Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

by Sara Cockerill

  As soon as Margaret had been born, the party were off again, on the combined pilgrimage and property-scoping visit via Aylesbury into Suffolk described in Chapter 10. They then rushed to return to London for the spring parliament, summoned for 22 April, but which did not actually commence until the 26th, since Edward had still been in Essex on 22 April. That parliament had a full programme, including the First Statute of Westminster, which reflected the materials gained during the Hundred Rolls inquiry. Thus the Hundred Rolls’ theme of setting the country to right is prominently reflected in the Act’s preamble. In the terms one can see both Edward’s personal aim of restoring royal rights and his broader and more popular aim of improving law and order generally. The law and order agenda will actually have been much in the minds of the inner circle around Edward, following a serious incident at Canterbury in early 1275 when Otho de Grandison was attacked by a number of citizens, resulting in a heavy fine being levied against the citizens as a whole.4

  Once Parliament had broken up in July, the royal party were off for the busy summer programme, commencing with small stops at Kempton and the children’s main base of Windsor. The main summer programme had two themes: an attempt to take the homage of Llywelyn, and an assessment of Eleanor’s properties and the proposed dower assignment. So through Buckinghamshire, with stops conveniently near Eleanor’s properties at Risborough and Aylesbury, the party went, to Oxford, where a civic reception had to be met, and doubtless appeased, when Edward would not enter the town itself owing to the superstition that St Frideswide would exercise his displeasure on any king entering the town. Business came to join them there, in the form of Gaston de Béarn, who was committed to the custody of Sir Stephen de Pencestre, and a request from Philip of Savoy to be pardoned 1,000 marks owed to the late king. After a stop at Woodstock, it was North via Kenilworth to Eleanor’s properties at Derby and the Peak and Macclesfield, and then on to Chester itself, where in September Edward had summoned Llywelyn to render his homage. There the court kicked its heels for a couple of weeks while Llywelyn refused to come over the border, and Edward refused to go to him. Edward issued a further peremptory summons for London in October 1275.

  From Chester, the court moved across the country via Healey and Heywood in Lancaster, Lichfield in Stafford and Merevale in Warwickshire and Leicestershire to the heart of the Leicestershire–Rutland–Northampton territory which was to form one of the major blocks of Eleanor’s property empire. This was combined with another stay at the royal hunting lodge at Geddington. From there the party headed back at top speed – reaching Windsor for a short visit to the children in less than a week and passing on to Westminster for the second parliament of the year. By the time of their return, Eleanor was pregnant yet again.5

  This parliament is particularly interesting in that it saw the introduction of the Statute of Jewry, which was a quid pro quo for a much-needed injection of funds from Parliament into the royal pocket. The Act met the many complaints about Jewish moneylending, and more specifically the trade in debts to the Jews entered into by some rich Christian speculators (such as Richard of Cornwall, and latterly Eleanor herself), which had proliferated again since the deal which had been part of the price for Crusade funding. The means of providing a remedy went to the root of the problem: under the terms of the statute, Jewish moneylending was outlawed completely. Such satisfaction did this measure give that Edward was able to raise a fairly substantial tax to assist with his towering debts.

  But the statute had other interesting features; contrary to the current trend in Europe, the statute made some efforts to assist the Jewish population in that it permitted them to live ‘by lawful trade and by their labour’ and officially offered them the king’s peace and recorded his will that his sheriffs and bailiffs preserve and defend them. As such, it was a notably more broadminded approach that that of, say, Simon de Montfort, who believed in the virtues of encouraging his supporters to kill Jews, or Eleanor of Provence, who at about this time expelled all Jews from her dower property. However, along with the more tolerant approach, a considerable residue of prejudice remained: the statute also decreed Jews were only to live in the king’s towns, and effectively in ghettos, with no Christian among them. It also notoriously put into law the Vatican’s demand that all Jews over the age of seven wear a yellow felt badge (shaped like the Mosaic tablets) on their outer garment. Although this latter part of the legislation has been much seized on as demonstrating an anti-Semitic approach on the part of Edward, that is hardly a fair criticism, bearing in mind the fact that the Church had required such a distinction since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1213, that it had been officially enforced in England since 1218, and that even Alfonso X in Castile was by now beginning to yield to pressure on this item.6

  Overall, the statute may be described as an attempt to find an acceptable modus vivendi for the Jewish population as contributors to the king’s wealth. Can this middle way be traced at all to Eleanor’s influence? Parts of it seem to find their inspiration in similar initiatives attempted by Louis IX, but there is certainly some reason to discern Eleanor’s hand in its final form. Certainly it seems likely that, without Eleanor’s influence, Edward would have been much more minded to follow his mother’s approach; there are indeed some suggestions that he did consider expulsion at this time. Further, the provision in 1280 whereby the Jews were to listen to weekly conversion sermons preached by the Dominicans seems to hint at her influence. There is also something of the Castilian approach of encouraging broader Jewish participation in trade in the provisions of the Statute of Jewry, which enabled Jews to buy houses on behalf of the king or to take lands to farm. Finally, the overall thrust of the statute was commercial; in effect, the Jews were given a stay of execution on the basis that they were considered likely to have a continuing commercial utility to the Crown. This balance is consistent with Eleanor’s own dealings with her Jewish contacts and also vividly echoes the approach of the Castilian monarchy during Eleanor’s childhood, where the position of the Jews was stoutly defended because of their considerable commercial utility to the Castilian throne. Eleanor, of course, is not the only possible source of influence in this regard; there is certainly some evidence that Robert Burnell wished to make the affairs of the Jewish population workable. It is perhaps most likely that these two moderating influences worked together upon Edward in arriving at the approach which the statute encapsulated.7

  The October parliament also coincided with a second refusal to render homage by Llywelyn, who refused to comply with Edward’s summons on the grounds that he did not consider himself safe in England; he cheekily demanded that the Earl of Gloucester and Robert Burnell stand as hostages for his safety. At more or less the same time arrived the news that Llywelyn had married (by proxy) Eleanor de Montfort, daughter of Simon and Edward’s aunt Eleanor. His defiance was now plain; the result was a vote in Parliament of funds to cover a Welsh war.8

  Of course, the most important matter for Eleanor at this period will have been the finalisation of her revised dower assignment, which was approved in October 1275. Having visited key areas for that assignment and viewed potential properties during the tours made since their return, she and her advisers will have been spending considerable periods of time finalising exactly what was to be assigned in various areas; and where visits by Eleanor had not yet been possible, evaluating reports from the staff despatched to deputise for her in those areas. The result, as noted earlier, was a considerable block of property based in several different areas which was to form the nucleus of her acquisitions for the years to come.

  Planning for those further acquisitions began at once, with assignment of various debts secured on strategically sited locations so that further purchases could then begin to be sought. Also, there would be planning for the revenue side of the acquisitions. So at this point, we find one Geoffrey de Lewknor writing apologetically to Eleanor, explaining that he can’t find the certificate for the results of the Leicestershire eyre at this mo
ment, but that he will send it as soon as he can lay hands on it. Interestingly, too, Eleanor’s unusual head for business seems to have attracted personal petitions outside her own business – Lucy de Grey wrote to her in this period asking for help with her accounts.9

  Another matter which claimed Eleanor’s attention at this point was the crisis in Castile, where Alfonso’s year had started badly and then deteriorated. Early in the year he had been forced by the Pope to drop his claim to the Holy Roman Empire. Glory in Germany was therefore off the menu. On his return to Castile, he therefore decided to resume the Reconquista against Granada, where there was a civil war going on. A concatenation of catastrophes followed. In autumn he sent a force to engage the Moorish and Moroccan forces. The resulting meeting was disastrous for the Castilians, whose general was among the dead. To add bad to worse, at around the same time Alfonso’s eldest son, Ferdinand de la Cerda (‘the Hairy’), died, leaving two small sons by his marriage to Blanche of France – and a highly sensitive inheritance issue between them and Alfonso’s second son, Sancho. For a final touch, in October Sancho personally averted disaster in a second battle. The net result was that, by the end of the year, Alfonso had to sue for peace with the Almohads, rather than pursuing the Reconquista – the very obverse of his father’s success. Yet it was the succession issue created by the death of Ferdinand and the rise in Sancho’s prestige which was to haunt him longest and most seriously.10

  Back in England, as soon as Parliament rose in November the court was off again. The first stop was the Tower of London itself, to oversee progress of the building works which had been started here soon after the coronation; the disrepair caused by the failure to progress Henry III’s plans and the collapse of the great gate in 1240 doubtless was very apparent on Edward and Eleanor’s return. How much of the current look of the Tower is owed to Edward’s works and how much to Henry’s original plans is a matter of debate. However, it seems clear that, as well as dealing with dilapidations, a considerable upscaling in size and defences – in particular the size of the moat – was part of the later works. It is also likely that its concentric pattern, which afforded multiple lines of defence and was familiar from Crusader castles, was an Edwardian innovation and may well have been linked to the architect in charge of the works, Brother John of the Order of St Thomas of Acre. While the works had an obvious purpose militarily, London was not actually under threat and the statement created by the building was more in the way of a manifesto by Edward that he was a strong king who would defend his rights. Such a message was of course pertinent to the historically troublesome Londoners, but it was also one worth making to the magnates, commons and foreign visitors alike, after a number of years when royal authority had been lacking. One can perhaps also sense Castilian overtones: the Siete Partidas adjures kings to preserve and defend castles for the good of the kingdom.

  At the same time, the royal apartments themselves were undergoing a revamp: new apartments in St Thomas’s Tower were created as part of the project and furnished in Eleanor’s favourite colours of green and red. Tellingly, too, before Eleanor ever set foot in it Edward had spent considerable sums of money refurbishing the gardens of the Tower: at least 13,000 turves were laid and pear trees, rose trees and lily bulbs were all deployed.11

  Once business at the Tower had been examined, in December 1275 the party moved off to visit more of Eleanor’s properties. This time, after a stop at Marlborough and Upavon near the new dower acquisitions at Bedwyn and Wexcombe and Wimborne (next to her manor of Ringwood), it was on for another scanty Christmas holiday. This was a mere five days at the noxious Gillingham – which, we will be unsurprised to find, was very close to the lands which Eleanor had acquired in wardship at Compton Chamberlayne. The next move was to Charminster and Bindon, which were well situated for reviewing some properties which Eleanor had in mind to acquire (and did shortly thereafter acquire) in the neighbourhood of Dorchester before heading back to the New Forest property – which obviously had the added advantage of providing excellent hunting ground.

  After all this movement, the party finally came to rest for a few weeks in January 1276 at Winchester, where the king’s intervention was needed in a long-standing quarrel between the citizens. This was probably the venue for the wedding of Edward’s brother Edmund to Blanche of Artois, the widow of Henri, Count of Champagne and King of Navarre and cousin to Eleanor through her grandmother Blanche of Castile. Blanche of Atrois had lost her only son in the most appalling circumstances – he was dropped from the battlements of a castle by a careless nurse. Her daughter Jeanne, heiress of Navarre, had been destined to marry Eleanor and Edward’s son Henry, but after his death the previous year she had been snapped up by the French king as a wife for his son Philip. The marriage with Blanche was therefore very much second best; but it had its attractions, not least in that it brought Champagne and Navarre under English control during Jeanne’s minority, since Blanche was regent for her daughter. It also appears to have been a successful and harmonious marriage on a personal level, with the Lancasters being close associates of Eleanor and Edward for the rest of Eleanor’s life. Interestingly, the regency of Champagne and Navarre was exercised through Eleanor’s cousin Jean of Brienne. While the Brienne family’s good standing in the French court made this a politic move, Eleanor’s influence seems possible in this appointment.12

  In the interim, a great piece of excitement had occurred. Eleanor de Montfort was captured on the high seas on her way to join her new husband, Llywelyn, in Wales and was brought to England in genteel captivity. Her brother Amaury, who was escorting her, was despatched off into rather less genteel captivity, in which he was to stay for some years. It seems likely that Eleanor de Montfort was initially received at court during this period, before being banished to Windsor, where she spent the next three years as a bargaining chip between Edward and Llywelyn. Nor was she the only captive making her appearance at court at this time – Gaston de Béarn returned to make his submission to Edward and to be released. It is doubtful, however, whether anyone present thought that this was the end of his troublemaking. Meanwhile, the news of the death of their friend Gregory X, which occurred in early 1276, will have been a sadness, particularly to Eleanor, who had maintained a friendly correspondence with him. It was also a cause for concern going forward, since no replacement was likely to be as well disposed to them, in particular as regards disposing of the papal tenth, as their crusading companion; and so it was to prove.13

  Late in February, the court passed to Marlborough and then to the favoured destination of Quenington, before heading up via Oxfordshire into Rutland and Lincolnshire for the entire month of March. Again the influence of Eleanor’s property empire is manifest. The trip involved visiting her dower lands of Temple Bruerne and Sixhills, the former being just a mile or so from lands recently acquired by Eleanor at Nocton and Dunston and the latter being situated near her properties at Gayton le Marsh, Tothill, Lincoln and Caistor. Via a stay at Barton-upon-Humber, two properties from the dower in the East Riding of Yorkshire were accessible as well. Then, in an echo of the previous year, there was a rush back south. In April, the party passed back at speed via some of the northern Northamptonshire properties to Kempton, arriving just days before the birth of Berengaria, who arrived on 1 May 1276. The court thereafter moved to Westminster to attend Parliament throughout May, with Eleanor following once her lying-in was complete.14

  With the dower and the immediate post-dower acquisitions now safely established and reviewed, the summer of 1276 offered the chance for a tour with very little reference to Eleanor’s properties. The party ranged through Sussex, Kent and a little bit of Essex before returning to London in late July. However, this was not idle holidaymaking. It fulfilled at least two functions. While it provided an opportunity for Edward to survey the problems of the once prosperous port of Winchelsea, which was in the process of being overrun by the sea, the route chosen also reflected one of Eleanor’s main preoccupations in the year of 1
276 – the promotion of the Dominican Order.

  As has already been mentioned, Eleanor’s family had close associations with the order, and she was to demonstrate a clear preference for them throughout her life. Acting in their favour doubtless seemed particularly apposite at a time when the first Dominican Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, was now incumbent, and the new Pope, Innocent V, was also of that order. It was therefore during this year that the London chapter of the Order moved from Holborn, where they had commenced their mission in fairly constrained surroundings opposite a tannery, though they had subsequently extended their holdings southwards through the area now known as Lincoln’s Inn. In 1276, the mayor and aldermen of London gifted the order with property around two streets leading down to the Thames: the area now named Blackfriars after them. The Dominicans’ London chapter was based there, at Baynard’s Castle, from the completion of works in the 1290s. It seems that the impetus for this move came from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Eleanor. The works involved, however, were major and had required authority from Edward I to remove the city wall between the river and Ludgate and rebuild it around their precinct. Eleanor’s influence can be seen in this permission and in later benefactions made directly by Edward to the chapter.

  This Dominican theme was also featured in the summer tour, which featured a stay at Chichester to coincide with the translation of the body of the late bishop St Richard De Wych, the great supporter of the Dominicans in England prior to Eleanor’s advent. Given that Henry III had refused to recognise Richard as bishop for many years, the hand of Eleanor as supporter of the order appears discernible in this decision. The foundation of the Chichester Dominicans, of which Eleanor was the major patron, probably occurred at the same time and with her support.15