Eleanor Of Aquitaine Dbq

Eleanor of Aquitaine was an extremely influential woman who changed the way people live. She was born in the year of 1122 and lived to be 82 years old, which was extremely old in the middle ages. She was the daughter of William X and was raised to rule Aquitaine by him. At the age of fifteen, William X, died, leaving Aquitaine for Eleanor. She was forced to marry Louis VII, who became king of France. After many boring years with Louis and her two daughters, she obtained a divorce and married King Henry II of England. The fifteen years following her marriage with Henry were the most exciting years of her life. She had eight other children, among them were Richard and John Lackland. She was independent and was capable of ruling by herself. She

After marrying Henry, she travelled frequently around England. She got a good overview of people’s lifestyle, their life conditions, and what systems and what laws they used. When she travelled around, she noticed that laws would change wherever she went. Many were unfair laws were present, where thievery and trickery was always present. “Laws differed from village to village, many people didn’t know what land they owned, criminals went unpunished, innocent men were hanged.” (Brooks, pg. 76). Trial by ordeal was commonly used. People would be put to trials to see if they were guilty or not. For example, a woman had to carry a red hot iron for three steps. After three days, if the burn was larger than the size of a walnut, then she would be guilty. People believed that god’s judgement decided whether you were guilty or not. Trial by combat would also be used in the middle ages. This wasn’t very fair because someone could accuse a person with a disadvantage who would obviously lose. This would cause many thefts. “Henry offered a fairer, more logical type of trial: trial by jury.” (Brooks, pg. 77). When Henry and Eleanor went to tour England, they changed trial by combat and ordeal to trial by jury, which was a lot fairer and “closer to god’s judgement.” We still use trial by jury today. Also, in Eleanor’s late years, she made another tour of her lands. She found that values of money and the units of measurement were completely different in different places. She changed them and made a set of measurements that everyone used. She unified the money systems so that everyone used the same system of money. This got rid of a lot of confusion, and some of the measurements used back then are still used