Marie de France

Author(s): John Charles Fox

Source: The English Historical Review , Apr., 1910, Vol. 25, No. 98 (Apr., 1910), pp. 303-
306
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/550653

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1910 HENRY OF BLOIS AND BRIAN FITZ-COUNT 303

Sciant igitur omnes fideles Sancte Ecclesie quod ego Brientius filius
In litteris Comitis, quem bonus rex Henricus nutriuit, et cUi arma dedit
rubris et honorem, ea que in hoc scripto assero contra Henricuni
conscript. nepoteni Regis Henrici, episcopum Wintonie et Apostolice sedis
legatum, presto sum probare uel bello uel iudicio per unum clericumn uel
per unum laicum.

Marie de Fr-ance.

THE known facts about Marie de France are related by Miss

Rickert in the introduction to her edition of Marie's Lays 1' 'I will
tell my name that I may be remembered: I am called Marie and
I am of France.' This is one of the few definite statements that
the most famous writer of medikeval lays makes about herself.
She says further that she has collected and translated her Lays in
honour of an unnamed 'noble king' to whom she intends to present
them; that she has translated her Fables ' which folk call Esope,'
from English, for love of a certain ' Count William,' and that she
has turned the Purgatory of St. Patrick into Romanz ' for God ' and
'for the convenience of lay folk.' Denis Pyramus, a contemporary,
refers to her as ' Dame Marie.' Upon these facts and upon other
evidence taken from Marie's works, Miss iRickert proceeds to the
following conclusions, partly founding them upon the authority of
Dr. Warnke, the latest editor of the Lays and Fables.
Marie belongs to the secolnd half of the twelfth century.
The ' noble king' is Henry II. ' Count William ' is William Long-
espee, Earl of Salisbury (1150-1226), a natural son of Henry II.
The following are the approximate dates of AMarie's works: (1) The
Lays, 1160-1170; (2) The Fables, 1170-1180; (3) The Purgatory,
after 1190. It is generally agreed that she did much or all of her
literary work in England. The title ' Dame' bestowed upon her
by Denis Pyramus indicates that she was a lady of rank. This is
confirmed by her attainments-she knew French, Latin, and English;
by the tone of her dedications taken in connexion with the rank of
the persons to whom they were addressed; by the refinemnent of her
work, and especially by her representation of l'amour courtois, an
artificial love-code formulated in the twelfth century under the
direction of Marie de Champagne, stepdaughter of Henry II. But
Marie's conception of l'amour courtois is not altogether orthodox
usually she favours the lover as against the husband. The atmo-
sphere which Marie unconsciously reveals in her work is the very

I Muarie de France, Seven of her Lays (1901). For a bibliography, see The Cambridge
History of English Literature i. 469; and see Dr. Karl Warnke's latest editions of the
Lays and the Fables (1900) and H. L. D. Ward's Catalogue of Romances, i. (1883),
407-415, and ii. (1893) 291-307.

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 304 MIAPRE DE FRANCE April

Court atmosphere of the time. For the rest, Miss Rickert must be
quoted at length:

A curious change in attitude is observable between the Lays and

Fables on the one hand and the Purgatory on the other. In the former
she shows no interest in religious matters. . . . Although the Purgatory
is a fairly close translation of the Latin treatise of the monk of Saltrey,
there are several indications of a religious attitude on the part of the
translator. First, the choice of subject would indicate this; again, though
the dedication to some ' bel pere ' is certainly in the original and refers to
the abbot at whose request the book was written, there seems no reason
why Marie should have translated it unless she intended it to refer to some
ecclesiastic of her acquaintance, the more so as both her other works have
elaborate dedications . . . she is doing this work ' for God ' . . . These
reasons prove nothing more than that, like Denis Pyramus, she turned in
her later years from romances to religion; and, one might add, passed
through a stage of interest in didactic literature (the Fabdes) between the
two. But as Henry II died in 1189, and as she was almost certainly
connected with his Court, it seems not impossible that she, late in life,
severed her connexion with the Court, in whatever connexion she was
there, and entered a m-onastery. This is pure conjecture, but it accords
with the known facts (pp. 145-148).

That a lady answering to this description and nearly connected

with the English royal family was living during the period 1151-
1215 I shall now endeavour to show. This was Mary, abbess of
Shaftesbury, natural daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of
Anjou, the father of Henry II.
We learn from Eyton 2 the names of the following natural
children of Geoffrey Plantagenet: Emma, Geoffrey's daughter
'by a woman of Maine,' married, perhaps secondly, in 1174, to
David ap Owen, prince of North Wales; Hameline, Earl Warren,
married 1164; Aldewide, wife of Ralph, junior prince of Bourg-
Deols; -Mary, abbess of Shaftesbury. This list does not profess
to place the children in order of birth, for the dates are not known,
nor is there evidence to show whether they were all of the
same mother. The evidence Eyton produces for Mary the abbess
is a charter granted by Henry II to the abbey of Shaftesbury in
1181,3 in which the abbess Mary is referred to as the king's
sister. This relationship is proved further by two charters granted
to the abbey by John-one, as count of Mortain (his title before he
came to the throne), undated, and the other, as king, in the seventh
year of his reign. According to the Register of Shaftesbury, which
contains copies of these charters,' John refers to the abbess Mary

2 Court, Household and Itinerary of Henry II, pp. 75 n., 85 n., 182, 244, Index,
sub tit. ' Anjou, Cointes of.'
Cited from Dugd. Mon., ii. 484, No. xx.
4 HarL MS. 61, fo. 26. The second charter is incorrectly dated 1 John,

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 1910 MARIE DE FRANCE 305

as carissima amica mea. However, in the later of the two, as tran-

scribed under the direction of the Record Commissioners,5 the word
is amita, not amica. In the charter roll the doubtful letter may be
either t or c, but as Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, the editor of the
printed copy, adopted the formaer reading, we need have no hesitation
in doing the same in regard to both of John's charters.6 It is clear,
then, that Henry II acknowledged the abbess as his sister and that
John acknowledged her as his aunt.
Geoffrey died in 1151; probably Mary was born some years
earlier. The charters just cited show that she was certainly abbess
of Shaftesbury in 1181 and in 7 John (1205). In March 1208,
upon the proclamation of the papal interdict, the custody of the
abbey, its manors, lands, and effects, was granted by the king to
Hugh de Neville, but was re-granted to the abbess the next month.7
It appears by the following charter of 52 Henry III, taken from
the Shaftesbury Register,8 that Mary was still abbess in 1215.

De carta Henrici Regis facta super inquisitione &c. abbatisse Shaftoii

de exoneratione reparationis pontis castri Sarisburiensis.
Henricus dei gratia Rex Anglie Dominus Hibernie et Dux Acquitanie
omnibus ad quos presentes littere pervenerint salutem. Quia accepimus
per inquisitionem quam per dilectum et fidelem nostrum Nicholaum de
Turry et socios suos iusticiarios nostros ultimo itinerantes in comitatum
Wilte?, quod Willelmus Longespee quondam comes Sarisburiensis
primo distrinxit Mariam tune abbatissam Shaftoii ad reparandum
pontem castri predicti durante guerra in regno nostro in tempore domini
lohannis regis patris nostri, et quod Nicholaus de Lustehull 9 quondam
vicecomes noster Wiltes tempore vacationis eiusdem abbatie secundo
distrinxit moniales dicte domus ad reparandum pontem predictum, per
quam quidem districtionem ab eadem domo cepit centum solidos, et etiam
quod abbatissa et moniales eiusdem abbatie non habent terram, redditum,
aut aliquod tenementum per quod eedem moniales ad reparationem
predicti pontis vel porte predicte [sic] teneantur.

The charter proceeds to remit the liability of the abbess and nuns
to repair the bridge and gate. The expression durante guerra in regno
nostro can only refer to the years 1215 or 1216. In May 1215 the
barons were in arms and the king was actively preparing for the
struggle. He gave orders to the earl of Salisbury concerning the
repair of the royal castles, and that of Salisbury amnongst them.'0

5 Rotuli Chartarum, 1199-1216, p. 150.

6 For the discovery of this error I am indebted to the suggestion of Mr. H. W. C.
Davis. The mistake has not been corrected in Dugdale's Mon. ed. 1846, ii. 473, note
(t), nor in the Victoria History of Dorsetshire, ii. 74.
7 Rotuli Literarum Clausarum, 1204-1224 (Rec. Comm.), 108, 110 b. 111.
8 Harl. MS. 61, fo. 94 b.
Nicholas de Lusteshull, sheriff of Wiltshire in 1246, List of Sherigs, Public Recor
Office, 1898, p. 152.
'? Rot. Claus. 1204-1224, p. 198 b; Rot. Pat. 1201-1216, p. 135.
VOL. XXV.-NO. XCVIII. X

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 306 MARIE DE FRANCE April

The earl was sheriff of Wiltshire in 1213, and probably in 1215,11 and
apparently in that capacity he was called upon to levy a distress
upon the Wiltshire possessions of the abbess of Shaftesbury towards
the repair of the castle of Salisbury. The king was enforcing a legal
right which the abbess evidently disputed, and their relations
must have been less friendly than at the time when he addressed her
as carissima antita mea. Assuming the identity of the abbess with
Marie de France, it was an unhappy stroke of fortune that selected as
the instrument bv which the king enforced his right the same 'Count
William' for love of whom the Fables had been translated some
thirty years before. In September 1216 the custody of the abbev
was granted to the prior of Wareham,12 and the name of Mary
appears no more.
It is easilv conceivable that a woman whose circumstances of
birth were those of Geoffrey Plantagenet's daughter should, under
the influence of bitter feeling, use her pen to express the unorthodox
opinion attributed to AMarie de France in connexion with l'amour
courtois.
King Alfred was the founder of the monastery of Shaftesbury,'3
and if Wright is correct in his view that Marie attributed the English
version of the Fables to Alfred,'4 it is open to observation that a work
of the founder's would be a likely subject for an abbess with literary
tastes to choose for translation, and it is not impossible, according
to the given dates, that the Fables were translated after the king's
sister entered Shaftesbury. The title ' Dame' of course would be
correctly applied to an abbess.
According to Hutchins, William Longespee gave land to the
abbey of Shaftesbury.', Agnes Lungspe, who was elected abbess in
1243,16 has not been identified as a daughter of the Earl of Salisbury,17
but the name, the position of abbess, and the date point to the
existence of some near relationship.
In the absence of conflicting evidence, may we not say that a
strong presumption is raised in favour of the identity of Marie
de France with the sister of Henry II ?
JOHN CHARLES FOX.

1" See List of Sheriffs, p. 152.

12 Rot. Pat. 1201-1216, p. 197. In November 1216 the king informs the prior of
Wareham of the appointment of ' J.,' formerly sub-prioress, as abbess of Shaftesbury,
Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1216-1225, p. 7.
3 Dugdale, MIon. ii. 471.
4 Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 396; but see Freeman's
Norman Conquest, iv. 796-8.
15 Dorsetshire, 3rd ed., iii. 26. Hutchins seems to rely on the Shaftesbury Register
(Harl. MS. 61) as his authority, but I have not been able to find the passage.
16 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1232-1247, p. 397.
'7 See Dict. of Nat. Biogr., sub nom. 'William Longespee.'

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