When the couple visited England in 1263, Eleanor’s attendance at the English royal court was expected in spite of the highly charged political climate. A letter of safe conduct issued at St Paul’s Cathedral in London on 16 June 1263 made provision for Simon, in the company of Eleanor and their children, to visit the king, provided that they came without arms.61 The timing of this safe conduct was significant. It was during the late spring and summer of 1263 that Montfort strengthened his position at the head of the reform movement, against a background of mounting violence towards prominent royalists.62 The king’s safe conduct should be seen as part of his wider and, ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to curb the growing disorder, which found expression in a whole series of royal letters issued between 12 and 15 June, appointing new castellans and military commanders in the northern and south-eastern counties, and reissuing the earlier Provisions of Westminster as a sop to his critics.63 His inclusion of Eleanor and her children in the safe conduct reflected Eleanor’s importance as Henry’s sister and as the crucial familial link between the king and the earl. In spite of the impact of Eleanor’s intransigence on the progress of the Treaty of Paris, and in spite of the bitterness that Henry III clearly harboured towards Earl Simon as one of the architects and subsequent enforcers of the Provisions of Oxford, the king retained at least a vestige of outward respect for his youngest sister.
AFTER LEWES
In the aftermath of the battle of Lewes in May 1264, Eleanor de Montfort, Countess of Leicester, was pre-eminent in status among the highborn women who remained in England. Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Provence, was overseas, and Eleanor of Castile, the young bride of the Lord Edward, was in Montfortian hands. The countess was soon to prove adept at safeguarding and promoting her own, as well as her husband’s and children’s, interests.64 It was a measure of Eleanor’s close relationship with her husband, as well as her competence in estate and household administration, that the most important royal captives after the king spent time, so the London annalist observed, ‘under the custody of the countess of Leicester’ at Wallingford Castle in Berkshire.65 First, Eleanor’s nephew, the Lord Edward, was transferred in May from Dover Castle in Kent to Wallingford, along with his cousin, Henry of Almain, Richard of Cornwall’s eldest son and heir. A little later, Richard of Cornwall himself was also transferred from the Tower of London to Wallingford.66 The royalist chronicler Thomas Wykes commented upon the harsh treatment of royalist captives at Dover, while under the guard of its recently appointed constable, Henry de Montfort.67 Although the Lord Edward’s modern biographer, Michael Prestwich, found ‘no solid evidence’ of Edward’s poor treatment, it is curious that Earl Simon apparently decided to transfer his royal nephew from Dover into his wife’s care at Wallingford, rather than into that of any of his other close supporters or kin.68 There were, admittedly, excellent reasons for removing the Lord Edward from Dover and Richard of Cornwall from the Tower on the grounds of security. In the summer, news reached the barons that the English queen was actively recruiting mercenaries and soliciting the support of her allies – the king and queen of France, her uncle Peter of Savoy and other royalist exiles – in order to mount an invasion of England to rescue her husband.69 The Dunstable annalist noted the barons’ efforts to fortify the English coast against this threat.70 Dover Castle’s situation on the English Channel rendered this great fortress and its royal hostages vulnerable to the queen’s potential military operations. Richard of Cornwall’s residence in London, the kingdom’s capital, might have left him similarly exposed should an invasion force land in the south east.
There might also have been other more personal reasons for transferring the Lord Edward, Henry of Almain and Richard of Cornwall into his wife’s care. Simon needed to ensure that his most important captives, the men at the core of the royalist party who were closely related to Henry by blood, were held by someone who had the interests of the Montforts and of the baronial reformers at heart, and by someone whom the earl could implicitly trust. His wife was the ideal candidate. It is not inconceivable that news had reached Eleanor’s ears about the treatment meted out by her eldest son and others to the royal captives and hostages. In spite of the grievances between Eleanor, her husband and the king, the countess might well have wished to ameliorate the discomfort of her captive kin, perhaps regarding it as her Christian duty to do so, and repay their past kindnesses to her. This might explain Earl Simon’s decision to transfer into her care her other brother, Richard of Cornwall, the previous holder of Wallingford.71 After all, by virtue of her position as a wife and hostess, not to mention her status as the king’s sister, she was ideally placed to provide for her husband’s reluctant ‘guests’. It is possible that Eleanor requested or suggested that one or more of her kinsmen be placed in her charge.72
Admittedly, the captives’ time at Wallingford was short lived. By the end of July, the Lord Edward and Henry of Alamain had been transferred to Kenilworth Castle.73 Although the royal hostages were moved around during the summer and autumn 1264 – Henry of Almain, for instance, undertook a brief diplomatic mission to France in September before returning to captivity at Dover – Edward, Henry and Richard were all at Wallingford again later that year.74 They were there in November when an attempt was made by the Lord Edward’s followers to free him from Montfortian custody. As a direct result of this, the Earl of Leicester determined to move all three men to the greater security afforded by Kenilworth Castle. According to the chronicler Robert of Gloucester, Countess Eleanor might well have accompanied the captives there.75
Mindful of her obligations to reward those persons loyal to her family, Eleanor’s activities in 1264–5 extended beyond the care of royal hostages and captives. Her husband’s military success did much to resolve the couple’s financial woes. The matter of Eleanor’s Marshal dower looked like it might be resolved. On 18 November 1264, some of the Montfort’s closest political allies and supporters, namely Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, Henry of Sandwich, Bishop of London, Hugh Despenser, the justiciar, and Peter de Montfort, were appointed to a commission to investigate the case of Eleanor’s Irish and Welsh Marshal dower, which had, so it was claimed, long been detained from her by the king. The commissioners were empowered to assign Eleanor her dower and ensure that she received due reparation for her losses.76 The countess also secured profitable royal grants of properties and rights for men and women in her service. In December 1264, John of Havering, a yeoman of the countess, who was either the son or another relation of Richard of Havering, was awarded the wardships and marriages of the heirs and lands of Richard of Arden.77 On 13 June 1265, royal letters issued at Hereford recorded that the services and customs of Christiana of Odiham, an unfree tenant of the Countess of Leicester, had been valued at 14s. 4d. a year, and that henceforth Christiana and her heirs were to be quit of all customs and services and were to pay an annual rent instead. The scribe who drew up the letters carefully noted that this grant had been made with the assent of both the Earl and Countess of Leicester in special recognition of Christiana’s long service to Eleanor.78
As an experienced political operator, one cannot help but suspect that Eleanor also endorsed Simon’s efforts to enrich their sons through grants of lands and offices across southern England. In the aftermath of Lewes, Earl Simon’s role as leader of the baronial party allowed him to place his sons and his closest supporters in the key offices of royal government, and to profit from the estates confiscated from their defeated royalist opponents, including those of Richard of Cornwall.79 Some of the Montforts’ tactics were more than a little dubious in their execution. Their second son, Simon junior, resorted to a series of underhand measures to seize the Sussex lands of William de Briouze, a royalist who had attacked Simon junior’s estate at Sedgwick.80 Simon junior’s stratagem involved a substantial claim for damages against Briouze in a court packed with Simon junior’s sympathizers, including his older brother, Henry. Until Briouze paid up, the younger Simon retained custody of both
Briouze’s lands and his young son and heir, also named William.81 A year later, Simon junior’s mother was in charge of her son’s hostage, providing for his maintenance and making payments to his groom and to Isabella his nurse.82 Since Simon junior was unmarried, it was perhaps only fitting that his mother should care for young William. Even so, Eleanor’s involvement raises the possibility of an element of complicity in her son’s plans. Eleanor might also not have been entirely in the dark about the matrimonial ambitions Simon junior harboured towards Isabella de Forz, Countess of Devon and lady of the Isle of Wight. It is solely down to the chance survival of Eleanor’s household accounts for 1265, which are discussed in the next chapter, that we know that she exchanged letters with Isabella, a wealthy young widow with baronial sympathies, throughout the spring of 1265 and entertained her at Odiham in April.83 Earl Simon sold the royal rights to Isabella’s remarriage to Simon junior during the summer of 1265 and, in a later lawsuit, Isabella claimed that she had been the victim of an attempted abduction by Simon junior, which forced her to seek refuge in Wales.84 If Isabella’s later claim can be trusted, one wonders whether Eleanor once again had a hand in encouraging her son.
8
1265
‘the conflict of Evesham’1
In April 1267, Henry III wrote to the sheriff of Northamptonshire, ordering him to restore the lands confiscated from William de St Philibert, a former rebel, during the recent disturbances within the realm. These disturbances, the letter recalled, had drawn to a partial close after the battle of Evesham in 1265 with an ‘ordinance and form of peace’ made at Dover Castle between the Lord Edward, the king’s eldest son, and Eleanor de Montfort, Countess of Leicester, widow of his fallen opponent Earl Simon.2 This fairly innocuous phrasing concealed the full horror for the Montfort family and their supporters of the disastrous events of that year. If the Montforts’ fortunes had been riding high after their success at Lewes in 1264, the summer of 1265 was nothing short of disastrous for Eleanor, Earl Simon and their children. Within the space of less than three months, between late May and the beginning of August, Eleanor witnessed Earl Simon’s hold on government slip away, following the Lord Edward’s dramatic escape from Montfortian custody at Hereford, his rapprochement with Gilbert de Clare, the new Earl of Gloucester, and the rapid collapse of the Montfortian regime in the Welsh Marches.3 The resurgence in royalist fortunes culminated in a pitched battle at Evesham on 4 August 1265, where many Montfortians were slain, including Eleanor’s husband and her eldest son.4 In December 1264, Eleanor presided over her husband’s splendid Christmas court at Kenilworth; by December 1265 she was a widow in exile in France.5
An invaluable insight into Eleanor’s role in 1265 and her response to her family’s changing political fortunes is provided by a large fragment of her household accounts for this year (British Library, Additional MS 8877), the only household roll of Eleanor’s or Simon’s that has survived down to the present day. Eleanor’s household roll was preserved until the early nineteenth century in the archives of the Dominican nunnery of Montargis in France that she entered in widowhood. It is an important source not only in terms of its chronological coverage, but also by virtue of the fact that it is one of the earliest surviving private household accounts from England and it was produced for a woman.6 The thirteen extant membranes, carefully compiled by Eleanor’s clerks Christopher and Eudes, and possibly another, illuminate the functioning of the Montforts’ domestic establishment at a critical stage in the Barons’ War. They itemize the day-to-day expenses of the countess’s household from 19 February to 29 August 1265 on the face, detailing Eleanor’s place of residence, the names of visitors she received and the household’s provisioning, including the numbers of horses for whom fodder and hay had to be found. Lists of wages and other miscellaneous expenses, including messenger accounts covering the period up to 1 October, appear on the dorse. This chapter offers a fresh appraisal of these accounts and the light that they shed on Eleanor’s activities in 1265.
THE MONTFORT HOUSEHOLD IN 1265
Eleanor’s household roll indicates that she spent most of 1265, apart from a brief visit in March,7 separated from her husband, Earl Simon, who was preoccupied with the Hilary parliament and with later developments in the Welsh Marches. In the meantime, the Countess of Leicester presided over her own domestic establishment, which had 207 people present on average, including household officers, servants, guests and poor, and which was, in common with other great households of her day, a peripatetic institution.8 For much of February, Eleanor stayed at Wallingford Castle, then in Montfortian hands, before moving later in the month to Odiham Castle via Reading in Berkshire at a relatively leisurely pace of fifteen miles a day.9 The countess remained there throughout the spring until news of the Lord Edward’s escape uprooted the household again.10
In view of Eleanor’s attendance behind the scenes at earlier councils and parliaments in the reign, it is curious that she did not accompany the earl to the Hilary parliament. This was the longest of all the reforming parliaments and sat from 20 January until the middle of March 1265, discussing, amongst other weighty matters, the arrangements for the relaxation of the Lord Edward’s custody.11 Now that the aggrandizement of her husband and sons had alleviated her family’s financial predicament, perhaps Eleanor felt that there was little to be gained by accompanying her husband there in person.
Another far more compelling explanation for Eleanor’s absence from these proceedings is that she was already fulfilling an important role for her family at Wallingford and Odiham. Eleanor’s residence at these castles during these months might arguably, as her later entertainment Isabella de Forz, an important local landowner,12 suggests, have helped to strengthen her husband’s political position in the south. Odiham, after all, was located in the heart of southern England. Eleanor’s presence there made sound strategic sense within the context of her sons’ recently acquired lands and offices. It meant that she resided, geographically, at the centre of a recently formed Montfortian network of influence, which stretched, if at times somewhat shakily, across southern England. In the south east, her eldest son, Henry, was constable of the royal castle of Dover and warden of the Cinque Ports.13 Simon junior, Eleanor’s second son, was constable of Portchester Castle in Hampshire,14 and active in Surrey and Sussex.15 Meanwhile, in the south west, Eleanor’s fourth son, Guy, enjoyed custody of Richard of Cornwall’s lands in Devon and Cornwall,16 while her third son, Amaury, who was forging a career in the church, had been awarded the rectory of St Wendron (Cornwall), one of the wealthiest benefices in this region and formerly in Richard’s gift.17 In the midst of this Montfortian sea, and in Earl Simon’s absence, there was no one better placed than Eleanor as a wife and mother to act as an intermediary and communication point for her family.
Eleanor’s household accounts confirm that she maintained contact, via letters and messengers, throughout the spring with her husband, who, on one occasion, thoughtfully sent her a gift of porpoise for her table.18 Furthermore, Eleanor’s absence from proceedings at Westminster might not necessarily have inhibited her talents as an intermediary; her accounts reveal that the countess sent letters to the Lord Edward on 25 February.19 Earl Simon’s first action when the Hilary parliament dispersed was to set out immediately for his wife’s residence at Odiham, where he arrived on 19 March for a family conference.20 His arrival was preceded, two days earlier, by that of the Lord Edward and one of Richard of Cornwall’s sons, escorted by the Montforts’ eldest son, Henry.21 Another son, Guy, had reached Odiham on 13 March.22 Something of the scale of this conference and the hospitality that Eleanor was expected to provide emerges from her household roll. The number of horses in Eleanor’s stable, all of whom were provided with hay from the castle stores, rose from 44 to 172 with the arrival of Henry and her nephews, and from 172 to 334 with the coming of the earl.23 On the same day (17 March) that the Lord Edward arrived, the enlarged household consumed no fewer than 1,000 herrings, and the countess felt comp
elled to purchase no fewer than 1,000 dishes, presumably for the use of her newly arrived guests and their entourages.24 It was clearly no small undertaking to house and feed the retinues of the visiting nobles.
Eleanor’s central importance within the Montfort family, her continuing concern for the welfare of her sons, and her personal interest in their wider affairs was reflected elsewhere in her accounts. They firmly reinforce the impression that Eleanor enjoyed a particularly close bond of affection with Simon junior, a bond that undoubtedly holds the key to Simon’s subsequent actions later that summer. On 6 April, for example, a few days after the earl’s departure from Odiham, and again on 14 April, Eleanor dispatched letters to her second son, who had been engaged since the previous year in the siege of Pevensey Castle.25 Admittedly, in the absence of any payments to messengers received from him in the interim, we cannot help wondering whether, on this occasion, Simon junior had been perhaps a little tardy in replying to Eleanor’s missives. This son was back in touch by 30 April when his messenger received 12d. for conveying his master’s news to the countess.26 It was subsequently to Simon junior whom Eleanor turned for an escort in her flight across southern England in June 1265 after the Lord Edward’s escape, thereby temporarily diverting this son from moving directly to assist his father against the resurgent royalists in the Welsh Marches.27
ELEANOR’S WIDER CONTACTS
Eleanor’s household accounts are revealing not only of the personal support that she lent her husband and sons, but also of her role, more generally, in underpinning the Montfortian regime. They suggest that Eleanor was instrumental in upholding her family’s position by fostering a range of contacts, many of whom were Montfortian sympathizers. During the seven months covered by the extant roll, she received more than fifty visitors28 and sent numerous letters and messengers to a whole host of other people. She corresponded, for example, with Margaret de Lacy, the widowed Countess of Lincoln whose manor of Caversham was situated just fifteen miles from Odiham.29 Margaret had enjoyed close dealings with the Montforts in the recent past: the Countess of Lincoln was Eleanor’s sister-in-law through her second marriage to Walter Marshal and Earl Simon had helped to negotiate the marriage of Margaret’s grandson in 1256.30 Eleanor communicated with Margaret’s daughter, Matilda de Clare, the dowager Countess of Gloucester.31 On 12 and 13 March, another lady, Margery de Crek, the widow of a former servant of William Marshal junior, enjoyed the Countess of Leicester’s hospitality, accompanied by her retinue of twelve horses.32 Eleanor similarly entertained the Countess of Oxford and her somewhat larger retinue of twenty-one horses on 20 May, sending her away with a gift of wine when she departed on the following day.33 This countess’s husband, Robert de Vere, was a loyal adherent of Earl Simon and was among the Montfortians who were later captured at Kenilworth.34
Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England Page 16