Edmund at War

There were few times in England's Medieval period when it was not at war with someone. Even when they were not forced to defend themselves, they chose to go to war for territory or to start a Crusade.

During the time of Edmund Crouchback, younger brother of King Edward I, the relationship between Wales and England was not good. During the Second Barons' War against their father, Henry III, the chief rebel, Simon de Montfort, had made an alliance with the Prince of Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

Llywelyn kept up good relations with Simon de Montfort's family, and married Simon's daughter Eleanor by proxy in 1275. Eleanor (Edward's cousin: her mother and his father were both children of King John) was in France, and when she sailed to England to meet Llywelyn, Edward had her ship seized and herself imprisoned at Windsor Castle.

Edward's intent was to force Llywelyn to make certain concessions. Llywelyn was not universally liked by his countrymen, and Edward considered taking over Gwynedd himself or splitting it up and letting the parts be ruled by Llywelyn's brothers, Dafydd and Owain. Dafydd was on-board with this plan.

Edward declared Llywelyn a rebel and made military preparations in 1276. In 1277 Edmund was put in charge of the forces in southern Wales. Some Welsh castles had already been captured, so Edmund was able to move north, taking Aberystwyth in July. He rebuilt Aberystwyth Castle before returning to England.

Through Edmund's marriage to Blanche of Artois, he became Count of Brie. In January 1280, the capital of Brie, Provins, was taken over by rebels who opposed a new tax. They killed the mayor and installed their own. Edmund marched to Brie. The mob fled, leaving the town undefended. Edmund removed the town's privileges, confiscated weapons, and declared the rebels to be executed or banished. (He returned in 1281 and pardoned Provins after negotiations with church officials, but hit them with a heavy tax that caused the town to deteriorate.)

In 1282 Wales started a war with England (it was still Llywelyn in charge), in violation of the Treaty of Aberconwy signed just a few years earlier, and Edmund returned to England to help. It was part of the forces under Edmund's control that lured Llywelyn into a trap and killed him.

There was more to his life—another 15 years or so—but I'd like to go back to the man for whom Edmund was named, an earlier king who became a saint. Tomorrow we'll examine what we know about Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia.

Edmund's Second Wife

After returning to England from failed Crusade attempts, Edmund Crouchback had to deal with some unrest. His father, Henry III, died on 16 November 1271. The succession passed to Edward, who was still returning from the Mediterranean. In fact, Edward was gone so long that there was a rumor that he would never return. This prompted some unrest and a rebellion in the north. Edmund had to suppress that rebellion with help from royalist supporter Roger, 1st Earl Mortimer.

Edmund's wife Aveline turned 14 in 1273, so Edmund was allowed to consummate the marriage. She died suddenly on 10 November 1274, however, meaning there would be no chance of Edmund inheriting any of the titles and lands of Aveline's still-living mother, Isabel. The search for a new wife commenced. 

Enter Margaret of Provence, Edmund's aunt, who had been married to Louis IX and was therefore the Dowager Queen of France. She wanted Edmund to marry Blanche of Artois (c.1248 - 1302). Blanche was recently widowed after the death of King Henry I of Navarre (c.1244 - 1274). Blanche was also Countess of Champagne and Brie, making her quite wealthy.

Blanche was willing, because she had to manage Champagne and Brie, and wanted a husband who was on good terms with the current king of France, Philip III. Since Edmund and Philip were cousins, this seemed like a sensible choice. At least one chronicler of the time, the Benedictine monk John of Trokelowe (flourished about 1290 - 1330) claimed the two knew of each other already, and the reputation of Edmund as a handsome knight and Blanche as an attractive woman made them both amenable to the union.

One person was not in favor. Blanche had a brother, the Robert II, Count of Artois, who still thought of England as an enemy of France. King Edward I supported the union, however. The couple was close in age; Edmund was only three years older.

Edmund went to France to meet her after August 1275, and met and married Blanche sometime between December and January of 1276. Edmund was now Count of Champagne, and paid homage to King Philip III as his vassal in Champagne.

Edmund and Blanche returned to England in June to see Edmund's lands, and then in July went to Navarre to see the lands there that she still possessed. The couple's first child, Thomas, was born in 1278. Henry was born c.1281, and John, Lord of Beaufort was born in 1286.

In many of those years of their marriage Edmund was away fighting wars on behalf of his brother Edward. We'll take a brief look at those tomorrow.

Funding a Crusade

When Henry III's son Edmund Crouchback was 23 years old, he pledged to go on crusade with his brother, Edward, and a cousin, Henry of Almain (son of Henry III's brother, Richard of Cornwall; Henry would be killed three years later by relatives of Simon de Montfort).

Crusades cost money, of course, and that was a problem. The recent Second Barons' War had depleted the king's funds. Edward turned to his uncle, King Louis IX of France, for a loan. (Louis was already planning a Crusade against Tunis.) Edmund decided it was time to make a political marriage (to someone with wealth).

A wealthy countess, Isabel de Forz, had been widowed several years earlier. Henry arranged a marriage between his son and Isabel, but Edmund thought he would be better off marrying one of Isabel's daughters, and in early April 1269 he married Aveline de Forz, Countess of Aumale (arranged by Edmund's mother, Eleanor of Provence). Aveline was only ten years old, and the marriage couldn't be consummated until she was 14.

The 6th Earl of Derby, Robert de Ferrers, was unable to recover his lands financially after his participation in the Second Barons' War; his title was removed from him and given to Edmund. Edmund was already Earl of Leicester and Lancaster. This gave him some additional income.

By the summer of 1270, however, they had still not started on Crusade because Henry was vacillating about being absent from England. It was decided that Edward would lead the English. Edward and his people arrived in Tunis on 10 November 1270, but it was too late to help Louis. The Treaty of Tunis had been signed 11 days earlier after Louis died of an epidemic and the Crusade failed. Edward led his men to Palestine, arriving on 9 May 1271.

Edmund, however, left England for the Holy Land by March 1271, leaving Eleanor of Provence in charge of his estates. He stayed briefly with his maternal great uncle Philip I, Count of Savoy, and possibly met James of Saint George (a master mason who would later build castles in England for Edward).

Edmund joined Edward in September 1271 with an army that was expanded with the participation of Hugh III of Cypress. Unfortunately, despite a few successful attacks, the Crusade was outnumbered and eventually forced to concede defeat. Hugh III had to coexist with the other powers in the Eastern Mediterranean, and so signed a 10-year-treaty with the Mamluk sultan Baibars.

There is no contemporary account for why Edmund had the epithet "Crouchback." The idea that he had a hunchback is countered by contemporary chronicles that claim he was handsome and good at combat. The best theory historians have to offer is that the epithet is a corruption of the term "crossback," referring to the practice of stitching a cross onto the back of one's clothing to indicate being on Crusade.

Aveline died at the age of 15, childless, in 1274, and Edmund went looking for another wife. We'll talk about his later life tomorrow.

Edmund Crouchback

Henry III wanted another son. His first son, Edward, was followed by a daughter, Margaret, and Henry needed at least "an heir and a spare." So he prayed to the 9th-century East Anglian king Edmund the Martyr, who was canonized a saint not long after his death. Henry and Eleanor of Provence's next child was a son born in London on 16 January 1245 (the illustration is of Edmund's birth by Matthew Paris), named Edmund after the saint.

Edmund grew up at Windsor Castle with his siblings and parents—Henry rarely spent time away from the family—and was very attached to them all. Edmund would become his older brother Edward's faithful administrator.

When Edmund was nine, the "Sicilian Business" happened, in which Pope Alexander IV was looking for a suitable (to him) ruler of Sicily and the Regno (southern Italy), to get it away from the German Hohenstaufens.

Edmund actually made preparations to become King of Sicily while his father tried to persuade the barons to give him money and soldiers. His mother took him to Gascony in May 1254 to be closer to the Mediterranean for the eventual invasion. In October 1255, Henry started referring to Edmund as "king." In April 1257, Edmund was back in England, being displayed to Parliament in Italian garb and trying to raise money. A marriage to Manfred of Sicily (currently acting as ruler of Sicily) was suggested in order to make him seem the natural successor to Sicily. None of that worked out.

Meanwhile, Pope Alexander had been financing Henry's preparations, but was giving up on ever seeing Henry take the lead and succeed. He demanded £90,000 from Henry in compensation. Henry's failed attempt to raise the money only accomplished two things: turning the barons against him and helping to motivate the Second Barons' War, and prompting the pope to rescind the offer and offer it instead to Charles of Anjou. (Henry extorted money from the clergy to try to pay off the debt to Alexander after being threatened with excommunication.)

During the Second Barons' War, Edmund went to France with his mother to raise funds to fight. After the war and the death of Simon de Montfort, Simon's title as 6th Earl of Leicester was eliminated and Edmund became the 1st Earl of Leicester of the Second Creation in 1267.

An adult now with his own title, it was time for him to do what several nobles of his era did: go on Crusade. How that went, and how it created his nickname, will be tomorrow's topic.

Eleanor the Queen

A queen can have several duties, one of which is to produce heirs that can either succeed their parents or be used to make politically advantageous marriages. Eleanor of Provence was one of four sisters each of whom became a queen. Eleanor was married to King Henry III of England, and exercised a great deal of influence in England, even if she was disliked by the citizens of London.

Her relationship with Henry was very strong, and he did his best to care for his young wife (they were married when she was not yet a teenager and he was 28). He embarked on a campaign of updating and decorating royal apartments. They had their own rooms, but he made sure they were next to each other. If the queen's apartments were in a separate building or other part of the palace, he made sure the distance between them had covered walkways so she could visit his apartments in comfort.

The two often appeared in public in matching outfits, and Henry made sure her residences had furniture and trappings equal to his. For the wedding of their daughter, Margaret, to King Alexander III of Scotland, they wore matching cloth of gold.

Eleanor also matched her husband in religious devotion. Henry had a special love of King Edward the Confessor, and instilled in Eleanor the same religious fervor. In 1250 she and Henry vowed to go on Crusade, and she vowed that after his death she would enter a nunnery.

She had close relationships with some of the greatest English minds of that era: Adam Marsh, Robert Grosseteste of London (the bishop, not the Oxford scholar), and royal physician and Bishop of Durham Nicholas Farnham.

Part of that religious devotion expressed itself in an act of anti-semitism shortly after Henry died. Henry had created in 1232 the Domus Conversorum ("House of Converts") in the west of London, a place where Jews who converted to Christianity would be housed, fed, given a stipend, and instructed in their new faith and made to pray for the king, his ancestors, and his descendants. Henry died in 1272, succeeded by his eldest son, Edward. In 1275 Eleanor sought, and received, permission from King Edward I to expel Jews from the lands given to her, in Marlborough, Gloucester (told to go to Bristol, but choosing Hereford since Bristol was known to have plenty of anti-semitism), Worcester (told to go to Hereford), and Cambridge (told to flee to Norwich).

Edward was raised by his mother to be hostile to Jews, and used the crime of coin-clipping as an excuse to punish them. This was a prelude to 1290, when Edward expelled all Jews from England.

Eleanor retired after Henry's death to Amesbury Priory, where two of her granddaughters were already nuns. She died in June 1291 and was buried at the Priory in a location that is now unknown—the only English queen whose grave is unmarked (except for her heart, which was buried at the Franciscan priory Greyfriars in London).

Of her children, Edward became king, Margaret became queen of Scotland, Beatrice became Duchess of Brittany, and Edmund became Earl of Leicester and Lancaster. Edmund had a nickname, "Crouchback," which sounds like something worth discussing. See you tomorrow.

Selling Sicily

Pope Urban IV's first move to try to curtail Manfred of Sicily's imperial ambitions was to excommunicate him. This was Manfred's third excommunication, and clearly he was not bothered by them.

Manfred had made himself King of Sicily after the rumored death of his nephew, Conradin, and refused to relinquish the claim when it turned out Conradin was alive (and demanding the title back). Urban tried to "sell" the title King of Sicily to someone he could trust. He offered it to Richard of Cornwall first.

Richard of Cornwall was the second son of King John of England. Matthew Paris writes that Richard refused the title, since Sicily would have to be taken by force. According to Paris, Richard expressed this unlikelihood to the pope by saying "You might as well say, 'I will sell or give you the moon, rise up and take it'."

Richard's brother, King Henry III of England, tried to get Sicily for his son Edmund Crouchback. Pope Innocent IV had already offered it for Edmund in 1254, but England was not keen on paying taxes for a battle to conquer and hold Sicily for a ten-year-old. There were many twists and turns in what historians call the "Sicilian Business," and ultimately no one from England took over Sicily, despite papal attempts and royal wishes.

The title was offered to Charles of Anjou, brother of King Louis IX of France, who (like Manfred) was interested in expanding his properties anywhere he could in the known world. Charles took up the challenge willingly, and the result has been told in the last several posts on this blog. Manfred was killed in the Battle of Benevento, then Conradin was captured and beheaded, and Sicily went into the hands of Charles.

I mentioned a few posts back, however, how driving out the last Hohenstaufen did not mean that no Hohenstaufen would become Sicilian royalty.

Manfred's only daughter, Constance, had been married to the man who became King Peter III of Aragon. Upon her father's death, Constance (in some minds) inherited the title Queen of Sicily, and that is attached to her name by history. By marriage to her, Peter claimed the throne of Sicily and fought over it. (The illustration shows Peter and Constance arriving in Sicily.) The result was the division of Sicily into the Kingdom of Trinacria, ruled by Peter and Constance and their heirs, and the kingdom of Naples, ruled by the heirs of Charles of Anjou.

So Manfred's daughter became Queen of Sicily, and even lived and ruled on the island until her death in 1302. After that, however, there were no heirs of Manfred or Conradin involved in Sicily.

I want to talk about Richard of Cornwall, the man who was offered papal support to take over Sicily but wisely stayed out of that messy conflict. Turns out he had his own prospects, and we'll see what he was up to next time.

Thomas Lost a Treasure

This is about Thomas, the 2nd Earl of Lancaster. He was born about 1278 to Edmund Crouchback (the second son of King Henry III). His life was not without problems.

He had an unsuccessful marriage to Alice de Lacy. They had no children, although Thomas fathered two illegitimate sons. Alice was abducted in 1317 by a knight under the Earl of Surrey. Thomas divorced Alice and started a conflict with Surrey which was ended by King Edward II. During the coronation of King Edward II, Thomas carried the royal sword Curtana in the procession. Like many nobles, however, he turned against Edward when Edward showed favor to Piers Gaveston, reputed to be the king's male lover.

Thomas led two revolts against Edward. One, in 1310, led to Parliament putting limits on Edward's spending. The second, in 1321, led to defeat and his execution for treason on 22 March, 1322.

Thomas had been given Tutbury Castle, which he renovated and made into his primary residence. His presence benefitted the surrounding countryside, stimulating the local economy. The famous Tutbury Hoard—the largest collection of found coins in history—was so large it must have come from his treasury. Historians assume he had gathered it to pay his allies and Scottish mercenaries, probably during his second revolt against the king. It was lost while crossing the River Dove, however, leaving it to be found by workmen in 1831.

But poor Alice! In her life she was married three times, abducted, widowed twice, imprisoned, raped, and had her in hesitance stolen. I'll tell you more about her next.