Edward II: The Unconventional King (36 page)

It is often assumed, and stated as fact, that Isabella’s trip to France was the result of careful planning and manipulation, that she had behaved submissively to convince her husband and the Despensers that she was no political threat, while she secretly plotted with the English exiles and the bishops who had suffered at Edward’s hands to bring down the Despensers and perhaps even her husband. Although it is beyond all doubt that Isabella hated the Despensers, when she first decided to act against them cannot be known. She may well have decided to use her absence to impose conditions on Edward for her return, but it seems extremely unlikely that she knew as early as March 1325 that she would ultimately return at the head of an army with his deposition in mind. The
Vita
ends abruptly in late 1325 and is the only chronicle not written with the benefit of hindsight. The author said nothing about conspiracies cooked up between conniving bishops, ruthless exiles and disgruntled queens, and evidently it didn’t occur to him that Isabella might be plotting against her husband.
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Lanercost
claimed in the 1340s that Hugh Despenser ‘was exerting himself at the pope’s court to procure divorce between the king of England and the queen’ and to this end sent the Dominican friar Thomas Dunheved to the pope, and that this was the reason for Isabella’s willingness to ‘escape’ to France. The
Annales Paulini
repeat the rumour that Edward was trying to annul his marriage to Isabella.
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Although it is just possible that Edward was contemplating this course of action in 1326, when Isabella was holding their son hostage and planning an invasion of his country, it is unlikely in the extreme that he would have attempted to annul his marriage in 1324 or 1325, at a time when offending her brother the king of France would have been disastrous. No proof of the chroniclers’ statement has ever been discovered in the Vatican archives, and Dunheved’s mission to the pope in fact concerned, according to a letter of John XXII himself, Edward’s grievances against the archbishop of Dublin.
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As divorce in the modern sense was unknown, Edward could only have hoped to persuade the pope to grant an annulment, which would mean that their marriage had never been valid in the first place. Not only did Edward have no grounds for an annulment – the only possible reason would have been for consanguinity, for which they had received a dispensation – it would have made their children illegitimate, at a time when Edward was negotiating their marriages with the royal houses of Spain. Many rumours were flying around England in the final years of Edward’s reign, most of them untrue, such as the statements in various chronicles that Edward had it publicly proclaimed in 1326 that ‘the queen of England might not be called queen’ and that his wife and his son were his enemies.
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The royal clerk and chronicler Adam Murimuth, who visited the papal court in 1324 and was therefore in an excellent position to know what was happening, does not say anything about Edward trying to get an annulment as he surely would if there were any truth to the story, and when Thomas Dunheved wrote to Edward in 1325, he did not mention it.
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Ironically, given later developments, Edward was concerned that Roger Mortimer and the other English exiles on the Continent might hurt the queen in some way, and that ‘perils and dishonours’ might befall her.
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A few days before Isabella’s departure, Edward asked the Dominicans of Venice to pray for her, himself and their children.
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The queen and her retinue sailed from Dover – not a secret escape from Winchelsea, as invented by Jean Froissart – on 9 March 1325, and arrived at Wissant the same day.
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She travelled in great state: Edward gave her £1,000 for her immediate expenses and authority to withdraw more money from the Bardi in Paris as and when needed, and she received at least £3,674 from them.
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The king did not accompany his wife to Dover, but remained at the Tower of London; he had no way of knowing that he would never see her again. In letters of December 1325, Edward wrote that Isabella and Hugh Despenser had always behaved amicably towards each other in his presence and especially before Isabella’s departure, and talked of ‘the great friendships that she held to him [Despenser] upon her going beyond sea’. Edward also claimed that he had seen no evidence of Isabella’s dislike of Despenser, saying, ‘When she departed, towards no one was she more agreeable, myself excepted,’ which has sometimes been seen as proof of the queen’s brilliant deception of her husband and his favourite, but is just as likely to represent Edward’s capacity for self-deception.
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Isabella made her way to Paris, visiting relatives, including her brother Louis X’s widow Clemence of Hungary, and holy sites. If she was in touch with her husband’s enemies, or in love with Roger Mortimer and desperate to see him, there is not the slightest sign of it. She wrote to Edward on 31 March 1325, addressing him five times in the letter as ‘my very sweet heart’ (
mon tresdoutz coer
), informing him that she had met her brother Charles IV at Poissy and found him very difficult to deal with. Isabella ended by writing, ‘My very sweet heart, may the Holy Spirit by his grace save and keep you always.’
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Pope John XXII sent Charles IV a very strange letter a few weeks later, saying that Isabella had sent a messenger to him ‘about a story of a monk and an abbot and his nephews, which the king is not to believe’, which sounds more like the beginning of a joke than a papal letter.
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Edward spent most of April 1325, including his forty-first birthday, at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire, where his little half-sister Eleanor had been buried in 1311. He had, as late as 20 February, been intending to lead an army into Gascony on 17 March, but the campaign was cancelled.
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An army finally departed at the beginning of April 1325 under the command of the earls of Surrey and Atholl, having once more been delayed by contrary winds, to Edward’s anguish; the truce Kent had negotiated with Valois on 22 September 1324 only lasted for six months.
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The
Vita
criticises Edward for not paying his foot soldiers, who were perforce compelled to pillage the Gascon countryside for food, though one wonders how much they found, given that the clerk Nicholas Hugate told Hugh Despenser in December 1324 that ‘in this country, one will find nothing except wine’.
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Thomas le Blount, formerly an adherent of Edward’s cousin Henry of Lancaster, replaced Richard Damory as steward of the royal household on 14 May, and the king appointed his loyal friend William Melton, archbishop of York, as treasurer of England on 3 July, replacing Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter.
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Edward wrote a brusque letter to Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, saying he had heard that Reynolds, ‘wishing to disturb the archbishop of York’, had ordered his suffragans not to celebrate divine service in Melton’s presence or even communicate with him.
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The king seems now to have become profoundly irritated with Reynolds, formerly his close friend, and asked the pope once again on 28 May, unsuccessfully, to depose Adam Orleton from his bishopric of Hereford.
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The king dined with a barge-master called Adam Cogg several times in June 1325 – evidently he was as fond of the company of the lowborn as ever – and gave two shillings to a fisherman called Cock atte Wyk who presented him with a ‘great eel’ and other fish, and ten shillings to his chamber valet Robin Traghs, whose wife Joan had borne him a daughter.
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Edward opened parliament at Westminster on 27 June, departed for the Tower on 14 July, and spent the rest of that month and the first half of August in Essex, where he received letters from his niece Joan of Bar, countess of Surrey, in France with the queen.
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It was perhaps when Edward was staying at Portchester Castle in the early summer of 1325 that Hugh Despenser and his allies Robert Baldock and Robert Holden, respectively chancellor of England and controller of Edward’s wardrobe, imprisoned over thirty merchants at the castle for a week until they consented to buy a few dozen tuns of ‘rotten and putrid’ wine at many times its market value.
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Despenser, supremely rich, was able to make loans of £100 each to the abbots of Hailes, Leicester and Waltham, £400 to his father, 100 marks to his sister Isabel Hastings and 200 marks to the earl of Richmond.
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Edward gave Despenser a present of eighty-four mares in July 1325, sent to his South Wales castle of Chepstow.
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In France, Queen Isabella and her brother Charles IV drew up a draft peace treaty on 30 May and sent it to Edward. He ratified it on 13 June, ordering all his sheriffs to proclaim the news that England and France had made peace.
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Its terms were catastrophic for Edward, which was not Isabella’s fault, and it is unlikely that any other envoy could have thrashed out better ones. The date for performing homage was postponed until 29 August.
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If Edward failed to travel to Beauvais and perform homage, this would mean that Gascony would be forfeit to Charles IV, Edward would lose the duchy’s revenues and face enormous criticism; given his failures in Scotland and the accusations of losing that country, he simply could not afford to let Gascony go. Edward was reluctant to go to France, however, nervous at the thought of Roger Mortimer and the other exiles on the Continent and that they might kidnap or assassinate him. He was also afraid that he would be indicted in the French court for the death of Thomas of Lancaster, Charles IV’s uncle.
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And travelling to France presented Edward with another huge dilemma. He could not go with Hugh Despenser, as it was said that the favourite would be arrested and perhaps tortured if he set foot in France.
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Yet he could not leave Despenser behind either, surely remembering what had happened to Piers Gaveston in 1312 when he left him at Scarborough. Edward had backed himself into a corner: he could not go to France with Despenser, he could not go to France without Despenser, and he could not avoid paying homage. His only other choice was to send his son in his place, making Edward of Windsor duke of Aquitaine and count of Ponthieu and allowing him to perform homage to Charles IV instead. This alternative also had serious drawbacks. Edward would lose control of the lands and their income, and far more dangerously, the king was well aware that his enemies could capture young Edward, not to mention the more general risks of sending his heir to a hostile country. The king’s grandfather Henry III had in 1253 been equally reluctant to send his fourteen-year-old son, Edward II’s father, to Castile, in case Alfonso X took him as a hostage.
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Edward’s indecisiveness as to the correct course of action is painfully apparent. At first he resolved to go himself, without Despenser: the pope had heard by the end of June 1325 that Edward was ready to go to France, and he had started making preparations to depart by 20 July.
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He told Robert Kendale, constable of Dover Castle, that he would go to France around the Assumption, 15 August, and ordered Kendale to provide as many ships as necessary for himself and the magnates accompanying him (the ship which would carry him personally was
La Jonete
of Winchelsea).
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On 21 August, Edward began issuing letters of protection for his retinue, asking the Dominicans of Lincoln on the same day for their prayers on behalf of himself, Isabella and their children.
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He received over £3,515 in French gold florins and silver plate worth £1,768 from his Italian bankers the Bardi, for his expenses and for gifts at the French court.
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Edward changed his mind on 24 August and told Charles IV that he would not be able to travel to France as he had suddenly been taken ill, which was almost certainly feigned, given that Edward, healthy, strong and fit, rarely suffered a day’s illness in his life.
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Six days later, the day after he should have performed homage at Beauvais, Edward changed his mind again and appointed his son, who was still only twelve – he would turn thirteen on 13 November – regent of England during his absence overseas.
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On 1 September, Edward informed the bishop of Durham that he was ‘shortly going to France’.
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The very next day, however, Edward changed his mind yet again and appointed his son count of Ponthieu prior to sending him to pay homage, though evidently he was still unsure as to whether he was doing the right thing and continued issuing letters of protection for his own retinue to accompany him to France on 3 and 4 September. He waited until 10 September before making his son duke of Aquitaine.
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Charles IV wrote to Edward on 4 September declaring that sending Edward of Windsor instead would be acceptable to him, but as Edward had known that since the beginning of 1325, it is debatable whether the letter affected his decision, and besides, he had already made his son count of Ponthieu by the time he received the letter.
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The king spent the second half of August and early September hovering in Kent, staying at the archbishop of Canterbury’s manor of Sturry, at Dover Castle and with his close friend William the abbot of Langdon, while he debated what he should do. According to Adam Murimuth, Edward and his councillors continued to discuss while at Langdon – the king was there from 24 August to 3 September, with, among many others, Murimuth himself – whether he should travel overseas.
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Possibly they continued the discussions during the meal they ate in the abbey garden on 30 August, when Edward, the Despensers, the earl of Arundel, the chancellor Robert Baldock and others dined on large quantities of fish and seafood including sole, crabs, whiting, codling, sea bass, mullets, bream and salted herring. Edward did his best to relax: he spent two pence playing dice, gave twenty shillings to twenty-two local men who played a ball game for his entertainment, and paid twelve pence to ‘three small children, brothers’ who sang for him in his garden. He also gave twenty shillings in compensation to a Thames fisherman named Colle Herron, whose goods had been burned, presumably in an accident, ‘when he was with the king the last time he was in Hadleigh’ in Essex. The king still enjoyed spending time with his lowborn subjects, and gave seven shillings to four Thames fishermen who spent time with him and four shillings and sixpence to a group of carpenters who travelled with him from 16 to 21 August.
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