Countess Eleanor BAR LE DUC

   Other names for Eleanor were BAR LE DUC Countess and ENGLAND Princess.

   Ancestral File Number: 8WKN-6N.

   General Notes:

Princess of ENGLAND, Countess of BAR LE DUC.

BOOKS
The Political History of England 1216-1377, Vol III, T F Tout, 1905, AMS Press, P192:"...[1295] Edward strengthened his party further by marrying three of his daughters to the Duke of Brabant, the son of the Count of Holland, and the Count of Bar as the price of their adherence to the coalition..."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol III, The Three Edwards, Thomas B Costain, 1958, Doubleday & Co
p13: "This time they welcomed the mature and beautiful young woman who came ashore with the king. They cheered themselves hoarse when they saw the hungry affection withwhich both king and queen received the two surviving children of the three they had left behind; Eleanor, the oldest, who was developing into a rare beauty and who would always be the apple of her father's eye (he would even break off a matchwith the heir to the Spanish throne because he could not bear to have her go so far away)..."
p14 Family Tree: "Eleanor 1264-1298, Mar Henry Duke of Bar-le-Duc..."
p22: "There is a disagreement among authorities as to the number of child- ren presented to Edward by his queen, some saying fifteen, others claiming a total of seventeen. On one point there is accord, however. Only four of the children were sons. Of the eleven or thirteen daughters, as the case may be, a number died in their infancy and nothing is known about them, not even their names. With those who lingered just long enough to acquire names, there has been little statistical recognition. Let us pick out one at random from the long list: Eleanor, Joanna, Margaret, Berengaria, Mary, Elizabeth, Alice, Blanche, Beatrice, Katherine...
"This much is well established, that all the royal children shared the Plantagenet beauty. Some of the daughters were blond and blue-eyed, some were cast in the duskier mold of Castile. Eleanor, the first, seems to have been the great beauty of the family...
"Edward loved all his daughters devotedly, but he must have looked them over with an uneasy eye. Daughters made poor successors to a throne as contentious as that of England."
p37: "...After the death of the second son, the oldest daughter, Eleanor, became first in the line of accession. Edward even went to the length of having the members of the baronage swear fealty toher as his successor. It was recognized that the princess now needed an official home of her own, and at first she was given Maiden Hall, a retired angle of Westminster Palace. There was not much room there for an elaborate household, and the princess had to be content with `three men servants, three maids, and thre greyhounds.' Later her retinue included `her own chamberlain, keeper of the hall, groom of the bedchamber, cook, salterer, shieldman, and sumpterer, besides boys and damsels.' Her younger sisters accompanied her on visits to shrines where they left alms of stated amounts...
"When they grew older the princesses hunted with their parents and became accustomed to the spectacular characteristics of their tallfather in the field..."
p43: "The histories of three of the princesses, Eleanor, Joanna, and Margaret, seem to run in a pattern. In an age when marriages, particularly in royal families, were arranged when the principals were little more than infants, these three daughters of England's greatest king seem to have found some belated happiness. When the queen died in 1290, Eleanor, as the oldest daughter, became the most important woman of her father's court. Here, that same year,she was to find sympathy and solace in a Frenchman of great charm, the Duke of Bar-le-Duc, a new and well-considered friend of Edward. He became a constant visitor to the court and they, Eleanor and the duke, had the opportunity of close association. In her babyhood Eleanor had been affianced to the future King of Alfonso of Aragon, but they never met and destiny gathered him to his royal fathers. Three years passed and Eleanor happily married the Duke of Bar-le-Duc..."

A History ofthe Plantagenets, Vol II, The Magnificent Century, Thomas B Costain, 1951, Doubleday & Co
p326: "On October 29, 1265, Queen Eleanor returned to England, landing at Dover and accompanied by Dona Eleanora, the young wife of Prince Edward. The King and his heir met them at Dover with becoming state and ceremony.
"Dona Eleanora, who mus henceforth be called by the Anglicized form of Eleanor by which she is known in history, was now twenty years old. She had been in England atintervals before the start of the war and had borne her husband two children, a boy named John and a daughter [Eleanor]..."

The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Antonia Fraser, 1975, Alfred Knopf, p70: "Eleanor, mar (2) Henry Count of Bar, died 1298..."

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 8WKN-6N.

   Marriage Information:

Eleanor married King Alphonso III ARAGON on 15 Aug 1282. (King Alphonso III ARAGON died in 1291.)

   Marriage Information:

Eleanor also married Count Henry III BAR LE DUC on 20 Sep 1293. (Count Henry III BAR LE DUC died in 1302.)