The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty

by J. S. Hamilton

  The campaign to reinstate Pedro was fraught with difficulties from the outset. Initially, the route to Castile was threatened by Charles of Navarre, who abandoned his alliance to Pedro and the prince, only to return after raids on his territory by Hugh Calveley demonstrated his vulnerability. The prince’s army included his younger brother John of Gaunt, who had marched south from Brittany with Sir Robert Knolles and a force of some 500–600 men, primarily archers. Altogether, the prince’s army was 6,000–8,500 men, many of them mercenaries drawn from the Free Companies. They assembled at Dax in January and crossed the Pyrenees through the famous pass at Roncevalles in mid-February.

  By the end of the month, the army was encamped outside Pamplona, but the next month was spent in a difficult and ultimately fruitless march west toward Burgos through difficult terrain in cold rain and wind with ever-dwindling supplies, only to find their route blocked by Castilian forces. Inexplicably, however, in early April, Trastamára abandoned his successful defensive strategy, despite the advice of his experienced French commanders Bertrand du Guesclin and Arnaud d‘Audrehem. Apparently, the political repercussions of refusing to stand and fight outweighed military considerations and led the pretender to throw caution to the wind. Crossing the Najerilla River, he prepared to meet the prince’s much larger army near the small town of Nájera.

  The prince achieved complete tactical surprise when his army suddenly appeared on the left flank of Trastamára’s army at dawn on 3 April, having approached from the north rather than from the east along the main road, as expected. Forced to reconfigure their lines and attack at once, the Castilian army faltered. An initial charge was pushed back by John of Gaunt and John Chandos in the centre of the prince’s formation, and simultaneously the wings of the Anglo–Gascon army encircled the enemy. The battle was both short and one-sided, the prince achieving his last great victory. Some 5,000 Castilians lay dead on the field, although in an exaggeration of the chivalric ethos of the day, virtually none of the Castilian nobles were killed, being taken for ransom instead.

  The prince dissuaded Pedro the Cruel from taking his revenge by executing all of these ‘traitorous’ prisoners, but the greatest prize of all had eluded them, as Enrique of Trastamára had escaped the field of battle, first reaching Aragon and, ultimately, France.

  Although he returned from Spain seemingly at the height of his reputation, the Black Prince was soon brought low by disease and confronted by revolt. He returned from Spain ill, perhaps with the dysentery that claimed the lives of many of his followers on the return journey to Aquitaine that began in August. The finances of the principality appear never to have been adequate to support the prince’s administration, and Pedro’s subsequent inability to reimburse the prince for the costs of the Nájera campaign compounded this problem. Although it has been commonplace to point to the extravagance of his court and his excessive demands for taxation, the situation was more complex. Wine exports in the 1360s, and the associated customs revenues, were only half of what they had been several decades earlier, and the transition from a war economy to a peace economy probably exacerbated the situation. Most importantly, the revolt of 1368 sparked by the collection of a hearth-tax, the fouage, must be seen as an Aquitainian revolt rather than a Gascon revolt: it reflects the artificial nature of the principality and its consequent fragility. While it is true that French administrative personnel – including most of the seneschals – had been replaced with English appointees, nonetheless French administrative practices seem to have been continued. The revolt was a rejection of Brétigny more broadly, fomented by the duke of Anjou and implicitly supported by Charles V. The refusal of the prince to attend the parlement in Paris in January 1369 justified the repudiation of the treaty and the resumption of war. The count of Armagnac announced his renunciation of fealty in the following month, and 900 towns and castles in Armagnac followed his lead within weeks. The remarkable speed with which the principality collapsed must have been both alarming and frustrating to the prince, but cannot be attributed solely to some failure on his part as an administrator as has sometimes been suggested. He himself was largely incapacitated and his commanders were unable to stem the tide of French troops that quickly overran the Rouerge, Quercy and the Agenais. The final military action undertaken by the prince has had a lasting effect on his image: this was the siege and sack of Limoges in September 1370. The siege lasted only 6 days before the town was taken and the population massacred.

  Authorities disagree as to how many died, with estimates ranging from 300 to 3,000. There is also disagreement as to the personal responsibility of the prince, who was now in a litter. The prince’s reputation for chivalry, however, was badly damaged. Within a month, John of Gaunt was appointed lieutenant in Aquitaine and the prince returned to England.

  In August 1372, the prince set out for France one last time, sailing for Calais with the king. An unfavourable wind prevented a successful crossing, and in the end the fleet returned to harbour in England. Thereupon, the prince resigned the principality of Aquitaine to his father, citing insufficient revenues to meet the expenses of government. The final 4 years of his life were spent in the shadows.

  Although a considerable number of the prince’s retainers appear as members of parliament throughout the reign and especially in the last decade (when he was himself in England), his role in the affairs of state in general, and in particular in the Good Parliament of 1376, has almost certainly been overstated, and his political impact prior to his death was negligible.

  The prince died on Trinity Sunday, 8 June 1376, his death being a great political and personal blow to his father. The Plantagenet inheritance had descended in unbroken succession from father to son since the crown had passed from John to Henry III. But what would happen now? The eldest son of the Black Prince, another Edward, had died in 1371 leaving the 9-year-old Richard of Bordeaux as his heir. Would the principle of representation be followed in order to allow a minor to succeed Edward III, or would the crown instead pass to an adult male in the royal line? And which one? John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster and third son of Edward III, was the obvious choice. But what if Richard himself died without heirs before the passing of his grandfather? Would the crown then go to Gaunt, or would it instead be conveyed through the line of Edward III’s deceased second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, whose daughter Philippa, wife of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, had given birth to a son, Roger? In these confusing circumstances, Edward III was forced to make specific provision for the succession to the throne, and although these provisions have only recently come to light in the form of a badly damaged copy of a draft , it is now possible to state unequivocally that Edward III did, in fact, designate Richard of Bordeaux as heir to the throne in late 1376. Moreover, and in contrast to the actions of Edward I in 1290, he limited the succession to the male line, even though this same policy had posed the primary barrier to his own claim to the crown of France.

  As we have seen, the war with France had resumed in 1369. A resumption of hostilities had been inevitable since 1364, when Charles V had succeeded his father on the French throne. In a matter of years, Charles V had reshaped the diplomatic landscape of western Europe to the disadvantage of Edward III and the English cause, with Navarre, Flanders, Britanny and Castile all firmly now in the French camp. The Castilian fleet defeated an English fleet under the earl of Pembroke off La Rochelle in 1372, breaking the English grip that had existed for 30 years. With the English unable to reinforce Aquitaine, Charles V was able to overrun much of the duchy. As noted above, the king attempted to lead one last expedition himself, sailing from Southampton on 30 August 1372, but contrary winds prevented his crossing. The great warrior king had seen his last campaign.

  The period after Brétigny also saw increasing domestic strife. Although unable to secure parliamentary consent, in 1363 the administration went ahead with the establishment of a new wool staple through which all English exports must flow. There was similar uncertainty over the administration of
justice in the localities. In 1362, the powers of the recently created Justices of the Peace to pass judgements and pronounce sentences were confirmed, only to be withdrawn in 1364 and then reconfirmed yet again in 1368. The second half of the decade saw the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and the Steward of the King’s Household all dismissed from office following allegations of corruption and abuse of their offices. Once the war in France recommenced, added financial pressures were brought to bear on the government and the king was obliged to seek subsidies in parliament.

  In 1371, parliament agreed to an innovative tax to be levied on parishes rather than individuals, and this was projected to raise some £50,000. In order to secure this grant, Edward was forced to dismiss his Chancellor, Wykeham, the Treasurer, Thomas Brantingham, bishop of Exeter, and the Keeper of the Privy Seal, Peter Lacy. Another grant was made in 1373, but by 1376 this money was all spent and the king was in desperate financial straits once again, necessitating another parliament. The Good Parliament of April 1376 refused the king any direct taxes, agreeing only to an extension of the wool subsidy. Neither Edward III nor the Black Prince was in good enough health to attend this parliament, which was presided over by John of Gaunt. In their absence, the Speaker of the Commons, Sir Peter de la Mare, launched an unprecedented attack on some of the king’s closest associates: William Latimer, the King’s Chamberlain; John Neville of Raby, Steward of the King’s Household; and Richard Lyons, a prominent London banker. Lyons and Latimer, in particular, were accused of profiteering. Among others charged was Alice Perrers, the king’s mistress. The charges were heard before the Lords, and the king was forced to dismiss Latimer and Neville, to imprison Lyons, and to banish Perrers.

  Alice Perrers has often been taken to symbolize the corruption and decay in the last years of the reign of Edward III. She was previously married to a Lombard merchant named Janyn Perrers, but appears to have been widowed prior to the time that she became the king’s mistress in the 1360s. Although the relationship did not become public knowledge until after Queen Philippa’s death in 1370, she gave birth to John Southeray, the first of her three children with Edward III in 1364. During the final decade of the king’s life, she received numerous and substantial grants of wardships and marriages, lands and even jewels that had previously belonged to the queen. More importantly, she was also at the nexus of the network of London merchant capitalists who financed – and greatly profited from – the king’s war efforts in the 1370s. In 1375, she appeared at Smithfield at one of the last tournaments of the reign, dressed as the Lady of the Sun. Contemporaries such as William Langland were aghast. In Piers Plowman, he based the character of Lady Meed, the personification of venality, on Alice.

  Despite the attack on her at the Good Parliament in 1376, she was quickly restored to favour by the ailing king. She was probably at the king’s bedside when he died, but Walsingham’s account of her stripping the rings from his fingers before fleeing the scene appears to be caricature. After the king’s death, she was tried in parliament before John of Gaunt, convicted and sentenced to banishment and forfeiture of all her lands and goods. In fact, she never left the realm, and was subsequently pardoned, although she spent the entirety of Richard II’s reign in a largely unsuccessful struggle to recover her former property. She died at one of the few manors she managed to recover, at Gaines in Upminster in the winter of 1400–1401.

  In the meantime, the king’s health was continuing to fail. As early as 1369, the royal physician John de Glaston was absent from court for a number of days, preparing medicine for the king. By 1371–1372, Glaston was out of court for more than 2 months, seeing to the king’s needs. In the mid-1370s, it seems that Edward suffered a series of strokes. His movements had become largely restricted to a handful of royal manors in the southeast. In June 1376, he was transported from Havering to Kennington, where the Black Prince lay dying. In late September, the king himself fell ill, appointing trustees and writing a will in early October.

  He recovered sufficiently to move from Havering to Sheen in February, actually passing by Westminster as the Good Parliament was in session: the Lords are said to have come out and cheered his passage up the Thames. On 23 April, he was present at Windsor for the annual Garter feast, at which his grandsons Richard of Bordeaux and Henry Bolingbroke were knighted and admitted to the Order of the Garter, although neither boy had as yet any accomplishment in arms. The king returned to Sheen, where he died on 21 June 1377 in the fifty-first year of his reign.

  The remarkable figure of £470 was distributed to paupers in Sheen prior to the departure of the funeral cortege. Edward’s body, which had been embalmed at a cost of more than £20, was conveyed to London, where masses were said at St Paul’s in the presence of Archbishop Sudbury on 28 June, and again on 4 July with John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley in attendance. The wooden effigy that surmounted his coffin has survived, the face derived from a death mask of the king, providing us with a literal portrait. As he wished, he was interred among his Plantagenet ancestors in the chapel of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey on 5 July 1377. His elaborate tomb was completed in 1386, and is adorned by a bronze effigy of the king, flanked by eight angels in prayer. Interestingly, although the earlier Plantagenet tombs of Edmund of Lancaster (brother of Edward I, d. 1298) and John of Eltham (brother of Edward III, d. 1336) had celebrated their Plantagenet ancestors, the tomb of Edward III celebrates the continuation of the dynasty. It was decorated with six niches on both the north and south side, which contained gilt-bronze miniature effigies of each of his beloved children, identified by their armorial shields. Both his achievements and his standing among contemporaries were captured in the epitaph inscribed on the tomb:

  Here lies the glory of the English, the flower of kings past, the pattern for kings to come, a merciful king, the bringer of peace to his people, Edward III, who attained his jubilee.

  The undefeated warrior, a second Maccabeus, who prospered while he lived, revived sound rule, and reigned valiantly; now may he attain his heavenly crown.

  CHAPTER 5: RICHARD II (1377 – 1399)

  Richard of Bordeaux, the second son of the Black Prince and Joan of Kent, came to the throne at the age of 10 years old in June 1377. If he was not menaced by the presence of foreign troops faced by Henry III in 1216, he did still face a daunting diplomatic and military situation not unlike that which had confronted Edward III half a century earlier. For all these difficulties, however, he came to the throne already with a stronger sense of his own regality than any of his Plantagenet forebears. The fact of his having been born on the feast of the

  Epiphany (6 January 1367) seems to have shaped Richard’s sense of self. By the time he was 4 years old, with the death of his elder brother Edward of Angoulême, he seemed assured of succession to the throne. With the passing of his father, the Black Prince, on 8 April 1376, he became his grandfather’s heir. On 20 November 1376, the king, aged and infirm, invested his young grandson as prince of Wales, duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester. On Christmas Day of that year, Richard sat at the king’s table, elevated above the king’s own sons, his own uncles, John of Gaunt, Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock. In January 1377, he represented the king at the opening of the parliament that met in the Painted Chamber at Westminster. There, his elevation as prince of Wales was announced by the chancellor, Bishop Houghton of St David’s. The chancellor sought to impress upon the elected members of parliament the honour and obedience owed to their future sovereign, following Matthew’s gospel in stating, ‘Here is my beloved Son, here is he who is wished for by all men’. He then went on to quote from Peter: ‘your king is sent you from God, he is God’s vicar or legate for you on earth’. A few months later, in April 1377, at the annual St George’s Day celebrations, Richard was invested as a Knight of the Garter, as were his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham, and his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, earl of Derby. Meanwhile, preparations were being made for a campaign in France, o
f which Richard was to be nominal joint commander along with his eldest uncle John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. This campaign was not to be, however, as the old king’s health was failing rapidly, and he died at Sheen on 21 June 1377.

  Richard’s coronation on Thursday, 16 July 1377, the first in a half-century, was a splendid affair. On the eve of the coronation, the king proceeded from the Tower to Westminster along a route thronged with onlookers, preceded by representatives of Bayeux, London and Gascony, followed in turn by his earls, barons and knights. The Great Conduit had been transformed into the ‘Heavenly City’, with angels surmounting the towers and wine flowing in place of water.

  Passing through Cheapside, Richard was offered wine from gilt cups by ‘angels’ who came forth from a ‘castle’ constructed along the way. The spectacle of the procession on 15 July was surpassed by the coronation ceremony on the following day. It must have filled Richard with a sense of his regal dignity. He duly took his coronation oath, and while he swore, like his great grandfather in 1307 and his grandfather in 1327, to uphold the laws made by his subjects, he did so only after the insertion of the qualifying phrase ‘justly and reasonably’ to describe those laws. If not the boy king himself, then certainly his advisors, led by Gaunt in his capacity as steward of England, were already jealously guarding the royal prerogative. After the coronation oath, Richard was ceremonially disrobed and then anointed with chrism. Then, last, but not least, Archbishop Sudbury of Canterbury crowned the new king, investing him with the other symbols of his royal office, the ring, sceptre and orb. Richard then sat enthroned before his subjects as their king for the first time. The ceremony was marred, however slightly, by the loss of one of the coronation shoes worn by the king as he was borne aloft from the church by his tutor, Simon Burley. The shoes were alleged to date back all the way to the reign of Alfred the Great, and later commentators would make much of the prophetic import of this accident, but at the time it seems to have had little impact.