Friday Monarch Moment: Isabella, She-Wolf of France

Isabella of France, unofficially r. 1326-1330

Isabella has long been one of English history's great villains. Now, I've only read one book about Isabella (Alison Weir's Queen Isabella), and it's one that is explicitly trying to rehabilitate Izzy's reputation. So maybe I'm a little biased, but Weir did seem to put forth convincing evidence on all her major points. (Except one, but I'll get to that.)

There's no denying that Isabella didn't have it easy. She got sent to England at age twelve to marry Edward II--the marriage of the English king to the French king's daughter was meant to establish a lasting peace between the two countries (which, as it turns out, backfired hilariously! Details to follow in an upcoming post). When one is Queen of England, one expects attention, respect, etc. One does not necessarily expect that one's husband will shower all his affection on some dude named Piers.

Piers' brutal execution worked wonders for Isabella and Edward's marriage. It seems that Edward came to trust and depend on Isabella, and he granted her lots of property and such so that she could be a major landowner (and be very rich) in her own right. But then Boyfriend #2, Hugh le Despenser, came along and things got much much worse. (For Isabella, that is. Times were good for Hugh.)

Hugh was smarter and meaner than Piers had been, and he used tension with France to turn Edward against his French queen. The King eventually took all her stuff away--her lands, her independent income, her French servants, and even her kids: the youngest three had been living with her but got put in somebody else's custody. Isabella had no freedom and practically no hope until Edward, as was his wont . . . did something really stupid.

Back in their marital heyday, Edward had employed Isabella as a peacemaker, sending her to France to negotiate with her own daddy. In 1324, during the bad times, the Pope was nervous about the looming war between France (now ruled by one of Isabella's brothers) and England; he was also not super happy about Edward's virtual imprisonment and literal humiliation of Isabella. So the Pope was like, "Hey, Ed, why not send her over there again?" Edward and Hugh didn't want Edward to go himself, leaving Hugh unprotected from the angry, angry English people, so Ed was finally like, "Sure, why not." Isabella put on her happy face and was in turn like, "Bye sweetie! I'll miss you! Tell Hugh XOXO!"

Once she was in France (where her bro the King was pretty willing to back her up), she took her sweet time doing diplomatic stuff. Her masterstroke was when she convinced Edward that everything would go better if he sent over their boy, li'l Eddie (he was in his mid-teens, but I enjoy typing "li'l"). That's when Isabella revealed her real feelings (which, honestly, should have been pretty obvious all along, Edward):

Amongst other things, when the king sent his son to France, he ordered his wife to return to England without delay. When this command had been laid by the messengers before the King of France and the queen herself, she replied, "I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life, and that someone has come between my husband and myself trying to break this bond; I protest that I will not return until this intruder is removed, but, discarding my marriage garment, shall assume the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this Pharisee."

Vita Edwardi, via The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

So Isabella had her freedom, foreign support, and the heir to the throne in her clutches. All she needed was a man to tell her what to do.

This is Weir's theory, anyway--Isabella just kind of dawdled and pondered, until Roger Mortimer (an English baron in revolt against Edward) came along and was all, "I'll take it from here, baby." And this being the 14th Century, and Isabella having been long saddled with a weak/ineffectual husband, her reaction was "FINALLY."

To cut to the chase, Isabella and Roger married li'l Eddie to Phillippa of Hainault, whose father paid her dowry not in boring old gold or china, but with motherflippin' soldiers. Then they all invaded England. They didn't have that many men, but the tyranny of Edward and Hugh was such that the English people's response to the Queen's invasion was "Where do we sign up?!?!" They marched through the country more or less unchallenged, captured Edward, executed/mutilated Hugh (read the story if you dare), and crowned li'l Eddie.

Sadly, this awesomeness could not be sustained. Li'l Eddie, being li'l, couldn't actually rule; a regency council was set up and consisted of many Very Important Persons. However, Isabella and her boyfriend Roger (neither of whom among the official VIPs) held the read power. And in a regrettable emulation of her discarded husband, Isabella left all the decisions to her boyfriend, who used them all to empower and enrich himself.

A return of awesomeness was declared when Eddie decided his li'lness was no more. He and his buddies kidnapped Roger and tried him for treason, allowing Eddie to sieze his own power for his own self. Isabella was kept under close watch for a while, but with good behavior was slowly allowed to have sweet lands and money again. In the last years of her life, despite her having lived in semi-brazen adultery with Roger and despite her onetime overthrow of an anointed monarch, she was seen as a respectable elder statewoman. (Later people would focus more on the adultery/overthrow angle, though.)


Oh, so what happened to Edward II?

Well, he was imprisoned for a while, but after one too many attempts to spring him, it was decided (probably by Rog) to have him taken care of. This is the most famous story of what happened, and I will warn you right now that it is graphic and gruesome. Some of you may want to skip the following quote.

Firstly he was shut up in a secure chamber, where he was tortured for many days until he was almost suffocated by the stench of corpses buried in a cellar hollowed out beneath. Carpenters, who one day were working near the window of his chamber, heard him, God's servant, as he lamented that this was the most extreme suffering that had ever befallen him.
But when his tyrannous warders perceived that the stench alone was not sufficient to kill him, they seized him on the night of 22 September as he lay sleeping in his room.
There with cushions heavier than fifteen strong men could carry, they held him down suffocating him.
Then they thrust a plumber's soldering iron, heated red hot, guided by a tube inserted into his bowels, and thus they burnt his innards and vital organs. They feared lest, if he were to receive a wound in those parts of the body where men generally are wouned, it might be discovered by some man who honoured justice, and his torturers might be found guilty of manifest treason.
. . . As this brave knight was overcome, he shouted aloud so that many heard his cry both within and without the castle and knew it for a man who suffered a violent death.

The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, via the Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

As Weir points out, the account is riddled with implausibilities. They really thought he would die in a couple of days from bad smell? How could four guys carry cushions heavier than 15 men could carry? And of course, the guy who wrote it is otherwise unreliable and was in no position to know what had really happened. She says it is more likely that Edward was simply smothered. (I mean, come on. That's the way to not leave a mark.)

However!

Though Weir thinks suffocation is more likely than, you know, the gross murder, what she thinks is likelier still is that Edward . . . got away.

There's this document, see, called the Fieschi Letter. It's a communication from an Italian priest to Edward III, containing a detailed story about how Edward II evaded his would-be murderers, escaped from England, and tooled around Europe for a while before settling in a monastery in Italy. Weir makes a lot of good points--for instance, the writer of the letter was a trustworthy fellow, and he knew many details (like those of Edward's attempted evasion of Isabella's invasion forces) that very few people knew at the time. Much of it is clearly not impossible. (She also adds an account from later that Edward III once mysteriously met with a mysterious stranger in France--was it a father and child reunion?!?)

But I just can't get convinced. For one thing, I find it hard to believe that a deposed king could be out and about without getting noticed by a lot more people. Sure, information was not easy to disseminate in those days, and maybe there are other letters by other priests that simply haven't survived, but still. Wouldn't Edward's survival have been a bigger deal? Secondly, many of Edward's supposed adventures hinge on him being competent. In his escape from prison, he was said to have overpowered and killed the guard at the exit, stealing the guard's clothes. Which is so cool that I have a bit of a hard time believing Edward could pull it off. And then a guy who spent all his life surrounded by servants and retainers, and who did not show a knack for doing stuff well, managed to get along well and quietly all by himself, all over Europe? I dunno. (Although then again, maybe he could earn his keep bricklaying and fixing rooves?)

So I guess it's possible, but I remain unconvinced. It would be awfully cool if it were true, though.

Friday Monarch Moment: Edward II

Edward II, House of Plantagenet, r. 1307-1327

For the record, I've got to say that I think Edward II holds the title of England's Gayest King.

Sure, I know what you're saying (if you're saying anything in particular): What about James I? And I hear you, I do. But whereas James mostly had boy-toys (to whom he tended to grant ridiculous amounts of power, yes), Edward pretty much wanted his boyfriends to be co-kings with him, and he didn't care who knew it (example: at the coronation feast of Edward and his wife Isabella, was it Isabella who sat next to Edward? Was it Isabella whose coat of arms hung next to Edward's in the hall? [Hint: no. It was his boyfriend]).

Granted, this measure of "gayness" may not perfect; I'm not sure who I would think was "straighter," Edward I, who was (as far as anybody can tell) faithful and devoted to his wives, or Henry I, who was a raging mistress-o-holic.

. . . What was I talking about? Oh right, Edward II. Did you know that Edward was the first son of an English King to be known as the Prince of Wales? Now you do.

Edward was also, let's face it, kind of dumb. In Alison Weir's Queen Isabella (a biography of Edward's to-be-monarch-momented-later wife), she wrote a sentence I loved so much I actually dog-eared the page (don't worry, I own the book). When analyzing a letter Edward wrote to his wife, claiming to be super confused about why she hated his super vindictive Boyfriend #2, Weir states: "In his next sentence, Edward demonstrates that he was a liar of the first order or capable of the greatest self-deception or perhaps extraordinarily stupid." They might all have been true in some measure, but if I had to choose, I'd pick door number three.

Admittedly, Edward didn't come to the throne with many advantages--the war in Scotland was already going badly, and the extremes to which his father had gone to prosecute the war had left the country's finances in sad shape. Still, his reign is just frustrating to read about--it's a continuous cycle of politically tone-deaf blunders, perpetrated by someone seemingly without the capacity to learn from his mistakes.

He'd lavish too much power and land on his boyfriend (at first, it was Piers Gaveston of the hair-pulling incident). The barons would get (understandably) fed up, and force the king to exile the boyfriend. Edward would find a way to bring the boyfriend back. Repeat a few times until boyfriend is killed by angry barons. Find a new boyfriend (Hugh le Despenser the younger). Lavish too much power and land on boyfriend until barons get fed up and force the king to exile the boyfriend. Boyfriend turns to piracy. Edward finds a way to bring him back. Edward, boyfriend, and boyfriend's father rule tyrannically and horribly until Queen invades and deposes them all--except that's a story better left for next time.

Even though he was a lousy king, it's hard not to have a soft spot for the poor fella. He was, on top of everything else, just kind of a weirdo (by, of course, the standands of his time, which are the only standards by which weirdness really matters). It was said that with his kingly stature and physical abilities, he could have been a great warrior like his father. He just . . . didn't feel like it. He preferred hanging out with commoners and doing common stuff:

[I]t was commonly reported that he [Edward] had devoted himself privately from youth to the arts of rowing and driving chariots, digging pits and roofing houses; also that he wrought as a craftsman with his boon companions by night, and at other mechanical arts, besides other vanities and frivolities where in it doth not become a king's son to busy himself.

The Chronicle of Lanercost, via The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

As Weir puts it, Edward's barons were "horrified" by Edward's penchant for "digging ditches on his estates, thatching roofs, trimming hedges, plastering walls, working in metal, shoeing horses, driving carts, rowing, [and] swimming--even in February." But I think it's adorable! Even though he was just a terrible king, it makes me feel bad that he was eventually deposed and murdered (. . . or was he?!?!!), but again, I'll get back to that next week.

Friday Monarch Moment: Edward Longshanks, Scotorum Malleus

Edward's tombstone reads Edwardus Primus Scotorum Malleus hic est: "This is Edward I, Hammer of the Scots."

(What a sweet nickname.)

Edward and Scotland didn't start out as enemies. The troubles didn't begin until 1291, when the Scots, having suffered a series of really unlucky royal deaths, found themselves without a clear heir to the throne. There were thirteen claimants, but it really came down to John Balliol and Robert the Bruce. Edward picked Balliol, but afterwards demanded Balliol be subservient to him. Edward kept picking fights until war broke out, giving him an excuse to invade.

The whole situation is pithily explained over at Cracked (where they put Edward #1 on their list of "6 Historical Villains Who Were Actually OK Guys"):

Scotland: Help us, Edward Longshanks, you're our only hope!
Longshanks: Sure, I'll be glad to help. But first, I'll be needing Scotland.
Scotland: You'll be needing Scotland to do what?
Longshanks: To belong to England. I'll be needing you to give me Scotland.
Scotland: Oh. Er. Hm. OK, you can have our country, as long as you give it back when you're done.
Longshanks: ...Sure. I'll give it back. (rolls eyes)
Scotland: Huzzah! I don't see how this could possibly go wrong!
Seriously, Scotland? Had you even met England before?

Now, to be fair to Scotland, Edward had acted as peacemaker in other international pursuits. But not for countries of which he considered himself overlord. They really should have looked at his behavior towards Wales (that is, he refused to stop destroying stuff until he owned it) instead of that toward, say, France.


Here's a fun story about the siege of Dunbar (both of these quotes are from Michael Prestwich's Edward I):

[T]hose within the castle unfurled their banners, and directed the customary insults at the English, calling them 'tailed dogs', and threatening them with death and the amputation of their tails (it was a well-known myth in the middle ages that all Englishmen had tails).

Now, the reason William Wallace was so effective was because he used guerilla tactics--like all invadees facing a stronger opponent throughout the ages, the Scots did best when not forced into formal battle. Of course, the English did not take kindly to his methods or his success; after his capture, he was given a show trial:

The accusations against him reproduced some, but not all, of the English propaganda against a man who was feared and hated to a remarkable extent. He was accused of sparing none who spoke the English language, and of slaying infants, children, widows and nuns, but the curious charge that he had organized choirs of naked Englishmen and Englishwomen to sing for him, who were then tortured, was, understandably, not produced in court.

And this has been your fairly tangential monarch moment.




I'll admit, my heart wasn't totally in writing a second Edward I moment, because I am so! excited! for Edward II. So, as a preview, I bring you this segue--the account of the Edwards' most famous father-son moment. The backstory is that junior wanted his boyfriend, Piers Gaveston, to be given the territory of Pontieu. Instead of asking his scary dad himself, he got a bishop to do it:

The king was mightily enraged. "Who are you that dares to ask such a thing? As the Lord lives, you shall not escape my hands unless you can prove that you undertook this negotiation against your will, through fear of the prince. Now, however, you shall not leave until you see what he who sent you has to say." Having called for his son, the king said, "What negotiation have you promoted through this man?" His son replied, "That I might, with your acquiescence, give Ponthieu to my lord Piers de Gaveston." "You baseborn whoreson," shouted the king, "do you want to give away lands now, you who never gained any? As the Lord lives, if it were not for fear of breaking up the kingdom you should never enjoy your inheritance." And seizing a tuft of the prince's hair in each hand, he tore out as much as he could, until he was exhausted, when he threw him out.

Walter of Guisborough, via The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

Wow, good times.

Friday Monarch Moment: Edward I

Edward I, House of Plantagenet, r. 1272-1307

You may remember Edward I from Braveheart--he's Edward Longshanks, the cruel old English king bent on destruction of William Wallace and Scotland. And while that description is not actually untrue (he could be pretty cruel, he was old by that time [especially for the Middle Ages], and he really wanted to have Scotland), neither is it complete.


Anyway, Edward's imbroglio with Scotland is a whole big thing unto itself, so that will be covered in the next Monarch Moment. For now, let's get to know Edward outside a Braveheart-related capacity.

Edward is sometimes called "The English Justinian," because his reign saw major reforms to English law. Edward emphasized justice and was the first king to regularly--and of his own will--summon parliaments.

Before he ascended to the throne, he led a Crusade to the Holy Land and, since he wasn't utterly humiliated, it seemed pretty successful. He had a lifelong ambition to lead another, larger, pan-European Crusade to win back Jerusalem, and to that end, he promoted peace throughout Europe. He sometimes acted as a mediator in disputes between other rulers, and he did his best to maintain good relationships with them himself. Edward was eventually drawn into a war with France, but only because Philip IV bullied him into one. Michael Prestwich, author of the book I just read on Edward I, even compared the over-eager diplomacy of Edward's agents in the run-up to the French war with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler--that's how bad Edward wanted to stay friends.

Edward could be merciless to those he did not see as equals, though. He conquered Wales, after all.

My favorite Edward I story (this one made me laugh so hard the first time I read it that Neal came in the room to see what was going on) is from his father's reign, when Edward was captured by rebel forces. And, even though it's true he did escape from them, this story is almost certainly not true--which is a bummer:

. . . Edward went out riding from Hereford in the company of a number of knights . . . The classic account of what took place is that Edward asked to try all the horses in turn. Having found the swiftest, he dug in his spurs and rode off, shouting "Lordings, I bid you good day."

Michael Prestwich, Edward I

Edward was an able military commander, but he was also strangely lucky:

In Palestine he survived the murderous attack of the assassin by almsot a
miracle; in Paris the lighnting passed over his shoulder and slew two of his
attendants; at Winchelsea when his horse leapt the town wall he was uninjured;
at the siege of Stirling a bolt from a crossbow struck his saddle as he rode
unarmed and a stone from a mangonel brought his horse to the ground. Even illness seemed to pass him by and his last years found him as vigorous and upright as a palm tree with eyes and brain undimmed and the teeth still firm in his jaws, able to bite hard literally as well as figuratively, at the table as in the field.

L. F. Salzman, Edward I, via The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

In short, Edward I wasn't very nice, but he was pretty awesome. To be continued!



Bonus moment: the children of Edward I

Edward had two wives; the first was Eleanor of Castile, whom he apparently loved devotedly. She bore him fourteen verifiable children, though many died in infancy or childhood. The boy who would become Edward II was the last of her children, so he had three older brothers more likely to become king than he. But I think it's interesting that had the Medieval Infant Mortality Dice rolled differently, England could have had a King John II, a much quicker King Henry IV, or a King Alphonso. King Alphonso of England--that would have been weird.

Edward's second wife, Margaret of France, had three children. The first was Thomas of Brotherton:

According to Rishanger, Thomas was a patriotic baby, who rejected the milk of his French wet-nurse, and began to thrive only when he received good English milk.

Prestwich

I just think "patriotic baby" is an adorable phrase. (!)

Friday Monarch Moment: Henry III

Henry III, House of Plantagenet, r. 1216-1272

Well, I tried to get interested in Henry III, I really did. (I even checked out this hilariously old fashioned and terrible biography of him--seriously, it was written in the 1950s, but with all the melodrama and bias, I would easily have believed it was from the 1890s.)

But it's tough. He came to the throne at nine years old, which is sort of interesting--but then that means for the first 11 or so years of his reign, he was just some kid in a crown while the real work was done by grown-ups. And when his reign started, there was a civil war/French invasion (I forgot to mention that some of John's barons got so fed up with him, post Magna Carta, that they invited the French king's son to come over and rule England. Yeah. King John, ladies and gentlemen). And then there was another civil war later, where Henry and his son got captured by a rebellious earl. But it was Prince Edward, not Henry, who escaped and saved the day. And the first parliament was called during his reign, but it was forced on him by barons who were aggravated by his poor decision-making (like father, like son).

Henry is mostly known for his piety--although he is outshined (outshone? I really can't decide) in that area by Edward the Confessor, Henry VI, and his own contemporary King of France, St. Louis. And then he really liked architecture. He was responsible for building a bunch of cathedrals. Oh, and he was cultured and fostered learning and such; the first colleges of Oxford University were founded in his reign.

But none of that really lights a fire under me, you know? So let's talk about his zoo:

As premier zoo-keeper of Western Europe, Henry kept in his royal menagerie at the Tower a camel, buffaloes, the first elephant in England, a [polar] bear for the King of Norway, three leopards from the Emperor Frederick II, and a lion from Louis IX.

Elizabeth Longford, The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

About this time, too, an elephant was sent to England by the French king as a present to the king of England. We believe that this was the only elephant ever seen in England or even in the countries on this side of the Alps; wherefore the people flocked together to see the novel sight.

contemporary chronicler Matthew Paris, via ibid.

Friday Monarch Moment: John

John, House of Plantagenet, r. 1199-1216

It is just hard to overstate how lame John was. (There are some historians, like the one that compiled my handy royal anecdotes book, who try to rehabilitate his rep, and to those people I say, more or less, Pfft.) Let's start with this:

These were John's domains at the beginning of his reign.


And that's what he had at the end of it.

Sure, it's not like he lost everything in France, but it was a lot. Moreover, it was most of his mother's inheritance of Aquitaine and Poitou; it was the homeland of the Plantagenet dynasty, Anjou; and it was freaking Normandy, which had been cheek-by-jowl with England since the Conquest. And he didn't lose it all just because of a lack of military prowess; sure, he got the nickname "Softsword," but he also showed flashes of military . . . competence. He won, like, this one battle once? It was pretty good. But anyway, the problem was not so much that he lost a bunch of battles as it was that so many of his subjects rose against him (and allied with the King of France) in the first place. Because they hated him.

Take the people of Brittany, for instance, who preferred the claim of John's nephew Arthur, who was also their duke. They didn't like John much to begin with--and less so once he probably murdered Arthur. Or take many, many of his continental nobles who turned against John when, instead of ransoming the prisoners he took at his big victory at Mirebeau or putting them under honorable house arrest, he put them in chains in dungeons. Or, of course, take the barons in England who, chafing against John's military failures and abuses of power, were like "NO DUDE SERIOUSLY. STOP IT" and forced him to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. John saw the famous document less as a foundation for Western government in future centuries and more as an annoying treaty he preferred to ignore.

This is not even to mention John's lust-driven second marriage to a twelve-year-old girl. (Ew.) We also haven't delved into disastrous feud with Pope Innocent III. You see, the Pope wanted one guy to be Archbishop of Canterbury, and John wanted a different guy. Things escalated and eventually resulted in the King's excommunication and an interdict on his kingdom. Interdicts were bad times, yo.

Therefore the king withdrew fromm the negotiations and so did the bishops and everyone else and, on 24 March by papal mandate, divine services were suspended throughout England. Great sorrow and anxiety spread throughout the country. Neither Good Friday nor Easter Sunday could be celebrated, but an unheard-of silence was imposed on all the clergy and monks by laymen. The bodies of the dead, whether of the ordinary fold or the religious [that is, not-monks/not-nuns vs. monks/nuns], could not be buried in consecrated cemeteries, but only in vile and profane places.
The king ordered the few monks who remained at Canterbuy, the blind and crippled, also to be expelled, and the monks to be regarded as public enemies. Some fled England, some were imprisoned, some were saved by money, others suffered many afflictions; their woods were cut down and their men were fined and taxed heavily. The whole of England suffered this burden. The people were forced to pay at first a quarter of their money, then a third, then a half. Even the rents of the cardinals and whatever they had in England were taken away from them and Peter's Pence, which the Roman Church had had since the time of Cnut, were withheld by the king. . . . Therefore the rich and poor left England, countless men and women; theirs was a thankless pilgrimage to avoid the enormous cruelty of the king rather than a devoted one.

Ralph, abbot of Coggeshall; via The Plantagenet Chronicles, ed. Elizabeth Hallam

Eventually, John gave in, even paying homage to the Pope as overlord of England and Ireland. (What was with those Plantagenet brothers, acknowledging every Tom, Innocent, and Harry as their overlords?)

Friday Monarch Moment: Richard the Lionheart

Richard I, House of Plantagenet, r. 1189-1199

Let's get one thing straight: Richard I was not a good king.

Whatever.

I mean, it's not like he was the worst king ever--or even the worst king his momma brought into the world--but he sure wasn't great.

Now this is a pretty accurate historical portrayal of John.

If you'd like an American comparison, I'd say Richard was a combination of the panache and charisma of Teddy Roosevelt and the economic and foreign policy success of Jimmy Carter (had Jimmy Carter himself been taken hostage).

OK, the economic comparison isn't perfect--with Richard, it was less general economic downturn and more a straightforward bleeding dry of his subjects. You see, Richard wasn't so much interested in ruling all the stuff his daddy left him; he just wanted to Crusade. So at the beginning of his reign he got all the money he could from all the people he could in all the ways he could so he could buy ships and siege engines and soldiers and stuff. He is said to have joked, "If I could have found a buyer I would have sold London itself."

Well, ol' Couer de Lion went on his Crusade and he did OK, by Crusade standards. He kept the slaughter of his men to a minimum, although he didn't take back Jerusalem from the infidel or anything. But then he went home through the territory of his enemy, Leopold of Austria. He posed as a pilgrim to escape detection, but just like he was a better warrior than a king, he was also a better warrior than an actor.

A German chronicler says that when Richard was captured he was found in a kitchen, roasting meat on a spit, hoping that by doing servile work he would escape recognition. Unfortunately the kitchen hand was wearing a magnificent ring, worth many years' wages. The details of this story are probably false but in common with the accounts in other chronicles it suggests that the travellers--despite their elaborate pilgrim's attire, long hair and flowing beards--did not take enough trouble to conceal their wealth. . . . So, shortly before Christmas 1192, less than fifty miles from the safety of the Moravian border, Richard fell into the hands of Leopold of Austria.
. . . Leopold sent Richard to a strong castle built high on a rocky slope overlooking the Danube: the castle of Dürnstein. The castle is in ruins today, but a legend still clings to its broken walls, the legend of Blondel, the faitful minstrel who travelled the length and breadth of Germany in search of his missing lord. He visited castle after castle and ouside each one sang the first lines of a song which he and Richard had composed together. At last, at Dürnstein, he heard the refrain.

John Gillingham, Richard the Lionheart, 1978

After a few months, Leopold handed Richard over to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, who in turn gave Richard his freedom. You know, after everybody in Richard's realms had to pay through the nose again to raise the enormous ransom that Henry demanded. (According to Elizabeth Hallam in The Plantagenet Chronicles, "The ransom itself was roughly twice England's gross income; in today's terms, something like a hundred billion pounds.") And after Richard swore fealty to Henry as the feudal overlord of England. (Wow. Embarrassing.)

Despite this, and despite the fact that he only spent six months of his ten-year reign in England, he was very popular with his subjects.

As popular as if he actually were Patrick Stewart!

It must have been the panache.

Friday Monarch Moment: Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine, b. 1122, d. 1204

Eleanor was a vivacious, strong-willed woman who left a huge mark on European history. Because it would take too long to describe all the cool stuff she did (it took Alison Weir 346 pages in the book that, incidentally, I am taking all my information from), I am just going to give you a bare-bones list:

1. became "the greatest heiress in the known world" (Weir, 85) at age 15

2. married the King of France
3. went on the Second Crusade
4. convinced Louis to annul their marriage (she was sick of him, they were fourth cousins, and she hadn't borne him any sons)
5. married her former husband's greatest rival (and a man a decade younger than her), Henry of Anjou (soon-to-be Henry II of England)
6. proved the medieval if-a-woman-doesn't-have-sons-it's-her-fault thing wrong by having five of them with Henry
7. oh, and all but one of her ten children survived to adulthood, which is just astounding for that day and age
8. off-and-on served as ruler of her own lands and/or regent of England for her husband
9. eventually fomented rebellion by her sons against their father (although, since Henry II was much, much better at everything than his spoiled, vicious boys were, all of their rebellions failed and Henry had Eleanor locked up for several years)
10. off-and-on served as ruler of her own lands and/or regent of England for her son Richard
11. continued to be hugely influential in European politics (and her children's and grandchildren's marriage arrangements) into her seventies
12. was a great patron of the arts (particularly courtly literature) throughout her life
13. was, much like Queen Victoria, a "grandmother of Europe": "Her sons their descendants were kings of England, her daughters queens of Sicily and Castile; among her grandsons were a Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of Castile and Jerusalem, while her great-grandson became king of France. Two saints, Louis IX of France and St. Ferdinand III of Castile, were also among her descendants. In England, the line of kings that she and Henry founded [the House of Plantagenet] endured until 1485, and her blood flows in the veins of England's present queen, Elizabeth II" (Weir, 344-5).

So which moment to choose? Unfortunately, a lot of the most vivid and famous stories about Eleanor are plain old made up. (She murdered Henry's mistress Rosamund de Clifford, she held a "court of love" where she handed down verdicts based on the principles of courtly love, she dressed up as an Amazon to kick off the Second Crusade, etc.) But then there are a lot of pretty good real stories, given that--as previously mentioned--she did a lot of stuff. So here's a passage I picked nearly at random--it shows that even for a woman as powerful and intelligent and awesome as Eleanor, it still was a pretty raw deal to be a chick in the Middle Ages:

It soon became very clear to Eleanor that while she remained single [after the dissolution of her marriage to Louis] she would be at the mercy of fortune hunters. Twice, as she was making her way to [her capital at] Poitiers, would-be suitors, with covetous eyes on her vast inheritance, attempted to abduct her. At Blois, the future Count Theobald V was plotting to seize her on the night of 21 March 1152; forewarned in time, and protected by her escort, she was forced to flee under clover of darkness, taking a barge along the Loire toward Tours. Farther south . . . where she intended to make a crossing, Geoffrey of Anjou, younger brother of Henry, lay in wait for her. Again she recieved a warning . . . and narrowly evaded caputre, swinging south to where she could ford the River Vienne and, avoiding the main roads, make a dash "by another way" for Poitiers. Her marriage to Henry of Anjou had to be arranged without delay, or it might never take place at all.

Weir, 89.

Oh, in her extreme age, Eleanor employed a secretary named "Guy Diva," which is just about the greatest name I've ever heard. That is all.

Friday Monarch Moment: Henry II

Henry II, House of Plantagenet, r. 1154-1189

Henry II's awesomeness is too awesome to be contained in one mere blog entry, but I'll try to give you an overview. Henry ruled what historians now call the Angevin Empire, which looked like this:


That southern chunk of France he got by marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (whose awesomeness is far, far too awesome to be a mere part of one mere blog entry, so she's getting her own later); that northern chunk he inherited from his father, Geoffrey of Anjou (except, technically, for Normandy, which Geoffrey had wrested from Stephen), and England he got because he was Matilda's boy. Only a ruler of great ability could have managed to assert authority over such a vast territory (keep in mind: medieval transportation technology), and Henry was that.

Another fact to keep in mind is that France at that time was only very loosely under the rule of the King of France. Henry was Louis VII's major rival and was more powerful than Louis.

Henry was intelligent, energetic, and had a horrible temper--which would get him into trouble. The most famous event of Henry's reign is the murder of Thomas Becket (AKA St. Thomas à Becket). Henry and Thomas were actually BFFs when Thomas was merely a worldly churchman who served as the King's chancellor. But then Henry had Thomas appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas decided he could no longer be the King's man, he had to be God's man.

The two became enemies, tussling over the rights of the Church vs. the rights of the King. In December 1170, Henry cried out in despair over Thomas's behavior--the popular version of his cry is "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (which is a lot catchier the quote from a more reliable source, "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!") Four of his knights, who as Elizabeth Longford surmises, were "probably not very intelligent" took this as a call to action. They found Thomas in Canterbury Cathedral and brutally murdered him.

This didn't sit well with anybody.

It certainly horrified the King, who did the whole penitence thing--sackcloth, ashes, three days of starvation. But even that wasn't enough. He also did a pretty impressive round of public penitance:

When he came near Canterbury, he dismounted from his horse, and laying aside all the emblems of royalty, with naked feet, and in the form of a penitent and supplicating pilgrim, arrived at the cathedral . . . where, prostrate on the floor, and with his hands stretched to heaven, he continued long in prayer . . . Meanwhile the bishop of London was commanded by the king to declare, in a sermon addressed to the people, that he had neither commanded, nor wished, nor by any device contrived the death of the martyr, which had been perpetrated in consequence of his murderers having misinterpreted the words which the king had hastily pronounced: wherefore he requested absolution from the bishops prsent, and baring his back, received from three to five lashes from every one of the numerous body of ecclesiastics who were assembled.

Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History, via The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes

I love medieval people. When they did stuff, they meant it.

And a bonus Henry moment! This one cracks me up, but I didn't know if anybody else would enjoy it enough to make it the main moment.

Henry had a temper, but he also had a sense of humor (and you could never predict which one would show up at any given time), as shown in this story about a time when Henry was angry at Bishop Hugh:

As [Hugh] approached the royal hunting-lodge . . . the king, who was extremely angry with him, rode off into the forest with his barons, and finding a pleasant spot sat himself on the ground, with the members of the court dispersed in a circle around him. The bishop followed them, but Henry bade everyone to ignore his presence. No one rose to greet the bishop or said a word to him, but Bishop Hugh, undaunted, eased an earl out of his place beside the king and sat himself down too. There was a long, brooding silence, broken finally by Henry who, unable to do nothing, called for needle and thread and began to stitch up a leather bandage on an injured finger. Again there was a heavy silence until Bishop Hugh, contemplating the king at his stitching, casually remarked, 'How like your cousins of Falaise you look.' At this the king's anger fled from him, and he burst into laughter which sent him rolling on the ground. Many were amazed at the bishop's temerity, others puzzled at the point of the remark, until the king, recovering his composure, explained the gibe to them: William the Conqueror was a bastard, and his mother was reputedly the daughter of one of the leather-workers for which the Norman town of Falaise was famous.

I like to imagine that Hugh added, "Thank you! I'll be here all week!" Cuz that's good stuff.