Queens Consort (50 page)

The allusion to Isabelle’s education is a discreet reference to her unfortunate domestic circumstances. Better, De Mezieres suggests, that a bride should be removed from her parents before habits which may prove displeasing to her husband can become ingrained. Isabelle’s mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, was notorious for her debauched lifestyle and undiscriminating love life and had received warnings about the neglect of her regal and maternal duties from everyone from the Pope to the celebrated scholar Christine de Pisan. Isabeau and Charles had married in 1385, and the French Queen’s arrival in Paris had set a new standard for royal pageantry, but the success of their relationship, which produced twelve children, was compromised when, in 1392, the King went mad, and the periodic fits of insanity he suffered for the rest of his life overshadowed the marriage. One of the first consequences was the assumption of the regency by Charles’s uncle, Philip of Burgundy, which led to dissent between the crown and the duchy that would influence English policy in the next century. More immediately, it had a personal impact on the French royal children.

Isabeau of Bavaria might not have been a perfect mother, but a glance at the ‘facts’ of her life reveals that, as in the case of Eleanor of Aquitaine, many of them are legends, if not downright fabrications. Since much of the criticism levelled by French accounts is politically motivated, it is not surprising that these are particularly hostile. Although Isabeau was extravagant and unwise in her choice of allies, her accounts belie accusations that she was a neglectful mother.
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Purchases of books, toys and clothes for her children, as well as the commissioning of memorial Masses for those who died show that she was at least as involved with their upbringing as other women of her rank, but this has not stopped her detractors from claiming that, caught between their mother’s frivolity and their father’s bouts of madness, the royal children lived a ramshackle, abandoned life in conditions of squalor that scandalised witnesses. It was said that it was only thanks to the pity of their servants that the sons and daughters of France managed not to die of starvation. While there is no evidence for such extreme allegations, the atmosphere in which Isabelle was raised might well have been an unpleasant and confusing one.

Charles’s madness often caused him to shrink from his wife and children in confusion and fear, and he frequently did not recognise them. He could be violent, smashing and burning furniture, tearing his clothes, and such rages were severe enough for it to be considered unsafe for the Queen to sleep with him. A mistress was procured for the King, perhaps as some sort of therapeutic measure, but this led to accusations that the Queen of
France was pimping for her husband. When he was sane, Charles was a handsome, intelligent man, but when the fits came over him, ‘It was a great pity to see him, as his body was all eaten away with dirt and ordure’.
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The French court was condemned for immorality and drunkenness, and Isabeau’s reputation was not helped by dreadful incidents such as the 1393 ‘Bal des Sauvages’, a party in ‘primitive’ costumes which went horribly wrong, resulting in the death by fire of five of the King’s friends. Charles himself was saved only by a quick-thinking duchess who threw her dress over him to stifle the flames. Yet Isabeau did try to help her husband. During his first illness, she promised she would dedicate the child she was then carrying to God if He would spare the King, and Isabelle’s sister Marie duly became a nun at Poissy at the age of six. Isabeau also organised holy processions in Paris and in 1409 sent her children to pray for their father’s recovery at Mont St Michel. A combination of the frenzied hedonism of the court, her mother’s anxious piety and a father who was by turns gentle and terrifying could not have formed a very stable background for a little girl, even a privileged princess of France. Perhaps this explains Isabelle’s own rather sad enthusiasm to leave home to be married, as, according to Froissart she expressed her gladness at the prospect: ‘For I am told that then shall be a great lady.’

Isabelle’s age may well have accorded with Richard’s own inclinations towards chastity which, if they did not precede Anne’s death, were affirmed by the crossing of his arms with those of the Confessor in the Wilton Diptych and the announcement of the King’s assumption of the new arms on 13 October, the feast of the saint. A sexless marriage fitted into the splendid vision carefully conjured by De Mezieres, of Richard as a new Arthur and Charles as Charlemagne, uniting not only European Christendom but the kingdoms of the east in ‘royal and imperial splendour’. In Monmouth’s
History of Britain
, Arthur is said to have begun his reign with a campaign in Ireland, where Richard received Charles’s proposal, and the combination of the Irish expedition and the French marriage played seductively into a grandiose projection of Richard as the king who would finally lead England to the new Jerusalem.
The Verses of Gildas
, a prophecy written in Edward II’s reign, describes the ‘king now ruling’ as being married to a princess of France. After a serious crisis, the king would conquer Ireland and Scotland, settle the Gascon question and restore unity to England. France, Spain and North Africa would fall to his might, he would recover the Holy Land and accept an imperial crown from the Pope. De Mezieres’ use of Edward II’s story, and his casting of Richard as the conquering redeemer of the past through his alliance with Isabelle,
could be seen as corroborating the Gildas prophecy. An alliance with Isabelle would chastely connect Richard not only with the heroes of Arthurian romance, but with the crusaders: the Grail could be glimpsed only by the pure, while the attainment of the Holy City had been linked with sexual abstinence (or not) since Eleanor of Aquitaine had been maligned for subverting Louis VII’s hopes for Jerusalem. The distinction between the private and the public man could never be clear for any medieval king, and in Richard’s case it is quite characteristic that what may have begun as an idiosyncrasy, or a personal religious commitment, had to be transformed into transcendental destiny.

Of course, it was also a matter of money. This time, Richard would not be accused of taking a pauper bride. In July, he sent his own envoys to Charles to demand two million gold francs as Isabelle’s dowry, though they were permitted to allow the French to haggle them down to one million if necessary, with an initial payment of 400,000 and the balance to be paid annually over three years. Eventually the English settled for 800,000 with a 3,000 down payment. If the match were to be broken off, Charles would be liable for a three million-franc forfeit, and he was to bear the expense of bringing his daughter to Calais for the wedding. Should Isabelle die before she was thirteen, Richard was to marry a relative, possibly one of her sisters Mary or Michelle, and retain 400,000 francs of the dowry. If Richard died before Isabelle was twelve she would receive 500,000 francs, as well as her dower settlement of £6,666 13s 4d per year. Some provision was made for the fact that Isabelle was below the canonical age of consent: if she refused the marriage when she was twelve the dowry was forfeit, and if Richard rejected her he would return it with 800,000 francs’ compensation. Any jewels Isabelle was given could also return with her to France in the event of Richard’s death.

Thus, on 9 March 1396, a twenty-eight-year truce was sealed between England and France. One clause of the marriage settlement has attracted particular interest: the assurance of French military assistance for Richard against his own subjects if necessary. Given that many English magnates, notably Gloucester, objected to the French peace, this clause has been seen as indicative of Richard’s future plans, but in fact it was dropped when the first payment of 300,000 francs was accepted. A proxy marriage was conducted at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris three days later, with the Earl of Nottingham substituting for the King, and Isabelle prettily made her first formal intercession as Queen of England, a plea for an imprisoned debtor named Peter de Craon.

In October, Isabelle and her father left Paris with a retinue that included
the dukes of Berry, Bourbon and Orleans and the counts of Harcourt and Sancerre. On 26 October Richard and Charles met at Ardres, where Charles wore a green gown whose decoration commemorated Richard’s first wife Anne, a respectful gesture of family solidarity echoed in the livery of Richard’s companions. On 30 October, Isabelle rode to meet her husband in a blue gown and a jewelled crown, curtsied to Richard, who kissed her, and was formally handed into his care by her father. Froissart recorded that when Charles expressed his disappointment that Isabelle was too young to become his wife in the full sense, Richard declared that the love he valued best was that of the King of France, and of his people, for we shall now be so strongly united that no king in Christendom can in any way harm us’.

The meeting between the kings of England and France was Richard’s first international embassy, and neither party was prepared to concede anything to the other when it came to display The courtiers were housed in a city of tents, with ornate pavilions for the monarchs, between which ran an ever more competitive exchange of extravagant gifts, featuring a gold cup and basin, a gilt ship carved with tigresses and set with mirrors, a pearl collar, a crystal bottle encrusted with jewels, a buckle worth 500 marks and a horse with a silver saddle. Charles was judged to have come out on top in the present-giving, but Richard bested him in the fashion stakes, for the French King wore the same red velvet each day, while Richard’s array of outfits included a red velvet robe with a gold collar, another of red and white velvet and one ofblue with gold ornaments. For the wedding itself, in the church of St Nicholas on All Saints Day, Isabelle was carried to Calais in a cloth-of-gold litter. The whole business cost Richard between 10,000 and 15,000 pounds, but it was considered an essential investment in royal prestige.

After hearing Mass together on 3 November, Richard and Isabelle sailed for England. Despite a fair wind, the curse of the English queens’ arrival fell on Isabelle, and some of the ships were wrecked. From Dover, the couple travelled through Rochester and Canterbury to Eltham, where they rested before the Queen’s entry into London. At Calais, Isabelle had been given into the care of the duchesses of Gloucester and Lancaster, and it was between their households that she could expect to spend the rest of her married childhood. Eleanor de Bohun, the thirty-six-year old Duchess of Gloucester, was the elder sister of Mary de Bohun, the wife of John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke. The Duchess of Lancaster, Bolingbroke’s stepmother, Kathenne Swynford, had married Gaunt in January 1396. She was notorious for having been Gaunt’s mistress before, during and
after his second marriage to Constance of Castile, and for having four children by him. Katherine was of Hainault descent, her father Paen de Rouet having served as a herald under Edward III, and her sister Philippa had attended Edward’s Queen before her marriage to the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Katherine’s first husband, Sir Hugh Swynford, was a member of Gaunt’s household, and after the death of Gaunt’s first wife, Blanche of Lancaster in 1369 (commemorated by Chaucer in his
Book of the Duchess)
, Katherine had acted as governess to Blanche’s daughters. Her relationship with Gaunt was an open secret, but the marriage, and Richard’s subsequent legitimisation of his Beaufort cousins, was a scandal. However, Gaunt was the premier English magnate and there could be no question of excluding his wife from her proper role. In Eleanor, Isabelle might have found a more maternal figure, and a playmate in her daughter, another Isabelle, aged ten. Queen Isabelle was given her own French governess, Margaret de Courcy, who received an annuity of a hundred pounds on New Year’s Day 1397.

Isabelle arrived in London for her coronation on 3 January that year, spending the night in the Tower. Her formal entry into the city the preceding November had been spoiled by a great crush on the bridge between Southwark and Kennington, where the eager crowds swarmed so tightly that several people were killed, but the coronation, conducted according to the
Liber Regalis
, went smoothly. On 4 January Isabelle rode in procession along Cheapside with twenty ladies leading twenty knights in red gowns emblazoned with the King’s badge of the white hart to meet Richard at Westminster. She was crowned the next day, and two weeks of tournaments were held in celebration, although, as in Anne of Bohemia’s case, there were mutterings about the expense. It seemed cruel to make a little girl the focus of political conflict which had been fomenting for a decade, but the unpopularity of the peace with France was reflected in a certain discourtesy in Isabelle’s reception. Markedly, neither Warwick nor Arundel presented the Queen with New Year gifts, and Isabelle’s new uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, made plain his objections to the truce in Parliament, which convened on 22 January.

It would be unreasonable to expect Isabelle to have made any mark at the beginning of her queenship, and within three years circumstance deprived her of the opportunity forever. The chronicler Adam of Usk was convinced that Richard had married Isabelle only as a means of obtaining French support for a long-planned revenge on his enemies Gloucester, Arundel and Warwick. Froissart reports a conversation between the King and the Count of St Pol in the summer of 1396, as arrangements for the
wedding were being finalised, in which Richard expressed his fear that Gloucester’s hatred of the peace would provoke him and his allies to another rebellion. St Pol’s advice was to bribe and flatter Gloucester into acquiescence until the marriage had taken place, after which Richard could depend on the help of the King of France to ‘crush all your enemies or rebellious subjects’. If Richard believed that his second marriage was to inaugurate a form of Arthurian apotheosis, he certainly needed to silence his opponents first, but neither Isabelle nor his actions of 1397 can be entirely explained by his personal animus against the Lords Appellant.

The January Parliament revived the criticisms of the King of a decade before. A bill presented by one Thomas Haxey outlined four areas of grievance: the length of office of sheriffs, Richard’s failure to secure the Scottish border, the distribution of badges of office or affinity by the King and the excessive cost of the royal household. Richard particularly objected to the final point, which he saw as touching on his ‘regality’, and Haxey was arraigned as a traitor. Yet he was given no stricter punishment than house arrest. Many writers
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have seen Haxey’s bil1 as a ruse instigated by Richard to establish a fresh mandate for the defence of his ‘regality preparation for his next move, a theory substantiated by Richard’s recall of the exiledjudges who had ruled in his favour in 1387. The King also seemed to be courting the support of his powerful uncle, as on 6 February he legitimised Gaunt’s Beaufort bastards and made the eldest, John, Earl of Somerset. When he left with Isabelle for a pilgrimage to Canterbury at the end of the month he was accompanied by Gaunt and his son Henry Bolingbroke, who also joined the court at Windsor in February. The Haxey bill, the recall of the judges and the cultivation of Gaunt fit a pattern of Richard’s increasing frustration at opposition to his prerogative. There were rumours at court of plots against him, and Walsingham focuses on a sharp remark made in relation to the King’s ambition to be elected Holy Roman Emperor. An embassy from Cologne had given him hope ofachieving this, and he sent envoys ofhis own to sound out the electors, one of whom dissented with the suggestion that Richard was hardly fit to be emperor since he was incapable of controlling his own subjects. It is notable that Richard resumed his wooing of the imperial electors less than two weeks after the July coup.