by Marc Morris
King Edward had reacted to the defeats in Scotland, inevitably, with orders for more troops: a new army was to muster at Carlisle in the middle of July. In the meantime, however, his health again went into decline. According to Walter of Guisborough, the king was now suffering from dysentery, an affliction that all the electuaries, cordials and ointments prepared by his doctors in the past months can have done nothing to alleviate. There can thus have been little celebration in mid-June when Edward passed his sixty-eighth birthday. So grave was his condition that he had become all but invisible, and his seclusion gave rise to the rumour that he was in fact already dead.45
When, at length, these murmurs reached the king’s own ears, they stirred that part of his spirit that was indubitably great. Around 24 June the order was given to prepare for an immediate advance. With the muster date still three weeks into the future, whatever army had assembled in Carlisle can only have been half-formed at best. But leadership was required at once, and Edward had now abandoned the notion that it could be provided by others, least of all by his feckless and still-absent son. Instead, the ailing king rose from his bed to lead his men to war in person. The litter that had borne him on his agonising journey to the Border he rejected, and it was ceremoniously surrendered in Carlisle Cathedral. Edward now mounted his war-horse, as of old, and rode out from the city at the head of his host.46
It was all, of course, a magnificent act, undertaken in defiance – of the rumours, of the Scots, of pain and illness, and thus even of death itself. As such it was unsustainable. The king had headed west out of Carlisle, evidently with the intention of sailing to Scotland across the Solway Firth. But after ten days he had advanced only six miles, and on 6 July he was forced to stop at Burgh by Sands, an isolated settlement close to the Cumbrian coast. In this windswept wilderness Edward spent his last night on Earth. The following day – Friday, the feast of St Thomas – around mid-afternoon, his attendants appeared to help him to eat, but as they lifted the king from his bed, he died in their arms.47
A Great and Terrible King
For almost a fortnight Edward’s death remained a closely guarded secret. According to Walter of Guisborough, anyone who spoke of it during this time was imprisoned. Only three letters are known to have been dispatched the following day: one to the queen, one to the earl of Lincoln and one to the prince of Wales. This last was received on 11 July, and Edward of Caernarfon set out at once for the north-west, arriving a week later to mourn over the body. It was not until 20 July that his rule was proclaimed in Carlisle Castle, and the veil of secrecy surrounding his father’s death was lifted.1
As the news spread throughout England, it elicited a chorus of despair. ‘Death has taken him, alas!’ cried Peter Langtoft. ‘My heart is in desolation,’ wrote another Englishman in French. ‘Me thuncheth that deth hath don us wrong,’ said yet another in his native tongue. When messengers found the pope in Poitiers he was reportedly unable to stand on account of his grief. During the last days of July prayers and sermons were recited in Poitiers Cathedral – the first of their kind to be said for any king at the Curia – and across the city the bells rang out. Back in England Edward’s body began its long journey southwards from Burgh by Sands, led by the bishop of Coventry, and slowed by a crowd of lamenting subjects.2
Edward of Caernarfon was able to accompany this procession only during its opening stages; after a few days he had to return to Carlisle in order to lead the abandoned host. Their expedition, however, proved short lived and uneventful, and no doubt the English troops were deeply dispirited. They advanced into south-western Scotland, but Bruce wisely chose to remain hidden, and less than a month had elapsed before the campaign was called to a halt. The new king returned to the Border, where he paused to receive the homages of loyalist Scots, and then continued south to attend his father’s funeral.3
Since the start of August Edward’s corpse had lain embalmed in Waltham Abbey in Essex, not far from London. Around 18 October it began the final stage of its journey. On entering the capital it was received with maximum honour, resting for consecutive nights in the priory of Holy Trinity and St Paul’s Cathedral, as well as being taken to other city churches besides. At length it was brought to Westminster Abbey, where the funeral was held on Friday, 27 October. The service, says Guisborough, was attended by magnates of all lands and diverse regions, and Edward was laid to rest amongst his fathers.4
Contemporaries were in no doubt: this was a farewell to a truly great king. Edwardus Magnus was a phrase that sprang readily and naturally to the minds of men from Westminster to the far west of Ireland. Some went further still. Peter Langtoft averred that there had been no greater king since the time of Arthur, and in Poitiers one of the pope’s preachers ventured that his subject had been no less and perhaps more worthy of praise than Alexander. In Westminster itself, meanwhile, there was no such hesitation. According to the local writer who composed the longest lament of all, Edward had been entirely without equal, outshining not only Arthur and Alexander but also Brutus, Solomon and Richard the Lionheart. ‘We should perceive him to surpass all the kings of the earth who came before him,’ was this author’s unstinting conclusion.5
On what basis did this conclusion rest? Several obituarists went on to justify their superlative assessment and, unsurprisingly, one reason stood out above all others. Edward, as Guisborough put it, had been a king ‘most strong’. ‘The most renowned combatant on steed,’ opined Peter Langtoft, ‘he had no equal as a knight in armour.’ ‘King Edward was an outstanding warrior from his adolescence,’ added the Westminster eulogist, ‘in tournaments most mighty, in war most pugnacious.’ That these and other authors were right to remember their former leader as a valiant fighter is hardly open to doubt. Evidence of Edward’s courage and prowess in arms is abundant across his entire career. His personal participation in tournaments appears to have ended in 1273, after an especially bloody encounter at Chalon-sur-Saône in France drew condemnation from the pope. But the king had continued to throw himself into the even deadlier business of war regardless of the risks involved. As late as 1304, as his Westminster obituary recalled, he had very nearly been killed by crossbow bolts and other projectiles during the siege of Stirling. It is especially noteworthy that in respect of his valour Edward’s reputation was not simply the work of flatterers. After the Battle of Lewes in 1264, even his enemies had acknowledged that ‘he was not slow to attack in the strongest places, fearing the onslaught of none’.6
Of course, physical strength, and even valour, while crucial, were by themselves insufficient: tyrants could also be strong and courageous. To be truly useful these qualities had to be combined with wisdom, and here too the obituarists were in agreement. Edward was the wisest and most prudent king, said Guisborough; ‘full of understanding’, added Langtoft, while another author affirmed that ‘all the things he did, he wisely brought them to an end’.7 Again, it is difficult in general terms to disagree with this assessment. Wisdom is clearly a more subjective quality than valour; what seems wise to one person at a particular time may seem less wise to another, or in retrospect. The fundamental measure of Edward’s wisdom, however, is that he was a good judge of other people. He could spot frauds (such as the knight who claimed to have been cured of blindness at the tomb of Henry III), and he had a talent for selecting men of outstanding ability to serve him. As one of the preachers in Poitiers put it: ‘He did not rule in a frivolous state of mind, nor under the influence of flatterers … but with the prudent counsel of good and wise men.’ Certain names spring immediately to mind. Robert Burnell, the longest serving chancellor until the eight eenth century; Otto de Grandson, a brave soldier and a brilliant statesman. Both had served Edward since his youth, at a time when his faculty for recruiting the right people was already demonstrably superior to that of his father. Roger Leybourne, Roger Clifford, Roger Mortimer – many of those whom he bound to his side were men of his own warlike stamp. Yet Edward also proved adept at choosing the best lawyers and cle
rics to serve at his court. His wisdom was such that he could channel their differing talents and satisfy their considerable (and often competing) ambitions.8
The corollary of this – contrary to what some historians have asserted – is that Edward’s lordship was emphatically good. A king who shared their longing for feats of arms, adventure and the pursuit of noble causes – this was a king worth serving for his own sake. Unlike his father, Edward had no need to buy loyalty with lavish grants of land or money. He had friends but not favourites. As his Westminster obituarist explained, men would come from all over the king’s dominions simply in the hope of joining the company of his knights. But those who served him well Edward did reward generously. The extensive new lordships given to Henry de Lacy, Reginald de Grey and John de Warenne in Wales, or to Thomas de Clare in Ireland, are a standing argument against the spurious notion that Edward was somehow lacking in largesse.9
Masterful in the management of his own household, Edward was no less competent in managing the wider political community. He took care, for example, to involve his greatest magnates in the running of the realm, consulting them in council on matters of importance. He proved able to handle the prickliest of characters, placating them where possible, overruling them when necessary. Thus Gilbert de Clare was allowed to lead armies in south Wales and to marry the king’s daughter, but given a severe dressing-down when he failed to respect the Crown’s authority.
An important part of Edward’s success as a leader, also mentioned by his Westminster obituarist, was his ready eloquence. According to a later writer, the king had some form of mild speech impediment – possibly a lisp. If this was so, it clearly did not affect his powers of persuasion. One thinks of his success in talking round former Montfortians in the wake of a bitter civil war – men like John de Vescy, who went on to follow Edward for the rest of his days. One also recollects the broad Christian coalition he built in the Holy Land, and his speech outside Westminster Hall that moved an archbishop to tears. It is a pity that no one preserved any of the pre-battle harangues that the king must surely have delivered, for he was clearly an orator of considerable skill.10
Eloquence, of course, had been held against him by his Montfortian enemies. Edward was said to ‘cloak himself in pleasant speech’ but then go back on his word. This, the author of The Song of Lewes opined, showed that he thought himself above the law, and prompted the lament, ‘O Edward, thou dost wish to become a king without law; verily, they would be wretched who were ruled by such a king’. But to judge from his obituaries, these fears had been unfounded. Edward was lauded in 1307 as a rigorous ruler who loved the law. ‘Truly,’ said one preacher, ‘in our times no king’s kingdom was made firm and strong with so much justice and so much mercy.’ In terms of lawgiving this was certainly true: Edward’s reign, especially during its first half, had witnessed an unprecedented volume of legislation – a stream of wide-ranging statutes that led seventeenth-century commentators to dub the king ‘the English Justinian’. Recent research has put Edward’s contribution to this process in perspective. It is now appreciated that he had little personal interest or involvement in the practical business of lawmaking, or even in passing judgement. Nevertheless, that so much regulation was introduced during Edward’s reign was significant, and shows that the king was anxious that justice should be maintained. In this respect his attitude had not altered since, at the age of twenty, he had instructed his bailiffs to exhibit ‘common justice’ to all, lest he lose the favour of God and man, and his lordship was belittled.11
Modern historians have found fault with Edward’s justice, identifying several occasions when the king departed from such high ideals for his own or his family’s advantage. The most notorious example, the disinheritance of Robert de Ferrers, has already been discussed. Another incident, wherein royal ministers persuaded the dying countess of Devon to sell her lands to the king, thereby disinheriting her distant relatives, also looks highly suspect. There can be no denying that, in his desire to increase the Crown’s estate, Edward occasionally indulged in quite low skulduggery. Here too, however, it is important to retain a sense of proportion. It would have been a rare medieval monarch indeed who never manipulated the law to suit his own purposes. What mattered in Edward’s case was that, in spite of the odd lapse, his rule was generally perceived to be equitable. People could feel confident about approaching him for justice in a way they could not have done during the reigns of his father and grandfather. The king’s own attitude is well illustrated by a private letter he sent to the chancellor in 1304 concerning a royal ward called Thomas Bardolf. This young man had given offence by refusing to go through with a marriage that Edward had arranged for him, and the chancellor was therefore instructed ‘to be as stiff and harsh towards Thomas in this business as can be, without offending the law’. Were such a letter leaked from the heart of government today it would be enough to generate resignations, but thirteenth-century kings did not have to be so careful in their correspondence. What is more striking in this instance is that, even as he instructed his chancellor to be partial, Edward reminded him to stay within the limits of what was legal.12
Another quality that the eulogists singled out for praise was Edward’s piety. He was, in the opinion of one writer, ‘the most Christian king of England’. This description probably rested more on his reputation as a crusader rather than the kind of piety for which his father had been famous. ‘O Jerusalem, thou hast lost the flower of thy chivalry,’ was one poet’s response to the news of his passing, and the general emphasis on crusading in the obituaries seems to have been encouraged by the rumour that, in his dying moments, Edward had willed his heart to the Holy Land, along with a fighting company of eighty knights. (The story that he commanded his body be carried at the head of future armies until Scotland was conquered was only told later, and is palpably nonsense.)13
In many respects, however, the king’s piety was very similar to the kind practised by his father. Like Henry, Edward distributed alms to the poor on a grand scale, feeding (or at least paying) hundreds of paupers at his court every week. He also undertook the unpleasant business of touching people suffering from ‘the king’s evil’ – scrofula, or tuberculosis of the neck – and was apparently more sought out for this reason than any of his successors. Like his father, Edward was a frequent visitor to cathedrals and other places of worship, and he made rich offerings of gold, jewels and money at their shrines and tombs. He did not share Henry’s inordinate devotion to Edward the Confessor – that much was clear from the fact that Westminster Abbey, half-built at the time of his coronation, was still in much the same state at the time of his funeral. Nor did he indulge in ostentatious displays of piety in order to compensate for political and military failure. Edward’s pilgrimages were often undertaken in advance of military campaigns, and his ecclesiastical patronage was more eclectic. When his armies advanced, they carried with them the banners of a host of English saints. For Edward, pious conduct was a necessary buttress to military success. An inventory drawn up after his death reveals that the king possessed a veritable arsenal of ornamented relics, including an arm of St David, a nail from Christ’s cross, and even a saint’s tooth ‘effective against lightning and thunder’.14
It was small wonder that Edward believed in the efficacy of these and other relics. As another of his obituarists observed, he was an exceedingly fortunate king, at least to the extent that he survived numerous near misses. Many have been mentioned in the preceding pages: the storm at sea that prompted him to found Vale Royal Abbey, the chamber that collapsed beneath his feet in Gascony, the two battles from which he emerged unscathed and, most famously, the unsuccessful attempt on his life at Acre. The list could easily be extended. Nicholas Trivet, a later chronicler whose patrons included Edward’s daughter Mary, preserved two episodes that would otherwise be unknown. In 1297, while the king was at Winchelsea waiting to sail to Flanders, his horse was startled by a windmill and leapt clean over the town’s lofty rampart
s, along with its royal rider. Miraculously both survived. On another, earlier occasion, a youthful Edward was reportedly playing chess in a certain chamber and, for no apparent reason, got up to stretch his legs, only to have a stone crash down from the vaulting in the place where he had been seated. This escape was said to be the source of his devotion to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham.15
Trivet also told a story of how Edward, out hunting one day, rode his horse through a river to pursue a man who had mistakenly presumed he could disregard royal orders with impunity. The chronicler’s intention was to demonstrate that the king was ‘heedless of danger when he wanted revenge’, but his tale has recently been taken to indicate that Edward also possessed ‘a violent temper’. Given the story’s suspiciously allegorical appearance, its value as evidence in this last respect is open to debate. Edward could undoubtedly get angry on occasion: financial records show that in 1290 he paid twenty marks’ compensation to an esquire whom he had assaulted with a stick, while in 1297 repairs were necessary to a coronet, the property of his daughter Elizabeth, after the king had thrown it into the fire. Beyond this, however, evidence of genuine royal wrath seems rather thin on the ground: there are certainly no stories of Edward falling to the floor and biting the rushes after the fashion of his Angevin ancestors. By the thirteenth century, as the murals in the Painted Chamber make clear, it was important that ira (anger) should be vanquished by débonaireté (urbanity, literally ‘having a fine air’). Naturally, that did not mean that the chamber’s occupants were always capable of similar self-restraint. But there is far more evidence of debonair activity at Edward’s court than there is for explosions of ire. His financial accounts show frequent payments to jesters, acrobats, minstrels and dancers (including, in the last instance, a certain Matilda Makejoy). They also record the charming fact that every year on Easter Monday the queen’s ladies-in-waiting would try to catch the king in bed, and he rewarded them with a ransom if they were successful.16
