A Great and Terrible King Read online

  A Saint in Name

  T

  his story begins in the year 1239 with a girl called Eleanor. Eleanor lives in England, a peaceful and prosperous kingdom, much the same size then as it is now. Eleanor herself, however, is not English. She was bred and brought up in Provence, an independent county in the south of what is now modern France. The reason Eleanor is living in England in 1239 is because, three and a half years earlier, she had been married to the king of England, Henry III. At the time of their wedding, Henry was twenty-eight. Eleanor was twelve.

  Eleanor is now sixteen years old, or very nearly so, and reportedly a great beauty: graceful, charming and elegant. Henry is very much in love with her, and she with him, but she has yet to win the hearts of his subjects. In the thirteenth century the English did not take to foreigners with the same easy readiness they do today. We may take as our witness a monk of St Albans by the name of Matthew Paris, who, as well as being a thorough-going xenophobe, also happens to be one of the most gossipy, prolific and best-informed chroniclers of the entire Middle Ages. Brother Matthew and his contemporaries had observed the effects of Eleanor's arrival and seen the thing they most feared: an influx of foreigners, surrounding their king, separating him from his 'natural' subjects and advising him - so the English believed - badly. Rather ridiculously, Paris tried to pin the blame for this on Eleanor. Foreigners were pulling the kingdom to pieces, he said, and Henry, 'being under the influence of his wife', was letting them.

  It was also apparently held against Eleanor that, three years into her marriage, she had not produced any children. 'It was feared the queen was barren,' said Matthew Paris, with the sympathy of a professional celibate. Again, this was quite ridiculous, given Eleanor's tender years. What is much more likely is that Henry III, a kind and considerate man, had been exercising a bit of self-restraint. Twelve was the minimum age at which the medieval Church would permit girls to marry, and Henry and Eleanor had probably had sex soon after their wedding, but this would have been for political reasons, to ensure that their union was valid and binding. Common sense and compassion suggested that twelve was too young for regular marital relations and to run the risk that Eleanor might become pregnant.

  By the time Matthew Paris made this comment, however, Eleanor was fifteen, Henry was thirty-one, and they were definitely sleeping together. We know this because on 9 September 1238, in the middle of the night, a knife-wielding madman broke into Henry's bedchamber with the intention of killing the king. He failed because, as Matthew Paris himself tells us, Henry was not in his room at the time. Luckily, he was with the queen.

  And now, a little over nine months on from that dramatic evening, the queen is about to confound her critics and silence the rumour-mongers. It is June 1239, just a few days short of midsummer, and Eleanor is lodged in Henry's palace at Westminster, by the side of the River Thames, on the site where the modern Houses of Parliament stand. And there, during the night of 17—18 June, in a room presumably lit by lanterns and candles, she gives birth to her first child. Her delivery is successful, the baby is healthy, and — best of all — it is a boy. In the most important aspect of her role as queen, Eleanor has triumphed. She has provided Henry, and England, with an heir to the throne.1

  There was immediate celebration in the Palace of Westminster. At Henry's command the clerks of the royal chapel sang the triumphant anthem Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christns Imperat (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ rules), and messengers were sent speeding off in all directions to spread the good news. In nearby London, a walled city of some 50,000 souls, the citizens went wild, dancing through the streets with lanterns, drums and tambourines. Soon the royal messengers were returning, laden with costly gifts from the king's greatest subjects. In some cases Henry apparently felt that these presents were not costly enough and sent their bearers back to get better ones. According to Matthew Paris, this provoked some wag at court to quip, 'God has given us this child, but the king is selling him to us!' Paris himself, striking a more serious tone, thought that Henry's ingratitude had 'deeply clouded his magnificence', and the episode, while not very significant, does provide something of a character note for the king. Henry, as other contemporaries observed, was a vir simplex: charitably, a 'straightforward' chap; more obviously, a simpleton. Consequently, he tended to act in inept ways such as this. Even when fortune handed

  him a silk purse, Henry could generally be relied upon to make a pig's ear out of it.2

  A much more important indicator of the king's personality is provided by the name he chose for his newborn son. Henry, although king of England, was ancestrally and culturally French. He and his family were direct descendants of William the Conqueror, the Norman duke who had snatched England's throne some 170 years earlier. Similarly, his leading subjects were all directly descended from the Conqueror's Norman companions. When they talked to each other they spoke French (or at least a slighdy anglicised, Norman version of it), and, when they came to christen their children, they gave them French names. William (Guillaume), for example, was still a popular name, for obvious reasons. So too was Richard (Ricard), because it evoked the memory of Henry's famous uncle, Richard the Lionheart. And Henry (Henri) itself was perfectly respectable and commonplace. Henry III might have been rather limited in his abilities, but his two namesake predecessors had both been fearsome and successful warrior kings, worthy of commemoration and emulation.

  All these options, however, Henry rejected. He had no desire to father conquerors, or for that matter crusaders. Thanks to his own father, the notorious King John, he had grown up surrounded by uncertainty and conflict. John had died in the midst of a self-inflicted civil war, bequeathing to his son a kingdom scarred and divided. What Henry craved above all for himself and his subjects was peace, harmony and stability. And it was a reflection of this ambition that he decided to call his son Edward.

  Edward was a deeply unfashionable name in 1239 — no king or nobleman had been lumbered with it since the Norman Conquest, because it belonged to the side that had lost. Edward was an Old English name, and it sounded as odd and outlandish to Norman ears after 1066 as other Old English names - Egbert, Ethelred, Egfrith - still sound to us today. To call a boy such a name after the Conquest was to invite ridicule; he was bound to be mocked by the Williams, Richards and Henrys who were his peers.

  But Henry III had good reason for foisting this unfashionable name on his firstborn son. After his father's death, his mother had abandoned him — Isabella of Angouleme left England for her homeland in France, remarried and never returned. Effectively orphaned from the age of nine, the young king had found substitute father figures among the elderly men who had helped him govern his kingdom. But these men too, Henry ultimately decided, had failed him, and by 1234 he found himself alone once more. It was at this point, though, that the king discovered a new mentor, a man who would never, ever let him down - largely because he had already been dead for the best part of two centuries.

  Henry's new patron was Edward the Confessor, the penultimate king of Anglo-Saxon England. Like Henry himself, Edward had not been a very successful ruler: his death in January 1066 had sparked the succession crisis that led to the Norman Conquest nine months later. Posthumously, however, Edward had acquired a reputation as a man of great goodness — so much so that, a century after his death, he had been officially recognised as a saint. Thereafter his reign had acquired the retrospective glow of a golden age: men spoke with great reverence about his good and just laws (even though, in reality, he never made any). Of course, the fact that Edward was not a great warrior had made him an unlikely exemplar for the conquering dynasty of kings who came after him. But to a man like Henry III, who was entirely lacking in military skill, the Confessor seemed the perfect role model. There were, moreover, other similarities between their two lives that must have struck Henry as highly significant. Edward had lost his father and been abandoned by his mother at a young age; he had grown up with war and wished to cultivate peace;
he had been misled by treacherous ministers. Above all, Edward, like Henry, was famed for his piety. Edward was the king who established the royal palace at Westminster, in order to be near the great abbey (minster) that he spent the last years of his life rebuilding. In due course he was buried in the abbey church, and his tomb there became a pilgrim shrine. It was the greatest testament to Henry III's love and reverence for the Confessor that, from 1245, he would spend vast sums rebuilding the abbey for a second time, replacing the old Romanesque church with the massive Gothic building that stands today.

  It was no surprise to anyone, therefore, that Henry should choose to call his son Edward in honour of his idol. Nor, probably, was it a coincidence that the boy happened to be born in Westminster. Henry spent plenty of time in his palace there, partly to be near the abbey, and partly because Westminster was a centre for some branches of royal government. But the king had lots of other palaces and castles all over England, and to govern his realm properly he was obliged to travel around them. It seems likely that Henry had deliberately arranged it so that he and Eleanor were in Westminster as the end of her term approached, so that they would be in the closest possible proximity to the Confessor s shrine. Being born in Westminster also meant that Edward could be baptised there. A few days after his birth, the new baby became the first king of England to be christened in the abbey, surrounded by a great crowd of bishops, noblemen and ladies, no fewer than twelve of whom became his godparents. Henry was evidently determined from the first that his son would have all the affection and guidance in childhood that he himself had lacked.

  Westminster's spiritual and governmental advantages made it a busy place, unsuitable for the raising of children. A few weeks after Edward's birth the court left the palace and travelled fifty miles up the Thames (twenty miles as the crow flies) to the royal castle at Windsor.4 It was here, in the quiet Berkshire countryside, that Henry and Eleanor intended their son should grow up. Soon after their wedding in 1236 Henry had begun a major rebuilding programme to update the venerable fortress - Windsor had been established by William the Conqueror - in line with contemporary standards of luxury and his own exacting tastes. A brand-new chamber had already been constructed for the queen and, just a few weeks after his birth, work began on an adjacent courtyard for her son. Henry went on to build a wholly new suite of rooms at Windsor for himself and Eleanor, with an especially grand chapel. Altogether the king spent well over £10,000 on these improvements - enough to have built an entirely new castle from scratch. Almost nothing of these buildings survives today. The fragments that remain, however (such as the doors to the chapel), and the detailed orders that Henry sent to his designers, are enough to establish the quality of the life that they afforded. Chambers were fashioned expensively in stone, with fireplaces and en-suite toilets. They were linked by covered walkways and lit by large windows, glazed with glass of many colours. Interior decor was sumptuous: floors were exquisitely tiled, pillars were sculpted from Purbeck marble, walls were painted with colourful patterns or hung with tapestries. Henry's favourite decorative scheme, it seems, was for green walls spangled with gold stars. Outside, in the courtyards, gardens were planted with herbs and flowers.5

  Nor was this level of luxury confined to Windsor. At all his palaces and castles, even ones he hardly ever visited, Henry delighted in commissioning new building work, improving the plumbing or the wainscoting, or ordering new wall-paintings (favourite subject: Edward the Confessor). It made him something of a target for satirical comment. 'White bread, chambers and tapestries,' mocked one observer, 'to ride like a dean on a docile mount: the king likes better all that than to put on a coat of mail.' But it also meant that Henry and his young family enjoyed a level of comfort that is the antithesis of what most people today imagine as 'medieval'. Even as a small child Edward ate off silver plate, and drank fine wine, imported from the south of France. By his parents' command, he was dressed in expensive silks, robes of scarlet trimmed with fur, and cloth of gold.

  As the orders for these items imply, Henry was an attentive and doting father, and his itinerary suggests that he spent as much time as he could at Windsor. Nevertheless, the fact that such orders had to be committed to writing indicates that, for most of the time, the business of government meant that the king had to be elsewhere. So too, on some occasions, did Eleanor — her most notable absence being a seventeen-month visit to France with Henry in 1242-43. In general, however, the queen was at Windsor far more often than her husband. Such evidence as survives suggests that she probably resided at the castle for well over half of all the weeks in any one year.7

  This was without doubt because she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her growing brood of children. In the autumn of 1240 Edward had been joined at Windsor by a little sister, delivered at the castle on 29 September and christened Margaret in honour of a maternal aunt. A few years later, in 1243, came Beatrice, born in Bordeaux during her parents' trip to France and named in this instance after Eleanor's mother. When a second son arrived at the start of 1245 it was Henrys turn to do the naming, and once again he defied convention in order to honour another Old English royal saint. Baby Edmund was soon installed in what had become a veritable royal nursery. As well as his younger siblings, Edward by this stage was keeping company with his cousin Henry and a number of other noble children.

  Needless to say, the queen had plenty of help in raising them all. Her foremost assistants were Hugh and Sybil Giffard, a husband and wife team who were entrusted with Edward's custody from the moment of his birth. Sybil, indeed, had helped to deliver Edward and was later well rewarded by Henry for having acted as midwife. There were also several other ladies on hand to assist in the practicalities of child-raising. As an infant Edward had two nurses, Alice and Sarah, whose responsibilities would have extended to suckling him.

  Eleanor was also supported, in a less immediate but nevertheless crucially important way, by certain members of her own family. On her mother's side, the queen had no fewer than six clever and ambitious uncles. These men, who hailed from the Alpine province of Savoy, saw in their niece's marriage the opportunity for self-advancement, and she in return looked to them for help and advice. One of these uncles, William of Savoy, had accompanied Eleanor to England in 1236 (and, until his death in 1239, had been the principal cause of English discontent). A few years later Boniface of Savoy arrived, having been elected, at Henry's urging, as archbishop of Canterbury. But between these two brothers, and more important than either, came Peter of Savoy. He appeared in England soon after Christmas 1240 and immediately established himself as one of the king's closest advisers. (Among the many properties that Henry later rewarded him with was a house on the Strand, which became the Savoy Palace and, latterly, the Savoy Hotel.) An exceptionally smooth operator - even Matthew Paris had to admit that he was 'discreet and circumspect' - Peter understood from the start that his influence depended on Eleanor, and that her importance flowed from her position as the mother of the heir to the throne. Peter therefore also became his niece's principal confidant and collaborator, and took steps to ensure that together they maintained the tightest possible control over her son. Even before Peter's arrival, a Savoyard clerk had been made responsible for controlling access to Edward and, within a year of his coming, the old constable of Windsor was replaced by Bernard of Savoy, who may have been Peter's bastard brother. No aspect of Edward's welfare, no matter how unglamorous, escaped Savoyard attention. Just months after his arrival, presumably because of the health risk they posed, Peter advised Henry to clear all the horses out of Windsor Castle, along with their dung.

  Little is known of Edward's education, but we may make some general observations. Hugh Giffard, husband of Sybil, was described by Matthew Paris as the boy's teacher (pedagogus), and it is entirely possible that Hugh was responsible for giving Edward some of his earliest lessons, though these were more likely of a basic social nature rather than an overtly scholarly one. Hugh died before Edward's seventh birthday,
which was the stage at which most medieval thinkers reckoned that infancy ended and the more rigorous training associated with boyhood ought to begin. Up to that point, the care and education of children was considered to be principally a female concern."

  It was therefore more likely Sybil Giffard, the nurses Alice and Sarah, and, indeed, the queen herself who began one of the most important aspects of Edward's education, namely teaching him to read. Although there were a number of male clerks in the boy's household, their tasks were probably administrative in nature and connected with the performance of religious services. It was, as one thirteenth-century poem put it, 'woman [that] teacheth child the book'. Learning to read was perfectly normal for aristocrats in the thirteenth century, as indeed it was for most other ranks of society. By the time Edward was king, for example, it was a legal requirement that even serfs (unfree peasants) should own a seal with which to authenticate documents. Writing, on the other hand was a more specialised technical skill, and because it was rather messy many nobles no doubt considered it somewhat beneath them, especially since they employed plenty of dedicated clerical staff in their households. Edward, therefore, was certainly a reader, but probably not a writer.'2