The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  On 6 September, the day after his coronation, while still at Koblenz, Edward commended the services of one Nicholas Blank de Fieschi, master of a certain galley lately sent to him in England, and at the same time released the man from his covenants agreed in Marseilles with Niccolinus Fieschi on Edward's behalf. Whatever the task for which Niccolinus had engaged Nicholas Blank (who was probably his nephew), it was now finished. It so happens that this coincides with the arrival at Niederwerde of one Francesco Forcetti or Forzetti, probably a member of the Forzetti family of Florence. The reason this deserves notice in a biography of Edward III is that with Forzetti was a man called William le Galeys -William the Welshman - 'who calls himself the father of the king of England'. It appears likely that on 6 September 1338, on the island just north of Koblenz, Edward finally came face to face with his father, Edward II.

  The meeting had been planned well in advance. Edward II as 'William the Welshman' (a name reflecting his one remaining royal title: Prince of Wales) had originally been taken to Cologne, where Edward had visions of meeting Ludvig, but due to his need to meet the emperor sooner rather than later, he had gone straight on to Koblenz. Hence William the Welshman had to be brought to him by his minder, Forzetti. That Edward had either directly or indirectly deputed Forzetti to bring his father to him is suggested by his description as a royal sergeant-at-arms on this, his first appearance in the royal accounts. (Sergeants-at-arms were middling status, well-respected men, superior to esquires of the royal household but less important than knights, expressly sent on missions to do the king's personal bidding.) So it seems likely that it was on an island in the middle of the Rhine, near Koblenz, that Edward met his father again. And the meeting went well. Forzetti was paid in advance for the expenses of looking after Edward II for three weeks in December.

  Of all meetings between members of the royal family, this and its follow-up in December must have been the strangest that ever took place. Indeed, the whole story of Edward's survival is so amazing that historians have normally refused to believe the evidence, and preferred to present the whole episode as a series of hoaxes and deceptions. It goes against the grain of professional sobriety to present such an extraordinary story as fact, or anything other than the plot of a nineteenth-century Italian opera. But this was neither a hoax nor a deception. Edward had last seen his father in 1325, thirteen years earlier, when he had still been king, and when Edward himself had been twelve. In the months afterwards his father had written letters to him which, although they did contain shards of fatherly affection, remonstrated with him in the severest terms. Perhaps Edward had forgotten the dire pronouncement that his father would make him an example to sons everywhere to obey their fathers. Perhaps Edward II himself had forgotten that he had said it. What is undoubtedly true is that now the tables were reversed. Edward was king, and his father diminished. Indeed, Edward II had officially been dead for the last eleven years, and Edward himself had advocated that his father should continue to be treated as such. Both men probably experienced some feelings of guilt, and we may especially suspect Edward III did, as he had sanctioned the execution of his father's beloved half-brother and refused to acknowledge his father's continued existence. But he could explain now. He had kept his father alive by sacrificing his uncle. He had punished Mortimer. Moreover, he had won at Halidon Hill whereas his father had lost at Bannockburn. That was why he was a king and his father now a penniless hermit.

  The reasons for picking December as the time when he would meet his father again was due in part to Edward's great demonstration of imperial authority at Herk in October, but more importantly because it would be a time for the old king finally to meet his grandchildren. Not only were little Isabella and Joan at Antwerp. On 29 November 1338 Philippa gave birth to a son. Edward was overjoyed, and promised the man who brought him the news a reward of one hundred pounds. He gave the child the Arthurian name Lionel, which he had himself adopted as a nickname in his youth. It may have been conceived as a tribute to his dead brother John, or with the idea that Lionel would be a lifelong companion to his elder brother, or maybe it was a reminder of how he himself had come through the test of living under the shadow of Mortimer's authority. We do not know, but, given the stories of brotherhood and suffering with which this name was associated in the Arthurian cycle, and given Edward's own earlier adoption of the name, it was probably not selected just because he liked the sound, especially not in his father's presence.

  We have only one vague possibility as to what was actually said at this meeting. Father and son seem to have discussed Edward I. It is noticeable that every year for the rest of his life after this meeting, Edward III ordered the wax torches to be renewed around the tomb of the old king at Westminster, this being done on or about the anniversary of his death. It is not possible to be certain, but it seems likely that Edward II had reflected over the years on his confrontational relationship with his own father, and hoped that his son would make amends with the old man on his behalf, if only in the way he was treated in death.

  We have no further definite location for Edward II after December 1338. It is likely he stayed for the Christmas feast - always a lavish event in Edward's court, costing that year £172, including £56 on cooking - and probably for the churching of Philippa at the end of December. Niccolinus Fieschi probably left Antwerp the following February. There is no further reference to Francesco Forzetti until October 1340, when he was back in England, dealing with the Italian wool business. We do not know whether Edward himself took charge of his father from this point, or whether he remained in the custody of the Peruzzi as security for some of the loans they still hoped to reclaim from Edward. All we may say is that, wherever he was taken, he lived out the rest of his days in peace.

  Edward's journey to the Low Countries alarmed Philip. In August he responded by gathering an army and going to Saint-Denis to take the semi-mystical, ceremonial war banner of the Oriflamme. He expected Edward to invade immediately. At that moment Edward was in no position to attack; but this did not make Philip any more comfortable. He tried to shift the confrontation to England, sending fifty ships to Southampton. Several thousand men landed there on a Sunday, while all the inhabitants were at church. They sacked the town, and as the inhabitants left the churches they ran away. The French took what they wanted at their leisure. It is recorded that where they found poor people, they killed them, and where they caught any women, they raped them. And where they caught a man of wealth or status, they hanged him in his own house. Then they set the whole town on fire. Guernsey too was taken and its garrisons killed. For Edward, worst of all was the capture of an English wool fleet, five ships, including one of the most prestigious, the St George, and two of his largest and most important: the Christopher and his flagship, the Edward. The sailors manning the royal vessels surrendered after being outnumbered. Even though Edward's personal clerks were among them, they were all thrown overboard and drowned.

  Philip was not the only leader threatened by Edward's move to the Low Countries. The pope too was disappointed to see Edward cross to Brabant. As he shrewdly observed, such a move would force him to start paying his allies, and he would soon want to see some military gain in return for his investment. But what really infuriated the pope was Edward's alliance with Ludvig, the heretic. Regardless of the fact that Philip also would have enlisted Ludvig's support if he had been able to, the furious pope took sides. He wrote to Philip informing him that he had heard, from someone who had been at Koblenz, that Edward was planning to attack France the following May. The pope added that he suspected also that this information might be deliberate misinformation, and so he urged Philip to be cautious. To Edward, he was less cordial, barely concealing his indignation despite his considerable diplomatic skills. He pointed out to Edward again that John XXII had excommunicated Ludvig for good reason. He added that he had offered to take Ludvig back into the Church if only he would give up his support for the anti-pope and be reconciled to the Avignon papacy, but Ludvi
g was adamant. In this light the pope was amazed that Edward was prepared to go to Germany, risking excommunication. He stressed how hard he had worked to maintain peace between Philip and Edward, sending cardinals to negotiate with them. He called on Edward 'to free himself from the bonds and snares in which he is involved by his relations with Ludvig'. At the same time (1 November) he wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury asking him to intercede and show the king how wrong he was to accept an office from an excommunicated ruler. He also wrote to the archbishops and bishops in the Low Countries and Germany forbidding them to swear to serve Edward. He also copied all these letters to the cardinals supposed to be negotiating between the two kings. As demonstrations of Benedict's anger went, this was severe.

  Edward's principal worry lay in England. As soon as he had set sail, three years of good harvests, combined with a lack of silver in the money supply, had disastrous results. Deflation - crashing prices - set in. With money being sucked out of the kingdom, and Edward's officers impounding wool supplies for shipment to the Low Countries and Italian markets, and the royal purveyors seizing whatever they wanted under cover of it being for the king's campaigns, the country was fast approaching an economic crisis. Coming on top of the three-year taxation granted in 1337, this meant social catastrophe. And then the winter came, and with it came rain and cold. Where there had been plenty of supplies but no money, now there was neither money nor food.

  Edward's reaction to his logistic and economic problems was to blame his advisers. As he saw it, it was not his role to understand why supplies were late, or why money could not be raised; it was his role to enforce discipline on his enforcers, so that his instructions were carried out. In a fit of anger he sacked his treasurer, Robert Wodehouse. This was most unfortunate, as Wodehouse was probably the man responsible for managing what would yet prove to be a turn-around in Edward's ability to raise money from wool in England. Wodehouse wrote to John Molyns lamenting the way he had been treated, and expressly mentioning the king's lack of gratitude for his efforts. It was in a similarly angry mood that Edward responded to the pope's letter, appointing the highest status embassy possible to treat with Philip - Montagu, Richard Bury, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Geoffrey le Scrope and Bishop Burghersh - but expressly forbidding them to address Philip as king of France. This was not the same as claiming the throne (as he had done briefly in October 1337), but it was close.

  Under severe pressure on all fronts, including his own companions who doubted his strategy, Edward was beginning to show some of the character traits of his father. He was acting in a high-handed fashion, yet not more so than most kings of the middle ages, but like his father he rounded on men who were genuinely trying to help him. His utter faith in his own royal irreproachability, coupled with his frustration with the faults of his advisers, threatened to cloud his judgement. When frustrated, Edward tended to try to force his will on those around him. Wodehouse was just one example. Another example is his order in May that all debts to him were not to be paid in instalments, in the traditional manner, but all were to be paid instantly and in full, an impossible demand. It is possible to argue that other examples are to be found in his high-handed appropriation of various rights in England, largely in order to raise money. If an heiress was unmarried - whether a spinster or a widow - Edward assumed the right of appointing her husband, partly to raise money, and partly to use the revenue from women's lands to provide an income for his most trusted war commanders. Lands of felons which had formerly reverted to their feudal lord were confiscated outright by the king and used to endow the new and rising members of the nobility. Priories dependent on foreign monasteries had their revenues temporarily confiscated and handed over to provide incomes for Edward's associates. To those who gathered for the parliament at Westminster in February 1339, it was worrying that Edward was demanding more from them in taxes, and yet not even prepared to return to England to meet them and hear their grievances. Having empowered the commons and given them a voice, he was now running a very great risk by failing to listen to them.

  It was at this point that Philip invaded Aquitaine for the second time. Believing the pope's advice - that Edward's campaign in the Cambresis would not begin until May - and probably trusting his own spies' validation of this information, he judged it safe to withdraw his forces from the north. Having done so, he threw them into a sustained onslaught on the English forces in the south-west. It was an inspired strategy; Edward was unable to take his army across France and unable to mobilise a seaborne force to defend the duchy. He had also failed strongly to support those who had previously resolutely held out for him, so that their resolve was weaker on this second occasion. He had only one option left open to him: to invade France without delay, diverting Philip's attention from the south-west. He summoned all his allies to gather for an invasion on 18 December, but, to his great anger, the response was not even lukewarm. They had settled their minds on a war in May 1339, and nothing would move them to risk everything now, in winter.

  The strategic drawbacks of the alliance were now apparent. It was holding Edward back from attacking Philip, it was preventing him from taking action against the French fleet, and it was quickly bankrupting him. And it was sapping his moral authority too. It would not be long before he was reduced to little more than a paymaster for the German confederacy. He had lost papal support, and had infuriated Philip into attacking England itself as well as English trade. His own kingdom was on the brink of economic turmoil, and he was in grave danger of parliamentary opposition. But even if Edward could now see that he had been wrong, and that he had made mistakes, he was aware that to give up on the alliance now would be a waste of all he had invested. In order to maintain a degree of pressure on Philip through the alliance, it was important for him not to lose his nerve.

  Edward's saving grace was that, unlike his father, he had a sense of purpose, and it was a noble purpose by the definitions of the time. He also had a self-belief which allowed him to cope with the problems which he had brought upon himself. He could rant at his ministers, he could sack them and he could even order the council back in England to stop paying die civil servants (which he did, to their shock and indignation), but while he kept focused on England's war with France, and while he continued to inspire those around him, no one was in a position to question him or take action against him. It was this focus, confidence and leadership which now he used to draw himself out of his predicament. He marched to Brussels with his army and threw himself into negotiations for the campaign. When these had proved futile, he declared to his allies that, if they would not fight, then he would. He would lead his army into France, and do battle, with or without them. He set down his terms for renewing negotiations in a final ultimatum. He demanded five things: that the losses on either side should be made good, that friends of either king could freely pass over the lands of both kings, that merchandise should be freely transported, that the king of France should offer no further help to the Scots and that Philip should restore those parts of Gascony which he had recently occupied. It was not an excessive list; the first three were merely normal affairs. The pope, still in a hostile mood towards Edward, declined to accept the fourth point, advising merely a truce between England and Scotland, and preferred not to comment on the fifth point. King Philip refused to accept the ultimatum outright.

  Edward, having made up his own mind, and seeing the pope and Philip practically united in their opposition to English interests, now put his own grievances to the pope and the college of cardinals in a long letter dated 16 July. He stressed the dangers of war, asserted that he loved the ways of peace ('as God knows'), but claimed that Philip (whom he described as his 'persecutor') had illicitly occupied the throne of France, and therefore threatened war. His basis for this was that although a woman was barred by Roman Law from occupying the throne, this bar only applied to the woman herself, and not her male offspring. If the bar attended to her male offspring, then Jesus had no right to be described as of the l
ine of David, as his mother Mary, bearer of God's child, was the parent through which this claim descended. As Edward was the nephew of the last king, and Philip was a cousin, he had a prior claim, as Philip's was collateral. (Contrary to popular belief his claim had absolutely nothing to do with Salic' Law, a local land inheritance law whose relevance was pretended by French writers in the next century.) Edward went on to state that he had done nothing to provoke Philip, and that he deplored the invasion of Aquitaine and France's support for the Scottish nationalists. He stressed how wronged he felt. The letter is very revealing, especially the sentences immediately following this claim of self-defence. Edward claimed that:

  We only make a shield against him who levelled a deadly blow at our head ... At this he storms, Holy Father, he storms, is uneasy and complains: he, who sought by his subtle devices to find us unadvised and unprepared. But according to the Theory of War, which teaches that the best way to avoid the inconvenience of war is to pursue it away from one's own country, it is more sensible for us to fight our notorious enemy in his own realm, with the joint power of our allies, than it is to wait for him at our own doors.