The Origins and Development of the English Queen’s Household and Wardrobe
2023–2025
RFD18
Research into the records of medieval English royal government has been a cornerstone of Anglophone historical scholarship for centuries. Nevertheless, approaching these records with new methodologies and research questions continues to yield fresh insights into the functioning of English royal administration in the Middle Ages. Rather than focussing on the contents of these government records, examining the documents as artefacts in themselves by investigating the materials they were written upon, the shapes of the documents, and the hands that wrote them can shed new light on the administrative and record-keeping practices of royal government.
The purpose of this project is to apply this material-focussed approach to some curiously understudied royal records: the earliest surviving Household and Wardrobe accounts of the English queens. These documents survive from the thirteenth century onwards, following the creation of a separate Wardrobe for Eleanor of Provence, the queen of Henry III (r. 1216–1272). The development of these queenly departments is charted over the course of the century with the inclusion of the accounts of the two queens of Henry’s successor, Edward I (r. 1272–1307): Eleanor of Castile and Margaret of France. In examining the material features of these records’ production and use, this study aims to uncover the origins and developments of the queens’ Household and Wardrobe. It investigates how these queenly offices functioned and fitted within the larger framework of royal government, whether as independent departments or subsumed within the king’s respective administration.
People
Project lead: Abigail Armstrong