Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (13 page)

‘Quo audiens, Populus universus, unanimo, manus extendetes, clamabat, Fiat! Fiat!’ – ‘On hearing which all the people, unanimously, hands extended, cried “Let it be! Let it be!” ’

The reaction of Parliament, January 1327, to
Archbishop Reynold’s declaration that
Edward be deposed

I
sabella’s and Mortimer’s loathing for Hugh de Spencer the Younger was given full vent in his gruesome death. The fallen royal favourite had no illusions about what was in store and tried to starve himself to death.
¹
Exhausted by his sudden collapse from power, flight across England and wandering through Wales, de Spencer was already in poor shape. The Queen would have liked to have taken him back to London and displayed him before the mob, but did not want to risk him dying on the way, either from sheer weakness or by committing suicide. De Spencer’s son-in-law, the Earl of Arundel, had already faced summary execution at Hereford and the same city was therefore chosen for the public humiliation and execution of Hugh.
First, he faced a military tribunal composed of Lancaster, Mortimer and other lords: a list of charges were read out, encompassing all his crimes since 1321. His treatment of Isabella figured high in these. He was blamed for the collapse of the Queen’s marriage, coming between man and wife, of humiliating Isabella, seizing her estates and wealth and bribing the French court against her.
²

De Spencer, like his father, was not given a chance to reply and he was too feeble to protest. He was found guilty and taken to the gates of Hereford. There he was dragged from his horse, his clothing stripped off him and the surcoat bearing his arms reversed. A crown of nettles was fashioned and forced on his head. His enemies drew knives and scratched into his bare skin verses from the scriptures denouncing his evil arrogance. He was then forced back on his horse and led into the city to the bray of trumpets and the mocking tunes of a bagpipe. The mob were allowed to have their way. Everything at hand was hurled at both him and his marshal, Simon of Reading, who was forced to walk in front carrying de Spencer’s disgraced, polluted standard. The fallen favourite was suffering so much that, according to one chronicle, such a horrid sound came from him as had never been heard before. Judgement was again pronounced. De Spencer was dragged off his horse, tied to a sled pulled by four horses, and taken into the town square to be hanged on a specially erected gallows fifty feet high. Still conscious, he was cut down, his body sliced open, his intestines plucked out and burnt before his eyes before decapitation put an end to his pain. Simon of Reading, his marshal and principal henchman, was despatched on a smaller gallows next to him. The entire proceedings were watched by the Queen, Mortimer and others, who feasted and celebrated. De Spencer’s head was sent for display in
London, the quarters of his corpse to different cities of the realm.
³

For the rest of de Spencer’s supporters Isabella and Mortimer acted with restraint. There was no witch-hunt, no general purge. Many were pardoned and the clerks, the civil service, who had been so close to Edward, de Spencer and leading ministers like Stapleton, were allowed to continue in office. But Edward and de Spencer’s households at Westminster and the Tower of London were ransacked and
£
8000, an incredible sum at that time, was seized, with Isabella and Mortimer acquiring the lion’s share.
⁴

Supporters were rewarded, lands restored, prisons opened and some form of compensation was paid to the victims of the de Spencer reign of terror. Isabella and Mortimer now faced one serious problem. Nobody would mourn de Spencer but the imprisoned King was a different matter. He was the Lord’s anointed, their tenant-in-chief. Medieval lawyers could draw a distinction between the Crown and its wearer but how could the two be separated? Edward of Caernarvon was King by primogeniture and God’s grace; he was the ‘Christus’, the Anointed One. In the eyes of medieval man, the coronation ceremony was very similar to a marriage and ‘what God has joined together no man should put asunder’. And, of course, there was the more sensitive problem of Isabella’s adultery. She may have been much suspected but nothing was ever proved. Now that de Spencer had been removed, surely the King could reign once again and the Queen rejoin her husband?

Meanwhile Edward II was being held in honourable custody by his cousin Henry of Lancaster. He had reigned for almost twenty years, he’d shown himself to be feckless, but he had also shown that he never forgot. If released, he would
eat humble pie, bow and beg, accept any conditions. Nevertheless, time would pass and Edward, once again, would plot revenge. He was only forty-five years of age; his father had lived to be sixty-eight. New favourites might emerge?

Isabella had murder in her heart. De Spencer had been killed. Why couldn’t Edward die as well? Like de Spencer, he, too, had committed hideous crimes and brought the kingdom to its knees. She had to move quickly. Already the flush of victory was fading, secret sympathizers of Edward were emerging while Isabella was having to face the hard grind of government. Robert the Bruce had been held back by a secret agreement between himself and Isabella,
⁵
but there were other, equally urgent problems. London had risen in rebellion. De Spencer’s agents were being taken and beheaded in the streets. Bands of rifflers, robber gangs, roamed the city pillaging churches, attacking the Italian bankers, mobbing any official of Edward II who dared to show his face. The unrest had spread to the countryside. Lambeth was attacked. Rochester lurched under mob rule. Merchants fled and commercial life collapsed as farmers refused to bring produce into the markets.
⁶

Edward II had first been taken to Monmouth where he handed over the Great Seal to his cousin Henry of Lancaster. By 23 November the Seal was with Isabella,
⁷
and she began to issue writs, sometimes in her husband’s name, sometimes ‘by the King on the information of the Queen’, ‘by the Council’, ‘by the Queen and the King’s first born son’.
⁸
Isabella was intent on keeping government in her hands. She personally supervised the Great Seal, kept the Hainault mercenaries in her household and did not allow her fifteen-year-old son out of her sight. She tried to bring London back to the King’s peace. But the
Londoners, now holding her second son, John of Eltham, refused to co-operate. When she tried to assist a German merchant, Hildebrand, they rudely retorted that no enemy of London could be a friend of the Queen and she was to mind her own business.
⁹

Isabella resolved to act. A small force of Hainaulters secretly entered the capital and seized the Tower.
¹⁰
Castles around London were given to trusted servants of the Queen and, by supporting her own nominee as Mayor, Isabella was able to take control of the situation.
¹¹
Next she travelled to Wallingford via Gloucester, Lichfield and Witney. A great council was held there during Christmas 1326 to discuss what steps to take next. Isabella and Mortimer showed their hand: there were calls for the King’s execution, prompted by Isabella, but these were not taken up. Henry of Lancaster, the King’s cousin, would never have accepted this; his treatment of Edward had always been honourable. The bishops, too, would have balked at such an outcome. Nevertheless, for a while the argument was maintained: Edward should stand trial and face the full penalty for his crimes. The council became divided on the issue, but the decisive voice was that of the mercenary leader, John of Hainault. He argued that Edward was an anointed king: he could not be harmed and they had no right to try him. The council eventually came down on his side. Edward would be constitutionally deposed and confined to a castle for the rest of his natural life. Isabella had, at least, won half a victory.
¹²

Parliament was summoned at Westminister for January 1327 to depose Edward II and make way for his elder son.
¹³
The entire proceedings were pure pantomime. A deputation was sent to Edward at Kenilworth, inviting him
to attend the Parliament and face the charges against him. According to chronicle sources, the delegation, led by two bishops, received a savage rebuff from Edward. He called them traitors and said he would have nothing to do with the proceedings. It is doubtful whether Edward said anything of the sort. The two bishops who led the delegation – Orleton of Hereford and Stratford of Winchester – were firmly in the Queen’s camp. Edward may have personally reviled them but he would have loved an opportunity to speak in public at Westminster, attack his Queen and take her to task for her failings. Of course, his enemies never intended the imprisoned King to be given a public forum at Westminster. Once again, Edward was depicted as being recalcitrant and unwilling to co-operate, so at this point Mortimer emerged from the shadows. He declared that the King should be deposed in his absence.

The play-acting continued, with the parliamentary proceedings, punctuated by speeches from Isabella’s bishops, Orleton of Hereford and Stratford of Winchester. The chronicler Swynbroke dismissed these two worthies as ‘Alumpni Jezebele’ and ‘Baal Sacerdotes’, ‘the assistants of Jezebel’, ‘the Priests of Baal’. Isabella herself is described as a ‘
virago ferrea
’, ‘an iron virago’. Orleton certainly protected the Queen’s interests, loudly proclaiming how Edward of Caernarvon was too dangerous for the Queen to live with. According to Orleton, the imprisoned King carried a knife in his hose to kill the Queen and, if he was disarmed, he would slay her with his teeth. Orleton’s comment that Isabella could not rejoin her husband, was a pointed reminder to those bishops who were beginning to murmur about the sanctity of marriage vows, as well as those amongst the victorious magnates who argued that
the Queen had done her duty and should now withdraw. Of course, once she was gone, Mortimer’s power would be weakened.
¹⁴

Orleton finally asked Parliament to consider whether Edward should be deposed or not. The hapless Archbishop Reynolds, who had made his peace with the Queen, put forward the Articles of Deposition against Edward II: incompetence, relying on bad counsel, destroying the Church and many noble families, defeat abroad, breaking his Coronation Oath, dissipating the realm’s treasure and being totally unwilling to change his ways.

Prince Edward, now almost fifteen years of age, was then led into Westminster Hall. The people were asked to choose between father and son: with one voice, the people cried they would choose the son. Isabella played her part to perfection: dressed in black, a sorrowful countenance, ‘La Grande Dame du Douleur’, torn between grief at her husband’s deposition but bravely smiling through the tears at her son’s accession.
¹⁵
Archbishop Reynolds then delivered another sermon, ‘
Vox Populi, Vox Dei
’, and Stratford followed with a discourse on what happens to a kingdom ‘When its head was sick’. Orleton concluded this marvellous piece of theatre by choosing the theme, ‘Woe to the kingdom whose king is a child’. A nice touch. No one was sure whether he was speaking about Edward the father or Edward the son but it was a timely reminder that the young king would need the protection and guidance of a royal council, in which Mother, as well as ‘Uncle Roger’, would play a prominent part. The young prince was then proclaimed to cries of ‘
Ave Rex
!’ followed by the hymn, ‘Gloria, Honor, Laus . . .’

A second delegation was then sent to Edward at
Kenilworth. Again, the King supposedly refused to have anything to do with it, cursing them as traitors. Isabella was in a quandary. She didn’t want the King coming to Parliament but, at the same time, she needed his co-operation. Secret messages were sent to Kenilworth, this time with a different slant. The deposition would go ahead but, if Edward didn’t co-operate, there was a possibility Parliament would choose a king from another family. This may have been an empty threat or even an allusion to Parliament choosing Mortimer. If that had happened the kingdom would have slipped into civil war. Henry, Earl of Lancaster, not to mention Edward II’s half-brothers, had legitimate claims to the throne. Nevertheless, Mortimer placed great emphasis on his supposed descent from the legendary British King Brutus. He was steeped in the Arthurian legends and possibly saw himself as founding a new dynasty.

Edward II’s resistance was broken and he decided, or was forced, to concede. A formal delegation, with the Lancastrian knight William Trussel as their spokesman, was despatched to Kenilworth. Edward met them in the audience chamber clothed from head to toe in black. He was weak, almost swooning with grief, but reluctantly abdicated in favour of his son. On 21 January, Trussel, on behalf of the whole kingdom, read out the renunciation of homage. Sir Thomas Blunt, Edward II’s steward, broke his staff of office to show the royal household was dissolved and Edward was then led away. The abdication was proclaimed on 29 January and the young King was crowned at the beginning of February 1327.

At the coronation Isabella was still playing the role of a stricken queen. The historian Walsingham talks of her
face and posture being that of ‘A woman of sorrow’, but adds that it was a great pretence.
¹⁶
Indeed, Isabella must have been delighted. De Spencer was gone, Edward II was deposed, her young son was King, while she controlled both him and the council. She was with Mortimer and had a cast-iron excuse not to go back to Edward.

Isabella busied herself acquiring lands and treasure. The allegation of one chronicler that she eventually owned almost two-thirds of England is exaggerated, but she became a byword for rapacity, especially amongst the de Spencer family. They later informed the garrulous chronicler, Froissart, that ‘Isabella had been an evil queen and took everything from them’.
¹⁷
Between 1 December 1326 and 13 January 1327, Isabella received cash grants of almost
£
32,000. The great alliance she and Mortimer had formed with the other barons began to fall apart in the face of such greed. Moreover, sympathy was growing for her deposed husband, as became apparent at a council meeting at Stamford on 16 April 1327. According to rumours, Edward regretted his former reluctance and pitifully demanded to see his wife and children again.
¹⁸
The deposed King was now spending his time making heartrending pleas and engaged in writing doleful poetry: