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The
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Orcish Landscape (new)
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Eowyn and Isabelle Countess of Buchan and Fife
Eowyn, the
niece of the King of Rohan, said she feared ‘a cage.
To stay
behind bars until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing
great
Although cages were
occasionally used overnight as holding places if the gaols were full,
only once
in the entirety of British history
was encaging used as a method of punishment on a woman. This was by
Longshanks
at Berwick Castle for Countess Isabelle of Buchan
and simultaneously on Bruce’s sister at Roxburgh.
Edward 1st ordered the public encaging the 20 years old Isabelle in 1306. The male head of her family had the hereditary right to crown the Scottish King, but the men were under the control of Longshanks. The Stone of Scone – a Scottish symbol of power- had been taken by Longshanks to London, so she left her husband’s home and personally crowned Robert the Bruce to help give him official stature. After Bruce’s army was defeated at the Battle of Methven, she and Bruce’s sister were betrayed by the Earl of Argyll to the English. Though her husband wanted her killed, Longshanks said that as she had not killed anybody she should have a different punishment. He personally devised the public punishment of the cage[1] in the shape of a crown.
Some have said that she was on public display inside the turret and occasionally hung over the battlements of the castle, but some have said it was permanently outside. After about 4 years and after Longshanks’ death, Edward 2nd ordered her release. She was taken to a monastery and most probably died there. Bruce’s sister was similarly treated at Roxburgh Castle.
It is not possible to prove what Isabelle personally achieved, and there was little mention of the encaging at the time as though it was accepted as part of all that took place with many of the men being hung, drawn and quartered. But as part of the efforts of many Scots people at the time, she – and Bruce’s sister at Roxburgh -suffered and helped to create the Scottish identity, and Tolkien honoured it.
In the context of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, after Eowyn had expressed her fear of a cage to Aragorn, she rode into battle in disguise. She disobeyed her Uncle who had commanded her to stay and govern Rohan if he and her brother were killed in the forthcoming battle. Emotionally, she was suicidal in her despair of Aragorn who did not return her love, she saw herself as capable of fighting for her people, and she feared Sauron would put her in a real cage if the Rohan army were defeated – as they expected to be.
Aside
[1] A translation from Rymer’s Fśdera in Norman French of Edward 1st order: she was to be kept “on one of the towers and turrets within the castle. The ‘Kage’ is to be of strong lattice-work, cross-barred with wood and well strengthened with iron, into which he must put the Countess of Buchan. In this she is to be surely guarded so that she may never escape. One or two English women of the town of Berwick, on whom there rests no manner of suspicion, are to be set over the countess as servants. She is to be guarded that no Scottish person of either sex may speak to her. Those in charge are to answer her safety with their own bodies. But she was kept like a wild beast, and gazed upon by those who frequented the castle'. (Scott 1888:36-37). She was encaged for 4 years.
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