In anticipation of conflict, each side stakes out its territory. It’s a knee-bending formality but one which irks the English Crown and will ultimately lead to the Hundred Years War. Edward, though a monarch in his own right, is still expected, as Duke of Aquitaine, to pay homage to the King of France, Philip IV, in whose kingdom his territory lies. Towards the end of the 1200’s, tension and taunting between the two sides ramp up. Equally noteworthy in the context of her annulled first marriage is that, through her second marriage, she produced two future kings of England: John and Richard (the Lionhearted). * It's worth noting that Eleanor is the only woman to have been, by successive marriages, both Queen of France and Queen of England. The effect was seismic: Aquitaine now belonged to the English Crown… and would remain so for three hundred years. Through the dowry that Eleanor brought to the marriage, Henry now also became Duke of Aquitaine.Īll of this would have remained an internal French affair, a mere re-allocation of national real estate – but for the fact that two years later in 1154 Henry added one more title to his collection: Henry II, King of England. Just two months later Eleanor re-married – this time a member of the rival branch of the family, the Angevin Henry Plantagenet who had inherited the titles Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy. He kept their daughters and, critically for what happened next, she kept her lands. The marriage was annulled after she had failed to bear him a male heir - or he had failed to provide the necessary means. Pretty well by chance – and a salutary example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.Įleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine (inherited from her father), was originally married to the French (Capetian) king, Louis VII. How did the English Crown come to acquire a third of France in the form of Aquitaine? A century later, the conflict between 'the English’ and ‘the French’ was more accurately between two branches of the French royal family: the Angevins (aka Plantagenets) based in England and the Capetians based in France.Īs the historian Simon Schama has pointed out, the Magna Carta was signed by French barons. After victory at the Battle of Hastings, he was crowned King William Ist of England – and from then on for many decades so-called ‘English monarchs’ not only spoke French they were French. William (the Conqueror), Duke of Normandy, crossed the Channel and invaded England in 1066. Historians of the Middle Ages tend to talk about ‘Crowns’ – the English Crown and the French Crown – rather than England and France, or the English and the French. How ‘English’ were the English kings of the Middle Ages? Public criers with trumpets are despatched to the surrounding countryside to proclaim the birth of the bastide and recruit ‘candidats-habitants’ as its future citizens. It will be called Montis Pazerii – the Mount of Peace. Here, it has been decreed, will be built a new town. There is a short speech, read from a scroll of parchment. The pole – ‘ le Pal’ – is placed in the central hole of a stone block sunk into the ground by a team of surveyors (The hole can still be seen today just beyond the north-east corner of the central square. One of the group is holding a pole, bearing the arms of Edward 1st, King of England, and those of Pierre de Gontaut, the local Lord of Biron and Edward's business partner in the joint enterprise. It measures about 400 by 220 metres, falls away on three sides and overlooks the valley of the River Dropt. A small group is gathered on a plateau of cleared land known as 'La Boursie'. It’s the seventh day of January in the year 1284 – and probably vachement froid.
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