THE MURDER OF HENRY OF ALMAIN
The horrors of Evesham came back, however, to haunt the Countess of Leicester and her family in 1271. On Friday 13 March 1271, Henry of Almain, who had been dispatched to Italy by the Lord Edward, then en route to the Near East on crusade, to act as a peace-broker between the Montfort sons and the English crown, was murdered. While Henry was hearing mass in the church of San Silvestro in Viterbo, he was brutally attacked by Guy.
45
This act, which deeply shocked the courts of Europe, resulted in the flight of the murderer and his accomplice, Simon junior. Both men suffered the immediate confiscation of their estates and offices.
46
It should be seen primarily as an opportunistic act of revenge for the deaths of Guy and Simon junior’s father and brother at Evesham, and perhaps also for Henry’s earlier desertion by turning his back on the Montfortian cause in 1263. Another significant factor that riled Earl Simon’s sons further was Henry’s recent marriage to a Gascon heiress, Constance, the daughter of Gaston de Béarn, a marriage that threatened the Montforts’ interests in their father’s former county of Bigorre.
47
The murder at Viterbo cast a dark shadow over all Countess Eleanor’s surviving sons. The Lord Edward strongly suspected Amaury of involvement, although a spell of illness in Padua, which was subsequently confirmed by the bishop, chapter and university there, apparently proved that Amaury was not witness to, or obviously complicit in, the deed.
48
What is clear, however, is that the Lord Edward did not extend his suspicion to his aunt, Eleanor, at Montargis. Furthermore, when Simon and Guy fled in the aftermath of the murder, they remained in Italy, rather than seeking direct and open aid from their mother or their Montfort kinsmen in France. Simon died a short time later, in a castle near Siena,
49
while Guy evaded capture with the assistance of his father-in-law. After his excommunication by the Pope in April 1273, Guy surrendered and was imprisoned, albeit in the custody of his former lord, Charles of Anjou.
50
THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD I
With the death of Henry III on 16 November 1272, the Lord Edward, who was then still absent on crusade, succeeded to the English throne as Edward I. Edward’s accession smoothed the way, with a bit of help from the new French king, Philip III, for a period of reconciliation between Eleanor and the English court. When, on his way back from the East, Edward visited Melun on the outskirts of Paris in the summer of 1273, it is likely that he met with his aunt for the first time in almost eight years. At the time of his accession and, no doubt, with a view to conducting a successful exercise in public relations that was designed to heal past divisions, he offered Eleanor an olive branch. On 10 August 1273, Edward wrote to the royal chancellor, Walter of Merton, in England, announcing that, ‘at the instance of the most serene prince and our dearest kinsman, Philip, by the grace of God, illustrious king of France’, he had withdrawn all his indignation and all the rancour within his soul towards Eleanor, Countess of Leicester. Eleanor, the letter recorded, was now admitted ‘to our grace and firm peace’, provided that she continued to behave ‘well and faithfully to us’.
51
During the visit, Edward felt sufficiently well disposed towards his aunt to loan her £200, a debt that she subsequently repaid in full to the keeper of the royal wardrobe in the autumn of 1274.
52
The advent of more friendly relations paved the way for Eleanor to pursue, once more, the matter of her Marshal dower. Payments for her dower had ceased at Easter in 1265 and had not resumed since.
53
After Evesham, Eleanor lost possession of her English estates. The local jurors whose testimonies were recorded on the Kent hundred rolls in 1274–5, for example, recorded how ‘William de Valence, [Eleanor’s half-brother who was married to one of the Marshal co-heirs] after the battle of Evesham entered that manor [of Sutton, Kent] and claimed it by hereditary right of his wife’.
54
William de Valence also held Kemsing, together with another manor, Brabourne, from which Eleanor had transported supplies to Dover Castle in 1265. The jurors who reported on Brabourne, though, were more reticent about their new lord. Here, the jurors recalled that ‘King John held Brabourne manor through escheat and now Lord William de Valence holds that manor by what warrant they do not know’.
55
Perhaps, in this expression of uncertainty about William’s right to the manor, the jurors retained vestiges of loyalty to their former countess.
In recovering her lost rights, the connections that Eleanor had fostered with the French royal court again proved to be invaluable. On 10 October 1273, Philip III wrote to Edward I, expressing concern for the safety of his father’s soul in the afterlife, on the grounds that the 15,000 marks which had been deposited in the New Temple at Paris during Louis IX’s lifetime as security for the settlement of Eleanor’s dower had been removed by the English king after Evesham.
56
Spurred into action, Edward I issued an order, just two and a half weeks later, for the Marshal heirs to answer at the English royal Exchequer for their outstanding debts to the Countess of Leicester.
57
In addition to this, Edward I took steps to ensure that Eleanor’s English properties from her first marriage were restored to her.
58
Eleanor, dowager Countess of Leicester and dowager Countess of Pembroke, died at Montargis in France on 13 April 1275 (the eve of Easter).
59
Shortly before her death, she was visited by Margaret of Provence, now the dowager Queen of France, who subsequently wrote to Edward I, relaying the final wishes of the English king’s aunt. In a final act of intercession on Eleanor’s behalf, the French queen urged Edward to observe the terms of Eleanor’s testament and to show pity to her son Amaury by returning him to the king’s grace.
60
Eleanor’s death was not, however, entirely that of a defeated exile. From the convent of Montargis, she had remained active in pursuit of her family’s interests right up until her death. On 9 January 1275, just three months before her death, Countess Eleanor had appointed Master Nicholas of Waltham, a canon of Lincoln, as her attorney for one year to pursue and protect her rights in the English royal courts.
61
Countess Eleanor also lived just long enough to see the marriage, by proxy, of her only surviving daughter and namesake, Eleanor, to her dead husband’s former ally, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, a match that her husband, Earl Simon, had arranged many years earlier.
62
In death, Countess Eleanor’s heart reposed in the Abbey Royal of St-Antoine-des-Champs, a Cistercian nunnery on the outskirts of Paris.
63
Although Eleanor’s will is now lost, other records reveal that she bequeathed £220 16s.
par
. (Parisian money) to the nuns of this house for an earlier debt, a sum Eleanor’s executors, including her son, Amaury, finally attempted to recover in 1286 with Edward I’s aid from the Marshal co-heirs.
64
Even in death, the legacy of Eleanor’s battle for her Irish Marshal dower, a battle that had dominated so much of her adult life, lived on.
Notes
Notes on Preface
| K. Asaji (2010), ‘Household Accounts of the Countess of Leicester, 1265’, in idem,
The
Angevin Empire and the Community of the Realm in England
. Kansai: Kansai University Press, pp. 162–88, at p. 163.
|
| L. Kjær (2011), ‘Food, Drink and Ritualised Communication in the Household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265’,
Journal of Medieval History
, 37, 75–89. I am grateful to Lars for sending me a copy of his article.
|
Notes on Chapter 1
| Prinet expressed doubt about the identity of this tomb’s incumbent. The heart of another lady from the Montfort family, whose name was not recorded, was buried in the cloister there in 1294. Prinet also considered it odd that the tomb apparently displayed the arms of Eleanor’s sons, rather than her ancestors: M. Prinet (1917), ‘Deux monuments funéraires de l’abbaye de Saint-Antoine des Champs’,
Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France
, 80–83; C. Bémont (1930),
Simon de Montfort
(2nd edn), trans. E. F. Jacob. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 259 n. 1.
|
| One aunt was also the grandmother of King Louis IX of France:
Wendover
, iii, p. 113; L. J. Wilkinson (2009), ‘The Imperial Marriage of Isabella of England, Henry III’s Sister’, in E. Oakley-Brown and L. J. Wilkinson (eds),
The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship, Medieval to Early Modern
. Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 20–36, at pp. 26–7. Eleanor’s maternal uncle, Peter de Courtenay, was the Latin emperor of Constantinople: N. Vincent (1999), ‘Isabella of Angoulême: John’s Jezebel’, in S. D. Church (ed.),
King John: New Interpretations
. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 165–219, at pp. 177–8, 180–1 tables 2–3. For an excellent biographical study of Eleanor’s cousin, Berenguela of Castile, see: M. Shadis (2009),
Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages
. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
|
| Majorie Chibnall, for example, observed much the same about Eleanor’s great grandmother, the Empress Matilda: M. Chibnall (1991),
The Empress Matilda
. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 9–10.
|
| Eleanor’s surviving siblings were: Henry, the future King of England, Richard, the future Earl of Cornwall, and her sisters Joan and Isabella. See D. A. Carpenter (1990),
The Minority of Henry III
. London: Methuen; N. Denholm-Young (1947),
Richard of Cornwall
. Oxford: Basil Blackwell; J. Nelson (2007), ‘Scottish Queenship in the Thirteenth Century’, in B. Weiler et al. (eds),
Thirteenth Century England XI: Proceedings of the Gregynog Conference 2005
. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 61–81, at pp. 68–70; Wilkinson, ‘The Imperial Marriage of Isabella of England’, pp. 20–36. On high rates of infant mortality, even among the wealthy, see N. Orme (1984),
From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530
. London: Methuen and Co., p. 3; D. Youngs (2006),
The Life Cycle in Western Europe, c. 1300–c. 1500
. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 24–5.
|
| On this see J. C. Holt (1992),
The Northerners
(revised edn). Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 144.
|
