Eleanor de Montfort: A Rebel Countess in Medieval England (12 page)

In the absence of surviving household rolls from this period of her life, tantalizing glimpses of Eleanor’s activities feature in the records of the English royal government. Although the responsibilities that Eleanor assumed within the fields of estate and household management were similar to those of other comital widows, she enjoyed a privileged position as Henry III’s sister and was, therefore, able to turn to her elder brother for assistance with greater ease than his other subjects.
²⁰
Even in her teenage years, Eleanor was prepared to stand her ground. Eleanor’s determination to ensure that wardships in her English manors came into her own hands, rather than those of her brother-in-law, presumably lay behind a royal order, dated 6 September 1231, whereby Richard Marshal was instructed to surrender to Eleanor the wardship of the heir of Roger de Clifford, a former tenant in Severnstoke.
²¹
Fifteen months later, a royal inquiry determined that Eleanor ought to enjoy the custody of the land and heir of Simon de Chelefeld’ by virtue of her possession of the manor of Newbury.
²²
On 1 September 1233, Henry III committed Ralph Bluet’s former land in Daglingworth (Gloucestershire), which fell within the countess’s dominion, to Eleanor, thereby removing it from the keeping of the king’s faithful servant, Mathias Bezill.
²³
Later that month, Eleanor secured possession of another property in Wiltshire, which also belonged to her fee.
²⁴
On 31 August 1234, the sheriffs of three counties – Bedfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire – were all ordered to ensure that Eleanor enjoyed the same liberties in their bailiwicks as those formerly enjoyed by her dead husband.
²⁵
Eleanor readily and effectively solicited Henry III’s help to enforce her position as lord.

In general terms, then, the widowed countess took her responsibilities as a landlord seriously. She also looked to the interests of those who served her. In this, her position as the king’s youngest sister once again stood her in good stead: she was a conduit for royal favour. Richard of Havering, Eleanor’s ‘servant’, discovered this to his advantage in 1234–5, when the king granted him land in Havering, Essex, at Eleanor’s request.
²⁶
It was not just members of local elites who benefited from Eleanor’s benevolence. When, on 4 June 1234, the men from her manor of Kemsing were summoned by the Exchequer for a ‘murdrum’ or murder fine of forty shillings, Eleanor procured a royal pardon and her men were acquitted.
²⁷
She stepped in on other occasions to clear the names of manorial officials who had fallen foul of royal justice. When the justices visited Canterbury in the spring of 1236, they heard how three men employed by Eleanor had defended her property when a group of malefactors broke into her park at Kemsing. One of the intruders was slain in the ensuing struggle, whereupon the countess subsequently petitioned the king and the killer, her servant, was pardoned.
²⁸

In the aftermath of Richard Marshal’s rebellion, Eleanor occasionally served as a peace-broker for Marshal supporters caught on the wrong – the losing – side of the conflict. It was expressly ‘at the instance of our beloved sister, Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke’ that the king pardoned Robert de Grendon, who had previously fought against the king alongside Richard Marshal in Ireland, from paying a forty-mark fine to return to royal favour.
²⁹
Eleanor’s involvement here is significant in two respects. In the first place, it is striking that an Irish landholder, albeit one associated with the Marshal family, decided to approach the king through Eleanor rather than anyone else; Eleanor’s reputation as someone with influence over the king, her brother, evidently extended to the Anglo-Norman lords in Ireland. In the second place, it raises intriguing questions about Eleanor’s relationship with the tenants and officials of William junior, her former husband, and Richard, her disgraced brother-in-law. In his biography of Peter des Roches, Nicholas Vincent noted the difficulties faced by Richard Marshal, who had spent a considerable amount of time in France, in assuming effective control of the English, Welsh and Irish Marshal lands.
³⁰
As William junior’s widow, Eleanor offered an alternative focus for the loyalties of those Marshal followers with lands on or near her English manors. When the Marshal tenants were faced with an alien earl of Pembroke in Richard, the prospect of service to Eleanor as William junior’s widow and the English king’s sister was sometimes a more appealing proposition. Bartholomew de Crek, Eleanor’s yeoman, had, for example, previously served William junior in Ireland in 1224 and yet apparently chose to remain in Eleanor’s employment rather than enter that of Richard Marshal.
³¹

A similar continuity in service can be traced in the cases of Ralph fitz Richard and William Bluet, both of whom witnessed the assignment of Eleanor’s English dower by Gilbert Marshal in 1235 and both of whom were described as Eleanor’s knights (‘knights of the countess’).
³²
Prior to this, ‘Lord Ralph fitz Richard’ had attended William junior when he confirmed his father’s gifts to Tintern Abbey in Wales.
³³
The Bluets (or Bloets) possessed long-standing ties with the Marshal honour of Striguil in England and Wales, where they were important tenants. Ralph Bluet held lands in Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire from the honour. William, who appears to have been his younger son, had served William Marshal junior, acting as his banner-bearer at the battle of Lincoln in 1217.
³⁴

There was, naturally, a strong element of self-interest involved in such activities on Eleanor’s part: it was important for her as a lord to be seen as someone who was capable of protecting the men and women who were connected with her.
³⁵
Eleanor’s dealings with the crown, though, betray an overriding concern to assert her seigneurial rights and prevent any further diminution of her revenues or properties. When Adam fitz Hugh, one of her men from the manor of Newbury, committed an offence and abjured the realm, Eleanor, through her brother’s assistance, successfully recovered five and a half marks that the Exchequer had demanded from her as the value of the wrong-doer’s chattels.
³⁶
In a similar way, Eleanor’s position as a landholder brought her into contact, and sometimes into conflict, with neighbouring landlords. In September 1232, for example, Eleanor found herself in dispute with Richard, Prior of Dunstable, over the customs of her manor of Toddington.
³⁷
At Michaelmas 1233, Eleanor was the plaintiff in a property dispute centred upon her manor of Luton.
³⁸
During the same term, her attorney brought another lawsuit on her behalf against the men of Collingbourne Ducis and Everleigh in Wiltshire.
³⁹
On occasion, the activities of Eleanor and her officials landed the young dowager Countess of Pembroke in hot water. In June 1233, Henry instructed the sheriffs of Herefordshire and Worcestershire to restore forthwith to Hugh of Kinnersley lands that Eleanor had seized from him.
⁴⁰
Eleanor’s position as the king’s sister did not render Henry III indifferent to her transgressions against others.

Eleanor’s involvement in administration was motivated by a clear and practical purpose. By taking an interest in the day-to-day business of her estates, she might improve the profitability of her manors and thereby maximize her income from them. Eleanor attempted, for example, to invest, when possible, in her properties and ensure they were kept in good condition. Henry III’s gift to his sister of twenty oaks from Chute Forest (Hampshire and Wiltshire) so that she might repair her mill in Newbury has already been discussed in
chapter 3
.
⁴¹
In April 1233, Eleanor received a further twenty oaks, this time from Tonbridge Forest, for rebuilding her houses at Kemsing, which had lately been damaged by fire.
⁴²
It was yet another telling indication of the countess’s or her officials’ talent for estate management that the measures implemented in Eleanor’s name looked beyond the immediate necessity of maintaining, provisioning and stocking her manors. With an eye to the commercial development of her manor of Seal, near Sevenoaks in Kent, the countess secured from the crown the right to hold a weekly market every Wednesday and an annual fair there.
⁴³
Eleanor also saw to it that the royal licence to hold a weekly market each Thursday on the Marshal manor of Toddington was extended beyond her dead husband’s lifetime to cover her life as well.
⁴⁴

Elsewhere, building work provided the countess with improved accommodation and allowed her physically to stamp her authority on those properties and the surrounding countryside. After all, new and renovated structures, which might be decorated with the armorial devices of Eleanor’s blood and marital kin, served as visual reminders and markers on the landscape to tenants, neighbours, local communities and visitors of her position as their new lord.
⁴⁵
On 22 August 1235, the countess secured a gift of yet another twenty oaks from the manor of Chute and forty oaks from its neighbouring forest of Savernake for the construction of a new hall on her Wiltshire manor of Wexcombe.
⁴⁶
Such activities on Eleanor’s part perhaps reflected a heartfelt desire to establish comfortable and well-maintained residences that might support the luxurious lifestyle appropriate for a woman of her rank. It was possibly with this in mind that Eleanor’s estates from the Marshal marriage were enlarged by further grants of property from the king. When Eleanor turned twenty-one, for example, she was given a royal residence all of her own – the manor and castle of Odiham in Hampshire.
⁴⁷

Odiham, which was situated midway between the royal centres of Winchester and Windsor, offered Eleanor a residence convenient for maintaining contacts with her brother’s court. Built near the River Whitewater, it was defended by a series of inner and outer moats. At the heart of its complex lay a great three-storey octagonal keep, which Eleanor’s father, King John, had begun building in 1207; the surrounding park had been a popular hunting venue with the late king who had visited Odiham on no fewer than twenty-four separate occasions. The castle keep was home to a hall, which rose to thirty feet in height, and above that to the king’s chamber.
⁴⁸
Since the beginning of Henry III’s reign the castle had undergone a series of repairs, at least some of which were for damage sustained during the civil war of 1215–17. The keep’s chimney, one of the earliest in England, was repaired in 1226, and further work was carried out over two years on the castle chapel.
⁴⁹
When Henry visited Odiham in the autumn of 1234, he had initiated a further series of renovations – the keep’s windows were repaired with iron and the chapel redecorated and refurbished. With the completion of these repairs, he passed the castle to Eleanor.
⁵⁰

Eleanor’s close relationship with her brother, the king, brought with it other tangible rewards that helped the countess to support a lifestyle appropriate to her station in spite of her personal indebtedness. By 1238, the king had loaned the countess no less than £1,000 to meet her expenses.
⁵¹
The dowager Countess of Pembroke divided her time between Odiham, her different Marshal manors and her brother’s royal residences.
⁵²
It is, of course, possible that by occasionally residing on her brother’s estates, Eleanor sought to defray some of the cost of provisioning her household. On 30 May 1235, Eleanor was Henry’s guest at Tewkesbury (although her brother was elsewhere), where the king’s houses were placed at her disposal for as long as she wished, and the countess was provided with fodder for her horses and wood for her fire.
⁵³
For most of the time, however, Eleanor’s household was, in all probability, supplied from the produce of her manors and by purchases from local markets and fairs, along the lines envisaged in Grosseteste’s
Rules
.
⁵⁴
Yet regular gifts from her brother helped to ensure that the finest quality meat – venison – continued to reach her high table in the mid 1230s. Eleanor’s taste for venison as well as, perhaps, her employment of huntsmen and her own enjoyment of hunting as a form of pastime suitable for a lady emerges clearly from the record evidence. As before, Henry III bestowed upon Eleanor the right to take deer from the royal forests at different times of the calendar year, presumably at locations that were most convenient for Eleanor or which reflected her current place of residence. Venison was a meat enjoyed particularly when it was fresh.
⁵⁵
Nevertheless, the number of deer that Eleanor received from her brother was truly remarkable. In 1233, the year of Richard Marshal’s rebellion, Eleanor was given thirty-eight bucks, including three roe-bucks, and two stags, from the forests of Savernake, Chute and Rockingham.
⁵⁶
These were followed by a further thirty deer and two stags from the forests of Feckenham (Warwickshire and Worcestershire), Savernake and Chute in 1234,
⁵⁷
twenty-six deer and a stag from the forests of Savernake, Dean, Rockingham and Chute in 1235,
⁵⁸
twenty-one deer and six stags from Wychwood (Oxfordshire), Whittlewood (Buckinghamshire), Bernwood, Dean, Braden (Wiltshire) and St Briavels (Gloucestershire) in 1236
⁵⁹
and thirty-one deer from Savernake, Bernwood and Clarendon (Wiltshire) in 1237.
⁶⁰

The king’s kindnesses to Eleanor did not stop at gifts of venison. On 8 November 1236, Henry gave Eleanor a black palfrey, apparently anticipating the pleasure that such a beast might bring her.
⁶¹
Another guest at the English royal court at this time was Eleanor’s older sister, Joan, Queen of Scots, who had been enjoying an extended stay in her brother’s realm since the Anglo-Scottish conference at York in September that year. Joan’s presence provided an opportunity for a family reunion between the sisters.
⁶²