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1. The Dower of Isabella of Angoulême

This month it is a great pleasure to welcome Dr. Louise Wilkinson's first contribution to the Fine of the Month series. Now lecturing at Christ Church University, Canterbury, Louise both inspired and devised the Henry III Fine Rolls Project and has been an active member of the project management team. In this article she brings the controversial career of Henry III's mother, Isabella of Angoulême, into sharper focus, examining the struggles between the queen mother and the minority government in the 1220s over her dower settlement.

⁋1Isabella of Angoulême (d. 1246), the wife of King John and mother of King Henry III, was a highly controversial political figure during the early thirteenth century. ¹ She was the queen consort whose marriage helped to spark the disastrous conflict with King Philip Augustus of France which resulted in the loss of Normandy in 1204. ² She was also the queen dowager who left behind four of her five fatherless children in England in 1217 when she returned to her native homeland of Angoulême, and who later married Hugh X de Lusignan, her daughter’s betrothed. When considered alongside the close and patent rolls, the small series of entries in which she features in the fine rolls for Henry III’s reign provide a useful insight into Isabella’s remarkable widowhood and her fraught relationship with her son’s government.

⁋2In order to comprehend the events of Isabella’s widowhood, it is necessary to say a few words about her marriage to John by way of background. Married in August 1200 to one of England’s most unpopular monarchs, Isabella’s reputation during her lifetime suffered at the hands of chroniclers concerned to portray her as a fitting partner for John. The St Albans writer, Roger of Wendover, went so far as to blame the inadequate defence of Normandy on John’s reluctance to leave Isabella’s side, ‘so that it was said that he was infatuated by sorcery or witchcraft’. ³ Whether or not Wendover’s account of John’s pleasure in Isabella’s company can be trusted ⁴ , it is clear from government records that Isabella enjoyed little personal political influence over the affairs of her husband’s territories during his reign. John denied his wife access to resources which might have allowed her freedom to dispense patronage and play an active part in court politics. ⁵ Admittedly, extensive French properties were settled on Isabella as dower in 1200, followed by a further assignment comprising English and Norman properties after the death of her mother-in-law, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in 1204 ⁶ , but Isabella did not enjoy possession of her dower or queen’s gold during her first marriage. ⁷

⁋3Although Eleanor died just four years after John’s second marriage, Isabella might well have been impressed as a young bride by her mother-in-law’s formidable reputation. ⁸ Certain striking parallels can be drawn between Isabella’s and Eleanor’s experiences as queen consorts. Both women were the heiresses of strategically important lands in the south of France, lands which recommended them as marriage partners for members of the Angevin dynasty. ⁹ Just as Isabella played a minimal role in English government under John, Eleanor’s involvement in the affairs of Henry II’s dominions was heavily circumscribed after her relationship with her husband deteriorated in the late 1160s and early 1170s. ¹⁰ Both women, however, fulfilled their primary function as queen consorts, and safeguarded the succession to their husbands’ thrones by bearing sons. After sixteen years in captivity at the hands of her estranged husband, the reign of Eleanor’s son Richard (1189-99), witnessed her greatest period of political activity. ¹¹ With the example of her mother-in-law before her, might not Isabella have harboured similar ambitions after the death of John and the accession of her son, the nine-year-old Henry III, in the midst of civil war?

⁋4A clear indication that Isabella harboured such ambitions exists in the form of a letter close, issued on 1 November 1216, just four days after Henry III’s coronation at Gloucester, which instructed the sheriff of Devon ‘that immediately and without delay’ he should hand over to ‘Lady Isabella the queen, our mother’ the city of Exeter and various other properties in Devon which had been assigned to her in dower. ¹² The short space of time between John’s death, her son’s coronation and the assignment of Isabella’s dower strongly suggests that the queen mother was moving not only to secure possession of her property but also to establish a position of influence within her son’s fledgling regime. Yet the order of 1 November 1216 was silent on the matter of Isabella’s continental dower, much of which had been lost with Anjou and Normandy during her husband’s reign. In the following spring, Isabella was awarded seisin of the stannaries of Devon, apparently in partial recompense. ¹³ The matter of her dower and her possession of the stannaries were considered to be sufficiently weighty by the government to be listed in the fine rolls as an item for discussion at the king’s council held at Oxford during the spring of 1218. ¹⁴ Yet Isabella, apparently frustrated at her exclusion from the deliberations of Henry III’s minority government, had already departed from England during the previous year to administer her inheritance in Angoulême. ¹⁵

⁋5After her departure from England, Isabella did not display the same level of attachment to her son’s regime as her mother-in-law had shown towards Richard and John in her widowhood. ¹⁶ Just three years after she left, Isabella entered into a new marriage with a powerful Poitevin lord, Hugh X de Lusignan, count of La Marche, who was already betrothed to Isabella’s daughter and Henry III’s sister, Joan. ¹⁷ Isabella explained her extraordinary behaviour in a letter to her son in May 1220, in which she asked that her new husband might be assigned outstanding properties from her dower. She justified her actions with a convenient story that Hugh’s ‘friends’ had expressed concern for Joan’s youth and urged him to seek another wife ‘in Francia’ who was mature enough to bear him an heir. In order to avoid the possibility of an alternative marriage alliance which threatened Angevin interests, Isabella, presenting herself as a sacrificial offering (‘God knows, [she told her son], that we did this rather for your benefit than our own’), married Hugh herself. ¹⁸ More ominously, though, Isabella also urged Henry to be mindful of her new husband’s power in Poitou ¹⁹ , now augmented by the acquisition of Angoulême and the promise of Isabella’s other wealth. ²⁰

⁋6Isabella’s marriage to Hugh, her new husband’s territorial dominance in Poitou and her refusal to drop her claims to her dower, caused serious headaches for the minority government during the early 1220s. The couple continued to push their claims to the Poitevin territory of Saintes which had been promised with Niort to Isabella by John in dower in 1200 ²¹ , but which had later been re-assigned to Joan as part of her Lusignan marriage settlement. ²² When the minority government insisted upon the return of Joan’s marriage portion, and Isabella and Hugh refused to co-operate, the English government applied pressure with the most effective weapon in its armoury – the confiscation of Isabella’s English dower lands. ²³ On 29 September 1221, two entries on the fine rolls recorded that the king had notified the men of Rockingham (Northamptonshire), Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire), Ilchester (Somerset), Exeter (Devon), ?Kenton (Devon), and Wilton (Wiltshire), all places held by Isabella in dower, along with the abbot of Malmesbury (Wiltshire), the keepers of Queenshithe in London and the earl of Essex, that he had ‘committed to Richard de Ripariis [Redvers] the custody of all the land that H. count de la Marche and I., his wife, the kng’s mother, had in England in the name of dower of I., the king’s mother’. ²⁴ i Recognising the very real danger that this might push the king’s mother and Hugh into the arms of the Capetians, Henry’s ministers later reneged and restored her dower to the queen mother and her new husband in 1222. ²⁵ Isabella’s officials were apparently administering her English dower lands on her behalf in the summer of 1223 when an entry on the fine rolls recorded that the king had ordered that certain demands made of the queen’s men by the sheriff of Northamptonshire should be placed in respite ‘until the king commands otherwise’. ²⁶ Yet tensions continued to simmer between Hugh and Isabella, and her son’s government, and came to a head once more during the summer of 1224 when Isabella and her husband abandoned their allegiance to Henry III and accepted an offer from the French king, Louis VIII, to compensate them for losses to Isabella’s dower caused by their defection. ²⁷ Once again, the split between Isabella and her son’s government can be traced in the fine rolls. On 16 June 1224, the king committed to Thomas of Cirencester all the lands held by Isabella and Hugh ‘in England in the name of dower of the queen’. ²⁸ Although several olive branches were offered to Isabella and her new husband by the English government during the mid to late 1220s, and Henry nurtured hopes of a reunion ²⁹ , Isabella remained, for the time being at least, an absentee and politically embarrassing mother to her eldest son. In August 1227, all Isabella’s English dower was committed to Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry III’s younger brother and Isabella’s younger son by John. ³⁰

1.1. C 60/9, Fine Roll 2 Henry III (28 October 1217–27 October 1218), membrane 7d.

1.1.1. 39

⁋1 Memorandum concerning the stannaries of Devon, which are in the hand of the queen by order of the king’s council until she has been assigned her dower in full. This matter is to be discussed at Oxford.

2.1. C 60/15, Fine Roll 5 Henry III (28 October 1220–27 October 1221), membrane 2.

2.1.1. 319

⁋1 Rockingham. The king has committed to Richard de Ripariis the custody of all the land that H. count de la Marche and J., his wife, the king’s mother, had in England in the name of dower of I., the king’s mother. Order to the worthy men of Rockingham to be intendant and respondent to Richard both for the farm of their vill and for other things, just as they were previously intendant and respondent to H. count de la Marche and I., his wife. Witness H[ubert de Burgh], etc. Westminster, 29 Sept.

2.1.2. 320

⁋1It is written in the same manner to:

3.1. C 60/18, Fine Roll 7 Henry III (28 October 1222–27 October 1223), membrane 6.

3.1.1. 135

⁋1 Northamptonshire. To the sheriff of Northamptonshire. Order to place in respite, until the quindene of Easter shortly forthcoming in the seventh year, the demand for amercements from the eyre of the king’s justices last itinerant in his county which he makes of the men of H. count de la Marche and Isabella, his wife, of the honour of Berkhamstead in his bailiwick. Witness [Hubert de Burgh, justiciar], Westminster, 6 April. By the same.

4.1. C 60/21, Fine Roll 8 Henry III (28 October 1223–27 October 1224), membrane 6.

4.1.1. 203

⁋1 Wiltshire. The king has committed to Thomas of Cirencester all of the lands that the Count de la Marche and the queen, his wife, had in England in the name of dower of the queen, to keep for as long as it pleases the king. Order to the sheriff of Wiltshire to distrain the men of Wilton, without delay, to render to Thomas all arrears of tallages and rents and all other things that they ought to have rendered to the count and the queen, in order that he answers thereafter at the Exchequer. Witness the king. Brill, 16 June. Before the justiciar.

4.2. C 60/21, Fine Roll 8 Henry III (28 October 1223–27 October 1224), membrane 1.

4.2.1. 411

⁋1 Concerning Queenhithe in London. To the sheriffs of London. Order to cause Thomas of Cirencester, constable of the castle of Berkhamstead, to have the farm of Queenhithe in London without delay, formerly of the count de la Marche and Queen I., his wife, which the king committed to him to keep for as long as it pleases him. Witness the king. Westminster, 15 Oct. Before the justiciar.

5.1. C 60/25, Fine Roll 11 Henry III (28 October 1226–27 October 1227), membrane 3.

5.1.1. 338

⁋1 Concerning the county of Rutland, committed to R. earl of Cornwall. The king has committed to R. earl of Cornwall, his brother, all of the lands that Queen I., his mother, held in dower, in order to sustain him etc. for as long etc. Order to the sheriff of Rutland to cause him to have full seisin of the county of Rutland with appurtenances, saving to the king his debts for which he is bound to answer at the Exchequer. Abingdon, 21 Aug.