In November Gaveston left for Flanders, but the Ordainers went too far by insisting that his friends and hangers-on leave court as well. Defiantly, Edward recalled him, and he was back in January with his lands restored. In response, the earls made Lancaster their leader and entrusted Pembroke with catching Piers, while Winchelsey prepared another excommunication. Unaware of this, Edward spent most of April with Gaveston in Newcastle until they learned Lancaster was coming with an army. Leaving Piers, who had fallen ill, at Scarborough Castle, the king went off to find troops.
Pembroke besieged the castle and on 19 May, without a proper garrison or provisions, Piers surrendered on condition he be kept safe until parliament met, after which he could go back into the castle if satisfactory terms had not been agreed. Pembroke took his captive south, leaving him at Deddington rectory in Oxfordshire while he visited his wife at their manor nearby. Early on the morning of 10 June the Earl of Warwick’s men surrounded the house and seized Piers, dragging him off to Warwick Castle, first on foot at the end of a rope and then on a broken-down nag.
Ten days later, he was handed over to Lancaster before whom he grovelled, begging for mercy. ‘Pick him up! Pick him up!’, cried the earl. ‘In God’s name, take him away!’ He was led off to Blacklow Hill 2 miles off, where a Welshman ran him through with a sword and another Welshman hacked his head off, Lancaster watching from a distance. According to the Vita, all England rejoiced at the news, with one exception. ‘By God’s soul, he behaved like a fool’, cried Edward. ‘If he’d taken my advice, the earls would never have got hold of him. I always told him to keep clear of them as I knew something like this would happen. Just what did he think he was doing with the Earl of Warwick, who hated Piers, as everybody knows? I was sure he could never escape if the earl caught him.’15
Civil war seemed unavoidable. The earls wanted the ordinances; the king wanted revenge. But while the earls controlled northern England and had captured all Edward’s ready money, at Newcastle, Warwick and Lancaster shrank from a confrontation. Penniless, Edward listened to Pembroke and Gloucester, who advised against armed conflict. Philip of France and Pope Clement sent envoys to mediate. Meanwhile, parliament refused to grant supplies, so the king borrowed money from London merchants.
In November 1312 the queen gave birth to her first child, the future Edward III. ‘To some extent this soothed the king’s grief at Piers’s death, by providing the realm with an heir’, says the Vita, warning readers that without one there would be war for the throne when the king died.16 It brought the father unaccustomed self-confidence. He began listening to his wife’s advice, and his pardon to the earls in October 1313 stated he did so at the intercession of his dearest companion, Isabella, Queen of England.
Scotland
Living up to his name of ‘Hob in the Moors’, the Bruce was using hit-and-run tactics, avoiding pitched battles and demolishing castles, not only those he captured but his own, which meant there were fewer strongpoints. Small English garrisons could no longer hold down wide areas, and town after town fell to Robert. Since 1311 he had been raiding over the border into Northumberland and Cumberland, whose inhabitants grew so desperate that they paid him protection money. He even attacked Durham. Early in 1314 Edinburgh and Roxburgh fell. Other than Berwick, the only major Scottish fortress retained by the English was Stirling, besieged by Robert’s brother. Its constable sent word to Edward that he must surrender if relief did not reach him by midsummer. Near to tears when he heard he had lost Edinburgh, the king was determined to save Berwick. If he did, winning a significant victory, he could afford to ignore the Ordainers.
Early in June, sending Pembroke ahead to reconnoitre, Edward marched out from Berwick with 2,000 men-at-arms and 10,000 foot. Protesting that the campaign had not been approved by a parliament and that they had no wish to infringe the Ordinances, Lancaster, Warwick and Warenne stayed away but sent troops. Edward marched at breakneck speed, with very short halts for sleep and meals. The Scots had wrecked the road by digging pits along it, so the English army was exhausted by the time it came in sight of Stirling on the afternoon of Sunday 23 June.
Robert was waiting, with half as many infantry and only 500 men-at-arms. When two English scouting parties attacked as soon as they arrived, he routed them, personally killing one of their commanders. Even so, despite spending the night on wet marshland, Edward’s troops expected to win overwhelmingly next day because of their numbers and weaponry. But the king made a fatal mistake in naming Gloucester as constable (commander-in-chief) in place of Hereford, the hereditary constable, causing a dispute that deprived the English of coherent leadership. Overwrought, Edward also rejected Gloucester’s advice to let his tired troops recuperate, accusing the earl of treachery.
Next morning, instead of staying on the defensive when the English moved up to attack, the Scots’ four schiltrons of pike-men crossed the Bannockburn and advanced over the marshy ground towards their surprised enemy. It should have been simple enough to drive off the scanty Scottish cavalry so the archers could shoot the pike-men down, as at Falkland; but Edward lacked a battle plan and had no control over his army. Instead Gloucester led a chaotic charge that became bogged down in the marshy soil, he himself being unhorsed and killed with many men-at-arms and infantry.
Before the English archers on the right flank could do much damage the Scottish horse rode up and cut them down. Bruce’s pike-men then routed the remaining English infantry. When Edward had a horse killed under him, his household warned it was no longer safe to stay, so he fled towards Stirling Castle. Seeing the royal standard leave the field, what was left of his army broke and ran. A thousand Englishmen died in the battle, many more being killed or taken prisoner during a pursuit that went on for 50 miles. Casualties included 22 barons and 68 knights – even the privy seal was captured with its keeper. The Scots lost 500 pike-men and two knights.
Anxious to make terms with Bruce and save their lives, the garrison of Stirling Castle refused to let the king enter, so he galloped to Dunbar, finding a ship to Berwick from where he sailed to York. He had suffered the worst defeat seen in Britain since the Norman Conquest. Knowing his father had destroyed a Scottish army of the same sort at Falkirk, all England realized his inadequacy. For over a decade the Scots plundered and slew as far south as Yorkshire. Carlisle nearly fell to King Robert in 1315 and Berwick went two years later. There was trouble in Wales, where Llewelyn Bren (‘Llewelyn of the Woods’) raised Glamorgan and Gwent in 1316, burning English castles.
The immediate result was the triumph of the Ordainers. Three months after Bannockburn the king reluctantly confirmed the Ordinances in a parliament at York, dismissing his chancellor, treasurer and sheriffs, who were replaced by men chosen by the earls.
In February 1315 Edward interred the still unburied corpse of Piers Gaveston at the Dominican friary he had built at King’s Langley, with a service led by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Reynolds, who was assisted by many bishops and abbots. Edward had hoped to make the earls attend the burial, which was why it had not taken place before. Piers’s biographer stresses that the ceremony shows how much Bannockburn demoralized the king.17
Queen Isabella emerges
Gaveston had not been followed by ‘an unending stream of catamites’, whatever one popular historian suggests.18 Queen Isabella took his place and began to play an important role in political life. Very beautiful, she had the same thick, blonde hair and large, unblinking, pale blue eyes as her father Philip IV, who was the most handsome man in Europe. She also inherited his intelligence and cruelty, and gift for hiding what he thought behind a smiling mask. She was fond of music and books, and her household included minstrels and instrumentalists, while she owned a library of illuminated Arthurian romances. She also enjoyed hunting and hawking. Noticeably more pious than the king, she was genuinely charitable, not only feeding the poor but arranging for the adoption of a small boy who had been orphaned in the Scottish wars. A less attractive quality was avarice.
In 1313 Isabella and Edward visited Paris, where she persuaded her father to confirm Edward as Duke of Guyenne. Next year she paid another visit, securing further concessions. During her stay Philip was told his daughters-in-law were unfaithful, a charge resulting in their imprisonment and their lovers being broken on the wheel – Isabella was rumoured to have been his informant. Her father died a few months after Bannockburn, supposedly summoned to hell by the Templar Grand Master, whom he had just burned at the stake.
Isabella did her best to make her husband resist the Ordainers. At this time he was devoted to her, rewarding a knight who brought the news of their second son’s birth with £100. She attended the royal council meetings and in 1316, when the bishopric of Durham fell vacant, prevailed on Edward to appoint her candidate Louis de Beaumont, in the teeth of Lancaster’s opposition.
The Earl of Lancaster fails
The Ordainers’ leader, Edward’s Plantagenet cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, had risen in public esteem for refusing to serve on the Bannockburn campaign. Three years older than the king, a man who was in every way unlike his grandfather Henry III, Thomas of Lancaster comes down the centuries as stupid, arrogant and unscrupulous despite undeserved popularity. His programme was to replace the Crown’s power by a council of magnates, and win support by reducing taxes. He had no real objectives beyond his own interests and taking revenge on personal enemies.
Everything conspired against Lancaster. The weather was hostile from 1314 to 1322, rain falling day after day so that the crops failed in what became known as the Great Famine, people being driven to cannibalism. Thousands perished when disease followed hunger, killing men and animals. Farm rents collapsed, wiping out royal and baronial revenues. Law and order broke down, with riots throughout the country.
The earl had no allies after the deaths of his wise old father-in-law Lincoln in 1311 and Warwick four years later. Even if he found supporters among lesser barons and the bishops, his fellow magnates loathed him. Having dominated the royal council since Bannockburn, he became its official head in the parliament of January 1316, cancelling all grants of Crown land to favourites over the last six years. But either from arrogance or ill health he then stayed away from parliaments, making enemies of men who should have been his friends. When Surrey tried to obtain an annulment so that he could marry his mistress, Lancaster intervened and Surrey was excommunicated. He retaliated by abducting Lancaster’s wife.
Meanwhile, new courtiers found favour with Edward. Hugh Audley was given Gaveston’s widow and Roger Damory, an obscure Oxfordshire knight, secured the king’s niece, the twice widowed Elizabeth de Clare, who was one of the richest women in the country. William Montague obtained the coveted job of steward of Gascony. Hugh Despenser, a former minister of Edward I who had recommended himself by his cynical support for Piers, also gained advancement. Others included Lord Badlesmere, a great Kentish landowner, and John Giffard.
There was also a ‘middle party’ led by Pembroke, which opposed both the court and Lancaster. ‘If we are to make a hero in the reign at all, earl Aymer of Pembroke has surely the best claim to that distinction’, says Tout.19 With Badlesmere, he hoped to isolate Lancaster while keeping the Ordinances, and give back the king most of his powers if he governed wisely. Isabella supported this sensible but not very strong man, whose advice offered the best hope of stability.
The Treaty of Leake
By autumn 1316 Lancaster had abandoned his attempt to rule and was sulking on his estates. He prepared for civil war as did King Edward. Each man hated and feared the other. While Thomas had no wish to risk his life in battle, and he felt little affection for his wife – they lived apart – her abduction nearly drove him into rebellion because he suspected Edward of encouraging it. When his men harried Surrey’s northern lands, the king saw a pretext for crushing Lancaster by force. However, Pembroke dissuaded him, while a group of bishops restrained Earl Thomas.
Two strange incidents did not make Edward feel any more secure. At Whitsun 1317 a masked woman rode a horse into the banqueting hall at Westminster and handed a letter to him as he sat at dinner, which he ordered to be read aloud. Embarrassingly, it complained of the shabby way he treated the knights of his household. Arrested, the woman confessed to being paid by one of the knights to deliver the letter.
Then, early in 1318, a young Oxford cleric named John of Powderham, who resembled Edward, presented himself at the nearby Palace of Beaumont and announced he was the true king of England, offering to undergo trial by combat with his supplanter. He claimed he had been exchanged at birth for Edward, who was a carter’s son – the reason why he did not govern properly and liked peasant pursuits. Brought before the king, he called him a changeling, repeating his offer to fight for the throne, but when put on trial at Oxford he broke down, telling the court he had acted under instructions from his cat, who was the devil. He and the poor feline were hanged side by side. According to the Vita, this ridiculous episode was reported throughout the whole country, infuriating the queen ‘beyond words’.20
The quarrel between the king and Lancaster simmered on, the earl claiming that, as holder of the earldom of Leicester, he should be high steward – the office held by Simon de Montfort. Finally Pembroke prevailed. In August 1318 peace between Edward and the earl was reached at Leake (in Nottinghamshire) with a treaty harking back to the barons’ attempt to control Henry III sixty years before. The Ordinances, Lancaster’s talisman, were reaffirmed, while five members of a council of seventeen were to supervise royal business. Badlesmere, who was acceptable to both sides, became steward of the household, and the new chamberlain was the younger Hugh Despenser.
There was general agreement that Berwick must be recovered. After capturing the town, the Scots had begun raiding further south, the people of Ripon only saving their lives by taking shelter in the minster and paying £1,000. Lancaster joined Edward’s army in besieging Berwick in the summer of 1319, but was suspected of treachery. Implying he was a traitor, the Vita says he disgraced the royal family, but it is more likely that he merely paid the Scots protection money. When King Robert sent a force to attack Pontefract Castle, his main residence, Lancaster rushed home. He may also have heard that Edward was muttering, ‘When this miserable siege is over, we’ll get back to other business – I haven’t forgotten what was done to my brother Piers.’21 It was the end of the Treaty of Leake.
The rise of the Despensers
The king abandoned the siege, and it only needed a spark to set alight his feud with Lancaster – which Hugh Despenser the younger soon provided. Sir Hugh had become one of England’s wealthiest men overnight after the death of his childless brother-in-law the Earl of Gloucester at Bannockburn, and inheritance of half the earl’s estates by Sir Hugh’s wife, yet until he was appointed chamberlain by parliament in 1318 Edward took little notice of him. From then on, however, he supervised every detail of the royal day, becoming all powerful, and by 1320 he witnessed three-quarters of the charters issued by Edward. Very different from Gaveston, he has been convincingly described as ‘a war lord, a politician and an administrator’.22
To Queen Isabella, it seemed that Piers had come again. At this time she enjoyed so much prestige that in 1319, when she was staying near York during the siege of Berwick, the Scots diverted 10,000 troops to capture her, but the plot was discovered by a spy. ‘Had the queen been taken prisoner, I think Scotland might have been able to impose peace [on its own terms]’, comments the Vita,23 whose author thought Lancaster had told them where to find her. Hugh must have known he could not dominate this strong, shrewd woman.
Hugh’s greed verged on the manic, as did that of his father, another Sir Hugh. In 1320 they obtained the vacant marcher lordship of the Gower by persuading the king to confiscate it and then grant it to them. The Marchers were outraged, since the precedent made their own fiefs vulnerable to seizure. In any case, they were terrified of young Despenser, a violent man who had recently murdered the captive Llewelyn Bren.
In spring 1321, led by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, they mobilized. In June they attended a meeting in Yorkshire with Lancaster and other northern lords that resulted in an ‘indenture’ demanding the Despensers’ dismissal. The protesters were joined by Pembroke, John of Brittany and Lord Badlesmere, and by such former royal favourites as Roger Damory and Hugh Audley. On her knees in tears, Queen Isabella begged her husband to get rid of the pair. When parliament met in July it was surrounded by the barons’ armed retainers. Denounced as evil counsellors and enemies of the people, the Despensers were banished.
According to the Vita, the ‘cruel and greedy father’ simply went abroad (to Bordeaux), but the son took up a murderous career as a pirate, turning into a ‘sea monster’. One of his exploits was capturing a great Genoese merchantman, slaughtering the entire crew and stealing its immensely valuable cargo.24 Meanwhile, Edward plotted their return.
The end of the Ordainers
In October, ostensibly on pilgrimage to Canterbury, Queen Isabella arrived at the royal castle of Leeds in Kent, demanding to spend the night there. Suspecting she intended to seize it, the wife of its absent castellan, Lord Badlesmere, greeted her with a flight of arrows, killing six of her escort. Badlesmere made matters worse by writing a truculent letter to Isabella, saying that he fully approved of his wife’s actions. Joined by a contingent from London, where the queen was very popular, the king assembled an army and besieged the castle, using stone-throwers. On learning the Earl of Lancaster refused to send help, Lady Badlesmere surrendered. She was sent to the Tower, while the garrison commander, Sir Walter Culpeper, was hanged from the battlements with a dozen of his men.
The Demon's Brood Page 14
