Eleanor of Castile, Countess of Ponthieu ^{1 2}

   Other names for Eleanor were Alianor, Alienor and Leonor.

  Research Notes:

From Wikipedia - Eleanor of Castile :

Eleanor of Castile (1241 - 28 November 1290 ) was the first Queen consort of Edward I of England .

Birth
Eleanor was born in Castile , Spain , daughter of Fernando III , King of Castile and Leon and his second wife, Jeanne, Countess of Ponthieu . Her Castilian name, Leonor, became Alienor or Alianor in England, and Eleanor in modern English. She was the second of five children born to Fernando and Jeanne. Her elder brother Fernando was born in 1239/40, her younger brother Louis in 1242/43; two sons born after Louis died young. For the ceremonies in 1291 marking the first anniversary of Eleanor's death, 49 candlebearers were paid to walk in the public procession to commemorate each year of her life. This would date her birth to the year 1241. Since her parents were apart from each other for thirteen months while King Ferdinand conducted a military campaign in Andalusia from which he returned to the north of Spain only in February 1241, Eleanor was probably born toward the end of that year.

Prospective bride to Theobald II of Navarre
Eleanor's marriage in 1254 to the future Edward I of England was not the first marriage her family planned for her. The kings of Castile had long claimed to be paramount lords of the Kingdom of Navarre in the Pyrenees , and from 1250 Ferdinand III and his heir, Eleanor's half-brother Alfonso X of Castile , hoped she would marry Theobald II of Navarre . To avoid Castilian control, Margaret of Bourbon (mother to Theobald II) in 1252 allied with James I of Aragon instead, and as part of that treaty solemnly promised that Theobald would never marry Eleanor.

Marriage
Then, in 1252, Alfonso X resurrected flimsy ancestral claims to the duchy of Gascony , in the south of Aquitaine , last possession of the Kings of England in France. Henry III of England swiftly countered Alfonso's claims with both diplomatic and military moves. Early in 1254 the two kings began to negotiate; after haggling over the financial provision for Eleanor, Henry and Alfonso agreed she would marry Henry's son Edward, and Alfonso would transfer his Gascon claims to Edward. Henry was so anxious for the marriage to take place that he willingly abandoned elaborate preparations already made for Edward's knighting in England, and agreed that Alfonso would knight Edward before the wedding took place.

The young couple married at the monastery of Las Huelgas , Burgos on 1 November 1254. Henry III took pride in resolving the Gascon crisis so decisively, but his English subjects feared that the marriage would bring Eleanor's kinfolk and countrymen to live off Henry's ruinous generosity. Several of her relatives did come to England soon after her marriage. She was too young to stop them or prevent Henry III paying for them, but she was blamed anyway and her marriage was unpopular...

Queen consort of England
Arranged royal marriages in the Middle Ages were not always happy, but available evidence indicates that Eleanor and Edward were devoted to each other. Edward is among the few medieval English kings not known to have conducted extramarital affairs or fathered children out of wedlock. The couple were rarely apart; she accompanied him on military campaigns in Wales , famously giving birth to their son Edward on 25 April 1284 in a temporary dwelling erected for her amid the construction of Caernarfon Castle .

Their household records witness incidents that imply a comfortable, even humorous, relationship. Each year on Easter Monday, Edward let Eleanor's ladies trap him in his bed and paid them a token ransom so he could go to her bedroom on the first day after Lent ; so important was this custom to him that in 1291, on the first Easter Monday after Eleanor's death, he gave her ladies the money he would have given them had she been alive. Edward disliked ceremonies and in 1290 refused to attend the marriage of Earl Marshal Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk ; Eleanor thoughtfully (or resignedly) paid minstrels to play for him while he sat alone during the wedding.

That Edward remained single until he wed Marguerite of France in 1299 is often cited to prove he cherished Eleanor's memory. In fact he considered a second marriage as early as 1293, but this does not mean he did not mourn Eleanor. Eloquent testimony is found in his letter to the abbot of Cluny in France (January 1291), seeking prayers for the soul of the wife "whom living we dearly cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love." In her memory, Edward ordered the construction of twelve elaborate stone crosses (of which three survive) between 1291 and 1294, marking the route of her funeral procession between Lincoln and London. (The story that the name "Charing" is from the French chère reine or "dear Queen" is mere legend, as is the name's supposed derivation from "char ring," allegedly referring to a circular roadway in which the nobles' carriages (chars) waited while their owners attended court. The name Charing is found for that part of London in the 1250s and probably existed long before that.)

However, only one of Eleanor's five sons survived childhood and, even before she died, Edward worried over the succession: if that son died, their daughters' husbands might cause a succession war. Despite personal grief, Edward faced his duty and married again. He delighted in the sons his new wife bore, but attended memorial services for Eleanor to the end of his life, Marguerite at his side on at least one occasion...

Death
Further information: Eleanor cross
In the autumn of 1290, news reached Edward that Margaret, the Maid of Norway , heiress of Scotland, had died. He had just held a parliament at Clipstone in Nottinghamshire , and continued to linger in those parts, presumably to await news of further developments in Scotland. Eleanor followed him at a leisurely pace as she was unwell with a feverish illness, probably a quartan fever first reported in 1287. After the couple left Clipstone they travelled slowly toward the city of Lincoln, a destination Eleanor would never reach.

Her condition worsened when they reached the village of Harby, Nottinghamshire , less than 10 miles (16 km) from Lincoln [citation needed ]). The journey was abandoned, and the queen was lodged in the house of Richard de Weston, the foundations of which can still be seen near Harby's parish church. After piously receiving the Church's last rites, she died there on the evening of the 28th of November 1290, aged 49 and after 36 years of marriage. Edward was at her bedside to hear her final requests...

Legacy
Eleanor of Castile's queenship is significant in English history for the evolution of a stable financial system for the king's wife, and for the honing this process gave the queen-consort's prerogatives. The estates Eleanor assembled became the nucleus for dower assignments made to later queens of England into the 15th century , and her involvement in this process solidly established a queen-consort's freedom to engage in such transactions. Few later queens exerted themselves in economic activity to the extent Eleanor did, but their ability to do so rested on the precedents settled in her lifetime...

Children of Queen Eleanor and King Edward I

The Northampton Cross
Daughter, stillborn in May 1255 in Bordeaux, France .
Katherine, (before June 17 , 1264 - September 5 , 1264 ) and buried at Westminster Abbey .
Joan, born January 1265, buried at Westminster Abbey before September 7 , 1265 .
John, (13 July 1266 - August 3 , 1271 ) at Wallingford , in the custody of his granduncle, Richard, Earl of Cornwall . Buried at Westminster Abbey .
Henry of England , (before 6 May 1268 - October 16 , 1274 ).
Eleanor , (18 June 1269 - 29 August 1298 ). Buried 12 October 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, (28 May 1271 Palestine - 5 September 1271 ). Some sources call her Juliana, but there is no contemporary evidence for her name.
Joan of Acre . (April 1272 - April 7 , 1307 ). She married (1) in 1290 Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Hertford , who died in 1295, and (2) in 1297 Ralph Morthermer, 1st Baron Monthermer . She had four children by each marriage.
Alphonso, Earl of Chester , born 24 November 1273 , died 19 August 1284 , buried in Westminster Abbey .
Margaret Plantagenet , (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, died shortly after birth at Westminster, on or about3 January 1278 . There is no contemporary evidence for her name.
Mary, (11 March 1279 - 29 May 1332 ), a Benedictine nun in Amesbury , Wiltshire (England), where she was probably buried.
A son, born in 1280 or 1281 who died very shortly after birth. There is no contemporary evidence for his name.
Elizabeth of Rhuddlan , (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 .

Eleanor married King Edward I of England, son of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, on 18 Oct 1254 in Monastery of Las Huelgas. (King Edward I of England was born on 17 Jun 1239 in Westminster Palace, London, England, died on 7 Jul 1307 in Burgh-by-Sands, Cumberland, England and was buried in Westminster Abbey, London, Midlesex, England.)

  Marriage Notes:

Wikipedia has m. 1 Nov 1254. Source: Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700 by Frederick Lewis Weis and Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr, ed. by William R. Beall & Kaleen E. Beall, Baltimore, 2008, Line 1-27 has m. 18 Oct 1254.