Eleanor de Castile, Queen of England

Female 1241 - 1290  (~ 49 years)


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  • Name Eleanor de Castile 
    Suffix Queen of England 
    Birth 0___ 1241  Burgos, Segovia, Castile, Spain Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 2, 3, 4
    Gender Female 
    Death 28 Nov 1290  Hardby, Nottinghamshire, England Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 4
    Burial 16 Dec 1290  Westminster Abbey, 20 Deans Yd, London SW1P 3PA, United Kingdom Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 4
    Person ID I37371  The Hennessee Family
    Last Modified 27 Nov 2016 

    Father Fernando III, King of Castile and Leon,   b. 5 Aug 1201, Castile, Spain Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 30 May 1252, Seville, Spain Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 50 years) 
    Mother Jeanne de Dammartin, Countess of Ponthieu,   b. 0___ 1220, Dammartin-en-Goele, Seine-et-Marne, France Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 16 Mar 1279, Abbeville, Somme, France Find all individuals with events at this location (Age ~ 59 years) 
    Marriage 0___ 1237  [3, 4, 5
    Family ID F16003  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Edward I, King of England,   b. 17 Jun 1239, Westminster, London, Middlesex, England Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 7 Jul 1307, Burgh by Sands, Carlisle, Cumbria, England Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 68 years) 
    Marriage 18 Oct 1254  Burgos, Segovia, Castile, Spain Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 2, 6, 7
    Children 
     1. Lady Joan (Plantagenet) of Acre,   b. 0Apr 1272, Acre, Israel Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 23 Apr 1307, Clare Castle, Clare, Suffolk, England Find all individuals with events at this location (Age ~ 35 years)
     2. Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, Princess of England,   b. 7 Aug 1282, Rhuddlan Castle, Denbighshire, Wales Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 5 May 1316, Quendon, Essex, England Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 33 years)
     3. Edward II, King of England,   b. 25 Apr 1284, Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd, Wales Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 21 Sep 1327, Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, England Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 43 years)
    Family ID F13822  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 30 Apr 2023 

  • Event Map
    Link to Google MapsBirth - 0___ 1241 - Burgos, Segovia, Castile, Spain Link to Google Earth
    Link to Google MapsMarriage - 18 Oct 1254 - Burgos, Segovia, Castile, Spain Link to Google Earth
    Link to Google MapsDeath - 28 Nov 1290 - Hardby, Nottinghamshire, England Link to Google Earth
    Link to Google MapsBurial - 16 Dec 1290 - Westminster Abbey, 20 Deans Yd, London SW1P 3PA, United Kingdom Link to Google Earth
     = Link to Google Earth 

  • Notes 
    • Eleanor of Castile (1241 - 28 November 1290) was the first queen consort of Edward I of England. She was also Countess of Ponthieu in her own right from 1279 until her death in 1290, succeeding her mother and ruling together with her husband.

      Eleanor was better-educated than most medieval queens, and exerted a strong cultural influence on the nation. 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 also a successful businesswoman, endowed with her own fortune as Countess of Ponthieu.

      Issue

      Daughter, stillborn in May 1255 in Bordeaux, France. Buried in Dominican Priory Church, Bordeaux, France.
      Katherine (c 1261 – 5 September 1264) and buried in Westminster Abbey.
      Joanna (January 1265 - before 7 September 1265), buried in Westminster Abbey.
      John (13 July 1266 – 3 August 1271), died at Wallingford, in the custody of his granduncle, Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Buried in Westminster Abbey.
      Henry (before 6 May 1268 – 16 October 1274), buried in Westminster Abbey.
      Eleanor (18 June 1269 – 29 August 1298). She was long betrothed to Alfonso III of Aragon, who died in 1291 before the marriage could take place, and in 1293 she married Count Henry III of Bar, by whom she had one son and one daughter.
      Daughter (1271 Palestine ). Some sources call her Juliana, but there is no contemporary evidence for her name.
      Joan (April 1272 – 7 April 1307). She married (1) in 1290 Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford, who died in 1295, and (2) in 1297 Ralph de Monthermer, 1st Baron Monthermer. She had four children by each marriage.
      Alphonso (24 November 1273 - 19 August 1284), Earl of Chester.
      Margaret (15 March 1275 – after 1333). In 1290 she married John II of Brabant, who died in 1318. They had one son.
      Berengaria (1 May 1276 – before 27 June 1278), buried in Westminster Abbey.
      Daughter (December 1277/January 1278 - January 1278), buried in Westminster Abbey. There is no contemporary evidence for her name.
      Mary (11 March 1279 – 29 May 1332), a Benedictine nun in Amesbury.
      Son, born in 1280 or 1281 who died very shortly after birth. There is no contemporary evidence for his name.
      Elizabeth (7 August 1282 – 5 May 1316). She married (1) in 1297 John I, Count of Holland, (2) in 1302 Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford & 3rd Earl of Essex. The first marriage was childless; by Bohun, Elizabeth had ten children.
      Edward II of England, also known as Edward of Caernarvon (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327). In 1308 he married Isabella of France. They had two sons and two daughters.
      It is often said, on the basis of antiquarian genealogies from the 15th-17th centuries, that Eleanor delivered 2 daughters in the years after Edward II's birth. The names most often associated with these ephemeral daughters are "Beatrice" and "Blanche"; later writers also mention "Juliana" and "Euphemia," and even a "Berenice," probably by confusion with the historical daughter Berengaria. At least one eighteenth-century writer made "Beatrice" and Berengaria into twins, presumably because of the alliteration of names; but Berengaria's birth in 1276 (not the 1280s) was noted by more than one chronicler of the day, and none of them reports that Berengaria had a twin sister. Queen Eleanor's wardrobe and treasury accounts survive almost intact for the years 1288-1290 and record no births in those years, nor do they ever refer to daughters with any of those names. Even more records survive from King Edward's wardrobe between 1286 and 1290 than for his wife's, and they too are silent on any such daughters. It is most unlikely that they ever existed in historical fact. It is more likely that there were other pregnancies and short-lived children in the years prior to 1266, when records for Eleanor's movements are very slight.

      Eleanor as a mother

      It has been suggested that Eleanor and Edward were more devoted to each other than to their children. As king and queen, however, it was impossible for them to spend much time in one place, and when they were very young, the children could not travel constantly with their parents. The children had a household staffed with attendants carefully chosen for competence and loyalty, with whom the parents corresponded regularly. The children lived in this comfortable establishment until they were about seven years old; then they began to accompany their parents, if at first only on important occasions. By their teens they were with the king and queen much of the time. In 1290, Eleanor sent one of her scribes to join her children's household, presumably to help with their education. She also sent gifts to the children regularly, and arranged for the entire establishment to be moved near to her when she was in Wales. In 1306 Edward sharply scolded Margerie de Haustede, Eleanor's former lady in waiting who was then in charge of his children by his second wife, because Margerie had not kept him well informed of their health. Edward also issued regular instructions for the care and guidance of these children.

      Two incidents cited to imply Eleanor's lack of interest in her children are easily explained in the contexts of royal childrearing in general, and of particular events surrounding Edward and Eleanor's family. When their six-year-old son Henry lay dying at Guildford in 1274, neither parent made the short journey from London to see him; but Henry was tended by Edward's mother Eleanor of Provence. The boy had lived with his grandmother while his parents were absent on crusade, and since he was barely two years old when they left England in 1270, he could not have had many worthwhile memories of them at the time they returned to England in August 1274, only weeks before his last illness and death. In other words, the dowager queen was a more familiar and comforting presence to her grandson than his parents would have been at that time, and it was in all respects better that she tended him then. Furthermore, Eleanor was pregnant at the time of his final illness and death; exposure to a sickroom would probably have been discouraged. Similarly, Edward and Eleanor allowed her mother, Joan of Dammartin, to raise their daughter Joan in Ponthieu (1274–78). This implies no parental lack of interest in the girl; the practice of fostering noble children in other households of sufficient dignity was not unknown and Eleanor's mother was, of course, dowager queen of Castile. Her household was thus safe and dignified, but it does appear that Edward and Eleanor had cause to regret their generosity in letting Joan of Dammartin foster young Joan. When the girl reached England in 1278, aged six, it turned out that she was badly spoiled. She was spirited and at times defiant in childhood, and in adulthood remained a handful for Edward, defying his plans for a prestigious second marriage for her by secretly marrying one of her late first husband's squires. When the marriage was revealed in 1297 because Joan was pregnant, Edward was enraged that his dignity had been insulted by her marriage to a commoner of no importance. Joan, at twenty-five, reportedly defended her conduct to her father by saying that nobody saw anything wrong if a great earl married a poor woman, so there could be nothing wrong with a countess marrying a promising young man. Whether or not her retort ultimately changed his mind, Edward restored to Joan all the lands he had confiscated when he learned of her marriage, and accepted her new husband as a son-in-law in good standing. Joan marked her restoration to favour by having masses celebrated for the soul of her mother Eleanor. [8]

  • Sources 
    1. [S51609] http://www.ourfamilyhistories.org/ahnentafel.php?personID=I7340&tree=00&parentset=0&generations=5.

    2. [S7975] "Ferdinand III King of Castile and Leon" biography, http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-III-king-of-Castile-a.

    3. [S7974] "Robert Ferrers, Jr. Abt 1341 - 1381" Pedigree-Ahnentafel, http://www.ourfamilyhistories.org/ahnentafel.php?personID=I52.

    4. [S8993] "Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290)" biography,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Castile, updated February 1, 2016 by.

    5. [S8994] "Joan of Dammartin (French: Jeanne de Dammartin; c. 1220[1] - 16 March 1279)" biography, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.

    6. [S7809] "Edward I of England (1239-1307)" biography, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England.

    7. [S9233] "Eleanor of Provence" biography, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Provence, retrieved March 17, 2016 by David A.

    8. [S51684] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Castile.