Isabella, Queen Without a Conscience

by Rachel Bard

  But I didn’t enjoy it. As my hearing got worse I found it aggravating to have to ask people to speak up, to repeat. I hated this, especially when they were people I cared so little about—the prioress, the nuns, the abbess, the other noble ladies. Before long when they found it too difficult to have a conversation they stopped trying. So I was spared the company of those I despised. Not only that, but as I grew more silent they assumed I’d lost my hearing entirely. This could be amusing sometimes, when I overheard remarks never meant for my ears. At other times it was painful when I was the subject of their gossip. Fortunately for my peace of mind, I had the steadfast companionship of Lady Louise all this time. She went along with the little game I was playing.

  One day I overheard something more alarming than idle chatter. The prioress told a friend that if I should try to leave the abbey I would be prevented. “We’ve been given these instructions from the very highest authority,” she said.

  I was outraged. Wasn’t I a countess, a queen? Wasn’t I free to go where and when I pleased? Poor Louise had to listen to my invective.

  “I came here of my own free will, I can certainly leave if I wish. Who could give an order to prevent me?”

  “Forgive me, my lady, but I think I know. I’ve befriended one of the abbess’s confidantes. She told me she understood that King Louis had given the order that you were to be detained here to keep you from making more mischief. I didn’t want to tell you this because I knew it would only anger you and add to your sorrows.”

  Though this was shocking, I didn’t burst out in an explosion of anger. Nowadays, along with the rest of me, my temper wasn’t as robust as it had been. I merely said “Ha!” Then I thought about what to do.

  “You were right to tell me. And perhaps you were right to keep this to yourself up to now. You know me very well, my dear friend.”

  Being told I couldn’t leave made me suddenly want to escape. I had to test the King’s decree and find out if I were indeed a prisoner. But where would I go?

  The answer was obvious. I wrote to Hugh. I was sure he must be back from his service for King Louis.

  My dear husband Hugh: I hope and trust you have returned unharmed from Toulouse. I find that I am not wholly contented with my retirement here at Fontevraud. It is far too quiet. I miss the active life we used to lead. I miss our children. Most of all, I miss you. I regret that I left you so abruptly. May I come to you at Lusignan? Your loving wife, Isabella.

  Just writing those words made me look forward to resuming our life together. Maybe after all this time apart we’d find it easier to get along. I waited anxiously for a reply. I packed my belongings so I’d be ready to depart the moment I heard. In ten days his answer came.

  My dear Isabella: Yes, I have returned, safe and sound, from my service for King Louis. I thank you for your concern. Your suggestion that you return to me at Lusignan comes too late. I have decided to undertake a Crusade to the Holy Land, something I have wished to do ever since my father did the same and lost his life there. All is ready. I will leave in three days. Our son Hugh and his wife Yolande are already here. Hugh will take over as head of the clan when I leave. Of course they would welcome you if you came. Otherwise, I hope you will become reconciled to your quiet life at Fontevraud. May God shed his mercy on you. Hugh.

  I read and reread the letter. If Hugh had really wanted me to come back he would have changed his plans. Only now did I realize how much I’d been counting on his welcome, his affection. Not for a moment did I consider going to Lusignan if he weren’t there. Fond as I was of my son Hugh, I knew that he and Yolande would have taken over my Logis de la Reine. I’d be sent to stay in a tower room, as poor ailing Mathilde, Hugh le Brun’s wife, did for so many years. I’d never submit to that.

  Well, perhaps I could go to Angoulême. When I’d packed up and left for the abbey, I’d told Guy that he might as well move in whenever he liked, since we’d left Angoulême to him. I hadn’t heard whether he’d done so or not. In any case, there was plenty of room there for both of us. I wrote to tell him that I intended to leave Fontevraud and come back to my home. He replied at once.

  My dear mother: I grieve to hear that your life at the abbey is not what you had hoped. I have been at Angoulême for two months, and you would be pleased to see the progress we have made on the new tower, though it is years away from completion. My sister Agatha is here too. As you know, she was to marry William de Cauvigney, but the arrangements are going very slowly. My brother Hugh is handling that. In the meantime, of course I told Agatha she was welcome here. She is living in the apartments that you once occupied. I believe that we could make you quite comfortable in the old tower where you lived as a girl. Please send word as to when you plan to arrive. Your loving son, Guy de Lusignan

  The message was clear. He didn’t really want me. I couldn’t imagine going back to the little room where I’d spent so many lonely hours during my childhood. Nor could I imagine accepting a secondary position in the home of my son and my daughter.

  With this, my zeal to escape died. If I couldn’t be lady of the castle I’d have to content myself with staying at Fontevraud for whatever years were left to me. Here at least I had my independence.

  And time. I had plenty of time. Time to reflect on all the turns my life had taken. These days I found myself dwelling more on the past than on the future. How vivid the memories! How often I’d risked so much, to assert my right to live my life as I thought best. And as often as not I’d won. When I didn’t, it hadn’t been my fault.

  It wouldn’t be too bad, I thought, looking around at my comfortable room with all its familiar furnishings. I’d have Lady Louise’s company and her restorative teas. Maybe I’d study holy works. It couldn’t do any harm and might do some good. I’d go to mass more often, and pray to the Virgin Mary to prepare a place for me in heaven.

  Then at last, I trusted I’d be laid to rest in the abbey church. That was surely my due as a Queen of England.

  Epilogue

  Isabella died at Fontevraud Abbey in 1246, aged sixty. Her son Henry saw to it that she was buried in the abbey church. Her recumbent effigy lies near those of King Henry II, Queen Eleanor and King Richard I, the Lionheart. Isabella wears a crown over a wimple that hides her hair. She is dressed in a simple blue gown, belted at the waist, and a cloak trimmed in gold braid. Her hands are folded on her breast. In eternal repose, her face is calm but not meek.

  After Isabella’s death her husband, Hugh X of Lusignan, seemed to shed his enmity toward Louis IX. He was one of some four thousand knights who joined the Seventh Crusade, led by King Louis. The Crusaders’ first conquest was Damiette. They intended to take Egypt before marching on Jerusalem. Hugh died at Damiette in 1249—fighting at the side of his onetime enemy, the king’s brother Alphonse. Hugh’s father, Hugh le Brun, had died at the same place thirty years before.

  Encouraged by the easy capture of Damiette, King Louis led his army toward Cairo. He was disastrously defeated. The Egyptians took him prisoner, then released him and forced him to pay indemnity. His army was greatly depleted. He spent the next six years in the Holy Land, negotiating unsuccessfully with the Muslims in an effort to acquire Jerusalem without fighting for it. He returned to France, and launched his last Crusade in 1270. This too was doomed to tragic failure. Louis died of the plague at Carthage before reaching the Holy Land. Canonized in 1297, he was the only French king to become a saint.

  Isabella’s son Henry III ruled England until his death in 1272, when his son Edward I succeeded him. After his defeat in 1242 Henry made no further attempts to regain the English lands in France, having ample occupation at home dealing with the fractious Welsh and Scots. As his father King John had been at Runnymede in 1215, Henry was challenged by the magnates of the realm who demanded more say in the government. Also like his father, toward the end of his reign Henry presided over an England riven by civil war. Unlike John, he survived to rule another seven years.

  One of the most curious seque
ls to Queen Isabella’s life story is the tale of how Henry befriended his half-brothers and -sisters, children of Isabella and Hugh, after his mother’s death. As far as we know the only ones Henry could have met were the elder sons, who were with Hugh when he and Henry were defeated by King Louis’s forces at Saintes. Under those conditions of battle and hasty retreat there couldn’t have been much time to get acquainted with one’s brothers.

  Yet in 1247, the year after his mother’s death, Henry--who was genuinely attached to all his brothers and sisters, English as well as French--invited his Lusignan relatives to come to England. Guy, William, Aymer and Alice accepted with alacrity. Geoffrey came a few months later. As the younger children in this large family, with relatively small inheritances and not having found advantageous marriages, they may have seen more opportunity for advancement on the other side of the Channel. Henry was generous to them, ostentatiously so. He loved pageantry, and they gave him a good excuse. One of his first acts on their arrival was to arrange a magnificent spectacle to mark the knighting of William, complete with a full ceremony in Westminster Abbey and a lavish banquet to follow. Later he arranged a brilliant marriage for William to a wealthy heiress. He also showered the others with honors and riches. Aymer became Bishop of Winchester. Alice married the Earl of Surrey. Geoffrey and Guy were given impressive amounts of money, much of which they took back to France. When it was safely stowed away, they came back for more. The chronicler Matthew Paris reported that when Guy left England for a trip home in 1247, “his saddle bags were so heavily loaded with new money that he had to increase the number of his horses.”

  No wonder this didn’t sit well with the English barons, nor did their monarchs’ similar largesse granted to Queen Eleanor’s relatives from Savoy. They saw these foreigners usurping the honors and rewards that good Englishmen were entitled to. By 1258 the barons had had enough, and rose up to demand that Henry evict his “beggarly relatives” from the kingdom. Henry had to comply. So back the Lusignan brothers went, considerably better off than when they had come.

  It would be hard not to conclude that Queen Isabella bequeathed to her children her ambition for power, wealth and recognition, and that her husband Hugh’s more equable, temporizing nature died with him.[1]

  Later generations of Lusignans did not fare so well. They fell heavily in debt. The temptation to occasionally ally themselves with the English against their own king resurfaced from time to time. The last count, Guy, imprudently joined Henry’s son Edward I in Edward’s last assault on France, which failed. On Guy’s death in 1308 King Philip le Bel of France, citing the Lusignans’ enormous debts, took over their lands. After three centuries the powerful Lusignan house sank into oblivion.

  Edward I and his successors continued the battles with the French that had embroiled the English since the reign of Henry II. Not until1453, the end of the Hundred Years’ War, did the struggle end. The English had to give up all their possessions in France except the port of Calais, which they finally lost during the reign of Mary I, “Bloody” Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. Yet the rulers of England continued to call themselves kings and queens of France until 1802. Isabella would have approved: once a queen, always a queen.

  And what of Isabella’s legacy, as recorded by history? There is no doubt that her contemporaries saw her as unpopular. The chronicler Matthew Paris, a monk who wrote in the thirteenth century about King John and King Henry III, was harshly judgmental of both of them and by extension of Queen Isabella. He claimed that the French called her a Jezebel, after the fiercely energetic Biblical queen who disregarded the rights of the common man and defied the prophets Elijah and Elisha. She was described to Queen Blanche, mother of King Louis IX (probably before Blanche met her) as a shrew, a termagent and an inciter to rebellion. Others accused her of attempted murder, adultery, and betrayal of her own son. Though later historians have made only glancing references to her character, they were seldom kind. One called her the Helen of the Middle Ages, chiding her for exploiting her extraordinary beauty to influence men and events.

  The French historian Sophie Fougère (see bibliography) imagines Isabella’s thoughts during her final seclusion at Fontevraud. She sees her musing on her life, admitting her follies and finding humility and repose. We have no way of knowing what her state of mind was. I prefer to believe that this strong-minded woman was convinced to the end that fate had been unfair to her, but accepted the fact that there was nothing she could do about it. She did find a measure of repose. But humility? No.

  A Selective Bibliography

  Castaigne, Jean François, Notice Historique sur Isabelle d’Angoulême, Comtesse-reine. Angoulême, 1836

  Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Isabelle d’Angoulême, Comtesse-reine et son temps (1186-1246). University of Poitiers, 1999

  Costain, Thomas B., The Conquering Family. Tandem Books, 1973

  Duby, Georges, William Marshal, The Flower of Chivalry. Pantheon Books, 1985

  Fawtier, Robert, The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation, 987-1328. Macmillan, 1960

  Fougère, Sophie, Isabelle d’Angoulême, Reine d’Angleterre. Edit-France, 1998

  Joinville, Jean de, The Life of St. Louis. Penguin, 1963

  Kelly, Amy, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings. Harvard University Press, 1950

  Lloyd, Alan, The Maligned Monarch: A Life of John of England. Doubleday, 1962

  Marvaud, François, Isabelle d’Angoulême, ou la Comtesse-reine. Lafraise, 1856

  Norgate, Kate, The Minority of Henry III. Macmillan, 1912

  Painter, Sidney, The Reign of King John. Johns Hopkins Press, 1966

  Roger of Wendover, Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History, Vol. II, 1170-1235. John Allen Giles, tr. Bohn, London, 1849

  Snellgrove, Harold, The Lusignans in England, 1247-1258. University of New Mexico, 1950

  Strickland, Agnes, Isabella of Angoulême, Consort of King John. In Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. I. London, 1857

  Vincent, Nicholas, Isabella of Angoulême, John’s Jezebel. In King John: New Interpretations, S.D. Church, ed. Woodbridge, 1999

  * * *

  [1] For a full account of this post-Isabella chapter in the Lusignans’ history, see the article “The Lusignans in England” by Harold Snellgrove, cited in the bibliography.