Edward II

Brief Biographies: The Fisher Family

2012-03-04T14:55:00.002+01:00

Just a quick post today (I've had an eye injury and haven't been able to come online for a while) about a family who served Edward II: the Fishers.

Edmund Fisher, Fissher, Fisshere or Fyssher, whose first name almost always appears on record as the diminutive 'Monde' - Edmund in the early fourteenth century was spelt 'Esmon' or 'Edmon' - was a valet of Edward II's chamber by February 1323 and probably a lot earlier, but unfortunately few of Edward's chamber accounts survive. That month, he was given a gift of five shillings by the king (paie a Monde Fissher vadlet de la chambre de doun le Roi v s). He often appears in Edward's extant chamber accounts of the 1320s doing errands for the king, usually called 'valet of the king's chamber', and in January 1326 'the king's fisherman', as per his name, given three shillings by Edward to buy himself fishing boots (botes p' lewe, literally 'boots for the water').

Monde's son Wille was also a member of Edward II's household, and appears in the records as a page of the king's chamber and later as a huntsman. What I love is that he is almost always called Litel Wille, Little Will. (Edward also had servants called Litel Colle, Little Colin, and Grete Hobbe, Big Rob. So cute.) Although Edward's chamber accounts were written in French, the nickname was always written in English, Litel or Lytle, not Petit, although I have seen it once in Latin, Parvo Willelmo. The name Fisher always appears in English too, not in French (le Peschour, it would have been).

In November 1322, Edward gave Litel Wille and another page of his chamber, Wille de Donestaple, nine pence to buy themselves shoes, and in August 1325 the two young men and two others received money from him to buy themselves robes. From October 1325 to January 1326, 'Lyttle Wille' was sent to Somerset and Dorset with Richard Beauchamp 'the king's huntsman', six other men, forty-one 'coursing hounds' and eleven greyhounds, for which he was paid seven pence a day, a very generous amount for a young man of his rank. In late April 1326, 'Litel Wille Fyssher, page of the king's chamber' was given a gift of five shillings "for what he did when the king mounted his horse." (Unfortunately, whatever he did is not specified.) Edward was leaving Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire that day, and Litel Wille was forced to remain behind, ill; presumably the five shillings was at least partly intended in aid of any expenses he incurred while not travelling with the court.

Monde Fisher's wife, Wille's mother, named Isabelle or Sibille for short, first appears in Edward II's chamber account in the autumn of 1325, receiving a gift of five shillings in exchange for sending him fish. On 1 April 1326, Edward sent 'Esmon le Fisshere' to the priory of Coventry on his retirement; it was a usual and frequent occurrence for kings to send their former servants to a convent to receive sustenance there for the rest of their lives when they retired. Monde was still with the king at Sturry in Kent on 12 June, however, when Edward gave ten shillings to "Monde Fissher, one of the valets of the king's chamber, remaining ill at the said Sturry." Edward departed that day for Leeds Castle, leaving Litel Wille behind with a gift of two shillings to help look after his father, but sadly Monde "was called to God" (fust a dieu commande) the next day. Edward gave twelve pence to "Peres, boy of Monde Fissher" who came to inform him of Monde's death.

Edward met Monde's widow Sibille while travelling between Sheen and Byfleet on 2 July. He gave her a gift of twenty shillings (a pound), and also gave ten shillings to her and Monde's daughter Joan ('Johane' in contemporary spelling), his chamber account noting that the money was given to the women in his presence. On 25 July, Edward encountered Sibille (her name this time recorded as 'Isabell') again, also when travelling between Sheen and Byfleet - this was the day he met a man named John de Walton who gave him a bucket of fish and who "sang before the king" - and she gave him and his niece Eleanor Despenser, travelling with him, a present of loach. He gave her five shillings in return.

This is the last instance I can find of Edward II's association with the Fisher family, though Litel Wille was named as one of Edward III's huntsmen in 1330. I hope he thrived. I'm so fond of him. :-) I like the glimpse into the lives of some of the lower-ranked people who served Edward and how he looked after them, and also into contemporary nicknames - Monde, Wille, Sibille. Finally, it's interesting to see that Monde, who really was a fisherman, had the name Fisher, and that his son Wille bore the same name, despite not being a fisherman to the best of my knowledge. He wasn't called 'Hunter' or 'Page' or 'of the Chamber' or 'of Byfleet' or anything else which might have served to identify him and distinguish him from other men named Wille. Are we seeing part of the evolution of fixed English surnames here?

Sources

The National Archives E 101/379/17
Society of Antiquities Library MS 122
Calendar of Memoranda Rolls Michaelmas 1326-Michaelmas 1327
Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327

Some Ancestors Of Edward II

2012-02-24T16:51:00.001+01:00

I've been doing some research into a few of Edward II's ancestors lately. I didn't know that he had some Polish blood: one of his great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers was Władysław II, High Duke of Poland and duke of Silesia (1105-1159), whose daughter Richeza married Alfonso VII of Castile. (And that's interesting in itself - a marital alliance between Spain and Poland in the twelfth century.) Richeza and Alfonso's only child Sancha married Alfonso II of Aragon, and their son Alphonse was count of Provence and the grandfather of Edward's paternal grandmother Eleanor:

Edward II - Edward I - Eleanor of Provence, d. 1291 - Ramon Berenger V, count of Provence, d. 1245 - Alphonse, count of Provence, d. 1209 - Sancha of Castile, d. 1208 - Richeza of Poland, d. 1198 - Władysław II, d. 1159.

Władysław's grandfather Sviatopolk II, the father of his mother Sbaslawa or Zbyslava, was the ruler of Kievan Rus and prince of Novgorod. (My friend Christy Robinson knows a lot about this family.) Władysław's father was Bolesław III Wrymouth (d. 1138), prince of Poland. Through Bolesław's mother Judith, Edward II was descended from kings of Bohemia, German dukes and counts, the grand dukes of Kiev (again) and was the ten greats grandson of Olga Prekrasna (d. 969), wife of Igor I of Kiev, who converted to Christianity in Constantinople and took the name Yelena or Helen. She was canonised as a saint and equal-to-the-Apostles in 1547 and is considered the first saint of the Russian Orthodox church, instrumental in spreading Christianity in Russia.

The mother of Richeza of Poland and wife of Władysław II was the German noblewoman Agnes of Babenberg. Agnes' father Leopold III (d. 1136), margrave of Austria - Edward II's six greats grandfather - is the patron saint of Austria. Agnes of Babenberg's mother Agnes of Franconia (d. 1143) was the mother of Conrad III of Germany, the first king of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, by her first marriage. She was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (d. 1106), Edward II's seven greats grandfather, by his first wife Bertha of Savoy. Henry IV is most famous for being forced to wait for three days in the snow at Canossa in 1077 by Pope Gregory VII, who had excommunicated him.

Also via Agnes of Babenberg and her father Leopold III, Edward II was the ten greats grandson of Otto Orseolo, doge of Venice from 1008 to 1026, and his wife Sarolta Arpad, daughter of Geza, Grand Prince of the Magyars. Sarolta's brother Stephen (or István, d. 1038) was the first king of Hungary and was canonised in 1083; his feast day is still a national holiday in Hungary. Edward II is descended from Otto Orseolo and Sarolta's daughter Froila. Geza's great-grandfather was Arpad Arpad (d. c. 907), Edward's fourteen greats grandfather, second Grand Prince of the Magyars (after his father Almos).

Another saint in the family, ancestor of Richeza of Poland and Edward II's thirteen greats grandmother, is Saint Ludmila of Bohemia (d. 921), who is a patron saint of Bohemia, the Czech Republic, widows, people who have problems with their in-laws, and - of all people - duchesses. Her grandson Boleslav, Edward's ancestor, was the brother of St Wenceslas (as in 'Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen, where the snow lay round about...').

Olaf Skötkonung, also known as Olaf Eiríksson, king of Sweden from 995 to 1022, was Edward II's eight or nine greats grandfather through three lines: via Richeza of Poland, and via both of Edward's parents, who were descended from Anna Yaroslavna (also known as Anne of Kiev), daughter of Yaroslav, prince of Novgorod and Kiev and granddaughter of Olaf. Anna married Henry I of France (d. 1060). Olaf Skötkonung's maternal grandmother was Dobrava of Prague, daughter of Boleslas, king of Bohemia and an English mother, Adiva or Edith, daughter of Edward the Elder, king of Wessex, son of Alfred the Great (d. 899). Edward II was descended from Alfred the Great many times over, including via Alfred's daughter Ælfthryth and her son Adalulf (d. 933), count of Boulogne. Edward the Elder's daughter Edith (d. 946) married Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 973), Edward II's ten greats grandparents

Edward II was the great-great-grandson of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine; he was also the great-great-grandson of Alais of France, daughter of Eleanor's former husband Louis VII of France, who was betrothed to Henry and Eleanor's son Richard Lionheart but may have been Henry's mistress.

Edward II - Eleanor of Castile, d. 1290 - Jeanne de Dammartin, queen of Castile and countess of Ponthieu, d. 1279 - Marie, lady of Ponthieu, d. 1250 - Alais of France, countess of Ponthieu and the Vexin, d. c. 1220.

I really like one of Isabella of France's lines: she was the seven greats granddaughter of Harold Godwinson, the king of England killed at the battle of Hastings in 1066, via Harold's daughter Gytha, who married Vladimir II Monomakh, grand duke of Kiev, in about 1070. It makes me happy to think that the kings of England from Edward III onwards are Harold Godwinson's descendants:

Isabella of France - Philip IV, d. 1314 - Isabel of Aragon, queen of France, d. 1271 - Yolande of Hungary, queen of Aragon, d. 1251 - Andras II, king of Hungary, d. 1235 - Bela III, king of Hungary, d. 1196 - Euphrosyne of Kiev, d. before 1186 - Mstislav I, grand duke of Kiev, d. 1132 - Gytha Haroldsdaughter, d. 1107 - Harold Godwinson, king of England, d. 1066.

Talking of an Anglo-Saxon connection, as well as another saint in the family, Edward II was the seven greats grandson of Edmund Ironside, briefly king of England for a few months in 1016 until his defeat in battle by Cnut, via Edmund's son Edward the Exile (who grew up in Hungary) and Edward's daughter Saint Margaret, queen of Scotland (who married Malcolm Canmore):

Edward II - Edward I - Henry III - King John - Henry II - Empress Matilda, d. 1167 - Edith (Matilda) of Scotland, queen of England, d. 1118 - Saint Margaret of England/Hungary, queen of Scotland, d. 1093 - Edward the Exile, d. 1057 - Edmund Ironside, d. 1016.

Edward II's great-great-great-great-grandmother Petronilla (c. 1135-1173) was queen of Aragon in her own right. Her father Ramiro was a monk forced to give up his monastic vows temporarily to become king of Aragon on the death of his childless brother; he returned to his monastery after fathering Petronilla (by Agnes of Poitou, aunt of Edward II's great-great-grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine) and betrothing her as a baby to Raymond Berenger IV, count of Barcelona. Petronilla abdicated in 1163 in favour of her young son Alfonso II, and acted as regent for him until her death the following year.

Edward II - Edward I - Eleanor of Provence - Raymond Berenger, count of Provence - Alphonse, count of Provence - Alfonso II, king of Aragon, d. 1196 - Petronilla, queen of Aragon, d. 1164 - Ramiro 'the Monk', king of Aragon, d. 1147.

Edward's great-grandmother Berenguela (1180-1246, granddaughter through her mother of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine) became queen of Castile in her own right on the death of her brother Enrique I in 1217, but immediately abdicated in favour of her son Fernando III. She acted as her son's regent for a few years and was still his chief adviser after he came of age.

The first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques (c. 1109-1185), was Edward's great-great-great-grandfather:

Edward II - Eleanor of Castile - Fernando III of Castile and Leon, d. 1252 - Alfonso IX of Leon, d. 1230 - Urraca of Portugal, d. 1188 - Afonso Henriques, d. 1185.

Leo VI Mamikonian, emperor of Byzantium (d. 912), was Edward's twelve greats grandfather, by his second wife Zoe Zaoutzaina. Leo was known as 'the Wise' or 'the Philsopher', and his paternity is uncertain, though his mother was certainly the Empress Eudokia Ingerina, wife of one Byzantine emperor and mistress of another.

Edward's thirteen greats grandmother may have been Auria or Oria bint Lopo, who may have been the wife of Fortún Garcés, king of Pamplona (d. 905). She came from the Banu Qasi dynasty of northern Spain, who converted to Islam in the early eighth century following the Umayyad conquest of much of the Iberian peninsula.

Edward was descended from the Bagratuni or Bagratid dynasty, who ruled Armenia as princes and kings from the eighth to eleventh centuries. For example, Varaz-Tirots Bagratuni, Marzpan (i.e. governor-general) of Armenia from 628 to 635, was Edward's twenty greats grandfather (roughly).

The Well-Connected Anjou/Naples Siblings

2012-02-20T15:40:00.002+01:00

A post today about some of Edward II's first cousins once removed and second cousins.

Edward's paternal grandmother Eleanor of Provence was the second of four sisters, daughters of Count Raymond Berenger V of Provence and Beatrice of Savoy, who all became queens (for more information about them, see Nancy Goldstone's non-fiction book Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe, and also Sherry Jones' forthcoming novel Four Sisters, All Queens). The eldest, Marguerite, married Louis IX of France in 1234 and was the mother of Philip III (and others); Eleanor married Henry III of England in 1236 and was the mother of Edward I (and others); Sanchia married Henry III's brother Richard of Cornwall, future king of Germany, in 1243, and was the mother of Edmund, earl of Cornwall; Beatrice married Louis IX's brother Charles of Anjou, future king of Sicily, in 1246, and was the mother of Charles, king of Naples (and others). Philip III, Edward I, Edmund of Cornwall, Charles of Naples and their siblings were thus all very closely related, being the offspring of one set of sisters and two sets of brothers.

It's the descendants of Charles, king of Naples (c. 1248/54 - 5 May 1309) whom I mainly want to talk about today. His father Charles of Anjou was crowned king of Sicily in 1266; the story of how he took the kingdom from Manfred, illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and then lost it again to Manfred's daughter Constanza and her husband Pedro III of Aragon and died in exile, is a fascinating one. The other children of Beatrice of Provence (d. 1267) and Charles of Anjou (d. 1285) were: Beatrice (d. 1275), who married Philip de Courtenay, titular emperor of Constantinople, and whose only child Catherine married Philip IV of France's brother Charles of Valois; Blanche (d. 1270), who married Robert of Béthune, count of Flanders; Philip (d. 1277), titular king of Thessalonica; Isabella (d. 1304), who married László IV, king of Hungary.

Charles of Naples - first cousin once removed of Edward II, whose wedding to Isabella of France he attended the year before his death - had many titles: king of Albania, king of Naples, prince of Salerno, prince of Achaea (part of the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece), prince of Taranto (a port in Apulia, southern Italy), count of Provence and count of Anjou. He was not, however, king of Sicily as his father had been; the kingdom passed to Pedro III of Aragon and then to two of his sons and their descendants. He is known to history as Charles 'the Lame' (le Boiteux in French). In 1270, Charles married Marie of Hungary (c. 1257-1323), sister of László IV who married his sister Isabella. Two of Marie's sisters were queens of Serbia, while the fourth married the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, whose second wife was Edward II's first cousin once removed Yolande of Montferrat. Charles of Naples and Marie of Hungary's many children, Edward II's second cousins, are the main focus of this post:

- Charles Martel, titular king of Hungary (1271-1295). The eldest son and named after his father Charles of Naples and his grandfather Charles of Anjou. Charles Martel ('Hammer') was seen by some as the successor of his mother's childless brother László IV of Hungary, though never ruled the country. His son Charles (or Károly in Hungarian) sent to Hungary as a child by his grandfather Charles of Naples in 1300, did successfully press the family's claim, however, and eventually ruled the country, and was also king of Croatia. Charles Martel married Clementia of Hapsburg (also d. 1295), one of the daughters of Rudolf, king of Germany and duke of Austria, Styria and Carinthia; their daughter Clemence married Louis X of France in 1315 and was the mother of the short-lived John I 'the Posthumous' of France. (Clementia of Hapsburg's brother Hartmann was betrothed to Edward II's sister Joan of Acre from 1278 to 1281, when he drowned in the Rhine.) Charles Martel died the month before his twenty-fourth birthday.

- Marguerite, countess of Anjou in her own right, countess of Valois (1273-1299). Marguerite took Anjou with her as dowry when she married Philip IV's brother Charles, count of Valois (1270-1325) in 1290 (his second wife was Marguerite's first cousin Catherine de Courtenay, titular empress of Constantinople, mentioned above; his third was Mahaut of Châtillon or of St Pol, whose sister Marie married Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke). Marguerite was the mother of Philip VI, the first Valois king of France, and through her daughter Jeanne, the grandmother of Edward III's queen Philippa of Hainault.

- Saint Louis of Toulouse (1274-1297). Elected bishop of Toulouse just a few months before his death at the age of twenty-three, the same age as his elder brother, having previously been elected archbishop of Lyon in 1294. Louis was canonised by Pope John XXII in April 1317, his feast day 19 August, the date of his death; the great-uncle after whom he was presumably named, Louis IX of France, had been canonised in 1297. For more info about him, see here.

- Robert 'the Wise', king of Naples, titular king of Sicily and Jerusalem, prince of Salerno, duke of Calabria, count of Provence, Forcalquier and Piedmont (1277-1343). The fourth child and third son of Charles of Naples and Marie of Hungary, and the eldest to outlive their father. I can hardly do justice to Robert's long and eventful life here, or to his contested claims to the throne of Jerusalem, which came from Marie of Antioch (d. 1277). Edward II tactfully addressed his kinsman as 'king of Sicily and Jerusalem' when he unsuccessfully tried to claim a share of the county of Provence from him in 1323. Robert married firstly Violante or Yolande, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon and Constanza of Sicily - two of her brothers really did reign as kings of Sicily - and secondly Sancha, daughter of Jaime, king of Majorca. His heir when he died was his granddaughter Jeanne or Joanna, whose mother was one of the many daughters of the prolific Charles of Valois, by his third wife Mahaut of Châtillon. The notorious, much-married and murdered Queen Jeanne is the subject of another of Nanc y Goldstone's books.

- Philip, titular emperor of Constantinople, king of Albania, prince of Achaea, prince of Taranto, despot of Epirus*, lord of Durazzo** (1278-1333).
* a successor state of the Byzantine Empire in Greece and Albania

** a city in Albania.

I've mentioned Philip of Taranto before, as he sent a violist named Robert Daverouns to Edward II in 1316. In 1294 he married Thamar Angelina Komnena, great-niece of the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (Edward II wrote to Michael's son Andronikus, and his cousin Empress Eirene, in 1314, asking them to help free Sir Giles Argentein). Philip and Thamar's marriage was not successful: Thamar, raised in the Orthodox faith, was forced to convert to Catholicism and renamed Caterina, and in 1309, Philip accused her of adultery with no fewer than forty noblemen, annulled their marriage and imprisoned her. She died in 1311. Philip then married, in 1313, his first cousin once removed Catherine of Valois, daughter of - who else? - Charles of Valois and his second wife Catherine de Courtenay, titular empress of Constantinople. Philip's children included: Jeanne, who married Oshin, king of Armenia; Marguerite, who married the titular duke of Athens; and Philip, despot of Romania, who married his first cousin Violante, daughter of Jaime II of Aragon, who had once been proposed as a bride for Edward III.

- Blanche, queen of Aragon (c. 1280-1310). Blanche married Jaime II, king of Aragon, in 1295. Jaime succeeded his brother Alfonso III, who was planning his marriage to Edward II's sister Eleanor when he died suddenly in 1291. He himself first married Sancho IV of Castile's eldest daughter Isabel, but had the marriage annulled when Sancho died in 1295, and married Blanche soon afterwards. Blanche's son succeeded as Alfonso IV in 1327; her grandson the future Pedro IV (b. 1319) was betrothed to Edward II's younger daughter Joan in 1325; Edward had previously made plans to marry his son and heir Edward III to Blanche and Jaime II's youngest daughter Violante (b. 1310). Edward II said in February 1325 that Jaime "is old and decrepit and it is not certain that he is not dead," although Jaime lived for another two years and nine months. After Blanche's death aged about thirty, Jaime married Marie de Lusignan, daughter of the king of Cyprus, and fourthly Elisenda de Montcada, daughter of an Aragonese nobleman.

- Raymond Berenger, count of Andria (1281-1307). Died unmarried.

- John, a priest (1283-1308), and Tristan, born and died 1284.

- Eleanor or Alienore, queen of Sicily (1289-1341). She married Fadrique (Frederick), king of Sicily, one of the sons of Pedro III of Aragon and Constanza of Sicily, whose sister Violante married her brother Robert 'the Wise'. Her children included Pedro, king of Sicily, and Constanza, who married firstly Henry of Lusignan, king of Cyprus, and secondly Leo IV, king of Armenia.

- Marie, queen of Majorca (1290-1346/47). Married in 1309 to Sancho I, king of Majorca, who died childless in 1324. His father was the brother of Pedro III of Aragon, of Isabel, who married Philip III of France, and of Violante, who married Alfonso X of Castile.

- Peter 'Tempesta', count of Eboli and Gravina (1291-1315). Died childless.

- John, lord of Durazzo, count of Gravina (1294-1336). (Another John.) In 1318 he married, as her third husband, Matilda of Hainault, after abducting her with the connivance of his brothers Robert and Philip, but their marriage was annulled for non-consummation in 1321. John married secondly Agnes of Périgord, by whom he had three sons.

- Beatrice, Countess of Andria (1295-1335). She married firstly the decades-older Azzo VIII d'Este, marchese of Ferrara, who died in January 1308 when she was still barely pubescent, and secondly Bertrand III des Baux, count of Andria, with whom she had one daughter.

Be My Valentine, Not A Dummy

2012-02-14T15:12:00.000+01:00

Some years ago, Edward II penned a deeply moving Valentine letter to Piers Gaveston, using the Valentine Generator. He now writes one to Hugh Despenser.

To my delicious hedgehog,

You are the pearl of my surcoat. I want to smooch with you more than any Castilian in the whole privy.

The first time we roller-bladed, I felt scrumptious in my liver, and I was so anguished that I could barely yodel. I knew that we would prevaricate together for a minute and a half.

Whenever you stampede, it makes me pout awesomely and belch like a sumptuous ruby.

I will fondle with you fluffily until the Tower of London throbs and the parliament reveres.

Magnificent Valentine's Day!
Love, your disgruntled heretic
Edward, king of England, lord of Ireland, prince of Wales, duke of Aquitaine, earl of Chester and count of Ponthieu.

More of the Edward II for Dummies series, from here :-)

Some anagrams of 'Edward of Caernarfon' (from here):

A Cad Narrow Offender

A Facade Nod Err Frown
A New Afforded Rancor
A Canon Forward Freed
A Farce Adorn Frowned

A Dancer Narrowed Off

A Racoon Dwarf Fender

Isabella of France:

A Faecal Snob Lifer
A Facial Noble Serf
A Rascal Noble Fief
A[n] Anal Bile Scoffer
A Fabric Sale Felon

Piers Gaveston:

Grapevines Sot
Envisage Strop
Avengers Posit
Veteran Gossip
Overeats Pings
Vintage Posers
Onstage Vipers
Pensive Groats
Pats Sovereign

Hugh Despenser:

He Spurns Hedge
He Hugs Spender
Her Pens Gushed
Nerds Hug Sheep
Hug Ends Herpes

A Plot To Free Some Contrariants, 1323

2012-02-11T15:47:00.001+01:00

I've already written several posts about Edward II's successful campaign against the Contrariants in 1321/22, and the executions of twenty or twenty-two men which followed. In addition, a few dozen men were imprisoned - various chroniclers give the numbers as sixty-two, eighty-three or a hundred [1] - while others were released in and after 1322 after being forced to acknowledge that they owed large debts to the king in return for a pardon. The men imprisoned included Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk; Maurice, Lord Berkeley and his son Thomas, Edward's future captor at Berkeley Castle; Edward's former favourite Sir Hugh Audley and his father Hugh Audley the elder. I have no idea what Edward II's long-term plans were regarding the imprisoned Contrariants; did he intend to keep them locked up forever, or did he think that one day he might be secure enough on his throne to release them? That day never came, and with the exception of a handful of escapees (Hugh Audley, Robert Walkfare, and, of course, Roger Mortimer), the Contrariants imprisoned in 1322 remained there until freed after Mortimer and Isabella's invasion in 1326.

Several chroniclers describe a plot to free several of the Contrariants from captivity in early 1323, and there are also references to the plot in official government sources and an extant letter of Edward II. Maurice, Lord Berkeley and Hugh Audley the Elder were imprisoned at Wallingford Castle in Berkshire - which had formerly belonged to Piers Gaveston - and, according to a long account of the plot in the Vita Edwardi Secundi [2], "a certain esquire who had long been in his [Berkeley's] service used often to visit him...it happened one day that this esquire with three or four companions entered the castle, by leave of the guard, and because his visit was customary it was in no way suspicious. The same night Maurice invited the constable to dine with him, and all the doorkeepers and watchmen in the castle as well. As they were dining the esquire and his companions suddenly rose and demanded the keys of the castle, threatening with death anyone who resisted." The constable handed over the keys, and the squire let in twenty or so others, intending "to warn certain friends and to get his lord Maurice away at cockcrow together with the other prisoners." Unluckily for them, a boy "living at the outer gate, realising that affairs in the inner ward were not as they should be, secretly slipped out, went to the mayor of the town, and at once reported that the castle was lost, and that many strangers had entered." Thus was the plan foiled, and the sheriff arrived in the morning and ordered the men inside to surrender. The Vita says that Edward II's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, and Hugh Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester, happened to be in the area, and entered the castle, where they found "Maurice in custody as usual, and the rest in the chapel." Berkeley "stoutly maintained that he had plotted nothing to the prejudice of the lord king...". (A leaf of the Vita is unfortunately missing at this point, so the story remains unfinished.)

The Sempringham continuation of the Livere de Reis de Britanie has a totally different account of events [3]: it says that on 11 January 1323 Wallingford Castle was captured by Maurice Berkeley's wife, and that they held the castle for about two weeks until Edward II's forces besieged it and they surrendered. The Livere says that they were aided by Sir John Maltravers, Sir Edmund de la Beche and Hodgkin de Wandon, who "chiefly held the castle, [and] were bound and brought before the king." Two interesting things here. John Maltravers was another of Edward of Caernarfon's captors at Berkeley Castle in 1327, and is usually assumed to have fled from England after the battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322, though it's not impossible that he was still there or had returned temporarily and was trying to create as much trouble for Edward II as possible (his father John Maltravers the Elder was still in England and at liberty, and attacked a fair in Dorset in or shortly before October 1325). [4] Secondly, Maurice Berkeley's wife - his second wife, whom he married in 1316 or thereabouts when she was already in her mid-fifties - was Isabel de Clare, the much older half-sister of Eleanor de Clare and thus Hugh Despenser the Younger's sister-in-law. (Much as I'd love to think of Isabel, the eldest child of Gilbert 'the Red', earl of Gloucester and then aged sixty, holding a castle with her husband against the king and some of his powerful nobles, I'm afraid I just don't think the annalist's account is correct.) The Brut chronicle contains a short account similar to the Vita's [5], naming Maurice Berkeley's squire as Roger Wauton, and saying that Sir Edmund Beche and Sir John 'Goleinton' were taken to Edward II at Pontefract after the castle's surrender and that Wauton was drawn and hanged at York. John 'Goleinton' has been identified as John Wilington, a Contrariant and adherent of John, Lord Giffard, and pardoned in November 1323; John's brother Henry and Giffard were executed in 1322. [6]

Edward II, at Stowe Park in Lincolnshire, heard of Maurice Berkeley and his friends' plot on 17 January - perhaps six days later, according to the date in the Sempringham continuation - when he wrote to the constable of Skipton Castle to see to the castle's safety and report to him, because of "some strange and diverse news we have heard" (par ascuns estranges et diverses novelles qe nous avons oy). [7] On the same date, he sent his household steward and the sheriffs of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire to "besiege the castle of Walyngford and to arrest all rebels who have entered therein." [8] The steward of the royal household was Sir Richard Damory, elder brother of Edward's former favourite and nephew-in-law Sir Roger Damory, who had died in the Contrariant rebellion ten months previously. (Natalie Fryde's Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, p. 261 note 26, misses Edward's letter and the order to Richard Damory and says that the king heard of the plot on 20 January.) On 6 June 1323, Edward II paid seven pounds, six shillings and eight pence to Drogo Barentyn, sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, "which he expended by order of Edmund, earl of Kent, Hugh, earl of Winchester, and Richard Damory, steward of the king's household, whom the king appointed to take into his hands Walyngford castle, which was lately held against the king...". The money included payments to seven footmen from 27 January till 14 February and twenty-three footmen from 14 to 23 February, and for four men to bring one 'Thomas de Fencote, a prisoner' to the king, and a horse for him. [9] (I love this bit: "6s 8d. for the expenses of the said four men returning home for five days; and 20d. for the expenses of the horse returning for the same time.")

Edward II cannot have been a happy man in early 1323; the rebellion of Andrew Harclay, earl of Carlisle, came to light at the same time, and that of Robert Lewer had taken place only a few weeks before. Rightly or wrongly, the king suspected that Maurice Berkeley's attempt to escape from Wallingford was part of a wider plot to free other Contrariants from the Tower of London and Windsor Castle, a suspicion he gave voice to in November 1323, some months after Roger Mortimer's escape from the Tower on 1 August. [10] On 5 February 1323, Edward ordered a commission of oyer et terminer "touching the persons who seditiously entered the castle of Walyngford, co. Berks, wherein Maurice de Berkeleye and Hugh Daudele, the elder, and other prisoners were detained, and held it against the king; as the king now understands that the said Maurice and Hugh and the other prisoners consented thereto, and kept the castle against the king jointly with the said persons," a commission repeated on 7 April with the addition of Windsor and "other of the king's castles." [11]

Maurice Berkeley and the elder Hugh Audley both died in 1326, before the invasion of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella, as did Mortimer's uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk. Berkeley was fifty-five, Mortimer of Chirk about seventy, Audley in his late fifties or early sixties. Given their ages, I don't think we need to look for a sinister explanation for their deaths, and there is nothing to suggest they weren't natural; none of the younger Contrariants imprisoned in the 1320s, who would have been more of a threat to Edward and the Despensers, died in captivity. The account of the plot given in the Vita, with Maurice Berkeley allowed frequent guests and permitted to wine and dine his captors, and Roger Mortimer's escape from the Tower later that year by putting poison in his captors' wine while he ate with them and the constable of the Tower, argues that the Contrariants' imprisonment was hardly onerous. The unsuccessful plot of 1323 should, however, be seen as part of the general unrest in England in 1323 and unhappiness at the king's incompetence and his and the Despensers' greed and tyranny.

Sources

1) G.L. Haskins, 'A Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II', Speculum, 14 (1939), p. 83; The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 62; Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 100.
2) Vita Edwardi Secundi, pp. 129-131.
3) Le Livere de Reis de Britanie e le Livere de Reis de Engletere, ed. John Glover, p. 347.
4) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1324-1327, p. 232.
5) The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, vol. 1, p. 231.
6) Seymour Phillips, Edward II, p. 439 note 189. See also Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II, pp. 166-167; Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326, pp. 155-156.
7) Phillips, Edward II, p. 438 note 187.
8) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 234.
9) Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327, pp. 656-657.
10) Foedera 1307-1327, pp. 537-538.
11) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 257, 314.

Edward II Non-Fiction

2012-01-31T14:53:00.001+01:00

Today's post is about the five biographies of Edward II published in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and lists other non-fiction works about him. The five biographies are:

Seymour Phillips, 2010.

- Seymour Phillips, Edward II (2010). Part of the Yale English Monarchs series (W. Mark Ormrod's biography of Edward III, in the same series, was published recently), and a superb achievement likely to remain the standard work on Edward II's reign for many years. Useful both for the reader who knows little about Edward's reign and for anyone with more knowledge of the era, and much more sympathetic to the king than accounts of him usually are, without whitewashing his many mistakes and character flaws. There are great reviews here and here, and one by Professor Nigel Saul here. (And a really dire, extremely ill-informed one here.)

- Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II: His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284-1330 (2003). Also a scholarly, exhaustive look at Edward's life and reign, especially useful for its chapters on what was happening in Scotland, Ireland and Gascony at the time. Perhaps not the best bet unless you already know a lot about the era, however, but a must-read for anyone seriously interested in Edward II.

Harold F. Hutchison, 1971.

- Mary Saaler, Edward II 1307-1327 (1997). A small book of less than 150 pages to cover the period from 1284 to 1327, for a general audience. There are a few interesting details in it I haven't seen elsewhere, such as Edward's owning falcons in the 1310s named Beaumont and Damory after his kinsman Henry Beaumont and friend Roger Damory, but there are also many inaccuracies, and overall I'd describe it as oddly disappointing and inadequate.

Caroline Bingham, 1973.

- Caroline Bingham, The Life and Times of Edward II (1973). A gorgeously illustrated overview of Edward's life and reign, aimed at a general audience. Although necessarily dated now, and states the red-hot poker death as fact, this is a really good place to start if you're interested in Edward II and his reign, and it treats him sympathetically and makes many insightful points. Definitely recommended (as long as you take some of it with a pinch of salt!).

- Harold F. Hutchison, Edward II: The Pliant King (1971). Another short overview of Edward's reign for general readers, also necessarily dated as it's over forty years old now, but a good little read to get you started. The useful appendices cite some of the Ordinances of 1311 and several of Edward's extant letters of 1305, and the epilogue defends him against charges made against him in 1327 and ever since.

Other works of non-fiction about Edward II and his reign:

Mary Saaler, 1997

- Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307 (1946). Terrific examination of Edward II before his accession to the throne. I love this one.

Roy Martin Haines, 2003.

- Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326 (1979). A much-used textbook, but not one I have much time for, I'm afraid; very useful in some aspects, especially Edward's finances, but full of errors, and ruined for me at least by Mrs Fryde's obvious dislike of Edward, which leads her into some unfair judgements on him.

- Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson, eds., The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives (2006). Superb collection of academic essays about aspects of Edward II's personality and reign, including his sexuality, his education and his foreign policy.

- James Conway Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II: Its Character and Policy (1918). Not for beginners. :-)

- Roy Martin Haines, Death of a King: an account of the supposed escape and afterlife of Edward of Caernarvon, formerly Edward II, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine (2002). Aimed at a popular audience, in contrast to Professor Haines' other scholarly works, this slim volume provides a useful overview of the events and people involved in them after Edward's supposed death in 1327. I strongly disagree with his opinions and evaluation of the earl of Kent's plot of 1330, however.

R. Perry, Edward the Second: Suddenly, at Berkeley (1988). Very short - more of a pamphlet than a book, really - discussion of the plots to free Edward of Caernarfon in 1327, his supposed death, and its aftermath.

- Ian Mortimer, Medieval Intrigue: Decoding Royal Conspiracies (2010). Includes Dr Mortimer's excellent article 'The Death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle', formerly published in the English Historical Review, as well as evaluations of the earl of Kent's plot and Edward III's relations with the Fieschi family in the 1330s, as they relate to Edward II's survival.

Works focusing on the personalities who shaped Edward II's reign and its aftermath:

- J.R.S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II (1972)

- J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II (1970)

- Ian Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327 to 1330 (2003)

- J.S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall 1307-1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II (1988)

- Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother (1994)

- Mark Buck, Politics, Finance and the Church in the Reign of Edward II: Walter Stapeldon, Treasurer of England (1983)

- Roy Martin Haines, Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of the Liberties of the English Church, ca. 1275/80-1348 (1986)

- Roy Martin Haines, The Church and Politics in Fourteenth-Century England: the Career of Adam Orleton, c. 1275-1345 (1978)

Jeffrey H. Denton, Robert Winchelsey and the Crown 1294-1313 (2002)

There's also Alison Weir's hagiography of Isabella of France (2005) and Paul Doherty's odd and error-strewn book Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (2003), neither of which I can recommend. I should also mention several other more general works which I've found helpful and interesting (by no means an exhaustive list!):

- Michael Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272-1377 (1980) and Plantagenet England 1225-1360 (2005)

- The Fourteenth Century England series, published every two years.

- Chris Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Later Middle Ages (1996)

- Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (1982)

- K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (1973)

- G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (1957)

- May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399 (1959)

- Michael Hicks, Who’s Who in Late Medieval England, 1272-1485 (1991)

- Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (2008)

- Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III (2006) and The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England (2008)

- W.M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England 1300-1450 (1995)

- John Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England (1995)

(Apologies if the formatting in this post is messed up, as it always seems to be in photo posts.)

Two of Edward II's Letters

2012-01-27T16:09:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post today about two letters sent by Edward II.

The first dates perhaps to late 1311, shortly after Piers Gaveston was sent into his third exile, though it may also date to late 1321, when Hugh Despenser father and son were also perpetually exiled from England. The letter was sent to the abbot of Glastonbury, and the king almost certainly sent it to numerous other high-ranking churchmen as well, though these letters have not survived. Edward asked the abbot to search through his chronicles for information about people exiled from England during the reigns of his ancestors "and for what reasons and at what time, and by whom, and how, they had been recalled." Evidently, he was searching for a precedent by which he could bring Piers Gaveston or the Despensers back from banishment. The abbot of Glastonbury received Edward's letter at vespers on 2 January (presumably 1312, or 1322) and replied two days later, having obeyed his king's command with some haste. He enclosed a few extracts from his chronicles, which dated from 1210 to 1289. One of the precedents he found concerned William de Valence (died 1296), half-brother of Edward's grandfather Henry III and father of the earl of Pembroke of Edward's reign, exiled from England in 1258 and allowed to return in 1261. Another dated back to 1210, when William de Braose was outlawed and exiled from England, though was allowed to return in the fourteenth regnal year of King John, May 1212 to May 1213.

Edward II's original letter no longer exists (the abbot's reply was fortunately copied into his register for posterity), and it's a shame that it cannot be dated more precisely. Stones and Keil (see below for reference) state that the document is found in the same folio and in the same hand as letters of 1321/22, but the reference to William de Valence, who was a foreigner although half-brother of the king of England, would be more relevant to Piers Gaveston than the Despensers, who were Englishmen. If the abbot was writing in 1322 about the Despensers, it perhaps seems odd that he doesn't mention the several returns from exile of Piers Gaveston himself, unless he was trying to be tactful - though neither does he mention the exile in 1305 and return in 1308 of Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury. Edward II had already revoked the Despensers' exile on 8 (Hugh the younger) and 25 (Hugh the elder) December 1321, though may later that month still have been searching for further justifications for doing so. Without further information both dates remain plausible and possible.

[E.L.G. Stones and I.J.E. Keil, 'Edward II and the Abbot of Glastonbury: A New Case of Historical Evidence Solicited from Monasteries', Archives, 12 (1976), pp. 176-82. See also Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (2004), pp. 73-74, 229.]

The second letter was written on 20 November 1311 to Sir Robert Holland, adherent and - apparently - friend of Edward's first cousin and enemy Thomas, earl of Lancaster (and about whom I'm intending to write a blog post sometime). The letter reads:

"Edward by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to our dear and faithful Sir Robert de Holand, greetings. We make known to you that we are very joyous and pleased about the good news we have heard concerning the improvement in our dear cousin and faithful subject Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and that he will soon be able to ride in comfort. And we send you word and dearly pray that, as soon as he is comfortable and able to ride without hurt to his body, you should ask him to be so good as to hasten to us at our parliament and that you yourself should kindly come in his company to our said parliament if you can, for love of us. Given under our privy seal at Westminster on the twentieth day of November in the fifth year of our reign."

There's something about this letter that really appeals to me, perhaps because the sentiments of care and concern in it must surely have been so opposed to what Edward really felt about his cousin, one of the men who had just mandated Piers Gaveston's exile yet again. It's also interesting for the insight into Thomas of Lancaster's physical condition at the time - was he ill, or had he had some kind of accident? Somehow I can just imagine Edward gritting his teeth and clenching his fists over this letter. :-)

[Cited in George Osborne Sayles, The functions of the medieval Parliament of England (revised edition, 1988), p. 302.]

Stay Away From The King, You Gascons

2012-01-22T17:04:00.002+01:00

I was looking recently at the Ordinances, a list of forty-one reforms of the king's household and of the kingdom in general, which were imposed on Edward II in the autumn of 1311. (If anyone's interested in the election of the twenty-one Lords Ordainer in 1310, their preparation of the Ordinances and the political background to it all, there are thorough accounts in Seymour Phillips' 2010 biography of Edward and in Roy Martin Haines' 2003 biography of him, as well as in James Conway Davies' Baronial Opposition to Edward II.) The twentieth Ordinance, which caused Edward the most anguish, mandated the perpetual exile of Piers Gaveston from England, Ireland, Gascony and other lands ruled by the king; this is the only Ordinance cited in full by the Vita Edwardi Secundi, on the grounds that it was "more welcome to many than the rest." [1]

The Ordinances were published on 27 September 1311 in the churchyard of St Paul's, London, and on 11 October were sent out to the sheriffs to be published in every county. Further Ordinances were issued sometime later, probably in late November [2], which, as the Vita says, "declared that Piers' friends and partisans should leave the court under penalty of imprisonment, lest they should stir up the king to recall Piers once more." Edward II, fuming, snarled that the Ordainers were treating him like an idiot and that he could not believe that "the ordering of his whole house should depend upon the will of another," and declared somewhat hyperbolically that "he was not allowed to keep even one member of his household at his own wish." [3]

In this post, I'm going to take a look at some of the men ordered to be sent away from Edward II in late November 1311. There were twenty-seven named altogether, and Piers Gaveston's biographer Jeffrey Hamilton has worked out that eighteen of them had connections to Piers. [4] One Ordinance explicitly states that all of Piers' relatives should be removed from the king's presence (Item qe tout le linage Pieres Gavastone soit entiorement ouste du roi). The men I want to focus on are Bourgeois de Tilh and his son Arnaud (Borgois de Tille et seon filz), who (Arnaud) had been appointed marshall of the king's exchequer around Michaelmas 1311 [5], and Bertrand Caillau "and his brother and those of Gascony who are in their company in the parts of Cornwall" (Bertran Kaillon et seon frere et ceux de Gascoigne qe sunt en lur compaignie en les parties de Cornewaille). The pages from the London Annals which names the men can be seen here and here, in the original French.

Bertrand Caillau was, almost certainly, Piers Gaveston's first cousin: Piers' mother's sister Miramonde de Marsan married Pierre Caillau (died 1280), mayor of Bordeaux, and they had at least two sons, Pierre, also mayor of Bordeaux, and one named Bertrand, presumably the man named in the Ordinance. [8] Jeffrey Hamilton calls Bertrand Piers' 'nephew', which seems improbable; Bertrand was an adult and active on Piers' behalf in 1311/12, and can hardly have had an uncle (Piers) who was himself not yet thirty in 1311, unless perhaps Piers had a much older sister or half-sister who had also married into the Caillau family. Whatever the exact relationship of the two men, Bertrand was devoted to Piers: he borrowed over 3000 gold florins to plead Piers' cause, and was imprisoned by Edward II's father-in-law Philip IV of France to prevent him travelling to the pope in Avignon on Piers' behalf. [9] The name and identity of Bertrand's brother (the Ordinance spoke of "Bertrand Caillau and his brother") is uncertain, though is unlikely to have been the Pierre mentioned above, who was mayor of Bordeaux from 1308 to 1310. Perhaps it was Arnaud Caillau, of whom I have written before, a man who remained staunchly loyal to Edward II until the very end of his reign and who served him in both Gascony (he was, among other positions, keeper of the island of Oléron) and England. He's a man who deserves his own blog post sometime, actually. There are lots of references to Bertrand in various primary sources: he was accused of the death of a man named Reymon de Savynak in Gascony in 1311 and granted custody of the lands late of Thomas Audley by Piers Gaveston in 1308, for instance.

The reference to the men of Gascony who were in the company of the Caillau brothers in Cornwall presumably means something which happened in the spring of 1312, not long after Piers Gaveston's return to England for a third time. Piers, perhaps believing that he might be sent yet again into exile if his enemies caught him, ordered his steward in Cornwall to deliver £853 to his retainers Bertrand Assailit and Berduk or Bernard de Marsan, presumably to take abroad with him if necessary. Marsan and Assailit were captured near Plymouth in a ship called La Grace Deu de Fauwy and imprisoned by William Martin, one of the men who had been sent to search for Piers in the west country the previous autumn - not everyone believed that Piers had in fact left the country - carrying 1000 marks (£666) and 129 pieces of tin. Edward II, claiming that the money was his and that Marsan and Assailit were going to Gascony on his affairs, ineffectually ordered William Martin to release them (Martin responded to the first order by committing Bertrand "to harder imprisonment"). [10] Berduk or Bernard de Marsan must have been another relative of Piers, Marsan being the name of Piers' mother Claramonde and his elder brother Arnaud-Guilhem. In June 1319, Edward II compensated Bertrand Assailit and his brother Ramon for their expenses incurred "in the defence of the king's rights" in France. [11]

Bourgeois de Tilh was another close ally of Piers Gaveston, and, as Pierre Chaplais has pointed out, came from Tilh in the Landes in Gascony, close to Piers' family seat of Gabaston. His son Arnaud was appointed marshal of the exchequer around Michaelmas 1311 at the expense of the earl of Lancaster's retainer Nicholas Segrave, most likely at Piers' request - yet another reason for the powerful earl to dislike Piers. [12] Bourgeois, whose name appears in contemporary documents as Burgeys or Burgesius de Till or similiar, was a valet of the king's household for many years, until at least July 1322. In December 1308, he rather bizarrely accused Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury, and John Salmon, bishop of Norwich, of stealing "corn, animals and other goods" which had belonged to the late Master Arnald Lupi de Tillio, presumably a relative, in Norfolk. [13] The Tallifer de Tillio or Talhefer de Tilh who appears in a few entries on the calendared rolls in Edward II's reign as a king's valet may have been another relative, as was maybe the 'Fortener Burgeys de Tille' also named as a king's valet in August 1318. [14] Piers Gaveston had a brother named Fortaner, which may perhaps point to a family connection between the Gavestons and Tilhs (though this is pure speculation). Bertruc de Tilh, sergeant-at-arms, was granted lands in Bédorède in the Landes in the third year of Edward III's reign (January 1329 to January 1330), for his "good service" to Edward II; in his petition asking for lands, Bertruc stated that he had been in Edward's service for eighteen years. [15]

Also named in the additional Ordinances to be sent away from Edward II in late 1311 were the thuggish Robert Lewer; Edward's chamberlain John Charlton, who was to join the Contrariants against Edward in 1321/22; Robert Darcy, to whom Piers wrote a letter in April 1308; and 'all the Basques' (touz les Bascles). Rather intriguingly, Darcy, Sir Edmund Bacon - to whose keeping some of Piers' lands were given in December 1311 after his third exile [6] - and unnamed others were said to have set out from court with the intent to attack, of all people, Hugh Despenser the Younger (sir Huwe le Despencer le fiiz) [7] who at this time appears to have been opposed to his father, a staunch royalist, and to Edward II, his uncle by marriage. It's unlikely that many if any of the men ordered to be 'ousted' from court in fact did stay away from Edward for very long, as is shown by an examination of their later careers.

Oooops, I moved some of this post around and now two of the footnote numbers are in the wrong place. :-) The notes are correct, they're just in rather the wrong order in the text. :-)

Sources

1) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, pp. 19-20.
2) J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, p. 117; T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, vol. 2, pp 195-198. These Ordinances are cited (in French) in Annales Londonienses 1195-1330, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 1, pp. 198-202. The original forty-one Ordinances are cited in full, in English and the French original, in Statutes of the Realm, vol. 1, pp. 157-168.
3) Vita, p. 21.
4) J.S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall 1307-1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II, pp. 94, 163 note 10.
5) Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, Edward II's Adoptive Brother, p. 70.
6) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 117; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 429.
7) Annales Londonienses, p. 200.
8) Malcolm Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy 1250-1340, p. 280.
9) Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, p. 88.
10) Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 417, 461, 582; Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 417, 465, 484; The National Archives SC 8/286/14296; Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, p. 94.
11) Gascon Rolls, online.
12) Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, p. 70; Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, pp. 88-89; Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, p. 118.
13) Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 126-128, 170; Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 181.
14) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 10.
15) Gascon Rolls, online.

Law And Order Again

2012-01-19T14:38:00.001+01:00

A few interesting entries I found in the Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous from when Edward of Caernarfon was a boy. I wrote a similar post here.

Inq. taken in Shropshire on 30 June 1289:

"John de Quertubus of Scottes Acton killed Hugh de Weston, chaplain, in self-defence. On Christmas Day 16 Edward I [1287] after sunset there were some men singing outside a tavern kept by Richard son of William of Skottesacton in the town. And Hugh came by the door immensely drunk, and quarrelled with the singers. Now John was standing by, singing, and Hugh hated him a little because he sang well, and desired the love of certain women who were standing by in a field and whom Hugh much affected. So Hugh took a naked sword in his hand and ran at John, striking him once, twice, thrice, on the head, and nearly cutting off two fingers of his left hand. And John went on his knees, and raised his hands asking God's peace and the king's, and then ran into a corner near the street under a stone wall. And Hugh ran after him and tried to kill him, so he drew his knife and wounded Hugh in the chest, killing him instantly."

I love the description of the women 'standing by in a field', after dark, on Christmas Day. What on earth were they doing?

Inq. taken in Herefordshire on 9 July 1289:

"John le Blount of Letton killed Walter de Bredwardyn in self-defence. Walter assaulted John with a long knife in the cellar of Miles Pichard at Staundon and struck him cutting all his robe against his belly, wounding him and preventing him from getting out of the cellar."

Inq. taken in Middlesex, undated:

"On Friday St Gregory's Day 16 Edward I [12 March 1290] after nine o'clock, a sow, which belonged to Nicholas le Keu of Westminster, entered the house of Geoffrey de la Paneterye while Lucy the wife of Geoffrey was looking for milk for her son Simon, dragged the child forth from its cradle and killed him. Death by misadventure."

That's interesting, as in 1318 John of Powderham claimed to be the real son of Edward I, who had been attacked by a sow in his cradle and replaced with a peasant boy, i.e. Edward II.

Inq. taken in Derbyshire on 16 March 1290:

"John de Longgeley came to the house of William de Loggeforde in Yiveleye about midnight and almost drew away the bolt of the door. He was seen by a small boy, who shut the door and summoned Henry son of William de Loggeforde, who rose from bed and took his sword in his hand. He heard someone breaking a window in the closet like a robber. He went to the window and found half the body of a man through it. He asked who it was and on receiving no answer to his question he severed John's jugular vein with his sword. No-one procured the slaying. Henry killed John in self-defence."

Inq. taken in Cumberland on 19 May 1293:

"William son of Patrick and his wife came from Penreth very drunk on Tuesday after Whitsunday 5 Edward I [18 May 1277] by the high road to Laysonby; and Alexander son of John de la Chapele, who was breaking stones in a quarry near the road to build his father's house, heard the woman cry out and ran up, and supposing it to be a case of rape, struck William over the reins with a shovel so that he died the same night. He did not intend to kill William, but only to prevent him ravishing the woman, whom he did not suppose to be his wife."

Inq. taken in Westmorland on 29 June 1293:

"Richard le Fraunceys, clerk, is of good fame and conversation."

That's it. :-)

Ing. taken in Kent on 13 October 1300:

"Nicholas le Bret on St Lambert's Day 27 Edward I [17 September 1299] was upon a piece of his own land which he had sown with beans...when there appeared Hamon le Bret his brother suddenly, carrying an iron-shod fork in his hand. He attacked Nicholas on his own land, saying "Flee, robber, or you will die," and with the fork pursued Nicholas for a furlong as far as a ditch filled with water of the breadth of twenty-five feet, which Nicholas could not cross. As he would have been killed or drowned he unsheathed a misericorde and while defending himself he struck Hamon on the breast and the latter died the same day."

Inq. taken in Bedfordshire on 8 November 1300:

"Henry Bateman and William de Gamelingey were playing in the house of John le Mareschal in Eton at a game called penyperche on Thursday in Whitsun week 28 Edward I [2 June 1300]. A strife arose between them outside John's door. When withdrawing from the tavern William caught Henry by the hair and afterwards took him firmly by the throat so that Henry could free himself only by drawing his knife. Reynold Elys, Henry's kinsman in the third degree, heard of the strife between the two men as he sat at tavern in John's house and ran to them to aid Henry, who did not perceive him as he came in haste. Reynold by misadventure dashed violently upon the unsheathed knife and received a wound in the right shoulder, from which he died. His death was due to misadventure and not to malice."

Inq. taken in Lancashire on 6 February 1301:

"Adam son of Henry the clerk and William son of Alan de Bradefeld sat in William's house in the town of Lathum on Sunday before the Annunciation 27 Edward I [22 March 1299]. A strife arose between them regarding the allocation of a cow. Adam feared William, arose and went out. William followed him with an iron fork and pursued him between a hedge and a marle-pit. Adam turned around and wished to go another way and William struck him upon the back with the fork. Adam to escape death hit William with a stick of alder-wood upon the head and he fell to the ground. Adam, seeing him prostate, took to flight. Before and after the deed Adam was of good fame."

William Melton's Letter

2012-01-14T16:09:00.000+01:00

14 January marks the anniversary of an extremely important letter written by William Melton, archbishop of York, almost certainly in 1330 (though 1329 is also possible). Addressing his kinsman Simon Swanland, a draper and then mayor of London, he emphasises the need for secrecy before informing Swanland that he has "certain news of our liege lord Edward of Caernarfon, that he is alive and in good health of body in a safe place, by his own wish" (in the French original, nous avoms certeins noueles de nostre seignur lige Edward de Karnarvan qil est en vie et en bone sancte de corps en enseur leu a sa volonte demeign). Melton goes on to ask Swanland to purchase some items for Edward, mostly clothing, boots and cushions, and asks the mayor how he can procure "a great sum of money for the said lord" (grant somme dargent pur le dir seignur) because he wishes to help him. This is hardly a surprise; William Melton had long been a friend and supporter of Edward II, whose household he had joined in or before 1297 when the future king was thirteen. Melton bravely spoke out against Edward's deposition in the parliament of January 1327 - the bishop of Rochester, who joined him, was beaten up for doing so - and refused to attend Edward III's coronation shortly afterwards. He was far more, however, than a mere royal sycophant, and was known in his lifetime as a pious yet very able man of integrity and compassion. The Lanercost chronicler says "although he was one of the king’s courtiers, he led a religious and honourable life," and the Vita Edwardi Secundi says he was "a courtier faithful in everything committed to him" who remained honourable despite the venality of the royal court where he lived so long. [1] Edward III restored Melton to his position as treasurer of England within days of Roger Mortimer's execution on 29 November 1330; the young king recognised his worth and appreciated his abilities.

This extremely important statement that Edward II was in fact still alive more than two years after his funeral in Gloucester has not received the attention and serious scholarly analysis it deserves, except in Ian Mortimer's Medieval Intrigue, where it is cited in full (in English), properly analysed in the context of other events of 1330 (the earl of Kent's plot to free Edward II from Corfe Castle), and given due weight as a significant historical document. Seymour Phillips' otherwise superb 2010 biography of Edward II doesn't even mention it, and Roy Martin Haines' 2009 article about the letter in the English Historical Review [2] states with certainty that Melton was "misled" and "easily convinced, or should one say deceived?" into believing that Edward II was alive and fails even to consider the possibility that Melton's statement was true. Frankly, I find this bizarre. As Ian Mortimer points out, if a man of Melton's calibre believed that Edward II was still alive in 1330, and went as far as buying clothes and other items for him, and was willing to commit all this to writing despite the enormous risks, it is entirely plausible that Edward II was still alive. As I say in my article on the earl of Kent's adherents, numerous other men appear to have also believed that Edward was alive in 1330. One of them was the earl of Mar, who told Melton that he would bring an army of 40,000 men to England when instructed by the archbishop in order to aid Edward II's release [3] - a lot of soldiers to free a dead man, one might think.

Rather than just blithely assuming that Melton must have been wrong or ignoring his letter altogether, it would be great if historians of the era actually engaged with it and presented proper arguments against it. We have a clear statement, by a man who knew Edward II, Queen Isabella, Roger Mortimer and the earl of Kent well and who cannot lightly be dismissed as a gullible fool in the way that Kent so often unfairly has been, that Edward II was still alive after his funeral. Let's at least debate the possibility that he was correct. In the meantime, I'm going to raise a glass to William Melton today, to a brave and loyal man doing everything he could to help a friend.

Sources

1) ; H. Maxwell. ed., The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346 (1913), p. 217; N. Denholm-Young, ed., Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, (1957), p. 139.
2) R.M. Haines, ‘Sumptuous Apparel for a Royal Prisoner: Archbishop Melton’s Letter, 14 January 1330’, English Historical Review, cxxiv (2009), pp. 885-894.
3) Phillips, Edward II, p. 567; Mortimer, Medieval Intrigue, p. 161.

The Curious Case Of Lady Baret

2012-01-09T16:22:00.002+01:00

Some years ago, I wrote a post translating the charges against Hugh Despenser the Younger at his trial in Hereford in November 1326. One of the many charges, and certainly the most horrific one, is this:

"And after the deaths of their barons, you pursued widowed ladies such as my lady Baret, and as a tyrant you had her beaten by your mercenaries [or rascals, or menials: ribaldes]** and shamefully had her arms and legs broken against the order of chivalry and contrary to law and reason, by which the good lady is forever more driven mad and lost [la bone dame est touz iours afole et perdue]."

[** that part is often mistranslated as 'making her the butt of his ribaldry']

This horrible accusation is frequently repeated as certain fact in secondary sources, and often used as evidence that Hugh Despenser was some kind of violent abusive misogynist and sadist who therefore thoroughly deserved his drawn-out and excruciatingly painful death. (The notion that Hugh raped Queen Isabella, which is purely an invention of her modern biographers, is also sometimes repeated in this context, as is Hugh's reprehensible imprisonment of the earl of Pembroke's niece Elizabeth Comyn, which did indeed happen - though there is nothing to suggest that Elizabeth was physically ill-treated, and Hugh's aim was to coerce her into signing over part of her large inheritance to him and marrying his eldest son.)

Did Hugh indeed order this inhuman and astonishingly brutal treatment of Lady Baret? Who was Lady Baret anyway? Natalie Fryde's The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326 - which states as certain fact (p. 117) that the lady was tortured and driven out of her mind by Hugh - identifies her as "probably the widow of Stephen Baret of Swansea." This is most likely correct. Fryde says "We do not know to what end these injuries were perpetrated," though a desire to take over her or her late husband's lands seems by far the likeliest reason, given what we know of the Despensers. This page states "The Lady Baret, widow of a Knight who fought against the crown at the battle of Boroughbridge was tortured and all her limbs broken before she gave up her lands to him [Hugh Despenser the Younger]."

Sir Stephen Baret was, almost certainly, executed with other Contrariants in the spring of 1322, most probably in Swansea. Only three chronicles mention his execution, and he was not, for some reason, named in the November 1326 judgement on the younger Despenser, as the other men executed in 1322 were. An entry on the Patent Roll of 28 April 1322, however, is a commission to four men (one of them Sir John Inge, a close associate of Hugh Despenser) to "render judgment upon Stephen Baret, a traitor, at Swaneseye [Swansea]." [1] Other men named in these commissions to receive judgement were all executed.

The Lady Baret supposedly tortured on Despenser's orders was most probably Stephen's widow (though might, perhaps, have been his mother). The couple had no children: Stephen's heir was his brother David, who in February 1327 petitioned the young Edward III for the restoration of his inheritance. A clerk named Stephen Baret, perhaps David's son, who was one of the guardians of the "temporalities of the bishopric of Worcester" and the attorney of the bishop of St David's, is mentioned in February 1327 and March 1334. [2] Stephen (the Contrariant of 1322) held lands on the Gower peninsula in South Wales, which Edward II granted to the younger Despenser in October 1320, to the huge annoyance of the Marcher lords (it led to the Despenser War the following May). According to the inquisition post mortem of Sir Guy Brian in August 1307, Stephen had "1 carucate land called Cralond" in Carmarthenshire, for which he paid a pound of wax and twelve pence annually. [3] A man named Richard Wroth was sent to arrest Stephen Baret in Gower on 16 February 1322, though in fact he was taken prisoner in Yorkshire sometime after the battle of Boroughbridge on 16 March by the constable of Knaresborough Castle (and must have been among those who threw away all his possessions in an attempt to flee, as he was "taken bare)". [4] According to a c. 1322 petition by the people of the Yorkshire village of Laughton-en-le-Morthen, Stephen had gone to the village in late 1321 or thereabouts with John, Lord Mowbray and Sir Jocelyn Deyville (both also executed in 1322) with eighty men at arms and four hundred foot soldiers. The men robbed the village and its church of livestock and goods, and took them all to the Isle of Axholme, which belonged to Mowbray. [5]

I have been unable to discover anything very much about Stephen Baret's wife, except that her name was Joan de Gynes and she inherited three manors in Leicestershire, Suffolk and Staffordshire from her mother Isabel de Mandeville. [6] According to an inquisition of July 1324, these three manors - named as Moteshale, Dadelyngton and Herliston - were then in Edward II's hands, not Hugh Despenser's. [7] It is unclear from the entry whether Joan was still alive at the time of the inquisition; it begins "Stephen Baret, sometime knight, and Joan late his wife, on the day of his forfeiture, jointly held the manor of Moteshale...". If Hugh did indeed have Joan tortured for her lands, he didn't hold them for long. It doesn't seem likely that he had her tortured to gain Stephen's minor holdings on the Gower peninsula, either.

What is significant is that the record of the charges against Hugh Despenser the Younger in November 1326 is the only source for the claim that he had Lady Baret tortured - and the charges against him are, as Professor May McKisack once so eloquently put it, "an ingenious tissue of facts and fiction," with a strong emphasis on 'fiction'. No fourteenth-century chronicler mentions the alleged torture. There are no petitions or commissions or inquisitions or anything else to confirm that it ever happened. The charge perhaps sounds too specific to have been completely invented, yet it is extremely odd that neither Joan - if she was still alive - nor any of her family or friends later petitioned Edward III for restitution, and even stranger that no contemporary or later chronicler noticed such a horrific act. They might have ignored the torture of a lowborn woman, but never, surely, a highborn one. I'd expect to see indignant and horrified condemnations of such brutality against a defenceless noble widow somewhere, but there's nothing. Whatever happened between Despenser and Joan Baret, the story of her broken limbs and insanity is likely to be, at best, a gross exaggeration at a time when all the ills of the 1320s were being heaped on one man's head. Whatever wrongs Hugh committed, and it's undeniable that he committed many, it seems rather unfair to assume that the story of his torturing a woman into insanity is certain gospel truth when it only appears in one document containing dubious, and some laughably inaccurate, accusations against a detested royal favourite.

Sources

1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1321-1324, p. 149.

2) Calendar of Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 25, 61; Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, p. 14; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-1337, p. 319.

3) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1307-1327, p. 32.

4) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 77; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, p. 131.

5) The National Archives SC 8/7/301.

6) Cal Inq Misc, pp. 200-201.

7) Ibid.

Merry Christmas, For The Seventh Time On The Edward II Blog

2011-12-16T16:35:00.001+01:00

Apologies for not updating the blog more regularly! What with visits, work, illness and preparing for Christmas, I just haven't had time, unfortunately. This will also be the last post for a while, as I'm off home tomorrow to the Lake District for my Christmas holidays. Amazingly, this is the seventh Christmas since I started writing the blog in early December 2005.

Six years later, there are still a few misunderstandings about Edward II online - though, I hope, rather fewer than there used to be before I got started! Here are some recent ones I've found on forums, blogs and websites:

"In 1327, Welsh conspirators needed to murder King Edward II without clear evidence of their involvement. One of them sent this note to the perpetrators: “Kill Edward not to fear is good”. Purposely ambiguous, punctuation was left out in case the plot backfired. So poor little Edward did die at the mercy of a scalding iron shimmied up his anus where, quite frankly, the one thing that could’ve saved his colon was a colon."

This story about deliberately ambiguous punctuation, which appears in Christopher Marlowe's c. 1592 play about Edward, is an old, thoroughly discredited myth. And I can't help but laugh at the notion that it was 'Welsh conspirators' who murdered him. It was Welsh conspirators who were trying to save him.

"Wasn't Edward II the one who died so ignominiously at Pontrefact Castle? I'm really having to scrape the sides of the memory bowl for this! But I believe some of his ministers grabbed him and stuck a hot fire poker up his ass cuz his latest lover had too much power."

It's amazing how many people confuse Edward with his great-grandson Richard II in many ways.

"We have a family tradition that Edward II asked my ancestor Thomas the Swine Worrier for a maid to tend his needs ( so it is said). As that "maid " was my N th degree great grandmama--it gives credence to our family motto " Regis Futare" or, loosely translated "Bad Luck". In which case, your loyal fealty is most welcome."

Although obviously someone was the mother of Edward II's illegitimate son Adam, it's hard to imagine that story being true or Edward being the kind of man who would demand a woman like that. :)

"I am aware there are parentage questions of at least two kings: Edward III: was his father Edward II or William Wallace? (source: movie Braveheart)"

"[Roger] Mortimer and Queen Isabella are the biological parents of Edward III because Edward II wasn't up to the job (he preferred Piers Gaveston). This is conjecture (but not without some evidence) but what is true is that Mortimer was the ancestor of Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, and all monarchs from Henry VIII onwards. Somebody should make a movie about Mortimer and Isabella although it might upset the current Royal family to have it made public that they are all descended from the bastard Edward III. Big skeleton in a very big cupboard."

Yes, that's the Roger Mortimer who was in a different country to Isabella at the time that Edward III, and her and Edward II's younger children, were conceived. (So I would love to see the 'evidence' mentioned.) To add insult to injury, the person who wrote this idiocy linked to a blog post of mine as 'proof' that Edward II was murdered by red-hot poker. Huh!

"Edward II was purportedly homosexual, and he spent most of his time with Piers Gaveston and then the Despensers, so Queen Isabella grew resentful. She did bear her husband a son, the future Edward III, but one has to wonder if Edward II's nobles and subjects believed that the child was his."

Why would they not?

"The French princess was about 12 years old when she was brought over to marry the Prince Of Wales (Edward II). She and Wallace never met. She was it appears indeed impregnated by someone other than Eddie II, but it was not Wm. Wallace."

This is still a common misconception, despite my best efforts. Still, a Google.com search for "Edward II children" brings up three of my blog posts in the top five results, so the message will spread, I hope!

Some links to previous Christmas posts of mine, with info about the festive season in Edward II's time, are here, here and here. Looking further afield, Ian Mortimer's essay about Edward's daughter-in-law Philippa of Hainault is well worth a read, as is his What's New page, with lots of great links to interesting articles and talks of his. And finally, a reminder that if you haven't read my article in the English Historical Review yet, please do so soon. :-) Have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and see you in 2012 for lots more Edward II information and myth-busting!

Poems Of Edward II's Era

2011-12-03T16:52:00.002+01:00

Edited to add: I've just remembered that this is the sixth anniversary of my blog! Yippee! Six years of Edward II - and here's to many more. :-)

A post about some of the poems written in or around the time of Edward II's reign.

The Sayings of the Four Philosophers

Written partly in English and partly in French - to me, a fascinating sight - this poem seems originally to have been written as a complaint about Edward I breaking the terms of the Provisions of Oxford of 1258, and to have been re-written as a condemnation of Edward II breaking the Ordinances of 1311 and his dependence on Piers Gaveston. It begins:

L’en peut fere et defere,
Ceo fait-il trop sovent;
It nis nouther wel ne faire
Therfor Engelond is shent.

Nostre prince de Engletere,
Par le consail de sa gent,
At Westminster after the feire
Made a gret parlement.
La chartre fet de cyre,
Jeo l’enteink et bien le crey,
It was holde to neih the fire,
And is molten al awey.
Ore ne say mes que dire,
Tout i va a Tripolay,
Hundred, chapitle, court, and shire,
Al hit goth a devel way.
Des plusages de le tere
Ore escoutez un sarmoun,
Of iiij wise-men that ther were,
Whi Engelond is brouht adoun.

Translation:

A person can make and unmake,
This he does too often;
It is neither well nor fair,
Therefore England is ruined.

Our prince of England,
On the advice of his people,
At Westminster after the fair
Made a great parliament.
The charter made of wax,
So I have heard, and well believe it,
Was held too near the fire,
And is melted all away.
Now I don't know what more to say,
Everything goes to Tripoli,
Hundred, chapter, court and shire,
It all goes the devil's way.
The wisest men of the land
Are now listening to a sermon
Of four wise men that there were
Why England is brought down.

The four wise men go on to explain why England is lawless, without strength, mercy, love, kindness, alms and much else, and full of wrong, sin and revenge. The solution is for us all to love God, and to remember that he loves us, to live 'in love and good manner', and to see him that bought us dearly, in joy everlasting (Sen him that bouhte us dere, In joye withoute ende).

Adam Davy's Dreams of Edward II

Five prophetic poems in English dated most probably to 1307/08, the years of Edward II’s accession to the throne (7 July 1307) and his coronation (25 February 1308) and written by one Adam Davy, who identifies himself as the marshal of Stratford-at-Bow in London. (A name I can never see without thinking of Geoffrey Chaucer’s commentary on the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales: "And Frensch she spak ful faire and fetysly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe"). Davy's five dreams about Edward II, the new king and prince of Wales, as Davy calls him ("His name is ihote sir Edward the kyng, Prince of Wales, Engelonde the faire thing") liken Edward to Christ, under the special protection of God and invulnerable to attackers (if only!), the head of his realm and sacrosanct thanks to his birth and status, a mediator between God and his people, and a pilgrim to Rome, where he is crowned emperor of Christendom. The dream poems are so flattering to Edward II it seems highly likely that they date to the start of his reign, before it all started going so wrong.

Elegy on the Death of Edward I

A song written shortly after and lamenting - you'll never guess - the death of Edward I in July 1307, apparently written originally in French, with an English version preserved in another manuscript. Here's part of the English song, relating to Edward II:

Nou is Edward of Carnarvan
King of Engelond al aplyht,
God lete him ner be worse man
Then is fader, ne lasse of myht
To holden his pore-men to to ryht,
Ant understonde good consail,
Al Engelonde for to wisse ant diht;
Of gode knyhtes darh him nout fail.

Now is Edward of Caernarfon entirely king of England,
God never let him be a worse man
Than his father, nor less of might,
To hold his commons to right,
And understand good counsel,
All England to direct and manage,
Of good knights there need not fail him.

And in the French version:

Le jeofne Edward d'Engletere
Rey est enointe e couroné
Dieu le doint teil conseil trere,
Ki le pais seit governé;
E la coroune si garder
Qe la tere seit entere,
E lui crestre en bounté
Car prodhome i fust son pere.

The young Edward of England
Is anointed and crowned king
May God grant that he follow such counsel
That the country may be governed
And so to keep the crown
That the land may be entire,
And himself to increase in goodness
Because his father was a worthy man.

On The Evil Times of Edward II

Also known as the Simonie or Symonie and Couetise, written in English sometime in the 1320s, this work of almost 500 lines is a poem of social protest, with many references to the Great Famine and the corruption and vices of the nobility and clergy. The poem begins:

Whii werre and wrake in londe and manslauht is i-come,
Whii hungger and derthe on eorthe the pore hath undernome...
(Why war and vengeance and manslaughter have come to the land,
Why famine and dearth on earth have seized the poor...)

These themes also appear in a much better-known social protest poem of the later fourteenth century,
Piers Plowman, whose author William Langland was the grandson of Peter de la Rokele, one of the men who joined the Dunheved brothers in their attempt to free the former Edward II from captivity at Berkeley Castle.

Finally, the poem known as the Lament of Edward II, once thought to have been written by Edward himself, deserves a blog post entirely to itself sometime. :-)

Anniversaries

2011-11-29T16:05:00.000+01:00

27 November 1358: Isabella of France, dowager queen of England, was buried at the Greyfriars Church in London, with all due ceremony and in the presence of her son Edward III and daughter-in-law Queen Philippa (and I presume of her other surviving child Joan, queen of Scotland). With Isabella was buried the cloak she had worn at her wedding to Edward II half a century previously, and a silver casket with her husband's heart inside. (NOTA BENE: being buried with your spouse or child's heart was perfectly normal in royal burials of the era; Isabella was not buried next to Roger Mortimer or even in the same city; she was buried with Edward II's heart, not Mortimer's, a point I make especially because this is often erroneously stated online.)

28 November 1290: Edward II's mother Eleanor of Castile, queen of England, lady of Ireland, duchess of Aquitaine and countess of Ponthieu in her own right, died at the house of one Richard de Weston in Harby, Nottinghamshire. She was probably forty-nine. Her tomb and effigy in Westminster Abbey still survive, as do three of the Eleanor Crosses her widower erected in her memory. Only six of the fourteen or sixteen children she bore outlived her, one of them - Joan of Acre - then pregnant with the king and queen's eldest grandchild, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester.

Edward of Caernarfon, then aged six and Eleanor's youngest child and sole surviving son, can barely have known his mother: she and Edward I left England for Gascony in May 1286, shortly after his second birthday, and only returned in August 1289. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Queen Eleanor's death, 28 November 1315, her son paid thirty-five shillings to seventy Dominicans (the favourite order of both Edward and Eleanor) for "performing divine service at the anniversary of the lady the queen, mother of the present lord the king."

29 November 1314: Philip IV, king of France, Edward II's father-in-law and second cousin (their paternal grandmothers Marguerite and Eleanor of Provence were sisters) was killed in a hunting accident near Fontainebleau, aged forty-six. Philip survived his accident long enough to make a codicil to his will the day before he died, in which he left two rings to his daughter Ysabella Regina Anglie, one of them set with a large ruby, which she had once given him.

29 November 1330: Roger Mortimer, earl of March and lord of Wigmore, was hanged naked at Tyburn - an execution site for common criminals but not, previously, a nobleman. He had been dragged to Tyburn wearing the black tunic he had worn at Edward II's funeral in December 1330.

Brief Biographies: Simon of Reading

2011-11-22T14:48:00.001+01:00

Today, a post about Simon of Reading, or Symond or Syme de Reding or Redyngg or Redynges as the name was spelt at the time, who was executed with Hugh Despenser the Younger in Hereford on 24 November 1326. When the two men were brought into Hereford before Hugh's trial, Simon was forced to parade in front of Hugh bearing the Despenser arms reversed, and some time later was hanged next to him but on a much lower gallows (Hugh's was a massive fifty feet high). Unlike Hugh, it appears that Simon was hanged until dead, rather than cut down and disembowelled and all the rest of the horrors inflicted on the royal favourite. I wonder whether many, or indeed any, people watching the execution had any idea of Simon's identity.

Before I look at who Simon was, let's look at who he wasn't. Natalie Fryde says in her 1979 work The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326 that he was "one of Despenser's closest friends" - well, possibly, but she doesn't cite a source for this and I've never seen one that confirms her statement - and also calls him "the loyal knight of Despenser." Simon wasn't a knight. Neither was he the marshall of Edward II's household, the younger Despenser's standard-bearer or marshall, or pretty well anything else claimed about him in modern times. He was in fact a sergeant-at-arms of Edward II's household (see below for the evidence for this).

What I find most puzzling about Simon is why Isabella and Roger Mortimer wanted to execute someone so obscure; as far as I can tell he was just one of Edward's sergeants-at-arms, among many others, so why did they deem it necessary to execute him so publicly with Hugh Despenser? Simon was not even given a trial, though according to the Brut chronicle he was drawn and hanged "for encheson [reason] that he despisede the Quene Isabel," and the Anonimalle, a French version of the chronicle, talks of "une Symond de Redyngges, qavoit despise la roigne..." (a Simon of Reading, who had despised the queen...). 'Despise' in this context means insult, humiliate, scorn, disregard. A 1327 entry on the Fine Roll relating to Simon says that he was "hanged for a felony." Hmmmmm. Was insulting the queen a felony, and when did it become a capital offence and such a serious one that no trial to prove the truth of the allegation was required? Natalie Fryde in Tyranny and Fall says that Simon was "included in the punishment meted out to his master [i.e. Despenser] because he had in some way insulted Isabella," as though these were reasonable grounds to execute someone without trial, and assuming that what the Brut says is certainly true (she doesn't say he was 'alleged to have insulted Isabella' or similar).

Unfortunately I don't know who Simon's parents were, or if he was married, or almost anything else about him. The Fine Roll entry of February 1327 which refers to his hanging is an "order to the bailiffs of the manor of Bray to take into the king's hand the lands, goods and chattels, which Simon de Redyng, who was hanged for a felony, held in chief of Edward II in their bailiwick." [1] The Berkshire village of Bray is fifteen miles from Reading, itself about forty miles west of London. Judging by his name and this entry, Simon must have grown up and lived in or close to Reading. The earliest mention I can find of him is in November 1318, when a commission of oyer et terminer was ordered "on complaint by Simon de Redynge touching the persons who assaulted him at Gedenoye [Gedney], co. Lincoln." [2] On 20 September 1324, Simon was one of six men granted a 'general pardon' by Edward II, and on 16 April the year before had been granted the Worcestershire manors of Kyre Wyard and Woodhall forfeited by John Wyard, an adherent of Roger Mortimer, in which manors and two others in Worcestershire, 'Salynes' and 'Smytheslond', Simon was granted rights of free warren. [3] His being granted the manors of one of Roger Mortimer's followers was presumably a reason why Mortimer hated him. Simon must have become pretty well-off: in July 1325, William Nicol of Selsey acknowledged that he owed twenty pounds to him, a large amount of money for a man of his rank and position (Edward II's sergeants-at-arms earned twelve pence a day). [4]

Simon appears three times in Edward II's chamber account of 1325/26 that I've found. In August 1325, Edward sent him to pay money to someone (not sure who; that entry is hard to read). In May 1326, there are two references to 'Syme de Redyng', whose horse needed shoeing while the king and his household were travelling along the Thames, near Henley. As far as I can make out, Simon lost his mace (I assume that's what 'mase' is) in the river shortly afterwards, and it was later returned to him by John Feryman of Sonning, who received three shillings from Edward II for his efforts.

Simon is next mentioned on 28 September 1326, the day after Edward II, in the Tower of London, learned that his queen and Mortimer's invasion force had landed in East Anglia on the 24th. An entry on the Patent Roll says "The like* of Simon de Redyng, king's serjeant, to select 100 footmen out of the men arrayed in the counties of Oxford and Berks and lead them to the king to repel the invaders." [5] (* The previous entry says: "Appointment of Daniel de Burgham in the county of Kent to select and lead all the horse and foot who will go with him against Roger de Mortuo Mari" (Mortimer).) Two c. 1327 petitions by a William de Whithurst say that Edward II gave Whithurst a hundred pounds at Gloucester to pay the wages of the men-at-arms coming to his aid, and that Whithurst gave some of this to Simon at Edward's command and that the rest was taken by Isabella when she arrived in Gloucester shortly afterwards. [6] Simon is named in the Annales Paulini and Adam Murimuth's chronicle as one of the men still with Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger when they were captured in South Wales on 16 November. He was to pay the ultimate price for this loyalty eight days later. The manors granted to him in Worcestershire, as well as "two messuages and land in Boclington, co. Worcester, and the messuage in Wyndesore, co. Berks, which belonged to Simon de Redyng", were granted back to John Wyard in 1327 and 1328. [7]

Martyn Lawrence in his D. Phil. thesis on the Despensers points out that there are no specific references to Simon of Reading as a Despenser adherent. Nigel Saul says "The chroniclers are surely doing no more than reflecting popular opinion when they associate his name with that of the younger Despenser...Yet the actual position he held was that of a serviens ad arma [sergeant-at-arms] in the royal household. Whatever his nominal position, his familiarity with the Despensers meant that he was denied any chance of making his peace with the regime that succeeded theirs." Earlier in his article, Saul says "We know also that they [the Despensers] had some very unpopular officials like Simon de Reading, who was to share a traitor's death with his lord...". [8] There is no evidence I know of to suggest that Simon was a Despenser official, or particularly close to them, or involved in any way in their tyranny, land-grabbing and other crimes. It is Simon's execution alongside Hugh Despenser that leads writers to draw the obvious conclusion that he must have been a henchman of theirs and grossly unpopular throughout England for aiding and abetting their schemes, even though no known contemporary source suggests this. The Brut, Annales Paulini and the chronicle of Adam Murimuth do not say that Simon was executed for complicity in any of the Despensers' crimes; indeed, the Brut claims that he died because he insulted the queen. You'd think that if a man was so notorious and guilty of such horrendous crimes that it was necessary to execute him publicly alongside Hugh Despenser without a trial, there would be more mentions of him somewhere and more obvious associations with the Despensers. Even if Simon were famous in his time as a Despenser adherent and yet no evidence of this has survived, it's peculiar that other far more influential and better-known supporters of theirs, such as Sir Ingelram Berenger (a former sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire), and Sir John Haudlo, were pardoned for their adherence within weeks of the new regime taking control. Perhaps Simon just had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, as John Daniel and Robert de Micheldever appear to have been a week earlier when they were executed with the earl of Arundel, to have irritated Roger Mortimer by being given two manors which formerly belonged to his adherent John Wyard, and to have irritated Isabella by saying something about her which perhaps hit a little too close to home. Whatever Simon's misdeeds, public humiliation and execution without trial hardly seem a fair and just punishment, and don't lend much credence to the notion that the revolution of 1326/27 was intended to improve, and in fact did improve, the situation in England; Isabella and Mortimer's decision to execute Simon appears just as petty, capricious and vindictive as the decisions of Edward II himself often were.

Sources

1) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-1337, pp. 19, 21.
2) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1317-1321, p 289.
3) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 275; Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 23; Calendar of Charter Rolls 1300-1326, p. 462.
4) Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 494.
5) Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 325.
6) The National Archives SC 8/239/11922, SC 8/169/8413.
7) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 338, 343, 419.
8) Martyn Lawrence, 'Power, Ambition and Political Rehabilitation: the Despensers, c.1281-1400' (Univ. of York D. Phil. thesis, 2005), p. 102 note 49; Nigel Saul, 'The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II', English Historical Review, 99 (1984), pp. 4, 11-12.

17 November 1326: The Execution Of The Earl Of Arundel

2011-11-17T15:35:00.000+01:00

Today marks the 685th anniversary of the execution of Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, who was beheaded in Hereford with two other men, John Daniel and Robert de Micheldever, on the orders of his cousin Roger Mortimer and Isabella of France. The pair's invasion force had arrived in England on 24 September, Hugh Despenser the Elder was executed in Bristol on 27 October, and although Mortimer, Isabella and their allies didn't yet know it, Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II himself had been captured in South Wales the day before Arundel's death. Arundel and the other two men were captured in Shrewsbury by John Charlton, formerly Edward II's chamberlain who switched sides after his son and heir married one of Roger Mortimer's many daughters, and taken to the queen and her allies in Hereford.

Arundel was forty-one at the time of his death, born on 1 May 1285, and left a son and heir, Richard 'Copped Hat', who was about thirteen in 1326 and was destined to become one of the richest men in England in the entire fourteenth century, as well as several daughters and at least one younger son. His widow Alice was granted £130 a year in March 1327 for the sustenance of herself and her children, perhaps at the request of her brother John de Warenne, earl of Surrey (Patent Rolls), who survived Edward II's downfall.

There had long been bad blood between the earl of Arundel and Roger Mortimer, who was his first cousin once removed (Arundel's paternal grandmother Isabella Mortimer was the sister of Roger's father Edmund). Mortimer attacked and captured Arundel's castle at Clun during the Despenser War of 1321, and Arundel sent an indignant letter to to the "good and wise men and his dear and beloved bailiffs and the other burgesses and good men of the town of Shrewsbury" on 4 June that year, on 4 June 1321, regarding a sum of money which they were keeping for him and which he evidently suspected his cousin of wanting to steal: "...we do not under any circumstances intend that our cousin of Mortimer, who is so close to us in blood [nostre cousin de mortemer qe nous est si pres de saunk], should do us such a great injury, which we have in no way merited."

Arundel and his two companions, John Daniel and Robert (not Thomas) de Micheldever, were not granted a trial but merely "beheaded at Hereford without judgement and without being arraigned," as a later petition of Micheldever's wife to parliament points out. Arundel's main 'crimes' were being an ally of Edward II, marrying his son Richard to Hugh Despenser the Younger's daughter Isabel - which at least spared her the fate of three of her sisters, dumped into convents at Queen Isabella's behest weeks after their father's death - and being Roger Mortimer's rival for land and influence in the Marches. Arundel's lands in North Wales and Shropshire were later granted to Mortimer; his castle and honour of Arundel in Sussex were given to Edward II's half-brother the earl of Kent; most of the treasure Arundel had stored in Chichester and London ended up in Queen Isabella's coffers. The chronicler Adam Murimuth says that Arundel, Daniel and Micheldever were executed because Roger Mortimer hated them with a "perfect hatred" (perfecto odio). As I wrote in my post about Daniel and Micheldever, I don't know what they had done to deserve Mortimer's loathing or to merit summary execution without trial.

The Lancastrian chronicler Henry Knighton, writing a few decades later, claims that the earl of Arundel did harm to Queen Isabella in some way, but that sounds like a much later justification for what amounted to the murder of a peer of the realm; there is nothing in any contemporary source that I've seen to confirm this. Several chroniclers say that a similar accusation, that of 'insulting the queen', was thrown at Simon of Reading, who likewise was not given a trial, when he was executed with Hugh Despenser the Younger a week later - when exactly did 'insulting the queen' become a capital offence? Another of Arundel's supposed crimes was condemning Thomas of Lancaster to death in March 1322, but the earl of Kent, one of Mortimer and Isabella's supporters and with them at Hereford, had also sat at Lancaster's trial and condemned him to death. Apparently the hypocrisy of that didn't bother anyone.

According to the Chronicle of Lanercost, Arundel was "condemned to death in secret, as it were, and afterwards beheaded" (et quasi in occulto adjudicatus est morti, et postea decollatus), and the Llandaff chronicle, cited in Arundel's ODNB entry, says that the axe was wielded by a "worthless wretch" (villissimi ribaldi) and that it required twenty-two strokes to sever the poor man's head. The Brut chronicle, who wrongly calls the earl 'Sir John of Arundel', says that he was beheaded for the simple reason that he was one of the Despensers' counsellors. In the brave new world of 1326/27, during a revolution frequently said to have put an end to Edward II's tyranny, that was apparently all it took.

A Letter To Edward II, 1325

2011-11-13T18:41:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post today, in which I'd like to say 'Happy 699th Birthday, Sire' to Edward III, born at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312. I'm also pleased to report that Edward II now has 700 fans on his Facebook page. :-)

Here's a great letter sent to Edward II on 6 June 1325, during the War of Saint-Sardos between Edward and his brother-in-law Charles IV of France over Gascony, by a young Gascon nobleman called Bérard d'Albret (died 1346), one of Edward's greatest supporters. He was the son of Amanieu, lord of Albret (died 1326), a powerful and wealthy nobleman related by blood and marriage to the lords of Bergerac and counts of Armagnac, and was himself lord of Vayres and Vertheuil. Jonathan Sumption describes Bérard as "perhaps the ablest of his ruthless and warlike clan" and cites a contemporary letter which calls him "more enthusiastic than anyone else in these parts about the service of the king our lord [Edward II]."

Somewhat bizarrely, I found Bérard on a website called Who's Dated Who. Hmmm; in fact he married, in 1319, a woman with the excellent name of Guiraude de Gironde. Bérard was in England in 1326, and there are several mentions of him there in the chancery rolls, including one which demonstrates that he had some troubles unloading his possessions on arrival in Southampton: Edward II sent a man there "to bring to the king the horses, harness and goods of the said Berard, lately arrested by the mayor, bailiffs and keepers of the port of that town." One hopes that this unfortunate introduction to the country didn't put Bérard off England too much.

Here's my translation of Bérard's short letter, which I love both for its attitude towards Edward II and for the lovely Gascon French in which it's written (by a clerk rather than Bérard himself, presumably): le vostre umyl sosgis siniffia a la vostra treshauta senhoria que je ay reseu vo letras...E a Diu que set garda de larma e du cuer de vos...

"To his very dear, dread lord, your humble subject recommends himself to your very high lordship. Very dear, dread lord, your humble subject signifies to your very high lordship that I have received your letters stipulating that I should come to you, which thing, very dear, dread lord, is the greatest joy that I have ever had in my life, that is, to see you. And, very dear, dread lord, as promptly as I can I will set off to come to you. The reason, very dear, dread lord, that I have remained behind the bearer*, if it please you, he will be able to tell you more fully. And may God, very dear, dread lord, safely keep your soul and your heart. Given on the island of Glénan on the day of the festival of Corpus Christi."

* i.e. stayed longer in Gascony and not travelled to England with the man carrying his letter to Edward.

I also recently read a letter sent to Hugh Despenser the Younger on 31 March 1325 by Bertrand Assailit, formerly an adherent of Piers Gaveston: a few weeks before his death in June 1312, Piers sent Bertrand and another man named Berduk de Marsan to Cornwall on his behalf to collect £583 from his steward there. Bertrand and Berduk were captured by William Martin carrying 1000 marks and 129 pieces of tin and imprisoned, to Edward II's fury. Assailit's French is also deliciously Gascon-flavoured: A la vostra senheuria faz assavoir que le prumier dimenge de Mars mestre Bernart de la Cassenhea fu pris a demia lua Dagens e est en prison dins le chastel de Penne e en bona garda...Cher senheur, umblament vos pri que moi vullez aver recomande a vostra graca...(To your lordship we make known that on the first day of March, Master Bernard de Cassanea was taken [arrested or captured] halfway to Agen and is imprisoned in the castle of Penne and well-guarded...Dear lord, I pray you humbly that you might show me your good will...)

Sources

The letters are printed in Pierre Chaplais, ed., The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents.

- Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial By Battle
- Malcolm Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War 1: The Angevin Legacy 1250-1340

Vagrant Pigs, The Price Of Ale And Re-dyed Caps

2011-11-06T14:40:00.000+01:00

Some details from ordinary people's lives in London during Edward II's reign, from the Letter Books of London 1314-1337.

- 13 October 1313: "...came Laurence de Hanyngtone, skinner, and found security for the goods left by the above William de Hanyngtone [who had recently died] to John his son, whose guardian he had been appointed. And forasmuch as complaint had been made to the Mayor and Aldermen that the said John had not been decently maintained, the said Laurence was ordered to provide him yearly whilst at school with a furred gown, a coat of 'Alemayne' [Germany] with tunic to match, four pairs of linen cloths, sufficient shoes and a decent bed, and every week give him tenpence for his commons."

- 15 August 1314: "Precept to the Sheriffs to deliver to Alice, late wife of John de Harwe, her free-bench* in a tenement which belonged to her late husband, viz., the hall, principal chamber and cellar beneath, and also common easement in the kitchen, stable, common privy, and courtyard."

* The note says "The estate in copyhold lands which the wife had for dower on the death of her husband according to the custom of the manor."

- 27 June 1314, three days after Edward II's privy seal was captured at the battle of Bannockburn and the day he reached safety at Berwick-on-Tweed (he used Isabella's seal instead): "Writ to the Sheriffs notifying the loss of the King's Privy Seal, and ordering that proclamation be made that no attention be paid to any command that may appear under that Seal without further orders from the King, unless the command be to the King's benefit and honour."

- Uncertain date in late 1314: "William de Mortone attached [i.e. arrested] to answer a charge of having forcibly extracted various articles of jewellery, silver plate, linen and woollen cloths, also certain bonds and deeds of acquittance, from two chests lying near the church of St Magnus in the Ward of Bridge."

- Monday before Christmas, 1314: "The same day came good men of the Ward of Bradestrete and prayed that a certain elm tree growing near London Wall by Bisshopesgate, which by reason of its age and dryness was dangerous to the shops of Roger Poyntel, might be cut down and sold, and the proceeds of the sale devoted to the purchase of a cord for le Wardehoke." (Whatever that is.)

- 21 September 1316: "Proclamation that no brewer nor brewster [female brewer] nor any one else sell a gallon of ale for more than three farthings, and the best at three halfpence. Any one convicted of doing the contrary shall at first lose his brew, at the second offence abjure the trade, and at the third abjure the City forever."

- 30 May 1315: "Writ to the Mayor and Sheriffs for proclamation to be made that all vintners and taverners selling wine by retail in the City and suburb shall take no more than threepence a gallon, under heavy penalty...Proclamation made accordingly on Sunday before the feast of St Barnabas [11 June]."

- "Henry de St. Antonine, taverner, to answer a charge of having sold a gallon of wine at Christmas, 10 Edward II [1316], for sixpence, contrary to the ordinance which declared that no taverner of the City should sell wine by retail for more than fivepence per gallon. The said Henry came, confessed his guilt, and put himself on the mercy of the Mayor and the Aldermen. Judgement given that, inasmuch as the said Henry had sold a gallon of wine out of a cask at a penny more than was lawful, he should sell the remainder of the cask at fourpence a gallon and bring the money into court to be dealt with as the court should decide."

There's a discrepancy of twopence there between the price of a gallon of wine stated in the proclamation and the price stated in the judgement against Henry.

- Letter from Edward II to the mayor and sheriffs, 15 March 1318: "We have understood that certain cappers of the city fraudulently make from day to day, and expose for sale in the City, diverse caps of flocks, and and wool and flocks mixed, and of other wool not suitable for caps, and that they redye old and used caps and sell them as new, and many merchant strangers bring caps deceitfully made elsewhere into the City...". He ordered the men to search for such caps and burn them. :-)

- 4 March 1316: "Writ to the Mayor and Sheriffs, enjoining them to see that the pavement of the City is repaired, the streets cleaned and freed of vagrant pigs."

- 23 February 1320: "Writ to the Mayor and Sheriffs for the punishment of bakers, taverners, millers and diverse others guilty of committing assaults with swords, bucklers, and other arms by night."

- 12 March 1320: "Seventeen pieces of hide belonging to John de Portesmuth were seized in the house of Robert de Gloucestre by Richard Lussher and his fellows, sworn to survey hides in the City, who say that the aforesaid hides are not tanned nor fit for making shoes, and that the aforesaid John brought them to the City for the purpose of making shoes...The jurors say that the aforesaid hides are false and badly tanned to the deception of the people."

- Undated, c. Easter 1320: at the end of a long schedule about taxation: "Be it known that in this taxation of goods in the City and suburbs there shall be exempted one gown for the man and one for his wife, and a bed for both; a ring and a bracelet of gold or silver, and a girdle of silk for daily use, and also a hanap of silver from which they drink."

- 17 June 1320: "a certain John le Chaundeller was summoned at the Guildhall to answer for that he, being the tenant of a certain small house outside Alegate, adjoining the churchyard of St Botolph, for which tenancy he ought to clean the gate of Alegate within and without and under the same, had not cleaned the gate."

- July/August/September 1320: at the Hustings for Common Pleas, men named William le Clerk of Higham Ferrers, Nicholas Schyngel and Warin de Waldene were found guilty of selling putrid meat unfit for human consumption and condemned "to stand in the pillory and the meat to be burnt under him."

- 3 June 1321: "Letters patent granting the City a royal pardon for neglecting to keep watch on those taking sanctuary in churches, provided that in future such fugitives be safeguarded in the City according to law and custom, in the same manner as in other parts of the realm. Witness the king at Westminster."

Book Review: The Lion Of Mortimer by Juliet Dymoke

2011-11-02T12:43:00.000+01:00

Published in 1979, this short novel about Edward II - it's less than 200 pages long - is out of print, but easily available in online bookshops at a very low price. It's the third volume in Dymoke's The Plantagenets series, after A Pride of Kings and The Royal Griffin (about Edward II's great-aunt Eleanor, who married Simon de Montfort) and before Lady of the Garter (about his niece Joan of Kent). I adore this tacky cover of Lion of Mortimer, and this one of Lady of the Garter, which is the copy I have of the book.

The novel's title is confusing and puzzles me somewhat, as it has little to do with the Mortimers, and features instead Edward II's friend Sir William Montacute (died 1319), his son of the same name who is the future earl of Salisbury, and his wife Elizabeth de Montfort as viewpoint characters. Lion opens in May 1306, just before the mass knighting of nearly 300 men including Edward of Caernarfon and the elder William Montacute, and closes just after Edward III's arrest of Roger Mortimer at Nottingham Castle in October 1330 (as novels about Edward II almost always do).

The Lion of Mortimer is a reasonably good place for a reader keen to learn more about the reign of Edward II to start: it's a fairly basic - hardly surprising, given its lack of length - overview of the era with little in-depth characterisation, and a decent and easy to follow (though dated) narrative of the main events. My favourite scene of the novel is the first one: William Montacute, decked out in all his court finery, walks down to the river Gade near Langley, and spots "a solitary man rowing a small boat strongly against the current, muscled arms pulling well at the oars, broad shoulders moving smoothly under peasant fustian, the May sunshine glinting on a head of thick curling russet hair." This turns out to be the prince of Wales himself, Edward of Caernarfon, who is further described in the scene as a "tall, healthy-looking young man" and "passionately addicted to physical exercise"; a lovely introduction to his eccentricity and unusual rustic hobbies, and the enormous strength remarked on by chroniclers.

Edward and William proceed to a vividly-described feast at his manor of Langley, where many of the important players are introduced to the reader: Roger Mortimer, the young lord of Wigmore, who has "an air of suppressed intensity" and is "not a man to cross"; Hugh Despenser, very young and insignificant as yet, though already heartily disliked by Mortimer; and of course Piers Gaveston, who "came from Gascony and knew how to dress, how to carry himself; he had a natural grace but there was an insolent turn to his head, an arrogance in his smile." Edward's face glows whenever he looks at Piers. Over the next few pages we also meet, among others, Piers' nemesis the earl of Warwick - whom he mocked as the Black Hound of Arden - who has "a habitual and uncontrollable dribble of saliva trickling down his chin," Edward's cousin and enemy Thomas of Lancaster, loathed by his wife Alice de Lacy, and Edward's queen Isabella, a beautiful but haughty young woman with a habit of writing to her father every time anything annoys her, which is pretty often.

Unfortunately, the rest of the novel doesn't entirely live up to the promise of its excellent beginning. It moves at a breakneck speed; the first fifty pages cover the period from May 1306 to Edward's coronation in February 1308, which leaves only 140 pages for Dymoke to write about the period up to October 1330. Piers Gaveston goes into exile and returns with dizzying rapidity, the queen is pregnant and Edward - yawn - abandons her at Tynemouth to save Piers, Piers dies and Edward grieves for half a page, then suddenly it's Bannockburn, then suddenly it's 1318 and the king and queen have three children. And so on. Many of the most interesting and important events are not dramatised: for instance, we see Edward's son the young duke of Aquitaine through the eyes of his friend William Montacute the younger in Hainault in September 1326 just before the invasion of England, and the next scene is Edward II in captivity at Kenilworth Castle months later, grieving for the Despensers, whose executions we never saw. Some pages later at Berkeley, Edward is foully mistreated and then murdered by red-hot poker, scenes I find very hard to read. (I console myself with the thought that this mistreatment almost certainly never happened.)

There's little original in Juliet Dymoke's re-telling of Edward II's story, but it does cover the period well, and of course it's not her fault that scholarship has moved on considerably since she wrote it. The portrayal of Edward as a man totally unsuited to his position, unable to change and unable to see what is wrong with the way he behaves, is well-written and plausible, and fits in with what we know of him. I found Isabella irritating more than anything else, but then, I'm not generally given to finding Isabella sympathetic or likeable, so the portrayal of her may well affect other readers entirely differently. There are some lovely vivid scenes in the novel, with Piers Gaveston's jousting tournament at Wallingford in December 1307 and Edward meeting visiting dignitaries while digging a pond at Langley stripped to the waist and muddy being particular favourites of mine. I also enjoyed seeing the story through the eyes of people who rarely appear in fiction about this era. In short, The Lion of Mortimer is a quick easy journey through Edward II's turbulent reign and is well worth a read, especially as you can pick it up for a mere penny on Amazon.

Edward II In October 1325

2011-10-26T19:56:00.000+02:00

A detailed look at Edward II's movements and activities this month 686 years ago, a year before the beginning of the revolution which was to sweep him from his throne.

Edward had said farewell to his elder son Edward of Windsor at Dover on 12 September 1325, when the boy sailed to France to pay homage to his uncle Charles IV for Aquitaine and Ponthieu. Queen Isabella was also in France, and Edward would never see his wife or son again; fortunately for him, he had no way of knowing that. From Dover, the king travelled slowly through Surrey to Westminster, staying at Banstead, a manor he had given to Isabella in 1318, and Bletchingley, forfeited in 1321 by his former favourite Hugh Audley, where the living quarters and the chapel were hastily cleaned and refurbished before his arrival. Edward arrived at Banstead late in the evening of 5 October, and at midnight sent out messengers ordering the array of his army on land and sea to be renewed because of "some news which he had heard" - I don't know what that was - and summoned the treasurer, Archbishop William Melton, and other members of his council to come to him at Banstead on the 7th, "at the king’s rising." On the same day, Edward wrote a letter to the chancellor Robert Baldock, which said "The king has found many faults in William de Gosefeld, clerk, as the chancellor knows well, for which he cannot be kept in the king's service, and has heard that he has been appointed justice in many places, which seems to be a great scandal." The king called parliament on 10 October, to meet at Westminster on 18 November (it would mostly be devoted to the queen's refusal to return from France).

On the day he returned to Westminster, 9 October, Edward gave ten shillings to Jack the Trumpeter of Dover, who had bought forty-seven caged goldfinches for Edward to give to his niece Eleanor Despenser, and also paid his clerk Will of Dunstable to look after the birds until Eleanor took possession of them. Edward stayed at his palace of Sheen from 12 to 18 October, with Eleanor, paying her expenses and ordering forty bundles of firewood for her chamber. Eleanor's husband Hugh Despenser the Younger, for his part, set off for Wales: he was at Caerphilly on 9 October, and still away from court on 19 November, when Edward wrote to him. Edward asked the pope on 16 October to grant dispensations for his children Eleanor of Woodstock and Edward of Windsor to marry King Alfonso XI of Castile and his sister Leonor, a dispensation being necessary as the children were second cousins once removed. He also sent letters to Jaime II of Aragon's son and heir Alfonso and the regents of Castile, who included the bishops of Burgos and Avila and several of the king's royal kinsmen, thanking them for their affection for him and "the gracious and benevolent way" they had handled his affairs. He left Sheen for Cippenham that day, and his chamber journal records that he bought fish from five fishermen of the Thames along the way; his clerk carefully noted that it was Edward himself, not one of his servants, who purchased the fish. While at Cippenham, the king gave a pound to a woman who had brought him a gift of ale, bread and more fish, and twenty-five shillings to his porter Will Shene and his new wife Isode as a wedding present. Edward exerted himself to help Thomas ate Churche, a valet of his kitchen, on 20 October: Thomas claimed to have been wrongfully imprisoned by a group of Londoners and an inquisition was being held regarding the matter, and Edward, having heard that "some people are trying to put on the inquisition suspicious and ignorant people by which damage may happen" to Thomas, ordered the mayor and sheriffs of London to ensure that "loyal and sufficient people who know the business" were put on the inquisition instead. On the following day, Edward granted permission for the abbot of St Mary's in York to found a chapel in the Yorkshire village of Myton, "in honour of the Transubstantiation and the flesh and blood of Our Lord," to pray for the souls of the men killed at the Chapter of Myton in September 1319.

More evidence that Edward II had himself been planning to travel to France to pay homage to his brother-in-law Charles IV, and thus did not fall into some mythical trap prepared for him by Isabella and Roger Mortimer by sending his son (see here for much more about that), is found in an entry in his chamber journal of 23 October 1325, when the king gave a hundred shillings to "John Haddyng, sailor, captain of the ship called la Jonete of Winchelsea, in which ship the king should have passed overseas from Dover...". On 31 October, Edward gave forty shillings to Katherine, wife of Hugh Despenser the Younger's chamberlain Clement Holditch, "who came to the king with some important business she had to do with his help," and the following day sent his valet John de Toucestre, who was retiring, to live at Reading Abbey (as was very common with retired servants of the royal household). That's interesting, as Toucestre must have left the abbey a year later to fight for Edward after Isabella and Mortimer's invasion, and also joined the earl of Kent's conspiracy to free Edward from captivity in 1330.

Sources

Society of Antiquities of London MS 122
Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327
Calendar of Patent Rolls 1324-1327
Foedera 1307-1327
Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326
Elizabeth Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household, 1307-1328

My Edward II Badge

2011-10-16T16:40:00.000+02:00

Courtesy of the History Police group on Facebook, one of whose members came up with the idea, a fancy official badge for Edward II's greatest fan, i.e. me. :-) Click here to make your own...:)

Friday Facts

2011-10-07T16:59:00.000+02:00

More interesting stuff about Edward II, his reign and his family. :-)

- Edward's grandfather King Fernando III of Castile and Leon captured Seville from the Moors in December 1248, and supposedly mocked his Muslim enemies by riding his horse up the Giralda tower, the minuet of Seville's Great Mosque - perhaps one of the factors which prompted a Muslim writer to describe him as "the tyrant, the cursed one."

- After Edward's ally Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, died in early 1311, his daughter Alice's husband Thomas of Lancaster, Edward's first cousin, inherited Lincoln's lands by right of his wife. Lancaster had to pay homage to Edward for his new lands, but refused to cross the Tweed into Scotland, where Edward was taking part in one of his unsuccessful campaigns, to do so. Edward refused to return to England to accept the homage. Lancaster threatened to take a hundred knights to forcibly enter his lands. Eventually Edward caved in and agreed to meet his cousin at Haggerston, on the English side of the river, perhaps to save any future legal difficulties because Lancaster hadn't paid homage to him in England.

- Before his accession, Edward was usually named in documents as 'Lord Edward, prince of Wales' (in French, monsire Edward prince de Gales, and in Latin, Dominus Edwardus princeps Wallie).

- After he fled from the field of Bannockburn to safety at Dunbar Castle, Edward granted one William Franceis an income of fifty marks annually in gratitude for the unspecified "kind service he lately performed for the king in his presence at Dunbar."

- On 1 January 1317, Pope John XXII wrote to both Edward and Robert Bruce to confirm a two-year truce between them, addressing Edward as "our dearest son in Christ, Edward, illustrious king of England," and Robert as "our beloved son, the noble man, Robert de Bruce, holding himself king of Scotland."

- Edward's father-in-law Philippe IV of France died in a hunting accident on 29 November 1314; on 15 December, Edward ordered the archbishops of Canterbury and York, all the bishops and twenty-eight abbots to "celebrate exequies" for him.

- Nine days before this order, on St Nicholas's Day, the king had given two pounds to Robert Tyeis, who officiated as boy-bishop in the chapel of his favourite manor of Langley. In 1316, Edward gave six shillings and eight pence to John, son of Alan of Scrooby, who officiated as boy-bishop in his chapel on St Nicholas's Day, and ten shillings to the unnamed child who acted as boy-bishop in his presence at St Mary's Church in Nottingham on 28 December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

- One of Edward's clerks, Master James de Ispannia ('of Spain'), a canon of St Pauls in London whom the king appointed as one of the Chamberlains of the Exchequer of the Receipt in 1317, appears to have been his first cousin, presumably an illegitimate son of one of Eleanor of Castile's many brothers, though which one is uncertain.

- In August 1320, Edward wrote to the king of Cyprus, asking him to protect three Dominican friars going there to preach to the 'Saracens'. The king is not named in the letter, which opens "To the magnificent lord prince..., by the grace of God illustrious king of Cyprus," as though no-one was sure what he was called. In fact, he was Henry II de Lusignan, Edward II's third cousin twice removed via common descent from Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Blog Break And Pics

2011-09-23T16:08:00.000+02:00

Wigmore Castle, Herefordshire, which belonged to Roger Mortimer.

I'm off on my holidays again, so won't be able to update the blog for a while - in the meantime, there are hundreds of old posts to read, linked in the sidebar. :-) See you soon!

Wigmore Castle.

Inner bailey of Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire.

Ludlow Castle.

Berkeley Castle, with the keep on the right (where Edward II was supposedly imprisoned in 1327).

Tomb of Hugh Despenser the Younger, Tewkesbury Abbey.

The site of Hanley Castle, Worcestershire, which belonged to Hugh Despenser the Younger.

Moat of Hanley Castle.

What Hanley Castle once looked like.

Letters

2011-09-19T15:30:00.001+02:00

Some of my favourite extracts from letters of Edward II's era...

- Hugh Despenser the Younger to Sir John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan, on 21 March 1321:

"Regarding that which you have heard, that the earl of Hereford is even more gloomy and thoughtful than usual, it is no wonder if he is, as he has turned his countenance against his liege lord, who has given him so many goods and honours, that he might well have much to think about" (avoir grant pensee, literally 'have great thinking').

The earl of Hereford was Humphrey de Bohun, widower of Edward II's sister Elizabeth (died May 1316).

- Hugh to Inge again, fifteen days previously; you can practically hear him sighing with exasperation:

"We have already so often sent letters on this subject in the past that we are quite tired of it, and we inform you that we will send no further instructions about it until we have need to write in answer to your letters, and therefore the instructions we have given before this must suffice."

- Edmund, earl of Arundel, to the "good and wise men and his dear and beloved bailiffs and the other burgesses and good men of the town of Shrewsbury" (bones gents et sages et ses chiers et bien amiez les bailiffs et lez autres burgoys et bone gent de la vile de Salopesbir) during the Despenser War on 4 June 1321, regarding a sum of money which they were keeping for him and which he evidently suspected his cousin Roger Mortimer of Wigmore of wanting to steal:

"And we beg you as friends, and charge you on pain of all that you are able to forfeit to the king, as well as our friendship, that you should keep safely for our use the money which you have received in our lord's [Edward II's] town, for we do not under any circumstances intend that our cousin of Mortimer, who is so close to us in blood [nostre cousin de mortemer qe nous est si pres de saunk], should do us such a great injury, which we have in no way merited."

Arundel and Mortimer, who were almost the same age (born on 1 May 1285 and 25 April 1287 respectively) were first cousins once removed: Arundel was the son of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel (1267-1302), himself the son of Isabella Mortimer, elder sister of Roger Mortimer's father Edmund.

- Arnaud Caillau of Gascony to Edward II in March 1325, during the War of Saint-Sardos, perturbed because he had only had one letter from the king since leaving England the previous summer:

Mon cuer est en grant penssement, literally, 'My heart is in great thinking'.

This letter ended:

"May our Lord increase your honour and and grant you a good and long life, and give you vengeance over all your enemies, wherever they may be."

A similar ending, from Arnaud to Hugh Despenser the Younger in November 1324:

"I pray to God, who is all-powerful, that he increase your honour daily, and guard you from all evils, and multiply your goods, and give you vengeance over all your enemies."

- Hugh Despenser the Younger to Edward II's half-brother the earl of Kent in September 1324:

"And truly, sire, there is no other reason that the ships arrived late with you, except that a strong wind was against them, which we cannot divert by our own command."

- Eighteen-year-old Duke John III of Brabant to Edward II, his uncle, in May 1319. In late March and early April 1319, Edward had asked Pope John XXII to "proceed with severity against the Scots," and also sent letters to his nephew, to Robert of Bethune, count of Flanders, and to the towns of Bruges, Dunkirk, Mechlin, Ypres and others, asking them not to allow any Scots into their territory or to trade with them.

"Very dear uncle, we have well understood your letters which you sent us regarding Robert Bruce, and about his adherents and companions, and about the wrongs they have done to you and to my lord the king [Edward I] your father and my grandfather, on whom GOD have mercy, in Scotland, and also in your kingdom of England; which wrongs, damage, defiance and outrages that they have done to you and still do strike us dumb and weigh heavily upon our heart." (Foedera 1307-1327)

- Isabella of France to Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, on 5 February 1326, about her husband Edward II:

"My very dear and very sweet lord and friend" (Mon treschier et tresdouche seignut et amy): how Isabella referred to Edward
"And certainly we desire above all else, save God and the salvation of our soul, to be in the company of our said lord [Edward] and to live and die there."

Sources

- Pierre Chaplais, ed., The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents
- Seymour Phillips, Edward II
- Foedera 1307-1327
- W.H. Stevenson, 'A Letter of the Younger Despenser on the Eve of the Barons' Rebellion, 21 March 1321', English Historical Review, 12 (1897)
J. Goronwy Edwards, Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales
- The National Archives, Arundell Deeds, 215/1

Was Edward II Trying To Annul His Marriage In 1325?

2011-09-11T13:39:00.000+02:00

Almost certainly not, and here's why.

The Lanercost chronicler, a monk living in a convent near the Scottish border, claims that in 1325 Hugh Despenser the Younger "was exerting himself at the pope's court to procure divorce between the king of England and the queen, and in furtherance of this business there sent to the court a certain man of religion, acting irreligiously, by name Thomas Dunheved, with an appointed colleague, and a certain secular priest named Master Robert de Baldock." (Yes, the same Thomas Dunheved, Dominican friar, who temporarily freed the former king from Berkeley Castle in the summer of 1327.) The St Paul's annalist repeats the rumour that Edward was trying to annul his marriage to Isabella and that Dunheved was involved in this. [1]

This statement in two chronicles is often repeated as fact in secondary sources, as yet another grievance Isabella had against her husband Edward II, along with supposedly 'removing' her children from her (rather than just setting up households for them in normal fashion), confiscating her lands and giving her a much smaller income to live on (he did do that), and so on. Let's look at this logically. Why exactly would Edward II have wanted to annul his marriage to Isabella? What benefits could he have gained from it? Precisely none. He would, however, have suffered a whole pile of negative consequences. Edward was at war with Isabella's brother Charles IV of France from the autumn of 1323 (although military action did not begin until the summer of 1324) until a peace treaty was signed in June 1325. As Edward's biographer Seymour Phillips points out, "An attempted divorce in the conditions of 1325 would have been political madness, since it would have meant the repudiation of all agreements between England and France, which Edward and Isabella's marriage had been intended to strengthen, and would have plunged England into an immediate war with France" (shortly after peace had finally been established between the two countries). [2] Even during Edward's war with Isabella's brother, over Gascony, there is no reason to suppose that he considered annulment, or that it would have gained him anything. The only possible grounds Edward could have had for an annulment of his marriage in 1325 was consanguinity, as he and Isabella were second cousins once removed. They had been granted a papal dispensation for this, however. An annulment would have meant that their marriage had never been valid in the first place (as a marriage then could not simply be ended, in the way we understand divorce), which would have made Edward and Isabella's children illegitimate. Edward II spent much of 1325 negotiating marriages for three of their children with the royal houses of Spain. Why on earth would he have risked making them illegitimate?

No proof of the two chroniclers' statement that Edward was trying to annul his marriage in 1325 has ever been discovered in the Vatican archives, nor is there any evidence that he ever wrote to the pope regarding this matter. He did send Thomas Dunheved to Pope John XXII in Avignon in 1325, it's true - but to complain about Alexander Bicknor, the archbishop of Dublin, whom Edward held responsible for his half-brother the earl of Kent's surrender at La Réole in September 1324, and who was not afraid to make his intense dislike of Hugh Despenser the Younger obvious and public. (Bicknor boasted that were he not a cleric, he would challenge Despenser to a duel.) John XXII, who made Dunheved a papal chaplain while he was visiting the papal court, wrote to Edward II in October 1325: "To the king, whose letters sent by Thomas Dunhevede, a Friar Preacher, the pope has received. The matter touching Alexander, archbishop of Dublin, cannot be heard in camera, but must be laid before the consistory...". [3] The Lanercost chronicler says that Edward also sent Robert Baldock to the pope regarding an annulment of his marriage. Baldock was chancellor of England from August 1323 until October 1326, after Isabella and Mortimer's invasion [4], and did not leave the country, to my knowledge.

As for other chroniclers, the very well-informed author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi does not mention an intended annulment. Neither does the royal clerk and chronicler Adam Murimuth, who knew the royal couple well and who visited the papal court in 1324. Neither does the author of the Flores Historiarum, who loathed Edward and who would have jumped on a chance to condemn him for humiliating his wife in this fashion. Neither does any other chronicler, even Jean Froissart, who a few decades later invented a tale of Isabella secretly fleeing to France from Winchelsea with her son in 1325, to escape from Edward's mistreatment of her (in fact she departed from Dover with a large retinue and, of course, Edward's full knowledge and consent). When Thomas Dunheved wrote to Edward II on 7 October 1325, he did not mention an annulment. [5] Edward was debating with his counsellors, by the end of 1324, the possibility of sending Queen Isabella to France to negotiate with her brother, and she departed for her homeland the following March. Why then would he suddenly decide to annul his marriage to her? It wasn't until late 1325 that it became apparent that the queen did not intend to return to England. Isabella herself wrote to her husband from France on 5 February 1326, addressing him as "our very dear and very sweet lord and friend" (nostre treschier et tresdouche seignur et amy) and informing him that although she wished nothing more than to return to his company and live and die with him, she did not dare, because of her fear of Hugh Despenser. Isabella did not mention that Edward was trying to annul their marriage; neither did any letters her brother Charles IV sent to Edward around this time or earlier (and Charles would have been utterly furious at this horrendous insult to his sister). [6] At Hugh Despenser's trial in November 1326, he was not accused of attempting to procure an annulment of Edward and Isabella's marriage. Why would Isabella not charge him with this, if he had done it? It was the gravest and most humiliating crime Despenser could have committed against her.

The Lanercost chronicler in his convent in the far north, although an invaluable source for events in Scotland and Scottish raids in the north of England, knew little of what was going on at court, while the Pauline annalist was merely reporting a rumour he had heard (ut vulgariter dicebatur), not stating it as definitive truth. Plenty of rumours were flying around England in 1325/26, including one reported in the Brut that Edward II intended to strangle his wife and his son Edward of Windsor to death. Edward was, apparently, informed of this after his deposition, and was - as any normal human being would be when accused of something as monstrous as wishing to murder his own child - deeply upset and horrified ("God knows, I thought it never, and now I would that I were dead! So would God that I were! For then were all my sorrow passed.") [7] Just because rumours existed does not automatically make them true, and it's a shame that writers continue to declare as fact that Edward was trying to divorce his wife without considering the ample evidence that he was doing no such thing, and without considering the logical implications and consequences of this act. It does fit so nicely into the popular Victim!Isabella school of thought, though, doesn't it? Precisely why Edward would have wanted to annul his marriage to the queen in 1325 and what he would have gained from it in exchange for taking such a huge risk is never actually explained; his supposed nastiness and neglect of the queen and the nastiness of Hugh Despenser appears to be enough reason. Alison Weir claims in her biography of Isabella that "Lanercost's statement is to some extent corroborated by the fact that Dunheved was sent to the papal Curia on secret business at this time," but fails to notice the papal letter which demonstrates that Dunheved delivered Edward's letters regarding the archbishop of Dublin to the pope, and somehow confuses Thomas with his secular brother Stephen (as Lanercost clearly and correctly refers to the Dunheved brother in question as Thomas, I can't help but wonder how carefully she looked at the sources). Of course, it's entirely possible that Thomas Dunheved discussed other matters with the pope on the king's behalf, but we have no evidence, besides a rumour repeated in two chronicles, that an annulment of the king and queen's marriage was one of them.

I believe that it is virtually certain that Edward II was not intending to annul his marriage in 1325; he had no reason to do so, and the consequences would have been disastrous for him, his children and his kingdom. Having said that, it is just possible that he was considering this course of action in the summer of 1326, by which time he knew that Isabella was going to betroth their son to the count of Hainault's daughter without his consent and invade his kingdom with an army. It's perhaps hardly surprising if he then decided that an annulment would solve his problems, and that even making his children illegitimate would be worth it. I hasten to add there is no real evidence that he was planning to ask the pope for an annulment: again, there are no documents in either the Vatican or England to confirm it. Edward met the bishop of Rochester, his ally Hamo Hethe, at Boxley Down in Kent in June 1326, and he and Hugh Despenser the Younger rode with the bishop back to Rochester. Edward asked Hethe if it were true that there had once been a queen who had disobeyed her husband and had therefore been deposed from her royal dignity. Hethe was having none of it, and retorted that whoever had told the king this had given him very bad advice. [8] This does sound as if perhaps Edward was then considering the possibility of annulment. This may be confirmed by two letters Edward sent to his son in 1326, then in France with Isabella (whether willingly or not). The first, written on 18 March, orders the thirteen-year-old not to marry without his father's consent, and to obey Edward "under pain of forfeiting all that he may to the king...". The second, written on 19 June, ends with the words "if the king find him contrary or disobedient hereafter to his will, by what counsel soever it may be, he will ordain in such wise that Edward [of Windsor] shall feel it all the days of his life, and that all other sons shall take example thereby of disobeying their lords and fathers." [9]

Do these letters, and Edward's remark to the bishop of Rochester, imply that Edward was now indeed considering an annulment of his marriage? I don't know, and if Edward did think along these lines, he took no action, and it's highly doubtful that the pope would have consented to annul his marriage anyway. If they do imply this, it must be noted that this was months after Isabella had defied Edward and refused to return to him, and was planning an invasion of his kingdom. However justified her actions may have been, seen from Edward's perspective, it's hardly surprising that he was furious with her and (perhaps unfairly, given how young the boy was) with his son, even to the extent that he was willing to infuriate Isabella's brother Charles IV by annulling the marriage and willing to disinherit his son and thereby avert the threat to himself by making the boy illegitimate. If an annulment of Edward II and Isabella of France's marriage was ever on the cards, it was a consequence of Isabella's actions against her husband, not a cause of them.

Sources

1) The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 249; Annales Paulini 1307-1340, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 1, p. 337.
2) Seymour Phillips, Edward II, p. 483 note. 169.
3) Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, pp. 474, 479.
4) T.F. Tout, The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History, p. 327.
5) F.D. Blackley, 'Isabella and the Bishop of Exeter', in T. A. Sandqvist and M. R. Powicke, eds., Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, p. 226.
6) Isabella's letter is cited in Phillips, Edward II, p. 491. For Charles IV's correspondence with Edward II in the 1320s, see Pierre Chaplais, ed., The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents.
7) The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, volume 1, pp. 252-253.
8) Roy Martin Haines, 'Bishops and politics in the reign of Edward II: Hamo de Hethe, Henry Wharton, and the 'Historia Roffensis'', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44 (1993), pp. 605-606.
9) Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327, pp. 576-578.

The Despensers In Chronicles

2011-09-04T15:08:00.000+02:00

What some fourteenth-century chroniclers wrote about Hugh Despenser the Younger (c. 1287/90 - 24 November 1326) and his father Hugh the Elder (1 March 1261 - 27 October 1326).

Scalacronica

"...the great men had ill will against him [Edward II] for his cruelty and the debauched life which he led, and on account of the said Hugh [the Younger], whom at that time he loved and entirely trusted."

It's interesting to note that Sir Thomas Gray or Grey, author of the Scalacronica, fails to point out anywhere that his father of the same name served in the retinue of Hugh Despenser the Younger for years. As late as March 1326, there's an entry in Edward II's chamber journal saying that the royal favourite had given Grey 200 marks because "Sir Hugh Despenser the son desired above all else that the said Sir Thomas remained with him all his life" (mons' Hughe le Despenser le fitz qe desirast sur toute rien qe le dit mons' Thomas demoerast ouesqe lui a toute sa vie).

Vita Edwardi Secundi

On Hugh the Elder in the mid-1310s, following a discussion of Edward II's reconciliation with the barons who had killed Piers Gaveston: "...and as for the other friends of the king matters were arranged as the king willed; but Hugh Despenser [the Elder] could find no favour. Let him beware of the earl of Lancaster and leave the country if he wishes to escape. The whole land has turned to hatred of him. Few would mourn his downfall. As an unjust official he did harm to many; he disinherited many magnates and rich men. Would that he might lose what he has thus acquired, that he might be punished in his crime."

On Hugh the Elder again in 1325: "...he was hated by everyone and even by the king's son."

On both men in 1321: "Hugh [the Younger] was accused of being too greedy and thus unsuitable to be with the king; he was accused of evil counsel; of conspiracy and falsehood; of being a destroyer of the people, a disinheritor of the crown, an enemy of king and kingdom. All these things the barons alleged against Hugh, and persistently accused father and son alike of these enormities...the brutal and greedy father had in the past wronged many, and promoted the excommunication of many...it was right that the son should share in the paternal guilt. According to some the malice of the son outweighed the father's harshness."

On Hugh the Younger in general after he became Edward's favourite: "confident of the royal favour, he did everything at his own discretion, snatched at everything, did not bow to the authority of anyone whomsoever."

Lanercost

On Hugh the Younger: "...Sir Hugh Despenser the younger, who was, as it were, the king of England's right eye, and, after the death of Piers de Gavestoun, his chief counsellor against the earls and barons...a most avaricious man..."

Geoffrey le Baker

Hugh the Younger was "another king, or more accurately ruler of the king…in the manner of Gaveston, so presumptuous that he frequently kept certain nobles from speaking to the king. Moreover, when the king, out of his magnanimity, was preoccupied with many people addressing him about their affairs, Despenser threw back answers, not those asked for but to the contrary, pretending them to be to the king’s advantage."

Brut

Hugh the Younger "kept so the king’s chamber [as Edward's chamberlain], that no man might speak with the king…all men had of him scorn and despite; and the king himself would not be governed by no manner of man, but only by his father and by him."

Anonimalle

On Hugh the Younger: "no man could approach the king without the consent of the said Sir Hugh"; it also calls him haughty, arrogant, greedy, evil and "more inclined to wrongdoing than any other man."

Robert of Avesbury, Vita et Mors Edwardi Secundi, Flores Historiarum

The first two say that Hugh the Younger was another king in England, and the Vita et Mors, referring to Hugh the Elder, comments that there were three kings of England. The Flores comments that Hugh led Edward around like a cat with a straw.

Jean Froissart

On Hugh the Younger: "Without him nothing was done and through him everything was done, and the king trusted him more than everyone...he was a heretic and a sodomite, even, it was said, with the king."

Poems On Piers Gaveston's Death

2011-08-26T16:08:00.000+02:00

According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, the death of Piers Gaveston on 19 June 1312 was an enormously popular act throughout England: "When Piers had met his end, and the voice of the people had dinned his death into the ears of all, the country rejoiced, and all its inhabitants were glad…The land rejoices, its inhabitants rejoice that they have found peace in Piers' death."

It is surely an exaggeration to say that all the country rejoiced at Piers' death, though for sure some did, as demonstrated by two contemporary poems, which are in Latin in the original:

"Celebrate, my tongue, the death of Piers who disturbed England, whom the king in love for him placed over all Cornwall; hence in his pride he will be called Earl, not Piers.
This is the work of our salvation, that Piers is dead; all the artfulness of the multifarious traitor has perished;
Henceforth let the good omen rejoice our hearts, for sorrow is past; when the fullness of time which was fit for the thing came, his head is cut off from the juncture of his body; he who raised trouble within is now troubled from without.
He who was unwilling to have an equal, clothed in the extreme of pride, against his will bends his neck to the executioner; of whose merited death this hymn is set forth.
He who placed himself as a head above his equals, loses his own head; justly his body is pierced, whose heart was so puffed up; both land, sea, stars and world, rejoice in his fall.
Ferocious and cruel among all men, he ceases now from his pomp,
Now he no longer behaves himself as an earl, or a king;
The unworthy man, worthy of death, undergoes the death he merits…
May the house of Piers, in which he is held, not be supported in strength;
May the other place [the Dominican friary of Oxford, where Piers' body was taken] be profane, and may it be in disgrace, which the filthy gore spilled from Piers’ body has defiled!
Glory be to the Creator! Glory be to the earls
Who have made Piers die with his charms!
Henceforth may there be peace and rejoicing throughout England!"

***

"The bad tree is cut down, when Piers is struck on the neck;
Blessed be the weapon which thus approached Piers!
Blessed be the hand which executed him!
Blessed the man who ordered the execution!
Blessed the steel which struck him whom the world would not bear any longer!
O Cross, which allowed to be suffered this wretched misery, do thou take from us all the material of misery.
Thee, highest God in Trinity, we pray earnestly, destroy and crush forever the maintainers of Piers."

(Both poems cited in T. Wright, The Political Songs of England (1839), pp. 258-261.)

According to the Vita, Edward II issued an edict ordering everyone to refer to Piers by his title, earl of Cornwall, rather than by his name (as mentioned in the first poem above), and talks of Piers "scornfully rolling his upraised eyes in pride and in abuse, he looked down upon all with pompous and supercilious countenance…indeed the superciliousness which he affected would have been unbearable enough in a king’s son." The somewhat later Scalacronica agrees that the "great affection" which Edward bestowed on Gaveston made him "haughty and supercilious" – although the author also calls him "very magnificent, liberal and well-bred" – and Lanercost says that Gaveston "had now grown so insolent as to despise all the nobles of the land." His behaviour evidently alienated many...

Friday Facts

2011-08-12T15:25:00.000+02:00

Another post with some fairly random facts about Edward II and his reign. :-)

- The Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow, Piers Lubaud, was a cousin of Piers Gaveston, according to the Vita Edwardi Secundi. Shortly before Christmas 1312, Edward II sent Lubaud's wife Nichola a palfrey horse worth six pounds and a saddle "with a lion of pearls, and covered with purple cloth" worth five pounds. (Whatever a 'lion of pearls' is.)

- Thomas Cobham, bishop of Worcester, told Pope John XXII that at the Westminster parliament of October 1320 "Holy Father, your devoted son, our lord the king, in the parliament summoned to London bore himself splendidly, with prudence and discretion, contrary to his former habit rising early and presenting a nobler and pleasant countenance to prelates and lords. Present almost every day in person, he arranged what business was to be dealt with, discussed and determined. Where amendment was necessary he ingeniously supplied what was lacking, thus giving joy to his people, ensuring their security, and providing reliable hope of an improvement in behaviour."

- Edward's efforts were rewarded in April 1320 when Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford, who had died in August 1282, was canonised: he had written to Popes Clement V and John XXII half a dozen times between December 1307 and January 1319, asking them to canonise Cantilupe. The two archbishops and all the bishops of England asked Edward to be present at the "translation of the holy body" in Hereford Cathedral on 14 June 1321, as this "would be greatly to the honour of God and Holy Church" and to Edward himself. He responded "it pleases the king to be there." As it turned out, Edward was unable to be present; thanks to the Despenser War, he had far more pressing matters to deal with.

- In England on the day of Cantilupe’s canonisation, according to the Sempringham annalist, "about midnight, there were frightful thunders heard, with lightning, and immoderately high wind."

- Edward wrote to his first cousin and greatest enemy Thomas of Lancaster's adherent and friend Sir Robert Holland (who was destined to be beheaded in a wood in Essex in 1328) on 20 November 1311: "we are very joyous and pleased about the good news we have heard concerning the improvement in our dear cousin and faithful subject Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and that he will soon be able to ride in comfort. And we send you word and dearly pray that, as soon as he is comfortable and able to ride without hurt to his body, you should ask him to be so good as to hasten to us at our parliament." I wonder if he gritted his teeth as he dictated that one.

- At Bannockburn, according to the Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Gray (whose father of the same name fought for Edward there), Edward "struck out so vigorously behind him with his mace there was none whom he touched that he did not fell to the ground." And according to the St Albans chronicler, he fought "like a lioness deprived of her cubs." Not exactly the coward he's been depicted as in some novels, then.

- Edward's nephew Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, killed at Bannockburn, was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire. His heart, however, was buried at Shelford near Nottingham: on 8 August 1317, Edward passed through the village on his way to York with Isabella, and attended masses and distributed five shillings and sixpence in oblations at the conventual church of Shelford in memory of the young earl, "whose heart lies there inhumed."

- Edward's name, in contemporary English documents, was always spelt the way it is today. In letters sent to him from France, however, it appeared as Edouwart, Eduart or Edduvart. Isabella's name was spelt in a variety of ways: Isabell, Isabele, Ysabel, Ysabell, Ysabelle, Yzabel. The name Hugh was often spelt Hughe, Hue, Hew, Hugg or Huge, while the foreign name of Edward II's elder brother Alfonso (November 1273-August 1284) baffled English scribes, who wrote it Anfuls, Aufos or Auffoms.

Friday Facts

2011-08-05T16:06:00.000+02:00

A post with some fairly random facts about Edward II and his reign. :-)

- Sometime before October 1311, Edward's first cousin once removed Fernando IV of Castile asked him "for a loan of money in aid of his war against the enemies of Christ." Edward politely declined that month, on the grounds that he "had been so engaged since his accession with the war in Scotland and other matters that he is unable to accede to this request." The 'other matters' presumably meant Piers Gaveston, in large part; Edward was at that time batting against the Lords Ordainer, who were determined to send Piers into exile for the third time. I'm a very long way from being knowledgeable about Spanish history, but I imagine Fernando's war had something to do with his and Jaime II of Aragon's crusade against the king of Granada.
(Close Rolls)

- Edward sent letters on 2 and 12 June 1319 to Haakon V of Norway regarding debts which the Norwegian king owed to eight English merchants - evidently unaware that Haakon had died on 6 May. Edward had as a child been betrothed to Haakon's niece Margaret the 'Maid of Norway', queen of Scotland. (Close Rolls).

- On 16 October 1325, Edward asked Pope John XXII to grant dispensations for his children Eleanor of Woodstock and Edward of Windsor (the future Edward III) to marry Alfonso XI and his sister Leonor of Castile, they being second cousins once removed, and sent letters to Jaime II of Aragon's son Alfonso and the regents of Castile two days later, thanking them for their affection for him and "the gracious and benevolent way” they had handled his affairs. (Close Rolls).

- On the same day, at Cippenham in Berkshire, Edward gave twenty-five shillings to his porter Will Shene and his new wife Isode as a wedding present. (SAL MS 122).

- Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke and also Edward's first cousin once removed, died on his way to Paris (the precise location is uncertain, but his biographer Seymour Phillips thinks probably Saint-Riquier near Amiens) on 23 June 1324; the news took only three days to reach the king at Tonbridge in Kent. (Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II by J.R.S. Phillips)

- During the war of Saint-Sardos (with Charles IV of France, over Gascony) in 1324, an atmosphere of fevered suspicion pervaded England: two letters were sent to Hugh Despenser the Younger, telling him that a fleet of foreign vessels with a hundred armed men aboard each ship had been seen in Falmouth and mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night. This turned out to be a group of Genoese merchants making their annual trip to the Netherlands, with armed men to guard their valuable cargo. (Pierre Chaplais, The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents; Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326).

- Edward's brother-in-law Philip V of France sent him a gift of a box of rose-coloured sugar in September 1317. Edward gave Philip's messenger William de Opere two and a half pounds for bringing it. (Thomas Stapleton, 'A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the 10th, 11th, and 14th years of Edward II',Archaeologia, 1836)

- Edward's huntsman William Twyt or Twici wrote a French treatise called Le Art de Venerie around 1320; the earliest text on hunting written in England, it opens "Here begins the art of hunting, which Master William Twici, huntsman of the king of England, made in his time to instruct others."

- "...we command you to watch our affairs that we may be rich and may attain our ends, of which you have good cognisance; and this cannot be attained without pain and diligence on your part." Hugh Despenser the Younger to Sir John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan, on 18 January 1321; entirely open about his aims and ambitions. (J. Goronwy Edwards, Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales)

- From 8 July 1315 to 7 July 1316, Edward spent £627 on clothes for his household. He received in April 1316 two tunics for himself, comprising six ells of scarlet – expensive woollen cloth, not the colour – two ells of yellow cloth for sewing leopards, his heraldic arms, on them, and more scarlet for making bags or purses. He also received sixteen ells of green medley (dyed in the wool cloth) to make two sleeved tunics and two tabards, while three household knights had twelve ells of the same for their tunics. Green cloth lined with miniver was also given to Isabella, their son Edward of Windsor, the king's sister the countess of Hereford, his nieces Margaret Gaveston and Eleanor Despenser, and the dowager countess of Warwick. (Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe).

- In November 1319, Edward wrote to William, count of Hainault, to raise the possibility of a marriage between his son Edward and William's eldest daughter Margaret (who later married the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV; her sister Philippa ultimately married Edward III). His careless scribe addressed the letter to 'Robert, count of Hainault'. Names could prove a problem for inattentive scribes: Louis X's queen Clemence was called Elizabeth in a letter sent to her by Edward II in May 1316, and Edward's niece Jeanne de Bar, countess of Surrey, was called Isabella in a writ of 1313. (Foedera)

My Article

2011-07-26T17:19:00.000+02:00

So, great news - my article 'The Adherents of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, in March 1330' has now been published in the English Historical Review, volume 126, pp. 779-805. :-) Here's a link to the abstract. Needless to say, I'm very, very proud and excited to see my name in such a prestigious journal, and I really hope the article goes a long way to demolishing the often-repeated notion that the earl of Kent was stupid and that's why he believed Edward II was still alive in 1330. He wasn't stupid, you know. Really not. Neither were the many dozens of men who supported him in the plot to free Edward and, as far as I can tell, shared his belief in the survival of the former king. I do hope you'll read the article and enjoy it. :-)

Chronicles On Edward II's Accession

2011-07-17T18:19:00.000+02:00

Here's a look at what some fourteenth-century chroniclers said about the death of Edward I and the accession of Edward II in July 1307:

- Vita Edwardi Secundi (Latin):

"On the day of the Translation of St Thomas in the thirty-fifth year of his reign [7 July 1307], died Edward the First after the Conquest, and his son Edward II began to reign, a robust young man in about his twenty-third year*. He did not achieve the ambition that his father had set before himself, but directed his plans to other objects. He recalled Piers Gaveston, who had recently abjured the realm at his father's command. This Piers had been the most intimate** and highly-favoured member, as soon became abundantly clear, of the young Edward's household when the latter was Prince of Wales and the old king still alive...
If our king Edward had borne himself as well [as Richard Lionheart] at the outset of his reign, and not accepted the counsels of wicked men, not one of his predecessors would have been more notable than he. For God had endowed him with every gift, and had made him equal to or indeed more excellent than other kings. If anyone cared to describe those qualities which ennoble our king, he would not find his like in the land...What hopes he raised as Prince of Wales! How they were dashed when he became King!"

* Edward was twenty-three, born 25 April 1284.
** Doesn't imply sexual intimacy.

- The Brut (Middle English; modernised spelling):

"And after this King Edward, reigned Edward his son, that was born in Caernarfon [Carnaryvan], and went into France, and espoused Isabel, the king's daughter of France...And anon [soon] as the good King Edward was dead, Sir Edward his son, king of England, sent after Piers Gauaston into Gascony*; and so much loved him that he called him his brother; and anon after gave him the lordship of Wallingford; and it was not long after that he gave him the earldom of Cornwall, against all the lords' will of the realm."

* Piers spent his first exile in 1307 in Ponthieu, Edward's inheritance from his mother Eleanor of Castile, not his native Gascony.

- The French Chronicle of London (French):

"In this year, on the Friday after the Feast of St Luke [18 October], King Edward was nobly buried at Westminster. At this time the Templars were destroyed. In this year, on the Sunday after the feast of St Peter's Chair [25 February 1308], the King and the Queen, Lady Isabele, were crowned; at which coronation, Sir John Bacwelle, a knight was killed by falling from a wall. In this year there was a great malady of the eyes, whereby many persons lost their sight*. At this time came Sir Piers de Gaverstone into England, who had been banished by King Edward the Conqueror; and was made Earl of Cornwall, to the great detriment of all the realm. In this year there was a very great frost on the Thames, so that many persons passed over on foot, upon the ice, to Suthwerk, and back again to London. In this year, judgment was given at Westminster against the franchise, as to the rights of bastardy; to the effect that if any one should die without heir and without testament made, his lands and tenements should escheat to the King."

* Wonder what that was!?

- Chronicle of Lanercost (Latin):

"...this illustrious and excellent King, my lord Edward, son of King Henry, died at Burgh-upon-Sands...in the thirty-sixth year of his reign and the sixty-seventh of his age.* Throughout his time he had been fearless and war-like, in all things strenuous and illustrious; he left not his like among Christian princes for sagacity and courage...Messengers were sent in haste to my lord Edward Prince of Wales, his son and heir...Thus Edward the younger succeeded Edward the elder, but in the same manner as Rehoboam succeeded Solomon, which his career and fate were to prove."

* Edward I was sixty-eight when he died, born 17 June 1239, and in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, acceded 20 November 1272.

- Scalacronica (French):

"After the death of Edward the First after the Conquest, his son, Edward the Second, reigned in great tribulation and adversity. He was not industrious, neither was he beloved by the great men of his realm; albeit he was liberal in giving, and amiable far beyond measure towards those whom he loved and exceedingly sociable with his intimates. Also, in body he was one of the strongest men in his realm."

Edward of Caernarfon and Rotting Animal Corpses

2011-07-11T16:23:00.000+02:00

The chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, written around 1350, vividly describes the torments supposedly inflicted on the former Edward II as he was taken from Kenilworth to Berkeley Castle in the spring of 1327, and during his incarceration at Berkeley, paraphrased here:

- Edward's jailers make him travel at night, riding bareheaded despite the cold, and deprive him of sleep. They taunt him by placing a crown of hay on his head, make him shave off his beard with cold, dirty ditch-water - whereupon Edward cries, thereby providing himself with warm water - feed him on rotting food to make him ill, and do their utmost to make him believe he is mad. Once this nightmare journey is over and he arrives at Berkeley, he is incarcerated in a cell with a deep hole nearby into which the rotting corpses of animals are thrown, in the hope that the putrefaction will kill Edward by asphyxiation. This failing, he is murdered by means of a red-hot poker, "the aid of enormous pillows and a weight heavier than that of fifteen substantial men."

Needless to say, this has been grist to the mill for a lot of writers over the centuries (including Christopher Marlowe), and is repeated all over the internet and in numerous published books as certain fact. But - surprise, surprise - it isn't. Geoffrey le Baker is the only even vaguely contemporary source for the notion that the former Edward II was so cruelly mistreated and abused at Berkeley, and Baker was not writing history but hagiography, at a time when the amusingly implausible campaign to have Edward canonised was well underway. (Miracles were widely reported at his tomb in Gloucester.) Baker's intention was to portray Edward as a Christ-like figure nobly suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the torments of lesser men, the "satraps of Satan" as Baker memorably calls them: the Passion of Edward of Caernarfon. If we accept Baker's story of the former king's fate in 1327 as historical truth, we might as well accept Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard III as the hunchbacked epitome of evil as historical truth.

Geoffrey le Baker was about the only fourteenth-century chronicler who actually liked Edward II, and blamed all his faults and mistakes on the Despensers. As a corollary, Baker loathed Queen Isabella and portrayed her as, well, a she-wolf*, cruelly taking delight in making her husband suffer. Although I have to admit I find it quite amusing to see Isabella called 'Jezebel' and 'the iron virago', Baker's portrayal of her is very wide of the mark. Chronicler Adam Murimuth, a royal clerk who knew Edward II and Isabella well, was in the south-west of England in 1327 and is a much more reliable source than Baker (though by no means infallible), says that she sent Edward kind letters and gifts while he was at Berkeley - hardly, one might think, the actions of a woman keen to inflict torments on her husband. After all, after Edward's deposition in January 1327, Isabella had no reason to manipulate him into thinking she still loved him, and no reason to send him letters and gifts unless she wanted to.

* Not a contemporary nickname, as many people think, but invented by Shakespeare for Margaret of Anjou and first applied to Isabella in a 1757 poem by Thomas Gray.

King Edward III was too young in 1327 to be in a position to protect his father, but he wouldn't be fourteen forever, and one day he would take over the governance of his own kingdom. Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers, appointed custodians of the former king in April 1327, would have been pretty stupid to mistreat the king's father, knowing that one day they would have to answer for their actions - and Edward III never accused them of mistreating Edward of Caernarfon. Adam Murimuth claims that although Berkeley treated Edward well and humanely, Maltravers did not. This may be correct, but is not supported by any other evidence - and most fourteenth-century chroniclers, even Murimuth, thought that Maltravers was accused of Edward II's murder, which he certainly wasn't; he was condemned to death in the November 1330 parliament for his role in entrapping the earl of Kent and bringing about his execution. At no point in Maltravers' very long life - he lived until 1364 - did Edward III accuse him of complicity in Edward II's death, or of mistreating and abusing the former king. Murimuth's statement that Maltravers behaved harshly towards Edward II may be an assumption based on the false (albeit widespread) belief that Maltravers was one of Edward's murderers.

Paul Doherty in his 2003 book Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (p. 119) says that kings and princes, once deposed, have suffered from the actions of their former minions, who were "only too quick to join in the fun of cruel mockery of one who formerly lorded it over them." Well, possibly, but that's missing the point. Edward II was no longer king in 1327, but he was still royal, the son of a king and, more to the point, the father of the present king. Edward II is unique among the deposed kings of medieval England, not just because he was the first, but because he was the only one succeeded by his son, who would not take kindly to allegations that his father had been abused by those appointed to care for him. (Incidentally, Paul Doherty, like many other writers, repeats the myth about John Trevisa on which I wrote a post.)

One of the charges against Roger Mortimer at his trial during the November 1330 parliament was that he had had Edward removed to Berkeley in order to have him killed, when "the father of our lord the king was at Kenilworth by the ordinance and assent of the peers of the realm, to remain there at their pleasure in order to be looked after as was appropriate for such a lord." According to the chronicler Jean le Bel, it was decided in early 1327 that Edward "would be well guarded and honestly kept for the rest of his life, according to his estate." 'According to his estate' and 'looked after as was appropriate for such a lord' does not mean 'OK, lads, we can abuse him as much as we want because he no longer wears the crown', it means 'he must be treated with all the respect, deference and courtesy due to a man of royal birth who is the father of the king'.

Paul Doherty (p. 120) also claims that "no real evidence exists that Edward was not mistreated." OK, here's one: Lord Berkeley bought wax for him, presumably for candles. Wax was expensive, and Berkeley might easily have bought the much cheaper tallow (made from animal fat) instead. But then, if Berkeley and his allies were mistreating Edward, why did they bother to buy him wax (or tallow) at all? Do people usually buy candles for a man they're keeping incarcerated in a dungeon or pit and trying to asphyxiate with animal corpses? The Berkeley Castle muniments roll records the purchase of wine, cheese, eggs, beef, capons and spices for Edward (Seymour Phillips, Edward II, p. 541 n. 118, citing rolls 39, 41, 42). Paul Doherty suggests (pp. 119-120) that Edward didn't get this food, but that "the supplies, the delicacies may well have gone to others" and furthermore that the produce purchased for him and Isabella's gifts are "perhaps not evidence enough to reject the allegations of ill-treatment." This is pure speculation. I don't see why there's any reason to assume that Edward didn't receive them. These purchases of food were recorded in Lord Berkeley's own household accounts; they were not intended to be presented to the Exchequer as proof that he was feeding Edward of Caernarfon properly. I don't see why Lord Berkeley would lie in his own accounts and record the purchase of food for Edward if the former king wasn't going to receive it.

And here's another piece of evidence: there are several entries on the Close Roll which record payments made to Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers for Edward's upkeep, and refer to the expenses of Edward and 'his household'. There are also references in the Berkeley Castle records to liveries, i.e. clothes, provided for "the household of the king's father," as he was almost always referred to. Yes, Edward had servants at Berkeley. How many is not clear - a very small fraction of the 400 or 500-strong household he'd had as king, of course - but he wasn't locked up alone with no-one to attend him. Men imprisoned in pits do not, generally, have servants attending them. This evidence is ignored by writers who want to believe the notion that Edward was mistreated, among them Paul Doherty, who - following le Baker - is pushing the notion of Isabella as an evil nasty murderous b*tch and says several times that she desperately wanted Edward dead and to suffer as much as possible first. (If you have the book, notice that Doherty doesn't provide a note for his claim (p. 109) that Isabella publicly called for Edward's execution in early 1327, even before his deposition; that's because he can't back it up with any primary source. And "Isabella had murder in her heart" regarding her husband in late 1326/early 1327 (p. 108)? How can Doherty possibly know that?). An anonymous chronicle which Doherty makes much of claims that workmen at Berkeley Castle heard Edward sighing and groaning when he was incarcerated there in 1327. Maybe that's significant, maybe not. Edward of Caernarfon was a highly emotional man at the best of times, and 1327 was definitely not the best of times for him. He must have been suffering a great deal emotionally from losing his throne, his wife, his children and Hugh Despenser.

The guides at Berkeley Castle and numerous websites spread the stories of Edward of Caernarfon's mistreatment and supposed horrific red-hot poker murder. Lurid stories of murdered kings and agonised screams and vile torture and asphyxiation by animal corpse and men getting their just desserts for allowing themselves to be anally penetrated by other men (a theory of the supposed red-hot poker murder frequently repeated as though it's 'truth') bring in the tourists, don't they. Websites and books about Castle Rising in Norfolk do much the same thing, claiming that Isabella of France was imprisoned there by her son as punishment for her role in the murder of Edward II and subsequently went mad; the story of an imprisoned queen going insane and wailing for her dead lover Mortimer is apparently far more interesting than the truth, which is that Isabella lived a perfectly conventional life after 1330 as queen dowager. Geoffrey le Baker's tales of the vile abuse inflicted on Edward at Berkeley Castle are contradicted by contemporary evidence, and were concocted with a specific purpose which had little to do with actual historical events as experienced in 1327. It's a shame that they're still so often repeated as though they're certain truth.

Edward II In Fiction: A Spoof

2011-07-03T15:03:00.001+02:00

Apologies for the long delay in posting - a combination of work, checking article proofs, celebrating my birthday and suffering from a health problem. Many thanks to my dear friend Ashmodiel/Rowan at the Seelenlicht blog for giving me a lovely 'Your Blog is Super' award! xx She has a new blog now too, Anam Cara, in English.

Here's Edward II in Fiction, a Spoof, an idea nicked from the hilarious Anne Boleyn spoof on The Anne Boleyn Files. Thanks to some of my friends on Facebook, especially Rachel, Kate and Andy, for their contributions! (See also this post on how Edward II and Isabella are portrayed in fiction for some background, and Ragged Staff's great post about John Nevill, which lists with painful accuracy a few of the archetypes often seen in histfict.)

**
King Edward II and his lover Sir Hugh Despenser sat in the king's private chamber, listening to music and discussing ways in which they could make the life of Edward's perfectly beautiful desirable queen, Victim!Isabella, even worse than it was already.
Edward stamped his foot. "It's not good enough! We have to make my queen suffer even more!" he shrieked, his voice high and shrill and perverted. "After all, you're completely evil, so that's the kind of thing you do."
"Why on earth are you talking like that, Ned?" EvilHugh asked.
Edward shrugged and pouted. "I love you, EvilHugh, and we're both men, and I used to love Piers Gaveston and Roger Damory who were also men, and apparently this means I have to behave like a twelve-year-old girl in a snit at all times." He flung himself face first on his bed and snivelled for a while, then stood up and stamped his foot a few times for absolutely no reason.
"Ah, I see, and that's why I'm usually portrayed as an amalgamation of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and sundry other genocidal dictators," said EvilHugh in sudden understanding. "Novelists of your reign don't really do subtlety, do they? Do stop pouting, Ned."
Edward fluttered his hands pervertedly a few times and shrieked again. "Not so much. Everything has to be so black and white. My wife's either a helpless passive victim adored and pitied by everyone or a psycho bitch-queen from hell loathed by everyone, because apparently those are the only two possibilities and authors can't possibly give her a combination of good and bad character traits and make her, you know, an actual human being. And me, I'm not a real person either, just a walking stereotype of the way authors think gay men should behave."
He sighed in a very girlish and pervertedly unnatural fashion. "And how many novelists have Gaveston's mother burned alive for witchcraft, although that won't happen in Europe for, oooooh, ages yet? And even though he was a nobleman and a warrior, hand-picked by my father as a suitable companion and role model for me, the future king of England, yet in fiction he also somehow manages to be a low-born prostitute with a tavern-owning uncle. Weird, the way that works."
EvilHugh nodded. "Mind you, it's also pretty weird the way novelists almost invariably miss the fact that I'm a high-born nobleman too and have been married to your niece since long before I became your favourite."
"Isn't it just." Edward stood up and minced around the room for a few moments. "Not to forget the way they so often use modern ideals of motherhood as a way of drumming up mawkish sympathy for Isabella because I supposedly stole our children from her when I set up their own households. They also use the modern belief in equality of the sexes as a stick to beat me with, because I expect my wife to obey me as her lord. Just like every other man of our era and most others, but of course it's entirely bad and wrong when I do it. Hel-lo, we live in the fourteenth century, people, not the twenty-first! If you're going to drag your own society's attitudes into it, why not show a little bit more tolerance for my sexuality while you're at it?" Edward threw a girly and unnatural tantrum in the corner, flounced out of the room and slammed the door, then came back in again, looking girly and perverted.
EvilHugh rolled his eyes. "Funny how characters in histfict who are intended to be likeable to readers are usually portrayed as holding opinions that would fit seamlessly into the early twenty-first century, while the unsympathetic ones have views which are actually accurate for the society and era they live in. Talking of which, I'm almost always written as an unsympathetic figure in fiction, so here goes: women are inferior to men! Anyone who isn't white and Christian is a heretic who deserves to die horribly! Slavery is awesome and the peasants are revolting! Watching animals die for our entertainment is fun!"
Edward screamed and tore at his hair. "Stop it, EvilHugh!" he shrieked. "The readers will take against you, and who knows what might happen then?"
"It doesn't matter how unpopular I am, dear Ned. I am your beloved, and no-one will ever be able to touch me, least of all your wife, the victim-queen!" EvilHugh laughed heartily as the words 'Dramatic Irony' flashed repeatedly above his head.

**
Meanwhile in her own chamber, Queen Victim!Isabella cried hard, her perfectly beautiful desirable face all red and screwed up but still incredibly beautiful and desirable. She was officially the most beautiful woman in all Europe, but still, life was just so unfair and Edward such a cruel nasty husband. She was the richest woman in the country with lands in half the counties of England, the anointed queen, influential and connected to half the royals in Europe, incredibly beautiful and desirable, yet she suffered so terribly. Why, her own husband had not fallen at her feet with helpless lust the first time he saw her! And she had been promised, promised, that he would, and would madly adore her for the rest of her life, just like every other man who had ever seen her did. And he had talked to that horrible Piers more than to her at their coronation banquet! Anyone would think he actually preferred the company of a close friend of his own age than a pre-pubescent girl, the most beautiful pre-pubescent girl in all Europe! Whoever heard of such a thing?

"I'm so worried about my son's position, with my useless husband on the throne," Victim!Isabella sobbed to her damsels. Her rosy desirable lips were incredibly rosy and desirable and her body was astonishingly perfect and also desirable. She was incredibly beautiful, the most incredibly beautiful woman in all Europe. "I think I should rule the country in place of my husband, because I plan to give away almost all of Gascony to France, sign away my son's claims to Scotland, and bankrupt England. That'll show everyone how much more politically astute I am than my husband and how much I care about my son's inheritance." She sobbed beautifully and desirably.

ManlyRoger Mortimer strode into the room unannounced and in an audaciously studmuffinly and heterosexually virile way. "Never fear, ma belle reine. I'm the bold manly hero who saves the day," he declared, with a deep virile bow towards the incredibly beautiful and desirable yet desperately suffering and victimised queen. ManlyRoger caught sight of one of the queen's squires sitting in a window seat, vigorously polishing his sword, and stood and stared for a moment, admiring the young man's broad shoulders, sensual mouth and the pleasing bulge in his hose. Then he remembered that he was 100% certified unequivocally heterosexual, and hastily desisted.
Victim!Isabella clapped a hand to her perfectly shaped and incredibly beautiful and desirable mouth. "Oh my!" she gasped. "Don't tell me that the brave, audaciously virile and studmuffinly hetero hero with whom I am destined to have Twu Multi-Orgasmic Wuv 4ever and ever is you?"
"For sure it is, ma reine. Do you know how much I love having sex with girls? Well, let me tell you: a lot," ManlyRoger boasted. "And anything you might have heard about me sleeping with my sexy and lusful squires on occasion? Soooo not true. You wouldn't believe how many of my squires I haven't had sex with."
Victim!Isabella clapped her beautiful, perfectly-shaped and desirable hands in joy. "Oh, ManlyRoger. I have dreamed so long of having real Twu Wuv with an audaciously virile man who, unlike my husband who prefers men, is actually available to me. Well, apart from the fact that you're married, of course." Victim!Isabella shrugged beautifully and smiled desirably at her manly new lover. "I have long wanted to find Twu Wuv of the kind my husband has with Despenser and used to have with Gaveston and Damory, but you know, the proper permitted heterosexual kind, not the kind between two men that's really eeewwwww, icky."
"Yes," agreed ManlyRoger. "Us manly men who are incredibly heterosexual have fantastic sex with girls that's not icky at all, and we absolutely don't think about our sexy squires while we're doing it. I mean, have you seen how many kids my wife and I have? There's unequivocal heterosexuality, right there."
Victim!Isabella threw herself into her virile studmuffinly lover's arms. She looked really, really beautiful and desirable. "Oh, ManlyRoger!" she cried. "Take me, take me, and we'll take my husband's kingdom!"
"I will, ma reine," ManlyRoger smirked. "I really fancy you, and not in any way your squire who's sitting over there. And me fancying you has nothing at all to do with wanting lots of power and wealth thanks to you being the queen of England. Queen of England? I barely even noticed. Come to bed, ma reine, and afterwards I'll tell you exactly how I'm going to rule England in your husband's place. Oops, did I say I? I meant you, of course."
Beautiful, desirable Victim!Isabella sighed with happiness. No longer would she suffer terribly and beautifully; her super-hetero virile lover would make everything all right, forever.

A Week Of Anniversaries

2011-06-23T15:56:00.000+02:00

This week is important in Edward II World :) for various anniversaries...

18 June: Edward and Isabella's elder daughter Eleanor was born at the palace of Woodstock in 1318, and named after Edward's mother Eleanor of Castile. Edward - then thirty-four - had been in Canterbury, apparently on pilgrimage, but arrived in Woodstock on the day of his daughter's birth. His Wardrobe account records a payment of 500 marks to "Lady Isabella, queen of England, of the king's gift, for the feast of her purification after the birth of the Lady Alienora her daughter." Eleanor married, shortly before her fourteenth birthday in 1332, Count (later Duke) Reynald II of Gelderland, and had two sons, named after her husband and her father; the marriage to King Alfonso XI of Castile planned for her by Edward didn't come off. Edward's chamber journal of 1326 reveals that he appointed Jonete Germye (or Jermy) sister of his sister-in-law Alice Hales, countess of Norfolk, as the governess (mestresse) of his two daughters, and paid a messenger five shillings to take his letters to the little girls, then aged eight and five, in Marlborough on 25 July that year.

19 June: I could hardly let the anniversary of Piers Gaveston's death in 1312 pass without comment! RIP Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall and beloved of a king. (See Anerje's post remembering him too.)

19 June: the day in 1313 when Edward watched 54 naked dancers perform for him in Pontoise.

19 June: the day in 1320 when Edward set sail for France to pay homage to his brother-in-law Philippe V for Gascony and Ponthieu.

20 June: the day in 1316 when Edward sent his kinsman the earl of Pembroke to deal with the rebellion in Bristol.

23 June: the anniversary of the first day of the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Don't think I need to say much about it, really...:)

23 June: the day in 1324 when Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, died suddenly on his way to Paris to negotiate with Charles IV on Edward's behalf.

24 June: the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, one of Edward's favourite saints. The king marked the day in 1317 wearing (presumably) "a crown of wax of various colours and of various devices" for which he had paid two pounds, and in 1326 spent five shillings playing dice with Sir Giles Beauchamp and unnamed other members of his household in the Tower of London.

25 June: the day in 1308 on which Piers Gaveston was ordered to depart from England (he sailed for Ireland to take up his role as king's lieutenant), in his second exile.

27 June: the day he returned a year later. :-)

28 June: on this day in 1323, Edward II ordered the bishop of London to prevent people praying and making offerings at a tablet in St Paul's "whereon are depicted statues, sculpture or images of diverse persons," having learned that many people went to "worship it as a holy thing." The problem was that one of the persons thereon depicted was his cousin Thomas of Lancaster, whom he had had executed the previous year.

29 June: on this day in 1317, five years and ten days after Piers' death, Edward ordered abbot and convent of Thame to take on six additional monks "to celebrate divine service daily in the abbey for the souls of the king’s ancestors, and of Piers de Gaveston, earl of Cornwall." And in 1320, he paid liege homage to Philippe V at Amiens.

Cartmel Priory

2011-06-15T16:22:00.001+02:00

A building I visited a few days ago: Cartmel Priory in South Cumbria, founded in about 1190 by the great William Marshal (1146/47-14 May 1219), earl of Pembroke, lord of Cartmel and regent of England for Edward II's grandfather Henry III. Via his five daughters (his five sons all died childless), William was the ancestor of most of the English nobility of Edward II's era; his namesake William Marshal, a descendant of one of his brothers, was killed at Bannockburn in 1314. Cartmel was spelled Kertmel or Kertmele in the early fourteenth century, and there are various references in Edward II's reign to the prior. The priory was dissolved in 1536, and only the church survives (and was used as a stable by some of Oliver Cromwell's troops in 1643).

Misericords in the choir, which date to 1440

The tomb of Sir John Harington (knighted with Edward of Caernarfon in 1306, died 1347) and his wife Joan.

Blog Break And Links

2011-06-02T15:54:00.000+02:00

This is my last post for a little while, as I'm off on holiday! The second part of my post about Henry of Lancaster will appear after my return, I hope. :)

In the meantime, here are some blogs to check out, all written by good friends of mine:

- Anerje's blog about Piers Gaveston, which takes in other periods of history as well. Her latest post is a fascinating one about Piers' health, or rather the lack of it.

- Ashmodiel/Rowan's blogs Seelenlicht (in German) and Wings of Inspiration (with Tricia Danby), with examples of their great artwork and quite a few mentions of Edward II and Piers Gaveston. :-)

- Paula's blog Sons of the Wolf, with extracts from her fantastic novel of the same name and factual posts about eleventh-century England.

- Christy's blog Rooting for Ancestors, with lots of interesting posts about genealogy and history.

Michael Jecks' novel King's Gold, the latest instalment in his popular Knights Templar Mysteries series, was released in the UK a few days ago. Many thanks to Mike for sending me a copy and mentioning me in the acknowledgements.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Article, The Earl Of Kent's Plot

2011-05-29T15:34:00.001+02:00

It has now been confirmed that my article 'The Adherents of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, in March 1330' will be published in the August 2011 edition of the English Historical Review. Kent was beheaded for treason against his nephew Edward III on 19 March 1330, aged twenty-eight, after he admitted plotting to free his half-brother Edward II from captivity - two and a half years after Edward's supposed death at Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327. It is often assumed that Kent had been tricked into trying to rescue a dead man to provide an excuse for Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer to execute him - which explanation either ignores altogether the men who supported Kent in his plot, or dismisses them as a few friars and a handful of others with grievances against Isabella and Mortimer's rule who did not truly believe in Edward II's survival. (Although the archbishop of York, William Melton, certainly did, and told the mayor of London in January 1330 that "my liege lord Edward of Caernarfon is alive and in good health of body"; Donald, earl of Mar certainly believed that Edward was alive too.) In fact, around seventy men can be demonstrated to have supported Kent in 1330, and in my article, I've provided backgrounds and allegiances for almost all of them, showing that the majority had been close to Edward II and had shown great loyalty to him before, during and after the revolution of 1326/27. Kent's adherents in 1330 included two Scottish earls (Mar, Robert Bruce's nephew, and Buchan, Henry Beaumont), Welsh knights, a former chamberlain of North Wales and a former keeper of the peace in Berkshire, the earl of Warwick's stepfather, two sheriffs of Kent, a glover, a cellarer and a mercer, Edward II's tailor, the Dunheved brothers, and the notorious gang leader Malcolm Musard. I hope the article goes some way to destroying the often-repeated myth that Kent only believed Edward was still alive in 1330 because he was 'stupid' and 'gullible'. He wasn't, and in fact I believe that his many supporters, including men who had reason to dislike and distrust him (former adherents of Edward II and of the Despensers, whom Kent condemned to death in 1326) demonstrate that he was seen as a plausible and credible figure, a genuine leader. The merciless speed with which Kent was condemned and executed for the 'crime' of trying to free a man who had officially been dead for two and a half years also indicates that Isabella and Roger Mortimer saw him (and his plot) as a real threat, not as a fool.

Anyway, more news about the publication of my article here as and when I know more! :-)

The Knighting Of 22 May 1306

2011-05-22T17:06:00.001+02:00

Today is the 705th anniversary of the knighting of Edward of Caernarfon at Westminster on Sunday 22 May 1306, described by the contemporary chronicler Piers Langtoft as the greatest event in Britain since King Arthur was crowned at Caerleon.*

Some of the nearly 300 men knighted at the same time were: Roger Mortimer and his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk; Hugh Despenser the Younger and his kinsman Ralph Basset, future steward of Gascony; the earls of Arundel and Surrey; Edward Balliol, son of the former King John of Scotland; John Comyn, son of the John Comyn of Badenoch recently killed by Robert Bruce and destined to die fighting for Edward II at Bannockburn; John Maltravers, one of Edward II's custodians in 1327; Fulk Fitzwarin and William la Zouche, two of the men who joined the earl of Kent's plot to free Edward in 1330; John, Lord Mowbray, executed in 1322; and the Castilian Roderick of Spain (Rethericus de Ispania), a member of Edward's household. The name of Edward of Caernarfon himself is given on the list of new knights as 'Lord Edward, Prince of Wales' (Dominus Edwardus Princeps Walliae). Piers Gaveston (Petrus de Gavaston) appears on the list, but was in fact knighted four days later and not with the others (perhaps because of illness?).

I wrote a post about this splendid event on the 700th anniversary, and here's another one. :-) Edward I ordered all his sheriffs on 6 April 1306 to "cause proclamation to be made that all those who are not knights and wish to be shall come to London before Whitsunday to receive from the king's wardrobe all the gear necessary for them in this case, of the king's gift, so that they may be able to receive knighthood from the king there," having announced his intention the previous day of "making Edward, his eldest son, a knight." The king purchased eighty rolls of scarlet and other coloured cloth, 2500 yards of linen and 5000 yards of canvas. Edward of Caernarfon himself received, to adorn his chamber in Westminster Palace, five pieces of yellow silk to line his quilt; one piece of green silk to line his cloak; five pieces of red silk to make a dorsal curtain for his bed and five of green for another curtain; six pieces of red silk to line another quilt and five pieces of silk of an unspecified colour to line his second bed. During the banquet after the knighting, four lengths of gold-threaded cloth were hung on the wall of Westminster Hall behind Edward I and his son.

The minstrels who performed during the splendid banquet afterwards included: the famous acrobat Matilda Makejoy; "the minstrel with the bells" (le menestral oue les cloches); Guilleme the Harper "who is with the Patriarch," i.e. Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, patriarch of Jerusalem and a good friend of Edward of Caernarfon; Martinet "who is with the earl of Warwick"; Baudetti the Taborer and his companion Ernolet; Gauteron the Small and Gauteron the Big; Pearl In The Eye, who had cataracts, and unnamed companion; Mahu "who is with La Dammoisele de Baar," i.e. Edward of Caernarfon's niece Jeanne de Bar, who was shortly to marry the earl of Surrey; Mahu "of the North"; Edward's trumpeters Januche and Gillot, his crwth player Nagary and his harper Amekyn; Reginald The Liar; Lion de Normanville; Master Walter Leskirmissour and his brother, who performed a sword dance. For their performance, the men and women received between twelve pence (the majority of them) and ten marks (for the highly-skilled musicians such as the trumpeter Janin of the Tower, the vielle-player Guillot de Roos, and the citole-player Richard de Leyland).

* Unkes en Bretagne puys que Dieu fu nez
N'estoye tel nobleye en villes n'en citez
Forpriz Karlioun en antiquitez
Quant sire Arthur luy reis i fust coronez.

Sources

- Calendar of Close Rolls 1302-1307, pp. 375, 377, 438, 484.
- Constance Bullock-Davies, Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast
- Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother

Piers Gaveston's Brothers And Some Of Edward II's Supporters In 1326

2011-05-16T15:52:00.001+02:00

The second part of my post about Henry of Lancaster is coming soon (I hope)! In the meantime, here's a kind of random post about some petitions I've been looking at on the National Archives website lately.

1) There's one presented by Piers Gaveston ('Perrot de Gavastun') and his elder brother Arnaud-Guilhem de Marsan to Edward I in or about 1305. The two men call themselves "sons of Sir Arnaud de Gavastun, late knight of Gascony" (iadis chevaler de Gascoigne; Arnaud had died in 1302), and make various requests of the king, including that "the testament of the lady of Marsan their mother be kept and fulfilled." Claramonde de Marsan died before 4 February 1287 (see J.S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall 1307-1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II, p. 25), when four castles of her inheritance were taken into Edward I's hands; Piers' and Arnaud-Guilhem's c. 1305 petition also relates to these castles. [TNA SC 8/291/14546]

2) A petition presented sometime during Edward II's reign by "Arnaud Guilhem de Marsans and Fortaner de Lescun, brothers" asking for arrears to be paid to them from the lands of their mother the lady of Marsan, i.e. Claramonde. This is interesting, as J.S. Hamilton (Piers Gaveston, pp. 22, 27-8) identifies Fortaner as Claramonde's brother, not her son. The petition is pretty faded, and I need to go through it more carefully, but there appears to be a reference to "Sir Arnaud de Gavastun father of the aforesaid Arnaud Guilhem...". It doesn't say, as far as I can tell, that Arnaud was Fortaner's father. I'm confused about the Gaveston/Marsan/Lescun family tree. Was Fortaner de Lescun a brother (or half-brother) of Piers, another son of Claramonde? Why does Hamilton say he was Claramonde's brother? Or were there two men called Fortaner de Lescun, one Claramonde de Marsan's brother and the other her son? Who was the 'Bourd de Gavaston' living at Wallingford Castle in 1312 (Close Rolls 1307-13, p. 468)? What happened to the younger brothers Gerard and Raymond-Arnaud which Hamilton (p. 26) says Piers had? Hmmmmm. [TNA SC 8/278/13863]

3) A petition presented by a John Beauchamp of Somerset which must date from the very end of Edward II's reign, as it's presented to "the king and his council" but mentions "my lady the queen and my lord the duke of Aquitaine her son," i.e. the soon-to-be Edward III. The petitioner is clearly of Isabella's allegiance and it is apparent from the entire document that she and her faction are now in charge, which makes the naming in the petition of the powerless, imprisoned and soon-to-be ex-king Edward II rather puzzling - although perhaps it reflects the confusion over Edward's status in the weeks before his deposition and indicates that it was still unclear at this point what would happen to him. Anyway, John Beauchamp complains that John de Toucestre and Richard Broun of Halford led men (eleven are named) from his manor of Shepperton to Bristol to fight against Isabella and her son, against their will (supposedly, but then Beauchamp would say that, wouldn't he?). I don't know who Richard Broun was - though intend to look into it - but John de Toucestre was a staunch supporter of Edward II in 1326 and long afterwards, joining the earl of Kent's plot to free the former king in 1330. I wrote about him a while ago. Fascinating to see what's going on here: Toucestre and Broun take men to fight against a rebel army and for their lawful king and are accused of wrong-doing while he is still their lawful king. [TNA SC 8/32/1572]

4) Another petition addressed to "my lady the queen and my lord the duke [of Aquitaine]," which presumably dates to the same period of December 1326/January 1327, by one John Giffard of Essex. Giffard claims that his manor of Bowers Giffard was attacked by Roger Wodeham and more than fifty armed men (Giffard calls them "rebels") who stole some of Giffard's horses to ride against Isabella and her army, Wodeham supposedly claiming in doing so that Giffard was an enemy of Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger and of the queen's faction. Without irony, the petition refers to Wodeham and his men as acting "against the peace of our lord the king" (encontre la pees n're seigneur le Roi). Giffard says that Wodeham and the rest remained in the company of Hugh Despenser until Despenser went overseas - presumably a reference to his and Edward's sailing from Chepstow on 20 October 1326 - and then returned to Essex and attempted to kill Giffard because of his support of Isabella. Roger Wodeham was a valet of Edward II's chamber and constable of Hadleigh Castle in Essex, and was said in March 1327 to have ousted a couple from their lands in Essex on Edward II's orders because they refused to "receive Hugh le Despenser, the younger, at the time of his exile" in 1321/22 (Close Rolls 1327-30, pp. 49-50). As with the previous petition, men fighting on behalf of their king are accused of wrongdoing and named as 'rebels'. [TNA SC 8/307/15309]

And finally, combining support for Edward II in 1326 and Piers Gaveston's family, here's some info about Arnaud Caillau, who may have been Piers' cousin (Piers' aunt Miramonde de Marsan married Pierre Caillau of Bordeaux) and was certainly a close ally of Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger, called "very dear friend" by the latter in a letter of February 1325. The Gascon Caillau was in England in 1326, and was preparing to sail from Southampton on 10 September "for the expedition of certain of the king's affairs"; presumably the arrival of Roger Mortimer and Isabella's invasion force shortly afterwards delayed his departure. (Close Rolls 1323-27, p. 615 and Fine Rolls 1319-27, p. 415.) On 22 February 1327, Mortimer and Isabella paid £35, 6 shillings and 6 pence to 158 men in three ships for pursuing Caillau along the coast of Devon and Cornwall between 8 and 20 December 1326; the timing strongly suggests that he had been with Edward until shortly before his capture. (Close Rolls 1327-30, p. 9.) The king was not entirely friendless...

Henry, Earl Of Lancaster (1)

2011-05-08T16:21:00.000+02:00

I've written four posts about Henry of Lancaster's brother Thomas, three about his son Henry of Grosmont, and one about his daughters, but never about Henry himself, so it's high time I rectified that (thanks to reader Kate S. for the the suggestion!). This is the first of two posts about him.

Henry of Lancaster, Edward II's first cousin, was born in or about 1281 as the second son of Edward I's brother Edmund, earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby (16 January 1245 - 5 June 1296), and Blanche of Artois (c. 1245/48 - 2 May 1302). Blanche was the niece of Louis IX of France, queen of Navarre by her first marriage, mother-in-law of Philip IV of France and grandmother of Louis X, Philip V, Charles IV and Isabella of France. (Yes, Isabella's grandmother was also the aunt by marriage of Isabella's husband Edward II; oh, these complicated royal inter-relations.) Henry of Lancaster was thus grandson and nephew of kings of England, brother-in-law of a king of France, half-brother of a queen of Navarre, and uncle of three kings of France and a queen of England. So was pretty well-connected, then.

Sometime before 2 March 1297 [1], when he was about fifteen, Henry married the heiress Maud Chaworth (elder half-sister of Hugh Despenser the Younger), who was born on 2 February 1282 and inherited the lands of her father Patrick and uncle Payn in Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Henry inherited a part of his father's vast lands, though of course the bulk of it went to his elder brother Thomas, and was lord of Kidwelly and owned the Three Castles in Monmouthshire (Grosmont, Skenfrith and the White Castle). Henry and Maud had six daughters - the countesses of Arundel and Ulster, the prioress of Amesbury, Lady Percy, Lady Wake and Lady Mowbray - and one son, the great Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster. Henry was the grandfather of: Elizabeth, duchess of Clarence; Blanche, duchess of Lancaster (both of the latter daughters-in-law of Edward III); Richard, earl of Arundel, executed by Richard II in 1397; Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury; Maud, countess of Oxford; Alice, countess of Kent; Joan, countess of Hereford; Henry, earl of Northumberland and Thomas, earl of Worcester; and was also the great-grandfather of King Henry IV and of Philippa, queen of Portugal.

As well as his elder brother Thomas, Henry of Lancaster had a younger brother, John, who died childless in 1317; Henry was heir to his lands in France, including Beaufort, after which the illegitimate children of his grandson by marriage and heir John of Gaunt were named. Henry was widowed sometime before 3 December 1322 [2], and never remarried (the Alix de Joinville often named on genealogical sites as his second wife was in fact the wife of his brother John). How Henry got on, or not, with his brother-in-law Hugh Despenser the Younger is a matter for speculation, though he seems to have been a loving and caring father to his children and formed close relationships with them: his daughters Blanche Wake, Joan Mowbray and Maud de Burgh (and perhaps the others) lived with him most of the time even after they married, and Henry paid all or most of the expenses of his son Henry long after he reached adulthood. There is also evidence that the siblings were close and that they and their spouses often travelled together. [3] On the other hand, Henry's relationship with his elder brother Thomas was, according to Thomas's biographer John Maddicott, a distant one [4] - for which Thomas's prickly personality was perhaps largely to blame.

Given the eminence of the Lancaster brothers, it's surprising how little is known of their early lives; even their dates of birth are not known. Henry accompanied his elder brother and their cousin by marriage Jan of Brabant - husband of Edward II's sister Margaret - on several visits to their cousin the future king in 1293, and were with him for his ninth birthday on 25 April. The boys stayed with Edward again in June, Henry and Thomas accompanied by thirty horses and twenty-one servants and Jan by thirty horses and twenty-four servants, much to the exasperation of Edward's clerk, as Edward's household had to bear all the costs ("They are still here" and "Here they are still, and this day is burdensome," the clerk wrote). In September 1293 Henry stayed with Edward again, for longer than expected, as he fell ill. [5] Henry accompanied his uncle Edward I on the Flanders campaign of 1297, when he was perhaps only sixteen - he wasn't paid for it - and took part in the king's siege of Caerlaverock three years later; the Roll of Arms of Caerlaverock says of him:
"I may go on to speak of Henry,
Whose whole daily study
Was to resemble his good father..." [6]

In the Barons' Letter to the pope of February 1301, Henry - then about twenty - is named as 'Henry of Lancaster, lord of Monmouth' (Henricus de Lancastre Dominus de Munemue). He appears tenth on the list, after the eight earls and William, Lord Leyburn. According to the later and frequently unreliable chronicler Jean Froissart, Henry was known as Wryneck (Tort-Col in French). To quote Scott L. Waugh in the ODNB, this name "could refer either to a physical deformity, or to the stiff-necked pride that he displayed in his family's political and territorial heritage."

In February 1308, Henry was ordered to meet his cousin Edward II and Isabella of France on their arrival in England after marrying in Boulogne. [7] Whether Henry had ever met his niece before, I don't know. At their coronation several weeks later, Henry carried "the royal rod [virga], at the top of which was a dove" in the procession. [8] He crops up occasionally throughout Edward's reign, though as he was a younger brother, he wielded little political influence and didn't play a huge role in events of Edward's turbulent reign. Edward was probably annoyed with Henry in 1316, when Henry's eldest daughter Blanche (then aged about twelve or fourteen) married Sir Thomas Wake without the king's permission; Edward had been planning to marry Wake, his ward, to his great-niece Joan Gaveston. Still, it doesn't appear to have had a deleterious effect on the two men's relationship, and Henry took part in the campaign against Llywelyn Bren in early 1316, with Sir William Montacute. [9]

Henry's younger brother John died childless in 1317, and in May 1318 Edward II granted him permission to travel to France to "obtain the inheritance in that land which by the death of John de Lancastre, his brother, descended to him." In June 1319, Edward excused Henry from attending the siege of Berwick as he was "beyond the seas on important business." Henry appears to have spent much if not all of the next few years in France, to judge from the number of times Edward granted him permission and protection to remain overseas (he was still out of England in January 1322 and perhaps even later). [10] The pope wrote to Henry several times in 1318 as a close kinsman of both the king and the earl of Lancaster, and "bound to pay them reverence and affection," asking him to promote accord between them "so that the realm may be freed from disturbance" (Edward and Thomas of Lancaster were, to cut a very long story short, feuding endlessly). [11] I wonder how effective Henry's intervention was, assuming he even attempted one, given that he was not close to his brother and had little if any influence over his cousin Edward II.

Henry's life was to change dramatically in March 1322, when his brother Earl Thomas was beheaded for treason. As Thomas had no legitimate children by his wife Alice de Lacy (though had at least two illegitimate sons), Henry was heir to his vast inheritance - but Edward II was unwilling to give all or even most of it up to him, and Henry was to play a vital role in the revolution of 1326/27 and the regime of his niece Isabella. Coming soon!

Sources

1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1292-1301, p. 239 (a grant to "Henry de Lancastre and Matilda his wife").
2) Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 687 (when the "executors of the will of Matilda, late the wife of the aforesaid Henry" are mentioned).
3) Kenneth Fowler, The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310-1361, pp. 26-27.
4) J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, p. 319.
5) Seymour Phillips, Edward II, pp. 51-53.
6) Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, p. 68 (for 1297); Thomas Wright, ed., The roll of arms, of the princes, barons, and knights who attended King Edward I to the siege of Caerlaverock, in 1300, p. 20.
7) Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 51.
8) Ibid., p. 53.
9) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1308-1348, p. 439.
10) Patent Rolls 1317-1321, pp. 145, 146, 153, 217, 329, 343, 503; Ibid. 1321-1324, p. 69.
11) Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 439.

Thank You, My Readers

2011-05-01T15:19:00.000+02:00

Edward II's Effigy

Keep of Berkeley Castle

Just wanted to put up a quick post before the next proper one (about Edward II's cousin Henry, earl of Lancaster) to say: today the average number of daily visitors to this blog reached 200 for the first time. The number of page views stands at just under 225,000 since I added a counter to the site in 2008, and readers have left 4220 comments. Wow, that's a lot of people who read a blog dedicated to a disastrous and unpopular king of 700 years ago. :-) Edward also has almost 600 fans on his Facebook page now.

I'm so pleased, and really want to say a big THANK YOU to all of you for visiting and for your support! By the way, I'm open to suggestions about future posts, so if there's anything or anyone of Edward II's era you'd like to read about, let me know any time, either in a comment thread or via email: mail(at)edwardthesecond(dot)com, or edwardofcaernarfon(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Edward II's Effigy, with angel

Edward II's Effigy: lion at his feet

Edward II's Tomb

Edward II's Tomb and Effigy

Gloucester Cathedral

Happy Birthday And Happy Easter

2011-04-25T16:15:00.000+02:00

Happy Birthday to Edward II, who was born on 25 April 1284 and is thus 727 years old today! Looking good for his age, isn't he...? :-) It's also the birthday of King Louis IX of France in 1214; Edward II was seventy years younger to the day than Louis, who was both his father's uncle by marriage (Louis's wife Marguerite being the elder sister of Edward I's mother Eleanor of Provence) and his wife Isabella's great-grandfather.

Today is of course also Easter Monday, and I thought I'd take a quick look in this post at where Edward was for every Easter of his reign and what he was up to at that time. Oh, he had a lovely tradition on Easter Monday, inherited from his father: if he was caught in bed that morning, his 'captors' had the right to drag him out, and he had to pay them a large ransom to free himself. In 1311, Edward paid twenty pounds to three of his household knights who dragged him out of bed, and in 1312, gave forty marks to Isabella of France's damsels and ladies for 'capturing' him.

Here are the dates of Easter Monday, and what Edward was up to:

1308, 15 April: Edward was at Windsor Castle with Piers Gaveston, and fortified the place against his barons, who were gathering at Westminster with the intent of forcing Edward to exile Piers. (Which he duly had to do a few weeks later, to his great fury.)

1309, 31 March: Edward was at Langley in Hertfordshire, his favourite residence, plotting to bring Piers back to England. (Which he duly did a few weeks later, to his great joy. :)

1310, 20 April: Edward was at Windsor, having been recently forced to consent to the formation of a group of barons and bishops called the Lords Ordainer, who were to have sweeping powers to reform his household.

1311, 12 April: at Berwick-on-Tweed with Isabella, avoiding the Lords Ordainer and attempting a military campaign against Robert Bruce, which failed because Robert (sensibly) refused to meet an English army in the field and undertook guerrilla warfare instead. Meanwhile, the Lords Ordainer in London were preparing the Ordinances, which would limit Edward's sovereign powers considerably and force Piers Gaveston into exile yet again.

1312, 27 March: at York, with the newly-pregnant Isabella and - guess who? - Piers Gaveston, who had returned to England from his third exile some weeks before. Edward was, as he had been the previous year, staying (or is 'skulking' a better word?) in the north to avoid his baronial opponents.

1313, 16 April: at Windsor, avoiding the Westminster parliament which should have started on 18 March - it was on 7 April postponed until 6 May - by pretending to be ill ("the king did not come at the appointed day, detained, as was thought, by a feigned illness," says the Vita Edwardi Secundi).

1314, 8 April: at Ely Cathedral, quizzing the monks as to their supposed possession of the body of St Alban when he'd just seen it in St Albans Abbey. Heh. "You know that my brothers of St Albans believe that they possess the body of the martyr. In this place the monks say that they have the body of the same saint. By God’s soul, I want to see in which place I ought chiefly to pay reverence to the remains of that holy body." You tell 'em, Edward.

1315, 24 March: at Windsor, having recently attended the parliament which regulated the price of basic foodstuffs in the early months of the Great Famine.

1316, 12 April: at Windsor, shortly after the rebellion of Llywelyn Bren and shortly before the rebellion in Bristol came to a head.

1317, 4 April: at the palace of Clarendon, supposedly plotting with Roger Damory and his other court favourites to annoy his cousin Thomas of Lancaster by abducting Lancaster's wife Alice de Lacy, shortly before Damory married Edward's rich widowed niece Elizabeth de Clare.

1318, 24 April: at Wallingford Castle, which had formerly belonged to Piers Gaveston, a few days after some of his barons and bishops met Thomas of Lancaster at Leicester in an attempt to improve the dire relations between the two most powerful men in the country. Isabella was then heavily pregnant with their elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock.

1319, 9 April: at Kirkham, around the time that Edward embarrassed himself by asking the pope for permission to have himself re-anointed with the holy oil of St Thomas Becket, in the belief that this would bring his political troubles to an end. (In a remarkably honest letter to John XXII, Edward condemned his own gullibility and "dove-like simplicity.")

1320, 31 March: at Eltham in Kent with Isabella, waiting for safe-conducts from her brother Philippe V of France to arrive, for them to travel to Amiens so that Edward could pay homage to Philippe for his French lands. The safe-conducts failed to arrive, so they returned to Westminster a week later, and finally travelled to Amiens in late June.

1321, 20 April: at Gloucester, attempting unsuccessfully to negotiate with the Marcher lords, who began attacking the lands of the two Hugh Despensers on 4 May.

1322, 12 April: at Pontefract Castle, formerly Thomas of Lancaster's, a few weeks after the successful campaign against the Contrariants and Lancaster's execution, and before parliament opened in York in May.

1323, 28 March: at Langley, not long after Edward returned south after a long sojourn in Yorkshire. This was the year when it all started to go horribly wrong for him, as I mentioned recently.

1324, 16 April: also at Langley, nine days before Edward's fortieth birthday. By now the king was, brilliantly, openly feuding with several of his bishops and his cousin Henry of Lancaster, while war with his brother-in-law Charles IV broke out this year and the king and the Despensers were wildly unpopular. Bravo, Edward.

1325, 8 April: at Beaulieu Abbey, a few weeks after Queen Isabella sailed for France to negotiate with her brother Charles IV; Edward would never see his wife again. She sent him a letter on 31 March, calling him "my very sweet heart" (mon tresdoutz coer).

1326, 24 March: at Kenilworth, also formerly his cousin Thomas of Lancaster's. Crisis crisis crisis, with Isabella and Roger Mortimer's invasion expected any time and war with France breaking out again. Edward did find time a few weeks before Easter to found Oriel College at Oxford, however, and on 11 March, gave money to his painter Jack of St Albans for dancing on a table and making him laugh.

Easter Monday fell on 13 April in 1327; Sir Edward of Caernarfon, formerly King Edward II, spent it at his new home of Berkeley Castle - not entirely voluntarily, shall we say - where he had been moved from Kenilworth a few days previously.

Plotting To Free Edward II, 1327 And 1330

2011-04-18T15:16:00.000+02:00

In the early autumn of 1327, a group of Welsh knights plotted to release the former Edward II from captivity at Berkeley Castle - which appears to have been unrelated to the plot of the Dunheved brothers and their allies to free Edward that summer. The ringleaders were Rhys ap Gruffydd of South Wales, lord of Narberth, sheriff of Carmarthen and formerly a squire of Edward II's chamber (see here for more about him), and Sir Gruffydd Llwyd of North Wales, lord of Dinorwig and Tregarnedd, sheriff of Anglesey and Merioneth. Rhys (with half a dozen of their allies) fled to Scotland after the failure of the plot, while Gruffydd was imprisoned at Caernarfon Castle for eighteen months. [1]

Edward II's loyal Scottish friend Donald, earl of Mar, Robert Bruce's nephew, appears to have been deeply involved in the plots to free Edward from Berkeley in 1327. Donald - captured in 1306 as a child by Edward I and imprisoned at Bristol Castle - remained totally loyal to Edward II throughout his reign and only returned to his homeland at the time of Edward's capture in November 1326. In the summer of 1327, he led one of the columns of his uncle Robert's army against the new regime, and Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer evidently considered him a great threat: in July and August 1327, they ordered the arrest of two of his supporters in Staffordshire merely for sending letters to him, and also ordered the arrest of Richard le Brun, former mayor of Chester, for adherence to Donald. (The Dunheved brothers, perhaps not coincidentally, were in Chester in early June 1327.) In the summer of 1327, Donald's adherents were said to be gathering in the Marches "to do and procure the doing of what evils they can against the king [Edward III] and his subjects" and to have returned from Scotland "to do what mischief they can to the king and his realm." [2]

What's interesting is that Donald of Mar, Rhys ap Gruffydd and Gruffydd Llwyd's son Ieuan (future governor of the Channel Islands) were also involved in the earl of Kent's plot of 1329/30 to free his half-brother Edward - supposedly dead since September 1327 - from Corfe Castle. [3] William Melton, archbishop of York, sent a messenger to Donald to inform him that Edward was alive; Donald duly promised Melton that he would come to England with an army of 40,000 men when instructed by the archbishop. [4] (Rather a large army to free a dead man, you might think.) Rhys ap Gruffydd met other enemies of Roger Mortimer and Isabella in Paris and Brabant - whose duke was Edward II's nephew - who were also plotting an invasion of England. On 8 August 1330, Roger Mortimer appointed himself, as justice of Wales, to arrest and imprison any followers of Rhys, who was said to be "propos[ing] to enter the realm with a multitude of armed men"; it was said that many people in Wales were "of his confederacy." [5]

This planned invasion never took place, but caused panic in England, where Roger Mortimer and Isabella were by now deeply unpopular: the Brut chronicle wrote that the country was "ful sore adrade, and almost destroiede," and "bigan the communite of Engeland for to hate Isabel the Quene...". [6] In mid-July 1330, Mortimer and Isabella ordered all the sheriffs in the country to array knights, squires and others who bore arms; they should prepare themselves as speedily as possible "to set out against certain contrariants and rebels who lately withdrew secretly from the realm and who have assembled a multitude of armed men in parts beyond the sea and have prepared ships of war and other things and who propose entering the realm to aggrieve the king and his people." Other arrays were ordered in late July and August against "certain rebels who lately withdrew from the country by stealth." [7]

As well as Edward II's good Welsh and Scottish friends, there were plenty of English men keen to free him from captivity. In 1330, they included the bishop and mayor of London; William la Zouche, lord of Ashby, who had besieged Hugh Despenser the Younger's castle of Caerphilly in 1326/27 with Hugh's son inside; Malcolm Musard; William Aune; Giles of Spain; and many dozens of others.

Sources

1) See my previous post, which lists the sources for this paragraph.
2) Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. ii, p. 96; H. Maxwell. ed., The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, pp. 256-257; Calendar of Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 142, 157, 212; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 139, 180-181, 183, 191.
3) E.M. Thompson, ed., Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, p. 256; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-1337, pp. 169-170.
4) Ian Mortimer, 'The plot of the earl of Kent', in his Medieval Intrigue: Decoding Royal Conspiracies, p. 161; Seymour Phillips, Edward II, p. 567.
5) Murimuth, p. 256; Close Rolls 1330-1333, p. 51.
6) F.W.D. Brie, ed., The Brut or the Chronicles of England, vol. 1, p. 257.
7) Close Rolls 1330-1333, pp. 147, 151; Patent Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 544, 563, 570-572.

Everything Going Wrong

2011-04-11T16:10:00.000+02:00

A post about Edward II in late 1322 and early 1323, following his humiliating flight from a Scottish army at Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire on 14 October - when he was forced to ride fifty miles to Bridlington on the coast to evade capture, leaving all his possessions behind, "to the great shame and ruin of the king and his realm" as the Anonimalle chronicle (not at all unreasonably) wailed. For the second time in his reign - the first was after the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314,when the king left his great seal behind on the battlefield - one of Edward's seals was captured by a Scottish force he was fleeing from, and for the second time, the Scots courteously returned it. (A writ of 27 October 1322 mentions that Edward had recovered his privy seal.) [1] Edward's half-brother the earl of Kent, Hugh Despenser the younger, the king's former steward John Cromwell and other men accompanied him on his flight, while John Dalton, once the executed Thomas of Lancaster's bailiff of Pickering, helped Despenser's ally Robert Baldock in some way at Rievaulx and received a reward of ten marks from the king. [2]

Edward spent one night at Bridlington Abbey, and the abbot, Robert of Scarborough, escorted him to Burstwick the following day. Edward had written to the abbot on 12 September, thanking him warmly for the two carts and eight horses he had provided for Edward's disastrous expedition in Scotland and returning them, adding that the abbot would "find him [Edward] his most gracious lord when he has affairs at court." The Bridlington chronicler, who might have seen Edward or talked to members of his retinue, asks rhetorically "What worse fate could befall the English than to behold their king fleeing from place to place in the face of the Scots?" [3] After his flight from Rievaulx, Edward spent late October and early November in York, where he gave - among many other gifts - a pound to the earl of Louth (John de Bermingham)'s minstrel Sourelius for performing before him, two pounds to a monk of Rievaulx to buy himself a habit and nine pence to Litel Wille Fissher (whose father Monde was also in the king's household) and Wille de Donestaple, pages of his chamber, to buy themselves shoes. [4]

Edward probably saw the interesting phenomenon on 31 October recorded by the Sempringham annalist and the Brut: the sky "of a colour like blood," which supposedly lasted from Terce to Vespers, or nine a.m. to sunset. [5] He spent the second week of November at Tutbury in Staffordshire, forfeited to the Crown by the earl of Lancaster and where his great favourite Roger Damory had died the previous March. On the way back to York, Edward stayed at Thorne near Doncaster, where he gave two shillings each to ten fishermen "who fished in the king’s presence and took great pike, great eels and a large quantity of other fish." His chamber account also records a payment of ten shillings to John Burnet for a small boat "bought from him in the king’s presence," and two pounds to the Carmelite friar Walter Mordon, "whose mass the king often heard in the chapel" at Temple Hirst. The account sheds light on Edward's enjoyment of 'low' pursuits and fondness for the company of the lowborn: for example, he went to the forge at Temple Hirst to talk to his blacksmith, John Cole. [6]

The king decided to spend the winter in the north, and on 27 December, once more ordered a muster of his army at York on 2 February 1323 - a campaign destined never to take place (he would never fight in Scotland again). Edward spent Christmas 1322 at York, and ate porpoise, sturgeon, swans, peacocks, herons, pigeons, venison and wild boar, among much else. He paid two women for singing for him in the garden of the Franciscans on 26 December, presumably a mild day. [7] Hugh Despenser was with him, but Isabella of France - perhaps still angry at what she chose to see as their 'abandonment' of her at Tynemouth - apparently was not: Edward gave Jack Stillego ten shillings on 19 December for bringing him letters from his wife, and there is little evidence of other contact between the couple for the next few months. [8] Four days after receiving the queen's letters, Edward informed various (unspecified) sheriffs that Isabella was going on pilgrimage at "diverse places within the realm" until the following autumn, and granted writs of aid to eighteen members of her household "to provide lodging for her company and horses." [9]

Isabella's whereabouts for the next few months are rather obscure for the most part, though there's a romantic notion that she spent some of this time visiting and otherwise aiding Roger Mortimer, imprisoned at the Tower of London. (And, according to several novelists, having hot sex with him. Riiiiiight.) Quite how the queen of England of all people was meant to have gone into Mortimer's cell without anyone in the Tower, a very busy place, ever noticing, I cannot imagine - but there you go, that's the theory. Make of it what you will. She certainly spent some time at the Tower in early 1323, in the company of Hugh Despenser's wife and her niece by marriage, Eleanor de Clare. The queen wrote a letter to the treasurer on 17 February, from the Tower, asking him to ensure that her "dear and beloved cousin" Joan Mortimer (née de Geneville) received promptly the money allocated for her sustenance. This has sometimes been seen as evidence of her collusion with Joan's husband Roger, with whom the queen began a relationship in late 1325. Although it is possible that Mortimer smuggled a message to Isabella asking for her help, it is equally likely that the queen was motivated by concern for a (partly-French) noblewoman who was her distant cousin. Eleanor de Clare also wrote a letter on Joan's behalf, on the same date and from the Tower; I think we can safely say that Eleanor was not colluding with Roger Mortimer. [10]

Edward II, meanwhile, remained in Yorkshire with Hugh Despenser until 19 March 1323, when he began to make his way back south. On 7 January, he gave two pounds to four clerks for playing "interludes" before himself and Hugh Despenser in the great hall at Cowick, and spent three shillings playing dice. On 4 February, he had to pay fourpence to replace a key which opened a chest of money, "which the king himself lost" (q' le Roi mesmes perdist). [11] More and more problems beset the troubled, unpopular and increasingly tyrannical king in 1323: Andrew Harclay's treason; a near-escape from Wallingford Castle by some of the Contrariants imprisoned there; a remarkable royal vendetta which he carried out against several of his bishops; persistent reports of miracles at the execution sites of several Contrariants; Roger Mortimer's escape from the Tower; and conflict with his brother-in-law Charles IV of France which would ultimately end in war in 1324. Edward II's troubled reign was becoming ever more chaotic and beginning its final descent towards his deposition in January 1327...

Sources

1) The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307-1334, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, p. 112; Foedera 1307-1327, p. 498.
2) Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in W. Stubbs, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 2, p. 79; James Conway Davies, 'The First Journal of Edward II’s Chamber', English Historical Review, 30 (1915), p. 676.
3) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1308-1348, p. 143; Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon, pp. 79-80.
4) Rastall, Richard, 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England' (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1968), part 2, p. 70; Davies, 'First Journal', 675-676.
5) Le Livere de Reis de Britanie e le Livere de Reis de Engletere, ed. John Glover, p. 347; The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, vol. 1, p. 228.
6) Davies, 'First Journal', pp. 676-678; The National Archives E 101/379/17.
7) Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp 687, 690 (muster), Mary Saaler, Edward II 1307-1327, p. 116 (food); E 101/379/17 (singers).
8) Davies, 'First Journal', p. 678.
9) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 227, 229.
10) Isabella's letter: TNA SC 1/35/45; Eleanor's: SC 1/37/4.
11) Davies, 'First Journal', pp. 678-679; E 101/379/17.

Links

2011-04-06T15:47:00.001+02:00

Oh dear, I've really been neglecting the blog lately! :( I don't even have a proper post today, either. Apologies; life seems to be getting in the way at the moment.

So in the absence of a post about Edward II or an aspect of his reign or someone else who lived then, here are a few links to other sites:

- Alan Flower of History and the Sock Merchant hosted an excellent History Carnival recently.

- My blog, and Hannah's blog, get a nice mention here.

- A great post about Edward II by Martin Porter.

- I've discovered the Alternate History Discussion Board lately, which is very active and has some fascinating 'what if' threads, including: what if Edward II had been more competent and what if Edward I had outlived him?

- More generally, The Guardian has had a few articles recently about history and the teaching of it in schools; see here, here, here and here (as usual in The Guardian, the comment threads below the articles are well worth a read too).

- A production of Marlowe's play about Edward II, updated to Latin America (with Edward renamed Eduardo and Piers Gaveston Gustavo), is on at the Rose Theatre, directed by Constanza Hola Chamy.

- And last but certainly not least: The Daisy and the Bear, K. L. Clark's hilarious historical spoof set in the fifteenth century (it's brilliant; see her blog for extracts), is now available to buy on Lulu.

Edward II The Attorney

2011-03-28T15:12:00.000+02:00

On 19 December 1316, Edward II made a most unusual offer: he wrote to his cousin* Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, offering to act personally as Pembroke's attorney while Pembroke travelled to Avignon to see Pope John XXII on Edward's behalf.

* Aymer de Valence (c. 1270/75 - 23 June 1324) was the son of William de Valence, earl of Pembroke (died 1296), Henry III's half-brother, and was thus Edward II's half-first cousin once removed. Aymer's mother Joan Munchensi, who died in 1307, was the granddaughter of the great William Marshal, earl of Pembroke (died 1219).

Here's my translation of the letter, with punctuation added as there's very little in the original!

***
Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to our dear and faithful cousin Sir Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, greetings. Very dear cousin, we have well understood the letters and the message which you sent us by our dear and faithful Sir John Sapy and Oliver de Bordeaux, and we thank you as dearly as we can, and we are extremely grateful that you have our business so tenderly at heart. And we make known to you, very dear cousin, that we have a special interest in all the affairs which touch you, and we will be your attorney for as long as you are overseas, and we wish you to charge your people who will remain here [in England] that for the period of time while they manage the affairs which touch you that they should come to us in person, to show to us the state of your said affairs, and we will see to them in such a way that, if it please God, you will consider yourself satisfied on your return to us. And know, very dear cousin, that all the items which you have drawn up regarding our estate, we will observe them. Wherefore we beg and charge you especially that you may have our affairs tenderly at heart, which you have so well begun, and pursue them with all the diligence that you can, in the same way that we will especially do for you. And the progress of our affairs you will make known to us from time to time, with the news which comes to you, as dearly as you love us.
Given under our privy seal at Clipstone on the nineteenth day of December, in the tenth year of our reign [1316].
***

How the earl of Pembroke felt about this is anyone's guess; as Professor Seymour Phillips points out, "Edward's advice and assistance on anything might be regarded as a mixed blessing." Still, as Phillips says, the letter demonstrates the remarkable level of trust and affection Edward II had for his kinsman, and it's also interesting to see that Pembroke had made some suggestions to Edward regarding the governance of the kingdom which Edward agreed to act on. Sadly for Pembroke, however, the rise of Edward's favourite Roger Damory at court in 1317 led to a considerable reduction in the earl's influence over the king, which declined even further after Hugh Despenser the Younger became all-powerful at court. In June 1322, Edward even forced Pembroke to swear an oath on the Gospels that he would always be obedient and faithful to him, because "the king was aggrieved against him for certain reasons…and could not assure himself of the earl," most probably because Pembroke had persuaded Edward to consent to the Despensers' exile in August 1321, and also made Pembroke swear that he would not ally himself against the king or "anyone whom the king will maintain," surely a reference to the Despensers. [Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 563-564.] By the time Pembroke died in June 1324, on Edward II's service in France - still, despite everything, faithfully serving him - his influence over the wayward and ungrateful king was a thing of the past.

[Edward's letter is printed in French (or Anglo-Norman, rather) in J.R.S. Phillips' Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II, p. 317, and see also p. 110. The original document is located in the National Archives, SC 1/49/39.]

Wine, Decrepitness And A Duelling Archbishop

2011-03-22T14:49:00.000+01:00

Some fairly random, but I hope interesting, extracts from letters of 1324/25, at a time when Edward II was at war with his brother-in-law Charles IV of France over Gascony: the little-known War of Saint-Sardos.

- Some of the Englishmen sent to Gascony to aid the war effort evidently didn't think much of the place: the royal clerk Nicholas Hugate sniffily told Hugh Despenser the Younger in December 1324 that "in this country, one will find nothing except wine" (en cest pays homme ne trovera gueres fors que vyn). [Pierre Chaplais, ed., The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents (Camden third series, 87, 1954), p. 114; my translation.]

- Edward II's seneschal of Gascony from June 1323 to March 1324 was Sir Ralph Basset, who was in some way related to Hugh Despenser the Younger (who always addressed Basset as 'very dear cousin'; Hugh Despenser the Elder's mother, who was countess of Norfolk by her second marriage and died in 1281, was Aline Basset). Ralph Basset in December 1324 advised Despenser that he should "have the treasury of our lord the king searched, to see if you might find an ancient record" pertaining to Castile, because he had "heard from some old people" (jeo ai entendu par ascunes ancienes gentz) that the kings of Castile had often claimed homage for the part of Gascony as far north as the River Dordogne. Alfonso X had incited a rebellion in Gascony in 1253 with a view to invading and taking over the duchy, though he renounced his claims to it the following year when his half-sister Eleanor married the future Edward I.   Presumably Basset was hoping that, seventy years after the marriage of Edward II's parents, the regents of Castile would decide to fight France for a share of Gascony, a ludicrously unrealistic proposition to which Despenser did not even bother to respond in his next letter to Basset. [Chaplais, War of Saint-Sardos, pp. 118-119, 145; my translation.]

- Ralph Basset, as early as 6 December 1323, was aware of the hostility towards Edward II and England in general in Paris, and informed Hugh Despenser the Younger of the same, in a letter which began "Sire. I am writing to you because I do not dare write to the king." [War of Saint-Sardos, p. 3; my translation.]

- Edward II reached out to the Spanish kings as potential military allies against France, and entered into correspondence with Jaime II of Aragon regarding a marriage alliance between their families. His younger daughter Joan, born July 1321, was betrothed to Jaime's grandson the future Pedro IV of Aragon, who was born in September 1319.   In February 1325, Edward decided to write not to Jaime but to his son, the future Alfonso IV (Pedro IV's father), on the grounds that Jaime, then in his late fifties, "is old and decrepit and it is not certain that he is not dead." Jaime, in fact, lived until November 1327. [Calendar of Patent Rolls 1324-1327, p. 104.]

- Edward II's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock was betrothed to Alfonso XI of Castile. Carried away by the wonderfulness of his adolescent first cousin twice removed, Edward wrote "The king rejoices greatly that providence has illuminated abundantly the boldness of Alfonsus's youth by gifts of virtues and natural and gracious good things, as widely diffused fame has made known and is as now spread to the ends of the world."  [Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 344.]

- Edward wrote again to Jaime II of Aragon in September 1324, "remembering the treaties of love between his and James’ royal house that have existed for a long time." (Edward’s eldest sister Eleanor had long been betrothed to Jaime’s elder brother Alfonso III, but he died in June 1291 before the marriage could take place, and she married the count of Bar instead.) Edward grumbled to Jaime about Charles IV's "severity and malevolence," and asked Jaime to send men-at-arms, horsemen and footmen to aid him against Charles, so that "Charles's greed may be restrained and his pride repressed." He sent the same letter to Alfonso XI of Castile and the regents Juan el Tuerto, Maria Díaz de Haro and her cousin Fernando. [Close Rolls 1323-1327, pp. 313-314.]

- Edward was forced in October 1325 to send an apologetic letter to Pedro López de Luna, archbishop of Zaragoza (Saragossa, as his clerk spelt it) and primate of Spain, for his envoys' failure to present themselves or communicate their business to him, declaring himself "annoyed" by their error. [Close Rolls 1323-1327, pp. 516-517.]

- In December 1324, Hugh Despenser the Younger told Edward II's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent and commander of the king's forces in Gascony, that the only reason for the late arrival of the ships carrying provisions to Gascony was that "a strong wind was against them, which we cannot turn by our own command" - a statement clearly intended humorously but which also demonstrates Despenser's arrogance, with its implication that he could control everything except the weather. [Saint-Sardos, p. 64; my translation.] This statement was mistranslated in Natalie Fryde's Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326 (1979) as "Even I cannot control the wind."

- The earl of Kent sent Despenser a letter on 22 November 1324 which ended "Very dear and beloved nephew, may Jesus Christ of his power grant you a good and long life." Given that Kent was one of the men who sentenced Despenser to death two years almost to the day later, that is somewhat ironic.

- Queen Isabella, sent as an envoy to her brother Charles IV in March 1325 - sometimes considered by her fans (though not by me) to be the first stage in her Super-Duper Extra-Special Clever Cunning Plan to meet Roger Mortimer, wrest control of her son from her husband and ultimately depose him - sent a letter to Edward II on 31 March 1325, in which she called him "my very sweet heart" (mon tresdoutz coer) five times. [Saint-Sardos, pp. 199-200.]

- One of the men Edward II sent to Gascony was Alexander Bicknor, archbishop of Dublin, who proved deeply unpopular in the duchy: Arnaud Caillau, ally of Edward and Hugh Despenser, enemy of Charles IV and probably a relative of Piers Gaveston, informed Despenser in November 1324 that the inhabitants wished that Bicknor had not come to Gascony, but stayed in Ireland instead ("vostra gent de Guasconha ne vousissent ja qe larchevesque de Dovelina fust venu au pais, anceis voudreint qe fust oras en Irlanda"). [Saint-Sardos, p. 92.] Bicknor loathed Hugh Despenser, and claimed that only his office prevented him from challenging Despenser to a duel; Edward retaliated by sending the Dominican friar Thomas Dunheved to the pope with letters asking John XXII to depose Bicknor from his archbishopric. The pope refused. [Foedera 1307-1327, p. 600.]

And, on the note of the archbishop of Dublin boasting that he wished to duel against the king's chamberlain and 'favourite', I shall end this post. :)

Private Chambers, Silver Images and Little Domesday

2011-03-14T14:49:00.000+01:00

Some rather interesting payments made by Edward II, taken from Frederick Devon, ed., Issues of the Exchequer: Being a Collection of Payments made out of His Majesty's Revenue, from King Henry III to King Henry VI Inclusive (1837). I love old books and their long titles; incidentally, the full title of Christopher Marlowe's c. 1592 play about Edward is The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer.

- 24 October 1307: 500 pounds paid to Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, "for so much money which the same lord the earl lent in the Wardrobe for the lord the king." The question is, how did Piers get such a huge sum of money to lend to Edward? From Edward in the first place, almost certainly.

- 4 November 1307: 52 pounds paid to one Richard de la Bayr "for two war-horses purchased from him for the king's use, the one a bay and the other white spotted." Also, 20 pounds paid to de la Bayr for "a roan coloured palfrey, purchased from him, and given by the king to the countess of Cornwall." Given the date, this was almost certainly a wedding gift from Edward to his niece Margaret de Clare.

- 13 December 1307: 30 pounds paid to Peter de Sparham "by the hands of Godin, his boy, for diverse tassels of gold, a chaplet and frontal of gold, and for an alb with pearls and silk, and divers other mercery of this sort, purchased from the same Peter by the king's command, and given by him to the countess of Cornwall [Margaret de Clare] and to other ladies and maids of honour then with him."

There are numerous payments relating to Edward II's coronation on 25 February 1308. Here are a few:
- 40 pounds paid to Nicholas Picot and Nigell Drury, sheriffs of London, for beer.
- 100 pounds paid to Ralph Ratespray and Nicholas Dorman, merchants of London, for "large cattle and boars."
- 20 pounds to John le Discher of London for - well - dishes.
- 70 pounds to Walter le Haken and Henry de Redenhale, fishmongers of London, for "large fish" and "small pike." (All this food presumably ended up being served at the disastrous banquet.)
- 40 marks paid to Hugh de Bungey for "armour, beds and apparel for the lord the king on the day of his coronation."
- 100 marks to Edward de Lovekyn for "sheep, pigs, large cattle and other things of this kind."
- 20 marks paid to Roger Frowyk for repairing the royal sceptre.

- 29 January 1308, 10 marks paid to the fishmonger Henry de Redenhale "to obtain from Gloucester lampreys for the king."

- 21 October 1310, 20 marks "paid to John Chaucomb, "of the king's gift, for the news which he brought to the same lord the king, respecting the lady Eleanor le Despenser." This means Edward's eldest niece Eleanor de Clare, who had married Hugh Despenser the Younger in May 1306. I wonder what the news was - that she had borne a child? (Their eldest son, the imaginatively-named Hugh, was born in 1308 or 1309.) Hugh the Younger himself had left England without Edward II's permission at the beginning of the year to take part in a jousting tournament in Mons with Robert d'Enghien; Edward issued an order on 31 December 1309 forbidding any Englishman to leave the country to joust, and seized Hugh's lands nine days later after he disobeyed the order. Perhaps Hugh impregnated his wife just before leaving the country!

- A sad entry on 28 August 1311: Edward paid 113 pounds for the "expenses and preparation made for the burial of the body" of his five-year-old half-sister Eleanor, Edward I's youngest child and born in May 1306 when he was nearly sixty-seven, at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. I don't know what the poor little girl died of.

- 14 June 1315: 20 shillings paid to sailors Edmund of Greenwich, Thomas Springet and William Kempe "for their labour in taking a whale, lately caught near London Bridge."

- 16 August 1315: 8 marks paid to William le Clerk of London "for eight pots of brass and one great brass pot, purchased from him for the king's use."

- 26 November 1315: 20 marks given to Roger Frowyk, the London goldsmith who mended the royal sceptre before the coronation, in part payment for making "a crown of gold" for Edward.

- 5 December 1315: Edward paid 70 shillings to 35 Dominicans for "performing divine service at the anniversary of the lady the queen, mother of the present lord the king." 28 November 1315 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Eleanor of Castile's death.

- a somewhat intriguing payment on 9 December 1315: 20 shillings paid to William Ward, a valet of Edward's chamber, "to keep certain private chambers for the king in the palace of the said lord the king at Westminster."

- 12 February 1316: 60 shillings paid to John Norton, "surveyor of the king's works within the king's palace at Westminster," for purchasing iron, steel and sea coal to "make divers heads for the king's lances."

- 27 March 1316: 20 pounds paid to "Adam de Brugges, farrier to the lady the queen, consort of the lord the king, and to William de Watford, keeper of the palfreys of the same lady the queen, by the hands of John de Salisbury, for a bay horse purchased by them from John Fleg, a horse dealer of London, and delivered to them to carry the litter of the said lady the queen." Isabella was about four months pregnant at the time with her and Edward's second child John of Eltham.

- 13 April 1317: 20 marks paid to Roger de Gretford, "the king's bailiff at the manor of La Nayte, to complete certain works there begun for the lord the king at his command." The manor of La Nayte or La Neyte lay in modern-day Pimlico, London.

- 15 April 1317: Edward gave 20 pounds to the Dominicans (his favourite order) of Pamplona for "three days' entertainment...to wit, one day for the lord king himself, the second day for the lady queen his consort, and the third for the Lord Edward their son."

- 6 May 1317: 8 pounds and 4 shillings was paid to a goldsmith called Walter de Spaldingg for "making a silver image, weighing ten marks, for the use of the lord the king, which said image the lord king commanded to be made." Which image is sadly not recorded.

- 17 May 1317: 50 marks paid to Rose de Bureford - half of what was owed to her - for making an embroidered cope as a present from the queen to the new pope, John XXII. (Note that Edward, not Isabella, paid for it.)

- 18 May 1317: 4 pounds paid to Hugh de Bungeye for making a bed for Edward.

- 21 May 1317: Edward paid 20 marks for his sister, the nun Mary, and niece Elizabeth de Burgh to go on pilgrimage to Canterbury. Elizabeth had just married Roger Damory, and apparently wasn't in any great rush to settle down into married life with him. (Talking of Roger Damory, Hannah Kilpatrick has an excellent new post about the judgement on him in 1322.)

- 5 December 1321: 3 shillings and 4 pence paid to William, bookbinder of London, for "binding and newly repairing the book of Domesday, in which is contained the counties of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk." This means Little Domesday, which still exists in the National Archives in Kew. Nice to see Edward doing his best to preserve an ancient and incredibly valuable document!

Improper Works And Occupations: Edward II's Hobbies

2011-03-10T16:04:00.000+01:00

A post detailing what fourteenth-century sources said about Edward II's love of physical labour and 'rustic pursuits' and his fondness for the company of his low-born subjects...

- The Chronicle of Lanercost: "...from his youth he devoted himself in private to the art of rowing and driving carts, of digging ditches and thatching houses, as was commonly said, and also with his companions at night to various works of ingenuity and skill, and to other pointless trivial occupations unsuitable for the son of a king."

I wonder what the night-time activities 'of ingenuity and skill' were?

- The articles of deposition in January 1327 mentioned Edward's inclination to "give himself up always to improper works and occupations, neglecting the business of his kingdom" (se ad doné toux jours as ouraignes et occupations nient covenables, entrelassaunt lesploit des bosoignes de son roialme).

- According to the Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Gray, whose father must have known Edward II well as he served in the Despensers' retinue, Edward "tarried in the south, where he amused himself with ships, among mariners, and in other irregular occupation unworthy of his station, and scarcely concerned himself with other honour or profit, whereby he lost the affection of his people." The chronology in this section of the chronicle is unclear, but it seems to be referring to 1315.

- The Vita Edwardi Secundi laments: "If only he had given to arms the labour that he expended on rustic pursuits, he would have raised England aloft; his name would have resounded through the land."

- After the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, Robert le Messager, a member of Edward's household, was arrested for speaking irreverently of the king: he complained that Edward had lost the battle because "he spent the time when he should have been hearing Mass in idling, ditching, digging and other improper occupations."

- Edward's love of rowing appears to have been known in Scotland too, to judge from a song written there after Bannockburn, which mocks the traditional oarsman's chant of Heavalow, Rumbelow:

"Maidens of England, sore may you mourn,
For you have lost your men at Bannockburn with 'Heavalow'.
What, would the king of England have won Scotland with 'Rumbalow'?"

- Here's the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden on Edward's affection for the company of his low-born subjects: "He forsook the company of lords, and fraternised with harlots, singers, actors, carters, ditchers, oarsmen, sailors, and others who practise the mechanical arts."

- The Flores Historiarum comments derisively that Edward spent a month swimming and rowing in the Fens in 1315 "with a great company of common people" (who saved him from drowning on one occasion, apparently).

These statements are to some extent borne out by the evidence of Edward's own accounts, and I could give numerous examples of the eccentric king's fondness for the company of his lower-born subjects and for watching - if not necessarily actively taking part in - manual labour. Here are a few:

- Twenty-seven men in July 1326 "cleaned the ditches around the manor of Burgundy in the king's presence." Burgundy was Edward's cottage at Westminster, where he spent a lot of time in the last couple of years of his reign.
- In November 1322, ten men of Thorne near Doncaster "fished in the king's presence and took great pike, great eels, and a large number of other fish."
- December 1322: "Paid to Master John Cole, king's blacksmith, for iron and steel bought by the said John at the king's command, for various things, and who this day showed the items to the king himself, paid at the king's command and in his presence in the forge of Templehurst, 7s and 1p."
- May 1326, at the wedding of Hugh Despenser the Younger's niece Margaret Hastings to Sir Robert Wateville in Marlborough: Edward gave a pound to one Will Muleward, who "was for some time with the king and made him laugh greatly."
- In July 1326, Edward gave a gift of a pound to Alis de la Churche, who had brought him a pike (fish), "by the hands of the king himself."
- In September 1326, Edward paid a fisherman three shillings for two salmon "bought by the king himself" at the postern gate of the Tower of London.

There are dozens of other examples.

Edward's eccentricity by the standards of his age is demonstrated by the emergence in 1318 of the impostor, John of Powderham, who claimed to be the real son of Edward I and to have been swapped in his cradle for a peasant baby. It's difficult, if not impossible, to imagine this happening to Edward I or Edward III...

Book Review: The Darkening Glass by Paul Doherty

2011-02-28T15:49:00.000+01:00

The Darkening Glass by Paul Doherty, published in 2009 by Headline Publishing. This is the third novel in Doherty's murder mystery series featuring Mathilde ('of Westminster'), a French physician who joins the retinue of Isabella of France and travels to England with her when Isabella marries Edward II. All the novels are narrated in the first person by Mathilde herself in old age, sometime after 1358 (as she mentions that Isabella is dead and - GAH - buried next to Roger Mortimer at the Greyfriars in London. No, she wasn't!). The first novel is set at the time of Isabella's marriage and arrival in England in 1308, the second a few months after this as Edward's barons try to get Piers Gaveston exiled, and Darkening Glass in 1312, covering the period of Piers' return from his third exile and his murder.

Darkening Glass is typical Doherty, and no doubt will please his legions of fans with its vivid depictions of fourteenth-century life, glimpses into power politics and a juicy whodunit. For me, there's too much description in Darkening Glass and in Doherty's novels in general; this is a matter of personal taste, but I find the pace of the novel too slow and I get a strong sense of déjà vu from his previous novels - Doherty seems to recycle a lot of his descriptions of street scenes, clothes, feasts and so on. I don't want to give away the novel's plot, but much of it hangs on Doherty's theory that Edward II has lost interest in Piers Gaveston, who is bitterly jealous of Isabella's pregnancy and her influence over her husband, aware that he is losing the king's favour, and blackmailing Edward in desperation. Unfortunately I don't come anywhere close to believing this, so much of the novel didn't ring true to me and therefore I found it very hard to enjoy it.

Doherty's author's note at the end of the novel says that Edward II's reaction to Piers Gaveston's murder was "strangely muted. He called Gaveston a fool, and only much later did he kindle his angry hatred against the earls....". That made me blink rapidly. Edward very nearly went to war against Piers' killers the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford in the summer of 1312, and the Vita Edwardi Secundi says "having summoned his counsellors, he enquired from them what should be done about these things, although he had already decided to destroy those who had killed Piers." Other chroniclers comment on Edward's desire for revenge and on the utter rage he felt towards Piers' killers. Yes, what Edward said in public, as recorded by the Vita, might sound callous - but (assuming the words are accurately recorded) to me they're a sign not of indifference but of deep shock and horror - focusing on how a terrible event can have happened before the trauma of losing a loved one has had time to sink in. Anyway, actions speak louder than words, and it's perfectly obvious that Edward II adored Piers Gaveston, felt deep grief and rage at his death, yearned for revenge, and cherished Piers' memory for the rest of his reign. Although Doherty's take on events of 1312 is original and fresh, and his portrayal of Piers' death is moving, it's too far removed from reality for me.

Doherty also claims in his author's note that "Isabella's separation from her husband during the crisis was also very curious, bearing in mind that she was pregnant." I'm really not sure what he means here. The queen wasn't separated from her husband for most of the period from mid-February to late June 1312, and was with him at York when he heard of Piers' death on or before 26 June (Alison Weir in her biography of Isabella also misses the fact that the king and queen were together when news came of Piers' murder). Edward left York for London on 28 June leaving Isabella behind, which strikes me as an entirely sensible, understandable and thoughtful precaution to keep her out of harm's way in the north if he went to war against Piers' killers, not least because she was pregnant. He summoned her south a few weeks later when the situation had calmed somewhat. Doherty also claims in the author's note that "Isabella was trapped at Tynemouth and had to fight her way out. Some chroniclers place this in 1312, others 1323, and others claim that such an escape happened twice." I don't know of any chroniclers who place this event in 1312 or say that it happened twice; one French chronicle says that she had to escape from Tynemouth in 1322 (not 1323) when Robert Bruce's army was nearby, but the story is not mentioned by any English chronicler that I've seen. Isabella's own household book proves that she didn't have to 'fight her way out' of Tynemouth in May 1312 and was not 'trapped' there: she travelled uneventfully to York by land and was reunited there a few days later with her husband, who had gone by sea via Scarborough with Piers Gaveston. (See here and here.) Paul Doherty's author's notes and lists of historical characters almost invariably contain errors, such as calling Piers Gaveston the 'duke' of Cornwall, calling Edward II's brother-in-law the earl of Hereford 'Henry Bohun' instead of Humphrey, saying that Eleanor of Castile died in 1296 (recte 1290) and that Edward I and Marguerite of France had four children (recte three), claiming that the 'duke' (recte earl) of Warwick himself stabbed Piers Gaveston to death with his dagger when in reality he wasn't even present, and so on and so on. Most unimpressive.

One of the most problematic aspects of Darkening Glass for me is the way Mathilde, a first-person narrator, describes the queen: she constantly - or at least that's how it feels - tells the reader how incredibly beautiful and desirable Isabella is. Mathilde is, throughout the series, in love with a former Knight Templar called Demontaigu, and there is no indication that she is sexually attracted to women. Yet she describes Isabella like this:

"Queen Isabella was on the verge of full ripeness. Sixteen summers old, she had matured rich and fertile, a fairy-tale Queen from the romances she so ardently read. A beautiful woman, tall, willowy and slender, her face as perfect as an angel, with lustrous blonde hair, rose-kissed lips and eyes that could dazzle with life."

This passage, especially the 'ripeness' bit, made me squirm, as did Mathilde/Doherty's reference in the prologue (which is set a few decades after the events of the rest of the novel) to Isabella's tomb at Greyfriars which contains "her beautiful body" (Isabella was in her sixties when she died in 1358). We also get "She looked radiant...Never had she looked so glorious," "though beautiful and graceful, [she] was sturdy as an oak. Sixteen she was, of full height...Pregnancy had brought a fresh bloom to those blue eyes and that golden face," "Her face, framed in a white wimple, looked truly beautiful, her skin translucent, those eyes a deeper blue, sensuous red lips slightly parted," and "Isabella was that rare flower, elegantly beautiful and lissom but in fact hard and tough as the finest armour in the land." In the first Mathilde novel, Cup of Ghosts, she is said to have "a body even a friar would lust after." OK, OK, Isabella has an incredibly beautiful, desirable body and an incredibly beautiful face. I get it.

By contrast, the only physical description of Edward II I can remember in the entire novel is "Edward's face grew soft, smiling, full of that lazy charm that could so easily disarm you." Shouldn't a woman who is supposed to be attracted to men notice and comment on the fact that Edward is tall, muscular and good-looking a wee bit more often? Shouldn't Mathilde be noticing his 'beautiful body' rather than Isabella's, and why on earth would she be constantly thinking about Isabella's 'ripeness' and sensuous, 'rose-kissed lips' (whatever they are)? I'm afraid the frequent and tedious talk of Isabella's amazing gorgeousness and 'beautiful [dead] body' struck me as the author leering over her. There's a huge disconnect between what Doherty wants to describe and the way his chosen narrator would think and feel and react to those around her; he seems unable or unwilling to write from the perspective of a person who desires men, not women. This has been a problem throughout the Mathilde of Westminster series, but it's particularly acute in the third one. It seems to me too that no other woman in the novels is allowed to be either physically attractive or a sympathetic well-rounded character, and thus risk overshadowing Isabella.

Piers Gaveston, meanwhile, is "pretty-faced" and "a spoilt pampered fop," and has "woman-like features." Well, of course he does. He's Edward's lover. We've got to get those stereotypes in there somewhere, and never mind the fact that the real Piers was a great soldier and jouster and - like Edward II himself - about a million miles away from being a pampered fop. Piers' supporters, the so-called Aquilae Petri or 'Eagles of Piers' (an invention of Doherty's), have "foppish ways, curled coiffed hair, painted eyes...". But of course. They are supporters and allies of a man who is in love with and has sex with another man. Obviously, despite being "deadly" and expert soldiers, they have to wear make-up and be as girly as possible.

Turning to characterisation in Darkening Glass, it's rather one-dimensional. Stephen Dunheved, who temporarily rescued Edward from Berkeley in 1327 and joined the earl of Kent's plot in 1330, and is a Dominican friar here, is "a wolf disguised as a lamb," a fanatic, devious and evil; even in his author's note, Doherty calls him a "real and very sinister figure." Err, why was Dunheved 'sinister'? No idea. Edward II is a feeble brainless idiot; Piers Gaveston has "a heart full of murderous deceit"; the Beaumont siblings Henry, Louis and Isabella, relatives of both Edward II and his queen, are an "unholy trinity, those imps of Satan, falseness incarnate..."; the earl of Warwick is "violent and malicious...the devil at the feast"; the earl of Hereford is fat and stupid; Isabella's father Philippe IV of France and her three brothers are evil and nasty and sex abusers to boot. Edward III is mentioned briefly in the prologue, and has been depicted in previous Doherty novels as - bizarrely - some kind of raving psychopath. (From Cup of Ghosts: "The king ordered me here screaming, his foam-flecked lips curling like those of a snarling dog.") The Mathilde novels are plot-driven rather than character-driven, but still, I'd hoped for more subtle characterisation than this. Pretty well all the characters in the series except Isabella, Mathilde herself and her lover Demontaigu are horrible and/or evil and/or stupid (with the exception of Margaret de Clare, who's a bland "little mouse"), and Isabella is, completely implausibly, perfect and wonderful with no character flaws whatsoever. (As well as being incredibly amazingly beautiful and and having a gorgeous desirable beautiful body, in case you hadn't noticed.)

In Death Of A King, Doherty changed Edward III's date of birth by eight months in order to make Roger Mortimer his real father. (AGH!!!!) In Darkening Glass he graciously allows Edward II to be the father of his own son, but we do get a passage that made me snort with laughter:

"In the February of 1312, the favourite's wife, that little mouse, the sanctimonious and ever pious Margaret de Clare, gave birth to a girl child. Six weeks later, Isabella announced to a delighted court that she too was expecting a child. I had known this since the Feast of the Epiphany [6 January]. I advised the queen that she was to be a mother: her courses had stopped for at least three months…"

Edward III was born on 13 November 1312, yet Mathilde knows at the beginning of January that Isabella is expecting - and it appears that Isabella's menstruation had ceased at least three months prior to that, so in September 1311. Blimey, that's a long pregnancy, isn't it?

Paul Doherty claims in his author's note that "The events of this novel are closely based on fact...". Unfortunately, I'd have to disagree with that. It's a slow-moving and rather implausible murder mystery based extremely loosely on real historical people and events. I often feel with Doherty that the speed with which he writes his books - several a year - has a negative impact on their quality, and I don't think The Darkening Glass is one of his better ones. Probably a good idea to go back to one of his Hugh Corbett novels instead.

Hugh Despenser Builds A Cattle Shed And Edward II Grants The Carmelites A Tunnel

2011-02-23T15:27:00.000+01:00

A somewhat hotch-potchy post today mostly from Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, which might be titled 'random stuff about buildings I found interesting'.

Edward II spent a lot of time in the spring of 1317 at his palace of Clarendon in Wiltshire, of which very little remains today, sadly. An inquisition of June 1315 found numerous defects which needed repair, and gives a lovely insight into the palace rooms ('l' means pounds, a pentice was a covered walkway and a garderobe was a toilet):

"The repairs required in the king's manor of Claryndone would cost 1830l besides timber, viz.
the king's chapel near the king's chamber 40l
the king's chamber 20l
the hall with pantry and buttery 100l
two kitchens with a passage and pentice between the hall and kitchens 120l, including the larder and saucery
the chamber with garderobe on the east side of the hall 40l
the chamber called 'Antioche' with garderobe 40l
the queen's chambers, with passage and pentice towards the hall and the queen's chapel 60l
the great cellar for the king's wine with the chamber above 400l
two chambers called the 'brethren's chambers' 140l
the chamber for the chancellor and the clerks of the chancery 20l
the chamber of the chaplains and clerks of the king and queen 20l
the east gate with the chamber above 20l
two chambers for the clerks 20l
the steward's chamber with the passage and pentice to the hall 50l
the chamber of the king's children with passage and pentice and staircase to the king's chamber 40l
the building for the chandlery 40l
the treasurer's chamber 40l
the chapel for the king's household 60l
the king's almoner's chamber 10l
the buildings for the marshalsea 100l
the chamber near the west gate with garderobe 60l
4 chambers of office 60l
the west gate with the chamber above 40l
walls, ditches, hedges and fences about the manor 300l.

All the defects...were caused by long neglect of roofing."

I love the fact that the 'chamber of the king's children' (though Edward II only had one legitimate child in June 1315) was connected to Edward's chamber.

Fulfilling his vow "when in danger" after the battle of Bannockburn to found a friary in Oxford, Edward II granted the Carmelites his palace of Beaumont in February 1318, and by 1324 had also granted them plots of land covering seven and a half acres, including "a plot of vacant land in the suburb of Oxford, adjacent to their new dwelling place, containing 100 feet in length, and 1 foot at either end, and 30 feet in width in the middle, to hold to them and their successors for the enlargement of their dwelling place: licence also for them to make a subterraneous way, 50 feet in length and 10 feet in width from their old dwelling place in the same suburb passing under the king's highway to their new house." The Carmelites promised in return to celebrate divine service daily "for the good estate of the king and queen Isabella and their children so long as they shall live, and for their souls after death."

An inquisition taken at Winchester Castle in May 1314:

"The hall of Winchester castle needs repair to the value of 100l; the king's hall to the value of 100s; the buildings covered with Cornwall stone called 'Esclate' have been much damaged by storms, and need repair to the value of 20l; buildings adjoining the wall of the castle need repair to the value of 100l; buildings covered with lead and lead gutters need repair to the value of 10 marks; the king's chamber and several other chambers adjoining there too were burned in the time of the late king, while he was at the castle, and the jurors cannot estimate at what cost they might be repaired; the bridge without the great gate needs repair to the value of 10l."

I like that bit "the jurors cannot estimate at what cost they might be repaired." It gives me a mental image of a group of men wandering around going "Hmm, that bridge needs a fair bit of work, doesn't it? Five pounds' worth, do you think, John?" "Nah, I reckon closer to ten, Will." "Right you are, John; I'll stick ten down. What about all those burned chambers, Robert? How much do you reckon to rebuild them?" "Bloody hell, they're a right mess! Haven't a clue, mate, sorry."

Inquisition taken in Lincolnshire, July 1331:

"A house at Est Hanyngefeld, which was called the Nurse's house [domus Nutricis], was so ruinous at the time that the king committed the wardship of the said manors to Roger de Mortuo Mari [Mortimer] that it could not stand longer without being rebuilt, and suddenly fell down in the year 1 Edward III [1327]. Hugh Despenser [the Younger], who held the said manors by commission of King Edward II, caused to be raised a house at West Hanyngefeld for a cattle shed, placing there only the timber of the house, which is not roofed or walled, but it has in no way deteriorated."

Inquisition taken at Scarborough in September 1312 by, among others, the excellently-named Tallifer de Tillio or Tilliolo, constable of the castle:

"From the port of Le Sandyat towards the east there is a staith made on the king's soil towards the sea upon which is a common road for men to walk upon and cross, especially at high tide, over which staith and road hangs a solar of Sir Thomas de la Ryver too low, so that men cannot cross directly, 18 feet long and 3 feet wide.
Other similar solars are described, also a pigsty on the same staith and road; refuse heaps obstructing the harbour; solars and stalls in and over the harbour, and encroachments upon the castle moat and the town wall. Thomas son of Robert Uttred has a house near the wall 100 feet long, and the king's wall was destroyed by Thomas Uttred the elder for the length of the said house; William Nessigwyke has a similar house 30 feet long, and the king's wall was destroyed by John Codelyng for the length thereof."

Inquisition in Northampton, May 1323:

"The buildings of Northampton Castle need repairs estimated to cost 1097l 6s 8d. An old tower called 'Faukestour', begun in the time of King Henry the elder, is mentioned." I assume that means Henry II.

Inquisition on the manor and castle of Oakham, which belonged to Hugh Audley and Margaret de Clare, in April 1340:

"The castle is well walled and within are a hall, four chambers, a chapel, a kitchen, two stables, a grange for hay, a house for a prison, a chamber for the gatekeeper, and a drawbridge with iron chains; within the walls are two acres of land by estimation; within the castle is a garden of the yearly value of 8s and a preserve with a dyke of the yearly value of 3s 4d."

Inq. taken on the castle and manor of Fotheringhay, which belonged to the dowager countess of Pembroke, also in April 1340:

"The castle is well built, walled, and crenellated, and has a stone tower and a moat; there are therein a great hall, two chambers, two chapels, a kitchen and a bakery of stone, a gatehouse with a chamber, underneath which is a drawbridge; within the castle there is another plot within the walls built over with houses and called the manor, where are a grange, a granary, a great stable, a longhouse used as a stable, cowhouse, dairy and larder, a forge, and a house for the outer gate with a chamber above."

Book Review: The Ruling Passion by David Pownall

2011-02-17T15:01:00.001+01:00

Published in September 2008 by Herbert Adler Publishing. Somehow I thought I'd written about the novel on the blog ages ago, and have just realised I didn't!

I was so thrilled when I heard that The Ruling Passion, a novel about Edward II and Piers Gaveston, was coming out. Featured on BBC Radio Four as a Book At Bedtime, it promises to tell the story of "a passionate and defiant relationship that was to bring England to the brink of civil war" and "a story of infatuation and a relationship pursued to destruction". Amen to that, I thought; I'm always in the market for a novel about the relationship between Edward and Piers, and there's precious little fiction worth reading about them. I read two excellent reviews of the novel on Amazon UK calling it "deeply engaging" and "really gripping," and various websites repeated that it's a "superbly crafted historical novel," and so I ordered Ruling Passion with great anticipation, expecting a passionate, compelling story about my favourite couple in history.

Well. For a novel with the word 'passion' in the title, how utterly disappointing and passionless it proved. A large part of the book, and I do mean a large part, involves Edward II's father King Edward I discussing his son's relationship with Piers with his adviser, William Wild. Who is always, always referred to either by his full name or as 'the Irishman', which made me grit my teeth with irritation; the first four words of the novel are in fact 'William Wild, the Irishman', and he is referred to as 'the Irishman' four times on the first page alone. (I had a similar problem with Liz Jensen's novel The Rapture, where one of the main characters is always referred to as 'Frazer Melville' and never, ever as just 'Frazer'.) In point of fact, Ruling Passion is not really 'about' Edward II and Piers Gaveston at all; the dull and made-up William Wild The Irishman and his wife Valmai are, contrary to what the blurb says, the main characters. It reminds me of Edith Felber's Queen of Shadows, which claims to be a novel about Isabella of France but is just as much the story of her dull, invented attendant Gwenith.

There's far too much telling in Ruling Passion and not nearly enough showing; why do we need to read endless pages where two men discuss the relationship of two other men when we could be reading about the relationship itself? (The novel opens in 1303, when the future Edward II is nineteen and four years before Edward I dies, and ends shortly after Piers' murder in June 1312.) And when we do get to see Edward and Piers, it's impossible to see why this is a "relationship pursued to destruction" as the blurb says, or threatens the English throne as the blurb says, or why Edward is so infatuated with his lover. We're told, constantly, that Edward adores Piers but not *shown* it. We're told that their relationship will bring England to civil war, but not why. Piers' characterisation is utterly minimal, and even at the end of the novel I had no idea what kind of man he's meant to be, except that he's bisexual and...ummm, well, that's about it. It's never made clear why this man is so sexy, so seductive and so powerful that he can topple thrones. A boring Piers Gaveston?? I would have thought that was impossible, but there's nothing at all here of the historical Piers' famous wit and charisma. Likewise, Queen Isabella remains a one-dimensional enigma throughout the novel. We're told what she's like ("Strong within outlandish contradictions [huh?], austere, sensual, pious and violent"), but she seldom does anything to demonstrate that she is any of these things, and appears to be much older than her stated age of thirteen. There is very little description and action and a lot, a lot, of talking in the novel; the first thing anyone says is Edward I telling William Wild to "Sit down, you old whore". Lovely. Usually I enjoy 'talky' novels, but the dialogue in Ruling Passion for the most part reveals very little about the characters and too often, in my humble opinion anyway, comes across as excessively modern and/or anachronistic (such as William Wild The Irishman Who Is Irish asking his wife "How do you know I'm not a former homosexual?").

There are few sex scenes in Ruling Passion, rather oddly in my opinion, in view of the subject matter (unless I blinked and missed them). One of the very, very few has Edward "being noisily buggered" by Piers in front of a group of actors, one of whom later brains himself "rather than live with such poisonous shame." Yes, that's the exact quotation; yes, that's the entire description of the sex; yes, it's as incredibly unerotic as it sounds. Oh, and there's another bit where Piers "fondles" Edward in front of the archbishop of York, not out of sexual desire but from a wish to embarrass and shock the archbishop, which just seemed childish to me. There is no passion in The Ruling Passion at all. NONE AT ALL. A strange inconsistency: Edward tells Piers at one point "I can't possibly get a woman with child" but half a dozen lines later tells him that he has, in fact, made a woman pregnant, and has an illegitimate son called Adam. Regarding his impending marriage to Isabella of France, Edward tells his lover that he will never be able to have intercourse with women as "their bodies appal me" and the thought revolts him, and that "It doesn't matter how beautiful she [Isabella] is, I won't be able to do it." But a few chapters later he consummates his marriage with Isabella with no problems or hesitation at all and with no awareness that women's bodies are meant to 'appal' him, despite the fact that - bizarrely - her father's pet dwarf is spying on them from the bed hangings. (Seriously.) And a few chapters after that, Isabella is pregnant with Edward III. Equally bizarrely in the consummation scene, the pubescent Isabella tells her new husband that she has previously enjoyed sex on her knees "like the animals," and Edward shows not the slightest shock or horror that his young royal bride is not a virgin, saying merely "God's Mother, what have I got here?". There is not enough 'What the hell???' in my vocabulary. This is some alternate reality, not Europe in the fourteenth century. There are other contradictions: William Wild at one point says about Edward "It's not that he doesn't like women...In fact he likes them as people more than most men," yet later in the novel the narrative says "Almost incidentally, Ned revealed his attitude to women - which was not entirely hostile..." being one example.

I did like some parts of the novel. There are some lovely insights into Edward II's character, which make it obvious how hopelessly unsuited he is to his position as heir to the throne and king, and some nice flashes of humour, such as Edward - or Ned, as he's called throughout - groaning "why couldn't I have been born someone else?" when realising he'll have to consummate his marriage while being spied on by a voyeuristic heavily-breathing dwarf. There are some great bits showing the king's historically-documented love of physical labour, and a vivid scene on a bridge just after Edward has recalled Piers from exile in 1307, where Edward is unsure whether to continue to stand with his arms open to welcome Piers, who is kneeling a few yards away, or whether he's starting to look ridiculous. William Wild (The Irishman Who Is Irish, lest we forget) remembers Edward's long-dead mother Eleanor of Castile with great affection and comments several times how much Edward resembles her in character, which I liked - I've often wondered how much, or whether, Edward resembled Queen Eleanor in appearance or personality. I'm extremely glad that Pownall didn't go the clichéd route of making Piers a Goddess-worshipper - boooooooring and based on a myth about Piers's witchy mother not recorded until three centuries later - and didn't turn Edward into the usual shrieking, foot-stamping, snivelling, tantrum-throwing stereotype so beloved of bad novelists. The novel is reasonably historically accurate, with a few exceptions (such as portraying Hugh Despenser becoming Edward's 'favourite' just after Piers' death, a good six years too early) and at least it doesn't depict Isabella taking a lover who fathers Edward III, for all Edward II's protestations that he won't be able to make her pregnant. But overall, Ruling Passion achieved something I always thought was impossible: made me bored with a novel about Edward II. It took me a few months to finish it, because every time I put it down there was nothing at all compelling to make me want to pick it up again and I turned to other books instead. I still feel like I've missed plot threads in the novel - there's something going on between William Wild The Irishman Who Is Irish's wife Valmai and Piers Gaveston, but I don't know what and couldn't possibly care less - because I skimmed rather a lot of it in sheer boredom. A novel about such a passionate, obsessive and destructive relationship should make the reader feel lots of things, but 'bored' is not one of them. There's an excellent review of the novel by Fiona Glass on Speak Its Name, which identifies much of what is wrong with Ruling Passion: basically, it's incredibly dull. Brenda Honeyman's The King's Minions, despite being a very short novel, contains far more genuine passion, infatuation and eroticism between Edward II and Piers Gaveston in a handful of pages than Ruling Passion manages in its entirety.

Edward II And His Children, And Why Neither William Wallace Nor Roger Mortimer Was Their Father

2011-02-13T14:43:00.004+01:00

This (long!) article was inspired by my huge irritation a) that so many people still think the Braveheart story of William Wallace fathering Isabella of France's child is somehow factual - people hit this blog pretty well every day searching for it - and b) that the notion of Edward II not being the father of his own eldest child has so well and truly taken hold in the popular imagination. For examples, if you can stomach them, see here, here, here, here and here, and the novels cited below. Read them and weep. I cannot adequately express my annoyance that a man with an Oxford doctorate on Isabella (Paul Doherty) wrote a novel (Death of a King) in which Edward III's biological father is Roger Mortimer, which Doherty must know is absolute BS but chose to sex up his novel by including it anyway and thereby giving the notion spurious plausibility. Agh.

EDIT: Thanks to Susan Higginbotham for telling me about a very recent post claiming that Edward II may have been 'cuckolded' and not the father of his children, in the Yahoo group of the Richard III Society, no less. Check out Susan's excellent and elegant rebuttal.

Braveheart features the future King Edward II as a fairly major character, with Edward – in real life, an enormously strong, athletic and handsome man – caricatured as a useless feeble court fop whose lover is thrown out of a window and whose wife cuckolds him with William Wallace. There are countless historical inaccuracies in Braveheart, which have been well detailed elsewhere, and I won’t go into them here. I just want to focus on one: the statement at the end of the film that Wallace is the real father of the baby Edward’s wife Isabella is carrying, who is, presumably, intended to be Isabella’s first-born child King Edward III.

Let’s check some basic dates and facts here:

- Sir William Wallace was executed on 23 August 1305.

- Isabella of France arrived in England on 7 February 1308, having married King Edward II at Boulogne on 25 January. [1] She had recently turned twelve at the time of her marriage and arrival in her new husband’s kingdom; her biographer* places her date of birth sometime during the winter of 1295/96. [2] (Edward II was born on 25 April 1284, so was about eleven and a half years his wife’s senior.) Isabella never met her husband’s father Edward I (‘Longshanks’), who had died on 7 July 1307 – not, incidentally, on the same day as Wallace, as depicted in Braveheart. She was never princess of Wales, as she married Edward II after his accession to the throne and became queen of England on marriage.
* Paul Doherty, but this is a properly-researched academic article, not a sensationalist, hopelessly inaccurate novel.

- Isabella’s first child, the future Edward III, was born at Windsor on 13 November 1312, more than seven years after William Wallace’s death. As noted above, Isabella’s date of birth means that she was nine at the time of Wallace’s execution, and was still in France at the court of her father Philippe IV. She was seventeen or shortly to turn seventeen at the time of her eldest child’s birth.

- Edward II and Isabella of France had four children together, not one, the others being: John of Eltham, earl of Cornwall (15 August 1316-13 September 1336); Eleanor of Woodstock, duchess of Gelderland (18 June 1318-22 April 1355); Joan of the Tower, queen of Scotland (5 July 1321-7 September 1362). In addition, Isabella may have suffered a miscarriage in or shortly before November 1313, when pennyroyal was purchased for her (though this is disputed). [3]

- Edward and Isabella had been married exactly nineteen years when the king was forced to abdicate in favour of their son, following Isabella and Roger Mortimer’s invasion of his kingdom; the fourteen-year-old’s reign as Edward III began on 25 January 1327. I make this point because there is a widespread misapprehension that Isabella overthrew her husband and ruled with Mortimer while her son – presumed to be her only child – was still only a toddler.

A few writers, both in novels and online, have realised the impossibility of William Wallace’s fathering Edward III, but have unfortunately taken on board the notion that Isabella of France took a lover and have looked around for another possible father for her son. This desperation to re-assign Edward III’s paternity appears to be based on the assumptions that a) Edward II was gay and therefore incapable of intercourse with women, and b) Isabella began a relationship with Sir Roger Mortimer, lord of Wigmore in late 1325, and therefore may well have committed adultery with him or another man a few years earlier. The first ever suggestion that Edward III was not Edward II’s biological son is found in Paul Doherty’s novel Death Of A King, published in 1982 – 670 years after Edward III’s birth. Doherty changes Edward III’s date of birth by eight months, from November 1312 to March that year, in order to put forward the theory that Roger Mortimer was the boy’s real father. In fact, it is physically impossible for Mortimer to have fathered Edward III, as he was in Ireland, a country Isabella never visited, at the time of the boy’s conception in February/March 1312. Mortimer was also in Ireland in the summer of 1311 nine months before March 1312, which puts paid to Doherty’s fictional theory, in Ireland in late 1315 and autumn 1317 when Edward and Isabella conceived their next two children, and on his way from Ireland to Herefordshire when their youngest was conceived in autumn 1320 (Isabella was at Westminster). [4] The notion that Roger Mortimer was Edward III’s biological father is also advanced in Charles Randolph Bruce and Carolyn Hale Bruce’s 2006 novel Bannok Burn, although Isabella manages to convince Edward that his own lover Piers Gaveston is the father. There is nothing at all to indicate that Isabella and Roger Mortimer had any kind of relationship – beyond the normal courtly association of a baron and his queen – before late 1325. Edith Felber’s 2006 novel Queen of Shadows has Edward III being fathered by a Scotsman who is never identified, with whom Isabella has an affair when she is ‘abandoned behind enemy lines’ in Scotland by her husband. In reality, Isabella never set foot in Scotland, unless you count the port of Berwick-on-Tweed, which was in English hands anyway when she was there in 1311 and 1314.

Let me just repeat the salient point here for absolute clarity: Roger Mortimer was in Ireland and thus several hundred miles away from Isabella at the time of Edward III's conception.

A comparison of Edward II and Isabella of France’s itineraries proves conclusively that they were together approximately nine months before the births of all their offspring. This will come as no surprise to anyone who does the inhabitants of early fourteenth-century England the credit of assuming that they weren’t so stupid and ignorant they wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss if the queen had become pregnant while she and the king were apart for months on end. (Which, incidentally, Edward and Isabella very seldom were.) Let’s take a look at the date of conception of their eldest child, Edward III. Edward II arrived in York in mid-January 1312 to meet up with Piers Gaveston, who had recently returned from his third exile, presumably to see his new-born child (Piers’ wife, Edward II’s niece Margaret de Clare, gave birth to his daughter Joan on or around 12 January 1312). In York on 20 February, after Margaret’s churching, Edward and the proud parents celebrated Joan’s birth with music and feasting. [5] Meanwhile, Queen Isabella was making her way north from Westminster to join her husband, remaining in frequent contact with him via her messenger John Moigne and sending him a basket of lampreys. [6] (The queen was certainly not "fraternising with the rebel barons on her way north to meet her husband" with the result that "Some doubt could be raised as to whether King Edward II was the genetic father of Prince Edward" as this silly page claims.) Edward III was born on Monday 13 November 1312. Counting back thirty-eight weeks from 13 November, roughly the length of a full-term pregnancy from the time of conception, brings us to 21 February (1312 was a leap year). On this date, Isabella’s Household Book shows her to have been at Bishopthorpe, just south of York, and she probably arrived in the city very soon afterwards. [7] The king and queen remained together in the city until early April. Easter Sunday fell on 26 March in 1312, so Edward and Isabella must have conceived their son during Lent, when intercourse was forbidden. This hardly lends credence to the notion that Edward slept with his wife unwillingly; Lent gave him the perfect excuse not to have sex with Isabella, if he didn’t want to.

The same applies to the conception of the couple’s younger three children: in November 1315, they were together at the royal hunting lodge at Clipstone in Nottinghamshire to conceive their second son John, born August 1316. In September 1317, they were together in York to conceive their daughter Eleanor, born June 1318. In October 1320, they were together at Westminster to conceive their daughter Joan, born July 1321. No record of the fourteenth century – not a single one – gives even the slightest hint that anyone believed Isabella had taken a lover and that Edward was not the real father of the future Edward III or of any of their other children. Privacy is a modern invention, and Isabella probably had less of it than anyone else in the country; she spent every minute of every day surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, damsels, chamber and wardrobe staff, and many other servants, and it is basically impossible that she could have conducted an affair and kept it secret (two of her sisters-in-law in France had affairs, but were discovered and imprisoned and their lovers executed). The purity of royal and noble women and the sacred royal line were considered of vital importance, and it is unlikely that Isabella ever had much, if any, chance to be alone with a man who wasn’t a close relative. People who believe that she took a lover in early 1312 who fathered her son – and bear in mind that the queen was only sixteen years old then – must explain how she managed this seemingly impossible feat without anyone ever noticing. Her relationship with Roger Mortimer, whatever the true nature of it was, began in late 1325 and occurred when she was in France and beyond Edward’s influence, after their marriage had broken down and long after she had borne her husband’s children. This cannot be taken to mean that Mortimer, or anyone else, had been her lover years before.

It was only in the late twentieth century that speculations about Edward III’s paternity arose, presumably on the basis that Edward II was gay and therefore incapable of intercourse with women. Although it is beyond doubt that Edward II loved men, he had an illegitimate son called Adam, so evidently wasn’t repelled by sex with women and might have enjoyed it enormously for all we know. Adam, sadly, is very obscure. The identity of his mother is unknown, his date of birth likewise, though a date of sometime between about 1305 and 1308 (when Edward II was twenty-one to twenty-four) seems likely. The boy or young man, called ‘Adam, bastard son of the lord king’ (Ade filio domini Regis bastardo) and ‘Adam, son of the king’ (Ade filio Regis) accompanied his father on the disastrous Scottish campaign of September/October 1322 with his tutor Hugh Chastilloun, and was given money totalling thirteen pounds and twenty-two pence to buy himself ‘equipment and other necessaries’. He is probably, rather than his younger half-brother the future Edward III, the boy called ‘the king’s son’ in a letter sent to Edward II in the summer of 1322, wherein the unidentified writer comments that “all good qualities and honour are increasing in him” (tutes bountes e honours sount en lui cressaunt). Adam died shortly before 30 September 1322, probably in his mid-teens or thereabouts, and was buried at Tynemouth Priory; his father bought a silk cloth with gold thread to lie over his body. [8] For the record, Piers Gaveston fathered an illegitimate daughter called Amie, as well as his legitimate daughter and heiress, Joan. [9]

Although writers who push the ‘Isabella took a lover who fathered her child’ narrative probably think otherwise, they’re actually doing her a gross insult, not to mention pushing a ludicrously anachronistic notion of sexual freedom for royal women in the Middle Ages. (Fictional depictions of the queen of England managing to have hot sex with Roger Mortimer without anyone ever noticing by escaping from court wearing a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak, I mean a hood: I point at you and mock.) Isabella, daughter of the king of France and the queen of Navarre, sister of three kings of France and herself crowned queen of England at the age of twelve, was a woman with (understandably) a powerful and sacred sense of her own royalty and exalted status. In 1314, two of her brothers’ wives were found to have committed adultery and imprisoned; according to several chronicles, it was Isabella herself, visiting Paris, who informed her father Philippe IV of the women’s actions. If true, this was almost certainly not intended vindictively or maliciously, but demonstrates Isabella’s concern that her sisters-in-law might become pregnant by their lovers and thereby endanger the French royal line. In 1329, when her son Edward III had to pay homage for his lands in France to her cousin Philippe VI (son of Philippe IV’s brother the count of Valois and first of the Valois kings of France), Isabella declared furiously “The son of a king would never do homage to the son of a mere count.” [10] In 1318, when the impostor John of Powderham claimed to be the rightful son of Edward I and to have been switched in infancy for a peasant boy, the rumours spreading through the kingdom "annoyed the queen unspeakably." [11] (Not that she believed the story, I'm sure, but it must have been deeply humiliating for Isabella to have half the country speculating that her husband was not the descendant of kings but a peasant.) Does any of this sound even remotely like a woman who would have taken a non-royal lover and foisted his child onto the English throne?

Whatever the nature of Edward II’s sexuality and whatever his contemporaries thought of it, no-one doubted that he fathered Isabella’s children – let me repeat that there is not the slightest hint in any medieval source or anything written prior to the 1980s to suggest that anyone thought he didn’t – and therefore there is no reason for us to doubt it. Edward himself certainly never doubted that his children were his; there are numerous indications that he loved them deeply, rejoiced at their births and took great pride in them. No historian worth his or her salt would ever write that Edward did not father Isabella’s children, so if you see this claim anywhere, be aware that the writer hasn't a clue what s/he is going on about.

Sources

1) Elizabeth Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household, 1307-1328 (List and Index Society Publications, 211, 1984), pp. 27-28; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 14.
2) Paul Doherty, ‘The Date of Birth of Isabella, Queen of England’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 48 (1975), pp. 246-248.
3) G.E. Trease, ‘The Spicers and Apothecaries of the Royal Household in the reigns of Edward I and Edward II’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 3 (1959), p. 46.
4) Ian Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer (2003), pp. 49-50, 69-70, 87, 100-01, 305-310.
5) Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 2 (1883), p. 42; Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II’s Adoptive Brother (1994), pp. 78-79; J.S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall 1307-1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II (1988), pp. 93-94; Constance Bullock-Davies, A Register of Royal and Baronial Domestic Minstrels 1272-1327, p. 143.
6) F.D. Blackley and G. Hermansen, eds., The Household Book of Queen Isabella of England 1311-1312 (1971), pp. 25, 27, 137, 143.
7) Ibid., p. 13.
8) F.D. Blackley, ‘Adam, the Bastard Son of Edward II’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 37 (1964), pp. 76-77; Seymour Phillips, Edward II (2010), pp. 428-429.
9) The archives of soc.genealogy.medieval are chock-full of threads about Amie.
10) Cited in Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III (2006), pp. 73-74.
11) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 86.

A New Website And A New Drama Production (And Facebook)

2011-02-07T15:16:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post with some info about a new website and a new theatre production which should be of interest to a few of my readers...

Claire at The Anne Boleyn Files has had the excellent idea of setting up a website called The History Files. To quote Claire:

"Calling all history lovers! Are you a student, historian, amateur historian, researcher or someone who just loves history? Would you be interested in having your work published on a history website which aims to be a community of historians and a place to educate the general public? Somewhere where you can also promote yourself by having your own bio page with a link to your website or contact details?"

The site is now up and running: here it is! As you can see, I've contributed an article about Edward II, and am looking forward to writing many more for the site. If you're interested in getting involved - and I think it's a fantastic opportunity to meet like-minded people, read fascinating articles about many different eras, build a great history community online and get your name known - visit this page. Many thanks to Claire for doing this; it's one of those ideas that's so terrific you wonder why no-one's thought of it before.

A new production of Christopher Marlowe's c. 1592 play 'Edward II', performed by Em-Lou Productions and directed by Peter Darney, is on at the Rose Theatre, Bankside from 10 February to 5 March. See Em-Lou's website and the Rose Theatre's website for more details. To quote from their press release, "King Edward comes to the throne, and immediately recalls his banished lover, Piers Gaveston - an order that puts him at odds with most of his court. Edward must battle his sneering subjects, his scorned wife and his own family for not only the right to rule, but for the right to love... This rarely performed classic is a thrillingly crafted bloody tale of love, lust, betrayal and class conflict; of what one man would do for power and what another man would do in the face of love..." Sounds terrific! Best of luck to cast and crew, and I hope they'll let me know how it went.

If you're a member of Facebook, please consider joining my Edward II page there - he currently has 498 fans, and I really, really want to get it past 500. :-) The page is very interactive and, I hope, informative and a lot of fun. Even if you're not a member of Facebook, I think you can still read Edward's posts there. Also, check out The History Police, Susan Higginbotham's Margaret of Anjou page, Claire's Anne Boleyn page, and the Nevill Guide to the Wars of the Roses. Lots of great history on Facebook these days!

Two Letters To The King Of France

2011-02-03T15:18:00.000+01:00

A post about two very different letters sent by Edward II to his father-in-law Philippe IV of France in the summer of 1309, only four days apart. The twenty-five-year-old king was then attending parliament at Stamford, Lincolnshire; Piers Gaveston had recently returned to the country after his year-long exile in Ireland (Edward travelled to Chester to meet him on 27 June) and was restored to his earldom of Cornwall on 5 August. Edward II was also planning a campaign against Robert Bruce, which in the end was postponed for a year and on which only three of his earls - Piers, Edward's nephew Gloucester and nephew-in-law Surrey - were to accompany him. In the middle of all this, Edward discovered, to his great annoyance, that his father-in-law's envoy to England had acknowledged Robert Bruce as king of Scotland and had endeavoured to hide this fact from Edward: hence the second letter.

1) This is a letter Edward sent from Stamford on 30 July 1309, excusing himself from travelling to meet Philippe because of his ongoing 'business' or 'affairs' (busoignes) in Scotland. In both letters, I've tried to keep as close to the original punctuation, choice of word and word order as possible, to give a good flavour of how it reads:

"To the very excellent and very puissant prince, his very dear and very beloved father, Ph' by the grace of GOD noble king of France, Edward by the same grace [king of England] etc, greetings and very dear affection.

Very dear sire, we have well understood the letters of authority which you sent us by Sir Mahen de Varennes, your knight, bearer of these [letters], and what Sir Mahen has told us on your behalf.

And regarding, sire, what he has said to us from you, by this same authority, that you would like to know if we would be willing to accept another day for the meeting between you and us;

You, sire, will know, by our messages, which will come to you later, that our affairs in Scotland are in such condition, that we cannot well proceed towards other parts [nous ne nous porroms bonement treire vers autres parties] until we are advised otherwise.

Regarding that which you have sent us by your letters, that you hold us for excused, we thank you dearly [nous vous mercioms cherement].

And, very dear sire and father, we pray you that it will please you to hold us excused, that the said Sir Mahen has been so delayed in attending to this reply; we will soon make known to you the reason.

Very dear sire and father, may our Lord, of our grace, grant you a good and long life.

Given at Stamford, the 30th day of July."

2) A letter Edward wrote four days later on 3 August, in an entirely different tone:

"To the king of France, the king, greetings [A Roy de France le Roy, saluz]. We are sending to your highness two pairs of letters, enclosed within these, which Sir Mahen de Varennes, your knight, who carried your letters to us, wrote in his own hand to Sir Robert Bruce [sire Robert de Brus]; of which one is addressed to him as earl of Carrick; and the other as king of Scotland [Roi d'Escoce]; in a manner which appears more fully in these same letters;

And this letter, which is addressed to the said Robert as earl of Carrick, the said Mahen sent in a box, openly; and the other he had concealed in the breeches [brael] of the bearer of the aforesaid letters.

This act, sire, we hold suspicious, the manner of delivery as well as the matters contained within one of these letters;

In this, sire, kindly have regard for the honour of yourself and of us.

And, sire, for this reason, the said Sir Mahen has been delayed with our response to the last letters which you sent to us by him.

Given at Stamford, the third day of the month of August."

On the same day that Edward wrote (or dictated, rather) the first letter, he summoned his army to muster at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 29 September. On 21 August, however, he appointed his ally Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster - father-in-law of Edward's nephew the earl of Gloucester and of Robert Bruce himself -"to treat with Robert de Brus for terms of peace."

We have to be cautious when using letters as a source to tell us something about a person's character, attitudes etc, as Edward II simply couldn't have had the time to read or listen to all (or even to many) of the letters sent out in his name and most of them are merely conventional, but it's very difficult to imagine that his clerks would have dared to write in such an abrupt fashion to the king of France unless Edward had told them to.

Sources
Foedera 1307-1327, pp. 78-79; Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1308-1348, p. 19; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 189; Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 224-225.