In the event, Henry III made good his promises, perhaps wishing to save face with his mother-in-law. With regard to Eleanor’s Irish dower, the situation surrounding the payment of the £400 fee owing to her from the earls of Pembroke had been complicated by Gilbert Marshal’s sudden and unexpected death in June 1241 from wounds sustained in a tournament.16 Walter Marshal, Gilbert’s younger brother, stood next in line to succeed to the earldom of Pembroke, but Walter’s succession was delayed until October 1241 by Henry III’s refusal to recognize his claim. In fact, the king was angered by Walter’s presence at the fatal tournament, a tournament Henry had expressly prohibited from taking place.17 Once Walter became earl, he inherited the obligation to pay Eleanor the £400 fee in lieu of her Irish dower. Eleanor and Simon’s prolonged absence from England had made it easy for Walter to ignore this payment.
Eleanor and Simon’s return to England in 1243, with a family of young sons to support, made them particularly eager to pursue Eleanor’s dower rights once more. One immediate problem that the couple faced was that the king’s agreement to stand as a surety for Gilbert Marshal’s payments had expired on Gilbert’s death, alleviating the pressure on Walter to honour payments to his sister-in-law. On 9 January 1244, just two days after he pardoned Eleanor’s debts to the crown, Henry III announced his agreement to stand as surety on Walter’s behalf to Eleanor and Simon. Henceforth, the king undertook to make good any dower payments that Walter missed.18 The arrangement was augmented by a bond which confirmed that on the first default of payment by Walter, the king would step in to assign the Countess of Leicester’s dower directly from her late husband’s lands in Ireland and south Wales.19 This, as Maddicott has argued, represented a potentially momentous undertaking by the king; it suggests not only that the couple ‘had complained about the inadequacy of the dower’, but ‘that they had broached the possibility of a full settlement in land, that Henry had recognized their case, and that he was even prepared to contemplate giving them what they wanted by assigning Irish land to Eleanor at Walter Marshal’s expense’.20 On 2 May, the king compensated Eleanor and Simon with 200 marks to cover the losses the Montforts had sustained because Eleanor was ‘not fully dowered of the lands of W. Marshal formerly her husband’.21
Admittedly, it took a little longer for the king to provide Eleanor with her promised dowry. It was not until 28 May 1244 that Simon and Eleanor received an annual grant of 500 marks from the Exchequer for the remainder of both their lives. Henry promised to substitute the cash for lands to the same value as soon as he was able. He also agreed to give the Montforts’ heirs 300 marks from the Exchequer after their parents’ deaths.22 On the face of it, this might have appeared like a generous grant, had not the king decided to reduce the sum payable to Eleanor and Simon’s heirs. Had Henry provided Eleanor and Simon with a grant of land as a marriage portion, then that land might, according to custom, have descended to their heirs in its entirety.23 Once again, Henry sold the interests of his youngest sister short.
Further favours were, however, on the horizon. Throughout 1244, the Montforts pushed for further concessions from Henry III that promised to place them on a firmer financial footing. In February, for example, the Montforts had been provided with another suitably royal residence for the king’s sister, her husband and their sons, when Henry III granted Earl Simon the custody of Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, the royal residence where Eleanor had stayed in 1238 during Simon’s trip to Rome.24 In June, Henry III pardoned Eleanor for a debt of £100 that she was bound to pay to the Jewish moneylender, David of Oxford, indicating the Eleanor had once again resorted to the services of Jewish financiers when faced with a lack of ready cash to meet her expenses.25 A month later, another debt of £110 that the Montforts owed to David of Oxford was effectively written off and the king instructed that they were to be protected from prosecution by David’s widow, Licoricia.26
The year 1244, therefore, represented a relative high point thus far in the Montforts’ standing at Henry III’s court. The couple remained, for the time being, on relatively warm terms with the king. Simon did not, for example, number among those barons who protested at the harshness of the king’s government and denied Henry III’s request for taxation at the November parliament.27 The earl also served the king during the Welsh campaign of 1245.28 Henry III, for his part, allowed Eleanor occasional favours that hint at the renewal of their earlier relationship. Significantly, the resumption of more cordial relations between Henry III and his youngest sister can be traced through the renewal of royal gifts to her. These presents often accompanied other grants intended to alleviate some of the couple’s financial woes. On 8 November 1244, the same day that Henry III granted Eleanor the right to tallage (impose a tax on) the men of the manors of East Stoke and Garbeton in Nottinghamshire, for example, Henry instructed the keeper of the royal wines at Clarendon Palace to send the countess a tun of wine.29 The king also began, once more, to send her venison. In December 1244, Henry arranged for a cart and horses to convey fifteen does to the Countess of Leicester’s manor of Sutton in Kent.30 On 17 August 1246, the king gave his sister seven bucks from Rockingham Forest in Northamptonshire.31 The summer of 1247 found Eleanor a willing recipient of her brother’s bounty: two stags from Feckenham Forest in June were followed by ten bucks from Rockingham Forest in July.32 Some of these gifts were clearly intended to stock the Montforts’ properties. It was, for instance, with a view to replenishing the herds in the Montforts’ park at Hungerford that the Countess of Leicester secured a total of thirty does and ten bucks from the royal forests of Melksham and Chippenham in January 1248.33 These gifts from Melksham and Chippenham were accompanied by another concession from the king that addressed, more directly, the couple’s financial situation, whereby Henry promised to relieve his sister of the burden of paying an annual rent of £50 for her manor of Odiham.34
The royal patronage directed towards the Montforts hints at the extent to which Eleanor traded upon her kinship with the king to provide for her expanding family. The most striking indications of Eleanor’s influence, though, were the privileges which she began, once more, to secure for third parties through her personal intervention with the king. In December 1248, the Countess of Leicester approached the king to secure an exemption from service on assizes, juries and recognitions for her servant, Adam de la Brech.35 Eleanor also effectively petitioned her brother to pardon felons convicted of a variety of offences.36
The year 1248 marked a pinnacle in Earl Simon’s public career: on 1 May, Simon was appointed governor of Gascony for seven years, whereupon he took up residence there with a view to restoring the authority of the English crown within the duchy.37 Paris attributed the Earl of Leicester’s Gascon appointment to Simon’s reputation as a warrior.38 His natal family’s position in France and Earl Simon’s experiences as a diplomat on the international stage also recommended him for the post.39 In view of Henry III’s increased generosity towards Eleanor, it is also possible that the king wished to please his sister and her husband by providing Earl Simon with a weighty role in government, an almost vice-regal role that signified the scale of the couple’s political rehabilitation. From his point of view, Henry might have felt that his brother-in-law was ideally placed, through his marital ties to the crown, to act as Henry’s trusted lieutenant in Gascon affairs.40 It was unfortunate, to say the least, for the Montforts, that Earl Simon’s sojourn in Gascony was, ultimately, fraught with controversy.41 At the same time, the matter of Eleanor’s Irish Marshal dower returned, ominously, to the fore.
ELEANOR’S IRISH DOWER
The death of Walter Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, at Goodrich Castle on 24 November 1245 was followed just eleven days later by that of his younger brother and heir, Anselm Marshal.42 This left the great Marshal estates in England, Ireland and Wales to be divided between the five sisters of William Marshal junior or their descendants as co-heirs. By the time that the final partition was made in May 1247, there were thirteen co-heirs with cla
ims to the Marshal lands. Of the five sisters, only Matilda, the widow of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and of William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, was still alive. Of the remaining sisters, Joan, the wife of Warin de Munchensy, was succeeded first by her son John (who died in 1247) and then by her daughter, Joan, while Isabella was succeeded by her son from her first marriage, Richard, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, Sibyl by her seven daughters from her marriage to William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, and Eva by her three daughters from her marriage to William de Briouze.43 Furthermore, there were now two other Marshal widows with claims to dower in the Marshal lands in addition to those of Eleanor: Walter’s widow, Margaret de Lacy, suo jure Countess of Lincoln, and Anselm’s widow, Matilda de Bohun.44
The main problem with this situation from the point of view of the Montforts and, indeed, the crown, was essentially twofold. In the first place, the existence of other Marshal widows raised the question, once more, of whether Eleanor had, in fact, received a fair share of William junior’s estates in dower. Under the common law, Eleanor ought to have received lands or property valued at a third of her dead husband’s estates. As we have already observed in chapter 3, figures derived from the documents detailing the partition of 1247 indicate that Walter’s widow, Margaret de Lacy, was entitled to English and Welsh lands worth £444 per annum and Irish lands worth £572 per annum.45 It would, therefore, appear that Eleanor had been short-changed in accepting the £400 fee at the king’s urging in 1232. The speed with which Eleanor and Simon reached this realization, or at least decided to act upon it, and just how much it rankled with them, was reflected by their decision at Easter 1247 to launch a legal challenge against the Marshal co-heirs. Eleanor, so the Montforts claimed, had been dowered with a third of all William junior’s lands in Ireland and Wales, and they now demanded Eleanor’s full dower entitlement. When the agreement between Eleanor and Richard Marshal, whereby Eleanor had agreed to accept her £400 fee, was produced in court, the Montforts claimed, quite simply, not to recognize its force. According to Eleanor and Simon, it was invalid. It had been made, so they argued, when the countess was underage and in the king’s custody and power. In a bitter courtroom drama, this line of argument was, not altogether surprisingly, completely rejected by the Marshal co-heirs. According to them, the countess had possessed independent legal power at the time of the original settlement.46 The case dragged on into 1248, a day was appointed for judgment, but no verdict was apparently reached, much to the Montforts’ deep frustration.47
In the second place, the king was faced with the task of collecting the £400 fee for Eleanor’s Irish dower from each of the co-heirs in turn, many of whom were married to Henry III’s greatest earls and barons.48 This state of affairs was far from ideal and had all the makings of an administrative nightmare. For the first years, though, the Montforts were able to collect their money directly from the crown as they had done in the recent past. On 1 May and 20 October 1246, for example, Henry III authorized two separate payments to Earl Simon of the £200 he was due to receive on his wife’s behalf at Easter and Michaelmas.49 The same arrangement continued in 1247–54.50 Having issued instructions to his officials to pay the money owed to the Montforts, the king was then faced with the tricky task of recovering the sum from the Marshal co-heirs himself.51 Yet the king proved reluctant to force those co-heirs who defaulted to compensate the crown. In January 1249, for example, Henry III allowed three defaulters – the Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, William de Valence (Henry III’s Lusignan half-brother and the husband of Joan de Munchensy) and the Earl of Norfolk – to escape the threat of distraint on their lands for non-payment until Easter.52
As the crown lurched towards a severe financial crisis in the 1250s, however, the king’s orders for payment to the Montforts from his own funds might not always have been honoured in practice.53 By 1254, crown finances were in a parlous state. The payment of Eleanor’s fee was no longer forthcoming after Michaelmas 1254.54 By May 1256, the Montforts were still owed £400 to cover the payments due at Easter and Michaelmas in 1255, a situation the king attempted to remedy by authorizing an emergency payment of £600 to cover the period up to and including Easter 1256.55 Henry appears to have come to rely increasingly upon funds received directly from the Marshal co-heirs. Yet even these funds, when they were forthcoming, might, on occasion, have been directed elsewhere to meet other, more pressing obligations. In August 1256, the king solemnly promised Earl Simon that the money received by the crown for the yearly arrears of £400 owed by the Marshal co-heirs to the Montforts would be used for no other purpose than to pay off the outstanding sum.56
With a degree of irony, by 1256, the greatest defaulter of all the Marshal beneficiaries was another widow, Margaret de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, who owed the crown seven years in arrears for her contribution towards Eleanor de Montfort’s £400 fee. When pressure was brought to bear on Margaret during the summer of 1256, the Countess of Lincoln came good and agreed to pay £1,066 directly to Eleanor and Simon.57 This sum was apparently enough to cover the money owing to the Montforts for Michaelmas 1254 to Michaelmas 1256, according to the royal clerk who compiled the memoranda roll.58
GASCONY
Between 1248 and 1252, Simon de Montfort’s political career was dominated by his governance of Gascony and Eleanor, as his wife, also experienced the highs and lows of his time there. Earl Simon’s initial triumphs in 1248, whereby he negotiated and reached agreements with the kings of France and Navarre, were quickly overshadowed by Gascon complaints about the earl’s administration and by the huge expenses he incurred in attempting to bring order to the duchy.59 Furthermore, the earl’s commitments in Gascony placed extra strain on the Montforts’ finances as the crown struggled to divert adequate funds to support Simon’s regime.60
The Countess of Leicester’s activities during her husband’s Gascon years are difficult to trace. Even Paris, who describes, in some detail, Simon’s role in Gascony after his appointment, is often silent on the subject of Eleanor’s movements during this period of her life. It seems, however, likely that the countess had accompanied the earl on his first visit to the duchy after his appointment in 1248 and was, as the English king’s sister, an informal party to her husband’s dealings with the kings of France and Navarre. According to Paris, Simon de Montfort returned to England in December 1248, whereupon the king received his brother-in-law with joy.61 This date for his return, perhaps in his wife’s company, is confirmed by a series of royal grants that served Simon and Eleanor’s mutual interests.62 The earl and countess were certainly in England together during the spring of 1249, when Simon, ‘after discussing the matter with the lady countess’, made arrangements for the education of the couple’s eldest son, Henry, in anticipation of his return to Gascony.63 In the event, the earl’s departure was delayed until early June 1249.64 Eleanor and Simon were in Gascony in the autumn of 1249 when the friar Adam Marsh regretfully informed the couple’s friend Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, that he was ‘unable to dispatch letters’ for ‘the earl and countess of Leicester in time for them to reach [the bishop’s palace at] Buckden’ in Cambridgeshire. Marsh asked if Grosseteste’s messenger, who was destined for Gascony, might visit him en route to collect his letters for the Montforts.65 The countess’s presence in the duchy, holding court alongside her husband, is also confirmed by another letter, written by a clerk of Count Alphonse of Poitiers, whose master had been asked to visit the couple at La Réole.66
Earl Simon was in England again, according to Paris, during Rogation (May) in 1250.67 Although the earl departed for Gascony by the middle of May, his wife was almost certainly in England in July 1250, when the king gave her ten bucks from the New Forest.68 In 1251, Paris noted that Simon had returned from Gascony to his brother-in-law’s court by Epiphany (6 January);69 the earl departed again for the duchy in March.70 Eleanor’s presence overseas in 1251 is supported by Paris’s story of a crossing to England which the earl and countess attempted to make that year in the c
ompany of Eleanor’s half-brother, Guy de Lusignan. This chronicler described how the couple set out from the port of Wissant, only for their ship to be driven back by the wind, before they were able to cross safely to Dover.71 One hopes that Eleanor had, by this time of her life, overcome the seasickness that plagued her teenage years.
The earl and countess were not constant companions that year. In October 1251, Marsh wrote to Earl Simon with news of the countess, whom he had visited in England.72 In December 1251, Earl Simon attended the king’s Christmas court at York, where the marriage of Henry’s daughter, Margaret, to Alexander III, King of Scots was celebrated, and where he quarrelled with the king over a Gascon revolt, a revolt provoked, so the Gascons claimed, by the harshness of the earl’s government.73 Earl Simon returned, briefly, in the spring of 1252 to the duchy to deal with the situation before coming back to England, this time to answer the charges relating to Gascon affairs as political pressures mounted.74
The royal inquiry into Earl Simon’s governance of Gascony inevitably brought to a head long-standing tensions between the Montforts and the king over Simon’s lieutenancy. Marsh, in a letter dated 15 June, summarized affairs for Grosseteste’s benefit. Writing from Eleanor’s Kentish manor of Sutton, Marsh described how Earl Simon ‘frequently suffered reproaches and vociferous abuse from the lord king in front of many great persons’.75 ‘It must be a long time’, the clearly partisan Marsh reflected, ‘since any nobleman or private individual has been so harshly and insensitively treated.’76 Such was the Earl of Leicester’s isolation at the English court, once the full fury of the king’s rage became apparent, that only a few men were initially prepared to speak up on his behalf or offer him ‘loyal protection’, apart from Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, Peter of Savoy, the queen’s uncle, and Peter de Montfort.77 Fortunately for Simon, the prelates, Richard of Cornwall, the Lusignans and ‘the barons of the kingdom’ stepped in as well to defend Earl Simon’s reputation.78
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