The royal party arrived at Harby on 20 November. It is highly unlikely that this was a planned stop – Harby is and was a tiny village and had never been part of Eleanor’s round in this well-trodden area. It was only a few miles from Lincoln. The only permissible inference was that she was simply too ill to travel further. It was fortunate that Harby had a house in the ownership of a member of the de Weston family, local justice Sir Richard de Weston, a connection of John de Weston of the royal household.
On 23 November – probably Eleanor’s forty-ninth birthday – a member of the household bought parchment for wardrobe accounts and letters, indicating that Eleanor intended to keep at her work. On 24 November comes the first open acknowledgement in the Liber Garderobe that the queen was ill (‘at that time having become infirm’). A rider was sent to Lincoln to buy urinalli, which Parsons speculates was some sort of bowl for preparing medicines, but which more strongly suggests Eleanor was now too weak to leave her bed. The next day, another messenger was sent to London with all speed ‘on account of the queen’s illness’. A message was sent to Robert Tybetot, Edward’s long-time friend and ally, the only one of Edward’s close friends not at court who was available to be summoned. Then for four days the records are silent.
On Tuesday 28 November, another messenger was sent to buy specia – ingredients for medicines. It is not clear whether he arrived in time for the medicines to be made, but in any event it was to no avail. The Liber concludes its entries for 28 November with the words ‘Decessus Regine’ – the queen died. The timing at which Westminster Abbey later observed her death, on St Andrew’s Eve, which ran from 6 p.m. on 28 November to 6 p.m. on 29 November, indicates that she died at some time after 6 p.m.14
Perhaps characteristically, some of Eleanor’s last thoughts were with her work: ‘After she had devoutly received the last rites she earnestly asked her lord the king, who was agreeing to her requests, that everything taken from anyone unjustly by her or her staff should be restored and damage repaired.’ This was, of course, in keeping with the current political climate – in the summer of 1290, Eleanor of Provence had requested a similar inquest into the conduct of her officials. But it might also reflect questions raised by her recent journeys through her properties and the sense which she was bound to have, in the light of Archbishop Pecham’s remonstrances, that theologically she was treading a very difficult line.
What is also clear from this account is that Edward was, as one might expect, fixed firmly at the side of the wife to whom he had been so devoted since their teens, listening to her every word and promising what relief it was in his power to offer. The circumstances of Eleanor’s death mean that she will have had a chance to bid farewell to the close household which had surrounded her for years, and to her daughters. Almost certainly her friend Robert Burnell will also have been in attendance, and the proximity of Lincoln suggests strongly that her friends the earl and countess of Salisbury also were enabled to say their last goodbyes. Some reports also suggest that the local priest, William de Kelm, and the Bishop of Lincoln, Oliver Sutton, were at her deathbed also.
What killed Eleanor? At this distance of time we shall never know. Parsons, taking the view that she was gravely ill only from about 20 November, favours the theory that she died from an opportunistic infection or septicaemia, consequent on malaria contracted in Gascony. Most other commentators defer to his opinion, but in my own view the history of illness demonstrated by the records over a period of three to four years and the timing of the supposed ‘malarial’ infection in the cold Pyrenean December militate against this view. Another commentator suggests tuberculosis. However, this diagnosis rests on some unreliable assumptions.
Although the possibility of coronary or circulatory problems was dismissed by Parsons in his early work, he noted a significant point – that on her paternal side her father and grandfather had apparently suffered from such problems and that her own brother Alfonso may have done likewise. This medical history would certainly be regarded as a risk factor for heart disease today. It seems quite possible that some form of heart malady – even something as simple as coronary artery disease – could account for a fairly long period of reduced vitality, with intervals of illness requiring medical intervention, leading to a final complete breakdown of health over her final year.15
Eleanor’s body was removed to Lincoln. By 2 December, her body had been eviscerated, embalmed and stuffed with barley, preparatory to a progress back to London which was unprecedented in English history and which has formed much of the myth of Eleanor which survives. The process of embalming was probably performed by the Lincoln Dominicans, who had their own water supply and were situated close to the North Gate of the city, through which a cortege from Harby could most safely access the city. The body would then have been carried to the cathedral to lie before the high altar, with priests keeping vigil. The ceremony observed probably reflected that when King John brought the body of St Hugh to Lincoln; the body was carried by his magnates to the porch of the cathedral, where it was received by the archbishop and bishops. Thence it was carried to the choir on the shoulders of priests.
For this, and for the procession south, Eleanor’s body was not coffined but exposed, dressed in loose robes as for a coronation. She wore a crown and carried a sceptre, a parallel with the approach taken on the death of Henry II and probably Richard I, and also the approach taken more recently by the French in 1252 with her great-aunt Blanche of Castile, who was ‘attired completely as a queen with a crown on her head’ and carried in a litter of gold. This approach, according Eleanor honours previously bestowed on ruling kings and France’s greatest and most powerful queen, surely reflect a tribute by Edward to her active role in assisting him, as well as of affection.
Eleanor’s viscera were buried in the cathedral on 3 December. This meant that she ultimately received what is termed a ‘triple’ burial, with heart, viscera and body all in different places. This was the first recorded instance of such a burial in England, although double burials were plainly fashionable – examples were those of John de Vescy and Alphonso, both of whose hearts awaited Eleanor’s at the house of the London Dominicans. Henry III had also received double burial, his heart being sent to the Abbey of Fontevrault. Further, there was a growing trend in the European monarchies for triple burials. After Louis of France was so divided after his death on Crusade, this approach was followed by his brother Charles of Anjou and one of his sons, Peter of Alençon. Interestingly, the practice, which was not conformable with the usual Spanish burial practices, was also adopted by Eleanor’s brother Alfonso on his death in 1284. However, it appears likely that, although Eleanor’s burial was to be an unprecedented event in English history, this triple burial was not specifically a part of the plan to provide a funeral of inimitable grandeur; rather, as with the other ‘triple burial’ in English history (that of Richard I), the inconvenient fact of dying far from the destined grave rendered separate burial of the viscera expedient, particularly if the plan for a prolonged procession was already in play.16
The next day, 4 December, a magnificent cortege departed. Eleanor’s bier, on which the royally clad body was clearly visible, was accompanied by her chaplain, a cross propped on his saddle. Some distance behind rode Edward, giving primacy to the wife who had so loyally supported him. Accompanying him were the household (including presumably Eleanora and Margaret), the chancellor and ‘numerous magnates’.
Unprecedented as it was, there is no full account of the procession in the chronicles. The timing and course of the journey is reconstructed from the evidence of the business of the court, which still went on at each stop. Thus we can see that halts were made by the bier as follows:
Monday 4 December: Grantham
Tuesday 5 December: Stamford
Weds–Thurs 6–7 December: Geddington
Friday 8 December: Hardingstone near Northampton
Saturday 9 December: Stony Stratford
Sunday 10: Woburn
&nbs
p; Monday 11: Dunstable
Tuesday 12: St Albans
Wednesday 13: Waltham
The cortege arrived at the priory of the Holy Trinity Aldgate on 14 December before moving to St Pauls, convenient for the Dominicans’ house at Blackfriars on 15 December. The final stop was at Charing on 16 December, leaving a short, final distance to Westminster. At each overnight stop, Burnell and the attendant nobles chose out a fitting place for the bier to rest and the place was sprinkled with holy water. These then became the sites of the memorial crosses.
Edward followed the procession until St Albans and probably proceeded direct via Watling Street (the modern A5) while the cortege passed across country to Waltham, entering through the city, thereby allowing his wife to be honoured in her own right throughout the city of London.17
It will be noted that most of the stops had a resonance with Eleanor’s landholdings, past or present. Thus Lincoln was part of her 1275 dower and she had acquired houses there, whereas Stamford and Grantham had been part of the original dower and again she had properties in the vicinity of each. Dunstable, Geddington and Northampton were all places at which Eleanor had stayed while on tour examining her properties, actual or prospective; indeed, Geddington had been one of the first places the royal couple had stayed on return from Crusade, and had been visited in 1275 and 1279 as well as earlier in 1290. Stony Stratford was a couple of miles from her Haversham holdings – now held by one of her de la Plaunche relatives, who had married the heiress in May 1289. Woburn was the closest point on Watling Street to Eleanor’s Bedfordshire landholdings, St Albans was close to Langley and Waltham was near to her property of Shenley.
It should not be thought that this coincidence of properties and stops was entirely fortuitous. The cortege started out, and finished, on Ermine Street (which approximates to the A1 in its northern reaches and to the A10 closer to London), entering London at its north-eastern corner. However, it moved from Ermine Street to Watling Street after the Stamford stop, and then looped back after St Albans. Given the detours involved in the two changes of route, there has to have been some good reason for this. Powrie suggests a variety of possible reasons, but her suggestions are not compelling. Yet when one looks at the route taken for the move to Watling Street, one likely reason becomes very apparent: that route, following the modern A43, enabled the cortege to process right through one of the most crowded areas of Eleanor’s holdings, past most of her Northamptonshire holdings, and close to her property centre for the area at Market Harborough. After that, Watling Street would bring the cortege close to the Bedfordshire holdings and within reasonable distance of the most easterly of the Buckinghamshire properties. Following Ermine Street would, after Stamford, have exposed the cortege to relatively little of Eleanor’s property – her Cambridgeshire properties were some way off Ermine Street, and her Norfolk and Suffolk properties still further away. Given Eleanor’s devotion to her work, and the amount of time she and Edward had consequently spent in the area, the fact that the move to Watling Street enabled them to ‘take in’ the heart of Eleanor’s property empire is surely no coincidence. Essentially, therefore, someone ensured that Eleanor progressed to London within sight of her own lands, and readily accessible for all her tenants and dependents on those lands to pay their last respects.
The Dunstable annalist, giving a first-hand account, recorded how precious cloths and a stunning eighty pounds of wax for candles were provided on the night when she rested there. He also describes how ‘her bier lay in the centre of the market place until the king’s chancellor and the nobles who were there with it chose a suitable place, for there to be built … a wonderfully large cross; and our prior sprinkled holy water to bless the chosen place’. The St Albans witness, in turn, gives a sense of the grandeur of the event, with the entire abbey, dressed in their finest vestments, going to the edge of town to meet the bier and escort it to the abbey before a massive service and night-long vigil.18
Edward was not as prone to great pieces of showmanship as his father had been, but on this occasion it is clear that he had learnt the lessons of how to stage such an event well – and to use it with focus and subtlety. The act of returning the body to Westminster, and creating a lavish funeral there, continued the tradition which Henry III had begun of marking Westminster as a royal ‘centre’ akin to those of the French royal family at Sainte-Chapelle and the Castilian royal family at Las Huelgas, and hence elevating the status of his royal house both at home and abroad. The magnificent procession did not just honour Eleanor; it also inflated the importance of the entire royal family. At the same time, after a period which had been politically difficult for Edward, it marked him out as a focus for sympathy and support. Undoubtedly deep grief was there, but he had managed to pull off a truly excellent piece of political theatre in the midst of it.
Whether the plan of the memorial crosses had been reached at once is unclear; very probably it had, since the idea almost certainly came from the Montjoie memorials erected in France to mark the resting places of the body of King Louis on its return from the Crusade; a lavish procession would therefore fit with the creation of monuments in its wake, and by Dunstable, certainly, sites were being marked. Still more interesting is the question of whether the planning was all Edward’s, or if it had been pre-concerted with Eleanor. The Torel meeting and her ordering of material for her own tomb-chest suggest that at least some planning had gone into Eleanor’s funeral at her own behest. The Westminster tomb can therefore be inferred to be at least in part Eleanor’s idea. There is nothing, however, which links her to the crosses, save to the extent that they took their styling in some measure from the main tomb. It is more probable that these, which do contain more touches of sentiment, were genuinely Edward’s own idea, albeit inspired by ideas which he knew were important to Eleanor.
On Sunday 17 December, the queen’s body was buried in Westminster Abbey. The funeral was conducted by Oliver Sutton, the Bishop of Lincoln, since Archbishop Pecham was ill. The event was so splendid that Walter of Coventry thought the like had not been seen in England since the coming of the Christian faith. It records that she was interred ‘with royal vestments, crown and sceptre, dust on forehead and breast in the form of a cross, and a wax candle with certain writings’. In terms of position, it is interesting to note that Eleanor effectively usurped Eleanor of Provence’s position opposite Henry III, possibly because the latter had decided that she wished to be buried at Amesbury’s mother house of Fontevrault or because preparations had already begun on her grave and tomb, since her decease was naturally to be expected within a few years, and Eleanor’s untimely death required the grave to be annexed.
On 19 December, Eleanor’s heart was deposited at the Blackfriars church, together with those of John de Vescy and Alphonso. Once the ceremonies were over, Edward retreated until the end of January to the hermitage which Edmund of Cornwall had founded at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire. From here came his best-known tribute to his lost wife; writing to the Abbot of Cluny, he refers to the wife ‘whom living we dearly cherished, and whom we cannot cease to love, now she is dead’. At Easter, three months later, her absence from his bed was still a powerful grief as he paid the traditional fine to her ladies, which in previous years had restored him to enjoyment of his conjugal rights after the loneliness of Lent.19
The tombs and memorial crosses were obviously some time in the making; each of them was a work of art in its own right, and together they may be seen as the highest flowering of arts under Edward’s reign. The Westminster tomb survives gloriously to this day, and is widely regarded as one of the best medieval tombs. On top of the tomb an effigy of Eleanor reclines in gilt bronze, cast by William Torel in 1291. The use of the bronze image rather than the more orthodox marble was surely a nod to Capetian practices – Eleanor was given the treatment accorded only to their most glorious kings. Dressed in flowing robes, whose loose folds suggest luxury and softness even in their brazen form, one hand, which would once have held a sceptr
e, rests gently along her right flank while the left is raised over her chest, in a gesture which now suggests blessing but in fact reflects the fact that she is pulling gently at the cord of her mantle – in a similar way to the established fashion at Sainte-Chapelle, also depicted in the English context in L’Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei.
Eleanor’s head rests on two pillows, her hair flows free as for a coronation, and she wears a full circlet crown. This, the sceptre and the mantle would at the time have been gilded and borne paste jewels. Overall, the pose – and even the gable which surrounds her head – is very reminiscent of the pose in which she appears on her own seal. Her face is thoughtful, meditative even – no sign remains of the fiery personality which we know resided within the real woman. Parsons notes how the pose mingles the sacred and the secular, and could equally be a model for a statue of the Virgin Mary or the goddess Diana. But to the contemporary viewer, the secular message would have been very clear. The coronation references in the effigy – including the wearing of unadorned clothes, as was then considered appropriate to such a ceremony – would emphasise her status as a crowned queen and evoke the continuity of the monarchy. The tomb slab and the pillow beneath her head are carved with a patchwork effect of castles and lions, signifying Castile and Leòn and reminding the viewer of Eleanor’s elevated birth and thus her status in her own right.
Interestingly, Eleanor did not disclaim the less elevated sides of her ancestry either. The sides of the tomb have an arch-and-gable motif and are richly carved with heraldic shields, suspended from foliage. These shields state Eleanor’s full pedigree. So, while the arms of Castile and Leòn are there, so too are those of Ponthieu, flanked by the royal leopards of England; an acknowledgement of her mother’s family and perhaps a sly nod to the families she had successfully seeded into England’s highest aristocracy. But also, the combination of these three shields identifies Eleanor precisely: no one else was entitled to exactly these arms. Her tomb identifies her as a particular individual in unambiguous terms.
Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen Page 50