Monday 17 June 2019


Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens by Lisa Hilton

Elizabeth Woodville
Elizabeth Woodville was dismissed as cold for turning a blind eye to Edward IV's infidelities 

Helen Brown finds both high politics and soap opera in a history of England's medieval queens

In her "partial" and "prejudiced" History of England, the 16-year-old Jane Austen wrote that "it is supposed that Henry IV was married, since he had certainly four sons, but it is not in my power to inform the Reader who was his wife."

This is hardly surprising, for the queens of medieval England have long been treated as little more than animated title deeds and brood mares by our chroniclers and textbook writers.

Who had Richard the Lionheart's babies? Who shared her sheets with bad King John? The 20 women married to British kings from 1066 up until the reign of Henry VIII are far less familiar to us than their spouses.

A few transgressively manly or wicked queens, such as Margaret of Anjou, have played bigger parts in the conventionally told national saga, but otherwise the long train of Matildas, Isabelles and Eleanors can seem as blank as the faces in the stained glass windows of their day.

Lisa Hilton's corrective Queens Consort illuminates these 20 lives as far as records permit, and explores the peculiarities of their unique social function.

They were more independent under the law than most of their gender. While normal women were under the guardianship of fathers and then husbands until they were widowed, queens enjoyed the (at least theoretical) status of femmes soles, able to sue and be sued, acquire property, preside over legal cases, grant land and make wills.

Consecration and coronation made these women "sacred" and "magical": if a king was chosen by God, then so was his queen. Associated with the Virgin Mary, queens were also seen as intercessors.

A 14th-century petition to Anne of Bohemia called on her to "soften royal severity that the king may be forbearing to his people. A woman mellows a man with love; for this God gave her, for this o blessed woman, may your sweet love aspire."

But these were ideals, and people were ever people. So what we get is a catalogue of women who made a varied fist of a role that expected them to be powerful but submissive; beautiful but not seductive; pious but fashionable; peace-weaving but able to raise and lead an army; maternal but unsentimental; and to serve the ambitions of both their birth families and the in-laws.

The queens were not dealt even hands and many tried their best with men who made their jobs very difficult. Poor Matilda of Scotland was mocked as a frump because Henry I was a "walking baby boom", siring at least two dozen extra-marital children.

Three centuries later the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville was dismissed as "cold" and "designing" for turning a blind eye to Edward IV's infidelities. As if she had any choice.

Edward II's wife, Isabella of France, felt she was ousted from her husband's affections and her rightful lands by two favourites who may or may not have been his homosexual lovers.

So, having openly cohabited adulterously with Edward's enemy Roger Mortimer, she had the latter favourite hung, drawn and quartered, but only after he'd had his genitals burned in front of her.

Henry V's consort, Catherine of Valois, had "a honeymoon of sieges". Meanwhile Margaret of Anjou was hurried over the threshold with Henry VI who is portrayed as either "saint or simpleton" but either way had little interest in sex, making her heir-producing duty a special challenge.

Hilton does not make a case for all of these women as heroines. She makes it clear that they were often ruthless, greedy or stupid. Some chapters read like medieval episodes of Desperate Housewives, with the queens plotting to oust their rivals while maintaining an unruffled outward appearance.

But throughout Hilton emphasises the double standards at work in the way the queens were judged by both their contemporaries and their chroniclers.

What would be a "daring escape" from a siege by a king is a "woman's trick" when achieved by the Empress Matilda. Indeed it seems that the empress's enemy, Matilda of Boulogne (wife of King Stephen), played the role best.

Hilton writes that she "thought and fought like a man, but she never made the mistake of acting like one". It's a line I think Austen would have enjoyed.

More books news


More from the web


More from the web

More from the web

Back to top

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2019

Terms and Conditions

Today's News


Style Book

Weather Forecast