On 9 October 1325, Edward II gave ten shillings to one Jack the Trumpeter of Dover, who had bought forty-seven caged goldfinches for Edward to give to his niece Eleanor Despenser, and also paid his clerk Will of Dunstable to look after the birds until Eleanor took possession of them. I've often wondered why Edward bought forty-seven goldfinches particularly, as it seems such a random number; had he originally bought fifty, but three had died? What's also interesting is that the word appears in English in the otherwise Anglo-Norman text of the king's chamber account (now kept in the library of the Society of Antiquaries of London): goldfynches. Perhaps Edward's chamber clerks, good at French though they undoubtedly were, could not think what the French word for 'goldfinches' might be. I sympathise; neither do I, without looking on Google Translate. ("Errrrm, err, errrrm, finches d'or, maybe? Oh, apparently it's chardonneret. Who knew?")
Eleanor Despenser, now thirty-three years old, was about seven months pregnant at the time of this gift, and gave birth to a child - probably her youngest daughter Elizabeth, Lady Berkeley - at her uncle's manor-house of Sheen sometime shortly before 14 December 1325. She moved into Sheen soon before the gift of the goldfinches, and stayed there until she gave birth and presumably for a while afterwards as well. Edward also gave her gifts of caged larks and three swans on other occasions in 1325, and gifts of cash too. Eleanor's itinerary, where it can be discovered, reveals that she was at court with the king and with her husband, Edward's mighty favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger, most of the time in the 1320s. My book about Eleanor Despenser and her sisters Margaret Gaveston Audley and Elizabeth de Burgh, currently titled Powerful Pawns of the Crown, is coming out on 30 January 2020. In it - among much else, obviously - I take a look at the intriguing evidence for Eleanor's complex relationships with her uncle Edward II and with Hugh Despenser the Younger. My view is that Eleanor was a devoted supporter of both men, and was involved with Hugh's extortions up to her neck, even when they were aimed at her own sisters.
What does not cease to amaze me is the cut throat nature of the politics and power games in medieval societies. Sister, brother, cousin, father, mother, no matter what if the moves had to be made, they were done regardless. The more I learn about medieval families and politics the more similar they seem to be of highly organised crime of our times, including bank frauds, boiler rooms and other white collar crimes. Really intriguing stuff. It is somehow hyper human on it's all forms, all the negative and all the POSITIVE stuff put together.
ReplyDeleteDifficult for a woman if the target of her husband's family's machinations was her own birth family. To see your father or your mother or you siblings destroyed either literally or politically would surely have been painful. Yet Eleanor appears to have thrown in her lot whole-heartedly with her husband. Perhaps she did not care too much for her sisters.
ReplyDeleteSo excited to read this book!:-)
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely hoping for a copy! I'm an art historian who works on the visual and material culture of this court, and have recently published a couple of chapters developed from the 1358 inventory of Isabella's things. I am very happy to see work coming out on Philippa. StantonA@missouri.edu
ReplyDeleteThank you, have added you to the draw! Am really interested in your Isabella work.
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