The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  These five great achievements - kingship, domestic peace, England's standing in the international community, modernised warfare and participatory government - are all huge, overarching developments. They are therefore somewhat abstract to us. Their significance is lost when we stand back and see them merely as elements in the development of the nation, even though they were so closely associated with one man. But they each had cultural spin-offs which have proved of lasting significance. The demonstration of kingship in the great palaces Edward built is an obvious one. As pointed out in Chapter Twelve, he was the greatest patron of art and architecture of the fourteenth century, and his cultural influence impressed itself on subsequent centuries, even if only one of his palaces survives today. Similarly, although most nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors completely failed to understand the nature of his claim on the throne of France, that claim was maintained by English kings even after his reputation began to dwindle in the eighteenth century. Not until 1802 was it given up: it was important to the idea of English kingship. Legislative consequences of his parliamentary policy are still to be found in the use of hallmarks, standardised weights and measures, the regular sitting of parliament, the framework of local justice, the crime of high treason and the official recognition of the English language. And perhaps most visible of all the cutural spin-offs is the English flag - the flag of St George -and the very adoption of St George as our patron saint, a consequence of Edward's vision of himself as a warrior-king and England as a fighting nation. When the flag of St George flies today at international football and rugby matches, when it is paraded around on supporters' cars, there is a distant echo of Edward's huge St George banners on his ships as he led England bravely and proudly to war.

  As a result of all this, it is very difficult to deny that Edward was a great king. But what of him as a man? Obviously it is very difficult to separate the two, as he was a king, by nature, duty and service. Nonetheless, by examining Edward's whole life and remaining focused on him personally, we may go far further than previous writers in summing up his character. In his youth he was ambitious and hopeful but nervous - terrified even -by the dictatorship' of Mortimer: a man whom he both feared and admired. He was open to learning, and his enthusiasm for a text could prove unbounded (as shown by his paying a nun one hundred marks for a book which he wanted). But his passion lay in the challenges of kingship, and those inevitably included war. His boyish passion for adventure remained with him right up until his late thirties, and, even after that, stories of far countries and civilisations, whether they be India or Italy, delighted him. He was, quite simply, romantic.

  Edward's romance and love of adventuring was not allowed to run away with him, however. Secret business delighted him; dashing off with his companions to see to particular threats and problems was fun. But there was also a straightforwardness about Edward. He wanted to solve his problems himself. He wanted to be in control. The subtle intriguing of a Charles of Navarre was distasteful and alien to him. The shirking of battles by the French and the Scots was frustrating and cowardly. There was nothing glorious or noble about secrecy when it involved deception; but covert missions to capture a ford at low tide, or to arrange a deal with the pope, those were much more his style. This steadfast, dependable straightforwardness is occasionally mentioned by contemporaries. Walsingham goes on at some length about the king's childlike innocence at the end of his life. And his unbeguiling, honest approach may be seen in his political decision-making. Once he had developed a military strategy for attacking France, he stuck to it rigidly. When he had decided what was a reasonable expectation as a result of his French war, he stuck to his decision. When he did try plotting with the great kings of Europe in the 1340s, they all let him down. This is not surprising to us, but he was surprised. He did not understand duplicity.

  Edward had the logical mind of a strategician. He did not have the fluid versatility of a schemer - although many of his advisers did - and he did not have the patience of an intellectual. He respected scholarship but did not have the education, patience or desire to get involved in its intricacies. Religious debates left him cold; his religion was laid down for him in his position, and he never questioned it. He knew he was a warrior-king appointed by God, and if he prayed hard and was spiritually dutiful, he would be victorious. That was his faith, and, as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the debate. But that straightforward conviction, unquestioning as it was, allowed him considerable intellectual scope. It did not hamper his logical analysis of a battlefield situation, or his quick-minded appreciation of clocks, parliaments, alchemy, guns and projectile warfare. It even permitted him to reach the heights of genius, as displayed in the strategic brilliance of the design of Queenborough Castle or in the campaign in France in 1346-47. The only time when Edward seems deliberately to have done something to discourage a knowledge-related activity was when, as a young man, he reprimanded the abbot of St Albans for spending too much time and money making his clock and not enough of either on finishing his church. For Edward at the age of ninteen, religious obligations came first, then the exercises of the mind.

  Edward's logic and religious conscience go a considerable way to explaining his sense of fairness. This of course is essential to understanding his dealings with parliament; in domestic politics he was often looking for a fair compromise. Distinct signs of his fairness may be seen in such actions as his enactment that men should be tried in their own language, the prohibition of maintenance, and that earls should be expected to live up to their military responsibilities. But it may be seen also in actions less favourable to himself and the nobility, such as his repeated insistence that purveyors should pay for the goods they took. As a man who regarded royal status so highly, we might have expected him to have reinforced the king's purveyor's rights, not limited them. Likewise there is a distinct sense of fairness in his judgement of men, like those accused of his father's murder in 1330. He could simply have seized them and had them executed as scapegoats, but he did not. Nor did he hold the sins of the father against the son and grandson of Roger Mortimer. There was a fine conscience at work in Edward: he did not do things which he suspected he would later regret.

  Hence his famous clemency. Edward could be 'terrible to his enemies' - that was expected of a warrior - and his anger sometimes knew no limits, but he could also be merciful and was often magnanimous in victory. The regularity with which he was persuaded to spare condemned men their lives and let them go free was so great that we must treat each such scene as public propaganda. And very successful propaganda it was too: Edward created the image that he was both a wrathful king and a merciful one. Moreover the mercy - with regard to his own subjects at least - seems to have been genuinely instinctive. It is difficult otherwise to understand his forgiveness of Geoffrey Mortimer or Archbishop Stratford. One suspects that in some cases his instincts led him to be too merciful. John Molyns was a criminal through and through, but in 1340 Edward forgave him his crimes, and only in 1357, after repeated offences, locked him up for the rest of his life. Similarly Chief Justice William Thorp deserved worse punishment than he got: according to the law, Edward should have executed him as well as dismissing him. From corrupt ministers and barons to the towns of Caen and Calais, it is the number of men he forgave which deserves notice, not the number he punished.

  Edward's mercy to previously loyal servants leads on to another aspect of his character which is repeatedly demonstrated: fidelity. This might seem a strange characteristic to pick, given his reputation as sexually promiscuous, but we cannot escape how grateful Edward remained all his life to those men who helped him overthrow Mortimer in 1330. The reason John Molyns was forgiven for a great number of crimes for almost thirty years was that he was one of those men. Edward remained faithful to those who helped him in his darkest hour. He also remained wholly faithful to his country, as we would expect of a king. And he remained steadfastly loyal to his chosen spiritual protectors, St George, St Thomas the Martyr, a
nd, above all others, the Virgin Mary. Loyalty and fidelity were in his nature. But fidelity of course must include sexual fidelity, and as soon as we mention sex we find him open to accusations of immorality. He encouraged sexual licence at his court: about that there is no doubt. The repeated accusations in English sources of adultery among the women attending his tournaments only gives weight to the immoral character of these events. But these descriptions should not blind us to the complete lack of reference to any bastard children before John Southeray. His eldest son sired two, John of Gaunt had so many that contemporaries described him as a 'great fornicator', but none are attributed to Edward III himself before the age of fifty and the onset of his wife's protracted final illness. The only evidence that he had passing affairs are the French story that he committed adultery while at Calais, and the possibility that there is a kernel of truth concerning his sudden unconsummated infatuation for a young noblewoman at Wark. The first of these was almost certainly propaganda, and the latter is hardly a moral crime. Moreover, to father as many legitimate children as he did required him to stay in close proximity to his queen, and for her to travel with him and to sleep with him often. When Alice Perrers did become his mistress in the early to mid-136os, Philippa was already gravely ill. Most striking of all, Edward remained faithful to Alice. Therefore his only proven adultery is to have slept with Alice while his wife was preparing to die (and had begun making arrangements for her tomb) and to continue sleeping with Alice after her secret marriage (for which he can hardly be blamed). There may well have been other instances, perhaps many others, but there is no evidence. His inclination was to be loyal. We may in fact go as far as to say he was among the most faithful of all our medieval kings, first to his wife and, after Philippa's physical decline, to his mistress.

  So, Edward was loyal, faithful, religious, unintellectual, romantic, adventurous, controlling, encouraging of sexual indulgence, straightforward, logical, fair and merciful. That list includes some surprising contradictions. Romantic and logical? Faithful and yet encouraging of sexual indulgence? But in such contradictions lies the interest of the man. Just as his father is fascinating for his complications of character, so too is Edward. In Edward we have the faithful servant of God who argued with the pope. We have the straightforward man who despised duplicity but who connived at his father's secret custody. We have the fair-minded man who destroyed hundreds of innocent French villages, towns and lives. And we have the merciful man who beheaded a hundred Scotsmen on the morning after Halidon Hill. In each case we may try to explain his actions, but that is not the point. Whatever one says about him, he was a man who contained many conflicting characteristics and motivations. Against his positive attributes we may fairly accuse him of overbearing pride, selfishness, conceit, occasional outbursts of uncontrollable anger, impetuousness, impatience, and probably many more weaknesses, especially in his youth. We may go further and deride him for being merely lucky, if we feel that luck does not count as a virtue, or pity him for being miserable, lonely and unlucky in his later years. But to pretend he was simply a warmonger, a religious cynic and a brutal thug, and that all the cultural achievements of the reign should be interpreted as the side-effects of his passion for women, power and war — as so many historians have done and continue to do — is simply wrong.

  One virtue has purposefully been left off the above list and saved for special mention. His courage. It is not a virtue which was particular to Edward - his father and grandfather both had it, and his sons and grandsons displayed varying degrees of bravery - but it deserves special mention nonetheless. For without it none of the above would have happened. In our twenty-first-century comfort, hearing of wars around the world, we do not doubt that the lives of Western political leaders are more or less safe. Those of their generals are probably even safer. But in Edward we see a man who knew that, if anything was to come of his reign, then safety was not an option. He had to risk everything. It was not mere bravado that made him fight as a common knight in his tournaments. Nor was it his sense of adventure that made him stand on foot in the front line at Halidon Hill. It was an awareness that, unless he could show he could conquer his own fears, he had no chance of inspiring his men. At Calais in 1349 he did not need to risk his life as a common knight, fighting de Ribbemont. Nor did he have to stand on deck at Sluys in 1340 or Winchelsea in 1350. On both occasions he went beyond the call of duty. He did put himself at risk, and he repeatedly showed he was prepared to fight, and so he encouraged his men to risk their own lives and go far beyond duty themselves. It was this attitude and this courage that led to the incredible feats of the English armies in the first stage of the Hundred Years War. If there is any one thing for which all people in all times should respect Edward and his contemporaries, it is this: when he had made a political decision which he believed was right, he did not simply give orders for his will to be carried out. He donned armour, drew his sword, and prepared to fight for it himself.

  Thus we arrive at the end of Edward's life. But in one respect it is not the end. The great majority of people in England of English ancestry are descended from him, if not the entire population. Although comparatively few people today will be able to prove every generation, the genealogy is less important than the genes. The virtues and the weaknesses of this man have passed into the entire English people, in every walk of life. He may not have been the perfect king he tried to be, but, given the unattainable heights of his ambition, we have to applaud his achievement. For better or for worse, he helped to make the English nation what it is. And for better or for worse, he helped us become what we are.

  Philippa of Hainault’s Date of Birth

  The register of Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter, contains a delightful description of a daughter of the count of Hainault, dated 1319, which has long been thought to refer to Philippa. Stapeldon writes that the girl was, according to her mother, aged 'nine on the next Nativity of St John the Baptist' (24 June). He mentions that her hair was 'between blue [i.e. blue-black] and brown', her eyes were 'brown and deep', her forehead large, and her nose was 'large at the tip' but not snubbed, and 'her neck shoulders and all her body and limbs of good form'. The adjectives used are those of romance literature, with the notable exception that Stapeldon stated she had some off-white teeth. Many historians (including the author of Philippa's article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) have accepted that this relates to Philippa, and have assumed as a result that she was slightly older than Edward, being born in 1310. However, this is incorrect.

  For a start, the eldest daughter of the count of Hainault was Margaret, who was born in 1311. If Philippa had been born before 1311, she would have been in a much stronger position to inherit the county which passed to her sister on the death of their brother William in 1345. But laying this inconclusive argument aside, there are aspects of the actual entry in Stapeldon's register which should concern us. Although this is in the same hand as the surrounding text, and thus contemporary, the statement that it was Philippa is of later date, in a later hand (probably that of Bishop Grandison), and an insertion in the margin. Therefore the attribution to Philippa is not part of the description. As noted in Chapter One, Stapeldon made two trips to the courts of Flanders and Hainault in 1319: one from January to March, and another in the summer. The reason for the error that Philippa was born in 1310 is a double assumption: that the description relates to Philippa as the insertion suggests, and that the description was made on Stapeldon's return to England after his first trip in March 1319. If correct, this would mean that the girl he described was born on 24June 1310. However, this overlooks Stapeldon's second trip in the summer of 1319. Edward sent Stapeldon back again to see Count William of Hainault, urging the count to pay special heed to 'certain matters' which Stapeldon would discuss with him. This second visit was organised before 10 April 1319, the date of Edward III's letter to Count William. However, Stapeldon did not receive his letters of safe-conduct - the equivalent of a passport - until 27 May,
and at that point he was in the north, at York. These letters stated he should return from his mission by Michaelmas (29 September). If we then check Stapeldon's register it appears that his reference to the Hainaulter girl appears on folio 142, after entries for May, June and July 1319. The description therefore dates from his second trip to Hainault. This took place between 6 July (when he was at Canterbury) and 7 August (when he was in London). He did not return to see the king at York, but returned to the West Country, and sent his report by letter: hence the appearance of a copy in his register. Therefore his reference to the girl as nine on the 'next' 24 June must refer to the next such date after 6 July, i.e. 1320. So we can be sure that the girl he was describing was born in 1311. This was Count William's eldest daughter, Margaret, who was born in that year, as mentioned above. It would follow that Stapeldon was looking over Margaret of Hainault for the possible marriage to Edward, not Philippa. Other documents confirm that Count William wrote to the pope on 10 December 1318 seeking dispensation for Margaret of Hainault to be married to Edward. Although permission for the marriage was granted by the pope in 1321, as stated in Chapter One, nothing came of the attempt. By the time of Edward's visit to Hainault in 1326, Margaret had been married for eighteen months to Ludvig of Bavaria, the future Holy Roman Emperor; hence she never became Edward's bride.