Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (18 page)

Then the Prince tried to comfort her; he kissed her very often, and felt great tenderness for her tears, and said to her: “Belle Cousine, I have a message for you from one of the gallant gentlemen of England, and he is besides a very charming man.” The Countess answered, still weeping: “Ah, Sire, for God’s sake forbear to speak of such things to me. I have made up my mind not to marry again; for I have given my heart to the most gallant gentleman under the firmament, and for love of him, I shall have no husband but God, so long as I live. It is impossible that I should marry him. So, for love of him, I wish to shun the company of men. I am resolved never to marry.”

The Prince was very desirous to know who was the most gallant gentleman in the world, and begged the Countess insistently to tell him who it was. But the Countess the more she saw his eagerness, the more she besought him not to inquire further; and, falling on her knees, said to him: “My very dear Lord, for God’s sake, and for His mother’s, the sweet Virgin, please forbear.” The Prince answered that, if she did not tell him who was the most gallant gentleman in the world, he would be her deadly enemy. Then the Lady said to him: “Very dear and redoubtable Lord, it is you, and for love of you no gentleman shall lie beside me.” The Prince, who was then all on fire with love for her, said: “Lady, I swear to God, that as long as I live, no other woman shall be my wife.” And soon they were betrothed.

A less colorful, and probably less embroidered version of the story is given in the
Life of the Black Prince
written by Chandos Herald:

The prince, very soon after this
[the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360],
married a lady of great worth, with whom he had fallen in love, who was beautiful, pleasing and wise. He did not wait long after his marriage before going to Gascony to take possession of his lands. The prince took his wife with him, whom he loved greatly.

Because the two were closely related, they needed to receive a dispensation from the pope allowing the marriage. They had no trouble obtaining it. The historian Richard Barber writes:
“Innocent VI, like all the Avignon popes, favoured the French cause, and the prince’s proposed marriage eliminated an important diplomatic weapon for the English.”
The French wanted nothing better than to see Edward III’s son make a politically useless marriage.

But although an alliance with Joan offered no political advantage, the prince never appeared to regret his choice. Seven years later, the romance was still alive, as evidenced by a letter written to Joan after the Battle of Najera. The prince’s salutation reads:
“My dearest and truest sweetheart and beloved companion.”

Although sickness and time would harden the prince’s character, making him capable of committing the massacre at Limoges in 1370, we never hear of anything but felicity betwixt him and Joan. Together Edward and Joan had two sons, the youngest of whom would become Richard II of England.

Edward died in 1376 at the age of 45. He had instructed that his body be laid to rest in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, in the Chapel of Our Lady, with a space nearby for his dear wife. He even had carvings of her face added to the ceiling there. The crypt, however, was not deemed worthy enough, and so his body was moved upstairs to be placed by the shrine of the famous Saint Thomas Becket. Joan lived nine years longer to see the accession of her son to the throne, the rise of the Lollards, and the Peasants’ Revolt. When she died, her body was laid to rest in Lincolnshire beside the tomb of Thomas Holland, her first husband. And so, despite the prince’s dearest wishes, in the end he and his “beloved companion” were separated.

As wife to Edward, the Black Prince, Joan became history’s first English Princess of Wales. But there was more to remember about Joan than just her title. She was, in the words of the chronicler Froissart, “
la plus belle de tout le royaume d’Engleterre et la plus amoureuse
—the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving.” Or to use Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s translation:
“the prettiest girl and greatest coquette in England.”

Sources

Barber, Richard.
Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince.
Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1978.

_______, trans. and ed. 
The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince: from contemporary letters, diaries and chronicles, including Chandos Herald’s Life of the Black Prince
. Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1979.

Froissart, Jean. 
Chronicles
. Translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton. London: Penguin Books, 1978.

Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. 
The Black Prince
. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.

Alice Perrers: A Notorious Woman

by Anne O’Brien

A
lice Perrers, mistress of King Edward III at the same tim
e as she was a damsel (lady-in-waiting) to Queen Philippa, has had an astonishingly bad press. Her reputation is black with no redeeming features.
“There was...in England a shameless woman and wanton harlot called Ales Peres, of base kindred...being neither beautiful or fair, she knew how to cover these defects with her flattering tongue....”

Modern historians have been hardly less damning than her contemporaries. Here she is, in all her notoriety, as seen in the fourteenth century:

1) Alice the Lowborn Usurper of Royal Power

Did Alice know her place in society, or did she step outrageously beyond it? As far as we know, Alice had neither breeding nor wealth nor significant family connections, but was she the reputed bastard of a labourer and tavern whore? Perhaps not.

Recent evidence suggests that she may have had a brother with whom she did business, and that she engaged in a brief marriage to Janyn Perres, a Lombardy merchant and moneylender, during which she made her first purchase of property. She could read and write and figure. Somewhere she learned this—if not with her invisible family, then in a convent. And royal mistress to Edward III? Alice would not be the first lowborn woman to share a King’s bed, nor the last.

We do not know how she came to the attention of Queen Philippa but it is unlikely that she would have done so if she had been born in the filth of the gutter. Perhaps Alice does not deserve her notoriety based on her stepping beyond her birth.

2) Alice the Unattractive Woman

Alice was not merely a plain woman but “famously ugly”. How could an ugly woman rise to such pre-eminence? Using supernatural powers—she was accused of witchcraft—she gained a foothold in the Queen’s household and lured the unsuspecting King into a sexual liaison from which she never allowed him to escape.

Much can be forgiven a beautiful woman but not an ill favoured one. Alice was reputed to be the inspiration for Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. He gave her a bold face, a gap-toothed smile, broad hips, a wide hat, and red stockings. I’m sure he enjoyed writing this description, but is it true? He also gave her five “legitimate” husbands. It may be that Chaucer’s physical description of Alice/the Wife is as scurrilous as the rest of it.

Alice was said to be graceful and possess a pleasing, seductive voice. Certainly she had enough attractions to please the King. Could it be that she was dark rather than fair, the fashionable trend for the day? Perhaps she did not have mere beauty but rather a lively, striking countenance. How unfortunate that there are no representations of this famously ugly woman. We might decide that she was not ugly at all.

3) Alice the Rapacious Royal Mistress

Alice beguiled and manipulated King Edward until he neglected his wife and his country. Because she seduced him while Philippa was still alive, Alice was the cause of King Edward committing the sin of adultery. So great was her power over the King that he could refuse her nothing. So corrupt were her morals that she entered into a clandestine marriage with William de Windsor without Edward’s knowledge.

It is true that Alice became Edward’s mistress during the lifetime of the much loved Queen Philippa, and for this she was condemned. How interesting that on such occasions (even in modern royal scandals) the blame is placed very firmly on the shoulder of the non-royal woman involved. Edward was not to blame: it was Alice who seduced the King! Hard to believe that Edward, a true Plantagenet, had no part in this sexual chemistry, even in his later years.

How did Philippa react to her damsel sleeping with her husband? Certainly she must have known, yet she made no move to dismiss her. Interestingly, during Philippa’s lifetime, the scandal was kept under wraps at court as if there was a conspiracy of silence to protect the Queen from humiliation. It was only on her death that Alice’s position was widely acclaimed. Despite the liaison between Edward and Alice, there is no evidence that the King neglected his wife. To the contrary, when Philippa died, Edward was heart-broken. It was a very strange ménage-a-trois. I regret that we know so little about it—but it is a gem for a writer of historical fiction.

4) Alice the Greedy Embezzler of Wealth

It is impossible to deny Alice’s desire for wealth. Alice dipped her hands into the royal treasury at the same time as she amassed jewels worth more than £200,000. After Queen Philippa’s death, Alice demanded that Edward give the Queen’s jewels, placed by Philippa into the keeping of her senior lady-in-waiting, to her as a gift. Alice wore them ostentatiously as if she were queen, flaunting her power. At the same time, together with Windsor, her new husband, an equally unprincipled courtier, she was embezzling funds set aside by the King to deal with the uprisings in Ireland.

And the most heinous crime of all? When Edward lay on his death bed, Alice stripped the rings from his fingers. All difficult to defend? So it would seem, and Alice was without doubt guilty of a degree of embezzlement, but as a writer of historical fiction I have allowed Alice to give her own reasons. Read
The King’s Concubine
to discover more.

5) Alice the Grasping Land-grabber

Alice persuaded Edward to give her land. So successful was she that she controlled 56 manors, castles, and town houses stretching over 25 counties of England.

Perhaps surprisingly, out of the 56 manors in her possession, only 15 came from royal grants. All the rest—45 of them—were gained by her own initiative and efforts, and most of them in prime locations in the counties surrounding London.

Alice made use of her clerk William Greseley and a group of male business associates to acquire and manage the manors for her. Sometimes she made the purchases herself, showing a knowledge of business and the law. When she came under legal attack from men whose toes she trod on, Alice sat in court, next to the judge, to ensure that he considered her interests first and foremost. (What a wonderful scene this would make!) If a man had shown such acumen, he might have been accused of gross self-interest, but he might equally have been admired for his achievements. He would not have been denigrated to the extent that Alice was.

6) Alice the Arch-Manipulator of the King and Queen

The government of England in the final years of Edward’s life when he was at his most vulnerable fell into the hands of Alice, in alliance with John of Gaunt, Edward’s son, and a group of royal ministers appointed by her and loyal to her. Edward was unable to prevent her from usurping royal power that was not hers to take. This cannot be argued against.

It was said of her by Thomas Walsingham, a monk at St. Albans: “
no one dared go against her
”. And no one did, until Edward became too weak to protect her. When the Good Parliament in 1376 finally set its sights on Alice, intent on dismissing her from court, stripping away all her property and jewels, and even banishing her from the country, we are left with the impression that she deserved everything she got.

One thing that should be mentioned, however, is that in these years Edward suffered from increasing dementia. Perhaps it was Alice’s duty, as she saw it, to save the King from humiliation in the sight of his subjects. She created a façade to protect him. There is no evidence that she had any influence on the direction of royal policy during these years.

7) So What and Who is the Real Alice Perrers?

Alice was neither bad nor good. Certainly she was no angel. She was opportunistic and seized every opportunity that came her way to feather her nest against the bad times. But Alice was a realist. She was a survivor. She was aware, first and foremost, that when Edward died, she would be alone and vulnerable to attack. She must prepare for an uncertain future, both for herself and her four children. And this is what she did, acquiring land as a very permanent form of wealth. Perhaps this explains Alice’s less-than-wise clandestine marriage to William de Windsor. When Edward was sinking into dementia, as he was in 1373, she saw in Windsor some security for her future.

Alice was smart and clever and a formidable opponent. Intelligent and ruthless, she set out to make her way in life, and much of what she did would have been forgiven if she had been a man. If a man had acquired her wealth and standing with the King, he would have been entitled to high praise and an earldom, a degree of respect if not outright popularity. Alice, as a woman, was condemned as a mercenary and immoral swindler.

Alice struggled constantly against her lack of connection, making her way in the world in one of the few ways open to women without family or influence. I believe that she deserves some admiration for her strength of character under adversity. She was even accused of witchcraft in her seduction of the King—always a useful weapon to use against a powerful woman.

We never hear Alice’s voice raised in her own defence. I hope in some small way in
The King’s Concubine
I have given her back her voice and a measure of respect.

Edw
ard, 2nd Duke of York

by Brian Wainwright

E
dward was born sometime in 1373, the eldest child of Edmund of Langley, Earl of Cambridge, fourth surviving son of King Edward III, and his wife Isabella of Castile. Edmund was by some way the least rich of his brothers, of whom he was the only one
not
to marry an heiress.

Isabella was the younger sister of Constance of Castile, who had married Edmund’s brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, as his second wife. Constance claimed to be the rightful heiress to the throne of Castile, a claim which her husband was to pursue, unsuccessfully, over the next few years.

Edmund and Isabella were merely pawns in this game and were in fact required to renounce any rights in Castile. It was a very poor deal for the Earl of Cambridge, but he seems to have been an amiable cove without the excessive and distasteful ambition of most of his family.

Edmund and Isabella’s son Edward is sometimes known to historians as “Edward of Norwich” although there is no evidence he was born there or had any connection with it. As his father was created Duke of York in 1385, it is more appropriate to refer to him as Edward of York. He was knighted at the coronation of his first cousin, King Richard II, when only four years old.

It was not long before young Edward became involved in English diplomatic manoeuvres. In 1381, he was taken by his parents to Portugal, Edmund having been placed at the head of an English expeditionary force which was intended, with the aid of Portuguese allies, to attack Castile. Edward was “married” to the Princess Beatriz of Portugal, and if his father had not made such a mess of the expedition Edward might eventually have become King of Portugal, because Beatriz was her father’s heiress.

Instead, with Edmund’s army in a state of near-mutiny, her father had second thoughts and married her to the son of his enemy, the King of Castile. He also paid to send Edmund of Langley, his wife, son, and attendant unruly army back home.

Back in England, the York family was to receive increasing favour from Richard II, not least because they were loyal to a fault and gave him far less trouble than his other relatives. Edward was created a Knight of the Garter in 1387 (just when Richard was starting to have serious political difficulties) and was then made Earl of Rutland in 1390 (once Richard was back in full control of his affairs).

By late 1391 he was also Lord Admiral of England, one of the great offices of state, despite the fact that he was not yet of full age. As the 1390s progressed, Edward of York gradually acquired more offices and more gifts of land, and despite his relative youth was clearly one of Richard II’s most favoured advisers, being chosen to represent the King on a number of key diplomatic missions abroad, including those to negotiate Richard’s marriage to the (very) young French princess Isabella of Valois. He accompanied the King on the successful military expedition to Ireland in 1394, and enjoyed an independent command during operations against Richard’s Irish enemies.