The Traitor's Wife (102 page)

Nicholas de Litlyngton has been identified by historians, notably Barbara Harvey and Chris Given-Wilson, as likely being an illegitimate member of the Despenser family, and he certainly used a differenced version of the Despenser arms. He called his parents “Hugh and Joan,” leading Given-Wilson to suggest that he was a son of Hugh le Despenser the younger. There seemed no good reason to me why he could not instead be a son of Hugh le Despenser the elder, Hugh the younger being more than busy elsewhere.

Allegations of a sexual relationship between Edward II and Eleanor le Despenser are contained in a contemporary Hainaulter chronicle and have been given some credence by Roy Martin Haines, Edward II's recent scholarly biographer. Whether there is truth to them is unknown, and probably unknowable, but records indicate that Eleanor's relationship with the king, whatever its nature, was a close one that predated Edward's relationship with Eleanor's husband. Novelists have often discovered their characters taking on minds of their own as their work progresses; in this case, I left the decision whether to bed together to the king and Eleanor, who finally found it impossible to resist temptation.

Most historians believe that the relationships of Edward II with Piers Gaveston and Hugh le Despenser were homosexual in nature, although Pierre Chaplais has argued that Gaveston and the king were not lovers but adoptive brothers. The evidence as to Edward II's sexuality rests mainly on contemporary innuendo, some of it quite ambiguous, and the reported manner of his death. Froissart, however, stated explicitly that the genitals of Hugh le Despenser were severed because he was a heretic and a sodomite. As Froissart was friendly with Hugh's grandson Edward le Despenser, it seems unlikely that he would have made such a statement lightly. Whatever the nature of Edward II's relationships with his favorites, they were extraordinarily close and proved to be severable only by death.

The procedural steps of the marriage controversy between Eleanor, William la Zouche, and John de Grey are sketched in the
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland
, but little is known of the basis for John de Grey's allegations. I therefore invented a scenario that seemed plausible in light of canon law at the time. (Much as I would have liked to write a courtroom battle of the sort familiar in domestic cases today, medieval marriage litigation was a rather staid proceeding, with most testimony taken in private by examiners and no opportunity for stinging cross-examination.)

In a petition brought after Mortimer's execution, Eleanor claimed that she had been imprisoned in the Tower of London, and later Devizes Castle, despite the order of the king's council that she be released, and that Mortimer told her that she would not be released until she gave up her lands. She also stated that she feared for her life if she did not agree to his demands. The king's rapid granting of her petition to have her lands restored (“to ease the king's conscience” as he himself put it) is strong evidence that he believed her allegations. I have invented the details of her removal to Devizes Castle and her treatment there, but by 1329 Roger Mortimer, drunk with power, was probably quite capable of the actions I have ascribed to him. In his speech at the scaffold, he did confess to the entrapment of the hapless Earl of Kent.

After Mortimer's fall, William la Zouche told the king that much of the treasure removed from the Tower by Eleanor had come into the hands of Benedict de Fulsham. This suggests that Eleanor admitted to stealing the jewels, but again the details of how and when she obtained them are unknown, necessitating invention on my part. Benedict de Fulsham is known to have lent money to a number of people, so it seems likely that the jewels came to him as security for a loan. He, and a Thomas of Tyverton and a Hugh Dalby, the latter two associated with Eleanor, all were arrested, seemingly in connection with Eleanor's theft.

Maud de Clare, Gilbert's widow, did claim to be pregnant for three years, leading the king's council to advise Hugh le Despenser the younger that he should have obtained a writ to have her belly inspected. Whether she suffered from a physical or a psychological condition that caused a false pregnancy, whether she had a real pregnancy that ended badly, or whether she was simply lying is unknown.

Froissart, though not always reliable, reported that Queen Isabella became pregnant by Roger Mortimer. Ian Mortimer, the latter's biographer, has discussed the possibility of such a pregnancy and found it likely. If a child did result from the relationship, he or she has been lost to history.

There is no record of Hugh le Despenser engaging in piracy before his exile, but as his brief career as a pirate was a successful one, it seemed fair enough to allow him the opportunity to gain some practice at it in his youth.

The exact birth dates of Eleanor's ten surviving children are unknown, or at least have yet to be unearthed, but they can be narrowed by records of land grants, marriage agreements, papal dispensations, and the like. The dates I give for their births here, while never deliberately inconsistent with this documentary evidence, are for the most part my own approximations. There is no evidence supporting a posthumous birth for Elizabeth le Despenser in the Tower, but an in utero status in January 1327 seemed the most likely explanation for her having escaped the forced veiling of her older sisters. Evidence that Eleanor bore a fifth son who died young can be found in Thomas Stapleton, “A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the Tenth, Eleventh, and Fourteenth Years of King Edward the Second” in the 1836 volume of the journal
Archaeologia
. There the king is stated to have given Hugh le Despenser a cloth of gold for his son; this appears in conjunction with gifts of fine cloth to others that are explicitly stated as being for burial purposes.

In the nineteenth century, what has become known as the “Fieschi letter” was discovered. The letter, supposedly written by a papal notary to Edward III, details the escape of Edward II from Berkeley Castle and his eventual life as a hermit in Italy. The letter and the ensuing debate about the possibility of Edward II's survival has attracted keen interest from historians. Most (along with myself) still believe that Edward II did die in Berkeley Castle (though perhaps not by the horrific means of a red-hot spit), but Paul Doherty and Ian Mortimer have each recently argued with great vigor the case for Edward II's survival.

Caerphilly Castle, where Eleanor was born and where her son Hugh was besieged by her second husband, still stands in Wales. It had become somewhat of a white elephant and was allowed to deteriorate until the nineteenth century, when restoration began. It is now maintained by Welsh Historic Monuments. The great hall that Hugh le Despenser the younger renovated can be hired out for functions, including weddings—a splendid piece of irony given that one of the chief charges against the executed Hugh was that of coming between the king and the queen.

Much of Tewkesbury Abbey escaped destruction during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, though the Lady Chapel, where William la Zouche was buried, was pulled down. Fortunately, Zouche's tomb was one of the few survivals from the Lady Chapel and was moved to nearby Forthampton Court. Eleanor's burial place in Tewkesbury is unrecorded. Hugh le Despenser the younger's tomb with its statues of saints and apostles attracted the disapproval of the Puritans, who stripped it of those ornaments. Minus them and Hugh's effigy, it remains at Tewkesbury. At some point, Abbot John Coles' slab was placed in the space where Hugh's effigy had rested; this odd arrangement still exists.

Edward II was eventually given a canopied tomb at Gloucester Abbey, now Gloucester Cathedral, though it is unclear whether Edward III or the abbey itself funded it. The king's alabaster effigy is beautiful and marvelously detailed.

In one respect, Edward II and Hugh le Despenser triumphed over their enemies—architecturally. The work Hugh and his descendants commissioned at Tewkesbury Abbey is considered a fine example of the Decorated style and can still be seen today, as can the stained glass evidently paid for by Eleanor, including figures of Eleanor's ancestors, brother, and husbands. The nude, kneeling woman watching the Last Judgment in Tewkesbury's east window may be a representation of Eleanor herself. Meanwhile, the offerings accruing from Edward II's burial at Gloucester Abbey enabled the monks there to remodel it extensively, making the abbey a splendid example of the Perpendicular style of architecture. By contrast, nothing remains of Isabella's and Mortimer's tombs or of the buildings that contained them. Isabella's tomb and its neighbors were sold during the Dissolution, and the church in which the queen rested was destroyed in the Great Fire. Mortimer's burial place is uncertain, but Wigmore Abbey, where the regicide was likely buried, was among the many dismantled by another ruthless man with a troubled marital history, Henry VIII.

Susan Higginbotham
October 2008

Read on for a preview of the next novel by Susan Higginbotham

HUGH AND BESS

S
TRICTLY SPEAKING, BESS TOLD HERSELF, SHE WAS NOT EAVESDROPPING ON her parents, for she had been curled up in a window seat, half dozing, when they came in, and before she could say a single word, they had launched into a conversation that plainly was too important (and too interesting) to bear interruption. And she had been told many times not to interrupt; it was a bad habit of hers. So she would not do so now. Instead, she drew her feet up where they could not be seen and quietly rearranged the heavy drapes to screen herself more securely from view.

“The king himself proposed the marriage,” her father had said when he first came into the room. “And there's nothing to be said against the man, Katharine. Everything for him, as a matter of fact. He's a good fighter. He's rich. He's the king's near kinsman and a great-grandson of the first Edward. So how could you possibly object? He'll make an excellent husband for her.”

So it was true; her parents were at last arranging a marriage for Joan of Kent, who though her mother was still alive, had been raised with the Montacute children and with the king's children after the wicked Mortimer had been hung at Tyburn. It was high time the girl got married; all of the Montacute household had been saying so. Joan was almost thirteen, less than a year younger than Bess, but unlike Bess, who at thirteen and a half still had simply a chest, Joan had breasts, unmistakable ones, even under the modest robes she and the Montacute girls wore. More than once Bess had heard her mother tell her brother Will, when he was visiting from the king's court where he served as a page, that he should not stare at Joan's breasts. “I realize it is difficult not to, with them poking forward as they do,” Katharine had said tartly. “But you must try. My, that girl needs to be married, and soon!”

Bess herself had been married several years ago to Giles de Badlesmere, soon after Papa became an earl and she had become a desirable match. Then after only a year of marriage—if one could count living with her parents while her grown husband lived on his estates as a marriage—Sir Giles had fallen ill, leaving Bess a widow at the age of eleven. Her husband had sent her gifts on occasion and had visited her several times, but she had known him little better than any of the other men who came to visit her parents, and though she dutifully prayed for his soul, his death had otherwise meant little to her. She was vaguely aware that she had been left quite prosperous by the brief union, and she had a sense that suitors had approached Papa about her now and then, but none had been quite right, it appeared. There seemed to be no great hurry; after all, she had just started her monthly courses a few months before, and her figure was still so far from womanly that had she put on her brother Will's clothes and hidden her waist-length, thick, dark hair, she could have taken service as a page.

But Joan was a different matter altogether, yet Mama did not appear happy. “Nothing wrong with him! His father executed as a traitor, his grandfather executed as a traitor, his great-grandfather killed fighting for Simon de Montfort against the king—”

“So, at least
he
wasn't executed as a traitor, Katharine. And the great-great-grandfather was quite respectable, I understand.”

Bess's mother did not laugh. “I suppose one should feel pity for the man; he can't help his parentage, but what girl would want to call herself the wife of Hugh le Despenser?”

“Despenser wouldn't have suggested the match himself, I imagine. He knows full well of his family's disgrace and that some are loath to associate with him; it's probably what has kept him single all of these years.”

“Indeed,” said Katharine, finding a straw to grab upon. “He can't be young, is he, William?”