12
The next question to ask is, who was Eleanor’s family? To whom did she look for support and affection in the busy and pressured years of her queenship? The answer is more complex than might be imagined.
The starting point for any consideration of Eleanor’s family must be the most important constituent of it to her – her husband. The more time one spends looking at the life of Eleanor, the more apparent it becomes that she and Edward were genuinely incredibly close, and not really happy out of each other’s company. Marc Morris concludes, and I entirely agree, that their shared tastes for horses, hunting, chivalry, romance and chess had provided a good base for a happy marriage. More than this, though, it is fairly clear that they shared a sense of humour – each was plainly ready to laugh and to find fun in amusing pictures and little wordplays and both also enjoyed the kind of boisterous fun which marked the coronation. Beyond these shared interests and tendencies, however, one can see in the household records the hallmarks of active respect, consideration and kindness which promote a happy marriage.
So repeatedly each can be seen paying attention to the interests of the other, and doing their best to help. Each helped the other financially – Eleanor gifting Edward with 1,000 marks when he and everyone else was out of cash following the Gascon expedition, and Edward helping with purchase monies and funds for improvements for her properties. For Eleanor, Edward was the centre of the world, and she identified herself completely with his interests – as she had been raised to do. Everything gave way to his interests and she would uproot herself from her work for years at a time to be with him in Wales and in Gascony, as well as on Crusade. Although Eleanor had her own office and power base of very able employees, there was no ‘Team Queen’ operating in opposition to ‘Team King’ as there had been under Eleanor of Provence and Henry III. Eleanor and her staff were parts of Edward’s team, and never sought to be perceived otherwise. But it was far from being a one-way street. Having charged Eleanor with a role in property management, Edward was supportive of Eleanor’s very active interest in this role to the extent of inconveniencing himself in repeated dislocations.
Each can also be spotted in the records planning pleasant surprises for the other, and trying generally to make life more pleasant for their spouse. So in Gascony, Eleanor sent home to get Edward a particularly special hunting bird for his birthday, while on another occasion Edward, mindful of Eleanor’s book obsession and vibrant theological interests, commissioned a psalter and book of hours as a present for her. Facing a social engagement too far, Eleanor agreed to go by herself, and made arrangements for musicians to be hired to amuse Edward while she was discharging their social obligations. Meanwhile, Edward made sure that everywhere they went, gardeners and decorators went ahead so that Eleanor need not face the shabby lodgings which were her aversion.
One surprising thing which emerges from the record is that Edward was surprisingly sentimental – rather more so, it would appear, than Eleanor. So the records of his charitable oblations for 1283–4 show him giving extra alms on the occasion of their wedding anniversary and also in those nervous days in the run-up to Eleanor giving birth to Edward, as well as the expected celebratory donations on the birth and christening of a prince. When Eleanor was ill and he could not actually be with her, he sent thoughtful gifts of food, with which he hoped to tempt her appetite or recoup her strength. The public face of his mourning is well known, but in addition to the well-known gestures after Eleanor’s death of commissioning spectacular funeral monuments, he provided chantries at the place of her death and at Leeds Castle, where they had spent happy time together. He also took for himself the chess set with which they had played chess together.1
The next group to consider must be Eleanor’s children. It might be thought that, with such a large family, Eleanor would find all the ties she needed here; but, as will become apparent, this was far from being the case.
So far as the children are concerned, the shape which the family was to take can conveniently be tracked by rejoining Eleanor just after the coronation, because to celebrate the return there was to be yet another baby. Shortly after Edward and Eleanor made it back to Windsor Castle from their spring tour, Eleanor gave birth to Margaret (reportedly on 15 March 1275), who must have been conceived during the journey home.
Within a few months of Margaret’s birth, Eleanor was pregnant yet again – Berengaria, born 1 May 1276 at Kempton, must have been conceived in the summer of 1275 while Eleanor and Edward made their way northwards slowly towards a possible meeting with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. And so the pattern continued: a daughter, born dead at Westminster in January 1278; another daughter, Mary, born at Woodstock in March 1279; another son who died young in 1280 or 1281; Elizabeth, born in Rhuddlan in August 1282; and finally Edward, famously born in Caernarfon in April 1284.2
There may even have been further pregnancies in Gascony in the years after 1286. That possibility is certainly suggested by the pattern of childbearing which one can see from this listing: there were sixteen months between Alphonso and Margaret, fourteen months between her and Berengaria, twenty months to the next anonymous daughter, fourteen months to Mary, eighteen months each for the anonymous boy and Elizabeth, and a further nineteen months to Edward. Thus, over this period Eleanor was bearing a child roughly every eighteen months or less. This is consistent with the pattern of births of the children born between 1265 and Margaret’s birth: between Joan (born January 1265) and John was eighteen months (during some of which Edward was imprisoned). Between John and Henry was twenty-one months and then a gap of just thirteen months to Eleanor, another eighteen months to the birth of the anonymous daughter in Sicily, and barely a year then to Joan of Acre in spring 1272. She herself was followed by Alphonso eighteen months later. So for the best part of twenty years Eleanor bore a child every thirteen to twenty months.3
The absolute number of children which Eleanor bore is perhaps not important – on any analysis, she bore between fourteen and eighteen children in about twenty years. This bold statistic illustrates more than one point. The first is that Edward and Eleanor had, and continued to have, a thriving marriage. This tally of children would be regarded as pretty remarkable even in the modern era, without prescribed saints’ day abstinences; in the context of those religious layoffs – and because of the story about the end of Lenten abstinence, and the dates of the children’s births, we know that Edward and Eleanor observed this taboo – it becomes pretty staggering. The bottom line is that the two of them were plainly as little separated as possible.
The second fact it tells is that Eleanor had a very hard life physically. Although recent research has tended to suggest that what is termed ‘great grand multiparity’ is not necessarily an overall physical risk factor to the mother, no one can doubt that pregnancy is a physical strain on the body – and was probably still more so without modern supports and interventions in pregnancy and childbirth. Eleanor was more or less constantly pregnant, and combined this with a lifestyle which involved constant changes of residence in a period where, even for a queen, ensuring optimum nutrition would have been an impossibility. It may well be that the number of stillbirths which she endured can be in part ascribed to the physical effects of such a demanding lifestyle. However, despite this, she continued to participate fully in it, and to carry out both her role as queen and her job in managing her property empire. The evidence therefore establishes clearly that, at least until her latter years, she was a woman of fairly exceptional good health and physical robustness.4
As to her role as a property developer and manager, the challenge which her formal job as queen and mother to the royal children would have imposed on her routine was considerable. Every pregnancy meant a period of ‘lying in’, during which her access to business would have been restricted. This may be one reason why Eleanor appears to have broken with tradition and, at least with her girls, lain in not for the usual forty days but only for twenty-nine – and even, on occasion, less. One can see all these factors coming together in 1275 with the birth of Margaret.
So Eleanor undertook a tour of her lands late in her pregnancy, arriving back at Windsor not long before Margaret was born. Yet by at least 17 April she was back on her travels – this time at Bury St Edmunds, where a local chronicler notes her presence. Yet Bury is a good long way from Windsor, and Edward, at least, had proceeded there gradually via Cippenham (now part of Maidenhead), Risborough, Aylesbury, Weston and Royston. The conclusion seems inescapable that Eleanor left Windsor with Edward, and the only accommodation made for this was a slightly slower-paced journey than would otherwise have been the case – the stops were very moderately spaced. If Margaret was indeed born on 15 March, this would equate to a very short lying-in indeed. Rather more likely is that Margaret was actually born in mid-February, shortly after the arrival at Windsor; but even so the lying-in would have been considerably short of the traditional forty days. Perhaps the imminent end of Lent drove this move – the royal couple would certainly not have wanted to be parted at this point in the year. Another likely factor in this particular year will have been Eleanor’s determination to get on top of her day job – the 1275 royal progress was closely linked to Eleanor’s property interests and in particular the settling of her increased dower.
On other occasions, though, Eleanor maintained a fairly normal lying-in; Edward’s itinerary shows him moving from Kempton, where their next child, Berengaria, was born in April/May 1276, to Westminster just days after her birth. Eleanor will have joined him later in the Westminster stay, around 29 May, giving time for preparations before the party set off into Sussex, Essex and Kent. And in early 1278, following Eleanor giving birth to a stillborn child, Edward undertook a short tour in Kent while she lay in for twenty-nine days, sending her venison to aid her recovery. Parsons hypothesises that Eleanor lay in for twenty-nine days for a girl and forty for a boy, but the material available does not provide firm support for this conjecture. What seems likely is that around thirty days was taken if convenient, but a full lying-in period was dispensed with if Eleanor considered other business more pressing. So in 1275 a short lying-in was probably taken. The final documented babies, Elizabeth and Edward, attracted full lyings-in, since Eleanor was on both occasions static in Wales while Edward campaigned there.5
As for her role as mother, we have seen earlier that Eleanor was not an overly fond mother to her very young offspring. To what extent that was innate, in that she was someone who found small children rather boring, and to what extent it was defensive, given the high mortality rate for young children, we cannot know. What seems quite likely, given her active memorialising of the first baby, her avoidance of or at best fleeting attendance at young Henry’s deathbed, and ‘farming out’ of young Joan, is that it was at least in some measure a defensive and learned response, prompted by the trauma of the loss of the first baby. However, whichever is the case, there is much more evidence of her interest and concern for her children as they grew older, both in terms of their interests, their education and their future prospects.
Until about the age of seven the children lived in what was effectively a separate nursery establishment, which housed not just the royal children but wards and children of members of the household. To this establishment can be traced such a variety of people as the mentally deficient Walerand heirs, the children of Eleanor’s ladies, the young Earl of Hereford, some of Eleanor’s young de Beaumont relatives, some of the children of Edward’s sister Beatrice and a number of Eleanor’s wards, such as young Nicholas Burdon. The ages ranged from the very young, accompanied by their wet nurses or nurses, to the older children being prepared for military and court life or a career in the Church. Thus, the staff of Edward of Caernarfon’s household included seven knights and nine sergeants and it was headed up by an ex-Crusader companion of Edward and Eleanor. It was, effectively, a small boarding school governed by rules such as those we have seen earlier about the number of servants, and amount of food, beer and candles to be provided to each child. As can be imagined, its provisioning requirements were considerable and even provoked negative comment in the chronicles. These problems were not assisted by the requirements of one member of the ménage – the King’s Langley camel, for whom bushels of barley were required rather frequently.
Eleanor kept in close touch with the nursery establishment by messenger and sent treats to them – such as the salmon pies sent to young Edward in spring 1290. Toys were also sent: Alphonso, during the Welsh wars, was gifted with a detailed model castle – a complement for the toy soldiers of the era found at the Tower and now on display there. Young Henry had had toy arrows, a coronet and a toy trumpet. She also sent tutors – who were doubtless much less welcome. So in 1290, Eleanor arranged for Dominican friars and one of her scribes to join the household of young Edward of Caernarfon (then five and a half years old) to ensure his spiritual and intellectual formation. The nursery establishment was frequently uprooted in its entirety to place it more conveniently within reach of the king and queen – so while the Welsh campaign went on, the children were brought north. Likewise, in Eleanor’s last months the nursery establishment moved north to Clipstone. Even when it was settled, it was not short of visitors – young Edward’s household seems to have attracted distinguished visitors roughly once a week, including relations, other nobles, bishops and foreign dignitaries.
The middle children, and in particular Alphonso and Margaret, born in the mid-1270s, probably saw rather more of their parents than their older and younger siblings. The period from the return to England until the departure of Eleanor and Edward for Gascony in 1286 had a degree of stability about it; every year there were two lengthy stays in London. The main court would be housed at Westminster, but it appears that the nursery section was brought at the same time to the Tower. This was, of course, a very easy distance from Westminster, and it seems likely that Eleanor and Edward would make the trip across at least a few times a week, if not daily. Moreover, this period also sees fairly lengthy stays a few times a year at locations which were suitable for the younger royals to be part of the party. Windsor, of course, was well established as a location for the royal nursery, and Langley, under Eleanor’s careful development, was to become the preferred base of young Edward of Caernarfon. However, Woodstock, Clarendon and Marlborough all have form as locations for the younger royal family under Eleanor of Provence, and still featured regularly in the royal itinerary; thus they too may have involved ‘joined-up’ parties of the whole family, adults and children.
As the children grew older, they were in fact tacked on to the court for at least some of the time as it moved. So in 1293 young Edward visited Westminster, Mortlake, Kennington, Canterbury, Windsor, Winchester, Salisbury, Bath, Clarendon, Melksham and Devizes. Thus, it seems likely that Eleanor did build close bonds with her children as they grew: Eleanora, Joan and Margaret were at court almost constantly once they had reached a good age to travel with the court, and even young Mary, who became a nun, came to court fairly frequently.6
A glimpse of how the regime worked can be gained by following the eldest surviving child, Eleanora. She seems to have joined the court in about 1276–7 – her age at this point was around eight, and she was already engaged to the prince of Aragon. Her mother would therefore have much to teach her in terms of the language and culture which she could expect to encounter, as well as the political issues of the Iberian peninsula. However, presence at court still did not denote constant proximity to her mother. She had an entire household of her own from 1277 – a chamberlain, keeper of the hall, groom of the bedchamber, and a sumpterer (seconded from her mother’s household) among others. So in 1278 we find Eleanora and her household joining her royal parents at Devizes, and then proceeding with them to Easter at Glastonbury, and on to London in May. Furthermore, Eleanora maintained a close relationship with her grandmother Eleanor of Provence, interspersing her visits to court with stays with her grandmother until Eleanor of Provence took the veil in 1286. In 1282, Eleanora accompanied her mother to Wales, and by this point she had been joined at court by young Joan (now about nine or ten), returned from Ponthieu. By late 1284, the royal princesses at court numbered three, for Margaret (nine) had now joined the circle at court.7
Of course, the practice of bringing the children to court as they grew up does not necessarily reveal any strong affection for them on Eleanor’s part; this might simply be done because it was deemed the best way to educate them. However, the story of Mary’s veiling suggests differently. Mary became a nun at Amesbury as a companion to her grandmother Eleanor of Provence in August 1285 at the age of six. It is clear from the sources that Eleanor objected to this plan fairly strongly: the Chronicle of Nicholas Trivet, dedicated to the princess, notes that she was veiled by her sire, at the wish of her grandmother, and with the ‘assent’ of her mother. One very credible explanation for Eleanor’s reluctance to go along with Eleanor of Provence’s plan in 1285 for young Mary to join her as a nun there may be that Eleanor was reluctant to lose her daughter just at the stage of life when she would expect to be building a meaningful relationship with her. Certainly it seems unlikely that she objected to the project of Mary taking the veil per se, since a good deal of correspondence had already been conducted between Edward and the Abbey of Fontevrault as early as 1282 with a view to Mary ultimately becoming a nun there.
Fortunately for Eleanor, it is also clear that Mary’s veiling was not a complete renunciation of the world; she paid a visit to her family in March 1286, and another in May of that year, which probably lasted a month. Mary was then at court again in early 1290, very probably again for about a month, culminating in the marriage of her older sister Joan. That she spent enough time with her mother to regard Eleanor with strong affection despite her enclosure is demonstrated by the decision of Mary and her younger sister Elizabeth to pay for a special Mass in honour of their mother in 1297.8
Further evidence for the affection in which Eleanora and her sisters were held by Eleanor as they grew up can perhaps be seen in Eleanor’s attempts (in partnership with her mother-in-law) to delay the marriage of Eleanora in 1281 when she was rising twelve – the canonical minimum age for marriage, and the age at which Eleanor herself had been married. There are also records of her purchasing small items of jewellery for them in Paris, sending back to them other pieces gifted to her, and making offerings for their health at many of the major shrines visited.
However, although Eleanor was plainly fond of them and influential in their later upbringing, the sense of true closeness is missing; and Eleanora’s choice to visit her grandmother at regular intervals, including in the run-up to the anticipated marriage in 1281, suggests that, certainly for her, emotional closeness lay more with the grandmother who had seen her through her early years than with her focussed and driven mother. Edward, who plainly did enjoy a very good relationship with his daughters in later years, seems to have purchased more personal presents for the girls, and to have been held in more demonstrative regard by them. All in all, it is fair to say that there is a flavour in the slim records which remain of Eleanor being fond of her children, but much more focussed on her marriage and her work.
There is also a sense that Eleanor was by some way the more disciplinarian parent – keen for the children to progress in the education to which none of them seems to have been very strongly inclined. Eleanor herself was, as we know, book mad, and unlike any of the English kings prior to Richard II she could write – that is the inescapable conclusion from her brother’s view as to the utility of writing, the purchase which she made of writing tablets for Eleanora, and the despatch, shortly before her death, of a scriptor to help educate young Edward. Thus, either directly or indirectly, Eleanor saw that her daughter was, like herself, educated very much above the level of most educated noble men.
Eleanor’s influence can be felt when Eleanora’s abilities are contrasted with the youngest of the brood, Edward of Caernarfon, who was born too close to his mother’s death to benefit much from her encouragement. In his case, there is no evidence of any primer being bought for him until his sixteenth year, he demonstrated no great fondness for books and there are certainly questions over the extent of his linguistic abilities, particularly as regards his ability to read Latin with facility. But we can see, from the despatch of the Dominicans and the scribe to Langley in the months before Eleanor’s death, that she would certainly have had him commence serious study at an early age.
The difference of even a few years of influence can be seen when we compare young Edward to his sister Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, two years his senior, who was born in mid-1282 and was therefore just over eight when her mother died. Elizabeth is in some respects exceptional, appearing to have been the only child that Eleanor kept with her in the very early years – she either stayed with Eleanor full time or visited her frequently in her first two years, and was with her mother at Caernarfon when Edward was born. She nonetheless spent much of her childhood prior to her mother’s death in her brother’s establishment and received the basic education which would have been provided under Eleanor’s running of that household. She would have come to court more or less on Eleanor’s return from Gascony and thus have come under Eleanor’s eye slightly more in that period, but even so, she spent a good proportion of her time still with her brother’s household; she spent most of the summer of 1290 touring the countryside with him, rather than with the court, except for the royal weddings.
There is therefore relatively little ground for hypothesising any exceptionally close tie of affection or influence between mother and daughter; and this is reflected in the fact that Elizabeth was to call her first child after her stepmother. However, Elizabeth seems to have had a real fondness for books – service books are recorded as part of her marriage goods on her first marriage to the Count of Holland, and the Alphonso Psalter can be traced into her ownership at a later date.
As for Joan, while she herself offers very little evidence of academic attainments, a generation later her daughter Elizabeth de Clare/de Burgh was to become possibly the pre-eminent female artistic patron of the fourteenth century, inferentially inspired by a fairly full education organised by her mother.
Thus we can see that Eleanor did attempt to ensure that her children received a fine education, as she had done. But it is fair to say that the ground was a little stony: the daughters of Eleanor seem to have imbibed more of her taste for domestic finery than her appetite for books and scholarship. The surviving records of all the princesses describe a myriad of purchases of the kinds of luxurious small items which were such a feature of their mother’s housekeeping – and no book purchases.9
So we can safely dispose of the myth that Eleanor had little contact with her children; though at the same time it is clear that her relations with them were less intense and more distant than the modern idiom expects. But this does not bring to a close a consideration of those whom Eleanor would have counted as family. The surviving Liber Garderobe for the 1289–90 period gives a vivid, though necessarily partial, indication of the members of her family with whom Eleanor corresponded. Relations with Eleanor of Provence were not notably affectionate – as can be seen from the fact that the older Eleanor was relatively seldom at court after her widowhood commenced and that the tone of her letters to Edward is obviously loving and warm, whereas the exchanges between the two Eleanors seem to have been confined to administrative detail, such as the loan of staff. But Eleanor had a wealth of other correspondents; for instance, within the immediate royal family, Eleanor corresponded with and sent gifts to her brother-in-law Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and his second wife, Blanche of Navarre.10
Nor were her own brothers neglected. Eleanor maintained close contact with Alfonso until his death in April 1284 and with Enrique until hers (for all their contrasting fates, one suspects Enrique’s letters were more fun than Alfonso’s). For all his brilliance, Alfonso’s story was not a happy one. Distracted, like Henry III, into a range of expensive sideshows at home and abroad, he bred discontent among his prominent nobles and, as we shall see, ultimately reaped the whirlwind. However, Eleanor continued to correspond with him and to fulfil her role by trying to persuade Edward to support him, or at least to let him down gently. Thus we see, in 1275, Edward writing very politely to Alfonso, who had sought his help against the Moors, explaining that if he were to go on Crusade he had already been asked by the Pope to go again to the aid of the Holy Land, far from the Moors, but that while he could not help personally he was very content for his subjects in Bayonne to help if they were so minded, and following this up with letters to the Mayor of Bayonne offering ships for anyone who wished to serve. Even after his death, Eleanor maintained at least one of his illegitimate children in her household: Martin Alfonso, later Abbot of Valladolid, was with her throughout the Gascon stay of 1286–9. Another possible son of Alfonso is the gentleman known as Rotheric de Yspannia who was granted a legacy of £20 by Eleanor’s executors in 1291 and who was acknowledged as a kinsman by Edward II. More likely, however, is that the latter was an illegitimate son of Fadrique, who did not return to Spain with his father and brother in 1272. These gentlemen were openly acknowledged as relations, albeit as ‘cousins’.11
Further afield, Eleanor seems to have corresponded with a number of her female relatives on her mother’s side.
The first of these ladies, Viscountess Jeanne of Châtellherault, has already appeared in the earlier chapters. She was the daughter of Eleanor’s mother’s youngest sister, Mathilde of Dammartin, and was demonstrably a close contact of Eleanor’s over a number of years. It appears likely that Jeanne and Eleanor were born within a year of each other and that Eleanor was involved in arranging Jeanne’s marriage to Geoffrey de Lusignan in around 1260, and the two possibly spent time together on Crusade. Further, there is correspondence which seems to demonstrate that she was also involved in Jeanne’s second marriage, to the Sieur de Harcourt (a baron of Normandy), which occurred sometime between May 1278, when she appeared as a widow in litigation against one of her first husband’s bailiffs, and March 1279, when Jeanne of Ponthieu died. Eleanor exerted herself to assist Jeanne; for example, she corresponded with Robert Burnell about her cousin’s business in 1282. There is also material which shows Eleanor and Edward visiting her cousin in July 1289, and sending a thank-you present of scarlet cloth and some ermine furs after the visit.12
The second member of her maternal family with whom Eleanor corresponded (and who is referred to as her cousin) is the Countess of Gueldres. She was probably Marie of Flanders, the daughter-in-law of her aunt Philippa of Dammartin. Marie had previously been married to Edward’s nephew Alexander of Scotland.
The presence of both of these maternal relations in her list of regular correspondents indicates that Eleanor also corresponded freely with her mother while her mother lived, and strongly suggests a wider correspondence with her maternal relations generally – an inference borne out by other connections discussed below.
But there was also correspondence with her paternal connections, and members of Edward’s family: Eleanor’s third correspondent in 1289–90 was Isabelle de Brienne, the daughter of Eleanor’s cousin Alphonso de Brienne, who had married Marie de Lusignan, Countess of Eu. Isabelle married Jean de Dampierre, the Sieur of Dampierre. This correspondence with her wider family, including the Brienne connection, is consistent with the interest which she took in that family’s careers.
The final lady mentioned in the 1289–90 records is Isabelle de Lusignan, the half-sister of Henry III who married Maurice of Craon, and later Geoffrey de Rancon, the seneschal of Poitou, who appears to have been managing Craon on behalf of her son, the heir to the lordship.13
As can be seen from this list of correspondents, Eleanor’s family should not be regarded as confined to her immediate blood – cousins were close associates even when they were not likely to meet for years at a time.
But there is a whole further layer of family which has to be considered: Eleanor’s household, often referred to in the records as her familia. A starting point here is a quick review of Eleanor’s immediate attendants – men and women. Eleanor now stood at the head of a household that comprised around 150 people. In 1289–90, Eleanor had twelve knights, of whom one was the husband of her long-standing lady-in-waiting Margery de Haustede. Robert de Haustede himself had been part of Eleanor’s household since at least 1266, when Eleanor interceded for him with Henry III. He went on Crusade with Edward and Eleanor and moved temporarily into Edward’s household in 1280, before gaining promotion to the role of Eleanor’s butler. He then accompanied the couple on the Gascon trip of 1286, and was knighted following their return. His close involvement with the whole royal family is shown by the fact that he was later to travel with Eleanor’s daughter Margaret to her new home in Brabant.14
Two other knights in Eleanor’s service were Guy Ferre junior and Giles de Fiennes, whose surnames echo those of some of Eleanor’s connections in earlier years. Guy de Ferre was the son of John Ferre, who had served as Eleanor’s yeoman as early as 1266. The family appear to have had connections in Gascony, each of John and Guy having been given postings there at some point in their career. John married one of Eleanor’s ladies, Joanna, and the pair of them accompanied Eleanor and Edward on Crusade. John’s brother, Guy, was the queen mother’s steward and became magister to Edward of Caernarfon. The younger Guy was a ‘scutifer’ (a squire, and probably one of the more senior staff under the steward’s direction) in Eleanor’s service by April 1277. He seems to have impressed her, receiving grants of land from her in 1281 and 1289, a legacy of £100 on her death and further lands from the king. He also succeeded in marrying well, obtaining the hand of the daughter and heir of Roger Fitzosbert, with lands in Suffolk.
Giles de Fiennes was the nephew of the Michael de Fiennes noted in Edward’s household in 1255 who had accompanied Edward to Palestine on Crusade together with his brother William. Eleanor had interceded with Henry III for him before their departure. He seems to have served in her household or Edward’s throughout the period and by 1290 he had two children in the queen’s household in addition to himself: John de Fiennes and Eleanor de Fiennes.15
Also on the knight’s list are Philippe Popiot, a former servant of Eleanor’s mother Jeanne, who appears to have come to England and into the queen’s service after Jeanne’s death and in company with his wife Edeline, who was Joan of Acre’s governess until her marriage; and John de Hengham, whose wife Margerie was also a lady in the household of Joan, and whose son was brought up with Edward of Caernarfon at Langley. A relationship between this family and Edward’s judicial right-hand man Ralph de Hengham seems possible, though if it did exist it was not a close one. Also in the list was Geoffrey de Piccheford, who was custodian over the person and household of both young Henry (until his death) and Edward of Caernarfon.16
Thus far, just looking at the senior male attendants who surrounded Eleanor, a picture begins to emerge of a family ethos around the queen.
This is reinforced by a consideration of her waiting ladies. Those who were actually related to her are considered separately later, but good examples of the household’s family ethos can be found among those of the senior ladies who had no family link to Eleanor.
Chief among her ladies was Margery de Haustede, who was the lady in charge of Eleanor’s jewels, and even apparently charged with shopping for pieces to be given as gifts. She accompanied Eleanor to Gascony (leaving at least one of her children in the care of another family), may well also have been on Crusade with her, and by 1289 was of such importance that she had a chamber built for her personally in the precincts of the palace of Westminster in the run-up to the Christmas festivities. Her daughter Joanna was a damsel to the royal princesses in 1289 and 1290, and her son Robert was sent to reside with Edward of Caernarfon in 1289 and later served him. Her third son, John, also passed into royal service and distinguished himself, serving in the prime position of seneschal of Gascony under Edward III. Margery and Robert’s own good relations with the younger generation (and inferentially the closeness of the familia at court) is attested by the fact that their obituaries are inscribed in the Alphonso Psalter; in fact it seems possible that this valuable family memento was given to them by Elizabeth of Rhuddlan.
Another intimate of Eleanor’s was Ermintrude de Sackville, the daughter of John de Chandos by Margaret FitzWalkeline. Although by reason of her status and single state she was unlikely to have been with Eleanor as early as the Crusade, she was a favourite by 1275, when she was married by the king’s special precept to Andrew de Sackville, who was still a minor at the time of their marriage. The couple remained close to the court for most of the rest of Eleanor’s life, with Andrew featuring on the witness lists in 1280 and 1281 and Ermintrude in a position of some authority over other ladies in 1289, when the queen sent her messages relating to their management. Towards the end of Eleanor’s life, Ermintrude was accompanied at court by Eleanor de Sackville – likely her daughter and also almost inevitably Eleanor’s god-daughter. Ermintrude was apparently so close to the queen that Eleanor went to stay with her in November 1289, when Ermintrude was ill: her itinerary shows her at Bindon near Dorchester in Dorset for about a week, and this appears to have been Ermintrude’s home, since in January Eleanor had sent a messenger to her there with money to cover her expenses during her illness. Interestingly, and characteristically, Eleanor seems to have brought Edward with her most of the way on this personal diversion – he is recorded at Bindon for two nights and just up the road at Frampton for the remainder of Eleanor’s stay.17
But the family ties and atmosphere did not stop with the immediate circle of upper attendants. Throughout the household can be found individuals with links to Edward and Eleanor’s families, and with their own family links at Court. So Ebles de Montibus, a squire to Eleanor in 1289–90, was the son of Edward’s former companion, who had died in around 1268. Young Ebles went on to be household steward to Isabella of France. Geoffrey, the kitchen ewer, had a brother Simon who was Eleanor’s cook or sauser, and yeoman Richard had a brother in a similar post. Meanwhile, another yeoman, Raoulet, and one of her tailors, Gillot, had been in her mother’s service, and her cooks John de Wodestock and Henry Wade had come from her in-laws’ kitchens and were succeeded by one of Edward’s cooks. In her administration, John of London, her first keeper of the wardrobe, came to her from Eleanor of Provence, and was replaced (until his death in 1270) by William de Yattenden, who was probably related to Bartholomew and Nicholas of the same name, who worked respectively for Edward and Eleanor of Provence.
Eleanor seems to have had a distinct preference for having married women in her household, presumably as they were unlikely to misbehave in a way which would reflect on her; a preoccupation directed by her education. Her apparent preference for finding husbands who were likewise part of the familia may be from the desire to have a family atmosphere surrounding her, but may likewise have been informed by the fact that seemly behaviour was more likely if couples were not separated. The results, however, are striking: of the women who formed part of Eleanor’s group of ladies-in-waiting in 1289–90, two were widows of husbands chosen by Eleanor, most of the rest were married to knights and squires either in her household or that of Edward, and the small remainder of unmarried women had fathers at court in either Edward or Eleanor’s household.18
A family or collegiate atmosphere was thus inevitable and was reinforced by the routines which were observed – all would attend church together regularly. They would also attend marriages and anniversary services for family and friends of the royal family, and services of commemoration for the deceased. Increasing the family atmosphere, these events were extended to those in the servants and attendants’ families: weddings were celebrated at court (often financed by the royal family), pregnancies and childbirths were organised and often funded by the queen, and Eleanor stood sponsor to numerous offspring in the wider familia – such as the Eleanors de Sackville, de Beauchamp, de Cretyng, Ferre, de Hacche, de Burgh, de Caumpeden and de Ewelle.19
Eleanor’s ‘family’, however, can be said to have extended beyond those who were part of her household. A consideration of the witnesses to her surviving deeds show a fascinating consistency, indicating a ‘magic circle’ of close friends around the king and queen, but also very close relations between Eleanor and some of the most prominent men in the country. For although certain key members of the royal household and administration appear again and again (Geoffrey de Aspale, John Ferre, Walter de Kancia, Giles de Fiennes, Andrew de Sackville, John de Lovetot), the witness lists range much wider than this. In particular Robert Burnell, the chancellor and Edward’s closest adviser, is a regular feature on these lists, as is Hugh de Cantilupe, the Bishop of Hereford, and William de Middleton, Bishop of Norwich.
Indeed, Burnell seems to have been one of Edward and Eleanor’s closest friends and, if the letter of October 1274 which appears in Appendix 1 is indeed hers, there is first-hand evidence of the ease and confidence with which they operated. Burnell is sent ‘loving’ greetings and the request is sent with affection. There is also a light joke about constantly boring him with requests for her friends and his being relied on to help. Whether or not that letter is Eleanor’s, it is apparent that she corresponded with him frequently – a significant proportion of her surviving letters are to him – and that the two were on the warmest of terms. Ultimately he was to be one of her executors, and in the inquest on her properties he was referred to as the one person outside her administration who would know the details of her involvement in a specific transaction. Part of the rapport which grew up between Eleanor and Burnell was probably due to shared interests; Burnell, too, worked hard to acquire properties in parallel with his other duties – with notable success. This suggestion is lent force by the fact that Robert Burnell’s attorney John de Berewyk emerged as a frequent witness to Eleanor’s deeds well before he took up a new role as her last wardrobe keeper. Interestingly, Edward seems to have had no scruples about the very close association between his wife and Burnell, who, though a priest and therefore technically sworn to celibacy, was somewhat successful with the opposite sex, having at least one known mistress (Juliana) and five children by her. This evidences further the closeness between Edward and Eleanor, and his complete trust in her.20
Other very frequent appearances are Robert Tybetot; John de Vescy; Roger Mortimer; Otho de Grandison; Hugh Fitzothes; Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey; and Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. This list of the great and the good, essentially a list of Edward’s closest associates, shows a regular core of long-standing friends often present at court. It is also – particularly when taken with other names which appear occasionally, such as a galaxy of bishops, the Bigods, and even the older and younger Bruces – in sharp contrast to the position as regards Eleanor of Provence’s Acts, which were usually attested by members of her household or family, conveying the impression of actions performed very much as a private individual. The impression conveyed is that Eleanor was on very good terms with and was well respected by the major power players at court, and that her business was regarded as of significance and was approved by the king.
Beyond this, there is evidence for close friendship between Eleanor and a number of the core names in this list. So Henry de Lacy and his wife Margaret de Longespée (Countess of Salisbury in her own right and a relative of both king and queen through her descent from Henry II) appear to have been close friends of Eleanor’s. As well as witnessing many of her Acts, Henry de Lacy was a frequent correspondent of the queen and was one of her executors. As for John de Vescy, Eleanor would arrange his marriage and that of his nephew; her affection for him is clearly seen on his death in 1289, when Eleanor arranged for his heart to be buried with her own and that of her son Alphonso in the London house of the Dominicans.21
A third member of Edward’s male circle with whom a close friendship can be inferred is his childhood friend Otho de Grandison, who not only appears often as a witness but was a recipient of gifts from Eleanor. Earlier years cannot be spoken for due to the absence of records, but in 1290 she granted to him certain houses in London which she acquired via Hagin son of Moses, and in 1289–90 she gave him 1,000 marks. She also bequeathed him the manor of Turweston for life. Otho was to give her valuable personal gifts in return. His nephew John de Strattingen was in Eleanor’s household as one of her knights by 1286 and she probably had a hand in arranging a marriage for him with the niece of Bishop Godfrey Giffard of Worcester. Another nephew, Peter d’Estavayer, was also among her knights. She patronised his nephew Gerard von Wippingen, later bishop of both Lausanne and Basel. Obviously Eleanor had no interest in anyone except her husband, other than by way of friendship. However, there seems a possibility that Otho’s feeling for her was more tender. Four facts point in this direction. The first is that, despite the fact that he ultimately made a considerable fortune in Edward’s service, Otho did not marry. The second is that he is the one friend depicted on Eleanor’s tomb, where he is pictured praying for Eleanor. The third is that he re-gifted the manor which she left him to the king to be used to endow her memorial service. Finally, he remained out of England for nearly six years following Eleanor’s death. All in all, there seems some reason to speculate that he was devoted to her and was reluctant to return to England once she was no longer there.22
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Eleanor’s family concerns her ties to her female relations. The starting point for this is to look at her domicille, that is the women who surrounded her day to day. Among Eleanor’s ladies were no fewer than four distant cousins: Joanna Wake, Clemence de Vescy, Alice de Montfort and Marie de St Amand. In these ladies we see clearly both an extended family being constructed and Eleanor’s scheme of quietly advancing her maternal relatives.
Joanna Wake was a de Fiennes, and a ‘double cousin’ of Eleanor’s, descending from the marriage which Eleanor arranged between her cousin William de Fiennes and her cousin Blanche of Brienne, granddaughter of Berengaria of Castile and John of Brienne. Joanna was particularly close to Eleanor, receiving new robes at the king’s expense five times in the 1290 period (Christmas Easter, Pentecost and the two royal weddings), which was more than any other of the domicille received, and having her goods carried at his expense. What is more, her children were sent to be raised with the younger royals at Langley, and her expenses for visiting them there were paid by the Crown. She was therefore emphatically regarded as part of the family.
Her marriage to John Wake appears to have been another of Eleanor’s matchmaking endeavours – Wake lands were granted to Eleanor after 1265 and were ransomed under the Dictum of Kenilworth, and John Wake and his brother were brought into the royal nursery establishment after the death of their mother in about 1283. John Wake’s wardship was granted to Eleanor in 1285, and the marriage appears to have followed speedily upon this, as Joanna had two children by 1290. The marriage was a very good one for Joanna – the Wakes were of impeccable Norman descent and John also had connections via his mother to William the Conqueror, the Welsh royal family and to the earls of Salisbury. One of the younger Wake children, Margaret, was to marry Edmund of Woodstock, Edward’s younger son by his second marriage; perhaps this was a match effectively made in the royal nursery, which both inhabited. Through this connection, Joanna Wake became the ancestress of the Fair Maid of Kent.23
The two ladies de Vescy were also cousins of the queen, and within her matchmaking ambit. John de Vescy’s wife Isabella was part of the older Brienne line, descending from the marriage of Louis de Brienne to Agnes de Beaumont. Her marriage to John de Vescy in 1280 was very clearly brought about by Eleanor, with John promising to pay her £550 in silver if his new bride had no child (which she did not). The couple, as will be seen, remained very close to Eleanor and Edward, travelling to Gascony with them in 1286. Clemence de Avagour, later de Vescy, named as a domicille in 1290, married the nephew and heir presumptive of John de Vescy and was descended from the very same Brienne line, being Isabelle’s own niece. Clemence’s marriage, too, was a close concern of Eleanor’s, with the groom’s father (John de Vescy’s brother William) making promises directly to the queen about what dower property would be assigned to Clemence, and the queen providing her with a coronet on the occasion of the wedding on 16 July 1290 at Westminster. Both de Vescy marriages were highly advantageous ones, since the Vescy family were at this time the great lords of the North – effectively the predecessors of the Percy family, who came to prominence in the North after the Vescy family line failed.24
The third domicilla mentioned, Lady de Montfort, was no relation to Simon de Montfort, but yet another of Eleanor’s maternal relatives. Her grandfather-in-law was the Peter de Montfort who fell fighting in the Montfortian cause at Evesham. His son Piers reconciled with Edward in 1267 and it is the son of this Piers, John, who married Alice de la Plaunche, Eleanor’s relative. The exact family connection between the two is hard to trace, though it is clear from the acknowledgement of her as a ‘consanguine regine’ that such a connection did exist. The credible theory advanced by Parsons is that Alice was another connection of the de Fiennes family and hence a distant connection of Eleanor’s on the Dammartin side. The connection was not a close one, so it is significant that Eleanor acknowledged the relationship, with Lady de Montfort being named as kin in her Liber Garderobe. It appears likely that the relationship was acknowledged during the Gascon trip, since in 1286 Edward is noted as giving a silver gilt cup to the lord de la Plaunche, also identified as a relative of the queen. Alice then joined Eleanor’s household in Gascony and accompanied Eleanor to England on their return, with a suitable marriage being put in place for her before that return; the marriage appears to have taken place before March 1287, when Edward ordered Edmund of Cornwall to deal favourably with John de Montfort because he had married a relative of Edward’s ‘dearest consort’.
The Montfort marriage was not by any means as grand a marriage as those arranged for the other cousins, but it was more than respectable, and for a family which very probably descended from a bastard line it was something of a coup. Meanwhile, other members of this family were also looked after albeit to a lesser extent: James and John de la Plaunche had a tutor hired for them in Gascony in 1287. John de la Plaunche appears as a vallettus in Eleanor’s wardrobe list and his brother James was married in 1289 to a ward of Eleanor, Matilda de Haversham. Matilda de Haversham/de la Plaunche was herself at court as domicilla to Eleanora from 1287 to 1290.
Also in attendance on the queen was Marie de St Amand, formerly Marie de Pécquigny, who was a distant cousin of Eleanor’s, her great-grandmother having been a daughter of John I of Ponthieu (father of the William of Ponthieu who married Alys of France). Marie was married to Almeric de St Amand at Leeds Castle on 21 August 1289, a short time after she joined the royal household. The St Amands were not a particularly noble or rich family, but were close military associates of the English royal family: one of them was godfather to Edward himself, and then died on Crusade with Richard of Cornwall. Another served with distinction under Edward in the Welsh wars.25
These matches show Eleanor surrounding herself with maternal relatives, a natural extended family, and advancing them subtly at the same time. Such matches as we have seen within her own familia were far from being the limit of Eleanor’s matchmaking, however. She arranged marriages for a couple of the younger de Fiennes relatives who were not in her own household but were being brought up in the nursery establishment with Edward of Caernarfon. From one of these matches, between John de Fiennes and Joanna Forester, descends the lines of the lords Saye and Sele and the lords Dacre – and in modern times the array of famous Fiennes.
But Eleanor also advanced her family in more marked ways, while at the same time keeping them within her extended family. These matches are not easy to trace – a contrast to Eleanor of Provence’s profligate approach. However, when the records are closely examined, it becomes apparent that Eleanor almost certainly had a hand in at least two very high-status and ultimately significant marriages.
The first is the marriage, sometime in the early 1280s, of Joanna Wake’s sister Margaret de Fiennes to Edmund de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. Margaret was therefore also a ‘double’ cousin of Eleanor’s through the Dammartin family and the Castilian–Brienne link. Two things in particular indicate Eleanor’s hand in this match. The first is that the arrangements for the wedding were made at royal expense, i.e. Eleanor gave the wedding, as might be expected if she had brought the match about. The second is that the history of Wigmore monastery reports the bride as being from a Castilian family – which, of course, she was not. However, a Castilian link was obviously perceived by onlookers, which indicates an association with the queen.
The significance of the marriage is not far to seek: Margaret de Fiennes, Eleanor’s distant cousin, was the mother of the infamous Roger Mortimer (the lover of Edward II’s wife Isabella, and bête noire of Edward III’s minority), and she was also hence ancestress of the Yorkist kings. How the match came about is uncertain; there was no Welsh link, as was most usual for Mortimer marriages, though on the credit side the bride could boast descent from the famous warrior Jean de Brienne, as the Mortimers could from his English counterpart, William Marshal. Ultimately the most likely reason for the link is Eleanor herself; through the close ties that bound Edward to Edmund’s father Roger Mortimer, a relative of Edward’s adored and influential queen might well have been perceived by the Mortimers as a worthy or at least useful match, particularly in the difficult period after Roger’s death.
The second match, even more prestigious and even more mysterious, is one between Margaret’s aunt Maud/Mathilde de Fiennes, daughter of Enguerrand II de Fiennes, and Humphrey de Bohun, heir to the Earl of Hereford and Essex. This took place rather earlier, in 1275, and the blood link to Eleanor was later to be reinforced when their son, another Humphrey, married Eleanor’s daughter Elizabeth after Eleanor’s own death. As for the reasoning behind this first marriage, some link between the family and the Crown was probably felt to be politic after some years of uneasy relations – Humphrey de Bohun’s father had died on the wrong side at Evesham – and again it seems likely that a link to Eleanor’s family was seen as conveying its own prestige. This, of course, says much about the influence which she was felt to wield, even by major magnates. Another mild traditional justification might just be found in the Fiennes family’s property holdings in Essex, the earl’s own county.
There is also a suggestion in the documents that the marriage represented a rapprochement bought by Eleanor. De Bohun had bought from his guardian, Gloucester, the right to his own marriage in 1270, for a sum of £1,000. This sum had not been paid, and Gloucester had even commenced an action to recover it. This action was discontinued shortly after the wedding, the conclusion being that the sum was paid. On the other side of the transaction, we see that in 1270 Eleanor had acquired Martock, next to her farm of Somerton, from William de Fiennes on a six-year lease, and in 1275 she subleased it ‘so the queen may recover a portion of the £1,000 she agreed to pay as a dowry for William de Fiennes daughter [sic], who is to marry the earl of Essex’s heir’. The implication is clear – Eleanor bought de Bohun out of the litigation as the price of his taking her relative as a wife. Whatever the reasoning behind the marriage, the marriage was a momentous one – through this line was ultimately to descend the Lancastrian kings of England.
The third significant marriage in which Eleanor’s hand can be traced is one between Margaret, daughter of Count Arnoul of Guines and Mathilde de Fiennes, and Richard de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster. Again, too, there is a link to the royal nursery: Richard de Burgh was another of the children brought into the royal nursery after the death of his mother in 1274. He married Margaret in February 1281 and Margaret seems to have been a member of Eleanor’s household from then until the Gascon visit. This was a high-status marriage for Margaret, but plainly had considerable advantages for Richard de Burgh too – courtesy of it, he was thereafter known as the king’s kinsman and the extension granted of his tenure of his Irish lands was obviously related to this, being for the lifetime of his wife. In the longer term, this too was a significant marriage. Margaret’s son John married Joan of Acre’s daughter Elizabeth de Clare. Their granddaughter Elizabeth married Edward III’s son Lionel of Antwerp, from whose line descends the Yorkist claim.26
As can be seen from this, Eleanor did not just surround herself with her wider family; some of the matches made by her put members of her family in the heart of some of the most prominent families in the country – and in future in the line for the throne. Yet Eleanor completely avoided the odium which was heaped on Eleanor of Provence. Indeed, one of the early chroniclers specifically praises her as being a queen in whose time the land was not troubled by foreigners, despite her own foreign birth. How was this coup achieved? The short answer is that Eleanor’s matchmaking was a masterpiece of subtlety. Unlike Eleanor of Provence, she did not seek to marry relatives who were too obviously close to her. Unlike Eleanor of Provence, she did not choose as beneficiaries of her matchmaking impoverished male relatives, or girls with no connection to England at all; nor did she broker treaties encapsulating lots of matches, which were bound to be noticed.
Furthermore, she seems to have worked quite hard to make the marriages palatable in traditional English matchmaking terms as well. A very good example is that of the de Vescy marriages. The brides in those cases were from the Fiennes/Beaumont families, both of which were some little distance in terms of familial proximity from Eleanor, and both of which held English lands: the Fiennes family held lands in Somerset, Hertfordshire and Essex, given to Pharamus de Tingry by King Stephen; and the Beaumonts held lands granted to Raoul de Beaumont by Henry I on the occasion of his son Roscelin’s marriage to one of Henry’s numerous illegitimate daughters. Thus the Beaumonts and de Fiennes could by this stage pass muster as English – or at least ‘non-alien’. In addition, however, the Vescy marriages had a subtle touch of kinship to recommend them even in traditional English matchmaking terms. The Vescys were related to the Scottish king, descending from a natural daughter of William the Lion of Scotland; meanwhile, the Beaumonts too were related to Alexander of Scotland, via Alexander II’s mother Ermengarde de Beaumont, and held lands from him by reason of that connection. Therefore, while a marriage between the families was not an obvious dynastic choice, it was perfectly explicable in local terms and a world away from Eleanor of Provence’s matches.27
Thus we can see that, very quietly, and without any of the outcry which Eleanor of Provence attracted for ultimately less influential marriages, Eleanor succeeded in inserting her relatives within touching distance of the royal house itself. At the time this was probably about securing loyal supporters for the royal house itself, in much the same way that she had done at a less elevated level within her own household. In the end, however, it maximised the chances of her family’s bloodline occupying the top spot.
Parsons notes that one reason Eleanor avoided outcry was that she made no attempt to advance her male relatives; no heiresses were ‘disparaged’ and no Castilian or French relatives received baronial summonses to Parliament. Actually, Parsons slightly overstates the case – at least as regards her de Brienne relatives, who were related to her on her father’s side. The Beaumont side of the family armoured by their descent from Henry I and Scottish connections not only received the marriage of Isabella to John de Vescy; the son Louis became Bishop of Durham in 1318 and another son, Henry, was Lord of Man, and through his marriage to Alice Comyn, the countess of Buchan, a conduit to the Lancaster line. However this marriage and his main honours (for example being made Constable of England) did not come until Edward II’s reign. Probably Eleanor’s main contribution to their advancement consisted in establishing them in Edward of Caernarfon’s household, which facilitated their eventual promotion by him. Otherwise, advancement of male relatives, such as John de Fiennes and James de la Plaunche, was very limited and not at a level to create scandal.28
Eleanor’s family can therefore be seen to be a very complex construct. Apart from Edward, the unalterable centre of her world, she assembled many layers of support and friendship, in which her children played a relatively small part. Her closest ties of blood created yet more responsibilities for her. But elsewhere she had a vibrant network of friends, most of whom were also Edward’s intimates, providing a close support network as the royal couple went about their business. There was also a close extended family around the queen largely made up of families tied to her by blood and marriage and who also owed some portion of their advancement to her, although there was a small leavening of close blood family. The atmosphere will have been warm and familiar, many miles from the formalities of later court protocols. But also Eleanor will have been assured of the kind of loyalty which had been missing around England’s royal family for some years – her household had multiple ties of interest with her and her family. The success of her strategy can be seen in the way that these families went on to support Eleanor’s descendants for generations to come.
In addition, Eleanor carefully selected female relatives to advance her bloodline into Britain’s foremost noble families. often choosing from among those who had played some part in that extended family at court. The aim was probably to seed loyalty into those houses as she did among her staff. The result would put her family on England’s throne.