heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

380 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
after Eleanor of Castile ;
and Edward is said to have borne, himself, both
their hearts to London, and placed the former in the church of the
Friars' Preachers, the latter in that of the Friars' Minors, now called the
Minories.
ELEANOR OF CASTILE.
The shield of Castile and Leon is certainly
the shield of Edward's
first wife, Eleanor of Castile and Leon, who was the daughter of Ferdinand,
King of Castile and Leon. His father was Alonzo IX., King of Leon ; his
mother, Berengaria, daughter of Alonzo VIII., King of Castile, who had
married Eleanor, daughter of Henry II. of England. Berengaria's brother,
Henry King of Castile, when quite a lad had married Malfada, daughter of
the King of Portugal, from whom he was divorced, and soon after he was
killed by a tile falling on his head from the roof of the palace. Upon this
the Castilians elected his sister Berengaria as their Queen, in preference to
her eldest sister, Blanche, who had married a foreigner, Louis VIII. King of
France but ;
Berengaria speedily resigned
Ferdinand, who, on his father's death, became King
the Crown of Castile to her son
of Leon also. He first
married Joanna, daughter of Simon Earl of Poictiers and Adelaide,
daughter of Alice, daughter of Louis VII., King of France, whose repudiation
by Richard Cceur de Lion in the preceding century had involved
Europe in war. From her Joanna inherited Ponthieu, which at her death
passed to her only child, Eleanor of Castile. Ferdinand's second wife
was Beatrix, daughter of the Emperor Philip. This was considered, I
suppose, a grand match, for Mariana tells us that " he was married in the
" cathedral by the Bishop of Burgos, who, the day before, said mass in his
" pontificalibus, during which the King knighted himself, there being none
"worthy to perform that act as was the custom of those times."
Edward seems to have first made acquaintance with his fair cousin
in 1255, when he came to the court of Alonzo X. (Eleanor's half-brother),
on a mission from his father, probably to remonstrate about the treatment
of his cousin Christina, daughter of the King of Denmark, by
Alonzo. He had sent for her to become his wife in the place of his queen,
Violante, whom he intended to divorce ;
but finding an unexpected prospect
of a family by her, he repudiated the young lady, and compelled his
brother Philip, Abbot of Valladolid, and Archbishop Elect of Seville, to
renounce his priestly functions and marry Christina, who died soon after.
I suppose that the young Prince Edward returned smitten, for when, soon
after, war broke out between Henry III. and Alonzo, about Gascony, the
union of the young people was proposed as the terms of peace ; and the
Bishop of Bath, and John Mansel, the King's secretary, having been
despatched from Bordeaux with this purpose, they speedily returned with