Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England

by Louise J. Wilkinson

  The advent of more friendly relations paved the way for Eleanor to pursue, once more, the matter of her Marshal dower. Payments for her dower had ceased at Easter in 1265 and had not resumed since.53 After Evesham, Eleanor lost possession of her English estates. The local jurors whose testimonies were recorded on the Kent hundred rolls in 1274–5, for example, recorded how ‘William de Valence, [Eleanor’s half-brother who was married to one of the Marshal co-heirs] after the battle of Evesham entered that manor [of Sutton, Kent] and claimed it by hereditary right of his wife’.54 William de Valence also held Kemsing, together with another manor, Brabourne, from which Eleanor had transported supplies to Dover Castle in 1265. The jurors who reported on Brabourne, though, were more reticent about their new lord. Here, the jurors recalled that ‘King John held Brabourne manor through escheat and now Lord William de Valence holds that manor by what warrant they do not know’.55 Perhaps, in this expression of uncertainty about William’s right to the manor, the jurors retained vestiges of loyalty to their former countess.

  In recovering her lost rights, the connections that Eleanor had fostered with the French royal court again proved to be invaluable. On 10 October 1273, Philip III wrote to Edward I, expressing concern for the safety of his father’s soul in the afterlife, on the grounds that the 15,000 marks which had been deposited in the New Temple at Paris during Louis IX’s lifetime as security for the settlement of Eleanor’s dower had been removed by the English king after Evesham.56 Spurred into action, Edward I issued an order, just two and a half weeks later, for the Marshal heirs to answer at the English royal Exchequer for their outstanding debts to the Countess of Leicester.57 In addition to this, Edward I took steps to ensure that Eleanor’s English properties from her first marriage were restored to her.58

  Eleanor, dowager Countess of Leicester and dowager Countess of Pembroke, died at Montargis in France on 13 April 1275 (the eve of Easter).59 Shortly before her death, she was visited by Margaret of Provence, now the dowager Queen of France, who subsequently wrote to Edward I, relaying the final wishes of the English king’s aunt. In a final act of intercession on Eleanor’s behalf, the French queen urged Edward to observe the terms of Eleanor’s testament and to show pity to her son Amaury by returning him to the king’s grace.60 Eleanor’s death was not, however, entirely that of a defeated exile. From the convent of Montargis, she had remained active in pursuit of her family’s interests right up until her death. On 9 January 1275, just three months before her death, Countess Eleanor had appointed Master Nicholas of Waltham, a canon of Lincoln, as her attorney for one year to pursue and protect her rights in the English royal courts.61 Countess Eleanor also lived just long enough to see the marriage, by proxy, of her only surviving daughter and namesake, Eleanor, to her dead husband’s former ally, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, a match that her husband, Earl Simon, had arranged many years earlier.62

  In death, Countess Eleanor’s heart reposed in the Abbey Royal of St-Antoine-des-Champs, a Cistercian nunnery on the outskirts of Paris.63 Although Eleanor’s will is now lost, other records reveal that she bequeathed £220 16s. par. (Parisian money) to the nuns of this house for an earlier debt, a sum Eleanor’s executors, including her son, Amaury, finally attempted to recover in 1286 with Edward I’s aid from the Marshal co-heirs.64 Even in death, the legacy of Eleanor’s battle for her Irish Marshal dower, a battle that had dominated so much of her adult life, lived on.

  Notes

  Notes on Preface

  1

  F. M. Powicke (1947), King Henry III and the Lord Edward. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2 vols, i, pp. 203–4.

  2

  For a brief but scholarly modern biography, see E. Hallam (2004), ‘Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke and Leicester (1215?–1275),’ ODNB, available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46703, accessed on 31 May 2011.

  3

  M. W. Labarge (1965, repr. 2003), Mistress, Maids and Men: Baronial Life in the Thirteenth Century. Phoenix: London, p. 45.

  4

  K. Asaji (2010), ‘Household Accounts of the Countess of Leicester, 1265’, in idem, The Angevin Empire and the Community of the Realm in England. Kansai: Kansai University Press, pp. 162–88, at p. 163.

  5

  Ibid., p. 184.

  6

  L. Kjær (2011), ‘Food, Drink and Ritualised Communication in the Household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265’,Journal of Medieval History, 37, 75–89. I am grateful to Lars for sending me a copy of his article.

  Notes on Chapter 1

  1

  Wendover, iii, p. 113.

  2

  Prinet expressed doubt about the identity of this tomb’s incumbent. The heart of another lady from the Montfort family, whose name was not recorded, was buried in the cloister there in 1294. Prinet also considered it odd that the tomb apparently displayed the arms of Eleanor’s sons, rather than her ancestors: M. Prinet (1917), ‘Deux monuments funéraires de l’abbaye de Saint-Antoine des Champs’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France, 80–83; C. Bémont (1930), Simon de Montfort (2nd edn), trans. E. F. Jacob. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 259 n. 1.

  3

  One aunt was also the grandmother of King Louis IX of France: Wendover, iii, p. 113; L. J. Wilkinson (2009), ‘The Imperial Marriage of Isabella of England, Henry III’s Sister’, in E. Oakley-Brown and L. J. Wilkinson (eds), The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship, Medieval to Early Modern. Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 20–36, at pp. 26–7. Eleanor’s maternal uncle, Peter de Courtenay, was the Latin emperor of Constantinople: N. Vincent (1999), ‘Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel’, in S. D. Church (ed.), King John: New Interpretations. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 165–219, at pp. 177–8, 180–1 tables 2–3. For an excellent biographical study of Eleanor’s cousin, Berenguela of Castile, see: M. Shadis (2009), Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

  4

  Majorie Chibnall, for example, observed much the same about Eleanor’s great grandmother, the Empress Matilda: M. Chibnall (1991), The Empress Matilda. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 9–10.

  5

  Isabella, Eleanor’s older sister, appears to have been born in 1214. See p. 5. On chroniclers as preservers of ‘dynastic’ and ‘institutional’ histories, see C. Given-Wilson (2003), Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England. London: Hambledon, ch. 4.

  6

  Eleanor’s surviving siblings were: Henry, the future King of England, Richard, the future Earl of Cornwall, and her sisters Joan and Isabella. See D. A. Carpenter (1990), The Minority of Henry III. London: Methuen; N. Denholm-Young (1947), Richard of Cornwall. Oxford: Basil Blackwell; J. Nelson (2007), ‘Scottish Queenship in the Thirteenth Century’, in B. Weiler et al. (eds), Thirteenth Century England XI: Proceedings of the Gregynog Conference 2005. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 61–81, at pp. 68–70; Wilkinson, ‘The Imperial Marriage of Isabella of England’, pp. 20–36. On high rates of infant mortality, even among the wealthy, see N. Orme (1984), From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530. London: Methuen and Co., p. 3; D. Youngs (2006), The Life Cycle in Western Europe, c. 1300–c. 1500. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 24–5.

  7

  On this see J. C. Holt (1992), The Northerners (revised edn). Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 144.

  8

  On John’s reign, see J. C. Holt (1992), Magna Carta (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Holt, The Northerners; W. L. Warren (1961), King John. London: Eyre Methuen.

  9

  For the best English biography of Isabella, see Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’.

  10

  Alice (d. after 1215) married: (1) Andrew of La Ferté-Gaucher in Champagne (d. c. 1177); (2) William of Joigny (marriage annulled in c. 1184); and (3) Adomar, Count of Angoulême (d. 1202): ibid., pp. 175–82. For her Courtenay ancestry, see Chronica Albrici monachi
trium fontium, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst (1874), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, SS 23, p. 874.

  11

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, pp. 170–2.

  12

  Ibid., pp. 172–3.

  13

  Ibid., pp. 184–93. See also L. L. Huneycutt (2002), ‘“Alianora Regina Anglorum”: Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Anglo-Norman Predecessors as Queens of England’, in B. Wheeler and J. C. Parsons (eds) Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 115–32.

  14

  Isabella’s experiences in this respect stand in stark contrast to those of her future daughter-in-law and eventual successor as queen in England, Eleanor of Provence. See, for example, M. Howell (1998), Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England. Oxford: Blackwell, esp. chs 3 and 6.

  15

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, pp. 184–93. On Queen’s Gold and its administration under Henry II, see The Dialogue concerning the Exchequer, book II, ch. XXVI, in E. F. Henderson (ed.) (1896), Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages. London: George Bell and Sons, available online at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/excheq.asp#b2p26, accessed on 1 December 2009.

  16

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, pp. 193, 196–7. For Isabella of Gloucester, see R. B. Patterson (2004/5), ‘Isabella, suo jure Countess of Gloucester (c.1160–1217)’,ODNB, available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46705, accessed on 7 December 2009.

  17

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, pp. 193–5; N. Vincent (1996), Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 70. For the bishop discharging the queen’s expenses, see The Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester, 1210–11, ed. N. R. Holt (1964). Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 34 (Downton, Wilts), 37 (x2, Downton, Wilts).

  18

  RLP, i.i, p. 117; RLCl, i, p. 169b; Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, p. 195.

  19

  Warren, King John, pp. 219–21.

  20

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, pp. 195–6. See also RLP, i.i, pp. 143b (1215), 192b (1216). For the sojourn at Exeter, mentioned in a later letter close, see RLCl, i, p. 433.

  21

  RLCl, i, p. 177. See also ibid., i, p. 154b; RLP, i.i, p. 105b. For Berkhampsted as dower, see RLC, i, p. 293.

  22

  RLP, i.i, p. 124b; RLCl, i, p. 180b.

  23

  RLCl, i, p. 189b; RLP, i.i, p. 136 (x2).

  24

  RLP, i.i, p. 136 (x2). For Isabella at Marlborough, see also RLCl, i, p. 213b.

  25

  Corfe was then in the custody of des Roches’s associate, Peter de Maulay: Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (1840). Paris: Jules Renouard, p. 152; Vincent, Peter des Roches, p. 71. Richard, the younger son, was also in de Maulay’s charge: Histoire des ducs, p. 180.

  26

  For a useful essay on medieval ideas about gender, see J. Murray (1995), ‘Thinking about Gender: The Diversity of Medieval Perspectives’, in J. Carpenter and S. MacLean (eds), Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 1–26.

  27

  This was in spite of King John’s disregard for the rights of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, the son of John’s older brother, Geoffrey (d. 1186), in the matter of his own accession to the throne: M. Jones (2004), ‘Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (1158–1186)’, ODNB, available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10533, accessed on 4 December 2009. The crown apparently retained the right to bypass the rules of inheritance and succession in this period. See, for example, J. C. Holt (1997), ‘The “casus regis”: The Law and Politics of Succession in the Plantagenet Dominions, 1185–1247,’ in idem, Colonial England, 1066–1215. London: Hambledon Press, pp. 307–26.

  28

  D. Alexandre-Bidon and D. Lett (1999), Children in the Middle Ages, Fifth to Fifteenth Centuries, trans. J. Gladding. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 64–5; J. C. Parsons (1993), ‘Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantagenet Evidence, 1150–1500,’ in idem (ed.), Medieval Queenship. Stroud: Sutton, pp. 63–78, at pp. 68–9.

  29

  For the birth of Henry III, see, for example, ‘Annales de Wintonia’, in Ann. mon., ii, p. 80; ‘Annales de Waverleia’, in Ann. mon., ii, p. 259. For the birth of Richard of Cornwall, see, for example, ‘Annales de Margan’, in Ann. mon., i, p. 29; ‘Annales de Waverleia’, p. 264. For the birth of Joan, see, for example, ‘Annales de Theokesberia’, in Ann. mon., i, p. 59; ‘Annales prioratus de Wigornia’, in Ann. mon., iv, p. 399.

  30

  Wendover, iii, p. 108.

  31

  In or around 1224, Henry III referred to Eleanor as his ‘younger sister’: Royal Letters, i, pp. 244–6 no. CCXI, esp. p. 246. See also M. A. E. Green (1857), Lives of the Princesses of England from the Norman Conquest, Volume II. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman and Roberts, pp. 1, 3–4, n. 5; J. R. Maddicott (1994), Simon de Montfort. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 38 n. 1.

  32

  Medical writers recommended the use of a wet-nurse: W. F. MacLehose (1996), ‘Nurturing Danger: High Medieval Medicine and the Problem(s) of the Child’, in J. C. Parsons and B. Wheeler (eds), Medieval Mothering. London: Garland, pp. 3–24, at pp. 12–13.

  33

  RLCl, i, p. 225. For another gift of robes to Isabella and her damsels in December 1215, see RLCl, i, p. 242.

  34

  N. Orme (2001), Medieval Children. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 19–21.

  35

  Chronica majora, iii, pp. 566–7.

  36

  Vincent, Peter des Roches, p. 71. See also Pipe Roll, Winchester, 1210–11, p. 65.

  37

  P. Stafford (1997), Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 128–31; L. L. Huneycutt (2003), Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 37, 41, 69.

  38

  ‘Annales de Wintonia’, pp. 82–3.

  39

  Earldom of Gloucester Charters: The Charters and Scribes of the Earls and Countesses of Gloucester to A.D. 1217, ed. R. B. Patterson (1973). Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 7.

  40

  RLCl, i, pp. 275, 285 (June and August). In February 1216, Terric was awarded custody of the abbey of St Augustine, Bristol: RLP, i.i, p. 166. See also RLCl, i, p. 251; RLP, i.i, pp. 174b.

  41

  Warren, King John, p. 254.

  42

  See also p. 28 below.

  43

  RLC, i, p. 293. For these and other properties which Isabella held in dower, see also ibid., pp. 294, 302, 302b (French dower), 304b, 315, 328b, 349b, 389b.

  44

  Carpenter, The Minority, pp. 13–19.

  45

  Ibid., p. 14 and n. 6; Warren, King John, p. 255.

  46

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, p. 198.

  47

  Carpenter, The Minority, pp. 44–9.

  48

  Wendover, i, pp. 295, 314, esp. 317.

  49

  See, for example, Alexandre-Bidon and Lett, Children in the Middle Ages, p. 61; Parsons, ‘Mothers, Daughters’, pp. 68–75. Royal and aristocratic children were usually placed in the care of nurses, some of whom were presumably wet nurses, shortly after birth. References to payments made to the nurses of John and Isabella’s children litter the pipe rolls. See, for example, Pipe Roll 16 John, pp. 127 (Christiana, nurse of Joan), 35, 54 (Elena, nurse of the king’s son), 1, 79 (Eva, nurse of Richard the king’s son), 39 (Hodierna, nurse of Richard), 1 (Matildis, nurse of Richard).

  50

  RLP, i.i, p. 117.

  51

  Denholm-Young, Richard of Cornwall, p. 3; Histoire des ducs, p. 180; Vincent, Peter des Roches, p. 71.

  52

 
; On education, see Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p. 45.

  53

  Isabella’s role in her sons’ early upbringings might help to explain why, much later in life, Henry III extended so warm a welcome to the children of his mother’s second marriage. See H. W. Ridgeway (1989), ‘Foreign Favourites and Henry III’s Problems of Patronage, 1247–1258’, EHR, 104, 590–610; Howell, Eleanor of Provence, pp. 54–5.

  54

  Vincent, ‘Isabella of Angoulême’, p. 208.

  55

  Vincent, Peter des Roches, pp. 153–4.

  56

  PR, 1216–25, p. 234. It was agreed that Isabella would marry Alexander if Joan failed to return from the south of France in time: ibid., p. 235; Carpenter, The Minority, p. 196.

  57

  Vincent, Peter des Roches, p. 153.

  58

  I am grateful to Dr Jennifer Ward for this suggestion.

  59

  On this, see Carpenter, The Minority, pp. 249–52.

  60

  See Wendover, iii, pp. 77; Vincent, Peter des Roches, pp. 414–15.

  61

  Similar arrangements are found with the higher nobility. See, for example, J. C. Parsons (1998), ‘ “Que nos in infancia lactauit”: The Impact of Childhood Care-givers on Plantagenet Family Relationships in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, in C. M. Rousseau and J. T. Rosenthal (eds), Women, Marriage and Family in Medieval Christendom: Essays in Memory of Michael M. Sheehan. C. S. B., Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, pp. 289–324, at pp. 293–4.

  62

  I was alerted to the existence of the following entries by Vincent, Peter des Roches, p. 153 n. 93. I am grateful to the staff of the Hampshire Record Office (Archives and Local Studies) for their assistance in accessing the unpublished pipe rolls of the bishopric of Winchester.

  63

  HRO, 11M59/B1/6, mm. 12, 12d.

  64

  HRO, 11M59/B1/7, mm. 10d, 11. See also HRO, 11M59/B1/9, m. 5.

  65

  Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p. 19 n. 93; Vincent, Peter des Roches, p. 155; N. Vincent (2004), ‘Aubigny, Philip d’ (d. 1236)’,ODNB, available online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47227, accessed on 22 September 2010; Alexandre-Bidon and Lett, Children in the Middle Ages, pp. 43–5.