Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

by Sara Cockerill

  This more informal approach also seems consistent with the picture which emerges of Eleanor as regards clothes. There is good reason to suppose that Eleanor (like Edward) was far from being absorbed by this subject, and this is perhaps not surprising given the evidence of her very strong interests in work and in sport in the form of hunting. The evidence begins early: Eleanor’s arrival in England in 1255 without the right clothes speaks volumes; what remotely clothes-centred woman would face a new family and a new job without all the right clothes – and the best she could afford? This fact alone tells us that for Eleanor there were many things more important than appearances. But it does not stand alone; the picture is reiterated by the limited extent to which descriptions of clothes feature in the wardrobe accounts or in the chronicles. Under Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, royal clothes were noteworthy – and usually new. The directions for the clothes for the Scottish wedding provide a fine example, with colours, cloth of gold, and furs all being minutely specified even for outfits which were to be worn only for a few hours.

  Under Eleanor, smart and seemly seems to have been the watchword; the pictures which emerge from the wardrobe accounts of Eleanor’s daughters having to make do and mend, and trot their smart dress out for the fifth or sixth time, even if they had ripped most of the buttons off dancing last time, are both hilarious and revealing. Interestingly, too, there is less sign of this prudent approach after Eleanor’s death: the royal princesses were rather more indulged in their fineries. However, that is not to say that the proper level of grandeur was lacking: clothes, when purchased, were clearly very good and serious thought was given to their fabrics and to their adornment. We can see that Eleanor (as queen at least) was far from being scruffy. The flavour is, however, that clothes were to be good and comfortable, and to be smart enough to do the job. Again Eleanor’s early training under Alfonso echoes here: the Siete Partidas directs that a prince or princess should be taught to wear fine and elegant clothes, like accustoming a horse to harness. Eleanor accepted her fine harness, but never came to love it.7

  When it comes to her domestic surroundings, however, a marked change of emphasis emerges. There is every evidence that Eleanor liked her surroundings to be comfortable to the point of luxury; the home which she created was a thoroughly pleasant place in all its appointments. What is more, it is plain that all around her understood that this level of comfort was very important to her and that she wished to maintain it, while also maintaining the very active programme which was hers and Edward’s modus operandi. The fact that a high degree of comfort was absolutely non-negotiable is well illustrated by the fact that her living quarters in less prepared locations (such as Rhuddlan and Caernarfon) were subjected to considerable overhauls prior to her arrival. Proper roofs (lead), painted walls, glazed windows (sometimes with decorative or coloured glazing), coloured candles, and at least a simulacrum of a proper garden – with a lawn and some sort of water feature – were imperative.

  The same message emerges from a consideration of the places where the court generally stopped. While not palaces, properly so called, these ‘hunting lodges’ tended to be ones which had been the subject of major renovations by that arbiter of domestic comfort and style, Henry III. Thus Clarendon was a favoured stop. Here, we know that the wainscoting of the queen’s room was green, starred with gold, and that the walls were painted as green curtains. Geddington was another fairly frequent stop throughout the reign, from December 1274 right up until Eleanor’s final trip north. A proper hunting lodge under Henry II, it was the subject of a substantial building programme under Henry III. The great hall was overhauled with decorative windows (some with columns, some round and some with stained glass), and further windows were added to the queen’s gallery and another major chamber; the queen’s rooms were enlarged and redecorated, while the king’s room had decorative green panelling with small gilt shields. The king’s and queen’s chapels were painted green spangled with gold.

  Even well-decorated venues, though, had to be adjusted to her taste: the chapel at Westminster (which was obviously frequently visited) had to be repainted and re-gilded, though it is unlikely that Eleanor of Provence left it in a state of disrepair. But the importance of such comfort can maybe best be seen by considering a location not previously honoured by Henry III; we know that Eleanor’s chambers at the little-used venue of Banstead (visited only once, on 12 May 1278) had the walls painted with colours before her stay.8

  Sadly, owing to the loss of Eleanor’s accounts for the relevant years, the precise details of the work done by Eleanor at Leeds Castle, where her own taste will have directed the work, are not known. We can, however, be sure that domestic comfort will have been well attended to; the one well-known aspect of the works there effectively proves this. For at Leeds one feature was what was known as ‘the King’s Bath house’, which was certainly tiled and probably included a system for piping water direct. This seems to have been the first such bath house in English history. This feature is also an obvious reflection of Eleanor’s fond memories of the glories of baths in her home country – and a desire to approximate to them in her new home. Indeed, Eleanor may properly be credited with pushing bathroom civilisation in this country forward more generally, for she also ensured that proper bathrooms (albeit probably lacking the piped water) were installed at Langley and Westminster.

  As for colours, the rich colours of red and green seem to have been favourites in terms of decor, as they are mentioned repeatedly. They also figure large in descriptions of accessories and jewels; for example, an inventory of the effects of the Earl of Hereford (Eleanor’s son-in-law) included a great crown set with rubies, emeralds and pearls which had been devised by Eleanor to her daughter.9

  Although interior design does not appear to have captivated Eleanor quite to the extent it did Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, the records do show that Eleanor had a taste for fine items, with a multitude of small luxuries being detailed in the wardrobe records – a fact which is reflected in Agnes Strickland’s portrait of Eleanor and which Parsons amusingly suggests produces a version of Eleanor ‘as a housewife with all the modern conveniences’. The joke conceals a truth, however – Eleanor did give great attention to the making of an elegant and comfortable home. Here, her early years, surrounded by fine items of craftsmanship, shine through. Thus, her wardrobe records describe purchases of basins of Damascene work. This probably reflects ‘Damasquinado de Oro’, the art of decorating non-precious metals with gold which had become very common in Castile, and particularly Toledo. In this tradition, an ornate gold leaf pattern is sunk into steel which is later treated to turn it a glossy black. Eleanor also sent for other, more informal, brightly painted bowls of Andalusian manufacture. Other items bought included cloths from Tripoli, Venetian vases (possibly Murano-type blown glass), tapestries from Cologne and enamel caskets from Limoges.

  Key to Eleanor’s style appears to be the fact that even small items were required to be beautiful; in 1284 she purchased knives with jasper handles, and in 1289 she had her goldsmith add enamels and ornaments to the hilts of some knives. She had candles decorated in her favourite colours of red and green. Her mirrors, glass and metal, were housed in ivory cases and she purchased silver ornaments for her books. In the list of her plate after death also figure a fork of crystal, and a silver fork handled with ebony and ivory, thereby lending some ballast to the tradition that Eleanor was the introducer of this sine qua non of elegant dining, some 300 years before it was described by Thomas Coryate, and 500 years before the idea really caught on in England. This supposition is reinforced by the fact that the next instance of a fork being recorded is after Edward I’s death, when six silver forks and one of gold were recorded in his possession.10

  And then there were jewels – a number of records show such items being purchased from Parisian or Florentine merchants. But at least some of her jewellery was made closer to home – in Rhuddlan Castle in 1282, the queen had a building made for her goldsmith.


  Then, of course, there were the tapestries. It will be recalled that decorating a room in this manner (including, shockingly, placing carpets on the floor) was seen as particularly Spanish at the time of Eleanor’s arrival. Eleanor’s own records show that such decoration remained close to her heart – aside from the Cologne tapestries mentioned above, four green and three red carpets were purchased for her by Edward in 1278, and she paid £5 to a ‘tapeciarius’ called John de Winton in 1286. She even employed her own tapestry keeper and there are references scattered through the records to the carpets and tapestries of the queen’s chamber.

  Her taste in this regard apparently set the fashion for the court: one of the duties of Edward I’s royal chamberlain was ‘to ensure that the king’s chambers and banquets are … adorned with hangings’. Moreover, the records show her lending a set of tapestries to her close friend John de Vescy, and their having to be reclaimed after his death from Anthony Bek, the Bishop of Durham, who was plainly thought to be likely to keep his hands on such fine work.

  Not all such decorative work was of foreign manufacture. John de Winton’s supplies may well have been of domestic manufacture, and certainly England produced textiles of which Eleanor was proud; she sent her brother Alfonso hangings and vestments which she had had made which he later bequeathed to the cathedral of Seville.

  Overall, therefore, a tone of considerable domestic luxury emerges when one considers Eleanor’s taste. This is further emphasised when one considers that, after her death, those items of her carpets hangings and jewels which were not gifted elsewhere – in other words the less desirable portions of her collection – were sold for the staggering sum of £617 11s 10d.11

  As for food, again Eleanor’s early tastes acquired in Spain show through clearly. She was plainly pleased with the fruits which were available in England: apples, pears and quinces feature often, and though not shown in the records, grapes were available and are likely to have been enjoyed too. She was also sent gifts of fruit by the Earl of Lincoln on her return in 1289, and also by two poor women – suggesting that if anything about Eleanor was notorious, it was a taste for fruit. But it is also clear that she missed the more exotic fruits of home. Her accounts show repeated entries for fruit imported from Spain and indeed her eagerness for the fruit can be seen in the fact that she is recorded sending the messenger to meet the ship. The fruits purchased included figs, pomegranates, lemons and oranges and also dates and raisins. Vines and apples from France also feature as introductions in her gardens. Saffron seems also to have been missed; this is surely the ‘strange colour’ of which four earthen jars were purchased in November 1289. Unsurprisingly, too, there are records of purchases of olive oil for her. She also thought well of the onions of her maternal county – in 1280 she sent for seventeen large baskets of them. However, it seems she also developed something of a passion for soft cheeses, particularly those of Brie; there are repeated items in the wardrobe accounts for the purchase of such cheeses and the presentation of a cheese for Christmas for her in 1286 suggests her taste for them was something of a joke among her intimates.12

  So far as anything about Eleanor’s personality is well known, it is her taste for gardens and here, too, the influence of her childhood is strongly felt. Eleanor did not simply employ local men, but sent back to the Iberian peninsula for specialists who understood the idiom she sought to invoke. She thus employed a number of Aragonese gardeners at Langley, among whom was Ferdinand ‘Ispannus’, the gardener, and she left money in her will for them to return to Spain. A consideration of their work reveals why they may have been called for. The documentation shows that part of the extensive works undertaken in constructing the new gardens at Langley involved the digging of wells and ditches, and the documentation includes a layout of multiple wells. This is highly suggestive of some approach to the Spanish water gardens of her childhood.13

  Langley is not the only place where the water gardens of Castile are referenced. There seems to be evidence of her having brought the Spanish/Arabic taste for water gardens with her to England, and created a number of homages to her native lands in her gardens. The most obvious influence of her home and its water gardens is perhaps the gloriette – the small structure which juts out into the water from the main castle at Leeds Castle, which may almost be a tribute to the famous garden of Ismail al-Mamun at Toledo. But also her garden at Westminster boasted a lead-lined pond, overlooked by an oriel window and filled by pipes from the river (hence running water rather than a static pond). There is also mention of a water channel at the Queen’s Garden at Wolvesey Castle in Winchester. At Rhuddlan there was a garden with a fishpond and seats surrounding it.

  There is also evidence of the erection in 1275 of a magnificent ornamental fountain at the mews near the site of the later Charing Cross, which had water brought by aqueduct from neighbouring land and pouring through four leopard-head spouts into a lead pool, the whole being surmounted by a bronze falcon. Pausing here, we may see two small private jokes – the use of the leopard’s head rather than the maned lion used in Islamic gardens was doubtless a reference to the English coat of arms, which showed leopards, and the falcon on its summit was a reference to the location in the royal mews (mews then being associated with falconry rather than horses).14

  Nor did her interest stop there. At Langley, Eleanor provided for a paved cloister, a garden and a park as well as the water features. Reflecting her interest in fruit, and the difficulties of obtaining enough for her taste in England, one feature of the extensive gardens planted there included apple trees (sent by Eleanor from Ponthieu and Aquitaine) and vines, which had their own ‘vineator’, the deliciously named James Frangypany. There was also apparently a summerhouse – a lodge known as ‘little London’ with a hall and chambers for recreation, again reminiscent of the garden pavilions of her homeland. At Westminster, the garden was replanted in 1277 under Eleanor’s direction with vines and roses set around a lawn, and later improved with new cuttings and turves and a herbarium. A herbarium also featured in another of Eleanor’s gardens at Mauléon in Gascony.15

  There are also suggestions that Eleanor introduced Spanish plants; the hollyhock is one plant first reported in England at about this time which is commonly said to have been introduced by her, and its old-fashioned name of ‘Spanish rose’ does lend some colour to this tradition. Given the style of Spanish gardens, it is unlikely to have been a feature of a main garden, though its medicinal properties would qualify it to feature in one of Eleanor’s herbaria. The suggestions that she introduced sweet rocket, wallflower, stock and perhaps lavender seem speculative – and the latter is far more likely to have been introduced by Eleanor of Provence. More certainly, there is evidence of her introducing certain French fruit varieties such as the apple varieties mentioned above and the cooking pear Cailloel.16

  A keen interest thus is plain. But the very great importance to her of a garden is perhaps best indicated by the fact that when Eleanor was to sojourn in the building site that was Caernarfon Castle, arrangements were made to bring a garden to the castle. Likewise, in her earlier 1282 stay at Rhuddlan Castle, another garden was constructed – the details of which do not survive but some hints of which can be ascertained from the fragmentary accounts which remain for that period. So 6,000 turves were brought down by boat to turf the 80–90-foot courtyard (which still exists, albeit with no trace of the garden). Around the well, whose roof was boarded, Willemo le Plomer created a little fishpond with seats set around the pond. Landsberg calculates that the amount of turfing ordered, compared to the size of the space, indicates that the pool edging and seats were all turfed. Fencing within the garden was created from tun barrels. The amount of turfing employed here, at Caernarfon and at the Tower in fact also suggests that Eleanor came to appreciate that most English of gardening features – a lawn.

  Even at relatively infrequently visited places, such as Banstead, gardens were put in order; there, for what appears to have been a single night’s s
tay, a timber-framed cloister was constructed and a park enclosed with ditches and hedges. The sense which emerges is that one thing which was guaranteed to cloud Eleanor’s temper was the absence of a decent garden.17

  As one might expect from the fact that the court generally stayed at hunting lodges rather than urban castles or palaces, both Eleanor and Edward enjoyed hunting, but their tastes diverged as to the mode. Edward was an aficionado of falconry, while Eleanor preferred to hunt with dogs and maintained a number of different categories of hunting employees. It is probably no coincidence that the illustration in the Alphonso Psalter of a noble lady hunting shows her hunting with dogs (who look like greyhounds).

  Some flavour of the extent of the hunting interest can be gained by looking at the provision made for it at some of the places where Eleanor and Edward stayed. So Geddington was the base for an extensive kennels for the royal greyhounds and also a mews for royal falcons, each of whose feed cost ½d per day (more, according to one calculation, than Eleanor de Montfort provided by way of alms to the poor), while Odiham had stabling for over two hundred horses.

  It may well be this passionate interest in hunting which in part informs a curiosity noted by Marc Morris: every year from 1278 to 1282, in February/March (and again in 1289 after the upheavals of the mid-1280s), the royal family seems to have settled down for something approaching a holiday in the Cotswolds at Quenington near Cirencester. The timing of these visits might seem peculiar – it is a little early, even allowing for the effects of the Medieval Warm Period, for the delightful Cotswolds spring to be in full operation – until one recalls that hunting, of which both Edward and Eleanor were inordinately fond, is in full swing in February. Quenington is very close to the territory of the modern Beaufort hunt; their 2013 Boxing Day hunt commenced at Didmarton, one of Eleanor’s nearby properties.