Edward II: The Unconventional King (42 page)

On 20 October at Chepstow, Edward replaced Hugh Despenser’s sister Aline Burnell as custodian of Conwy Castle with Sir William Erkalewe, presumably because he felt he needed an experienced military man in charge of such an important stronghold. He sent men named Roger and Richard Flete ‘to diverse parts of the realm on his affairs’ the same day, to what end is unclear.
³³
Also on that day, the king, Despenser, Despenser’s confessor Richard Bliton and the chancellor of England Robert Baldock – and possibly the earl of Arundel – set sail from Chepstow, probably heading for Lundy Island (which had been in Despenser’s possession since 1321) in the Bristol Channel and ultimately, probably Ireland, where Edward may have hoped to find allies and perhaps even raise an army to launch a counter-invasion.
³⁴
The Lanercost chronicler expressed his alarm that if Edward had reached Ireland he might have sailed from there to Scotland and attacked England with the help of the Irish and Scots.
³⁵
Despite Bliton praying to Saint Anne ‘that she would send us a good wind’, however, the boat went nowhere, and on 25 October they were forced to put in at Cardiff.
³⁶
Jean Froissart, unreliable as ever, claims that the weight of their sins kept them at sea for eleven days.
³⁷
The king’s attempted flight by sea meant that his enemies could claim he had abandoned his kingdom, and so they appointed his son Edward of Windsor as regent in his place on 26 October.
³⁸
The memorandum on the Close Roll names the bishops and magnates then at Bristol with the queen. As well as those mentioned above, they included the archbishop of Dublin; Henry Beaumont, whom Edward had imprisoned earlier that year; William la Zouche of Ashby, who had fought for the king at Boroughbridge in 1322; and perhaps most painfully for Edward, Robert Wateville, to whom he had shown considerable kindness and generosity in 1325/26.
³⁹

Shortly before he sailed from Chepstow, on 18 October, the king paid a messenger for bringing him letters from Hugh Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester.
⁴⁰
The earl had been left to defend Bristol, and the queen arrived there also on 18 October. The city fell on the 26th, and on the 27th Winchester was given a mock trial in front of William Trussell, a judge who had fled from England after Boroughbridge, in the presence of Roger Mortimer, the earls of Norfolk, Kent and Lancaster (as Henry of Lancaster, earl of Leicester, was now styled), Thomas Wake and the queen. Winchester, who was sixty-five – not ninety, as stated by Froissart – was given a mock trial deliberately arranged as a parody of Thomas of Lancaster’s in 1322, for which the Despensers alone were blamed.
⁴¹
The earl of Kent, watching the trial, had also been one of the men who sentenced Lancaster to death, though the hypocrisy of this went unremarked. Because Lancaster had been executed in 1322 without the right to defend himself, Winchester was also denied the right to speak. Lancaster had been forbidden the right to speak because he had forbidden Piers Gaveston the right to speak in 1312. To no one’s surprise, least of all Winchester’s, no doubt, he was sentenced to death and hanged immediately on the public gallows in his armour, in front of a jeering crowd. His body was cut down and fed to dogs, and his head carried to the town of Winchester on a spear to be displayed in public there.
⁴²
The Bridlington chronicler alone mourned his death, lamenting, ‘O sorrow!’ and describing Despenser as a great and powerful man.
⁴³
Edward II at Neath in South Wales had heard the news by 5 November, and one assumes that he mourned sincerely for the nobleman who had remained loyal to him from the very beginning of his reign, and who had perhaps been a father figure to him.
⁴⁴
A chronicle written at Bury St Edmunds Abbey – over 200 miles from Bristol – claims that Isabella pleaded for the earl’s life to be spared but Roger Mortimer and Henry of Lancaster overruled her, which seems unlikely. The Flemish chronicler Jean le Bel, an eyewitness to Despenser’s execution, does not mention that Isabella did this, and neither does any other source. Precisely how Isabella’s social inferiors would have dared to overrule her wishes in public is not clear. She had sworn that she would destroy the Despensers, and her subsequent actions against Hugh Despenser the Younger’s children hardly demonstrate that she was overflowing with forgiveness towards the family.

On the day of the earl of Winchester’s death, Edward and Hugh Despenser arrived at the latter’s stronghold of Caerphilly. They stayed there until 2 November then left, for reasons which are hard to explain, given that the castle could, and did, withstand a siege for many months. The numerous possessions Edward took with him, which must have required many carts to transport all the way from London, were later found and inventoried at Caerphilly. They included a red retiring-robe with saffron stripes and embroidered with bears; a black cap lined with red velvet and decorated with butterflies made of pearls; a white cap lined with green velvet and decorated with gold trefoils; eight cushions of purple velvet and red samite (a heavy silk); a counterpane and mattress of red sendal lined with green sendal; a canopy and curtains of red sendal to surround his bed; two silk curtains with gold stripes; and a sword, girdle and scabbard enamelled with the arms of Castile. Edward also took more practical items, including crossbows and numerous pieces of armour, and a great deal of plate, including three brass pots marked with the letter E, 279 silver saucers marked with a leopard, and other random items such as a chain for his greyhounds, a plectrum for a lyre, four small pennons embroidered with Edward’s arms to decorate trumpets, and items for his chapel, including a bag of incense. £14,000 in cash was found in twenty-seven barrels.
⁴⁵
Edward left Hugh Despenser’s knight John Felton in charge of Caerphilly Castle and made him swear on the Gospels not to deliver it to Isabella or to his son, an oath Felton kept; he and the dozens of other men within, who included Despenser’s teenage son Huchon, refused to surrender to the castle’s besiegers until the following March when Mortimer and Isabella finally agreed not to execute Huchon.
⁴⁶

Edward’s chamber journal was kept for the last time on 31 October, either because his clerks had abandoned him or because they had given up in despair.
⁴⁷
The final entry records wages to five carpenters and twenty-four chamber valets, including two women, Joan Traghs and Anneis de May, for the twenty days since 12 October.
⁴⁸
Some of the king’s chamber staff were among the garrison of Caerphilly Castle pardoned on 20 March 1327 for holding it against the queen, which implies that they remained there when Edward left on 2 November, perhaps at his command.
⁴⁹
Also on 31 October, Edward took the fealty of his nephew John de Bohun, eldest son of the earl of Hereford killed at Boroughbridge in 1322, and allowed him his lands, although John would not come of age (twenty-one) until 23 November 1327.
⁵⁰
John’s brother Edward, about fourteen, was also with the ‘baffled king’ as he ‘wandered houseless around Wales’, as
Lanercost
put it.
⁵¹
Desperately, Edward sent out orders for 400 footmen to be brought to Cardiff, ordered men to keep the ports along the South Wales coast safe against his enemies and even offered felons a pardon if they would come to Caerphilly Castle and defend it, but no one was listening anymore.
⁵²

Edward, Despenser and their remaining followers spent the period from 2 to 10 November at Margam Abbey and Neath. On the 10th, Edward appointed envoys to negotiate with Isabella: his nephew Edward de Bohun; the abbot of Neath; Rhys ap Gruffydd; and the royal squires Oliver de Bordeaux and John Harsik.
⁵³
Isabella, who held the upper hand and had no reason to negotiate, showed no interest, and indeed it is not certain if the envoys ever went. What Edward was hoping to achieve by leaving Caerphilly for Neath is unclear; by now he probably had no plans at all and was merely, hopelessly waiting for the inevitable. He had with him his Great Seal, £6,000 and some of the chancery rolls, which were later found at Neath and Swansea by Henry of Lancaster and taken to Isabella.
⁵⁴

Edward’s movements for the next few days are uncertain. He seems to have left Neath on 11 November and attempted to make his way back to the castle of Caerphilly, perhaps because he knew he was being pursued by a group of men sent by Isabella and Mortimer: Henry of Lancaster, William la Zouche, who would marry Despenser’s widow Eleanor in 1329, and two sons of the Welsh nobleman Llywelyn Bren, hideously executed by Despenser in 1318.
⁵⁵
On 16 November, the king and Despenser were captured near Llantrisant, in a place later known as the Vale of Treachery, with a small handful of followers. They were the chancellor Robert Baldock, the king’s controller Robert Holden, a sergeant-at-arms called Simon of Reading, knights named Thomas Wyther and John Bek, a valet named John le Blount and a clerk named John Smale.
⁵⁶
The
Annales Paulini
, dramatically, say they were captured in the middle of a terrific storm, and the author of the
Anonimalle
reveals his ignorance of Welsh geography by declaring that Edward was taken near Snowdon.
⁵⁷

Although Edward II remained king of England in name for another nine weeks, his influence ended at that moment. And so his reign staggered to an ignominious end with him wandering around Wales with a handful of followers. As the king, however, he was still treated with respect and deference, and his cousin Lancaster took him to his castle of Kenilworth (recently restored to him), via his castle at Monmouth. On 20 November, Edward was forced to give up his Great Seal to Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford. The memorandum on the Close Roll claims, implausibly, that Edward deliberated for a while then announced that ‘it pleased him to send his great seal to his consort and his son’, and thus it was carried to the queen and the duke of Aquitaine, who had turned fourteen on 13 November.
⁵⁸

On 16 November, Edward II saw Hugh Despenser for the last time, both of them knowing that the powerful chamberlain was going to his death. How Edward felt is a matter for speculation. Did he regret his dependence on Despenser, which had brought him to this? Did he blame Isabella for what he saw as her faithless betrayal, and refuse to acknowledge his own culpability? Whether he was upset, or furious, or denying reality, or vowing revenge, is unknown, and in a sense, it hardly matters. Events were now out of his control. Although most of the men who remained with the king were released, Robert Baldock the chancellor, who as a cleric could not be executed, was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. He was handed over to the not so tender mercies of Adam Orleton, who imprisoned him in his London house, which some months later was broken into by a mob. They dragged Baldock to the notorious Newgate prison, where the unfortunate man died soon afterwards in torment.
⁵⁹
Simon of Reading was sentenced to death and hanged on a vague accusation of insulting the queen – not in fact a capital offence – and without a trial.
⁶⁰
The reasons for this are mysterious; although Reading has been described in modern times as a close personal friend of Hugh Despenser, his knight or his marshal, he was merely a sergeant-at-arms in Edward II’s household.
⁶¹

In Hereford on the day after the king’s capture, Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, was executed. Arundel, now forty-one and present at Piers Gaveston’s death in 1312, had come over to the king and the Despensers’ cause when they were strong. Now he must have realised that he had backed the wrong horse, but to his credit, he remained loyal, a rare example of a former enemy of Edward II who changed sides and stayed at the king’s side. Arundel was captured by John Charlton, Edward’s chamberlain until replaced by Hugh Despenser in 1318, whom Edward had pardoned for allegiance to the Contrariants in 1322. According to Adam Murimuth, Roger Mortimer hated his cousin – Arundel’s grandmother was the elder sister of Mortimer’s father – with a ‘perfect hatred’, and Arundel’s death had far more to do with a private vendetta than with any kind of justice.
⁶²
The two had been on opposing sides in 1321/22, were long-term rivals for land and influence in Wales, and of course Arundel had been a staunch adherent of the king and Despenser and married his son and heir to Despenser’s daughter. These felonies sufficed to condemn him, and he was beheaded by a ‘worthless wretch’ who needed twenty-two strokes of the axe to sever the unfortunate earl’s head, perhaps because a blunt blade had been ordered.
Lanercost
says he ‘was condemned to death in secret, as it were’, and there is no evidence that he had a trial.
⁶³
Two other men, John Daniel and Robert de Micheldever, were beheaded with him, also without a trial.
⁶⁴
Daniel was the keeper of two of Mortimer’s manors and of one belonging to Mortimer’s mother, and had been appointed in March 1326 to search for men who had supported Mortimer as a Contrariant. Micheldever was a squire of Edward II’s chamber.
⁶⁵
It is unclear what either man had done to merit execution, and not only were they not given a trial, they were not even accused of any crime. The goods Arundel had stored at the cathedral church of Chichester were delivered to Isabella and Edward of Windsor four days after his death, and included £524 in six canvas sacks, a silver salt cellar ‘enamelled all over’, a silver-gilt enamelled cup with matching basin, and seven partly broken cups.
⁶⁶

Hugh Despenser, Robert Baldock and Simon of Reading were taken from Llantrisant to Hereford and subjected to every indignity possible. Despenser was tied to a mean horse, in the same way as Thomas of Lancaster had been in 1322, his coat of arms was reversed, and a ‘chaplet of sharp nettles’ was set on his head. Through all the villages they passed, the populace came out to shriek their joy at the downfall of the hated royal favourite, to blow trumpets and bang drums, and to throw things at him. Biblical verses were written or carved onto Despenser’s arms, shoulders and chest, including ‘Why do you boast in evil?’ from Psalm 52. Four years almost to the day later, the same verse would be read out to Roger Mortimer as he went to his own execution.
⁶⁷
There was much discussion as to where Despenser would be put on trial and executed, Isabella favouring London. Despenser, however, refused all food and drink so that ‘he was almost dead from fasting’, and so it was decided to judge him in Hereford on 24 November so he would not die by his own will and cheat the queen of her revenge.