Daughters of Chivalry

by Kelcey Wilson-Lee

  After decades of fighting, Edward needed to arm another force, and this time his daughters helped him to pay for it: Magna Carta allowed the King of England the right to levy a tax on the marriage of his first daughter. Twelve years earlier, on the eve of Joanna’s marriage to Gilbert, Edward had been granted the right to raise a tax to support her dowry, but this had never been fulfilled. Now, lacking ready funds, the king appealed, and on 7 November 1302 his men were authorized to collect the taxes owed. If fully realized, the king expected 10,465 pounds, but although only 6,832 pounds was collected, the funds helped him mount a fresh force before heading north for Scotland once more. Humphrey set out to meet the king’s muster at Roxburgh, just to the north of the border, late the following spring, and Elizabeth went with him, most likely in the company of Joanna, who accompanied Ralph, as well as Marguerite, who followed in the wake of the king with her young sons, Thomas (aged two) and Edmund (one).3

  Whether the women peeled off before arriving at Roxburgh or remained with the main body of the eight-thousand-strong army until it struck out into the as-yet-unconquered territories north of the ‘Scottish Sea’ (as Edward termed the Firth of Forth), is not clear. What is readily apparent is that, when the English forces moved into unfamiliar terrain where there was an increased threat of ambush, safeguarding royal women and babies would be an encumbrance. In any case, Elizabeth was by this time heavily pregnant and could not risk childbirth so far into hostile territory, especially with the Scottish rebel leader William Wallace still at large and sporadically mounting attacks; she required a secure residence for her confinement and subsequent recovery. While their husbands, brother, and Joanna’s eldest son, Gilbert – now ensconced with a tutor within the household of his uncle Prince Edward and training to be a knight (for which his grandfather had bought him a small suit of armour) – continued north, the women turned back to England.4

  By 6 June, Elizabeth, Joanna, and Marguerite arrived at Tynemouth Castle, a highly developed defensive site on the east coast, near Newcastle. Tynemouth was far away from any fighting and well-positioned to receive food, wine, and salt from merchant ships – an acute challenge for the cash-strapped English captains, as they struggled to feed their men on the march north. The castle’s direct access to the sea also provided a means of escape in the unlikely event that it was besieged. Though lacking the manicured gardens and idyllic parkland of Woodstock where they had awaited Prince Edmund’s birth the year before, Tynemouth was a practical and secure choice for Elizabeth’s confinement while the armies of England pushed north towards Aberdeen.5

  A surviving letter from the king’s camp at Aberdeen late that August, casts light both on the constant flow of letters to and from Tynemouth, as well as the active intercessory role that Elizabeth played, even during her pregnancy. Since the formation of the alliance with France that was part of Edward’s marriage to Marguerite, he had sought to support his new brother-in-law and ally, the King of France. Among Edward’s actions had been to direct the seizure of goods held by all Flemish merchants in London after Flanders had rebelled against the French, in the summer of 1302. When the cloth merchant, Walter de Bruges, was arrested, he appealed – not directly to the king but to his daughter, Elizabeth, for whom he may have procured items she had developed a taste for while living in the Low Countries. Identifying himself as ‘clerk and merchant of Elizabeth’, Walter got word of his arrest to the countess. From Tynemouth, she wrote directly to her father, explaining that Walter, ‘although born in Flanders, did not adhere to the Flemish enemies and rebels of the King of France’. Walter had good reason to feel grateful to his patron: on the word of his daughter, Edward directed a renewed investigation and eventually released Walter’s stock, which amounted to over two hundred pounds’ worth of cloth and other items.6

  At Tynemouth, Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, a baby girl she named Margaret, almost certainly in honour of her stepmother and friend Marguerite, though the name of course also recalled her sister in Brabant. We are able to surmise from the recorded gift-giving that followed Margaret’s birth that the delivery had proceeded smoothly: a buoyant Elizabeth purchased and distributed a number of silver cups (ubiquitous as gifts in this era) to her companions, including Joanna de Mereworth, who had continued in the countess’s service ever since King Edward had sent her to collect Elizabeth from Holland in 1300. With autumn closing in and the king and his men intending to stay in Scotland, Elizabeth, Marguerite, and Joanna – who was pregnant once again – planned to return north. Each woman seemed to want to be with her husband, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that something we would recognize today as romantic love linked the princesses with their husbands: Joanna’s passion for Ralph had clearly been demonstrated by the trials she endured to marry him; Marguerite would, on Edward’s death, remain a widow, proclaiming that ‘when Edward died, all men died’ for her; Elizabeth and Humphrey would go on to produce nine further children during the next twelve years of their marriage, suggesting at the very least a persistent intimacy. But although love may have drawn the young countesses and queen back towards the theatre of war, they recognized that Scotland in the winter among an army struggling with food supplies was not an ideal environment for small children, and Elizabeth’s baby Margaret was sent to the royal nursery at Windsor with her uncles, the toddler princes, Thomas and Edmund. Back in the security of the castle, Margaret’s needs were catered to by a dedicated wet nurse, as well as teams of maids and cradle-rockers who managed the nursery, under the guidance of a royal administrator, who oversaw the broader requirements of the household. The king’s minstrel Martinet was assigned to entertain the children, one of whom got hold of his tabor, a small snare drum often played in accompaniment with a pipe, and managed to break it. The minstrel’s wages were supplemented for the repair of his instrument.7

  By November, the queen and her two stepdaughters had rejoined the king’s court. Edward had chosen to spend the winter at the abbey and royal palace at Dunfermline, the ancient capital of Scotland and by tradition the burial site for the country’s kings – as at Aberconwy in Wales, Edward knew his occupation of this sacred royal ground would symbolically reinforce the completeness of his conquest of Scotland. The site will also have appealed for more practical reasons: the chronicler Matthew Paris described the thirteenth-century compound as large enough to house the retinues of three kings at once without them inconveniencing one another. All the available chambers and horse stalls would have been occupied by the assembled retinues of the king (with his nearly five hundred knights and dozens of personal servants), as well as Marguerite, Joanna, and Elizabeth. Prince Edward had departed for Perth with his own household late in November, hinting perhaps at early signs of estrangement with his father that would burst forth in the years to come. But the king’s two sons-in-law, Humphrey and Ralph (who by this point, was so well-beloved by his father-in-law, that he had been granted the extraordinary privilege of a licence to hunt and carry away game as he pleased from any royal forest) remained at Dunfermline to welcome their wives north.8

  On their arrival, Elizabeth and Joanna were greeted with the happy news that a rupture that had threatened the friendly relationship between England and their sister Margaret’s Duchy of Brabant had finally been resolved. English merchants all along the east coast had been protesting that they were unable to recover debts owed them by Duke Jan, and after many months of complaints Edward was forced to allow them to confiscate the goods of local Brabaçon merchants in turn as compensation. In June, Margaret wrote a letter replete with expressions of filial love and obligation to ‘her very dear and well-beloved lord and father’, deploying sentiment in the service of international diplomacy. Margaret, ‘his humble daughter, gives all the affection and reverence that she can send him, with a daughter’s love’, in informing the king in the Anglo-Norman they spoke to each other that:

  in no place have [Edward’s English] merchants been arrested or detained . . . even when the merchants of our
lands have been detained and arrested: so, I pray you, dearest sire, that, for reason and right, and also for the love of me, you will command that their goods be restored and delivered to them.

  When Margaret’s pleas were not sufficient to stop the king’s actions against the merchants of Brabant, Jan seized the goods of an English merchant, before rapidly thinking better of it. By November, yielding to the entreaties of counsellors that included his wife, Jan wrote to his father-in-law, promising that he would honour any debts owed, thereby de-escalating the diplomatic situation. Although Margaret’s name is not mentioned in the final charter, her influence was very important in negotiating a peaceful outcome.9

  The presence of Elizabeth and Joanna, so deep into hostile territory during the darkest months of the year, demonstrated once again the impact of their mother’s influence on these adult women: just as Eleanor of Castile had accompanied her husband to war in the Holy Land and into Wales (perhaps inspired by her own mother’s journeys in Spain), her daughters Joanna and Elizabeth did not shy away from travelling into the warring territories of Scotland with their own husbands. From their base in Dunfermline, the princesses – ever accustomed to itinerant journeying – took several extended journeys throughout the southern region of Scotland and down the east coast of England. For Christmas that year, Elizabeth travelled south to Hovingham at the bottom of the North York Moors with her father and stepmother, and after the holiday they continued as far as Frodingham in Lincolnshire, before turning north. Nearly two hundred horses were required to transport all the furnishings and personal items that they took with them, encircling the royal family in a sea of courtiers and servants. Elizabeth’s household alone required provision for thirty horses: seven for her carriage, seven more to pull the carts that held her personal suite of furniture and goods, three for the countess to ride, and a further fifteen to transport her ladies and chief attendants. Labourers idling along the roads in the winter months who hoped to glimpse their monarch would have needed to strain their eyes as the entourage passed to pick out the king and queen amid the sizable retinue, but their impression of royal power would have been reinforced.10

  As spring arrived and the king’s army left Dunfermline, having turned the palace and all its monastic buildings apart from the magnificent abbey church itself to rubble, Joanna safely delivered her eighth child, a baby boy she named Edward, in honour of her father. Elizabeth and Marguerite, meanwhile, remained with the army. Behind an oriel window constructed for the purpose of providing them with a view safe from projectiles and shrapnel, the royal ladies watched as Edward’s men lay siege to Stirling Castle. From their protected vantage point, they would have heard the king declaring a lengthy oration of the legal rationale for his overlordship of Scotland, and seen the deployment of battering rams and giant siege engines, which hurled huge stones and ‘Greek fire’ (so-called because it sought to replicate an incendiary weapon used by the Byzantines – an explosive mix of sulphur and saltpetre) over the walls. Elizabeth’s husband Humphrey, leading a contingent of knights on horseback, managed to fight off a Scottish force aiming to break the siege, while her father paraded boldly along the castle walls to demonstrate his bravery and boost the morale of his men – at one point narrowly escaping a cross-bow bolt shot from inside the castle that dramatically pierced the saddle of his horse. The appearance of the royal ladies within the besieging camp attests to the confidence of the English forces in their control of the area outside the castle, but also offers vivid evidence of the interest of these women in the business of war, even if only as spectators.

  Late in July, Stirling Castle fell, effectively concluding Edward’s conquest of Scotland. Joanna remained at court, which was still only as far south as Jedburgh in the border region, where she interceded with the king for mercy on behalf of an Englishman charged with murder. Her twenty-two-year-old sister Elizabeth, pregnant for the second time, meanwhile departed for the safety of England. She left on 21 July, heading for the royal castle in picturesque Knaresborough near Harrogate in Yorkshire, where she would remain for her second confinement. That fortress’s defences had been strengthened under King John a century before; a broad moat to enhance its security had been installed, and its chambers had been updated to house the king and his retinue while they hunted in nearby Knaresborough Forest. But the standards of comfort expected of nobles by the early fourteenth century had increased considerably, and the castle seems to have been found wanting. In 1307 King Edward would set about reconstructing it, adding a modern keep with vaulted cellars and three upper storeys housing a great hall and a chamber with large Gothic windows. Three years before those works began, however, his daughter travelled south in a carriage refitted for the journey with feather cushions to soften the constant jolts caused by the bumpy roads. Following her were carts with trunks filled with household goods to enhance the comforts of Knaresborough: seven tapestries to cover the dusty walls, woven with the arms of England and Hereford, on a background of deep green; two new benches for her chamber and three to furnish her hall; six large, canopied beds for the countess and the five lady companions who accompanied her. Her kitchen was provisioned by the royal storehouses that dotted the north of England and the captured stores of Scotland: bread came from Stirling, Edinburgh and Berwick-on-Tweed; fish was sent from Newcastle; wine from York, with the sheriff of that county also asked to procure salt.11

  Despite frequent visits by her husband, Elizabeth began to feel a creeping anxiety about her impending labour as autumn set in. Her concern was not without precedent – Marguerite’s first delivery, and one of Joanna’s more recent experiences, had led both mothers to appeal during labour to one of the royal family’s favourite saints, Thomas Becket, and to feel sufficient gratitude after their safe deliveries that they named their healthy sons after the martyr. Statistics on maternal mortality in the pre-modern era are notoriously difficult to gauge, but studies that use both archaeological and textual sources and span the medieval centuries demonstrate a consistently high rate of death for women in labour – a fact made all the more harrowing when considering the number of children born to women like Eleanor of Castile and Joanna. Even when the babies had not lived, Elizabeth’s mother and all her sisters had survived by that date a total of twenty-six deliveries, though other women close to the royal family had succumbed during or shortly after childbirth: Aveline de Forz, the heiress who had married Elizabeth’s uncle Edmund, the Earl of Lancaster in 1273, had died giving birth to twins who were either stillborn or died very soon after their birth. Tellingly, the sole historical record of Aveline’s death is in the chronicle written by Nicholas Trivet, commissioned by Mary in the decades to come, which suggests that the death was remembered as significant within the family. In September 1304 Elizabeth’s anxiety eventually became so great that she sought divine protection beyond simple prayers to St Thomas – a messenger was sent to Westminster Abbey, requesting that one of the kingdom’s most prized relics be sent north to Knaresborough to comfort her.12

  The Girdle of the Virgin at Westminster is a mostly forgotten cousin to the relic still venerated at Prato, just outside Florence, but like that knotted cord – supposedly woven by the Virgin’s own hands and seen encircling her waist in surviving works by Raphael and Titian – its veneration rose sharply in the thirteenth century with the increased popularity of the cult of the Virgin Mary. The most well-known version of the girdle story came from The Golden Legend, a compendium of Latin tales about the lives of important saints that was compiled in Italy during the late thirteenth century by a Dominican monk-turned-archbishop, Jacobus de Voragine. The story follows the episode in which St Thomas the Apostle missed the appearance of Jesus to his fellow disciples after his resurrection and ‘doubted’ the veracity of his friends’ words. Despite his doubts, the saint nevertheless travelled to India to preach the Christian gospel, but in doing so missed the death and bodily Assumption of the Virgin Mary to Heaven. The Virgin, recognizing Thomas’s scepticism, appeared to him i
n the sky as he travelled back to Judea from India and dropped down to him the cord that served as her belt, offering physical proof of his vision. How this ancient object had survived the centuries intact or made its way to Europe was less important to the medieval mind than its direct, physical link to the pre-eminent saint of the Christian Church (although the detailed provenance story that became attached to the Prato Girdle perhaps lent greater weight to its authenticity than the Westminster Girdle, which was reputed to have come miraculously into the possession of Edward the Confessor and was given by him to the abbey). Relics – whether parts of the bodies of saints, or ‘contact relics’ like the girdle that acquired holiness through its association with the Virgin’s body – functioned as physical proofs of the stories within The Golden Legend, linking medieval Europe directly to the ancient Near East of Jesus’s time. Many who, like Thomas, doubted the historic truths of Bible tales, were convinced by the remarkably well-preserved phials of holy blood, breast milk, tears, and the thousand-year-old bodies encased in glass coffins that displayed early martyrs to crowds of pilgrims, as well as the girdles and veils that had touched Jesus or Mary at critical moments on their way to heaven.13

  From early in its veneration, the Girdle of the Virgin was particularly associated with pregnant women, unsurprising given the primacy of motherhood in the life of the Virgin Mary. If she was ‘immaculate’ from birth (preserved from the taint of original sin), it was in the act of giving birth to Jesus that she helped save humanity; her position as Queen of Heaven derives exclusively from her relation to Christ. It is apparent that the veneration of Mary, widespread across Europe at the start of the fourteenth century, suggested to medieval women that they too might enjoy enhanced authority once they became mothers. First, however, the women had to survive childbirth; it was to help with this that two monks from Westminster travelled north with the holy Girdle to the Countess Elizabeth in Knaresborough. They remained there until 15 September, when she gave them forty shillings to cover the expenses related to their travel.14