Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen

by Seward, Desmond

  In 1179 too, Richard was installed as duke of Aquitaine. His mother was taken from her prison and brought over to Aquitaine, where she publicly renounced the duchy in favour of her son. She then returned to England and captivity. It seems that for a short time — probably the only time — there was some ill feeling between Eleanor and Richard.

  Some pitied the queen. The Benedictine Richard the Poitevin wrote a moving lament for her: ‘You have been ravished from your own country and carried off to an alien land’, this faithful monk apostrophizes her, ‘you enjoyed the pleasures of your ladies, their songs and the music of lute and tabor. And now you must grieve and weep and are eaten up with sorrow … You cry out but no one listens because it is the king of the north who holds you captive. Yet cry out still, unceasingly; raise your voice as if it were a trumpet and then it shall reach the ears of your sons. The day is coming when they will deliver you and when once more you shall dwell in your own land.’ The monk puts words into Eleanor’s mouth: ‘Alas, my exile has been a long one. I have lived with a crude and ignorant tribe.’ The words may well reflect the queen’s true feelings about the English, as they obviously do those of many Aquitainians.

  At the end of 1179 Louis VII was paralysed by a severe stroke and, after lingering for nearly a year, died in September 1180. There is no record of when Eleanor heard the news or whether she felt any emotion at the death of the husband with whom she had spent fifteen years. But in time to come she was certainly to rue the accession of the new king of the French, Philip II Augustus. For the moment, however, he was too young to seem a danger to anyone.

  Meanwhile her sons were squabbling savagely. Some of the Poitevin lords had risen in support of the young king, whom they preferred to count Richard. One of the chief agitators was the famous troubadour baron, Bertran de Born, of whom a modern historian has written: ‘In the person of this meteoric and malignant troubadour all the worst and best qualities of southern chivalry were blended.’ Bertran, who could put nearly a thousand troops into the field out of his own resources, boasts openly in one of his songs that ‘I am never happy unless the rich barons are at feud’. What made him particularly dangerous was his charm, to which all the Plantagenet princes were susceptible.

  In 1182 the young king, accompanied by Geoffrey, invaded Poitou, and a full-scale civil war broke out. Henry tried to make peace between his ferocious sons but they ignored him and the conflict continued. The young king had assembled an army of adventurers and mercenaries, who plundered far and wide, sacking abbeys and churches without a qualm. Peter of Blois wrote to the young man to accuse him of having become no more than ‘a leader of freebooters’, of consorting with ‘outlaws and excommunicates’. But young Henry suddenly fell ill and found himself without resources. The few followers who remained faithful to him had not even enough money to buy food.

  In June 1183 the captive queen had a most vivid dream. She saw her son, the young king, lying on a bed with his hands together, like some effigy on a tomb; there was a great, glowing sapphire ring on his finger, and on his head were two crowns: the first was the one that she had seen him wear, and the other was a circlet of heavenly light. Some days later the archdeacon of Wells came to her with the news that her eldest surviving son had died at Martel on 11 June. He had contracted dysentery and, realizing that he was mortally ill, had despatched a messenger to his father to beg his forgiveness; in reply the old king had sent him a sapphire ring as a token of reconciliation, and after his death it could not be removed from his finger. The archdeacon noted down Eleanor’s dream, commenting that she had borne the sad news with much bravery and self-control because she had understood the meaning of her vision. She told him that, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him’. Her imprisonment seems to have made her turn to religion.

  We know that Eleanor mourned her handsome, charming son — years later, she wrote to the pope that she was still tortured by his memory. And Henry II, whom he had wronged so often and so cruelly, was plunged into deep misery. Something of the glamour and attraction of the younger Henry may be gathered from the anguish of his friend Bertran de Born. The troubadour composed a planh (lament) that goes, in Ezra Pound’s rendering:

  If all the grief and woe and bitterness,

  All dolour, ill and every evil chance

  That ever came upon this grieving world

  Were set together they would seem but light

  Against the death of the young English king …

  That was most valiant ’mid all worthiest men.

  Gone is his body fine and amorous,

  Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.

  On his deathbed the young king had implored everyone present to intercede with his father for the release of his mother. Henry may well have been impressed by his son’s dying words. Shortly afterwards, Eleanor’s daughter Matilda and her turbulent husband Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony — in exile for his rebellion against the German emperor — were allowed to visit her at Old Sarum. In June 1184 Eleanor was permitted to go to Matilda’s lying-in at Winchester, when she was presented with a grandson. The Pipe Rolls record the old king’s gift to his estranged queen of a scarlet dress trimmed with grey miniver (weasel) and some embroidered cushions, together with rewards for her maid Amaria; far from being evidence of magnanimity, this may reflect the shameful poverty to which Henry had reduced her. Later that year she was given a fine gilt saddle. Then she was summoned by the king to keep Christmas — a festival that began on 30 November — with him at Windsor together with her beloved Richard (now heir to the throne) and John.

  The queen’s presence, however, should not be attributed to her husband’s forgiveness. Probably he wanted her co-operation in a redistribution of his empire, as he wished to give a substantially larger share to John, his favourite son. It does not appear that Eleanor gave the king much assistance. Bishop Stubbs thought that although Henry ‘occasionally indulged her with the show of royal pomp and power, he never released her from confinement or forgave her’. But modern research tells a slightly different story. It really does seem that henceforward, by degrees, her confinement was considerably relaxed, even if archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury’s plea for her release in the following year was not granted in every respect. She is known to have been with Henry in his French territories between May 1185 and April 1186.

  Ever since the death of the young king, Eleanor must have been recognized by Henry II as potentially valuable in any dealings with his children. He had loved his eldest son deeply, despite all his rebellions and betrayals. He plainly felt very differently about Richard, although he clearly recognized his energy and ability; perhaps Richard hated him because of his treatment of Eleanor, and perhaps Henry knew it. None the less the old king respected the young duke and accepted him as his heir, although he foresaw that, like his elder brother, Richard would try to make himself independent. It was here that Eleanor, whether she wanted to or not, could help in bringing him to heel.

  Yet at the same time it may not be altogether fanciful to dicsern a softening in Henry’s attitude towards his faithless queen during the later years of his reign. Gerald of Wales says of Henry II that those ‘whom he had once hated he rarely loved’, but that those ‘whom he had once loved he rarely regarded with hatred’.

  After the late 1170s, the Angevin empire was almost a federation. Henry retained England and overall control, but his sons ruled the lands across the sea. The latter intrigued constantly with or against each other and frequently against their father. The situation became even worse after the young king’s death. Henry wanted Richard, as his new heir, to move to Normandy and give Aquitaine to John. Richard refused. For all his savage treatment of its barons, he seems to have loved Aquitaine deeply. In any case, he obviously considered that the remote and barbarous lordship of Ireland was quite sufficient for John. Accordingly, John and Geoffrey invaded Poitou on their father’s instr
uctions, but were easily repulsed by their brother, an excellent soldier. Richard then came to England, to pay homage to his father and promise both obedience and hostages, but refused to give up Aquitaine. Eventually Henry forced him to return the duchy formally to his mother at Rouen during the Easter court of 1185. It was a clever move, as both Richard and the barons of Aquitaine had remained devoted to her. Even so, Richard continued to rule Aquitaine undisturbed until his father died and he was able to make sure that he could keep it for good. Meanwhile John was sent to Ireland to take possession of his lordship, and infuriated the chieftains by his arrogance and by such jokes as pulling their long beards.

  In 1186 Geoffrey of Brittany died, either from a fever or by falling from his horse during a tournament. Unlike Richard, he was a small, dark-haired man. Gerald of Wales gives us a daunting portrait of him: ‘One of the wisest of men, had he not been so ready to deceive others. His real nature had more of bitter aloes in it than honey; outwardly he had a ready flow of words, smoother than oil … he was a hypocrite, who could never be trusted and who had a marvellous gift for pretence and dissimulation.’ Duke Geoffrey believed that it was his family’s inheritance to hate each other and to do one another as much harm as possible. He lived up to this idea fully, and once ordered archers to shoot at his own father. He was also a ruthless plunderer of abbeys who personally sacked the rich shrine of Saint Martial and Saint Stephen of Grandmont. At the same time he possessed extraordinary personal magnetism; at his funeral his friend Philip of France, who was noted for his coldness, had to be forcibly prevented from jumping into the grave after him. Seven months after his death Geoffrey’s widow, Constance, bore a posthumous son to whom she gave the name of one of her Breton people’s heroes, Arthur.

  The last years of Henry II’s reign were sad ones, dominated by quarrels with his sons. Gerald of Wales tells us of a cruel legend about the old king (which took the fancy of the Elizabethan antiquary William Camden). ‘It is said of this Henry that in a chamber at Windsor he caused to be painted an eagle with four birds whereof three of them all attacked the body of the old eagle. The fourth was scratching at the old eagle’s eyes, and when it was asked of him what thing the picture should signify, it was answered by him, “This old eagle”, said he, “is myself and these four eagles betoken my four sons which cease not to pursue my death and especially my youngest son John which now I love most shall most especially await and imagine my death”.’ But it is clear from Henry’s behaviour that his children’s enmity took him by surprise, again and again.

  The new French king, Philip II, was a brilliant and ruthless politician who knew only too well how to exploit his neighbour’s difficulties. First Philip demanded the return of the Vexin as a consequence of the death of the young king, who had held it only as his wife’s dowry. He then complained about the delay in solemnizing the marriage between Richard and Philip’s half-sister, Alice of France, knowing very well that Richard was reluctant to marry her; the reason, according to Gerald of Wales (who was probably right), was that the old king had seduced the girl during her long stay at his court. When Henry proposed that she should marry John instead and be duchess of Aquitaine, Philip slyly revealed the plan to Richard. The latter was so infuriated that he agreed to co-operate in the war against his father.

  The campaign was abandoned, however, when terrible news arrived from Outremer. In July 1187 the army of the crusader states had been annihilated by Saladin at the Horns of Hattin; Jerusalem and the Holy Cross were now in infidel hands, and of all the Holy Land only two or three seaports remained to the Christians. The pope proclaimed a new crusade and the emperor, the kings of France and England and count Richard took the cross. Henry had been offered the crown of Jerusalem by the patriarch Heraclius in 1185, and had declined it. But now he and his sons may have had second thoughts: the current king, Guy of Lusignan, was hopelessly discredited. Henry began to assemble an expedition, imposing a savage tax — the Saladin tithe — to pay for it. Before he was able to set out, however, a new war began in France.

  Richard was invading Toulouse. Count Raymond had tortured and murdered some merchants of Poitou, blinding and gelding them, apparently as a carefully considered insult. For all their friendship — they ate out of the same dish and slept in the same bed when they were together — Philip, as overlord of Toulouse, could not tolerate Richard’s attack on his vassal. In June 1188 the French king struck in Berry, storming several castles. Henry immediately sailed from England with an army of Welsh merceneries, while his son swung north and quickly expelled the French from Berry. The war spread to Normandy and Anjou. But, in a series of skilful diplomatic moves, Henry detached two of Philip’s chief allies — the counts of Blois and Flanders — while the French king began to run out of money. By November it looked as though the Angevin had proved too much for the Capetian.

  Then Richard turned against his father. He demanded that his marriage to the unfortunate Alice should take place at once (he was almost certainly insincere), that Henry should guarantee his succession to the throne of England, and that he should immediately be given full possession of Anjou, Maine and Touraine as well as Poitou. The old king refused all his demands. In his father’s presence Richard thereupon formally declared himself king Philip’s vassal, kneeling swordless before him, placing his hands in his and doing homage to him for every Angevin fief in France. It was unfilial, even unnatural; consciously or unconsciously, Richard may have felt that in some way he was avenging the wrongs that his father had inflicted on his adored mother. A truce prevented the war from breaking out again until Easter 1189, and the pope tried desperately to put an end to the quarrel, which could have wrecked his crusade.

  In June 1189 the combined armies of count Richard and king Philip invaded Maine. In residence at the capital, Le Mans, Henry had too few troops to stop them. He set fire to Le Mans, although it had been his birthplace — some say that the burning was an accident — and fled towards Angers, pursued by his son. But Richard found his way barred by William Marshal, the most redoubtable knight of the age. Afraid for once, the count cried out, ‘Marshal, don’t kill me — it would be wicked as I’m unarmed’. William replied, ‘I shan’t kill you, but I hope the devil does’, and drove his lance into Richard’s horse to bring him crashing to the ground.

  Shortly afterwards, Henry, who was seriously ill from blood poisoning, met his enemies at Villandry. Swaying in the saddle but refusing to dismount, he agreed to all their demands. As he gave his son the kiss of peace, he whispered in Richard’s ear, ‘God grant that I don’t die before I can take my revenge on you’. But the old king had to return to Chinon in a litter, a dying man. He was so bitter that at first he refused to be shriven. ‘Why should I revere Christ? Why should I honour Him who dishonours me?’ For Henry had learnt on his deathbed that even his favourite child John had gone over to the enemy. Only his bastard son Geoffrey remained with him. His face turned to the wall, Henry II’s last words were, ‘Shame on a conquered king’. Eleanor had been revenged in full.

  12 Queen Mother

  ‘The eagle of the broken vow shall find joy in her third nestling.’

  Geoffrey of Monmouth

  ‘The king then sold everything that he had, castles, towns and manors.’

  Roger of Howden

  In his famous Prophecies of Merlin, Geoffrey of Monmouth had foretold how ‘The eagle of the broken vow shall find joy in her third nestling’ (Aquila rupti foederis tertia nitidatione gaudebit). Later the dean of St Paul’s, Ralph of Diceto, was not slow in seeing that these words might be applied to the queen mother and Richard I. Eleanor was of course an imperial eagle, ‘because she spread her wings over two kingdoms, those of France and England’; the broken vow signified both her divorce by king Louis and her imprisonment by king Henry; and the ‘third nestling’ was the new king, her third surviving son. The dean was not necessarily a sycophant in claiming that Eleanor found joy in Richard: everyone must have known that he was her favourite child.

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sp; On hearing that his father was dead, Richard came in a repentant mood to weep by the bier before the interment at Fontevrault. Then he seized the royal treasure at Chinon and sent orders to England for the release of his mother. His messenger was his erstwhile enemy, William Marshal. When William arrived at Winchester where Eleanor had been imprisoned, however, he found that she had already freed herself and was ‘more the great lady than ever’. Her son had directed that she was to order everything as she wished and that her commands were to be obeyed implicitly. She at once gathered the court together, and went on progress ‘from city to city and from castle to castle, just as she pleased’. That she was able to free herself so promptly is a revealing witness to the widespread recognition of the bond between herself and the new king; not even the justiciar dared to resist her. A modern French historian had described queen Eleanor as emerging from captivity transformed, ‘a sovereign in full sail’.

  Anxious to court popularity while establishing his rule, king Richard told his mother to release large numbers of prisoners. Accordingly, she sent an order throughout England for the freeing of men who had been unjustly imprisoned, notably for infringing the tyrannical forest laws, or because of malicious accusations. When issuing the order Eleanor remarked that she herself had found ‘by her own experience that prisons were hateful to men, and to be released from them was a most delightful refreshment to the spirit’. Another who benefited was her old ally of 1173, Robert Beaumont, earl of Leicester, whose lands were restored to him.