by
Damien F. Mackey
“… Geoffrey le Baker in the
1350s, who was trying to promote Edward II as a saint and who detested
Isabella, calling her an ‘iron virago’ as well as ‘Jezebel’ …”.
What
was it about these queens “Isabella” (of Angoulême, of France) that they acquired
reputations as other Jezebels?
It may be partly due to the name itself.
“The
name Isabella, like Isabel, has long been considered a form of Elizabeth,
meaning “consecrated to God,” but it probably came originally from Jezebel,
meaning “consecrated to Baal,” Baal being the “false god” of the Hebrews”.
However,
it seems to go beyond that factor, to embrace character, life style and reputation.
Actress Sophie Marceau famously played the part of the mediaeval Queen Isabella (Isabelle) of France (1295-1358 AD, conventional dating), alongside Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart.
According to Kathryn Warner (Isabella of France: The Rebel Queen), the queen was “condemned as a wicked, unnatural ‘she-wolf’”
http://www.medievalists.net/2016/07/isabella-of-france-the-rebel-queen/
Isabella of France (c.
1295–1358), who married Edward II in January 1308, is one of the most notorious
women in English history. In 1325/26, sent to her homeland to negotiate a peace
settlement to end the war between her husband and her brother Charles IV of
France, Isabella refused to return to England. She began a relationship with
her husband’s deadliest enemy, the English baron Roger Mortimer, and with her
son the king’s heir under their control, the pair led an invasion of England
which ultimately resulted in Edward II’s forced abdication in January 1327.
Isabella and Mortimer ruled England during the minority of her and Edward II’s
son Edward III, until the young king overthrew the pair in October 1330, took
over the governance of his own kingdom and had Mortimer hanged at Tyburn and
his mother sent away to a forced but honourable retirement. Edward II,
meanwhile, had died under mysterious circumstances – at least according to
traditional accounts – while in captivity at Berkeley Castle in September 1327.
Though she was mostly
popular and admired by her contemporaries, her disastrous period of rule from
1327 to 1330 notwithstanding, Isabella’s posthumous reputation reached a nadir
centuries after her death when she was condemned as a wicked, unnatural ‘she-wolf’,
adulteress and murderess by writers incensed that a woman would rebel against
her own spouse and have him killed in dreadful fashion, or at least stand by in
silence as it happened (the infamous and often repeated ‘red-hot poker’ story
of Edward II’s demise is a myth, but widely believed from the late fourteenth
century until the present day). Isabella’s relationship with Roger Mortimer and
her alleged sexual immorality, as well as her frequently presumed but never
proved role in her husband’s murder, became a stick often used to beat her
with; a typical piece of Victorian moralising by Agnes Strickland declared that
‘no queen of England has left such a stain on the annals of female royalty, as
the consort of Edward II, Isabella of France’. Strickland’s work divided the
queens of England, seemingly fairly arbitrarily, into the ‘good’ ones such as
Eleanor of Castile and Philippa of Hainault, and the ‘bad’ ones such as Eleanor
of Provence; Isabella of France, naturally, fell into the second category. Her
reputation fared poorly between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and
well into the twentieth: in the early 1590s the playwright Christopher Marlowe
called her ‘that unnatural queen, false Isabel’, a 1757 poem by Thomas Gray was
the first to apply the ridiculous ‘she-wolf’ nickname (which had been invented
by Shakespeare for Henry VI’s queen Margaret of Anjou) to her, and in 1958,
exactly 600 years after her death, Isabella was still being called ‘the most
wicked of English queens’. The French nickname sometimes used for her, la Louve
de France – the title of a 1950s novel about her by Maurice Druon – is simply
the translation of the English word ‘she-wolf’ and has no historical basis
whatsoever. (Although it is sometimes claimed nowadays that Edward II
himself, or his favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger, called Isabella a
‘she-wolf’, this is not true; one fourteenth-century chronicler, Geoffrey le
Baker, called her Jezebel, a play on her name, but otherwise no unpleasant
nicknames for her are recorded until a few centuries after she died.) An
academic work of 1983 unkindly calls Isabella a ‘whore’, and a non-fiction book
published as late as 2003 depicts her as incredibly beautiful and desirable but
also murderous, vicious and scheming, and claims without evidence that she ‘had
murder in her heart’ towards her husband in 1326/27, called for his execution
and was ‘secretly delighted’ when she heard of his death.
Her contemporaries were
mostly kinder. With the notable exception of Geoffrey le Baker in the 1350s,
who was trying to promote Edward II as a saint and who detested Isabella,
calling her an ‘iron virago’ as well as ‘Jezebel’, fourteenth-century
chroniclers generally treated her well, and it is certainly not the case, as is
sometimes claimed nowadays, that they called her a ‘whore’ or anything equally
ugly and harsh because of her liaison with Roger Mortimer.
Most fourteenth-century
chroniclers seem uncertain whether Isabella even had an affair with Mortimer at
all, and a few depict the two merely as political allies and call Mortimer
Isabella’s ‘chief counsellor’, which may be a more accurate portrayal of their
association than the romanticised accounts so prevalent in modern writing. In
the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, writers have mostly been keen to
write Isabella sympathetically and rescue her from the unfair calumnies heaped
on her head for so long – an impulse to be applauded – but in doing so have
tended to go too far in the opposite direction. As a result, Isabella is depicted
nowadays as a tragic, long-suffering victim of marital cruelty, impoverished
and deprived of her children, who is miraculously transformed in 1326/27 into a
strong, empowered feminist heroine bravely fighting to end the oppression of
her husband’s subjects and to get her children back. This is no more accurate
than the old tendency to write her as an evil she-wolf. ….
According to another
article, this one written by Heidi Murphy:
….
Initially
contemporaries tended to view Isabella as something of a tragic figure, a
beautiful, passionate French princess trapped in a loveless marriage to an
incompetent, negligent husband. Isabella's early years as a dutiful, albeit
long-suffering, wife tend to be forgotten in favour of the high drama, romance
and intrigue that surrounded the eventual breakdown of her marriage and
continued to plague her during her brief reign as unofficial ruler of England.
While many had sympathised with her plight, regarding her husband as weak and
despotic, there can be little doubt that once she found the confidence to take
action, Isabella's behaviour scandalised her contemporaries and badly damaged
her reputation. Casting aside her previous role as a compliant consort before
finally throwing away all pretence of obedience and duty, Isabella actively
opposed her husband's regime and participated in his overthrow (and some
believe in his mysterious death) all the while conducting an affair with Roger
Mortimer, Earl of March, the man with whom for a time she ruled England. To
make matters worse during her short time in power the arrogance and avarice her
regime displayed alienated her supporters and eventually forced her young son,
Edward III to take action against her.
But to
judge Isabella solely on these brief but dramatic years is to underestimate the
important role she played both before and after her time in power. Isabella was
a woman who displayed a genius for survival and reinvention and even after her
enforced ‘retirement' from public life, she remained an influential figure in
royal circles. With the benefit of hindsight, and our twenty-first century
sensibilities it is possible to be a little more lenient with some of her
failings and it is important not to allow the drama attached to her years in
power to take from the very important role she played in European history.
Throughout her life Isabella was known for her fierce loyalty to her native
land, in England Isabella's behaviour helped overthrow her husband's regime
while dynastically, by transferring her claim to the throne of France to her
eldest son and by actively encouraging him to pursue the French throne on the
death of her last surviving brother, Isabella 'the She-Wolf' planted the seeds
for what would become known as The Hundred Years War.
But to
judge Isabella solely on these brief but dramatic years is to underestimate the
important role she played both before and after her time in power. Isabella was
a woman who displayed a genius for survival and reinvention and even after her
enforced ‘retirement' from public life, she remained an influential figure in
royal circles. With the benefit of hindsight, and our twenty-first century
sensibilities it is possible to be a little more lenient with some of her
failings and it is important not to allow the drama attached to her years in
power to take from the very important role she played in European history.
Throughout her life Isabella was known for her fierce loyalty to her native
land, in England Isabella's behaviour helped overthrow her husband's regime
while dynastically, by transferring her claim to the throne of France to her
eldest son and by actively encouraging him to pursue the French throne on the
death of her last surviving brother, Isabella 'the She-Wolf' planted the seeds
for what would become known as The Hundred Years War.
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