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Presentation summary

Sara talked about the life of the Queen including her up-bringing and her relationship with Edward I. This exceptionally influential and powerful Queen has somewhat been forgotten and Sara has spent many years researching documentary sources, such as land deeds, that reveal her influence and power. Sara drew upon these documentary resources to show that Eleanor had close contacts with Northamptonshire through land ownership. The route of her funerary cortege was influenced by the land she owned and powerful networks she had built amongst the aristocracy and religious elite. Eleanors' substantial interllect, education and interests meant that her relationship with Edward I was that of a partnership. Sara explained how the high regard in which Edward held Eleanor, and her influential networking, supports her theory why and where these expensive monuments were built to commemorate her.

Speaker biography

'Many years ago, I dreamed that when I grew up, I'd become a historian. Well, for a variety of reasons, that didn't quite work out. Instead I became a barrister, and just read lots of history in my "spare" time. Between 1990 and 2017 I was in practice at the Commercial Bar in London, Being a barrister was a pretty full on job, but every so often cases would disappear unexpectedly, and then I would get a bit of time when I could scurry off to the British Library, or my study, and do some historical digging. It was this sort of time I used for my first researches into Eleanor of Castile and which I ultimately patched together over a number of years to produce Eleanor of Castile - the Shadow Queen'.

Sara Cockerill