Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England

by Louise J. Wilkinson

  If there was any attempt to play upon Isabella’s sentiment during the early part of the summer of 1230, it failed to secure a steadfast ally for the English crown. On 8 June 1230, Ralph fitz Nicholas, the steward of the king’s household, informed the royal chancellor in England of the Count of La Marche’s defection to the French crown.94 One cannot help but wonder how Eleanor reacted to this news – with sadness or with a degree of cynicism at her mother’s behaviour. Eleanor’s role during the remainder of the Breton campaign went unrecorded, but her marriage to Pembroke, as well as the earl’s extensive experience and wealth, undoubtedly holds the key to the king’s subsequent decision to leave Pembroke, along with the Earl of Chester and Count of Aumale, to continue the campaign after his own return to England in October 1230.95

  Eleanor’s involvement in the Breton campaign raises the question of the personal dynamics within the relationship between Pembroke and his bride. English law, feudal custom and religious teaching expected and exhorted wives to be attentive, submissive and obedient to their husbands, who legally controlled their wives and their wives’ property during marriage.96 In practice, a husband’s authority within marriage and a wife’s level of subservience might be tempered by the personalities involved and by practical necessity; a long-running motif within medieval literature was the image of the wife who acted as her husband’s deputy in his absence, managing the noble household and its administration when he was engaged in family business elsewhere or in service to his lord or the king.97 The disparity in both age and experience between Pembroke and his royal bride strongly suggests that Eleanor was very much in her first husband’s shadow. The fifteen-year-old Eleanor’s presence alongside her husband on the Breton campaign, coupled with the existence of effective estate stewards on the Marshal estates, prevented Eleanor from assuming a role in the administration of Pembroke’s extensive lordships as her husband’s deputy or representative in his absence. Yet Eleanor’s status as the king’s sister might well have re-configured the sexual politics within their relationship in certain situations. Research into religious patronage by women in twelfth-and thirteenth-century England has illuminated the role of ‘persuasive wives’ as channels of benevolent influence and as active participants in religious patronage alongside their husbands.98 Like other great nobles of his day, the younger Marshal was a patron of religious houses throughout his estates in England, Ireland and Wales. He was a keen supporter of the new orders of friars who arrived in the British Isles in the 1220s, founding a house for Dominican Friars in Kilkenny in Ireland.99 He was a benefactor of Reading Abbey (Berkshire), where his father’s body had rested on its journey to its final resting place at the New Temple in London.100 William junior also made gifts to Tintern Abbey (Monmouthshire),101 Mottisfont Abbey (Hampshire),102 St Paul’s Cathedral, the resting place of his first wife,103 and St Mary’s Hospital, Roncevaux (in the Pyrenees).104 William junior confirmed the grants made by his father to William senior’s foundation of Cartmel Priory (Lancashire)105 and Duisk Abbey (Ireland),106 as well as making gifts in his father’s memory to St Thomas’s Abbey, Dublin.107

  Useful points of comparison with William junior’s activities are offered by William senior’s religious benefactions and by mention of his wife, Isabella de Clare, in his charters. A striking feature of the charters addressed by William Marshal senior to religious houses was the way in which he sometimes, quite deliberately, associated Isabella with his grants by naming her in pro anima clauses – clauses concerned with the safety of the souls of the grantor and other beneficiaries after death.108 Since Isabella was the great heiress through whom the elder William had secured vast estates, her appearance in her husband’s charters was not only an expression of his concern for her spiritual welfare, but also a reminder of her importance as the conduit through whom the greater part of the Marshal family’s wealth and influence had been secured and would be passed on to another generation. It reflected the importance attached to Isabella’s Anglo-Norman and Irish ancestry, as well as, perhaps, the length of her marriage to William Marshal senior; she had, after all, thirty years to build up an adult relationship with her husband. When Isabella was eventually widowed on William senior’s death, she secured control of her inheritance, fulfilled her commemorative responsibilities towards her late husband and, in doing so, associated William junior with her in her charters.109

  Although William junior’s wife, Eleanor, was not a great heiress like her mother-in-law, she was the English king’s sister in an aristocratic society that valued royal birth, noble lineage and impeccable political connections. When William junior married Henry III’s sister as his second wife, he deliberately associated Eleanor with him in at least some of his charters. This is clearly apparent in his patronage of the New Temple in London, his father’s burial place. When William senior granted the church of Speen in Berkshire to the Templars there, the pro anima clause of his charter included his wife as a beneficiary.110 When William junior confirmed his father’s gift of the advowson (the right of patronage over the church) of Speen, it was his turn to state that he did so expressly for the salvation of his own soul and that of his own wife, Eleanor.111 Admittedly, it is difficult to determine whether the association of a wife in a pro anima clause might simply have been a matter of form, rather than reflecting a desire on William junior’s part to celebrate his wife’s connections. It is, none the less, striking that the younger William’s charter mentioned his new, royal, wife by name.

  William junior’s attitude towards Eleanor as his wife might well have been influenced by the example set by his parents in other respects. In the History of William Marshal, a work probably informed by the younger Marshal’s personal testimony, Isabella de Clare emerges as a figure who was treated by her husband with the utmost respect. It is worth noting that, as was also the case with William junior and Eleanor, there was a significant age gap between the older Marshal and his bride. At the time of their marriage in 1189, Isabella was in her teens and William senior was in his forties; William received his young bride, who was, as we have seen, a substantial heiress, as a reward for his services to the crown.112 If, however, the countess was less experienced in public affairs than her older husband, William senior acknowledged her superiority of birth and status, and valued the wealth and connections that she brought to him on marriage. Throughout the History William senior’s wife, Isabella, is never mentioned by her personal name, but is referred to after her marriage simply as ‘la contesse’ as a mark of deference to her rank.113 In spite of, or perhaps because of, Isabella’s youth, she is portrayed as her husband’s frequent companion and trusted confidante, especially in the management of her natal family’s Irish lands. William senior, for his part, is clearly mindful of her personal importance both as the vessel through whom he holds many of his lands and as a figurehead for their tenants’ loyalties, especially on the Clares’ Irish estates. Hence the significance of the couple’s trip to Ireland in 1207, where William senior presented the countess to his men in Kilkenny and announced his intention for his wife to remain behind with them as his representative when he was summoned away on royal business, with the words:

  My lords,

  here you see the countess whom I have brought

  here by the hand into your presence.

  She is your lady by birth,

  the daughter of the earl who graciously,

  in his generosity, enfeoffed you all,

  once he had conquered the land.

  She stays behind here with you as a pregnant woman.

  Until such time as God brings me back here,

  I ask you all to give her unreservedly

  the protection she deserves by birthright,

  for she is your lady, as we well know;

  I have no claim to anything here save through her.114

  Crouch has argued that the countess’s stay in Ireland ‘may have been by her own insistence, rather than for health grounds’.115 Within the History, the countess certainly emerg
es as a woman who knew her own mind and offered frank advice that did not necessarily accord with her husband’s own views. When, for example, Isabella suffers ‘many a wrong and hurt’ in her husband’s absence, the History recalls her personal fury and desire for revenge against those persons who had committed these injuries to her lands and reputation; her husband, however, adopts a more moderate approach and shows mercy to those who come before him and restores their hostages to them.116

  Secondly, the History’s portrayal of the marriages of William junior’s sisters contains echoes of, and perhaps resonates with, Eleanor’s experiences as his youthful second bride. The History records the arrangements in or around 1206 for the marriage of William’s eldest sister Matilda (or Mahaut) with the Earl of Norfolk’s son. The boy, who is described as ‘worthy, mild-mannered and noble-hearted’, is regarded as an eminently suitable match for the teenage Matilda, who was ‘a very young thing … both noble and beautiful’.117 The marriage, which allied two powerful comital families, was to the ‘advantage and honour’ of the two earls who negotiated the union, with the unspoken assumption that it also suited the personal interests and tastes of the bride and groom.118

  There are also strong hints within the History of the feminine qualities and virtues that William junior might well have hoped to find, and perhaps encouraged, within Eleanor. In a passage where the author names and lists the attributes ‘Of the Marshal’s worthy children’, Matilda, the eldest daughter, is praised in no uncertain terms as a young woman whose character was endowed with ‘the gifts of wisdom, generosity, beauty, nobility of heart, graciousness, and, I can tell you in truth, all the good qualities / which a noble lady should possess’.119 Isabella, the second daughter, was ‘a handsome and beautiful girl’, and Sibyl, the third, similarly possessed ‘many fine qualities’.120 Eva, the fourth daughter, made a fitting match with the son of the ‘wise [and] powerful’ baronial family of Briouze, while the youngest daughter, Joan, was married, after her father’s death, to Warin de Munchensy, ‘a powerful man’ who was also of suitably ‘high birth’.121 The History’s apparent concern to emphasize that William junior’s sisters had not married ‘beneath themselves’, but had, in the case of the elder three, acquired husbands of comital rank (the son of the Earl of Norfolk, the Earl of Gloucester and the son of the Earl of Derby) or, in the case of the younger two, married men of equivalent wealth and power, betrays a real concern to celebrate and publicize the nobility of birth and the exemplary social connections of William senior’s offspring.122 The powerful political alliances embodied with the marriages of William Marshal senior’s daughters clearly made these women fitting sisters-in-law for Henry III’s youngest sister, Eleanor.

  The author of the History also waxed lyrical on the subject of William junior’s first marriage to the daughter of the count of Aumale, recalling the negotiations that had attended this match and the universal praise the two fathers received for bringing successfully to fruition a union of ‘two children from such very worthy fathers/and mothers’ until ‘Death’ prematurely robbed William junior of his first bride.123 Viewed against the existing network of Marshal marriages and the qualities and marital relationships constructed within the History, it appears that William junior expected his new, youthful, royal bride to be tutored to fill his mother’s shoes in the long term; there might well have been an expectation that Eleanor, like Isabella, would play an active role in family affairs. The value of the connections – both personal and political – that Eleanor brought to William junior on their marriage were reflected by her presence on the Breton campaign of 1230.

  THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARSHAL JUNIOR

  Eleanor returned to England from Brittany by the summer of 1230,124 but was reunited with her husband once more in the autumn. On 18 September 1230, the same day upon which instructions were issued by the king to furnish William junior’s messengers in England with a ‘good boat’ for their return to Brittany, Henry also saw to it that another ‘good boat’ was found to convey ‘the sister of the lord king, the wife of the earl’, overseas, presumably to rejoin her husband.125 The timing of this request – a matter of weeks before Henry III left for England – was significant, and provides another strong indicator of Eleanor’s importance to her new husband’s position. In the king’s absence, and with her husband continuing the war on Henry III’s behalf, Eleanor provided the English crown with a figurehead and focus for personal ties of loyalty to the Angevin dynasty, and a visual reminder of Pembroke’s marital relationship with the English crown.

  It was not until 22 February 1231 that William and, presumably, Eleanor finally returned to England.126 Pembroke was at Gloucester on 2 March 1231, when the earl witnessed a charter issued by the king.127 At the beginning of April, the Earl and Countess of Pembroke attended the wedding of Eleanor’s brother, Richard, now Earl of Cornwall, to William junior’s second sister, Isabella. Isabella’s first husband, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, had died at Penros in Brittany on 25 October 1230, leaving her free to marry again.128 Immediately after Gloucester’s death, the custody of his estates and of Richard, his eight-year-old son and heir, had been granted to the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh.129 This came at a time of growing resentment within England against de Burgh’s influence over the king and his domination of royal patronage; it is therefore possible that Isabella’s personal willingness to enter into a union with Richard of Cornwall suited her personal interests, as well as those of her brother and her future husband. Richard of Cornwall and the Earl of Pembroke had already joined together as part of a wider baronial alliance in 1227 against de Burgh. Richard, for his part, might well have resented surrendering his claims to the honour of Berkhamsted to de Burgh’s nephew, Raymond.130 The younger Marshal, on the other hand, opposed de Burgh’s promotion of the claims of another nephew, Richard, in Ireland, and probably resented losing the justiciarship there in June 1226.131 In 1231, therefore, Cornwall and Pembroke renewed their earlier association through marriage.132 It is, unfortunately, impossible to know whether Eleanor played a role in negotiating this match behind the scenes, but she was certainly well placed to serve as a go-between between her husband and brother and between her future sister-in-law and her brother. Richard and Isabella were, as the Tewkesbury annalist recalled, subsequently married on 30 March 1231 by Peter, Abbot of Tewkesbury, at Fawley in Buckinghamshire, much to Henry III’s dismay.133 Within seven days of his sister’s marriage, William junior was dead, dying from a swift and unexpected illness on 6 April 1231, and was buried a few days later at the New Temple in London, near his father.134 This sudden turn of events left Eleanor a widow at the age of sixteen.

  3

  The Chaste Widow

  ‘Woe is me! Is not the blood of the blessed martyr Thomas [Becket] fully avenged yet?’1

  The death of William Marshal junior in April 1231 was greatly lamented in royal circles. The king, so the chronicler Matthew Paris recalled, was overcome with grief at the loss of his brother-in-law, attributing it to divine vengeance for Henry II’s role in the martyrdom of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170. The depth of Henry III’s sorrow was also strongly conveyed within the records of the English royal chancery. On 25 May 1231, a little over a month after Pembroke’s death, a letter addressed to the king’s subjects in Ireland spoke of the recently deceased earl, ‘over whose death we violently grieved and [still] grieve’.2 The date of this letter was significant. By the end of May, the recently widowed Eleanor was in a position to inform her brother whether or not she was carrying her dead husband’s child, and thus a future heir to the Marshal estates. She was not.3 This left as William junior’s heir his younger brother, Richard, a liegeman of the king of France. His succession to the Marshal family’s English, Irish and Welsh lands raised the spectre of a Capetian–Marshal alliance that threatened the security of the realm. The royal letter, therefore, announced the king’s intention to take William junior’s Irish lands into the crown’s hands.4

  Ne
xt, though, came a curious twist in the tale. When Richard crossed the Channel in the summer of 1231, the English king informed him that he had learned that Eleanor was pregnant after all. Henry refused to entertain Richard’s claim to the Marshal estates until the truth of the matter had been determined.5 Thus, Eleanor’s potential, if not necessarily her actual, maternity offered the crown a convenient excuse for delaying Richard’s succession.

  Eleanor’s personal reaction to William’s death mirrored that of the king; a keen sense of sorrow and loss on her part is suggested by the young countess’s subsequent decision to make a ‘solemn vow’ to live out the remainder of her days as a chaste widow.6 In a formal ceremony presided over by Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, Eleanor took her vow alongside her erstwhile governess, Cecily of Sandford. Having received a ring ‘in testimony of perpetual celibacy’, Eleanor cast off her former finery and adopted clothes of russet, a relatively cheap and coarse cloth, as a mark of her new spiritual status.7 In committing herself to such a vow, Eleanor effectively ruled out the possibility that she might remarry and bear children, a decision that was neither taken lightly nor rushed into. Although Paris assigned no date to the ceremony during which Eleanor took her vow – it appears in a passage in his Chronica majora that describes Cecily of Sandford’s death in 1251 – the presence of Edmund of Abingdon as Archbishop of Canterbury is instructive. Edmund was elected archbishop by the monks of Christ Church on 20 September 1233 and subsequently consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral on 2 April 1234.8 If Paris’s dating can be trusted, the earliest that Eleanor took her vow was in the spring of 1234, three years after her husband’s death. So what, then, had happened to Eleanor in the intervening period that persuaded her to become a vowess?