Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England (15 page)

ROME

While Eleanor remained in England, Simon de Montfort faced the arduous task of securing a papal dispensation for their marriage. The letters of support from his royal and imperial brothers-in-law offered him an entrée to the papal curia, but it was, so Paris claimed, only by making a substantial offer of money that Simon finally secured Pope Gregory IX’s approval for his marriage.
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The Pope made separate declarations to Eleanor and Simon that their marriage might stand in spite of Eleanor’s earlier vow, and issued a further letter to the papal legate, Otto, Cardinal of St Nicholas in Carcere, to ensure that their marriage was now recognized.
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Yet this did not silence opposition within the English church to the match. Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, did not hold back from expressing his concerns to the Pope about Eleanor’s decision to renege on her vow.
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The Dominican friar William of Abingdon was another vociferous critic of the Montfort marriage.
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William and his supporters drew on the work of the twelfth-century theologian and bishop, Peter Lombard, whose
Four Books of Sentences
was a particularly influential text in the cathedral schools of Western Europe. The friar argued vigorously that ‘the woman in question [i.e. Eleanor] may not have assumed the habit with the veil, yet she has taken the ring, with which she has devoted, or rather betrothed herself to Christ, and is, therefore, indissolubly united to Christ her spouse’.
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According to Lombard, a widow who had taken a ‘vow of continence’ could not, therefore, marry again.
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In the face of such vehement disapproval, it is, however, noteworthy that in his account of these affairs Paris himself was cautious in his treatment of Eleanor, neither demonizing her nor passing his own judgement upon her. Perhaps he sympathized with her motives for remarriage or wished to avoid overt criticism of the wife of a man, Simon, whom he admired.
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SIMON’S RETURN

Simon de Montfort returned triumphant from Rome on 14 October 1238, whereupon he visited the English royal court before hastening to join Eleanor, who was then in the final stages of her pregnancy at Kenilworth.
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It was at Kenilworth that Eleanor spent her lying in and gave birth to a son, possibly on 26 November, two days earlier than Paris reported.
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The roll of the king’s almoner for 1238–9 indicates that it was on this day that the king made a hasty and apparently unscheduled trip from Woodstock, where the royal court was then in residence, to Kenilworth.
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Just as Henry had rushed to attend the deathbed of his older sister, Joan, on 4 March 1238, he now rushed to attend his youngest sister when she was safely delivered of her first child.
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As well as giving another ‘small’ but nonetheless significant ‘glimpse of the warm relations which existed at this time’ between Eleanor, Simon and Henry III, the king’s visit strongly suggests that he gave his blessing to the couple’s decision to name their son Henry in his honour and presumably acted as godfather to their child.
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The baby was baptized by Alexander de Stavenby, Bishop of Lichfield, who was apparently eager to secure the king’s favour by performing this service.
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Amid what would prove to be unfounded fears that Queen Eleanor might be barren, the birth of Henry de Montfort was particularly welcomed in royal circles as an event that promised to strengthen the ruling dynasty and lend comfort to the realm.
⁶¹

For six weeks or so after the birth, Eleanor remained in relative seclusion at Kenilworth, once her brother had departed and while she recovered from her delivery. Her absence from the king’s Christmas court at Winchester did not, however, mean that the welfare of his youngest sister escaped the king’s notice. On the contrary, the king ordered a luxurious new gown for Eleanor at Christmas, a robe she might well have received in time for her churching. This fine new robe and surcoat were made from cloth of gold and gold baudekyn cloth (a type of figured silk). They were trimmed and lined with miniver, easily rivalling the splendour of the robes with which Henry III had furnished Isabella the Empress before her marriage in 1235.
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These clothes were accompanied by further gifts in the form of a quilt and a mattress of baudekyn and a coverlet of scarlet cloth and the best ‘gris’ (grey fur), again made expressly for Eleanor’s use.
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These gifts, packaged in waxed canvas and other materials intended to protect them on their journey, were dispatched from London to the countess at Kenilworth in the safekeeping of Roger the Usher and his assistant, Taillefer.
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The countess’s churching had apparently taken place by 13 January 1239, when Simon returned to court.
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The purpose of Simon’s attendance on this occasion was to secure the collection of the arrears of his wife’s Irish dower. Henry III, in keeping with his earlier agreement to stand surety for Gilbert Marshal, the errant debtor, stepped into the breach once more: Simon received £200 from Henry’s coffers to cover the arrears for Michaelmas term 1238.
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Papal support for their marriage and the birth of a son placed the Montforts in an apparently unassailable position and entrenched them firmly in the king’s affections. There was no clearer indication of Henry’s regard for this younger sister and his new brother-in-law than his decision to allow Simon to realize his long-term ambition and elevate him to a rank comparable with that of his wife. On 2 February 1239, in recognition of his family’s long-standing claim, Henry III finally granted Simon the earldom of Leicester.
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Simon’s new-found status was given ceremonial prominence later that year when he participated in the baptism of the king’s eldest son, Edward, born on 17/18 June 1239. During the splendid state occasion that accompanied the baptism of the new heir to the throne, Earl Simon numbered among those appointed to receive Edward from the font.
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As the only one of the king’s sisters then resident in the realm, Eleanor very probably numbered among ‘the noble ladies’ whose presence at these celebrations was noted by Paris.
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Then, without warning, the Montforts’ fortunes experienced a sudden and dramatic change for the worse. Within just a matter of weeks after Edward’s baptism, the fragility of the edifice upon which their position at the Henrician court had been built was exposed for all to see. The peculiar circumstances of Eleanor and Simon’s marriage, the outcry that followed and the uncertainties surrounding the couple’s financial situation (Simon’s earlier debts, the outlay for his trip to Rome and the recurring problem of Eleanor’s Irish dower) placed them in a vulnerable situation: their position and lifestyle were secure only so long as they retained Henry’s goodwill. As Eleanor and her husband now discovered, the king’s benevolence was far from unlimited, all the more so now that there were new strings pulling on his purse. In the first place, the king had his own son and heir, as well as a wife, for whom he needed to provide. In the second place, visits by Eleanor of Provence’s Savoyard uncles to the English royal court allowed them to secure positions of influence and thereby compete with Henry’s blood kin and the English nobility for royal patronage.
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In the third place, Henry had recently been channelling large sums of money towards the crusade to the Holy Land planned by Richard of Cornwall in alliance with the Emperor.
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In such circumstances and in view of the sheer level of support that Henry had previously shown towards Eleanor and Simon – support that had jeopardized Henry’s relationship with Richard of Cornwall – it is perhaps easy to understand how Henry’s affection towards the couple came to be tinged with resentment.

The Montforts were certainly adept at taking from the crown. By the summer of 1239 Henry might well have felt justifiably aggrieved at the continual financial drain that Eleanor and her husband placed upon him, especially if there were those around him, like perhaps his younger brother, Richard, who were ready to point out to him the problematic nature of his relationship with the Montforts. The final straw came early in August 1239, when Henry III learned that Earl Simon had named him as a surety for a large debt (2,000 marks) he owed to the queen’s uncle, Thomas of Savoy, without first seeking Henry’s permission.
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This was a step too far. Henry was fed up with being treated as a bottomless pit from which to draw money. On 9 August 1239, in full view of the royal court, Henry III rounded on his brother-in-law and accused him of seducing his sister.
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It was a very public confrontation and one that betrayed the full measure of the king’s anger, albeit in a typically familial setting. The Earl and Countess of Leicester were turned away and barred from attending the purification of the queen, Eleanor of Provence.
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What is particularly striking about this episode is the way in which it was staged so as to make it clear that Henry’s rage was directed against his sister as much as her husband: Eleanor and her husband were equally culpable in the king’s eyes, a situation that strongly hints at Eleanor’s own political agency. According to Paris, ‘the noble ladies’ of the Henrician court assembled in London so that they might accompany the queen to Westminster Abbey for her purification.
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When Earl Simon arrived with his wife, Henry expressly forbade the couple from attending the ceremony. A furious king then threw a series of insults at his brother-in-law. In the presence of numerous witnesses, Henry called Simon ‘an excommunicant’ and claimed that he had ‘wickedly and secretly defiled’ Eleanor before their marriage.
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This public attack on Eleanor’s sexual reputation by her own brother, the man who had hitherto championed her remarriage and, indeed, protected Eleanor’s financial and personal interests even against their closest kin, was remarkable. For Eleanor, it was deeply humiliating. To make matters worse, when the Montforts fled and sought refuge at the Southwark palace of the former Bishop of Winchester, a residence loaned to them by the king, they found themselves rudely ejected from the premises. In an attempt to salvage the situation, the couple approached the king once more ‘with tears and lamentations’, but to no avail. In the bitter exchange of words that followed, Eleanor and Simon were rebuffed by the king, who repeated the accusation of his sister’s seduction and claimed that he had possessed prior knowledge of their affair before the couple’s marriage. In anger, the king now claimed that he had only approved Eleanor’s union with Simon in order to avoid a scandal.
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In general terms, Paris’s account of these dramatic events sits comfortably with those that Earl Simon and Eleanor later recalled for the benefit of the French king, Louis IX, in 1261.
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Such was the king’s wrath against the Montforts that they felt compelled to leave the realm, fearing for their safety. After the king unsuccessfully attempted to imprison Earl Simon within the Tower of London, Earl Simon and Eleanor, who was pregnant again, fled by boat to France, attended by their small
familia
.
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If the scale of the couple’s fall from favour can, in part, be measured by the ignominious nature of their departure from Henry III’s realm, it can also be measured by the subsequent silence of the English government records that document no gifts offered to Eleanor or her husband in the aftermath of their flight.

When, during the winter of 1237–8, Eleanor and Simon had solicited Henry III’s support for their marriage, in the face of opposition from the church on the grounds of Eleanor’s earlier vow and in the face of opposition from Richard of Cornwall, they had taken a tremendous political gamble. Initially, once Henry III had at great personal and financial cost rebuilt his relationship with Earl Richard and supported Simon’s mission to Rome, it might well have seemed to the couple that their actions had paid off. Yet, in the summer of 1239, they fell victim to their own ambitions, to the scale of their continued indebtedness in a fast-changing political climate, and, inevitably, to the enemies that they had made in contracting their
matrimonium
clandestinum
. In the end, it was the Montforts’ troubled finances that finally pushed Henry over the edge; Eleanor’s supposed seduction merely provided grist to the mill.
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By late August 1239, Earl Simon had secured various royal loans amounting to no less than £1,565, a vast sum of money, in addition to the more modest sum of £15, which Eleanor had received, expressly by the king’s order, from the royal wardrobe.
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Enough was enough, for the time being at least.
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From their exile in France, it remained to be seen how long it would take for Henry III’s anger against the Montforts to wax and then wane.

6

Family, Faction and Politics

‘Against the designs of malicious people take care’

[Friar Adam Marsh to Eleanor de Montfort]
¹

During the 1240s and 1250s, Eleanor de Montfort and her husband, Earl Simon, came to rely increasingly upon the advice of their closest friends and allies at the Henrician court as they weathered the political storms that came their way. In the aftermath of their flight into exile in August 1239, it was not until April 1240 – eight months after their departure – that Earl Simon dared to set foot in his brother-in-law’s kingdom again. When he came, he came alone. Countess Eleanor, who was then pregnant again, remained overseas, a guest perhaps of her French in-laws at Montfort l’Amaury.
²
Simon’s decision to leave his wife behind might well have reflected the couple’s personal concerns about the warmth of their reception in England, as well as the countess’s state of health.