The Portuguese Household of an English Queen: Sources, Purposes, Social Meaning (1387-1415)

The Portuguese Household of an English Queen 271

Chapter 11 The Portuguese Household of an English Queen: Sources, Purposes, Social Meaning (1387-1415)

Manuela Santos Silva

Philippa of Lancaster, queen of Portugal (1387-1415), was the only queen of Portugal of English origin, and she left a very good reputation in the popular collective memory. The success of the family she built with her husband João I of Portugal (1385-1433) can partially explain her good fame. The political con- sequences of that achievement are also of the utmost importance: through the alliance established with England, Portugal remained independent from Castile, at least for more than a century. Nevertheless, the queen’s personality often determined her public profile.1 Soon after her death, some of her chil- dren and even her husband’s chroniclers praised her because of her high moral and behavioral qualities, especially as a wife and a mother and a model to other ladies, particularly those closest to her.2 As a queen, her household grew incrementally through the years. The rents assigned to the queen maintained her household and paid the wages of her large group of female companions and household officials. In her time, the group of towns that belonged to the queens’ dominion became fixed, and the reform and changes implemented by her in the household administra- tion remained as a framework for the following generations throughout the fifteenth century.3

1 Manuela Santos Silva, “A construção coeva da imagem de Filipa de Lencastre como uma “santa rainha,” in eds Ana Luísa Vilela, Elisa Nunes Santos, Fábio Mário da Silva, and Margarida Reffoios, Representações do mito na História e na Literatura (Évora, 2014), pp. 137-47. 2 Fernão Lopes, Crónica de D. João I, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 225-26; Livro dos Conselhos de El-Rei D. Duarte (livro da Cartuxa), diplomatic ed., transcr. João José Alves Dias, intro. A.H. de Oliveira Marques and João José Alves Dias, rev. A.H. de Oliveira Marques and Teresa F. Rodrigues (Lisbon, 1982), pp. 76, 112, 118, 237. 3 Ana Maria S.A. Rodrigues and Manuela Santos Silva, “Private Properties, Seignorial Tributes and Jurisdictional Rents: The Income of the Queens of Portugal in the Late Middle Ages,” in ed. Theresa Earenfight, Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2010), pp. 209- 28; Manuela Santos Silva, “Small Towns Belonging to the Medieval Queens of Portugal Distinctiveness, Taxation, Jurisdiction,” in ed. Adelaide Millán da Costa Petites Villes Europénnes au Bas Moyen Âge: perspectives de recherché (Lisbon, 2013), pp. 125-36.

The Marriage of Philippa of Lancaster and João I of Portugal

João I, king of Portugal, married Philippa of Lancaster in February 1387 as the result of a series of negotiations between Portugal and England, with the aim of establishing a political and military alliance against their common enemy, Castile.4 Philippa was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, and his wife, Blanche. She was a granddaughter of King Edward III of England (1327-77) and Queen Philippa of Hainault, and of Duke Henry of Lancaster and Isabel de Beaumont.5 At the time of Philippa’s wedding, England was ruled by Richard II (1377-99), her cousin, who, in the previous year at Windsor, had signed a perpetual treaty of friendship with Portugal, with military and economic repercussions in the interest of the two realms.6 It is very likely, however, that Philippa’s father, the Duke of Lancaster, had been the greatest mentor of this alliance. Through his second marriage to Constance, the daughter of the deceased king of Castile, Pedro I, he had become a pretender to the throne of his wife’s native kingdom, and wished to use Portuguese help in its conquest. With this purpose in mind, the Lancaster family disembarked in Galicia at the end of July 1386, and, some months later, the king of Portugal and the Duke of Lancaster met in Portuguese territory to negotiate a joint military campaign to invade Castilian soil. They sealed the pact with this marriage arrangement between the new king of Portugal and the duke’s eldest daughter, Philippa. As a dower, the pretender to the throne of Castile and León would give his daughter and son-in-law a narrow but long line of Castilian territory along the border with Portugal (Figure 11.1).7 Therefore, the commitment between the two parts seemed to be to everyone’s satisfaction. The marriage took place some months later in the Portuguese town of Oporto. After a religious service on 2 February 1387 (the sponsalia), the king invited all the representatives of the crown’s towns to join the clergy and the nobility in attending a public ceremony on 14 February, to join the diverse fes- tivities and, possibly, to attend the assembly of all the kingdom’s strata to decide several subjects in connection with the royal wedding and the realms’ military and financial situation.

4 P.E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), chs. 9, 14, 16. 5 T.W.E. Roche, Philippa: Dona Filipa of Portugal (London, 1971), I; Manuela Santos Silva, Filipa de Lencastre: A Rainha Inglesa de Portugal (Lisbon, 2013), pp. 21-25. 6 Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal, ch.16; Santos Silva, Filipa de Lencastre, pp. 98-102. 7 Lopes, Crónica de D. João I, vol. 2, pp. 219.