Eleanor of Woodstock: Princess and Regent

Eleanor of Woodstock, countess of Guelders (born 18 June 1318)

Eleanor of Woodstock was daughter of Edward II of England and Isabella of France, the "she wolf" we've already met. Eleanor was the third child born to this unhappily married pair. 

An early-fourteenth-century
miniature of Eleanor of Woodstock,
from a Book of Hours

Eleanor became the second wife of Reginald "the Black" of Guelders. The two were married in 1332. The count had four daughters by his first wife, and Eleanor obligingly provided him with two sons, giving birth to the first in 1334, the second in 1336. 

Her husband proved to be as problematic as his name suggests--although he was "the black" because of his dark complexion, his behavior was equally dark.

Even before the marriage was arranged, he couldn't wait to become count of Guelders, so he had seized power and imprisoned his father for six years, from 1318 to 1326 (Reginald didn't release his father from prison; his father died there).

Reginald the Black proved to be no kinder to Eleanor. He dismissed her from court in 1338 (after she had given birth to the two sons), then claimed she had leprosy so he could have the marriage annulled. She managed to prove she didn't have leprosy by stripping down in court to reveal her body, unmarked by the disease. The annulment was denied, and Reginald was supposed to receive her again as his wife.

Whether they were reconciled or not, Reginald died in a riding accident in 1343. Eleanor of Woodstock then became regent of Guelders for her eldest son (unfortunately, another Reginald, this one later to be known as "Reginald the Fat"). 

Eleanor was forced to resign as regent in 1344. In 1350, with her encouragement, Eleanor's younger son, Edward, rebelled against his elder brother. During this period of civil conflict, Reginald confiscated all of his widowed mother's wealth, and she sought refuge in the Cistercian abbey of Deventer, which she had founded and where she died in poverty on 22 April 1355.

(Edward defeated his older brother in 1361, captured him, and imprisoned Reginald. It was during this imprisonment that he became "the fat"--he supposedly became so fat that he couldn't have escaped even if his prison door had been left open. But Edward died in 1371, and Reginald was released--he regained his role as count of Guelders, but died almost immediately.) 

And one further note: it's hard to say much about Reginald the Black's first wife, Sophia Berthout. She seems to have been born about 1303, she was married about 1325, she gave birth to four daughters (1326, 1327, 1328 and 1329), and then died, early in May 1329, at age 26.

There are a few bits and pieces about Eleanor of Woodstock in Alison Weir's biography of her mother, Isabella of France. The longest account is in volume 3 (1857) of Mary Anne Everett Green's The Lives of the Princesses of England; although published in the mid-nineteenth century, Green relies on chronicles written in Guelders at the time of Eleanor's life there for her account of Eleanor of Woodstock's life. Green's Lives is available through Google Books, and you can access it by clicking here.

Margaret of Anjou: A "Tiger's Heart Wrapped in a Woman's Hide"?

Margaret of Anjou (born 23 March 1430)

Margaret of Anjou has been endlessly vilified, most famously by Shakespeare in his memorable descriptions of her as the "she-wolf of France" and, as quoted in the headline to this post, a "tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide."* But, despite that vilification, Margaret of Anjou has been an inspirational figure for many women--and I include myself among them.

Margaret of Anjou,
from a manuscript image, c. 1445

Married to Henvy VI of England in 1445, when she was fifteen, Margaret initially failed in her most important duty as queen, the production of a male heir. To make matters worse, when the ineffectual king was incapacitated by some kind of mental breakdown in July of 1453, the void he had left was filled by his wife.

And so contemporary opinion justified the opposition of Richard of York, who was credited with having perceived that "the king was no ruler:" "the whole burden of the realm," according to York, had come "to rest in the direction of the queen."

When Margaret of Anjou finally did manage to produce a son and heir a few months later, in October 1453, her "success" became just one more failure; as one historian has recently commented, the birth of her son "served to . . . bring the queen into politics as a ruthless, even fanatical, supporter of Prince Edward of Lancaster's right to succeed his father."

In an effort to protect her son's rights during her husband's illness, Margaret attempted to secure the regency for herself, a newsletter circulated in January of 1454 reporting that she had "made a bill of five articles" which, if granted by Parliament, would have had the effect of giving her "the whole rule of this land."

Although Henry recovered in January of 1455, when he fell ill again in October, York was made protector, and the result was civil war. Margaret of Anjou's subsequent efforts to preserve the English crown for her son--her establishment of what amounted to her own court, her leadership of this court party, her negotiations with Scotland and France for support, her ultimate role on the battlefields of the War of the Roses--resulted in the deterioration of her own reputation. 

She became, in one contemporary judgment, "a great and strong labored woman" who "spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power." She was judged to be "inexorable" and arrogant: "All marveled at such boldness in a woman, at a man's courage in a woman's breast."

For Edward Hall, writing during Henry VIII's reign, Margaret was a "manly woman using to rule and not to be ruled"; deciding "to take upon her the rule and regiment," she fought not for her son but for herself, "desirous of glory and covetous of honor."

By the time the Elizabethan chronicler Ralph Holinshed described her, she had become the archetypal virago: 

a woman of great wit, and yet of no greater wit than of haute [high] stomach . . . desirous of glory and covetous of honor, and of reason, policy, counsel, and other gifts and talents of nature belonging to a man; full and flowing of wit and wiliness she lacked nothing, nor of diligence, study, and business she was not unexpert; but yet she had one point of a very woman, for oftentime, when she was vehement and fully bent in a matter, she was suddenly like a weathercock, mutable and turning.

She was widely reported to be sexually promiscuous, her enemies claiming that Edward was not Henry's son at all but the child of Margaret and one of her lovers, most likely Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Such hostile representations of Margaret of Anjou depict her as unnatural and her actions as a violation of woman's nature. 

And yet, in an interesting way, Margaret of Anjou's role in England was not only a response to the political crisis in that country; the role she assumed as queen and mother had been shaped by the political circumstances of her own childhood and by her own experience of women's abilities and capacities. As Margaret's biographer J. J. Bagley notes, "Politics, war, and administration seemed to be the natural vocations of women in her family."

A manuscript illustration of the marriage of
Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou,
from Vigiles of Charles VII, 1484

Margaret of Anjou was the daughter of Isabelle of Lorraine, who both fought for her husband René of Anjou in Sicily and served as his regent there.

While her mother was engaged in pursuing and defending René of Anjou's interests in Sicily, Margaret spent eight years with her grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, who was regent of Anjou for her oldest son, Louis III.

After Louis' death, Yolande remained active in politics and in her family's fortunes, marrying her daughter Marie to the French dauphin and encouraging him in his efforts to recover his throne.

Margaret of Anjou had been shaped by the example of these active and powerful foremothers.

England neither offered such powerful, independent exemplars for women, nor accepted them. Indeed, it was Margaret of Anjou herself who became a powerful exemplar for women--an example of the dangers of the determined woman who, ignoring "proper and permissible feminine activity," behaved, or tried to behave, like "ruling princes."

In the end, Margaret could not keep her husband on the throne or ensure her son's succession to that throne. Henry VI was deposed in 1461, briefly restored in 1470, then deposed again and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died on 21 May 1471. Margaret campaigned endlessly after Henry's initial deposition, and it was due to her tireless efforts that he was restored in 1470. She fought to defeat her Yorkist opponents, but she was defeated at the battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, her son Edward, fighting with her, killed on the field. (Margaret's son Edward was married to Anne Neville, whom we have already met.)

After the battle, Margaret was taken captive and held prisoner, but she was ultimately ransomed by her cousin, Louis XI of France. She lived in poverty and obscurity until her death, in Anjou, in 1482. She was buried in Anjers Cathedral with her parents, but as a final insult, her remains were scattered and lost during the French Revolution.

Margaret of Anjou has been the subject of several recent historical novels, and a character in others, most notably Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series. But her life is too rich to need fictionalizing. She is included in Helen Castor's She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth, its title a nod to Shakespeare's description of Margaret of Anjou, and in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Elizabeth of York. But I recommend Helen Maurer's excellent full-length biography, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Eleanor of Aragon, Queen and Regent

Eleanor of Aragon, queen of Portugal (died 19 February 1445)

Women faced numerous difficulties when they were left as regents for their children (usually, but not always, their sons). As we have already seen, many women functioned exceptionally well and were grudgingly, if not enthusiastically, accepted as regents, but for some, a regency was more difficult, frequently complicated by their foreignness. (Isabella of France and Catherine de' Medici are two women we have already met whose foreign backgrounds were the source of suspicion, resistance, and vilification.)

Eleanor of Aragon,
Detail from the Altarpiece of St. Vincent
(1460s)

That's the case for Eleanor of Aragon, queen consort of Edward (Duarte) I of Portugal. Her Aragonese connections may have useful for Portugal in forging a crucial political alliance, but these same foreign interests were problematic for Eleanor when she attempted to govern as regent. 

As a queen consort, Eleanor gave birth to nine children (five of whom survived infancy, including the requisite sons, Afonso and Ferdinand). At his death in 1438, Edward named his wife as regent for his successor, the Infante Afonso, an appointment that was affirmed by the ruling Portugues cortes (assembly). 

Although she was supported by the terms of her husband's will and by the nobility, there was deep-seated suspicion of Eleanor because of her Aragonese ties. A riot in Lisbon was the result of her confirmation as regent, suppressed by her Aragonese brother. Although efforts at compromise continued, the cortes eventually turned to the duke of Coimbra, the dead king's brother, appointing him as sole regent. 

By December of 1440, Eleanor was forced into exile. She died in Toledo, but she was buried alongside her husband at the monastery of Batalha.

The Dominican convent of Batalha,
the burial place for members of the
Portuguese royal house of Aviz

Isabella of France: He's King But She Rules

Isabella of France, queen of England (1 February 1327)

On 1 February 1327, Edward III was crowned king of England, and although he would become one of England's most powerful kings (reigning fifty years), at the time of his coronation his mother was ruling for him, as regent. 

Isabella of France (1295-1358) had assumed the regency in 1326 before the death of her husband, the notably incompetent Edward II, whose disastrous twenty-year reign staggered from one controversy to another.

(Isabella's father was the French king Philip IV. Her mother was Joan of Navarre--by marriage Joan was queen of France, but she was also a queen in her own right--she had inherited the throne of Navarre. She ruled there, as queen regnant, from 1274 to 1305.)

A fifteenth-century illustration showing Isabella among the troops
at the Siege of Bristol, 1326

Edward II lost his throne after years of mismanagement and civil strife--and Isabella played an active role in the events that led to her husband's defeat, capture, and, in the end, deposition. She seized power in the last few months of 1326, with Edward's formal abdication taking place 25 January 1327.

Isabella's regency lasted until 1330, when Edward III successfully rebelled against his mother's ongoing control. Roger Mortimer, who had long acted as Isabella's political partner (and who is generally believed to have been her sexual partner as well), was accused of treason, convicted, and executed. Isabella was initially under house arrest, but she was allowed to "retire" from power and the court, though she remained very wealthy. She eventually regained some measure of influence, entering into peace negotiations for Edward III in France (1348) and Navarre (1358). She remained very close to her children and, eventually, her grandchildren, a welcome member at court.

History has not been kind to Isabella--contemporary chroniclers condemned her as "that harridan" and "that virago." In his play Edward II, Christopher Marlowe had one character refer to her as "that unnatural Queen, false Isabel," while the fictional Edward described his wife as "my unconstant Queen, who spots my nuptial bed with infamy." In the eighteenth century, stealing a phrase from Shakespeare, the poet Thomas Gray described her as the "She-Wolf of France," who, "with unrelenting fangs" ripped through "the bowels of thy mangled mate." (Shakespeare had coined the phrase for another powerful woman-who-would-be-king, Margaret of Anjou.)

Such descriptions survive--in Berthold Brecht's adaptation of Marlowe's play, "Isabella" applies the name to herself: "I shall become a she-wolf," she says, "Ranging bare-toothed through the scrub." Contemporary historians are not much kinder. Helen Castor's She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth at least gives Isabella some companions in the "she wolf" business, though her discussion of Isabella is titled "Isabella: Iron Lady," which is marginally more positive. Elizabeth Norton uses the same phrase for her She Wolves: The Notorious Queens of England, with the chapter on Isabella titled "The She-Wolf of France."

Isabella landing in England with her son, Edward,
in 1326

While her popular biography of the queen is not particularly condemnatory, Alison Weir's title capitalizes on Isabella's reputation as a monster: Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England. In his Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors, Michael Farquhar writes about Isabella in a brief chapter called "A Royal Pain in the Ass." (At least Farquhar's monsters are gender-balanced.) 

My recommendation? There's also a fine chapter on Isabella of France in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens.