Medieval Gascony – a quick Look at 12th and 13th century geopolitics.

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map showing Angevin Empire

As many of you are aware I prefer to keep my feet firmly on this side of the Channel when it comes to writing about history. However, I do, on occasion, talk about the Angevin empire and King John’s loss of most of his father’s territories in 1204. So it’s probably more than time to take a closer look at Gascony.

Aquitaine and Gascony passed into the hands of Henry, Duke of Normandy when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. Gascony had been controlled by the dukes of Aquitaine since the eleventh century. It meant that Eleanor’s new husband became the most powerful vassal of her first husband – Louis VII of France. Two years later Henry ascended England’s throne by right of his mother, Empress Matilda, as King Henry II.

Henry and Eleanor’s youngest son, John, managed to lose most of his father’s empire while his mother, who was Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, continued to rule there and in Gascony – owing her feudal allegiance to the French rather than her son. When she died in 1204 most of Aquitaine fell into French hands because the region’s nobility preferred to offer their allegiance to Philip II of France rather than John.

Gascony – which was ruled by the dukes of Aquitaine and effectively the southern part of the duchy by that time- held out for the English under the command of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Elias de Malemort or Elie de Malmort depending on the source. All that remained of northern Aquitaine were parts of the Poitou region – including La Rochelle but the whole Poitou region was contested and by 1224 had fallen into French hands.

Territory that remained under English control, and which was managed from Bordeaux, became known as the Duchy of Guyenne – and by 1300 Gascony, south of the River Garonne, was all that remained of the formerly extensive territory.

The person appointed by the duke/king to govern Gascony had extensive powers as the ruling representative but becoming Seneshal was no sinecure. There was the difficulty of owing fealty to the Plantagenets who in turn were vassals of the French Crown. It meant that the inhabitants of Gascony often appealed to Paris if they disagreed with English policy or any of the seneschal’s decisions with regard to the administration and taxes levied in the region. There was also the fact that any British garrison was going to feel somewhat isolated – the territory was effectively surrounded by the French. In addition to invasion there was also the potential to cut off supply lines.

Gascony. Map by Goran tek-en / Wikimedia Commons

It should be added that the Gascons do appear to have liked a brawl with one another, the English and anyone else they encountered. At the time, kings of England were troubled by relations with their own barons – think First Barons’ War and Second Barons’ War. The best known of the seneschals, Simon de Montfort (who was Henry III’s brother-in-law and leader of the Second Barons War), was sent by King Henry III to sort out a local rebellion but found himself short of cash and supplies and beset by local politics – his response to the situation led to accusations of brutality, open rebellion against his rule and a threatened trial at Westminster in 1252. None of which helped his relationship with Henry III and did much to contribute to his own rebellion against the Crown.

It would have to be said that Simon de Montfort appears to have made a better fist of the task than one of his successors, John de Ferrers, who was seneschal in 1312. He died in office – either due to an accident while crossing a river or from being murdered!

For the Crown the region remained incredibly important not simply because of it was a territory in main land Europe but because its wine trade provided a massive amount of royal income.

Eleanor of England, Queen of Castile and Toledo

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By Anonymous – Alfonso VIII el Noble, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7174830

Eleanor was born in 1161 and her marriage had some long lasting consequences in terms of diplomatic, dynastic and cultural influences.

She was Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine’s second daughter. Her elder sister, Matilda, was five years older than her. When she was 3-years-old she was joined in her nursery by a sister Joanna and in 1166 by her youngest brother – John. We’ll leave her brawling older brothers to one side on this occasion.

When she was 3-years-old her father arranged a marriage for her to Frederick V, who was the eldest son of the Holy Roman Emperor and still an infant. However the Duke of Swabia died before the marriage could go ahead. Instead, a marriage was arranged to King Alfonso VIII of Castile who was 7-years-old. Eleanor was still only 9-years-old but it secured Aquitaine’s border. For Alfonso it meant that his father-in-law would be an ally against the king of Navarre. The marriage did not take place until Eleanor was 12-years-old. The couple would go on to have twelve children of whom seven survived infancy. It would be Eleanor who introduced the culture of Aquitaine to her adopted home and who acted as ambassador between her husband and her brothers.

The young bride would meet with her mother again when Eleanor of Aquitaine came to collect her granddaughter, Urraca, in 1200, when it was proposed that she should marry Prince Louis of France. Eleanor of Aquitaine spent two months at her daughter’s court and when she left Castile she took another of her granddaughters, Blanca, as Louis’s intended bride rather than Urraca. Blanche as she would be known became Louis’ queen and the mother of King Louis IX of France while Urraca would become Queen of Portugal.

Relations between Alfonso and Henry were not always so cordial. In 1200, or thereabouts, Alfonso tried to claim Gascony as part of Eleanor’s dowry. In 1205 he even invaded the territory in her name. Historians agree that it is highly unlikely that Henry II would have granted such an important territory to his daughter. By then Eleanor’s brother, John, was on the throne and it was Eleanor who was sent to visit her brother resulting in a peace accord. The argument was never truly settled because her grandson Alfonso X of Castile claimed the duchy stating that the dowry had never been paid in full.

Eleanor was clearly her mother’s daughter, holding much territory throughout her husband’s kingdom and ruling them in her own right or on behalf of her husband. In 1204, when Alfonso made his will, he stipulated that she was to be their eldest son’s regent and his executor. He died in October 1214. Unfortunately Eleanor died only 26 days after her husband and was buried beside him at Burgos.

And she understood the importance of making strategic marriage alliances. It was she who helped make the match between her daughter Berengaria and Alfonso IX of Leon even though the union was later dissolved on grounds of consanguinity. Berengaria, who was Eleanor of Castile’s grandmother, would become her bother’s regent and eventually Queen of Castile in her own right when her brother, Henry I, was killed by a falling roof tile. She abdicated soon after becoming queen, in favour of her son who became Ferdinand III.

And of course – for those of you who are keeping track it means that Eleanor of Castile and Edward I were related within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity along yet another line of the family tree. They were first cousins several times removed and shared kinship inside a web of royal families – Angevin, Capetian and Iberian.

Cockerill, Sara. Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

Bluecoat Schools

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Frank Daniell, Blue Coat Schoolboy and Blue Coat Schoolgirl Hollytrees Museum ,Colchester

Bluecoat schools were founded as charities to educate poor children. In the past the colour blue was associated with charity. The first was opened in 1552 by King Edward VI.

Halifax’s Bluecoat School was set up in 1642 by a bequest. Its charter was granted by King Charles I. Ten boys and ten girls received a home and an education that prepared them for life in the expanding textile town. Work they produced was to be sold to help finance their keep. It was also apparent that children who did not produce work of a suitable standard were to be whipped.

The Bluecoat School in Durham was started at the beginning of the eighteenth century by traders and operated from Ye Bull’s Head pub. It opened at a similar time to the Bluecoat School in Nottingham which began in 1706 in the porch of St Mary’s Church in the Lace Market. By 1855 it had moved to a purpose built building on the Mansfield Road. It is perhaps not surprising to discover that a similar school opened in York in 1705. Girls were educated at the Greatcoat School. Colchester’s Bluecoat School opened in 1710. For most of the schools the aim was to prepare boys for an apprenticeship and girls for a life in service as well as providing children with a grounding in religious education. Some of the schools also functioned as orphanages.

Children who were deemed as deserving were often chosen from within a parish based on their lack of income and their good character. The aim of the school benefactors who funded the schools was to help reduce poverty and to reinforce discipline and social hierarchy. As well as instilling discipline and teaching religion, sponsorship of these schools also reflected the religious responsibilities of the wealthy.

Education was divided between the sexes. Boys received a basic education and training for trades while girls learned to spin, sew and in the case of the girl in the picture above – to knit. The curriculum was limited and did not encourage upward social mobility. What they did offer was stability and the opportunity for adult employment.

William Blake’s poem Holy Thursday describes the annual ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral associated with London’s Christ’s Hospital. He felt that their poverty contrasted with the idea of a just society and used the image to draw attention to social hypocrisy in his Songs of Experience.

Who was Eleanor of Castile related to?

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The idea of consanguinity or shared blood was important in medieval marriage. During the Eleventh century you weren’t supposed to marry anyone within seven degrees of blood relationship but the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 changed it to four degrees – which must have been something of a blessing to assorted royal houses who were all kin to some degree or other. Essentially the method of working out prohibited degrees of consanguinity was to count four generations back up the family tree and if the proposed spouses shared any direct ancestors a papal dispensation was required if the marriage was to go ahead. Obviously the papacy did not hand dispensations out without payment – it was a fairly lucrative pastime. Just look at Eleanor of Castile’s immediate family.

Eleanor of Castile and Edward I are related – by counting straight back up their family trees, within the prohibited degrees of affinity to Eleanor of Aquitaine who was Edward’s great grandmother and Eleanor’s great great granny (think I’ve got that right).

Eleanor’s father was Ferdinand III of Castile but her mother was Jeanne de Dammartin, Countess of Ponthieu. Jeanne’s parents, Eleanor’s maternal grandparents, were Simon de Dammartin and Marie, Countess of Ponthieu (whose mother was Alys of France). Simon’s mother was Marie of France, the daughter of King Louis VII of France and his first wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Marie of France was something of a miracle as the saintly French king wasn’t much interested in fulfilling his marital duties. Born in 1145, Marie was only seven years old when her parents’ marriage broke down completely in the aftermath of the Second Crusade. She and her two year old sister, Alice, were declared legitimate but were separated from their mother who returned in the general direction of Aquitaine avoiding fortune hunters en route. She had plans of her own and stopped to marry Henry FitzEmpress at Poitiers. Eleanor and Louis’s divorce had been easy enough to obtain because they were kin within the prohibited degrees. Nor was Eleanor’s case in France helped by the fact that she had only given birth to two daughters and it was unlikely she would provide Louis with an heir – however the French king was not happy that his former wife had married Henry who was Duke of Normandy as well as count of Anjou, Maine and Touraine. Louis didn’t want the young upstart getting his hands on Aquitaine – technically Henry was his vassal but the duke was acquiring an empire of his own.

Marie of France’s son, Simon de Dammartin (Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grandson), married Marie Countess of Ponthieu. Another dispensation was required. The bride and groom were first cousins. Both of them shared a grandparent in the form of King Louis, who married Constance of Castile almost immediately after his marriage to Eleanor was annulled. It should be added that Constance also failed to provide Louis with a male heir. She gave him two more daughters — Alys and Margaret. Alys was Marie’s of Ponthieu’s mother. You might also want to pause to consider that Louis VII named both his younger daughters Alys (although I’ve used the English spelling for the first one in a vain attempt to avoid confusion).

Margaret of France was married off to Eleanor of Aquitaine’s oldest son with Henry Fitzempress who was by then Henry II of England. Now while Margaret and Henry, the Young King, weren’t related by blood there was a degree of affinity. Margaret’s father (Louis) and Henry’s mother (Eleanor) had once been married – affinity did, on occasion, come to an end with the death or other of the people who shared a close relationship but when in doubt a papal dispensation was an essential.

I start the Eleanor of Castile Zoom class on Monday 13th April.

The Newark Dance of Death

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The Markham Chantry Chapel at St Mary Magdalene Church, Newark contains an exterior panel depicting the ‘dance of death’. Essentially the skeleton – pointing at a grave and holding a carnation which symbolises the shortness of life – is reminding people that life is short and they should repent of their sins. The young man with the purse is a reminder that death comes for everyone – no matter how full their pockets. It was a popular theme after the Black Death of 1348. It’s thought that this particular example dates from early in the sixteenth century.

It’s a rare survival as it was clearly not something that Protestant England approved – verging as it does upon the perception of Catholic superstition. During the seventeenth century William Dowsing visited approximately 250 churches in East Anglia merrily destroying anything that smacked of anything even remotely superstitious. Some artefacts were hidden, others protected by layers of whitewash, originally designed to destroy them. There is no indication why the Markham Chantry Dance of Death survived Nottinghamshire’s purge.

The chantry chapel itself dates to 1505. The idea was that priests said masses everyday for the repose of the souls of the men and women the chantry chapel was dedicated to and who, in this case, were buried beneath the chapel. Essentially, Robert Markham made financial arrangements in the form of a financial endowment so that money was paid to the church for the priests to say mass for his and his wife, Elizabeth’s, salvation. Often chantry chapels were dedicated to specific saints – a favourite of the donor. The dance of death would not only remind visitors to the church to mend their own ways but also to pray on behalf of Robert and Elizabeth Markham.

Bridging the past

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Now I like a good bridge. I was only half joking the other day when I said I wanted a picture of Coggeshall’s bridge. Some of the bricks in it date from the twelfth century – now I know there are lots of Roman bricks kicking around but you’ll have to admit that it’s quite impressive. So to is the Swarkstone Bridge that snakes across the Trent Valley and marks the furthest south that Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite army of 1745 managed to reach.

Today though I found a new bridge at Wansford near Peterborough. It lies on the old Great North Road, five miles south of Stamford. The road, a coaching route, using the Roman Ermine and Dere streets runs from London to Edinburgh. In 1929 it was replaced with a new road which became the A1.

The bridge at Wansford crosses the Nene. It’s likely that there has been one on or near this spot since Saxon times. In medieval times repairing the bridge would get you remission from your sins. Various sources identify the current twelve arch structure as dating from 1577 to 1600 or in other words before the Spanish Armada sailed and while Elizabeth I sat upon the throne. William Cecil crossed the bridge on his way home to Stamford. Further work was completed in 1795 to ease navigation problems and to repair flood damage.

What amazes me though is that this was the Great North Road and the bridge has always been a single track carriageway – the holdups must have been impressive on occasion. And before I forget – Celia Fiennes paid Wansford a visit and stayed at the Swan as the Haycock Coaching Inn was formerly known in 1698:

There was no gate to Peterborough town and as I passed ye Road I saw upon ye walls of ye ordinary peoples houses and walls of their out houses, ye Cow dung plaister’d up to drie in Cakes which they use for fireing, it’s a very offensive fewell, but ye Country people use Little Else in these parts. Wansford is five mile from Peterborough, where I passed over the
Bridge which Entered me into Northamptonshire, the town being part in that Shire which is towards London, ye other in Lincolnshire which a mile or two farther joyns with Rutlandshire at Stamford, which town stand in ye 3 Countyes, where I lay at “ye Swan in Wansford in England,” being a jest on a man making haye fell asleep on a heap of it, and a great storm washed ye hay and man into ye River and Carry’d him to ye Bridge, where he awoke and knew not where he was, Called to ye people in ye grounds and told them he lived in a place Called
Wansford in England which goes for a jest on ye men of Wansford to this Day.

It’s probably not surprising to discover that Daniel Defoe also stopped here but more eyebrow raising is the note on the Haycock Manor website that Mary Queen of Scots was lodged there on her way to Fotheringhay Castle.

Swadlincote Festival of Words

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Looking forward to being a guest at the Swadlincote Festival of Words this Saturday. Tickets still available.

https://www.swadlincotefestivalofwords.co.uk/programme#row-f-anM5LsyR

Captain Swing

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During the first years of the nineteenth century times were exceptionally tough for agricultural labourers. Land enclosures were common from the 1760s onwards and it meant that landless labourers lost rights of access. According to Hobsbawm there were 4,000 private acts of Parliament between 1760 and 1850 that enclosed much of England’s common land. Agricultural labourers became, largely, reliant on their wages to survive. But the introduction of threshing machines meant that they lost their livelihoods during the autumn and winter months as wheat no longer needed to be flailed by hand. And the tradition of being able to glean the fields also faltered at about this time. New fences also meant that it was no longer legal to catch game for the pot. Following as it did after the Napoleonic Wars there was a glut of labour in any event. Inevitably, many of England’s rural poor migrated to towns and cities in search of work and for those who remained there was a decline in wages.

Even worse, the price of corn remained artificially high thanks to assorted Corn Laws dating from 1815 to 1840 which attempted to keep the prices of the Napoleonic period (when an army needed to be supplied) which was in the interests of the landed gentry but gave little thought to the near starvation of ordinary people. Parish relief was minimal for agricultural labourers who could not keep a roof over their heads or feed their families. A riot at Coggeshall, near Colchester, saw the workhouse overseer’s windows broken in November 1830.

Resentment spilled over into unrest during the summer of 1830 in Kent and Sussex before spreading into East Anglia and the rest of southern England. Unrest was limited in the Midlands although there were incidents of machine destruction. Further north, near Carlisle large crowds rioted while hay ricks burned. The newspapers of the period concluded that the unrest was the work of Captain Swing. Eventually two weavers were charged with arson. There were also some disturbances in Yorkshire – but these were more likely to have been the product of other grievances that took advantage of the widespread unrest in the south.

The main targets for the protesters were the hated threshing machines and the landowners who used them. Threatening letters were sent in the name of Captain Swing demanding that the machines be dismantled and that agricultural wages should be increased. Many of the machines were destroyed and that year hay ricks were put to the torch.

However, by the following year more than 2,000 people were brought to trial of whom nineteen were hanged and 481 or more, depending on the source, transported to Australia for daring to ask for enough wages to support themselves and their families.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Rudé, George. Captain Swing. (reprint 2001)

‘She-intelligencers’ – nothing so simple as spying

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Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, Anthony van Dyck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If you haven’t read Nadine Akkerman’s work, Invisible Agents, I heartily recommend it. It covers the world of espionage and women during the seventeenth century in Britain. It has been suggested that successful female agents were few and far between – but Ackerman sets out to disprove the view.

One of the most famous intelligencers – was Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle. Born Lucy Percy, the daughter of the 9th Earl of Northumberland (the so-called Wizard Earl) and Dorothy Devereux – making her a descendent of Mary Boleyn. At the age of 18-years she married James Hay soon to become the Earl of Carlisle.

James was one of King James I’s Scottish favourites and a Groom of the Stool (Yes, he wiped the king’s bottom for him!). The Hays’ proximity to the Crown continued when Charles I ascended the throne, thanks in part to James’s assisting with the negotiations for Charles’ marriage to Henrietta Maria. It is thought that Lucy was the Duke of Buckingham’s mistress at this time as well as becoming one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting. At first Henrietta was not keen on Lucy’s presence – mainly because Lucy wasn’t a Catholic and because she was spying on the Queen on Buckingham’s behalf. Ultimately the two women became friends – although it was a relationship destined to be a rocky one on occasion.

In 1636 the Earl of Carlisle, who was twice Lucy’s age, died. The Duke of Buckingham had been assassinated in 1628 – so there she was an independent and glamorous widow. She took up with Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford – the new royal favourite. He also advised her on her Irish property. However, when Strafford was impeached by Parliament she distanced herself from the earl. In any event she had found a new beau- the Parliamentarian John Pym.

By the outbreak of the civil war in 1642 both the Royalists and the Parliamentarians thought that Lucy was their intelligencer. She had after all warned her lover, John Pym, about the king’s intentions to have him arrested. Henrietta believed that Lucy was cosying up to Parliamentarians like the earls of Warwick and Essex to spy on her behalf and they, in turn, believed that she was spying on the Royalists. Her house, it should be noted, was full of Royalists but it didn’t prevent her moving seamlessly between London and the Royal Court at Oxford.

Lucy would go on to raise funds for the Royalists and took messages to Henrietta when she was in France. In 1649 – shortly after the king’s execution, Lucy was arrested and carted off to the Tower. Somehow or other her jailors didn’t spot that she was writing letters to the new king, Charles II. She used her brother as a courier. Ultimately, eighteen months after her arrest, she was freed and continued her work as a royalist agent seeking the restoration of the monarchy.

Lucy died at the beginning of November 1660 but is remembered in fictional form today as Alexander Dumas’s Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers.

Derbyshire in the English Civil War

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Predominantly Parliamentarian in sympathy, Derbyshire raised a regiment under the command of Sir John Gell of Hopton Hall and secured Derby in early December 1642. The Earl of Derbyshire went into exile and Chatsworth found itself being occupied by both sides at different times. The earl’s younger brother Charles Cavendish, would die in the Royalist cause.

Bolsover, the home of the earl’s cousin, William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, also had a Royalist garrison although it was never besieged. Wingfield Manor was also garrisoned as well Tissington Hall in the Peak District and Barton Hall to the south of the county. Gell set about securing the property of Royalists in February 1643. He began with Elvaston Castle the home of his rival Sir John Stanhope who had died in 1638. At the time Stanhope’s widow, Mary, was in residence. Gell’s forces ransacked the manor, ruined her flower garden and defaced Sir John’s newly erected tomb before entering the family vault and repeatedly plunging their swords into the coffins it contained. The destruction of Mary’s flower garden was at Gell’s express orders – I’m not warming to the man whose own tomb can be viewed in Wirksworth Church. Not content with his work, Gell went on to raid Jacinth Sacheverell’s home at Morley and Sir John Coke’s property at Melbourne.

By November that year Chatsworth, Wingerworth and Staveley, all Royalist locations, were garrisoned by Parliamentarian troops as was Wingfield Manor. In December, Newcastle’s Royalists laid siege to Mary Queen of Scots former prison and on 19 December the Parliamentarian garrison there surrendered.

It was at about the same time that the Royalists garrisoned Tissington Hall, then the home of William FitzHerbert. Colonel Eyre was able to garrison Chatsworth, the Parliamentarians having withdrawn, as well as his own home at Hassop. It meant that the Royalists looked more secure in Derbyshire than they had since the beginning of the conflict. Unfortunately for them, Newcastle, withdrew into Yorkshire to counter the Scottish invasion into England in January 1644.

In July, Gell besieged Wingfield Manor but when he discovered that Colonel Eyre (the Royalist from Hassop who incidentally was at Marston Moor) was intent on raising the siege he sent men, commanded by Major Saunders, to shadow their movements. It meant that when Saunders saw at opportunity at Boylestone he was able to surround the colonel’s men in the church where they spent the night and capture them.

Even so, without artillery it would be impossible to capture Wingfield and it was only when Gell arranged for some cannon to be sent from Sheffield that he was able to capture it. Staveley Hall had already surrendered as had Bolsover Castle.

With key positions secured, Gell returned his attention to other Royalist homes in the area. One of his targets was Barton Blount just three miles from Tutbury. However, Sir John’s own career was coming to an end. King Charles’ surrender in May 1646 members the gentry who had been at war returned home and began to challenge Gell’s position and, after an acrimonious election, complaints about Gell arrived in London.

And as an aside – the lady whose flower garden had been destroyed at the start of the war – Mary Radcliffe, the widow of Sir John Stanhope — she was married to Gell in 1644. It was an unlikely match and it appears Gell wanted to get his hands on her money. They were separated four years later. He took her children, from her first marriage, to court claiming that Mary had secretly set up a trust so that Gell could not get his hands her £1000 per year income.

Mary Radcliffe. William Larkin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And it just goes to show that a peruse of the Internet can reveal some unlikely finds. it appears that Mary, having separated from her unpleasant spouse (and Sir John Stanhope was described as choleric – so neither marriage sounds particularly comfortable) moved to London and the newly fashionable area of Covent Garden. She died there in 1653.

Mary Radcliffe’s shoes – Kerry Taylor auctions 2015