by Ian Mortimer
The accusations were numerous. Lancaster demanded firstly that Isabella give up her huge estates and return to the level of income more traditionally allowed a queen, and secondly that Roger be banished from court and forced to live upon his own lands, since he had disinherited so many people in order to acquire them. Thirdly he demanded an official inquiry into the fiasco of the campaign against the Scots, to establish who had betrayed the king. Fourthly he demanded that an inquiry be held as to why the rule that the king should be controlled by a council of twelve men ordained at the coronation was being neglected. Fifthly he claimed that the deposed king had been
taken out of the castle of Kenilworth, where he was in ward, and through the influence of the Queen Isabella and of the Mortimer, without consent of any parliament, they took him and laid him there that none of his kindred could see him or speak to him again, and afterwards they traitorously took him and murdered him, for whose death a foul scandal arose throughout all Christendom when it was done.
Sixthly he claimed that Edward II’s treasure had been frittered away without the consent of the young king. Seventhly that through the advice of Roger and Isabella the king had given up the land of Scotland for which many men had died, ‘to the disinheritance of himself, his successors and his vassals and great reproof to all Englishmen forever more’. And finally, that Princess Joan had been married to the son of a traitor, on Roger and Isabella’s advice.33
The seriousness of the accusations underscored the seriousness of the rebellion. Lancaster did not see this as a move to reduce Roger and Isabella’s authority but entirely to destroy it. But he was not a great strategist. What did he offer in place of their rule? Only his own. This was a marked contrast to Roger’s revolution with Isabella at the fore: they had been seen to offer a preferable alternative to the existing government, untainted by corruption. Lancaster offered an alternative which was partisan and every bit as corruptible as Roger and Isabella’s rule. But most of all Lancaster was perceived not to have the subtlety to control public and noble opinion. Evidence of this was to be seen in his armed entourage confronting and challenging the king at Barlings Abbey. Proof of it came a few days later when he heard that the king was by himself in East Anglia, and took his army to capture him. Only a high-speed flight saved Edward. He forced the court to ride or march 120 miles to Salisbury from Cambridge in under four days, and, learning there that Roger and Isabella were at Gloucester, travelled the remaining sixty miles to meet them equally rapidly.
As a result of Lancaster’s aggression, Roger obtained permission on 6 October to travel armed with his men. It was a sensible precaution. Shortly afterwards Lancaster’s retainer, Sir Thomas Wyther, ambushed Sir Robert de Holand in a wood in Hertfordshire, hacked off his head and sent it to the earl. There had been no pretence at a trial. Far from distancing himself from this murder, Lancaster condoned it, and took Wyther and his accomplices into his protection.34
Outright civil war now seemed inevitable. The Salisbury parliament was only five weeks away, and the two sides were bound to come armed. At Gloucester Roger was gathering a large army from Wales and the Marches, ready to put down Lancaster’s revolt and restore order. Lancaster was raising troops in London. The citizens had promised a force of six hundred men to support him. They had ousted Roger’s supporter, Richard de Bethune, from the mayoralty and replaced him with Hamo de Chigwell, one of those who had sentenced Roger to death. They had kidnapped the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds and looted his monastery. Lancaster moved his army to Winchester, ready to attack Roger on Salisbury Plain. Roger advanced to Salisbury, where he ordered that Parliament should sit, with or without the Earl of Lancaster.
Desperately the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had already given some encouragement to Lancaster, tried to intervene. He requested that, as a sign of his impartiality, Roger should swear upon the archbishop’s crozier that he intended no harm to the Earl of Lancaster, nor to his supporters. Roger did as requested. Slightly mollified, the archbishop proposed that the Bishops of London and Winchester should be sent to Lancaster, again asking him to attend Parliament. This was done. But Lancaster refused to come. He sent his list of grievances once more, stating he was prepared to come if his demands were met, and if he received guarantees of safe passage from those whom he thought were ‘determined to do him harm’.
Roger replied to his demands on the king’s behalf. With regard to the first of these, he said, the king was impoverished not by Isabella’s grants of land but by the present likelihood of war, although, he added with wry humour, ‘if any man knew how to make the king richer he would be made most welcome at court’. Quite simply the earl had no right to determine the level of the queen mother’s dowry. With regard to the fourth complaint, Roger explained that the reason the King’s Council did not more frequently advise the king was that Lancaster himself refused to attend, even when summoned. Lancaster could have letters of safe conduct if he should so require them, but if he took advantage of them he would have to abide by the terms of Magna Carta. This document held that he would be answerable in court if any man accused him of any crime, such as complicity in the murder of Sir Robert de Holand, or treason for riding against the king.35 There was no reference to the other matters raised by the earl and the citizens of London. Accusations such as murder, conspiracy with the Scots and of frittering away Edward II’s and Despenser’s fortune were best left unanswered, being on the one hand beneath contempt, and, on the other, justified.
Lancaster recognised that he had no option: he could not go to Salisbury. The threat of arrest loomed too large, since he would undoubtedly have been accused of both murder and treason. Moreover there was a real risk of his being assassinated himself. Bishop Stratford, who had now wholly adopted the earl’s cause, returned to Salisbury to attempt to win over more of the bishops gathered there for the parliament. He held secret meetings in his own house, but spies were at work in the town, and Roger’s men soon drove him out of the city. He took shelter in the nunnery at Wilton, but there he was informed that Roger intended to murder him, and, mindful of de Stapeldon’s fate, he fled across the fields by night.36
With the Earl of Lancaster and his supporters silenced, there was no need for Parliament to sit. But since it had gathered, Roger used the opportunity to recall the courts and the Exchequer from the north, safeguarding them from falling into Lancaster’s hands, and restoring to London some of the favour which he now realised was necessary to maintain his popularity there. The only other significant business of the parliament was transacted on the last day, 31 October, when the king created three earls. The first was his brother, Prince John of Eltham, to whom he gave the title Earl of Cornwall. The third was James Butler, son of Edmund Butler of Ireland, to whom the king gave the title Earl of Ormond. Between these two grants the king strapped the belt and sword on Roger himself. To him the king gave the title Earl of March.37 Roger’s greatest moment had arrived. To cap it all, eleven days later, at Ludlow, his eldest son’s wife gave birth to a son and heir.
Contemporaries were amazed by Roger’s new title. Normally earldoms were associated with specific counties or county towns. A more usual style would have been for Roger to call himself ‘Earl of Shrewsbury’ or ‘Earl of Radnor’, taking his title from the county town of one of the shires in which he held a significant lordship. Instead he chose March, referring to the Welsh March. This was for two reasons. Firstly it harked back to his wife’s ancestry, the French counts of La Marche, and drew attention to his connections with several of the ruling houses of Europe. Secondly it set him apart from all the other earls because it related to such a vast area. Despenser might have coveted the earldom of Gloucester, Roger himself might have controlled most of the earldom of Pembroke, but the earldom of March … Such a title implied supremacy over the existing earldoms of Pembroke, Hereford and Gloucester, and would naturally be far superior to those of Chester and Shrewsbury, if they were to be recreated. By comparison with such a magnificent title, what was an Earl o
f Lancaster?
Lancaster was furious when he heard of the title. Immediately he marched into Winchester and cut off the king’s approach to London. Roger sent the Sheriff of Hampshire to force Lancaster to withdraw. Thomas Wake came out from the city to meet the sheriff, and negotiations continued for several days before Roger’s army drew close. Desperately Wake tried to persuade Lancaster not to fight, suspecting that Roger would have little mercy on them. Only at the last minute did Lancaster relent. His soldiers were still leaving when Roger’s army marched into the city. Men from both sides skirmished with each other, jeering and shouting. The two armies scraped each other but they did not clash.
In London frantic negotiations were taking place as the Lancastrian supporters battled with the more moderate aldermen. Bitter recriminations were thrown across the Guildhall, as both factions realised the court was coming to London. In the end the neutral John de Grantham was elected, and he created a fiction that London had remained totally loyal to Roger. As the court entered the city in late November, both Roger and the Londoners had learnt a lesson: neither could afford to neglect the other.
Roger was satisfied for the time being, but he had not gone to London to make peace. He knew now for certain there would be war. There could be no return to the charade of Lancaster as head of a council. Only one of them could wield power. Thus his purpose in taking the court to London was to break the citizens’ support for Lancaster. The earl stationed himself at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire, and sent his messengers to the king with proposals for a meeting of the royal council. Roger sent them back angrily, stating that Lancaster should show more humility: that he should approach his king as a vassal and make an unconditional surrender. Roger listed the king’s grievances, including protests that the king had the right to surround himself with such advisers as he chose, and that Lancaster had stayed away from court when he had been summoned, and had appeared in arms before the king on the few occasions when they had met. While Roger awaited a response, he took measures to control the capital. He prohibited the carrying of arms in the city and reinforced law and order. Finally, confident that London would stand firm, he and the court withdrew from the city to Gloucester, to arm, plan and begin the war with Lancaster. Force of arms could determine which of them was loyal and which the traitor.
At moments of grave crisis, it seems, Roger turned to God. Now he made the endowment for his chapel at Leintwardine. On 15 December at Gloucester he granted lands and rent to the value of 100 marks (£67) per year for a college of nine chaplains to sing masses daily in the church of St Mary for the souls of King Edward and Queen Philippa, Queen Isabella, Bishop Burghersh, and himself, his wife, his children and their ancestors and successors.38 It had been a long time since he had fought a campaign, and he knew he would be fighting the combined forces of the Earls of Lancaster, Norfolk and Kent. He might not live much longer. His mind had grown a little colder, since the loss of another of his sons. Not long after the death of his second son, Roger, his youngest son, John, had been killed in a tournament at Shrewsbury.39 Besides the dead there were grandchildren being born whom he realised he might never see grow to adulthood, who would inherit the fruits of his labours and merely wonder at his name. Chantries and sepulchral monuments were one way for noblemen to communicate across the centuries with their descendants. And finally there was the matter of his wife and Isabella, with whom he could neither be together nor apart, being wrenched between them both. It was a strange extended family – a king, two queens, a wife, a mistress, the living and the dead – but these were the people for whom Roger cared most, and he wanted them to be together at peace, if only in the prayers of the chaplains of St Mary’s, Leintwardine.
There was one other reason for the timeliness of this foundation: Roger was not just going to war over his policy towards Scotland or Henry of Lancaster’s treason, he was fighting for his and Isabella’s lives. The Earl of Kent had learnt that Edward II was still alive. And he had told Lancaster.
We do not know how the Earl of Kent learnt about the ex-king’s continued existence. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that Edward III confided in him while Roger and Isabella were travelling to Berwick for the marriage between David and Joan in July 1328. This may explain why he and his brother, the Earl of Norfolk, refused to attend the meeting at York which was to take place on their return. In his later confession, Kent claimed that he had heard the news at Kensington from a Dominican friar of London who ‘had raised up the devil, which declared unto him for certain that Edward, his brother, sometime King of England, was alive’.40 This was almost certainly a means to cover up the identity of his true informant. It remains a possibility that friars of the Dominican order had learnt for themselves that Edward was alive, and informed the earl. Whichever was the true source of his information, if Kent informed Lancaster between July and September, then Lancaster’s accusation of murder in the autumn was an attempt to call Roger’s bluff, to force him to reveal the living ex-king. While this remains uncertain, it is highly likely that Lancaster had been informed by the end of October, as on 5 November he wrote to the Mayor of London stating that he would send some information by messenger he dared not have written down which he had heard from the Earl of Kent.41
The consequence of this information was further to alienate Edward II’s half-brothers from Roger. In December they issued a joint circular statement accusing their nephew the king of breaking the terms of his coronation oath and abusing Magna Carta.42 The latter was a tacit reference to Edward II’s custody, for which they held Edward III partly responsible, indicating that they were aware that he knew of his father’s survival.43 They called for a general gathering in London to discuss further action. It was sent to all those likely to be sympathetic to the Earl of Lancaster’s cause, as well as to the king. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester and the Bishop of London responded, as did Lancaster’s northern supporters. On 18 December the archbishop preached a sermon against the king at St Paul’s. Three days later a very full reply was received in the city and read aloud at the Guildhall. The archbishop, who by now had given up all pretence to impartiality, wrote back to the king and the court threatening him and them with excommunication. This outrageous letter, which implied the king was guilty as charged, coincided with the completion of Roger’s preparations for a military campaign. There was nothing left to do but fight.
On 29 December Roger declared war on Henry of Lancaster in the king’s name.44 A letter was sent to London stating that Edward intended to march to Leicester, via Warwick, and that those who surrendered before 7 January would be pardoned for their transgressions, with the exceptions of Henry de Beaumont, Thomas Roscelyn, Thomas Wyther and William Trussel, whose disloyalty could never be forgiven. The letter was read aloud on 1 January to Lancaster and the other leaders at St Paul’s, who even now thought they could mediate. But the royal army was already on the march. They left Warwick that same day and went to Kenilworth, where the king asked for access to the castle. Upon being refused, Roger decided to bring forward the deadline for action. He took the army to Leicester and began to sack the Earl of Lancaster’s manors. Then he ordered the town and all the earl’s property to be destroyed by sword and fire, including the property of his dependants. Over the years Roger’s men had grown experienced in the art of wanton destruction. They took the earl’s deer, cut down his woods, emptied his fish ponds, emptied his granaries, took his cattle and sheep, and destroyed his manor houses, barns, fences, sheds and cottages. The entire town and hinterland was devastated in a few days. The army was, however, restrained when it came to killing people: the majority of the fatalities arose from Henry Percy’s massacre of a crowd of peasants marching to serve Lancaster.
Hearing of the attack on his lands, Lancaster marched north. At Bedford he held a council with his fellow lords. He declared that they now had no choice: they would have to fight the king. At this the Earls of Norfolk and Kent recoiled. They refused to ride in arms against the r
oyal banner, for the double risk of being presumed traitors by their nephew, who was obviously Roger’s pawn, and for fear of Roger himself, who seemed unbeatable with a royal army behind him. They grew angry, and denounced Lancaster, accusing him of sedition, of trying to destroy the king. They abandoned the earl and rode off to seek peace before it was too late.
Roger was at Northampton. When he heard that the Earls of Norfolk and Kent had deserted Lancaster, he ordered his troops to prepare for an immediate night attack. Even Isabella took part, dressed in armour and mounted on a war horse. Through the night he led them, for twenty-four miles, arriving within sight of Lancaster’s camp near Bedford at daybreak. Henry made no attempt to defend himself. He came out of his pavilion and walked slowly forward through the cold January morning, and knelt down, alone, in the mud. He waited there until Roger, Isabella and the king rode up. They watched him from their horses as he begged for forgiveness.
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FOURTEEN
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King of Folly
THE MOMENT THE Earl of Lancaster knelt at the feet of the young king, Roger was able to claim a personal victory far greater than merely that of defeating Lancaster. All England, Wales and Ireland was under his control. The king was in his power, Isabella was more dependent on him than ever, and all the key office-holders in the country were his appointments. If people sought pardons, they sought them from him. If wardships were distributed, it was to men of whom he approved. He had been granted the most prestigious title in the country, and no one dared face him with an army. His only real threat had been the vanquished, humiliated earl, kneeling in the mud before him. This, he may have reflected in his moment of glory, was what it felt like to be a king.
