Edward II: The Unconventional King (14 page)

Edward’s nephew the earl of Gloucester offered to mediate between the two sides. He told the king that the earls who had killed Gaveston were not, as Edward believed, his enemies, but rather his friends, and that everything they did was for Edward’s own benefit. Edward, not surprisingly, was having none of it. He told his nephew,

I protest that they are not my friends who strive to attack my property and my rights. If I may use my royal prerogative as other kings do, may I not recall to my peace by the royal power a man exiled for any reason whatsoever? Of this right they deprived me by their own authority, for the man to whom I had granted peace, they cruelly put to death … Since they have seized my goods and killed my men, it is very likely that they do not wish to have any consideration for me, but to seize the crown and set up for themselves another king.
⁸²

Gloucester took himself off to Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford, who listened to Edward’s complaints and announced that they had merely ‘ordered to be killed a certain exiled traitor who lurked in the land’.
⁸³
This was not an argument calculated to appeal to Edward. War did not break out, partly because Edward couldn’t afford to fight one, but mainly because, revenge notwithstanding, he didn’t need to, as his position had been strengthened by the earls’ violent act. Tortuous negotiations between the king and Gaveston’s killers dragged on for many months. Although eventually willing to come to terms with the earls – in public, at least – Edward dug his heels in again and said, ‘Let the barons seek whatever they think may justly be sought; I will bow to their judgement in all things, but I will by no means charge Piers with treason.’
⁸⁴

Finally, shortly before Christmas 1312, Edward and the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford signed a peace treaty. The earls were to make obeisance to Edward in the great hall of Westminster Palace ‘with great humility, on their knees’, and would ‘humbly beg him to release them from his resentment and rancour, and receive them into his good will’. The goods Lancaster had seized at Tynemouth were to be restored to the king on 13 January.
⁸⁵
For some reason, Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, is not named in the treaty, although he was certainly present at Gaveston’s death. Neither is he mentioned in the numerous pardons granted the following year. Why Edward didn’t feel the need to pardon Arundel for his role in Gaveston’s death is not clear, but perhaps because Arundel tried to help Gaveston, or spoke out for him – or at least, persuaded Edward that he did. Arundel’s subsequent career trajectory is surprising: he became one of Edward’s most loyal allies.

At the end of July 1312, Edward sent an escort to Yorkshire for Queen Isabella, judging that the situation was calm enough for her to return south. He spent the first three weeks of August in Dover and Canterbury, where he gave three shillings to John of Lombardy for ‘making his minstrelsy with snakes before the king’, and met Isabella, who had travelled south very slowly because of her pregnancy, on 9 September.
⁸⁶
The king and queen were reunited for the first time since the end of June, and in the middle of September retired to Windsor Castle, where they would remain together for most of the following eight months. The dowager queen Marguerite, Edward’s stepmother and Isabella’s aunt, joined them there, with her brother Louis, count of Evreux.

Edward spent a few days in the park of Windsor on several occasions, perhaps digging a ditch or building a wall, using hard physical exercise as a way of soothing his grief, and gave two pounds to the earl of Pembroke’s Welsh minstrel Coghin, who entertained him – and presumably the heavily pregnant queen – on 12 October.
⁸⁷
On 20 October, he granted Isabella authority to make her will; married women needed their husbands’ permission for this, and it was a common thing to do while in an age when pregnancy and childbirth were so risky.
⁸⁸
While at Windsor, Edward probably received the news that his brother-in-law Duke John II of Brabant had died in Brussels on 27 October, at the age of only thirty-seven, and that Edward’s twelve-year-old nephew had succeeded as John III.

On the feast day of St Brice, Monday 13 November 1312, Queen Isabella, who was now seventeen or almost, gave birth to a healthy son, the future King Edward III. Edward’s joy at the birth of his heir went some way to assuaging his terrible grief over Piers Gaveston, and he gave his son his title of earl of Chester within days of his birth, and showered him with gifts and lands.
⁸⁹
In December, Edward granted the enormous sum of eighty pounds annually to Isabella’s steward John Launge and his wife Joan for bringing him news of the birth (though he was also at Windsor at the time), which gave them a higher income than some knights.
⁹⁰
By the time he was a few weeks old, Edward of Windsor had his own household of many dozens of people, and Edward and Isabella visited him occasionally. The
Vita
expressed a wish that the boy would grow up to ‘remind us of the physical strength and comeliness of his father’; evidently, Edward II’s good looks and impressive physique were the only positive attributes the author could think of to describe him.
⁹¹
The baby had seven godfathers, one of whom was his father’s friend Hugh Despenser the Elder. Less than fourteen years later, little Edward would see this godfather hanged in his armour and his body fed to dogs, at his mother’s instigation. To Edward II, the birth of a son and heir represented an enormous public relations coup, as it meant that God was favouring him and not his baronial enemies.
⁹²
A healthy son and heir was seen as a blessing from God, bestowed on the king and his kingdom. Edward’s subjects, especially in London, celebrated the news of the birth with immense joy and enthusiasm, dancing in the streets and drinking huge amounts of free wine for an entire week.
⁹³

Edward spent almost £1,250 on cloth for himself, his wife and son and their retainers in order for the royal family to look as splendid as possible during the festive season at Windsor.
⁹⁴
On 19 December, he sent a palfrey horse worth six pounds and a saddle ‘with a lion of pearls, and covered with purple cloth’ worth five pounds to Nichola, wife of Piers Lubaud, the Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow.
⁹⁵
Why Nichola was singled out for this honour is not clear, although it is probable that Lubaud was a cousin of Piers Gaveston.
⁹⁶
The king, queen and their son travelled to Westminster in late January 1313 to enjoy pageants and other celebrations put on for them, most notably by the Fishmongers’ Guild, then Edward returned to Windsor while Isabella went on pilgrimage to Canterbury to give thanks for the safe birth of her son.
⁹⁷
She joined her husband at the beginning of March, and she and Edward spent most of March and April together at Windsor. On 27 April 1313, Edward finally ordered the release of Isabel MacDuff, countess of Buchan, from her prison at Berwick-on-Tweed.
⁹⁸
Some years earlier he had freed Robert Bruce’s sister Mary from the cage where his father Edward I had had her imprisoned at Roxburgh Castle; records are missing for Isabel, and one can only hope that the unfortunate lady hadn’t spent six whole years incarcerated in inhuman conditions.

Edward finally received his and Gaveston’s possessions, which Lancaster had seized at Tynemouth the previous May, on 23 February 1313, six weeks late. They included presents from his sisters; a gold crown encrusted with jewels, worth 100 marks; a crystal goblet; silver plates for fruit; a belt decorated with ivory, notched with a purse hanging down from it, ‘with a Saracen face’; a gold buckle with emeralds, rubies, sapphires and pearls, a gift to Edward from the queen of Germany; a silver ship with four gold oars, enamelled on the sides; a gold dragon with enamelled wings; silver forks for eating pears; and many hundreds of other splendid and costly things.
⁹⁹

The king and queen spent almost two months in France between May and July 1313, to attend the simultaneous knighting of Isabella’s three brothers, and for Edward to engage in the usual endless discussions with Philip IV regarding his duchy of Gascony. Two days before his departure, Edward sent letters to four men: his correspondent of 1307, Oljeitu of the Ilkhanate; Davit VIII, king of Georgia; Alexios II, emperor of the Trebizond – a successor state of the Byzantine Empire, on the shores of the Black Sea in modern-day Turkey – and Renzong, emperor of Cathay (China). He asked them to give all possible aid to a Franciscan named Guillerinus de Villanova, travelling to preach the word of Christ to the infidels, as Edward named them.
¹⁰⁰
Edward’s information was somewhat out of date; King Davit had died two years earlier and been succeeded by his son, Giorgi. Whether Edward’s messengers managed to reach these far-flung places, and to return to England safely, is not recorded. Edward also told the constable of Dover Castle that he was sending six ‘Saracens’ to him, and ordered Kendale to pay them sixpence a day each until his return from overseas.
¹⁰¹
Mysteriously, a Gascon called Richard de Neueby, ‘who says he is the king’s brother’, received a large payment of thirteen pounds from Edward at the same time.
¹⁰²
Perhaps Neueby – an odd name for a Gascon – was an illegitimate son of Edward I, though he is never heard of again. The
Vita
remarks at this time, ‘Our King Edward has now reigned six full years and has till now achieved nothing praiseworthy or memorable,’ a nicely laconic way of summing up the endless crises of Edward’s reign.

Edward, Isabella and their large retinues departed from Dover at sunrise on 23 May 1313, having left his nephew Gloucester as regent.
¹⁰³
Edward was keen to present himself well in France, and spent the astonishing sum of £1,000 on his clothes and jewels. The king and queen passed through Amiens on 28 May, when Edward gave seven pounds and three shillings to his minstrel Jakeminus de Mokenon for his performance, and entered Paris five days later, where ‘the whole city rose up and went forth to meet them’.
¹⁰⁴
The knighting of Isabella’s brothers took place on 3 June, and Edward belted his eldest brother-in-law Louis, king of Navarre with the belt of knighthood. The two men and Philip IV then knighted about 200 others, including Isabella’s two other brothers Philip and Charles and their cousin Philip de Valois: all of them future kings of France. At noon on Tuesday 5 June, Edward hosted a splendid banquet at St-Germain-des-Prés, which was held in tents open to public view and hung with rich cloths. Torches, candles and lamps burned even in the middle of the day, attendants on horseback served the guests, and Louis of Navarre’s armourer created a ‘castle of love’ as the main attraction.
¹⁰⁵
Edward suffered the embarrassment of missing a meeting with Philip IV two days later, as he and Isabella had overslept. The amused commentator Geoffrey or Godefroy of Paris gave their night-time dalliance as the reason, adding that it was hardly a wonder if Edward desired his wife, as Isabella was ‘the fairest of the fair’ and ‘splendid of body’.
¹⁰⁶
Edward’s appearance as described by numerous fourteenth-century chroniclers – tall, handsome, elegant and enormously strong – makes it seem plausible that the queen also felt physical desire for him. The king stirred himself sufficiently that day to watch a large crowd of Parisians parade from the Île Notre-Dame to the Louvre, from the windows of Philip’s apartments. He and Isabella, surrounded by a throng of ladies and damsels, saw the procession again later from a tower in their lodgings at St-Germain.
¹⁰⁷
Geoffrey of Paris in his rhyming chronicle spelt Edward’s name as Oudouart and Isabella’s as Ysabiau and Ysabelot, which sound like affectionate nicknames for her, perhaps used by her family and her husband.

On the first anniversary of Piers Gaveston’s death, 19 June 1313, Edward was at Pontoise, where Bernard the Fool and no fewer than fifty-four naked dancers performed for him; one hopes that all the nude flesh on display went some way to consoling him. He gave the dancers two pounds.
¹⁰⁸
At Pontoise sometime after 11 June, a fire broke out in Edward and Isabella’s pavilion during the night, and he gathered up the queen in his arms and rushed outside with her, even though they were ‘completely naked’ (
toute nue
). In doing so, he probably saved her life, although her arm was badly burnt and the couple lost many of their possessions. This was at least the second time that Edward had escaped from a fire: in April 1306, he gave ten shillings each to the watchmen who roused him from his bed and evacuated his household as flames swept through Windsor Castle.
¹⁰⁹
Geoffrey of Paris, an eyewitness to Edward and Isabella’s visit to France, says that Edward was keen to save his queen above all else ‘because he loved her with fine love’.
¹¹⁰
Geoffrey evidently did not see Isabella as the victim of an uncaring, neglectful husband, and his testimony demonstrates that the couple were on close and intimate terms during the visit. Although we have little evidence of the state of their relationship at other times (as no one recorded it), there is no reason to suppose that the obvious pleasure they took in each other’s company at this time was unusual.

The king had the pleasure of meeting Guillerinus de Villanova, the friar travelling east to convert ‘infidels’ on whose behalf Edward had sent letters a few weeks before, and gave him ‘handsome presents’, also giving twenty-four florins to various friars of Paris and a pound as an offering at the shrine of the Crown of Thorns at Sainte-Chapelle. On his departure, Philip IV presented him with a gift of four horses and armour.
¹¹¹
The king and queen passed through the town of Hesdin on their way back to Boulogne and visited Mahaut, countess of Artois, whose daughters Joan and Blanche were married to Isabella’s brothers Philip and Charles.
¹¹²
Edward and Isabella arrived back at Dover on 15 July at vespers, or sunset, and spent most of August and September 1313 at Windsor. It is possible that Isabella conceived a child while they were there and suffered a miscarriage in November, as the chance survival of an apothecary’s account records two purchases of pennyroyal for her.
¹¹³
The traditional medicinal use of pennyroyal is to increase uterine contractions and menstrual flow, and it was used after miscarriages to clear the womb of any infection.