Eleanor of Castile Eleanor of Castile ( 1241 – 28 November 1290 ) was the first queen consort of Edward I of England . She was also Countess of Ponthieu in her own right from 1279 until her death in 1290 , succeeding her mother and ruling together with her husband . Life . Birth . Eleanor was born in Spain ( the exact location is unknown ) , daughter of King Ferdinand III of Castile and Joan , Countess of Ponthieu . Her Castilian name , Leonor , became Alienor or Alianor in England , and Eleanor in modern English . She was named after her great - grandmother , Eleanor of England . Eleanor was the second of five children born to Ferdinand and Joan . Her elder brother Ferdinand was born in 1239 / 40 , her younger brother Louis in 1242 / 43 ; two sons born after Louis died young . For the ceremonies in 1291 marking the first anniversary of Eleanor ' s death , 49 candlebearers were paid to walk in the public procession to commemorate each year of her life . This would date her birth to the year 1241 . Since her parents were apart from each other for 13 months while King Ferdinand conducted a military campaign in Andalusia from which he returned to the north of Spain only in February 1241 , Eleanor was probably born toward the end of that year . Both the court of her father and her half - brother Alfonso X of Castile were known for its literary atmosphere . Growing up in such an environment probably influenced her later literary activities as queen . She was said to have been at her father ' s deathbed in Seville in 1252 . Prospective bride to Theobald II of Navarre . Eleanor ' s marriage in 1254 to the future Edward I of England was not the first marriage her family planned for her . The kings of Castile had long made the tenuous claim to be paramount lords of the Kingdom of Navarre in the Pyrenees , and from 1250 Ferdinand III and his heir , Eleanor ' s half - brother Alfonso X of Castile , hoped she would marry Theobald II of Navarre . To avoid Castilian control , Margaret of Bourbon ( mother to Theobald II ) in 1252 allied with James I of Aragon instead , and as part of that treaty solemnly promised that Theobald would never marry Eleanor . Marriage . Then , in 1252 , Alfonso X resurrected another flimsy ancestral claim , this time to the duchy of Gascony , in the south of Aquitaine , last possession of the Kings of England in France . Henry III of England swiftly countered Alfonso ' s claims with both diplomatic and military moves . Early in 1254 the two kings began to negotiate ; after haggling over the financial provision for Eleanor , Henry and Alfonso agreed she would marry Henry ' s son Edward , and Alfonso would transfer his Gascon claims to Edward . Henry was so anxious for the marriage to take place that he willingly abandoned elaborate preparations already made for Edward ' s knighting in England , and agreed that Alfonso would knight Edward before the wedding took place . The young couple married at the monastery of Las Huelgas , Burgos , on 1 November 1254 . Edward and Eleanor were second cousins once removed , as Edward ' s grandfather King John of England and Eleanor ' s great - grandmother Eleanor of England were the son and daughter of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine . Henry III took pride in resolving the Gascon crisis so decisively , but his English subjects feared that the marriage would bring Eleanor ' s kinfolk and countrymen to live off Henry ' s ruinous generosity . Several of her relatives did come to England soon after her marriage . She was too young to stop them or prevent Henry III from paying for them , but she was blamed anyway and her marriage was unpopular . Interestingly enough , Eleanor ' s mother had been spurned in marriage by Henry III and her great - grandmother , Alys , Countess of the Vexin , had been spurned in marriage by Richard I . However , the presence of more English , Frank and Norman soldiers of fortune and opportunists in the recently reconquered Seville and Cordoba Moorish Kingdoms would be increased , thanks to this alliance between royal houses , until the advent of the later Hundred Years War when it would be symptomatic of extended hostilities between the French and the English for peninsular support . Second Barons ' War . There is little record of Eleanor ' s life in England until the 1260s , when the Second Barons ' War , between Henry III and his barons , divided the kingdom . During this time Eleanor actively supported Edward ' s interests , importing archers from her mother ' s county of Ponthieu in France . It is untrue , however , that she was sent to France to escape danger during the war ; she was in England throughout the struggle . Rumours that she was seeking fresh troops from Castile led the baronial leader , Simon de Montfort , to order her removal from Windsor Castle in June 1264 after the royalist army had been defeated at the Battle of Lewes . Edward was captured at Lewes and imprisoned , and Eleanor was honourably confined at Westminster Palace . After Edward and Henry ' s army defeated the baronial army at the Battle of Evesham in 1265 , Edward took a major role in reforming the government and Eleanor rose to prominence at his side . Her position was greatly improved in July 1266 when , after she had borne three short - lived daughters , she finally gave birth to a son , John , who was followed by a second , Henry , in the spring of 1268 , and in 1269 by a healthy daughter , Eleanor . Crusade . By 1270 , the kingdom was pacified and Edward and Eleanor left to join his uncle Louis IX of France on the Eighth Crusade . Louis died at Carthage before they arrived , however , and after they spent the winter in Sicily , the couple went on to Acre in Palestine , where they arrived in May 1271 . Eleanor gave birth to a daughter , known as " Joanna of Acre " for her birthplace . The crusade was militarily unsuccessful , but Baibars of the Bahri dynasty was worried enough by Edward ' s presence at Acre that an assassination attempt was made on the English heir in June 1272 . He was wounded in the arm by a dagger that was thought to be poisoned . The wound soon became seriously inflamed , and an English surgeon saved him by cutting away the diseased flesh , but only after Eleanor was led from his bed , " weeping and wailing . " Later storytellers embellished this incident , claiming Eleanor sucked poison from the wound , but this fanciful tale has no foundation . They left Palestine in September 1272 and in Sicily that December they learned of Henry III ' s death ( on 16 November 1272 ) . Edward and Eleanor returned to England and were crowned together on 19 August 1274 . Queen consort of England . Arranged royal marriages in the Middle Ages were not always happy , but available evidence indicates that Eleanor and Edward were devoted to each other . Edward is among the few medieval English kings not known to have conducted extramarital affairs or fathered children out of wedlock . The couple were rarely apart ; she accompanied him on military campaigns in Wales , famously giving birth to their son Edward on 25 April 1284 in a temporary dwelling erected for her amid the construction of Caernarfon Castle . Their household records witness incidents that imply a comfortable , even humorous , relationship . Each year on Easter Monday , Edward let Eleanor ' s ladies trap him in his bed and paid them a token ransom so he could go to her bedroom on the first day after Lent ; so important was this custom to him that in 1291 , on the first Easter Monday after Eleanor ' s death , he gave her ladies the money he would have given them had she been alive . Edward disliked ceremonies and in 1290 refused to attend the marriage of Earl Marshal Roger Bigod , 5th Earl of Norfolk ; Eleanor thoughtfully ( or resignedly ) paid minstrel s to play for him while he sat alone during the wedding . That Edward remained single until he wed Marguerite of France in 1299 is often cited to prove he cherished Eleanor ' s memory . In fact he considered a second marriage as early as 1293 , but this does not mean he did not mourn Eleanor . Eloquent testimony is found in his letter to the abbot of Cluny in France ( January 1291 ) , seeking prayers for the soul of the wife " whom living we dearly cherished , and whom dead we cannot cease to love . " In her memory , Edward ordered the construction of twelve elaborate stone crosses ( of which three survive , almost intact ) between 1291 and 1294 , marking the route of her funeral procession between Lincoln and London . ( See " Procession , burial and monuments " section below ) . However , only one of Eleanor ' s four sons survived childhood and , even before she died , Edward worried over the succession : if that son died , their daughters ' husbands might cause a succession war . Despite personal grief , Edward faced his duty and married again . He delighted in the sons his new wife bore , but attended memorial services for Eleanor to the end of his life , Marguerite at his side on at least one occasion . Popularity . Eleanor is warmly remembered by history as the queen who inspired the Eleanor cross es , but she was not so loved in her own time . The English saw her as a greedy foreigner . Walter of Guisborough preserves a contemporary poem : John Peckham , Archbishop of Canterbury warned Eleanor that her activities in the land market caused outcry , gossip , rumour and scandal across the realm . Her often aggressive acquisition of lands was an unusual degree of economic activity for any medieval noblewoman , let alone a queen : between 1274 and 1290 she acquired estates worth above £2500 yearly . In fact , Edward himself initiated this process and his ministers helped her . He wanted the queen to hold lands sufficient for her financial needs without drawing on funds needed for government . One of his methods to help Eleanor acquire land was to give her debts Christian landlords owed Jewish moneylenders ; she foreclosed on lands pledged for the debts . The debtors were often glad to rid themselves of the debts and also profited from the favour Eleanor showed them afterwards . But her reputation in England was further blighted by association with the highly unpopular moneylenders . Peckham also warned of complaints against her officials ' demands upon her tenants . On her deathbed , Eleanor asked Edward to name justices to examine her officials ' actions and make reparations . The surviving proceedings from this inquest do reveal a pattern of ruthless exactions , often without the queen ' s knowledge . She righted such wrongs when she heard of them , but not often enough to prevent a third warning from Peckham that many in England thought she urged Edward to rule harshly . In fact Edward allowed her little political influence , but her officials ' demands were ascribed to her imagined personal severity , which was used to explain the king ' s administrative strictness . In other words , the queen was made to wear the king ' s unpopular mask . It was always safer to blame a foreign - born queen than to criticise a king , and easier to believe he was misled by a meddling wife . Eleanor was neither the first queen nor the last to be blamed for a king ' s actions , but in her case the unsavory conduct of her own administration made it even easier to shift such blame to her . Limited political influence . Contemporary evidence shows clearly that Eleanor had no impact on the political history of Edward ' s reign . Even in diplomatic matters her role was minor , though Edward did heed her advice on the age at which their daughters could marry foreign rulers . Otherwise she merely bestowed gifts on visiting princes or envoys . Edward always honoured his obligations to Alfonso X , but even when Alfonso ' s need was desperate in the early 1280s , Edward did not send English knights to Castile ; he sent only knights from Gascony , which was closer to Castile . In England , Eleanor did mediate disputes of a minor nature between Edward ' s subjects , but only with Edward ' s consent and only with the help of ranking members of his council . Edward was prepared to resist her demands , or to stop her , if he felt she was going too far in any of her activities , and expected his ministers to do likewise . If she was allowed no effective official role , Eleanor was an intelligent and cultured woman and found other satisfying outlets for her energies . She was an active patroness of vernacular literature , with scribes and an illuminator in her household to copy books for her . Some of these were apparently vernacular romances and saints ' lives , but Eleanor ' s tastes ranged far more widely than that . The number and variety of new works written for her show that her interests were broad and sophisticated . On Crusade in 1272 , she had De Re Militari by Vegetius translated for Edward . After she succeeded her mother as countess of Ponthieu in 1279 , a romance was written for her about the life of a supposed 9th century count of Ponthieu . In the 1280s , Archbishop Peckham wrote a work for her to explain what angel s were and what they did . In January 1286 she thanked the abbot of Cerne for lending her a book — possibly a treatise on chess known to have been written at Cerne in the late thirteenth century — and her accounts reveal her in 1290 corresponding with an Oxford master about one of her books . The queen was a devoted patron of Dominican Order friars , founding several priories in England and supporting their work at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge . Not surprisingly , Eleanor ' s piety was of an intellectual stamp ; apart from her religious foundations she was not given to good works , and she left it to her chaplains to distribute alms for her . She patronised many relatives , though given foreigners ' unpopularity in England and the criticism of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence ' s generosity to them , she was cautious as queen to choose which cousins to support . Rather than marry her male cousins to English heiresses , which would put English wealth in foreign hands , she arranged marriages for her female cousins to English barons . Edward strongly supported her in these endeavours , which provided him and his family with an additional network of potential supporters . Death . Eleanor was presumably a healthy woman for most of her life ; that she survived sixteen pregnancies does not suggest that she was frail . Shortly after the birth of her last child , however , financial accounts from Edward ' s household and her own begin to record frequent payments for medicines to the queen ' s use . The nature of the medicines is not specified , so it is impossible to know what ailments were troubling her until , later in 1287 while she was in Gascony with Edward , a letter to England from a member of the royal entourage states that the queen had a double quartan fever , probably a strain of malaria . The disease is not fatal of itself , but leaves its victims weak and vulnerable to opportunistic infections . Among other complications , the liver and spleen become enlarged , brittle , and highly susceptible to injury which may cause death from internal bleeding . In the autumn of 1290 , news reached Edward that Margaret , the Maid of Norway , heiress of Scotland , had died . He had just held a parliament at Clipstone in Nottinghamshire , and continued to linger in those parts , presumably to await news of developments in Scotland . Eleanor followed him at a leisurely pace . She was unwell with what one contemporary chronicler describes as a feverish illness , quite likely the quartan that was reported in 1287 . After the couple left Clipstone they travelled slowly toward the city of Lincoln , a destination Eleanor would never reach . Her condition worsened as they reached the village of Harby , Nottinghamshire , less than from Lincoln . The journey was abandoned , and the queen was lodged in the house of Richard de Weston , the foundations of which can still be seen near Harby ' s parish church . After piously receiving the Church ' s last rites , she died there on the evening of the 28 November 1290 , aged 49 and after 36 years of marriage . Edward was at her bedside to hear her final requests . For three days afterward , the machinery of government came to a halt and no writs were sealed . Procession , burial and monuments . Edward followed her body to burial in Westminster Abbey , and erected memorial crosses at the site of each overnight stop between Lincoln and Westminster . Based on crosses in France marking Louis IX ' s funeral procession , these artistically significant monuments enhanced the image of Edward ' s kingship as well as witnessing his grief . The " Eleanor cross es " stood at Lincoln , Grantham , Stamford , Geddington , Northampton , Stony Stratford , Woburn , Dunstable , St Albans , Waltham , Westcheap , and Charing – only 3 survive , none in entirety . The best preserved is that at Geddington . All 3 have lost the crosses " of immense height " that originally surmounted them ; only the lower stages remain . The Waltham cross has been heavily restored and to prevent further deterioration , its original statues of the queen are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London . The Waltham and Northampton crosses have been moved to locations different from their original sites . The monument now known as " Charing Cross " in London , in front of the railway station of that name , was built in 1865 to publicise the railway hotel at Charing station . The original Charing cross was at the top of Whitehall , on the south side of Trafalgar Square , but was destroyed in 1647 and later replaced by a statue of Charles I . In the thirteenth century , embalming involved evisceration . Eleanor ' s viscera were buried in Lincoln Cathedral , where Edward placed a duplicate of the Westminster tomb . The Lincoln tomb ' s original stone chest survives ; its effigy was destroyed in the 17th century and replaced with a 19th - century copy . On the outside of Lincoln Cathedral are two statues often identified as Edward and Eleanor , but these images were heavily restored and given new heads in the 19th century ; probably they were not originally intended to depict the couple . The queen ' s heart was taken with the body to London and was buried in the Dominican priory at Blackfriars in London . The accounts of her executors show that the monument constructed there to commemorate her heart burial was richly elaborate , including wall paintings as well as an angelic statue in metal that apparently stood under a carved stone canopy . It was destroyed in the 16th century during the Dissolution of the Monasteries . Eleanor ' s funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 17 December 1290 . Her body was placed in a grave near the high altar that had originally contained the coffin of Edward the Confessor and , more recently , that of King Henry III until his remains were removed to his new tomb in 1290 . Eleanor ' s body remained in this grave until the completion of her own tomb . She had probably ordered that tomb before her death . It consists of a marble chest with carved mouldings and shields ( originally painted ) of the arms of England , Castile , and Ponthieu . The chest is surmounted by William Torel ' s superb gilt - bronze effigy , showing Eleanor in the same pose as the image on her great seal . When Edward remarried a decade after her death , he and his second wife Margaret of France , named their only daughter Eleanor in honour of her . Legacy . Eleanor of Castile ' s queenship is significant in English history for the evolution of a stable financial system for the king ' s wife , and for the honing this process gave the queen - consort ' s prerogatives . The estates Eleanor assembled became the nucleus for dower assignments made to later queens of England into the 15th century , and her involvement in this process solidly established a queen - consort ' s freedom to engage in such transactions . Few later queens exerted themselves in economic activity to the extent Eleanor did , but their ability to do so rested on the precedents settled in her lifetime . Historical reputation . Despite her unpopularity in her own day , Eleanor of Castile has had a positive reputation since the 16th century . The antiquarian William Camden first published in England the tale that Eleanor saved Edward ' s life at Acre by sucking his wound . Camden then went on to ascribe construction of the Eleanor crosses to Edward ' s grief at the loss of a heroic wife who had selflessly risked her own life to save his . Camden ' s discussion of the crosses reflected the religious history of his time ; the crosses were in fact intended to attract prayers for Eleanor ' s soul from passersby , but the Protestant Reformation in England had officially ended the practice of praying for the souls of the dead , so Camden instead ascribed Edward ' s commemorations of his wife to her alleged heroism in saving Edward ' s life at the risk of her own . Historians in the 17th and 18th centuries uncritically repeated Camden ' s information wholesale , and in the 19th century the self - styled historian Agnes Strickland used Camden to paint the rosiest of all pictures of Eleanor . None of these writers , however , used contemporary chronicles or records to provide accurate information about Eleanor ' s life . Such documents became widely available in the late 19th century , but even when historians began to cite them to suggest Eleanor was not the perfect queen Strickland praised , many rejected the correction , often expressing indignant disbelief that anything negative was said about Eleanor . Only in recent decades have historians studied queenship in its own right and regarded medieval queens as worthy of attention . These decades produced a sizeable body of historical work that allows Eleanor ' s life to be scrutinized in the terms of her own day , not those of the 17th or 19th centuries . The evolution of her reputation is a case study in the maxim that each age creates its own history . If Eleanor of Castile can no longer be seen as a paradigm of queenly virtues , her career can now be examined as the achievement of an intelligent and determined woman who was able to meet the challenges of an exceptionally demanding life . Issue of Queen Eleanor and King Edward I . Eleanor as a mother . It has been suggested that Eleanor and Edward were more devoted to each other than to their children . As king and queen , however , it was impossible for them to spend much time in one place , and when they were very young , the children could not travel constantly with their parents . The children had a household staffed with attendants carefully chosen for competence and loyalty , with whom the parents corresponded regularly . The children lived in this comfortable establishment until they were about seven years old ; then they began to accompany their parents for important occasions , and by their teens they were with the king and queen much of the time . In 1290 , Eleanor sent one of her scribes to join this household , presumably to share in her children ' s education , and in 1306 Edward sharply scolded the woman in charge of his children because she had not kept him informed of their health . Two incidents cited to imply Eleanor ' s lack of interest in her children are easily explained in the contexts of royal childrearing in general , and of particular events surrounding Edward and Eleanor ' s family . When their six - year - old son Henry lay dying at Guildford in 1274 , neither parent made the short journey from London to see him ; but he was tended by Edward ' s mother Eleanor of Provence , who had raised the boy during the four years his parents were on Crusade . The grandmother was thus at that moment more familiar to him than his parents , and the better able to comfort him in his illness . Since Henry was always sickly , the gravity of his illness was perhaps not realised until it was too late for his parents to reach him . Similarly , Edward and Eleanor allowed her mother , Joan of Dammartin , to raise their daughter Joan in Ponthieu ( 1274 – 78 ) . This implies no parental lack of interest in the girl ; the practice of fostering noble children in other households of sufficient dignity was not unknown and Eleanor ' s mother was , of course , dowager queen of Castile . Her household was thus safe and dignified , but it does appear that Edward and Eleanor had cause to regret their generosity in allowing Joan of Dammartin to foster young Joan . When the girl reached England in 1278 , aged six , it turned out that she had been badly spoiled . She was spirited and often defiant throughout childhood , and in adulthood remained a handful for Edward , defying his plans for a prestigious second marriage for her by secretly marrying one of her late first husband ' s squires . When the marriage had to be revealed because Joan was pregnant , Edward was infuriated that his dignity had been insulted by her marriage to a commoner of no importance . Joan , at twenty - five , reportedly defended her conduct to her redoubtable father by saying that nobody saw anything wrong if a great earl married a poor woman , so there could be nothing wrong with a countess marrying a promising young man . Whether or not her retort ultimately changed his mind , Edward restored to Joan all the lands he had confiscated when he learned of her secret marriage , and accepted her new husband as a son - in - law in good standing . Joan marked her restoration to favour by having masses celebrated for the soul of her mother , Queen Eleanor .