classic example of the‘Anglo-French’baronage that was so character-
istic of the period.^29 Although they produced an important family in
their own right, no great Brienne dynasty had thus emerged from either
of John’snuptials.
King Louis did not just help his kinsmen to make excellent marriages.
He also gave two of the brothers‘crown offices’in France. Alfonso
became chamberlain (chambrier), whilst John became butler.^30 Hence,
it has been concluded that Alfonso and John‘were often in the king’s
presence, and should be reckoned amongst the most influential of his
counsellors’.^31 It would be more to the point, however, to observe that
the young Briennes had become classic examples of a thirteenth-century
phenomenon. In a sense, they were‘aliens in French politics’. They were
close kinsmen of the ruler who had been encouraged into the realm and
raised into exalted positions–and to some extent, at least, this could only
be to the detriment of the better-established nobility. On the plus side,
though, the Briennes were not so obviously and provocatively‘foreign’,
in the way that, say, the Lusignans or Savoyards were at the court of the
contemporary English king, Henry III.^32
Of course, the Briennes did not just confine their attention to France.
They found ways to make their Spanish blood and connections work for
them too. All three brothers became close to the new king of Castile,
Alfonso X‘the Wise’, and witnessed a quite surprisingly large number of
charters for him between the 1250s and the 1270s (that is, during the
period when the king was making his notorious bid for the German
imperial throne). The Briennes’names appear in the following, almost
unvarying fashion:
Don Alfonso,fijo del Rey Johan Dacre, Emperador de Constantinopla et de la
Emperadriz Dona Berenguela, Conde Do, vassallo del Rey...Don Luis,fijo
del Emperador et de la Emperadriz sobredichos, Conde de Belmont, vassallo
del Rey...Don Juan,fijo del Emperador e de la Emperadriz sobredichos,
Conde de Montfort, vassallo del Rey...
(^29) SeeGenealogy 2.See also S. Cockerill,Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen(Stroud,
2014), 153, 261.
(^30) Ibid., 76 n. 77. See also É. Berger,‘Requête addressée au roi de France par un vétéran
des armées de Saint Louis et de Charles d’Anjou’,Études d’histoire au moyen âge dediées à
Gabriel Monod(Paris, 1896), 343–60; and Dunbabin,The French in the Kingdom of Sicily,
267 – 8.
(^31) J. Richard,Saint Louis: Crusader King of France, ed. S. Lloyd, tr. J. Birrell (Cambridge,
32 1992), 254.
For the best discussion of the issue of‘aliens’in a thirteenth-century context, see
N. Vincent,Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205– 1238 (Cambridge, 2002).
Across the Latin West 81