Tea at Trianon: Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 12, 2022

Eleanor, Countess of Pembroke

From History...the Interesting Bits:

Eleanor of England was the youngest child of John and Isabelle d’Angoulême; she is said to have inherited her mother’s beauty and feisty temperament.¹ Eleanor was thought to have been born at the height of her father’s troubles, in the midst of the Magna Carta crisis in 1215. However, historians are now inclined to the theory that she was born posthumously, sometime after the death of King John, either in late 1216 or early in 1217. She was named for her famous grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. As a baby, little Eleanor was placed in the household of the bishop of Winchester, where her eldest brother, Henry, had been living since 1212.² Eleanor’s father had died whilst the country was riven by war, on the night of 18/19 October 1216 at Newark. He was succeeded by Eleanor’s eldest brother Henry – now King Henry III. Eleanor’s mother, frozen out from any role in her son’s regency or life, returned to her native Angoulême and in 1220 married Hugh X de Lusignan, Count of La Marche.

In 1224 Eleanor’s future was decided when she was married to William (II) Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. The younger Marshal was the son of the first earl of Pembroke who had been regent in the early years of Henry III’s reign, and who had driven the French out of England following his victory at the Battle of Lincoln in May 1217. The first earl had a reputation for integrity and loyalty, having remained unwavering in his loyalty to King John during the Magna Carta crisis. The second earl, Eleanor’s husband, had been a hostage of the king between 1207 and 1213, as a guarantee of his father’s good behaviour. He later joined the baronial rebellion and was appointed marshal of the forces of the invader, Prince Louis. However, he returned to the Royalist cause when Louis refused him possession of Marlborough Castle, which had previously belonged to the younger Marshal’s grandfather.³

William (II) Marshal fought alongside his father at the Battle of Lincoln. On his father’s death in 1219, Marshal had succeeded him as earl of Pembroke and marshal of England; when his mother died in 1220, he succeeded to her lordships of Leinster and Netherwent. His younger brother, Richard Marshal, succeeded to the Clare lands in Ireland. In 1214 Marshal married Alice, the daughter of Baldwin de Béthune, Count of Aumâle, to whom he had been betrothed in 1203. The marriage was short-lived, however, as poor Alice died in 1216. (Read more.)