Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England

by Alison Weir

  Isabella could number among her allies, or potential allies, Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, Henry Burghersh, Bishop of Lincoln, and John de Drokensford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who are together referred to by Baker as “disciples of Isabella”; all three were close associates of Roger Mortimer. Then there was her uncle, Henry of Lancaster, the late Earl’s brother, John de Stratford, Bishop of Winchester, William Airmyn, a prominent churchman, and even the King’s own half brothers, Norfolk and Kent. Richmond, now in France, had shown himself to be sympathetic, and Henry de Beaumont was as dependable as ever.

  Baker says that Orleton fueled the Queen’s anger against the Despensers, exploiting her resentment at the loss of her estates. But although he was in a position to understand exactly how she felt, Orleton was still very much in disgrace at this time92 and is unlikely to have been in any position to influence Isabella. It was only later that he emerged as one of her strongest allies.

  Henry of Lancaster was a kind and honorable man in his midforties, who was known for his courtesy and balanced judgment. Having taken no part in his brother’s rebellion, he had been bitterly disappointed when, after petitioning the King for the earldoms of Lancaster and Leicester, to which he was the rightful heir, since Thomas had left no children, Edward refused him, and then, suspecting his loyalty, had him kept under close observation. After two years, however, the King was satisfied that Henry was loyal and allowed him to take possession of just one of his brother’s earldoms, that of Leicester. But Leicester had all along blamed the Despensers for his brother’s death and wanted not only his revenge upon them but also Lancaster’s name rehabilitated. He had defiantly assumed the late Earl’s arms rather than his own, even though they had been declared forfeit, and had built a stone cross to Thomas’s memory near Leicester.93

  That Leicester was sympathetic to Orleton is proved by his having sent a comforting and supportive letter to the Bishop in 1324, after Orleton, accused of treason for assisting in Mortimer’s escape, had written to Leicester begging him to help him make peace with the King. But before Leicester could do so, Edward got to hear of his warm response to Orleton’s plea and accused him, too, of treason. Thanks, however, to Leicester’s able defense and his position as the foremost magnate in the realm, he escaped conviction.94

  Leicester would be moved to offer the Queen his support because he wanted to rid the realm of the Despensers and, more important, recover his rightful inheritance. There is no evidence that he ever intended any harm to his cousin the King.

  John de Stratford, a worldly wise statesman,95 had no love for the Despensers, who hated him and had forced him to pay them £1,000 as the price of making his peace with the King after angering Edward the previous year. He had failed to press the case for the election of the King’s candidate, Robert Baldock, to the see of Winchester at Avignon, and had himself accepted that see from the Pope without first receiving royal permission. Edward’s fury was such that he withheld Stratford’s temporalities for over a year.96 Stratford’s intervention in pressing for Isabella to be sent to France may have been made purely out of a desire for peace, but there is always the possibility that he had another agenda entirely and that the Queen had somehow enlisted his support. Stratford may well have been one of the first to perceive her potential as a focus for the opposition to the Despensers.

  Kent, being of royal birth, particularly resented Despenser’s influence; both he and his brother Norfolk, another wild young man, voiced criticism of the King for allowing it. Kent’s spectacular failure in France had lost him royal favor and left him vulnerable to the blandishments of Edward’s enemies. While in Gascony, Kent came to rely on the advice of Sir Oliver Ingham, who had gained a reputation as a King’s man but would soon emerge as a staunch ally of Mortimer, who may well have used Ingham to subvert Kent’s loyalty and enlist him in the coalition against the Despensers.

  It is also possible that Despenser came to harbor suspicions of Kent and took steps to neutralize him. Froissart stresses how much Kent feared Despenser and asserts that he and Isabella were both “secretly told of the danger they were in from Sir Hugh, and of their probable destruction, unless they took good care of themselves.” Coming in the wake of Despenser’s recent moves against the Queen, such warnings could not easily have been discounted. If Froissart’s story is true, and it is seemingly corroborated by Edward’s later refutation of Isabella’s claim that she went in fear of her life from Despenser, then it proves that others were able to pass secret messages to the Queen and suggests that a network of intrigue did in fact exist.

  In 1326, Isabella revealed her fears that Edward, too, had intended to murder her; in a sermon given at Wallingford, Bishop Orleton publicly stated that “the King carried a knife in his hose to kill the Queen, and had said that, if he had no other weapon, he would crush her with his teeth.” There is no way of verifying the truth of this, but it sounds like a threat that had been uttered in the heat of the moment during a marital row; alternatively, Despenser, using his customary bullying tactics, might have threatened as much to Isabella to spell out the consequences if she proved difficult. Having been warned that both Despenser and the King wanted to kill her, Isabella must have been desperate to leave England.

  There is no direct evidence that Roger Mortimer was at this time part of any opposition party forming around the Queen. Had the King entertained the slightest suspicion of this, Isabella would never have gone to France. As it was, Edward ordered Thomas de Astley, one of his envoys in France, to obtain assurances from Charles IV that “Mortimer and the other traitors and enemies of the King had left the realm of France before the coming of my lady,” for the avoidance of any “perils and dishonour” that might ensue, “which God defend!”97 Yet, as we have seen, it is more than likely that Isabella had long since come to regard Mortimer as a victim of the Despensers, like herself. She had known him, probably quite well, for about sixteen years and must have been aware of his unblemished record of loyalty to the Crown in the years before the Despensers had forced him into rebellion. Isabella must have known that, in Mortimer, she could have her greatest potential ally against the favorites. Here was a man who had tried to have them assassinated, who wanted his revenge upon them, and who was prepared to plot an invasion of England in order to achieve that end. Had Isabella already thought of joining forces with Mortimer, once she escaped abroad? It is inconceivable that it would not have crossed her mind.

  Early in February, the Queen held a private meeting with Henry Eastry, the Prior of Christ Church, and confided certain secret concerns to him, chief of which might well have been the parlous state of her marriage and her fear and loathing of Despenser. Whatever it was, she not only won Eastry’s sympathy but also filled him with foreboding. On 8 February, he wrote to Archbishop Reynolds, urging that “it would be quite right that the Lady Queen, before she crosses over, should have restored to her her accustomed and dignified state.”98 Reynolds may have repeated this advice to the King, for Edward would shortly take steps to ensure that Isabella departed for France with full royal accoutrements; he did not, however, go as far as to restore her estates or her income.

  On 18 February, the King officially notified his envoys in France that the Queen was coming and stated that he wanted a prolongation of the truce successfully concluded by 26 May, or 24 June at the latest, so that Isabella could return home to prepare to accompany him on a visit to Gascony.99 On 20 February, the King issued letters of protection for Isabella’s retinue.100 Charles IV also sent a safe-conduct for his sister, which arrived before 5 March, when Edward drew up a list of instructions for Isabella’s guidance.101

  Preparations for the Queen’s journey were now almost complete. She was to travel in some state with a train of thirty persons, as befitted her position as Queen and formal emissary. Edward himself carefully selected all those who were to accompany Isabella, choosing only those whom he believed to be loyal to himself; some were probably set to spy on her. Her retinue was headed by John, L
ord Cromwell, and four knights.102 There were no French persons on the King’s list, but he did include William de Boudon, the Queen’s former treasurer, as her comptroller, and he also appointed two high-ranking noblewomen as her chief female attendants: Joan of Bar, Edward’s niece and Surrey’s ex-wife, and Alice de Toeni, the Dowager Countess of Warwick.103 The King was determined that Charles IV should have no excuse to say that his sister was slighted, and if she complained about the treatment she had received in England, her words would hopefully be given the lie by her entourage and equipage.

  Despite his friendship with Archbishop Reynolds having cooled after Reynold’s championing of Orleton, Edward had asked him to accompany Isabella to France. But Prior Eastry, evidently still fretting over what the Queen had said to him, dissuaded Reynolds from going and supplied him with a plausible excuse, which the King apparently accepted at face value.104

  While in France, Isabella’s expenses were to be paid by grants from the Exchequer—William de Boudon was initially given £1,000 and was also authorized to withdraw any funds that the Queen needed from the Bardi’s branch in Paris; in total, they are known to have paid out to her £3,674 13s. 4d.105

  On 5 March, the King informed his envoys in France that the Queen was on her way;106 accompanied by Despenser, he and Isabella then traveled down through Kent to Dover. At Canterbury, Isabella left her huntsmen and hounds in the care of Prior Eastry, who later complained to Despenser that they were eating him out of house and home.107

  Meanwhile, the Pope had written to the Queen to congratulate her on having once again assumed the role of peacemaker.108 Clearly, he had been kept closely informed of developments—and not by Edward II, for the King did not officially inform John XXII of the Queen’s forthcoming peace mission until 8 March.109

  Isabella looked to the land of her birth as a place of refuge and succor. At last, on 9 March 1325, just after Easter, her day of freedom dawned, and she finally boarded the ship that would take her to France. “The Queen departed very joyfully, happy with a twofold joy: pleased to visit her native land and her relatives, and delighted to leave the company of some whom she did not like.”110

  “On her departure, she did not seem to anyone to be offended,” Edward later wrote, remembering how Isabella even bade a courteous farewell to Despenser—“towards no one was she more agreeable, myself excepted.” He recalled also “the amiable looks and words between them, and the great friendship she professed for him on her crossing the sea.”111

  He had no idea that he would never see her again.

  PART TWO

  Isabella and Mortimer

  Sweet Mortimer, the life of Isabel

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mortimer and Isabel Do Kiss When They Conspire

  Isabella disembarked at Wissant that same day, 9 March,1 and with her company of thirty-one persons,2 rode to nearby Boulogne, where “she gave thanks to Our Lord” for her safe arrival “and went on foot to the church of Our Lady, and made her offering and her devotions. And the captains of the town and the Abbot welcomed her with joy and gave her lodging and hospitality, and they rested and refreshed themselves there for five days. On the sixth day, they left Boulogne, riding on horses and donkeys, which they had brought from England. The Queen was escorted and accompanied by all the knights of the surrounding country, who had come to see her and entertain her, since she was the sister of their lord the King.” This is according to Froissart, who wrote many years later. His account is full of omissions and courtly embellishments, but this part of it seems sound enough.

  Where did Froissart get his information about Isabella? Probably during his sojourn at the English court in the 1360s, when he was in the service of Philippa of Hainault, Isabella’s daughter-in-law. Isabella was dead by then, but Philippa had known her for more than thirty years and would doubtless have heard the tale of her adventures on the Continent many times. Froissart must have also picked up information in his native Hainault, much of it from the Flemish chronicler Jean le Bel.

  Accompanied by her enlarged retinue, Isabella traveled via Montreuil, Crécy, Pois, and Beauvais to Pontoise, where, on 21 March, she was received by fifteen-year-old Jeanne of Evreux, the young woman whom Charles IV had chosen as the future Queen of France; his second wife, Marie of Luxembourg, had died in childbirth the previous year, along with her premature infant, Louis. As the daughter of Louis of Evreux, Jeanne was Isabella’s first cousin.

  On 10 March, Isabella arrived at Poissy to meet the English envoys, whom she entertained to dinner for two successive nights. There, she began preliminary talks with representatives of King Charles, only to discover that the peace negotiations were already in deadlock.3

  King Edward had stayed in Kent “so that it would be easy for messengers to pass swiftly between himself and his wife.”4 By the thirty-first, Isabella could report to him that, after King Charles had arrived at Poissy, she had been able to persuade his commissioners to resume talks.5

  Charles IV was an intelligent and subtle man who had inherited the good looks of his race and was called “the Fair” like his father. He had also inherited Philip IV’s severity with those who opposed him. His driving ambition was to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, and to this end, he pressured the Pope into excommunicating his rival, Louis of Bavaria. This suggests that John XXII was Charles’s puppet, which would explain his support for Isabella; but the Pope was also shrewd and nobody’s fool.

  Both Baker and Froissart give touching accounts of the meeting between Isabella and Charles. Baker describes how the Queen “at last saw the dear face of her beloved brother, and embraced him.” According to Froissart, “when the King of France saw his sister, whom he had not seen for a long time, he went up to her as she came into his chamber, took her right hand and kissed her, and said, ‘Welcome, my fair sister!’ The Queen, who had little joy in her heart except at being near her brother the King, tried to kneel down two or three times at his feet, but the King would not allow her, and kept hold of her right hand, and inquired most kindly how she was. The Queen answered him calmly,” but she could not contain her misery “and told him sadly of all the injuries and felonies committed by Sir Hugh le Despenser, and asked his aid and comfort. And when King Charles heard his sister’s troubles, he took great pity on her, and comforted her most kindly, and said, ‘Fair sister, stay with us; do not be distressed or downhearted. We will find some remedy for your condition.’ The Queen knelt down and thanked him deeply.”

  But the problem of the Despensers had to be shelved, for the avoidance of war was a more pressing priority. Isabella’s task was not easy, and she later confessed to Edward that she was veering from day to day between hope and despair. Stratford had assured the King that her mediation would almost certainly secure the return of the Agenais, that part of Gascony that lay between the Dordogne and the Garonne, and other lands that the French had conquered the previous year, but Charles was reluctant to relinquish any of these territories. The papal legates who had suggested the Queen’s mission were there to lend her their support, and on 31 March, a peace treaty was finally drawn up, and the Bishops of Orange, Winchester, and Norwich, along with Henry de Sully, were commissioned to take it to England for the King’s approval.6 By the terms of this treaty, Edward was to surrender Gascony, Ponthieu, and Montreuil to Charles pending his paying homage to the French King at Beauvais by August; after the homage, Charles would restore all these lands to Edward except the Agenais, the tenure of which was to be the subject of arbitration by French judges.

  Until any treaty could be signed and ratified, however, the English were demanding a new truce in place of the humiliating one that had been agreed by Kent and Valois. But the French were not prepared to sanction anything but a prolongation of that truce. Isabella told Edward that, by 29 March, matters had reached such a deadlock that she was contemplating returning home. Instead, she made one final appeal to her brother and was able to report that the French had agreed to a new truce, which would last until 9 June. Sh
e closed her letter with an apology for not having informed her husband sooner of all these developments and said that she would stay on at the French court until the treaty and the truce had been successfully concluded, provided this met with Edward’s approval.7

  Accompanied by the English envoys, the Queen made a state entry into Paris on 1 April.8 She rode astride her horse, wearing a gown of black velvet with such voluminous skirts that only the toes of her checkered black and white leather riding boots could be seen. Her unplaited hair was confined on each side to cylindrical crespinettes of gold fretwork suspended from a narrow fillet, the very latest in headdresses.9 “Many of the nobles came out to welcome her. She was escorted to the palace by Lord Robert of Artois [her cousin], the Count of Dammartin, the Lord of Coucy, the Lord of Montmorency and several others.”10 Froissart places her first meeting with Charles here, but it is clear from her letter of 31 March that it had already taken place at Poissy. “And afterwards she stayed with all her company with the King at Paris.”11

  A week later, Edward issued safe-conducts for the Bishop of Orange’s embassy to come to England,12 Stratford and his colleagues having returned home by 10 April.13