Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

by Sara Cockerill

  What is more, the message at the time would have been even clearer than it is now. Not only would the audience understand the arms, but they screamed out from the side of the tomb in Technicolor. The facsimile version of the viscera tomb at Lincoln Cathedral gives something of the effect which the painted shields would have had: the rich red and gold of the English shields, bold blue and gold diagonal stripes of Ponthieu and the martial black lions and gold castles of Castile and Leòn. But the Lincoln tomb is a slightly muted version; it has only four shields (two English coats of arms and one each of Castile and Leòn, and Ponthieu), where the London tomb has six, two of each. Again Eleanor’s heritage and uniqueness is referenced by the Norman-French inscription around the tomb: ‘Here lies Eleanor, sometime Queen of England, wife of King Edward son of King Henry, and daughter of the King of Spain and Countess of Ponthieu, on whose soul God in His pity have mercy. Amen.’ In this mixture of the messages of majesty, spiritual power and domestic context, in death, as in life, Eleanor presented herself ambivalently.

  On the ambulatory side of the Westminster tomb is a fine carved iron grille by Thomas of Leighton Buzzard, which shields Eleanor from prying eyes behind a screen which evokes a garden trellis with plants growing up it – possibly intended again as a personal reference to her tastes. Also on the ambulatory side is a painting (now hard to discern) which is thought to depict Otho de Grandison, arrayed in chain armour, praying for Eleanor in the Holy Land before the Virgin and Child. The floor of the ambulatory by the tomb was apparently set with tiles depicting the queen between St Edmund and St Thomas Becket.

  Overall, the tomb appears to have been a groundbreaking work. While there was a precedent for a gabled, arcaded tomb chest embellished with coats of arms – that of Jeanne, Countess of Toulouse, at Gercy Abbey – that tomb appears to have been much simpler and to have involved a more formal praying effigy. There are also echoes of effigies of the French royal family at Sainte-Chapelle and at the abbey of Royaumont, but those tombs lack the surrounding detail and magnificence. The shield work best recalls the striking dual tomb of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of England. But that, it seems nearly certain, was not in place at the time. Indeed, there is a powerful case to be made, inter alia by reference to such details as the form of the castles and the lions on that tomb, that it was not installed until around 1330, and that it was deliberately intended as an homage to Eleanor’s tomb, using the prestige which she and Edward still had to add to the glamour of a venue which had fallen out of fashion. In fact, the repeated shield work may best be seen as referencing Castilian fashions, in a way which was unprecedented.

  The tomb therefore captured the best and most up-to-date trends in royal burials and harmonised them into a major work which was to inspire other notable tombs for years, including that of Edward’s brother Edmund, his first wife Aveline de Forz and Aymer de Valence, all at Westminster Abbey.20

  The Lincoln tomb was apparently a replica of the London tomb, since two large images were ordered from William Torel. The tomb itself, of marble, was made by Dymenge de Leger and Alexander of Abingdon between 1291 and 1292. The tomb visible today is not the original, but a copy produced in 1891 and sited on the opposite side of the church from the location of the original.

  The London heart tomb was rather different. The nature of the monument is unclear and has been considerably debated. It stood on the north side of the choir, in a chapel, possibly the lady chapel. It appears clear that it was a smaller monument than those at Lincoln or Westminster, more in the nature of a reliquary than a full tomb; though, given the amount of wax and metal ordered for the image, it was certainly not small. It featured three metal images made by William of Suffolk and a figure of an angel holding a representation of the queen’s heart made by Adam the Goldsmith. The heart tomb was surrounded by some decorated stonework by Alexander of Abingdon. It also had paintings by the same artist as provided the London tomb painting (William de Dunolmia). There was a crest carved by one William de Hoo above the tomb, and, in keeping with Eleanor’s love of wall hangings, there was a cloth painted to hang above the queen’s heart. Although parallels with Aymer de Valence’s heart tomb at Winchester and that of Thibaut of Champagne at Provins have been suggested, it seems more likely that St Louis’ lost heart tomb would have been the inspiration, or perhaps the viscera tomb of Isabelle of Aragon at Cosenza, which features three relief figures beneath a tracery arcade above an altar.21

  As for the memorial crosses, which have come to be known as ‘Eleanor crosses’, their derivation from the St Louis Montjoies has been noted briefly above. The idea of a memorial cross was not unprecedented. In France, some memorial crosses had been erected along part of the route of Philip Augustus’ funeral and Henry III raised one in Merton for the Earl of Surrey in 1240. Edward and Eleanor themselves had erected one at Reading in memory of his sister Beatrice. But these were simple crosses. The Montjoies, of which Eleanor and Edward may well have seen a sample on the 1286 trip, redefined the genre. Named after the traditional French war cry of Charlemagne, ‘Montjoie!’, they were elaborate structures with detailed sculptural decoration and included statues of the king – or, according to some theories, ‘a’ king.

  The images were lodged beneath an ornate gable, on each of the road-facing sides. None survive today, and so we are reliant on seventeenth-century pictures of them for information as to how they looked. It appears that they were two-storey constructions, the base being a hexagonal gabled structure with statues in niches between the gables. The second storey was a rod, about the same height as the first storey, topped with a cross. The statues were in a variety of fairly standard postures, similar to those seen on tomb effigies. The king toyed with a glove, or held a sceptre, or raised his hand to the fastening of his cloak. Interestingly, some scholars have interpreted the memorials as being fairly unsubtle reminders of the power of the king – a point which would have resonance, given the law-and-order problems which faced Edward on his return from Gascony.22

  The tributes erected in Eleanor’s memory built on all these aspects. They are essentially bigger and better than the Montjoies, being three storeys high and tiered like a wedding cake. The base is solid, generally with a foliate cornice easing the transition to the open storey; the second layer is open, with statues of the queen bordered by pinnacles and again topped by a foliate gable; and the third (again arched and decorated) is solid, topped with a cross. As with the Montjoies, the focal points of the crosses are statues of Eleanor, in what at first blush appear to be somewhat formulaic positions – again evoking the coronation idiom, with flowing robes, unbound hair and circlet crown, and, in some images, sceptres.

  However, a closer inspection of the detailed sketches made in 1791, when the statues were in better condition than they are today, indicates an interesting variety and hints of personality in the poses. In some, her mantle is clasped and her hands are by her sides; in another, echoing the tomb effigy, there are remains of a sceptre and one hand toys with the cord of her cape. In another, her robe is looped up on one side and she appears to be stepping forward, on the verge of speech. These details would probably have presented more clearly at the time with the new images, each of which would have been painted, than they do on the weathered versions which survive today. Furthermore, unlike the Montjoies, the crosses were larded with references to Eleanor as a person, separate from her role as queen. Her arms appeared again and again, including those of Castile, Leòn and Ponthieu. They are a celebration of a unique individual.

  With Louis it is generally considered that the crosses were intended, at least in part, as part of a bid for sainthood – ultimately, of course, successful. The purpose of the Eleanor crosses is altogether more obscure. In the light of the Montjoies’ existence, they cannot be taken simply as a tribute of love and grief on Edward’s part. Some, therefore, see them as essentially an invocation of the dignity and prestige of kingship, without personal overtones. Others consider them as part of an attempt to rehab
ilitate Eleanor – that the quasi-religious imagery (for even sceptres carried Marian overtones) represents a bid to refashion her as the compliant intercessory queen she had not been, and to do away with her alleged unpopularity. From the distant perspective of the twenty-first century, this seems perfectly rational.

  However, as discussed above, Eleanor was in fact by no means an unpopular queen. Further, this approach ignores the repeated personal references which would not have been lost on a contemporary audience – and the placing of the crosses, which were positioned in the heart of areas where Eleanor was best known. Overall, in the trouble taken to invoke the actual woman and her personal identity, one is entitled to see the crosses as a very personal tribute. Another factor which tends in this direction, largely unremarked to date, is the preponderance of roses in the decoration of the crosses. The Geddington cross’s elaborate tracery is principally composed of roses, and at Waltham the arches containing the shields are surrounded by a background composed of roses. We know, too, that some of the other crosses featured roses, since this is one part which survived at Stamford. This decorative feature should not be taken as a mere standard filler, for such decoration was by no means common – indeed, the crosses’ lavish use of miniature features was something entirely new. Nor was the rose as well associated with the English Crown as we, brought up on the Wars of the Roses and Tudor history, instinctively think. In fact, the rose as a royal symbol was new – it had first been adopted in the form of the golden rose by Edward I himself, perhaps based on his mother’s badge, or on the papal golden rose. Thus, it seems plain that, while Edward may have been making some propaganda points along the way in the concept of the crosses, the tribute was very personal.23

  Otherwise, the crosses showed an interesting variety. All were three-layered, and all the surviving crosses appear to be about forty feet tall, minus the cross which it is considered likely originally surmounted them – raising the tantalising possibility that, with the cross, each was forty-nine feet tall – echoing Eleanor’s age at her death. However, all the three surviving crosses are subtly different in shape. The Geddington cross is most noticeably different and, aesthetically speaking, divides opinion. It is the most delicate of the three which survive and is, in its uniqueness, enigmatic. It has a hexagonal base but rises to be triangular and bears three images of Eleanor. It also features ‘stone lacework’, which it has been suggested may reference Moorish architecture, although there are echoes in the decoration of Westminster Abbey’s choir, too. This decorative feature is richer than what is discernible on the other surviving crosses, or the illustrations of lost crosses. The images of the queen are generally considered inferior in quality to those of the other surviving crosses both in anatomical treatment and in the handling of the draperies. Each image of the queen (here wearing a headdress under her crown) is set in a gabled recess, but her feet appear to stand on a lace-decorated column which features a shield – in each case one out of England, Castile/Leòn and Ponthieu, reinforcing her descent. Above the second layer is a slender, spire-like storey with finials adorned with oak leaves and flowers. One particularly striking feature of the cross is that the narrowness of the base means that the statues cannot sit opposite the gable openings and so the statues hide behind a pillar of the gables, affording the viewer only a side-on glimpse. In purely aesthetic terms, this is probably a fault; but to anyone who has pursued the elusive Eleanor through the record, it seems remarkably apposite.

  Some commentators have suggested that the Geddington cross is the work of a mason called ‘Garcia of Spain’ because of the differences to the other remaining crosses and surviving illustrations of Cheapside and Charing. However, the reference to Garcia of Spain in the records is to a cross ‘given to the Queen’ by John de Berewyk (one of her executors) and costing only 30 shillings. Such a cost could have nothing to do with the Geddington memorial, and this entry must sensibly refer to some smaller cross either given to Eleanor on her deathbed and buried with her or left on one of her tombs.

  The other two remaining crosses are polygonal and resemble each other more closely. The Northampton cross is actually more properly called the Hardingstone cross, for it stands on a hill, some little way south of the town on the London road (the modern A508), just on the borders of what was then the village of Hardingstone. The site was apparently chosen because of its proximity to the abbey of De la Prie of St Mary’s de Pratis, a Cluniac foundation of King Stephen, which held the church of Fotheringhay. It was in the chapel of this foundation that Eleanor’s bier rested overnight.

  The cross was originally perched on twelve steps, though now only ten are visible. It has an octagonal base supporting eight gables with lacework, in each of which a pair of shields appears. Beneath the shields on alternate faces is a stone book, which it has been suggested were painted or carved with prayers to be said for Eleanor, but again these also reference the real woman behind the tribute. The pinnacles and gables of the first layer are adorned with blind tracery and foliage. Above this layer the monument steps in, and becomes four sided, with another set of fancy gables with finials and foliage protecting recesses, in each of which a statue of Eleanor appears. The images (one of which has a headdress, like the Geddington images) are to some eyes inferior to the Waltham images, but time and restoration have to be considered here, and certainly both sets of images were made by key workers in royal employ – William of Ireland in Northampton and Alexander of Abingdon in Waltham. The third layer is a square layer, somewhat lower than the Geddington third layer, with Gothic arches. The top, originally bearing a large cross, which will have seemed to float above the monument, is lost.24

  The Waltham cross is effectively the first of the London crosses. Although it survived the Civil War, it has not passed through the centuries unscathed. The antiquarian and Eleanor cross expert Revd Dr William Stukeley, writing to the Earl of Oxford in 1728, stated that ‘Waltham is pretty perfect, but this last summer Mrs Robinson has rebuilt part of her house and encroached upon the road and broke down a good deal of the cross to make way for her roof’. Another reporter, Gough, writing in 1796, says that the pub ‘the Four Swans’ (later the Falcon) has built almost into the cross, ‘whereby much of its beauty is concealed and many of its ornaments disfigured.’ Stukeley also reports a good deal of damage from carriages running against the cross, which can be seen fairly clearly in numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints and sketches (including some by J. M. W. Turner). Two restorations consequently took place in the nineteenth century.

  One cannot, therefore, be very confident about the extent to which the remains actually reflect the original cross. However, overall it appears to be a somewhat scaled-up version of the Hardingstone cross. It is reputed to have boasted six images, but, while this is consistent with the shape of the second layer, the arrangement of the arches in that layer appears to make this unlikely; and certainly the Vetusta Monumenta survey shows only three. Thus the cross commences with a hexagonal base, with gables ornamented with rosettes and heraldry, a foliate cornice and battlements, and on the second storey a hexagonal layer of hollow gables fitted with images of the queen in one face followed by a double gable supported by a pillar in the next face. There is then a smaller, hexagonal top layer with another round of arch-and-gable carving and a mini-parapet, above which a cross, which may or may not have resembled the one which now sits there, would have sat. Caen stone was bought for the images on this and the Charing cross.

  As for the images, there certainly seems to be something to recommend the view that they are the finest of the survivals. The version which has Eleanor grasping the cord of her cape bears a striking resemblance to the tomb effigy. Meanwhile, the one with the looped-up draperies seems both on the point of movement and of speech – the most lifelike of the entire lot, and a strong argument against the theory that no portraiture was intended in the representations. That Alexander was also deemed the more accomplished workman to thirteenth-century sensibilities is implied by
the fact that he was the person commissioned to make the ornaments for the final, most upmarket, cross at Charing.25

  As for the lost crosses, a certain amount can be inferred from the surviving evidence. The Lincoln cross, which probably stood outside Wigford by St Catherine’s Priory, utilised rods, rings and hoods, and also statues of the queen made by William ‘Imaginator’. The Grantham cross does not figure in the accounts and no part of it is known to survive to the present day. All that we do know is that it featured heraldry, since Stukeley refers to having ‘one of the lions’ – presumably from the arms of Castile – in his garden.

  The Stamford cross, which the more reliable witnesses place on the Casterton Road on the way out of Stamford towards Geddington, had (depending on which account you prefer) a hexagonal or octagonal base thirteen feet long, with steps of ‘squared Barnack stone’. Again heraldry was a major feature. Captain Richard Symonds in 1645 and Richard Butcher in 1646 refer to shields, and Symonds describes the arms of England, Ponthieu and Castile and Leòn carved repeatedly – presumably on each face of the cross. It was topped with a piece described and drawn by Stukeley as being pyramidal and carved with roses. As to its details, the Stamford cross was considered ‘not very splendid’ by Camden. It may be that the lack of splendour reflects that it was on the more simple Geddington pattern – and the surviving sketch by Stukeley, though very rough, tends to support this theory. But it may equally reflect a comparison with the London crosses, or the state of its repair when Camden viewed it.