Edward I "Longshanks", King of England
Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the night of 17–18 June 1239, to King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence.
Portrait in Westminster Abbey, thought to be of Edward I |
In 1254, English fears of a Castilian invasion of the English province of Gascony induced Edward's father to arrange a politically expedient marriage between his fourteen-year-old son and Eleanor, the half-sister of King Alfonso X of Castile. Eleanor and Edward were married on 1 November 1254 in the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Castile.
Eleanor of Castile, Queen Consort of England
Arms as Queen consort |
Marriage
Arranged royal marriages in the Middle Ages were not always happy, but available evidence indicates that Eleanor and Edward were devoted to each other. Edward is among the few medieval English kings not known to have conducted extramarital affairs or fathered children out of wedlock. The couple were rarely apart; she accompanied him on military campaigns in Wales, famously giving birth to their son Edward on 25 April 1284 in a temporary dwelling erected for her amid the construction of Caernarfon Castle.
Their household records witness incidents that imply a comfortable, even humorous, relationship. Each year on Easter Monday, Edward let Eleanor's ladies trap him in his bed and paid them a token ransom so he could go to her bedroom on the first day after Lent; so important was this custom to him that in 1291, on the first Easter Monday after Eleanor's death, he gave her ladies the money he would have given them had she been alive. Edward disliked ceremonies and in 1290 refused to attend the marriage of Earl Marshal Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk; Eleanor thoughtfully (or resignedly) paid minstrels to play for him while he sat alone during the wedding.
Eleanor's Death
Eleanor was presumably a healthy woman for most of her life; that she survived sixteen pregnancies does not suggest that she was frail. Shortly after the birth of her last child, however, financial accounts from Edward's household and her own begin to record frequent payments for medicines to the queen's use. The nature of the medicines is not specified, so it is impossible to know what ailments were troubling her until, later in 1287 while she was in Gascony with Edward, a letter to England from a member of the royal entourage states that the queen had a double quartan fever, probably a strain of malaria. The disease is not fatal of itself, but leaves its victims weak and vulnerable to opportunistic infections. Among other complications, the liver and spleen become enlarged, brittle, and highly susceptible to injury which may cause death from internal bleeding.
In the autumn of 1290, news reached Edward that Margaret, the Maid of Norway, heiress of Scotland, had died. He had just held a parliament at Clipstone in Nottinghamshire, and continued to linger in those parts, presumably to await news of further developments in Scotland. Eleanor followed him at a leisurely pace as she was unwell with a feverish illness, probably the quartan reported in 1287. After the couple left Clipstone they travelled slowly toward the city of Lincoln, a destination Eleanor would never reach.
Her condition worsened as they reached the village of Harby, Nottinghamshire, less than 22 miles (35 km) from Lincoln. The journey was abandoned, and the queen was lodged in the house of Richard de Weston, the foundations of which can still be seen near Harby's parish church. After piously receiving the Church's last rites, she died there on the evening of the 28 November 1290, aged 49 and after 36 years of marriage. Edward was at her bedside to hear her final requests. For three days afterward, the machinery of government came to a halt and no writs were sealed.
The Northampton Cross |
Edward followed her body to burial in Westminster Abbey,
and erected memorial crosses at the site of each overnight stop between
Lincoln and Westminster. Based on crosses in France marking Louis IX's
funeral procession, these artistically significant monuments enhanced
the image of Edward's kingship as well as witnessing his grief.The
"Eleanor crosses" stood at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington,Northampton, Stony
Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, Westcheap,
and Charing - only 3 survive, none in entirety. The best preserved is that at
Geddington. All 3 have lost the crosses "of immense height" that
originally surmounted them; only the lower stages remain. The Waltham
cross has been heavily restored and to prevent further deterioration,
its original statues of the queen are now in the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London. The Waltham and Northampton crosses have been moved to
locations different from their original sites.
The monument now known as "Charing Cross" in London, in front of the railway station of that name, was built in 1865 to publicise the railway hotel at Charing station. The original Charing cross was at the top of Whitehall, on the south side of Trafalgar Square, but was destroyed in 1647 and later replaced by a statue of Charles I.
The tomb of her viscera at Lincoln Cathedral |
In the
thirteenth century, embalming involved evisceration.
Eleanor's viscera were buried in Lincoln Cathedral, where Edward placed a
duplicate of the Westminster tomb. The Lincoln tomb's original stone
chest survives; its effigy was destroyed in the 17th century and
replaced with a 19th-century copy. On the outside of Lincoln
Cathedral are two statues often identified as Edward and Eleanor, but
these images were heavily restored and given new heads in the 19th
century; probably they were not originally intended to depict the
couple.
The queen's heart was taken with the body to London and was buried in the Dominican priory at Blackfriars in London. The accounts of her executors show that the monument constructed there to commemorate her heart burial was richly elaborate, including wall paintings as well as an angelic statue in metal that apparently stood under a carved stone canopy. It was destroyed in the 16th century during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Eleanor's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 17 December 1290. Her body was placed in a grave near the high altar that had originally contained the coffin of Edward the Confessor and, more recently, that of King Henry III until his remains were removed to his new tomb in 1290. Eleanor's body remained in this grave until the completion of her own tomb. She had probably ordered that tomb before her death. It consists of a marble chest with carved mouldings and shields (originally painted) of the arms of England, Castile, and Ponthieu. The chest is surmounted by William Torel's superb gilt-bronze effigy, showing Eleanor in the same pose as the image on her great seal.
When Edward remarried a decade after her death, he and his second wife Margaret of France, named their only daughter Eleanor in honour of her.
Edward I |
Eleanor of Castile |
That Edward remained single until he wed Marguerite
of France in 1299 is often cited to prove he cherished Eleanor's
memory. In fact he considered a second marriage as early as 1293, but
this does not mean he did not mourn Eleanor. Eloquent testimony is found
in his letter to the abbot of Cluny in France (January 1291),
seeking prayers for the soul of the wife "whom living we dearly
cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love." In her memory, Edward
ordered the construction of the twelve elaborate stone crosses between 1291 and 1294, marking the route
of her funeral procession between Lincoln and London.
However, only one of Eleanor's four sons survived childhood and, even
before she died, Edward worried over the succession: if that son died,
their daughters' husbands might cause a succession war. Despite personal
grief, Edward faced his duty and married again. He delighted in the
sons his new wife bore, but attended memorial services for Eleanor to
the end of his life, Marguerite at his side on at least one occasion.
Uncommon for such marriages of the period, the couple loved each other.
Moreover like his father, Edward was very devoted to his wife and was
faithful to her throughout their married lives—a rarity among monarchs
of the time.
How are the Clarks related?
Stuart Benson Clark> Anne Garnett Emory> Theodosia Blakey Garnett> Reuben B. Garnett> Richard Garnett> Elizabeth Ann Rogers> Joseph Rogers> Peter Rogers> Giles Rogers> John Rogers> Thomas Rogers> Thomas Matthew Rogers> Bernard Fitz Rogers> John Rogers> Thomas John Rogers> Catherine de Courtenay> Philip de Courtenay> John de Courtenay> Philip de Courtenay> Margaret Plantagenet de Bohun> Elizabeth Plantagenet > Edward I Plantagenet, King of England
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