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From: "John Parsons" < >
Subject: Eleanor of Aquitaine
Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 08:35:37 -0500


I believe we are all well aware that in working with sources from the
medieval period, we must be prepared to deal with what are often no more
than tiny fragments of information. The passage from Ralph of Diss (= de
Diceto) dealing with the children of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine is
one such fragment. Another, as I mentioned yesterday, is the passage in a
St Albans chronicle that relays Edward I's own statement that he and Queen
Eleanor had 5 sons, not 4 as is usually reported. In both these cases, it
is an overwhelming probability that the sons in question died so soon after
birth that no record survives of their names or the dates of their birth.
But both these chroniclers are reliable sources and even though no
additional evidence has been found for either of the sons they mention,
their testimony need not be rejected out of hand.

Compare, for example, the evidence that Eleanor of Castile had a child in
January 1278: all we have here is one entry in a fragmented book of Edward
I's wardrobe accounts that has survived entirely by chance. It tells us
only that the king paid for the expenses of his wife's confinement for 30
days in January of Edward's 6th regnal year. We know nothing more than
that, but clearly the queen did deliver a child at that time. There is also
the chance survival of an apothecary's account for an illness of Queen
Isabella, wife of Edward II, in November 1313, exactly one year after the
birth of Edward III. The nature of her illness is not specified but the
apothecary's account includes two purchases of the herb pennyroyal. This
herb's only medicinal use recorded across the ages has been to stimulate
uterine contractions. Evidently Isabella's illness in November 1313 had
something to do with pregnancy but whether she experienced a miscarriage or
a full-term stillbirth is not clear. No chronicler of the day mentions the
event.

What is the genealogical significance of these incidents? Obviously it
doesn't center around the life and death of any of these children, but such
evidence does bear directly on wider questions.

The article by Andrew Lewis that reports the existence of Eleanor of
Aquitaine's 9th child by Henry II also identifies a chronicle that states
Eleanor was aged 13 when she married Louis VII in 1137. We therefore need
to change the generally assumed year of her birth from c. 1122 to c. 1124.
This in turn bears directly on the history of her childbearing. She was 2
years younger at her first marriage than previously believed, and this could
explain the failure of her first pregnancy early in her marriage to Louis
(at least before 1144 when, still childless, she mentioned the failed
pregnancy in her plea to St Bernard to pray that God would allow her to bear
a child).

It doesn't, however, give us any new information to explain her infrequent
later pregnancies by Louis.

But it does bear on her very rapid childbearing by Henry II. Eleanor was
not 30 when she wed Henry in 1152, she was 28; her fertility levels would
still have been high as the swift succession of her pregnancies in the 1150s
demonstrates. And she was not 44 when she gave birth to her last child
John; she was 42. The existence of the nameless son, who was born either
between Geoffrey (1158) and Eleanor (1162) or between Eleanor and Joan
(1165) shows that Eleanor's fertility levels had not necessarily dropped by
her late 30s, as some have argued from the (formerly presumed) lessening
frequency of her pregnancies in the 1160s. This data bears on the general
question of the span of medieval women's childbearing years, which is
pertinent to many genealogical debates.

A good many postings to this discussion group include questions as to
whether a woman could have borne a child as late as such-and-such a date.
The more data (like that now available for Eleanor) that we can bring to
bear on such questions, the better. We now know, for example, that Philippa
of Hainaut, Edward III's wife, was born in 1310, not c. 1312. This means
she was 46 when she bore her last child, Thomas, in 1356. Such data bear
directly on the debates we often have to pursue about the parentage of
individuals in the Middle Ages. At a time when the only reliable forms of
population control were abstinence or infanticide, women often continued to
bear children into their 40s despite diets that were less nutritious than
they are today, and despite the possibility of lower fertility levels after
age 35.

Further comments welcome.

Regards

John P.



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