We are all spies

 

In August 1273 Edward I swore the oath of homage and fealty to his cousin Philip III for the duchy of Gascony, the last substantial Plantagenet land holding in France. Via the Treaty of Paris, this made Edward the vassal of a fellow king, an unworkable relationship that bedevilled Anglo-French relations and led to the Hundred Years War.

While in Paris, Edward attempted to put an end to the damaging feud with the Montforts. His late father, Henry III, had requested that Earl Simon's widow, Eleanor, be admitted to royal grace. Edward complied with his father's instruction and made contact with Eleanor (also his aunt) conveying his wishes to put an end to their quarrel, receive her into his peace and grant her the income from her English estates. He helped Eleanor financially, loaning her £200 which she only repaid with difficulty.

For good measure, Edward also sorted out Eleanor's dower, a hideously complex business that went back decades to her first marriage. The Dunstable Annalist maintains that he returned all her dower lands, although Eleanor would only enjoy them for another twelve months. She died in May 1275, aged about 63, at the convent of Augustinian nuns of St Dominic at Montargis in France. The house had been founded by Earl Simon's sister and was the burial place of her mother, Alice de Montmorency, and other women with Montfort connections. Eleanor's outstanding debts, however, would not be paid off until 1286.

Right up until the end, Eleanor may well have been playing a double game. J Beverley-Smith, in his magisterial biography of Prince Llywelyn of Wales, argued the widowed countess had secretly received Welsh agents at Montargis:

“...the Montfortian sanctuary at Montargis had been a meeting-place for a confluence of influences calculated to secure a new link between the lineage of Simon de Montfort and the principality of Wales”.

One of the go-betweens was almost certainly Nicholas of Wantham, a key member of Eleanor's household who served as her proctor and executor. In 1286, years later, Nicholas was summoned to court at Oxford to answer charges that he had spied on the English court and passed state secrets to Prince Llywelyn in North Wales and the Montforts in France. Rather than face the charges, Nicholas fled into exile.

“From infancy on, we are all spies.” - John Updike