Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England

by Louise J. Wilkinson

  THE MARSHAL DOWER

  William Marshal’s death in 1231 left Eleanor, in theory at least, an extremely wealthy young widow. In addition to the ten and a half manors that Henry III granted William junior and Eleanor in 1229,9 she was entitled to a third of her dead husband’s lordships in England, Wales and Ireland as her dower (or widow’s share). No figures survive that indicate the precise value of the Marshal estates in 1231, but by 1247 the English and Welsh properties alone were valued at £1,333 per annum, and the Irish estates at £1,715.10 In 1247, Margaret de Lacy, the widow of another earl of Pembroke – Walter, a younger brother of William junior – stood to receive as her Marshal dower English and Welsh lands worth £444 per annum and Irish lands worth £572 per annum.11 If allowance is made for changes to the overall value of the Marshal lands between 1231 and 1247, it is clear that in 1231 Eleanor was entitled to a life interest in a substantial portfolio of properties. As a result, Richard Marshal, William junior’s next heir, stood to lose possession of a third of his lands to a young widow of just sixteen, who might very well live outlive him, as she had his older brother.

  In thirteenth-century England, a widow’s right to dower was safeguarded by the common law and effectively served as a woman’s ‘insurance policy’ against penury in the event of a husband’s death.12 Yet dower and widows’ property rights remained sufficiently controversial political issues to merit their inclusion in the successive reissues of Magna Carta in the early thirteenth century. Cap. 7 of the 1225 version of the Great Charter, for instance, laid down that a widow ought to have her marriage portion and inheritance without any delay after her husband’s death, and that she should pay nothing for her dower, inheritance or marriage portion. It recognized a widow’s right to remain in her husband’s ‘chief house’ for forty days after his death until her dower was assigned to her, unless her husband’s ‘chief house’ was a castle, in which case she ought to be provided with an alternative residence.13 This was all very well in principle, but, as Eleanor soon discovered, these provisions were unworkable in complex cases where large estates were involved and where the assignment of a substantial mass of lands to a widow might have weighty political implications for the crown.

  In Eleanor’s case, at least, her position as the king’s sister, coupled with William junior’s close proximity to the court at the time of his death, ensured that Magna Carta’s initial ‘insurance’ mechanisms came into play straight away. On 15 April 1231, just nine days after William junior died, the king instructed his English sheriffs and the Irish justiciar to assist the dead earl’s executors and took immediate steps to safeguard his sister’s rights.14 Henry also instructed his agents to ensure that Eleanor enjoyed reasonable estover (the right to cut and take wood) in the manor of Inkberrow (Worcestershire). Then, a day later, Henry III informed the sheriff of Worcestershire and other royal officials that Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke, was to reside in her late husband’s castle at Inkberrow until she received her dower entitlement.15 A fortnight after this, Henry III implemented further measures for his sister’s maintenance; the young dowager countess was awarded custody of the manors of Badgeworth (Gloucestershire), Weston (Hertfordshire), Inkberrow (Worcestershire) and Wexcombe (Wiltshire) as a temporary assignment until her full dower settlement was handed over.16 This, in its turn, was followed on 13 May 1231 – a little more than a month after William junior’s death – with another royal order to see that Eleanor was placed in possession of her Irish dower estates.17

  It was unfortunate for Eleanor that the process of assigning her dower from such a vast and scattered collection of properties was both complicated and challenging for the officials concerned. The Marshal properties needed to be surveyed and valued before an assignment might be made, a process that dragged on well into the summer of 1231.18 Representatives of the countess or perhaps the countess herself visited the royal court at Oxford in July 1231, presumably in an attempt to hurry matters along. On 11 July, Henry III placed his sister in possession of the manor of Hamstead Marshall (Berkshire), the Marshal family’s ancestral seat, while she continued to await her dower. The king also gave her some oaks from Chute Forest (Hampshire and Wiltshire) with which to repair her mill at Newbury (Berkshire), together with a gift of venison from the forest near Havering in Essex.19 The gift of oaks, at least, suggests that Eleanor was taking an active interest in the day-to-day administration of those lands that were now directly under her management.

  With the assignment of such a prestigious Marshal family property – Hamstead Marshall – to the countess, it might have seemed that it would only be a matter of time before Eleanor enjoyed her full dower. Such hopes were soon to be dashed by Henry III’s apparent change of heart towards her brother-in-law, Richard Marshal, a change of heart that was seemingly prompted by the resumption of hostilities in the Welsh Marches. In the power vacuum created by William junior’s death, Hubert de Burgh had attempted to intrude the king’s men into the Marshal lands there, a situation that created confusion and which provided an excellent opportunity for the Welsh prince, Llywelyn, to pursue his own interests there once more.20 In early August 1231, Richard Marshal performed homage to the English king and finally secured possession of his inheritance.21 Not altogether surprisingly, once he had secured his estates, the new earl proved reluctant to address the outstanding issue of Eleanor’s dower. In fact, Richard attempted to withhold the Worcestershire manor of Severnstoke – one of the manors specifically earmarked for Eleanor’s upkeep in 1229 – from his royal sister-in-law. On 6 September 1231, Henry III stepped in and ordered Pembroke to allow Eleanor to enjoy this manor, otherwise the sheriff would intervene and eject the earl’s officials by force.22

  If Eleanor’s rights were a thorn in Richard’s side, the failure of the king and her brother-in-law to agree her dower allocation placed the countess in an increasingly difficult and, no doubt, stressful situation. Although some care was evidently taken on the crown’s part to ensure that Eleanor’s English manors were stocked with the oxen and ploughs necessary to sustain them in continuous cultivation,23 not all the properties were in good repair, hence Eleanor’s concern to renovate the mill at Newbury. This added burden of maintenance at a time when Eleanor possessed a limited pool of revenue-generating properties exposed her to financial hardship; she seems to have suffered from a lack of ready cash with which to meet her own expenses. By the winter months of 1231, if not earlier, Eleanor had turned to Jewish moneylenders as a source of personal finance. In doing so, Eleanor’s experiences reflected those of other noble and gentle women who ‘were most frequently drawn into credit relationships’ with the Jews in their widowhoods, either through inheriting their husbands’ debts or by contracting new bonds themselves.24 On 15 November 1231, Henry III gave permission, ‘at the instance of Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke, his sister’, for three Jews – Deusaye, son of Isaac of Winchester, Bonevie of Bristol and Lynn of Bristol – to stay at the countess’s manor of Newbury until 2 February 1232.25 Bonevie was either still at Newbury or paying another visit there in April 1232, when, again at Eleanor’s request, the king allowed him to extend his stay until Pentecost.26 Perhaps Eleanor entered into, or contemplated entering into, a short-term mortgage of this manor while she awaited her dower. Henry III, for his part, was not unsympathetic towards his youngest sister’s plight. On 7 January 1232, he ordered the knights and free men of Eleanor’s manors of Luton, Sutton, Kemsing and Brabourne to pay her a ‘reasonable aid’ to discharge her debts.27 The problem was that a measure such as this offered, at best, a short-term solution to Eleanor’s financial problems. The much-needed long-term solution – the assignment of Eleanor’s full amount of Marshal dower – still remained to be addressed.

  If, as the spring of 1232 gave way to summer, Eleanor hoped to receive her final dower allocation, she continued to be disappointed. In Eleanor’s case, the forty-day limit for dower assignments imposed by Magna Carta was simply unworkable. It was not until June 1232 that there was any significant
headway. At the beginning of the month, Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, prevailed upon the king to undertake what Nicholas Vincent has termed ‘a root and branch overhaul of royal finances’.28 As part of this, the king yet again attempted to settle the matter of Eleanor’s dower. On 8 June, the king informed Richard de Burgh, the justiciar of Ireland, that Richard Marshal had appeared before him at Worcester. There, in the presence of the king’s magnates, Richard agreed to surrender to Eleanor, the king’s ‘beloved sister’, her Irish dower. The new earl of Pembroke nominated nine properties, including the castle and vill of Kildare, and promised to hand over further lands to Eleanor should these fall short of the full value of her entitlement.29 Attentive to his sister’s interests, Henry then dispatched six officials to inspect Eleanor’s new lands and report their findings back to the English court.30 It might finally have seemed to Eleanor that her widow’s share of the Marshal estates in Ireland was at last within her grasp. This was not to be.

  THE ROAD TO REBELLION

  The political situation in England during the summer of 1232 was complicated by a dramatic coup at the very heart of Henrician government. Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar and leading architect of Eleanor’s first marriage, and an early opponent of Richard Marshal’s succession in 1231, fell from power.31 Between August and November 1232, through the connivance of des Roches and others who were dissatisfied with de Burgh’s regime, including Richard Marshal, the justiciar was stripped of lands and offices.32 Among the more outlandish charges levelled against Hubert was the improbable accusation that he had murdered Eleanor’s late husband, William Marshal junior, using poison.33 Against the background of this coup, Richard Marshal – Eleanor’s opponent – emerged, as Vincent has noted, as ‘the most active figure at court’, a situation that Eleanor might well have regarded with growing anxiety.34 If Eleanor entertained any hope that Marshal’s close proximity to Henry might encourage the new earl to regard her claims more favourably, she was sorely mistaken, as Earl Richard continued to block her interests. In fact, as the events of the final months of 1232 and opening months of 1233 unfolded, Richard Marshal’s own resentment continued to simmer – against the crown over Eleanor’s dower and against the crown over the king’s handling of patronage when disposing of de Burgh’s former lands and offices. Even now, Richard remained reluctant to surrender any of his Welsh and Irish estates to the king’s youngest sister, so keen was he to preserve the integrity of his inheritance. Richard’s reluctance might explain why, as early as 29 July 1232, when the king was at Woodstock, Richard had decided to offer the young dowager countess a cash sum of £400 per annum in lieu of her dower in Pembrokeshire and Ireland.35 Eleanor, apparently at her brother’s prompting, initially accepted this sum, driven perhaps by desperation at the length of time that had elapsed since William junior’s death and by a desire to alleviate her financial difficulties.

  It is, of course, perfectly possible that both the king and his youngest sister believed, perhaps on the basis of the Irish lands recently nominated by Richard Marshal, that £400 represented a fair deal. After all, Eleanor had already received a temporary dower allocation in England, which was presumably now made permanent, as well as those ten and a half English manors earmarked for her upkeep in 1229. A cash sum would save her from the trouble of managing her dower in south Wales and Ireland remotely as an absentee landlady,36 and thereby provide her with a guaranteed source of income. Henry III and Eleanor’s naivety on this matter would later return to haunt them.37

  Richard Marshal, for his part, either experienced a shortage of ready cash with which to pay Eleanor £400 or perhaps hoped to use this arrangement as a bargaining counter in his subsequent relationship with the crown. The £400 sum was payable in two instalments at the New Temple in London: the first £200 was to be paid within a month of Michaelmas and the remaining £200 within a month of Easter.38 In order to ensure that Eleanor would not be left out of pocket should Richard prove unable or just plain reluctant to pay, the threat of distraint (compulsory seizure) was placed upon Richard’s English lands.39 Yet even this safety clause proved inadequate to guarantee Marshal’s loyalty. As he grew increasingly disillusioned with Henry III’s court and resentful at the pre-eminence of Peter des Roches and his Poitevin allies, Pembroke’s willingness to pay waned. Indeed, Pembroke’s resentment against the crown threatened to boil over at the beginning of February 1233, when his kinsman Gilbert Basset was deprived of the Wiltshire manor of Upavon in favour of Peter de Maulay, the long-standing associate of Peter des Roches.40 Marshal withdrew from Henry III’s court, whence he initially travelled to Wales, and then on to Ireland.41 By the summer, Eleanor’s brother-in-law had allied himself firmly with a group of disaffected barons against the crown.42

  Eleanor, as the king’s sister, bore at least part of the brunt of Marshal’s antagonism towards the English crown. On 6 June 1233, the king felt compelled to inform the sheriff of Gloucestershire that the earl had failed to meet his payments to Eleanor. The sheriff was ordered to seize Pembroke’s goods in the county, so that Eleanor might thereby recover £150 in arrears.43 This was followed on 30 June by further letters addressed to the sheriffs of Berkshire, Sussex, Gloucestershire (again) and Worcestershire that instructed them to furnish Eleanor with money from the earl’s demesne properties to satisfy Marshal’s debts.44 Eleanor’s agreement with Richard had not been worth the parchment upon which it was written, after all: Richard had defaulted upon the entire payment for the first year.

  The agreement reached between Eleanor and Richard Marshal raises the question of Eleanor’s agency and her personal level of involvement in the negotiations over her Irish dower. As a teenage widow under her brother’s protection, it is tempting to dismiss Eleanor, once more, as a mere pawn who was excluded from the process of securing her dower by an older and more experienced brother. Eleanor was effectively packed off to Inkberrow and her other English Marshal manors to await the assignment of her Irish dower. This is certainly a view that found favour with M. A. E. Green, who claimed that ‘This agreement [between Eleanor and Richard Marshal] was made without the knowledge or consent of the countess, although it was sealed with her seal.’45 In Green’s eyes, it was Henry who acted on Eleanor’s behalf and Henry who, in his naivety, ‘allowed himself to be woefully imposed upon’.46 Admittedly, this was a line of argument that Eleanor herself adopted in the 1240s, when she attempted to apportion blame for the inadequacies of the £400 settlement.47 Yet there are signs that by 1232, if not earlier, Eleanor enjoyed a significant degree of leverage over her eldest brother and therefore agency, perhaps, in the negotiations for her Irish dower. The privileged access to the king that Eleanor enjoyed as his sister gradually allowed her to mediate between her brother and third parties who sought privileges from him. On 5 November 1231, for example, Eleanor probably attended the royal court at Marlborough, where the countess – or officials charged with her business – successfully petitioned Henry to grant Mabel de Cantilupe a forge within the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire).48 Eleanor was also a regular recipient of royal patronage; the English chancery rolls are littered with gifts of venison that the king made to her from the royal forests near her English manors and which bear further witness to her high standing in her brother’s favour, not to mention the king’s brotherly concern that she partake of fare appropriate to her rank. Venison was widely regarded as a high-status and highly valued dish in thirteenth-century England, one which was often eaten on feast days and other special occasions, and one that was procured primarily through hunting within private deer parks and the royal forest. The recipients of royal gifts of venison were either permitted to hunt the deer within a designated royal forest themselves or were supplied by royal officials.49 The gift to Eleanor of five deer from the forest near Havering park in July 1231 was followed by further gifts from the forests of Salcey (Northamptonshire), Chute (Hampshire and Wiltshire), Rockingham (Northamptonshire), Bernwood (Buckinghamshire) and Savernake (Wiltshire). In total, Eleanor
had received no fewer than fifty-one deer by late August 1233.50 She thus began to emerge as a figure of note at Henry III’s court.

  THE MARSHAL REBELLION, 1233–4

  By the end of August 1233, Richard Marshal had entered into open rebellion against the crown, a situation that left Eleanor particularly exposed – financially and politically.51 A truce between the warring parties in September 1233 was ended by the renewal of hostilities. Richard Marshal’s alliance with the native Welsh prince, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, resulted in Henry III’s authorization of the wholesale resumption of his estates at the Westminster Council of October 1233.52 In February 1234, the attacks on the Marshal Irish lordship of Leinster by the king’s justiciar and other loyalist allies forced the Earl of Pembroke to go to the aid of his Irish tenants.53 The fortuitous dismissal of Peter des Roches on a wave of anti-alien sentiment, however, paved the way for a critical political realignment at the heart of Henrician government, a move supported by none other than Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury. Edmund’s consecration on 2 April 1234 was followed immediately by the Bishop of Winchester’s removal from court and, more dramatically, on 16 April by Richard Marshal’s death from wounds sustained in Ireland.54 In the month immediately preceding Richard’s death and in the weeks and months that followed (May to July 1234), the new archbishop played a leading role in peace negotiations between the king and the rebels, and in orchestrating and effecting a lasting truce with the Welsh.55 Chief among the rebels whom Edmund escorted in person to the king was Gilbert Marshal, Richard’s younger brother and the new heir to the lands in which Eleanor claimed her dower.56 Once Gilbert’s inheritance was restored to him, it was Edmund who was appointed keeper of the Marshal castle of Striguil (Chepstow) during the king’s pleasure.57