Queens Consort (35 page)

Later characterisations of Edward I’s reign show just how effective his magnification of Eleanor had become, in that the nature of his rule is judged to have changed after 1290 as a consequence of the loss of her benign influence. In fact, Eleanor was blamed for the King’s harshness in his lifetime. Edward did love Eleanor: his most famous comment about her was made in a letter to the abbot of Cluny in 1291, in which he referred to his wife as she ‘whom living we dearly cherished and in death we cannot cease to love’. The year after she died he glumly went through the motions of paying his Easter ‘ransom’, even though there was no warm, welcoming bed for him to jump into. Yet Edward did recover from the loss, despite later affirmations that he never ceased to mourn her, and in a sense his commemoration of Eleanor serves to subsume the woman she truly was, first in terms of the remaking of her reputation and secondly in fashioning it into a representation of the might and spiritual dignity of the Plantagenet kings. Edward took a woman whom no one except himself had much liked and made her into a virtual saint, exquisitely celebrated in a novel fusion of sculpture and symbolism that attested far more to his own glory than to her achievements as a queen.

The success of the crosses in reinventing Eleanor is most poignantly evoked in the continuation of
The St Albans Chronicle
of Matthew Paris in 1408. Edward II, Eleanor’s last child, barely knew his mother — she had left England for three years when he was two, remaining in Gascony between May 1286 and August 1289, and in the final months of her life she hardly saw him. Brought up mainly at Langley, which was his favourite residence as King, Edward would often have seen his mother’s cross at nearby St Albans, and would probably have attended her annual commemorative Mass there. In 1305, he asked the abbot of St Albans to take
in John le Parker, a former servant of Eleanor’s who had worked at Langley, who wished to spend his last days in prayer for the late Queen’s soul. The continuation of
The St Albans Chronicle
, in essence a history of the reign of Edward I, would have been seen by Edward (if it was not intended specifically for him), and the writer may have hoped to please him by idealising the mother he had never really known. According to the continuation, Eleanor’s influence was one of a transcendental purity: ‘As the dawn scatters the shadows of the waning night with its rays of light, so by the promotion of this most holy woman and Queen, throughout England the night of faithlessness was expelled.’

One might suspect the chronicler of a little sarcasm at the royal expense. The ‘faithless’ Jews had indeed been expelled from England in the year of Eleanor’s death, but only, as her subjects were well aware, after she and Edward had bled them dry.

CHAPTER 10

MARGUERITE OF FRANCE

‘Dame Marguerite, good withouten lack’

M
arguerite, Edward I’s second wife, was the first French queen of England. Her marriage, like that of her predecessor, Eleanor of Castile, was largely determined upon as a consequence of the continued insecurity of the English position in Gascony, though the sixty-year-old King’s decision to take a much younger wife may well have been influenced by the need to provide additional heirs, as despite the fecundity of his union with Eleanor, Edward of Carnarvon was their only surviving son. Marguerite was one of four children of Philip III of France, the second of his second queen, Marie of Brabant. She probably remembered little of her father, who had died in 1285, when she was only three. She was brought up at the court of her brother, Philip IV, under the guidance of her mother and Philip’s queen, Jeanne of Navarre, both of whom were involved in the negotiation of the double betrothal of two French princesses, to Edward I and his heir respectively, which was ratified by the treaty of Montreuil in 1299.

In 1296, King Philip had successfully invaded Gascony, which, naturally, the English were desperate to recover, but Edward’s determination to subdue Scotland in a campaign that had been ongoing since 1290 had greatly depleted his military resources, and a diplomatic solution to Gascony seemed preferable to a war he was unlikely to win. In 1298, Pope Boniface VIII suggested the double marriage of Edward senior to Marguerite and his heir to Isabella, Philip’s three-year-old daughter, and in May the Earl of Lincoln was sent to open talks with the French. By the spring of the next year, after the conditions had been discussed by Parliament, Lincoln, accompanied by the Earl of Warwick and Amadeus of Savoy, returned to conduct the proxy betrothals. Amadeus reported back to Edward that seventeen-year-old Marguerite was possessed of the obligatory qualities of beauty, piety and virtue, though it is not known how he
responded to Edward’s more intimate inquiries about the span of her waist and the size of her feet. Under the treaty of Montreuil (signed by the English and French monarchs respectively in July and October 1299), Marguerite was to have a dowry of 15,000 livres. This offer of a cash sum, rather than lands, set a precedent for a policy that Charles V would cement by ordinanace in the next century as a way of preserving the French royal dominions intact. In return, Edward would give Marguerite the lands held by his first queen, Eleanor, in dower. These estates represented only a portion of the vast holdings Eleanor had obtained through royal grants and her unscrupulous acquisitions, but they were nevertheless worth 4,500 pounds per year and included land, farms and forest in Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Dorset, Essex, Hampshire, Huntingdon, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Wiltshire and Yorkshire, as well as the towns of Bristol, Lincoln, Grimsby, Tickhill and Heddon. The value of Marguerite’s dower lands was similar to that of the two previous English queens, and this sum was accepted as the rate for a queen’s dower throughout the fourteenth century, though Marguerite was exceptional in that the dower was decided quite precisely at her marriage, there being no queen dowager already in possession of it. These lands, the
‘terre regine’
, formed the backbone of royal dower assignments into the next century.

The background to Marguerite’s married life was always to be the rhythm of the Scots campaign. In 1296, Edward had taken Berwick, captured John Balliol, originally his own candidate for the Scottish throne, removed the sacred Stone of Scone and conquered the country to the north of Aberdeen. After defeating the rebel Scots leader William Wallace at Falkirk in 1298, Edward did not campaign in the year of his marriage, but in 1301 he wintered at Linlithgow after taking Bothwell. In 1302 Robert the Bruce negotiated a truce with England. The celebrated hero of Scottish nationalism campaigned effectively for the English in 1303—4, and after the siege of Stirling that summer, Edward was able to return to England. Wallace was surrendered in 1305, but a disgruntled Bruce turned back to Scotland in 1306 so that year and the next Edward was again leading his army in the north.

Edward and Marguerite were married at Canterbury on 10 September 1299. Though Edward had been a handsome man in his youth, Marguerite had high standards when it came to looks — her brother Philip was so exceptionally attractive he was nicknamed ‘the Fair’ — and it is rare for seventeen to look kindly on sixty. Still, both parties evidently did their duty, as Marguerite became pregnant almost immediately. Perhaps they
were temperamentally suited. Edward ordered two crowns for his new bride, a plain gold circlet for £22
IOS
and a grand, bejewelled state piece from the goldsmith Thomas de Frowick for over 400 pounds, but he was so keen to get back to his northern campaign that there was deemed to be no time for a coronation and, despite her condition, Marguerite gamely accompanied him. That she too was energetic and had no truck with physical weakness is demonstrated by the fact that she continued hunting until late in her pregnancy. Indeed, she was riding to hounds in Wharfedale, Yorkshire when her labour pains began, and just managed to get to nearby Brotherton for the safe delivery of her first son. The boy was named in honour of Thomas à Becket, to whom Marguerite had prayed during the delivery, and was known as Thomas of Brotherton for his last-minute birthplace. Edward was so delighted that he rushed ‘like a falcon’ to his wife’s side and baby Thomas was presented with two cradles, one in scarlet and one in blue, each draped with thirteen ells of cloth. Edward personally ordered striped draperies for his room and gilded hangings decorated with heraldic devices. The King was an old hand at fatherhood but, like many men who have children late in life, he seems to have found a new pleasure in the role, and when Marguerite’s second boy Edmund, was born at Woodstock the following August, the purveyors were so rapacious in their pursuit of goods for her that merchants were known to avoid being in the vicinity of her household.

Edward and Marguerite were united by their interest in their children and surviving information about the household set up for little Thomas and Edmund (a third child, politely named Eleanor, lived with them in 1305, but died young) gives an unusually intimate picture of medieval royal childhood. The boys were attended by a ‘family’ of fifty to seventy people, at a cost of approximately 1,300 pounds per year. The ‘family’ was overseen by a couple, Sir Stephen and his wife Lady Eveline, who supervised the female servants, among them chambermaids, washerwomen, Thomas’s wet nurse Mabille and Edmund’s cradle-rocker, Perrette. Lady Eveline, Mabille and Perrette were given presents of money by Marguerite in 1305, and the two nurses remained six years in the household, until the boys were ready for more masculine instruction. William de Lorri was appointed chaplain in 1301, and the children’s religious education was managed strictly They were expected to sit patiently through high Mass from a young age — in September 1302 Edward ordered that the boys hear divine service at Canterbury and make an offering of seven shillings apiece and the keeper of their wardrobe, John de Weston, was briefed to report back to the King on the conduct of the toddlers. At Easter, offerings of
clothes, shoes and money were made to the poor on the princes’ behalf. Queen Marguerite had a particular love for the Franciscan order, and was one of the main benefactresses of the new Franciscan foundation at Newgate in London. Regular payments to Franciscan friars show that she encouraged this association in her boys.

Like their parents, Thomas and Edmund played chess and also enjoyed ‘tables’. Skilled riding was a necessity, not a leisure activity, and they were each provided with a palfreyman to attend to their horses. Yet there was also time for fun. Marguerite, who was fond of music and employed her own minstrel, Guy de Psaltery, also hired musicians to entertain her sons on the zither, viola and trumpet. The boys made their own musical efforts, playing the drum of their minstrel Martinet with such enthusiasm that it had to be repaired in 1305. Music was part of the hospitality laid on for visitors, too, and as Thomas and Edmund, like their parents, journeyed between royal houses, they received noblemen, clergy and their rakish half-sister Mary, who had been enclosed at the Amesbury convent with their grandmother Eleanor of Provence, but who seemed to relish any opportunity to escape.

In common with other royal mothers, Marguerite was obliged to spend time away from her children, often on campaign with Edward in the north, but the details of the boys’ accounts indicate that she took a precise interest in their wellbeing. She was informed as to their diet, which was very healthy by medieval standards and included fresh fruit and vegetables as well as the usual quantities of meat and fish spiced with saffron, ginger, cinnamon and pepper. Treats included almonds, dates, figs and twisted candy sticks of spun sugar. Stephen the tailor made their clothes, always styled to reflect their royal rank. They had silk and wool cloaks, mantles and tabards, galoshes for wet weather and fur-lined robes with silver buttons and beaverskin hats for travelling in the cold. There is a tenderness to such touches as the broken drum and silver buttons that suggests Marguerite had both an intimate and a joyful relationship with her sons, and that this contributed to the happiness of her marriage to Edward.

For his part, the King’s satisfaction with his wife was evident from his unfashionable fidelity, and from his interest in the minutiae of her life. Marguerite was accused of extravagance by the St Albans chronicler, and apparently loved fashion: in 1302 she owed 1,000 pounds to Balliardi of Lucca for fabrics, not to mention 3,000 pounds-worth of other debts. Edward provided for their payment through grants of wardships and marriages, and managed to do so without attracting undue criticism of Marguerite. He was concerned about her health, corresponding with her
doctor on her recovery from measles and recommending bloodletting. The man who told Charles of Anjou that sons could always be got may be glimpsed in his clumsily kind-hearted advice to Marguerite’s confessor on the death of her sister Blanche. The priest, Edward suggested, should break the news to the Queen as gently as possible, but if she became very upset he was to say that she mustn’t mind as Blanche, who had married the Duke of Austria, had been as good as dead for a long while.

Contentment and warmth between the couple is also evident in Marguerite’s success not only as a provider of heirs but in another essential of the queenly dynamic: intercession. Though the queen’s role as ‘peace-weaver’ was to some extent becoming ritualised (as will be seen in the case of Philippa of Hainault in the reign of Edward III), it was still effective, as Marguerite proved when she pleaded that the citizens of Winchester be pardoned for having allowed an important hostage to escape, or in the case of Geoffrey de Coigners, a goldsmith who had had the temerity to manufacture a crown for Edward’s sometime arch-enemy, Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots, and who was pardoned only through Edward’s love of his ‘dearest’ wife. Marguerite also attempted to intercede for the Earl of Atholl, who had been taken prisoner while guarding the Scottish royal ladies at Kildrimny Castle in 1306. Edward responded harshly that Atholl would only be hanged higher than the rest. The siege of the same castle provoked Edward to the exceptionally ungallant punishment of two high-ranking ladies, Bruce’s sister Mary and the Countess of Buchan, who were imprisoned in cages within their chambers and permitted only English attendants and a niggardly fourpence per day for their maintenance.