Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/183

Eleanor , he left her in the disturbed district under the care of Count Patrick of Salisbury (, p. 517). Two years later it was at her intercession that the king invested his son Richard with the duchy (about August 1170) (, p. 318;, ii. 5, 6). Her affection for her children induced her to abet them in the great rebellion of 1173, if indeed she was not, as some contemporary accounts assert, the prime mover of the revolt. Eleanor had prepared to follow her three elder sons in their flight, and had even put on man's attire to facilitate her escape, when she was seized by the king's orders and put under strict guard, from which she was not fully released till her husband's death sixteen years later (. i. 242;, p. 521). A letter is still preserved that must have been written about the spring of 1173, when she was already contemplating this step, in which the Archbishop of Rouen urges her to return to 'her lord and husband before things get worse,' and warns her that it is really herself and her sons that she is injuring by her conduct (Epp, Petri Bles. ap., xv. 630). For the next sixteen years the chroniclers are almost silent as regards the queen. Somewhere about Easter 1174 she was led into England along with her daughter-in-law. According to Geoffrey of Vigeois her place of confinement was Salisbury; another account makes it Winchester. Probably she was not treated with great severity, for though we find Henry negotiating with the papal legate (c. October 1175) about a divorce from his 'hated queen,' she was apparently still produced in public for occasions of ceremony. Thus she was present at the concord between Henry and his sons in December 1184; and in the following spring Richard restored Poitou to her at his fathers command. According to one writer she was released from prison in this year (1185) at the request of Baldwin, the newly elected archbishop of Canterbury. Possibly, too, the dying petition of the young king Henry (d. 11 June 1183), in which he entreated his father on behalf of his captive mother, may have softened the old king's heart; added to which, since the death of Rosamond (about 1176), he had perhaps no longer the same inducements to seek a divorce (. p. 331;, p. 523; . i. 256; , ii. 288, 304; De Morte &c, Henrici Jun. ap. , Ralph of Coggeshall, pp. 267, 273).

The death of her husband (6 July 1189) freed Eleanor even from the semblance of restraint. In the days that elapsed before the coronation of Richard it was her efforts that secured the recognition of her son in England and the peace of the country. She made a royal progress through the land; she released the county prisoners from the gaols; and received oaths in her son's name. In earlier days men had seen the fulfilment of Merlin's prophecies when the 'eagle of the broken treaty' urged her sons to their revolt against her husband; now they found a more generous application of the prophecy, and imagined that in thus preparing for the coronation of her third-born son the same eagle 'was rejoicing in her third nesting' (, iii. 4; ii. 67; cf., ap. , xii. 420; Epp, Joh. Sarisb. ap. , p. 534).

In the spring of 1190 Eleanor accompanied her son and his betrothed bride, Alice of France, to Normandy. On 30 March 1191 she brought Richard's future wife, Berengaria of Navarre, to Sicily; and three days later started back home by way of Rome, where she had an interview with Pope Celestine III on the matter of Geoffrey's election to the see of York. The Christmas of this year she spent in Normandy at Bonneville. She reached Portsmouth 11 Feb. 1192 (, p. 55). A little later in the same spring she prevented John from crossing to France, as she suspected he was meditating some treachery towards his brother. In the same spirit she exacted an oath of fealty from all the lords of the realm to the same king (Lent 1192). When the news of Richard's captivity arrived, she was the very soul of the resistance offered to the contemplated invasion of Philip and John. Her commands brought all the English, noble and ignoble, knights and rustics alike, to guard the south-eastern coast (Easter 1193). She assumed the custody of Wallingford Castle and Windsor from the doubtful fidelity of John, who had now returned to England (April). It was to her that Richard wrote his orders about the collection of his ransom, and it was with her seal that the money-bags were stamped for protection when it was raised. In December the king called her to his presence; at Mayence, on 2 Feb. 1194, she was present when the emperor displayed the fatal evidence of her youngest son's complicity in the plot against his brother; and lastly, it was into her keeping that the captive king was delivered two days later (, iii. 4, 5, 32, 95, 100, 179, &c.; . ii. 67, &c.; . i. 515;, p. 557).

In the same year she attended the great council of Nottingham (30 March 1194), and on 17 April was present at Richard's solemn