This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  In all the disorganization of the King’s realm, there emerged a new grouping, a middle party. It was led by the Earl of Pembroke, who had fallen from the King’s favour after Bannockburn, and included the bishops. They saw good reason in their aims for administrative reform, particularly the changes they thought necessary to the King’s household itself. Not surprisingly, this did not please Edward II. He turned to Hugh Despenser and his son, also Hugh, for whom the king showed signs of infatuation. It became clear that the baronage would never accept the Despensers especially if it proved to be so that the younger Hugh had taken the place of Piers Gaveston in the King’s heart. Hugh the elder had long been an unquestioning royalist. He’d been a loyal servant of the King’s father, Edward I. Also, he’d been the only baron to support Gaveston during the move to get rid of him in 1308; and he was by Edward’s side at the retreat from Bannockburn. Hugh the younger had been a member of Edward’s household while he was still Prince of Wales. He’d married Eleanor, the King’s niece. The Despensers were certainly no more opportunists than Lancaster and his supporters, but the clue to the great opposition to them is in their rank. The Despensers may have gained lands, titles and influence, but they were not from one of the great families. In the medieval pecking order only the important landowning families could expect any right to influence the King. Here was a qualification for influence that would survive into the nineteenth century. In 1321 the King bowed to the demands of the baronage to dispense with the Despensers, but Edward could not live without the affections of the young Hugh and father and son had returned the following year. It was this same year that with renewed guile and support, Edward had taken the war to Thomas of Lancaster, captured and beheaded him.

  However, tragedy was waiting for Edward II. His wife, Isabella, disgusted by her husband’s passion for Hugh Despenser, became the lover and confederate of Roger de Mortimer, one of the chief Marcher Lords against the king, who had escaped to France. Isabella had gone to France to negotiate the restoration to England of Gascony – seized by her brother, Charles IV of France. Worse was to come. In 1324, perhaps with Despenser’s authority, Isabella’s estates were sequestrated. There was also a rumour that the young Hugh was attempting an annulment of her marriage to the King. Isabella needed a triumph to establish some authority within the claim of Gascony. She called for their son, also Edward, to be sent to honour and show allegiance to Gascony. This was simply a ruse to get the young Edward away from his father and, shortly after the prince’s arrival, Isabella and her now lover, Roger de Mortimer (who had made a name as Justiciar in Ireland), gathered an army led by exiled English malcontents. To cement the force, Isabella had betrothed her fourteen-year-old son, the heir to the throne, to the Count of Hainault’s daughter, Philippa, in return for soldiers. In 1326 the rebels sailed for Harwich and the Isabella–Mortimer axis was triumphant. The two Despensers were captured and they were executed at Hereford. Now, the rebels turned on the King.

  Edward II is said to have been murdered in Berkeley Castle when red-hot pokers were inserted and his bowels burned out. In an age of gruesome histories it is, for some, an attractive tale. There really is no evidence for this flimsy notion other than an unauthenticated account, which suggests that Edward II suffered an unusual form of execution, in a version of the Brut Chronicle:

  When that night the king had gone to bed and was asleep, the traitors, against their homage and their fealty, went quietly into his chamber and laid a large table on his stomach and with other men’s help pressed him down. At this he woke and in fear of his life, turned himself upside down. The tyrants, false traitors, then took a horn and put it into his fundament as deep as they could, and took a pit of burning copper, and put it through the horn into his body, and oftentimes rolled therewith his bowels, and so they killed their lord and nothing was perceived.

  Whatever the method of execution, Edward II had few friends to mourn his going, but there were plenty who mourned the act of regicide and the method of power changing. There was little they could do about it. Edward was murdered because of his foolishness. He was weak, without political imagination or intelligence. He lacked dignity and most certainly appears to have been a thoughtless monarch. And, in reality, he was no longer King when he was imprisoned. He’d already been forced to abdicate and in his place his young son was crowned as Edward III, who erected a fine monumental mausoleum for his father.

  The English monarchy was now threatened by the most serious events since the Conquest. For three years after the death of Edward II, England was effectively ruled by the Queen’s lover, Roger de Mortimer. Let us consider not so much a phenomenon of reign, but the unusual consequences of the time. Firstly, Isabella and Mortimer had no constitutional authority even by the standards of medieval power and certainly could not command the whole support of the nobility – the basis of all rule. Secondly, the precarious and doubtful basis for their rule meant Mortimer and Isabella were effectively constitutional outlaws and therefore had to sell authority and political silver to stay in power. The French and Scots were not slow to capitalize on this vulnerability to seemingly forgo so many of the claims the English had on their northern and southern neighbours, especially in Scotland. It was at this stage that the triumph of Robert the Bruce was complete and the historical shame of Isabella and Mortimer was also complete. The couple gave up English claims on Scotland and recognized Bruce as King of the North. There were two treaties, Edinburgh, in March 1328, and its protocol of ratification, Northampton.

  The Treaty of Northampton was decided when 100 Scottish knights had been asked to a Parliament to talk peace. The Scots were probably ready to reach an understanding and the documents of the settlement had been written, or at least drafted, under the influence of Bruce himself at the abbey at Holyrood. But the young King Edward III appears to have seen the treaty as a total humiliation. An extract from the fourteenth-century Chronicle of Lanercost18 makes clear the belief that he really wanted nothing to do with what he saw as a shameful document, especially as it committed future kings to acknowledge Scotland’s independence. It was also yet another document to be blessed by royal intermarriage:

  Acting on the pestilent advice of his mother and Sir Roger Mortimer (they being the chief controllers of the King, who was barely 15 years old) he was forced to release the Scots by his public deed from all exaction, right, claim or demand of the Overlordship of the Kingdom of Scotland on his part, and from any homage to be done to the Kings of England. He restored to them also that piece of the Cross of Christ which the Scots call the Black Rood. But the people of London would in no wise allow to be taken away the Stone of Scone, whereon the Kings of Scotland used to be set at their coronation at Scone. All these objects, the illustrious King Edward [Edward I] son of Henry, had caused to be brought away from Scotland when he reduced the Scots to his rule. Also the aforesaid young King gave his younger sister, my lady Joan of the Tower, in marriage to David, son of Robert de Brus [Bruce], King of Scotland, he then being a boy five years old. [Joan of the Tower, about seven years old] All this was arranged by the King’s mother, the Queen of England, who at this time governed the realm. The nuptials were solemnly celebrated at Berwick on the Sunday before the feast of St Mary Magdalene.

  We should not underestimate the anger expressed by people outside the baronage – what we may today call ‘public opinion’. Certainly there was a widespread belief that Isabella and Mortimer were usurpers; by itself, that state could have been tolerated. What was harder to carry was the burden of incompetence, corruption and Mortimer’s arrogance towards the barons, particularly in the Welsh Marches. We would do well to remember that the Marcher Lords held special powers. Mortimer had contrived to declare himself Justice of Wales, a life appointment. He then, in the autumn of 1328, declared himself to be Earl of March, a title that had to be confirmed by the Parliament of nobles. One of the most influential of those barons was missing from the count – Henry Lancaster, the brother of the Lancaster executed on orders of Ed
ward II. The Lancastrians were in revolt. Mortimer had enough support to put it down, for the moment, largely because, as ever, the barons looked to their individual interests rather than collectively ganging up. Still, with a little more thought, Mortimer could have survived. But the power of the barons, on occasions, could be overwhelming. The idea that the aristocracy held power while the King held only high office could be seen to have more than an ounce of truth to it. Mortimer’s downfall was due to two particular events: King Edward III began to rebel and Edmund Woodstock (1301–30), the late King’s half-brother (son of Edward I and Queen Marguerite) and now the Earl of Kent, believed Edward II may be alive. He had been a supporter of Lancaster, his cousin, but when Mortimer and his troops attacked Lancaster’s lands and invaded the Earldom of Leicester, Kent deserted him. Isabella and Mortimer had long decided that Kent was dangerous. He had friends; he had influence; he was fickle. There’s evidence that Isabella and Mortimer instructed their agents to drop hints, to lay false evidence, which they knew Kent would pick up. The opening lines of Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynbroke19 describe how easily the ploy, an elaborate one, succeeded.

  Certain men pretended that King Edward, lately murdered, was living magnificently in Corfe Castle [Dorset] but never wished to be seen by day. Wherefore they caused dancing to take place on many nights on the walls and turrets of the castle, bearing before them tapers and torches so they might be seen by the yokels of the countryside, as if they guarded within some great king . . . The Earl of Kent therefore sent a Dominican friar to find the truth of the matter who, thinking that he had corrupted the doorkeeper of the castle by bribes, was himself deceived. He was led in to hide by day and to see by night the person whom he wished to see. At night he was brought into the hall and there he saw, as he thought, Edward the King’s father, sitting splendidly at supper. He told the Earl of Kent what he believed he had seen. The earl therefore swore, in the presence of some whom he not to have trusted, that he would work to release his [half] brother from prison.

  The story of the plot spread and Edmund Kent was arrested and charged with treason because he had told the ‘wrong’ people that he intended to get the man he believed to be Edward II out of his prison at Corfe Castle. The living king, Edward III, who really wanted nothing much to do with this affair, held his court at Winchester where Kent was tried and sentenced to execution. This was a thoroughly unpopular verdict. It is sometimes said that the only person who would act as executioner was a convicted murder who stepped up on the understanding that he himself would be set free. Lancaster and his supporters quickly realized that unless they seized some sort of initiative, then they too would be victims of the treachery of Isabella and Mortimer. Young Edward assumed his powers of monarchy in October 1330 protected by the Earl of Lancaster. It was this step-stage that signalled the end of the events and eventually the execution of Mortimer. The remaining Kents were now treated as they should have been, as part of the new royal family.

  Mortimer’s treasonable act was that of having assumed the throne, albeit with the equally treacherous Isabella. But she was saved by her son, now Edward III. Towards the end of her long life, Isabella became a nun and was buried in a Franciscan church at Newgate. Despite the realm of Isabella and Mortimer being undermined by the coming of age of Edward III, Parliament had assumed a growing importance and the views of knights and burgers of the kingdom were listened to. Public opinion and the emergence of a Parliament which would – very slowly, but increasingly – represent the common view became important. Chroniclers began to write about ‘the Commons’.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1331–76

  A change of reign is a common time to identify an exceptional movement, almost a flurry of constitutional, political and therefore social change in a nation-state. In our modern times, British monarchs do not influence such movements even when their behaviour raises constitutional eyebrows. Political appointees – prime ministers and US presidents most certainly do have the powers to change a nation’s direction. Until the seventeenth century, English monarchs had this influence and used it. The long and vigorous reign of Edward III, and several years after it, was one such time. The Hundred Years War began. The Black Prince won his spurs at the Battle of Crécy. The Order of the Garter was founded. The Black Death came and went. William Langland’s Piers Plowman was written. The first Stuart King of Scotland came to the throne. Richard II came to the English throne. The Peasants’ Revolt took place. Wat Tyler died and John of Gaunt was born. The Scots beat the English at Otterburn. And Chaucer finished The Canterbury Tales. And all this happened in the sixty years between 1337 and 1397. Edward III reigned until 1377.

  Immediately, we can see that Edward III continued the policies of not his father, but his grandfather, Edward I. These were not necessarily peaceful arrangements for the country. The thorn that was Robert the Bruce and Edward II’s ignoble defeat at Bannockburn on 24 June 1314 still niggled the English, even though Bruce was dead. David II of Scotland, who had come to the throne in 1329 after Bruce’s death, was young, inexperienced and in a regency. Edward Balliol saw his chance, defeated David’s followers at Dupplin Moor and had himself crowned. Edward III could not tolerate this uprising and launched an army against the Scots at Halidon Hill. Balliol had little power to resist and gave up Berwickshire and much of the surrounding region. While not every Scot would have supported Balliol, all Scotland was set against the English incursion. As for David, he fled to France in 1334. He stayed there for seven years while the French court encouraged the Scots in rebellion against England.

  The English therefore were more than usually annoyed with the French. This is important because English kings had found it hard to get much support, especially financial help, from the barons every time they wanted to fight the French. But something was about to happen that would encourage the English magnates to dig deeply into their pockets. Edward III was about to embark on what would be known as the Hundred Years War. There were four apparent reasons for the war.

  Firstly, the English, through Edward’s mother, the disreputable Isabella of France, had until 1331 claimed the vacant French throne as Kings of England and France (the French House of Valois claimed the throne as Kings of France). Secondly, the French disputed the rights of the English over English areas of France – for example, Gascony. Thirdly, there was the French encouragement for the Scots against the English and the by now King of France, Philip VI, encouraged a force to invade Scotland on behalf of the exiled David. Fourthly, perhaps the most important of the reasons to go to war: wool. Wool in the fourteenth century was the equivalent of oil in the twenty-first century. It was the commodity that could tip the economy. The English produced wool but sent much of it to the superior weavers and markets of Flanders. They therefore tried to control Flanders. The French refused to sit by and let the English have such domination. The Flemish merchants and towns particularly valued the English wool trade. Without it, they would have been in terrible financial straits.

  In 1337, Philip of France confiscated Gascony and Edward III dusted off his claim to the French throne. And to keep people and Parliament on his side, Edward III published his manifesto, telling everyone the reasons for the coming war:

  These are the offers made to the King of France by the King of England to avoid war. First the King sent to France various solemn messages, begging him to return to him lands which he is withholding from him; but the King of France did nothing, until at last, he promised that if the King of England would come in his own person, he would do him justice, grace and favour.

  Philip at first refused to see Edward, then took even more of Edward’s possessions. Edward then claimed that he made the ultimate offers to the French monarch, offers which even casual students of this period will find familiar.

  First the marriage of his eldest son, now Duke of Cornwall, with the daughter of the King of France, without taking anything for the marriage. The marriage of his sister, now Countess of Guelders, with his son,
together with a very great sum of money. The marriage of his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, with any lady of the royal blood.

  Because the King of England was given to understand that the King of France wished to undertake a Crusade to the Holy Land, and wished to have him in his company, the King of England offered to go with a large force with him in the Crusade; provided that, however, before he set off, the French King should make him full restitution of all his lands.

  Then he offered to go with him on condition that, before he went, the French King should restore half, or a certain part of his lands. Then that he would go with the French King if he would make such a restitution on his return from the Holy Land. But the King of France would accept none of these offers; but, seeking his opportunities, busied himself in aid and maintenance of the Scots, the enemies of the King of England, attempting to delay him from the Scottish War, so that he would have no power to pursue his rights elsewhere.