62 Ambresbury Monastery. 
I. Evezanor or Britany, a Nun of this House. She was 
daughter of Geoffry Plantagenet (3rd son of Henry II.) and sister 
of Prince Arthur. After being imprisoned at Bristol, and (on her 
brother’s death) at Corfe Castle, she lived here but appears to have 
died at St. James’s Priory, Bristol, as Tanner (p. 479) mentions an 
order, in 1240, for the removal of her body from St. James’s to 
Ambresbury. 
IJ. Exzeanor Queen Dowacer or Kine Henry III. She was 
the second daughter and coheiress of Raymond Berenger, count of 
Provence. In 1287, fifteen years after her husband’s death, she 
took the veil here about the time of the Feast of St. John the 
Baptist (24th June), her dower being confirmed to her, and her 
profession being dated 1286. 
In M.A. Everett Wood’s “ Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies,” 
1846, is the following notice of her connexion with Ambresbury.! 
«A contemporaneous chronicler gives an interesting account of 
her conventual habits. He tells us that she filled her hands with 
good works; that she spent her whole time in orisons, vigils, and 
works of piety; that she was a mother to the neighbouring poor, 
especially to the orphans, widows and monks; and that her praise 
ought to resound above that of all other women. Besides other 
large charities, she distributed every Friday £5 in silver—a large 
sum in those days—to the neighbouring poor. When she ex- 
changed the crown for the veil—the proud title of Queen of 
England for that touchingly simple one of ‘humble nun of Fon- 
tevrand,’ Eleanor seems indeed to have laid aside the ‘ pomps and 
vanities’ of the world, and to have devoted herself, with the zealous” 
energy that characterised her ardent temperament, to works of 
religion. The present letter is in favour of the abbess of Fon- 
tevrand, who naturally looked for and found a powerful advocate 
in her royal votaress. The subsequent one appeals too forcibly to 
the feelings of domestic life to need comment. They were both 
written between 1286 and 1291, the year of Eleanora’s death. 
Much of the correspondence of this queen, scattered over many 

1 Mr. Edward Kite of Devizes was so good as to supply the information con- 
tained in the work referred to. 
