Sara Cockerill > Quotes

“between 1267 and 1270, she acquired grants from the king of progressively greater rights over the substantial neighbouring manors of Great Bowden and Market Harborough, and these grants were supplemented in 1268 by the complementary hundred of Gartree – a property which included both these manors.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“relatives of Eleanor through the Dammartin family, holders of land in England since the days of King Stephen; the de Pécquigny family, related to Eleanor through her Ponthevin family; and the de Brienne family, Leónese connections of Eleanor’s, one of whom”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“in it Edward had spent considerable sums of money refurbishing the gardens of the Tower: at least 13,000 turves were laid and pear trees, rose trees and lily bulbs were all deployed.11”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Guy. He was deprived of the right to hold property or make a will, and also of the law’s protections, making him a safe target for anyone.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“700 people, including Edward, his brother Edmund, Henry of Almain, John de Warenne, Gilbert of Gloucester, William de Valence and others, publicly pledged to go on Crusade.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“He knew, from the Church’s teaching, that anything more than a dutiful approach to paying the marriage debt was a sin; lust would corrupt his understanding, and to actually enjoy sex was to glory in a sin. Marriage, and sex within marriage, should be regarded as a distasteful necessity directed only at the procreation of children. It must be eschewed on Wednesdays, Fridays, weekends and feast days. Following St Jerome, loving one’s wife with too much passion was seen as the sin of adultery; sex must be performed with restraint, and it was the responsibility of the husband to hold back”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires

“The suggestions that she introduced sweet rocket, wallflower, stock and perhaps lavender seem speculative – and the latter is far more likely to have been introduced by Eleanor of Provence.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“In spring 1271, just as the Crusaders arrived, the Crac de l’Ospital (now better known as the Crac des Chevaliers), the greatest of the Crusader castles, fell and Tripoli came under siege.14”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“There are therefore distinct signs that Eleanor effectively rejected the established model for a queen’s involvement in religion. Instead of building relationships with prominent bishops, she did so with the Dominican Order (which encouraged an intellectual approach to religion) generally, and particularly notably with their Oxford chapter, where some of their most distinguished and controversial theologians were based.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“in other words that she brought not troubadour music but cutting-edge religious music to Paris. There”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires

“It is also reputed that Eleanor was the introducer of the more productive merino sheep to England; and while the tradition cannot be precisely verified, there is certainly a record of her importing some sheep.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Eleanor had turned her attention to getting a revised dower assignment. There were two reasons for this. The first was simply the need to keep pace with her mother-in-law – Eleanor of Provence had induced Henry III to increase her dower assignment to £4,000 in 1262. Eleanor would have been very unusual if she was not vexed to think that she had a quarter of the dower assignment which her mother-in-law had, and very imprudent if she had not looked ahead to the possibility of coping on such a sum if she were ever widowed (as”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Awaiting them there was one of the cardinals principally responsible for the Crusade – Teobaldi Visconti. One of the current contenders for the papacy, he had accompanied Cardinal Ottobuono to England after the civil war and was consequently well known personally to Edward and Eleanor.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“her dower assignment to £4,000 per annum. This suggests that, as queen, with a greater household and responsibilities, Eleanor would be likely to need a larger sum even than that.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Eleanor’s new city was, therefore, alive with interest, even if it was still far from being a place of beauty.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires

“She will also have been familiar with Limoges and the famous Abbey of Saint-Martial, which was probably the major centre for church music within France at the time. Aquitaine, and in particular the Abbey of Saint-Martial, was at the cutting edge of polyphonic religious music, with the scriptorium at Saint Martial apparently operating as a valuable repository for polyphonic works as they developed.29”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires

“Other items bought included cloths from Tripoli, Venetian vases (possibly Murano-type blown glass), tapestries from Cologne and enamel caskets from Limoges.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“of Jean de Brienne and Berengaria of León. Their family would become a particularly favoured group among Eleanor’s relatives.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Moreover, under her aegis, the entire thrust of literary production at court moved away from the rather ‘vanilla’ devotional verse and lives of the saints favoured by Henry III and Eleanor of Provence towards a genuine historical interest, sometimes in instructive prose works and sometimes in the forms of chivalric romances.28 Lives of the saints also appear to have figured in Eleanor’s library – when a payment was made in 1288 for repairs to some of her novels and books, the ones specified are lives of St Thomas Becket and St Edward the Confessor (the latter presumably the copy given her as a gift on her arrival in England).”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“designed”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“between 1268 and 1272 Eleanor nominated Jews to the custodianship of her Irish queen’s gold revenues and tried to do so again in 1273 and 1276.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Eleanor took the opportunity to intercede for her brother Enrique – with rather limited success. In late 1272, Charles did order Enrique’s prison to be cleaned and it was perhaps in this less rigorous confinement that the imprisoned knight errant wrote Amadis de Gaula.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“It seems possible that it is to this time, too, that we can trace the first evidence of Eleanor acting as a mediator or arbitrator in disputes between noble houses. A letter from Gaston de Béarn dating from around this time refers to her intervention in his dispute with Fortulus Ameravi. Apparently Eleanor was establishing her own reputation, at least outside England.24 Edward, Eleanor and their entourage remained in Gascony until February”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Business came to join them there, in the form of Gaston de Béarn, who was committed to the custody of Sir Stephen de Pencestre,”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“practically all the Wars of the Roses claimants descend from her wider family as well as the English royal family.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“Marriage, and sex within marriage, should be regarded as a distasteful necessity directed only at the procreation of children. It must be eschewed on Wednesdays, Fridays, weekends and feast days. Following St Jerome, loving one’s wife with too much passion was seen as the sin of adultery; sex must be performed with restraint, and it was the responsibility of the husband to hold back and to repress the excessive passions of the wife.17 Such”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France and England, Mother of Empires

“Eleanor’s achievement in carrying forward a surplus in her accounts to 1286 is a feat almost unprecedented in medieval financial administration.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“proper bathrooms (albeit probably lacking the piped water) were installed at Langley and Westminster.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“At more or less the same time as Camden’s Britannia, a dramatist called George Peele, now best known as the possible author of parts of Titus Andronicus, was penning his play Edward the First.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen

“The need for such precautions can only have been emphasised, as Gaston de Béarn provided occupation for the early part of 1274. He had been conducting guerrilla warfare against Edward’s forces but with limited success.”
― Sara Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen