Chapter 9

EDWARD VICTORIOUS, 1322–1324

EDWARD's REVENGE

‘It is not safe to rise up against the king, because the outcome is often likely to be unfortunate. For even Simon, Earl of Leicester, was at last laid low in battle at Evesham;¹ the Earl Ferrers lost his estates;² the king himself succeeded the Earl Marshal;³ each of these had resisted the king, and each of them in the end succumbed’; ‘What does it serve, to resist the king, save to throw away one's life and lose all one's goods as well. For an islander to rebel against an island king is as if a chained man were to try his strength with the warden of his prison.’⁴ These were the comments of the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi on the dangers for a magnate, however great and powerful, when he resisted the king. Even over three hundred years later, during the English Civil War, the earl of Manchester was to express a reality that any fourteenth- or fifteenth-century opponent of the crown would have understood all too well: ‘If we beat the king nine and ninety times he is king still, but if the king beat us but once we shall be hanged and our posterity made slaves.’⁵

Lancaster was only the first to die. Six others were pronounced guilty by the king's record on the same day and immediately executed.⁶ On the following day John de Mowbray, Roger de Clifford and Gaucelin d'Eyville were hanged in chains at York.⁷ Justices were also appointed to pass judgment on ten others at various places ranging from the Tower of London, Windsor and Winchelsea to Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea. In each case the justices were supplied with a document outlining the judgment expected from them.⁸The most notable victims were John Giffard of Brimpsfield who was hanged at Gloucester in late April or early May, and Bartholomew de Badlesmere⁹ who was taken back to his native Kent and executed with especial cruelty on 14 April: after being dragged through the city of Canterbury he was first hanged and then beheaded and his head stuck on the Burgate at Canterbury.¹⁰ The bodies of those executed were left on the gallows as an example to other potential rebels. They remained there until 1324 when Edward finally allowed them to be buried.¹¹

There was shock at the manner in which Lancaster and the other contrariants were condemned simply by a royal record of their alleged crimes, without any permitted questioning of the evidence or anything being said in their defence.¹² The Lanercost chronicler, for example, commented that Lancaster had been executed ‘sine parliamento et sine majori et saniori consilio’ and that no earl had ever been treated in this manner before; the Anonimalle Chronicle stated that the king's record was now taken for law; while theVita Edwardi Secundi reported what its author claimed were the only words Lancaster was allowed to utter: ‘This is a powerful court, and very great in authority, where no answer is heard nor any mitigation admitted.’¹³ Another perceptive writer, Adam Murimuth, was later to remark with bitterness that from the execution of Lancaster in 1322 to that of Roger Mortimer in 1330 no noble condemned to death had been allowed to speak in his own defence.¹⁴ While the procedures used against Lancaster and the other contrariants could be justified under the law of arms covering acts of war which were not justiciable under the common law¹⁵ and under the developing law of treason,¹⁶ allowance must also be made for the depth of bitterness which had entered English politics since the death of Gaveston in 1312. Just as Gaveston had been condemned to death unheard and undefended, and in 1321 the Despensers had been sentenced to exile by the award of the magnates, so Edward wished to adopt a similar procedure when he in turn had his enemies at his mercy.¹⁷ The author of the Flores Historiarum later wrote that Edward II ‘hated all the magnates with such mad fury that he plotted the complete and permanent overthrow of all the great men of the realm together with the whole English aristocracy’, while the writer of the Brut remarked that Edward ‘had brought the fiower of chivalry unto death’.¹⁸ They were both exaggerating but it must have seemed the case in 1322.

Edward had achieved his longed-for revenge. In 1324 Master John of St Albans painted the walls of the Lesser Hall of Westminster Palace with scenes, probably martial and heroic in character, from the life of his father: Edward perhaps felt that in destroying his internal enemies during the civil war of 1321–2 he had somehow at last matched Edward I's greatness in war.¹⁹ But it proved to be a pyrrhic victory. The effect was to raise the stakes to such heights that in future anyone wishing to engage in violent opposition to the king had to be prepared to end the king's reign and even his life. By acting with such ruthlessness against his enemies Edward II had only made himself vulnerable to a greater degree than ever before.

Other contrariants were condemned to imprisonment. Hugh Audley the Younger was spared because he was married to Edward's niece and Gaveston's widow, Margaret de Clare.²⁰ Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk, who had been in the Tower of London since February,²¹ were brought out to face their judges in Westminster Hall, where on 2 August they were sentenced to death for their roles in the capture of Gloucester and Bridgnorth. For once Edward relented and on the following day their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.²² They were joined in the Tower by at least fifteen others, including Thomas Gurney (who was to play a sinister role in the imprisonment and death of Edward II in 1327), Badlesmere's son Giles and John de Mowbray's son John.²³ Maurice de Berkeley and Hugh Audley the Elder were both sent to Wallingford castle.²⁴ Wives, widows and children were consigned to castles and convents around the country.²⁵ All the contrariants, both those who died in battle or were executed and those who were imprisoned, were also liable to forfeiture of all their lands and other property.²⁶ At least 117 men were to suffer permanent loss of their possessions.²⁷

In July 1322 Edward introduced a procedure by which former rebels or suspected sympathizers could regain their lands on payment of a fine. This was not all, since each individual also had to promise payment of a sum to be decided by the king if he should ever reoffend.²⁸ One hundred and fifty-eight men promised payment of fines totalling £15,000, often payable in instalments both as a way of ensuring collection and also to provide yet another guarantee of their future behaviour.²⁹ There were many cases in 1321–2 of families with divided sympathies, causing some members to suffer while others survived to fiourish under the new regime. Two outstanding examples of the latter were Thomas of Lancaster's brother Henry who had played no part in Thomas's rebellion and Richard Damory the elder brother of Roger Damory. Henry soon regained his lands and in March 1324 was recognized as earl of Leicester, one of the five earldoms which Thomas had held at his death; while in July 1322 Richard Damory was appointed to the important and highly infiuential office of steward of the royal household.³⁰ The successful rehabilitation of such men only gave further emphasis to the plight of those who had suffered loss and who might suffer once more at the whim of the king. The insecurity and enmity engendered by the 1322 ‘settlement’ contributed mightily to Edward's own insecurity in the closing years of his reign and to the ultimate loss of his throne.

Edward II's victory in 1322 over Thomas of Lancaster, the wealthiest and most powerful of the English magnates, and his marcher allies, the earl of Hereford and the Mortimers and the rest, at first sight appears almost inexplicable, especially after the relative ease with which Edward and the Despensers had been overcome in the spring and summer of 1321. However, the magnates seriously underestimated Edward's determination to avenge himself upon them, the extent and quality of the intelligence supplied to him by his informants in Wales, the Marches and the north of England, and the speed with which he and his own supporters would act. The failure of the Marchers and Lancaster to produce any concerted plan of action once Edward's intentions became clear and the panic which then entered their ranks were to prove fatal.

Edward's decision to attack Badlesmere first was a very shrewd move, since his lands in Kent were close to Westminster and easily reached, while there was a strong likelihood that Lancaster's enmity towards him would ensure that no baronial force came to his rescue. On the other hand Edward undertook the campaign with very limited financial and material resources. Between December 1321 and March 1322 the royal household spent about £8,000, of which just over £5,000 came from the exchequer. The rest was raised from a variety of sources, including local and foreign merchants,³¹ and the lands of contrariants such as Badlesmere and Roger Damory.³² It is likely that royal use of the contrariants' own resources made a significant contribution to their defeat.³³ Royal purveyance of food supplies in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire met with some resistance, partly for political reasons but also because of the poor harvest in the autumn of 1321. The winter of 1321–2 was also particularly harsh.³⁴ The barons too met resistance. The damage they infiicted on the lands of the Despensers in 1321 did not endear them to the inhabitants of those areas. In December 1321 both Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and Maurice de Berkeley had to resort to pillage when their demands for food were refused. These and other acts by the Marchers cut away any local support they might otherwise have enjoyed.³⁵ Something very similar happened in the north where Lancaster's attempts to gather supplies and to raise infantry forces in Yorkshire and Lancashire were also resisted.³⁶ His death left many creditors desperately pleading with the king to pay what Lancaster had owed them. Edward rejected their petitions out of hand with the words: ‘The king does not pay the earl's debts.’³⁷

Recent scholarship has placed considerable emphasis upon the unreliability of royal household knights during the reign and especially in the crisis of 1321–2.³⁸ It has also been noted that twenty-five knights who had served in the royal household between 1314 and 1321 ultimately fought against Edward in 1321–2.³⁹ There is a considerable amount of truth in this argument. There are obvious examples such as the behaviour of Gilbert de Middleton and John de Lilburn in 1317–18, and Edmund Darel in 1319.⁴⁰ More spectacular was the defection in 1321 of prominent individuals who had contracted to serve the king, such as the earl of Hereford, Badlesmere, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley the Younger, John Giffard, John de Mowbray and others.⁴¹ However, many of the knights who joined the royal household were northerners who did so when it was greatly expanded to meet the threat from Scottish raids after the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. These were not men with any tradition of royal service and it is not surprising that some of them also had other allegiances, in a number of cases as retainers of the earl of Lancaster.⁴² What was ultimately far more significant was the fact that in 1321–2 thirty-three others fought for Edward. Men such as John de Somery, John de Segrave the Elder, Oliver Ingham, Robert de Sapy, John and Walter de Beauchamp played a leading role in taking control of lands confiscated from the contrariants, and in raising and commanding troops. The force led by the Welsh knight Gruffydd Llwyd cut the ground from under the Mortimers and undermined both the earl of Hereford's and the earl of Lancaster's holdings in Wales.⁴³ The Cumberland knight Andrew de Harclay showed that the barons also lacked local support in the north-west of England and, crucially, raised the army which brought defeat to the contrariants at Boroughbridge.⁴⁴ These and other royal knights were an essential part of Edward's victory and one that has usually been overlooked.⁴⁵

While Edward II retained the active loyalty of a significant number of his household knights, the earl of Lancaster's experience was quite different. Not only did his attempts to raise troops prove unsuccessful,⁴⁶ but many of his retainers deserted him, either because they could not in the last resort bring themselves to fight against the king or because they feared the consequences if Lancaster were defeated. At least ten of his retainers, such as Peter de Mauley, John de Clavering, Fulk Lestrange, William Latimer and, most significantly of all, Robert de Holland, Lancaster's most trusted follower, changed sides in 1321–2.⁴⁷ Holland was in negotiations with the king from about 4 March, nearly two weeks before Boroughbridge, and even attacked some of Lancaster's men fleeing from Burton-on-Trent before giving himself up to the king.⁴⁸ With friends such as these Lancaster had no need of enemies.

A TIME FOR REWARDS

It was now time for Edward to divide the spoils of victory. Some of his largesse involved no more than reversing territorial gains which Lancaster had made during his lifetime and cost Edward little or nothing. The earl of Pembroke, for example, regained the New Temple in London and the manor and castle of Thorpe Waterville in Northamptonshire, both of which Lancaster had forced him to give up in 1314, while on 15 March, the day before Boroughbridge, he was granted Lancaster's valuable honour of Higham Ferrers as a reward for services rendered.⁴⁹ Another of Lancaster's victims, the earl of Surrey, regained his lordships of Bromfield and Yale in the Welsh March, but not the Yorkshire lands seized from him by Lancaster in 1318–19.⁵⁰ On 25 March the services of Andrew de Harclay were rewarded with the earldom of Carlisle, the first such new creation in England during the reign of Edward II, who personally girded Harclay with the belt signifying his new status. He was also to receive lands worth 2,000 marks per annum.⁵¹ Others who gained were the earl of Richmond who was given a number of manors in May; the earl of Arundel, now appointed justice of Wales, who was given his predecessor Roger Mortimer's lordship of Chirk to add to his own lordships of Oswestry and Clun; the king's half-brother, Edmund earl of Kent, who received the castle of Oakham in Rutland and two castles in Wales; the king's younger son John of Eltham, who gained Lancaster's former castle of Tutbury; and Robert Baldock, keeper of the privy seal and soon to be chancellor, who was granted some of the possessions of Roger de Clifford.⁵²

These were minor gains compared with the stream of patronage which came the way of the Despensers and continued to flow almost until the end of the reign. Hugh Despenser the Elder was given the earldom of Winchester on 10 May during the parliament at York which followed the king's victory.⁵³ In April and May he received four separate grants of lands to maintain his new rank, and in July was given the lordship of Denbigh in North Wales, previously held by the earl of Lancaster.⁵⁴ Hugh Despenser the Younger was not made earl of Gloucester, but the virtual earldom which he had created for himself in the Welsh March before 1321 was quickly reconstituted. He regained the lordships of Glamorgan, the Cantref Mawr, and Gower, which had been the immediate cause of the crisis in 1321; and added the strategically placed Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel which he had tried to obtain from Herbert de Marisco in 1321; Roger Damory's former lordship of Usk; and the lordship of Is Cennen with the castle of Carreg Cennen which had previously been held by John Giffard.⁵⁵ This last acquisition allowed him to link the Cantref Mawr with Gower and Glamorgan. He also had custody of the lordship of Brecon from July 1322; in August 1323 the earl of Norfolk, the king's half-brother, leased his lordship of Chepstow to him for life; and after the death of the earl of Pembroke in 1324 he obtained custody of the county of Pembroke as well as the former Hastings lordships of Cilgerran and Abergavenny. By the end of the reign Despenser had reunited all the lands of the earldom of Gloucester in South Wales and ruled over almost everything from Pembroke to Chepstow.⁵⁶ Why the Younger Despenser did not go the whole hog and persuade Edward II to make him earl of Gloucester is something of a puzzle. The lands held by the husbands of the other two Gloucester heiresses, Hugh Audley the Younger and Roger Damory, had come into royal hands through the forfeiture and imprisonment of the one and the forfeiture and death of the other and were technically available to be given to Despenser together with the title of earl. One possible explanation is that Despenser had only to bide his time, since his father, who was already aged sixty-one in 1322, could be expected to die of natural causes before many more years passed, leaving his son the title and vast possessions of the earldom of Winchester, to add to those he had already acquired. It was scarcely through moderation or restraint, as Tout suggested, that the Younger Despenser did not become earl of Gloucester.⁵⁷

Tout's other suggestion – that Despenser was waiting until some other more grandiose dignity could be devised, such as the title of earl of March which Roger Mortimer of Wigmore was to acquire in 1328 – is unproven but is another possible explanation.⁵⁸Moderate or not, it has been estimated that Despenser's Welsh lands, including those he held in custody, brought him an annual revenue of almost £5,000, making him one of the richest landowners of his day.⁵⁹ ‘Between them, the king, the two Despensers and the earl of Arundel held almost three-quarters of Wales under their sway in the years 1322–6.’⁶⁰

A succession of grants of lands in England added substantially to Despenser's holdings and the income derived from them.⁶¹ The survey of his English lands made after his fall in 1326 valued them at £2,100 per annum, while his father's English possessions were assessed at £2,500.⁶² This did not take account of moveable goods, which were valued at £2,300 for the Younger Despenser and £6,600 for his father.⁶³ There were also very large sums in ready cash, which the Younger Despenser deposited with the London branches of two firms of Florentine bankers, the Bardi and the Peruzzi. In September 1324 they held £5,886 between them in Despenser's name.⁶⁴ With the addition of the revenues of his Welsh lands and the unknown but certainly substantial value of his moveable goods there, the Younger Despenser was an immensely wealthy man. His wish expressed in January 1321 that ‘we may be rich and may attain our ends’ had been achieved, probably even beyond his dreams of avarice.⁶⁵

EDWARD IS WEALTHY

The Despensers were not the only ones to benefit by Edward II's victory over the contrariants: Edward himself also became immensely wealthy.⁶⁶ Throughout his reign Edward had been short of money. He had begun with the debts and the administrative confusion inherited from his father's war with Scotland; and had experienced the political resistance and social tensions which followed his attempts to finance his own campaigning through prises and purveyance. When he did briefly achieve a measure of solvency, in 1313–14, he immediately threw it all away in the disastrous Bannockburn campaign; the same pattern was repeated in 1318–19, culminating this time in the failure at Berwick. His victory in 1321–2 was achieved by hand-to-mouth finance, by which the contrariants in effect bore much of the cost of their own defeat.

In early May 1322 the treasury held no more than £1,195 in ready cash,⁶⁷ but this was only a part of the money available to Edward since the revenue generated from the confiscated possessions of some of the contrariants and from the payment of fines by others was being paid directly into the king's chamber rather than the exchequer. Between July and September the chamber handled sums totalling at least £14,724, some paid out on behalf of the exchequer and some delivered to the wardrobe.⁶⁸ Even after Edward's campaign against the Scots in August and September 1322 the wardrobe still had £7,000 in hand.⁶⁹ The taxation granted by the York parliament in November 1322 brought in at least another £42,000,⁷⁰ much of which was not needed because of the thirteen-year truce made with the Scots in May 1323. In July 1323, £27,500 in fifty-five barrels, each holding £500, was sent from York for storage in the Tower of London.⁷¹ A further £34,172 was received in 1323 and 1324 from the proceeds of clerical subsidies granted by the pope in April 1322 in aid of the Scottish war,⁷² and much of this probably also went into Edward's growing reserve in the Tower of London, to which £44,000 was added in May 1324.⁷³ Even after the expenditure of over £65,000 on war with France in 1324–5,⁷⁴£69,000 remained in the treasury.⁷⁵

In January 1324 an official estimate was made of the royal revenue. The total was £60,549, of which £13,000 came from Gascony, £16,000 from customs duties, £24,385 (?) from royal lands and the county farms, and £12,643 from the revenues of confiscated lands in England.⁷⁶ This estimate resulted from a request by Edward in April 1323 for a statement of his revenues,⁷⁷ and was part of a reorganization of the working of the exchequer which had begun in July 1322 when control over the revenues of confiscated lands was passed to it from the chamber.⁷⁸ This led to a great increase in the work of the exchequer, especially when in 1324 Edward also ordered the collection of all outstanding debts owed to contrariants.⁷⁹ One consequence was the division of the exchequer into two sections, one for the counties south of the Trent and one for those to the north.⁸⁰

The royal treasure continued to accumulate until the very end. When the new regime of Isabella and Mortimer took control at the close of 1326 it inherited almost £62,000 in ready money and treasure,⁸¹ a far cry from the debt of about £200,000 with which Edward II had begun his own reign and which had hampered his government at every turn.⁸² After his victory in 1322 Edward was determined that he would never again face such problems. Like the Younger Despenser, Edward II wanted to be wealthy and, again like Despenser, he did not hesitate to say so. In an order to his exchequer officials in September 1323 he told them that it was their duty to make him rich.⁸³ There is ample evidence from 1322 that Edward took a strong personal interest in the collection of revenue and the accumulation of treasure from all available sources.⁸⁴ The shared interest in money was probably one of the things that bound Edward most closely to Despenser. Like the archetypal miser Edward not only gathered every penny he could but was remarkably loath to spend any more than he had to. It is ironic that in his final years expenditure on his household, which the Ordainers and the earl of Lancaster had once sought to curtail, was lower not only than at any time in his own reign but for generations past and to come.⁸⁵ Edward's meanness even extended to trying to persuade parliament in February 1324 to contribute to the ransom of the earl of Richmond, who had been taken prisoner by the Scots in October 1322 and whose loyalty to the crown had never wavered since 1307. Parliament firmly turned down both this request and Edward's attempt to obtain a subsidy, knowing full well that he was wealthy and they were poor.⁸⁶ In 1324 Edward even still owed over £400 for the repairs carried out to Westminster Palace before his coronation in 1308.⁸⁷

According to the Brut chronicle, Edward II ‘was the richest kyng that ever was in Engeland after William Bastard of Normandy’, while the Vita commented that many of his predecessors had accumulated money but he had surpassed them all. ‘However the king's hardness is blamed on Hugh, like the other evils that take place at court.’⁸⁸ ‘This sir Hugh was full of evil and wrongdoing, and he was also greedy and covetous while he was in office. He was also proud and haughty, more inclined to wrongdoing than any other man, so that no one was able to approach the king without the consent of the said sir Hugh and even then only through making large gifts.’⁸⁹ The financial pressures and the sheer greed of the regime of Edward and the Despensers were apparent to all and were to play a large part in the regime's sudden collapse in the autumn of 1326.

THE YORK PARLIAMENT OF MAY 1322

In order to complete Edward's victory there were certain things for which only a meeting of parliament would suffice. On 14 March, even before the battle of Boroughbridge, Edward summoned a parliament to meet at York on 2 May. Edward's elder son Edward earl of Chester was summoned for the first time, together with his uncles the earls of Norfolk and Kent, the king's half-brothers, and the other earls who had remained loyal, Richmond, Pembroke, Arundel, Surrey, and the earls of Angus and Atholl who were in exile from Scotland. The earls of Lancaster and Hereford who were in rebellion against the king and would both soon be dead were not of course invited. The seventy-two barons summoned also excluded those who had rebelled and would also soon be dead in battle, executed or imprisoned. Ironically, Thomas of Lancaster's brother Henry was among those called to attend. For the first time representatives were summoned from the Cinque Ports in recognition of the assistance they had given to Hugh Despenser the Younger during his exile; and also from the principality of Wales, where the revolt against the Marchers had played such a large part in undermining Edward II's opponents at the beginning of 1322.⁹⁰

On the opening day of parliament the legal process against Lancaster was confirmed and the processes against the two Despensers formally annulled.⁹¹ The Ordinances, from which Edward had been trying to escape since 1311, were formally revoked in the Statute of York, on the grounds that they improperly restrained royal power. In future any such ordinances would be null and void unless they were ‘discussed, agreed and ordained in parliaments, by our lord the king and with the assent of the prelates, earls and barons and the community of the realm, as has been the custom in times past’.⁹² Much of the speculation about the significance of the Statute of York has been anachronistic. Edward II was trying to turn the clock back to before 1310–11, rather than to introduce a new emphasis on the authority of parliament or on the role of the ‘community’ in its future sense of the ‘commons’.⁹³ No king in his hour of victory was likely to tie his hands for the future by introducing a new constitutional doctrine.⁹⁴ As a way of emphasizing that the Ordinances had originally been imposed upon him and that he was not opposed to reform in principle, Edward had six clauses reissued and confirmed as ‘good points’. The rights and liberties of the Church, as contained in Magna Carta and other statutes, were to be observed; the king's peace was to be firmly kept throughout the land; Edward I's establishment concerning prises in the Articuli super Cartas of 1300 was to be upheld (this was the issue which lay behind many of the crises at the beginning of the reign of Edward II); sheriffs and the officials in charge of hundreds were to be appointed according to the Statute of Sheriffs of the 1316 Lincoln parliament; Edward I's grant in his Westminster parliament of 1306 concerning his forests was to be upheld; another of theArticuli super Cartas, concerning the estate of the steward and marshals of the household and of pleas to be held there was to be upheld in all its points (cf. Ordinances 26, 27); and the ordinances concerning the statute of merchants, outlawry and appeals, which were given verbatim as in the Ordinances of 1311 (cf. Ordinances 33, 35, 36).⁹⁵ However, the promulgation by Edward II of the ‘good points’ of the Ordinances was not, as has been suggested, a sign of ‘the magnanimity of the king in adopting the good reforms of his bitterest enemies’; neither was it ‘a good augury for the new era’.⁹⁶ Just as Edward's determination to defeat and destroy his enemies had inspired the Boroughbridge campaign in 1321–2, so now it dictated the ruthless zeal with which Edward and his agents exploited the confiscated lands of the contrariants for the advantage of the royal treasury.

The surviving agenda of matters referred by the king to the council before the parliament met shows that the business of parliament was determined in advance.⁹⁷ Altogether fourteen items were discussed by the council, beginning with the statutes to repeal the Ordinances and give effect to the ‘good points’, and including the treatment of chattels belonging to felons and fugitives, and the creation of a staple for wool and cloth in England. Edward charged his councillors to give thought as to whether each of these matters, other than the first two, should be dealt with by statute or by other measures, in order that those attending parliament need not stay any longer than necessary. This last statement could be taken to mean either that Edward was considering the convenience of his subjects or that he intended to allow parliament as little initiative as possible. The answer probably lies in both. The one item on which Edward did not get his way was in relation to the goods of fugitives and felons, which he wished to turn into an annual revenue for his own use, and suggests that the proposal met considerable opposition.⁹⁸

Scotland was also high on the agenda. Edward was determined to avenge his past defeats at the hands of the Scots as well as their recent raids. A Scottish campaign had already been ordered on 25 March to begin on 13 June, but during the parliament, on 11 May, the start of the campaign was postponed until 24 July at the request of the magnates and prelates.⁹⁹ The clergy granted an aid for the war in Scotland¹⁰⁰ but, so far as is known, the laity was not asked for a grant of taxation on this occasion. Edward did however revert to an expedient, which had already been tried in 1316 and 1318, for the service for forty days of one foot soldier from each vill, which was apparently approved at the parliament.¹⁰¹ On 18 May an assembly of wool merchants was summoned to meet at York on 13 June, in order to discuss the wool staple but probably also in the hope that they might provide Edward with financial help for the coming campaign.¹⁰²

A SIGN OF THE TIMES

The completeness of the Despensers' victory was vividly demonstrated shortly after the end of the York parliament. The earl of Pembroke was arrested by royal knights on the king's orders and taken back to York, but at the suit of some leading magnates he was pardoned, after making a pledge of loyalty on 22 June at Bishopsthorpe near York.¹⁰³ In this document Pembroke witnessed that Edward had been ‘aggrieved against him for certain reasons that he was given to understand’ and that ‘desiring to obtain the king's grace and good will’ so that Edward might assure himself of him ‘as his faithful and loyal liegeman in all points’, he had sworn upon the Gospels of his own free will to obey, aid and counsel the king in all matters, to come to him whenever ordered, to aid him in peace and war, not to ally with anyone against the king or anyone maintained by him, and to repress all alliances against him. For security Pembroke pledged his body and all his lands and goods, and also found guarantors.¹⁰⁴ The Despensers had obvious motives for wishing to see Pembroke humiliated and wishing to make him pay the penalty for his hostility towards them in 1321, but Edward had not forgiven him for his role in the Despensers' exile. He probably also believed that in 1320–1 Pembroke had used his planned remarriage as a pretext for staying abroad as long as possible. Pembroke was now a spent force politically. Short of outright opposition, which was unthinkable, he had no choice but to follow on the path marked out by Edward and the Despensers. He was one of the first noble men and women to suffer from the Despensers' greed; he was by no means the last.

DEFEAT IN SCOTLAND

As in 1314 and 1319, extensive and careful preparations were made for Edward's latest attempt to defeat the Scots. On 25 March, shortly after Lancaster's execution and while Edward was still at Pontefract, 38,000 infantry were summoned from throughout England; in early April a force of 6,000 infantry, 1,000 hobelars and 300 men-at-arms was ordered from Ireland; over 10,000 infantry from Wales; and 400 crossbowmen and lancers were to come from Gascony.¹⁰⁵ Orders were given for the purveyance in England, Ireland and Gascony of enormous quantities of food for this army;¹⁰⁶ and a large fleet of ships was engaged to carry these supplies and to support the advance of the army into Scotland.¹⁰⁷

Edward's plans were on the grandest, one might even say megalomaniac, scale. Victory had clearly gone to his head. The enormous army that he envisaged would have been unmanageable and, as events turned out, even more difficult to keep supplied. The army as finally assembled was much smaller than planned and consisted of nearly 20,000 infantry together with 2,100 hobelars.¹⁰⁸ In addition, the heavy cavalry force provided by the leading magnates, such as the earls of Arundel, Pembroke, Norfolk, Kent, Surrey, Carlisle, Richmond and Winchester, the earl of Louth from Ireland, the Scottish earls of Atholl and Angus, and the Younger Despenser and Henry of Lancaster, amounted to about 1,250.¹⁰⁹ Even so, it was bigger than the army which Edward had taken to Scotland in 1314 and the largest since his father's army at Falkirk in 1298. Edward himself remarked that the army was ‘such as never had been seen in our time, or in the times of our ancestors’.¹¹⁰ The sheer size of the army generated tensions: even before the campaign began a riot at Newcastle between English and Welsh troops left one royal knight, John de Penrith, and seven Welsh injured; while other Welsh foot soldiers caused considerable damage to a local convent for which Edward later paid the nuns compensation.¹¹¹

Edward left York on 22 July and joined his army at Newcastle on or before 3 August. He was in a particularly angry mood since Robert Bruce had personally led a raid into England on 1 July, passing through Cumberland into Furness, and then into Lancashire, where he burned the towns of Lancaster and Preston before returning to Scotland on 24 July.¹¹² The advance into Scotland began on 10 August and the army reached Roxburgh on 13 August and Musselburgh near Edinburgh on 19 August.¹¹³ If Edward hoped to bring Bruce's army to battle, he was sorely disappointed. Bruce withdrew northwards, clearing Lothian of all its livestock and other food supplies as he did so. As Edward himself remarked later in a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, having taken the road on the sea coast to do more damage, he found neither ‘man nor beast’. Bruce then crossed the Forth and established himself at the Cistercian abbey of Culross to await developments.¹¹⁴ Edward's army spent three days, from 23 to 25 August, at Leith, the port for Edinburgh, while it waited for the ships carrying supplies to appear.¹¹⁵ Some store ships may have arrived but not enough to feed the increasingly hungry army, the rest of the fleet having been scattered by stormy weather and by the activities of Flemish sailors allied to the Scots.¹¹⁶ English attempts to forage for food met with little success. Allegedly all the soldiers found was one lame bull, provoking the remark by the earl of Surrey: ‘In truth, I'm quite sure that this is the dearest beef that I've ever seen up to now; for a fact, it cost a thousand pounds or more’.¹¹⁷ Edward and his army, many of them starting to die of hunger and disease,¹¹⁸ had no choice but to abandon Scotland: they were followed by the Scots under Sir James Douglas who surprised them when they were trying to sack Melrose abbey and inflicted severe casualties. After the English crossed the border, the Scots infiltrated Northumberland provoking floods of refugees.¹¹⁹ On 10 September Edward was back at Newcastle, having achieved nothing and added only to his reputation for military incompetence.

The campaign was ill conceived from the beginning. Edward realized well enough that if he brought together very large numbers of troops, they would have to be fed and that a fleet of supply ships would be needed to ensure this. He was also aware of the dangers that might be posed to a campaign by Flemish sailors in Scottish service and took action beforehand to try to prevent this happening.¹²⁰ When the campaign had ended he was quick to place the blame on ‘these evil Flemings’ for preventing his supply ships from getting through.¹²¹ On the other hand, Edward's army was far too large and inflexible and consisted of the wrong kind of troops for the situation faced in Scotland. Unlike his father, Edward no longer possessed strongpoints in Scotland under English control which could support and reinforce the actions of a large invading army. A smaller army with greater numbers of hobelars and other mobile forces, such as the new earl of Carlisle Andrew Harclay had successfully employed at Boroughbridge, might have achieved better results.¹²² The armoured infantry, used experimentally in the 1322 campaign, had no opportunity to show their worth.¹²³ As it was, all the Scots had to do was wait for the English to starve and begin their inevitable retreat.

Edward decided to stay in the north for the winter to protect it from further Scottish attacks. He appointed Andrew Harclay as warden of the entire Scottish March, both east and west, and ordered local commanders, such as Sir Thomas de Grey the constable of Norham and Louis de Beaumont the bishop of Durham, to see to the defence of their own regions. He showed irritation at the behaviour of the bishop's brother, Henry de Beaumont, and also took out his displeasure on other commanders, such as the constables of Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh, Warkworth and Alnwick, for failing to challenge the Scots who had entered Northumberland and were infesting the neighbourhood of their castles.¹²⁴

A PERSONAL LOSS

As Edward told the archbishop of Canterbury on 17 September, after his return from Scotland, he was then in good health.¹²⁵ This may in part have been the result of the large stock of medicines worth over £9 and provided by the king's surgeon, Master Stephen of Paris, which was carried by land from London to Newcastle, and thence by sea to Edinburgh, before being shipped back again to ‘Halyeland’.¹²⁶ However, Edward experienced a personal loss in the death of Adam, the mysterious illegitimate son, who had his first and last experience of campaigning in the summer of 1322.¹²⁷ Although there is no known reference to Adam before 1322, he was evidently openly recognized by Edward as his son and was held in some degree of affection. Hugh Chastilloun, a squire of the royal household, was Adam's master, while Sir John Sturmy, one of the king's household knights, decided what Adam would need by way of arms and other equipment for the war. Adam was at York on 6 June and can be traced there again on 4 and 10 July. On 3 August he was at Newcastle, at Musselburgh in Scotland on 19 August, and again at Newcastle on 18 September, all dates which match his father's itinerary.¹²⁸ Adam was probably one of the many members of the army who became sick, and he died before 30 September when a silk cloth with gold thread was placed upon his body at his burial in the conventual church of Tynemouth priory.¹²⁹ That is all that can be said with certainty, but there is a possible mention of Adam in a letter addressed to Edward and datable to the summer of 1322. The unnamed author of the letter notes that Edward had ordered him to bring ‘the king's son’ safely to York, and adds that ‘all good qualities and honour are increasing’ in him.¹³⁰ The son in question could have been Edward of Windsor, Edward II's elder legitimate son, who was summoned as earl of Chester to join the army preparing for Scotland. But Edward was only nine years old and unlikely to have been present in person even if he sent military service in his name. The reference in the letter simply to ‘the king's son’, rather than to the earl, suggests that Adam was meant and that the author of the letter might have been Adam's master, Hugh Chastilloun.

TWO NARROW ESCAPES

On the day of Adam's burial his father was at Barnard Castle near Durham helping to gather forces to meet an expected Scottish attack. His wife, Isabella, meanwhile had been sent to Tynemouth for safety:¹³¹ it proved to be anything but safe. On about 30 September Robert Bruce entered England, reaching Northallerton in Yorkshire on about 12 October, only 15 miles from where Edward was staying at Rievaulx abbey.¹³² Although Bruce may have been hoping to take Edward by surprise and to capture him, Edward was warned by his spies of the proximity of the Scots and on 13 October wrote to the earl of Pembroke, asking him to come to Byland on the following day with all the force he could muster. There he would find the earl of Richmond and Henry de Beaumont, to whom Edward had already explained his intentions, and he was to make all the necessary plans with them.¹³³ Pembroke and Richmond carried out their orders and on 14 October stationed their men on the summit of Blackhow Moor near Byland. Here they were attacked by Sir James Douglas and the earl of Moray, and in the rout which followed they were defeated and the earl of Richmond and a French nobleman, Henry de Sully the butler of France, were captured.¹³⁴ Pembroke escaped from the battle to York with some of his retainers.¹³⁵ The encounter itself did not however come as a surprise since as early as 2 October Edward had summoned forces to assemble at Blackhow Moor.¹³⁶ On the day the English were defeated by more determined leadership and by the ferocity of the Scottish attack up a steep hillside which left them outflanked and in a desperate position.¹³⁷ Edward was warned of the danger while he was eating his breakfast and made his escape just in time, accompanied by his half-brother the earl of Kent, the Younger Despenser and others, first to Bridlington priory and Burstwick, and then to York, hotly pursued by the Scots until he reached the gates of the city.¹³⁸ As had happened at Bannockburn, Edward again lost his privy seal, together with other valuables and equipment.¹³⁹ When news of the battle reached London on 28 October it caused great alarm.¹⁴⁰

Even now Edward's humiliation at the hands of the Scots was not complete, since Isabella was cut off behind enemy lines and also in danger of capture by the Scots. To be fair to Edward, the Benedictine priory of Tynemouth, in which he had placed her for security, was situated in a strongly fortified position on a headland overlooking the North Sea. He had also told the constable of Norham to look after her safety,¹⁴¹ and he had ordered the earls of Atholl and Richmond to gather men from among those commanded by the Younger Despenser and to take them to defend the queen. Edward later had second thoughts and decided that Henry de Sully and his men should undertake the defence of Tynemouth since they would be ‘plus greables que autres’ to Isabella.¹⁴² This could be interpreted to mean either that Isabella already disliked Despenser so much that she could not bear to have any of his men around her or that Henry de Sully, freshly arrived with news of her family and of the French court, would be better company.¹⁴³ These plans of course came to nothing because of the débâcle at Blackhow Moor and in the end Isabella and Eleanor de Clare, Despenser's wife who was with her, were taken to safety by a number of squires of the royal household.¹⁴⁴ It is not clear how they escaped, probably by sea, or just how close Isabella and Eleanor came to capture by the Scots.¹⁴⁵ But there can be little doubt of Isabella's anger and humiliation. She had been forced to flee on three occasions during her marriage to Edward: from Tynemouth in 1312 when she, Edward and Gaveston had escaped from the advancing forces of the earl of Lancaster; in 1319 from Scottish raiders at the time of the battle of Myton; and now, once again from Tynemouth in 1322.

A SCOTTISH SETTLEMENT AT LAST

On 28 October Edward gave his minstrel, William de Morley, alias the King of the North, property at Pontefract which had belonged to one of Thomas of Lancaster's minstrels, John le Boteler, alias King Bruaunt. This action could be seen either as an example of Edward II's preference for trivial matters over affairs of state or, more positively, as a reward to a man who had served him loyally since 1299 and whose playing of the harp was helping him to get over the humiliation and tragedy he had just experienced.¹⁴⁶

Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that in the winter of 1322–3 Edward was as heavily concerned as ever with the Scots. Having come so close to capturing Edward on 14 October, the Scots took their revenge on the canons of Bridlington priory and their possessions before raiding other parts of the East Riding and returning across the border on 2 November. The Scots had been one month and three days in England, the longest time they had yet spent there. In the meantime they had ravaged the area around Carlisle, preventing Andrew Harclay from bringing his cavalry forces to aid Edward at Blackhow Moor, as intended.¹⁴⁷

On 18 September, immediately after his return to Newcastle from his disastrous Scottish campaign, Edward summoned a parliament first to Ripon on 14 November, and then under pressure of events to meet at York. Edward announced his intention of spending the winter in the north with a strong force to restrain the attacks of the Scots, before returning to Scotland in the coming summer to defeat the Scots once and for all, ‘with God's aid’.¹⁴⁸ When the parliament met on 14 November the chief topics were probably recriminations and money. The failure in Scotland was one of the things which weakened Edward II's hold on power in the closing years of his reign.¹⁴⁹ On 27 November, two days before the end of the parliament, it was decided that the king and the leading magnates should remain in the north over the winter and on 2 December a fresh muster was ordered to take place at York on 2 February 1323.¹⁵⁰ In order to finance this new campaign a tenth and a sixth of the value of moveable goods were granted to the king, to be payable in two parts, on 3 April and 1 July 1323. This tax, which proved to be both the last and the heaviest of Edward II's reign, yielded over £42,000.¹⁵¹ On 27 November the archbishops of Canterbury and York were ordered to summon the clergy, who had not attended the parliament, to meet at Lincoln on 14 January 1323 to discuss a subsidy in aid of the Scottish war.¹⁵²

However, there was no reason to believe that a new campaign in Scotland would be any more successful than its predecessor. The futility of Edward's policy towards Scotland was further demonstrated on 3 January 1323 when the earl of Carlisle, Andrew de Harclay, the victor of Boroughbridge, acted on his own initiative in meeting Robert Bruce at Lochmaben and making a draft peace treaty recognizing Scottish independence.¹⁵³ Two versions of the treaty exist, one now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen which Professor Barrow considers to be the best text;¹⁵⁴ and the other, of which there are two copies, in England: one in the National Archives in London and one in the Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon composed at Bridlington priory.¹⁵⁵ England and Scotland would be separate kingdoms, each with its own king and with its own laws and customs. Harclay promised to do everything in his power to ensure that the treaty was implemented and to secure the independence of Bruce and his kingdom; in return Bruce would promote and maintain the common advantage of the kingdom of England. If Edward accepted the terms within one year, Bruce would pay him 40,000 marks in ten annual instalments, would found a monastery in Scotland for the souls of those killed in the war, and allow Edward to choose a wife from his own family for Bruce's heir. Neither king would be forced to accept back into his kingdom anyone who had fought against him or to restore his lands.¹⁵⁶ Harclay sought to obtain the support of the mayor and community of Newcastle for the proposed treaty.¹⁵⁷ Harclay's motives are uncertain. According to the author of the Lanercost chronicle, he said that since Edward could neither govern nor defend his kingdom against the Scots, whose devastations were growing year by year so that in the end the entire kingdom would be lost, the lesser of two evils was for the two kingdoms to exist together in peace.¹⁵⁸ On the other hand, the mutual guarantees given by Harclay and Bruce that neither would harm the other's lands in any future campaign suggest that Harclay had given up on Edward II altogether and was also looking to his own interests.¹⁵⁹

Edward already had his suspicions on 8 January when he forbade Harclay and the communities of the Scottish March to engage in any truce negotiations with the Scots.¹⁶⁰ When he heard the details of Harclay's draft treaty, Edward at once repudiated it and declared Harclay a traitor. His arrest was ordered on 1 February and on 25 February Harclay was taken by surprise and captured in Carlisle castle by Sir Anthony de Lucy.¹⁶¹ Two days later the earl of Kent, Sir John Hastings, three royal knights and a royal judge, Sir Geoffrey le Scrope, were appointed to pass judgment on Harclay, which they duly performed at Carlisle on 3 March. Harclay was to be degraded from his title as earl and from knighthood before being hanged, drawn and quartered. The quarters were then to be displayed at Carlisle, Newcastle, York and Shrewsbury, as a warning to other possible traitors.¹⁶² The savagery of his sentence marked not only Edward's feelings of betrayal by the very man who had defeated Lancaster less than a year earlier but also the depths of violence and confusion into which the kingdom was now beginning to descend and which would soon be beyond anyone's control.

Although in early April Edward ordered troops to assemble at York before the 24th in case the Scots resumed their attacks, he had already entered into negotiations of his own.¹⁶³ The first steps in dealing with the Scots had been taken early in February, even before Harclay's arrest and execution, when some of the retainers of Henry de Sully who had been captured at Blackhow Moor came to the king as intermediaries. As a result a temporary truce lasting until 22 May was made on 14 March, and on 1 April, following an appeal from Robert Bruce to Sully, three Scottish envoys were given safe conducts until 5 May to come to Newcastle. On the same date Sully was asked to prolong the truce until after 22 May and English envoys were appointed to meet the Scots. Soon after this, all the orders issued on 1 April were cancelled, perhaps to give more time to prepare for the talks. On 29 April the truce was extended until 2 June, and on 30 April the Younger Despenser's son Hugh, Pembroke's nephew John Hastings and two others were sent from Newark to stay at Tweedmouth as hostages while the Scottish envoys, the bishop of St Andrew's and the earl of Moray, came to Newcastle and York to discuss a longer truce.¹⁶⁴ Since December 1322 negotiations for a truce had also been under way with the count of Flanders, in the hope that this would remove one of the most persistent and intractable sources of external support for the Scottish cause. On 5 April a truce with Flanders was finally proclaimed.¹⁶⁵

On 1 May the earl of Pembroke, bishop of Exeter, the Younger Despenser and Robert Baldock were given authority to make a final peace treaty with the Scots, whom they met at Newcastle a few days later.¹⁶⁶ The negotiations did not go well at first.¹⁶⁷ A letter from Robert Bruce to Henry de Sully, written from Berwick on 21 March, gives a good idea of the problems. In it Bruce expressed his desire to make peace with England but said that Edward's refusal even to address him by name, let alone as king, had so far made peace impossible. Bruce concluded by saying that ‘it does not seem advisable to us to accept a truce in which no more mention is made of us than of the humblest man in our kingdom, so that we could demand no more than any other if the truce were to be infringed wholly or in part’.¹⁶⁸ This was disingenuous on Bruce's part, since the English refusal to recognize him as the king of an independent kingdom was at the heart of the Anglo-Scottish conflict. On 11 May Edward wrote to the earl of Pembroke, telling him that the existing truce had been extended until 5 June, but also advising him to be ready to answer the military summons to Newcastle on 1 July if the talks should break down. Edward then indulged in a tirade against the malice of the Scots and the innumerable killings and acts of devastation they had committed against the people of his kingdom, whose welfare he claimed was always close to his heart:¹⁶⁹ fairly standard language in terms of past conflict, but not at all the words to be expected from a king who seriously intended to make peace.

No peace treaty was made, but Edward had his way, at least with regard to Bruce's title. In late May the English and Scottish negotiators agreed on a truce between Edward and ‘Sir Robert de Bruce’ and their respective subjects, lasting thirteen years; after which both sets of envoys came to Bishopsthorpe near York, where on 30 May the truce was confirmed by Edward and the council.¹⁷⁰ The final recognition of an independent Scotland by the English crown had to wait until the Treaty of Northampton concluded in the name of Edward III by Isabella and Mortimer in 1328. Although the 1323 truce had been born out of Edward's humiliation, England was at least at peace with all its external enemies for the first time since 1294.

However, an indication that all was not well occurred during the Bishopsthorpe council. Fifty councillors were present, including the archbishop of York, the bishops of Norwich and Exeter, the earls of Kent, Pembroke, Winchester and Atholl, as well as the Younger Despenser and Henry de Sully, newly released by the Scots. Henry de Beaumont, one of Edward's closest advisers since the beginning of the reign, was also present but disagreed so strongly with the proposed truce that he refused to take part in the discussion. Edward angrily dismissed Beaumont from the council and had him committed to prison, from which he was released only after the intervention of eight other councillors.¹⁷¹ Henry had a personal interest in Scotland since the terms of the truce prevented him from pursuing his claim to the Scottish earldom of Buchan, in right of his wife Alice Comyn.¹⁷² In February Edward had also criticized his brother Louis, the bishop of Durham for allegedly not doing enough to defend the lands of his diocese from the Scots.¹⁷³To make matters worse, the Beaumonts were related to Isabella, who had pressed strongly for Louis's appointment as bishop of Durham in 1316. Although Henry's relations with Edward were later patched up,¹⁷⁴ the episode was a sign of the times and may have been another cause of estrangement between Edward and his wife.

SIGNS AND PORTENTS

There were many indications that England itself was only superficially at peace. In September 1322 miracles were said to have taken place at Thomas of Lancaster's tomb in Pontefract priory, where the deaf, the dumb and the blind all found cures; and to make sure that the greatest possible political mileage could be obtained miracles were also said to have occurred in May 1323 at the painted plaque which Lancaster had set up in St Paul's cathedral in London to commemorate Edward II's granting of the Ordinances in 1311. In response Edward forbade anyone to go near Lancaster's place of execution or burial on pain of punishment; while on Edward's orders Robert Baldock the keeper of the privy seal and archdeacon of Middlesex removed the plaque and the candles which had been left burning there in Lancaster's honour.¹⁷⁵ In September 1323 the mayor of Bristol inquired into a riot which had recently taken place at the gallows on which the bodies of Henry de Montfort and Henry de Wilyngton had been hanging since their execution in March 1322, and told the king that Reginald de Montfort and others had fraudulently reported miracles.¹⁷⁶ It was probably a fear of further politically inspired miracles rather than just the pleading of the Church which in March 1324 finally induced Edward to allow the burial of the men executed in 1322.¹⁷⁷

The ‘miracles’ were only one example of local unrest and disturbance. Some of this had been caused by the passage of the rival armies of the contrariants and king during the civil war of 1321–2.¹⁷⁸ In many places the fighting between the king and the magnates was followed by an orgy of looting as individuals carried away as much as they could of property belonging to former contrariants before royal officials could take charge;¹⁷⁹ in other cases fugitive contrariants fought on.¹⁸⁰ The civil war and its aftermath also provided the cue and opportunity for men to engage in law-breaking and brigandage, secure in the knowledge that the government did not have the resources or the energy to bring them to book.¹⁸¹

One such individual was Robert le Ewer, a royal yeoman with a reputation for unruly and unscrupulous behaviour, which had caused a demand from the Ordainers for his expulsion from the king's service in 1311, and petitions to be lodged against him in 1314–15 and 1320.¹⁸² One chronicler even described him as ‘the prince of thieves’.¹⁸³ In February 1320 he was replaced as constable of Odiham castle in Hampshire by the Younger Despenser, and the following August his arrest was ordered, for defying and threatening violence against royal officials.¹⁸⁴ He was again put in charge of Odiham in July 1321 when Despenser's lands were taken into royal control to protect then from attack; and was active in the civil war of 1321–2 during which he helped to seize control of rebels' lands and raised and commanded troops for the crown. He appears to have served in the Scottish campaign but in September 1322 left the king secretly and without permission and headed for his home county of Hampshire, where he allegedly acted like a Robin Hood, distributing the goods of executed contrariants to the poor as alms for their souls; in November the king ordered Robert's arrest after he attempted to seize Odiham and raided a royal manor, and sent the earl of Kent south to capture him.¹⁸⁵Robert le Ewer's motives are obscure but he appears to have had had a particular enmity against Hugh Despenser the Elder, the new earl of Winchester, whose Hampshire manors he attacked, and who was allegedly forced to withdraw for safety to Windsor castle. Despite the efforts of the earls of Winchester and Kent to track him down, Robert le Ewer was eventually captured by chance in Southampton on about 13 December 1322, after first attempting to flee with his wife to France. Refusing to answer his judges, he was consigned to prison in Winchester, deprived of food and water, and so loaded with chains that he died there a few days later.¹⁸⁶

PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS

Robert le Ewer's revolt caused considerable anxiety to the king, especially since it included an attempt to seize a royal castle and also endangered one of his closest supporters, the earl of Winchester. So far as is known, Robert was acting on his own account and was not part of any more general conspiracy. Two far more serious events took place in 1323, not only involving the security of other important royal castles but also showing that the contrariants still had influential and determined supporters. The first of them occurred on 11 January 1323, when an attempt was made to free Maurice de Berkeley and other prisoners, including Hugh Audley the Elder, from captivity in Wallingford castle in Berkshire, where they had been held for almost a year.¹⁸⁷ According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, one of Berkeley's squires, later identified as Roger Wauton, who had visited him regularly in prison, one day entered the castle with several companions, with the guard's permission and without arousing any suspicion. That night Maurice invited the constable and all the doorkeepers and watchmen to dine with him. While they were dining the squire and his companions rose and demanded the keys of the castle; the squire then opened a postern gate and let in twenty more men. All this was done in complete silence and the conspirators might have escaped with all the prisoners, but for a young boy who realized that something was wrong and warned the mayor of the town that the castle was lost. When the local sheriff arrived, the conspirators tried to buy time by claiming that they had entered the castle with the king's authority. The earls of Winchester and Kent then came and threatened to attack the castle. On about 25 January, the conspirators opened the gates and withdrew to the castle chapel in search of sanctuary: ‘Thus, having entered, the earls found Maurice in custody as usual, and the rest in the chapel.’¹⁸⁸ Of those involved, the ringleader Roger Wauton, and two others, Sir Edmund de la Beche and Sir John de ‘Goleinton’, were taken to the king at Pontefract, where Wauton was hanged and the others imprisoned.¹⁸⁹ It had been a close call and was a foretaste of the attempts made in 1327 to release Edward II from captivity in Maurice de Berkeley's own castle.¹⁹⁰

The attempt on Wallingford occurred just as Andrew Harclay's conspiracy was developing in the north. The king's suspicions that the Londoners were complicit in the Wallingford affair were not allayed when they refused to send fifty crossbowmen to help in the siege, on the pretext that their prime duty was to hold London for the king, as surety for which the queen and her children were living among them.¹⁹¹ Isabella had come south after Christmas and since 12 January had been staying in the Tower of London, where she was apparently joined by her elder son, Edward earl of Chester.¹⁹² Because of the Harclay conspiracy Edward was unable to come south until late March, but was preceded by Harclay's head which on 13 March was stuck on a spike on London Bridge, as a warning to the Londoners.¹⁹³ Edward first spent a few days at King's Langley before reaching Westminster on 1 April. On 4 April he removed the mayor of London, Hamo de Chigwell, from office, replacing him with Nicholas de Farndon.¹⁹⁴ Edward (and probably Isabella) then made a short visit to Canterbury, on 10 April, perhaps to give thanks for past victories and pray for assistance in his present difficulties, before returning to the Tower of London on the 15th. Within a few days they were again on their travels, taking with them Hamo de Chigwell and three other London citizens, who were forced to follow the court wherever it went as if they were prisoners.¹⁹⁵ Edward and Isabella were back at Bishopsthorpe outside York in early May, just as the negotiations with the Scots were coming to their conclusion.¹⁹⁶ Edward left an angry London behind him. One likely consequence was the outbreak of Lancastrian miracles in St Paul's during May; another was to appear with great drama on 1 August.

The interrogation of Mortimer's close associate Maurice de Berkeley after the recapture of Wallingford may have given some indications of a plot to free Mortimer from the Tower of London.¹⁹⁷ But if so, no special precautions seem to have been taken to ensure that Mortimer was securely held: when he made his escape a full six months later it appears to have come as a complete surprise. Although there is no documentary evidence to support the claims by two of the chroniclers that Edward had decided to carry out the death sentence originally passed on Mortimer in August 1322, and that news or rumour of this precipated Mortimer's escape, it is quite possible.¹⁹⁸ In any case the longer Mortimer remained in prison and the more conspiracies grew around him, with or without his active connivance, the more likely it became that he would be put to death,¹⁹⁹ so he had every incentive to escape at the earliest opportunity. On 1 August 1323 he did so, with the aid of Gerard d'Alspaye, the deputy constable of the Tower. After drugging the constable, Stephen de Segrave, and the guards, while they were dining, Gerard let Mortimer out of his cell; both men escaped through the kitchens and let themselves down the outer wall using a rope ladder, to the banks of the river where other conspirators were waiting with a boat. They crossed the Thames, to a mill where Mortimer was met by several more men with horses and made his way to the coast and safety.²⁰⁰

Mortimer's escape was certainly planned, and he had helpers both inside and outside the Tower. It is very likely, as in the case of Wallingford, that visitors were able to smuggle correspondence in and out of the Tower. Although the constable was so badly affected by the drug he had been given that he was unable to resume his duties,²⁰¹ he inevitably came under suspicion and was later questioned about Mortimer's escape. He appears to have cleared himself, but admitted that ‘he could have kept Mortimer in deeper and closer imprisonment than he did’.²⁰² Edward replaced him as constable on 6 August, when the treasurer the bishop of Exeter was appointed. Edward however suspected that there might be resistance from within the Tower and told the bishop to visit the Tower on the pretext of examining the royal treasure which was stored there and to show his royal commission only after he and his household had entered.²⁰³ There is also evidence that several prominent Londoners – Richard de Bethune, John de Gisors and a London merchant Ralph de Bocton – were actively involved in the plot.²⁰⁴ Edward II was now paying the price for his interference in London politics.²⁰⁵

THE DESPENSER REGIME

One chronicler, Robert of Avesbury, writing in the reign of Edward III, called Despenser a ‘second king’, just as Gaveston had been described early in the reign of Edward II; while Thomas de la More, the author of the Vita et Mors Edwardi Secundi, added Hugh Despenser the Elder and wrote of there being three kings at once.²⁰⁶ The Younger Despenser certainly behaved like one. In the 1320s he established a family mausoleum in Tewkesbury abbey, modelled in part on the royal mausoleum at Westminster in which the tombs of the Clare earls of Gloucester were located. If Despenser could not himself be earl of Gloucester, he evidently intended to go one better.²⁰⁷ At his fortress of Caerphilly in Glamorgan he built a great hall, constructed by Master Thomas de la Bataille, a mason who had worked for the crown and may also have worked at Tewkesbury, and by Master William Hurley the craftsman who a few years later built the elaborate timber ‘lantern’ inside the famous octagon at Ely cathedral. The stone corbels supporting the timber roof bear carved heads, probably depicting Despenser himself and Edward II together with Isabella and Despenser's own wife Eleanor de Clare.²⁰⁸ It was a hall fit for a king: in the autumn of 1326 Despenser had his only opportunity to entertain Edward here but not in circumstances he would have chosen. In the charges laid against him before his exile in 1321 Despenser was accused of accroaching royal power to himself and of usurping royal power, mastery and sovereignty over the king's person.²⁰⁹ Similar language reappeared in the list of accusations made before his execution in November 1326, when he was charged with riding against the peers of the realm with force of arms, and of seizing and exercising royal power.²¹⁰ He was also accused of being a traitor, of having badly advised the king, and of having acted as a tyrant.²¹¹

Compared with Gaveston, whose influence seems to have been over the person of the king rather than in the day-to-day business of government, there was much more reason to accuse Despenser of acting as if he were king. Although his official title was never more than that of chamberlain of the royal household, or Hugh Despenser lord of Glamorgan, there was no doubting the power and influence he exercised. In November 1323, for example, Edward singled out three men – his chamberlain Despenser; Geoffrey le Scrope, chief justice of King's Bench; and Robert de Ayleston, keeper of the privy seal – as his most intimate advisers, to whom he committed and communicated all his most private business.²¹² To these three could be added Master Robert Baldock, archdeacon of Middlesex the former keeper of the privy seal and chancellor since August 1323, and Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter and treasurer since 1322. Hugh Despenser the Elder, an experienced royal councillor since the days of Edward I, was also influential in his new role as earl of Winchester.²¹³

But it was the Younger Despenser who played the leading part. Evidence of his power is apparent throughout the records. There are many instances of royal letters under the privy seal being sent together with covering letters from Despenser to the same persons and on the same date: on 23 September 1323, for example, royal letters to Edmund Passele and the bishop of Exeter were matched by letters from Despenser; two days later letters were sent in the same way to the earl and countess of Pembroke;²¹⁴ there are similar examples in November and December of 1323, and in January 1324.²¹⁵ On other occasions Despenser appears to have sent letters of his own on important royal business, as if he were acting as a chief minister.²¹⁶ There are examples of letters being addressed to Despenser rather than the king²¹⁷ and of Despenser acting as the king's agent.²¹⁸ The accident of the survival of part of Despenser's personal archives shows that he was centrally involved with the administration of Gascony during the time of the Anglo-French War there in 1324–5.²¹⁹ As Davies noted, in some of the correspondence there appears to be an assumption of regality. A draft letter from Despenser to Robert de Waterville, for example, said that Despenser had shown Waterville's letters to the king and the council, and ‘it seems to our lord the king and to us that you have acted wisely’. Even though the words ‘to us’ were cancelled, Davies is surely right in commenting that ‘Despenser had an exalted view of his own importance’.²²⁰ The pope also knew that Despenser was the avenue to influencing the king and wrote to him on numerous occasions after 1322, asking him for example to be watchful in the king's service, to try to remove causes of difference between Edward and the pope, to cause the bishop of Winchester (John Stratford) to be received with favour, and in 1326 asking him to retire from participation in the government so that Isabella could return to her husband without fear, and asking him to promote good relations between Edward and Isabella.²²¹

Despenser has traditionally been credited with overall responsibility for the extensive programme of administrative reorganization and reform of the royal household and the exchequer which took place after 1322.²²² There is however little to support this conclusion. Reforms and reorganization there certainly were, but this was a pattern that had already been established with the collection of documents relating to Scottish affairs made by Andrew de Tange between 1315 and 1318;²²³ the household ordinance of York in 1318;²²⁴ the register of Gascon documents drawn up by John Hildesle and Elias de Joneston in 1318–19;²²⁵ the sorting of exchequer records begun in August 1320;²²⁶ the calendar of Gascon documents produced under the overall supervision of Walter Stapeldon the bishop of Exeter between 1320 and November 1322;²²⁷ the ordering of the muniments relating to Scotland, Ireland and Wales which was decided on by the council in July 1321;²²⁸ and perhaps even the mysterious Modus Tenendi Parliamentumwhich was possibly a ‘procedural tract’ composed by a member of the royal administration.²²⁹ This process continued after the York parliament of 1322. The personal archives of Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry & Lichfield, who had died in November 1321, were delivered to the exchequer in November 1323, while a listing was also made of Thomas of Lancaster's muniments.²³⁰ In November 1322 Stapeldon delivered to the treasury three books containing details of royal gifts, forest rentals and parliaments;²³¹copies of the registers of clerical taxation were delivered to the exchequer; and detailed records of contrariant lands and their revenues were also made.²³² All these labours and the exchequer ordinances of 1323, 1324 and 1326, and the household ordinances of 1323 and 1324 took place on Despenser's ‘watch’, but there is no reason to suppose that he was personally involved in any of them. Walter Stapeldon in his capacity as treasurer was the prime mover, while the division of the exchequer into northern and southern departments in 1324 is said to have been the idea of Roger Belers, one of the barons of the exchequer.²³³ These measures were all carried out in the interests of efficient accounting for, collection and distribution of revenue. Both Despenser and Edward II had a close interest in money and its accumulation, but it is unlikely that their interest went further than urging the financial administration to gather as much of it as possible and by whatever means was available.²³⁴

It has been observed that ‘the Despensers carried out their policies with the aid of a sprawling clientele of retainers, administrators and servants’, and by their systematic exploitation of the ‘double allegiance’ of men who served both them and the crown.²³⁵Although double allegiance was not a new phenomenon or necessarily an indication of corruption,²³⁶ the Despensers, and especially the Younger Despenser, brought it to an altogether new level. In the Younger Despenser's case over seventy individuals in personal and royal service have been identified. Some were figures, such as John Inge, John Iweyn and Ralph de Gorges, already familiar from before 1321; but the majority of them, including royal administrators such as Robert Baldock, Roger Belers and Adam de Lymbergh, dated from 1322.²³⁷ At least three of the four controllers of the royal wardrobe between 1320 and 1327 were clients of the Younger Despenser;²³⁸ eight of the county sheriffs appointed between 1320 and 1326, about one in ten, can be identified as retainers of the Despensers;²³⁹ and there are many examples of humble members of the royal administration who also acted as Despenser clients.²⁴⁰ Despenser also acquired the services as retainers of a number of men who had previously been followers of other magnates, such as the earl of Pembroke, several of whose men joined Despenser after Pembroke's death in 1324.²⁴¹ Even men who had been actively opposed to Despenser in 1321–2, notably Roger Belers who had been a retainer of Thomas of Lancaster, joined him after the victory over the contrariants.²⁴² Altogether, over two dozen individual knights have been identified as serving one or both of the Despensers in the 1320s.²⁴³

It is initially surprising to discover that, despite the value to them of their clients and retainers, the Despensers did not go out of their way to intrude their followers into official positions, such as that of sheriff or judge. Their failure to do so when the opportunity offered has even been identified as one of the reasons why their power and Edward II's regime collapsed so swiftly at the end of 1326. When Isabella and Mortimer came to make changes in shrieval appointments in February 1327, they found it necessary to replace only nine sheriffs out of twenty-four; while most of the justices of the central courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas were quickly reappointed or even promoted.²⁴⁴ What gave the Despensers their authority was their influence over the king and the knowledge that whatever they wanted they were likely to get. Their network of clients and informers, spread over many counties of England and much of Wales, then ensured the desired result.

The lordship of Gower, whose seizure by the crown in 1320 had provoked the attacks on the Despensers in 1321, provides a very good illustration of how the Despensers achieved their ends. In July 1322 Gower was granted to the Younger Despenser, who then proceeded to use the lordship as a means of gaining further territory in South Wales. He first of all exchanged Gower for the lordships of Usk and Caerleon, which belonged to Roger Damory's widow, Elizabeth de Clare. In April 1324 and at Despenser's instigation, the former lord of Gower, William de Braose, began legal action to recover the lordship from Elizabeth by means of an assize of novel disseisin. Having succeeded, in June 1324 De Braose then granted Gower to the Elder Despenser, who passed it on to his son, so completing the circle.²⁴⁵ The appearance of legality hid the reality of fraud, threats of violence and abuse of legal process.²⁴⁶ In this case we know much of what occurred since in May 1326 Elizabeth de Clare lodged a petition protesting against her treatment by the Younger Despenser. In March 1322 Elizabeth had been captured at her castle of Usk and taken to Barking abbey where she was held throughout the summer of 1322. While she was there the king tried to persuade her to give Caerleon and Usk to the Younger Despenser in exchange for Gower. Elizabeth was unwilling to do so, believing that Usk was more valuable than Gower, but she eventually agreed through fear. At the end of 1322 she was summoned to the king at York, where she was imprisoned apart from her council and forced to promise that she would not remarry or grant any of her remaining lands away without Edward's permission. This was of course intended to preserve the Younger Despenser's position. She was threatened that if she refused, she would lose all the lands of her inheritance. Then came the final straw in 1324 when Gower was also taken away from her.²⁴⁷

This was typical of the way in which the Despensers achieved their ends. It shows too how completely Edward II supported them and aided them in their demands. If his niece Elizabeth de Clare could not withstand them, there was no hope for anyone else, whether high or low. Even Edward's own half-brother, Thomas earl of Norfolk, suffered in August 1323 when he was forced to grant the Younger Despenser a lifetime lease of the valuable lordship of Chepstow.²⁴⁸ Elizabeth and Thomas were not the only victims. Alice de Lacy, the widow of Thomas of Lancaster, and daughter of Henry de Lacy the earl of Lincoln and therefore also an heiress in her own right, was, like Elizabeth, summoned to York in 1322 and imprisoned until she released her lands to the king. These were then granted to the Despensers: to make this possible even Joan de Lacy, the widow of Henry de Lacy, was forced to give up some of her dower lands.²⁴⁹ After the earl of Pembroke's death in 1324 the Younger Despenser was given custody of the lordships of Pembroke in Wales and Wexford in Ireland. Pembroke's widow, Marie de St Pol, complained to the king that the Younger Despenser refused to allow the escheator to return an inquest on Pembroke's lands in Hertford and Haverfordwest because he wanted them for himself, and that Robert Baldock would not allow her to have dower in either of these places or in Pembroke's lands in Monmouth unless she produced the original royal charters. The countess of Pembroke gave up her rights in Little Monmouth, which in July 1325 was granted to Despenser.²⁵⁰ One of Pembroke's heirs, John Hastings of Abergavenny, was forced to make an obligation for £4,000 to Despenser in August 1324; while another of his heirs, Elizabeth Comyn, was imprisoned by the Despensers until in March 1325 she released to them her rights in the former Pembroke lands at the valuable castle of Goodrich in Herefordshire and Painswick in Gloucestershire.²⁵¹

The regime established in England after the victory over the contrariants in 1322 acted within a framework of legality but in reality was arbitrary and brutal. Edward II was implicated in everything that was done in his name and with his acquiescence. In 1325 the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi told the truth when he remarked: ‘The king's harshness has indeed increased so much today that no one, however great and wise, dares to cross the king's will. Thus parliaments, consultations and councils decide nothing these days. For the nobles of the realm, terrified by threats and the penalties inflicted on others, let the king's will have free rein. Thus today will conquers reason. For whatever pleases the king, though lacking in reason, has the force of law.’²⁵² This was a situation which could not last for long without further challenge. Even as early as 1323 the signs of the regime's ultimate dissolution were there for those with the will to read them. Although seeming all-powerful, it was severely restricted in its ability to control a deeply divided and disturbed kingdom which its own behaviour had done much to bring about. The regime of Edward II and the Despensers was indefensible and in the last resort there were few who were prepared even to try to defend it.

EDWARD FALLS OUT WITH THE CHURCH

With the exception of the dispute with Archbishop Winchelsey of Canterbury which he had inherited from his father and his hostility to Walter Langton bishop of Coventry & Lichfield, his father's former treasurer, for most of his reign Edward II had been on good terms with both the English Church and the papacy.²⁵³ Since 1313 he had a loyal and compliant archbishop of Canterbury in Walter Reynolds; the other English archbishop, William Melton of York, was also a loyal servant of the crown, as was Alexander Bicknor, archbishop of Dublin in Ireland. Edward had generally been successful in securing the appointment to English dioceses of men who were royal servants and were personally acceptable to him: Walter Reynolds to Worcester in 1307, Walter Stapeldon to Exeter in 1308, John Droxford to Bath & Wells in 1309, John de Hothum to Ely and John Sandal to Winchester in 1316 were all examples. In November 1321 his old antagonist Walter Langton had finally died, allowing Edward to plunder his possessions in aid of the war effort and to scrutinize his accounts for any sums that might be collected by the crown.²⁵⁴ The English bishops and the papacy had also played a key role during most of the reign in mediating between Edward and his baronial opponents.

In 1321–2 this all started to change. Signs of the change were already apparent in Edward's hostility to Henry Burghersh the bishop of Lincoln, the nephew of Bartholomew de Badlesmere, whose appointment he had vigorously supported in 1320 but who had sympathized with the contrariants in 1321–2. In retaliation Edward took control of the temporalities belonging to the diocese. Burghersh did not help himself in the eyes of the king when in 1323 he appealed to Charles IV of France to intercede with the pope on his behalf.²⁵⁵ Adam Orleton, a former royal diplomat, whose appointment as bishop of Hereford in 1317 over a preferred royal candidate had been accepted by Edward only under protest, was suspected of having supported the Mortimers in 1321–2. This was very much in the nature of unfinished business and was to come to a head spectacularly in the early months of 1324.²⁵⁶ Another bishop under a cloud of suspicion was John Droxford of Bath & Wells, who had been in royal service since as early as 1290. The cause of his offence is less clear than in the cases of Burghersh and Orleton, but in February 1323 Edward demanded that the pope remove both Burghersh and Droxford from the realm, which the pope refused the following September, together with Edward's further demand that Droxford should be replaced by his friend and confidant, William the abbot of the Premonstratensian house of Langdon in Kent.²⁵⁷ Louis de Beaumont, the bishop of Durham whose appointment Isabella had championed in 1316, was in uncertain favour too in 1322–3 because of his alleged failure to defend his diocese against the Scots, even before his brother Henry quarrelled with the king over the Scottish truce in May 1323.²⁵⁸

Edward was also finding it increasingly difficult to persuade the pope to appoint his nominees to English sees. This had already happened in 1319 when the pope appointed one of his tax collectors, Rigaud d'Assier, as bishop of the extremely wealthy diocese of Winchester and ignored Edward's pleas on behalf of Badlesmere's nephew, Henry Burghersh. It occurred again in the autumn of 1321 when the pope appointed Roger Northburgh as bishop of Coventry & Lichfield, in place of Edward's preferred candidate, Robert Baldock, the archdeacon of Middlesex and a close ally of the Despensers.²⁵⁹ Northburgh's appointment would ordinarily have been a very acceptable one to the king since Roger was treasurer of the royal household and a royal servant of long standing, on whose behalf Edward had written to the pope earlier in 1321 asking for him to be made a cardinal. The pope refused the request and made Roger a bishop as a consolation prize.²⁶⁰

Edward did not complain too loudly on this occasion but the disappointment was swiftly followed by another in April 1323, when the bishop of Winchester Rigaud d'Assier died while at the papal curia. The news reached Edward in less than two weeks and this time he was determined that Baldock should be appointed.²⁶¹ On 26 April Edward wrote to the pope, pressing the claims of Baldock to the see in the strongest terms. Further letters of recommendation followed, culminating on 7 June in a letter in which Edward expressed his concern at rumours he had heard about the pope's intentions. Edward's fears were well founded. On 20 June the pope appointed an English royal clerk John Stratford to be the new bishop of Winchester.²⁶² Stratford was a trusted royal councillor who had long experience of dealing with royal business at Avignon. He spent several months there in early 1322, seeking papal support against the contrariants and the Scots, before returning to England in July to report to Edward. Before the end of July he was again on his way to Avignon, with a long list of favours to be sought on behalf of the king,²⁶³ not least the advancement of Robert Baldock.

When Edward learned that Stratford had been made bishop of Winchester he was furious. The development was all too reminiscent of Adam Orleton's appointment as bishop of Hereford in 1317 when he too had been a royal envoy at Avignon and had seemingly taken advantage of the opportunity to advance his own career. Despite the pope's protestations to the contrary,²⁶⁴ Edward assumed that Stratford had done the same and bombarded the pope and cardinals with letters demanding that the appointment be revoked and attacking Stratford's integrity. Meanwhile the authorities at Dover and other English ports were to seize any papal letters relating to Stratford's promotion. In September Edward was even forced into making an embarrassing apology to the pope when the clerks of Cardinal Raymond de Roux were arrested and gaoled at Dover.²⁶⁵

In November 1323 the new bishop of Winchester returned to England and was summoned to appear before the Younger Despenser, Geoffrey le Scrope and the keeper of the privy seal to explain himself.²⁶⁶ Having refused to answer their questions he was held in contempt and summoned again, finally appearing before Hervey de Staunton and other royal justices at Nottingham on 28 November. Stratford then underwent a lengthy examination of his conduct of royal business at Avignon, which gives striking evidence of the pope's growing reluctance to do Edward's bidding.²⁶⁷

Stratford and his fellow envoys had been charged in 1322 with asking the pope to confirm and strengthen earlier papal sentences of excommunication and interdict against the Scots. The pope had initially been prepared to do this but on learning of the thirteen-year truce between England and Scotland²⁶⁸ decided to go no further in the matter, especially since one of the terms of the truce bound Edward II not to object to any relaxation of the sentences.²⁶⁹ The pope also refused Edward's request that no Scot should be appointed to a Scottish diocese on the grounds that, since a bishop of English origin could not function in Scotland, Scottish souls would be imperilled.²⁷⁰ The pope was under growing pressure from the Scots themselves. Late in 1323 the earl of Moray went to Avignon to argue the case for Bruce's recognition as king of Scots. The pope agreed and in January 1324 wrote to Edward II explaining that doing so ‘could not diminish your right and honour, nor add to Bruce's’.²⁷¹

Another important issue raised during Stratford's mission to Avignon related to the Ordinances. Edward's oath to uphold the Ordinances had been annulled by the pope in 1320, while the Ordinances themselves had been revoked during the York parliament in May 1322. However, there remained the question of the oaths taken by the prelates and magnates to uphold the Ordinances. Stratford had considerable difficulty over this matter. The pope pointed out that many people had endangered themselves by their adherence to the Ordinances and reminded Edward through his envoy that, although he could revoke and alter statutes, he had no jurisdiction over oaths: it was only with some reluctance that the pope gave authority to the archbishop of Canterbury to set aside the oaths, if he deemed it in the interests of the king and the kingdom.²⁷²

The pope had also expressed his reluctance or inability to do Edward's bidding with regard to certain unnamed bishops (clearly the bishops of Lincoln and Hereford), the appointment of cardinals and other matters.²⁷³ The latter included Edward's request for papal assistance in his pursuit of King Robert of Sicily for a share in the counties of Provence and Forcalquier, a claim stemming ultimately from Edward's grandmother Eleanor of Provence, the queen of Henry III.²⁷⁴ Edward was unsuccessful in his claim, which served only to demonstrate the world of fantasy in which he was living as his kingdom began to collapse around him.

The record of Stratford's examination by the royal justices showed that he had in fact carried out his diplomatic duties at Avignon with great skill and had adapted his instructions to meet with changes in circumstances, such as news of the truce with Scotland. But this did not satisfy Edward, who summoned Stratford to appear before him in person on 7 December 1323. Nothing is known about the outcome of this meeting but Stratford was later ordered to present himself at parliament in February 1324.²⁷⁵

THE ‘TRIAL’ OF ADAM ORLETON

Edward's anger against Stratford may have begun to subside because of his growing fears about Roger Mortimer's activities in France and his suspicion that the bishop of Hereford, Adam Orleton was in some way involved with Mortimer. The matter went back to the civil war of 1321–2 when Orleton was suspected by the king of having sympathized with the Mortimers and even of sending them military help. There is some evidence for the former but nothing to prove the latter. Nor is there evidence that in 1322 Orleton helped to persuade Edward to commute the death sentences on the Mortimers to life imprisonment or that he played any part in Roger Mortimer of Wigmore's escape from the Tower of London in August 1323.²⁷⁶ Nonetheless Edward's distrust of Orleton continued to fester. Orleton was ordered to appear before royal justices at Hereford on 23 January 1324, when the charges of collusion with the Mortimers in 1321–2 were rehearsed. Orleton refused to answer the charges on the grounds that he was the bishop of Hereford at the will of God and of the supreme pontiff and that the substance of the articles alleged against him was so serious that he ought not to answer in court on the matters alleged against him, nor could he answer thereon without offence to God and Holy Church.²⁷⁷Orleton then appeared before the king at Westminster on 24 February, the day after the beginning of parliament.²⁷⁸ Again the charges were read out and again Orleton refused to answer them; whereupon the archbishop of Canterbury claimed Orleton for the Church and was ordered to produce him again on 19 March. The archbishop and bishop duly came on that date, when Orleton was convicted on the evidence of a jury from Hereford of having given aid to the Mortimers. His lands and goods were seized by the king and Orleton himself was delivered to the custody of the archbishop.²⁷⁹ According to another and even more dramatic version of events, Orleton's conviction took place in his absence after the archbishops of Canterbury, York and Dublin and ten other unnamed bishops had taken Orleton under their protection and warned those present not to lay hands on him under pain of anathema. Only after this was Orleton convicted, and then by specific order of the king.²⁸⁰

By the early months of 1324 Edward II had succeeded in quarrelling openly with at least three of his bishops, Lincoln, Winchester and Hereford, and in causing offence to the archbishops and to the pope. It was time for Edward to mend some fences. In March he restored the temporalities of the diocese of Lincoln which had been in royal hands since 1322, thus depriving the bishop of most of his income.²⁸¹ In the same month Henry of Lancaster was restored to his brother's earldom of Leicester. Edward's attitude towards John Stratford was also starting to soften and the two men were reconciled at Tonbridge in Kent on 24 June 1324.²⁸² Edward however remained resolutely unreconciled with Adam Orleton: the breach remained unhealed to the very end of the reign and was to have a profound impact on Edward's own fate.²⁸³

In 1324 Edward had the strongest of reasons for wishing to restore some semblance of harmony to his kingdom: for the first time since 1298 England and France were rapidly approaching open war in Gascony.

¹ Simon de Montfort was killed at the battle of Evesham in 1265 during the civil war between Henry III and the barons. His earldom was given to Henry III's younger son, Edmund earl of Lancaster, the father of Thomas of Lancaster.

² In 1266 William de Ferrers, earl of Derby, forfeited his lands, which were also given to Edmund of Lancaster.

³ Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, was one of Edward I's opponents in the 1297 crisis. On his death in 1306 Edward I took his lands for the crown. The earldom was revived by Edward II in 1312 in favour of his half-brother Thomas of Brotherton.

⁴ Vita, 76–7, sub 1313; Vita, 128–9, sub 1316.

⁵ In 1644: C. Carlton in ‘Three British revolutions and the personality of kingship’, Three British Revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Princeton, 1980), 165, cited in J.R.S. Phillips, ‘Simon de Montfort (1265), the Earl of Manchester (1644), and other stories’ in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. R. W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge, Suffolk & Rochester, NY, 2000), 79–80.

⁶ William Tuchet, Henry de Bradbourne, Warin de Insula, Thomas Mauduit, William Fitzwilliam, and William Cheyny: Foedera, II, i, 479; Maddicott, 312.

⁷ Gesta Edwardi, 78; Melsa, 342–3; Brut, i, 224.

⁸ A copy of the document sent to the justices is preserved in PW, II, ii, App., 261–7, and in G.L. Haskins, ‘Judicial proceedings against a traitor after Boroughbridge’, Speculum, xii (1937), 509–11. A record of the individual judgments was enrolled in Jan. 1325 on the roll of the King's Bench (KB) 27/259 (Hilary 1325), mm.173d, 34–35d (Crown Roll): Sayles, ‘The formal judgments,’ 58.

⁹ CPR, 1321–24, 148–9; Melsa, 342–3; Murimuth, 36; Brut, i, 224.

¹⁰ Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 118; Anonimalle, 108–9. See also Fryde, 61; and the article on Badlesmere by J.R. Maddicott in the Oxford DNB.

¹¹ Murimuth, 43. The short chronicle in BL, Cotton Ms. Cleopatra D.IX, ff. 83r–85r, published by Haskins as ‘A chronicle of the civil wars of Edward II’, has lists of those who were killed at Boroughbridge (three: including the earl of Hereford), who died beforehand (one: Roger Damory), or were executed afterwards (22).

¹² Maddicott, 312.

¹³ Lanercost, 244; Anonimalle, 108–9; Vita, 214–15.

¹⁴ Murimuth, 56; see also McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 103.

¹⁵ Keen, ‘Treason trials’. It could however also be argued (and was so argued by Thomas of Lancaster's brother Henry in 1327) that Thomas had been condemned in time of peace since Edward had not unfurled his own banners: Keen, 164–5. The same argument was also put forward by Roger Mortimer of Wigmore in Feb. 1327 and accepted in July that year: CPR, 1327–30, 142.

¹⁶ Phillips, ‘Simon de Montfort’, 87–8.

¹⁷ Matthew Strickland has also argued convincingly that the executions of William Wallace in 1305, Simon Fraser in 1306, and many other Scottish opponents under Edward I formed a major precedent for Edward II's actions in 1322 and that, having sat in judgment on several of his father's victims, Edward II himself would have been well aware of this: Strickland, ‘Treason, feud,’ 109–13. John Gillingham has drawn attention to the role of professional judges, such as Robert Mablethorp in Lancaster's trial, and of others such as Geoffrey le Scrope, suggesting that they were prepared to pass judgment on Lancaster and others by the king's record rather than by judgment of their peers: Gillingham, ‘Enforcing old law in new ways’, in Law and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Andersen, M. Münster-Swendsen & H. Voght (Copenhagen, 2008), 199–220.

¹⁸ Flores, 200; Brut, i, 224–5; Gillingham, ‘Enforcing old law’, 199–200.

¹⁹ Binski, Painted Chamber, 112; KW, i, 508, n. 7.

²⁰ See the article on Audley by J.R. Maddicott in the Oxford DNB.

²¹ French Chron., 43.

²² PW, II, ii, App., 216; CPR, 1327–30, 141–3 (July 1327); Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 126 (where the date of their conviction is wrongly given as 21 July 1322). The judges had been appointed by the king on 14 July and provided with a copy of the charges against the Mortimers, which they used to pronounce judgment on 2 Aug. Edward had however already ordered on 22 July that the sentences of death should be commuted: CPR, 1327–30, 142.

²³ Fryde, 63; KB 27/254, Rex, m.37.

²⁴ Vita, 218–19. Haskins, ‘A chronicle’, 80–1, lists the names of 85 men (including the Mortimers who gave themselves up) who were imprisoned. Five others escaped (including four who went overseas).

²⁵ Including the widow and mother-in-law of Lancaster, the wife, sons and daughters of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and the sons of the earl of Hereford: Fryde, 63–4, 245; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 121.

²⁶ See Fryde, 69–86, for a general view of the confiscation of land which followed the king's victory in 1322.

²⁷ Ibid., 70; List in PRO, Lists and Indexes, v, Ministers' Accounts, part 1, 441–62. Many of these were apparently poor men who could not afford to pay fines or from whom it was not worth trying to collect anything.

²⁸ The form of the procedure and an example of how it was applied in one case, that of Richard le Waleys, a former supporter of the earl of Lancaster in Yorkshire, are given in Fryde, 70–1, citing CFR, 1319–27, 152–3; C 47/34/9, an original file of submissions. The names of over 1,000 suspects were entered on the rolls of the court of King's Bench: Fryde, 70; KB 27/262, Rex, mm. 13–14.

²⁹ Fryde, 75–6.

³⁰ Ibid., 72–3; Maddicott, 319. On Henry's career see the article by S.L. Waugh in the Oxford DNB. He was apparently abroad at the time of the rebellion: CPR, 1321–24, 69; Phillips, 228.

³¹ The Bardi, for example, provided loans totalling £2,000: Fryde, 92; E 159/95, m.32; E 403/202.

³² Fryde, 92; E 372/171, m.43v; E 101/15/38; E 404/484, file 30.

³³ Fryde, 55, 244, n. 57; Tebbit, ‘Household knights’, 89.

³⁴ Waugh, ‘The profits of violence’, 851–3.

³⁵ Ibid., 848–51.

³⁶ Maddicott, 308–9, 314.

³⁷ ‘Le roi ne paye mie les dettes le conte’: petition of John de Ripon, a merchant of Pontefract: SC 8/5/212. Other examples are SC 8/6/252 (Walter de Shirburn, vicar of Wyston); SC 8/7/336 (Constance, widow of William Haliday of Pontefract, responsible for 15 children ‘qe perissent par defaute’).

³⁸ Prestwich, ‘The unreliability of royal household knights’, 1–11, esp. 5–7.

³⁹ Tebbit, ‘Royal patronage’, 197.

⁴⁰ Prestwich, ‘The unreliability of royal household knights’, 7–9.

⁴¹ Ibid., 5–6; Tebbit, ‘Royal patronage’, 197, 206–8.

⁴² Prestwich, ‘The unreliability of royal household knights’, 7; Tebbit, ‘Royal patronage’, 204.

⁴³ Phillips, 221; Davies, Conquest, 409–10; Edwards, ‘Sir Gruffydd Llwyd’, 593. However, the earl of Hereford's own Welsh tenants in the lordship of Brecon remained loyal and fought for him in 1321–2: Davies, Lordship and Society, 290–1.

⁴⁴ On Harclay see the article by Henry Summerson in the Oxford DNB.

⁴⁵ Tebbit, ‘Household knights’, 88–93.

⁴⁶ Maddicott, 308–9, 314–15.

⁴⁷ Maddicott, 295–6; Phillips, 225. Latimer had been a royal knight before joining Lancaster in 1319. On Holland's career see Maddicott, ‘Thomas of Lancaster and Sir Robert Holland’, EHR, lxxxvi (1971), 449–72.

⁴⁸ CPR, 1321–24, 77; CCR, 1318–23, 525; BL, Cotton Ms. Nero D.X, f. 112; Brut, i, 216; Vita, 208–9; Phillips, 224.

⁴⁹ CPR, 1321–24, 87; CChR, 1300–26, 441; Phillips, 77–82, 227. Higham Ferrers was close to Thorpe Waterville.

⁵⁰ CCR, 1318–23, 455, 561.

⁵¹ Foedera, II, i, 481. New earldoms had however been created in Ireland, those of Carrick (for Edmund le Botiller) in 1315; Kildare (for John Fitz Thomas) in 1316; and Louth (for John de Bermingham) in 1319.

⁵² CChR, 1300–26, 441–3, 448; CPR, 1321–24, 98, 144, 183–4. Arundel had been closely allied with the Despensers since his son married the Younger Despenser's daughter in Feb. 1321: BL, Add. Ms. 9951, f. 45v.

⁵³ The Despenser family held lands in Wiltshire; and it has recently been suggested that Hugh Despenser the Elder could have made a distant claim to the earldom of Winchester through his descent from an earlier earl of Winchester, Saher de Quency (d. 1219): M. Lawrence, ‘Edward II and the earldom of Winchester’, Historical Research, lxxxi (2008), 732–9.

⁵⁴ CChR, 1300–26, 442–4, 448; CPR, 1321–24, 128.

⁵⁵ CChR, 1300–26, 444, 448–51; SC 1/49/144 (printed in Calendar … concerning Wales, 220–1).

⁵⁶ CFR, 1319–27, 143 (Brecon); CPR, 1321–24, 341 (Chepstow); Pugh, ‘Marcher lords’, 171–2. For a map showing Despenser's territorial control in Wales, 1322–6, see Davies, Conquest, 406. The only important exception was the lordship of Kidwelly, held by the former earl of Lancaster's brother, Henry.

⁵⁷ Tout, Place of the Reign, 15.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 138. One wonders if the notion of an earldom of March had already been considered before the fall of Despenser only two years earlier.

⁵⁹ Davies, Conquest, 405.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ At least 17 grants of lands in England are recorded between March 1322 and March 1324: CChR, 1300–26, 441, 443–4, 448–52, 461, 464; CPR, 1321–24, 129, 132.

⁶² Both figures are derived from the records of the survey in E 142/33. My figure for the Younger Despenser's income differs from that of £1,827 which Dr E.B. Fryde derived from the same source. He noted however that the figure probably did not include all the English estates in Despenser's possession in 1326: Fryde, ‘Deposits of Hugh Despenser the Younger’, item III, 348. For a detailed examination of the value of the Despensers' lands and other possessions see Fryde, Tyranny, App. 1, 228–32.

⁶³ Again derived from E 142/33.

⁶⁴ Fryde, ‘Deposits of Hugh Despenser the Younger’, 348. For details of Despenser's deposits and withdrawals from his account with the Peruzzi, 1322–6, see ibid., 360–2.

⁶⁵ Letter to John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan: SC 1/49/143 (Calendar … concerning Wales, 219–20).

⁶⁶ What follows is greatly indebted to Fryde, Tyranny, ch. 7, ‘Royal finance, 1321–6’; and to Buck, Politics, Finance and the Church, ch. 8, ‘The Exchequer’. See also W. Childs, ‘Finance and trade under Edward II’, in Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth-century England, ed. J. Taylor & W. Childs (Gloucester, 1990), 19–21; Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 210.

⁶⁷ Fryde, 92; E 401/239. Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter, took office as treasurer on 10 May 1322.

⁶⁸ Fryde, 92; E 401/239; BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 18v. Dr Fryde suggests that this was only a part of the revenues obtained from the contrariants and that other receipts were being paid into the reserve that Edward was starting to build up. This is possible but more evidence is needed. Payment into the chamber was however only a temporary measure and from July the revenues from contrariant lands were ordered to be paid into the exchequer: Buck, 164.

⁶⁹ Fryde, 93; BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 27.

⁷⁰ Fryde, 93–4; Willard, Parliamentary Taxes, 344–5. See also Lay Taxes, 36. The total assessment for the tax was £42,394.

⁷¹ Fryde, 94; E 403/202. Dr Fryde reasonably suggests that much of this money was the proceeds of the lay tax, together with money seized from the contrariants.

⁷² Fryde, 94; Lunt, Financial Relations, 411.

⁷³ Fryde, 94; E 403/207, m.13.

⁷⁴ Fryde, 94. The detailed breakdown of this figure is given in ibid., 250, nn. 38, 39.

⁷⁵ Fryde, 94; E 101/332/20; Buck, 193; E 101/332/18.

⁷⁶ Fryde, 97–8; Bod. Library, Ms. North C.26, no. 4. I have not had an opportunity to examine this at first hand. It has also been discussed by Dr G.L. Harriss, in King, Parliament and Public Finance, 146, App. B, 523–4. As Dr Fryde points out, the condition of the document makes it very difficult to read so that her figures differ from those of Dr Harriss. Both scholars agree on the total of £60,549, but give the figure for royal lands and the shires as £24,385 and £19,496 respectively. Dr Fryde's reading would bring the total to £66,028.

⁷⁷ Fryde, 97; E 159/96, m.26v.

⁷⁸ Fryde, 101; E 159/95, m.35v; C 47/35/21.

⁷⁹ Fryde, 102–3; E 159/97, m.32.

⁸⁰ Fryde, 103; T.F. Tout, ‘The Westminster chronicle attributed to Robert of Reading’, EHR, xxxi (1916), 461–3, where a copy of the writ ordering the division is recorded. The writ is also recorded in E 159/97, m.4.

⁸¹ Fryde, 105; E 159/103, m.24; Calendar of Memoranda Rolls, Michaelmas 1326–Michaelmas 1327, ed. R.A. Latham (London, 1968), no. 212; Buck, 193; E 101/332/21.

⁸² See Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 175–7. Although about £60,000 of this remained outstanding in the 1320s, it is not clear whether Edward thought it his duty to pay off all his father's debts.

⁸³ Fryde, 102; E 159/97, m.17: ‘et mettez votre peine qe nous soioms riches’. Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 209–10, is however sceptical that this represents Edward's personal wishes, precisely because of its resemblance to Despenser's remark in Jan. 1321 that ‘we may be rich and may attain our ends’: SC 1/49/143; Calendar … concerning Wales, 219–20.

⁸⁴ See examples given in Fryde, 98–103.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 97: the wardrobe receipts for 1325–6 (19 Edward II) were £6,175, the lowest recorded for any year between 1224 and 1399: citing Tout, Chapters, vi, 74–101, esp. 86–7. This low figure was also the result of the wardrobe being restricted to its household role and giving up wider responsibilities. In 1319–20 these wider responsibilities (largely military in nature) were reflected in wardrobe receipts of over £50,000: Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 209.

⁸⁶ Flores, 219–20; Buck, 145–6; W.M. Ormrod, ‘Agenda for legislation, 1322–c.1340’, EHR, cv (1990), 8.

⁸⁷ SC 1/17/28 (certificate from Walter Stapeldon, the treasurer).

⁸⁸ Buck, 193; Brut, i, 225; Vita, 136 (Denholm-Young edn), 230–1 (Childs edn).

⁸⁹ Anonimalle, 92–3, cited in Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 205. The remark was made in the context of the period 1318–21 but would have applied with even greater force after 1322.

⁹⁰ For the writs of summons to these and to the earls, barons, etc., see PW, II, ii, 245–60. For the proceedings of the York parliament of May 1322 see also my introduction in PROME on which I have drawn here. There is no surviving Parliament Roll for this assembly.

⁹¹ Foedera, II, ii, 478–9; CPR, 1321–24, 115; CCR, 1318–23, 544–6; Phillips, 228.

⁹² SR, I, 189–90; Select Documents, 31–2 (French text); English Historical Documents, 543–4 (English trans.).

⁹³ Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 205–6, argues that by this date ‘community of the realm’ was coming to mean ‘Commons’. My own view is that Edward's intention is that all those concerned in parliaments, from the king downwards, should approve legislation and that no one element, in this case the magnates, should be allowed to claim superiority over the rest.

⁹⁴ Cf. Phillips, 228, citing McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 71–2; D. Clementi, ‘That the Statute of York is no longer ambiguous’, in Album Helen Maud Cam, ii (Louvain & Paris, 1961). See also Fryde, 65–6; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 511–17; Tout, Place of the Reign, 136–7.

⁹⁵ Davies, Baronial Opposition, 492–4. For the text of the ‘good points’ see CCR, 1318–23, 537–8. Edward was however giving with one hand and taking with the other, since one of the consequences of the repeal of the Ordinances was that he could again levy the ‘new custom’ on the imports and exports of foreign merchants. This began to be collected on 21 July 1322 and could be expected to add several thousand pounds annually to the king's ordinary revenue: Fryde, 64.

⁹⁶ Davies, Baronial Opposition, 492.

⁹⁷ C 49/4/20: printed in Davies, Baronial Opposition, 582–3.

⁹⁸ Fryde, 65. Edward III tried the same policy in 1337 and was soon forced to abandon it: E.B. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French war, 1336–40’, in Historical Studies of the English Parliament, i (London, 1970), 252–3.

⁹⁹ CCR, 1318–23, 532; PW, II, ii, 296; Phillips, 228.

¹⁰⁰ Lunt, Financial Relations, 410.

¹⁰¹ Powicke, Military Obligation, 152–3.

¹⁰² J.C. Davies, ‘An assembly of wool merchants in 1322’, EHR, xxxi (1916), 596–606. The meeting of merchants was part of the lengthy process by which the staple town was moved by 1324 from Saint-Omer in territory loyal to France to Bruges in the county of Flanders: Tout, Place of the Reign, 232–4. In the interest of preserving good relations with France Edward preferred to leave the staple at Saint-Omer but was meeting with growing pressure either to move it to Bruges or to establish staple towns in England.

¹⁰³ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero D.X, f. 112v; CCR, 1318–23, 563–4; Phillips, 227.

¹⁰⁴ Phillips, 227–8. The pledge was in effect a repetition by Pembroke and a reminder of the terms of his indenture with Edward II on 1 Nov. 1317. There is no positive evidence that Pembroke did pay a fine as stated in BL, Cotton Ms. Nero D.X, f. 112v.

¹⁰⁵ CPR, 1321–24, 96–8; Foedera, II, i, 482. In Feb. over 13,000 infantry from Wales and 4,000 from neighbouring English counties had been summoned for service against both the rebels and the Scots: CPR, 1321–24, 73–4. At this stage Edward evidently imagined that he would be able to proceed directly from defeating one enemy to tackling the other. There was some overlap between these plans and those of March and April.

¹⁰⁶ CPR, 1321–24, 93–4.

¹⁰⁷ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, ff. 51, 77–8; McNamee, 214; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare 117. The fleet numbered either 36 or 25 ships, depending on how many were engaged in the Scottish expedition and how many in other royal service. Although it was half the size of that employed in 1319, the fieet was still very valuable: McNamee, 214, 230.

¹⁰⁸ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, 56–62, 80–4; McNamee, 124–5, 158; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 117.

¹⁰⁹ Prestwich, ‘Cavalry service’, 155; Phillips, 228. The earl of Pembroke, for example, brought a total of 108 men-at-arms, including three bannerets and 25 knights: BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 56. The service of the magnates as a whole is recorded in ibid. ff. 56–62. There is a photograph of part of this record in Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 50.

¹¹⁰ McNamee, 124–5; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 117, 246; E 163/4/11, no.42.

¹¹¹ McNamee, 224, 232; BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 23d; N. Fryde, ‘Welsh troops in the campaign of 1322’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, xxvi (1974–5), 85.

¹¹² Phillips, 228; Barrow, 243; McNamee, 98–9.

¹¹³ Edward's movements can be followed in BL, Stowe Ms. 553 and Itinerary, ed. Hallam; McNamee, 99.

¹¹⁴ Bruce, 678–9; CDS, iii, 144; Barrow, 243; Phillips, 228–9.

¹¹⁵ Edinburgh castle, which had earlier been an English-held stronghold, had been destroyed by the Scots after they captured it in 1314 and was of no use to Edward in 1322: Barrow, 196.

¹¹⁶ Bruce, 680–1; McNamee, 99; Fryde, 129. There is a record of payments in money and wheat flour to members of the army at Leith on 23 Aug. which may indicate the arrival of supplies by sea: CDS, iii, 142.

¹¹⁷ Bruce, 680–1.

¹¹⁸ See, e.g., Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 118d. In 1326 the Younger Despenser was accused of bringing about the deaths of more than 20,000 men in the 1322 campaign through neglect: Gesta Edwardi, 88. This is certainly greatly exaggerated. It is difficult to distinguish losses through death from desertions, which were certainly substantial: see Fryde, ‘Welsh troops’, 82–9.

¹¹⁹ Barrow, 243; McNamee, 99; Phillips, 229.

¹²⁰ In April and May he had tried to improve relations with the count of Flanders and had also ordered Great Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports to provide ships for defence against Flemish attack: Foedera, II, i, 483–5. Edward's dealings with Flanders were part of a diplomatic campaign that had begun in early 1319 when the earl of Hereford and the bishop of Exeter had visited Flanders, Brabant and Hainault to try to ensure that the Scots received no help from their rulers: Buck, 126.

¹²¹ Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 246; E 163/4/11, no. 73; CDS, iii, 144.

¹²² Harclay had also made use of the Scottish tactic of the schiltrom, soldiers armed with long spears in close formation: Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 333.

¹²³ Powicke, Military Obligation, 152–3; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 134.

¹²⁴ CDS, iii, 143–6. This may be a first sign of the tensions which led to Henry storming out of a council meeting at York in May 1323: C 49/45/15 (printed in Davies, Baronial Opposition, 584–5).

¹²⁵ CDS, iii, 144.

¹²⁶ CDS, iii, 142. ‘Halyeland’ is probably Holy Island off the coast of Northumberland. The ‘medicines’ included such items as Oxerocrosin, Dyatarascos, Apostolicon, dyaculon, Terbentyn, Agrippa, white and dark ointments, Gracia Dei, Apoponak, Mastyk, Saunguys Draconis, Mirre, Calamine, Tutie and litarge. Saunguys Draconis, or Dragon's blood, for example, was a resin used for treating wounds.

One of the places passed by the English army on its journey to and from Edinburgh was the Augustinian house and hospital at Soutra near Edinburgh. Recent archaeological investigations conducted by Dr Brian Moffat for the SHARP project (Soutra Hospital Archaeoethnopharmacological Research Project) have revealed extensive evidence of the medical and surgical treatment provided by the friars to men and women caught up in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the late 13th and 14th centuries.

¹²⁷ Nothing is known of Adam's mother but I suggested in ch. 3 that, assuming he was at least as old as Edward II had been when he first went to war (i.e. in his seventeenth year in 1300), Adam could have been born in about 1305 or 1306. F.D. Blackley first drew attention to Adam's existence in his paper, ‘Adam, the bastard son’, BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 27.

¹²⁸ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 27. Blackley did not notice this later reference to Adam.

¹²⁹ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 113.

¹³⁰ SC 1/63/177: ‘tutes bountes e honours sount en lui cressaunt’.

¹³¹ CDS, iii, 146 (letter to the constable of Norham castle; undated but probably Sept.). Isabella was presumably present at Adam's funeral.

¹³² Bruce, 683–4; Lanercost, 247; SC 1/49/52; Barrow, 243; Phillips, 229.

¹³³ SC 1/49/52; CDS, iii, 146–7; Phillips, 229. For safety, the letter was sent in duplicate by different messengers.

¹³⁴ Melsa, 345–6; Lanercost, 247; Bruce, 684–8; Flores, 210; BL, Stowe Ms. 553, ff. 68v, 69; Phillips, 229; Barrow, 244; McNamee, 101. For a map showing the Scottish raids in 1322 see McNamee, 102.

¹³⁵ Chroniques de Sempringham, 345; Phillips, 229.

¹³⁶ Foedera, II, i, 497; McNamee, 100.

¹³⁷ Barrow, 244, 371, n. 45.

¹³⁸ Gesta Edwardi, 79–80; Lanercost, 247–8; Melsa, 346; Bruce, 691–2; Barrow, 244.

¹³⁹ Foedera, II, i, 498; Lanercost, 247–8; Bruce, 691–2; CDS, iii, 147; Barrow, 244. The privy seal was merely mislaid in the confusion and had been found again by 19 Oct.: E 159/96, mm.96, 140.

¹⁴⁰ SC 1/63/169 (letter from the bishop of Ely to Edward).

¹⁴¹ CDS, iii, 146.

¹⁴² Doherty (D.Phil.), 93; E 163/4/11, no. 15 (a set of drafts of privy seal letters). In one of the drafts the reference to Despenser and his men is erased, which may be significant.

¹⁴³ Isabella's brother, Philip V, king of France had died in Jan. and been succeeded by her remaining brother Charles as Charles IV. So there would have been plenty of news to catch up on.

¹⁴⁴ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, ff. 45, 134.

¹⁴⁵ If the account in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, xx, 632, cited in Doherty, Isabella, 77–8, is correct, the two women were in real danger; one of Isabella's ladies was killed and another died later of her injuries.

¹⁴⁶ Foedera, II, i, 498; Bullock-Davies, Register, 18–19, 125–8.

¹⁴⁷ Gesta Edwardi, 79–81; Lanercost, 241; McNamee, 99–101, 104. The canons did at least manage to send their treasures to safety in Lincolnshire.

¹⁴⁸ PW, II, ii, 261–80.

¹⁴⁹ Military incompetence was to be one of the primary charges brought against Edward in 1327. While Professor Michael Powicke observed that at least seven of the knights who served in the 1327 parliament during which Edward was deposed had also played a part as arrayers of infantry troops in 1322, and no doubt had strong views on the failure of the campaign, he overestimates the part played by the ‘commons’ in 1327: M.R. Powicke, ‘The English commons in Scotland in 1322 and the deposition of Edward II’, Speculum, xxxv (1960), 556–62, esp. 556–8.

¹⁵⁰ CCR, 1318–23, 687, 690; Phillips, 229.

¹⁵¹ Lay Taxes, 36. The form of taxation is in PW, II, ii, 279–80.

¹⁵² For the summons to the clergy see PW, II, ii, 280–1. Forty-four abbots and three priors were also summoned to this assembly.

¹⁵³ Lanercost, 248; CCR, 1318–23, 692; Phillips, 229; Barrow, 248.

¹⁵⁴ Barrow, 248, 372. The text (text A) is printed with a commentary in Regesta Regum Scottorum, no. 215, 480–3, 485.

¹⁵⁵ E 159/96, m.70 (French), printed in Anglo-Scottish Relations, ed. Stones, no. 39; Gesta Edwardi, 82–3 (Latin); and (as texts B & C) in Regesta Regum Scottorum, no. 215, pp. 483–5; Barrow, 249; Phillips, 229. A summary of the treaty also appears in Lanercost, 248–9.

¹⁵⁶ Based on the summary of the terms in Barrow, 248–9. Some details have been omitted here.

¹⁵⁷ Gesta Edwardi, 83.

¹⁵⁸ Lanercost, 248. Barrow, 248, suggests the chronicler may have recorded Harclay's final words on the scaffold. Coming so soon after the recently held parliament, which he attended, Harclay's actions suggest that there had been discussion, perhaps heated, about whether or not to negotiate with the Scots and that those in favour of peace had for the moment been overruled, leading to Harclay taking matters into his own hands.

¹⁵⁹ Barrow, 248.

¹⁶⁰ Foedera, II, i, 502.

¹⁶¹ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 18v; Lanercost, 250 –1; Foedera, II, i, 504; CPR, 1321–24, 240; Phillips, 230.

¹⁶² CPR, 1317–24, 260; Foedera, II, i, 509; Phillips, 230.

¹⁶³ Foedera, II, i, 512.

¹⁶⁴ CPR, 1321–24, 236, 268, 277–9, 281; Foedera, II, i, 511; BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 27; Phillips, 230–1. The accident of Sully's capture by the Scots contributed considerably to smoothing the way for serious negotiations between the English and the Scots. The reason for Sully's presence in England in 1322–3 is not clear, but it may have been in response to Edward II's appeal to the French king in Feb. 1322 for help against Lancaster: Foedera, II, i, 475.

¹⁶⁵ Foedera, II, i, 500, 508, 511.

¹⁶⁶ CPR, 1321–24, 279; E 159/96, m.27d; Lanercost, 252; Gesta Edwardi, 84; Phillips, 231.

¹⁶⁷ Foedera, II, i, 521; Phillips, 231.

¹⁶⁸ Barrow, 245, citing Foedera, II, i, 511.

¹⁶⁹ SC 1/49/53; Phillips, 231. The summons had been issued on 23 Feb.: PW, II, ii, 346.

¹⁷⁰ Foedera, II, i, 521; Phillips, 231; McNamee, 236–7.

¹⁷¹ Foedera, II, i, 520. A list of those present at Bishopsthorpe, entitled Les nouns de ceux qi furent au conseil a Thorp y ceo Lundi a Lendemayn as oytaves de la Trinite, is preserved in C 49/45/15 and printed in Davies, Baronial Opposition, 584–5. Beaumont was related to Edward II through his great-grandfather, Alfonso IX, king of Leon, while his service to the crown went back as far as 1297, which made the breach in 1323 all the more serious: M. Prestwich, ‘Isabella de Vescy and the custody of Bamburgh castle’, BIHR, xliv (1971), 148–52.

¹⁷² This was an early indication of the problem of ‘the disinherited’ (whose ranks included other northern families such as the Wakes and Percys and David of Strathbogie, earl of Atholl) which was to be of great importance in the early years of Edward III's reign: W.M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III (New Haven & London, 1990), 8; R. Nicholson,Edward III and the Scots (Oxford, 1965), 57–74.

¹⁷³ Foedera, II, i, 506.

¹⁷⁴ But only for a time since in 1326 Henry was to be one of Isabella's leading supporters against her husband.

¹⁷⁵ E 163/4/11/16 (draft of privy seal letter, dated at Durham on 28 Sept., from the king to the archbishop of York); Foedera, II, i, 525–6; Flores, 213–14; Brut, i, 228–30; Anonimalle, 114–15. The incident at St Paul's probably reflected the hostility to the king and to the Younger Despenser within the city of London just as much as any more general support for the memory of Lancaster: see Williams, Medieval London, 291–3.

¹⁷⁶ JI 1/291, m.61; CCW, 543; CPR, 1321–24, 148, 378. A poor child, for example, had been given 2s to claim that he had recovered his sight.

¹⁷⁷ Foedera, II, i, 546; Murimuth, 43. But at the same time Edward made sure that the evidence of their guilt was preserved by ordering the enrolment in Jan. 1325 of the judgments recorded against them on the roll of the King's Bench (KB) 27/259 (Hilary 1325), mm.173d, 34–35d (Crown Roll): Sayles, ‘The formal judgments’, 58.

¹⁷⁸ Waugh, ‘The profits of violence’.

¹⁷⁹ Examples can be found in the commissions of oyer and terminer appointed by the government in May 1322 as it attempted to get a grip on the situation: CPR, 1321–24, 151–61 (May 1322).

¹⁸⁰ Fryde provides several examples of this: 151–2.

¹⁸¹ See, for example, E.L.G. Stones, ‘The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville in Leicestershire, and their associates in crime’, TRHS, 5th ser., vii (1957), 117–36; J.G. Bellamy, ‘The Coterel gang’, EHR, lxxix (1964), 698–717.

¹⁸² Ann. Lond., 199 (‘Roberd le Ewer archers et tieu manere de ribaudaille’, serving in castles and elsewhere); SC 8/4/190–1; SC 8/92/4562A, 4562B (the latter concerned a particularly devious and heartless attempt by le Ewer and an accomplice, William de Bentworth, to gain possession of a watermill near Basingstoke from its rightful owners).

¹⁸³ Princeps ipse latronum: Flores, 211.

¹⁸⁴ CFR, 1319–27, 15, 18; CCR, 1318–23, 260, 326.

¹⁸⁵ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 63; CFR, 1319–27, 64; CPR, 1321–24, 40, 44, 199, 206, 221–3, 254; CCR, 1318–23, 597; Vita, 200–1, 216–17, and n. 412. Le Ewer had been replaced as constable on 19 Sept.: CFR, 1319–27, 178.

¹⁸⁶ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, ff. 63, 68; Vita, 214–19; Flores, 211; Murimuth, 39. Control of Odiham castle was probably the root cause of his behaviour, since its custody had alternated between himself and the Despensers.

¹⁸⁷ CPR, 1321–24, 257; Chroniques de Sempringham, 346. Edward learned of the event on 17 Jan. at Stowe Park in Lincolnshire: BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 27v. On the same date he wrote to the constable of Skipton castle in Yorkshire (and probably other constables too) to tell him to see to the castle's safety and to report any news, ‘because of some strange and diverse news we have heard’; (‘par ascuns estranges et diverses novelles qe nous avons oy’): SC 1/45/206.

¹⁸⁸ Vita, 218–23; Chroniques de Sempringham, 346 (the only source to give a date for the start – 11 Jan. – of the occupation, which it says lasted for about two weeks). Roger Wauton was identified as the ringleader of the attackers in records dated 14 Nov. 1323 and 24 May 1324: E 159/97, m.187d; CPR, 1321–24, 349; Foedera, II, i, 537–8. The first men sent to besiege the castle were Hugh Chastilloun and Richard Damory the steward of the royal household, who left Stowe Park for Wallingford on 24 Jan.; it is clear that they then awaited the arrival of other men-at-arms: BL, Stowe Ms. 553, f. 60.

¹⁸⁹ E 159/97, m.187d; Foedera, II, i, 537–8; Brut, i, 231; Chroniques de Sempringham, 346. Sir John de ‘Goleinton’ was probably John de Wilyngton, a former adherent of John Giffard of Brimpsfield, who was pardoned for his support of the rebels in Nov. 1323: CPR, 1321–24, 9, 353. According to the Sempringham chronicle Sir John Maltravers was also involved. If this is meant to refer to John Maltravers the Younger, it is quite possible, but it is also believed that he escaped to the continent and there made contact with Roger Mortimer of Wigmore after the latter's escape in Aug. 1323: see Haskins, ‘A chronicle’, 80, and the article on Maltravers by C. Shenton in the Oxford DNB.

¹⁹⁰ Maurice died in prison in May 1326. On 5 Feb. the king ordered an inquiry into the incident: CPR, 1321–24, 257. The account in the Vita breaks off at just the point where more information was about to be revealed.

¹⁹¹ Williams, Medieval London, 293

¹⁹² Isabella can be traced there on 12 Jan., 3 Feb. (when she dined with her son) and 17 Feb.: Doherty (D.Phil.), 96; E 101/379/9, m.4; SC 1/37/45. It is not clear where the younger Edward had been previously.

¹⁹³ Ann. Paul., 304.

¹⁹⁴ Ann. Paul., 305; Williams, Medieval London, 293.

¹⁹⁵ Ann. Paul., 305; Williams, Medieval London, 293. Chigwell was restored to office by the king in Nov. 1323: CCW, 547.

¹⁹⁶ Isabella was with Edward at Selby in Yorkshire on 10 June, which makes it very likely that she had returned from London at the same time: Doherty (D. Phil.), 97; E 159/96, m.344.

¹⁹⁷ Berkeley and several of his followers, notably Thomas de Gurney and John Maltravers, had become retainers of Roger Mortimer in 1319 and served with him in the civil war of 1321–2. In May 1319 Berkeley's son Thomas married Mortimer's daughter Margaret: Phillips, 266.

¹⁹⁸ Anonimalle, 116–17, states that Mortimer would have been drawn and hanged within four days if he had remained in the Tower; and the Flores, 217, says that Edward intended to produce Mortimer before the people and execute him. The author of the Flores was however consistently hostile to Edward II and all he stood for and the claim comes immediately before a comparison of Mortimer's escape with that of St Peter as recorded in the New Testament: Acts, 12: 4, 6–11. Mortimer is said to have built a chapel at Ludlow castle dedicated to St Peter, on whose feast day (St Peter ad Vincula) he had made his escape: E.L.G. Stones, ‘The date of Roger Mortimer's escape from the Tower’, EHR, lxvi (1951), 98. Cf. Fryde, 142–3; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 130–1, 282, n. 18.

¹⁹⁹ Mortimer's situation was remarkably like that of Edward II when he was Mortimer's prisoner in Berkeley castle in 1327.

²⁰⁰ Knighton, 429; Ann. Paul., 305–6; Murimuth, 40; Flores, 217; French Chron., 47; Blaneford, 145–6. Blaneford's is the most detailed account, except that it wrongly gives the year as 1324: Stones, ‘The date of Roger Mortimer's escape’, 97–8.

²⁰¹ CCR, 1323–27, 13–14.

²⁰² Fryde, 161; KB 27/254, Rex, m.37.

²⁰³ CCR, 1323–27, 13–14. Edward was no doubt also worried that if the Tower were held against him, he would lose control of a vast sum of ready money.

²⁰⁴ Williams, Medieval London, 291–4. Gisors owned the mill to which Mortimer crossed from the Tower; while Bocton supplied the ship in which Mortimer crossed to France.

²⁰⁵ Ibid., 285–91: Gisors was one of those who had lost power at this time.

²⁰⁶ ‘Qui se gessit ut alter rex’: Robertus de Avesbury, De Gestis Edwardi Tertii, ed. E.M. Thompson, Rolls Series (London, 1889), 280; Vita et Mors, 305. For comparisons with Gaveston see Ann. Paul., 259; Vita, 4–5; Chaplais, 103, n. 62.

²⁰⁷ Morris, ‘Tewkesbury abbey’; Phillip Lindley, ‘The later medieval monuments and chantry chapels’, in R. Morris & R. Shoesmith, eds, Tewkesbury Abbey (Logaston, Herefordshire, 2003), 161–5; Lawrence, ‘Secular patronage.’ Fragments of a carved figure painted with the arms of Hugh Despenser the Younger were discovered amidst rubble flooring in Tewkesbury abbey in 1824: Morris & Shoesmith, 174 (illust.).

²⁰⁸ Renn, Caerphilly Castle, 41–4 (incl. photographs). On the possible involvement of Thomas de la Bataille and the influence of other royal masons, such as Michael of Canterbury (fl. 1275–1320) and Thomas of Canterbury (fl. 1323–35) at Tewkesbury see Morris, ‘Tewkesbury abbey’, 150–5.

²⁰⁹ SR, i, 181–4; PROME, Parliament of July 1321.

²¹⁰ ‘votre Roial poer que aviez purpris contre notre seignour le Roi’: G.A. Holmes, ‘Judgement on the Younger Despenser, 1326’, EHR, lxx (1955), 264.

²¹¹ ‘tyrant’: ibid., 265–6.

²¹² ‘Secretarios nostros,’ quibus secretoria negotia nostra committimus et communicamus: Foedera, II, i, 541–2: letter to John de Stratford.

²¹³ Baldock (‘a false pilede clerc’: Brut, I, 240) and Stapeldon were especially unpopular and paid the price at the end of the reign. See the articles on them by R.M. Haines and M.C. Buck in the Oxford DNB.

²¹⁴ BL, Stowe Ms. 553, ff. 130, 131v.

²¹⁵ E 101/379/19, ff. 2, 2v, 3v, 4, 5v.

²¹⁶ E 101/379/19, f. 2 (letter to Geoffrey le Scrope), f. 4 (letter to Richard Damory, steward of household).

²¹⁷ C 81/128/7027 (letter, 1324, from bishop of Exeter concerning Scotland); SC 1/49/58 (letter concerning the Scottish March); Davies, Baronial Opposition, 337–8.

²¹⁸ C 81/125/6744 (interview with a royal envoy returned from Avignon); SC 8/39/1944 (dispute concerning priory of Bermondsey); Davies, Baronial Opposition, 338.

²¹⁹ Despenser's personal archives were delivered to the exchequer on 25 March 1327: The War of Saint-Sardos (1323–1325), ed. P. Chaplais, Camden 3rd ser. lxxxvii (London, 1954), vii; E 101/332/27.

²²⁰ SC 1/49/152 (? end of April 1325: Saint-Sardos, 171–2); Davies, Baronial Opposition, 339–40.

²²¹ CPL, 1305–42, 444, 457, 459, 475, 477–8; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 337. Many of the documents edited by Chaplais in Saint-Sardos consist of newsletters and other correspondence sent by officials in Gascony to the Younger Despenser or from Despenser to recipients in Gascony. Of the 218 documents published, 126 fall into these two categories: see Chaplais, Saint-Sardos, Table of Documents, xv–xxi.

²²² Tout, Place of the Reign, 142–6 (though he does not ascribe exclusive responsibility to Despenser); Davies, Baronial Opposition, 103–4.

²²³ Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, ed. Stones & Simpson, i, 45–7, 81–2; ii, 378–80.

²²⁴ Tout, Place of the Reign, 118–119 & App. I, A, 241–81. In his capacity as chamberlain Despenser had played some part in drawing up this ordinance.

²²⁵ Gascon Register A, ed. Cuttino; Buck, 167.

²²⁶ CCR, 1318–23, 258; Buck, 168; E 159/93, m.53d. See Antient Kalendars, ed. Palgrave.

²²⁷ Gascon Calendar, ed. Cuttino; Buck, 167–8.

²²⁸ CPR, 1321–24, 7; Buck, 168.

²²⁹ See the discussion in the previous chapter; Parliamentary Texts, 65–114, and 1–63, esp. 25–31; and Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 224–6.

²³⁰ Buck, 168; E 159/96, m.81; Phillips, 171; DL 41/1/37.

²³¹ Antient Kalendars, ed. Palgrave, iii, 437; Buck, 169. While it is tempting to imagine that this was something to do with the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, it is more likely to have been the Vetus Codex (C 153/1), containing transcripts of the Parliament Rolls for some of the parliaments of Edward I between 1290 and 1307, the 1320 parliament, and brief references to the 1318 and 1319 York parliaments: see PROME, General Introduction and Parliaments of 1318, 1319, 1320.

²³² Buck, 169.

²³³ Ibid., 165: Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 208–9. On Stapeldon's role see Buck, 163–96.

²³⁴ As Nigel Saul has put it, ‘The notion that the two favourites and their clerical advisers were deeply preoccupied with the day-to-day minutiae of household reform or the keeping of exchequer records seems a faintly dated one’: Saul, ‘The Despensers’, 3.

²³⁵ Waugh, ‘For king, country and patron’, 24, 26.

²³⁶ It was common, for example, for retainers of magnates such as the earls of Pembroke and Lancaster to hold royal offices such as sheriff: ibid., 27; Phillips, 310–11. Lancaster also made a practice of retaining royal justices and legal experts: Waugh, ‘For king, country and patron’, 27; Maddicott, 48–51.

²³⁷ Waugh, ‘For king, country and patron’, Table 2, 49–56. Table 1, 47–8, lists 18 individuals who were clients of his father, more than half of whom had connections with him dating from before 1322–6.

²³⁸ Baldock (1320–3), Holden (1323–6), Huggate (1326–7): ibid., 28.

²³⁹ Saul, ‘The Despensers’, 18: e.g., Ingelram Berenger, Ralph de Wedon, John Inge.

²⁴⁰ Such as William de Aylmer, John de Dunstaple and Richard de Tyssbury, who were all royal clerks and acted as stewards or auditors for Despenser: Waugh, ‘For king, country and patron’, 28–30. Although there is evidence that before 1321 Despenser had placed some of his clients on judicial commissions, there is no evidence that he had packed the central royal courts with his dependants: Waugh, 27, n. 12; Select Cases, ed. Sayles, iv, xiii, n. 13; Tout, Place of the Reign, 130. Saul reaches broadly the same conclusion: ‘The Despensers’, 24–5.

²⁴¹ Waugh, ‘For king, country and patron’, 25–7; Phillips, 257. Examples are Thomas de Goodrichcastle, William Lovel and Constantine de Mortimer.

²⁴² Waugh, ‘For king, country and patron’, 25: other examples are the contrariants, Edmund Pinkenny, Robert de Wateville (although Saul, ‘The Despensers’, 13, thinks this is incorrect), and Thomas Wyther.

²⁴³ Saul, ‘The Despensers’, 6–8.

²⁴⁴ Ibid., 19–22, 24–5. The nine sheriffs all had apparent or likely connections with the Despensers or with the court.

²⁴⁵ Pugh, ‘Marcher lords’, 171–2.

²⁴⁶ G.A. Holmes, ‘A protest against the Despensers, 1326’, Speculum, xxx (1955), 210. Saul, ‘The Despensers’, 23, quotes R.W. Kaeuper's apt remark that ‘The two Despensers were probably the masters in malicious prosecution’: Kaeuper, ‘Law and order in fourteenth-century England’, Speculum, liv (1979), 778.

²⁴⁷ Holmes, ‘A protest’, 207–9. The text of Elizabeth's protest is in ibid., 210–12.

²⁴⁸ CPR, 1324–27, 52. Despenser was to pay an annual rent of £200; in Nov. 1323 this was changed to a single payment of 1,200 marks in cash. There is no overt indication of pressure but there can be little doubt that it was applied.

²⁴⁹ CCR, 1318–23, 574–6; CPR, 1321–24, 179–80, 194; Holmes, ‘A protest’, 209. Alice's own later protest is contained in DL 42/11, ff. 66v–67. The Elder Despenser gained the lordship of Denbigh, while the Younger Despenser obtained the constableship of Chester and the reversion of the honour of Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire: Holmes, ‘A protest’, 209.

²⁵⁰ SC 8/294/14690–2; SC 8/277/13819; CCR, 1323–27, 288, 395; CChR, 1300–26, 478; Phillips, 235.

²⁵¹ CCR, 1323–27, 309, 357; Phillips, 235. See also Fryde, 113–15.

²⁵² Vita, 230–1.

²⁵³ For a general view of Edward II's relations with the Church see Menache, Clement V; Wright, The Church and the English Crown; Edwards, ‘Political importance’; Haines, ‘The episcopate’.

²⁵⁴ Fryde, 103; E 159/97, m.42v.

²⁵⁵ Foedera, II, i, 38–9; Haines, The Church and Politics, 137–8.

²⁵⁶ Ibid., 17–19, 134–6, 144–5.

²⁵⁷ SC 7/24/16; SC 7/25/1; Foedera, II, i, 515, 537, 542–3; Haines, The Church and Politics, 137–8, 144. On the respective careers of Burghersh and Droxford see the articles by N. Bennett and M.C. Buck in the Oxford DNB.

²⁵⁸ Foedera, II, i, 506.

²⁵⁹ Ibid., 452–3, 462, 468–9.

²⁶⁰ Northburgh had been keeper of the privy seal at the time of Bannockburn and had been captured there, together with the seal. On his career see the article by R.M. Haines in the Oxford DNB.

²⁶¹ Haines, Stratford, 136.

²⁶² Foedera, II, i, 517–20, 522, 525; Haines, Stratford, 136–7. As well as stressing Baldock's personal qualities, Edward emphasized the value of his services to the crown. On Stratford's appointment and its repercussions see also N. Fryde, ‘John Stratford, bishop of Winchester, and the crown, 1323–30’, BIHR, xliv (1971), 153–61.

²⁶³ Haines, Stratford, 128–31. These included several matters of close personal interest to Edward. One concerned a prospective marriage, whose details were not specified but probably related to the young Edward, earl of Chester. Another matter with which Stratford was charged was obtaining a papal bull in favour of the Dominican priory at Langley where Gaveston was buried.

²⁶⁴ In Aug. 1323 the pope told Edward that he had appointed Stratford because of his personal qualities; he added, significantly, that certain information regarding Baldock had reached the curia, but that Stratford knew nothing about this: Foedera, II, i, 533; Haines, Stratford, 140.

²⁶⁵ Foedera, II, i, 526–9, 531–3, 535; Haines, Stratford, 138–41.

²⁶⁶ CCW, 546; Haines, Stratford, 142.

²⁶⁷ Haines, Stratford, 142–5. The record of the ‘process’ against Stratford, which contains details of the issues raised by him at the papal curia together with the papal replies, is printed in Foedera, II, i, 541–4.

²⁶⁸ News of this arrived at Avignon while Stratford was there and rendered his initial instructions out of date: Foedera, II, i, 542.

²⁶⁹ Ibid.; Haines, Stratford, 142–3. There is an understandable confusion on this issue in Barrow's Robert Bruce, 250, where it is stated that Stratford's mission asking for the strengthening of papal sentences took place in 1324 (i.e. after the 1323 truce) instead of in 1322–3. The record of his mission appears in Foedera under the date 1324 since the proceedings against Stratford went on until Jan. 1324.

²⁷⁰ Foedera, II, i, 542; Haines, Stratford, 142–3.

²⁷¹ Foedera, II, i, 541, 549–50, 561; Barrow, 250. Edward's protest on 1 April 1324 made no difference but in 1325 the pope did confirm earlier sentences of excommunication and interdict: Foedera, II, i, 613; Barrow, 250.

²⁷² Foedera, II, i, 542–3; Haines, Stratford, 43. The Statute of York which annulled the Ordinances was enrolled on the Statute Roll in 1322 and again enrolled in the court of King's Bench and on the Memoranda Roll of the exchequer in 1324. This was clearly done in reaction to the pope's decision on the oaths: Sayles, ‘The formal judgments’, 62–3. Although Sayles argues that Edward had sought papal annulment of his own oath to uphold the Ordinances, it is clear that it was the oaths taken by others that were at issue.

²⁷³ Foedera, II, i, 542–3 (contains a list of the nine items of business to be raised at Avignon together with the replies, article by article, of the pope); Haines, Stratford, 142–5.

²⁷⁴ Foedera, II, i, 507–8, 543. The claim to Provence was yet another consequence of the death of Edward II's first cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, since Eleanor of Provence had settled her share of Provence on Thomas and Henry of Lancaster in equal shares: Maddicott, 4.

²⁷⁵ What, if anything, happened during the parliament is unknown; Stratford's case was probably overshadowed by that of the bishop of Hereford.

²⁷⁶ Haines, The Church and Politics, 140–4.

²⁷⁷ Select Cases, ed. Sayles, iv, 145 (from KB 27/255, m.87d) (the detailed charges are ibid., 143–4); Haines, The Church and Politics, 144. There is a partial record of the proceedings in Chartulary of Winchester Cathedral, ed. Goodman, no. 441 (p. 185). The summons to Orleton was part of the investigation into possible contrariants and their sympathizers which was launched after Mortimer's escape in Aug. 1323.

²⁷⁸ See PROME, Westminster Parliament of Feb. 1324. Unfortunately there is no surviving roll for this parliament.

²⁷⁹ Select Cases, ed. Sayles, iv, 145–6; Haines, The Church and Politics, 145.

²⁸⁰ Blaneford, 140–2; Haines, The Church and Politics, 146–7.

²⁸¹ Article on Henry Burghersh by N. Bennett in the Oxford DNB.

²⁸² Foedera, II, i, 543; Haines, Stratford, 147 and n. 143. The reconciliation was recorded in the Historia Roffensis which added that in the meantime Robert Baldock, the chancellor and Stratford's defeated rival for Winchester, had continued to persecute him: ibid., 147, n. 143. Stratford was however forced to enter into a bond with the king for £10,000, £2,000 of it payable on demand: ibid., 149.

²⁸³ Even the papal envoys who visited England in Nov. 1324 could do nothing to soften Edward's attitude to Orleton: Haines, Stratford, 151–2.