April Queen (53 page)

W
ith Berengaria never having been crowned in England, but only by the bishop of Evreux in Limassol – and being in any case unable to face down such a powerful mother-in-law – it was Eleanor, who had clung at such cost to her titles, who was the unquestioned queen of the English, duchess of Normandy and duchess of Aquitaine. For the second time, a king’s death had left her the only crowned figure of regal authority in England and the continental possessions.

When the cortège reached Fontevraud, churchmen high and low were already there, including the persistent Peter of Capua presenting condolences on behalf of the Pope. Berengaria was present to mourn officially the husband she had never known, and whom she was to survive by a celibate widowhood of thirty-one years devoted to good works, including the foundation of the Cistercian Convent of L’Epau near Le Mans, where her effigy can still be seen in the chapter house (plate 24). With her came Matilda of La Perche, daughter of Matilda of Saxony, to press the case of a third contender for the succession. Her brother was Richard’s favourite nephew, Otto of Brunswick.

Eleanor’s dilemma had included him. Of the three, he was the nearest to Richard, and for a while he had been duke of Aquitaine in name at least. But he knew nothing of England, and that was the key to it all. John knew both the country and the language, but … Still, she wavered.

The eulogies spoke of the dead king as indeed the father-figure of valour, although many remembered him as an irresponsible monarch, whose arrogance and passion for war had twice impover-ished his subjects. The Lionheart sobriquet came much later, deriving from the reverse of his seal, which showed him mounted in full armour and brandishing his sword with a shield that differed from Henry’s in being not blank but bearing a
lion passant
from 1195 onwards. During the last year of his life this begat two others, to become the three golden
lions passants
still a feature of the English royal standard.

In Normandy on 7 April William the Marshal received a letter dictated by Richard after his injury, appointing him keeper of the castle of Rouen and guardian of its treasure. Staying at the priory of Notre Dame du Pré across the river was Archbishop Hubert Walter. Guessing that the wound was serious, they discussed the succession, William supporting John and the Archbishop Arthur.
¹
On 10 April a second messenger arrived with news of the king’s death four days earlier.

Hugh, the much-travelled bishop of Lincoln, met the Abbess Matilda on the road and was taken into her confidence,
²
which caused him to hurry southward to officiate at the funeral in Fontevraud. There he took precedence over the bishops of Agen, Poitiers, Angers and a host of lesser clergy swarming to the royal funeral like bees to honey. Among the mourners were the seneschals who had served Eleanor and Richard and now waited anxiously to know who was their new master.
³
Arthur, John or Otto?

The news of his brother’s death reached John dallying in treason yet again. Disenchanted with he considered Richard’s meanness in paring his allowances to the bone, he had been attempting to form a new power block by exploiting the mistrust of Constance of Brittany and the Breton lords for Richard, Philip and anyone else who was not a Breton. Hastily disentangling himself from these now potentially dangerous friends, John hastened south. His first port of call was not Fontevraud but the nearby Angevin treasure castle at Chinon, whose treasury was empty. There he met Bishop Hugh of Lincoln returning from the funeral, and attempted to enlist the venerable churchman – diplomat’s support in his cause as Richard’s successor.
⁴

The original courageous purpose of Hugh’s journey to Anjou had been to protest over the punitive taxation in England, despite his own clergy and those at Angers, where he had been staying, urging him never to confront Richard about money. Such was the lawlessness of the country that his treasury and horses had been stolen en route, but still he had pressed on with his mission. Although he had enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect with Henry, Hugh disapproved of all the princes born to what he considered Eleanor’s adulterous and consanguineous second marriage – and specifically of John, who was so scarred by his childhood experience as an oblate that he had no time for religion.

Despite John’s promise of bribes, Bishop Hugh consented only to return to Fontevraud with him and see how matters lay. There, despite the gratitude he owed to Abbess Matilda – presumably left far behind on the road from Brittany – for the delicate errand she had performed so discreetly, John flouted her wishes by hammering on the abbey door and demanding to be shown his brother’s tomb,
⁵
until restrained by Bishop Hugh, who diplomatically obtained permission for him to enter.

In Paris Philip proclaimed as suzerain of the continental posses-sions that Arthur, being the son of an older brother, took precedence over Richard’s younger brother John. Emboldened by this, Constance used Arthur’s name to appoint Guillaume des Roches the new seneschal of Anjou, in opposition to John’s candidate Amaury de Thouars.

On Easter Sunday, 18 April, Bishop Hugh preached in the abbey church at Fontevraud a homily none too subtle on the duties of kingship. It was quite normal for the congregation to fidget and chatter among themselves, for except at the three great feasts of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas they did not take communion, but only witnessed the service. John’s behaviour, however, exceeded the normal bounds. Growing bored, he twice yelled at Bishop Hugh to cut the sermon short, and was taken aback the third time when ordered to leave the sanctuary.
⁶
It was not an auspicious beginning for a prince who needed all the support he could get, especially from the Church.

He also needed Eleanor, as dowager queen and witness to Richard’s last wishes, to rebut Philip’s announcement that Arthur was the legitimate successor. But Eleanor had withdrawn from the world, to hide her grief. With all his shortcomings and vices, Richard alone of her sons had been of the same ilk as William IX and Prince Raymond of Antioch – a fitting poet–count of Poitou and warrior–duke
of Aquitaine, for whose sake she had thought worthwhile all her efforts to keep her heritage intact.

On 21 April, three days after John’s angry exchanges with Bishop Hugh, she disciplined herself to resume her feudal duties, affixing her seal to a charter confirming the gift to the abbey of Turpenay of a vivary or fish-farm at Langeais in consideration for its abbot’s help in the arrangements after Richard’s death. John was one of the witnesses, but is described only as her ‘very dear son’ and ‘Count of Mortain’.
⁷
The other significance of the charter is the question it raises: for what was the Abbot being rewarded at this fraught time? Had he been present when Richard dictated a will that Eleanor suppressed, naming Arthur of Brittany or Otto of Brunswick to succeed him? Was the gift a reward for silence? Three months later, on 21 July, Richard’s confidant Milo the Chaplain was also rewarded by gifts to his abbey of Le Pin. Was this for long and faithful service, or something else?

Shortly after Easter, news reached Eleanor at Fontevraud that a consortium of Breton barons with Arthur and his mother Constance had been joined by many barons and knights from Maine and Anjou under Guillaume des Roches, whom she had last seen at the funeral. Marching against Angers, only a day’s ride from Fontevraud, they took it without opposition.
⁸
Le Mans and several other cities went over to them, Count Aymar of Limoges exacting revenge for the fateful siege of Châlus by lining up also on Arthur’s side.

The news forced Eleanor reluctantly to give her backing to John, who hurried north to be invested on 25 April by Archbishop Walter of Rouen with the ceremonial sword and golden crown of the dukes of Normandy. Even at this solemn moment, John could not control his disrespect for the Church, joking with his cronies during the service and dropping the ceremonial sword. Crowned duke of Normandy – a vital step towards the throne of England – he sent the ever-loyal William the Marshal and Archbishop Hubert Walter across the Channel with orders to see every royal castle prepared for civil war.
⁹
They were also to extract from all free men an oath of fealty to John as duke of Normandy and son of King Henry. He would not be king of England until crowned there.

Many of the Anglo-Norman magnates gathered in council at Nottingham could find little good in him, except that he knew the country and spoke the language which Richard had not learned and even Henry had never properly mastered, using an interpreter for any important conversation. Their final decision was to accept him, but on conditions that laid the foundation for Magna Carta sixteen years later.
In Normandy, so little confidence had they in their new duke’s ability to keep the duchy independent of Philip that many barons and knights claimed the protection of the Peace of God by going on pilgrimage or answering the call of the Fourth Crusade to the Holy Land until the political–military situation had stabilised.
¹⁰

Normandy and England went together, as they had done for 133 years. As far as the other possessions of Henry’s empire were concerned, Eleanor was not prepared to give John Poitou and Aquitaine. Luckily she had at her side Mercadier, who had served both Henry and Richard and was now her man so long as she could pay him. Ordering his mercenaries back with all speed from the Limousin, he led them against the coalition forces, presenting the rare phenomenon of two
ad hoc
armies confronting each other, each with a woman at its head. Constance’s forces fell back on Le Mans, leaving Angers to be sacked by Eleanor’s men under Mercadier, whose reward was to hold its principal citizens for ransom.

Meanwhile, John as duke of Normandy was leading a force of Normans into Maine. In retaking Le Mans, fire and sword were again the order of the day, but Constance had slipped away with Arthur to Tours, where Philip again took charge of the boy as an important piece to be saved for later in the game. The immediate danger over, Eleanor wheeled south to make a regal progress through her own domains of Poitou and Aquitaine, accompanied by an impressive retinue of bishops and barons.

In the midst of this turmoil ex-Queen Joanna caught up with her in Niort, bearing a tale of betrayal and attempted murder. Loyally suppressing a revolt by some of Count Raymond’s vassals while he was campaigning elsewhere, she had narrowly missed death when her own knights changed allegiance and set fire to her tent. Whether she had been wounded in the attack, or burned, is unclear, but she was pregnant and too deeply shocked to keep up with her mother’s exhausting itinerary further than La Rochelle,
¹¹
from where Eleanor dispatched her to Fontevraud, to be cared for by the nuns while she continued her grand tour.
¹²

Seal of John

She was not seeking to solicit her vassals’ loyalty to John, who was to them a distant figure who had spent much of his life on the wrong side of the Channel and had neither Richard’s valour nor his poetic prowess to commend him. Instead, she reintroduced herself to her vassals – most of whom had not been born when she inherited the duchy in 1137 – as mother of one legendary dead hero and granddaughter of the great crusading troubadour-duke William IX. It is an illustration of her attitude to John that she did not think it worthwhile to attend his coronation at Westminster on 27 May, at which he buckled the belt of earldom on William Marshal in the expectation of long and loyal service – an expectation that was not disappointed.

Taking advantage of his absence from France, Eleanor made overtures to Philip, whom she met at Tours in mid-June, swearing fealty to him for Poitou and Aquitaine and receiving in return the kiss of peace. Satisfied that her inheritance was now safe from John, she continued dispensing gifts and confirming privileges on an exhaustive tour that lasted until mid-July, gathering support for herself not only from her barons but also from the burgeoning communities of merchants and free artisans in the cities, four of which received from her their freedoms: La Rochelle, Poitiers, Saintes and Oléron, where she put her seal to what is considered the first code of maritime law in France.

At St Jean d’Angély she authorised the foundation of a commune, compensating the abbey out of her own pocket for the taxes it would thereby lose. In Bordeaux, however, she found it difficult to balance the appeal of the burgesses for their freedom against the authority of the Archbishop, the chapter and religious foundations both inside and outside the walls. Here she was up against those very freedoms and privileges that had been the price demanded by Geoffroi de Lauroux for negotiating her marriage to Louis sixty-two years before.

Her compromise was to grant to the citizens exemption from taxes and feudal duties without going so far as to authorise them to form a commune electing its own mayor and officers. In compensa-tion, she did, however, grant them a mint in the city.
¹³
Elsewhere, too, the Church, with which so many of her predecessors had been at odds, was generously treated, as at Richard’s favourite abbey of La Sauve Majeure. Its founder Geraldus having recently been declared a saint by
Innocent III, Eleanor confirmed the charters given to the foundation by Louis and Henry and Richard and Otto, extending the annual fair to two weeks’ duration.
¹⁴