1. A queen and sister: Joan, the wife of Alexander II of Scotland, and sister of Henry III of England

Dr Jessica Nelson, medieval records specialist at The National Archives, and the latest addition to the Project Co-ordination Team, here reveals the light shed by an originalia roll entry on the relationship between Joan, queen of Scotland and her brother, Henry III, king of England.

⁋1Henry III’s eldest sister, Joan, has been rather forgotten by history. Despite being the daughter and sister of kings of England, and the queen consort of the king of Scots, she is barely remembered – a stark contrast to Henry III’s own queen consort, the formidable (and famous) Eleanor of Provence.

⁋2This is in large part due to the failure of her marriage to Alexander II to produce an heir. As a result, after Joan’s early death, Alexander II remarried, and the Scottish royal line was continued through his new queen consort, the French noblewoman Marie de Coucy. But an entry on the originalia roll for 22 Henry III (the fine roll no longer survives) helps shine some light on the role that Joan played as queen consort, as well as giving an insight into how she felt about her own life and queenship. 1

⁋3From earliest infancy, Joan was a pawn in the political games of her male relatives. In 1209, before Joan was even born, there may have been a verbal agreement between her father, King John, and the King of Scots, William, that William’s son Alexander would marry a daughter of John’s. 2 Certainly at this time an agreement was made that John would arrange the marriages of two of William’s daughters, with at least one marrying a son of John’s. In 1212, when Joan was just two, a formal marriage treaty was drawn up agreeing the match with Alexander. 3 Given the youth of the prospective bride and groom (Alexander was aged 10), there can have been no thought that the marriage would take place in the near future, and indeed it is possible that John never intended it to take place at all. While a marriage alliance with Scotland was certainly desirable, John had already amply demonstrated his de facto superiority over the king of Scots; William had done homage to John for his English holdings, and in 1209 had essentially bought peace from John on terms that were strongly in the English king’s favour. 4 To bestow such a valuable matrimonial prize on a young man already in John’s power might have seemed rather a waste: on similar grounds Henry II may have prevented the marriage of his granddaughter to Alexander’s father. 5 Further, William and Ermengarde’s elder daughters, both of marriageable age, had been in John’s custody since 1209 with no arrangements made for their marriages. 6 John may have agreed to the treaty in order to ensure that a bride for Alexander would not be sought elsewhere (chiefly, in France), while he waited to see if a preferable match could be found for Joan. And indeed in 1214 she was betrothed to Hugh de Lusignan. 7

⁋4William died in December 1214 and Alexander succeeded to the kingship. Shortly after his succession Alexander II joined the rebellion of the English barons, hoping to secure the Northumbrian earldom and likely infuriated by John’s flouting of Magna Carta, which explicitly safeguarded the rights and liberties of the Scottish king, and promised to rectify the position of his unmarried sisters. 8 After John’s death and the surrender of the English rebels, Alexander II came to terms with the king’s party in December 1217. In the spirit of conciliation, he was allowed to keep Tynedale and the earldom of Huntingdon, for which he did homage at Northampton. 9

⁋5But Alexander was not prepared simply to return to the status quo ante bellum with regard to his own marriage and the marriages of his sisters. He requested papal intervention to enforce his rights from the treaties of 1209 and 1212, and after an investigation by the legate Pandulf, the kings met at York in June 1220 and agreed that Alexander was to marry Joan, while Henry was to find suitable husbands for his sisters. 10 Alexander would also be granted 5,000 marks, and was promised Fotheringhay castle.

⁋6The date for Joan and Alexander’s wedding was set for October 1220. Alexander had to accept Joan without a maritagium (years later, he would claim that John had originally promised him Northumbria), and the obligation to find his sisters husbands did not stipulate that one of those husbands had to be Henry himself, as agreed in 1209. 11 This was probably the best that Alexander could have hoped for. His behaviour during the civil war would hardly have recommended him to the English court, and the meeting in June 1220 took place just weeks after Henry III’s second coronation, an event which had enhanced the young king’s authority and marked a new spirit of reconciliation with the former rebels. 12 The York location was further a signal of the rapprochement between Henry III and the northern barons. 13 One can see in the arrangements for the marriages an illustration of Keith Stringer’s thesis that the memory of the war injected a ‘new realism’ into Anglo-Scottish relations. Alexander II, Stringer argues, recognised that he had to get along with English government rather than resist it, while Henry III (and at this stage his minority government) recognised that Scotland was a self-governing kingdom with which they had no right to interfere. 14 The Scottish side of this rapprochement is exemplified by Alexander’s willingness for the three marriages to go ahead on less than ideal terms, while the English side is shown in Henry’s willingness to marry his own sister to the king of Scots, an acknowledgement of the Scottish royal dignity shown by neither John nor Henry II.

⁋7While it may have appeared that Henry III and his government had undertaken very light responsibilities at the York meeting, in fact fulfilling their side of the bargain was to prove far from straightforward. For a start, William Marshall junior was in possession of Fotheringhay castle, and only surrendered it into the king’s hands in November 1220 after threats and pleading in equal measure. 15

⁋8But the bigger problem was the absence of the bride. Joan was in the custody of Hugh de Lusignan. 16 Though they had been betrothed, when John’s death made Isabelle of Angoluême available, Hugh evidently considered a consecrated queen preferable, and married her without Henry’s permission in early 1220. 17 He then detained Joan as a hostage, demanding both Isabelle’s dower and the maritagium that he had received with Joan. 18 Alexander was aware of these problems, and indeed Henry’s government had agreed with him a ‘plan B’, that if Joan could not be retrieved Alexander could instead marry another of Henry’s sisters, Isabelle. 19 The negotiations for Joan’s return were tortuous, and made no less complicated by the fact that Hugh was threatening war in Poitou. Only after Henry appealed to the Pope for intervention was an agreement finally reached in October 1220, and Joan was surrendered. 20 Hugh was still in possession of Joan’s maritagium making it even less feasible that she would be provided with another for her marriage to Alexander. The wedding finally went ahead on 19 June 1221.

⁋9Though the fact that Alexander II travelled to York for the wedding was evidence of his subordinate position, it was far enough north to offer the masquerade of being neutral territory. (This was a far cry from the wedding of Alexander’s father to Ermengarde de Beaumont, in Henry II’s own chapel at Woodstock.) 21 Further, Henry III’s government ensured that all the appropriate escorts were in place for Alexander on his journey – everything was arranged ‘as Alexander desires, according to his own and his predecessors’ custom’. 22 The Northumbrian pipe roll for 1221 records a payment made to Alexander of £15 for his expenses en route, as well as Henry’s grant to him of £10 of lands in Tynedale, where the Scottish king already had possessions, presumably a small goodwill gesture in the absence of a maritagium. 23 The pipe roll for Yorkshire includes an entry for over £100 for the expenses of the king at York for the wedding of his sister and the three following days, which seems to imply that Henry paid for three days of celebrations after the nuptials, as Henry II had done after the marriage of William and Ermengarde, and as Henry III was himself to do after the marriage of his daughter Margaret to Alexander III. 24

⁋10Thus Alexander II and Joan were married at York in the presence of Henry III: the royal dynasties of Scotland and England were united in the person of the queen, and a queen who had been born to a reigning king. The Chronicle of Melrose records that ‘having celebrated the nuptials most splendidly, as was fitting, with all the natives of either realm rejoicing, [Alexander] conducted [Joan] to Scotland.’ 25 The wedding was widely recorded by English monastic chroniclers who had previously shown no interest in Scottish queens and the Barnwell chronicler notes that the archbishop of York performed the solemnities in the presence of a great many magnates of both realms. 26 As well as being a symbol of Anglo-Scottish entente, both parties must have hoped that before too long Joan would also be the vessel by which a new heir would be produced. The marriage took place just before her twelfth birthday, doubtless with the expectation of many fertile years ahead. 27 The Chronicle of Lanercost notes that she was ‘a girl still of a young age, but when she was an adult of comely beauty’. 28 Although there is no evidence of a specific ‘queen-making’ ceremony for queens of Scotland, Joan was conducted back to Scotland by her husband, presumably accompanied by the magnates who had attended the wedding, something mentioned both by the Chronicle of Melrose and by the Gesta Annalia, which states ‘the lord king returned to his country a happy man with his wife’. 29

⁋11But though she was a bride of the highest status, Joan lacked economic independence in Scotland. On the 18 June 1221 Alexander assigned her £1000 of land ‘in dotarium’ in Jedburgh, Hassendean, Lessunden, Kinghorn and Crail. 30 But there is no evidence that Joan had any control over her dower lands during her husband’s lifetime. Indeed, at the time that they were assigned to Joan’s dower, Crail and Kinghorn were still held by Alexander’s mother, Ermengarde. The charter noted that should Alexander predecease Ermengarde and she not wish to grant the lands to Joan, the deficiency should be made up from alternative specified sources, until Ermengarde died.

⁋12In Scotland then, Joan was dependent on Alexander for financial support. But while Henry did not provide a formal maritagium with Joan, he did make extensive provision for her. By October 1234 he had granted her the manor of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire for life. 31 Fenstanton was not a particularly valuable manor, but Henry granted Joan privileges in it that made it more lucrative, including provision to build a house there, 32 and, as recorded in the fine roll for February 1236, respites from a number of suits and fines. 33 In September 1236 he also granted her a much more valuable manor of Driffield in Yorkshire for life, worth at least £72 annually, in return for homage and service, and the annual payment of a sparrowhawk. 34 But these gifts were all made well into Joan’s queenship. For a decade or so after her marriage, Joan had no independent financial means.

⁋13Both Alexander II and Henry III must have hoped that the union would forge good relations between England and Scotland, reinforced by the marriage of Margaret, Alexander’s elder sister, to Hubert de Burgh, after a decade in English custody. 35 Although Hubert was not yet even an earl, he was at the height of his powers as justiciar of England and a powerful ally at the English court. In 1225 Isabelle, Alexander’s second sister, married Roger Bigod, the young earl or Norfolk and in 1235 Alexander’s youngest sister, another Margaret, also made an English match, to Gilbert Marshall, earl of Pembroke. 36

⁋14While kinship relations between the elites of the English and the Scottish royal houses were not then limited to the marriage of Joan and Alexander, this bond was still central to Anglo-Scottish relations throughout the 1220s and 1230s. Joan was a point of contact between Alexander II and Henry III and there is evidence of genuine affection between the queen and her brother. This can be seen in the tone of a letter written to Joan by Henry III in February 1235 informing her of the marriage of Isabelle ‘their beloved sister’ to Emperor Frederick, news at which he knew Joan ‘would greatly rejoice’. 37 This contact extended into real political action. Early in 1224, Hugh de Lacy invaded Ireland, aiming to retrieve his forfeited earldom of Ulster. He was allied with Llywellyn of Wales and the earl of Chester, and Henry III must have feared that he would attempt to gain additional support from Alexander. A letter from Joan to her brother written at this time states that she had been happy to receive letters from Henry and sympathises with him about the problems in Ireland. Further, she assures him that Alexander has told her that ‘from the return of this bearer’ no one shall go from Scotland to Ireland to injure Henry’s subjects, and that anyone intercepted trying to do so will be punished. It also mentions that it has been secretly reported in Scotland that the King of Norway was planning to assist de Lacy. 38 Thus Joan is watching over her brother’s interests, while the letter also provided a means for Alexander to communicate with Henry without the formality of writing to his fellow king himself. Further, Joan’s reference to the letters which she has received from Henry also suggests that Henry was using his sister as a means to approach Alexander, implying that he must have thought that she had influence over her husband.

⁋15For over a decade after her marriage to Alexander II, Anglo-Scottish relations were largely amicable, and it is likely that Joan’s position as Henry’s sister and Alexander’s wife afforded her an informal role as a mediator or facilitator of good relations between the two men. Joan’s importance becomes even clearer in the 1230s, when Anglo-Scottish relations declined. In December 1235, Henry III announced that he was calling all his fideles to London (presumably for the coronation of Eleanor of Provence), including the king and queen of Scotland, and arranged a safe conduct and escort for them, 39 although this honourable company, which included the archbishop of York and the bishop of Durham, cannot have entirely alleviated the indignity of the summons and the arduous journey. The day after Henry issued the order for the escort he granted that Joan should be allowed materials to improve her lodging at Fenstanton, implying perhaps that the king and queen of Scotland would stay there on their journey. 40 The presence of queens consort was by no means obligatory at royal councils, and Henry must surely have hoped that her presence would facilitate smoother negotiations.

⁋16However, relations between the two men did not improve, and in September 1236 Henry III went north to meet Alexander. According to Matthew Paris, Alexander was demanding that he be granted Northumbria, claiming that John had bestowed it on him in maritagium. Henry eventually offered Alexander lands worth eighty marks annually, and they broke up to discuss it further. 41 Paris does not mention the involvement of Joan. But Walter Bower’s notes the meeting ‘ubi intererat regina Scocie soror ipsius regis Anglie’, 42 possibly implying that she was taking part in the negotiations. Both sides might have expected the queen to take such a role, given that it was essentially about her marriage agreement, and further given the example of Ermengarde, who had mediated between their fathers. 43 Henry’s charter roll records that on 15 September 1236, at Newcastle, Henry granted Driffield to Joan, making it very likely that the grant was made at the time of the meeting. 44 The grant made to Joan was actually financially more lucrative than that offered to Alexander, although it was only a grant for life, and may perhaps have been a mark of gratitude to Joan for her role in the negotiations. Certainly it is worth noting that this grant, and that of Fenstanton, was just to Joan for her use, a contrast to a grant of maritagium at marriage, which would be controlled by the husband. Thus Henry was providing his sister with her own means.

⁋17Alexander was still unhappy, and so another meeting took place in York in September 1237, with the mediation of Otto, the papal legate. Both queens consort were present, along with various nobles, 45 and again it seems likely that Joan acted as a mediator. The meeting was a success: Alexander surrendered his claim to Northumbria and money owed from the 1209 treaty, and in return was granted lands in the northern counties worth £200 annually. Crucially for the king of Scots, the peace made no mention of any claim by Henry III to overlordship of Scotland. 46 Thus the ancient Scottish claim to Northumbria, pursued so vigorously by Alexander’s father, was abandoned precisely because of closer dynastic ties with the ruler of that long-disputed territory.

⁋18While it is thus clear that Joan had a significant role in Anglo-Scottish relations, it is far from clear what role she had in internal Scottish affairs. The good relations with Henry III left Alexander II more able to focus on the internal governance of Scotland personally, providing little in the way of opportunities for significant political action by his young English queen.

⁋19As Joan grew up she certainly had an intercessory role with Henry III and one could infer from this that she may have had such a role with Alexander II. In an undated letter to her ‘dearest brother’ Henry, she requested that justice should be done to the bearer of the letter, who had been unjustly fined. Richard, the bearer, was a knight (milites) and the keeper of the door of the king of Scots chamber. 47 This was an important position, as access to the king was crucial to political success, and perhaps Joan was thus attempting to earn this man’s loyalty and gratitude. In October 1236, shortly after the meeting at Newcastle, Henry pardoned a knight ‘of Joan queen of Scots’, 48 and in November 1237, while Joan was in England following the York treaty, he granted wardship of lands in Lancashire ‘ad instantiam’ of Joan, to Hugh de Gurleigh, her valet. 49 It is certainly tempting to conclude that a queen who considered it her role to intercede with her brother the king would equally consider it her role to intercede with her husband the king. However, in England royal intercession, particularly by women, was a well-established tradition, 50 and it is possible that Joan was accessing this tradition without attempting to establish anything similar in Scotland.

⁋20But it could not be overlooked that Joan’s most important role was the production of an heir, to ensure a smooth succession and to unite the dynasties of Scotland and England in the person of the king of Scots. Alexander’s succession to the kingship without dispute, despite the existence of his father’s younger brother, Earl David of Huntingdon, was the first time that a son succeeded in Scotland in place of a brother. Indeed Dauvit Broun has stated that Alexander’s peaceful succession could be considered ‘the final definitive moment when primogeniture became unambiguously the rule of succession’. 51 There could then be no doubt that Joan’s key role was the production of a son and heir.

⁋21By the time of the York council in September 1237 Alexander and Joan must therefore have been extremely concerned about their lack of children, even more so since the death in June of Alexander’s nephew and heir presumptive, John. 52 After the council had dissolved, Joan accompanied her sister-in-law, Eleanor of Provence, the young queen of England, on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Chronicle of Melrose records simply that it was ‘on account of prayer (causa orationis)’, but Joan was surely praying for an heir. 53 This may also have been Eleanor’s motive: she had been married to Henry since January 1235 and had not yet had a child. However, Joan fell seriously ill and died on the fourth of March 1238.

⁋22Matthew Paris comments that ‘her death was grievous, however she merited less mourning, because she refused to return [to Scotland] although often summoned back by her husband’. 54 Though uncharitable, this raises the possibility that even after sixteen years as queen of Scotland, Joan was still happiest with her natal family in England. Much of her stay seems to have been an informal, pleasurable time. She was at Henry’s court at Christmas 1237 where she was provided with new robes for herself and eight clerks and servants, 55 and with the gifts of does and wine. 56 Her widowed sister Eleanor, countess of Pembroke, was also present, as well as the countess of Chester and Eleanor of Brittany, Joan’s cousin. Joan gave gifts to Henry, and to the countesses of Pembroke and Chester on the occasion of their engagements. 57 Pleasant though this sounds, Matthew Paris implies it was clearly inappropriate for the queen to be separated from her husband for long periods of time, and in late January 1238 arrangements were being made for Joan’s return to Scotland, before her illness intervened. 58

⁋23Further evidence of a cooling in relations between Alexander and Joan is provided by the pattern of her landholding in England. The fact that Henry III’s grants to his sister were made only a number of years after her marriage could be due to the fact that earlier Henry III himself lacked financial security. But, taken with other evidence, it also suggests Joan’s growing unhappiness with life in Scotland. As the years passed without the birth of a healthy child, Joan and Alexander’s union must have come under considerable strain. Henry’s grants to her of English lands, and particularly the grant of Driffield after their meeting in 1236, could well imply that Joan envisaged spending more time in England after that date; certainly Driffield and Fenstanton would be convenient staging posts on journeys between Scotland and London.

⁋24But the most convincing evidence that Joan never became fully integrated into the Scottish royal family comes from her own will, which requested that her final resting places should be Tarrant Abbey, a Cistercian nunnery in Dorset, to which she also left a parcel of land. This was possible because of Henry’s generosity toward his sister. He granted her the issues of the manors of Fenstanton and Driffield for two years from Michaelmas in the 22nd year of his reign, in order to make her will, 59 and agreed that she could make a grant of land to Tarrant worth £20 yearly ‘with her body’. 60

⁋25Henry III was frugal and wily enough to keep a close eye on the execution of his sister’s will. The originalia roll evidence shows that while he allowed the executors to have the issues of the manors between Joan’s death and the following Michaelmas, he decided that thereafter it would be expedient to keep both the manors and their issues to himself. In their stead, he ordered the Treasury to pay the executors the very significant sum of £260 for them to use to execute Joan’s will. 61 After slight prevarication, he did assign land worth £20 in Fenstanton to Tarrant, saving certain profits there to the executors until the following Michaelmas. 62

⁋26Tarrant Abbey was founded by Richard Poore, bishop of Durham, who had on occasion formed part of Joan and Alexander’s escort. After his death in 1237 his tomb there was the location of reported miracles. Furthermore, Richard had apparently given the abbey to Eleanor of Provence when she came to England, so Tarrant already had a queenly link. 63 Despite these connections, it is remarkable that a queen of Scotland requested to be buried hundreds of miles from her marital home. While there was no tradition of queens of Scotland being buried alongside their husbands, they had always been buried in Scotland. 64 Joan’s decision surely implies that her primary identity was that of an English princess, not a Scottish queen. 65

⁋27Henry made careful arrangements for the commemoration and salvation of his sister’s soul. In March he spent over £20 on twenty-six silk cloths, some woven with gold, as offerings for her soul at cathedral churches and abbeys. 66 At the same time, he ordered a marble tomb to cover her body at Tarrant to be made at nearby Salisbury, 67 and pardoned two men imprisoned in Oxford castle ‘pro salute anime J quondam regine Scotie’. 68 He continued to honour Joan’s memory for the rest of his life. Most dramatically, in late 1252, almost fourteen years after her death, Henry ordered the production of the image (imago) of a queen in marble for Joan’s tomb, at the cost of 100s. 69 This was one of the first funerary effigies of a queen in England; the tradition developed in the early thirteenth century, but the tombs of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Berengaria of Navarre were in France. 70

⁋28Two candles burnt constantly at Tarrant in Joan’s memory, one in front of her tomb and one at the high altar. 71 On the first anniversary of Joan’s death, Henry was also in the process of providing for a domicilla to become a nun at Tarrant, surely for the commemoration of his sister. 72 He also regularly spent money on candles and feeding the poor in commemoration of his sister. 73 Tarrant Abbey received the abundant benefits of being the resting place of a queen, and Henry seems to have paid particular attention to the fabric of the church, 74 perhaps concerned that Tarrant should be physically as well as spiritually fit for a queen. Further, he paid 50s. yearly for a chaplain in the queen’s chapel at Marlborough to minister to Joan’s soul. 75

⁋29In contrast, no evidence survives from Scotland for any concern for her commemoration or salvation. This must in part be due to lack of comparable documentary sources, but there is no mention in Henry’s records of gifts from Alexander II in memory of his late wife, no Tarrant cartulary survives to record gifts made to the abbey directly, and I have found no grants made for her salvation to Scottish foundations. Joan’s burial in England meant that there was no convenient focus for any remembrance of her, in contrast to her mother-in-law, Ermengarde, who was frequently referred to in grants made to Balmerino, the abbey which she founded and in which she was buried. 76

⁋30Henry III’s strong attachment to his wife and children is well known, and the evidence suggests that he also had strong ties with his sister Joan. In life, there had been a practical purpose in maintaining these bonds: Joan created a vital link between the royal households of the neighbouring kingdoms. But the evidence of Joan’s will, and of Henry’s actions after her death, show that these bonds were based on more than mere pragmatism.

⁋31In Scotland, by contrast, Joan had failed in her primary task, to produce an heir, and this overshadowed her less tangible successes as an intercessor and mediator. In death, it became clear how closely Joan continued to identify with England; somewhat ironically, the close bonds that as queen of Scotland she had been expected to maintain with England, must have made it all the easier for her to continue to see herself as belonging to the English royal house. Thus a dynastic marriage begun in hope had ended in failure, and in the country of her queenship, Joan left little mark – not even a tomb.

1.1.1. E 371/5 Fine Roll 22 Henry III (28 October 1237–27 October 1238), membrane 4

1.1.1. 10

⁋118 March. Sandleford. The king has granted to J. queen of Scots while she lives that if she happens to die, her executors may hold in their hands the manors of Driffield and Fenstanton for two years from Michaelmas in the twenty-second year, in order to make execution of [the testament] of the aforesaid queen as would seem best for the king, so that they would hold those manors in their hand, as has been agreed between the king and the aforesaid executors, by a certain price. Order to Robert of Crepping to take the manor of Driffield into the king’s hand and keep it safely until the king orders otherwise, saving to the aforesaid executors the corn in the land, rent of assise and all stock found in the same manor up to Michaelmas in the twenty-second year.

Footnotes

1.
CFR 1237-8, no. 10. Back to context...
2.
A. A .M. Duncan, ‘King John of England and the Kings of Scots’, King John: new interpretations, ed. S.D. Church (Woodbridge, 1999), pp.255-61. Back to context...
3.
The marriage treaty survives only in a later copy, altered to fit the circumstances of the reign of John’s son, Henry III. It includes a clause that John would arrange the marriage within six years (before the end of February 1218). While entirely possible, it cannot be known for sure that this proviso was included in the original; see A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842-1292: succession and independence (Edinburgh, 2002), pp.110-111. Back to context...
4.
Duncan, ‘King John of England and the King of Scots’, pp.255-61. Back to context...
5.
William had requested to marry Henry II’s granddaughter, Matilda of Saxony. Henry claimed to have no objections, but referred it to the pope, who forbade the match on the grounds that it was within the prohibited degrees. It seems likely that Henry referred it to the pope with the intention that the pope would forbid it; Gesta Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls series, 1867), I, pp.313-4. Back to context...
6.
Margaret, the eldest, was certainly born before 1195, probably c.1190, and Isabelle may have been born in 1195. By 1209 they were both at least twelve. Back to context...
7.
Matthaei Parisensis, Monachi Sanctii Albani, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 7 vols (Rolls series, 1884-89), ii, p.573; Carpenter, Minority, p.155. Back to context...
8.
Duncan, ‘King John of England and the King of Scots’, pp.266-8. Back to context...
9.
Carpenter, Minority, p.69. Earl David continued to hold the earldom of Huntingdon from Alexander II, as he had held it from his brother, King William. Alexander’s claim to the northern counties was not discussed. Back to context...
10.
PR, 1216-1225, p.235 (summarised and translated in Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, 5 vols., ed. J. Bain and (vol. 5) G. G. Simpson and J. D. Galbraith (Edinburgh, 1881-1986), i, 761). Back to context...
11.
Carpenter has suggested that the 5000 marks was not a gift, but a waver of the debt still owed by the king of Scots under the terms of the 1209 treaty; for this, and a discussion of the terms in general, see Carpenter, Minority, p.196. Back to context...
12.
Ibid., pp.187-191. Back to context...
13.
Carpenter, Minority, pp.196-199. Back to context...
14.
K. Stringer 'Kingship, Conflict and State-Making in the Reign of Alexander II: The War of 1215-17 and its Context', in R. D. Oram (ed.), The Reign of Alexander II, 1214-1249 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), esp. pp. 151-2. Back to context...
15.
Carpenter, Minority, pp.148-149; 219-220. Back to context...
16.
Ibid., pp.193, 196, 200. Back to context...
17.
Isabelle had been betrothed to Hugh’s father in 1200, when he was deprived of her by King John, see Carpenter, Minority, p.193. Back to context...
18.
Joan’s maritagium had been made up of Saintes, the Saintonge and the isle of Oléron, see Carpenter, Minority, p.193. Back to context...
19.
CPR, 1216-1225, p.235 (Bain i, 761). Isabelle was brought to the 1220 York meeting, presumably for Alexander’s inspection; CPR, 1216-1225, p.234 (Bain, i, 760). Back to context...
20.
Carpenter, Minority, p.221. Back to context...
21.
'Quibus congregatis, venit dominus rex et dedit praefato regi Scotiae praedictam puellam in uxorem. Quam ipse suscipiens sacri lege matrimonii et maritali foedere sibi copulavit apud Wdestoke in majori capella regis...Baldwino Cantuariensi archiepiscopo missam celebrante, coadsistentibus praedictis episcopis’, Gesta Henrici, i, 351. Back to context...
22.
PR, 1216-1225, p.290 (Bain, i, 801); Close Roll 5 Henry III, TNA C54/24 m.10 (Bain, i, 802), m.11 dorso (Bain, i, 803). See also Duncan, ‘King John of England and the King of Scots’, pp.250-2. Back to context...
23.
Pipe Roll 1221, p.9 (Bain, i, 787). Back to context...
24.
Pipe Roll 1221, p.120 (Bain, i, 789). Back to context...
25.
...et celebratis splendissime prout decuit nupciis, exultantibus universis utriusque regni indigenis, adduxit eam in Scociam’, The Chronicle of Melrose, from the Cottonian manuscript, Faustina B. IX in the British Museum, intro. by A. O. and M. O. Anderson (London, 1936), p.76. Back to context...
26.
Memoriale fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls series, 1872-73), ii, 249. Back to context...
27.
She was born on 22 July 1210; Annales Monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, 5 vols (Roll series, 1864-69), iv, 399. Back to context...
28.
...puella adhuc tenerrimae aetatis, sed cum adulta esset decentis formositatis’, Chronicon de Lanercost 1201-1346, ed. J. Stevenson (Bannatyne Club 1839), p.29. Back to context...
29.
...et rediit dominus rex ad propria prospere cum sua sponsa’, Fordun, i, 288; Chronicle of Melrose, 1221. Back to context...
30.
CPR, 1216-1225, p.309 (Bain, i, 808). Back to context...
31.
Calendar of Close Rolls, 1231-1234, p.539 (Bain, i, 1214); Calendar of Charter Rolls, 1226-1257, p.190 (Bain, i, 1222). I’m grateful for Dr Jonathan Mackman for his identification of ‘Stanton’ as Fenstanton. Back to context...
32.
Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1234-1237, pp.136, 217 (Bain, i, 1245, 1258). Back to context...
33.
TNA C 60/35 m.13. Back to context...
34.
CChR, 1226-1257, pp.222-3 (Bain i, 1292). The manor had previously been held by the count of Aumale: CFR 1234-1235, no. 290. Back to context...
35.
Carpenter suggests October as the most likely time for the wedding (Carpenter, Minority, pp.245 and n.11, 268). Back to context...
36.
M. Morris, The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005), pp.4-7; also Alex II Acts, 203. The marriage was to prove rocky. The couple were childless, leading to protracted (and unsuccessful) attempts by Roger to have it annulled on the grounds of consanguinity; Morris, Bigod Earls, pp.43-4. For the marriage of the second Margaret, see Chronicle of Melrose, 1235 and Chron. Maj., iii, p.373. Back to context...
37.
Royal and other Historical Letters illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. W.W. Shirley, 2 vols (Rolls series, 1862-66), i, 383 (Bain, i, 1227). Back to context...
38.
Ibid., i, 195 (Bain i, 852). Back to context...
39.
CR, 1234-1237, p.331 (Bain i, 1257). Back to context...
40.
CR, 1234-1237, p.217 (Bain i, 1258). Back to context...
41.
Chron. Maj., iii, p.372. Back to context...
42.
Scotichronicon of Walter Bower, gen. ed. D.E.R. Watt, 9 vols (Aberdeen, 1987-98), v, pp.158-9. Back to context...
43.
The chronicler Walter Bower, probably basing his account on a contemporary account, records that Ermengarde had a key role as a mediator at the Norham meeting in 1212; Bower, iv, pp.467-469. Back to context...
44.
CChR, 1226-1257, pp.222-3 (Bain i, 1292); CPR, 1232-1247, p.158. As noted above, Driffield was worth at least £72 annually. The presence of Henry III in Newcastle is remarkable. It could certainly represent a diplomatic victory for Alexander, that for once it was Henry who had to do the travelling. On the other hand, it brought Henry menacingly close to the Scots border, not necessarily a comfortable position for the king of Scots. Back to context...
45.
Chronicle of Melrose, 1237. Back to context...
46.
Duncan, Kingship, pp.120-1; Carpenter, Struggle for Mastery, pp.331-2. Back to context...
47.
Chancery Miscellanea series, TNA ref C47/22/3/1 (Bain i, 2668). Back to context...
48.
CR, 1234-1237, p.320. Back to context...
49.
CR, 1237-1242, p.5 (Bain i, 1374). Back to context...
50.
See for example J. C. Parsons, ‘The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England’, Power of the Weak, eds J. Carpenter and S. MacLean (Chicago, 1995), pp.147-77. Back to context...
51.
D. Broun, ‘Contemporary Perspectives on Alexander II’s Succession: The Evidence of the King-Lists’, The Reign of Alexander II, 1214-49, ed. R. D. Oram (Leiden, 2005), pp.90-1. Back to context...
52.
Duncan, Kingship, p.122. John was the only legitimate son of Earl David. He left no legitimate sons. Back to context...
53.
Chronicle of Melrose, 1237. Back to context...
54.
Cujus obitus, licet lugubris erat, tamen ipsa minus meruit plangi, quia saepius per virum suum revocata reverti dedignatbatur’, Matthaei Parisensis Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols (Rolls series, 1866-69), ii, p.405. As with her marriage, Joan’s death was recorded by various monastic chronicles; AM, i, p.106; ii, p.318; iii, p.147. Back to context...
55.
Pipe Roll 21 Henry III, (TNA E 372/81), rot.13 (Bain i, 1309). Back to context...
56.
CR, 1237-1242, pp. 20, 21 (Bain i, 1390, 1393). Back to context...
57.
Pipe Roll 21 Henry III, (TNA E 372/81) rot.13 dorse (Bain i, 1310). Back to context...
58.
Calendar of Liberate Rolls, 1226-40, pp.308-9 (Bain i, 1395). Back to context...
59.
The original grant, rehearsed in the fine roll, was made on 21 February 1238; Henry and Joan must have known she was dying; CPR, 1232-47, p.210 (Bain, i, 1401). Back to context...
60.
CR, 1237-1242, p.48 (Bain, i, 1422). Tarrant later granted some of this land to Stephen de Seagrave; CChR, 1226-1257, p.250 (Bain, i, 1491, 1493). Also see CR, 1237-1242, p.150 (Bain, i, 1477). Back to context...
61.
CLR, 1226-40, pp.318-9, (Bain i, 1411). Back to context...
62.
CPR, 1232-47, p.214; CR, 1237-1242, p.48 (Bain, i, 1422). Back to context...
63.
Chron. Maj., iii, pp.392, 479; M. Howell, Eleanor of Provence, Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1998), p.262. Back to context...
64.
Margaret and Malcolm III were both buried at Dunfermline, but only after Alexander moved Malcolm’s body there from Tynemouth abbey, near where he had died; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, eds R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998-9), i, pp.464-5. Back to context...
65.
I have yet to find further evidence of grants made by Joan in her will, though the fact that executors were assigned £260 means that they must have been substantial. If evidence of these could be uncovered it would surely prove illuminating. I use the word ‘princess’ here as shorthand – it was not a term in use at that time. Back to context...
66.
CLR, 1226-45, pp.316-7 (Bain i, 1407). Back to context...
67.
CLR, 1226-40, p.316 (Bain i, 1405). Back to context...
68.
CR, 1237-1242, p.32 (Bain, i, 1406). Back to context...
69.
CLR, 1251-62, p.91 (Bain i, 1902). Back to context...
70.
For which see J. C. Parsons ‘ “Never was a body buried in England with such solemnity and honour”: The Burials and Posthumous Commemorations of English Queens to 1500’, Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. A. Duggan (Woodbridge, 1997), pp.317-37. Back to context...
71.
CLR, 1245-51, p.62 (and elsewhere in Henry’s Liberate rolls) (Bain i, 1692); CPR, 1232-47, p.483 (Bain, i, 1693). Henry’s sheriff was to pay for this out of the issues of the county. Back to context...
72.
CLR, 1226-40, p.374 (Bain, i, 1468, 1470). Back to context...
73.
For example Pipe Roll 28 Henry III, (TNA E 372/88) rot.12 (Oxon) (Bain, i, 1626); CLR, 1240-45, pp.106, 306 (Bain, i, 1670); CLR, 1250-1, p.358. Back to context...
74.
E.g. gifts of lead, iron and steel recorded in CLR, 1226-45, pp.374, 48 (Bain, i, 1475, 1469 respectively); lead to cover the roof, CLR, 1245-51, p.62 (Bain i, 1692). Similar gifts are recorded in the fine rolls CFR, 1242-3, nos. 401, 402, 461, 462, 855, 856, 857. Eleanor was also a keen patron, though this probably has more to do with the fact that Richard Poore had given the foundation to her; see Howell, Eleanor of Provence, p.282. Back to context...
75.
CLR, 1245-51, p.242. Back to context...
76.
E.g. The Chartularies of Balmerino and Lindores, ed. W. B. D. D. Turnbull (Abbotsford Club, 1841) 10, 12, 13, 14, 19, 39, 40, 41. Back to context...