Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen by Seward Desmond

Author:Seward, Desmond [Seward, Desmond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thistle Publishing
Published: 2013-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

11 The Lost Years

‘Foolish woman, thou art now like a firebrand that hath kindled others and burnt thyself.’

Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore

‘O sovereign mistress of true melancholy.’

Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

Henry II’s fury with his queen must have known no bounds. She was revealed at last as a secret enemy of many years, who had plotted to depose him and unleashed against him the greatest danger of his life. Admittedly he had been unfaithful to her, but — as no doubt he saw it — that was hardly sufficient reason for her to bear such enmity towards the father of her children. Reconciliation was impossible after treachery such as this. That her plot had so very nearly succeeded demonstrates how formidable she was as a politician. It is also a testimony to her lust for power.

In July 1174 Eleanor was shipped from Barfleur (possibly in the Esnecca — or ‘snake’ — which was the king’s personal vessel). According to the chronicler the weather was stormy, but she survived the crossing and was confined first in Winchester and then in Old Sarum castle. Here the tower’s site can still be made out within the ring of the grassy mound which is all that remains of the castle.

Henry’s problem was what to do with this treacherous wife. At first he seems to have been determined to divorce her, according to Roger of Howden. On 31 October 1175 a papal legate, cardinal Uguccione Pierlone of Sant’ Angelo, met the king at Winchester to discuss Church-state relations and tidy up the last vestiges of the Becket affair. It was rumoured that they were also discussing the possibility of a divorce. This posed many problems, however: to leave Eleanor free again would be to commit exactly the same political blunder that Louis VII had made nearly a quarter of a century before. Gerald of Wales believed that Henry offered the queen a divorce, but on condition that she should abandon the world and take vows as a nun; she would then be installed as abbess of the monastery of Fontevrault, of which she was so fond. Furthermore Gervase of Canterbury heard that the cardinal had been given large sums of money by the king, presumably to put him into an accommodating frame of mind, because he was noted for his avarice. The stumbling block was Eleanor herself. Despite her affection for Fontevrault, she was not going to solve her husband’s difficulties by abandoning her rights, and she refused. Although she was fifty-three — which was almost old age in the twelfth century — and although all her plans lay in ruins, she would not give way to despair and accept that she no longer had any chance of regaining the slightest vestige of power. In the event her determination was rewarded; but first she had to endure fifteen years of imprisonment, or at best semi-confinement, usually in strongly fortified buildings from which there was no hope of escape.

These years were not all spent at the same place, though Winchester seems to have been the most usual.

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