Page:The Queens of England.djvu/121

ELEANOR OF CASTILLE. 101 Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand the Third, King of Castile, by Joanna, Countess of Ponthieu, was borri about the year 1244. She could scarcely have entered on her eleventh year when she was demanded in marriage by Henry the Third, King of England, for his eldest son, Prince Edward, then a youth of fifteen. The consent of her brother Alphonso, the reigning King of Castile, having been readily obtained, it was agreed by the contracting parties, that within a stipulated time the young prince should proceed, with his mother, Eleanor of Pro- vence, to Burgos, the capital of Old Castile, in order to be united to his almost infant bride. Rapin, who wrote in 1725, informs us that in his time the scroll, sealed with gold, in which Alphonso gave his written consent to the union of his sister with the Prince of England, was still preserved in the Chapter House at Westminster. At this period, Henry the Third was holding his court at Bourdeaux, from which place the young prince and his mother crossed the Pyrenees to Burgos, which city they reached on the 5th of August, 1254. Their arrival in the Castilian capital was celebrated with all those circumstances of gorgeous mag- nificence which were the characteristics of the middle ages ; and for several weeks the fine old city of Burgos was the scene of successive tournaments and festivals. It was on one of these occasions that Prince Edward was dubbed a knight by his royal brother-in-law. Queen Eleanor was so delighted with her visit, that she remained there till the summer of the follow- ing year, when she recrossed the Pyrenees, accompanied by her son and his infant bride, and rejoined her husband, King Henry. King Henry kept his Christmas at Bourdeaux, where — determined not to be surpassed in magnificent hospitality by the Castilian monarch — he celebrated the espousals of his son and daughter-in-law with a splendor entailing such lavish ex- penditure as to draw down upon him the indignant outcries of his English subjects. "The King," says Daniel, "consumed all his treasure in these journeys, which was reckoned at two hundred and seventy thousand pounds ; more than all the lands which he had in those countries were worth, had they been sold right out ; which, when he was told of, he desired it might not be published to his disgrace." [Matthew Paris places the king's expenses at the same enormous amount. He also tells us that when one of his confidential advisers remonstrated with him on