Eleanor of Castile

Here's a post on the mother Edward II barely knew. Much of the information comes from John Carmi Parsons, who knows more about Eleanor than anyone else on the planet - see especially his biography of her, Eleanor of Castile, and his posts in the archives of soc.genealogy.medieval.

Eleanor was born as doña Leonor de Castilla, twelfth of the fifteen children of King Fernando III of Castile and León, by his second wife Jeanne de Dammartin, countess of Ponthieu. Her date of birth is often given as 1244, following Agnes Strickland, in her Lives of the Queens of England (volume 2, 1841), who states that Eleanor was "about ten" at the time of her marriage in the autumn of 1254. But Strickland cites no primary source for this statement, and in fact, Eleanor was older than that.

In his work De Rebus Hispaniae Libri IX, finished on 31 March 1243, don Juan Ximenez de Rada, Fernando III's chancellor and archbishop of Toledo, gives the names of Fernando and Jeanne's three children: Fernando, Eleanor (Leonor) and Luis, in that order of birth. If Eleanor had a younger brother born before 31 March 1243, she can't have been born any later than early 1242, and in fact, the likeliest date of her birth is late 1241. Fernando III and Jeanne were apart from the beginning of 1240 to February 1241 (Fernando was on military campaign).

Eleanor died on 28 November 1290. Edward I paid for forty-nine candle-bearers during her funeral. Why forty-nine, and not fifty? This implies that she was forty-nine at the time of her death, or close to it, and thirteen or almost when she married the future Edward I on or around 1 November 1254 - certainly not ten.

Eleanor's elder brother Fernando (1238/39 to circa 1264) and younger brother Luis (1242/43 to circa 1276) lived to marry and have children. Her youngest brothers Ximen and Juan, born about 1244 and 1246, died in infancy. Eleanor was the only one of Jeanne de Dammartin's five children to outlive her, and duly inherited the county of Ponthieu on her mother's death in 1279. In 1290, it passed to her six-year-old son, the future Edward II.

Eleanor bore at least fourteen, and perhaps sixteen, children. Historians and genealogists have made a right mess of them, adding children who never existed - Alice, confused with Alfonso, a name contemporary English scribes struggled with and often spelt in very odd ways; Juliana, never mentioned before about 1600; Blanche and Beatrice, supposedly the younger siblings of Edward II, who never existed (Edward was certainly Eleanor's youngest child); and getting the dates of birth and death of some of the others wrong. For example, Eleanor's eldest surviving daughter Eleanor, countess of Bar, was born in 1269, not 1264 as often stated, as this entry in the Patent Rolls proves. Eleanor's third surviving daughter Margaret, duchess of Brabant, is often said to have died in 1318, but she was certainly still alive in 1333, when she sent a letter to her nephew Edward III.

Later historians portrayed Eleanor as a noble, virtuous, and just queen beloved of her subjects. For example, Thomas Costain in his The Three Edwards 1272-1377 says: "Edward's queen was greatly loved in the country...[there was] a warmth and sweetness about her which won all hearts...She was generous and thoughtful in the extreme..." However, the mother of all idealised depictions of Eleanor is to be found in Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England: "What heart, however, does not warm at the name of Eleanora of Castile?...Foreigner as she was, Eleanora of Castile entirely won the love and goodwill of her subjects..."

Strickland's work is a masterpiece of Victorian moralising, which divides the queens of England into the 'good ones', such as Eleanor of Castile and Philippa of Hainault, and the 'bad ones', such as Eleanor of Provence and Isabella of France. Poor Isabella is condemned thusly: "Since the days of the fair and false Elfrida, of Saxon celebrity, no Queen of England has left so dark a stain on the annals of female royalty, as the consort of Edward II, Isabella of France...Now [1326] the evil nature of Isabella of France blazed out in full view." Isabella was many things, but she sure as heck wasn't evil!

Unfortunately, this rosy picture of Eleanor of Castile is very wide of the mark. In fact, she was widely disliked in her own lifetime, viewed as greedy and grasping and willing to use quasi-legal methods to get hold of any lands she fancied. As this contemporary rhyme put it, Le Roy cuvayte nos deneres/Et la Rayne nos beaus maners ('the king covets our money/and the queen our lovely manors'). John Carmi Parsons' biography of Eleanor has a great chapter on opinions and depictions of her from her own lifetime until today, if anyone's interested in reading more on the subject.

Edward I and Eleanor left England for Gascony in May 1286 and didn't return until August 1289, that is, from when Edward of Caernarfon was two years and one month old to when he was five and four months. Fifteen months later, Eleanor was dead, and in the meantime, little Edward had barely seen her anyway. Devoted to each other Edward I and Eleanor undoubtedly were, but they were no great shakes as parents; on learning that their eldest son John, and his father Henry III, were dead, Edward is said to have lamented that he could have more sons, but he'd never have another father. (You could argue that this remark came back to bite him on the behind when three of his four sons died in childhood, and the only survivor, Edward II, proved to be manifestly unsuited to his position.) When their second son Henry was dying in the autumn of 1274, Edward and Eleanor didn't bother to ride thirty miles to see him - although Eleanor's Wikipedia page - scroll down to near the end - tries to justify this and their all-round performance as parents. (Unconvincingly, in my opinion, though you may disagree.)

Losing his mother very young was something Edward II had in common with Piers Gaveston, whose mother Claramonde de Marsan died in 1286 or 1287, when Piers was about four or five. Incidentally, there's no truth to the often-repeated story that Claramonde was burned alive as a witch; it was invented in the sixteenth century.

It's doubtful that Edward had many, if any, happy memories of his mother. I sometimes wonder what he thought of her, how much he knew of his Spanish origins, if he could speak any Castilian, if he took pride in his Spanish ancestry...