Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen
Page 22
Last but not least, there were domestic changes. This period was ushered in by the crucial birth of the heir, John, in 1266. The next few years of relative peace saw two further additions to the nursery – a second son, Henry, was born in early May 1268, cementing Eleanor’s status as a successful royal wife in providing the necessary ‘heir and a spare’. This arrival was duly celebrated by Henry III, who granted the messenger twenty marks’ pension for the good news. Next arrived a daughter, Eleanor (referred to in this text as Eleanora), in June 1269 – attracting ten marks by way of present for the messenger.
However, even with the demands of the increasing family, Eleanor’s peregrinations with Edward continued: in 1267, Edward, adopting Richard I’s approach in seeing tournaments as a training ground for knights, persuaded Henry to revoke his ban on tourneys in England, and issued, with his brother Edmund and cousin Henry of Almain, an edict permitting them to be held. A rash of events followed, to which Eleanor will have followed Edward wherever possible.19
And her travelling was about to range rather further afield. From about mid-1268, Eleanor was part of the latest craze at court: Crusade fever. The papal legate had been preaching the Crusade in England since 1266 as part of a Europe-wide movement prompted by the loss of the fortified Crusader town of Saphet, near Acre, earlier in the year. At the time there had been few subscribers – the most notable early enrolments being Thomas de Clare, brother of the Earl of Gloucester and friend of Edward, and Teobaldo Visconti, the Archdeacon of Liège. The movement had gathered momentum in Europe in 1267, with Louis of France and his sons taking the cross, but was still not gaining ground in England.
However, as the post-war ‘mopping up’ drew to a close, the idea started to catch on, largely among Edward’s circle, who had enjoyed the experience of war and did not look forward to returning to peaceful and often subsidiary roles. Thus, at Midsummer 1268, around 700 people, including Edward, his brother Edmund, Henry of Almain, John de Warenne, Gilbert of Gloucester, William de Valence and others, publicly pledged to go on Crusade. There is no doubt that Edward’s commitment to going on Crusade was strong – despite papal advice that he should not go, he persisted in committing to the adventure. Of course, this determination may have been entirely his own – as Lloyd has pointed out, Edward was a classic example of a young man who wanted scope for his newfound skills, independence of action which (it was all too apparent already) would be lost to him in peacetime. There was, for example, no scope for exercising those skills in defence of his Marcher lands, since the peace of Montgomery, concluded in September 1267, precluded him from campaigning in Wales. He was also possibly driven by his own piety, by the example of Louis and his sons, and the past example of his uncle Richard of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort.20
There appears little doubt that Eleanor would have been equally enthusiastic – as the daughter of a great soldier and Crusader, she will have been firmly of the view that this was something which Edward ought to do. Still more would Eleanor have been in favour, since this was not the type of Crusade where ladies remained behind; since Eleanor of Aquitaine had caused scandal in accompanying her then husband the King of France on Crusade in 1147, the presence of women on Crusade had become quite the accepted mode. When Simon de Montfort and Richard of Cornwall had crusaded with Louis of France earlier in the century, Eleanor de Montfort and Queen Margaret of France had formed part of the party. So too with this new Crusade; Eleanor’s cousin and Isabelle of Aragon, the wife of Louis’ son Philip, was to go, as was Edward’s sister Beatrice, to accompany her husband John of Brittany.
It is, of course, pertinent to ask about the children. This readiness to leave her young brood behind has been the cause of some fairly overt criticism of Eleanor’s decision. But such an approach is hopelessly anachronistic. One can see, for example, from the list just given, that Eleanor’s decision was hardly unique – Isabelle of Aragon had four sons under seven at the time of departure, while Beatrice of Brittany had three sons, a daughter and another on the way. It was usual for royal mothers of the era to have their children largely raised away from them in the early part of their life; Eleanor of Provence’s approach was far more the exception than the rule. The approach which Eleanor’s own family had taken would be one part of the cause – this would give an opportunity for the children to be raised away from likely sources of infection, and maximise their chances of growing to adulthood.
One may also suspect that emotional self-preservation played a role too – so many children died young that it may well have been considered best not to become too involved until the child had passed the main danger age. This certainly ties with what we know of Eleanor’s relations with her children. Practicality, too, will have formed a part of many of the female Crusaders’ calculations; their job was to provide heirs, and this would not be possible for years at a time if they did not accompany their husbands. Eleanor herself would bear two children during the course of the Crusade, and one on the way home. Put brutally, their job entailed their being by their husband’s side. However, there seems little cause to doubt that, for Eleanor, inclination and her job marched here hand in hand – she would have wanted to be on the Crusade herself, she would want to be with Edward, and she would not want to be at home with a group of small children and her child-centred (and generally somewhat overbearing) mother-in-law.
But even once it was more or less settled that there was to be a crusading contingent from England, matters did not go smoothly. Cardinal Ottobuono had hoped to use the Crusade as a means of mending fences between the royal and baronial factions, seeing the shared opportunity to slaughter the infidel as a good route for reconciliation. But those who had just lost the war were, even after the adjustments to the Dictum of Kenilworth, in no position to find the money for the trip. It is therefore no surprise that the take-up from the former rebels was very slight – very few other than John de Vescy were among them. However, the Marchers were well represented: Roger Clifford, Roger Leyburn, Hamo Lestrange and William de Valence were pledged. So too was Gloucester – whose history might permit him to be classed with either side. Others who formed part of the party were Edward’s brother Edmund and his friends and Henry of Almain, Thomas de Clare and Otho de Grandison.21
The main issue, however, was money. This was critical because Edward’s own force would be the core of the expedition and Edward had to find 100 marks for each knight for a year’s service, plus the transport costs. He also had to fund the costs of a considerable household. A grant from the Church was not forthcoming, which meant that the funds had somehow to be found from within England – no easy task when the country was still recovering from the war, and everyone’s finances were accordingly straitened.
His solution was an interesting one, when Eleanor’s business dealings are brought into the equation: he asked Parliament to grant him a tax, in return for legislation against the Jews. The particular grievance which made this legislation a popular measure was the fact that, in order to discharge their own obligations to the Crown, Jewish moneylenders had recently taken to selling on their loans at discounts to Christian investors. Some of these had an eye not to the interest on the loan, or even the principal, but the land on which it was generally secured. By these means, certain enterprising investors (William de Valence and Richard of Cornwall among them) had found a very cost-efficient way of adding to their own property portfolios.
Morris compares the practice of these speculators to a purchaser of a mortgage who refuses to respect the repayment terms and forecloses on the properties regardless. In fact, there was technically nothing wrong with the practice. The means by which money was lent will be familiar to readers of Victorian fiction: X borrows money from Y for a period of time at an agreed interest rate. But in reality, X and Y both know it is unlikely that X will be able to repay the principal at the end of the period. Both anticipate that, at that period, X will wish to renew the debt – that is, to borrow the same sum of money, plus or minus whatever repaymen
ts and interest are relevant. And so the matter might progress from year to year. However, technically (as one sees, say, in Trollope’s Framley Parsonage) the lender is perfectly entitled, at the end of the period of each loan, to seek the repayment of the principal, and foreclose on the security if it is not forthcoming, rather than to renew the debt for a further period. This is what these Christian speculators did. The outrage from the ‘victims’ was a product of the tacit expectation that the debt would be renewed more or less ad infinitum. Edward’s proposals, which advocated requiring permission of the king before such debts could be sold to a Christian, were not at this stage greeted with sufficient enthusiasm to attract a grant from Parliament. Possibly Henry was seen as an insufficient safeguard – and on the basis of past form, such doubts may well have been justified.22
In August of 1269, Edward therefore sought help from another source of funds – the French king, under whose aegis the Crusade was to take place. Louis agreed to lend about £17,500, with repayment secured on the revenues of Gascony over twelve years under fairly harsh terms, including a requirement that Edward and his force be ready to depart at Aigues-Mortes on the Mediterranean coast by 15 August 1270, and to hand over one of his sons (Henry) as hostage to guarantee the agreement. That Louis seems to have been playing rather tough is suggested by the fact that preparations were certainly made to send Henry to him, with the formal letters of protection being issued, and some accounts even suggest he was sent, but returned by Louis.
There is one other possible foreign trip in this period. There is a Spanish tradition that, in late November 1269, Edward attended the wedding at Burgos of Louis IX’s daughter Blanche of France to Alfonso’s heir Ferdinand de la Cerda. If he did go, it seems inconceivable that Eleanor would not have accompanied him. This event would have been a major opportunity for reunions for Eleanor, with most of her family and the Aragonese royal family present. It would also offer a good opportunity for discussing the Crusade with Philip, son of King Louis, who escorted his sister. And of course for Edward and Eleanor it would have provided a fine opportunity for sentimental reflection on their own wedding in the same location some fourteen years before. Sadly, the documents prove that this tradition is not based in fact: Edward is to be is found at Harrow on 23 November and at Windsor on 7 December.23
Shortly after Edward’s return from his visit to France (which may have been a rare trip without Eleanor, given the birth of their daughter in June 1269), the entire royal family would have been busy with preparations for the moment which Henry regarded as the high point of his entire reign – the reinterment of the body of Edward the Confessor in the new Westminster Abbey – designed according to the new Continental-influenced English style. Again an element of emulation of the French monarchy can be discerned: Louis had finished his new cathedral at Reims in 1241. In fact, the church at Westminster was only partly built: the east end, the transepts and the radiating chapels were complete but the nave was only half-constructed, to the end of the choir; beyond that, the old Norman nave remained in place.
Apart from this slight oddity, the new abbey church was magnificent. The three master masons supervising the work appear to have sought inspiration from the new cathedrals at Reims, Amiens and Chartres, as well as from the Sainte-Chapelle for such features as an apse with radiating chapels, pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, rose windows and flying buttresses. But the long nave and single aisles retain the English idiom, as do the mouldings and sculptural decorations. The effect would have been far more dramatic and less restrainedly elegant than it seems in modern times: much of the decoration would have been brightly coloured, the wall arcades may have been decorated in vermilion and gold, and fine paintings – traces of which still remain in some places – decorated the walls. Stained-glass windows in bright reds and blues, with monochrome heraldic shields, added further colour – as did the bays in the aisles of the nave, which featured shields of the Confessor and the great nobles of England hung from projecting stone heads.24
Meanwhile, a new shrine had been constructed for the body of the Confessor, using workmen from Italy, principally Peter the Roman. The new shrine had three parts: a stone base decorated with Cosmati work – which may be loosely described as a kind of mosaic consisting of small pieces of cut stone, marble, glass and green-and-purple porphyry arranged in elaborate patterns. This base linked to a glorious Cosmati pavement and bore a gold feretory – a bier-like shrine – containing the saint’s coffin. Above this was a canopy which could be raised to reveal the feretory or lowered to cover it. The shrine was decorated with gold images of kings and saints and featured a separate finely decorated Cosmati-work altar, which now marks the final resting place of the dead children of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor and Edward.
For Henry, this event was the culmination of years of planning. An especially large parliament and assembly of key magnates and prelates was summoned to witness this festival, which proceeded with the pomp and fanfare Henry so loved, only slightly marred by arguments over precedence between the Archbishop of York (officiating) and the bishops of the Canterbury province and between the citizens of London and Winchester. The monks celebrated Mass for the first time in the new abbey church. Henry himself, Edward, his brother Edmund and Richard of Cornwall were among those including ‘as many of the greater barons as could put their hands’ to the bier, who carried the saint’s body to its new resting place. The church was duly admired and the feast awed the attendees – as it was intended it should do. The event was, in short, ‘the admiration and wonder of all’ – Henry III at his best.25
Following Christmas at Windsor, in the New Year Edward and Eleanor attended their own religious event, finally taking the first steps to fulfil the pledge which Edward had made in 1263 to found a monastery by way of thanks for his being spared from shipwreck. To be fair to him, the plan had not been in complete abeyance since that date. It had, for example, been decided that the foundation would be a daughter house of Abbey Dore in Herefordshire. The choice of Abbey Dore as the parent house was, according to Vale Royal’s ledger book, owing to the kindness shown to Edward by members of that house during his captivity at Hereford in 1265 – and possibly, given that this is whence Edward made his escape from captivity, for some assistance in that escape. It is reported that in 1266 the general chapter of the Cistercian Order authorised an inspection of the site proposed for the new house, but certainly matters had not been proceeding apace, very probably owing to lack of funds from Edward. He will therefore have felt that before taking up his crusading vow to God, it would be sensible to balance the books on this other vow. Edward and Eleanor then seem to have met with the Cistercian authorities and decided on a site – at Darnhall in the Forest of Delamere in Cheshire. With this task completed, final preparations for the Crusade could begin.26
8
The Crusade
The early part of 1270 passed in a whirl of preparations for the Crusade. Edward was still short of funds, but in April 1270 the negotiations with the laity finally paid off, with there being agreement for the grant of a ‘twentieth’, or a levy of a twentieth of the value of all personal property and income, the quid pro quo for which may have been a promise by Henry to enforce Edward’s proposed restrictions on Jewish moneylending. This yielded about £30,000, the greater part of which was paid to Edward, with sums also assigned at the rate of 100 marks per knight to the nobles accompanying him. So Henry of Almain, accompanied by fourteen knights, received 1,500 marks, William de Valence with his nineteen received 2,000, and so on.
Still, however, a major hurdle remained: the Earl of Gloucester. Certainly at this stage in their lives Edward and Gloucester could never stay in each other’s good graces for long, and although Gloucester had pledged to go on Crusade, he and Edward had subsequently had another falling out – and a highly serious one, which provides the other possible dating for Eleanor’s Douce Apocalypse depiction of him as Satan’s minion. The row has been variously attributed to a number o
f different causes, but the result was that Gloucester had been refusing to make preparations for the Crusade or to attend court since autumn 1269. He had missed the translation of Edward the Confessor in the previous October and even pressure from Louis of France, the head of the Crusade, was not productive. However, in spring 1270, Richard of Cornwall brought his fabled diplomatic skills to bear on this difficult problem and brought about an apparent solution: it was agreed that the earl was to follow Edward on Crusade within six months. If he co-operated with Edward he would receive 8,000 marks; if not he would receive only 2,000 marks.1
Eleanor, meanwhile, had much to do on her own account. Her land business had to be brought to a position where it could be left in the hands of subordinates for a few years. Therefore, as was discussed in the previous chapter, previous grants in the New Forest, Leicestershire, Norfolk and Northampton were all ‘tidied up’ in the early months of 1270. This will inevitably have been a time-consuming business. In addition, she had to take decisions on her own provisioning and staff for the Crusade – in the end she took her steward, her valet, her tailor and two clerks (John of London and the lower-ranked clerk Mr Richard) as well as a number of women staff – it is likely that Joan de Valle Viridi and Margerie Haustede, as well as their husbands, will have been part of the group. There would also have been considerable business about who else should make up the group which was to provide the constant companions of the future king and queen for some years – and here, it is interesting to note that Eleanor’s relatives William and Michael de Fiennes were both included.2
In addition, Eleanor and Edward had to agree on who should take charge of political and family matters while they were away. The former was primarily Edward’s concern, of course, and it was a serious concern given that Henry seems never to have regained full health and vitality after the Barons’ War and there was a real possibility that he might die while Edward was out of the country. When it comes to the family side, we see evidence that the relationship between Eleanor and her mother-in-law was not perfectly harmonious: despite Eleanor of Provence’s excellent record as a devoted mother, and her closeness to her grandchildren, she was not left in charge of them. That job was given to Richard of Cornwall, along with the primary responsibility for minding Edward’s political interests. Were Richard to die, his responsibilities were to devolve on his son Henry of Almain – a particularly odd choice, since he was pledged to go on Crusade with his fourteen knights.