by Lisa Hilton
Wherefore, dearest Lady, I beseech you as my Lady, I warn you as a daughter to return to our Lord King, your husband, putting aside rancour. You who have gone away for the sake of peace, do not for the sake of peace delay to return. For all the inhabitants of our land fear that many evils will result from your refusal to return … Alas! If things turn out thus it may happen that we shall regard as a stepmother her whom we hoped to have as patron. Alas! Clergy and people with complaining voice reiterate their fear that they and theirs will be utterly destroyed through the hatred felt for one man. Wherefore, my Lady Queen, accept wise counsel and do not delay your return. For your longed-for arrival I will restrain the malice of men and restrict all opportunities for evil.12
The language of the letter is interesting in the way it formulates Isabella’s position when the King is confronted with the prospect of her power. She is reminded of her duty as wife, lady and queen, but also as ‘daughter’, and threatened with the prospect of becoming a wicked stepmother instead of a good mother or ‘patron’. The bishops’ plea is in effect a reversal of the intercession trope — the male supplicating, the female resisting — and the focus on the Queen’s various feminine roles may be read as an order to demonstrate her abandonment of the power she has adopted and return to those offices. In other words, the bishops were telling Isabella to act like a woman. Their request forms the last section of the Vita Edwardi Secundi. Ominously, the writer concludes: ‘But notwithstanding this letter, mother and son refused to return to England.’
What were Isabella’s intentions as 1325 drew to its close? Her meetings with disaffected Englishmen suggest that her previous loyalty to the royalist cause had been seriously undermined by her determination to oust the Despensers, but was she planning, or being urged on to, more drastic action? In December, she attended the funeral of her uncle, Charles of Valois, in Paris, where among her gathered relatives she met her cousin, Valois’s daughter Jeanne of Hainault. Roger Mortimer had been in the county of Hainault on the Flemish border, for the past year, attempting to rally support for an invasion of England, and the acceptance of his presence by the Count and Countess lends credence to the idea that Jeanne proposed an alliance to Isabella. In return for reviving the idea of marriage between Isabella’s son Prince Edward and one of Jeanne’s daughters, which had been considered in 1319, and an agreement of trading regulations between their two countries, the Count of Hainault would provide the Queen with troops and funds. Isabella had no mandate to negotiate Edward’s marriage, and the boy had promised his father that he would accept no such union without the English King’s permission. If a Hainault affiance was mooted at this juncture, Isabella may well already have been considering replacing her husband with her son. The reappearance of Mortimer proved a catalyst to her decision.
Mortimer had arrived in Paris in December, possibly accompanying Countess Jeanne, and it was not long before it was common knowledge that ‘Mortimer secretly came first in the household of the Queen’.13 Isabella was not the first English queen to be accused of adultery, nor would she be the last, but she is unique in being the only one of them to live flagrantly with her lover. The scandal was such that the relationship was largely referred to in the most discreet, euphemistic terms, but by the following February, Edward himself was obliged, albeit obliquely, to acknowledge it. In February, mustering troops to set a guard on the coast of England, the King declared: ‘The Queen will not come to the King, nor permit his son to return, and the King understands that she is adopting the counsel of the Mortimer, the King’s notorious enemy and rebel, and that she is making alliances with the men of those parts and with other strangers with intent to invade.’14
In May, Isabella showed just how much she cared for her husband’s remonstrations, appearing publicly with Mortimer at the coronation of Queen Jeanne and permitting her lover the considerable honour of carrying the robes of Prince Edward. Isabella was well aware of the impact such a gesture would have on public opinion, and could only have been mindful of the conclusions that opinion would draw. It was not until July that Edward was drawn into a declaration of war, but Isabella had already made her choice, and displayed it to the world in the Saint-Chapelle.
The Queen was prepared not only to defy her husband, but the Pope. Edward had written to Rome to complain of her behaviour, and that of her brother, who was harbouring an adulteress, and the Pope had written to the King of France in no uncertain terms, threatening him with excommunication if he continued to support his sister. Publicly, Charles was obliged to censure Isabella, and ordered her out of his kingdom. Isabella and Mortimer decided that Hainault should become the base from which they would launch the attack on Edward. Isabella made her way there via Ponthieu, and was busy in the county throughout much of August, making use of her dower lands to raise money and support in her own affinity. She spent eight days at the court of the Count and Countess of Hainault at Valenciennes and on 27 August, at Mons, she signed an agreement for her son’s betrothal to one of the Count’s daughters, requesting a dowry of men, money and ships and promising to hold the wedding within two years and to ratify a new trade agreement between the countries. Already she was acting like a ruler.
Isabella’s invading army was small (the largest estimate is 2,500 men, the smallest 500), but oddly, this proved to be one of its strengths. Isabella had been corresponding with English magnates who resented the Despensers’ power and had been assured of the support of the earls of Leicester and Norfolk. When news of her arrival reached Edward and Hugh Despenser as they were dining in the Tower, it was her very lack of troops that dismayed them. ‘Alas, alas!’ reports the Brut Chronicle, ‘We be all betrayed, for certain with so little power she had never come to land but folk of this country had to her consented.’ After a stormy crossing, in weather so violent that the ships were lost for two days, Isabella had reached the Essex coast on 24 September 1326, spending her first night on dry land in a tent made of carpets. The Earl of Norfolk, Edward’s half-brother Thomas, then escorted her to his castle at Walton-on-the-Naze. From there she made her way, via Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge, to Oxford, which she reached on 2 October. Meeting no resistance, she then turned back to Baldock, where she issued a letter to the citizens of London, offering a reward of 2,000 pounds for Hugh Despenser’s head and calling on the people to support her in effecting his downfall. The letter was displayed for the public at the Eleanor cross in Cheapside, a significant choice of monument in that it associated Isabella with this emblem of pious queenship, her husband’s mother, suggesting that her actions were maintaining her fealty to her marital family and seeking to establish the rights of the true heir of Edward I.
By 15 October, Isabella was at Wallingford, where she put out a proclamation condemning the Despensers and explaining her plans. Despenser had ‘tarnished and degraded’ the country, ‘usurped royal power against law and justice’ and despoiled and dishonoured the Church. ‘We,’ announced Isabella,
… who have long been kept far from the goodwill of our Lord the King through the false suggestions and evil dealings of the aforesaid Hugh … are come to this land to raise up the state of Holy church and of the kingdom and of the people of this land, against the said misdeeds and oppressions, and to safeguard and maintain so far as we can the honour and profit of our Holy Church and of our said Lord the King … For this reason we ask and pray you, for the common good of all and each of you individually, that you come to our help well and loyally … For be assured that we all, and all those who are in our company, intend to do nothing that does not redound to the honour and profit of the Holy Church and the whole kingdom …15
Officially, Isabella was careful to insist that she was acting as a loyal subject whose only aim was to cleanse the kingdom of the canker of the Despensers.
Edward’s attempts at mustering a campaign force provided dismal proof of the unpopularity of his favourite. On learning on 27 September of Isabella’s arrival, he attempted to raise resistance in London and had a papal bul
l proscribing invaders — it had actually been intended for use against the Scots — read at St Paul’s Cross. It was heard in telling silence. He wrote to Charles of France, to the Pope and to the university of Oxford; he sought out supporters in the countryside around London and sent envoys to Wales and East Anglia. When none of this produced much of a result, the King left London with as much money as he could carry and a small group of archers and made for the Despenser lands in Wales. En route, he tried once more to summon troops at Gloucester, but again met with very little success.
As Isabella issued her proclamation at Wallingford, riots broke out in London. The Tower was seized from Despenser’s wife, Eleanor de Clare, and Isabella’s ten-year-old son John of Eltham was installed as nominal warden. Any Despenser supporters were threatened, the mayor was forced to declare for Isabella at the Guildhall and Hugh’s clerk, John the Marshal, was torn to pieces. In the first in a series of horrible executions, Bishop Stapledon was beheaded with a knife at the Eleanor cross. His head was transported to Gloucester, which was by then in Isabella’s hands. According to some reports she received it with the relish of a latter-day Salome. By 18 October, the Queen’s forces were besieging Bristol, the headquarters of Despenser the elder. The town fell after a week and Isabella was reunited with her two daughters, Eleanor and Joan, who had been living in Despenser’s household in their mother’s absence. Her manifest joy at recovering her children did not distract her from her pursuit of her enemies, however, and the day she entered Bristol, Despenser the elder, who was tried without right of reply (as the Earl of Lancaster had been) was sentenced to be hanged immediately. His body was given no burial, but was reputedly chopped to pieces and eaten by dogs.
Edward and Hugh Despenser had travelled from Gloucester to Checstow, arriving a few days before the fall of Bristol. Exhausted and desperate, they set off in a boat, possibly intending to make for Ireland, or simply for Lundy, the little island held by Despenser in the Bristol Channel. But the weather was against them, and they were forced to put back in at Cardiff after four days. This brief voyage, though, was all Isabella needed. Technically, the King had forsaken the country. In council at Bristol on 26 October, fourteen-year-old Prince Edward was made Keeper of the Realm. Edward’s Privy Seal was given to Isabella’s clerk, Robert Wyville, and she was now in a position to authorise acts in his name.
By mid-November, Edward was an isolated fugitive. Apart from Despenser, there had been only seven men with him when he was taken near Llantrisant in Glamorgan on 16 November. Despenser was immediately sent to Hereford, where Isabella had been staying since the beginning of the month. He tried to cheat her of her revenge by maintaining a hunger strike after his arrest, and at his trial on 24 November he was barely conscious as the long list of charges against him was read out. Two aspects of Despenser’s grisly end signal that his accusers were keen to highlight the corrupt sexual nature of his relationship with the King. While the Queen was at Oxford the previous year, Bishop Orleton had preached a sermon in which he accused Edward of sodomy, the first time such allegations had been made so explicitly. He repeated them three weeks later at Wallingford, adding that Isabella was in fear of her life from Edward, who claimed to carry a knife about him with which to kill her. Among the charges against Hugh, which he was not permitted to answer, was one of maliciously interfering with the royal marriage. And a refinement was added to his hideous traitor’s death of being hung, drawn and quartered: castration. His genitals were then burned before his eyes as Isabella watched. In conjuring this gruesomely symbolic connection between Despenser’s penis and Edward’s knife it was clear what Isabella wanted people to understand about Hugh’s crimes. Despenser’s execution in Hereford marketplace before a bawling crowd presents a repugnant image of Isabella, a vampiric, castrating beauty looking on impassively as her rival is literally hacked into spewing pieces. His head was delivered to London and lumps ofhis body distributed around the country.
Having disposed of Hugh, Isabella’s final challenge was to replace the rule of her husband with that of her son. But how could such an unprecedented revolution be brought about? She had been exercising official authority since writs had been issued in the names of the Queen and Prince Edward at Hereford in October. Bishop Orleton had been charged with recovering the Great Seal from the King, who was held first at Monmouth Castle then moved to Kenilworth. From 30 November, when Isabella and Edward were made joint Keepers of the Great Seal, the Queen was able to make out writs in her own name. Christmas was kept at Wallingford, where Isabella was at last able to see all her children together, and Parliament was summoned at Westminster for 7 January. At this juncture, there was nothing to prevent Edward II being restored to both his realm and his wife, but though Isabella scrupulously maintained her façade of acting legally and in the King’s name, this was obviously the last thing she intended. There was some doubt as to whether it was legally possible to summon Parliament without the King. Isabella put out a story that she had sent two deputations ofbishops to Kenilworth to ask Edward to join the session, but that he had responded by cursing them ‘contemptuously’ and ‘declaring that he would not come among his enemies’16 Empowered by this convenient refusal, and whipped in by Mortimer, members of the Lords and Commons consented to attend the Guildhall, where the new mayor of London had invited them to swear an oath of loyalty to Isabella and the Prince, to depose Edward 11 and crown his son.
In November, Isabella had communicated with the Londoners proposing that they elect a new mayor to replace the unpopular ‘royalist’ Hamo de Chigwell. The man they had chosen was one Richard de Bethune, an old crony of Mortimer’s. One theory about Mortimer’s escape from the Tower in 1323 has Bethune among the prominent Londoners who helped him. Certainly Bethune was Mortimer’s man and it would be interesting to know how big a part Mortimer’s influence played in his election. Isabella and Mortimer recognised that the support of London would be imperative if they wished to push through the deposition of the anointed king, and Bethune was ideally placed to help them paint a gloss of legality over the solemn pantomime of the January Parliament. The consent of the capital would suffice to present their actions as an expression of the common will, and the clamour for the deposition has been described as having ‘a distinct London accent’.17 in return, the oath sworn at the Guildhall included a promise to respect the liberties of the city, and in March 1327 it was granted a charter exempting citizens from the military service whose obligations had provoked such resentment of Edward II.
After the oath-swearing, the sitting resumed at Westminster. Archbishop Reynolds, the clerk for whom Edward had once petitioned a prebend, preached a stirring sermon, then declared that Edward II was deposed, to cries of enthusiasm. A list of Articles of Deposition was read aloud, then Prince Edward was led in and presented as the new King. Queen Isabella was in floods of tears, whether of joy or of sorrow who could say? Several chronicles now concur that the prospective Edward III, misunderstanding his mother’s sobs, threw a spanner in the works by refusing to accept the crown in his father’s lifetime without his consent. The writers in question were working some time after the events, and though it was obviously preferable that Edward III should be seen to have acted with absolute probity, there is no more reason to suppose that he refused the crown than there is to accept that his imprisoned father refused to come to Parliament. Isabella and Mortimer were making up procedure as they went along. There was no post-Conquest pattern for the deposition of an English king, as no one had ever done it. The processions, deputations, ceremonies and oath-swearings were little more than improvisations, and the roles of the players — sorrowing wife, reluctant prince — were part of the masquerade.
At Kenilworth on 20 January 1327, Edward was informed by Bishop Orleton that unless he accepted the ‘invitation’ to renounce the throne in recognition of the charges in the Articles of Deposition, he risked his son’s inheritance. It was even hinted that Mortimer himself might be invited to take the crown (though the Ear
l of Lancaster might have had something to say about that), but again, the reports of such persuasions may have been made to give Edward a noble motive for renunciation. Dressed in black, sobbing and finally fainting, Edward gave his consent. The reign of his son officially began five days later. On 30 January, at York, Edward III was married, as his mother had arranged, to the Count of Hainault’s daughter Philippa, who had arrived in England in December, and on 1 February he was crowned at Westminster.
However one judges Isabella’s methods, and the degree of Mortimer’s involvement in her achievements, she had managed to do something practically unthinkable: to depose an anointed king. Her journey from passive, obedient daughter to dutiful wife to vengeful lover required an extraordinary personal transformation, and whether she is celebrated or condemned, she remains exceptional. She had outsmarted the Despensers and succeeded in escaping to France, she had employed diplomacy and raised an invading army, pursued a campaign and seen her son crowned while his father lived. Throughout she had remained alert to the importance of public opinion and had attempted as far as possible to control her ‘image’ so that she would be perceived sympathetically. If history has been very hard on Isabella, recent attempts to rehabilitate her reputation have veered too far towards the positive. Just because she was brave, intelligent and resourceful does not mean that she could not be devious, ruthless and cruel. And now she was faced with one final problem. What was to be done with her husband?
