by Marion Meade
And yet powerful sexual attraction can be easily assuaged—and was certainly done so in Eleanor’s era—without resorting to marriage. Both Eleanor and Henry were far too practical to be swept away by physical passion alone, and their conversations in those secret meetings touched on more important subjects than the carnal. Their alliance had to be predicated on two developments that had not yet, and might never, occur: first, Eleanor’s ability to secure a divorce and the restoration, free and clear, of her duchy; and second, Henry’s rise to the throne of England. Doubtless Henry pointed out to her that his mother’s, and his own, efforts to win over the English barons were finally beginning to bear fruit. During the past year, he had assumed a commanding lead in his struggle against King Stephen in that the English had grown heartily sick of civil war and now spoke of an arrangement whereby Stephen would rule until his death and Henry reign as his successor. While the risks for Eleanor and Henry were great, so were the stakes. For Eleanor, there was always the hazard of Louis’s learning of her intentions and preventing a divorce but, on the other hand, a crown. The nature of the gamble was also clear to Henry: By marrying the queen he would incur Louis’s hostility, but this seemed a small price to pay for a young man entertaining visions of an empire. Created duke of Normandy, he would inherit the counties of Anjou and Maine on his father’s death, and now England too seemed within his grasp. By marrying Eleanor, he could take on Aquitaine as well. The prospects fired his imagination, for, if successful, he would someday rule an area from Scotland to the Pyrenees, an empire larger than any other feudal monarch. And another thought may have entered his mind. Henry was too realistic to overlook the fact that many believed the duchy of Aquitaine to be ungovernable, but this seemed a minor consideration compared to the dangers that Eleanor’s remarriage to anyone else would have created for him. Her divorce would remove Capetian influence from Anjou’s borders, but real security for Henry could only be found in marrying Eleanor himself.
In light of these considerations, the difference in their ages counted for nothing. In the future, Henry expected to have need of a queen, and one as beautiful and rich as Eleanor, regardless of her tarnished reputation as an adulteress, could certainly not be bypassed. Dominated as he was by his mother, he had no objections to an older woman, indeed the age difference in his own parents’ marriage must have made it seem natural. From all contemporary accounts, Henry neither looked nor acted his age, and at eighteen he had already matured into a self-assured adult with a will of iron, a determination to achieve his ends no matter the cost, and a capacity for work that would never fail to astonish his subjects. All in all, he was the most formidable man that Eleanor had ever met, as well as the most businesslike. If it occurred to her that Henry desired her for her lands, that exploiting heiresses ran as a tradition in his family, she could afford to overlook the cynicism of such behavior. In actual fact she had as much to gain by the marriage as he. As immense as her physical needs might have been, it was not in Eleanor’s character to settle for just any young stud. Whether she would have wanted Henry Plantagenet if she had not been convinced that he would be the next king of England is highly doubtful.
By the first week of September the hot weather still had not broken. The Plantagenets, grateful to be leaving the stinking, stifling alleys of the Île-de-France, made their amends to their Capetian overlord: Gerald Berlai and his family were released, the Vexin and Gisors formally relinquished, all the loose ends harmoniously tidied up. The count and duke, so recently testy, now appeared as mild as lambs, equably agreeing to anything, for the loss of the Vexin seemed a trifling cost to pay for the promise of Aquitaine. Louis marveled at his good fortune, and if any trace of a satisfied smile appeared on Henry’s face as he solemnly placed his hands in the king’s to swear fealty and then receive the kiss of peace, Louis failed to notice.
Years later, chroniclers would claim that Geoffrey strongly disapproved of his son’s intrigue with Eleanor. According to Gerald of Wales, “When Geoffrey was seneschal of France, he had carnally known Queen Eleanor of whom he frequently forewarned his son Henry, cautioning him and forbidding him in any wise to touch her, both because she was the wife of his lord, and because she had been known by his own father.” Gerald, who claimed that he had heard the story from Bishop Hugh of Lincoln who, in turn, had been told by Henry himself, cannot be regarded as an objective commentator because of his strong personal antipathy to Henry. Nor is Henry particularly reliable, because by that time he was not averse to spreading calumnies about Eleanor. Had she been Geoffrey’s mistress, it would not have been in keeping with the count’s character to have objected to the marriage on that ground, not in view of the lands that such a union would bring into the Plantagenet holdings. Moreover, it is difficult to explain his public conduct at Paris without assuming that he knew of Henry’s pact with Eleanor—and approved it.
When the two men left Paris in the early days of September, they must have felt exhilarated by their success. They had, unfortunately, been compelled to barter the Vexin, but neither of them regarded this as anything but a temporary loss. Now that Henry had been recognized as duke of Normandy, he was in a far better position to further his ambition to invade England, and on September 14, he planned to meet with a council of his Norman barons to discuss that very project. His most immediate concern was raising money to pay an army of mercenaries, and now, in full control of his duchy, such funds could be more easily obtained. As they galloped along the road to Angers on September 4, evaluating their gains and losses, no doubt chortling treasonously over their ease in duping Louis, the heat and dust grew almost unbearable. At the river Loire, twenty-five miles southeast of the capital city of Le Mans, where Henry had been born, they stopped to swim in the refreshing water. That night, Geoffrey was seized with chills and fever, and three days later, as if to prove the uncanny accuracy of Bernard’s prophecy, he died, all remedies having failed to save him.
Meanwhile, even before the news of Geoffrey’s death had drifted back to Paris, Eleanor had already pressed Louis into taking the first steps toward a divorce. In late September they set out on what would be their last progress through Aquitaine. That this was no casual holiday was evidenced by the size and importance of their escort. Accompanying Louis were his secretaries, Thierry Galeran and Adam Brulart; his chancellor, Hugues de Champfleuri; and an imposing number of prelates and barons. Eleanor, however, seems to have had a separate retinue of southerners, including Geoffrey du Lauroux, the same archbishop of Bordeaux who had officiated at her marriage; her old friend Geoffrey de Rancon; the bishops of Poitiers and Saintes; and prominent vassals, such as the viscount of Châtellerault and the count of Angoulême. Most of these men were either close family friends or relatives. The royal retinue celebrated Christmas at Limoges and from there traveled south to Bordeaux. On February 2, 1152, they were at Saint Jean d’Angély, where they observed Candlemas in the local abbey. During this circuit, Aquitaine was stripped of its Frankish garrisons and administrators and the domain set in order for Eleanor’s return. Later that month, Eleanor and Louis took leave of each other for the time being, she returning to Poitiers while he traveled on to Paris. Now all that remained was the formality of convening a special assembly to pronounce the decree.
In Eleanor’s lifetime and for long afterward there was a widespread impression that Louis had sufficient cause to repudiate her on the grounds of adultery but, out of the goodness of his heart, settled for an annulment based on the legal subterfuge of consanguinity. The Minstrel of Reims embroidered a colorful scene that has no foundation in fact but nevertheless reflected popular perception of the divorce. “And he [Louis] took counsel of all his barons what he should do with the queen and he told them how she had demeaned herself.
“I’ faith,” said the barons, “the best counsel that we can give you is that ye let her go; for she is a very devil, and if ye keep her long we fear that she will cause you to be murdered. Furthermore, and above all else, ye have no child by her.”
In the minstrel’s opinion, Louis “therein did he act as a fool. Far better had it served him to have immured her; then had her vast lands remained to him during her lifetime, nor had those evils come to pass that did befall.”
This excerpt underscores the agonizing dilemma facing Louis. If he divorced Eleanor for adultery, she would not be able to marry again during his lifetime and thus her fief would eventually be inherited by their daughters. But if he did that, he himself would not be able to remarry either. If he imprisoned her, Aquitaine would remain his, but again there could be no possibility of his remarriage. Foolish as his decision may have appeared to some of his contemporaries, in the end he had no choice. By 1152, not only were his barons eager for a new queen, but Abbot Bernard also sanctioned the divorce. Aside from Bernard’s personal hostility toward the queen, there was the certainty of her consanguinity to the king; from every angle, he could not regret her loss to the kingdom of France.
On March 21, 1152, the Friday before Palm Sunday, Eleanor arrived at the royal castle of Beaugency near Orleans for the annulment proceedings. A great assembly had gathered for this important occasion, which, although dignified, turned out to be more or less routine, confirming the clauses already agreed upon. Witnesses came forth with recitals attesting that the king and queen were related by blood within the prohibited degree. The princesses Marie and Alix were declared legitimate and their custody awarded to the king. The archbishop of Bordeaux, acting on Eleanor’s behalf, asked for reassurances that the queen’s domains would be restored intact and, equally important to Eleanor, that she might marry again so long as she gave Louis the allegiance a vassal owed her overlord. Without further delay, the annulment was formally pronounced by the archbishop of Sens.
A chronicler of a later century would paint a fanciful picture of a distraught, weeping queen, fainting, protesting her innocence, carrying on in such hysterical fashion that the prelates and barons feared for her sanity. What more likely happened is that Eleanor and her escort of vassals mounted and rode away from Beaugency with the greatest possible speed. There is no reason to believe that she and Louis parted on anything but cordial terms, although the cordiality on the king’s part would be short-lived. He had never truly desired the divorce, and the parting must have been unpleasant. On that final day of their marriage at Beaugency, the last time they would ever meet, there were surely moments when he regretted his decision. Perhaps he had been wrong to repudiate her, perhaps he should have allowed Marie and Alix to accompany her. Having no talent for prophecy, he wished her well.
If the day had seemed a sorrowful ending for Louis, it meant a bright new beginning for Eleanor. On that warm spring Saturday as she took the road south toward Poitiers, the countryside glistened, and every tree unfurled its green banners. It was a day when the towns bustled with activity, when people were stripping trees to make palms for the processions the following day or decorating the fronts of their houses. But part of the excitement was created by Eleanor herself, in that not every day did a divorced queen ride by. She had been preceded by news of her release, and people lined up to wave and stare. Near the city of Blois, however, she received her first real indication that life as the ex-queen of France might prove to be, not only difficult, but perilous as well. Stopping for the night, probably at one of the local abbeys, she learned that Theobald of Blois, second son of Louis’s vassal the count of Champagne, was plotting to kidnap her. While Eleanor may have been prepared for such an attack at some distant time in the future, she must have been startled to find it happening the day after her divorce. Protected by her escort, she quickly left Blois and hurried south toward the county of Touraine, which belonged to Henry and might offer greater safety. Nevertheless, on her guard now, she took the precaution of sending scouts ahead to make certain that no other ambitious knights lay in wait. As she neared the river Creuse, where she planned to make a fording, she was warned “by her good angel” that Henry Plantagenet’s seventeen-year-old brother, Geoffrey, had arranged a full-scale ambush at Port-de-Piles. Changing her route, she managed to detour around Geoffrey and finally crossed into Poitou “by another way.” Although she had outwitted both would-be seducers, Eleanor would not have found these two escapades flattering; indeed, she must have felt highly incensed to know that she had become fair game for every unemployed knight. Used goods she might have been, a rich, no-longer-young woman who, gossip said, had been repudiated by her husband for unseemly conduct, but she was not yet reduced to marrying second sons.
By Easter, safely home in the Maubergeonne Tower, she began life anew. A household had to be assembled, clerks hired to write letters and charters, notices sent to her chief vassals informing them of her divorce and asking them to render homage and swear fealty to the countess of Poitou and duchess of Aquitaine, grants and privileges renewed for various abbots and abbesses. In the midst of the chaos, Eleanor’s first preoccupation seems to have been her determination to rid Aquitaine of Frankish influence. While Louis’s staff had been evacuated, she did not, evidently, believe this sufficient, for immediately she declared null and void every act she had made together with her ex-husband, as well as those he had made alone. During these first weeks after her homecoming, we have documents attesting to her industriousness as an administrator but not to the arrangements she was making in her private life. How she prepared for her marriage to Henry, what letters were sent and received, what last-minute reservations she may have experienced, have long been a subject of speculation. Although it is generally accepted that she summoned Henry to Poitiers, so shrouded in secrecy were their communications that no document remains to betray them.
Eleanor’s position was extremely delicate on two levels. In her capacity as duchess of Aquitaine, she was a vassal of Louis’s, and as in the case of any vassal, protocol demanded that she secure his approval before marrying, though obviously this was one formality she could not afford to render. As Louis’s former wife, she knew intimately his feelings of dislike for Henry: aside from flouting his authority as her overlord, she was about to deliver a stinging personal blow by marrying his chief enemy, a factor that may well have been part of her initial attraction to Henry. In a sense, she was about to take a deadly revenge, both personal and political, for fifteen years of boredom and entrapment, but one false step now, and to her peril, she would find the king’s army pouring over her borders.
In mid-May, Henry and a few companions arrived in Poitiers, and on Sunday, May 18, barely eight weeks after Eleanor’s divorce, the marriage ceremony took place. No trumpets signaled their union. It was a subdued, almost surreptitious celebration, witnessed only by close friends, family, and household members. Although the occasion lacked the ostentation normally associated with the wedding of two distinguished persons, nevertheless precautions had to be taken in order to assure the validity of the marriage contract. Ironically, Eleanor was more closely related to Henry than she had been to Louis, their common ancestor being Robert II, duke of Normandy, and it was necessary to locate canonists who would issue the proper dispensations. The alliance so skillfully nurtured to fruition during the past seven months would have mighty and far-reaching consequences, but in May 1152, Eleanor was only concerned about the immediate ones, and the days following the wedding offered a temporary respite from the storm that she expected to break over her head.
Sexual attraction, her intuition that Henry would someday be the most formidable sovereign of his generation, a need for an efficient protector of Aquitaine, perhaps also her deep need to hurt Louis: These had been the main factors in her hasty selection of a husband. But she did not know Henry as a person. Now, during this honeymoon of sorts, she had an opportunity to scrutinize more closely the volatile man she had chosen. Basically she found that, though her judgment had been sound, he was a complex man with a host of contradictory qualities. Like herself, he had been given a first-class education, both at his father’s court and in the English household of his uncle Robert, earl of Gloucester. Both Mat
ilda and Geoffrey, despite their personal animosity for one another, had apparently been in agreement that Henry should be educated in a manner befitting a future king. Under the direction of his tutor, Master Matthew, archdeacon of Gloucester, Henry learned a smattering “of all the languages which are spoken from the Bay of Biscay to the Jordan but making use only of Latin and French.” From his father he received the usual training in riding, jousting, falconry, and hunting, and as an adult, these arts were to be a consuming obsession with him; neither was his military education neglected, for Geoffrey was known to have owned a fourth-century Roman handbook on war. For a layman, Henry was well read, sometimes taking books to bed, and he sought out the company of intellectuals, with the result that he constantly squirreled away information. “Anything he had once heard worthy of remembrance he could never obliterate from his mind. So he had at his fingers’ ends both a ready knowledge of nearly the whole of history and also practical experiences of almost everything in daily affairs.”