by Ian Mortimer
Hugh, you have been judged a traitor since you have threatened all the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, and by common assent you are also a thief. As a thief you will hang, and as a traitor you will be drawn and quartered, and your quarters will be sent throughout the realm. And because you prevailed upon our lord the king, and by common assent you returned to the court without warrant, you will be beheaded. And because you were always disloyal and procured discord between our lord the king and our very honourable lady the queen, and between other people of the realm, you will be disembowelled, and then your entrails will be burnt. Go to meet your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade; go to receive your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!19
And with that a huge roar went up and Despenser was roped to four horses – not just the usual two – and dragged through the city to the walls of his own castle, where an enormous gallows had been specially constructed, with a great fire at its foot. Simon de Reading was dragged behind him. Both men had nooses placed around their necks, and were lifted into the air. Simon de Reading was lifted just to the normal height, a few feet off the ground. Despenser was raised a full fifty feet, up above the walls of the castle, high for all to see. Then he was lowered on to a ladder. A man climbed up alongside him and sliced off his penis and testicles, flinging them into the fire at the foot of the gallows.20 Then he plunged his knife into Despenser’s abdomen, and cut out his entrails and heart, throwing them into the fire below, to the huge delight of the revenge-crazed crowd. The corpse was finally lowered to the ground, and the head was cut off, and raised to a chorus of ecstatic cheers. It was later sent to London, and Despenser’s arms, torso and legs were likewise sent to be displayed above the gates of Newcastle, York, Dover and Bristol. Justice was very visibly and viscerally done.
Baldock, who, as a clergyman, had to be handed over to his fellow clergymen for trial, met a similarly brutal fate, albeit an unofficial one. He was taken to London, but there the mob broke into the house in which he was held, beat him almost to death, and threw him into Newgate prison, where he was soon finished off by the inmates.
Roger and Isabella had every reason to be overjoyed at their success. The day of Despenser’s death was a mere two months after their landing in Suffolk, and there had been no innocent casualties except those caught up in the London riots. A year earlier Edward had peremptorily ordered the queen to return and urged the King of France to send Roger back to England in chains. Now Edward was in chains and both Despensers and Arundel, Baldock, and de Stapeldon were dead. In two months they had achieved what no one had managed since the Conqueror. But, in the wake of their victory, it was clear that life could not return to the way it was before Despenser rose to power. Roger’s uncle was dead. Many other lords, knights and commoners were dead as a result of the Despenser war. Many more innocent people had lost their lands in the subsequent tyranny. On the personal level, Roger and Isabella were no longer lovers in exile; they were in the same country as their spouses, and had at least to appear faithful for the sake of the government. On the political level, they had to decide the fate of the king and how to keep rival and potentially dangerous lords under control. It was clear, as Christmas approached, that victory brought a new set of problems to the fore.
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ELEVEN
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Revolutionary
WE DO NOT know when and where Roger came face to face with Joan again. Nor do we know what they said to each other when they did meet. They had last seen each other in the summer of 1321, more than five years earlier. In all that time they had both suffered for Roger’s war against the Despensers, but Roger had found a surrogate wife, had frequented the courts of Europe, and had become the most important man in the country. Joan on the other hand had spent five years in prison. At forty, having borne so many children, she must have been losing her looks and fast approaching (what was in the fourteenth century) old age. Whenever it was that they met, it seems likely that it was a meeting touched with sadness, regret and possibly some bitterness on Joan’s part; not only because Roger had become Isabella’s lover but also for the years of her life she had lost.1
It is possible that the meeting took place in November 1326, either just before or after the execution of Despenser. Roger seems to have visited his manor at Pembridge, near Wigmore, where he and Joan had been married.2 The records do not mention Joan (except in a legal capacity as heiress of the de Geneville lands) until two years later when Roger endowed a chantry at Leintwardine, where priests were to sing masses for the souls of Roger’s family, closest friends and ancestors. It is probable that four books of ‘romances’ which Roger obtained at Westminster early in 1327 were presents for his wife.3 Joan had a taste for romances, as shown by the inventory of her possessions in 1322. Those issued to Roger in 1327 were actually handed over to Walter de Lingaigne, canon of Wigmore, and Walter de Evesham, clerk, on 19 February. Since Roger was at Westminster himself at this time it seems likely that they were given to the two men to take back to Joan, especially as Walter de Evesham was one of Joan’s own clerks.4 This suggests that she was not with Roger at Westminster but back at Wigmore, where she had been staying in 1322, or at Ludlow, where she was living in 1330, and thus perhaps estranged from her husband. There is no evidence that Roger was anything other than regretful that his devoted wife of so many years had suffered for his actions.5 On balance it seems that the couple had decided to live apart by early 1327, a decision forced upon them by Isabella’s affection for Roger and her need of his guidance, and, most of all, by Roger’s love for Queen Isabella and his craving for power.
Roger spent Christmas 1326 at Isabella’s castle at Wallingford. His stay was not all seasonal frivolity. Several key issues faced him: how to make Isabella’s seizure of power legitimate; how to control lords such as Henry of Lancaster, who had now started referring to himself by his brother’s title of Earl of Lancaster; how long to keep the Hainault army in England; and, by no means least, what to do with the king.
The first and the last of these could be considered a single question. If the king were executed, his son would naturally assume the title after his father’s death. But such a move, while apparently simple, was technically very difficult. It required a state trial on a charge of treason, a guilty verdict and a death sentence. Roger invited various lords and prelates to discuss the matter with him and Isabella. There was little agreement. From the point of view of most of the lords, Edward had repeatedly shown himself to be unconcerned with the country’s welfare and deserved to die. Several of the prelates, however, held that he had been appointed by God, and thus could not legally be deposed or tried. This spiritual argument against a trial had wide political implications: if he were tried and found guilty, many people might believe that God would punish the country. There was also a legal argument against a trial: if Edward was not found guilty of treason – and most people believed that a king could not technically be charged with treason – he would have to be released, and possibly restored. While it would have been easy to rig the trial, this might have raised widespread sympathy for him. The hardest line was taken by the Lancastrians, whose world had been shattered by Edward’s destruction of Thomas of Lancaster. Roger, on the other hand, had been saved from his death sentence in 1322 by the king’s intervention, and indeed had for many years before that been a loyal supporter of the king. Even now he was a royalist, and he wanted to encourage Prince Edward’s respect, a respect which was very unlikely to be forthcoming if he were held responsible for the death of his father. Nor did Isabella want her husband destroyed, partly out of marital affection and partly on account of the dignity of royalty. Since Roger’s wife was still alive, there was no question of her marrying Roger even if Edward were executed. By the end of December those opposed to killing the king had prevailed. Roger and his associates decided not to have the king tried but to imprison him, without trial, for life.
This decision presented Roger with a much more difficult pro
blem with regard to the legal consolidation of Isabella’s power and the establishment of her son’s reign. Since the prince had been appointed guardian of the country while the king had been abroad, on Edward’s return that guardianship should have come to an end, even though the king was in prison. Roger and Isabella found a temporary solution by having Bishop Orleton take the great seal from the king and give it to Isabella, so she could rule in her husband’s name, or the prince’s, or her own, as appropriate. In addition, in December the Chancery was ordered to date writs issued in the king’s name as if they had emanated from him at Kenilworth. But Roger and his constitutional advisers, such as Bishop Orleton of Hereford and Bishop Stratford of Winchester, knew this state of affairs could not continue. It would only be a matter of time before someone challenged the legality of such writs.
On 4 January 1327 Roger and Isabella entered London with the prince and the court. The rioting had calmed somewhat. The election of Richard de Bethune as mayor in November had placed one of Roger’s most loyal supporters in power, and he had returned the city to something resembling normality. Parliament had accordingly been scheduled to meet on 7 January, and the lords, prelates, knights of the shire and representatives of the boroughs and Cinque Ports all assembled in Westminster Hall.6 But the king and the two bishops sent to accompany him from Kenilworth had not arrived.7 As a result Parliament could not proceed, for the assembly could not be deemed Parliamentary unless the king were present. Nothing happened until 12 January when the bishops arrived alone.8 Instead of the king himself they brought his defiant refusal to attend, and his declaration that all who did attend were traitors. Bishop Orleton, in announcing this, declared that it was just as well that the king had not come, for he kept a dagger in his clothes for the purpose of killing the queen, should he ever see her.
Already Roger’s propaganda machine was working. Orleton, who was almost certainly exaggerating the king’s defiance, knew as well as Roger that, for the first time in English history, the representatives of the community of the realm would be called upon to act as an authority over and above that of the king. At this time, commoners were rarely even summoned to Parliament, let alone asked to judge the monarch. But Roger and his advisers intended to manipulate them to their political advantage. It was no democratic principle which made Roger and Orleton draw the representatives of English boroughs into the debate about the deposition of Edward II, but a calculated attempt to unite all the classes of the realm against the monarch. Hence no representatives were summoned from South Wales, which was known to be strongly in favour of the king, and representatives were only summoned from North Wales (which was strongly anti-Mortimer) when it was too late for them to take part in the debates.
Orleton went straight to the crux of the matter: the king had refused to come to Parliament; so did Parliament want the king to rule the country or did it prefer that his son should rule instead? Orleton’s confidence and the rigging of the later debates itself suggests that a wave of approval was expected to follow his speech, together with a unanimous declaration of allegiance to the prince. But such a reaction was not forthcoming. It was too sudden. The Archbishop of York, three other bishops, and various other people refused to give an answer. They declared that this was for fear of the Londoners, who were known to be on Roger’s side. Some of them wished to see the king himself speak in Parliament, and openly abdicate, rather than for him to be deposed by Roger and Isabella. Frustrated, Orleton accordingly dismissed Parliament until nine o’clock the following morning, and consulted with Roger as to what to do next.9
Roger now used his influence over the Londoners. The waverers were reluctant to answer his demands because of fear of recriminations; rather than reduce that fear he decided to exploit it. He instructed Richard de Bethune to write to Parliament asking whether the members would come to the Guildhall to swear an oath to protect Isabella and her son, and to depose the king. He also called all the great lords to attend a secret meeting that evening, and asked for their unanimous support in deposing the king. This was forthcoming. Roger now had all the weapons he needed.
At nine o’clock on the morning of Tuesday 13 January Roger addressed the mass gathered in Westminster Hall. He spoke eloquently, but did not try too hard to persuade them. Instead he showed the assembly the letter from the mayor and citizens of London, asking that they all swear the oath to support the queen and her son and to depose the king. Roger added that in a meeting the night before all the great lords of the realm had discussed the matter and were unanimous in their opinion that the king should be deposed. He was not saying this for himself, he said, and nor could he speak for the commons, but he had to speak out on the issue because the great lords had urged him to do so. On cue, Roger’s cousin, Thomas Wake, jumped up and declared in a loud voice that he for one did not think that the king should be allowed to rule any longer. As the tones of assent were heard around the hall, Orleton rose to his feet. ‘An unwise king destroyeth his people,’ he preached, going on to give a tremendous sermon, rousing those present in the way he knew best, through the power of the word of God. By the time he had come to the end, Parliament was truly animated. ‘Away with the king! Away with him!’ they shouted. But the show was only just beginning. As soon as Orleton had resumed his seat, Bishop Stratford took up the call. His theme, obviously prepared well in advance, was that the head of the nation was feeble, and that the king should be allowed to lead the country astray no longer. As he spoke, again Thomas Wake rose and demanded, gesturing to the assembly, ‘Do you agree? Do the people of the country agree?’ By this stage the representatives of the people who agreed were completely swept away, and those who did not had been silenced by the knowledge that they would have to face the Londoners in the Guildhall later that day. As the commotion died down, the last of the three scheduled speakers stepped forward. This was the old Archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Reynolds. He said that the people of England had been oppressed too long, and that, if it were the people’s will that the king should be deposed, then it was God’s will, and the reign should come to an end. Again, on cue, Thomas Wake rose and demanded: ‘Is this the will of the people? Is it the people’s will that the king should be deposed and his son made king in his place?’ A tumult of approval answered him. ‘Let it be done! Let it be done!’ The archbishop then concluded: ‘Your voice has clearly been heard here, for Edward has been deprived of the government of the kingdom and his son made king as you have unanimously consented.’10 Then, as the assembly was carried away, Prince Edward was ushered into the hall to the cry ‘Behold your king!’ At which point most of the assembly started singing ‘Glory, Laud and Honour’. The Bishop of Rochester, one of the few who did not sing, was later beaten up for his lack of enthusiasm.
The overt manipulation of Parliament was entirely Roger’s doing. Later that day a large crowd of nobles, prelates and knights followed him to the Guildhall to swear the oath of fealty requested by Richard de Bethune. The first to swear the oath was Roger. The oath itself was different from that requested by de Bethune in his letter. Those who took it swore only to protect Isabella, her son, and those who fought against Despenser, and to observe the Ordinances and the liberties of the city of London.11 There was no mention of the deposition of the king. Persuading de Bethune to include this had just been a ruse by Roger to intimidate those who were not in favour to keep quiet during the sermons and speeches in Parliament.12 It did not matter that many of the assembly did not swear the Guildhall oath; the oath itself was irrelevant as far as the deposition went. But it had influenced or threatened Parliament clearly to vote in favour of removing the king, and thus Roger was able to say that the decision was with the assent of the people of England in Parliament. The English monarchy had changed for ever.
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The agreement by Parliament to dethrone Edward II was a landmark achievement. Never before had an English monarch been deposed, and nor had any European king of comparable status been removed from his throne. The only precedent was
a minor German prince of small reputation earlier in the fourteenth century. Thus, for Victorian and early twentieth-century scholars, the key feature of the fall of Edward II was this constitutional development, and especially what this indicated about the role of Parliament. In concentrating on the constitution they failed to notice the most important fact about the deposition of Edward II: it did not actually happen. Parliament’s will was not imposed on Edward; rather he was asked to accept its decision.
On 20 January Edward, dressed in a black robe, was led into the hall at Kenilworth Castle. There he saw the faces of those who had come to announce the decision of Parliament. Immediately he collapsed in a faint, and had to be lifted back to his feet by Bishop Stratford and Henry of Lancaster. Orleton read the charges. The king had been found guilty of several crimes. Namely: of being incompetent to govern, and of allowing others to govern for him to the detriment of his people and of the Church; of not listening to good advice but rather pursuing occupations unbecoming to a monarch; of having lost Scotland and lands in Gascony and Ireland through his failure effectively to govern; of allowing the Holy Church to be damaged and its representatives to be imprisoned, and other nobles to be killed, imprisoned, exiled and disinherited; of failing to ensure that all received justice, but instead governing for his own profit and allowing others to do the same, against his coronation oaths; and of fleeing in the company of a notorious enemy of the realm, and leaving the realm without government, thereby losing the faith and trust of his people. Since his cruelty and faults in his character were to blame, the people had agreed that there was no alternative but to depose him.13 Edward, utterly shaken by this judgement, wept as he heard the charges. At the end, he was offered a choice: to abdicate in favour of his son, or to resist and relinquish the throne to one who was not of the royal blood but experienced in government, with the obvious implication that this would be Roger. Through his tears, the king confessed that he lamented that his people so hated his rule. He agreed that if the people would accept his son, he would resign in his son’s favour. Sir William Trussel then stepped forward to renounce homage on behalf of all the lords of the realm, and after him Thomas le Blount publicly broke his staff of office, announcing that Edward’s royal household was no more. In this way Edward abdicated and was not deposed, a distinction which later would prove significant.
