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Margaret of Anjou,
unlike most medieval queens, has been the subject of many biographies
over the centuries but Helen E. Maurer's feminist approach to
the queen's political life offers a substantially new presentation
of Henry VI's queen. It is a scholarly but very accessible work
that challenges traditional interpretations of the Wars of the
Roses and makes a valuable contribution to understandings of queenship
in the later medieval period.
In the past two
decades there has been a significant surge in interest in the
study of medieval queenship. The role of intercession, the limitations
of female authority, the potential for informal power, and perceptions
of the ideal queen are all persistent themes of this scholarship
upon which Maurer has drawn. Maurer argues effectively that Margaret
has hitherto been judged according to masculine standards, judgements
that fail to take into account the limitations placed upon her
actions by her gender. The principal thesis of the book is that
Margaret's response to the failure of her king's authority and
the need to exercise some form of power on behalf of the Lancastrian
dynasty was striking, not because it transgressed gender expectations,
but for the extent to which the queen endeavoured to live up to
them.
The book is essentially
chronological in structure, divided into four sections - 'Expectations',
'Mediations', 'The Crisis of Kingship' and 'Queen's Rule?'. The
introduction discusses medieval perceptions of the frailty of
women, arguing that although women were denied authority, they
were often allowed considerable power because they were encouraged
to act as intercessors and as representatives of their menfolk.
Maurer argues that queens often wielded less effective power than
women a little lower in the social scale because as queens they
were expected to be exemplars of ideal feminine behaviour, 'more
visible and hence more vulnerable to judgement than other women'.(p.
12) However, her sources for this assessment, primarily Christine
de Pizan's Book of the Treasure
of the City of Ladies, are all French and Maurer does not
address the implications of the significant differences in French
and English queenship in the fifteenth century. Moreover, a more
cultural-historical analysis, assessing the pageantry of Margaret's
first arrival in London and her 1456 arrival in Coventry, as well
as the traditional rituals of coronation and childbirth and her
legal status, would suggest that the expectations on English queens
were more complex than Maurer's thesis allows - not merely higher
than for other women but distinctly different. As L. O. Fradenburg
has argued, there is a 'plasticity of gender in the field of sovereignty'
that this book does not really address.(1)
Nonetheless, Maurer's conclusion that Margaret's role in the Wars
of the Roses cannot be understood without examining the limitations
placed upon her by her gender is well-argued and sustained throughout
the book.
Part One deals
with the negotiations surrounding Margaret's arrival in England,
the contentious surrender of Maine, and her motherhood. In contrast
to most recent political historians of this period, Maurer argues
that Margaret's role in the surrender of Maine was significant
but that her actions reflect her commitment to the traditional
queenly role of mediator and should not be seen as diplomatic
meddling. The chapter on motherhood does not consider the practicalities
of the role but discusses contemporary concerns about her initial
failure to produce an heir and later allegations that Prince Edward
was either a changeling or a bastard. The latter, Maurer argues,
are closely connected with political events and reflect the complexities
of Margaret's position as a woman being drawn into politics. The
allegations either denied the queen's ability to 'do what a proper
woman would do' - that is, produce children - or intimated that
she had 'transgressed the boundaries of her proper place' through
an extra-marital affair. In each case the allegations were also
a commentary upon Margaret's political behaviour.
Part Two begins with a chapter on 'Business-as-Usual', which
is primarily an assessment of the queen's surviving letters. Maurer
convincingly rejects the assertions of earlier biographers that
these are apolitical, contending that many involve mediation and
intervention with political implications. While the original editor
of these letters, Cecil Monro, asserted that many of the queen's
attempts at intercession failed, Maurer argues that what is more
important is that over half were written in response to an appeal
to Margaret, which implies that the initiators expected Margaret's
intervention to be effective. Maurer's very interesting analysis
concludes that the one area in which action seemed to be more
often entirely at Margaret's initiative was that of clerical preferment
and that the things she was asked to do were not gender-specific. Maurer also shows that the letters reveal 'female networking within the
system of intermediaries' (p. 60), who included in their number
the duchesses of York and Somerset.
The
next chapter is a study of Cade's Rebellion, focussing largely
upon Margaret's role in the issuing of a pardon to the rebels.
Maurer argues that this was an instance of Margaret's personal
political influence, aimed both at undermining rebel unity and
presenting herself as the ideal intermediary queen tempering the
king's justice. Although Maurer admits to the complexities of
the practice of intercession in which the queen's name might be
invoked merely to allow the king to save face, her arguments are
a little unsatisfactory here. She does not fully examine how this
model works when, as on this occasion, the king had fled the scene.
Nor does she address the fact that no contemporary chronicler
seems to have been aware of the queen's supposed role at this
point: which leaves the question of whom the language of Margaret's
intercession was intended to impress unanswered.
Part Three examines
the period 1453-6, characterized as the 'political education of
Margaret of Anjou'. Maurer argues that the enmity between Margaret
and the duke of York has been habitually assumed to have been
of long duration, but that the evidence of the queen's relations
with York prior to the first battle of St Albans indicates that
this was not the case. Maurer's important study of Margaret's
gift-giving indicates that the queen was careful to signal that
she favoured Somerset and York equally in the early 1450s and
that Somerset only began to rise in her favour after he had increased
his influence with the king. Maurer argues persuasively that this
calls for a reevaluation of events following Henry VI's mental
collapse in 1453. In the light of Margaret Howell's recent work
on Eleanor of Provence (2),
Maurer suggests that Margaret's bid for regency was not as novel
as has usually been argued. She depicts Margaret attempting to
create a royal centre of authority that would offer greater stability
than either York or Somerset could do, but contends that it was
the limitations of her gender that told against Margaret: wives
could only act on their husbands' behalf, as Eleanor of Provence
had done in Henry III's absence, if the husband was 'cognizant
and capable of the authority and will that are to be represented'.
(quoted on p. 109) Tellingly, the post of Protector, which was
established in 1454 (as it had been for Henry VI's minority),
assumed a military role that inevitably prevented a woman from
occupying the position whereas a regency would have had less exclusive
implications.
Margaret seems
to have accepted York's protectorate and Maurer observes that
there is no evidence that she was responsible either for Somerset's
release or York's exclusion from power on Henry VI's recovery.
Maurer argues that after the protectorate, Margaret's role as
representative of her dynasty had become redundant and that she
stepped back out of the political frame. However, following the
first battle of St Albans, Maurer asserts that the queen must
have perceived York and his associates as a threat to her husband's
authority and that the enmity began at this time, possibly increased
by a sense of betrayal following her earlier efforts to signal
friendship.
Part Four, the
longest section of the book, examines the final years of Lancastrian
kingship and Margaret's efforts to exercise power in her family's
interest despite her lack of formal authority. In a fascinating
exploration of the workings of power, Maurer asserts that Margaret's
approach was always to represent herself 'as subordinate and adjunct
while asserting the king's authority', but that such a position
was inevitably short-term, because it 'denied her a more lasting
authority and made her vulnerable to charges of transgression
when the extent and nature of her activities attracted notice'.
(p. 127) Maurer argues here that Margaret was instrumental in
undermining York's second protectorate but, having driven him
from power, was once again without a role herself and therefore
retreated from the centre of power by moving out to her midland
estates. However, with Henry's arrival in the Midlands later in
the year, she was able to begin to exercise indirect rule on her
family's behalf, influencing the replacement of the Keeper of
the Privy Seal, the Treasurer and the Chancellor and being given
institutional influence through her son's newly-appointed council.
Maurer suggests that by appealing always to the authority of her
husband or son to obscure the extent of her actual power, Margaret
was able to push at the 'porous boundaries' of 'right order'.
(p. 139)
Maurer contends
that the gap between the image and reality of Margaret's power
was especially evident in the rituals associated with her arrival
and departure from Coventry on occasions in 1456 and 1457. In
September 1456 the queen was greeted by a series of pageants that
referred to her in the context of traditional ideals of womanhood:
the Virgin Mary, a queen served by chivalric heroes, and her name
saint, Margaret. For Maurer this indicates Margaret's self-association
with acceptable power relationships. However, as she mentions
briefly in a footnote, the king himself was already present in
Coventry and he had not been so welcomed. Maurer does not address
the implications of this unprecedented situation or the prominence
in the pageant scripts of themes and images of kingship, that
again suggest a more complex notion of gender and sovereignty
than Maurer allows. Her analysis of Margaret's controversial departure
from Coventry following the 1457 council is, however, more convincing.
Maurer argues
that Margaret's aims in the later 1450s were twofold - to exercise
practical power drawing on and reasserting the king's authority
and to nullify the threat posed by York and the Nevilles, drawing
them back into the Lancastrian polity. The second aspect is explored
in a fascinating chapter, focussing primarily upon the Loveday
procession of 1458, which has usually been dismissed as 'a fairly
silly exercise'. (p. 151) This, Maurer asserts persuasively, was
significant and meaningful at the time, despite its ultimate failure.
Because Margaret, as a woman with no official political role,
could not be party to the formal settlement of recompense for
St Albans, the Loveday procession was a crucial opportunity to
involve her in the demonstrations of reconciliation that both
she and the king desired. The occasion did imply some 'mixed and
murky' degree of role reversal between king and queen in terms
of prayer and intercession, although it did not challenge the
king as source of authority. Initially it strengthened Margaret's
position because York acknowledged her informal exercise of power.
In analysing
'The Road to War' which followed the failed reconciliation attempts,
Maurer challenges the accuracy of the single source, Benet's Chronicle,
which claims Margaret advised a great council at Coventry to indict
the Yorkist lords in the summer of 1459 - thereby highlighting
the difficulties involved in judging Margaret's actual role in
events from the primarily Yorkist accounts that survive. Maurer
maintains that, following Henry VI's captivity after the battle
of Northampton, Margaret at last emerged as the publicly-acknowledged
leader of the Lancastrian party, but that there is no way of knowing
if she was responsible for the earl of Northumberland's decision
to raise the army that was ultimately to defeat York at Wakefield
during her absence in Scotland. Maurer suggests that, although
Margaret rightly recognised the need to act immediately to capitalise
upon the Lancastrian victory, being forced to travel south in
winter probably made provisioning difficult, thereby leading to
the pillaging which so damaged her army's reputation and her own.
After victory at the second battle of St Albans, Maurer asserts
that Margaret was again without a public role and stepped out
of the political frame. This point is perhaps debatable since
the City of London's decision to send three ladies to negotiate
suggests that they still considered Margaret to be the central
decision-maker. Various explanations for the failure after St
Albans are mentioned but none explicitly favoured. Maurer argues
that the attainder against Margaret in the first Yorkist parliament
identified her as their principal opponent, using gender-determined
language to depict her crimes: 'a "contrary" woman,
guilty of sexual transgression and of faithless - female? - mutability'.
(p. 202)
The conclusion
deals very briefly with the last two decades of Margaret's life,
rehearsing the generally-accepted version of events up to 1471.
The sources for her fate after 1471 are contradictory and unclear,
but Maurer opts for the interpretation that a brief period of
confinement was followed by four years in the custody of Alice
Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, prior to her return to France, 'ransomed'
by Louis XI.
There is much
more that might be said about Margaret's queenship. The management
of her household and her properties or her religious interests,
for instance, are scarcely mentioned but have considerable political
significance. However, the narrow focus of this book enables Maurer
to tell a very readable and engaging story and to concentrate
the reader's attention on the central arguments of the limitations
of Margaret's power and the circumspection of her behaviour. This
makes it a book that will be appreciated by both general readers
and scholars alike. Such a significant (and long overdue) reappraisal
of one of the key figures of the Wars of the Roses must be welcomed
by all historians of both fifteenth-century politics and gender
studies in the later middle ages.
October 2003
Notes
1.
L. O. Fradenburg, 'Introduction: Rethinking Queenship', in Fradenburg
ed., Women and Sovereignty. Conference Papers
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), pp. 1-13.
2.
M. Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century
England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
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