11

The Queen and Her Interests

So far, we have seen the circumstances which took Eleanor to her thirty-third year and to her coronation as queen. This tells us much about the situations which formed her views and tastes. In addition, the preceding account of her work gives a better idea of her abilities and one of her major interests as a queen. But to date there has been no sensible place to stop and ask what Eleanor was like. What would those who actually knew her have told us about her?

The natural starting point is her looks. Here, one might imagine that the answer should be simple and that with all the commemorative statues of Eleanor one would be spoilt for choice. Sadly however, life is never that simple. We get very little assistance from the cross effigies; we cannot be sure that any real portraiture was even intended. Furthermore, they were not made by the most senior artist involved, Torel, but by more junior stone carvers. In addition, those which survive have been so affected by the passage of time that very little can be seen. So too with the stonework head supposed to be of Eleanor at Lincoln Cathedral; this has been restored from a degraded original.

The primary source to which one is driven, therefore, is the London tomb effigy by Torel. This gives some assistance, but it must be carefully weighed. One cannot take it that the effigy which we have of her is a true resemblance, since portraiture was not an established art. However, nor are tomb effigies completely anonymous. So, just as Edward’s forceful chin seems to make it into just about every contemporaneous sketch of him, one can tell that some attempt at resemblance was made by effigy artists; for example, the slight droop of Henry III’s eye which is contemporaneously reported is just about discernible in his effigy, also by Torel. At St Denis, Isabelle of Aragon’s tomb effigy has softly dimpled hands, and Charles of Anjou’s nose and massive forehead seem unlikely to be accidental. What is more, it appears likely that Eleanor visited Torel before her death, providing an opportunity for working sketches to be made from life. One can therefore expect that the figure who appears on Eleanor’s tomb is not dissimilar from Eleanor as she was known to those around her. The question is of the extent to which particular aspects of the depiction can be trusted. This is a question which can be answered by comparing aspects of the image to other sources.

The face on the tomb is almost a pure oval, but with a rounded chin just breaking the symmetry slightly. There is a lively pair of sketches of Edward and Eleanor found in a document in the British Library (the Cotton Manuscript), each of which show clearly Edward’s drooping eye, inherited from Henry, and they therefore appear to be a real attempt at portraiture. Eleanor’s sketch in this document agrees with the tomb effigy on the shape of her face. There is therefore a case for accepting that this detail is from life. Interestingly, this facial shape also appears in the depiction of the elegant ‘hunting lady with dogs’ in the Alphonso Psalter. Although the book cannot be definitively traced to a commission by Eleanor, its origin in the London Dominican priory, which she favoured, and its purpose, for the marriage of her son Alphonso, raise a strong presumption that she was the commissioner of the work. If so, and given that Eleanor was a keen huntress and favoured hunting with dogs despite Edward’s own preference for falconry, this is a picture which might well attempt some resemblance to Eleanor.

The effigy’s mouth is small and somewhat secretive, but upturned, showing resemblance to the Cotton Manuscript sketch; and, again suggesting portraiture, the sketch of Edward suggests a straight or even downturned line for his mouth. Once again, the psalter illustration provides a match. Together with the chin it suggests a face that would be charming when smiling, and even more so when laughing.

On all depictions, Eleanor’s nose is long, straight and slim. It is noticeably a slimmer nose than that of Henry III, or that shown on Eleanor of Provence’s likely image in Westminster Abbey’s Muniment Room (and hilariously more elegant than Charles of Anjou’s effigy nose). Again, this suggests an element of real portraiture. Another point of interest is that there is considerable similarity as regards Eleanor’s nose to that of Eleanor of Aquitaine, as depicted on her tomb at Fontevrault. In both sketch and tomb depiction and in the psalter there is a fairly high forehead, well-arched brows and large, almond-shaped eyes, not tilted upwards at the end but more sleepy in their setting.

As for colouring, this is always difficult to judge, since the chroniclers, only seeing the queens formally if at all, would never see their hair colour. The only occasion on which a decent queen’s hair might be shown in public was on the occasion of coronation, and few of the commentators whose works survive (being generally monks) ever viewed a coronation. Eleanor’s coronation was, of course, described by the chroniclers, but among the many wonders of the day the colour of her hair does not seem to have been reported back to the writers. One may infer, however, that if Eleanor had been the possessor of breathtaking blonde tresses it would have been considered worth mentioning. In fact with Eleanor, her own colour choices make it almost certain that her colouring was dark; as will be seen, she favoured reds and greens, colours which no blonde would be likely to choose but which are very becoming to brunettes. In relation to hair, the cross images are perhaps at last of some use: those which are not veiled show thick, wavy hair, worn long.

In terms of overall appearance, therefore, we can envisage a fine-looking Spanish lady, whose eyes and hair were probably her greatest beauty, with a determined chin and a winning smile. But, as we have already noted of the younger Eleanor, there is no sense that she was considered a notable beauty or that she presented herself to people as a woman remarkable for her looks.¹

This obviously brings us to the question of the kind of person Eleanor was. On this point, little emerges openly from the records which we have; again Eleanor lurks in the shadows. Parsons concluded that the household records indicate a number of close ties and therefore no lack of affection and a person who was able to interact in a congenial way with those around her. However, rather more than this can be said. The records show us that Eleanor was plainly very much alive to the needs and wishes of the people who surrounded her. They repeatedly show small acts of kindness – paying for medical expenses, making provision for people’s children, lending her valuable books to members of her household, giving her ladies leave to visit their families even when she herself was unwell, going out of her way to visit a friend who was sick, putting aside her own illness to honour a humble wedding among her servants. She was kind and considerate to those around her and those with whom she had direct contact, and that consideration was not limited to the more distinguished members of her acquaintance: servants and tradesmen could be assured of considerate treatment from her. What she was not was overtly or indiscriminately charming. There are no references (as there are with Eleanor of Provence) to her ‘debonairité’.

For all her kindness, however, the records show also a very different streak in her character, which most commentators have found difficult to reconcile with her traditional reputation as a sweet and merciful queen, and with the kind of documented details described above.

A good deal of this material comes from the evidence about Eleanor’s work, and she was certainly somewhat hardnosed when it came to matters of business. The other evidence, substantially from two letters from Archbishop Pecham – one to Eleanor and one to a person involved in dealings with her – suggest rather more than this.²

The first letter runs as follows:

My lady, the saints teach us that women are naturally greater in pity and more devout than men are, and scripture therefore says ‘he that hath no wife will wander about mourning’. And because God has given you greater honour than to others of your lordship it is right that your pity should surpass the pity of all men and women in your lordship. We therefore ask you for God’s sake and our Lady’s that you will incline the heart of our Lord the king towards our dear brother, the bishop of Winchester … my lady we require you for God’s sake that you will do so in this matter that those who say that you cause the king to use severity may see and know the contrary … My lady, for God’s sake, let pity overcome you and our Lord keep you, body and soul, forever…

This letter shows two important things. Firstly, Eleanor was perceived by the archbishop (who knew her fairly well) as being somewhat deficient in empathy or pity. Secondly, there was a view, presumably among those quite close to the royal family or the lords of the Church, being Pecham’s likely focus groups, that she encouraged the king to harshness rather than acting as peacemaker and pacifying his wrath as she was exhorted to do in the coronation oath and by her confessors.

The second letter is one from 1279 to the nuns at Hedingham. This convent had refused to admit a lady whose application was supported by the queen. Pecham warned them in no uncertain terms that they would be ill advised to contest the matter: ‘If you know what is good for you, you’ll admit her’ (‘si bene sapuessitis’). The implication is clear; Eleanor was known to be highly intolerant of having her will contradicted and to be the kind of foe you do not want to have.

Two further letters, mentioned in Chapter 10, reinforce this impression, albeit indirectly. In May 1283, Bishop Godfrey Giffard of Worcester advised the prior of Deerhurst to present the queen’s chaplain to a church, warning against incurring royal wrath. While it is not explicitly Eleanor’s wrath which is mentioned, that is the plain implication. Equally, it is implied that, if Eleanor decided she wanted her way, Edward would almost certainly support her; thus the closeness of the marriage and everyone’s knowledge of that closeness is again glimpsed in this sidelight.

In another similar case, very possibly a precursor to one of the letters to Eleanor quoted above, Pecham warned the Bishop of Winchester against the dangers of failing to appoint Eleanor’s Spanish physician to a living. Although the indignation there mentioned is the king’s, it again seems plain, particularly in the light of the plea in mitigation Pecham later addressed to Eleanor on behalf of the imprudent bishop, that it is actually Eleanor’s wrath which is feared – and which duly followed.

As if this were not sufficient material, two other examples can be given. The first is a letter from the Count of Bigorre in 1283, reporting that he is regrettably unable to fall in with a request of Eleanor’s, and asking to be excused and sheltered from her displeasure at his failure. The second is the exchange in 1285 when the people of Southampton sought to get Eleanor of Provence to intercede for them with Edward, in relation to Eleanor’s exactions from them. It is apparent that Edward did not press the matter, but effectively ‘shopped’ Eleanor’s tenants and his mother to her instead; Eleanor writes in great displeasure to Edmund of Cornwall, telling him to make sure the townspeople pay up.³

There are two interesting points which emerge from this. The first is the complete contrast between the picture of Eleanor traditionally portrayed – gently submissive, pacific – and the woman who had bishops and abbots across the country shaking in their shoes. Indubitably Eleanor was no mouse but a formidable and sometimes terrifying woman. What is also interesting to note is that Eleanor was plainly capable of losing her temper quite dramatically and did so at least occasionally when crossed. This conjures up again Alfonso’s injunctions for the raising of a queen: a princess should be prevented ‘from yielding to anger for … it is the one thing in the world which most quickly induces women to commit sin’; and it reinforces the inference that it was written with Eleanor in mind. Secondly, it shows that she kept this facet of her personality well hidden from the wider public; neither the abbey nor the convent – nor even the Bishop of Winchester, who was one of the major princes of the Church – had grasped what those who regularly featured in Eleanor’s witness lists and hence knew her better were aware of: that it was foolish to cross her.

How do these two sides of Eleanor reconcile themselves? Some have seen this as impossible, but in my own view the answer is not particularly surprising. Very few real people fall simply on one side of the good/bad dichotomy. Eleanor, like any person we meet in real life, had good qualities and bad ones. It seems quite plain that she had, when roused, a sharp temper which impressed itself on those about her. It is equally plain that, like many executives or professionals performing high-pressure jobs, she liked to have things done her way and was intolerant of those who did not accommodate her. However, outside her professional sphere, she would switch off and concentrate on the more pleasant aspects of life. In this realm, it would appear, she was almost always a kind and considerate person to deal with.

A tantalising question is whether this fiery personality entirely confined itself to Eleanor’s business doings, or if it sometimes made itself felt in the domestic environment. My own suspicion is that it did, albeit probably rarely. The facts which suggest this are indirect, and derive from the rather tempestuous behaviour of the royal princesses and Edward’s somewhat surprising acceptance of such behaviour. Thus Joan once refused to accept any money from her own wardrobe keeper after a row, and ran up considerable debts as a result; Edward did not, as one might expect, make her face the consequences, but paid the debts. Joan (again) refused to get married until she had an equal number of servants as her sisters; Edward hired the requisite number on a ‘temp’ basis until her wedding day. Elizabeth threw a tantrum when certain jewels due to be prepared for her wedding were not ready on time – leading to generous monetary compensation from her father. She then flatly refused to leave England once married, leading to Edward himself losing his temper and throwing some of her jewels into the fireplace – but she got her way. Of course, the princesses’ tempers may simply have been inherited from Edward; but, given the evidence of the letters, one suspects not. All in all, one may at least suspect that on occasion even Edward learnt to purchase peace on Eleanor’s terms.⁴

Having said that, there seems no reason to suspect that anyone but Edward wielded ultimate authority in the royal household. All Eleanor’s work was done very much under his aegis, with him assisting in providing funds both for purchases of and works at her properties. Eleanor’s work came to a grinding halt repeatedly when it came up against the exigencies of Edward’s own priorities. Furthermore, while an example can be found of Edward trying to intercede with Eleanor unsuccessfully on a matter of minor moment to him, there is at least one example of Edward putting his foot down when Eleanor sought to influence him in her favour. During the Gascon stay, Eleanor had word from one of her debtors, Geoffrey de Southorpe, that he had sold his manor of Southorpe to Stephen de Cornhill, who had (colluding with the Abbot of Peterborough) conveyed it to the king’s clerk, Elias de Bekyngham. Southorpe was, as he reminded Eleanor, deliciously close to her existing manors of Torpel and Upton. Eleanor duly went to Edward, demanding that the manor be taken into his hands, with the intent that he would then grant it to her. But the abbey had despatched their own advocate, who said that the abbey were merely trying to buy the land through Bekyngham’s agency. Edward is said to have told Eleanor that ‘he would do nothing contrary to right’ – a doubtless trying reminder of her own family’s theory of kingship. He then ordered an inquisition into the facts. Southorpe was put into debtors’ prison by Eleanor, and obtained his release by conveying to her some of his remaining lands. Peterborough Abbey obtained the land only after Eleanor’s death, and the seller had to endow an anniversary service for the queen.⁵

As for the lighter side of Eleanor’s personality, humour is, of course, something which is particularly hard to capture. But we can be almost certain that Eleanor had a very lively sense of humour. For one thing, she actually employed two fools, Robert and Thomas. Both seem to have been highly esteemed: Thomas received a horse from her executors and Eleanor bought Robert’s wife an expensive furred robe. Furthermore, it is plain that humour of a fairly broad type was alive and well at the court generally. Some of these jokes will appear as the chronological story progresses but a few examples set the tone. The first is the story of the post-Lenten ambush. After forty days of abstinence, Edward, seeking to rejoin Eleanor in her bed, would every year be held hostage by her ladies until he paid them a sizeable ransom. The humour here is frankly racy – it is plain to everyone that Edward is madly keen to be back in bed with his wife, and it seems hilariously funny to them all for her ladies to pin him down, struggling, until he pays up.

Similarly slapstick is the story of Edward’s bet with the laundress that she could not ride his horse, which has the woman leaping onto the mettlesome horse and galloping off, leaving him red faced. One might also think of the laughs involved in the riding of horses into the post-coronation feast, and a later party in Wales where the royal circle danced until the floor gave way. It is unlikely that any of this would have taken place if Eleanor did not enter into the fun also. She was therefore a person who was ready to laugh and to share a joke. There is also, as we shall see, evidence of Eleanor’s humour manifesting itself in the books which she commissioned, and sometimes in little touches of wordplay or architecture; in passing, glimpses of ‘in jokes’ peek out at us. All in all, we can be sure that Eleanor was far from sober or implacable in her daily dealings with those close to her. She liked a joke, and liked a household which was full of jokes. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Eleanor enjoyed making her friends laugh in turn.⁶

This more informal approach also seems consistent with the picture which emerges of Eleanor as regards clothes. There is good reason to suppose that Eleanor (like Edward) was far from being absorbed by this subject, and this is perhaps not surprising given the evidence of her very strong interests in work and in sport in the form of hunting. The evidence begins early: Eleanor’s arrival in England in 1255 without the right clothes speaks volumes; what remotely clothes-centred woman would face a new family and a new job without all the right clothes – and the best she could afford? This fact alone tells us that for Eleanor there were many things more important than appearances. But it does not stand alone; the picture is reiterated by the limited extent to which descriptions of clothes feature in the wardrobe accounts or in the chronicles. Under Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, royal clothes were noteworthy – and usually new. The directions for the clothes for the Scottish wedding provide a fine example, with colours, cloth of gold, and furs all being minutely specified even for outfits which were to be worn only for a few hours.

Under Eleanor, smart and seemly seems to have been the watchword; the pictures which emerge from the wardrobe accounts of Eleanor’s daughters having to make do and mend, and trot their smart dress out for the fifth or sixth time, even if they had ripped most of the buttons off dancing last time, are both hilarious and revealing. Interestingly, too, there is less sign of this prudent approach after Eleanor’s death: the royal princesses were rather more indulged in their fineries. However, that is not to say that the proper level of grandeur was lacking: clothes, when purchased, were clearly very good and serious thought was given to their fabrics and to their adornment. We can see that Eleanor (as queen at least) was far from being scruffy. The flavour is, however, that clothes were to be good and comfortable, and to be smart enough to do the job. Again Eleanor’s early training under Alfonso echoes here: the Siete Partidas directs that a prince or princess should be taught to wear fine and elegant clothes, like accustoming a horse to harness. Eleanor accepted her fine harness, but never came to love it.⁷

When it comes to her domestic surroundings, however, a marked change of emphasis emerges. There is every evidence that Eleanor liked her surroundings to be comfortable to the point of luxury; the home which she created was a thoroughly pleasant place in all its appointments. What is more, it is plain that all around her understood that this level of comfort was very important to her and that she wished to maintain it, while also maintaining the very active programme which was hers and Edward’s modus operandi. The fact that a high degree of comfort was absolutely non-negotiable is well illustrated by the fact that her living quarters in less prepared locations (such as Rhuddlan and Caernarfon) were subjected to considerable overhauls prior to her arrival. Proper roofs (lead), painted walls, glazed windows (sometimes with decorative or coloured glazing), coloured candles, and at least a simulacrum of a proper garden – with a lawn and some sort of water feature – were imperative.

The same message emerges from a consideration of the places where the court generally stopped. While not palaces, properly so called, these ‘hunting lodges’ tended to be ones which had been the subject of major renovations by that arbiter of domestic comfort and style, Henry III. Thus Clarendon was a favoured stop. Here, we know that the wainscoting of the queen’s room was green, starred with gold, and that the walls were painted as green curtains. Geddington was another fairly frequent stop throughout the reign, from December 1274 right up until Eleanor’s final trip north. A proper hunting lodge under Henry II, it was the subject of a substantial building programme under Henry III. The great hall was overhauled with decorative windows (some with columns, some round and some with stained glass), and further windows were added to the queen’s gallery and another major chamber; the queen’s rooms were enlarged and redecorated, while the king’s room had decorative green panelling with small gilt shields. The king’s and queen’s chapels were painted green spangled with gold.

Even well-decorated venues, though, had to be adjusted to her taste: the chapel at Westminster (which was obviously frequently visited) had to be repainted and re-gilded, though it is unlikely that Eleanor of Provence left it in a state of disrepair. But the importance of such comfort can maybe best be seen by considering a location not previously honoured by Henry III; we know that Eleanor’s chambers at the little-used venue of Banstead (visited only once, on 12 May 1278) had the walls painted with colours before her stay.⁸

Sadly, owing to the loss of Eleanor’s accounts for the relevant years, the precise details of the work done by Eleanor at Leeds Castle, where her own taste will have directed the work, are not known. We can, however, be sure that domestic comfort will have been well attended to; the one well-known aspect of the works there effectively proves this. For at Leeds one feature was what was known as ‘the King’s Bath house’, which was certainly tiled and probably included a system for piping water direct. This seems to have been the first such bath house in English history. This feature is also an obvious reflection of Eleanor’s fond memories of the glories of baths in her home country – and a desire to approximate to them in her new home. Indeed, Eleanor may properly be credited with pushing bathroom civilisation in this country forward more generally, for she also ensured that proper bathrooms (albeit probably lacking the piped water) were installed at Langley and Westminster.

As for colours, the rich colours of red and green seem to have been favourites in terms of decor, as they are mentioned repeatedly. They also figure large in descriptions of accessories and jewels; for example, an inventory of the effects of the Earl of Hereford (Eleanor’s son-in-law) included a great crown set with rubies, emeralds and pearls which had been devised by Eleanor to her daughter.⁹

Although interior design does not appear to have captivated Eleanor quite to the extent it did Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, the records do show that Eleanor had a taste for fine items, with a multitude of small luxuries being detailed in the wardrobe records – a fact which is reflected in Agnes Strickland’s portrait of Eleanor and which Parsons amusingly suggests produces a version of Eleanor ‘as a housewife with all the modern conveniences’. The joke conceals a truth, however – Eleanor did give great attention to the making of an elegant and comfortable home. Here, her early years, surrounded by fine items of craftsmanship, shine through. Thus, her wardrobe records describe purchases of basins of Damascene work. This probably reflects ‘Damasquinado de Oro’, the art of decorating non-precious metals with gold which had become very common in Castile, and particularly Toledo. In this tradition, an ornate gold leaf pattern is sunk into steel which is later treated to turn it a glossy black. Eleanor also sent for other, more informal, brightly painted bowls of Andalusian manufacture. Other items bought included cloths from Tripoli, Venetian vases (possibly Murano-type blown glass), tapestries from Cologne and enamel caskets from Limoges.

Key to Eleanor’s style appears to be the fact that even small items were required to be beautiful; in 1284 she purchased knives with jasper handles, and in 1289 she had her goldsmith add enamels and ornaments to the hilts of some knives. She had candles decorated in her favourite colours of red and green. Her mirrors, glass and metal, were housed in ivory cases and she purchased silver ornaments for her books. In the list of her plate after death also figure a fork of crystal, and a silver fork handled with ebony and ivory, thereby lending some ballast to the tradition that Eleanor was the introducer of this sine qua non of elegant dining, some 300 years before it was described by Thomas Coryate, and 500 years before the idea really caught on in England. This supposition is reinforced by the fact that the next instance of a fork being recorded is after Edward I’s death, when six silver forks and one of gold were recorded in his possession.¹⁰

And then there were jewels – a number of records show such items being purchased from Parisian or Florentine merchants. But at least some of her jewellery was made closer to home – in Rhuddlan Castle in 1282, the queen had a building made for her goldsmith.

Then, of course, there were the tapestries. It will be recalled that decorating a room in this manner (including, shockingly, placing carpets on the floor) was seen as particularly Spanish at the time of Eleanor’s arrival. Eleanor’s own records show that such decoration remained close to her heart – aside from the Cologne tapestries mentioned above, four green and three red carpets were purchased for her by Edward in 1278, and she paid £5 to a ‘tapeciarius’ called John de Winton in 1286. She even employed her own tapestry keeper and there are references scattered through the records to the carpets and tapestries of the queen’s chamber.

Her taste in this regard apparently set the fashion for the court: one of the duties of Edward I’s royal chamberlain was ‘to ensure that the king’s chambers and banquets are … adorned with hangings’. Moreover, the records show her lending a set of tapestries to her close friend John de Vescy, and their having to be reclaimed after his death from Anthony Bek, the Bishop of Durham, who was plainly thought to be likely to keep his hands on such fine work.

Not all such decorative work was of foreign manufacture. John de Winton’s supplies may well have been of domestic manufacture, and certainly England produced textiles of which Eleanor was proud; she sent her brother Alfonso hangings and vestments which she had had made which he later bequeathed to the cathedral of Seville.

Overall, therefore, a tone of considerable domestic luxury emerges when one considers Eleanor’s taste. This is further emphasised when one considers that, after her death, those items of her carpets hangings and jewels which were not gifted elsewhere – in other words the less desirable portions of her collection – were sold for the staggering sum of £617 11s 10d.¹¹

As for food, again Eleanor’s early tastes acquired in Spain show through clearly. She was plainly pleased with the fruits which were available in England: apples, pears and quinces feature often, and though not shown in the records, grapes were available and are likely to have been enjoyed too. She was also sent gifts of fruit by the Earl of Lincoln on her return in 1289, and also by two poor women – suggesting that if anything about Eleanor was notorious, it was a taste for fruit. But it is also clear that she missed the more exotic fruits of home. Her accounts show repeated entries for fruit imported from Spain and indeed her eagerness for the fruit can be seen in the fact that she is recorded sending the messenger to meet the ship. The fruits purchased included figs, pomegranates, lemons and oranges and also dates and raisins. Vines and apples from France also feature as introductions in her gardens. Saffron seems also to have been missed; this is surely the ‘strange colour’ of which four earthen jars were purchased in November 1289. Unsurprisingly, too, there are records of purchases of olive oil for her. She also thought well of the onions of her maternal county – in 1280 she sent for seventeen large baskets of them. However, it seems she also developed something of a passion for soft cheeses, particularly those of Brie; there are repeated items in the wardrobe accounts for the purchase of such cheeses and the presentation of a cheese for Christmas for her in 1286 suggests her taste for them was something of a joke among her intimates.¹²

So far as anything about Eleanor’s personality is well known, it is her taste for gardens and here, too, the influence of her childhood is strongly felt. Eleanor did not simply employ local men, but sent back to the Iberian peninsula for specialists who understood the idiom she sought to invoke. She thus employed a number of Aragonese gardeners at Langley, among whom was Ferdinand ‘Ispannus’, the gardener, and she left money in her will for them to return to Spain. A consideration of their work reveals why they may have been called for. The documentation shows that part of the extensive works undertaken in constructing the new gardens at Langley involved the digging of wells and ditches, and the documentation includes a layout of multiple wells. This is highly suggestive of some approach to the Spanish water gardens of her childhood.¹³

Langley is not the only place where the water gardens of Castile are referenced. There seems to be evidence of her having brought the Spanish/Arabic taste for water gardens with her to England, and created a number of homages to her native lands in her gardens. The most obvious influence of her home and its water gardens is perhaps the gloriette – the small structure which juts out into the water from the main castle at Leeds Castle, which may almost be a tribute to the famous garden of Ismail al-Mamun at Toledo. But also her garden at Westminster boasted a lead-lined pond, overlooked by an oriel window and filled by pipes from the river (hence running water rather than a static pond). There is also mention of a water channel at the Queen’s Garden at Wolvesey Castle in Winchester. At Rhuddlan there was a garden with a fishpond and seats surrounding it.

There is also evidence of the erection in 1275 of a magnificent ornamental fountain at the mews near the site of the later Charing Cross, which had water brought by aqueduct from neighbouring land and pouring through four leopard-head spouts into a lead pool, the whole being surmounted by a bronze falcon. Pausing here, we may see two small private jokes – the use of the leopard’s head rather than the maned lion used in Islamic gardens was doubtless a reference to the English coat of arms, which showed leopards, and the falcon on its summit was a reference to the location in the royal mews (mews then being associated with falconry rather than horses).¹⁴

Nor did her interest stop there. At Langley, Eleanor provided for a paved cloister, a garden and a park as well as the water features. Reflecting her interest in fruit, and the difficulties of obtaining enough for her taste in England, one feature of the extensive gardens planted there included apple trees (sent by Eleanor from Ponthieu and Aquitaine) and vines, which had their own ‘vineator’, the deliciously named James Frangypany. There was also apparently a summerhouse – a lodge known as ‘little London’ with a hall and chambers for recreation, again reminiscent of the garden pavilions of her homeland. At Westminster, the garden was replanted in 1277 under Eleanor’s direction with vines and roses set around a lawn, and later improved with new cuttings and turves and a herbarium. A herbarium also featured in another of Eleanor’s gardens at Mauléon in Gascony.¹⁵

There are also suggestions that Eleanor introduced Spanish plants; the hollyhock is one plant first reported in England at about this time which is commonly said to have been introduced by her, and its old-fashioned name of ‘Spanish rose’ does lend some colour to this tradition. Given the style of Spanish gardens, it is unlikely to have been a feature of a main garden, though its medicinal properties would qualify it to feature in one of Eleanor’s herbaria. The suggestions that she introduced sweet rocket, wallflower, stock and perhaps lavender seem speculative – and the latter is far more likely to have been introduced by Eleanor of Provence. More certainly, there is evidence of her introducing certain French fruit varieties such as the apple varieties mentioned above and the cooking pear Cailloel.¹⁶

A keen interest thus is plain. But the very great importance to her of a garden is perhaps best indicated by the fact that when Eleanor was to sojourn in the building site that was Caernarfon Castle, arrangements were made to bring a garden to the castle. Likewise, in her earlier 1282 stay at Rhuddlan Castle, another garden was constructed – the details of which do not survive but some hints of which can be ascertained from the fragmentary accounts which remain for that period. So 6,000 turves were brought down by boat to turf the 80–90-foot courtyard (which still exists, albeit with no trace of the garden). Around the well, whose roof was boarded, Willemo le Plomer created a little fishpond with seats set around the pond. Landsberg calculates that the amount of turfing ordered, compared to the size of the space, indicates that the pool edging and seats were all turfed. Fencing within the garden was created from tun barrels. The amount of turfing employed here, at Caernarfon and at the Tower in fact also suggests that Eleanor came to appreciate that most English of gardening features – a lawn.

Even at relatively infrequently visited places, such as Banstead, gardens were put in order; there, for what appears to have been a single night’s stay, a timber-framed cloister was constructed and a park enclosed with ditches and hedges. The sense which emerges is that one thing which was guaranteed to cloud Eleanor’s temper was the absence of a decent garden.¹⁷

As one might expect from the fact that the court generally stayed at hunting lodges rather than urban castles or palaces, both Eleanor and Edward enjoyed hunting, but their tastes diverged as to the mode. Edward was an aficionado of falconry, while Eleanor preferred to hunt with dogs and maintained a number of different categories of hunting employees. It is probably no coincidence that the illustration in the Alphonso Psalter of a noble lady hunting shows her hunting with dogs (who look like greyhounds).

Some flavour of the extent of the hunting interest can be gained by looking at the provision made for it at some of the places where Eleanor and Edward stayed. So Geddington was the base for an extensive kennels for the royal greyhounds and also a mews for royal falcons, each of whose feed cost ½d per day (more, according to one calculation, than Eleanor de Montfort provided by way of alms to the poor), while Odiham had stabling for over two hundred horses.

It may well be this passionate interest in hunting which in part informs a curiosity noted by Marc Morris: every year from 1278 to 1282, in February/March (and again in 1289 after the upheavals of the mid-1280s), the royal family seems to have settled down for something approaching a holiday in the Cotswolds at Quenington near Cirencester. The timing of these visits might seem peculiar – it is a little early, even allowing for the effects of the Medieval Warm Period, for the delightful Cotswolds spring to be in full operation – until one recalls that hunting, of which both Edward and Eleanor were inordinately fond, is in full swing in February. Quenington is very close to the territory of the modern Beaufort hunt; their 2013 Boxing Day hunt commenced at Didmarton, one of Eleanor’s nearby properties.

The possibility of this being the favoured royal hunting location is supported by the fact that there were also fairly regular stops in November or December (albeit usually only for two to three days) and the fact that it was unlikely that it was the most comfortable of the locations chosen for court stays. Quenington was not a royal manor but a preceptory for the Knights Hospitallers of St John, the manor having been given to them by the de Lucy family late in the twelfth century. It was therefore likely to offer a very good level of comfort in very congenial surroundings, but it would not be amenable to Eleanor’s own preferences. There must therefore have been a very good reason for its favoured status, and hunting would seem the obvious answer.¹⁸

Eleanor was plainly a keen horsewoman, with her wardrobe records, especially those in Gascony, liberally featuring purchases of horses and harness and other riding impedimenta. She was also interested in the breeding of horses. This probably reflects her Spanish heritage, as horse breeding was taken very seriously there, with some monasteries applying a very scholarly approach to the subject; and Spanish horses had long been highly prized elsewhere in Europe. Thus, Eleanor employed a stud manager from Spain, one Garcia, and had studs at Hampton, Horsington (using this manor for this purpose was very possibly Eleanor’s idea of a joke), Woodstock and Estwood. Tolley suggests that the employment of a Spaniard as stud manager reflects her use of Spanish jennets, which had a reputation for speed, strength and beauty through the cross breeding of European stock with the Arab horse, with which the Iberian countries were of course familiar as a consequence of the Muslim invasion.

Whether, as he also suggests, such high-status horses were used by Eleanor as mounts for her messengers may be more doubtful. However, as a good judge of horseflesh it is no surprise that her messengers had horses which could achieve the speedy correspondence shown in the records. She does seem to have promoted the use of Spanish horses by Edward’s key supporters: most of his close circle purchased horses from Spain after the time of the marriage. Eleanor’s influence can probably also be seen in Edward’s introduction of studs for selective breeding: a younger Garcia was then employed in the studs of Edward II and Edward III.¹⁹

There is also considerable evidence that Eleanor was very fond of birds – a large aviary was included in the 1279 refurbishment of the Westminster gardens, and there are references in her accounts to swans, Sicilian parrots and nightingales. She also bought birds in Ponthieu and had them sent back to England. There are records of a further aviary at Leeds Castle. This taste is evidenced by the lavish use made of illustrations of birds in the Alphonso Psalter; as Yapp points out, it is unlikely that the artist would have gone this far unless requested to do so by the commissioner of the work. Looking at the illustrations, one suspects it was a taste which Eleanor shared with Alphonso or a taste of Alphonso’s which she wanted to indulge, as the pictures seem designed to appeal to a child. Thus, a hunting scene is observed by an elegant crane, the royal coats of arms are separated by a very lifelike and rather comic seagull, a vivid woodpecker perches beside the text and one page is adorned by a most beautiful pair of peacocks being harassed by what appears to be a common or garden cockerel. Likewise in the Bird Psalter, also commenced for Alphonso’s anticipated marriage, which cannot be directly proved to be commissioned by Eleanor but is probably linked to her, there are twenty-seven different species of birds carefully depicted. Again humour is notable in the pictures, such as the seagull who is managing to hide beneath a very large butterfly.

It seems likely that this taste for birds, aside from his hunting them, was shared by Edward too, since a reference to Eleanor’s bird catcher has him taking birds ‘for the king’s amusement’. For those hunting birds, of course, Edward had his own lavish mews at Charing (approximately where Trafalgar Square now lies), with a lead bath for the birds and running water via the leopard’s head fountain referred to above. He also had a probably even larger mews in Bicknor in Kent, where the chief falconer, John de Bicknor, lived.²⁰

Turning away from outside pursuits, Eleanor had a documented enthusiasm for chess, and is likely to have gained it in childhood, her brother Alfonso being a noted chess patron, even being depicted playing chess. Her taste involved her in sending for a handbook of chess tactics from Alfonso. In 1286, Edward gave her a set of chessmen made of jasper and crystal, probably in her favourite colours of red and green, which seems to have had strong sentimental associations – he reclaimed it from her effects after her death and probably passed it to one of her children. Inferentially, her tastes influenced her children and other descendants: Edward III and his sister are both documented as possessing jasper-and-crystal chess sets. If she gambled on her chess games (as Edward did at least on some occasions) it would appear she was a good player, since, unlike him, her wardrobe accounts note very few losses. Aside from chess, Eleanor also played backgammon, or ‘tables’ as it was then known, and ‘the game of four kings’, which may well have been a four-hand chess variation.²¹

One other thing of which we can be quite certain is that Eleanor was very bookish indeed by the standards of her day. That is proved conclusively by the fact that she ran, as part of her household, a scriptorium wherein books she wished to read could be copied. This scriptorium – the only one documented for any royal court in Northern Europe in this period (even St Louis lacked one) speaks of a very powerful appetite for books indeed – way beyond the interests even among highly educated royal men of the time. Funding a scriptorium was, in essence, the act of a book addict and scholar. That it was Eleanor’s own very personal interest and perhaps regarded as somewhat eccentric is demonstrated by the fact that it was disbanded by Edward on her death. In it were employed two scribes, Roger and Philip, and a ‘pictor’, Godfrey, who seems to have travelled with her, at least to Gascony. Another ‘scriptor’, Hugh of Hibernia, is also mentioned in the records. The staff of the scriptorium purchased a full range of materials needed to produce books: vellum, ink, quills, colours, gold leaf, boards for binding books, glue and mucilage. This, and casual references to their productions in the accounts – vellum being purchased specifically for a life of St Thomas Becket, for example – prove conclusively that it was a true scriptorium and not a mere correspondence office which was being maintained. The importance which Eleanor attached to her books is further shown by the fact that a chamber specifically for the scriptorium was constructed at Westminster in 1289.²²

Ironically, the existence of the scriptorium is in some sense a handicap to ascertaining Eleanor’s reading interests, because no correspondence remains in relation to its works, which is not the case for commissions outside the scriptorium. Thus we simply do not know how many books the scriptorium produced, or what they were. But two commissions do remain, and indicate a high degree of education on Eleanor’s part. The first is the commission for the copy of Vegetius’ classic Roman military handbook De Re Miltariias a gift for Edward. The fact of the commission shows that Eleanor knew what the contents of the book were, and her familiarity with it is further evidenced by the comment inserted into the commissioned work comparing his action at Evesham to the relevant portion of the text. Apparently her education in Castile had covered Vegetius (in Latin), and it had stuck in her mind as useful knowledge for her solider husband. The other known commission is for a copy from her brother of a translation of an Arabic chess manual, again a notably highbrow choice.

In addition, among the forty-seven letters of Eleanor’s which survive, of which forty-six concern her administration and property empire, there is one which is a letter of thanks to the Abbot of Cerne thanking him for sending her a copy of a book which she wished to borrow. Again, it seems almost certain that this book was a serious work, probably of theology. This evidence for Eleanor reading and studying serious academic works is also supported by one of her final recorded pieces of correspondence, which was with an academic at Oxford about a point of theology, and by Archbishop Pecham’s exposition for her in his ‘Jerarchie’ of the Hierarchia of Pseudo-Dionysius. The latter was a work of neo-Platonic mystical theology which was influential on the scholastic approach to theology and which, having been translated by Robert Grosseteste in the early 1240s, was a subject for debate in the latter part of the century. Pecham’s work, which compares the hierarchy of angels to the ranks of the king’s officials, demonstrates that he appreciated that Eleanor sought this work for her own information, and that his analogy was chosen to be one which she would find familiar and useful. Her considerable interest in theology is also indicated by her intimacy with the renowned theologian William of Hotham.²³

We can also see hints of Eleanor’s love of learning even in her staffing of her office. It seems quite likely, for example, that Eleanor’s strong taste for the academic was accountable for her appointment in 1277 of Geoffrey de Aspale as her wardrobe keeper – effectively her most senior household officer. He will have been familiar to her from the Crusade, which he joined in 1270, but is better known as a distinguished scholar of Aristotle, in particular his scientific works. Given the absence of any known qualifications for a financial career, and the fact that he left her accounts in considerable disarray when he died in 1287, it is unlikely that he was recruited for his skills as a financial manager. Rather, there is a sense that Eleanor’s respect for his academic attainments, and possibly pleasure in discussing such subjects with him, encouraged her to admit him to a job for which he was not the most qualified candidate.

However, while relishing academic reading, there is evidence of a playful humour even in that; the amusing nature of the illustrations in the Alphonso Psalter have been alluded to above. Likewise, the copy of Vegetius now in the Cambridge Fitzwilliam Museum (which is probably a later copy of the original) features illustrations showing Lord Edward and his knights assembled at the feet of Vegetius, and of a lively sea fight involving different types of weapon. The Douce Apocalypse also shows signs of private jokes being inserted in the use of the arms of Simon de Montfort and Gilbert of Gloucester amongst the forces of the Antichrist.²⁴

Nor was Eleanor’s reading all highbrow. Certainly, it was not centred on the lighter Arthurian romances preferred by Eleanor of Provence, but it should by no means be assumed that Eleanor was above such interests. The wardrobe records show a purchase of a coffer per romanciis regine (in essence, for the queen’s novels) which demonstrates that she liked to have some lighter reading to hand on her travels. Likewise, the fact that while on Crusade Edward gave Rustichello di Pisa a large volume of romance as the basis for the new work Meliadus suggests that he (and inevitably Eleanor too) had read Palamedes or the Prose Tristan, where the Meliadus story is touched upon.

But there are also two very interesting commissions by her. She was the dedicatee of Girard of Amiens’ Escanor, and is specifically said by the author not only to have commissioned the work but also to have told him the outline of the story. The book is a very minor Arthurian work but its theme is not uninteresting, involving a Northumbrian princess and the enmity-turned-friendship between Escanor and Sir Gawain. The fact that Escanor appears to describe paintings of the royal palaces, which Girard would probably not have seen, tends to confirm his story of her positive input. If it is true that Eleanor told the story to Girard, it suggests a very thorough knowledge of the genre, and an interest in local variations of the canon. Moreover, that regional flavour suggests it may have been intended as a present for one or both of John or Isabelle de Vescy – or for their marriage; a particularly thoughtful present.²⁵

The other fascinating commission is an illustrated copy of ‘un romanz de Isembart’ from France in 1281. Isembart was the hero of a French chanson de geste based on legends arising from the Battle of Saucourt in 881, and had been recently asserted by French historians to be a local Ponthevin hero, probably a count or duke of Ponthieu. In the tale, Isembart features as a rebellious young French lord who allies himself with a Saracen king, Gormont, renouncing his Christianity, and fights against the French king. There was an obvious family resonance for Eleanor, aside from the geographical association, given the Dammartin side of her family’s history of opposition to the French king, and it is even possible that the commission had a political motive reflecting this. Certainly there are other commissions of essentially anti-Capetian work, notably translations of the Historia Caroli Magna (also known as the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle) which are traceable to Renaud of Dammartin or his intimates; there is one by Renaud of Dammartin’s chaplain and another commissioned by a Ponthevin lord taken prisoner with Simon of Dammartin at Bouvines. And again, the local link suggests someone had researched the local history. The Isembart song, but not the historical association with Ponthieu, is mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth; thus the inspiration for the commission cannot have come from there alone. This apparently light work therefore provides grounds for supposing Eleanor to have been familiar not just with the chanson de geste, but with what was then recent historical research; this would of course make sense, coming as she did from the Castilian court, which was enthusiastic about the historical record. It also provides some grounds for supposing that she knew of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicleand the propaganda uses to which it had been put by her relations in the near vicinity of Ponthieu.²⁶

Overall, there seem to be good grounds to suppose that Eleanor was an enthusiastic reader of light fiction, especially Arthurian, and of history as well as of more weighty works. The Arthurian enthusiasm was probably shared in some measure by Edward, brought up on Eleanor of Provence’s Arthurian tales.

With her brother Alfonso, there appears to have been the lively give and take to be expected between two bookworms. Eleanor sent a copy of Rusticiano’s Meliadus, which Edward commissioned while on Crusade, to Alfonso, and it then went on to influence the Arthurian tradition in Castile, in particular Tristan de Leonis, the first Arthurian Castilian romance. From him, in turn, she seems to have received at least a manual on chess, a very early copy of the first part of the Siete Partidas, and The Ladder of Mohammed, which had been translated from Arabic to Spanish by Alfonso’s Jewish doctor Abraham and thence to French by Alfonso’s clerk Buonaventura de Siena. It is also considered likely that she brought with her on her first arrival in England the Primera Cronica General, since this book was later found in her son’s possession. The existence of this book in England, and the knowledge that another court was ensuring an ‘authorised history’, has been suggested to have influenced the ‘official’ continuation under Edward II of the Flores Historiarum.²⁷

Certainly Eleanor seems to have been the intellectual driving force of Edward’s court; as Binski notes, every book recorded in Edward’s possession or that of his family can be traced back to Eleanor. Moreover, under her aegis, the entire thrust of literary production at court moved away from the rather ‘vanilla’ devotional verse and lives of the saints favoured by Henry III and Eleanor of Provence towards a genuine historical interest, sometimes in instructive prose works and sometimes in the forms of chivalric romances.²⁸

Lives of the saints also appear to have figured in Eleanor’s library – when a payment was made in 1288 for repairs to some of her novels and books, the ones specified are lives of St Thomas Becket and St Edward the Confessor (the latter presumably the copy given her as a gift on her arrival in England). But they are alone; there is no particular sign of enthusiasm for this portion of Eleanor’s library. Eleanor also purchased religious works – records remain of her buying a ‘portiferium’ (akin to a breviary) in 1278 and a psalter and seven primers from Cambridge in 1289. She has also been credibly linked to the commissioning of two psalters – the Alphonso and Bird psalters – and to two Apocalypses – the Douce and the Trinity. The latter certainly shows signs of having been influenced by a Castilian-styled Apocalypse, which it seems may have formed part of her library on her marriage.²⁹

As for the practice of religion, the simple approach would be to record Eleanor’s charities and her extensive patronage of the Dominicans. However, if one digs a little deeper, an altogether more interesting picture emerges. A good place to start is with those basic facts. Eleanor was a very considerable religious and charitable patron. Of course charitable giving was absolutely expected of a queen, but there is evidence that Eleanor’s contributions were over and above expectation. Thus, there was a set amount allowed in the king’s accounts for almsgiving by the queen – 2s daily for distribution while travelling and 7s for oblations at religious shrines – but Eleanor’s donations exceeded this and are recorded in her own Liber Garderobe. There are also a number of records in the king’s expenses of his making extra donations at Eleanor’s instance. So in winter of 1283–4, Eleanor asked Edward to feed extra poor men and women over the coldest weeks of the year and she asked for extra donations to be made on certain saints’ days. No definitive reckoning can be made from the sources owing to their incompleteness, but Parsons has calculated that between April 1289 and November 1290 (the period of the surviving Liber Garderobe) Eleanor provided meals for 9,306 paupers at a cost of 1½d per meal. In other words, she was feeding about fifteen poor people a day. Overall, it would seem that Eleanor exceeded by a considerable factor the expected level of donation; for example, Eleanor de Montfort has been calculated to give 4d per day to Eleanor’s approximate 60d (ignoring her donations while travelling).³⁰

Secondly, Eleanor was a devoted patron of the Dominican Order, and has been called the ‘nursing mother’ and a devoted friend of the Dominican Order in England. There are ample records of donations to the friars at most of their English locations. Specifically one sees gifts of land to the Dominicans in Chichester, and substantial gifts to the Rhuddlan priory while she was in Wales. She is recorded as foundress or co-foundress of the Dominican priories at London (where her heart was to be buried), Chichester and Rhuddlan and she planned to settle Dominican nuns at Langley, though that plan was thwarted by her death. She enriched other houses such as Northampton, Salisbury and Saint-Sever in Gascony. She was also very generous to the Oxford chapter of the Dominicans; the wardrobe accounts for 1289–90 show that she provided money for food and drink at their provincial chapters of 1289 and 1290, sent salmon to the Oxford priory in Lent 1290, and provided food and drink there and at the Oxford Franciscans’ priory for the anniversary of her brother’s death in 1290. Indeed, so generous were her benefactions there that, in 1280, the Oxford chapter admitted Eleanor and her children to spiritual participation in the order’s good works. While she also gave gifts to members of the Franciscan orders, to the Benedictine nunneries at Amesbury and Cheshunt and to two nuns at the Benedictine priory of Huntingdon St James, there is no doubt that the vast majority of her religious patronage went to the Dominicans; as such, Parsons has described her as being the most active royal foundress since Edith-Matilda, wife of Henry I.³¹

This aspect of Eleanor’s religious and charitable giving provides a good point of entry for a more nuanced consideration of her religious interests. The very fact of her choosing the Dominicans as her main religious point of contact is not insignificant. They were, of course, familiar to her from her childhood, but represented a somewhat unorthodox choice for a queen. Generally, the Dominicans at this time received support from male members of the royal family, with the female members being patrons of the Franciscans. So Eleanor’s patronage of the Dominicans was not a ‘given’, but represents a positive choice on her part; either in acknowledgement of her early education and training at their hands, or possibly reflecting her preference for their slightly more academic and less emotive approach to theology.

In concert with this piece of unorthodoxy, there is an absence of the other religious links which might be expected. Eleanor of Provence obviously had the advantage, denied to her daughter-in-law, of retreating to a convent in her old age; however, even as a young woman and throughout her years as queen, she was very embedded in the religious hierarchy of the English Church. Her brother, of course, became Archbishop of Canterbury, but she also corresponded with numerous bishops, including Edmund Rich of Canterbury, Richard Wych of Chichester, Nicholas Farnham of Durham and Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln. Letters survive from the latter in particular, seeking to advise her on how to use her queenly influence, and he supported her in her dispute with Henry III over the Flamstead appointment.

Nor was her reference to these bishops purely or even mainly on matters of business. Farnham, for example, was her moral guide and her doctor within her household until his elevation in 1241, and it seems likely that she continued to seek and to receive his moral guidance. She also sought spiritual and moral guidance from the celebrated Franciscan Adam Marsh – indeed, she appears to have positively bombarded him with letters, begging him to visit and provide guidance face to face, to which he occasionally had to return a plea of being too busy. She also kept a spiritual director within her household – William Batale, who was installed on Marsh’s recommendation. Howell has even traced the influence of a third spiritual coach, Thomas of Hales, who may or may not have been the queen’s chaplain for a few years, but who certainly specialised in providing moral guidance to aristocratic ladies via emotionally charged written works – the emotive appeal being very much the Franciscan style. Howell concludes that the fervour and lyricism of this style of piety was plainly very much to Eleanor of Provence’s taste.³²

Similarly, Eleanor de Montfort was fond of the Franciscan approach, and also sought a considerable amount of guidance from Adam Marsh, who directed her religious reading, and advised her on her moral conduct, including on the proper submission, restraint and passivity which a wife should show to her husband and adjured her to mind her temper, which he considered she governed less well than she should. She, too, retained a spiritual adviser in her household.³³

With Eleanor of Castile, however, a very different picture emerges. She had no spiritual friendships with bishops at all. Those bishops to whom she was close, she was close as a matter of business. Thus the bishops with whom we can trace an intimacy are Burnell (of course), whose promotion she and Edward sought assiduously, precisely because he was their principal man of business, and John de Kirkby of Ely, who assisted her first property acquisitions and became her most regular correspondent on property affairs. There is perhaps half an intimacy with Godfrey Giffard at Worcester, but this was thanks to his family links to the royal family – his mother assisted at the birth of Edward, his father was Edward’s tutor, and he had a niece among her ladies. Moreover, when Eleanor wrote to the Curia on his behalf in 1282, she spoke not of his spiritual qualities or advice, but of his advice in the business sense. The nearest one comes to spiritual advice flowing from a bishop to Eleanor is Pecham’s ‘Jerarchie’; but that is actually not advice, but effectively a scholarly précis, intended to assist private theological study. On occasion, Pecham may have (as can be seen above) sought to adjure Eleanor in respect of her behaviour, but this was not solicited advice. Nor, as we have seen, was it followed.

Her closest religious contact appears to have been Brother William of Hotham, a prominent Dominican and one of the foremost theologians of his day. Hotham is documented as being with the royal party in Wales in 1283, shortly before he clashed with Pecham on the fierce debate which had been underway for some years, and which was to simmer on until the Reformation, about the impact of Aristotelian thought on traditional Augustinian theology. This was a subject where the Parisian Dominicans, led by Thomas Aquinas and supported by Hotham, led the way. Given Eleanor’s education, her employment of a prominent Aristotelian thinker in Geoffrey de Aspale, and her intimacy with Hotham, it seems hugely likely that she followed this debate closely, and sided with the Dominicans – against Pecham.

There are therefore distinct signs that Eleanor effectively rejected the established model for a queen’s involvement in religion. Instead of building relationships with prominent bishops, she did so with the Dominican Order (which encouraged an intellectual approach to religion) generally, and particularly notably with their Oxford chapter, where some of their most distinguished and controversial theologians were based. Instead of relying upon moral and religious guidance from a spiritual director or adviser, Eleanor made her own study of theology and formed her own views. Both of these are, of course, entirely consistent with her upbringing under the Dominicans and the intellectual approach to religion which Alfonso X advocates in the Siete Partidas.

Further, and again consistently, what we can see of Eleanor’s private devotions reinforces the impression of an independent and intellectual approach to religion. In 1278, she was given a dispensation to permit her to have a portable altar for her chapel. This altar and the two coffers full of furnishings which it required seem to have been a slightly comic theme in the royal court’s peregrinations: some part or other of the furnishings was often missing, with the coffer having been left behind, or there having been no suitable cart to carry it. Then, as we have seen above, Eleanor had primers and books of hours, redolent of private devotions, and commissioned at least one psalter for her son. On the same theme and following the approach of the Dominicans, who are widely attributed with early fostering of the rosary, there are records of purchases of jet and coral beads for her own use. Finally her commemorations involved requirements, specifically stipulated by her, for prayer repetitions both by the clergy and by the objects of charitable donations in her memory.³⁴

One point which Parsons has remarked upon is that, despite her considerable donations, Eleanor gained at the time practically no reputation as a charitable giver and her interests in this regard largely escaped the contemporaneous chroniclers and the historians who relied on them prior to his groundbreaking work. This is likely because of a noticeable difference in her approach to that of the noble lady patron paradigm, where ladies associated themselves personally with the donations. Thus Eleanor of Provence, like earlier queens, partnered her intercessory work with a broad range of charitable donations (including patronage of up-and-coming churchmen), and was seen as being a very charitable woman. However, Eleanor of Castile, while giving more, did so predominantly to the very poor and not directly but through chaplains and almoners. She otherwise gave almost entirely to purely religious causes. Again, this anomaly is consistent with the Dominican intellectual piety which she appears to have practised.

Parsons slightly shies away from the conclusion that Eleanor’s approach to religious practice and to charitable donation was a deliberate one, and therefore an assertion of individuality. But it should be borne in mind that Eleanor was not likely to be unaware of the fact that her approach to this field of interest could, if she wished, be used to ‘spin’ her reputation and indeed to present herself in a conventionally pious light, broadening her appeal outside her own circle. The better view, therefore, is that, particularly when taken in conjunction with her unorthodox approach to the related subject of intercession, this approach was indeed deliberate. Eleanor had been raised to adopt a rigorous and intellectual approach to religion. She appears to have wished to be true to this, and she also appears to have seen no need to gild the lily to please anyone.³⁵

Eleanor the queen was, therefore, not merely an intelligent and able woman, but a woman of many interests, which she pursued with considerable enthusiasm and determination. Her extensive reading ensured that she had much to contribute to discussions in many directions – be the conversation literary, historical, military or theological – and her sense of humour seems to have ensured that she wore her considerable scholarship lightly. She presents herself to us as a woman with a vibrant zest for life. Her vitality is reflected in her passion for hunting and even more so in her obviously notorious fondness for delicious food, which even had local poor women bringing fine items (or on one occasion ‘a large loaf’) for the queen’s enjoyment. This last vignette also echoes the earlier evidence of her wardrobe accounts. Eleanor might have had a terrible temper when roused, but she seems to have exercised it on those who were in positions of power. To those who occupied a more humble position, she was a kindly and approachable queen; a real woman, not a figure of unimaginable glamour.