The Queens of Love and War by Ellen Jones

Author:Ellen Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter 34

TWO DAYS AFTER HE had left Henry in Bermondsey, Thomas sat at the head of a long table in his chancery by the Thames, a stone’s throw from the gray hulk of Westminster.

On one side of the table his secretary, William, read aloud dispatches from all the far-flung reaches of Henry’s vast empire: Northern England, Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine. There were applications for opening a lawsuit; a missive from Henry’s lieutenant in Poitou, complaining that the Poitevin lords paid no attention to his orders; letters from scholars seeking benefices; venomous notes from bishops accusing the king’s judges of encroaching on their jurisdiction. If true, a very serious charge indeed. Lay judges had no business interfering in ecclesiastical courts.

In a separate pile were several unopened missives, newly arrived from the seneschal in Poitou, addressed to the queen. Probably complaining about Henry’s lieutenant. The documents were carefully sealed with a special red seal, and it would have been obvious if they had been opened. By rights all such documents should come directly to the chancellor, and Thomas considered it a bypass of his authority that he could not read them first. But the queen had made a point of demanding that all such dispatches addressed to her should initially be read by her; Thomas did not want a repeat of the scene of two nights ago.

Henry, who officially ruled in Aquitaine, allowed his wife to still believe she was the dominant authority. One day, however, Thomas hoped that Henry would stop indulging his queen. Her receipt of special payments from the exchequer—referred to as the Queen’s Gold—was shocking enough, a complete break with precedent. Whatever degree of unofficial control Eleanor managed to retain over her duchy was even more intolerable.

In Thomas’s opinion women had no place in the administration of government. He even questioned the wisdom of allowing the Empress Maud, virtually acting as regent in Normandy, to actually sign charters without royal authority, in her and Henry’s name! But as her son lived in a state of unqualified admiration regarding his mother, Thomas, like everyone else, tread carefully where the tough old empress was concerned.

In England, at least, he did his best to see that the Aquitainian whore was relegated to the background. Not too difficult, since she had been kept so busy performing her primary task of producing children that she had little time to meddle in state affairs.

On the other side of the table a set of clerks copied the minutes of decisions taken in the royal council: grants of land awarded, marriages of royal wards—every decision of the king’s that must be recorded for posterity. A clerk brought Thomas a pile of his own dispatches to be sealed, along with the great Seal in its wooden box, and the container of sweet-smelling green beeswax. Thomas sealed all his own letters; he enjoyed the ceremony of affixing to parchment this emblem of his power.

“Here is a letter from a knight in the north country,” said William, scrutinizing a square of parchment, “reminding the king that he was promised a good-sized fief.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.