by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2022

Eleanor of England, Countess of Bar; Credit- Wikipedia

Eleanor of England, Countess of Bar was born on June 18, 1269, at Windsor Castle in Windsor, Berkshire, England. She was the third but the eldest surviving daughter and the fifth but the eldest surviving of the 14 – 16 children of Edward I, King of England and Eleanor of Castile, the first of his two wives. Eleanor’s paternal grandparents were Henry III, King of England and Eleanor of Provence. Her maternal grandparents were Ferdinand III, King of Castile and Toledo and King of León, and Galicia and his second wife Jeanne, Countess of Ponthieu and Aumale in her own right.

Early fourteenth-century manuscript showing Eleanor’s parents King Edward I of England and Eleanor of Castile; Credit – Wikipedia

Eleanor’s parents had 14 – 16 children. Only five daughters and one son survived to adulthood. The eleven siblings of Eleanor below were named and the ones who died in infancy survived for at least a couple of months. During the reign of the House of Plantagenet, their children were often identified by their place of birth. For instance, Edward I’s daughter Joan of Acre was born in Acre (now in Israel) while her parents were on a crusade.

• Katherine of England (born and died 1264), died in infancy
• Joan of England (born and died 1265), died in infancy
• John of England (1266 – 1271), died in childhood
• Henry of England (1268 – 1274), died in childhood
• Joan of Acre (1272 – 1307), married (1) Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford, had four children (2) Ralph de Monthermer, 1st Baron Monthermer, had four children
• Alfonso, Earl of Chester (1273 – 1284), died in childhood, heir apparent to the English throne who never became king
• Margaret of England (1275 – after 1333), married John II, Duke of Brabant, had one son
• Berengaria of England (1276 – 1278), died in childhood
• Mary of Woodstock (1279 – 1332), a Benedictine nun in Amesbury, Wiltshire
• Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (1282 – 1316), married (1) John I, Count of Holland, no children (2) Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford, 3rd Earl of Essex, had ten children
• King Edward II of England (1284 – 1327), married Isabella of France, had four children

When Eleanor’s mother died in 1290, only six of her children, five daughters and one son, were still living. The son, the future King Edward II, was the youngest child and only six years old. King Edward I had to be worried about the succession, and a second marriage with sons would ensure the succession. On September 10, 1299, 60-year-old King Edward I married 17-year-old Margaret of France, daughter of King Philippe III of France and his second wife Marie of Brabant.

Eleanor had three half-siblings from her father’s second marriage to Margaret of France:

• Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk (1300 – 1338), married (1) Alice de Hales, had three children (2) Mary de Brewes, no children
• Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent (1301 – 1330), married Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell, had four children including  Joan, 4th Countess of Kent who married King Edward III‘s eldest son Edward, Prince of Wales (The Black Prince) and was the mother of King Richard II of England
• Eleanor of England (1306 – 1311), died young

In 1270, due to the departure of her parents for the Ninth Crusade, Eleanor, her brother Henry, and her first cousin John of Brittany (the son of Eleanor’s paternal aunt Beatrice) were cared for at Windsor Castle by their grandmother Eleanor of Provence. During the absence of her parents, Eleanor’s grandfather King Henry III of England died on November 16, 1272, and her father succeeded to the English throne as King Edward I. Eleanor remained very close to her brother Henry until his premature death in October 1274. Because Eleanor’s parents had left England when she was only a year old, she was much closer to her grandmother Eleanor of Provence. Eleanor did not see her parents again until their return from the crusade in August 1274.

In 1273, when Eleanor was only four years old, her father King Edward I betrothed her to the future Alfonso III, King of Aragon who was eight years old, hoping to form an anti-France alliance. In 1281, Alfonso’s father King Pedro III of Aragon asked King Edward I to send him Eleanor so that she could be raised in Aragon but Edward wanted to wait another year before sending his daughter to Aragon. However, in 1282, a war broke out between Aragon and Naples over Sicily, and King Philippe III of France and Pope Martin IV were on the side of Naples. King Edward I decided it would be a bad foreign policy move to send his daughter to Aragon at that time. In 1285, Alfonso became King of Aragon, and five years later, when King Edward I felt that it was a reasonable time, Eleanor and Alfonso III, King of Aragon were married by proxy at Westminster Abbey on August 15, 1290. However, the marriage was never consummated. On June 18, 1291, before Eleanor left for her in-person wedding in Aragon, Alfonso died from an infection.

Henri II, Count of Bar; Credit – Wikipedia

Deprived of the alliance with the Kingdom of Aragon, Edward I immediately began a search for a new groom for his eldest daughter. He chose Henri III, Count of Bar. Henri was ten years older than Eleanor and the son of Thiébaut II, Count of Bar and Jeanne de Toucy. The Duchy of Bar was a sovereign state located in what is now northeast France. An alliance with Henri against King Philippe IV of France could provide a significant military advantage. Eleanor married Henri III, Count of Bar on September 20, 1293, in Bristol, England.

Eleanor and Henri III, Count of Bar had one son and one daughter:

• Edward I, Count of Bar (circa 1295 – 1336), married Marie of Burgundy, had three children; Edward and other rulers from the Holy Roman Empire, intending to make a crusade, landed on the island of Cyprus. They either died in a shipwreck or something went wrong, and the people of Famagusta, Cyprus killed them.
• Joan of Bar, Countess of Surrey (circa 1296 – 1361), married John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey, no children

The South Ambulatory of Westminster Abbey, to the right of the main altar, where Eleanor is buried

Eleanor and Henri’s marriage lasted a little less than five years. On August 29, 1298, 29-year-old Eleanor died in Ghent, County of Flanders, now in Belgium, of unknown causes. Possibly, she died in childbirth (along with the baby), which at the end of the 13th century was a frequent cause of the premature death of women. Her father King Edward I had Eleanor’s remains returned to England, where she was buried on October 12, 1289, in Westminster Abbey in London, England in the south ambulatory between the Chapel of Edward the Confessor and the Chapel of St. Benedict.

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Works Cited

• En.wikipedia.org. 2022. Eleanor of England, Countess of Bar – Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_England,_Countess_of_Bar> [Accessed 1 September 2022].
• Flantzer, Susan, 2013. Eleanor of Castile, Queen of England. [online] Unofficial Royalty. Available at: <https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/november-28-1290-death-of-eleanor-of-castile-first-wife-of-king-edward-i-of-england/> [Accessed 1 September 2022].
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• Fr.wikipedia.org. 2022. Aliénor d’Angleterre (1269-1298) — Wikipédia. [online] Available at: <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali%C3%A9nor_d%27Angleterre_(1269-1298)> [Accessed 1 September 2022].
• Fr.wikipedia.org. 2022. Henri III de Bar — Wikipédia. [online] Available at: <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_III_de_Bar> [Accessed 1 September 2022].
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• Wilson-Lee, Kelcey, 2019. Daughters of Chivalry: The Forgotten Princesses of King Edward Longshanks. New York: Pegasus.