The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  The shock of this story tends to deflect attention from the impact of John's death on Edward. Edward was exceedingly upset. He ordered nine hundred masses to be said for John's soul. A year later, John's death was still giving him bad dreams, as his household accountant noted, after extra alms-giving by the king; but the cause of those bad dreams was almost certainly not regret for a knife wielded in rage.77 John had died on 13 September at Perth, and although it is probable that Edward was at Perth at the time, the source of this story, The Scotichronicon, is very doubtful. It was written about twenty-five years later by John Fordun, a clerk from Aberdeen, which Edward had just burnt to the ground. We therefore have to accept that the truth remained hidden from all Edward's English companions for twenty-five years before being leaked to an embittered and relatively unimportant Scottish clerk. Sir Thomas Gray - writing while a prisoner in Scotland in 1355 - stresses that John died a 'good death', which probably implies fortitude in the face of an illness sent by God. Most fourteenth-century English chroniclers record the death; not one of them states he was murdered. Barnes believed that he died of a fever brought on by his military exertions. There is little room for doubt that Fordun's story of Edward stabbing John to death was not a rare fragment of a hideous truth but a choice piece of Scottish propaganda. An inspiration for the theme of the story may be found in Edward's adopted role of Sir Lionel, for this Arthurian knight attempted to kill his brother Sir Bors. In the wake of the destruction of Aberdeen, men from the town may have believed that Edward was so ruthless in destroying the land of which his sister was queen that he could have killed his own brother.

  Edward probably remained at Perth until the third day after his brother's death. He had sent his wardrobe ahead to Nottingham in readiness for the council to be held there, but still he lingered by the body of his brother. He seems still to have been at Perth on 16 September. This left him a mere eight days to reach Nottingham, more than three hundred miles away. When he finally moved off he hastened south at a breakneck speed. He entered his council chamber at Nottingham Castle on 22 September, tired from a very long journey, distraught, and facing the gaunt faces of men who knew that the kingdom was facing imminent invasion.84 Worse, the Scots had been pricked into action by the French support. Andrew Murray was burning and levelling his own lands - in emulation of Edward at Aberdeen - to stop the English being able to station an army there. The isolated English castles were already under attack. In this climate, it is no wonder that the council granted Edward his taxes without question. Men were raised from the shires. An immense defensive army was conceived, and large sums of money were secured from the Bardi and Peruzzi banking houses as a means of paying troops. Edward summoned naval help from Bayonne. He even wrote to the king of Norway to request that that monarch refuse to supply ships to Philip. In doing so he admitted that he was likely also to face the opposition of the counts of Hainault and Guelderland, his relatives. Far from setting an example of perfect kingship, he now looked very beleaguered indeed.

  As it turned out, the invasion threat was more imagined than real. By the end of October the large army ordered for the defence of the country could be sent home, and the naval contingents of the south coast could be safely directed to protect the merchant fleet heading to Gascony. They were to be replaced by ships raised from Great Yarmouth and twenty-four other ports. Further protection measures were made - including a repeated order to Bayonne to send ships, and an order to protect the port of Dartmouth in Devon - and gradually the sense of fear calmed. But as it calmed in England, it grew in Gascony. In the Agenais, fear of attack became reality as a French army was sent to assault Gascon outposts, and plans for the seizure of the whole duchy of Aquitaine were contemplated. Philip .was now writing to Edward saying that he should expel Robert d'Artois from England, or, rather, send him to France in chains for judgement as an enemy of the French king. In Scotland, to which Edward had returned after the council at Nottingham, his rebuilding of Bothwell Castle was hampered by constant attacks from William Douglas. For Edward, the glories of war had turned into the long, bitter reproaches of diplomacy.

  It was a discomfiting contrast to the glorious tournaments of the years after Mortimer's fall.

  Edward left Bothwell in mid-December and came south with his brother's embalmed body. Philippa travelled with him as far as Hatfield, where they spent Christmas together. Heavily pregnant, she remained at Hatfield while Edward went on with John's corpse to the Tower, arriving on Friday, 10 January. The next morning, he walked with it in a great solemn procession to St Paul's Cathedral, surrounded by clerics and citizens, where it lay the night. The following day, Sunday, he attended mass in its presence. After mass it was taken to Westminster Abbey. The next day solemn exequies were celebrated by the archbishop of Canterbury in the presence of the king and many earls, prelates and barons. Funeral feasts were arranged at Westminster and St Paul's. Finally, on Wednesday 15 January, John of Eltham was laid to rest in St Edmund's Chapel, Westminster. As a mark of respect, Edward commissioned one of two exceptionally fine alabaster effigies for his tomb. The other was for their father, to be incorporated in the tomb at Gloucester.

  The day after John was lowered into the stone floor of Westminster Abbey, Philippa gave birth to a second son, William of Hatfield. Edward responded to the good news by making a journey to Canterbury to give thanks at the shrine of Becket. But beyond this, the birth of a second son was greeted with muted enthusiasm. The reason is not hard to find. The child was sickly, and dead within weeks. Edward seems to have been disturbed by this, as he decided that his dead baby should not be buried in the family mausoleum at Westminster. Instead he sent its corpse all the way to York Minster. Although grief for a lost new-born was, in medieval times, often less profound than today, it was another blow. God was not favouring Edward. He had lost his brother and now a son. And that was not the end of his worries. The French had attacked Portsmouth and Jersey. In Scotland the rebels had won a series of victories against the under-resourced English garrisons. Bothwell Castle, only just repaired, was under attack and soon to be destroyed. It was as if Edward had never fought and won at Halidon Hill. His achievements were being undone, the winter had set in very cold, and bad rumours were spreading. It was said that a calf was born with two heads and eight feet. A very bright comet was seen which 'darted forth its rays with terrible streams', as if a precursor of devastation. If Edward was a warrior of God, then God required something more from him than this. It is a telling sign that most chroniclers do not mention the birth, let alone the death, of his doomed baby.

  SIX

  The Vow of the Heron

  'The Vow of the Heron' is a political poem about Edward, written in the Low Countries in the mid-1340s. It relates' how, in September 1338, Edward was sitting in his 'marble palace' in London with his courtiers and 'ladies, girls and many other women' around him. He was thinking about love and had no plans to make war, when Count Robert d'Artois returned from a hunting expedition with a heron he had caught. Having had the heron plucked, stuffed and roasted, d'Artois had two girls carry the bird on a silver plate to Edward, accompanied by minstrels playing the viol and the gitterne. D'Artois declared before all the court: 'I have caught a heron, the most cowardly bird there is, and therefore I will give it to the greatest coward alive, King Edward, the rightful heir of France, whose heart has clearly failed him, for he fears to maintain his claim to the throne.' In the story, Edward was embarrassed, and, red-faced, replied: 'Since I am so accused, I swear on this heron that I am no coward but that I will cross the sea within a year to claim what is mine.' Having heard the king's promise, d'Artois smiled wickedly, and let the girls go forward to sing of sweet love-making to the king as the courtiers embraced their mistresses around the palace.

  This poem gives us a vivid glimpse of how Edward was imagined by his enemies at this time, and in particular how he was seen in relation to the war. He was the sole protagonist. His warmongering could not even be excused by his leadership of a
parliament which had resolved to take up arms. He personally decided to begin the conflict, and his cause was a selfish one: a frustrated claim to the throne of France, and the shame of accusations of cowardice. In the story of the Vow of the Heron the catalyst who turned this frustration into violence - Robert d'Artois - was a sinner, a heretic and a traitor. Furthermore, Edward's decision was portrayed as being taken in the midst of a lascivious court in which nobles paraded their mistresses openly, flaunting their immoral behaviour before God. It all added up to a melange of vice, dishonour and unworthiness.

  Considering the need for pro-French propaganda, especially in the small countries whose rulers wanted to persuade their people to support them in their alliances with King Philip, there is nothing particularly surprising in the story itself. What is surprising is that modern popular understandings of the causes of the war are largely based on it. In Queen Philippa's entry in the old Dictionary of National Biography, this vow was regarded as a real event, a chivalric ceremony in which Edward swore to make war. In twentieth-century classrooms, Edward was almost always portrayed as the guilty party on account of his dynastic ambitions and his claim to the kingdom of France (his 'absurd' claim, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica called it) However, as we have already seen, Edward was very cautious about the developing diplomatic situation, and had proved scrupulous in his consultation with parliament and his council. As scholars have universally acknowledged for the last fifty years, his war-related claim that Philip had illegally seized the throne of France cannot be treated separately from his claim to Aquitaine, which Philip now openly and directly threatened. When he finally did claim the French throne, it was principally a technical shift to permit the Flemish legally to renounce allegiance to Philip. In this way we may see that Edward was not proceeding without parliamentary support. His decision to fight, while not encouraged by parliament, was nevertheless ratified by it. And hostilities broke out long before Edward finally and irrevocably claimed the tide King of France. The dynastic claim was a symptom of the conflict, not a root cause.

  In considering the events of 1337-40, Edward's dynastic ambitions are less important than Philip's dynastic vulnerability. When Edward's claim to the French throne had first been put forward, during his minority, it had proved impossible to sustain it with any force. In addition, regardless of any legal claim or dynastic right, the French nobles preferred an exclusively French king to a part English, part French one, for the simple reason it was better to have a head of state who would have to consider their interests before those of the English. Thus Philip had become firmly established as the French king soon after his accession. Edward was in no position to risk a continental war in the early 1330s, and was well-advised by his parliament in 1331 to seek a peaceful solution to his disputes with Philip. This he did. But the fundamental problem had never gone away. In reality, it was in neither England's nor France's interests for Edward to be king of both nations; and Edward would have acknowledged that his dynastic claim to the throne of France would have been difficult (if not impossible) to assert and maintain without conflict. In later years he was happy to agree to peace treaties in which his claim was laid aside. But the very fact he had a claim could be used to his advantage if Philip tried to push his overlordship of the duchy of Aquitaine - and thus his overlordship of Edward himself - too far.

  In order to counter this dynastic vulnerability, Philip had adopted a strategy of sustained diplomatic antagonism towards Edward. First he had claimed in 1331 that the form of homage which Edward had paid him was insufficient. Next he had refused to restore the parts of the Agenais seized from the English by his father. Then he had insisted on supporting the Scottish claim of David II, and had used Edward's championing of Balliol to accuse him of threatening the crusade. After that he had threatened to invade Scotland, and had embarked on a policy of naval piracy, killing English sailors, looting English ships and burning English ports. Now he claimed Edward should not shelter d'Artois. As each dispute had been smoothed over by the patient negotiators, Philip had found another. While Philip may have benefited domestically in die short-term from such a policy, he was like a boy showing off to his peers by prodding the English lion's rump with a sharp stick. That the lion did not immediately turn and bite - as Edward would have preferred - is probably due to three factors. These were the repeated advice of the English parliament and councils of magnates that the French question should be setded by negotiation, not war; Edward's higher priority on asserting his Scottish rights; and a series of papal initiatives, including the crusade.

  Philip's demand that Edward should surrender d'Artois was thus just one more in a long string of grievances. If there had been no d'Artois, war would have been no less likely, as some other problem would have been put forward by Philip as a justification for taking action against the English king in Gascony. As it was, d'Artois was the best excuse Philip could find. On 30 November 1336, the pope wrote to Edward stating that Philip would not receive his peace envoys as Edward was protecting d'Artois.4 At the same time the pope asked Edward to send him (the pope) envoys equipped to agree a peace treaty. In the pope's view, all was not lost. Even if Philip would not negotiate, the pope would.

  Edward would have heard the pope's view of the d'Artois dispute in December 1336. Such a contrived reason to break off diplomatic relations would certainly have infuriated him, and may well have convinced him that Philip was bent on war. This in turn may have triggered Edward's next series of innovations. Out of the despondency of his brother's death, his infant son's death, and losses in Scotland, he saw a chance to recapture that enthusiasm and chivalric brilliance of the early 1330s. Philip's antagonism had the result of challenging Edward to concentrate his attention and the bulk of his resources on France. It was exactly what Edward needed to enthuse himself, his court and parliament - and thus the country as a whole - into purposeful optimism for the future.

  The seeds of the new initiative probably were sown in the days around his brother's funeral. On 23 January 1337, almost immediately after his return from Canterbury, Edward held a council in the Tower of London.

  Gascony and Edward's claim to the French throne were again discussed, but, as before, his counsellors urged him to seek peace, not war. English interests, it was said, would be best served by reinforcing the English fleet and building a league of allies against Philip, as Edward's grandfather, Edward I, had done in 1297. Edward listened, and took these debates into parliament with him in early March 1337.

  The first day of the parliament, 3 March, was momentous. Edward raised his six-year-old son, Edward, to be the duke of Cornwall. Never before in England had there been a duke; the tide was connected solely with continental possessions. But in the wake of his brother's death Edward had the idea of endowing his eldest son with the richest available earldom (Cornwall) and giving him the pre-eminent title among the nobles. In this he was emulating his grandfather's creation of his son and heir (Edward II) as prince of Wales. Edward could not pass on that tide in good faith, knowing his father - who had retained the tide Prince of Wales - was still alive. So he did the next best thing: a royal dukedom. All the chroniclers were impressed, and almost all recorded the creation.

  The parliament of March 1337 was radical. Innovation loomed large. The ban on all exports of unworked wool - proposed in late 1336 — was reinforced with parliamentary support. From now on weavers would be regularly invited to ply their craft in England and to teach the English how to make cloth. Grants would be offered to entice them over from the Low Countries. In this way the cloth trade could be developed and enhanced. And to maximise the potential and increasing demand, the wearing of imported cloth was banned, except of course for the king and his nobles. No one should wear imported furs unless they had an income of one hundred pounds per year. This 'sumptuary law', together with a similar statute of the previous year, was die first of its kind in England. Although the high income required for the wearing of furs might be seen as exclusive, the criterion is a money
-related one, not restricted to the nobility. This permitted rich merchants and their families to continue to wear furs, and thus set men like the London merchants William de la Pole and John Pulteney - whose friendship and finances were beginning to make a real impression on the king - up alongside the barons. In so doing Edward was extending his principle of inviting leading townsmen to tournaments, and enforcing the requirement for all men with an income from land over forty pounds per year to be knights. A sensibility to the advantages of broadening the upper and middle tiers of the class structure was clearly at work.

  The major event of the parliament of March 1337 was not a law, nor anything to do with the wool trade, nor the creation of a duke, but the creation of six earls. This delighted chroniclers: so many in one triumphal creation! It was a clever move. In the past kings had been dogged by accusations of favouritism, but in raising six deserving men to such high status, no one could look at Edward favouring this or that one over the others. Each chronicler dutifully wrote down who received which earldom, documenting their names reverently, as if a new tier of chivalry had just been invented, which is, of course, what Edward had in mind. First and foremost was his closest friend, the thirty-four-year-old Sir William Montagu, captain of the plot to capture Mortimer and a war leader at Edward's right hand ever since. He became earl of Salisbury. Lancaster's eldest son, the twenty-six-year-old Henry of Grosmont, was created earl of Derby. The twenty-five-year-old William Bohun - another of those who had assisted at Mortimer's arrest, a frequent participant in the Scottish wars, and recently married to the widow of Mortimer's heir - was created earl of Northampton. Hugh Audley, son of Edward's childhood justiciar, was created earl of Gloucester. Despite being Mortimer's nephew, Hugh had joined Lancaster's attempt to overthrow Mortimer in 1328, and had been unswervingly loyal to Edward ever since, providing him with troops for his Scottish wars and serving in person on the last two campaigns. William Clinton, another of the knights who had seized Mortimer in Nottingham Castle, was made earl of Huntingdon. Now thirty-two years old, he also had continued an active military life, being warden of the Cinque Ports and admiral of the western fleet during the French raids. Finally, Robert Ufford, who at the age of thirty-eight was the oldest of the new earls, was created earl of Suffolk. He too had assisted in arresting Mortimer. In surveying the credentials of those now raised to earldoms, it is striking how the removal of the dictator Mortimer was a common factor. It shows Edward continued to acknowledge and value the help he had received in throwing off the dictator's oppression.