Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England

by Louise J. Wilkinson

  These events and the archbishop’s central role in bringing about peace proved to be particularly significant for Eleanor. It was most probably against the political backdrop of negotiations to end the Marshal rebellion and to bring about Gilbert’s succession to the earldom of Pembroke that Eleanor, Richard’s and Gilbert’s sister-in-law, made her vow of perpetual widowhood, a point hitherto neglected in the historiography of the Marshal rebellion and its aftermath.58 The supervisory presence of Edmund at these proceedings reveals that Eleanor’s action was not, as M. A. E. Green believed, the ‘intense and passionate’ act of a young widow ‘in the first transports of her sorrow’, but was perhaps a more measured decision taken by a young widow three or more years after her husband’s death.59

  Clearly, there were a number of forces at work that might well have prompted Eleanor to take such a step at this particular time. In the first place, the vow was made in the presence, and therefore with the compliance and potential influence, of Edmund of Abingdon himself. Paris’s Life of St Edmund, written for Isabella, Countess of Arundel, paints a compelling picture of the archbishop as a tireless negotiator in the peace process of 1234.60 In the second place, the £400 due to Eleanor from the earls of Pembroke for her Irish dower remained a highly contentious issue, as the ever-increasing arrears owed to Eleanor by Richard demonstrate, and one that posed a serious obstacle to the restoration of peace. Eleanor’s vow of chastity offered Richard and, after his death, Gilbert an olive branch from Eleanor and, by implication, from the crown. In promising to remain a widow, Eleanor effectively removed herself, at the age of nineteen, from the marriage market and, in doing so, removed the possibility that she would convey her dower lands to a new husband, who might subsequently obstruct the Marshal family’s smooth recovery of those properties upon Eleanor’s death. The childless Eleanor’s vow also made it likely that the earl would benefit, in the long term, from the reversion of the ten and a half English manors that the king had bestowed upon the couple and William’s heirs in 1229.61 As we have seen, Archbishop Edmund was a key agent in the process whereby the king was persuaded to accept Gilbert’s accession to the earldom – it was Edmund who accompanied Richard’s heir at his first audience with the king, making it highly likely that Archbishop Edmund was privy to Gilbert’s personal concerns on this point.62 It is, therefore, possible that Edmund actively encouraged or at least advised Eleanor to enter into such a vow during the summer of 1234.

  Eleanor’s vow, then, might be seen as an appropriate political concession to the Marshals, even if neither Eleanor nor Henry III were prepared to – or in Eleanor’s case, could afford to – write off the arrears owing for the £400 sum. Yet there were other considerations that might have influenced Eleanor’s decision. Perhaps her vow was also, in part, motivated by a personal desire to avoid repetition of the situation in which she had found herself as a young child, when her future had been decided for her in the years leading up to her first marriage. As a child she had enjoyed no say over her choice of marriage partner; as the widowed younger sister of the king, she might well be pressured to marry a candidate of Henry’s choosing once more.63 Eleanor had only to recall the example of her paternal aunt, Joan, Queen of Sicily, who had been widowed at the age of twenty-four in November 1189, and whose second marriage to Raymond (VI), Count of Toulouse, had been orchestrated by her brother, King Richard I, with a view to settling a long-term territorial dispute when Joan was thirty-one.64 The death of William Marshal junior immediately after the marriage of her sister-in-law, Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, to Eleanor’s second brother, Richard of Cornwall, served as another timely reminder of the pressures on aristocratic widows to remarry.

  There was, furthermore, the additional danger that, should Eleanor remarry, her second marriage might be a source of personal unhappiness. Here, the experiences of her older sister, Joan, Queen of Scots, offered a contemporary and cautionary example. Jessica Nelson has argued that her childlessness had serious repercussions for Joan, who consequently preferred the company of her birth kin to that of her husband. Her failure to produce the all-important heir who might tie the interests of England and Scotland more firmly together ‘resulted in her failure to be integrated fully into the Scottish royal family’, whereby Joan was effectively marginalized from political life in her adopted kingdom.65 Eleanor might also have wished to avoid the uncertain situation in which her older sister, Isabella, found herself. In the early 1230s, Isabella still lacked a husband altogether after a whole series of abortive marriage negotiations with different foreign potentates.66 At least as a widow and a vowess Eleanor would retain possession of her property and, potentially, a measure of personal independence from the high politics of the Henrician court.

  By the spring of 1234, Eleanor was also quite possibly faced with the growing realization that her position as Henry’s widowed younger sister rendered her vulnerable to schemes for remarriage, especially at a court riven with faction between the Poitevin supporters of Peter des Roches and the disaffected allies of Richard Marshal. In the early months of 1234, rumours were apparently circulating at court that the royal women most closely connected with the king were vulnerable to the marital machinations of des Roches and his associates. According to Roger of Wendover, the English bishops feared that Eleanor of Brittany, the king’s cousin, and one of the king’s sisters, perhaps Isabella, might be compelled to accept unsuitable husbands at the hands of des Roches and his associates.67 It is extremely likely that Eleanor heard these rumours and that this made her consider her own situation. The vow that Eleanor made with the spiritual counsel and guidance of Cecily of Sandford, her erstwhile governess, offered the young countess the chance to maintain her personal autonomy as a widow, while removing the danger that she might be disparaged by marrying an alien to further Poitevin interests. Yet this is not to deny the existence of strong religious motives on Eleanor’s part. Eleanor visited religious houses during her widowhood and perhaps found solace within their precincts. She was, for example, a guest of the nuns of Wherwell Abbey in Hampshire on 20 January 1234, when the king granted her firewood for her stay there. Perhaps during this visit Eleanor paused to reflect upon her personal spiritual interests as well as the uncertainties that dogged her widowhood.68

  Whatever the truth of the matter, Henry III remained interested in his youngest sister’s welfare. The king himself was at Winchester in Hampshire on 25 January 1234, when he granted Eleanor the Sussex manor of Bosham during his pleasure and made her a further gift of venison from Chute Forest.69 On 21 May 1234, and again on 14 June, Richard’s executors were instructed to raise £550 from his goods and deliver the money to Eleanor for the arrears of her Irish dower.70 Even in death, Richard Marshal was unable to escape his debts to Countess Eleanor.

  4

  The Countess as Lord

  ‘saving to … Eleanor her dower …’1

  With the accession in June 1234 of Gilbert Marshal, the younger brother and nearest male heir of Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, it seemed that an end to the problems surrounding Eleanor’s dower was once more in sight. The olive branch offered by Eleanor’s vow and Gilbert’s return to allegiance after his brother’s rebellion potentially boded well for relations between this brother-and sister-in-law. Yet the matter of Eleanor’s final English dower assignment and the outstanding arrears for her Irish share remained unresolved. On 12 August 1234, when the royal court was at Marlborough, Eleanor sued the new earl for the recovery of a third of the manors of Awre (Gloucestershire), Caversham (Oxfordshire) and Upper Clatford (Hampshire) and a third of half the manor of Long Compton (Warwickshire), all of which were intended to make good the shortfall in Eleanor’s full entitlement in England.2 It fell to Henry III to mediate between Gilbert and the young dowager countess. In the king’s presence, the disputing parties reached a compromise, whereby the earl granted Eleanor an alternative manor, the manor of Weston (Hertfordshire), and a further £40 worth of land in Badgeworth (Gloucestershire) to supplement a
ll the dower properties that Eleanor already held. Then another date was set so that the countess and the new earl might settle the issue of Eleanor’s Irish and Welsh dower.3 Eleanor’s continued pursuit of her rights in the Marshal estates and her management of her affairs in widowhood form the focus for this chapter.

  THE IRISH DOWER

  Gilbert Marshal’s willingness to address Eleanor’s dower in August 1234 paved the way for more cordial relations between the new earl and the king. Gilbert was rewarded for his return to loyalty and for assigning Eleanor the remainder of her English dower with a substantial concession from the crown. On 22 August 1234, just ten days after the Marlborough settlement, Henry III finally confirmed Gilbert in possession of his English, Irish and Welsh inheritance. This included the castles of Striguil in south Wales and Dumas in Ireland, previously placed in the keeping of Archbishop Edmund of Canterbury and Archbishop Luke of Dublin to ensure Gilbert’s continued cooperation.4 Earl Gilbert and Countess Eleanor then turned their attentions to Eleanor’s Welsh dower. On 26 September 1234, in the presence of Henry III and his council at Marlborough, Eleanor sued Pembroke for dower properties in Netherwent (Monmouthshire) and Tidenham (Gloucestershire). On this occasion another compromise was reached, whereby Gilbert conceded to Eleanor the manor of Magor (Monmouthshire), along with extensive rights and privileges there. The earl also formally acknowledged the countess’s right to enjoy all the land previously assigned to her from the Marshal properties in Usk.5 The future finally looked rosier – from a financial perspective at least – for Countess Eleanor.

  If the second agreement at Marlborough drew a line under Eleanor’s Welsh dower allocation, the problem of her Irish dower and its arrears rumbled on. On 28 September 1234, just two days after the Welsh settlement, Henry III was compelled, yet again, to dispatch instructions to the Irish justiciar. An impatient king ordered the justiciar to raise ‘without delay’ £500 by selling off the new earl’s corn and goods for Eleanor’s benefit.6 In November, Earl Gilbert again appeared before the king, acknowledged that he owed Eleanor 400 marks, 300 marks for her Irish dower and 100 marks ‘for the peace made between them at Marlborough’, and agreed terms of payment. Henry III stood as surety for the earl and promised to pay the money directly to his sister should the earl default.7

  By the following spring, however, it was becoming abundantly clear to both the countess and the king that Gilbert Marshal, like his older brother before him, was struggling, or was quite simply reluctant, to pay Eleanor’s £400 annuity. Having defaulted upon the payments due at Michaelmas 1234 and Easter 1235, Gilbert himself now owed arrears of £400 to Eleanor. It was this situation that prompted Henry, presumably at Eleanor’s insistence, to broker yet another new deal, whereby Gilbert assigned Eleanor income from the manors of Long Crendon (Buckinghamshire), Ringwood (Hampshire), Inkberrow (Worcestershire) and Upper Clatford (Hampshire) to satisfy the £400 owing to her.8

  A keen sense of Eleanor and her brother’s frustration emerges from the terms that accompanied this settlement. In an effort to ensure that £400 actually reached Eleanor, Gilbert’s bailiffs, together with four men from each manor, were made to swear oaths to collect the money and deliver it directly to the countess.9 In a further bid to compel the earl to abide by these arrangements, Pembroke himself was required to pledge his word before Walter, Prior of the Friars Preacher of Bristol, in the presence of Eleanor and Henry’s brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, as well as the earls of Kent and Norfolk, and Ralph fitz Richard and William Bluet, two knights in Eleanor’s service.10 There was, however, a significant reciprocal element to this new settlement. Eleanor, for her part, promised to relinquish her claim to money from these manors and to repay any sums received if the new earl discharged his debts by other means. To ensure that Eleanor fulfilled her side of the bargain, Henry III stood as her surety, and both the king and the countess attached their seals to the accompanying bond.11

  Gilbert Marshal’s return to loyalty and the steps he took to address the problems relating to Eleanor’s dower placed him high in the king’s favour. In July 1235, Henry III consented to Gilbert’s marriage to Marjorie, the sister of Alexander II, King of Scots, noting his personal pleasure at this union.12 Yet Eleanor’s financial concerns did not disappear overnight. In October 1235, Henry III, presumably at the countess’s request, pardoned her from paying £135 of a £141 debt owed at the Exchequer.13 Financial uncertainty continued to cast a cloud over Eleanor’s life as a widow.

  THE COUNTESS AS LORD

  On 19 August 1234, a week after Eleanor and Gilbert reached their agreement over the English Marshal properties, Henry III granted special protection to Richard Marshal’s executors so that they might carry out their duties effectively and free from obstruction. The executors, though, were ordered not to interfere with Eleanor’s Marshal properties.14 Having finally helped Eleanor to secure her English manors at least, Henry III now took steps to ensure that his youngest sister enjoyed undisputed and untroubled possession of those properties.15 According to a later roll that listed Eleanor’s principal Marshal properties in or around 1275, the countess enjoyed the English manors of Weston (Hertfordshire), Luton and Toddington (Bedfordshire), Brabourne, Kemsing and Sutton (Kent), Newbury, Speenhamland and Woodspeen (Berkshire), Wexcombe and Bedwin (Wiltshire, together with Kinwardstone Hundred), Badgeworth (Gloucestershire) and Long Crendon (Buckinghamshire).16

  As Eleanor entered her late teens and early twenties in the 1230s, her role as an estate and household manager gathered momentum. From the earliest days of her widowhood, much of Eleanor’s daily life focused on her manors and castles, away from the royal court. Having accumulated property and established her authority over the men and women who staffed her domestic establishment and resided upon her lands, Eleanor took a strong personal interest in the governance of her estates. This was, by its very nature, a complex and potentially challenging task, and one that inevitably blurred conventional gender roles.17 As a widow Eleanor expected to safeguard her own interests; the death of William Marshal junior transformed his wife from a lady under her husband’s legal coverture into a sole woman and a lord. The Rules, a treatise that Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, compiled between 1245 and 1253 for Margaret de Lacy, the newly widowed Countess of Lincoln, offers a valuable, if idealized, impression of just what this might entail. Managing a noble household and its attendant estates involved the recruitment, employment, direction and co-ordination of a whole score of comital officials and servants. There was also a strong expectation that the widowed countess would possess or would quickly acquire a detailed knowledge of the farming year, its seasonal changes and the means by which her domestic establishment might be provisioned from estate produce – in both crops and livestock – supplemented by prudent purchases at local markets and fairs. A landholder needed a clear understanding of a whole range of legal rights and local customs that touched upon all areas of her lordship, or at least the services of trustworthy officials who were experienced and knowledgeable in these matters.18 Only then might she stand a chance of effectively defending her rights and, most importantly, of preserving her estates, and, by implication, the good honour and reputation of her house.19

  In the absence of surviving household rolls from this period of her life, tantalizing glimpses of Eleanor’s activities feature in the records of the English royal government. Although the responsibilities that Eleanor assumed within the fields of estate and household management were similar to those of other comital widows, she enjoyed a privileged position as Henry III’s sister and was, therefore, able to turn to her elder brother for assistance with greater ease than his other subjects.20 Even in her teenage years, Eleanor was prepared to stand her ground. Eleanor’s determination to ensure that wardships in her English manors came into her own hands, rather than those of her brother-in-law, presumably lay behind a royal order, dated 6 September 1231, whereby Richard Marshal was instructed to surrender to Eleanor the wardship of the heir of Roger de Clifford,
a former tenant in Severnstoke.21 Fifteen months later, a royal inquiry determined that Eleanor ought to enjoy the custody of the land and heir of Simon de Chelefeld’ by virtue of her possession of the manor of Newbury.22 On 1 September 1233, Henry III committed Ralph Bluet’s former land in Daglingworth (Gloucestershire), which fell within the countess’s dominion, to Eleanor, thereby removing it from the keeping of the king’s faithful servant, Mathias Bezill.23 Later that month, Eleanor secured possession of another property in Wiltshire, which also belonged to her fee.24 On 31 August 1234, the sheriffs of three counties – Bedfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire – were all ordered to ensure that Eleanor enjoyed the same liberties in their bailiwicks as those formerly enjoyed by her dead husband.25 Eleanor readily and effectively solicited Henry III’s help to enforce her position as lord.

  In general terms, then, the widowed countess took her responsibilities as a landlord seriously. She also looked to the interests of those who served her. In this, her position as the king’s youngest sister once again stood her in good stead: she was a conduit for royal favour. Richard of Havering, Eleanor’s ‘servant’, discovered this to his advantage in 1234–5, when the king granted him land in Havering, Essex, at Eleanor’s request.26 It was not just members of local elites who benefited from Eleanor’s benevolence. When, on 4 June 1234, the men from her manor of Kemsing were summoned by the Exchequer for a ‘murdrum’ or murder fine of forty shillings, Eleanor procured a royal pardon and her men were acquitted.27 She stepped in on other occasions to clear the names of manorial officials who had fallen foul of royal justice. When the justices visited Canterbury in the spring of 1236, they heard how three men employed by Eleanor had defended her property when a group of malefactors broke into her park at Kemsing. One of the intruders was slain in the ensuing struggle, whereupon the countess subsequently petitioned the king and the killer, her servant, was pardoned.28