Eleanor of England

Eleanor of England (* around 1215 in Gloucester , England ; † April 13, 1275 in the monastery of Montargis , France ) was an English princess from the House of Plantagenet . By marriage to William Marshal , the second Earl of Pembroke , she was first Countess of Pembroke and then by her marriage to Simon V. de Montfort Countess of Leicester . As the sister of the English King Henry III. she had an almost constant argument with him about her financial support. Even when her second husband Simon sat at the head of an English aristocratic revolt and in open military conflict with Henry III. Eleanor was supporting her husband and not her brother.

Life

Childhood and time as the Countess of Pembroke

Eleanor was the third daughter and thus the youngest child of King John Ohneland and his wife Isabella von Angoulême in Gloucester. She received her first name in honor of her grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine . The princess never got to know her father because he died when she was only one year old. For her still underage brother Heinrich III. William Marshal took over the reign . Under his leadership, the invasion of a French army under the French heir to the throne Ludwig ended and the invaders were driven from the island.

Eleanor was then promised as a wife to the regent's widowed son, also named William, after three years of considering marrying the princess to a foreign prince. The wedding took place on April 23, 1224 at Temple Church in London . Because Eleanor was only nine years old at the time, she stayed at her brother's court until 1229, before moving into the household of her husband, 25 years her senior. In the following years she accompanied him on his travels through England, France and Ireland.

Williams' death in April 1231 widowed Eleanor after a childless marriage at only 16 years of age. In the presence of Edmund Rich , Archbishop of Canterbury , she then made a vow of chastity and vowed not to remarry for the rest of her life. Due to her still young age, Eleanor was not allowed to take care of her financial affairs herself, but was again under the tutelage of her brother. But in 1233 - in their name, but without their consent - he made a very unfavorable agreement regarding their widow's pension. From her brother-in-law Richard Marshal , who succeeded her husband as Earl of Pembroke, she was to receive £ 400 a year from the income of her widows' estates, although this sum was less than a quarter of the actual income from the estates. This agreement, which was unfavorable for Eleanor, was in later years the cause of disputes between the siblings.

Widowhood and time as the Countess of Leicester

Eleanor moved into Intebergh Castle in Kent after the death of her husband , before Henry transferred her in 1237 to Odiham Castle in Hampshire , which she made her main residence. During these years she was also often a guest at the royal court, where Simon V. de Montfort noticed her. He and Eleanor married on January 7, 1238 with the consent of Henry III. secretly in the King's Chapel at Westminster Abbey . The marriage of the two was kept secret for a few months, because according to the Magna Carta Heinrich should have obtained the approval of the leading representatives of the English nobility, the so-called barons , for this connection. At some point, however, this became public. A noble opposition under its leader, the king's brother Richard of Cornwall , claimed that the marriage was not valid because the barons did not approve it. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, questioned the validity of the marriage because Eleanor had taken a vow of chastity shortly after the death of her first husband. However, Simon de Montfort went on a pilgrimage to Rome and was able to obtain confirmation of his marriage from the Pope - not least through large donations of money. Due to the constant hostility to which Eleanor was exposed during the absence of her husband at the English royal court, she moved to Kenilworth Castle and lived there very secluded. The castle had Henry III. granted to the couple as compensation for Eleanor's far too low widow's pension and as compensation for having given her into the second marriage without a dowry.

After his return from Rome, Eleanor's husband was very popular with the king, but that changed suddenly in August 1239. Henry III. publicly claimed that Eleanor had been seduced by Simon before the wedding and that he had given his royal consent to the marriage of the two only because of this. There was not the slightest evidence for this accusation, which Heinrich had made in an angry state, rather it can be assumed that Simon de Montfort had annoyed his quick-tempered brother-in-law by naming him, without being asked, as a guarantor for his high debts. The couple were forced to flee from the monarch's anger to France - possibly to Montfort - even though Eleanor was pregnant at the time. Their departure was so hasty that they even had to leave their firstborn son Henry behind in England.

On the occasion of the barons' crusade , Eleanor accompanied her husband and brother Richard of Cornwall on their way through France to Marseille, where they boarded. While her brother drove straight to Palestine, she and her husband made a stop in Brindisi, Italy, to visit their brother-in-law, Emperor Friedrich II . Simon then also traveled on to Palestine and Eleanor returned to England alone. The dispute between her husband and brother was settled in 1242 so she could return to England. However, she did not stay long on the island, but accompanied them on a campaign to France that same year. In the years that followed, Eleanor often stayed in France, because from 1247 Simon acted as Seneschal of Gascony and represented the English king in this area. During this time she was also a frequent guest at the court of the French King Louis IX. and his wife Margaret of Provence . This resulted in a lifelong friendship, which Eleanor would later often turn out to be an advantage. The royal couple acted as a mediator between Eleanor and her brother several times when the two of them quarreled over the too low financial widow income of the royal sister. And this was very often the case, for the princess had the same quick-tempered temperament as her brother. It is recorded through letters from Franciscan Adam Marsh, who was Eleanor's confessor, that she was easily excitable and very argumentative. Marsh also mentioned her flamboyant and expensive tastes, which put her in almost permanent financial trouble. In order to get Heinrich to pay her further compensation for the disadvantage in the matter of widow's pension, she did not shy away from blackmail. For a long time it blocked the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris by refusing to give up Angevin territories. The claim resulted from the inheritance of her grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had brought large territories on the French mainland into marriage with Henry II of England and thus to the House of Plantagenet. However, the waiver of these claims by all of Eleanor's heirs was a central point in the peace treaty between England and France. Only when Heinrich III. Having made several outstanding payments and deposited a large sum of money with the French king as security for future payments, Eleanor signed the waiver of her inheritance.

From 1254, her husband was the head of a nobility revolt against Heinrich III. and found himself in open military conflict with him. When Simon was finally defeated and perished in the Battle of Evesham in 1265 , Eleanor organized the upcoming defense of Dover Castle against royal troops, but the castle was captured by Prince Edward in October . All of Eleanor's possessions were confiscated by the Crown before she was banished by her brother and had to go into exile in France with her daughter Eleanor. However, she had previously managed to send two of her sons, Richard and Amaury , to France equipped with a large amount of money in September of that year, in order to remove at least a small part of her property from her brother's access. At the intercession of Louis IX. granted Heinrich III. However, his sister received compensation for the confiscated lands and goods in 1267.

Eleanor spent her final years in the Dominican monastery of Montargis, which was founded by her sister-in-law Amicia de Montfort . She died there in 1275 and was buried on the monastery grounds.

Descendants

Eleanor's first marriage to William II Marshal was childless. The second marriage to Simon de Montfort resulted in a total of seven children:

1. Henry (November 1238-1265)
2. Simon (April 1240-1271)
3. Amaury , canon in York (1242 / 1243-1300)
4. Guy , Count of Nola (1244–1288), ⚭ Margherita Aldobrandeschi
5. a daughter who died as a child (1248–1251)
6. Richard (1252-1266)
7. Eleanor (1258-1282), ⚭ 1278 Llywelyn ap Gruffydd

Historical meaning

Eleanor of England is of particular interest to historiography for two reasons. On the one hand, a six-month bookkeeping of your household from 1265 has been preserved. Not only is it an important source of lifestyle, customs and habits at English aristocratic courts in the Middle Ages , but it also documents Eleanor's last months in England in great detail, before she had to go into exile in France after the death of her husband. On the other hand, Eleanor's name was mentioned again and again in official state documents after she was of legal age, which shows that she looked after her own financial interests and did not let her second husband Simon V. de Montfort represent her in these matters. This approach was very unusual for a woman of her time, even if she was of such high class as Eleanor.

literature

Main literature

• Mary Ann Everett Green: Lives of the Princesses of England, from the Norman Conquest . Volume 2. Longman, Brown, Green, Longman & Roberts, London 1857, pp. 48-169 ( online ).
• Elizabeth Hallam: Eleanor, countess of Pembroke and Leicester . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, January 2008 online edition, doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 46703 .
• JR Maddicott: Simon de Montfort, eighth earl of Leicester . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, January 2008 online edition, doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 19049 .
• Margaret Wade Labarge, NE Griffiths: A Medieval Miscellany . McGill-Queen's Press 1997, ISBN 0-88629-290-5 , pp. 48-50 ( online ).

further reading

• Joan M. Fawcett: The Household Roll of Eleanor of Montfort, 1265 . In: History Today . Vol. 1, No. 11, 1951, ISSN  0018-2753 , pp. 41-43.
• Margaret Wade Labarge: Eleanor de Montfort's Household Rolls . In: History Today . Vol. 11, No. 7, 1961, ISSN  0018-2753 , pp. 490-500.

Web links

• Eleanor of England at ancestry.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Alison Weir: Britain's royal family. The complete genealogy . Bodley Head, London 1989, ISBN 0-370-31310-0 , p. 71.
2. ^ MA Everett Green: Lives of the Princesses of England , p. 69.
3. ^ MA Everett Green: Lives of the Princesses of England , p. 72.
4. ↑ ^{a b} J. R. Maddicott: Simon de Montfort, eighth earl of Leicester .
5. ^ MA Everett Green: Lives of the Princesses of England , p. 78.
6. ^ Mandell Creighton: Life of Simon de Montfort. Earl of Leicester . Longmans, Green & Co., London 1895, p. 34 ( online ).
7. ↑ Charles Bemont: Simon de Montfort, Comte de Leicester: Sa Vie (1207-1265), Son Role Politique en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1884)