The Medieval Eleanor Crosses
Built by King Edward I to Mourn Eleanor of Castile
Twelve medieval monuments built by an English king devastated by the death of his queen.
The Eleanor crosses are twelve decorated stone monuments erected on the orders of the English King Edward I, to honour his wife, following her death in 1290 from a fever.
The Location of the Twelve Eleanor Crosses
The twelve Eleanor crosses mark the points where Queen Eleanor’s funeral cortege stopped on its journey from Lincoln (where she died) to Westminster Abbey (where she was buried). Of the twelve crosses, only three remain; Waltham Cross (Hertfordshire), Hardingstone and Geddington (both in Northamptonshire).
The other crosses were located at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Cheapside and Charing Cross. The original Charing Cross monument was destroyed in the 1600s and replaced by a nineteenth-century monument which stands outside Charing Cross railway station.
The Eleanor crosses were intended to allow the faithful to pray for the Queen and so hasten her passage to heaven. King Edward was determined that his wife ‘whom living we dearly cherished and whom dead we cannot cease to love,’ would never be forgotten.
The crosses were put in place between 1291 and 1294. Each was very similar, consisting of three tiers, featuring statues of the queen in the middle tiers. A huge stone cross topped each monument but none of these have survived.
The Marriage of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile
Like so many royal unions, the marriage of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile was a marriage of convenience, designed to strengthen political ties. Eleanor was ten years old when she married the fifteen-year-old Edward in 1254.
The pair were separated for about eight years, as was the custom with pre-teen marriages. Both were crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1274, after the death of Edward’s father Henry III. The couple had around fifteen children, some of whom died. The exact number has never been verified as there is some confusion over how many of the children died in infancy.
Despite the marriage being an arranged match, historians agree that King Edward and his queen were devoted to each other. Eleanor travelled almost everywhere with her husband, even accompanying him on crusade. Their first surviving son Edward was born in 1284, in Wales, during one of the King’s expeditions to subdue the Welsh. The prince was born in a temporary residence built in the grounds of Caernarfon Castle, which was at the time still under construction.
The Death of Eleanor of Castile
Eleanor died in 1290 near Lincoln. Typically, she was following her husband on a trip, this time to Scotland. Before she reached Scotland, she contracted a ‘low fever’, from which she never recovered. She was embalmed at Lincoln and her entrails interred in the city’s cathedral and later, her heart was taken to Blackfriars church in London.
The queen’s funeral procession took twelve days to reach London and each Eleanor cross marks an overnight stop. Eleanor was buried at Westminster abbey. King Edward ordered two candles to burn by her tomb for all time and this tradition was continued until the reformation in the sixteenth century.
Even after Eleanor’s funeral, the ceremonies continued. On the first anniversary of the queen’s death, 49 candle bearers were paid to march in a procession, each carrying a candle for one year of Eleanor’s life.
Edward himself died in 1307 and was also buried at Westminster Abbey. The abbey already had a reputation as a place of medieval pilgrimage, being the final resting place of Edward the Confessor, who Edward I had so admired.
Source
Prestwich, Michael, Edward I (The English Monarchs Series) [Yale University Press, 1997]
