Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  Also, if we want to use the word ‘mistress’ to refer to the extra-marital sexual partner of a king, we may need to define precisely what we mean by it. Dictionaries offer the following modern definitions:

  a woman (other than the man’s wife) having a sexual relationship with a married man.1

  a woman who has a continuing extramarital sexual relationship with a man.2

  The first of these would cover any extra-marital sexual relationship, but the second definition would confine the use of the word to an ongoing, long-term relationship, more or less akin to a marriage. It is with this second meaning that the term ‘mistress’ will generally be employed here.

  We should also note that, at least during the first century or two after the Norman Conquest of England, the concept of the concubine was still very much alive, and this further complicates the issue. A concubine was a woman who had a semi-official and ongoing relationship with a man, usually of higher social status than herself. She was less than a wife, but rather more than a mistress, and her children were entitled to a kind of recognition. Hence one author suggests that ‘it is probable that royal bastards of the tenth and thirteenth centuries, if not somewhat later, were considered as nothi (as they were under Roman law) that is children born in concubinage and thereby entitled to the support of their fathers but with no right of inheritance from them’.3

  By no means all English monarchs of the early Middle Ages are known to have had mistresses in the sense of long-term partners outside of their marriages. No such partners seem to be recorded in the cases of William I, William II, King Stephen, Richard I, Henry III, Edward I and Edward II. Of course, in respect of William II, Richard I and Edward II a preference for members of their own sex is assumed, and this predilection may suffice to account for the lack of extramarital female partners.4 In the case of Edward II, the existence of male lovers has certainly been alleged, and two such lovers have been named. But curiously Edward II also had a bastard son, Adam Fitzroy, so he must have had a sexual relationship with a woman other than his wife on at least one occasion. Adam seems to have been born in about 1205, at a time when Edward was a teenager, still unmarried, and still heir to the throne.5 However, there is no reason to suppose that Adam Fitzroy’s mother was Edward’s ‘mistress’ in terms of the definition we are using here. Adam may have been the fruit of a mere passing fancy.

  Of the eleven kings between William I and Edward III, seven had no known long-term female partners outside of marriage. Does this mean that these seven kings were all faithful to their marriage partners? Not exactly, because William II had no wife, and Edward II was apparently unfaithful to Isabelle of France after their marriage – albeit with male partners rather than female. The precise conduct of Richard I is unclear. Nevertheless, of the ten married English kings in this period, 50 per cent may have been faithful husbands.

  The others certainly seem to have made up for this! Henry I had sexual relations with at least six women other than his wives, and he is reputed to have fathered twenty illegitimate children. Henry II had at least five similar relationships, resulting in several bastards. King John had several sexual partners outside his marriages, and Edward III had one, or possibly two, such relationships.

  Henry I’s affairs were with Gieva de Tracy, Ansfride … Sybil (or Adela or Lucia) Corbet, Edith Fitzforne,6 Nest ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr and Isabel de Beaumont. Henry had chosen his first wife, Matilda (Edith) of Scotland, for largely political reasons, so it might not seem surprising if he felt little personal affection for her. In fact, however, the ages of Henry’s bastards show that his relationship with most of their mothers dated from a period well before his marriage, and prior to his accession to the throne. Thus most of Henry’s illicit relationships tell us nothing about the happiness or otherwise of his marriage, or about the king’s marital fidelity.

  Only the last two of Henry’s six illicit partners had sexual relationships with the king coeval with his marriages. Interestingly, perhaps, these last two women were both of much higher social status than their predecessors (most of whom seem to have been of middling rank at best). Nevertheless, these last two relationships do not necessarily prove that Henry was unhappily married. Perhaps by this time his long bachelorhood had simply accustomed him to a somewhat free and easy lifestyle.

  Henry I – our first instance of a post-Conquest English king who had known female partners outside marriage, and who fathered illegitimate children by them – is also the first such king to display clearly a pattern which was to recur subsequently in the context of later royal relationships. We find that while Henry was a prince, not even in the direct line of inheritance, and not yet married, he engaged in illicit relationships which resulted in bastard children. Later, however, he married, and settled down to a more regular lifestyle.7 King Henry I recognised his bastards, which is how we come to know about them.

  Some entered the Church, but for those who did not various provisions were made. One, as we have seen, was even married to the King of Scotland.8 Others had less magnificent marriages found for them. Probably the most prominent of Henry I’s illegitimate children in terms of English history was Robert Fitzroy,9 Earl of Gloucester (?1090–1147). Incidentally, Robert Fitzroy had many descendants, and has been described by one author as the ‘father of England’.10 It is probable that Robert had a well-born mother (maybe Nest of South Wales), though his mother is not named in any surviving source. When his father died leaving no legitimate son and heir, Robert, who was a very intelligent and able man, even seems to have been considered a potential candidate for the throne. However:

  when he was advised, as the story went, to claim the throne on his father’s death, deterred by sounder advice he by no means assented, saying it was fairer to yield it to his sister’s son [the future Henry II] than presumptuously to arrogate it to himself.11

  Given that his grandfather, William the Conqueror, had been a bastard, the fact that Robert’s illegitimacy was ultimately seen as excluding him from the Crown is interesting. This established an important precedent, which has been followed in all subsequent periods.12

  Like those of his grandfather, the extra-marital partners of Henry II seem to have covered a broad social spectrum, ranging from the royal, through the noble, to the plebeian. His reputed royal lover was Princess Alys of France, the fiancée of his own son, Richard (see above).13 By Alys Henry II is rumoured to have had a child, though no details are available, and the evidence is uncertain.14 Henry II’s aristocratic partners were Ida de Tosny, later Countess of Norfolk, and her relative, Rosamund de Clifford.15 Ida was the mother of Henry’s best-known bastard son, William Longspee, Earl of Salisbury (1176–1226), but the celebrated Rosamund de Clifford – despite being probably the most famous of Henry’s women – is not known for certain to have borne the king a single child.

  Henry II may have had other affairs, with women whose names are lost.16 However, the names of two partners of lower birth are recorded. One was the wife of Ralph Bloet. Her first name is in doubt but it may perhaps have been Nest. The other was a woman called Ykenai (or Hikenai) who was described by one hostile contemporary source as a prostitute. Between them these two women bore Henry three children, all of whom found their futures in the Church.17

  In the case of Henry II the pattern noted earlier for Henry I’s relationships applies again – at least in part. Whereas Henry I had most of his affairs, and fathered most of his illegitimate offspring, prior to his marriage, Henry II seems to have been less faithful to his consort. Of course, the marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine is known to have been turbulent, and ultimately Henry imprisoned his wife.

  But Henry II’s bastard son Geoffrey, Archbishop of York (1152–1226) was certainly born before the king’s eldest legitimate child, Henry the Young King (1155–83), so that Henry’s relationship with Geoffrey’s mother presumably predated his royal marriage to Queen Eleanor (in May 1152). On the other hand, the birth of William Longspee occurred at a time when Henry II wa
s already married to Eleanor of Aquitaine – but at a time when the sexual relationship between the king and queen had most probably come to an end. Henry’s relationship with Rosamund de Clifford (a relation of William Longspee’s mother) probably also post-dated the period of Henry’s active sexual relationship with Eleanor of Aquitaine.18

  In the case of King John the chronology of his relationships is not entirely clear, but he too may have been following, at least in part, the pattern established by his ancestor, Henry I. Certainly his relationship with Clemence d’Arcy dated from the 1190s (prior to his accession, and prior to his marriage to Isabelle of Angoulême). However, the overall pattern in John’s case is not entirely clear, and the picture is complicated by his first (and subsequently annulled) marriage to his cousin. It is true that the king had at least five children with mistresses while he was supposed to be married to Isabel of Gloucester, but of course, as we have already seen, that first marriage was very peculiar, because John was not allowed to have sex with his wife. John’s later behaviour (following his marriage to Isabelle of Angoulême) shows no sign of adultery. However, contemporary writers did complain that John’s mistresses during the earlier period were married ladies of aristocratic status, which was thought to be improper.

  There is no evidence of extramarital activity on the parts of Henry III and Edward I, and we have seen already that Edward II had no known relationships with other women during his reign as king. His relationships with Piers Gaveston, and later with Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger, seem to have been the key factors in his adult life.19 Nevertheless, the fact that he fathered one illegitimate son during his teens, at a time when he was still heir to the throne, and still unmarried, has been noted. This reflects a pattern of conduct akin to that found in the cases of Henry I and Henry II. His relationship with Adam Fitzroy’s unnamed mother was probably very brief, and it would therefore be inappropriate to describe her as Edward’s ‘mistress’. In terms of relationships with other women, it seems clear that Edward II was not unfaithful to his wife once he and Isabelle were married. Edward III (reigned 1327–77) was born in November 1312. He was therefore only 11 years old when negotiations for his marriage to Philippa of Hainaut began. It was around the king’s fifteenth birthday that his marriage was finally celebrated (in October 1327, by proxy, and at York Minster on 24 January 1328, in person). His bride was some two years his junior, and she would not have been considered old enough at the time of their wedding for the marriage to be consummated at once. However, it must have been consummated within a year or so, because their first child, Edward Prince of Wales (‘the Black Prince’) was born in 1330. Further children followed at regular intervals until 1348, after which a gap of about seven years intervened before the birth of the couple’s last child, Thomas of Woodstock. Queen Philippa seems to have suffered from ill-health towards the end of her life, and she died in 1369.

  Given this chronology, Edward III had little opportunity to follow the precedent established by his ancestor, Henry I, by engaging in love affairs and the fathering of bastards prior to his marriage. And in fact the pattern of Edward III’s relationships does indeed seem to have been quite different. His marriage with Philippa was considered a success in all respects, and it was not until 1363, eight years after the birth of his last legitimate child, and just six years before the queen’s death, that the king seems to have entered into any kind of long-term extra-marital relationship.

  The woman in question was Alice Salisbury, and she was reportedly serving as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Philippa when she attracted the king’s attention. Alice is better known under the surname Perrers, and indeed, until recently this was thought to have been her maiden name. However, research has now proved that her birth surname was not Perrers but Salisbury, and that Janyn Perrers was her first (and previously unknown) husband, whom she married prior to 1360.20 Janyn must have died shortly after 1360, and Alice later married again, her second husband being Sir William Windsor.

  Alice was hitherto thought to belong by birth to a gentry family from Hertfordshire, but this view must now be dismissed. The fact that she was in the service of the queen is not, in itself, sufficient to prove that Alice was of gentle birth, since the queen’s ladies have been shown to come from quite varied backgrounds. Alice had a brother called John Salisbury and it is this fact which has recently established Alice’s maiden name.

  Her own reluctance to name or rely on any of her relatives means that it is ultimately impossible definitively to prove Alice’s family origins. However, the Cobham petition links John Salisbury to a series of manors around Wantage (Berkshire) and gives some justification to Thomas of Walsingham’s claim that Alice came from ‘Henneye’ (West and East Hanney, Berkshire). Further evidence of Alice’s connections with a family named Salesby and with John Southbury, the previous holder of one of her East Hanney manors, generates the hypothesis that Perrers’s origins lay in a family of petty landholders and traders operating in this corner of Berkshire.21

  Another possibility is that Alice was a Londoner by birth, coming from one of the ‘Salisbury’ merchant families resident in the capital. A third possibility is that Alice was of quite low birth. In fact Thomas of Walsingham (who clearly despised the king’s mistress) described her as a harlot, and the daughter of a thatcher!

  Alice bore the king a son and two daughters.22 Her relationship with Edward was regarded by contemporaries as scandalous.23 Indeed, the degree of popular hostility to Alice was unusual in the history of English royal mistresses.24 There was a widespread feeling of affront when she was given some of the queen’s jewellery. Also, she profited financially from her situation. She grew wealthy as the king’s mistress – although this seems to have been due in large measure to her own intelligence and business acumen.25 Most importantly, however, her hold over the king was so strong, and the use Alice made of this situation was so evident, that it caused her influence to be feared. She was known – or at least widely believed – to exert her command of the king’s ear in an unjust way in order to achieve her own ends, and it was seen as virtually impossible to oppose her will.

  Alice’s behaviour was certainly extraordinary at times, for ‘this woman felt no embarrassment at taking her place on the bench of judges at Westminster; and she was not afraid to speak there, either on her own behalf or on that of her friends, or even on behalf of the king’.26 Unsurprisingly, perhaps, under the circumstances, the judges were thought to be intimidated by her domineering influence.

  The king’s love for Alice was regarded by contemporaries as abnormal on the grounds of Edward III’s age at the time, since it was considered that while the sin of lechery might be natural in youth, in old age such behaviour could only be a kind of insanity.27 There could only be one possible explanation. Clearly Alice must have employed the black arts to achieve her wicked ends. Spells and potions were not necessarily required for this. Merely touching a man’s hand intimately was sometimes taken as a kind of sorcery, capable of compelling desire!28 However, Alice was known to be associated with a Dominican friar, trained in the arts of healing. He was popularly reported to be ‘an evil magician, dedicated to evildoing, and it was by his magical devices that Alice had enticed the king into an illicit love affair with her’.29 Here we have one of the first recorded instances of sorcery being alleged in order to account for what was popularly perceived as an otherwise inexplicable royal love affair. Alice’s Blackfriar friend was thought to have made love philtres for her, with which she had ensnared the king. ‘He was accused of using spells and potions along with images of Alice and the king, suffused with herbs and other plants picked at the full moon, to work his magic’.30

  Rightly or wrongly, similar allegations of sorcery were to resurface on several occasions in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to account for strange, inconvenient or otherwise inexplicable royal love affairs. But the allegations against Alice and her friend the friar provide one of the first indications that in England, as elsewhere
in Europe, witchcraft was beginning to be taken more seriously. Hitherto there had been a tendency to regard sorcery as fairly harmless, but the climate was changing. Early in the following century Johannes Nider would publish his Formicarius (‘The Ant Hill’) in Augsburg – one of the earliest works to explore how witches could be hunted down and persecuted. Witchcraft was becoming a serious and potentially dangerous allegation, almost bound to lead to trouble, as it did for Alice. Although she was safe enough while her royal lover lived, after Edward III’s death Alice was brought to trial, banished for a time, and her goods confiscated. However, she survived, and later she was even able to return to England and reclaim some of her property. Some subsequent royal consorts and lovers who were subjected to accusations of sorcery were to prove less fortunate.

  There have been rumours that Edward III also had an affair in the 1340s with Catherine Montacute (or Montagu), Countess of Salisbury. It was said to have been in honour of this countess that the king founded the Order of the Garter. However, the story of this relationship is very confused and uncertain. Some sources have suggested that the Order of the Garter was founded not in Catherine’s honour but in honour of her daughter-in-law, Joan of Kent, the future bride of the Prince of Wales (see below).31 Thus it is not certain that Edward ever really had an affair with Catherine. If he did, it must have been a brief, one-off exception to his general marital fidelity at that period.

  The pattern of Edward III’s relationships seems, therefore, to have been one of early marriage, followed by faithfulness to his wife until she began to age and to lose her health. Then the king found himself one new, young and pretty sexual partner, to whom he subsequently appears to have remained faithful until his death. And unlike his predecessors, whose love affairs in later life seem to have been with ladies of some status, Edward III’s late love was for a woman of moderate, or possibly even quite low birth.