Margaret of France (1282-1318)
Margaret of France (* around 1282 in Paris , † February 14, 1318 in Marlborough Castle , Wiltshire ) was the daughter of the French king Philip III. and his second wife Maria von Brabant . As the second wife of King Edward I , she was Queen of England from 1299 to 1307.
Life
marriage
Despite the mourning for his first wife Eleanor of Castile , who died in 1290 , King Edward I of England decided a few years later to remarry. That his choice originally went to Blanche , the daughter of Philip III who is known for her beauty. and sister Margarethes, but this marriage was thwarted by her half-brother, the French King Philip IV, the handsome , is an unfounded story. Blanche was supposed to marry King Rudolf I of Bohemia in 1300 .
In 1294 Philip IV offered to marry the still very young Margaret to the 55-year-old Edward I. Negotiations in this regard were initially unsuccessful. The Anglo-French conflict came to a head and Philip IV advanced into Gascony , which belonged to Edward's mainland property. Pope Boniface VIII , who acted as a mediator in the war that followed, brought the marriage project back into discussion in 1298, and after negotiations in Montreuil in June 1299, a peace was made, including on the condition of Eduard's marriage to Margarethe. On September 10, 1299 , the marriage of the 17-year-old (or, according to other sources, 20-year-old) Margaret to the now 60-year-old King of England took place in Canterbury by Archbishop Robert Winchelsey . This was followed by four-day wedding celebrations.
English queen
In October 1299 Margarethe moved into London . The new ruler was never crowned in an official ceremony, making it the first uncrowned queen since the Norman conquest of England. Eduard soon returned to the theater of war in Scotland , leaving Margarethe alone in London. There she first lived in the Tower so as not to fall victim to the smallpox epidemic brought in by the crusaders . After a few months, Margarethe decided to travel to her husband, who was still active in the military.
The royal couple, who are so far apart in age, had a happy marriage. In 1303/04 Margarethe was with her husband in Scotland. According to the testimony of his letters and contemporary chronicles, Eduard loved his wife very much. When her sister Blanche died in 1305, Eduard ordered state mourning at his court just to flatter his wife. Margarethe had a close friendship with her stepdaughter Mary, a nun, and her stepson, the heir to the throne Eduard (II.) , Who were both her age. Eduard (II.) Once gave his stepmother an expensive ruby and a gold ring, and Margarethe in turn mediated in 1305 in a conflict between the heir apparent and his father.
Margarethe often stood up for subjects who had fallen out of favor with her royal husband and was thus able to reduce their sentences. For example, a goldsmith who had been captured and threatened with death who had made the crown for the Scottish King Robert Bruce owed his life to her. Perhaps in this way she wanted to allay concerns about her French origins, which she apparently could not entirely dispel. She was described as beautiful and pious by contemporary English authors and called "the flower of France".
Widowhood and death
After Edward's death in 1307, Margarethe no longer married, although she was only about 25 years old. Allegedly she said: "When Edward died, all men died for me". She commissioned her chaplain John London to write a Latin eulogy for her late husband. In January 1308 she sailed to France with the new English King Edward II and accompanied him to Boulogne to his wedding with Isabella , a daughter of King Philip IV of France. She then lived at Marlborough Castle in Wiltshire until her death and devoted herself primarily to charitable work. She died in 1318, so only survived her husband by a good 10 years. She was buried in London's Greyfriar's Church , the construction of which she had helped to finance. Her battered tomb was bought by the English politician Martin Bowes around 1550 . Although she had been generously endowed by the king financially and with her own lands and had received £ 4,000 from Pope Clement V in 1306 , she left considerable debts.
ancestors
Louis VIII the lion | Blanka of Castile | Raimund Berengar V. | Beatrix of Savoy | Henry II of Brabant | Maria von Staufen | Hugo IV of Burgundy | Jolande from Dreux | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Louis IX the Saint | Margaret of Provence | Henry III. from Brabant | Adelheid of Burgundy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Philip III from France | Maria of Brabant | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Margaret of France | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
progeny
Margarethe had three children with Eduard I.
- Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk (June 1, 1300, † August 4, 1338)
- Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent (born August 5, 1301, † March 19, 1330)
- Eleanor of England (May 6, 1306, † 1310)
Margaret named her firstborn son Thomas after the canonized Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket , whom she had called for help during her dangerous birth; She gave her daughter Eleonore, who died as a toddler, the name of Edward's first wife.
literature
- John Carmi Parsons: Margaret (1279? –1318). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 36: Macquarie – Martin. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861386-5 , pp. 635-636, ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2008
- Michael C. Prestwich: Margaret, Queen of England († 1318) . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 236.
- William Hunt : Margaret (1282? -1318) . In: Sidney Lee (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 36: Malthus - Mason. , MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1893, p. 136 (English).
Remarks
- ↑ Margaret's year of birth is given by some sources as 1282, the Liber de antiquis legibus as 1279; the year of death 1318 is certain (JC Parsons, ODNB, vol. 36 (2004), p. 635; MC Prestwich, Lexikon des Mittelalters , vol. 6, col. 236.)
- ↑ JC Parsons, ODNB, Vol. 36 (2004), p. 635.
Web links
predecessor | Office | Successor |
---|---|---|
Eleanor of Castile |
Queen Consort of England 1299–1307 |
Isabella of France |
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Margaret of France |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Queen of England |
DATE OF BIRTH | around 1282 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
DATE OF DEATH | February 14, 1318 |
Place of death | Marlborough Castle , Wiltshire |