by Ian Mortimer
Edward had probably begun to think in terms of permanent creations even before Winchelsea. In the Order of the Garter he had created a means to perpetuate a knightly reputation long after an individual was no longer capable of fighting at the highest level. As soon as it was founded, the fame of the Order spread across Europe. In France the newly crowned King John was thinking about founding his own order, the Order of the Star, and other princes and kings were doing likewise. A whole host of orders was in the planning, all based on knightly accoutrements: swords, buckles, collars, even a knot. But there was no doubt which order every knight in Europe aspired to join. When historians write that these orders of chivalry were distinguished by lavish ceremonial and ornate dress regulations they are missing an important point. The distinguishing mark of the Order of the Garter was that it was a select band of just twenty-six knights chosen by the man who was widely recognised to be the greatest warrior-king in Christendom and the epitome of chivalric honour. So great was its reputation that when in 1350 Thomas de la Marche, bastard son of the French king had agreed to fight a duel with a Cypriot knight, John Visconti, they chose to do so not before King Philip but in front of Edward, even though the English king was de la Marche's enemy.
It was with the Order of the Garter in mind that Edward set about his largest and most impressive architectural creation, at Windsor Castle. This was where he had been born; this was where the Garter tournament had taken place, and this, he decided, would be where the heart of the Order would remain. Already he had established the collegiate chapel of St George in the lower bailey. From now on, all Knights of the Garter were to attend the service at Windsor on St George's Day every year. Even if they could not - if, for example, they were overseas - they should celebrate as if they were at Windsor, being a travelling advertisement for the glory and dignity of Edward's chivalric order. For his part, Edward would enhance the Order's reputation, building the largest, grandest and most opulent palace in Northern Europe.
Today Windsor Castle has the appearance of a modernised medieval castle, a great symbol easily recognisable from the motorway or on the television as the monarch's home. But in the fourteenth century it was nothing short of a Versailles Palace: the court of the Sun King. Edward's work there amounted to the most expensive building in Britain by a single monarch throughout the whole of the middle ages. To put it in proportion, we often think of Edward I's eight Welsh castles, built between 1277 and 1304, as one of the most significant building programmes undertaken by a medieval king. The entire cost of all eight was £95,ooo.3 Edward III spent more than £50,000 on Windsor Castle alone.
And yet few people today connect Windsor Castle with Edward III. People immediately associate the Tower of London with William the Conqueror, and Hampton Court with Henry VIII, just as they do Versailles with Louis XTV of France. But Edward has, once again, slipped through the net of national self-awareness. One reason is the dampening effect of his reputation throughout the nineteenth century, so that his achievements were obscured by writers eager to focus on his failings. But there are two other, simpler reasons as well. One is that Edward's principal works at Windsor are not open to the public; they are very private, as the royal family still lives in them. The other is that they are mostly internal buildings: living and ceremonial quarters, which have been repeatedly adapted to suit the tastes of each monarch since Edward, unlike the stern curtain walls, which retain their militaristic solidity. What the public sees today from outside the castle is largely restored twelfth- and thirteenth-century stonework. It was inside this impressive chivalric shell - the largest residential castle in the world - that Edward created the stone epitome of his vision of kingship and knighthood.
The internal reconstruction of Windsor Castle as the greatest medieval palace in England took about eighteen years. Practically every major artist and craftsman in the country was at some time or other employed on the fabric. A striking mark of the importance which Edward gave to his projected works at Windsor from the outset was his donation of the Neith Cross (a portion of the True Cross and his most precious relic) to the chapel of St George. Actual structural work may be said to have begun with the appointment of the first of a series of clerks of works in April 1350, the first anniversary of the Garter tournament. The earliest works were the buildings for the College of St George in the lower bailey. He removed the huge, unfinished Round Table building he had begun six years earlier and replaced it with a series of half-timbered houses for die canons, clerks and choristers around a series of cloisters. At the same time the chapel was re-roofed and equipped with new choir stalls and windows. A new chapter house was built with a warden's lodge above it. A new treasury was added, a new vestry, and a belfry. The construction and decoration of the collegiate buildings took until 1357 to complete, and cost about £6,000.
It was the king's palatial accommodation in the upper bailey which captured the attention of contemporaries. These works were intended from the outset to be truly impressive. Beginning in 1358 under the direction of a promising royal clerk, William of Wykeham, Edward ordered the rebuilding of the entire upper bailey, beginning at the north-west and proceeding in a clockwise direction. By the early 1360s his expenditure on the castle was running in excess of £5,000 per year. There was a new hall and kitchen, the old hall being converted into a chamber for the personal use of the king. This room alone had twenty windows. He also had a painted chamber, and five other chambers, including one - the Rose Chamber - coloured with blue, green and vermilion paint and large quantities of gold leaf. Philippa had four chambers, including one hung entirely with mirrors, and another decorated as a dancing chamber. Stone was brought from all over the country', including Somerset, Surrey, Berkshire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, to give variety and character to the walls. Although Edward had lost his master mason, William Ramsey, in the plague, he was followed by a whole host of successors, including Henry Yevele, arguably the most important of all medieval English architects. In 1360 alone no fewer than five hundred and sixty-eight masons were employed from thirteen counties. The following year - which saw expenditure on the castle top the £6,000 mark — more than twice this number were employed, drawn from seventeen counties. One chronicler remarked that 'almost all the masons and carpenters throughout England were brought to that building, so that hardly anyone could have any good mason or carpenter'. The chronicler perhaps exaggerated a little, but in one respect he was absolutely correct: all the very best craftsmen worked at Windsor. One of the master carpenters at work on the collegiate buildings was William Hurley, the man responsible for Hugh Despenser's great roof in the hall of Caerphilly Castle, built before 1326 (still extant) and many other great buildings of Edward's reign. Edward used all the country had to offer in terms of numbers, skill and experience. At the end of the process he had constructed a palace which was worthy not only of him as the victor of Halidon Hill, Sluys, Crecy, Calais and Winchelsea, but of the English people, who had fought for him at those battles, and won.
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Edward's huge rebuilding programme at Windsor was by no means his sole cultural contribution. However, the rest have not lasted so well. It is one of the great ironies of Edward's life that the structures and art works which he commissioned from 1350 to be a permanent commemoration of his achievements have not proved as lasting as the memory of those achievements themselves. As mentioned above, few people today associate Windsor Castle with him; but most people have heard of the Order of the Garter. Not a single stone remains from his great vision of military power, Queenborough Castle, on the Isle of Sheppey, but most of us remember the result of the battle of Crecy. Likewise, although most historians today first think of the establishment of parliamentary representation as one of Edward Ill's major achievements, the great paintings of St Stephen's Chapel, which stood near the current Houses of Parliament at Westminster, have long since vanished.
St Stephen's Chapel, the principal place of royal worship within the Palace of Westminster, was ordered to be complet
ely rebuilt by Edward I in 1292. Over the next sixty years, progress became a barometer of royal authority. When the king was strong, building rushed ahead; when his policies were challenged, building stopped. Thus it is not surprising that work had progressed very slowly through the last years of the reign of Edward I and through most of Edward IPs reign. It was only in the 1320s that the old walls, which had been protected by thatching since 1309 were cleaned off and the slow, scrupulous work of constructing 'the most splendid chapel in England' began again. Little progress had been made by the time Mortimer and Isabella invaded, and brought the work once more to a halt. Building only resumed after Edward III took charge of the country, in 1331. Over the next three years the east end was finished. A lull in construction followed in 1334, while the king was away in Scotland, and facing his first financial crisis in the wage bill from that campaign, but it was not long before work began again, in 1337. This time there was no stopping. William Hurley, the king's master carpenter, and William Ramsey, Surveyor of the King's Works, were put in charge. By 1348 the exquisite chapel - ninety feet long by thirty feet wide - was complete, with a gallery leading directly from the king's chamber into the upper part. At the same time, Edward established a college of canons to celebrate mass there. All that needed to be done now was to glaze, paint and furnish the chapel.
It is, of course, a sad loss for us that the chapel was pulled down after the fire of 1834, which destroyed most of the Palace of Westminster. But what is especially sad is that the decoration was almost entirely lost in that fire. For at St Stephen's Edward commissioned what is generally recognised as the most magnificent English painting programme of the fourteenth century.10 It is tempting to say that England had not seen painting like this before, for many of the techniques are exclusively connected with painting of the Italian Renaissance: the use of perspective, for example. But, surprisingly, the painters themselves seem to have been English. In March 1350 the master painter Hugh of St Albans was directed to search out the best men of his craft in Kent, Middlesex, Essex, Surrey and Sussex and to bring them to Westminster to work on the painting. Other painters were ordered to do the same in the Midlands and East Anglia. Edward was doing at Westminster with painting what he was doing at Windsor with stonework: conscripting the very best artists his kingdom had to offer. No expense was spared. Paper (still a relatively rare commodity) was purchased for the designs, and peacocks' feathers, swans' feathers, pigs' bristles and squirrels' tails for the brushes, as well as rich paints and gold leaf for the decoration. Every part of the chapel walls was painted. The spaces below the windows were adorned with religious subjects; the corners of the windows were painted or gilded, the walls themselves were covered with angels with extended wings, and doves, eagles, elephants and castles. Beneath the great east window there were painted figures of St George, King Edward, Queen Philippa and ten of their sons and daughters. Only some incomplete sketches made of these images now survive: the originals were destroyed in the fire. A few small fragments of the paintings were rescued, and these are now in the British Museum. Otherwise everything was lost.
Edward did not stop at employing the best painters at St Stephen's: he also employed the best carpenters, glaziers and carvers of stone and wood. Heading up the list of carpenters was, unsurprisingly, William Hurley, the foremost carpenter of his day. They worked on the stalls and the reredos. In 1351-52, twenty to thirty glaziers worked to the orders of the master glazier, John of Chester. The best woodcarver in the kingdom was initially thought to be Robert Burwell, whom Edward had employed at Windsor in 1350; but after a few years it was found that in Nottinghamshire there was an even more skilled man, Master Edmund of St Andrew, a canon of Newstead Abbey. Master Edmund was accordingly brought all the way to Westminster in 1355. He became just the latest of the scores of artists whom Edward drew together from all over the realm. As for stone sculpture, Edward was the first important patron of the fine school of English alabaster carving (his father's effigy at Gloucester being the earliest extant masterpiece), and alabaster sculptures were installed at Windsor and probably also at St Stephen's. The alabaster reredos he commissioned for the high altar of St George's was a particularly large piece: it required ten carts and eighty horses to transport it from Nottingham to Windsor.
By 1355 Edward was the patron of most of the best artists in England. Had all medieval kings acted in a similar way, medieval provincial art may well have been poorer but English royal buildings would have rivalled many of the structural masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. This may sound like a wild statement, in view of the destruction of the royal chapel and the unique cultural status accorded to the Renaissance, but consider how closely Edward was in touch with the Italians. His extended family links with southern European families (such as the counts of Savoy and Provence, the Fieschi and the Visconti) had, over the years, made him as familiar with Italian culture as his forefathers. For years, through royal gift-giving and gift-receiving, Edward had seen the best that Italian craftsmen had to offer, and had offered back in return priceless works from English goldsmiths' workshops. The banking families of the Peruzzi and the Bardi had practically dwelt at his palaces for several years, and in 1340 the head of the Peruzzi died in London, after spending a year with Edward. His constant embassies to Avignon meant that his high-status ambassadors and low-status messengers were regularly exposed to the culture of the Mediterranean. Some of his doctors were Italian, some of his clerks, and some of his armourers. He purchased paintings and armour from Italy. As a result it would be wrong not to regard Edward III as a Renaissance ruler.
No panel paintings belonging to Edward exist now, but documentary evidence shows us that he himself commissioned some and even appointed a royal painter. In 1353 this was 'John, a canon of St Catherine's, the king's picture painter'. Five years later Queen Isabella possessed at least six and perhaps ten Italian paintings, the largest being of seven leaves. This is not a small collection, and her owning such large constructions as six-leaf and seven-leaf paintings suggests that these were being brought to England as a result of a known demand for them, if only in royal circles. Edward similarly used Italian panel paintings in his favourite residences. Most striking of all, Edward was probably the first English king who sat for his portrait, for in 1380 the king of France owned a painted likeness of Edward. We cannot look at this development as being accidental; rather it appears to be another example of Edward's own artistic patronage and links with Italian Renaissance culture.
Much more could be said about St Stephen's chapel, and many books have been written on the subject of the medieval Palace of Westminster, but perhaps one last point is particularly suitable for inclusion in a biography of Edward III. It must be noted that he himself did not begin the chapel, his grandfather did. This may be taken simply as a sign of a continuation of his grandfather's ambitions, but is also indicative of his will to complete his predecessors' foundations. He had already endowed and founded the King's Hall at Cambridge in line with his father's promises. Similarly in 1346 he had founded a convent of nuns at Dartford dependent on the Dominican friars, a unique establishment which was the original idea of his father and grandmother.'8 In these foundations, brought to splendid completion under Edward III, we may detect a sense of triumph, or, more particularly, of a determination to complete what his predecessors had been unable to finish. Edward was keen to tie up the loose ends of the last two generations and eliminate the evidence that the English royal family occasionally failed to live up to its promises. To return to the idea of Edward trying to be 'the perfect king', it is arguable that in 1350 his ambition had gone one stage further, to turn his whole family into a 'perfect dynasty'. If we are right in reading the evidence in this way, then it is surely a remarkable ambition. It was only twenty years since Edward had assented to the execution of his own uncle.
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Almost nothing now remains of Edward's other great building enterprises. In 1350 he founded the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary Graces beside th
e Tower, in order to celebrate yet another safe delivery from a storm at sea. This was swept away in the Reformation. So too was the nunnery at Dartford. His palaces at Eltham, Sheen, King's Langley, Queenborough and Moor End (Northamptonshire) and his extensions of Nottingham Castle have disappeared without trace. Of his house at Rotherhithe, only the foundations are visible. Hadleigh Castle is just rubble and jagged ruins.
His work rebuilding Eltham Palace, begun in 1350, lasted for ten years and cost over £2,237. His work there included new lodgings for the royal family, and passages between the king's great chamber and the queen's. He rebuilt the encircling wall, repaired the halls (plural), king's chapel and gatehouses, added a new drawbridge, kitchen, roasting house, saucery, larder and oratory. He restocked and repaired the garden and improved the vineyard. This is an interesting reference to the cultivation of vines in fourteenth-century England which is mirrored in similar payments at the gardens and vineyard at Windsor Castle, from which wine continued to be produced good enough for royal consumption until the end of the reign.
After 1350, Edward began building on a scale which, if not unprecedented, certainly equalled anything previously seen in Britain. In 1351 he acquired Henley from John Molyns and started rebuilding the royal residence there. Having paid £550 for it, he then spent £785 under the watchful eye of William of Wykeham on the principal dwellings. Two years later he commenced work at Rotherhithe, on the south bank of the River Thames. There he spent £1,064 over the next three years on a fine house with a wharf, gardens and vineyards, this to be a convenient stopping-off point on his journeys into Kent. The foundations of this house are still extant, but that is all. The accounts for the garden have survived much better, including the list of seeds, plants and compost purchased. In 1354 he began to rebuild substantial parts of the manor of Woodstock, where his eldest son and daughter had been born. It was particularly with his wife and eldest daughter in mind that he rebuilt a new chamber for the queen and a balcony outside Isabella's suite of rooms so that she might have a view of the park. A few years later he spent more than £500 reconstructing part of Rosamund's Bower, the legendary trysting place of Henry II and his favourite mistress at Woodstock.
