The Coming of Eleanor to England.
The omens at the commencement of Eleanor’s career in England were by no means favourable, and little indicated the event. At the age of about nine, Eleanor, a princess of Castile, was married to Edward, the heir to the English Crown, who had reached the mature age of fifteen years. The marriage took place in the year 1254, in the ancient city of Burgos, and was celebrated with the utmost pomp; but the magnificence of the occasion fails to conceal the features of the hard diplomatic bargain driven between Henry III, the father of the bridegroom, and Alfonso X of Leon and Castile, Eleanor’s half-brother. As a condition of this treaty Alfonso merged all his claims and rights in Guienne and the South of France in the English Crown; and the marriage, arranged after much difficulty, placed the seal on this compact, terminating a long period of petty warfare and intrigue, during which Alfonso had sought to encourage the Gascons and other Gallic subjects of Henry against their liege lord.
This Spanish marriage was by no means a popular one amongst the English; and although in the following year, 1255, when Eleanor came to London, her reception was marked with much circumstance and great official cordiality, it is clear that the Londoners had no great love for the Spaniards. Henry had given sufficient reason for the people’s jealousy of foreigners; his prodigality and many acts of favouritism already shown to foreign relations of the royal house and their retainers gave good earnest that a similar outburst of extravagance on the part of the King would result from this Spanish invasion. Preceding the arrival of Eleanor, an embassy led by her brother, Don Sancho, the young Archbishop of Toledo, had arrived to make certain preliminary arrangements. They had been greeted with only a modified degree of favour by the London populace. Their manners were considered to be anything but up to the London standard. Under an aspect of richness and profusion their habits were considered to be sordid and mean; one of the complaints made by the grumbling Londoners was that the Spaniards, not content with hanging the walls of their lodging with tapestry, must also use tapestry for covering the floors! The unfortunate young Prelate himself on riding through the streets of London had ventured to confer his benediction on the populace with upraised hand—an act which was interpreted with but little generosity. The hapless ten years old Princess and wife presents a pathetic picture, for in the midst of all this political intrigue even the little maiden herself did not escape the animadversions of her future people. Special notice is taken of the fact that though landing with a great retinue at Dover, and with much bravery of outward attire, she had but a very scanty wardrobe (minus bene munita hernesio). One of the first disbursements on the part of Henry for his daughter-in-law was to remedy this grave defect.[[22]]
[22]. Rot. Lit. Claus., 39 Henry III, m. 2. (No. 69).
The young Prince, her husband, appears to have been a headstrong and undisciplined young man; though nominally in possession of great estates in France and England, his actual income in money was small, and he and his friends and retainers seem to have lived on the land as if they were a band of foreign robbers. Edward’s thoughtlessness and the harshness and cruelty of those around him are unfavourably commented on at this time. The hard discipline, which the young Prince received in the years immediately following, was very necessary to render him the great king of England which he subsequently became, and many years also were required before the little Princess acquired the gracious firmness of character which is recognized in the “Regina bonæ memoriæ” of English history.