The Magnificent Century (26 page)

The other children were equally loyal to their parents and to one another. Margaret, the oldest daughter, who married Alexander III of Scotland, was passionately devoted to her husband but at every stage of her brief married life longed for her childhood home; for the beautiful mother, the smiling, talkative father, the handsome brothers and sisters, for the woods about Windsor, the park at Woodstock around which many of her fondest memories clustered. She made repeated visits to England, taking Alexander with her, and by doing so lost for her husband much of the loyalty of his Scottish subjects.

It remained for Edward to sum up the feeling which animated the royal family when he was in the Far East on a crusade and received word there of the deaths of an infant son and of his father. Edward bore the loss of his fine boy with fortitude but broke into loud lamentations when he learned of Henry’s demise, not caring, seemingly, that he had become King of England. His uncle, Charles of Anjou, was puzzled enough at his attitude to ask for an explanation. Edward answered, “The loss of children may be repaired by the same God who gave them; but when a man has lost a good father, it is not in the course of nature for God to send him another.”

Henry and Eleanor were almost as continuously on the wing as Raimund Berenger and his family had been in Provence when Eleanor was a young girl. They kept moving from Westminster to Windsor, to Wallingford, to Clarendon, to Winchester or Gloucester. It was necessary, therefore, to establish a family base for the children. Windsor was selected, partly because of the security it offered, partly because the Queen had always been fond of that great Norman castle. The new buildings had been completed by the time the children began to arrive. A curtain of masonry had been erected along the chalk ridge, ending in a tower called the Belfry. Another wall was carried back to connect with the keep, thus providing a line of granite defense. Within the enclosed space thus provided Henry had made for himself a series of handsome buildings, a King’s chamber
sixty feet long, a chamber for the Queen, a chapel called St. Edward’s, which was seventy feet long, and a Great Hall which was much larger still, a quite magnificent apartment in full keeping with the King’s grandiose ideas. These chambers were all paneled and beamed and hung with tapestries which gave them a warmer feeling than most of the royal residences.

When Edward began to grow up into an active and high-spirited boy, it was deemed advisable to provide special quarters for him, and new lodgings were built against the keep. From that time on he always had his own household, tutors, squires, grooms, valets, and cooks, his own chaplain and confessor. It was a noisy household, filled with talk of hunting and fighting, the clash of quarterstaves, the roar of laughter which followed the success of practical jokes. The other children seem to have been lodged in the family quarters already described, where each of them had servants of his own. They arrived with great regularity. Of those who survived infancy, Margaret was born on September 29, 1240, and named after the French Queen. Beatrice was born on June 25, 1242, and named for her maternal grandmother. Edmund, the second son, arrived on January 16, 1245. Katherine, the last child, was born on November 25, 1253. There were four other sons who died in infancy, Richard, John, William, and Henry.

The King was devoted to all his children, although he seems to have displayed some preference for Edmund, who became known as Crouchback. Whether this was due to a deformity, which might explain Henry’s special solicitude for him, or was merely a nickname bestowed on him when he was at the Crusades has never been satisfactorily settled. Edmund, at any rate, was handsome, sunny of disposition, and likable. When at Windsor, Henry always had his children around him. The birth of Margaret had left the Queen in a weakened condition, and this depressed his spirits so much that he paid small attention to the child. When he was told, however, that she gave great promise of beauty, he became quite exuberant and rushed to her cradle to give her the one kind of present he seems to have considered worth while, twelve ounces of gold.

Although indolent and averse to the concentrated work which personal rule involves, Henry was fond of detail in a way all his own. He liked to inject himself into such matters as the costumes his servants and officers were to wear. This man, he would direct, was to have a
tunic made of cloth at fourteen pence a yard and with fur lining. Another one was to have the same kind of tunic but without the fur lining. He personally directed certain charities, setting aside days for the royal palaces to be thrown open so that the poor could enter and be fed. On one occasion he took a leaf from the book of the mother of Thomas à Becket and had his children weighed. When the combined weight of the royal brood had been ascertained a corresponding amount of silver was donated to charity.

Henry was a gourmet and gave great attention to the matter of supplies for the royal table. It was one of the duties of sheriffs and bailiffs to keep the King well fed, and Henry saw to it that they did, requisitioning four hundred hens once from Buckingham, eels from Bristol on another occasion, and herring pies from Yarmouth. He was inordinately fond of salmon pasties and saw to it that there was always an assortment on hand. Once he became very wrathy on learning that his children were being given the iron-flavored wine of Wiltshire, which was comparatively cheap, and he peremptorily instructed the officers to give them nothing but the best imported wines. He failed, however, to detect an economy which was put into effect at the expense of the royal children. The Archbishop of York, who was left in charge at Windsor when the King and Queen were elsewhere and who seems to have had a parsimonious streak in him, gave an order that all good fat deer caught in the forests about Windsor were to be sent away for the use of the King, the lean ones to be kept for the children.

The royal children were spared one experience which might have been humiliating for them. Conscience-stricken over the state of royal finances, Henry and his consort decided to economize. As might be expected, they made a sort of public ritual of their resolution and arranged things so their subjects bore the brunt of the economy program. They reduced the wages paid to their servants and always dined out as the guests of wealthy people. The nobles, the bishops, the most prosperous of the citizens of London were all honored in turn. It was, of course, a great privilege for those selected to provide meals for the royal family and the members of their court, but a very expensive one, particularly as it was always the King’s expectation that he would be given a suitable present by his host on taking his departure.

Giving presents to people in the train of visiting celebrities was a
favorite pastime of this monarch of muddle and misrule. Even so small a matter as the proper reward for Clair and Lancelot, the fiddlers of Guy of Lusignan (one of the dependent half brothers), was deemed worth his attention, with the result that the sum of thirty-three shillings and fourpence was set aside for each. In 1227 he directed that fifty pounds of almonds, fifty of raisins, and a frail of figs (a frail was a basket capable of holding up to fifty pounds, a great deal of figs, surely!) should be sent to the unfortunate Pearl of Brittany, who was then being kept in Bristol Castle.

It may have been that the affection existing between the King and his children was due in some measure to the fact that he himself never quite grew up and could enter wholeheartedly into their pleasures. One of the great interests in his life was the creation of a menagerie. There had not been one in England, and Henry was determined to correct this deficiency. He started off with three leopards which the Emperor of Germany sent him, a delicate compliment to a king whose flag was emblazoned with the leopards of England. They were placed in cages in the Tower of London, a fitting place of captivity when it is considered how many great Englishmen during the centuries which followed would be kept there in cages of forbidding stone. Lesser animals were added, and then to the great delight of the King an elephant was obtained from the East. Henry had all the affection of a boy for the pachyderm and wept as bitterly as any of his children when the news reached them that their huge pet, finding the atmosphere of the Tower oppressive, perhaps, had died. His indignation was great when he learned that the constable of the Tower, a caitiff of blunted susceptibilities, had buried the body in the Tower ditch, and he sent off a peremptory order for the bones to be dug up at once and shipped to Westminster for a more fitting interment. Richard of Cornwall sent the King a herd of buffalo which proved a vexatious problem because they could not be kept with the rest of the menagerie. Finally the great favorite of all was added to the collection, a white bear. All members of the royal family loved the bear, but it became in a sense a symbol of the King’s tyranny over London. He was always demanding that something be provided for Bruin; a muzzle, a chain of iron, a daily fee of fourpence to provide the animal with suitable food.

It was no secret to those about him that Henry had never quite shaken off his adolescence, as shown by his exaggerated notions, his
sudden passions and abrupt shifts of mood. There was a strange creature about the court who had been a priest but was now kept as a jester. When the King’s half brother Aymer came to England from Poitou he and Henry would indulge in rough games with the not-overly-bright clown, pelting him with clods in summer and snowballs in winter, laughing uproariously the while.

Sometimes a saying of curious wisdom would issue from the mouth of this uncouth court fool. One evening at court he suddenly piped up in his shrill voice: “Hear ye, hear ye, my masters! Our King is like unto the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The King turned his head expectantly. It was quite clear that he was pleased, anticipating some complimentary allusion.

“Why so, sir fool?” he asked.

“Because the Lord was as wise at the moment of his birth as when he was thirty years old. So likewise our King is as wise at this moment”—the jester paused and winked slyly at the company—“as when he was a little child!”

Henry’s high neighing laugh did not join in that of his courtiers. The King was not amused.

The troubles of the royal couple, their discontents, their fears, their jealousies, were freely displayed before the princes and princesses. The children grew up, therefore, in full knowledge of the situation which existed, and their sympathies were strongly aroused in their parents’ behalf. They probably shared in the exultation of their mother when she learned that the original copy of Magna Charta had been destroyed in a fire at the papal palace in Rome. She believed this meant that the Charter had ceased to exist and they would never again have to bother about its vexatious clauses and restrictions! They undoubtedly joined in their father’s perturbation when the royal cupboard became so bare that orders had to be issued to John Mansel to raise money by pledging a valuable image of the Virgin Mary. Henry was sincerely devoted to the ritual of the Church, and it would take a serious crisis to bring him to such a pass.

The whole family shared in a most distressing misfortune, the loss of their home. The Second King’s House, as the new buildings at Windsor were called, began to fall to pieces. They were of stout enough construction, but there had been a miscalculation as to what the chalk ledge would hold. Seams opened up in the walls and a tendency to sag was noticed. Then the Almoner’s Tower gave way.
The crenelated ramparts buckled and heaved; the walls crumbled and finally down they came with a resounding crash and a cloud of dust which mounted higher than the top of the keep. The children were hastily removed to the First King’s House, and it was well that they were, because next the curtain toppled over the edge of the escarpment and even the King’s chamber, which they had hoped would stand, began to show signs of disintegration. After making some renovations the third Henry, a much crestfallen and indignant man, moved with his family to what was left of Henry I’s quarters.

Although a builder of taste and perception, Henry had very bad luck with his undertakings. His efforts to raise a stone wharf on the Thames side of the Tower of London resulted in two costly cave-ins and a rumor in London that the spirit of Thomas à Becket was interfering with the work. He persevered, nevertheless, and finally succeeded in erecting a stone crib which stood resolutely and permanently against the currents and tides of Thames water.

Princess Margaret’s early days were spent at Windsor. Soon after her birth Edward was given the royal castle of Eltham as his residence, and her companions at first were Edmund and a daughter of the Earl of Lincoln who lived as a ward with the royal family. Later there were more brothers and sisters and more wards, and so Margaret’s childhood was a pleasant one.

She more than fulfilled the promise of beauty which had sent Henry so eagerly to her cradle with his hands full of gold; a dark and lively child, full of the joy of life, a little impulsive, a little hasty of temper. When she was still a small girl the King of Scotland died, leaving a son named Alexander as his heir. The boy was a year younger than the English princess, but in order to assure a continuance of peace between the two countries a marriage was arranged between them. There was much sadness at Windsor when it was known that little Margaret was to be taken away. The princess herself seemed well disposed to the idea of being a queen and having a crown of her own, but she dreaded the separation it involved. The Scottish prince was crowned Alexander III when he was eight years old, and the marriage was solemnized at York two years later. It was an imposing ceremony and, of course, involved the bride’s father in
unnecessary mountains of debt as well as practically ruining the Archbishop of York, who had to entertain hundreds of visitors. The departure of the darkly lovely bride for her new home was not as keenly felt when it was seen that the youthful couple had conceived a romantic liking for each other.

But the reports which came back from Scotland soon thereafter were most disturbing. The stem regents of Scotland, John Baliol and Robert de Bos, had decided that their King and his bride must be kept in rigid separation until they were old enough for matrimony. Margaret was placed in Edinburgh Castle under conditions which amounted almost to imprisonment. Finally a letter from the little Queen herself was smuggled out of the castle and reached her parents. It painted an even more alarming picture. She was a prisoner, she was suffering from ill-health, her appeals to the stern Scottish lords had no effect. She begged her father to lead an army into Scotland and set her free.