Eleanor of Castile

Eleanor of Castile (1241 – 28 November 1290) was Queen of England as the first wife of Edward I. She was educated at the Castilian court and also ruled as Countess of Ponthieu in her own right (suo jure) from 1279. After diplomatic efforts to secure her marriage and affirm English sovereignty over Gascony, 13-year-old Eleanor was married to Edward at the monastery of Las Huelgas, Burgos, on 1 November 1254. She is believed to have birthed a child not long after.

Fuller records of Eleanor's life with Edward start from the time of the Second Barons' War onwards, when Simon de Montfort's government imprisoned her in Westminster Palace. Eleanor took an active role in Edward's reign as he began to take control of Henry III's post-war government. The marriage was particularly close; Edward and Eleanor travelled together extensively, including the Ninth Crusade, during which Edward was wounded at Acre. Eleanor was capable of influencing politics but died too young to have much effect.

In her lifetime, Eleanor was disliked for her property dealings; she bought up vast lands such as Leeds Castle from the middling landed classes after they went into arrears on loan repayments to Jewish moneylenders, and the Crown forced them to sell their bonds. These transactions associated Eleanor with the abuse of usury and the supposed exploitation of Jews, bringing her into conflict with the church. She profited from the hanging of over 300 Jewish alleged coin clippers and after the expulsion of the Jews in 1290, she gifted the former Canterbury Synagogue to her tailor. Eleanor died at Harby near Lincoln in late 1290; following her death, Edward built a stone cross at each stopping place on the journey to London, ending at Charing Cross, known as Eleanor crosses. This series of monuments may have included the renovated tomb of Little St Hugh – who was falsely believed to have been ritually murdered by Jews – to bolster her reputation as an opponent of supposed Jewish criminality.

Eleanor exerted a strong cultural influence. She was a keen patron of literature and encouraged the use of tapestries, carpets and tableware in the Spanish style, as well as innovative garden designs. She was a generous patron of the Dominican friars, founding priories in England, and supporting their work at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Notwithstanding the sources of her wealth, Eleanor's financial independence had a lasting impact on the institutional standing of English queens, establishing their future independence of action. After her death, Eleanor's reputation was shaped by conflicting fictitious accounts – both positive and negative – portraying her as either the dedicated companion of Edward I or as a scheming Spaniard. These accounts influenced the fate of the Eleanor crosses, for which she is probably best known today. Historians have generally neglected Eleanor and her reign as a topic of serious study, but she has received more attention since the 1980s.

Eleanor was born in Burgos to Ferdinand III of Castile and Joan, Countess of Ponthieu. She was named after her paternal great-grandmother Eleanor of England, the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England.

Eleanor was the second of five children. Because her parents were separated for 13 months while King Ferdinand was on a military campaign in Andalusia – from which he returned to the north of Spain in February 1241 – Eleanor was probably born towards the end of that year. The courts of her father and her half-brother Alfonso X of Castile were known for their literary atmosphere. Both kings encouraged extensive education of the royal children so it is likely Eleanor was educated to a standard higher than the norm, a likelihood that is reinforced by her later literary activities as queen. Eleanor was at her father's deathbed in Seville in 1252.

Eleanor's marriage in 1254 to the future Edward I of England was not the only marriage her family planned for her. The kings of Castile had long made a tenuous claim to be paramount lords of the Kingdom of Navarre due to sworn homage from Garcia VI of Navarre in 1134. In 1253, Ferdinand III's heir Alfonso X of Castile – Eleanor's half-brother – appears to have stalled negotiations with England in the hope she would marry Theobald II of Navarre. The marriage would have afforded several advantages: the Pyrenees kingdom afforded passage from Castile to Gascony; and Theobald II was not yet of age so an opportunity to rule or potentially annex Navarre into Castile existed. To avoid Castilian control, in August 1253, Margaret of Bourbon – mother and regent to Theobald II – allied with James I of Aragon instead, and as part of that treaty, solemnly promised Theobald would never marry Eleanor.

In 1252, Alfonso X resurrected an ancestral claim to the Duchy of Gascony in the south of Aquitaine – the last possession of the Kings of England in France – which he claimed had formed part of the dowry of Eleanor of England. Henry III of England swiftly countered Alfonso's claims with both diplomatic and military moves. Early in 1253, the two kings began to negotiate; after haggling over the financial provision for Eleanor, Henry and Alfonso agreed she would marry Henry's son Edward, who now held the title of Duke of Gascony, and Alfonso would transfer his Gascon claims to Edward. Henry was anxious for the marriage to take place; he willingly abandoned the already-made, elaborate preparations for the knighting of Edward in England and agreed Alfonso would knight Edward on or before the next Feast of Assumption.