Lady of the English - By Elizabeth Chadwick Page 0,202
Was this just chance, or was there something else going on? I think it well within the bounds of possibility that there was, and perhaps she hoped for an annulment.
Matilda did indeed escape from Oxford Castle during a severe and bitter winter, crossing the frozen moat and the Thames to reach Abingdon and eventually the safety of Wallingford. The chronicles differ in her method of escape. Once source says she escaped via a postern door, another that it was via a rope from a window.
When Matilda went to Normandy in 1148, she continued to work behind the scenes to help her son win England’s throne.
She sought in particular to foster relations with the Church and was a respected benefactor of numerous religious houses, to which she donated a considerable treasure in her will. When 501
LadyofEnglish.indd 501
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Elizabeth Chadwick
she died in 1167 her son Henry was a king reigning over a vast European empire that stretched from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. As she had wished many years earlier, she was buried at the priory of Bec-Hellouin. Sadly, her bones were disturbed during various religious and political upheavals and her remains were eventually gathered up and buried in Rouen Cathedral, burial place of the Dukes of Normandy. So in the end her father got his way!
In fiction, the empress is usually paired with Stephen’s wife in the struggle for England. Matilda of Boulogne (she is called Maheut in the story to avoid confusion as it is another medieval form of the name) was Matilda’s cousin and shared the same maternal bloodline and thus a link to the English royal house.
She was the rod in Stephen’s spine and although sometimes portrayed as a gentle sort, she had an underlying toughness and was an excellent negotiator. She also had the advantage of being able to function in a deputy’s role and not be seen as a threat to the natural order by taking power of her own volition.
The above pairing has often been written about before and I wanted to take a different slant. During my research, I became very drawn to Henry I’s second queen, Adeliza of Louvain, who is less well known.
Adeliza’s story, which runs parallel to Matilda’s, is an interesting one. Negotiations to marry Henry were already under way before the disaster of the sinking of the White Ship in 1121
robbed him of his only legitimate son. Adeliza was born circa 1103 and the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon praised her beauty and said that gold and jewels paled beside it. The fact that she did not bear Henry any children although they were together for fifteen years was a source of deep distress to her.
She wrote to a friend, the churchman Hildebert of Lavardin, bishop of Le Mans, seeking his counsel on the matter and he told her:
502
LadyofEnglish.indd 502
6/9/11 5:35 PM
Lady of the English
…if it has not been granted to you from Heaven that you should bear a child to the King of the English, in these (the poor) you will bring forth the King of the Angels, with no damage to your modesty. Perhaps the Lord has closed up your womb so that you might adopt immortal offspring…it is more blessed to be fertile in the spirit than in the flesh.
Henry, meanwhile, continued to beget bastard offspring on other women on a regular basis.
When Henry died, Adeliza retired to the nunnery at Wilton, near to which she had founded a leper hospice. Although she didn’t entirely seclude herself there (there are charters from her witnessed at Arundel and she was present at Reading Abbey on the anniversary of Henry’s death to give a hundred marks), she did spend much of her time at Wilton until the autumn of 1138 when she married William D’Albini, whose family were baronial officers in the royal household. They began a family immediately and in the next ten years Adeliza produced at least six children, thus confounding all her years of barrenness.
Adeliza seems to have formed a strong bond with Matilda and they would have come to know each other well in the years when Matilda was at court before her marriage and then in the intervening years when she was estranged from Geoffrey. Certainly Adeliza welcomed Matilda to Arundel in 1139, despite Adeliza’s husband being staunchly Stephen’s man.
Although very different women, they were close in age and had plenty in common by way of family ties, social standing, and their dedication to religion and religious benefaction.