The de Courcy Matter Part I: According to English records….

Marguerite, Lady de Courcy, was the French governess of Richard II’s second wife, the child-bride Isabelle of Valois. This article, Part I, tells the generally known English version of what led to Marguerite’s return to France.

I will begin with Richard’s obligation to remarry after the death of Anne of Bohemia, with whom he had been deeply in love, and she with him. I don’t think anyone would deny their love story, which was marred by her sudden early death and the absence of any children. Kings have to have legitimate offspring to ensure the continuance of their line, and so Richard, still deep in grief, was pressed to remarry….and to choose a bride with whom he could immediately begin conjugal relations. To his advisers’ dismay and disbelief, he chose Princess Isabella de Valois, eldest daughter of King Charles VI of France. She was still only six years old! There could be no hope of sharing a bed for years to come, until she was around 14, more likely 16, which in those days was considered to be the age at which girls were old enough to bear children.

The marriage ceremony took place on 4 November 1396 at the Church of St. Nicholas in Calais, and was conducted by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel.

Isabella “….was five days short of her seventh birthday (born 9 November 1389). Her dolls were included in her trousseau….” Richard was twenty-two years her senior, but from the outset he treated her with great kindness and consideration, and in the few years they were together she came to love him, although obviously not yet as a husband or lover. In the meantime he could not have done more to make her welcome in England or to present her as his beloved queen.

His reason for this particular marriage might have been two-fold. First he was a sensitive man still in mourning for his adored Anne of Bohemia and couldn’t bear the thought of taking another to his bed just yet. Second, he had always wanted peace with France. The “Hundred Years War” seemed never-ending, and at that moment there was a 28-year truce. Surely an excellent time to make a formal and permanent peace more likely?

Whatever the whys and wherefores, the second marriage was done and dusted, as the saying goes. From then on it could never be said that the little girl was maltreated or ignored. Richard was not that kind of man and set about winning her trust and then love. He was not deserving of the many accusations subsequently flung at him of madness, cruelty tyranny and so on. We’ll never know the how the marriage went when she was adult, because in 1399 Richard II was usurped and murdered by his first cousin, John of Gaunt’s son and heir, Henry Bolingbroke who became the first Lancastrian king of England.

Before then, of course, Isabella led the life of a highborn, very privileged but underage girl, living in various royal castles with her French household. Her governess was Marguerite, Lady de Courcy, who had come over with her from France. Marguerite had care of the little queen, with access to everything, clothes, jewels and so on. When English royal jewellery was provided for Isabella it was Marguerite who had charge of it.

But English suspicions had been aroused that the governess was removing precious stones from various jewels. I imagine her closeted alone in her chamber by candlelight, prying a diamond here, an emerald there, before returning the jewellery to the English.

According to this site: “….Her name attached to entries allows us to identify some of Isabelle’s other jewels, not part of her trousseau. A diamond was missing from a collar of fern which had probably once belonged to Anne of Bohemia, a sapphire from a headdress. Two gold harts, Richard II’s badge, had also lost gems while in Lady de Courcy’s charge. A sapphire and a pearl disappeared from one hart, worth £20. From the other, which was set with a true ruby and exceptionally valuable at £300, a balas ruby was lost at Rockingham in Northamptonshire….

R 346 Item, j cerf d’or garnisez d’un rubie, iij balaces et xviij grosses perlez, dont j balace perdu a Rokyngham en la garde la dame de Courcy, priz par estimacion,, iijc li.

[Item, a hart set with a ruby, three balas rubies and eighteen large pearls, one balas ruby lost at Rockingham in the charge of the dame de Courcy, estimated value, £300.]….”

Hmm. It seems pretty incriminating to me. The actual disappearances are so specific. Of course, it’s possible that someone else in Isabella’s household took the stones, but it was the governess who had charge of them.

At this time the political situation in Ireland had persuaded Richard that he needed to make another expedition there. He’d already made one and it had been successful, so he hoped a second would have the same effect. He departed with his army in June 1399. Before he left, he celebrated St George’s Day with a great tournament, and created Marguerite a Lady of the Garter (see here) a great honour indeed. He must have thought she was everything she should be and more to his little wife. So I can’t imagine that at this point he knew about the jewel-thieving. These celebrations were to be the last time Isabella saw him. He promised to send for her soon, so she too would go to Ireland.

But then Richard learned of the suspicions surrounding Marguerite. According to Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones, page 271, the king arranged for William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, to send Marguerite back to France in disgrace, together with twenty other members of Isabella’s household. Once the royal expedition had gone to Ireland, the instructions were carried out. The French were furious. They thought Richard was “insensitive and unfair” (Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones, 112-13) to his little wife by sending away her beloved governess and so many of the household, and then going away himself, to add to the child’s sudden loneliness. She’d been left at Windsor Manor, a new palace built from a former hunting lodge of Edward III. It was five miles south of Windsor Castle and was where she and Richard had been staying during the St George’s Day festivities.

Richard must have known how the banishments would be received in France, but I suppose the evidence against the governess was such that he couldn’t ignore it.

We don’t know if Isabella was heartbroken to lose her governess and so many of her household, but she was heartbroken when she learned of Richard’s captivity and demise, the latter of which occurred under highly suspicious circumstances at Pontefract. Marguerite herself disappears from English history.

Wanting to keep Isabella’s dowry, the Lancastrian usurper pressed her to marry his son, Henry of Monmouth, now Prince of Wales, but she wouldn’t. In the end she was returned to France, and in 1406 became the duchess of Charles, Duke of Orléans. She died in childbirth in 1409.

In due course Henry of Monmouth became Henry V and married Isabella’s sister, Katherine of Valois. Katherine was to be widowed and then become the ancestress of the Tudors. I won’t say that she married Owen Tudor because it isn’t known if she did. No records exist. They lived together, certainly, and became the apparent grandparents of Henry VII. Of whom the least said the better.

The above account is the English view of the de Courcy affair. Part II follows tomorrow, and tells the French version. It’s rather different, I promise.