Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England

by Louise J. Wilkinson

  THE FRUSTRATED BRIDEGROOM

  At the time of her betrothal in or around 1221 to William Marshal junior, Eleanor was still just a six-year-old child and below the age of canonical consent for betrothal approved by the church. The deliberations over the pros and cons of the match by the English barons undoubtedly delayed matters. By the summer of 1222, Pembroke was blaming the machinations of ‘jealous’ parties for the failure of the marriage to come to fruition. Eleanor’s extreme youth might also have offered Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar, a convenient and plausible reason to postpone the marriage, while at the same time guaranteeing Pembroke’s loyalty as a political ally, but without actually delivering William junior’s marital prize. A strong sense of Pembroke’s frustration at having turned down alternative brides in order to accept the match with Eleanor, only to have her withheld from him, is conveyed by his decision to solicit support by petitioning the pope in 1222 – the year in which Eleanor turned seven.59 William junior’s representations secured a papal mandate in June that year, whereby the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Salisbury were both ordered to ensure that the promised union between William and Eleanor went ahead. The mandate stipulated, however, that their marriage ought only to proceed if it was to the advantage of Henry III and his kingdom, and on the express condition that it resulted in no great scandal, a clear reference to the relative obscurity of Pembroke’s birth in relation to that of his intended bride. Indeed, the concerns expressed in this mandate might have reflected concerns at the papal curia itself about Eleanor’s possible disparagement, concerns that prompted Henry III’s detailed memorandum on the subject when the marriage finally went ahead in the spring of 1224.

  By the early months of 1224, there were no reasonable grounds for delaying the union any longer. Pembroke had, after all, more than fulfilled his side of the bargain by surrendering Marlborough in 1221, and performing important services for the English crown during the Welsh campaign of 1223. The closing months of 1223 were also a momentous time for the royal government: Henry III, now sixteen, assumed control of governmental affairs and, with the assistance of his supporters, recovered his royal castles and sheriffdoms from those who had held them during his minority.60 In Ireland, however, where the younger Marshal possessed extensive lordships and where his cousin, John Marshal, controlled Ulster for the crown, the situation was far less promising for the king. Hugh de Lacy, a former rebel and a former lord of Ulster, invaded Ireland and laid waste to lands in Meath.61 These events placed a higher premium still on the value of retaining Pembroke’s loyalty and, arguably, explain Henry III’s readiness to see his youngest sister’s marriage to Pembroke finally come to pass. In addition, the projected marriage, once again, offered a way of strengthening the position of Pembroke’s ally, de Burgh, at the heart of government against the competing interests of des Roches and his associates, who had found their power base eroded by the resumption of castles and shrievalties.62 The connection between affairs in Ireland and the conclusion of the Marshal marriage is implicit in the order of entries recorded on the patent rolls, a series of rolls containing copies of royal letters that were issued open or ‘patent’. On 5 February 1224, the same day that the king informed the Archbishop of Dublin that he had awarded custody of Roscrea Castle to Theobald Walter, for whom Pembroke stood as surety, Henry III furnished his future brother-in-law with another letter. Significantly, this was addressed to Robert de Courtenay, the nobleman who then had charge of Eleanor’s household, and instructed him to hand Eleanor over to Marshal, so that she might travel with him to the king.63 In assigning Marshal the role of escort, the king, it seems, sought to reassure him that his long-anticipated union with Eleanor would stand.

  THE MARSHAL BRIDE

  When, in the spring of 1224, Henry III appointed William junior to escort the nine-year-old Eleanor to the royal court, he provided his youngest sister with a valuable opportunity to become acquainted with her future husband in advance of the couple’s nuptials on 23 April 1224.64 At the time her marriage was celebrated, Eleanor was probably no more than nine years old at most, three years below the canonical age of consent for marriage, and she had not yet reached puberty. Pembroke, her new husband, was, by contrast, in his mid-thirties. William junior had also experienced married life before. His first wife was Alice de Béthune, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Aumale, to whom he had been betrothed in 1203, and whom he had married in 1214. Alice, who bore William junior no surviving children, died in or around 1216.65 William’s transition from the husband of a count’s daughter to the husband of the daughter and sister of a king stood as testimony to his rise in power and influence during the minority of Henry III. The value that he placed upon securing a royal bride explains why, initially at least, and in a departure from the usual social conventions of his day, William received Eleanor without a substantial marriage portion. As the king boasted to his proctors at the papal curia in 1224, ‘without diminution of lands, castles, or money, we granted our younger sister to him’.66 The marriage also, in the short term, secured a powerful and influential ally for the crown in Ireland. Indeed, the Dunstable annalist, in his account of the Marshal marriage, noted the contrast – while labouring his own political and moral point – between William Marshal junior, who ‘took to wife the sister of Henry, King of England’, and the behaviour of the rebel Hugh de Lacy in Ireland, who put aside his legitimate wife and lived in adultery, while the Marshal waged a just war against him and subdued Ireland on the crown’s behalf.67 The annalist was astute in linking the Marshal marriage so strongly with Irish affairs. Eleanor and Pembroke’s marriage had been followed nine days later by William junior’s appointment as justiciar there.68 Marshal’s extensive properties in Ireland, which included the lordship of Leinster, coupled with his new status as Henry’s brother-in-law, made him an ideal candidate to represent the English crown in Ireland and bring the Irish rebels to heel.

  But what did this union actually mean for Eleanor in personal terms? Throughout the negotiations between de Burgh, Henry III and the younger Marshal, Eleanor was treated as a valuable asset and pawn in the hands of the royal government. It is useful here to consider Eleanor’s experiences in the light of those of other girls of similar rank. John Parsons’s study of eighty-seven matrimonial alliances entered into by members of the English royal house and the noble families of Mortimer of March and Holland of Kent between 1150 and 1500 found thirty-eight brides who were fourteen or younger on marriage, but observed that it was more usual for Plantagenet brides to marry when they were fifteen or older.69 Margaret Howell’s research has modified this view for the thirteenth century: no fewer than eight of the twelve royal women who were associated with the courts of Henry III of England and Louis IX of France as mothers, sisters, wives, daughters and daughters-in-law of the two kings married at twelve or a little earlier in order to cement advantageous political alliances.70 This accords well with the experiences of the generation of royal women who preceded Henry III and his sisters. Eleanor’s aunts on her father’s side had married at similarly young ages. Born in 1156, Matilda, the eldest daughter of Henry II by Eleanor of Aquitaine, was betrothed in 1165 and married in 1168 to Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, a man twenty-seven years her senior.71 Matilda’s younger sister, Eleanor/Leonor, was just nine years old when she married Alfonso VIII (b. 1154), King of Castile, in 1170, with an eye to strengthening the Pyrenean frontier of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s lands.72 Matilda and Eleanor’s youngest sister, Joan (b. 1165), was betrothed in 1176 to William II, King of Sicily, and married him in the Palatine Chapel in Palermo on 13 February 1177; William was more than a decade older than his bride.73

  The relative youthfulness of Henry III of England’s sisters, Joan and Eleanor, at the time of their first marriages to the King of Scots and the Earl of Pembroke sat well with contemporary practice at the level of the elite. Above all, it demonstrated the importance attached to their marriages as a means of bringing security and stability to the English realm. It is usef
ul to think of the young princesses, Eleanor and Joan, as highly prized assets during the first, uncertain decade of Henry III’s reign, at a time when the crown’s position at home and abroad remained relatively weak. In such circumstances, there was little point in delaying the arrangement of their marriages, when they might secure immediate political advantages – Joan’s marriage strengthened England’s northern borders, while Eleanor’s procured a powerful and wealthy English ally for the young king. This partly explains why Eleanor, in particular, found herself married to a much older man.

  On the occasion of her marriage to William Marshal junior in 1224, Eleanor was simply too young and too inexperienced to play a role in the arrangements for the match. If, as a nine year old, she expressed an opinion on her future husband, it went unrecorded. We do not even know at which point Eleanor was informed that she would marry Pembroke. Her marriage to an English magnate, rather than a foreign potentate presumably exempted her from the custom for foreign ambassadors to ‘view’ her, that is, meet her and appraise her suitability as their master’s prospective bride.74 Yet we must be cautious of bringing modern values to bear on a thirteenth-century dynastic union and of painting too bleak a picture of the way in which Henry III and his counsellors regarded Eleanor and her marriage. There are clear signs that the young king was far from indifferent to the emotional and physical wellbeing of the young bride-to-be. In the first place, it is worth noting her connection with Robert de Courtenay during these formative years. Robert, in whose care Eleanor can be found early in 1224, was lord of Okehampton in Devon and the husband of Marion de Vernon, a daughter of William (d. 1217), Earl of Devon.75 He was also, more significantly, a kinsman of the French lords of Courtenay from whom Eleanor was descended through her maternal grandmother Alice de Courtenay.76 Furthermore, as sheriff of Devon, a county where the queen dowager held substantial properties in dower, Robert had witnessed a grant by his kinswoman, Isabella of Angoulême, of the fair of Exeter to St Nicholas’s Priory on 29 May 1217, shortly before she departed from the realm.77 The combined importance of this family connection and Robert’s earlier association with Eleanor’s mother should not be overlooked. It seems likely that Courtenay’s distant blood relationship with Eleanor recommended him to the crown as a suitable custodian and gave him a strong personal interest in the upbringing of the king’s youngest sister. It also potentially allowed Eleanor to maintain a connection with her maternal heritage in her mother’s absence. If this was, indeed, the case, then it is not inconceivable that the queen dowager herself remained informed after all, via letters and messengers, of her youngest daughter’s health, welfare and impending marriage throughout Eleanor’s childhood.

  In the second place, having made Pembroke wait three years for marriage, the king was perfectly prepared to make him wait quite a bit longer for the match to be consummated and for the couple to fulfil their conjugal debt to one another. It was possibly in recognition of the final consummation of Eleanor and Pembroke’s union that the king decided on 18 October 1229 to make a special grant to William and his heirs of ten manors – Brabourne (Kent), Sutton (Kent), Kemsing (Kent), Luton (Bedfordshire), Norton (Northamptonshire), Foulsham (Norfolk), Wantage (Berkshire), Severnstoke (Worcestershire), Toddington (Bedfordshire) and Newbury (Berkshire), and half a manor in Shrivenham (Berkshire). This gift, made on the express condition that these manors would remain with Eleanor for life in the event of her widowhood, was clearly intended to provide the king’s youngest sister with some form of future maintenance.78 These lands were all former properties of the Count of Perche that Pembroke held already; Eleanor’s long-term financial support was, thus, guaranteed at minimal cost and inconvenience to the English crown.79

  The timing of the grant in 1229 was significant from the point of view of Eleanor’s physical development. Delays between the wedding ceremony and the advent of regular conjugal relations between couples were, so Parsons argues, fairly common when royal brides were in their early teens or younger.80 Eleanor’s mother, Isabella of Angoulême, married King John in 1200 at the age of twelve, but bore their first child in 1207. Roger of Wendover blamed the loss of Normandy in 1203–4, in part, upon John’s infatuation with his young bride, a comment that might indicate that it was widely believed that their union had been consummated by the time that Isabella reached the age of fifteen or sixteen.81 Henry III’s wife, Eleanor of Provence, was twelve at the time of her marriage in 1236, and gave birth to her eldest son, Edward, three years later.82 Their eldest daughter, Margaret, married Alexander III, King of Scots, in 1251, when she was eleven, but only lived together with him as his wife after 1255. In the interim, and much to Margaret’s frustration, the couple were kept apart by their Scottish guardians.83 Royal daughters might be ‘sacrificed’ to the interests of national and international diplomacy through their early marriages, but not entirely without thought of their future health and welfare. A bride who was still too young to be nubile would be unable to bear an heir until she reached the age of menarche. Medical treatises indicate that contemporaries understood that once a girl reached the age of menarche, and was potentially able to bear an heir, the travails of pregnancy and childbirth might be particularly dangerous for a younger, rather than an older, woman. Brides who were in their early teens were less likely to carry a living child successfully to full term and were also less likely to survive delivering a child or to bear healthy sons or daughters in the future. The Trotula texts, for example, a compendium of work on women’s medicine that originated in southern Italy in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries and which circulated throughout western Europe in the Middle Ages, observed that women usually menstruated between the ages of thirteen or fourteen and thirty-five to sixty or sixty-five.84 The compilers of such texts believed that young women who gave birth in winter were more likely than others to encounter difficulties and were more likely to experience stillbirths due to ‘a tight orifice of the womb’, exacerbated by the cold weather.85

  In the years between Eleanor and Pembroke’s marriage in 1224 and its consummation in 1229, Eleanor was placed in the care of a governess, Cecily of Sandford, with a view to preparing her for married life.86 The continuing value that the English crown placed upon the marriage in the meantime as a way of keeping one of the kingdom’s wealthiest magnates in check is demonstrated nowhere more clearly than in a letter patent that the king sent to William junior on 10 July 1226. In this letter, the contents of which are suggestive of a certain degree of reluctance on the Marshal’s part to become a mere cipher of the crown, Henry III admonished his brother-in-law for failing to meet with him; rumours had reached Pembroke that Henry regarded him with suspicion once more. Pembroke had apparently informed the king of his intention to undertake a pilgrimage but appears instead to have set off for Ireland. In seeking to reassure Pembroke of his continuing affection, the king reminded the earl that he had given him his own sister in marriage.87 After all, what clearer statement of the king’s continuing regard was needed than that?

  Pembroke was frequently employed on royal business after his marriage to Eleanor was consummated in 1229. Even if the royal campaign overseas planned for 1229 was postponed, Pembroke and his knights were summoned to serve the king in Brittany in 1230.88 Eleanor accompanied her husband and the royal court on the Breton expedition. Perhaps Pembroke was hopeful that by keeping his long-anticipated royal bride by his side, it would remind the king of his new ties of kinship and strengthen Pembroke’s stature as a senior adviser on the campaign. Eleanor’s attendance alongside her husband also increased the likelihood that the couple might conceive an heir. Her presence during the initial stages of the campaign is confirmed by a remarkable letter sent by Nicholas de Neville to Ralph de Neville, Bishop of Chichester and royal chancellor, which describes Henry III’s crossing to Brittany.89 The letter reported how Henry, with a retinue of about thirty ships, landed on the isle of Jersey before nine in the morning on 2 May. The rest of the great fleet, meanwhile, had diverted to the port of S
t Gildas. The king, however, remained on Jersey ‘because his sister was just a little fatigued by the sea’.90 Once Eleanor recovered, Henry and his ships set sail for St Malo at three in the morning on the following day, together with Eleanor’s husband, the Earl Marshal, where they joined the remainder of the English fleet.91 The king’s sympathy for Eleanor’s seasickness – that he stopped for her and then refused to leave her behind – provides yet another striking demonstration of the king’s personal interest in his sister’s welfare and hints at his affection towards her.92

  On their arrival at St Malo in Brittany, the royal party prepared to receive their ally, the Duke of Brittany. The king and his retinue then proceeded to Dinan in the company of Isabella of Angoulême and from there made arrangements to travel on to Nantes for a family conference with his stepfather, Hugh (X) de Lusignan, Count of La Marche.93 Eleanor’s presence in Brittany on this occasion is intriguing. In accompanying her older brother, Eleanor was presented with an opportunity to meet with her mother for the first time in thirteen years, a further testimony to royal favour. Eleanor’s presence was also not without its potential for political leverage from the crown’s point of view. Henry might well have hoped that, in bringing his youngest sister with him and thus engineering a family reunion, her involvement would incline the queen dowager and her husband to lend their support to the king’s campaign. It is, of course, possible that Isabella requested, and perhaps anticipated with pleasure, her youngest daughter’s presence. Henry III’s and Eleanor’s maternal connections mattered – on both personal and political levels.