Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen
Page 31
The area of Eleanor’s business dealings for which she has attracted most criticism since her time is that which involves dealing with debts owed by individuals to members of the Jewish community. Aside from Pecham’s concerns about usury, such dealings do not seem to have concerned her contemporaries: it is notable that neither the Guisborough or Dunstable annalist refers to this aspect of her business affairs. One reason may be that, as has been shown above, a significant proportion of the dealings by which Eleanor acquired key properties have all the appearance of concerted acquisitions, in the sense that she was pushed towards them by the debtor in question, who could see a way to free himself from a debt to the Jewry and please the queen, with consequent benefits for himself.
However, her dealings in Jewish debt were not confined to property exchanges. Edward made somewhat of a habit of granting her issues of fines for coin clipping, the targets of which were predominantly Jewish. Thus in 1280 he gave her a grant from the issues of transgressions of coin and on 20 April 1283 a grant of all issues of concealed goods and chattels of condemned Jews and from all transgressions of coin. In addition, there are numerous debts granted to Eleanor which did not end up with her possessing the debtor’s property. For example, in Trinity term 1275 she was granted debts owed to Hagin son of Cress in the amount of £1,207 13s 4d, where no property gain seems to have resulted. The inference is that she enforced the debts instead and received cash. Similarly, in November 1279 there was a grant of debts owed to Hagin son of Moses in the amount of £5,262 6s 8d. Some parts of this sum resulted in land transfers, though others did not, and it is to be presumed the debts were paid. The difficulty of enforcing some of these debts may have raised the profile of Eleanor’s dealings in Jewish debts: some disputes about whether debts had already been paid dragged on for over a decade and were only finally thrashed out at the inquest into Eleanor’s affairs after her death, and Eleanor had to summons the Abbot of St Mary’s Abbey twice, in 1282 and again in 1284 when he asserted that the debt on which she sued was based on a forgery by the Jewish moneylender.32
So numerous were Eleanor’s dealings with the Jewry that she had a specific contact, Hagin son of Cress, who was known as ‘the queen’s Jew’. However, this sort of association was not unique; Aaron son of Vives was known as ‘the Jew of the king’s brother’. Eleanor certainly obtained a significant number of debts and properties through her dealings with Hagin and his uncles Hagin son of Moses and Mr Elias. Further, a certain degree of closeness is implied by the fact that she persuaded Edward to name Hagin son of Cress as arch presbyter of the Jews, a move which would have been highly unwelcome to most of the community since he had been excommunicated from Jewish society. Another fact tending in this direction is that between 1268 and 1272 Eleanor nominated Jews to the custodianship of her Irish queen’s gold revenues and tried to do so again in 1273 and 1276.33
Having said that, there is certainly no sign of open closeness; there is no evidence that Eleanor even met those Jews with whom she dealt frequently. Indeed, one may speculate that if she dealt openly and personally with the Jewish community, that would be likely to have attracted the attention of such a keen critic as Pecham. The mere fact of these dealings was enough to attract censure from those who took a very strict line on such matters. However, it would seem the Dominicans took a more nuanced or lawyerly view which relied on the Fourth Lateran Council’s distinction between ‘excessive’ usury, which was condemned, and ‘moderate’ usury, which might be considered permissible. This would enable dealings in Jewish debts, so long as sums exacted were in some sense reduced. It appears very possible that this approach explains some of the compensatory transactions Eleanor entered into in relation to properties acquired, as well as explaining Pecham’s stress that Eleanor may be being wrongly advised – and her apparent rejection of his approach.
But there is nothing in Eleanor’s continued dealings with the Jewish community which particularly suggests any sympathy for them as a group. On the contrary, she seems to have had nothing to say against the ruination of the family of Jacob son of Moses, one of her first contacts in the Jewish community and formerly her gold keeper at the Exchequer of the Jews, nor did she intercede for Benedict de Wintonia, a long-term contact, nominee for her Irish queen’s gold keeper and again former gold keeper at the Exchequer of the Jews, who was hanged for coin clipping in 1278. Moreover, in 1288, while abroad, Eleanor had no hesitation in appointing an agent to assist in the matter of enforcing seizure of the goods of a number of condemned Jews, to ensure all was dealt with efficiently. All the signs therefore point to the conclusion that Eleanor, while dealing extensively with the Jewish community, did so only in the way of business.34
The latter point links to another aspect of her Jewish dealings which is not irrelevant to Pecham’s accusation of scandal. This is that they were predominantly in the earlier part of the reign, around the time of the dower assignment and the associated acquisitions. While there were some continued dealings with Jewish debts, most of the property acquisitions associated with these can be traced to conveyances of debt in the earlier phase of her business, before 1281. Only two property acquisitions fall outside this rule. The last grant of all a Jew’s debts to her was in 1279, and there was no acquisition of a debtor’s total debts to the Jewry after that. Why, then, was Pecham making such an assertion in 1286? Part of it may almost certainly be traced to the fact that he disapproved of Eleanor’s theological independence, and her application of that to her unqueenly business dealings. Part, too, may be referable to the fact that Pecham, as a prominent Franciscan, was generally in favour of a more hard-line approach to dealing with the Jewish population than Eleanor and her Dominican advisers – Franciscan advice has been linked to Eleanor of Provence’s expulsion of Jews from her dower lands. He also took a very strong line on pluralism – the backbone of Eleanor’s financial provision for her more talented clerks.
But also there was tension from the fact that Eleanor and her administration were no respecters of the Church’s asserted rights. Some of the disputes which arose concerned property issues, where Eleanor’s administration seem to have made something of a habit of disputing rent or services owed to church landlords, including (and this is a far from exhaustive list) Clive Abbey, Southwark Priory, St Albans Abbey, Peterborough Abbey and even Amesbury Priory, home to Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor’s own daughter Mary, and niece and goddaughter Eleanor. But other disputes had at least some link to Jewish debts in their purely financial incarnation. So Eleanor had disputes with the Bishop of Worcester about a debt to which both claimed title. Most particularly, it is tempting to see, in the dispute with St Mary’s Abbey in York, grounds for church gossip and scandal and hence the genesis of his outburst. As recorded above, in this action Eleanor had the abbot before the Exchequer of the Jews on two occasions; moreover, provocatively, she claimed and was awarded not just the sum owed but also ‘usury incurred’. It therefore seems likely that the archbishop’s letter reflects a rather partial view, assisted by church rather than national gossip.35
One further topic should be dealt with while considering the queen’s work. That is intercession, which (aside from childbearing) was the traditional job of the queen. In a society offering limited exercise of power for women, it had become traditional for queens to promote their profile by interceding with their royal husband, and procuring his exercise of power in favour of the object which they advocated. This role, where the obvious parallel is with the biblical Queen Esther, but a further strong parallel can be drawn with the intercessory role of the Virgin Mary, demonstrated actual influence and also associated the queen with powerful role models, giving power by association. Huneycutt has traced how effectively and prolifically Matilda, wife of Henry I, exploited her role as intercessor, but it can be seen echoed again and again by other queens both before and after Eleanor. For example, perhaps the best-known example of a queen’s intercession is that of Philippa of Hainault for the burghers of Calais in the fourte
enth century, a wonderful set piece of roleplay both for king and queen, which has duly received its tribute in artistic memorials by, among others, Rodin and Benjamin West. This intercessory role was of increasing importance to English queens as their roles in government lessened throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, along with their control during their husband’s lifetime over their dower properties. Eleanor of Provence, for example, was a great proficient in the intercessory art. At her own coronation she made a formal intercession with Henry for pardons. Among her surviving letters are numerous examples of intercessions with her husband while she was queen, and still more are addressed to Edward in her years as dowager queen.36
In this formal intercessory role there is almost a complete break during Eleanor of Castile’s reign as queen. She did exercise her intercessory role under Henry III; and one example of this, on behalf of the de Haustede family in 1266, may well have won her loyal service from the family for two generations. However, this formal intercession practically stopped once she became queen. Aside from three intercessions for murder recorded in the Patent Rolls, there is not one single letter or account which demonstrates her interceding with her husband. Indeed, Eleanor of Provence was a far more prolific intercessor with Edward than was Eleanor the queen – as also was Margaret of France after Eleanor’s death. Eleanor’s behaviour is thus anomalous.
There is just one story which is generally cited as an example of Eleanor adopting an intercessory role. For a variety of reasons, however, it actually shows no such thing. The story in the records of St Albans Abbey goes thus: knowing that ‘the queen’ was about to visit the monastery, local people who were at odds with the abbot lay in wait to seek her help, forming a somewhat fractious mob. The abbot took the queen ‘a private way’ to avoid them, but the people nonetheless obtained access to her, running up shouting and crying. She rebuked the abbot for trying to keep the people from her. One of the queen’s household then asked a poor woman all about the issue between the town and the abbot, but she was so overcome that she could not answer. In the end the issue was tried and found in favour of the abbot, which the chronicler of St Albans seems to find highly satisfactory.37
This somewhat inconsequential story is frequently cited as grounds for saying that Eleanor was looked to by the people as a benign queen to whom the common folk might look for intercession in the face of abuse from their superiors. It should be noted at the outset that even if this were a story about Eleanor, it does not actually demonstrate her interceding at all. But in fact, the story does not stack up as a story about Eleanor of Castile. The date given by the chronicler is around Maundy Thursday. It appears in the chronicle in a section which begins ‘in 1274’ and before a section which begins ‘in 1275’; accordingly, Parsons originally considered that context of the story places it around Maundy Thursday 1274, at which point Eleanor was not even in the country. He later changed his view to suggest that the Maundy Thursday referred to is 1275, which is just about possible owing to the slightly thematic arrangement of the chronicle. However, the two possibilities for Eleanor’s location on that date place her elsewhere. In March 1275, Eleanor had recently given birth to Margaret at Windsor. If Parsons’ theory that Margaret was born on 15 March and Eleanor habitually lay in for twenty-nine days after birth is correct, on Maundy Thursday she was still at Windsor following the birth of Margaret. If, as I suggest in Chapter 11, Eleanor moved from Windsor with or shortly after Edward, she was spending Holy Week (including Maundy Thursday) at Weston, considerably further north in Hertfordshire; having followed a route well to the north of St Albans from Aylesbury. It is therefore more than likely that, whenever the incident took place, the queen in question was not Eleanor of Castile but Eleanor of Provence.
What is more, at this period Eleanor of Provence was far better known to the populace as queen than her daughter-in-law, and as we know, she continued to use the title of queen. The queen in question being Eleanor of Provence would also be consistent with the terms of the petition apparently presented to the queen on this occasion, which explicitly refers to ‘your help, which you have often given to us’. There seems to have been no scope for the younger Eleanor to have given any help in the past at all. In contrast, Eleanor of Provence had close associations with the abbey at St Albans. Finally, identifying the St Albans queen as Eleanor of Provence is also consistent with the oddity of the story featuring a queen travelling alone. This is not at all remarkable if the widowed Eleanor of Provence is the queen, but highly anomalous if it is Eleanor of Castile.38
To the extent that Eleanor did intercede, she predominantly did so not directly with Edward, but with administrative staff. In this context, there are a number of letters from her to Edward’s clerks in which she asks them to do something for a petitioner, and indicates that she will regard the doing of the thing as a favour to her. But are these properly categorised as intercessions? They are not intercessions in the accepted mode; they are not to the king and they are quiet, behind-the-scenes letters, which could gain no public advantage for Eleanor except through the (minimally useful) report of the individual petitioner. In fact, given the material regarding Eleanor’s very considerable influence with Edward, and her dislike of being thwarted, one may perhaps better read these letters as gentle threats in the mode of a powerful ‘Godfather’-style figure than actual intercessions; a command concealed under the courtesy of a request and a kind thank you. If that seems extreme, one may ask the question – where bishops tremble, would any clerk actually wish to cross Eleanor?
Further support for an inference that Eleanor actively rejected the role of intercessor may be seen in two other places. The first is that there is actually one classic example of Edward being procured to intercede with Eleanor, rather than vice versa. In 1287, the people of Southampton objected to paying a sum granted to Eleanor by Edward. They did not ask her to waive the sum or to intercede with Edward. Rather, they approached Eleanor of Provence, who held the town in dower, and she duly made a traditional intercession with Edward, asking him to remit the sum as it would reduce the town to poverty. The result? Eleanor peremptorily told Edmund of Cornwall, Edward’s lieutenant in the area, that she had told the king that she would tell Edmund to give the petitioners short shrift. In effect, therefore, Eleanor of Provence interceded with Edward, who interceded with Eleanor – with no success.
The second piece of evidence which supports a vision of Eleanor as standing outside the traditional role as queenly intercessor is one of the surviving letters to her from Archbishop Pecham, which is considered further in the next chapter. This explicitly refers to ‘those who say that you cause the king to use severity’. In other words, at least among a certain group known to him, Eleanor’s reputation was the diametrical opposite of the intercessory queen; rather than moderating the king’s wrath, she was seen as inclining him to greater harshness.39
Which comes first, the absence of intercessions or the reputation for harshness? At this distance, it is impossible to tell. However, if the correct answer (tentatively favoured by Parsons) is that Eleanor had a reputation for harshness leading to an absence of requests for intercessions, that reputation would have to have been established somehow; Eleanor as queen was an unknown quantity at Edward’s accession and a body of evidence or rumour would take time to build. One would therefore expect to see a falling off in intercessions and consequently a pattern early in the reign of a number of people coming to Eleanor for intercession. Of course, an unsuccessful petition would be unlikely to show up. However, there is in fact no greater sign in the records of Eleanor interceding more earlier in the reign than she did later. There is therefore at least a suggestion in the air that the absence of intercession was a positive choice by her.
Furthermore, we will see later that such a non-standard approach to more or less accepted queenly practice can also be discerned when it comes to Eleanor’s religious and charitable approach. It looks very much as if Eleanor, secure in her relationship with Edward (who w
ould generally do as she wished), busy with her assigned role in putting the queen’s financial affairs into order, and with no desire to be considered as affiliated with any other team than ‘Team Edward’, simply rejected the traditional intercessory role as being unnecessary to her. In doing so, she would of course know that an alternative route was available to would-be petitioners. The ‘other’ Queen Eleanor was still alive and well, with an established track record for and disposition much more inclined to the intercessory role, and she did indeed go on to play that role.