Eleanor of Aquitaine
John Parsons
medieval period, we must be prepared to deal with what are often no more
than tiny fragments of information. The passage from Ralph of Diss (= de
Diceto) dealing with the children of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine is
one such fragment. Another, as I mentioned yesterday, is the passage in a
St Albans chronicle that relays Edward I's own statement that he and Queen
Eleanor had 5 sons, not 4 as is usually reported. In both these cases, it
is an overwhelming probability that the sons in question died so soon after
birth that no record survives of their names or the dates of their birth.
But both these chroniclers are reliable sources and even though no
additional evidence has been found for either of the sons they mention,
their testimony need not be rejected out of hand.
Compare, for example, the evidence that Eleanor of Castile had a child in
January 1278: all we have here is one entry in a fragmented book of Edward
I's wardrobe accounts that has survived entirely by chance. It tells us
only that the king paid for the expenses of his wife's confinement for 30
days in January of Edward's 6th regnal year. We know nothing more than
that, but clearly the queen did deliver a child at that time. There is also
the chance survival of an apothecary's account for an illness of Queen
Isabella, wife of Edward II, in November 1313, exactly one year after the
birth of Edward III. The nature of her illness is not specified but the
apothecary's account includes two purchases of the herb pennyroyal. This
herb's only medicinal use recorded across the ages has been to stimulate
uterine contractions. Evidently Isabella's illness in November 1313 had
something to do with pregnancy but whether she experienced a miscarriage or
a full-term stillbirth is not clear. No chronicler of the day mentions the
event.
What is the genealogical significance of these incidents? Obviously it
doesn't center around the life and death of any of these children, but such
evidence does bear directly on wider questions.
The article by Andrew Lewis that reports the existence of Eleanor of
Aquitaine's 9th child by Henry II also identifies a chronicle that states
Eleanor was aged 13 when she married Louis VII in 1137. We therefore need
to change the generally assumed year of her birth from c. 1122 to c. 1124.
This in turn bears directly on the history of her childbearing. She was 2
years younger at her first marriage than previously believed, and this could
explain the failure of her first pregnancy early in her marriage to Louis
(at least before 1144 when, still childless, she mentioned the failed
pregnancy in her plea to St Bernard to pray that God would allow her to bear
a child).
It doesn't, however, give us any new information to explain her infrequent
later pregnancies by Louis.
But it does bear on her very rapid childbearing by Henry II. Eleanor was
not 30 when she wed Henry in 1152, she was 28; her fertility levels would
still have been high as the swift succession of her pregnancies in the 1150s
demonstrates. And she was not 44 when she gave birth to her last child
John; she was 42. The existence of the nameless son, who was born either
between Geoffrey (1158) and Eleanor (1162) or between Eleanor and Joan
(1165) shows that Eleanor's fertility levels had not necessarily dropped by
her late 30s, as some have argued from the (formerly presumed) lessening
frequency of her pregnancies in the 1160s. This data bears on the general
question of the span of medieval women's childbearing years, which is
pertinent to many genealogical debates.
A good many postings to this discussion group include questions as to
whether a woman could have borne a child as late as such-and-such a date.
The more data (like that now available for Eleanor) that we can bring to
bear on such questions, the better. We now know, for example, that Philippa
of Hainaut, Edward III's wife, was born in 1310, not c. 1312. This means
she was 46 when she bore her last child, Thomas, in 1356. Such data bear
directly on the debates we often have to pursue about the parentage of
individuals in the Middle Ages. At a time when the only reliable forms of
population control were abstinence or infanticide, women often continued to
bear children into their 40s despite diets that were less nutritious than
they are today, and despite the possibility of lower fertility levels after
age 35.
Further comments welcome.
Regards
John P.
D. Spencer Hines
where was it written?
We "deal" with tiny fragments of information all the time -- in writing
History and Genealogy and in daily life.
We don't necessarily believe all of these tiny fragments of information
uncritically without confirmation from other sources.
DSH
""John Parsons"" <car...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:BAY7-F1187D643BF...@phx.gbl...
| I believe we are all well aware that in working with sources from the
| medieval period, we must be prepared to deal with what are often no
more
| than tiny fragments of information. The passage from Ralph of Diss (=
de
| Diceto) dealing with the children of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine
is
| one such fragment....
Brad Verity
> I believe we are all well aware that in working with sources from the
> medieval period, we must be prepared to deal with what are often no
more
> than tiny fragments of information.
Absolutely. I am constantly amazed at the amount of written material
that has survived given the centuries that have ensued.
[snip]
> What is the genealogical significance of these incidents? Obviously
it
> doesn't center around the life and death of any of these children,
but such
> evidence does bear directly on wider questions.
Every birth is significant to a geneaologist, whether or not the child
survived.
[snip]
> This data bears on the general
> question of the span of medieval women's childbearing years, which is
> pertinent to many genealogical debates.
>
> A good many postings to this discussion group include questions as to
> whether a woman could have borne a child as late as such-and-such a
date.
> The more data (like that now available for Eleanor) that we can bring
to
> bear on such questions, the better.
Thank you very much for making this point. At a human resources
seminar that I participated in last year, one of the points brought up
is that before we started going off in the direction of goal-setting
and other theory, we needed to make sure that every employee got their
paycheck. In other words, there were basic database problems crying
out to be addressed.
In genealogy, the most important step after identifying father and
mother is establishing birthdate, deathdate and marriage date. What
I've noticed regarding the medieval English royal family and noble
houses is that too many present-day historians and geneaologists have
taken Complete Peerage, the Harleian Society published Visitation
pedigrees, and other Victorian-era research as the final authority on
the chronology of these family lines.
I have tremendous respect for the research and writings of antiquarians
from the 18th and 19th centuries. The amount of material that they
assembled on medieval families without the use of computers, databases,
easily accessible libraries, published indexes, or even ball-point
pens, is astounding. That they got more right than they got wrong is
attributable to the attention to detail (and the passion) that most
brought to their research.
So much more medival documentation has become readily accessible in
this age of computers and databases, that we have the luxury, if not
the calling, to review every family, no matter how extensively studied
in the past (Mowbray, Beauchamp, Stafford, Ferrers, even Plantagenet,
etc.), and compile/revise/expand the chronology of each line. Rosie
Bevan's articles on the Longford family in 'Foundations' is one example
that springs to mind. Long-time readers of the newsgroup may be
surprised to see me give Douglas Richardson props, but he has done a
lot of work in correcting birth, death and marriage dates that Complete
Peerage published, and this kind of research helps tremendously in
medieval geneaology.
Bottom line, in my opinion, is that no line - royal, noble or
mercantile - no matter how seemingly established and researched, is
above and beyond careful scrutiny of the birth, death and marriage
dates of its various members. Case in point: CP, Vol. 9, p. 383,
states that John, 3rd Lord Mowbray, married Joan "6th and yst. da." of
Henry, Earl of Lancaster. But a close look into the chronology of the
marriages of the Lancaster daughters shows that Joan, married in 1328,
had two sisters married in 1330 and 1334, so she certainly was not the
youngest daughter.
Does this revised fact have a huge impact on history? Well, it doesn't
affect the outcome of the Hundred Years' War, but as geneaologists, we
need to look at family units in more detail than historians, and
chronology has a huge effect on both disciplines. Knowing where Joan
falls in the birth order of the Lancaster daughters is important for
genealogical purposes. Is the fact that the Lancasters were allied
with the Mowbrays in 1328, six years before they allied with the Percys
in 1334, important from a historical standpoint? Perhaps. The sharing
of knowledge between us genealogists looking at these families from our
chronological perspective with historians studying these families from
a political or social perspective, could lead to breakhroughs in both
fields.
Henry of Grosmont, Joan's only brother, is another case in point.
Complete Peerage has him born "c. 1300". This would make him sixty
years old as military commander of the Reims campaign in 1360 - quite
impressive for a medieval senior citizen. But historian Kenneth
Fowler, who studied the unpublished household records of the Earl of
Lancaster (which the editors of CP probably had no access to in the
1890s), established that Henry of Grosmont was born a decade later,
about 1310. Suddenly the sixty-year-old senior becomes a
fifty-year-old military campaigner. And he's two years older than King
Edward III rather than a dozen years older and wiser. John Howard, 1st
Duke of Norfolk, is another example. Was he born about 1420 and thus
age 65 at Bosworth, or born about 1425 and age 60 at the battle that
cost him his life? Chronology has a huge impact on individual
biography as well.
> We now know, for example, that Philippa
> of Hainaut, Edward III's wife, was born in 1310, not c. 1312. This
means
> she was 46 when she bore her last child, Thomas, in 1356.
I believe that it was Bert M. Kamp from this newsgroup, in the 2002
thread 'Queen Philippa's birthdate', who established that Philippa was
born in 1314, and that it was elder sister Margaret of Hainault, who
married Louis of Bavaria in 1324 (four years before Philippa's
marriage), who was the one born in 1310. This makes Philippa age 42,
not 46, when she bore her final child.
> Such data bear
> directly on the debates we often have to pursue about the parentage
of
> individuals in the Middle Ages. At a time when the only reliable
forms of
> population control were abstinence or infanticide, women often
continued to
> bear children into their 40s despite diets that were less nutritious
than
> they are today, and despite the possibility of lower fertility levels
after
> age 35.
What are the specific examples of medieval women over age 40 bearing
children? Eleanor of Castile, born in 1241, had her final child in
1284, when she was 43. We have Queen Philippa bearing her last child at
age 42. Her contemporary Margaret, Countess of Devon, born in 1311,
had a child (Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham) in 1348, when she was
age 37, after many previous children. It's possible her son Sir Piers
Courtenay was younger than Philip, but I haven't been able to establish
that.
The greatest age of a medieval noblewoman bearing her first child that
I have been able to find is that of Margaret, youngest daughter of
Richard, Earl of Arundel and Elizabeth de Bohun. She was born about
1383, married the rather obscure Herefordshire knight Sir Rowland
Lenthal at some point during the reign of King Henry IV (1400-1413),
and bore her son and heir Edmund Lenthal on 17 June 1420, when she was
aged about 37.
> Further comments welcome.
Just a thank you for continuing to study contemporary documents and
revise birth, marriage and death dates of medieval queens (and nobles
and commoners) whenever possible. It's a huge contribution to
geneaology.
Cheers, ----Brad