Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England

by Alison Weir

  In addition, there was the royal household, which numbered around two hundred persons and provided for the domestic needs of the King and his court. The household had its own departments, headed by the steward, who had charge of the hall, kitchen, pantry, and larder; the chamberlain, who presided over the chamber (which comprised the royal apartments and was also a secretarial and accountancy office, and would later evolve into the presence and privy chambers); the treasurer, who looked after the royal treasure, which was kept in a chest in the King's bedroom; the Lord High Constable, who was in charge of the outdoor servants and the stables; and the King's Marshal, who was responsible for maintaining order and discipline within the court and, with the constable, for organising the royal sports and supervising the archers who formed the King's personal bodyguard; finally there were the keepers of the seals. All of these officers enjoyed specific allowances of food, wine, candles, and other perquisites.36

  Then there were the officers of the Queen's household, whose names are known mainly from the charters they witnessed. They comprised her treasurer, chancellor, attorneys, and clerks, who administered her estates (which were run by her stewards and baillifs), and her personal servants, such as her chamberlain, knights, esquires, chaplains, ladies, and Master of the Horse.

  The household included a great army of servants: cooks, bakers, confectioners, cellarers, fruiterers, and poulterers, all of whom either purveyed or prepared food; the chief butler and his staff, who were responsible for the provision of wine; and keepers of the cups, who served it. Other kitchen and pantry officials included the usher of the

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  spirit house, the keeper of the dishes, the master steward of the larder, and the workmen of the buttery. The numbers of royal servants were augmented by chaplains, clerks, painters (limners), ushers, huntsmen, horn-blowers, watchmen, guards, archers, men-at-arms, cat-hunters, wolf-catchers, keepers of the hounds, keepers of the royal mews, keepers of the tents, the chamberlain of the candles, the bearer of the King's bed, the King's tailor, laundresses, including the King's personal washerwoman, and a ewerer, who dried his clothes and prepared the royal bath.37 It is not known how often Henry used this, and we may surmise that it was not very often; King John prompted astonished reactions in 1209 when he had eight baths in six months.

  These hordes of servants required even more piles of baggage, for they needed to transport kitchen equipment, hunting spears, weapons, altar cloths, communion vessels and plate, tables, chairs, featherbeds, pillows, sheets, coverlets, hangings, napery, chamber pots, cosmetics, and clothing. 38

  The royal retinue would also include scholars, artists, "actors, singers, dicers, gamblers, buffoons and barbers,"39 as well as mimers, jugglers, conjurers, magicians, fortune-tellers,40 and a host of whores and pimps. Not for nothing did John of Salisbury and Walter Map write disparagingly of Henry's court as a hotbed of scandal and frivolity. John of Salisbury, who compared the court to ancient Babylon, particularly condemned the effeminate garments of the fashion-conscious nobles and gallants, the polyphonic music that kindled all kinds of licentiousness, the widespread indulgence in lovemaking that would once have been described by serious men as depraved, the dancing, the sport, and the gambling-- all done to excess; and he was scathing about the hangers-on, the wheedlers and flatterers who thought they could fawn their way to favour and advancement. Worst of all were the coarse mimes and bawdy dramas, with their extravagant acting and gross buffoonery, that were staged at court: John thought that all involved in them should be excommunicated for so corrupting their audiences.

  Once the court was on the move, messengers would be sent speeding ahead to warn the King's tenants or hosts that he was about to descend on them, and bid them prepare accommodation and ensure they had sufficient provisions for his retinue. In addition, hosts were required to provide one night's entertainment for the court. It was often a condition of land tenure that royal tenants provide these services, although many abbots and secular hosts were financially ruined through so doing. The King also had a habit of making sudden appearances. Peter of Blois tells us that Henry enjoyed vexing his stewards with the uncertainty of his plans: many a time he would announce his destination, "and we would be comforted by the prospect of good lodgings."

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  But at the end of a long day's ride, "the King would turn aside to some other place where he had, it might be, just a single dwelling with accommodation for himself and no one else. I hardly dare say it, but I believe he took a delight in seeing what a fix he put us in." A royal visit was therefore a prospect that filled most people with dread.

  One thing that Henry always looked for was good hunting, a pleasure he indulged in wherever he went. Map states he was "a great connoisseur of hounds and hawks, and most greedy of that vain sport."

  Even when it was settled in one place, the court was chaotic, disorganised, and noisy. Walter Map complained that, although Henry was a friend to scholars and loved learning, the Muses flourished less at his court than at any other, "since the worry of it would not allow an interval for rest sufficient for sleep, let alone study."

  The food was appalling, and so was the wine, despite hundreds of barrels of it being regularly imported from Gascony, Poitou, and Burgundy and brought directly to the royal palaces and hunting lodges. Peter of Blois recorded:

  At mealtimes or out riding, or during the long evenings, there is no order or restraint. The clerks and knights feed on poor, ill-fermented, unkneaded, unleavened, and unbaked barley loaves, made of the dregs of beer, full of bran and heavy as lead. To drink, they are given a tainted, murky, thick, rank, flavourless wine, greasy and rancid and tasting of pitch. I have seen wine set before persons of eminent rank which was so thick that to get it down a man had to close his eyes, clench his teeth and sift it rather than drink it, grimacing with horror. The ale tastes horrible and looks filthy.

  On account of the great demand, cattle are sold to the court whether they are healthy or diseased, meat is sold whether it be fresh or not, and fish-- four days old-- is no cheaper for being putrid or foul-smelling. We have to fill our bellies with carrion and become graves for sundry corpses. The servants care nothing whatever whether the unlucky guests become ill or die, provided they load their master's table with dishes. Indeed, the tables are sometimes filled with rotting food, and were it not for the fact that those who eat it indulge in powerful exercise, many more deaths would result from it.

  Nothing was ever done to rectify these shortcomings because food was not important to the King. When the monks of St. Swithun at Winchester complained, weeping, to him that their bishop allowed them only ten courses at meals, Henry was not impressed.

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  "In my court, I am satisfied with three," he snapped. "Perish your bishop if he doesn't cut your dishes down to the same."41

  It was only on the three great religious festivals that the court ceased being a strictly functional institution and became a theatre of ceremony. Henry commonly kept Easter at Winchester or Windsor, Pentecost at Westminster, and Christmas at Gloucester or Windsor, and all these feasts were marked by solemn religious observances and feasting. There was as yet no concept of the court as a regular forum for aristocratic pleasures, as in Tudor times, yet it formed a centre of patronage to which suitors flocked.

  Henry II was aware of the political value of royal display, and although fine clothes, luxury, and personal comforts meant little to him, his accounts include payments for rich furs, silken robes, plate, and jewels,42 which must have been purchased for great ceremonial occasions. Even King Louis commented on the relative magnificence of his rival, telling Walter Map: "Your King, the lord of England, has men and horses, gold and silk and jewels and fruits, game and everything else, while we in France have nothing but bread and wine and gaiety."

  Queen Eleanor also exercised a degree of patronage, mainly in cultural matters, yet her role in the court was chiefly decorative and ceremonial. She was often present at the King's side when he received im
portant visitors or envoys, who came from all over Europe, and at royal banquets, religious ceremonies, and state occasions.

  As we have seen, the Queen had her own household and her own officers and personal attendants. She was waited on by the wives and daughters of the nobility, all of whom were paid, some receiving salaries and others occasional gifts: the records of these payments contain the first references to ladies-in-waiting in England. The pattern of payments suggests that unmarried girls were expected to attend the Queen on a regular basis, while married ladies waited upon her for part of the time and spent the rest on their husbands' estates or bearing children.

  For all her experience at the civilised and orderly courts of Aquitaine and France, Eleanor seems to have made little attempt to impose more sophisticated standards upon Henry's court. She did lay down some rules of courtesy, insisting for example that no man appear before her with unkempt hair, unless he wished to be promptly ejected from her presence, but the evidence suggests that she was unable to enforce more stringent reforms. Instead, she appears to have resigned herself to enjoying, in the privacy of her apartments only, a higher standard of living than the rest of the court, achieved through importing many luxury items from abroad; these included gold for plates and goblets, regular shipments of spices, her favourite wine from La Rochelle, and incense for her chapel and to disguise the smell of the London fog.43 From the

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  Pipe Rolls we know that Eleanor's private bowers boasted the very latest in decoration, including tiled floors, glazed windows, silken hangings, and carpets imported from the Orient, and that she always took tapestries and cushions with her on her travels.44

  The Pipe Rolls also record purchases for the Queen of "oil for her lamps," wine, flour, linen for tablecloths, brass bowls, and sweet-scented rushes for the floor, all of which give a clearer picture of the comfort in which she lived. However, we have no way of knowing how Eleanor occupied her time, although we may surmise that, when she was not attending to her state and administrative duties, she read books and poetry, listened to music, spent a part of each day at her devotions, attended to household and family matters, and perhaps undertook some sewing and embroidery, those age-old pastimes of queens.

  During Henry II's reign, the crown owned perhaps sixty castles and a number of hunting lodges. It was customary for apartments to be kept ready for the King and Queen at most of these residences, in case they chose to pay a visit or demanded a night's lodging while on their travels.

  Of the chief royal residences of Eleanor's day, three are still in use today: the Palace of Westminster, the Tower of London, and Windsor Castle. Other important castles, such as those at Winchester, Nottingham, Ludgershall, Gloucester, and Marlborough, are now ruins.

  King Edward the Confessor had had a Thames-side residence at Westminster in the eleventh century, but this had been replaced by a palace built by William Rufus, who also erected the vast New Hall, completed around 1099-1100, which still stands today (although with a fourteenth-century hammerbeam roof) and is now known as Westminster Hall. From the time of Henry II, the King's judges sat here to dispense justice. Nothing else survives of the Norman palace, although we do have William FitzStephen's description of how it appeared in Henry II's reign: "Upstream, to the west, a royal palace rises high above the river, an incomparable building ringed by an outwork and bastions, two miles from the City and joined thereto by a populous suburb."

  In 1153 King Stephen built a new wing of the palace, which was surrounded by orchards and woodlands, extending down to the river bank. In this wing were the royal apartments that were found to have been vandalised on Henry II's accession. The older palace lay to the south, and was used to house the various departments of state and provide accommodation for courtiers. It was a sparsely furnished and strictly functional building.

  William the Conqueror's priority had been to strengthen the defences of London, and in 1067 he had begun building fortifications on

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  what is now Tower Hill, on the site of an ancient Roman stronghold on the banks of the River Thames. Around 1078, he ordered the building of the White Tower, which was completed in 1097 and remained unchanged until 1190, when the building of two curtain walls, bisected by towers, began. William FitzStephen refers to the Tower as the Palatine Castle, stating that it was "very great and strong with walls rising from very deep foundations, their mortar being mixed with the blood of beasts."

  The White Tower, so named because of the regular coats of whitewash applied to it, stood ninety feet high, with walls eleven feet thick. It was a rectangular building with turrets at each corner, one housing a spiral staircase. Access was through a doorway set high above the ground, reached by an external staircase, and the walls were pierced with arrow slits, which were not converted into windows until 1715.

  In each of the royal residences, the King's apartments were divided into hall, chamber, and chapel, which together formed the substance of his household. On the upper floors of the Tower were to be found a galleried great hall and chamber, each two storeys high, the royal apartments, and a Norman chapel dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, constructed of Caen stone with rounded Romanesque arches and brightly painted stonework. It is still in use today. The ground floor provided quarters for the Constable of the Tower, and in the basement there were storerooms and a well. There is no evidence of an indoor kitchen; the kitchen was probably housed in a separate building in the bailey.

  The Tower dominated London. It was not only a fortress and palace but also a state prison, garrison, arsenal, armoury, mint, wardrobe, and treasure house: the crown jewels were always kept here. There was even a small menagerie. Even by King Stephen's reign, it was famous as one of the chief residences of the kings of England.

  In 1070-1080, in order to complete his ring of fortresses around London, built to control the southeast of England, William the Conqueror had erected a defensive wooden castle on top of a steep earthwork at Windsor, in the parish of Clewer, not far from Edward the Confessor's palace at Old Windsor. The castle overlooked the River Thames, had far-reaching views across a wide area, and was surrounded by forests and heathland offering excellent hunting grounds. The Conqueror and his sons had enclosed much of Windsor Forest for their own use and built kennels for their hounds and a royal mews.

  The Conqueror's tower had been built, in Norman fashion, on the summit of the earthwork, with courtyards known as the Lower Ward and Upper Ward on either side of it; the whole area was surrounded by a wooden palisade and a ditch. The entrance was via a drawbridge

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  and gate in the Lower Ward. Within the courtyards were huts for the garrison, stables, cages for prisoners, and access to secret subterranean tunnels for emergency use when the castle was under siege. The later Norman kings had added a range of royal apartments, a great hall, a kitchen, and a chapel dedicated to St. Edward the Confessor.

  Around 1166-1170, Henry II ordered that Windsor Castle be rebuilt in stone. The work took several years to complete, and entailed transporting blocks of heath-stone from quarries near Bagshot and lead for the roofs from Cumberland in the north. The palisade was replaced by half a mile of massive stone walls, and the tower-- rebuilt in 1180 and thereafter known as the Round Tower-- and other buildings were also rebuilt in stone; these included the private royal apartments in the Upper Ward (on the site of the present state apartments) and an official royal residence with a great hall, known as the Winchester Tower, in the Lower Ward. On the slopes of the escarpment on which the castle was built, a vineyard was planted, although its yield was never plentiful.

  Very few of Henry II's buildings survive today, having been either demolished, rebuilt by later sovereigns, or disguised during the early nineteenth century, when Jeffrey Wyatville remodelled the castle for George IV. The earliest surviving room at Windsor is a thirteenth-century dungeon. Nevertheless, the size and form of the original mediaeval buildings may still be seen, and because of the dirt-repellent properties of heath-s
tone, the twelfth-century walls at Windsor still look as pristine as they did eight centuries ago.

  William the Conqueror also built the royal castle known as the King's Castle at Winchester, although hardly anything remains after its demolition by Cromwell's men in the seventeenth century, and the surviving great hall dates only from 1235. We know from the Pipe Rolls and other sources, however, that the castle boasted a painted chamber in Eleanor's time.

  In Oxford, around 1130, Henry I had built the King's House, later known as Beaumont Palace. A complex of massive wooden and stone buildings, it was surrounded by a defensive wall, had a great chamber, in which Henry II held court, a great hall adorned with mural paintings, two chapels, a cloister, and private quarters for the use of the Queen, the royal chaplains, and other officials. Two of Eleanor's children were to be born here. The palace was later converted into the church of the White Friars, which became in turn a workhouse; in the nineteenth century, a crumbling, roofless chamber with the remains of a fireplace was pointed out as the birthplace of King Richard the Lionheart.

  Nearby was the royal hunting lodge at Woodstock, built by Henry I

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  on the site of a Saxon manor house. It stood in the middle of a forest and was surrounded by a well-stocked deer park. Here, Henry II founded the first royal menagerie in order to house the animals sent to him as gifts by foreign rulers. They included Hons, leopards, lynxes, camels, and a porcupine; later, Richard I housed a crocodile there. Although Woodstock was used chiefly as a hunting lodge, Henry also held meetings of the Great Council there.