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Authors: Desmond Seward
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Like their uncle Louis,Eleanorâs father had been a crusader hero, King Ferdinand III â
el Santo
â, who regained much of Spain from the Moors. (Ironically, she was descended from Mohammed, one of her forebears having married a daughter of a Caliph of Cordoba.) She was also half-French, inheriting the county of Abbeville from her mother. Like her husband, she loved Arthurian romances, employing scribes to copy them; and when they were on Crusade she commissioned as a present for him a French translation of Vegetiusâs treaty on war,
De Re Militari
. Eleanorâs avaricious streak â she bought up loans from Jewish moneylenders â did not affect their relations.
Family ties meant much to the king, because of a happy childhood. When his mother died in 1291, he wrote to a cousin that since his fatherâs death she had been closer to him than any other human being. 8 He admired his uncle Louis IX deeply, although nobody was more different, and stayed on friendly terms with Louisâs son, Philip III â a bond between ruling families unique in thirteenth-century Europe.
While giving alms as lavishly as his father and annually touching hundreds of sufferers for the Kingâs Evil (scrofula), Edward was less pious. Nor did he have Henry IIIâs cult of St Edward. When he had the Painted Chamber at Westminster redecorated, it was with scenes from the life of Judas Maccabeus instead of the Confessorâs. His favourite saint was Thomas Becket, to whose shrine he once sent a wax image of a sick gyrfalcon, praying for the birdâs cure.
As a young man he loved tournaments â according to some, he was the best lance in Christendom. His pleasures were not those of the mind, and while he enjoyed tales of King Arthur and the music of Welsh harpers he was less well read than Henry III, except in law. His Latin was poor even by thirteenth-century standards, but he wrote French and some Spanish, and spoke English. If he had idle moods (hunting, hawking, playing chess) that hint at boredom, never for a moment did he lose his love of power.
King Arthur
On his way home from Palestine, Edward commissioned Rustichello da Pisa (who later helped Marco Polo with his
Travels
) to write the
Romance of King Arthur
, a compendium of Arthurian tales. In 1278 he and Eleanor went to Glastonbury Abbey when the supposed bodies of Arthur and Guinevere, found in the previous century, had been rediscovered, and moved them to a worthier tomb before the high altar, helping personally to carry Arthurâs coffin. It was probably Edward who ordered the construction of the Round Table still displayed in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle.
Enlisting the Arthurian cult in his campaign to rule all Britain, in 1284 he staged a Round Table tournament in north Wales, portraying his conquest of the Welsh as an adventure of the sort undertaken by Arthurâs knights. Champions from all over Europe came to the joust, where he was presented with Arthurâs crown, discovered just in time. He held another Round Table tournament at Falkirk in 1302, to show that subduing Scots was an Arthurian duty.
Pillars of the realm
The earls could not help being dwarfed by the kingâs huge shadow. Two were Plantagenets, his brother Edmund âCrouchbackâ of Lancaster and his cousin Richard of Cornwall â both mediocrities who never caused trouble. Another two were uncles, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, Henry IIIâs Lusignan half-brother, and John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who had married Henryâs half-sister. The king treated his impeccably loyal nephew John of Brittany, later Earl of Richmond, almost as a son, and he took a prominent part in the Gascon and Scottish campaigns.
Among those unrelated to the king, Gilbert de Clare, the immensely rich Earl of Gloucester, red-headed, stupid andunreliable, who had fought on de Montfortâs side at Lewes, was less of a nuisance than might have been
el Santo
â, who regained much of Spain from the Moors. (Ironically, she was descended from Mohammed, one of her forebears having married a daughter of a Caliph of Cordoba.) She was also half-French, inheriting the county of Abbeville from her mother. Like her husband, she loved Arthurian romances, employing scribes to copy them; and when they were on Crusade she commissioned as a present for him a French translation of Vegetiusâs treaty on war,
De Re Militari
. Eleanorâs avaricious streak â she bought up loans from Jewish moneylenders â did not affect their relations.
Family ties meant much to the king, because of a happy childhood. When his mother died in 1291, he wrote to a cousin that since his fatherâs death she had been closer to him than any other human being. 8 He admired his uncle Louis IX deeply, although nobody was more different, and stayed on friendly terms with Louisâs son, Philip III â a bond between ruling families unique in thirteenth-century Europe.
While giving alms as lavishly as his father and annually touching hundreds of sufferers for the Kingâs Evil (scrofula), Edward was less pious. Nor did he have Henry IIIâs cult of St Edward. When he had the Painted Chamber at Westminster redecorated, it was with scenes from the life of Judas Maccabeus instead of the Confessorâs. His favourite saint was Thomas Becket, to whose shrine he once sent a wax image of a sick gyrfalcon, praying for the birdâs cure.
As a young man he loved tournaments â according to some, he was the best lance in Christendom. His pleasures were not those of the mind, and while he enjoyed tales of King Arthur and the music of Welsh harpers he was less well read than Henry III, except in law. His Latin was poor even by thirteenth-century standards, but he wrote French and some Spanish, and spoke English. If he had idle moods (hunting, hawking, playing chess) that hint at boredom, never for a moment did he lose his love of power.
King Arthur
On his way home from Palestine, Edward commissioned Rustichello da Pisa (who later helped Marco Polo with his
Travels
) to write the
Romance of King Arthur
, a compendium of Arthurian tales. In 1278 he and Eleanor went to Glastonbury Abbey when the supposed bodies of Arthur and Guinevere, found in the previous century, had been rediscovered, and moved them to a worthier tomb before the high altar, helping personally to carry Arthurâs coffin. It was probably Edward who ordered the construction of the Round Table still displayed in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle.
Enlisting the Arthurian cult in his campaign to rule all Britain, in 1284 he staged a Round Table tournament in north Wales, portraying his conquest of the Welsh as an adventure of the sort undertaken by Arthurâs knights. Champions from all over Europe came to the joust, where he was presented with Arthurâs crown, discovered just in time. He held another Round Table tournament at Falkirk in 1302, to show that subduing Scots was an Arthurian duty.
Pillars of the realm
The earls could not help being dwarfed by the kingâs huge shadow. Two were Plantagenets, his brother Edmund âCrouchbackâ of Lancaster and his cousin Richard of Cornwall â both mediocrities who never caused trouble. Another two were uncles, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, Henry IIIâs Lusignan half-brother, and John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who had married Henryâs half-sister. The king treated his impeccably loyal nephew John of Brittany, later Earl of Richmond, almost as a son, and he took a prominent part in the Gascon and Scottish campaigns.
Among those unrelated to the king, Gilbert de Clare, the immensely rich Earl of Gloucester, red-headed, stupid andunreliable, who had fought on de Montfortâs side at Lewes, was less of a nuisance than might have been
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