Читать книгу The Three Edwards: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 21
ОглавлениеThe Death of Queen Eleanor
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Trouble was brewing in Scotland over the succession to the throne, and Edward was watching the progress of events with a shrewd eye, having a deep interest, as will be explained later. He had decided to have a few days’ hunting in Sherwood Forest (a certain youth who would become known later as Robin Hood was thereabouts but not yet a thorn in the flesh of sheriffs) and he issued summonses for a meeting of Parliament later at Clipstone. The queen, who was often called Eleanor the Faithful, had gone north with him, but when he rode on to Clipstone she remained behind at Harby, a small village in Nottinghamshire, as a guest in the house of a gentleman of the court named Weston. She was seized almost immediately with a lingering fever. Master Leopardo, the queen’s physician, did not consider it serious at first but, becoming alarmed finally, he sent hastily to Lincoln for certain medicines, including a special syrup. The report sent to the king was sufficiently alarming to bring him hurrying to her bedside. He left the Scottish situation still simmering and dismissed Parliament after no more than seven days of deliberation. When he reached Harby it was apparent that his beloved wife had not much longer to live. She died on November 28, in her forty-seventh year.
The king was so stricken with grief that he remained in seclusion for two days, eating and drinking little and turning a white and drawn face to such of his advisers as found it necessary to interrupt his vigil. He wrote, or dictated, a few notes, for one is still in existence addressed to the Abbot of Cluny, in which he says, “We cannot cease to love our consort, now that she is dead, whom we loved so dearly when alive.” The body in the meantime was placed in a coffin filled with aromatic spices, and Edward emerged from his solitary mourning to accompany the cortege to Lincoln. The bier rested that first night at the Priory of St. Catherine close to that city, and it was probably then that the determination became fixed in the king’s mind to express his grief in a memorable manner.
He recalled no doubt that twenty years before the coffin of Louis IX of France, known in history as Saint Louis, had been carried on the shoulders of his devoted followers from Paris to the burying grounds at St. Denis, the bearers being relieved at intervals so that all who so desired could have a share of the burden. Wherever the procession stopped, a cross forty feet high had been set up. This custom was to be followed in France on at least one other occasion, when the great French constable, Bertrand du Guesclin, died in 1380 before Châteauneuf-Randon in Languedoc. His coffin was carried all the way to Paris. So universal was the desire to honor that valiant warrior that everywhere men clamored for a chance to bear a share—knights, citizens, and field hands alike. Across the face of France went that amazing procession, and it was recorded that not one bearer but wept as he bore the weight on a bowed shoulder.
Feeling that his once beautiful and always loving consort was worthy of special remembrance, Edward decided to erect a stone cross of surpassing beauty at every place where her body rested for a night. Because she had been so well loved by the people of England, he decided also that the work must be entrusted to native hands; a wise decision, for the work of the stone carvers of England could not be surpassed.
The first of the Eleanor Crosses was set up on Swine Green opposite the priory in Lincoln. In addition to the cross, which was the work of one Richard de Stow, master mason, a tomb was built in the Angel Choir in Lincoln Cathedral to contain the viscera of the queen. The second cross was on St. Peter’s Hill near the entrance to the town of Grantham. The third was at Stamford. The fourth was at Geddington, described as “one of the sweetest and quietest villages in England.” This one differed from the others in that the platform for the cross was raised over a bubbling spring.
The fifth was at Hardingstone, about a mile from Northampton, the sixth at Stratford, the seventh at Dunstable where Icknield Way crossed Watling Street, the eighth at St. Albans. The ninth was at Waltham and the tenth at Cheapside in the outskirts of London. The eleventh, and last, was at the village called Cheringe then but now known as Charing. It was the most elaborate and stately of all.
This sorrowful procession had lasted from December 4 until December 14. All the noblemen and the bishops who had attended the Parliament at Clipstone were in the mourning train.
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Time and the parliamentary forces in the civil war collaborated to destroy most of these beautiful memorials. The stone used for most of them could not resist exposure to the elements for much more than two centuries, after which the beautifully carved figures began to deteriorate. The Roundheads, as Cromwell’s iron horsemen would be called in that bitter clash in the seventeenth century, are said to have destroyed the crosses at Lincoln, Grantham, Stratford, Dunstable, St. Albans, Cheapside, and Charing.
Perhaps it was just as well that they thus passed out of existence, for the efforts made at restoration had not been successful. One case of this may be recorded. The Cheapside Cross was handsomely designed by Michael of Canterbury, but it soon fell into disrepair and an elaborate restoration was decided upon by one of the mayors of the village, John Hatherly. The efforts were ill conceived and directed. Figures of kings, queens, and bishops were added, all of them ludicrous in execution, as well as a Madonna and a figure of the pagan goddess Diana. To complete the desecration, a conduit was laid from the Thames to the stone figure of the huntress, so that a stream of water spouted from her mouth continuously. The Parliament of 1643 ordered the destruction of this monstrosity, and it is said that “drums beat, trumpets blew, caps were thrown in the air and a great shout of joy arose from the people” when, the impious Diana having been destroyed, the top cross fell. The populace were said to have made knife handles from pieces of the stone.
Edward would have been very much saddened had he known that the memorials he raised to the memory of his beloved Eleanor would fail to survive the ravages of time and the religious rancors of civil war.
The cost of the Eleanor Crosses was estimated to have been in the neighborhood of fifty thousand pounds, the equivalent of many millions in present-day currency. The penny was still the common coinage of England (all other denominations, such as shillings, marks, and pounds, being coins of account only), and one wonders what method was employed in paying such large amounts.
It must be added with some reluctance that the cost of the Crosses was assumed by the queen’s executors. This would seem to indicate that she had been the possessor of great wealth in her own right, and moreover that the king, while inspired to this unusual gesture by his deep grief, was not above taking advantage of her wealth.
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Foreign queens were not often popular with the people of England. Edward’s mother, the fair and sophisticated Eleanor of Provence, was so heartily detested that her barge was stoned on one occasion when it bore her up the Thames from the Tower of London. John’s consort, the very beautiful Isabella of Angoulême, was admired but not liked. Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Henry II and the mother of Richard of the Lion-Heart, was considered a wicked woman and blamed, unjustly, for the death of the Fair Rosamonde. But Edward’s queen was greatly loved in the country. She was not as brilliantly lovely as Isabella, nor to be compared for vivacity and charm with Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had been the toast of Europe. There were, however, a warmth and sweetness about her which won all hearts. Her endearing qualities may still be discerned from the statue in bronze on her tomb in Westminster Abbey. It was executed immediately after her death by a fine English sculptor, William Torell. Her delicate features are there shown in a gentle smile. The dusky softness of her long tresses can only be guessed at, but they form a pleasing background for her face.
It was not her beauty alone which appealed to the people. She was generous and thoughtful in the extreme, as witness her will. It contained bequests for all who had served her, even in the most menial capacities. Master Leopardo, who may have been too slow in sending to Lincoln for those drugs, was left twenty marks nonetheless. A leech sent by the King of Aragon received twelve and a half marks. The queen remembered her ladies-in-waiting with enough to serve as marriage portions. She did not forget her cooks and tailors and grooms. The nature of some of the bequests made it clear that she had revised her will a very short time before the end, which is an evidence of great thoughtfulness. One of the chronicles of the day had this to say of her: “To our nation she was a loving mother, the column and pillar of the whole nation.”
Wax candles burned without dimming around her tomb in the abbey for more than three hundred years, a proof that the affections she had inspired were not soon forgotten.
