Eleanor of Castile--III
John Carmi Parsons
cannot be reliably documented.
"Beatrice" and "Blanche" are names from Edward I's family circle--he had a
sister Beatrice, countess of Richmond (1242-75), and his brother Edmund's
second wife was Blanche of Artois. It is quite possible that two of the
daughters in the list in posting II, whose names are not known to us, could
have borne these names, but no extant contemporary source proves this.
Attempts by some historians to provide dates for these daughters, however,
cannot be accepted. Strickland, _Lives of the Queens of England_, ii, p.
439, for example, states that "Beatrice" and Berengaria (no. 11 in posting
II) were born while Edward I and Queen Eleanor were visiting Gascony
between 1286 and 1289, and that "Blanche" was born in 1290 after they
returned to England. But we known that Berengaria was really born in
1276, and the numerous wardrobe accounts surviving from the years 1286-90
do not indicate that Queen Eleanor was still bearing children then.
"Alice" appears among Queen Eleanor's children only in the 15th century,
when pedigrees of the royal line were proliferating as Henry IV's younger
sons all died childless, leaving the succession to the feeble and (until
1453) childless Henry VI very uncertain. It is beyond question that the
name "Alice" arose from a misreading of the name "Alphonso," whether in a
chronicle or some other source. The English always had a difficult time
with this foreign name, and it underwent many spelling twists and turns.
The vital clue here is that while Alphonso (1273-84, no. 9 in the list in
posting II) died just before his 11th birthday, some 13th-century writers
said that he died "fere duodennis," or aged about 12 (see _Flores
historiarium_, iv, p. 16, and the Waverley annals in _Annales monastici_,
ii, p. 401). We get exactly the same information in the late-medieval
pedigrees about Alice--she died at 12 and was buried in Westm. Abbey. The
clincher is that until the late 16th century, the heraldic and other MS
pedigrees include *either* "Alice* or Alphonso, BUT NOT BOTH. Only in
Elizabeth I's reign do these pedigrees begin to name them together--the
earliest I have seen that does so is dated 1595, and is dedicated to
Elizabeth Tudor (London, British Library, MS Harley 1416, fol. 53r).
It was from these elaborate Elizabethan and Stuart pedigrees that
Sanford and others compiled their publications, and of course they saw no
reason not to include "Alice." Many modern writers state that "Alice" was
born in March 1279 and died in 1291, but this is a job of mistaken
guesswork that derives from Green's _Lives of the Princesses_. Green's
grasp of medieval chronology was very hazy; she did not realize that
different chroniclers could reckon the beginning of the Christian year
differently, and failed to grasp that what some 13th century chroniclers
noted as the birth of an unnamed royal daughter in Mar. 1278 is, in fact,
Mary's birth in Mar. 1279. But Green concluded that it was Mary who was
b. in Mar 1278, and that another dau., name undetermined, showed up in
Mar. 1279. Then, H.M. Lane decided that the anonymous dau. of Mar. 1279
might have been "Alice," though this was pure guesswork on his part.
Since the late-medieval and Tudor pedigrees said "Alice" died at 12, Lane
compliantly killed the poor girl off in 1291 and, to dispose of the
evidence, buried her in Westminster Abbey, also as the pedigrees
indicated.
If "Alice" had lived from 1279 to 1291, however, we would
certainly find her in the royal almonry accounts, which record the king
and queen's oblations on behalf of their children. In this of all places
we would surely expect to find every one of the children named, but in the
plentiful surviving records from the 1280s--when "Alice" was supposedly
alive and well--the accounts *never* mention such a daughter.
"Isabella" is a variant form of Elizabeth (no. 14/15 in the list in
posting II), and she is occasionally called Isabella by contemporary
chroniclers. Significantly, however, royal records invariably use the
form Elizabeth. The late-medieval pedigree makers who created "Alice" as
above, however, evidently also found the name "Isabella" in those
chronicles and added the name to their pedigrees. But it is important to
note that in those pedigrees we find no birth or death dates associated
with "Isabella" nor, unlike "Alice" above, do we find an age at death or a
place of burial. Because Green misread a MS chronicle and thought that
Queen Eleanor's dau. Margaret (no. 10 in the list) was b. Sept. 1275,
Green failed to deal properly with other chronicles stating that a dau.
was b. in Mar. of the same year. H.M. Lane, _Royal Daughters of England_,
then did another job of guesswork and connected "Isabella" with the dau.
b. in Mar. 1275. Some later writers follow Lane, but only at the cost of
creating insurmountable difficulties in reconciling "Isabella's" birth in
Mar. 1275 with Green's date for Margaret's birth in Sept. 1275 and, of
course, Berengaria's birth in May 1276! But apart from the few
chroniclers who rarely refer to Elizabeth as "Isabella," there is no
reliable evidence that Edward I and Queen Eleanor ever had a child of this
name.
The name "Julian(a)" is not associated with Edward I's family until 1600,
when it surfaces in J. Stow, _Annales of England_ (London, 1600), p. 327.
There is no contemporary evidence for a daughter of this name. The name
might, I surmise, have arisen from a misreading of "Joanna" in other
sources. H.M. Lane, _Royal Daughters_, guessed (again) that the dau. who
d. in Palestine in 1271/72 might have been named Juliana, but there is no
evidence whatever about that child's name. (Lane also suggested the name
Katherine for the Palestine dau., but as above, Katherine [no. 2 in the
list in posting II] died in 1264, long before Edward & Eleanor went to
Palestine.)
"Berenice" occurs in H. Ockerby, _The Book of Dignities_ (London, 1890),
p. 10, but only suggested as a variant reading of Berengaria. No
contemporary source vouches for such a reading.
"Euphemia" is not associated with Edward I's family until as late as 1911
(K.A. Patmore, _The Seven Edwards of England_ [London, 1911], pp. 16-17,
24, citing no sources). The name is utterly foreign to the 13th-century
Plantagenets, and could not be accepted without strong corroborating
contemporary evidence--which is wholly lacking.
John C. Parsons
Henry Sutliff
John Carmi Parsons wrote:
The genesis of how these names came to be applied to the daughters is
fascinating. While we are on the topic of the Eleanors, may I bring up a
question about a third Eleanor, Eleanor of Provence. The wife of Henry III has
been traditionally shown to have had several children who died young, Richard,
John, William, Katherine and Henry. Do these names and identities bear up under
the same scrutiny as applied to the misindentified and invented children for
Eleanor of Castile? Allegedly they are buried in Westminster Abbey under a
segmental arch in the wall between the chapels of St. Edmund and St.Benedict.
This tomb is supposed to contain the remains of five children of Henry III and
four of Edward I. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Henry Sutliff
ss...@earthlink.net
John Carmi Parsons
by Margaret Howell, "The Children of King Henry III and Eleanor of
Provence," in _Thirteenth-Century England IV: Proceedings of the Newcastle
upon Tyne Conference 1991_ (The Boydell Press, 1992), pp. 57-72. Howell
finds reason to question the existence of the four sons (Richard, John,
William and Henry) commonly attributed to this couple. Their names and
the dates of birth/death associated with them originate in no contemporary
source. Three of them, Richard, John, and Henry, are known only from what
Howell judges to be early 14th-century additions made to only one MS of the
Westminster _Flores historiarum_. The case for William is particularly weak,
as he is originally found not as a son of Henry III but only as a nephew
and godson of Henry III's half-brother William de Valence; a much later
hand has then written in the MS that this was a son of Henry III.
See, too, Howell's recent excellent monograph on _Eleanor of Provence_
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
John Parsons