Chapter 10

EDWARD VANQUISHED, 1324–1326

PART ONE

THE ROAD TO WAR WITH FRANCE

During the earlier years of Edward II's reign relations between England and France ‘possessed many of the characteristics of détente’.¹ The multitude of problems caused by the earlier war in the 1290s both within the duchy of Aquitaine and in the relations of the king-duke and his French overlord had never been fully resolved, even when peace was made in 1303. The processes of Montreuil in 1306 and of Périgueux in 1311, which were conducted by expert representatives of both sides and were intended to remove outstanding problems, did not succeed in doing so. The personal visits to France by Edward II at the time of his marriage in 1308, in the summer of 1313 and again in 1320, helped to ease the difficulties but did not end them, partly because of ‘the tendency of the French to conduct their meetings as if they were part of a lawsuit between unequals rather than between two sovereigns of equal authority’.² The determination of the French monarchy to exercise its sovereignty as widely as possible, especially through its encouragement of Edward II's subjects in Gascony to take their grievances on appeal to the Parlement of Paris, meant that however many problems were settled or shelved fresh ones kept appearing to take their place. The turbulent nature of Gascon politics, sometimes amounting to acts of private war, such as the long-standing rivalry between the counts of Foix-Béarn and of Armagnac, the disputes between Jourdain de l'Isle and Alexandre de Caumont in 1318–19, and between Bernard-Jourdain de l'Isle and Amanieu d'Albret in 1322–3, made English rule in the duchy all the more difficult and created opportunities for French intervention.³ Throughout the reign of Edward II the problems of Aquitaine with their potential for renewed conflict between England and France were, so to speak, the elephant in the room.

The danger signs were already apparent in June 1320 when Edward II performed homage for Aquitaine at his meeting with Philip V at Amiens and brusquely rejected the French suggestion that he should also swear fealty.⁴ But worse was to follow after the death of Philip V in January 1322.⁵ First of all the question of homage returned to the agenda: the new king of France, Charles IV, proved to be much less accommodating of Edward II's desire to delay its performance for as long as possible. Charles IV was prepared to withhold his summons while England and Scotland were still openly at war, but as soon as news of the Anglo-Scottish truce in May 1323 reached Paris he acted. In July 1323 Charles sent envoys to England summoning Edward to be at Amiens at Candlemas (2 February) or at Easter (15 April) 1324. As he had done in the past, Edward played for time and in December 1323 asked for a postponement on the spurious grounds of a new Scottish invasion.⁶ This was a dangerous tactic since a determined king of France might interpret it as a disguised refusal to perform homage and use it as an excuse to seize control of Gascony: and the new king of France was determined.⁷ Charles had begun his reign by removing his predecessor's advisers, including Henry de Sully the butler of France who had acted as an intermediary between France and England before going to England in 1322.⁸ There were now fewer influential voices with a desire to restrain or to avoid conflict. The death in 1319 of Louis count of Évreux, with whom Edward II had been on terms of friendship, had already removed one such from the scene, while the death in June 1324 of Aymer de Valence the earl of Pembroke, who had close personal ties with both Edward II and the French court, removed another.⁹ One of the ‘new’ men in 1322 was Charles count of Valois, Charles IV's uncle and half-brother of Louis of Évreux, who had played a leading part in the previous Anglo-French conflict in the 1290s and had personal scores to settle with the English crown.¹⁰

By the summer of 1323 the situation in Gascony was becoming dangerous. At least thirty-seven separate appeals involving Gascon subjects of the English crown were pending before the Parlement of Paris; in the past both central and local officials of the French crown had been amenable to pressure or even to bribes, but no more.¹¹ The French showed what they were capable of in May 1323 when Jourdain de l'Isle's career ended with his execution in Paris for persistent acts of defiance of Charles IV's sovereignty.¹² Thebrief war between the count of Foix and Arnaud-Guillaume de Marsan between April and June 1323 may or may not have been instigated by Charles of Valois, but was yet another distraction for the English authorities in the duchy. The seneschal, Fulk Lestrange, had to mobilize local forces to deal with the outbreak; which meant in turn that Gascon troops were not available for use in Scotland as Edward II had intended. The war was ended by the mediation of John de Hothum the bishop of Ely, another indication of the increasing engagement of English resources in Gascony. A further disturbing development was the partial occupation of the island of Oléron by French troops in October.¹³

Edward II's government was well aware of the growing problems relating to the duchy of Aquitaine. In April and June 1322 Edward had complained to Charles IV about the actions of French officials in the duchy;¹⁴ in January 1323 he gave notice to his subjects there that he was sending Amaury de Craon, a leading Gascon nobleman and former seneschal, and the bishop of Ely who was also to visit the French king; in February he complained again about French ‘excesses’ and in the same month issued a set of ordinances for the future government of the duchy; further complaints to Charles IV followed in April.¹⁵ In May Edward sent instructions to the bishop of Ely and Amaury de Craon on the safekeeping of the ducal castles in Gascony.¹⁶ If war broke out, the duchy would at least be defended. The French reply was a proposal that Edward II's elder son, Edward earl of Chester, should marry the daughter of Charles count of Valois, to which Edward II replied on 6 June that this would have to be discussed in a parliament, which he did not intend to hold until 29 September.¹⁷

ENGLAND AND THE SCOTS

By the autumn of 1323 the situation in Gascony was threatening. One big unanswered question was how far the French were prepared to go, even as far as an invasion. But there were two more unanswered questions: would the French take advantage of the growing tension between the two kingdoms to draw in the Scots, and would they offer refuge and assistance to Roger Mortimer of Wigmore after his escape from the Tower of London in August?

Although the French had made an alliance with the Scots under their then-king John Balliol in 1295, the alliance was in effect suspended when England and France made peace in 1303. In future the French confined their activities to encouraging truce negotiations between England and Scotland.¹⁸ In return the English did nothing to impede the French king in his bitter conflict with his rebellious vassal the count of Flanders. As long as the French had a greater interest in maintaining good relations with England than in offering assistance to the Scots, nothing happened to change this situation. By the summer of 1324 however Edward II had good reason to fear that if war did begin in Gascony the Scots would attack England, either on their own initiative or with French encouragement.¹⁹ When Robert Bruce proposed negotiations to turn the thirteen-year truce of May 1323 into a permanent peace Edward therefore had every incentive to oblige, in the hope of reducing the number of his enemies.²⁰ The bishop of St Andrews and earl of Moray met English envoys at York on 18 November 1324.²¹ According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, which provides the only information on the negotiations, the Scots demanded that the kingdom of Scotland should be free from every exaction of the kingdom of England; that they should be allowed to retain by right of conquest and lordship all the land they had traversed as far as the gates of York; that Robert Bruce should be given back the family lands in Essex which he had forfeited through rebellion; and that the Stone of Scone on which the kings of Scots had been inaugurated and which had been taken to Westminster Abbey by Edward I and placed by the tomb of St Edward the Confessor, should be restored to the Scots. Robert Bruce also proposed a marriage between his daughter and Edward, earl of Chester; and finally that the treaty should be confirmed by the king of France in the presence of the pope.²² These were terms which the English could not possibly accept. Edward II is said to have commented when he heard them: ‘The Scots have come not to draw us towards a peace, but to seek opportunity for further discord and for unprovoked breaches of the truce.’²³ If the proposals are accurately recorded, it appears they were terms that were meant to be rejected, perhaps providing a pretext for renewing war. The mention of the king of France as a guarantor would also have raised suspicions as to Scottish motives.

Although on this occasion the Scots and the French did not act together openly, it was reported in April 1325 that in the event of a French invasion of England the Scots would probably join in.²⁴ It is unknown whether the Scots and the French were in contact at this time, but in April 1326 the Franco-Scottish alliance of 1295 was to be revived in the Treaty of Corbeil in which the two countries promised mutual assistance in any war against England.²⁵ Edward was probably right to have his suspicions and he took precautions. In or shortly before July 1324 Edward summoned to England his namesake Edward Balliol, the son of John Balliol, who had been living on his ancestral lands at Bailleul in Picardy since his father's death there in 1314.²⁶ Edward II knew Edward Balliol, who had been resident in his own household as far back as the 1290s and had lived in honourable custody in England until his departure for France.²⁷ Since Balliol had a claim to be the rightful king of Scots, his recall to England suggests that Edward II was considering intervention in Scotland if the Scots allied themselves with the French or if the peace talks broke down.²⁸ Edward also used his agents at the papal curia to ensure in 1325 that the pope did not accept Scottish petitions and instead confirmed his earlier sentences of excommunication and interdict upon them.²⁹

ROGER MORTIMER IN FRANCE

Although Edward's government knew as early as 10 August 1323 that Mortimer had escaped to France, and that a ship had been specially brought across in advance from Normandy to Portsmouth,³⁰ they were deeply concerned about his future plans. By late August there were fears that Mortimer meant to sail from the continent to Ireland,³¹ where he had extensive possessions, including the great fortress of Trim in Meath and where he had held office as king's lieutenant between 1317 and 1320. By November 1323 Edward had learned that the seizure of Wallingford in January had been only the first stage of a much greater plot designed to seize two other royal castles, Windsor and the Tower of London, as well as to free Roger Mortimer.³² Correspondence was also passing via the Staple at Saint-Omer between Mortimer and his sympathizers in England; and on 21 November the gates of the city of London were ordered to be closed to prevent the entry of conspirators.³³ Even more alarming were reports that Mortimer had sent agents to murder the king and the Despensers.³⁴ Mortimer's hand was seen everywhere,³⁵ and prompted a search for any contrariants and their sympathizers who remained at large.³⁶

Edward's agents and correspondents on the continent kept him informed of news and rumour concerning Mortimer and his activities. In September Edward heard that Mortimer had been given shelter by John and Robert de Fiennes in Picardy and forbade them to do so.³⁷ There is no further information on this but Roger Mortimer's mother Margaret de Fiennes was a close relative of the two men, so it is plausible that Roger should have sought refuge with them. It also raises the question of whether they had also been involved in some way in the planning of his escape. In November Master John de Shoreditch and two other envoys were sent to Paris. Among other matters, they were instructed to ask Charles IV to arrest Mortimer and his accomplices and either send them back to England or banish them from the kingdom, in the same way that Edward II had dealt with Flemish enemies of France in the past.³⁸ They evidently achieved some success, since on 13 December John de Shoreditch and his colleagues wrote from Paris with the news that Mortimer and his fellow rebels had been forbidden to remain within the domains of the king of France, but had been favourably received by the count of Boulogne. The envoys had not however been able to deliver Edward's letters to the count or to speak to him in person since they understood that he had gone to Toulouse with the king of France,³⁹ so leaving open the question of where Mortimer actually was. On 6 December 1323 Ralph Basset wrote from Saint-Émilion in Gascony telling Edward that his spy had reported that Mortimer and others were going to ‘Germany’.⁴⁰ In February 1324 Pierre de Cussac told Edward among many other things that Roger Mortimer's son Geoffrey, the new lord of Couhé near Poitiers, had recently been in Paris, but without indicating whether Roger had also been there.⁴¹ Whatever else, Geoffrey was at least in a position to help support his father financially. In early October 1324 the Younger Despenser wrote to John Sturmy, the admiral of the royal ships in the North Sea, that he had certain information about a large fleet of ships gathered in Holland and Zeeland, with the assent of the king of Bohemia (who was also count of Luxemburg) and the count of Hainault, and preparing to land a force of men-at-arms and other troops in Norfolk and Suffolk under the command of Roger Mortimer.⁴² This was strikingly similar to what eventually transpired when Mortimer invaded England in 1326. Nothing more came of this report, but it suggests that Mortimer was already looking for military assistance in the Low Countries. Some support for this suggestion came on 21 November 1324 when Nicholas Hugate wrote to the Younger Despenser from Bordeaux, telling him that Mortimer's son Geoffrey had pledged his French lands to Charles IV in return for 16,000 livres, repayable in three years, and that he and his father had gone towards ‘Germany’. Despenser was warned of Mortimer's malice and of the peril that he represented.⁴³ Mortimer was clearly up to something but his plotting was about to become absorbed into a chain of events which led England and France directly into war in the summer of 1324 and then almost inexorably to the downfall of Edward II and the Despensers two years later.

THE WAR OF SAINT-SARDOS

On the night of 15–16 October 1323 a band of armed men hanged a French serjeant from a post bearing the fleurs-de-lys of France, which had been driven into the ground to mark the foundation of a new bastide at Saint-Sardos in the Agenais. The proposal by the monks of the nearby abbey of Sarlat to establish a bastide on the lands adjoining their priory at Saint-Sardos had been hotly debated for several years past, since its construction would have created a French-controlled enclave in an area which owed allegiance to the English crown, whose agents could be expected to oppose it. It was also opposed by local interests in the city of Agen and by Raymond-Bernard of Montpezat, the secular lord of the area and a vassal of Edward II.⁴⁴ When news of the killing of one of his officials reached Charles IV at Angers on 1 November it was assumed with some justification that Raymond-Bernard's men were responsible, and with less justification that Ralph Basset, Edward II's seneschal of Aquitaine, was complicit.⁴⁵ The news arrived in England in early December and was received with shock and consternation by Edward II and his council who were already deeply engaged in trying to resolve the existing disputes between England and France and immediately understood the seriousness of the situation. Edward himself termed the attack an outrage.⁴⁶

In his letter to Charles IV on 7 December Edward said that he had no knowledge of or involvement in anything that had taken place at Saint-Sardos and would instruct his own officials in the duchy to inquire diligently into the facts. He could not openly apologize for something that had happened in his own territory, but this came close. It was deeply unfortunate that at the same time Edward was also asking for a postponement of his homage.⁴⁷ Charles IV exploited the situation with great skill. In February 1324 Ralph Basset and Raymond-Bernard of Montpezat were banished from the kingdom of France after failing to answer a summons to appear before the king at Toulouse, and orders were given to seize the castle of Montpezat.⁴⁸ When the English garrison refused to surrender, Charles ordered a local proclamation of arms for 1 April, which was suspended when an English embassy led by the archbishop of Dublin and Edward II's half-brother the earl of Kent came to Paris. They were received coldly, being told of Edward's folly in thinking that he, a mere duke, vassal and subject could presume to address the king of France, who was emperor in his own realm and sovereign under God.⁴⁹ Under extreme pressure from the French side, the envoys first of all promised to give up Montpezat, and then changed their minds. At the same time they asked for a further postponement of Edward II's homage until 1 May 1325 or at the earliest 6 October 1324 at Boulogne.⁵⁰

The slow fuse continued to burn.⁵¹ In England one last attempt to avoid disaster was made at a meeting of the council at Westminster on 27 May 1324⁵². Aymer de Valence, the earl of Pembroke and lord of Montignac near Angoulême, with a unique experience of Anglo-French diplomacy and personal contacts with the French court,⁵³ was chosen to go to Paris. No details of his commission have survived but his mission was clearly connected with the Gascon crisis.⁵⁴ He left London for Paris shortly before 13 June, but never reached his destination. On 23 June somewhere close to Saint-Riquier on the road from Boulogne he died suddenly after dining.⁵⁵ His death was almost certainly natural, but it was a sign of the times that one chronicler suggested that he had been murdered because of his part in the judgment of Thomas of Lancaster in 1322.⁵⁶ The news reached Edward II at Tonbridge in Kent on 26 June. In a show of gratitude to his cousin and one of his most loyal supporters, but whose influence had recently been eclipsed by the Despensers,⁵⁷ Edward sent his confessor Robert de Duffeld to break the news to the countess of Pembroke at Hertford.⁵⁸ Pembroke's body was received with honour in London on 31July and was buried in Westminster Abbey near the high altar and the royal tombs on 1 August.⁵⁹

It is unlikely that the earl of Pembroke's mission would have made any difference, even had he lived. Edward and his advisers had badly underestimated French determination. To Charles IV and his advisers the prevarication over Montpezat and the delay in doing homage looked like a refusal by Edward to recognize his obligations to the French crown. Shortly before 25 April 1324 Charles IV ordered a general proclamation of arms for 10 June,⁶⁰ as a preliminary to invading and confiscating the duchy.

Edward reacted to the news of French mobilization by appointing his half-brother, Edmund earl of Kent, as his lieutenant in Gascony on 20 July. Orders also went out for the arrest of all French citizens in England and for the gathering of shipping and an army to go to Gascony under the leadership of John de Segrave and Fulk Fitz Warin.⁶¹ But it was already too late. On 13 August a French army of about 1,000 men-at-arms and 6,000 infantry commanded by Charles of Valois was assembled at Moissac ready to carry out Charles IV's orders. To resist them were 400 men-at-arms and 4,000 infantry recruited locally.⁶² Charles of Valois then advanced into the Agenais, where the city of Agen surrendered on 15 August, followed by Valence-d'Agen, Aiguillon, Nicole, and other places in the valley of the Garonne. The French army reached the important town of La Réole on the approaches to Bordeaux, the administrative centre of the duchy, on 25 August and began to besiege it, taking care to prevent any reinforcements reaching it from Bordeaux.⁶³

Closed up inside La Réole were the earl of Kent himself and his colleague, Alexander Bicknor the archbishop of Dublin. The town was well supplied and defended and should have been able to sustain a long siege if necessary, tying down a large proportion of the French forces in the process. As the siege progressed the French suffered casualties, including the marshal of France; they also suffered from lack of food and disease.⁶⁴ In Bordeaux itself great efforts were made to ensure its safety from any French attack, which in the event never occurred.⁶⁵ In early September 1324 the greater part of the duchy, including the ports of Bordeaux and Bayonne and other key centres such as Bourg, Blaye, Saint-Émilion and Libourne in the vicinity of Bordeaux, and Dax and Saint-Sever further south, was still in Anglo-Gascon hands and remained so for the rest of the war.⁶⁶ There was also the prospect of the arrival in Gascony of reinforcements from England.

But these potential advantages were offset both by the confusion and uncertainty caused by the French invasion⁶⁷ and by the distance and time which separated Gascony from England. Although, for example, the council in England discussed the war in great detail during the autumn of 1324,⁶⁸ its decisions could have no immediate effect and might be seriously out of date by the time they reached Gascony. By the end of the war the English government had succeeded through a major administrative effort in mobilizing and transporting several thousand men, hundreds of horses, food supplies and munitions, but all this took nearly a year to achieve.⁶⁹ Altogether the war of Saint-Sardos cost the English crown about £65,000, much less than the average annual cost of £72,000 in 1294–8, the previous occasion of Anglo-French hostilities in Gascony; and unlike the earlier war, Edward's financial reserves were such that he could fight this one without recourse to borrowing.⁷⁰ This did not however mean that cash was readily available to the defenders of Gascony. The first assistance for the duchy did not reach Bordeaux until 3 October, when a sum of £8,000 was delivered, but another payment of 14,600 marks and a force of about 300 men-at-arms and several hundred foot soldiers were delayed by unfavourable winds and did not arrive until November.⁷¹ Further reinforcements, amounting to about 4,000 infantry and 300 men-at-arms, and the large sum of £20,441 did not reach Bordeaux until 10–11 May 1325, long after the immediate fighting had ceased but ready for a possible renewal.⁷² As has been aptly remarked, the attackers were exposed to fewer risks than the defenders.⁷³

On 28 September the Younger Despenser wrote from Porchester to the earl of Kent saying that no news had been received from him between 10 August when his valet John Daspale had arrived in England and 24 September when two vessels, one from Bordeaux and the other from Bayonne, had brought news of the duchy.⁷⁴ He could not know that on 22 September the earl of Kent had agreed to surrender La Réole to Charles of Valois in return for a six-month truce.⁷⁵

EDWARD's RESPONSE

Even before news of the truce was received in England measures were being taken to intensify and to extend the war. On 18 September Queen Isabella's English lands were taken into royal hands; a few days later the arrest of all French subjects in the kingdom was ordered, even including members of Isabella's household; at the end of September Edward appealed individually to the lords and urban communities of Gascony for support against the French; he also requested military assistance from the rulers of Aragon and Castile, and proposed a marriage between his elder son, Edward earl of Chester, and the daughter of the king of Aragon.⁷⁶ In a letter from the Younger Despenser to Ralph Basset the seneschal of Gascony in early October more details of Edward's plans were given, including the very significant information that Edward intended to go to Gascony the following summer in person and at the head of as large an army drawn from England, Wales and Ireland as he could muster.⁷⁷

On 20 October, by which time the news of La Réole had arrived, an assembly of magnates, bishops and knights was held at London.⁷⁸ Edward personally delivered a very interesting opening speech, demonstrating an insistence on his rights and duties as king but also claiming somewhat disingenuously that he had always sought and followed the advice of his magnates:

Lords, I have shown you certain things which concern the crown which have come under debate, as one who is your chief and who has the sovereign keeping of it, and as one who is ready to maintain the crown in all its rights, with your counsel and aid, and to defend it as far as a man can, by the power of all your might, on which matter I have always asked for your counsel, and have done nothing in the said business without counsel, in which I believe that I have done my part; whereupon I have demanded your counsel, aid and might on this, which you should do, give, and show to me at your peril, exactly as you would wish to acknowledge it, now and in the future, and that each of you, individually and independently, should give me his counsel and his advice on what I ought to do; which given, I wish it to be entered for perpetuity in the roll of parliament: because of which I again ask you, on your faith and your allegiance, to give it to me again orally, each of you individually and independently. For although you have shown me in a bill all your advice and arguments in general, this could be drawn up and put in a bill on the advice and counsel of one or two of you, who know best how to lead and win you over to their opinion, so I nevertheless wish to have your answers individually and from each one independently, and for each one to tell me orally what he thinks, so that I may be fully advised on the said business and on all the circumstances in detail: and I wish to be answered in such a manner, both by clerks and by laymen, that in future each one can answer in his own words without a general cover, and that your answers should be put down in writing: both what I have shown you and what you answer. For I do not want any concealment or sly evasion between us on such an important matter but to be answered orally, clearly and distinctly, just as the matters are distinctly and openly shown to you.⁷⁹

A group of prelates and magnates was chosen to advise Edward on his plans to go to Gascony, and they presented their recommendations to him at a meeting at Mortlake on 1 November: at least 1,000 men-at-arms should accompany him, and 10,000 infantry, 6,000 from England and 4,000 from Wales; Edward earl of Chester should act as his father's lieutenant in England during his absence in Gascony and should be assisted by a council consisting of two archbishops, four bishops, two earls and four barons; and before Edward's departure fealty should be sworn to his son, in the same way as when Edward I went to Flanders in 1297. But they added a word of warning: if so many men left England, there would not be enough left to protect the kingdom, ‘the times being as they are’, a significant choice of phrase encompassing every possibility from foreign invasion to internal disorder, rebellion or conspiracy.⁸⁰ For the moment the plans went ahead. Orders went out for troops to muster at Portsmouth on 17 March 1325. But soon signs started to appear of a change of mind. On 20 February it was announced that, at the request of certain prelates and magnates, Edward had decided to delay his own departure for Gascony until 20 May and that the March expedition would be led by the earl of Surrey.⁸¹ This was the force that arrived in Bordeaux on 10–11 May.⁸² Edward himself was never to leave England.

NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE

Edward's change of plan was the result of the peace talks which had been under way since the previous autumn under the auspices of the pope. John XXII had been anxious to preserve the peace before the war broke out, appealing to both Charles IV and Edward II.⁸³ From Edward's perspective it was important to obtain the pope's goodwill. This was one reason for Edward's reconciliation with John Stratford, the new bishop of Winchester: Stratford's experience in dealing with the papal curia was to be needed again. In July Edward had already written to the pope presenting his case against France; and in late September a proposal was made to him that Stratford should be asked to review the operation of previous peace treaties between England and France in order to demonstrate to the pope that Edward had not failed to perform his homage or other services required of him.⁸⁴ At about the same time news arrived in England that the pope intended to send two envoys, Guillaume de Laudun, archbishop of Vienne, and Hugh, bishop of Orange, to mediate.⁸⁵ The envoys arrived on 8 November and dined with Edward at the Tower of London on 11 and again on 20 November, just before their departure.⁸⁶

The main outcome of their visit was Edward's decision on 15 November to send an embassy to negotiate with Charles IV. This was to consist of the bishops of Norwich and Winchester, the earl of Richmond now released from captivity in Scotland, and Henry de Beaumont.⁸⁷ They were authorized to tell the French king that Edward had never refused to perform homage since he had not been properly summoned to do so; to negotiate for the return of the lands in Gascony and Ponthieu occupied by the French king's forces; to be prepared to discuss a marriage alliance if the king of France were to make the suggestion, but to agree to nothing without consulting Edward. They were also empowered to propose that Edward should grant all the land he held from the king of France to his elder son Edward and that the young Edward should then perform homage for all these lands and those now under French occupation; if that proposal was unacceptable, then homage should be performed by Edward II on a date to be agreed but as near as possible to All Saints following (1 November 1325) and at a place as close to the coast as possible. Edward II was prepared to confirm the six-month truce agreed by the earl of Kent and authorized his envoys to extend it until 29 September; and last but not least that Roger Mortimer and his accomplices should be expressly excluded from any treaty.⁸⁸ These instructions are of particular interest in showing that the suggestion that the young Edward should receive Gascony and go to France to perform homage for it originated from the English side and not from the French, as is sometimes argued.⁸⁹ Nor was it an original idea: it was in essence a repetition of the situation in the closing years of the reign of Edward I when the then Prince of Wales was first supposed to go to France to perform homage on behalf of his father and then in 1306 was granted the duchy of Aquitaine in his own right.

The English envoys arrived in Paris during December, and in early January 1325, after preliminary negotiations with Charles IV and his council, they sent the bishop of Winchester to report to Edward II and his advisers.⁹⁰ The news was not encouraging. The French had objected to the English attempts to make alliances with Aragon and Castile against the count of Hainault and the French crown, which were considered to be acts of treason; they did not consider themselves bound by the agreement entered into by the earl of Kent, which they claimed was more to the advantage of the king of England than the king of France; they also objected to Edward II's reception of men who had been banished from France, such as Ralph Basset the former seneschal of Gascony; and they were annoyed by the removal of the French members of the queen's household. The envoys had also heard that Charles IV had summoned another army and intended to enter the duchy of Gascony on 1 May, accompanied by the king of Bohemia and the count of Hainault.⁹¹ No mention was made of Roger Mortimer.

On the other hand, John Stratford brought with him a set of proposals for discussion by Edward II and his council. Firstly the king of France promised that if Edward were to come to him without preconditions concerning his lands in Gascony, he would do him justice fairly and speedily. The two papal envoys, the archbishop of Vienne and bishop of Orange, who had also been in Paris, had put forward three further proposals after discussions of their own with Charles IV's council. If Edward granted the Agenais and the county of Ponthieu to the king of France, he could then hold the duchy of Gascony on the same terms as before; if this was not acceptable, the king of France would be satisfied with the Agenais alone and would restore the duchy and county in return for homage; alternatively, if Edward gave up the Agenais, Charles IV would grant him lands elsewhere in France and restore the duchy and county. But there was one more proposal, which seems to have originated with Charles IV in person, but was supported by the members of his council who were negotiating with the English and via the papal envoys. This was to prove a fateful one: if Isabella and the young Edward were to come to France, then there was an excellent chance that Charles would extend the truce and would restore all Edward II's lands either to him or to the young Edward on performance of homage; in which case the alliances between England and France would be restored.⁹² It was a tempting offer but a dangerous one. Charles IV may genuinely have been offering peace but Edward II and his advisers could not be certain that he had no ulterior motives.

Edward first summoned a meeting of prelates, magnates and others to Westminster in early February and informed them of the French proposals.⁹³ As for the suggestion that Isabella and the young Edward should go to France together, ‘all with one voice’ advised that Edward should not go until peace had been settled; but it was agreed that Charles IV should be asked if it was acceptable for Isabella to go on her own to make peace; and if this was the case, the English envoys should ask for an extension of the truce until 24 June or at least until Pentecost (26 May), to allow Isabella time to discuss and make peace and to return to England. The envoys were also to ask for the expulsion of ‘le Mortimer’ and other traitors and royal enemies from France, before the queen's arrival, ‘lest she and her followers suffer peril and dishonour upon the road’.⁹⁴ This reflected a fear that Isabella might be held up and abducted by Mortimer.⁹⁵ Edward fully expected that Isabella would return from France after her mission and he made it clear to the prelates and magnates both that he still intended to go to Gascony if the negotiations failed and that he wanted Isabella to accompany him.⁹⁶

Armed with these detailed instructions, Thomas de Astley was first of all sent back to the bishop of Norwich and earl of Richmond in Paris on 7 February. On 16 February Edward received news from his envoys advising him that Isabella should be sent to France and the following day Edward confirmed that she would go. However, Edward also told both his own and the papal envoys, the archbishop of Vienne and bishop of Orange, who had also advised him to send Isabella, that her stay in France and her return to England were subject to his will, and that he would not accept the outcome of any negotiations if this meant his disinheritance or dishonour. As with the earlier instructions concerning Roger Mortimer, there is nothing here to suggest that Isabella might refuse to return after her mission was ended, simply a well justified apprehension about the terms which Charles IV and his team of legal advisers might seek to impose.⁹⁷ At the same time Edward made sure that, if anything untoward were to happen, he would be kept fully informed of Isabella's activities. The retinue of thirty which was to accompany her was selected by Edward and included the countess of Surrey, whose husband was about to lead an expedition to Gascony.⁹⁸ Perhaps he was simply anxious about the outcome of the negotiations, but it is also possible that he had reservations about letting Isabella out of his control. Whatever the truth of the matter, on 14 February the bishop of Winchester set off once more for Paris.⁹⁹

ISABELLA'S FATEFUL JOURNEY

On 8 March 1325 Edward wrote to the pope, informing him that Isabella was going to Paris.¹⁰⁰ In fact she was already well on her way, crossing to Wissant on 9 March and reaching Pontoise on 20 March. On 21 March she was at Poissy where she met the three English envoys, the bishops of Norwich and Winchester and the earl of Richmond,¹⁰¹ and it was here on the same date that she also met her brother Charles IV.¹⁰² The serious business of her mission now began. According to the letter, dated 31 March, in which she reported on the negotiations to her husband, Isabella found her brother harsh and unyielding.¹⁰³ The English envoys faced the same attitude when they tried to negotiate with Charles IV's representatives, to such an extent that they failed to find any common ground. The papal envoys were present throughout and tried to break the deadlock, but with little success, the talks veering from day to day between hope and despair. The English envoys even refused to attend a meeting with the French arranged by the papal envoys. This situation lasted until 29 March when the French announced that they would agree only to an extension of the existing truce in Gascony, which was due to expire on 14 April. The English envoys rejected this and Isabella wrote that she was so despondent that she was on the point of returning to her husband as fast as she could. But on the following day, 31 March, she intervened directly and managed to persuade her brother to agree to a new truce lasting from 14 April until 9 June.¹⁰⁴ The bishop of Winchester and William Airmyn, a chancery clerk, then crossed to England and reported to Edward and his council at Beaulieu in Hampshire soon after 10 April.¹⁰⁵

The terms for a permanent settlement were agreed at Poissy on 31 March between the two papal envoys and Charles IV's representatives and presumably conveyed to the English envoys but they were not given them to deliver. Instead the terms were to be transmitted in letters which would be brought to England by the bishop of Orange and Henry de Sully.¹⁰⁶ They were severe: Edward should first surrender all his lands in Gascony, which would be restored only after Edward had personally performed homage,¹⁰⁷which Charles IV promised he was prepared to receive ‘through love of his sister’;¹⁰⁸ Edward was additionally asked to pay an indemnity to cover the costs of the French campaign; he should not maintain any armed forces in the duchy other than those recruited locally; and Charles IV would also retain possession of the lands in the Agenais occupied by his army, while promising to do Edward justice. To make matters worse, Charles IV allowed only one month after Easter (5 May) for Edward to reply to these terms, and when the bishop of Orange and Henry de Sully came to Edward II at Winchester three weeks had already elapsed.¹⁰⁹

There were understandable fears on the English side about what might happen if the negotiations failed. On 9 April Ralph Basset wrote to the Younger Despenser from Bordeaux, telling him that after Isabella's arrival in Paris the earl of Kent and his fellow envoys had tried to discover as much as they could about French intentions and had learned that, in the event of war, they planned to divide their forces, one army entering Gascony while another would go to Normandy and from there cross to England, where they would be assisted by a Scottish attack.¹¹⁰

On 2 May the French envoys and the bishop of Winchester and William Airmyn appeared at Winchester before the king and a hastily summoned gathering of prelates and magnates.¹¹¹ Edward was faced with an almost impossible situation. His councillors considered that if he accepted the terms offered, he would be both disinherited and still run the risk of war; while outright rejection would bring about immediate war. They dared not advise Edward any further because such a decision should be taken only with the assent of the great men of the realm in parliament. However, they strongly defended Edward against the charge that he had been unwilling to perform homage to the French king.¹¹² It was therefore decided to send the bishop of Winchester and William Airmyn back to France to continue negotiations, while on 6 May a parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster on 25 June.¹¹³ Edward showed the depth of his anxiety and his suspicion that he was being betrayed when he wrote to the pope on 14 May complaining bitterly that he had been led to believe that if he sent Isabella to France, her brother Charles IV would refuse her nothing.¹¹⁴

The extreme nervousness of all present was only added to by a row which took place while Edward was at Winchester. According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, the earl of Leicester, Henry of Lancaster, aroused the king's anger by showing sympathy for the plight of the bishop of Hereford, Adam Orleton, who was still unreconciled to Edward; and also by using the arms of his brother Thomas of Lancaster and setting up a cross outside the town of Leicester in his brother's memory. Henry was ordered to attend the forthcoming parliament and to answer there for his behaviour.¹¹⁵

PEACE AT LAST

Meanwhile Isabella was in Paris, where she attended mass in Notre Dame on 7 May. On 18 May she was joined at Bois-de-Vincennes by William Airmyn, and on the 26th she dined at Fontainebleau with the queen of France, the two papal envoys, the bishop of Norwich, the earl of Richmond and Henry de Sully.¹¹⁶ This was not just a social occasion, since on that same day the truce in Gascony was extended until 22 July.¹¹⁷ On 30 May Isabella and the other English envoys appeared before the council of Charles IV in the palace of the Louvre to discuss peace terms, which were agreed on the following day by the papal, French and English envoys including the ‘treshaute et tresnoble dame madame Isabel Reyne Dengleterre’.¹¹⁸ On the same day it was decided that peace would be publicly declared in Gascony on 4 July, and on 1 June that Edward II should come to Beauvais on 15 August: and ‘if the king of England offers to do homage, the king of France will receive it’.¹¹⁹ On 5 June William Airmyn left Paris to bring the news to England.¹²⁰

Under the treaty Edward's lands in the duchy of Gascony would come under the control for the time being of Charles IV, who would appoint a seneschal acceptable to Edward, and other officials throughout the duchy; the duchy would be governed according to local laws and customs; troops in Edward's service who were already in the duchy should withdraw to Bayonne as soon as possible; and French troops would also withdraw, except for the garrisons of castles and other strongpoints. Edward would come to Beauvais to perform homage as agreed; afterwards Charles IV would restore his lands in the duchy and the county of Ponthieu, and Edward would then appoint his own officials; but if either king were unable to go to Beauvais because of sickness, he would inform the other as soon as possible. If Edward asked Charles to do him justice concerning the lands in the duchy which were held by the king of France, he would do so; within a year Edward would pay the costs of the French actions in the duchy; but if the king of France were to retain the land he had occupied (i.e. the Agenais), he would remit these costs. No mention was made in the treaty either of Roger Mortimer and other English exiles or of Ralph Basset and others who had been exiled from France.¹²¹

These were harsh terms, but made to appear less so by the language employed. Charles IV was at pains to emphasize that his restoration of the duchy was an act of generosity, and that he was also acting out of love of his sister Isabella. It was clear however that come what may Charles IV meant to keep the Agenais, which was what he had probably wanted from the beginning.¹²² Much would also depend on whether the French acted in good faith once homage had been performed.

In England Edward laid the terms of the proposed treaty before the prelates and magnates who had gathered for parliament. Each group in turn stated that they considered the terms reasonable and that Edward would not suffer disinheritance or dishonour. They advised him to accept the terms,¹²³ and on 13 June Edward did so, confirming the treaty; but in order to allow time for further details to be worked out the date of his homage was postponed until 29 August 1325.¹²⁴

HOMAGE

Preparations went ahead for Edward II's journey to Beauvais to perform homage on 29 August. It was to be a visit on a grand scale. Over 300 people were to accompany the king, one of them being Hugh Despenser, the son of the Younger Despenser; and a small fleet of ships including the king's personal barge the Saint Mary of Westminster was assembled at Dover, ready to cross to Wissant on 18 August. Other preparations for Edward's coming were made at Le Crotoy in Ponthieu and at Beauvais itself.¹²⁵ Edward left his manor at Havering-atte-Bower in Essex on about 11 August, heading for the coast, but he got no farther than the Premonstratensian abbey of Langdon near Dover, where his old friend William was abbot. Here he was suddenly taken ill and was unable to continue his journey, or so he wrote to Charles IV on 24 August. He expressed his continued willingness to come to Beauvais if arrangements could be agreed and said that he would depute John Stratford the bishop of Winchester and Master John de Bruton a canon of Exeter to see to this.¹²⁶

Edward may have been genuinely unwell, but it is far more likely that his illness was a diplomatic one and designed to take advantage of the provision in the Anglo-French treaty which allowed for postponement of the ceremony of homage if either monarch were unable to attend.¹²⁷ Crucially, it also gave Edward and his council time for further thought. Indeed there is evidence that further thought had already being given to Edward's crossing to France only three weeks after his confirmation of the treaty. On 5 July the bishop of Winchester, the earl of Richmond and William Airmyn were authorized to propose that the duchy of Aquitaine should be granted by Edward II to his son, who would then perform homage for it in his father's place and in his own right.¹²⁸ This repeated the proposal that Edward II's ambassadors had made in December 1324 and which the French had then been prepared to accept on condition that both the young Edward and Isabella should go to France.¹²⁹ At the time the English council had refused to agree to the absence from England of both Edward and Isabella. But now with peace agreed it was time to revive the suggestion: the only problem was that Isabella was still in France. Would she return to England in advance of her son's arrival in France; and was there as yet any indication that she might be unwilling to do so? It was a risk, but one that Edward II was prepared to take. It had the advantage that Edward would not have to meet Charles IV in his inferior capacity of duke of Aquitaine and a vassal of the French crown. After his bad experience when he last performed homage at Amiens in July 1320 and the haughty reception given to his half-brother the earl of Kent in Paris in March 1324, he knew that the intended ceremony at Beauvais was likely to be deeply offensive. The author of the Historia Roffensis probably expressed the fears of Edward and his advisers when he remarked that if Edward went to France he would find the French ready to threaten him with war.¹³⁰ If on the other hand Aquitaine were held by the heir to the English throne the young Edward, the danger of public embarrassment and a possible renewal of conflict might be reduced.

But there were other reasons for Edward II's lack of enthusiasm for crossing to France. According to the Historia Roffensis Edward and his advisers were also worried that if he crossed to Wissant a trap might be laid to capture him and take him somewhere outside the kingdom of France.¹³¹ This sounds fanciful but it was very like the fear expressed at the time of Isabella's journey to Paris in March.¹³² The reason was the same: anxiety verging on paranoia about Roger Mortimer's whereabouts and intentions. Edward would be passing close to an area in which Mortimer might be lurking and, if seized, could easily be taken to a nearby imperial territory such as the county of Holland, where Mortimer was already rumoured to have support.¹³³

According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, the prelates and magnates who had advised him to go to France during the June parliament were clearly uneasy about their decision but had done so because they felt they had no other choice.¹³⁴ That was not enough in itself, for there were still anxieties about possible plots against Edward within England itself. If Mortimer might reach him on the continent, there was also the danger that he might do so at home. There were also the current tensions between Edward and Henry of Lancaster which had not been addressed during parliament in June and remained unresolved; there was the matter of the bishop of Hereford; and the archbishops of Canterbury and York, Walter Reynolds and William Melton, were at odds since the latter's appointment as treasurer in July and their consequent row over Melton's right to carry his cross of office in the Canterbury province when on royal business.¹³⁵ Recriminations were starting to be heard about the war in Gascony. Edward blamed Alexander Bicknor, the archbishop of Dublin for the advice to the earl of Kent which had led to the loss of La Réole in September 1324 and for subsequently accusing the Younger Despenser of treachery. In May 1325 Edward asked the pope to remove Bicknor from office and in December seized his lands and goods in England and Ireland, thereby adding one more to the growing list of disaffected prelates.¹³⁶ A further complication was that although the young Edward would nominally be in charge of the kingdom in his father's absence, his chief advisers would have to be Henry of Lancaster, ‘because he was of better blood than the others’, and the Elder Despenser the earl of Winchester, ‘shrewder than all and more experienced’ but ‘hated by everyone and even by the king's son’.¹³⁷

It was probably the position of the Despensers as much as anything else that finally determined Edward not to go to France. While it is incorrect to say that the Younger Despenser had been banished from the kingdom of France and could not have accompanied Edward for this reason, nonetheless he could scarcely have gone there in safety.¹³⁸ If Mortimer really were laying traps for Edward, Despenser would have been an even more welcome quarry.¹³⁹ Two well-informed chroniclers, Adam Murimuth and the author of the Vita, record that the Despensers were afraid to accompany the king to France but were also terrified of what might happen to them if they were left behind in England.¹⁴⁰ Although it would take more than the sorcery of John of Nottingham, the Coventry magician, and other ‘magical secret dealings’ to bring an end to the careers of the Despensers, there is little doubt that by 1325 they were deeply insecure and perhaps, as Natalie Fryde remarked, living ‘in a nightmare of fear’.¹⁴¹

A letter from Henry of Eastry the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, to his archbishop on 15 August reveals that Edward II had convened a gathering of prelates, earls and barons at Sturry near Canterbury, at which a final decision on whether the king should go to France in person or send his son would be taken.¹⁴² This meeting, which was probably a stormy one, was clearly the source of Edward II's ‘illness’. So it was decided that Edward would not after all go to France. To put the best face upon it, in September the archbishop of Canterbury circulated a letter in his province which stated that Isabella, the earl of Richmond, the bishop of Winchester and the papal envoys had advised Edward that it would be better for him to stay in England governing his kingdom in peace and justice and to send his son in his place.¹⁴³

Events now moved quickly. On 2 September the bishop of Winchester visited Charles IV at Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, where Isabella and the earl of Richmond were also present.¹⁴⁴ Two days later Charles IV signified his acceptance of the proposal, ‘at the request of his dear sister’, that the duchy of Aquitaine should be transferred to Edward, the elder son and heir of Edward II. He undertook to receive Edward's homage in the usual form for the duchy, with the exception of the land which he himself controlled, i.e. the Agenais. In return Edward would have to pay a relief of 60,000 livres parisis (about £15,000).¹⁴⁵ Even before Charles IV's letter reached England, Edward II had acted: on 2 September he granted the county of Ponthieu to his son; and on 10 September he granted him the duchy of Aquitaine, following a form of words received from the bishop of Winchester and presumably reflecting the requirements of Charles IV.¹⁴⁶ On the same date Edward formally remitted all causes of rancour that had arisen between himself and his brother-in-law Charles IV and informed him that the new duke of Aquitaine would soon be crossing to France, accompanied by Henry de Beaumont and the bishop of Exeter.¹⁴⁷ The young Edward duly crossed the Channel on 12 September and joined his mother Isabella in Paris ten days later.¹⁴⁸ The great event took place on 24 September at Vincennes. After first granting Edward a dispensation because he was still only twelve years old, Charles IV received Edward's homage for Aquitaine and for Ponthieu. The ceremony was attended from the English side by Isabella, the bishops of Winchester, Exeter and Norwich, the earl of Richmond, Henry de Beaumont, John Cromwell and Gilbert Talbot; by the papal envoys, the archbishop of Vienne and bishop of Orange, and the bishop of Viviers; and by a large number of royal administrators and French nobles, including the count of Clermont and the duke of Burgundy.¹⁴⁹

PART TWO

THE ENDGAME BEGINS

Much would now depend on whether Charles IV kept his side of the bargain. The Anglo-French peace negotiations in 1325 had been long and difficult and the advantage had lain throughout with the French. In October 1325 the duchy of Aquitaine was duly restored to the control of a new seneschal appointed by Edward: Oliver Ingham, an English knight and close associate of the Younger Despenser.¹⁵⁰ It should however have been clear all along to Edward II and his council that, regardless of whatever settlement was ultimately agreed, Charles IV had no intention of relinquishing control of the Agenais.¹⁵¹

Recriminations were inevitable. The archbishop of Dublin had already been one victim; another was William Airmyn, who was blamed for Charles IV's failure to return the Agenais.¹⁵² This was unfair, but Airmyn was guilty in Edward II's mind of another offence, that of blocking yet again the promotion to bishop of the chancellor, Robert Baldock archdeacon of Middlesex. The death of John Salmon, the bishop of Norwich and one of Edward's envoys in Paris, on 6 July 1325, should have opened the way for Baldock's appointment to the vacancy. The monks of Norwich duly obliged by electing Baldock on 23 July, and on 12 August Edward restored the temporalities of the diocese. Unfortunately for him, the pope had also quickly learned of Salmon's death and on 19 July appointed William Airmyn as bishop. With Airmyn's consecration by the papal envoys in Paris on 15 September, there was nothing left for Baldock to do but to resign. For the third and last time Edward II failed to get Baldock made a bishop; he retaliated by withholding Airmyn's temporalities, which were not restored until February 1327 shortly after Edward III's coronation.¹⁵³

The most serious problem was Isabella herself. Edward clearly expected Isabella and Edward duke of Aquitaine to return promptly to England once their business was concluded.¹⁵⁴ Although it is known that between 9 March and 29 September 1325 Isabella received expenses from the English exchequer amounting to £2,841, no direct payment was made to her after 17 June, just after Edward II's confirmation of the Anglo-French treaty.¹⁵⁵ This implies that Edward already had suspicions about her intentions and this was a way of ensuring that she returned home.¹⁵⁶ If this was Edward's own intention, he simply played into the hands of his brother-in-law Charles IV. A note in Isabella's accounts reveals that on 18 July she dined with the queen of France at Châteauneuf-sur-Loire and that from that day Charles paid the living expenses of herself and her ladies.¹⁵⁷ No more money came to her from England until the arrival of Walter Stapeldon, the bishop of Exeter and treasurer, in Paris on 22 September: the money was to be handed over to her on condition that she returned to England at once.¹⁵⁸

But she did not return.

EDWARD AND ISABELLA

While there is no way of gauging the true nature of the relations between Edward and Isabella, until at least 1322 they appear to have been close. As the Bridlington chronicler remarked, their marriage had been intended to maintain and to improve relations between England and France,¹⁵⁹ but there was nothing unusual in this. Royal marriages were invariably arranged for reasons of political advantage or to advance a diplomatic agenda. Although Isabella was little more than a child when she married Edward in 1308, again there was nothing unusual in this by the standards of the time nor is there anything to suggest that Edward was in any way reluctant to contract the marriage for which he had been preparing since 1303. Edward's relationship with Gaveston, although almost certainly nonsexual in nature, was a major distraction of her husband's time and energies in the early years of their marriage, but with Gaveston's removal in 1312 and Isabella's growing physical and emotional maturity Edward and Isabella's own relationship appears to have flourished. Edward and Isabella produced four children at regular intervals between 1312 and 1321.¹⁶⁰ Edward appears to have been considerate of her welfare: he did not for example abandon the pregnant Isabella at Tynemouth in May 1312, as is sometimes alleged. As part of her marriage contract Isabella was also well provided for financially, even though for much of the reign money was in very short supply. Although she played some role as a mediator between Edward and his baronial opponents in, for example, 1312, 1313, 1318 and 1321, she was not particularly active in politics. She was loyal to her husband, giving her services as a negotiator with the French crown in 1314, and in 1321 allowing herself to be used as the bait to secure the defiance of Badlesmere's wife at Leeds castle and so begin the process of destroying Badlesmere and the other contrariant magnates.¹⁶¹

The king's victory in 1322 was to lead to a change in his relations with his wife as in much else. If Isabella had not distrusted or even hated the Younger Despenser before 1322,¹⁶² there can be little doubt that she did so afterwards. Despenser's increasing ascendancy over Edward, his behaving as if he were the real king, and his greed and lack of scruple were also an affront to her status as queen of England and the daughter of one king of France and the sister of three others. This was bad enough, but Despenser also had to bear some part of the blame for Edward's humiliation in Scotland in 1322, his near capture at Byland and her own near capture at Tynemouth. For the third time in her married life she had been forced to flee her husband's enemies.¹⁶³ Whether her experiences in 1322 also marked the beginning of an estrangement from Edward there is no way of knowing, but it seems likely.

Isabella was further humiliated in September 1324 by the seizure of her English lands in Cornwall and other western counties because of the alleged risk of a French landing in these remote districts.¹⁶⁴ Superficially this was a plausible excuse since the small ports of the west of England were a favourite route through which English exiles, such as John Maltravers and others came and went;¹⁶⁵ and if they could do it, so might the French or, most dreaded of all, Roger Mortimer himself. But it was no more than plausible since it was impossible to control clandestine comings and goings from England. In reality it was a petty move on the part of Edward, as was the removal and imprisonment of French members of Isabella's household.¹⁶⁶ She blamed the Younger Despenser for both actions,¹⁶⁷ which also caused serious annoyance at the French court.¹⁶⁸ Even more humiliating was the removal from her household of her children, John, Eleanor and Joan, into the custody of the Younger Despenser's wife Eleanor de Clare.¹⁶⁹

By the time Isabella departed for France in March 1325 she apparently had ample reason to wish to leave England. According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, ‘The queen departed very joyfully, happy with a twofold joy; pleased in fact to visit her native land and her relatives, pleased to leave the company of some of those whom she did not like. Certainly she does not like Hugh …; consequently many think she will not return until Hugh Despenser is wholly removed from the king's side.’¹⁷⁰

Her dislike and even fear of Despenser are not in doubt, but this passage may not be strictly contemporary:¹⁷¹ even a few months' delay in writing would be enough for hindsight to affect the chronicler's opinion. In the late autumn of 1325 Isabella gave Despenser as the reason for her refusal to return to England,¹⁷² but whether this was her intention all along is less certain. On 31 March, at the conclusion of the draft treaty with France, Isabella told her husband that, with the consent of the other English envoys, she would stay in France, unless Edward ordered otherwise.¹⁷³ This may of course have been a subterfuge, designed to ward off suspicion, but it was also true that the negotiations were not fully complete until August when Charles IV agreed to the young Edward's taking the place of his father in the performance of homage. Until then she could plausibly justify a longer stay in France.

It has also been alleged that Isabella's departure in March 1325 was part of a carefully contrived plot to get her out of England. The claim by the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker that Adam Orleton, the disgraced bishop of Hereford, somehow engineered her departure as the first part of a carefully stage-managed plot to bring about the downfall of Edward II has been shown to be entirely spurious.¹⁷⁴ John Stratford, who had fallen out with Edward II over his appointment as bishop of Winchester in 1323, and took a leading part in the peace negotiations of 1324–5, has also been suggested as being behind this.¹⁷⁵ However, the plan certainly originated in the set of proposals drawn up by the French negotiators and papal envoys and brought back to England by Stratford in January 1325.¹⁷⁶ From the French point of view it was a way of offering Edward II something tangible while still maintaining that he could claim nothing as of right. From the English point of view it offered a way of breaking the deadlock in the negotiations. The idea that Isabella should take some part in the negotiations was not an entirely new one in England. As far back as April 1324 someone close to Edward II had drawn up a detailed memorandum of the words she should use in replying to a French knight visiting England before his return to Charles IV.¹⁷⁷ It was not a great step from this to Isabella's actually going to France herself. She had, after all, done so successfully in 1314. In early February 1325 Edward II's council discussed the proposal and approved the idea in principle.¹⁷⁸ Although it is possible that in doing so Edward and his advisers were falling into a trap carefully prepared by Charles IV with the unwitting connivance of the papal envoys in Paris,¹⁷⁹ it is more likely that what followed when Isabella did go to France was a prime example of the law of unintended consequences.

ISABELLA REFUSES TO RETURN TO ENGLAND

By the end of September 1325 Isabella had been in France for over six months. Even without any ulterior motives on her part, she had good reason for staying in France for as long as possible. She was away from the tense atmosphere of the English court and especially away from Hugh Despenser; since 22 September her elder son and heir to the English throne, the new duke of Aquitaine had been with her; and she was probably enjoying herself in the company of her brother the king of France and other members of her family. During June 1325 Isabella remained in Paris, where she dined on occasions with her sister-in-law Clemence of Hungary the widow of Louis X, the countess of Foix, the Dominicans and Minoresses, as well as the earl of Richmond and the two papal envoys who were evidently still engaged in negotiations with the French crown. In July she went on a tour of places outside Paris, including Chartres and Étampes, before reaching Charles IV's palace at Châteauneuf-sur-Loire where she spent much of the rest of July and August. She was still at Châteauneuf in early September when she dined with the French queen and the earl of Richmond and bishop of Winchester: this was the time when the arrangements for the young Edward to perform homage were being settled. On 9 September she was back at Bois-de-Vincennes and from then until late October she remained in Paris. Her social life continued: she dined, for example, with the queen, the countesses of Saint-Pol, Évreux and Boulogne, and the abbot of Cluny. On 22 September her son joined her, and although he had his own household arrangements he ate with her on 7, 14 and 17 October. On 16 October she went to Saint-Denis to visit her uncle, Charles of Valois, just two months before his death on 16 December. Isabella was also in contact with some of the envoys who had helped to negotiate the unsatisfactory peace between England and France: she met the archbishop of Vienne, the bishop of Orange and the earl of Richmond on 1 October and the earl on 5–7 October.¹⁸⁰

Significantly there is no mention of any social dealings with another English envoy, Walter Stapeldon the bishop of Exeter who had come to Paris for the young Edward's performance of homage on 24 September.¹⁸¹ He was also charged with trying to persuade Isabella to return to England with her son, and he failed utterly. If the dramatic account in the Vita Edwardi Secundi is to be believed, Stapeldon's message was delivered publicly in the presence of both Isabella and her brother, Charles IV, to which she delivered herself of a dramatic and equally public reply: ‘“I feel”, she said, “that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, holding fast to the practice of a life together, and that someone has come between my husband and myself and is trying to break that bond; I declare that I will not return until that intruder is removed, but, discarding my marriage garment, shall put on the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this Pharisee”. And the king of France, not wishing to seem to detain her, replied, “The queen”, he said, “has come of her own free will, she may return freely if she wishes. But if she prefers to remain in these parts, she is my sister, I will not expel her.”’¹⁸² No one needed to be told who had come between Isabella and Edward. The bishop of Exeter was so shaken by his hostile reception at the French court and so fearful of being attacked there that he fled back to England as soon as he was able.¹⁸³ The opportunity came when Isabella and her son left Paris on 22 October. Against Isabella's express orders, the bishop also left, crossed the Channel as fast as he could and rejoined Edward II at Cippenham near Windsor on 30 October.¹⁸⁴ When Stapeldon tried to justify his conduct to Isabella, she reacted furiously and on 8 December sent him an angry letter from Paris in which she accused him of dishonouring both Edward and herself and of acting in the interests of the Younger Despenser.¹⁸⁵

EDWARD II REACTS

The news from Paris was depressing in the extreme. Even before the bishop of Exeter's return, it was clear that Isabella had no intention of coming home, and that the Younger Despenser's position was the reason for her behaviour. What was not yet clear, however, was whether she was acting solely on her own initiative or with the support and prompting of others.

In the bishop of Exeter's absence a parliament had been summoned on 10 October to meet on 18 November.¹⁸⁶ It was appropriate that he should be chosen to open it with a sermon on the theme of the battle between the giants Gog and Magog, representing the kings of England and France.¹⁸⁷ Edward was still obsessed with the failure, as he saw it, of Charles IV to honour the peace treaty by returning the Agenais; and on 15 October he complained bitterly about this to the papal envoys.¹⁸⁸

But the real business of the parliament revolved around two people: the Younger Despenser and Queen Isabella. In the chapel of the Tower of London, according to the Historia Roffensis, Despenser announced that anyone who failed to counsel the king truly was either a traitor or a fool; but received no reply, since everyone was afraid to speak the truth publicly.¹⁸⁹ According to the Vita, Edward then gave a short speech in which he said:

‘You know all the long-standing disputes and processes between the King of France and us over the land of Gascony, and how, wisely enough as it seemed at the time, the queen crossed to France to make peace, and she had instructions to return at once when her mission was accomplished. And this she promised with a good will. And on her departure she did not seem to anyone to be offended. For as she took her leave she bade farewell to everyone and went away joyfully. But now someone has changed her mind; someone has filled her with extraordinary stories. For I know that she has not invented any affront out of her own head, although she says that Hugh Despenser is her adversary and enemy.’

And he added this: ‘It is surprising that she has conceived this grudge against Hugh, for when she left, towards no one was she more agreeable, myself excepted. For this reason Hugh has been made very unhappy; but he is nevertheless prepared to prove his innocence in any way whatsoever. Hence I firmly believe that the queen has been led into this error at the suggestion of someone else and, in truth, whoever he may be he is a man who is wicked and is an enemy. Now therefore deliberate wisely so that she, whom the teaching of evil men directs and incites to deceit, may be urged and brought back to rightful harmony by your sensible and kindly reproof’.¹⁹⁰ At the request of the king's council, each of the bishops then wrote to Isabella, telling her that Despenser had proved his innocence before them and appealing to her as a dutiful wife to return to her husband. While there was no mention of Mortimer in the letter, the bishops were aware, allegedly from the queen's own letters, that a landing in England to remove Despenser was being considered and they begged her to spare the country the evils of foreign invasion, lest the innocent should suffer along with the guilty.¹⁹¹

EDWARD's APPEAL TO ISABELLA

While the parliament was still in session, John Stratford the bishop of Winchester returned from Paris where he had briefly met Isabella on or soon after 12 November.¹⁹² Stratford could only confirm what everyone already knew: that Isabella was staying in France. Armed with the latest news, on 1 December 1325 Edward II wrote to his errant wife and to Charles IV, as well as to sixteen of the leading clergy and nobility of France. He noted that he had frequently ordered her, both before and after the act of homage, to come back with all speed. Edward professed to be surprised that she was afraid of Despenser, since she had always behaved amiably to him, and he to her, especially at the time of her departure for France. Edward also claimed he had always treated her with honour since their marriage, except for a few times when he had occasion to reprove her in private. He told her that it would be unfortunate if her visit to France, which had been intended to bring peace between himself and her brother Charles IV, should instead be a cause of difference between them. Edward appealed to her to put aside all feigned reasons and excuses and come back to him with their son as quickly as possible.¹⁹³ On the following day, 2 December, Edward also addressed a short letter to his son, asking him, although he was young and of tender age, to remember what he had promised when they parted at Dover, and to come home, if necessary without his mother: they had much to talk about.¹⁹⁴

ISABELLA AND MORTIMER

On 29 November the bishop of Rochester was travelling towards Stone near Dartford in Kent when he met some members of Isabella's household returning from France.¹⁹⁵ Others came back to England on 23 December and during January and February 1326.¹⁹⁶Some of them may have come home simply because Isabella no longer had enough money to pay them;¹⁹⁷ some because they did not approve of her refusal to rejoin her husband or because they were aware of a liaison between her and Edward II's greatest enemy, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore.¹⁹⁸

The first clear reference in England to a connection between the two was in a royal proclamation on 8 February 1326 when it was claimed that Isabella was adopting the counsel of ‘the Mortimer’ and other rebels.¹⁹⁹ A closer and more personal relationship was hinted at on 18 March when Edward II wrote to his son and accused Isabella of openly and notoriously keeping Mortimer in her company and of associating with him ‘within and without house’.²⁰⁰ Mortimer's attendance in the company of Isabella and the young Edward, and wearing Edward's livery, at the coronation of the new queen of France on 11 May was a further humiliation for her husband.²⁰¹

There has been much debate about the nature of the relationship between Isabella and Mortimer and when it started. One writer has suggested that it began as early as the autumn of 1321; another that it ‘was not of sudden growth’;²⁰² while Ian Mortimer, the biographer of Roger Mortimer, describes their relationship as ‘one of the great romances of the Middle Ages’, suggesting that it already existed early in 1323.²⁰³ On the other hand both F.D. Blackley and Natalie Fryde see the relationship as developing only after her departure for France,²⁰⁴ while Isabella's biographer, Paul Doherty, argues that there is no evidence of any liaison existing before December 1325 when some of Isabella's followers began returning to England.²⁰⁵

Mortimer was three years younger than Edward II, had been knighted at the same time during the great ceremonies at Westminster in 1306, and also took part in Edward's coronation in 1308. Although Mortimer was absent for long periods in Ireland or in Wales, he and Isabella would have come to know one another socially. But that is all one can say. It is possible that Isabella sympathized with Mortimer's plight after his imprisonment in the Tower in 1322 and that this explains the letter she wrote on 17 February 1323 asking the acting treasurer to treat Mortimer's wife, Joan, with greater generosity.²⁰⁶ Since Isabella was staying in the Tower at the time, it has been suggested that Mortimer was able to communicate with her from his prison cell and that she may even have assisted his escape the following August.²⁰⁷ There is nothing however to support this conclusion. Although one French chronicler does seek to implicate Isabella in Mortimer's escape, there is not a hint of such collusion in any of the English sources.²⁰⁸ There is also the inconvenient fact that the Younger Despenser's wife, Eleanor de Clare, wrote a very similar letter to the acting treasurer on the same date.²⁰⁹

A connection between Isabella and Mortimer before she left England cannot of course be ruled out absolutely, but it seems unlikely. What is more interesting is the point at which she first made contact with Mortimer after her arrival in France. The one thing which both Isabella and Mortimer certainly had in common was their desire to see the Younger Despenser removed from power. It did not automatically follow that they both wished to see Edward II removed from the throne or that they were also involved romantically. Initially at least, their relationship may have been solely one of business.

There is no mention of Mortimer anywhere in the record of Isabella's stay in France between 9 March and 14 November, when it ends.²¹⁰ This is hardly surprising, since if there were any contact Isabella would have tried to keep it secret from members of her household who might pass on the news to Edward in England. However, on 22 October she was joined by her son, who then stayed with her until 12 November. The two set off from Paris for Reims where they stayed between 30 October and 1 November, before returning to Paris on 12 November.²¹¹ While they were at Reims Isabella visited all the major churches, including the cathedral, and made offerings especially at the Ampulla containing the holy oil with which the kings of France were anointed at their coronation.²¹² Reims was within easy reach of Valenciennes, the chief city of the county of Hainault in which Roger Mortimer may have been staying,²¹³ secure in the knowledge that he was outside the power of the kings of France and of England and yet able to communicate with both kingdoms whenever he chose.²¹⁴ While there is no firm evidence to support this suggestion, it is possible that Isabella made contact with Mortimer while she and Edward were at Reims and that this was the real purpose of their visit.

However, on 5 February 1326 Isabella wrote a remarkable letter from Paris in reply to Walter Reynolds, the archbishop of Canterbury, who had pleaded with her to return to England and had tried to persuade her that Hugh Despenser was not malevolent and that he wished her no harm.²¹⁵ Isabella said that no one should think that she would have left the king, whom she described as her ‘beloved and sweet lord and friend’,²¹⁶ ‘without very great and justifiable cause’,²¹⁷ and if she were not escaping from danger to her life.²¹⁸ For she was afraid of Hugh Despenser who ‘governs our lord [the king] and his entire kingdom’, and who ‘wished to dishonour us by all means in his power’. Isabella admitted that for long she had kept secret her dislike of Hugh, but only to escape from danger.²¹⁹ She went on: ‘We desire, above everything else, after God and the salvation of our soul, to be in the company of our said Lord and to die with him’,²²⁰ but could not return to her husband without endangering her life.²²¹ Although Isabella wrote the letter in the midst of a very tense and dangerous political situation, it appears that she was still sincerely attached to her husband Edward. If this was so, it must cast some doubt on whether her relationship with Mortimer was more than just an alliance against the Younger Despenser. It is yet another of the riddles in which the reign of Edward II abounds.²²²

RUMOURS OF INVASION

Isabella was not the only person under stress. The situation for Edward and his followers in England in early 1326 was much worse: all around them were signs of danger. The murder on 19 January near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire of Sir Roger Belers, a baron of the exchequer, and one of the most hated supporters of the Despensers, struck at the heart of the regime. Although the murder may have been associated with a local feud, Belers, a former retainer of Thomas of Lancaster, had deserted him in 1322. The facts that it took place while Belers was riding to meet Henry of Lancaster and that some of the attackers afterwards fled to France were probably therefore significant.²²³

Meanwhile in France Isabella was starting to become the centre of a group of exiles from England. One was John of Brittany, the earl of Richmond and brother of the duke of Brittany, who had been one of Edward II's envoys to Paris. Despite orders from Edward, the earl refused to return to England.²²⁴ She was also joined by Edward's half-brother, Edmund of Woodstock the earl of Kent, who had been in France since 1324, and by Henry de Beaumont and John Cromwell, who had accompanied her son Edward to France in September 1325.²²⁵ The new bishop of Norwich, William Airmyn, was another recruit. In early 1326 he was summoned to appear before the King's Bench in England to explain himself: he did not attend, fled abroad and joined Isabella.²²⁶ Worst of all, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore was also in her company, and plotting.

Edward II and his government became obsessed with the danger from the continent. On Christmas Day 1325 commissioners of array throughout England were told to see that every able-bodied man was properly armed and to erect beacons and appoint sentinels.²²⁷ Royal castles were also to be properly supplied and garrisoned.²²⁸ On 3 January 1326 Edward, fearing that she might be in communication with her son, ordered the removal of Roger Mortimer's mother, Margaret de Fiennes, from Worcester to the abbey of Elstow near Bedford.²²⁹ On the same date orders were given to look out for any suspicious correspondence entering England. A month later, on 8 February, Edward ordered the coast to be carefully guarded against any possible landing by foreigners in the service of Isabella and Mortimer:²³⁰ this was in response to a rumour reported to the king by the archbishop of Canterbury that Isabella was preparing to invade England from Normandy, accompanied by the count of Hainault and the king of Bohemia.²³¹This may also have been the occasion of the archbishop's appeal to Isabella to come home, and her reply on 5 February.²³² On 12 March Henry of Eastry, the dean of Christ Church, Canterbury, told the archbishop that the return of Isabella and her son was imminent, but was not clear whether this would be as part of an invasion or not. He advised that if they did return, they should be met with reverence and not hostility.²³³

Edward was also alarmed by other news. On 2 January the archbishop of Canterbury wrote telling the king that Charles IV had written to Count William of Hainault proposing a marriage between the young Edward and one of the count's daughters and asking for his assistance in an invasion of England.²³⁴ Edward II was still planning a Spanish marriage between his son and heir and Eleanor the sister of Alfonso XI of Castile, as a counterbalance to the power of France.²³⁵ He reacted angrily and on 3 January wrote asking the pope not to grant a dispensation for his son's marriage without consulting him first.²³⁶ A marriage between the young Edward and the count of Hainault's daughter was all too plausible. Edward II had himself pursued such a scheme between 1319 and 1321,²³⁷when a Hainault marriage would have helped to improve commercial relations between the two sides. But Edward had not worked hard enough at preserving relations with Hainault and may have caused offence when he broke off the marriage negotiations in favour of potentially more advantageous arrangements with Aragon or Castile. This may also help to explain why Mortimer appears to have found refuge there after his escape from England in 1323 and the persistent rumours of invasion plans with the assistance of Count William of Hainault. A revival of the Hainault marriage plans was thus an obvious tactic for Isabella and Mortimer to employ. Although Hainault was under imperial rather than French overlordship, there were close personal links between France and Hainault. The countess of Hainault was the daughter of Charles of Valois and therefore also a cousin of Isabella. The autobiography of Charles of Luxemburg, the son of King John of Bohemia and the future emperor Charles IV, records that Charles of Valois actively promoted a marriage between Isabella's son and a daughter of Count William.²³⁸ Negotiations could have been started in December 1325 when the countess and her daughter Philippa were in Paris to visit Charles of Valois on his deathbed. Since the countess is also known to have met Isabella, the young Edward may even have met his future wife.²³⁹ From Count William's point of view a marriage to the heir to the English throne and a successful invasion of England by Isabella and Mortimer could bring many advantages for Hainault. In January 1326 Edward II tried to improve his relations with Hainault but it was already too late.²⁴⁰

Charles IV's role was probably the passive one of providing sanctuary for his sister Isabella; there was no need for him to involve himself directly in an invasion of England, as was rumoured.²⁴¹ This would have been even further beyond his resources than a full-scale invasion of Gascony and would certainly have met with fierce resistance and rallied support around Edward II. For the moment it suited him that Edward's attention was distracted by news and rumours of Isabella and Mortimer's plans, allowing him to digest more fully his recent gains in Gascony. Since the war of Saint-Sardos, the valley of the Garonne, up to and including the great fortress of La Réole, had remained in French hands, undermining the eastern defences of the duchy. Saint-Macaire was now the only important stronghold before Bordeaux.²⁴² The war had also left a large number of outstanding claims for restitution of lands and for compensation which could not be settled speedily and caused tensions both within the duchy and between England and France.²⁴³Edward was forced to prepare for a possible resumption of hostilities. In April 1326 orders were given for the urgent completion of a new city wall for Bordeaux. As a precaution, the castles along the Scottish border were put in a state of defence, in case the Scots also joined in. War was resumed in Gascony between June and August 1326: in June Edward resumed the government of Gascony in his own name and in July was even considering sending an army there. Drift into a more general war in the region was a very real possibility and was avoided only by Isabella and Mortimer's invasion of England in September and the rapid disintegration of Edward II's rule.²⁴⁴ The problem of Aquitaine was left for the new regime in England to deal with. Edward II could do no more.²⁴⁵

EDWARD'S DESPERATION

On 18 March 1326 Edward wrote both to his son and to his brother-in-law Charles IV. He reminded the young Edward that he had promised when he left England in 1325 that he would always follow his father's orders; told him that he was not to marry without his father's permission, threatening him with forfeiture if he did so; and said he was to return home as soon as possible, accompanied if he wished by the earl of Richmond and John Cromwell. Edward said that he understood his son's desire not to leave his mother while she was suffering such distress and unhappiness, but told him that her fear of Hugh Despenser, the king's dear and faithful servant, was merely feigned, and that she had shamed her husband by her open association with Roger Mortimer. Edward's letter to Charles IV was in the same vein, reminding him that he had earlier banished Mortimer from France, and asking him to send the young Edward back to England. Of Isabella, he said that if she truly loved him she would want to be in his company, as she had claimed; ‘she who ought to be a mediator between England and France should not seek new forms of dissension’. Edward concluded by asking his brother-in-law to make his decisions ‘according to reason, good faith, and fraternal affection, without having regard to the wilful pleasure of women’.²⁴⁶

THE POPE INTERVENES

During 1325 and 1326 the pope kept a very close watch on events in France and England. His envoys, the archbishop of Vienne and the bishop of Orange, had played a central role in the tortuous negotiations in Paris which led to the unsatisfactory peace between Edward II and Charles IV in June 1325 and were probably partly responsible for the proposal that Isabella should go to France. On 15 February 1326 the pope intervened when he wrote to both Edward and Isabella to say that he had heard with grief of the dissension between them and was sending his envoys to talk to them, begging that they would each listen to their advice. Two days later the pope went to the heart of the matter when he wrote to the Younger Despenser, suggesting that, since his role in the king's government was given by the queen as the reason for her fearing to return to her husband, he should retire and find a way of removing Isabella's fear.²⁴⁷ The pressure on Edward was also increased by the rumours circulating in France and reported to him in April by the papal envoys in Paris that he had banished both Isabella and his son from England and was refusing to let them return.²⁴⁸

On 19 May Edward issued instructions for the reception of the papal envoys at Dover and their safe conduct.²⁴⁹ When they arrived they were accompanied by messengers from the French king and were kept waiting at Dover for eight days before being taken to meet the king and Despenser at Saltwood castle near Hythe on the Kent coast. Here they arrived ‘in fear and trembling’, not knowing how they would be received, and delivered their bulls and other letters in a sealed box. In the event they were received honourably and spent the next two days in discussion with the king and Despenser before crossing back to France on 10 June.²⁵⁰ There was much business to transact. The pope was concerned about payment of the accumulated arrears of the annual census of £1,000 owed to the papacy, the repayment of the clerical tenth which had been loaned to Edward II in 1322 in aid of the war in Scotland, and the plight of the archbishop of Dublin and the bishops of Hereford, Lincoln and Norwich; while Edward for his part was still pressing the case of Robert Baldock for promotion.²⁵¹

The real business of the meeting was of course Isabella, and Edward's willingness to create the necessary conditions for her return. For this to be possible he would have to promise to treat her honourably and see to her safety; he had promised both when he wrote to Isabella on 1 December 1325 and might be expected to do so again.²⁵² But the central and abiding problem had been and remained the Younger Despenser. Unless Edward was prepared to give him up, which would mean in effect sending him into exile to a safe place, if there was such a place, no settlement was possible. And Edward was not prepared to give up Despenser: by this stage in the reign each was dependent on the support of the other; if one fell, the other was likely to follow. There is no formal record of what took place but on 10 June Edward wrote to the pope that the Younger Despenser had been questioned by the papal envoys and had replied to each point orally.²⁵³ On the matter of Isabella there is some information. Edward II attached a schedule to his letter ²⁵⁴ in which he rehearsed the history of Isabella's going to France at the suggestion of the pope and of many others in order to make peace, and how Edward in all the sweetness of true love and with heart and mind had sent her;²⁵⁵ he told of her refusal to return to England; of her association with his mortal enemy the convicted traitor ‘le Mortimer’; and of her detention in France of his elder son and heir Edward, whom she forced to associate with Mortimer who wore Edward's livery at the coronation of the queen of France, in contempt and disparagement of the king; it was also rumoured that Isabella was planning to invade the kingdom in alliance with various magnates. Edward concluded by saying that if she came to England, and showed herself obedient to him, he would act towards her in a fitting manner; and he did not believe that the Holy Father himself, the king of France or any other man would do otherwise.²⁵⁶ Edward was very angry with Isabella: if she were to be allowed home she would have to break with Mortimer and allow her son to return to England; and Edward clearly had no intention of breaking with Despenser.

A few days later, on 15 June, the bishop of Rochester met both Edward and Despenser on the road between Leeds castle and Rochester, while they were on the way back to the Tower of London, and in conversation he asked about the talks with the papal envoys. Despenser told him that he was not the real obstacle to Isabella's return: she could have returned long ago but was prevented by Mortimer, who had threatened to kill her if she came back Edward.²⁵⁷ It is possible, as Paul Doherty has suggested, that Edward II was now so angry that he was seriously contemplating divorcing Isabella.²⁵⁸ Later, in the prior's chamber at Rochester, Edward spoke of a queen who was deposed from her royal dignity for refusing to obey her lord the king.²⁵⁹ In reply the bishop told the story of a councillor who was hanged for trying to estrange a king from his queen.²⁶⁰ With great boldness the bishop added that he would have preached to this effect in the king's presence at Tonbridge if he had been summoned to do so. Despenser commented that this would have been a marvellous sermon, since it was about him; to which Edward replied that the bishop spared no one.²⁶¹ The bishop said that it was the duty of a priest to tell the truth about everyone, great or small, whether in the confessional or in preaching. The following afternoon, while the bishop escorted the king to Gravesend, Edward said: ‘You have not asked me for anything. For you have done many things for me and the Lord Hugh, and I have not rewarded you. I have done much for those who are ungrateful, whom I promoted to high rank, and are now my chief enemies.’ And Edward told Despenser to let the bishop have whatever he wished. When the party reached Hallings, the bishop asked Edward and Despenser's permission and departed, ‘and he never saw the king again’.²⁶²

ISABELLA'S NEXT MOVE

This was the immediate background to Edward's appeal on 19 June to his son, to Charles IV, and the bishop of Beauvais. Edward spoke of his own shame and humiliation at Isabella's refusal to leave France and her association with Mortimer. Again he ordered his son not to marry without permission and begged him to return to England, and ended with a threat that if he disobeyed, he would feel it for the rest of his life and be an example to all other disobedient sons.²⁶³ If Edward also wrote to Isabella, there is no record of it.

Isabella was now in a quandary, since her position in France was becoming difficult. There is some evidence that the support given to her by her uncle, Charles of Valois, was continued after his death by his son Philip, who was aware that the king of France was ailing and likely to die without a male heir.²⁶⁴ In this case Philip of Valois and Isabella's son Edward would each have a strong claim to the French throne. At some point Philip of Valois made an agreement to help Isabella, for which the quid pro quo may have been that Isabella would support his claim over that of her son.²⁶⁵ On the other hand, by the summer of 1326 her welcome from the king of France, her brother Charles IV, was starting to wear thin. Charles did not approve of her conduct in abandoning her husband and in associating herself so openly with Roger Mortimer.²⁶⁶

Charles IV may have been tempted to send Isabella home²⁶⁷ and she may herself have been tempted to return. But this could quickly be ruled out. If the Younger Despenser's statement to the bishop of Rochester that Mortimer had threatened to kill her if she tried to return had any substance,²⁶⁸ then she was in danger in France; while Mortimer was later alleged to have tried to persuade her that if she returned to her husband, Edward would kill her.²⁶⁹ There is also evidence that the Younger Despenser tried to bribe some of Charles IV's councillors into withdrawing their support,²⁷⁰ while one chronicler claimed that Edward plotted to have Isabella murdered, using the earl of Richmond as his agent.²⁷¹ Whatever the explanation, the simple truth was that Isabella was now both an embarrassment and in serious danger, and she had to move on.²⁷² If she had had doubts earlier in 1326 about the wisdom and feasibility of launching an invasion of England with the assistance of Roger Mortimer, she now laid all doubts aside. Her destiny was as closely linked with that of Mortimer as Edward II's was with Despenser.

According to the highly coloured accounts of the Liège chronicler Jean le Bel and his successor Jean Froissart, Isabella left France after she was warned by Robert d'Artois, one of Charles IV's councillors, that she was about to be expelled. Accompanied by her son, the earl of Kent and Roger Mortimer, she went first to Cambrai, outside the borders of France, and then to Buignicourt in Hainault where she lodged with a simple knight, Eustace d'Aubrecicourt. Here she met Jean de Beaumont, a young knight ‘in the flower of his age’, who took pity on her and took her to his brother Count William of Hainault at Valenciennes. William offered to help her at the price of a betrothal between his daughter and the young Edward, and the invasion plans grew from there.²⁷³

Isabella may well have left France in a hurry but the truth was probably less dramatic.²⁷⁴ The only direction in which she could realistically go was the county of Hainault with whose count both she and Mortimer had long been in contact and in negotiation. It was now time to put those contacts to good use and complete the negotiations. Isabella had begun to plan the invasion of England even before she left France. On 10 June 1326 she was still in Paris, where she began arrangements to pledge the revenues of the county of Ponthieu to the count of Hainault to cover the costs of hiring ships and supplies.²⁷⁵ It is likely that she then went to Ponthieu and reached Hainault in early August.²⁷⁶ Mortimer had preceded her and before the end of July was gathering ships and supplies in her name and with the approval of the count. The ships were to be ready at ports between Rotterdam and Dordrecht by 1 September.²⁷⁷ On 3 August Isabella was at Mons in Hainault, where she confirmed and guaranteed an agreement made between Mortimer and the count for the supply of 132 ships and eight warships.²⁷⁸

BETROTHAL

On 27 August 1326 Edward, duke of Aquitaine, count of Ponthieu and earl of Chester, and Philippa, the daughter of William, count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, were formally betrothed at Mons. Edward engaged himself to marry Philippa within two years, to obtain the necessary dispensation from the pope, and to give her a dower worthy of a queen of England; if the marriage did not take place he would pay the count £10,000 sterling. In return for all these promises the count of Hainault undertook to provide troops for the planned invasion of England. On the same occasion Isabella promised that if the marriage had not occurred within two years she would send ten knights of noble lineage to Valenciennes, to stay there until the ceremony was completed. In two separate documents, Edward's uncle Edmund earl of Kent and Roger Mortimer also undertook to see that the marriage took place.²⁷⁹ This was no romantic engagement. The count of Hainault had driven a hard bargain and stood to gain, whatever the outcome.

GATHERING THE FLEET

After the betrothal Isabella left Hainault and travelled through Holland, Zeeland and Brabant, to arrange further details of the planned invasion, before joining the count of Hainault at Dordrecht on 7 September.²⁸⁰ Isabella, Edward and her companions then moved between the Hague, Rotterdam and Brill, where their presence is last recorded on 20 September.²⁸¹ The core of the army was a force of 700 mercenaries raised by Philippa's uncle Jean de Beaumont in Hainault and in Germany.²⁸² There were also a number of English exiles, who had escaped soon after Boroughbridge or who had left England later, men such as John de Kingston, John Maltravers, John Botetourt, William Trussell, and others; as well as Henry de Beaumont and John Cromwell who had accompanied the young Edward to France;²⁸³ there were the leaders of the force, Queen Isabella, her son Edward, Roger Mortimer, the earl of Kent, the earl of Richmond, and their own personal retainers. In total the army probably came to no more than between 1,000 and 1,500,²⁸⁴but what the army lacked in size it made up for in professional skill and in determination to bring down the hated Despensers. The fleet when finally assembled came to only ninety-five ships, far fewer than the original 140 which had been summoned.²⁸⁵ But they were enough to carry the men, horses and supplies. On 21 or 22 September 1326 the invasion force set sail for England from Dordrecht or Brill.²⁸⁶

D-DAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 1326

The long-awaited and long-feared invasion had begun at last. Although safeguards against an invasion by Roger Mortimer had been being put in place since January, the main perceived threat in the summer of 1326 was of a French invasion of England from Normandy in conjunction with the resumption of war in Gascony. On 10 August Edward ordered the setting up of a system of coastal beacons and watchers, and two days later, on the 12th, the assembling at Portsmouth on 31 August of all ships of more than 50 tons from the mouth of the Thames westwards; on 26 August he ordered the arrest of French subjects; and on 3 September that all ships of over 30 tons' burden from the mouth of the Thames northwards were to be assembled at the port of Orwell in Suffolk on 21 September.²⁸⁷ The chief enemy against which the ships were to be directed was the French: in the order of 12 August the French were the only enemy mentioned but on 3 September they were joined by ‘others’, unnamed but a clear indication that Edward had learned something of the plans of Isabella and Mortimer.

By coincidence or not, Orwell was close to the very spot at which Isabella and her followers landed on 24 September. This was an obvious destination for an invasion fleet coming from the Netherlands: two years earlier, in October 1324, it was believed that Mortimer was preparing to land in Norfolk or Suffolk from precisely this direction.²⁸⁸ Although Isabella and Mortimer probably took care to prevent news of their plans from leaking out,²⁸⁹ it seems likely that Edward had some knowledge, not just of their general plans, but also of the intended place and approximate date of their landing. On 2 September, orders were given for a force of 2,000 men, comprising 1,300 archers and 700 infantry, to be at Orwell by 21 September and to stay there for a month;²⁹⁰ and on 10 September a squadron of twelve ships from Harwich and Ipswich was ordered to be at Orfordness, not far from Orwell, on 24 September, ready to repel an enemy landing if the main fleet was absent on other duties. On 10 and 12 September two other squadrons were ordered to take up positions off Hunstanton in Norfolk and the Isle of Thanet in Kent.²⁹¹

However, if Edward knew something of Isabella's invasion plans and took precautions against them, he completely underestimated their chances of success. Instead he took his eyes offthe real danger and continued to give his attention to the non-existent threat of a French invasion of England. Edward's presence at Portchester near Portsmouth from about 30 August until 17 September must be connected with the attack on Normandy in the early days of September by 133 ships manned by 4,200 sailors and carrying about 1,600 soldiers.²⁹² The attack was led by John Felton, one of the Younger Despenser's knights, who was later to take part in the defence of Despenser's fortress of Caerphilly in Wales.²⁹³ It appears to have been in the nature of a commando-style raid, which was undertaken either to forestall a French attack or even in the mistaken belief that Edward II's son, Edward, was in Normandy and might be brought back to England.²⁹⁴

At about midday on 24 September Isabella landed in the port of Orwell and seized a position on the Colvasse peninsula a few miles from Harwich. She was accompanied by her son Edward the duke of Aquitaine, John de Beaumont the brother of the count of Hainault, Edward II's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock the earl of Kent and his wife,²⁹⁵ Roger Mortimer, John Cromwell, William Trussell, and other knights and men-at-arms. The ships were quickly unloaded and with a fair wind departed before sunset, all except the ship in which Isabella had crossed to England, which either deserted her or was captured as it left the harbour. The vessel was sailed to London where the crew broke the news of Isabella's landing to Edward II at the Tower of London,²⁹⁶ probably on 27 September.²⁹⁷

Isabella spent the first night at the nearby village of Walton,²⁹⁸ before moving on to Bury St Edmunds, ‘as if she were on a pilgrimage’. Here she found 800 marks left there by one of the king's judges, Hervey de Stanton, which she borrowed to pay for the costs of her household.²⁹⁹ Her next stop was Barnwell priory near Cambridge, where she spent several days, before going on to Baldock in Hertfordshire, which she had reached by 6 October; then on to Dunstable in Bedfordshire, before starting her pursuit of the king in his flight from London.³⁰⁰

Isabella's advance appears to have met no resistance.³⁰¹ Of the 2,000 troops ordered to assemble at Orwell only fifty-five are known to have appeared.³⁰² All the evidence suggests that, as news of her landing spread,³⁰³ supporters flocked to her, united by their common hatred of the Despensers. She was joined soon after the landing by Edward II's other half-brother, Thomas of Brotherton the earl of Norfolk,³⁰⁴ and by Henry of Lancaster the earl of Leicester, who ‘by chance’ had already begun to gather troops at Leicester. He immediately came south and met Isabella at Dunstable.³⁰⁵ Several of the prelates who had fallen out with Edward II, the bishops of Lincoln, Hereford and Ely, and the archbishop of Dublin, also joined her.³⁰⁶

EDWARD's RESPONSE

On 27 September Edward gave orders to raise forces against the invaders; on the following day he put a price of £1,000 on the head of Roger Mortimer, ‘his mortal enemy’, while ordering that no harm should come to Isabella, or to his son and the earl of Kent.³⁰⁷This proclamation was received with open hostility when it was read out in London.³⁰⁸ On 30 September the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London and Winchester, and the abbots of Westminster and Waltham gathered in St Paul's cathedral and solemnly republished a seven-year-old papal bull excommunicating all invaders of the realm and originally directed against the Scots. But a letter from Isabella and her son Edward announcing their landing and their purpose had already been widely circulated in the city. Although they had not replied because of fear of the king and the Despensers, the citizens realized what the archbishop was doing and showed their support of Isabella's cause by shouting down the archbishop's clerk Thomas de Stowe when he tried to read the bull in public.³⁰⁹

For Edward II the message was all too clear. Since his return from Portchester he had been staying in the Tower of London and could probably hear and see what was going on around it. On 2 October Edward abandoned London, heading west and accompanied by the Despensers, the chancellor Robert Baldock, a great company of men-at-arms, and with a large sum of money.³¹⁰ Edward left behind him most of his administration,³¹¹ his ten-year-old son John of Eltham and Despenser's wife Eleanor de Clare in the Tower, and a city seething with discontent.³¹² Nonetheless, there was still much to play for. The south and east of England already appeared to be a lost cause, but if Edward could use the money available to him to good effect, and if Wales was to prove its loyalty again as it had in 1321–2, a victory might still be possible.

LONDON IN REVOLT

On 9 October a second open letter from Isabella and her son, sealed with their pendant seals and asking the citizens to help them in the destruction of the Younger Despenser, arrived in London and was widely publicized.³¹³ The Londoners, who deeply hated Despenser for his attacks on their liberties since 1321 and were already sympathetic towards Mortimer, needed no further encouragement.³¹⁴ From this moment any hope that the king might retain some sort of control of the city vanished.

A last attempt at mediation was made on 13 October when the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of Winchester, Exeter, Worcester, London and Rochester assembled in convocation.³¹⁵ It was a measure of how dangerous London had become that they met at the archbishop's palace at Lambeth, south of the River Thames, instead of in St Paul's cathedral as originally planned. A very nervous group of bishops decided on 14 October to send two of their number to Isabella to mediate between her and Edward. John Stratford, the bishop of Winchester, volunteered to go but only if another bishop would join him.³¹⁶

On the following day and while Stratford was still trying to persuade the bishop of Rochester to accompany him, the Londoners rose in revolt. A great crowd gathered at the Guildhall and at what may have been a prearranged signal began to attack anyone associated with Edward II's regime. John le Marshal, a London citizen and a close ally of the Younger Despenser, was dragged out of his house and beheaded; the mayor of London, Hamo de Chigwell, saved his life only by swearing to support Isabella; and in one final act of barbarity Walter Stapeldon, the bishop of Exeter and former treasurer, was seized in the porch of St Paul's cathedral where he had sought sanctuary, beaten and savagely beheaded with a bread-knife. Afterwards Stapeldon's head was sent to Isabella at Gloucester. Stephen Gravesend, the bishop of London was lucky to avoid the same fate.³¹⁷

This was only the beginning of an orgy of plunder and mayhem. The chief justice, Geoffrey le Scrope, who had earlier tried to raise forces to assist the king, was another of the mob's targets. Scrope escaped across the Thames from Blackfriars, where he had been meeting the bishops of Exeter and London and other royal councillors in a vain effort to find a way out of the crisis, and rode for his life on one of the archbishop's horses. Walter Reynolds, the archbishop and one of Edward II's oldest and closest allies, rode off into Kent, leaving Hamo de Hethe the bishop of Rochester to follow on foot as best he could.³¹⁸ The treasuries belonging to the earl of Arundel at St Paul's and Robert Baldock at Holy Trinity were looted; and the offices of the Florentine bankers the Bardi, with whom Despenser had deposited large sums, were attacked.³¹⁹

On the following day, 16 October, the constable of the Tower, John de Weston, was forced to hand over the keys. All the prisoners who had been held there since 1322 were released, including Roger Mortimer's two sons, Badlesmere's widow and son, and others. The king's son, John of Eltham, was then appointed as the nominal guardian of the city after swearing loyalty to the city's cause.³²⁰ One who did not live to regain liberty was Mortimer's uncle, Roger Mortimer of Chirk, who had died in the Tower on 3 August.³²¹The completeness of the victory was symbolized on 17 October when Thomas of Lancaster's plaque marking the publication of the Ordinances in 1311 was restored to its former place in St Paul's from which it had been removed in 1323.³²² In a quite different symbolic act, nearly all the London Dominicans, whose order was very close to Edward II, fied the city.³²³

The seizure of control of London by partisans of Isabella and Mortimer had not been quite as straightforward or certain as the outcome suggested. The collapse into anarchy was almost as dangerous to Isabella's cause as it was to her husband’s. Nonetheless, London's allegiance to Edward II was now definitively at an end: a letter read at the Guildhall and claiming that Edward and Isabella had been reconciled and the enemies of the kingdom captured was immediately treated as a forgery.³²⁴ When the bishop of Winchester arrived on 15 November with letters from Isabella appointing Richard de Béthune and John de Gisors as joint keepers of the Tower, and Richard de Béthune replaced Hamo de Chigwell as mayor, order began to be restored.³²⁵ All that remained was the Londoners' noisy participation in the parliament of January 1327 during which Edward II was deposed.

EDWARD VERSUS ISABELLA

Edward and the Despensers did not waste any time in their journey westwards. Pausing at Wallingford on 6 October, they were at Gloucester between 9 and 12 October. They were not however fleeing aimlessly. Edward believed that he could trust the principality of Wales to offer him military support against the invaders; while the Younger Despenser also disposed potentially of enormous resources in money and manpower in the lordships he held or controlled in South Wales all the way from Chepstow in the east to Pembroke in the west. Whatever sympathy Roger Mortimer may have enjoyed in England, he was still cordially hated in Wales. Unfortunately for Edward's cause, the Younger Despenser was also loathed by his Welsh tenants.³²⁶ One of Edward's first acts on hearing of the invasion was to order two of his most loyal Welsh subjects, Rhys ap Gruffudd in South Wales and Gruffydd ap Rhys (otherwise known as Gruffydd Llwyd), to gather all the available forces of South, West and North Wales, and bring them to him.³²⁷ This strongly suggests that Edward and the Despensers were planning to fight in Wales even before their departure from London on 2 October. These two men had been largely responsible for the defeat of Roger Mortimer and the other Marchers in 1321–2 and Edward clearly hoped that they would do so again in 1326. However, events in the autumn of 1326 moved so fast that neither man was able to intervene in time to save Edward II from capture by his enemies. The knowledge that they would also be helping to save the Despensers from their well-deserved punishment may have somewhat dampened their enthusiasm and made them slower to react.³²⁸

While he was at Gloucester Edward sought to add to these anticipated forces by summoning men from Wigmore and Ludlow and other places under royal control with orders to join him at Gloucester on the following Wednesday, 15 October.³²⁹ But when that day came he had already moved to Tintern, and then on the following day to the great castle of Chepstow on the borders between England and Wales. Events were moving rapidly and Edward could not afford to wait until the troops he had summoned began to arrive. Perhaps he already knew that they were not coming.

Isabella meanwhile was hot on his heels. On 9 October she was at Dunstable where she placed a reward of £2,000 on the head of the Younger Despenser.³³⁰ On 15 October she was at Wallingford and here, on the same day as the rising in London, a proclamation was issued in the names of Isabella ‘queen of England, lady of Ireland, and countess of Ponthieu’; Edward, ‘the elder son of the noble king of England’, duke of Guyenne,³³¹ earl of Chester, and count of Ponthieu and Montreuil’; and Edmund, ‘the son of the noble king [Edward I]’, earl of Kent.³³² No mention was made of Roger Mortimer. This was a crucial moment, since it was still uncertain whether she and her followers had enough support to attain their objectives. In order to consolidate that support it was now essential for her to spell out exactly what those objectives were and to convince any waverers that her actions were legitimate. Isabella, Edward and the earl of Kent began by claiming that the state of the Church and of the kingdom had been greatly diminished by the evil counsel of Hugh Despenser the Younger, who had seized royal power for himself, against right and reason, with the aid and evil counsel of Robert Baldock and others; the crown of England had been destroyed in various ways, disinheriting the king and his heirs; many of the great men of the realm had been shamefully put to death, and others imprisoned, banished or exiled; widows and orphans had been wrongfully deprived of their rights; the people of the land had been ruined by various tallages and undue exactions; and for all these offences Hugh ‘showed himself to be a tyrant and enemy’³³³ of God and the Holy Church, of ‘our beloved lord the king’,³³⁴ and of the whole kingdom. Isabella, Edward and Edmund went on to say that, having been deprived of the goodwill of the king by the false suggestions and evil procurement of Hugh, Robert and their adherents, they had come into the land to relieve the Holy Church and the realm and all the people of the realm of these oppressions, and in order to guard and maintain the honour of the Holy Church, of ‘our lord the king’, and of the entire kingdom to the best of their ability. Therefore they called upon each and every one, for the common profit of all, to give them every assistance; since their actions were undertaken for the honour and profit of the Holy Church and the whole kingdom, as would appear in time.

The emphasis throughout was on the legitimacy of their cause and the many crimes and acts of oppression committed by the ‘tyrant’ Hugh Despenser and his adherents. Nowhere was it suggested that the king was himself a tyrant or that he was anything but a victim of Despenser's machinations. A few days later, in order to ram home Despenser's culpability, Adam Orleton the bishop of Hereford preached before the university at Oxford on the text ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head….’³³⁵

EDWARD ALL AT SEA

On 20 October Edward and Despenser sailed from Chepstow: they were to be at sea for the next four days.³³⁶ Their immediate destination was Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, which had been in Despenser's hands since 1322, but this tiny windswept island was not a feasible refuge, and it is very likely, as several chronicle sources suggest, that they were hoping to escape from there to Ireland.³³⁷ Edward II did not reach Ireland in 1326, but it is interesting to speculate as to what might have happened had he succeeded. Although the English government had been worried in 1323 that Roger Mortimer of Wigmore might go to Ireland after his escape from the Tower of London, there is no evidence to show that he had a significant following in Ireland by the time he and Isabella invaded England in 1326.³³⁸ On the other hand, if Edward II had landed in the south-east of Ireland, in for example Waterford or Wexford,³³⁹ he might have found a friendly reception in the lordship of Wexford, which had been in royal hands since the death of the earl of Pembroke in 1324; and in the lordship of Kilkenny, two-thirds of which was in royal control, while the remainder was held by Despenser.³⁴⁰ More importantly, he would probably have been well received in Dublin, the centre of the government of the lordship. Alexander Bicknor, the archbishop of Dublin, who was on bad terms with both Despenser and the king, was in England; while the justiciar, John D'Arcy, a former retainer of the earl of Pembroke who had been a loyal supporter of the king, would almost certainly have been sympathetic to Edward.³⁴¹

A strong indication of the possible attitude of the Dublin government can be found in the fact that, although Edward III was proclaimed king in England on 25 January 1327, the new king's authority was not proclaimed in Ireland until 13 May. D'Arcy had been replaced as justiciar and left Ireland twelve days earlier, on 1 May, but his successor, the earl of Kildare, found difficulty in asserting his authority for some time afterwards.³⁴² If Edward II really had been alive and well and living in Ireland, his position as the legitimate crowned king of England and lord of Ireland would have been extremely strong: no amount of manoeuvring in England by Mortimer and Isabella could have concealed this fact. Edward II could then have been removed from office only by another round of bloody civil war. From a base in Ireland Edward in his turn might have raised an army to restore his authority in England.³⁴³ He would certainly have found allies in Wales,³⁴⁴ and probably in Scotland³⁴⁵ as well as in England itself.³⁴⁶ Edward would also have had the money to pay an army, since it is known that the sum of £29,000 which had been brought from the treasury in the Tower of London when he left London on 2 October was formally delivered to him at Chepstow on 20 October, the day he put to sea.³⁴⁷

Edward's successful escape to Ireland would therefore have been fraught with all kinds of possibilities. But it was not to be. Instead of getting even as far as Lundy Island, the fugitives were held up by unfavourable winds in the Bristol Channel. Their prayers to St Anne went unanswered and they were forced to land at Cardiff on 25 October,³⁴⁸ before seeking refuge in Despenser's almost impregnable fortress at Caerphilly. From here on 28 and 29 October Edward summoned the forces of South and West Wales to his aid in the hope of a last-minute rescue from his enemies.³⁴⁹

EDWARD IS DEPRIVED OF HIS AUTHORITY

Edward's flight into Wales had handed Isabella and her allies a political opportunity. By 18 October she had reached Bristol, whose defence had been entrusted to the earl of Winchester Hugh Despenser the Elder.³⁵⁰ The city and castle surrendered after a brief siege and here on 26 October, at about the same time that Edward returned to dry land in Wales, the first stage in divesting him of his crown took place. A carefully worded statement placed on the Close Roll recorded that since Edward II had left his kingdom,³⁵¹accompanied by Despenser and Baldock and other notorious enemies of the queen and her first-born son, and the kingdom had been left without government, the archbishop of Dublin, the bishops of Winchester,³⁵² Ely, Lincoln, Hereford and Norwich, and other prelates, the earls of Norfolk, Kent and Leicester, Thomas Wake,³⁵³ Henry de Beaumont, William la Zouche of Ashby, and other barons and knights, then at Bristol, in the presence of the queen and Edward duke of Aquitaine, and ‘with the assent of the whole community of the realm there present’, unanimously chose the duke to be guardian of the kingdom, and to rule and govern the kingdom in the name of the king and during his absence.³⁵⁴ The young Edward put his new authority to use for the first time on 28 October when he summoned a parliament to meet at Westminster on 14 December 1326.³⁵⁵ Edward II was still recognized as king and would formally resume his authority as soon as he returned to England, but the writing was on the wall.

It was now time for rewards and punishments, as appropriate. On 26 October Henry of Lancaster, already recognized as earl of Leicester since March 1324, was styled earl of Lancaster;³⁵⁶ and on 27 October the Elder Despenser appeared before Sir William Trussell, who had been assigned to act as judge, the earls of Lancaster, Norfolk and Kent, Roger Mortimer, Thomas Wake and others to hear his sentence. In a procedure which was deliberately modelled on the trial of Thomas of Lancaster, Despenser was told that since he had made a law which allowed men to be condemned without being given any right of reply he would be treated in the same way. As an attainted traitor he had been banished and exiled, he had returned without being reconciled, and had usurped royal power and had advised the king to break the laws, namely in the putting to death of Thomas of Lancaster without cause; he was a robber, against whom the people cried out for vengeance; and he had treacherously advised the king to act against prelates of the Church. For his treason he was to be drawn; for robbery to be hanged; and for his acts against the Church to be beheaded; since he had dishonoured the rank of earl his head was to be taken to Winchester for display; and for having dishonoured the order of chivalry by hanging knights wearing coats quartered with their arms, he should be hanged in the same way and his arms destroyed for ever. And so he was executed on the public gallows at Bristol, the first victim of Isabella and Mortimer's revenge.³⁵⁷

EDWARD'S LAST DAYS OF FREEDOM

Edward and Despenser could have stayed at Caerphilly, which was well supplied and capable of withstanding a long siege.³⁵⁸ Instead after nearly a week they left on 2 or 3 November and moved westwards to the Cistercian abbey of Margam. After two days here Edward moved on again to the neighbouring Cistercian abbey of Neath, where his presence is recorded until at least 10 November.³⁵⁹ After this there is no certainty as to his whereabouts until the fateful day, 16 November.

Edward's departure from Caerphilly has no obvious logic. He left behind him at least £13,000 in twenty-six barrels, each containing £500 in silver pennies, together with a large number of personal items, including his bed, drinking cup, armour and swords, privy seal and household records, and a vast amount of other material.³⁶⁰ However he still had with him at least £6,000, the Great Seal and the rolls of chancery and other possessions, some of which he deposited in Neath abbey and in Neath castle, while some other items were left in the nearby Swansea castle.³⁶¹ While he was at Margam he placed the ports of Glamorgan in the care of four custodians, including a certain John Joseph, the master of the king's ship the Goodyear of Cardiff.³⁶² Edward might have left Caerphilly because his servants were deserting him;³⁶³ or because of the failure of more of his Welsh allies to join him; or because even at this stage he still had hopes of escaping by sea to Ireland or indeed anywhere he could reach. More likely he was in despair. But even now he made one last attempt to avert final disaster. On 10 November while he was still at Neath abbey he appointed the abbot of Neath, Rhys ap Gruffudd the only Welsh ally to have reached him, his nephew Edward de Bohun, and two others to go to his ‘most beloved consort’, Isabella queen of England, and Edward his first-born son on business especially concerning him and his kingdom.³⁶⁴ It was his last recorded act as a free man.

There is nothing to suggest that the deputation ever departed or that it would have been received by Isabella and her son Edward if it had reached them. However, Isabella and Mortimer understood the dangers that might still arise if the king remained at large and had sent a search party to find him. This consisted of the earl of Leicester, who wanted to avenge his brother's death and was also lord of Monmouth and of Kidwelly in the Welsh March;³⁶⁵ William la Zouche, Master Rhys ap Hywel newly released from prison in London, and two sons of Llywelyn Bren whose father had been treacherously executed by the Younger Despenser. Edward abruptly left Neath on 11 November, probably after discovering that he was being pursued and, accompanied by Despenser, Baldock and a few others, tried to make his way back to the relative safety of Caerphilly. It is likely that they followed a mountain road leading from Neath to Caerphilly via another of Despenser's castles at Llantrisant. On 16 November, after a stormy night, Edward was betrayed and captured by some Welshmen and taken to Llantrisant, before being handed over to the earl of Leicester. Despenser, Baldock and others were found in a nearby wood and taken to Hereford.³⁶⁶ The place where Edward was made prisoner became known locally as Pant-y-brad or the Vale of Treachery.³⁶⁷

THE TRANSFER OF POWER

Edward was first taken to the earl of Leicester's castle of Monmouth, where the next stage of his humiliation took place. Since the young Edward's authority as guardian of the kingdom ceased with his father's return to England, on 20 November Isabella and her son sent the bishop of Hereford from Hereford to Monmouth to ask the king to give up the Great Seal. This scene took place in the presence of Henry of Lancaster, the archdeacon of Hereford and others. After some hesitation Edward II gave the seal to Sir William Blount, who delivered it to Isabella and her son at ‘Martleye’ on 26 November. Four days later at Cirencester abbey Isabella and Edward appointed William Airmyn the bishop of Norwich as keeper of the Great Seal in the presence of Roger Mortimer and others, and he began to act as such, returning the seal to Isabella and Edward at the end of each day's work.³⁶⁸ The chancery rolls which Edward II had left in Swansea castle were handed over to the queen at Hereford on 22 November,³⁶⁹ while the records of the privy seal and chamber were found at Caerphilly when the castle fell in March 1327.³⁷⁰ Even before the Great Seal had been recovered, steps had been taken to gain control of the other great organ of state, the exchequer. On 6 November John Stratford the bishop of Winchester was appointed treasurer by the guardian of the kingdom, arrived at the exchequer in London on 14 November with some ceremony and began to exercise his office three days later.³⁷¹ All that remained now was to decide what to do with Edward.

THE THEATRE OF VENGEANCE: THE TRAITORS ARE PUNISHED³⁷²

The Younger Despenser and the former chancellor Robert Baldock were taken to Hereford, where they were met by great crowds amidst much noise and vilification.³⁷³ Edmund Fitz Alan, the earl of Arundel, who had been closely associated with Despenser and whose son had married Despenser's daughter, had earlier been arrested in Shropshire and brought to Hereford where he was beheaded on 17 November.³⁷⁴ Baldock was accused of many of the same crimes as the Younger Despenser and also suffered public humiliation but, as a clerk, was spared execution. He was handed over to the custody of the bishop of Hereford but suffered a miserable fate. He was first taken to London and imprisoned in the bishop's house in the parish of St Mary Mounthaw. Since the bishop had no right to have a prison within the city of London, some of the Londoners used this as a pretext to seize Baldock, and threw him into the Fleet prison where he died a few months later.³⁷⁵

The worst fate was suffered by Despenser, after several days refiecting upon his inevitable fate and allegedly trying to starve himself to death.³⁷⁶ On 24 November he was brought before William Trussell, the justice who had sentenced his father at Bristol, as well as the earls of Leicester, Norfolk and Kent, Roger Mortimer and other magnates.³⁷⁷ As in the trials of his father and Thomas of Lancaster before him, the charges and judgment were all of a piece: Despenser was allowed to say nothing in his defence.³⁷⁸ He was accused of returning to England after his exile as a traitor in 1321; of robbing two galleys worth £60,000 and so dishonouring the king and his kingdom and hindering merchants; of urging the king to ride against the peers of the realm and other faithful subjects, in order to disinherit them, contrary to Magna Carta and the Ordinances; of bringing about the death of the earl of Hereford and two others at the battle of Boroughbridge; of usurping royal power and committing an act of tyranny by causing the death through a false record of Thomas of Lancaster, the cousin of the king and queen and of the king of France; of the execution of eighteen other named individuals and the imprisonment of others, including the Mortimers, Maurice de Berkeley and the Elder and Younger Hugh Audley, and the king's nephews the sons of the earl of Hereford; of treating widows and orphans tyrannically; of traitorously embracing royal power in company with the Elder Despenser and Robert Baldock and inducing the king to fight in Scotland with the loss of 20,000 men; of leaving the queen in danger from the Scots at Tynemouth priory and of endangering the king at Blackhow Moor; of destroying the franchises of the bishops of Hereford, Lincoln, Ely and Norwich; of falsely advising the king to create the Elder Despenser earl of Winchester and Andrew Harclay earl of Carlisle; of seizing the Cantref Mawr and other lands rightfully belonging to the crown; of seizing the lands which the king had assigned to the queen in dower and promoting discord between the king and queen; of sending a great sum of money to bring about the destruction of the queen and her son, the rightful heir to the kingdom, while they were in France trying to make peace and preventing their return to England; of forcing great and lesser men to swear to support him against their allegiance and the estate of the king and his crown; of usurping royal power by imprisoning others such as Henry de Beaumont who were not prepared to swear to support him; and of leading the king out of the realm after learning of the arrival of the queen and her son, risking the safety of the king and dishonouring him and his people, and feloniously taking the treasure of the kingdom and the Great Seal out of the realm. All the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, regarded Despenser as a traitor and a robber: for which he was sentenced to be hanged. As a traitor he was to be drawn and quartered and the quarters distributed around the kingdom; as an outlaw he was to be beheaded; and for procuring discord between the king and the queen and other people of the kingdom he was sentenced to be disembowelled and his entrails burned; finally he was declared to be a traitor, tyrant and renegade.

Despenser was then taken out for execution on a specially built gallows 50 feet high.³⁷⁹ On the way to execution he wore a ‘“chapelette of sharpe nettles” upon his head to reflect his crime of “accroaching royal power”’,³⁸⁰ and a tunic with his coat of arms reversed, on the front of which was written the text of Psalm 51, beginning with the words ‘Quid gloriaris in malicia qui potens est in iniquitate?’³⁸¹ Despenser allegedly bore all the grisly rituals, including castration,³⁸² with patience, confessing his crimes to those who witnessed his death. Afterwards his head was carried to London where it arrived amid great rejoicing on 4 December. It was carried through Cheapside and impaled on London Bridge.³⁸³

EDWARD

By early December 1326 Edward II had been taken from Monmouth via Ledbury to the earl of Leicester's castle of Kenilworth,³⁸⁴ where for the time being he stayed. He left behind him a kingdom of which he was still nominally the ruler, an orgy of bloodletting as the Despensers and others paid the price for their crimes, and a large quantity of personal possessions scattered over South Wales between Caerphilly, Neath and Swansea. Many of these possessions were recovered but goods worth over £3,000 fell victim to looters, especially from the lordship of Gower, and were never restored to the crown.³⁸⁵ Of the items lost in 1326 a few have been found in modern times: some silver pennies discovered in Swansea and at Neath abbey;³⁸⁶ a gold brooch, set with jewels and cameos found at Oxwich castle in Gower in 1968;³⁸⁷ and, most intriguing of all, the document recording the betrothal of the future Edward II and Isabella in 1303 which came to light in the 1830s and is now preserved by the West Glamorgan Archive Service, Swansea.³⁸⁸ That Edward should lose this of all documents at the time of his final separation from queen, crown and kingdom was somehow appropriate.

¹ Vale, 228; Lalou, ‘Les Négociations’, 325–55.

² Vale, 228. On the processes see Cuttino, English Diplomatic Administration, 62–111.

³ Vale, 124–6, 132–7. For a detailed study of the politics of Gascony see ibid., ch. 4, ‘Politics and society in Aquitaine’.

⁴ Ibid., 51; Chaplais, Diplomatic Practice, part 1, i, 359–60 (no. 199).

⁵ Like his predecessor, Louis X, Philip died young and without a male heir. He made his will in Aug. 1321 and added a codicil on 2 Jan. 1322 when he must have been aware that he was dying: AN, J 404, nos 26, 27. There is no mention of Philip's sister Queen Isabella of England in either document.

⁶ Saint-Sardos, ix, 176–80.

⁷ Ibid., ix.

⁸ Vale, 129, 136, 228–9; Saint-Sardos, 56–8.

⁹ Vale, 136, 229; Phillips, 233–4.

¹⁰ Vale, 229.

¹¹ Vale, 229; Saint-Sardos, ix, 183.

¹² Vale, 137–8; Saint-Sardos, ix.

¹³ Vale, 230–2; Saint-Sardos, ix, 183.

¹⁴ Foedera, II, i, 483, 488–9. The details of Edward's complaints are contained in AN, J 634, no. 1.

¹⁵ Foedera, II, i, 503, 505–6, 510, 512–13, 515.

¹⁶ Foedera, II, i, 519. This was part of a programme of surveying and repair of these castles which had been under way since 1320: Vale, 230.

¹⁷ Foedera, II, i, 524. No parliament was in fact held until Feb. 1324. By Jan. 1324 Charles of Valois's proposals had changed to a double marriage between Edward II's two daughters, Eleanor and Joan, and his own two sons: Saint-Sardos, 16.

¹⁸ Barrow, 63–5, 128, 183, 200.

¹⁹ In May 1324 Hugh d'Angoulême, the papal envoy who was then in London, wrote to the pope that he believed Bruce would join an Anglo-French war: Barrow, 251, 372, n. 71; ASV, Instrumenta Miscellanea 944. If Hugh believed this, Edward II would certainly have done so.

²⁰ Vita, 222–3.

²¹ Foedera, II, i, 577–8; Saint-Sardos, 76.

²² Vita, 222–5. See also Vita, 224–5 nn. 465–8. There is no mention of these negotiations in Barrow or in Regesta Regum Scottorum.

²³ Vita, 224–9.

²⁴ Saint-Sardos, 164–5.

²⁵ Barrow, 251.

²⁶ Foedera, II, i, 558, 567; Barrow, 251.

²⁷ See the articles on John and Edward Balliol by G.P. Stell and B. Webster in the Oxford DNB.

²⁸ It is not known if Balliol did return to England at this stage, but he did so in 1327 after Edward III became king and was placed on the Scottish throne by Edward in 1332.

²⁹ Foedera, II, i, 613; Barrow, 250.

³⁰ An inquisition held at Portsmouth on that date uncovered the details of Mortimer's passage to the continent: Ann. Paul., 306. On 6 Aug. officials in all the English ports were ordered to look out for him and any of his accomplices: CCR, 1323–27, 132–3.

³¹ CCR, 1323–27, 133–4.

³² Foedera, II, i, 537–8 (14 Nov. 1323); CPR, 1321–24, 349; E 159/97, m.187d (24 May 1324); Phillips, 266.

³³ Ann. Paul., 306; Williams, Medieval London, 294.

³⁴ PW, II, ii, 374 (24 Nov. 1323). The earl of Arundel, Robert Baldock the chancellor, and Geoffrey le Scrope one of the royal judges were also the intended victims.

³⁵ It was ironic that in early Sep. 1323, just a month after Mortimer's spectacular escape, Edward paid 5s to Eleanor Rede and Alice de Whorlton for chanting songs to him about an earlier opponent of the crown, Simon de Montfort, while he was at Whorlton castle in Yorkshire: J.W. Walker, ‘Robin Hood identified’, Yorks. Arch. Journal, xxxvi (1944), 30; Taylor, English Historical Literature, 267.

³⁶ Haines, The Church and Politics, 144; KB 27/255/Rex m.87r; JI 1/1388.

³⁷ Foedera, II, i, 536 (1 Oct.). The letter refers to Picardy rather loosely, since the Fiennes family were prominent in the county of Ponthieu, which was one of Edward II's hereditary domains. Robert de Fiennes had also been seneschal of Ponthieu from 1316 to 1320.

³⁸ Saint-Sardos, 177–9.

³⁹ Ibid., 5;C 81/125/6788, no. 1; CCW, 548. This does not match the suggestion that Roger ‘was welcomed with great honour’ by Charles IV when he first arrived in France: Melsa, 348; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 136; Doherty (D.Phil.), 99. What the chronicle actually says is that Mortimer was held in great honour and favour ‘apud proceres Franciae’, which could be interpreted to mean the members of his various family connections in France, Fiennes, Joinville, Lusignan. The county of Boulogne was close to the lands of John and Robert de Fiennes, which might help to explain Mortimer's temporary association with the count.

⁴⁰ Saint-Sardos, 2; BL, Cotton Ms. Caligula D III, no. 6/1. This is very vague and could mean anywhere in the Empire, including parts of the Low Countries, which would tie in geographically with the references to Picardy, Boulogne and Hainault/Holland.

⁴¹ Saint-Sardos, 22; SC 1/47/102. Geoffrey inherited Couhé, which was a portion of the vast estates of the former Lusignan counts of La Marche and Angoulême, through his mother Joan de Joinville (Geneville): Phillips, 14; G.W. Watson, ‘Geoffrey de Mortemer and his descendants’, Genealogist, new ser., xxii (1906), 1–16.

⁴² Saint-Sardos, 72; CPR, 1324–27, 31. This ‘certain information’ was probably based on the letter from the archbishop of Canterbury to the chancellor on c. 20 Sept. in which the archbishop spoke of 180 German cogs and 60 French vessels assembled by the count of Hainault in Zeeland ready for an invasion of England in Oct.: Saint-Sardos, 59. Any large gathering of vessels, including such innocent ones as the annual Genoese trading fleet from the Mediterranean to the Low Countries, was likely to be interpreted as an invasion fleet: Fryde, 145. However in 1324 Antonio Pessagno, Edward II's former Genoese financier, was suspected of plotting some kind of attack on England with the aid of his brother Manuel, the admiral of the kingdom of Portugal. Edward wrote to his cousin Dinis of Portugal, asking him to put a stop to Pessagno's plans: Childs, ‘England in Europe’, 109.

⁴³ Saint-Sardos, 102–3; SC 1/50/95.

⁴⁴ For the details see Saint-Sardos, xi–xii; Vale, 233–4. For the location of Sarlat, Agen and Montpezat see the excellent map of the duchy of Aquitaine, c. 1307 (and therefore not including Saint-Sardos itself) in Vale, 284–5.

⁴⁵ Saint-Sardos, xii; Vale, 234–5.

⁴⁶ Saint-Sardos, 179. This forms part of a recital of Anglo-French negotiations from 17 Aug. 1323 until 3 May 1325, printed in Saint-Sardos, xii, 176–207. News of the attack arrived within days of the departure for Paris of John de Shoreditch and other English envoys with a long agenda of business, including ironically the plans for the newbastideat Saint-Sardos.

⁴⁷ Saint-Sardos, xii, 179–80.

⁴⁸ Saint-Sardos, xii; Vale, 235–6.

⁴⁹ Saint-Sardos, 186.

⁵⁰ The full account of the mission is given in Saint-Sardos, xiii, 27–38, 181–8; see also Vale, 235–6.

⁵¹ This is Malcolm Vale's very apt choice of image: Vale, 235.

⁵² SC 1/49/56; CCR, 1323–27, 184; Phillips, 233. Though the date of the meeting, nearly a month after it was summoned on 1 May, does not suggest any great sense of urgency.

⁵³ See Phillips, 1–8; Vale, 27–33.

⁵⁴ Ann. Paul., 307; Chroniques de Sempringham, 350; Melsa, 348; Blaneford, 150; Phillips, 233.

⁵⁵ Phillips, 233.

⁵⁶ BL, Royal Ms. 20. A. III, f. 216v; Brut, I, 252; Phillips, 233. If Roger Mortimer or any of his associates were suspected of such a killing, there would certainly be some mention of it.

⁵⁷ Nonetheless a memorandum of April 1324, in which the unknown author discussed how Edward II should respond to the French over Saint-Sardos, described Pembroke and the Younger Despenser as the king's closest advisers (‘les plus privetz le roi’): Saint-Sardos, 42; SC 1/60/126.

⁵⁸ CFR, 1319–27, 427;E 101/379/19, f. 15v; Phillips, 233.

⁵⁹ Ann. Paul., 307; Phillips, 233. His burial at Westminster was decided upon by the council at his widow's request: C 81/1329/6925. Aymer's father, William de Valence, and his brother John and sister Margaret were already buried at Westminster. Aymer's own tomb, which was constructed within a few years of his death, is particularly fine. See Binski, Westminster Abbey, 113–14, 118–19.

⁶⁰ Saint-Sardos, xiii, 186–7; Vale, 236.

⁶¹ Foedera, II, i, 560–2, 564–5. It is likely that Edmund had not returned to England after his unsuccessful mission to Paris in April.

⁶² Saint-Sardos, 49–52; Vale, 237–8. This and much else is recorded in a very detailed report from the constable of Bordeaux John Travers to the Younger Despenser, written from Bordeaux on 1 Sept. For details of the Gascon nobility who served Edward II with their followers during the war see Vale, 239–40.

⁶³ Saint-Sardos, 49–52.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 50, 52; Vale, 238.

⁶⁵ Vale, 238–9.

⁶⁶ Ibid. The war of Saint-Sardos was characterized by the loyalty of most of Edward II's subjects in Gascony, who preferred the lighter and more distant hand of Plantagenet rule to the more severe form of government practised by the French crown and its officials. The main exception was Amanieu d'Albret, whose loyalty to the English crown had been put under strain much earlier in the reign by the behaviour of Gaveston and his relatives in the county of Béarn: Vale, 240. Amanieu gave the French valuable assistance at the siege of La Réole.

⁶⁷ In his long report to the Younger Despenser John Travers stated that the entire duchy was on the point of being occupied by the French: Saint-Sardos, 50.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 65–8: datable only as between the end of Sept. and Dec. 1324.

⁶⁹ F. Bériac-Lainé in ‘Une Armée anglo-gasconne vingt ans avant la guerre de Cent Ans’, in Guerre, pouvoir et noblesse au Moyen Âge, ed. J. Paviot & J. Verger (Paris, 2000), 92. This is however a much more positive assessment of the English war effort than Fryde, 144–5. A good comparison is with the communication and logistical difficulties which faced the British government during the American War of Independence: see Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783 (London, 1964).

⁷⁰ Vale, 236.

⁷¹ BL, Add. Ms. 7967, ff. 4r, 7v, 17v; 30r–39v; Fryde, 144; Bériac-Lainé, ‘Une Armée’, 84–5 (this includes a valuable graph showing the size of the forces available for the defence of Gascony at various dates between May 1324 and Dec. 1325).

⁷² BL, Add. Ms. 7967, ff. 4r, 17r, 20v, 20v; Saint-Sardos, 210, n. 1, 221–2; Bériac-Lainé, ‘Une Armée’, 83–4. The reinforcements consisted of two separate fleets of 80 and 53 ships, which had left Portsmouth and Harwich on 22 April and 3 May.

⁷³ Bériac-Lainé, ‘Une Armée’, 92.

⁷⁴ Saint-Sardos, 64.

⁷⁵ AN, J 634, no. 2; Saint-Sardos, 61–3; Vale, 238. Both sides had probably by this stage fought one another to a standstill. The French were also distracted by the anti-French revolt which had recently broken out in Flanders: Fryde, 143; Vale, 236. The English extension of their existing truce with the count of Flanders in Aug. 1324 was likely to have been an attempt to take advantage of this situation: Foedera, II, i, 566.

⁷⁶ Foedera, II, i, 568–73. In Feb. 1325 this plan for an Aragonese marriage was abandoned in favour of a proposed double marriage alliance between the young Edward and Eleanor the sister of king Alfonso XI of Castile, and Alfonso and Edward II's daughter Eleanor: Foedera, II, i, 586–7. For a report on these and other Anglo-Castilian negotiations see Saint-Sardos, 214–17. On relations between England and Castile and Aragon see esp. Childs, ‘England in Europe’, 104–9, 111–12.

⁷⁷ Saint-Sardos, 75–7. Edward even imagined that Robert Bruce would accompany him, if the peace talks with the Scots succeeded. This document is wrongly dated as 1323 in Fryde, 145.

⁷⁸ PW, II, ii, 317–25: this assembly was not designated in the writs as a parliament. For details see PROME, Parliament of Oct. 1324.

⁷⁹ For the text and translation, edited from E 30/1582, see PROME, Parliament of Oct. 1324. The text was previously published in Rotuli Parliamentorum Hactenus Inediti, ed. Richardson & Sayles, 94–8, but incorrectly dated as belonging to the parliament of June 1325. The speech is also edited in Saint-Sardos, 95–8, with a note as to the correct date. E 30/1582 includes the detailed replies of the magnates present to the king's questions.

⁸⁰ ‘a temps qe ore est’: Saint-Sardos, 89; SC 1/49/89.

⁸¹ Foedera, II, i, 580, 583, 591.

⁸² Bériac-Lainé, ‘Une Armée’, 83.

⁸³ Foedera, II, i, 547; Vale, 236.

⁸⁴ Foedera, II, i, 563–4; Saint-Sardos, 68–9.

⁸⁵ Foedera, II, i, 567–8 (30 Aug.).

⁸⁶ Ann. Paul., 308; Saint-Sardos, 192, n. 1.

⁸⁷ Saint-Sardos, 192. Richmond, the brother of the duke of Brittany, and Beaumont both had close family connections with the French court. Beaumont however seems to have dropped out since he is not named in the recital of Edward II's letters patent in the agreement of 31 March 1325 between English and French representatives: AN, J 634, nos 3, 3 bis. Beaumont was probably still angry about the 1323 truce with the Scots.

⁸⁸ Saint-Sardos, 192–4.

⁸⁹ Cf. Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 138. Since the ambassadors' instructions were drawn up in England before they began their mission, there is nothing to support Natalie Fryde's argument that the bishop of Winchester was responsible for this suggestion: Fryde, 146.

⁹⁰ Haines, Stratford, 153–4. After a very difficult journey because of violent storms in the Channel he reached Dover on 13 Jan. and London on the 17th: Saint-Sardos, 195, n. 1.

⁹¹ Saint-Sardos, 129–32: the famous king John of Bohemia who was killed fighting for France against Edward III and the Black Prince at Crécy in 1346, and William count of Hainault, who was to become Edward III's father-in-law.

⁹² Ibid., 195.

⁹³ Ibid.; this must be the assembly decided on by the council when it was discussing Gascon affairs in Jan. (‘vii: Item qe les grantz soient somounz dy estre pur conseiller etc. et noun pas pur parlement’): ibid., 134–5; E 175/2/10. From this reference Natalie Fryde (Fryde, 67) concluded, I think wrongly, that Edward II did not like parliaments. They had not always of course been to his liking, but Edward needed advice quickly and this was the best way to obtain it. Councils of prelates and magnates were just as regular a feature of Edward's dealings with his subjects as were parliaments: see General Introduction to PROME. The changes in date and meeting place of parliaments and other assemblies, esp. in 1324–5, reflected the changing fortunes of the war in France and the state of the peace negotiations rather than an unwillingness to hold such meetings: cf. Fryde, 67.

⁹⁴ Saint-Sardos, 195–6: ‘pur perils et deshonurs qe a lui ou as soens purroient avenir sur chimyn, qe Dieu defende’.

⁹⁵ The areas in which he was reported to be lurking and where he had friends were uncomfortably close to the road she would have to follow from Wissant in the Pas-de-Calais to Paris. The fear was probably increased by the memory of Isabella's narrow escapes from capture by the Scots in 1319 and 1322, and by the problems caused in 1317 when the earl of Pembroke was seized and held to ransom in France.

⁹⁶ Saint-Sardos, 196.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 197–8.

⁹⁸ CPR, 1324–27, 44, 91–2; Doherty (D.Phil.), 114; E 101/381/3, f. iv. Another of her company was a certain William le Galeys, who may be the same man who claimed he was Edward II at Koblenz in 1338.

⁹⁹ The bishop had left even before the arrival at Westminster of the latest dispatches from Paris and crossed to France on 18 Feb., the same date as his letters of instruction. Fast messengers would have caught up with him and delivered the letters: see Haines, Stratford, 155–6.

¹⁰⁰ Foedera, II, i, 595.

¹⁰¹ These details are supplied in Isabella's itinerary: Saint-Sardos, App. III, 267, using E 101/380/9 & 10.

¹⁰² Saint-Sardos, 199. This contradicts the statement in Fryde, 147, that she did not meet her brother until 30 May, apart allegedly from another brief meeting at Bois-de-Vincennes in April (this latter detail is not confirmed by Isabella's itinerary: Saint-Sardos, 267).

¹⁰³ Saint-Sardos, 199: ‘lui trovai deur’. Edward was so anxious to learn the outcome of the negotiations that on 2 April he gave strict orders that any news from either Isabella or the other envoys was to be brought directly to him and not to be revealed to anyone else first: Foedera, II, i, 596. This does necessarily imply that Edward actually distrusted Isabella.

¹⁰⁴ AN, J 634, nos 3, 3 bis; Saint-Sardos, 201–2.

¹⁰⁵ Saint-Sardos, 199–205. Edward II was at Beaulieu for most of that month, ready either to respond quickly to news from Paris or to cross to Gascony if the talks failed. The bishop reached Dover on that date: Saint-Sardos, 197, n. 1.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 204.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 202–5.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 202: ‘pur lamur et la contemplacion de sa soer, la roigne Dengleterre’. Cf. Vita, 228–9.

¹⁰⁹ Saint-Sardos, 204–7. If literally three weeks elapsed, this would place their arrival at around 28 April. The bishop of Orange and Henry de Sully did not leave for England until 4 April at the earliest: Saint-Sardos, 202. Edward also included a summary of the terms in his letter of complaint to the pope on 14 May: Foedera, II, i, 599.

¹¹⁰ SC 1/49/114; Saint-Sardos, 164–5. Basset assumed that Despenser would already have heard this news more directly, but he added that he had also been told by the earl of Kent that his messengers were being intercepted and imprisoned by the French wherever they were found. The plans for a possible new attack on Gascony had been reported to Edward II by the earl of Kent as far back as Jan. 1325: Saint-Sardos, 129–32.

¹¹¹ Saint-Sardos, 202–7.

¹¹² Saint-Sardos, 205–6; Foedera, II, i, 599.

¹¹³ Saint-Sardos, 206–7; PW, II, ii, 328–33.

¹¹⁴ Foedera, II, i, 599.

¹¹⁵ Vita, 232–5. This dispute probably explains why on 6 May Henry was not summoned to the forthcoming parliament as an earl but instead was listed among the barons, coming after the Younger Despenser. In late April and early May Orleton was at Middleton in Hampshire, within easy reach of Winchester, should Edward wish to make his peace with him: Haines, The Church and Politics, 108, 152. Edward's response was to write to the pope on 28 May, making a further denunciation of Orleton: Foedera, II, i, 601.

¹¹⁶ Saint-Sardos, 267–8.

¹¹⁷ AN, J 634, no. 4.

¹¹⁸ Saint-Sardos, 268; AN, J 634, no. 6; Foedera, II, i, 601–2.

¹¹⁹ AN, J 634, nos 8, 9; Foedera, II, i, 601–2.

¹²⁰ Saint-Sardos, 268.

¹²¹ Foedera, II, i, 601–2.

¹²² A French conquest of the whole of Gascony was probably beyond their resources and would have met with local resistance. In 1327 the estimated cost of a proposed invasion of Aquitaine amounted to more than three times the annual revenues of the French monarchy, and would have required heavy and unpopular taxation to carry out: Vale, 247–8.

¹²³ Saint-Sardos, 277–8.

¹²⁴ AN, J 634, no. 9 bis; Foedera, II, i, 601–2.

¹²⁵ Foedera, II, i, 604–6; J. Hunter, ‘Journal of the mission of Queen Isabella to the court of France, and of her long residence in that country’, Archaeologia, xxxvi (1855), 248.

¹²⁶ Foedera, II, i, 606. The date of 21 Aug. given in Haines, Stratford, 159, n. 2, comes from a different edition of Foedera, and may be incorrect.

¹²⁷ Foedera, II, i, 602.

¹²⁸ Calendar of Treaty Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, i., 1234–1325, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1955), 256–8; CPR, 1324–27, 129; Haines, Stratford, 158.

¹²⁹ Saint-Sardos, 192–5.

¹³⁰ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina, B.V, f. 45v; Haines, Stratford, 159.

¹³¹ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina, B.V, f. 45v; Haines, Stratford, 159.

¹³² Saint-Sardos, 195–6.

¹³³ Saint-Sardos, 72; CPR, 1324–27, 31. This must also be the reason for Edward's expression in Nov. 1324 of his willingness to do homage, provided the scene was near the coast: Saint-Sardos, 194.

¹³⁴ Vita, 234–7.

¹³⁵ Vita, 236–9. Melton replaced Walter Stapeldon, who is accused by the Vita of greed and extortion, but who was probably removed because in the king's eyes he was not sufficiently active in raising revenue: Vita, 236–7; Buck, 210–15; Fryde, 103.

¹³⁶ Foedera, II, i, 600–1; see also the article by J.R.S. Phillips on Bicknor in the Oxford DNB.

¹³⁷ Vita, 236–9.

¹³⁸ The Vita, 240–3, comments that because of their treatment of Isabella ‘there are four greater persons among the men of England [the bishop of Exeter, Robert Baldock, and the Despensers] who if they are found within the kingdom of France will certainly not lack bad quarters’.

¹³⁹ Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 283, n. 10, wrongly concludes that, because Despenser was apparently unwelcome in France when he went there briefly in exile in 1321, he had therefore been banished from France. The men banished who were referred to in Charles IV's letter to Edward II in Dec. 1323 were Ralph Bassett the former seneschal of Gascony and Raymond-Bernard of Montpezat who were held responsible for the attack on Saint Sardos: Saint-Sardos, xii, 180–1; Vale, 235–6.

¹⁴⁰ Murimuth, 44; Vita, 234–5.

¹⁴¹ The incident which began in Nov. 1323 is recorded in Select Cases, ed. Sayles, iv, 154–7, from which Fryde has worked out a very entertaining account: Fryde, 162–4. The Younger Despenser had earlier complained to the pope about being ‘threatened by magical and secret dealings’, to which the pope replied that he should ‘turn to God with his whole heart, and make a good confession’: CPL, 1305–42, ii, 461. It is clear that the Younger Despenser at least was deeply superstitious.

¹⁴² Literae Cantuarienses, ed. Sheppard, i, 145–6. Edward was at Sturry on 19 and 20 Aug.

¹⁴³ Haines Stratford, 160.

¹⁴⁴ Saint-Sardos, 268–9.

¹⁴⁵ Foedera, II, i, 607. Edward undertook to pay this sum on 2 Oct. 1325: AN, J 634, no. 22.

¹⁴⁶ AN, J 634, nos 11, 12; Foedera, II, i, 607–8. Since Edward was never granted the principality of Wales, strictly it is incorrect to describe him as Prince Edward: cf. Fryde, 294; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 141–3; Buck, 156.

¹⁴⁷ AN, J 633, no. 1; J 634, no. 12; Foedera, II, i, 608; Saint-Sardos, 241. Charles IV did the same but the document was left in the custody of the young Edward's treasurer William de Cusance and never reached Edward II: Buck, 157.

¹⁴⁸ Foedera, II, i, 609; Saint-Sardos, 269.

¹⁴⁹ AN, J 634, nos 13, 14; Saint-Sardos, 241–5, 269. There is a photograph of AN, J 634, no. 14, in A. Wathey, ‘The marriage of Edward III and the transmission of French motets to England’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xlv (1992), 6.

¹⁵⁰ Vale, 247; Saint-Sardos, 235–6. He succeeded Henry de Sully, who had been appointed by Charles IV as a seneschal acceptable to the English crown while the duchy was in French hands.

¹⁵¹ The dangers implicit in the negotiations had been spelled out in the summer of 1325 in a memorandum addressed to the council by one of Edward II's clerks, Elias de Joneston, an expert on Anglo-French relations: Saint-Sardos, 238–9.

¹⁵² Foedera, II, i, 622; Saint-Sardos, 277, n. 1; Haines, Stratford, 161.

¹⁵³ Vita, 238–40 & n. 503. Airmyn had been elected as bishop of Carlisle in Jan. 1325, with support from both Edward and Isabella. John XXII had then appointed John Ross, while promising to look after Airmyn in due course. The pope may have thought that in appointing Airmyn to Norwich he was acting according to Edward II's wishes. However, he would have known of Edward's desire to promote Baldock, of whom the pope clearly disapproved; so he acted to forestall any further royal requests on Baldock's behalf.

¹⁵⁴ He made this clear in his letter to Charles IV on 1 Dec. 1325: Foedera, II, i, 614.

¹⁵⁵ Doherty (D.Phil.), 123; E 101/380.

¹⁵⁶ As suggested by Doherty (D. Phil.), 124.

¹⁵⁷ Saint-Sardos, 268.

¹⁵⁸ Buck, 156, 158; SC 1/49/106(the text of this is given in Buck, App., iii, 228–9: it is wrongly given as SC 1/49/100 in Doherty (D. Phil.), 124).

¹⁵⁹ Gesta Edwardi, 32 (sub 1308). In April 1324 the suggested instructions for Isabella's reply to a French knight on his return to Charles IV emphasized the same point: Saint-Sardos, 42. While these were not of course Isabella's own words, it is unfair to imply that this was the only basis for their marriage or that Edward held her partly responsible for the difficulties in Anglo-French relations during his reign: cf. Fryde, 146; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 135. For most of the reign relations with France were good, and for this Isabella certainly could take some of the credit. It was only after 1320 that the situation began to change and this reflected a growing insistence by the French crown on its rights of overlordship and sovereignty.

¹⁶⁰ The suggestion by Trease, in ‘The spicers and the apothecaries’, 46, that Isabella may have had a miscarriage in 1313 has been discounted (Doherty (D.Phil.), 53) since the medical treatment she was undergoing was the result of burns sustained in an accident in France. Nonetheless there may have been other pregnancies apart from the four known ones. The document published by C.J.S. Thompson as ‘Rules of health prescribed for an English queen in the fourteenth century’, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (London, 1921), was drawn up for the use of Isabella by her brother Louis X, but consists only of general advice and does not refer to any specific form of illness from which she may have suffered.

¹⁶¹ Isabella also had a personal reason for wanting Badlesmere's expulsion from Leeds, since Edward had settled the reversion of Leeds on her after the death of Edward I's widow Queen Margaret in 1318.

¹⁶² The charge that Despenser instigated the Scottish attempt to capture Isabella near York in Oct. 1318 appears to have been a slander directed against him and without substance: Haskins, ‘A chronicle’, 177; Maddicott, 249–50.

¹⁶³ In 1326 the Tynemouth incident was included in the charges laid against Despenser: Gesta Edwardi, 88.

¹⁶⁴ Foedera, II, i, 569. Fryde, 146, wrongly implies that Isabella's lands had been seized before April 1324. In lieu of these revenues, Isabella was granted 1,000 marks a year plus eight marks a day for her food and drink. As Dr Doherty points out, this was not generous treatment and was in any case a breach of the agreement on dower made in 1308 between Edward II and her father, Philip IV: Doherty (D. Phil.), 101–3; E 403/201, m.4.

¹⁶⁵ See Phillips, ‘“Edward II” in Italy’, 209–11.

¹⁶⁶ Foedera, II, i, 570. Twenty-seven French members of her household, including her chaplains and physician, were sent to religious houses around the country: Doherty (D. Phil.), 101; E 403/201, mm.14–15.

¹⁶⁷ It was another of the charges against him in 1326: Gesta Edwardi, 89; cf. Vita, 242–3.

¹⁶⁸ Saint-Sardos, 128, 130.

¹⁶⁹ Doherty, (D. Phil.), 103; E 403/201, mm.14–15. If there were any truth in the rumour that Eleanor also became Edward II's mistress, these indignities would have been particularly galling: Willelmi Capellani, ed. Pijnacker Hordijk, 177. According to the highly coloured account given by the author of the Lanercost chronicle, this was not all that Isabella had to put up with. Eleanor de Clare was allegedly also given custody of Isabella's personal seal so that she could read all her private correspondence; while at the instigation of the Younger Despenser a certain religious named Thomas Dunheved and Robert Baldock were sent to the papal curia in order to procure a divorce between Edward II and Isabella; these were further reasons for Isabella's desire to leave England: Lanercost, 254.

Although Dunheved did go to Avignon in 1325 and was appointed as a papal chaplain in Sept., his mission was to support Edward II's actions against the archbishop of Dublin; there is no evidence to support the story of a divorce: CPL, 1305–42, 474, 479. If such a scheme was ever considered it is more likely to have been in the summer of 1326 when the breach between Edward and Isabella was becoming unbridgeable. Thomas Dunheved was however to be involved in a plot to release Edward from his prison at Berkeley castle in 1327. In describing Dunheved's arrest the author of the Ann. Paul., 337, also referred to his alleged role in trying to secure a divorce, so the story or rumour must have circulated widely. Haines, Stratford, 156, is probably correct in describing the Dunheved story as apocryphal. An attempted divorce in the conditions of 1325 would have been political madness, since it would have meant the repudiation of all agreements between England and France, which Edward and Isabella's marriage had been intended to strengthen, and would have plunged England into an immediate war with France: see also F.D. Blackley, ‘Isabella and the bishop of Exeter’, in Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed, T.A. Sandquist & M.R. Powicke (Toronto, 1969), 226.

¹⁷⁰ Vita, 228–9.

¹⁷¹ See Given-Wilson, ‘Vita Edwardi Secundi’, 175–6.

¹⁷² CCR, 1323–27, 580–1.

¹⁷³ Saint-Sardos, 200: ‘tantque jeo ei vostre comandement’.

¹⁷⁴ Le Baker, 16–17, 19; Haines, The Church and Politics, 104–5, 158; Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 227.

¹⁷⁵ Fryde, 162. This view is argued but finally rejected in Doherty (D. Phil.), 107–12.

¹⁷⁶ Saint-Sardos, 195.

¹⁷⁷ Ibid., 42.

¹⁷⁸ Ibid., 195–6.

¹⁷⁹ Cf. Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 138–9, 283, n. 14; Doherty (D.Phil.), 113.

¹⁸⁰ Saint-Sardos, 267–70.

¹⁸¹ Buck, 156–7; Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 229–30.

¹⁸² Vita, 242–3. The statements in the Vita and in the French Chronicle of London, ed. G.J. Aungier, Camden Soc. London, 1844, 49 that Isabella dressed in widow's clothes are probably to be taken figuratively rather than literally.

¹⁸³ CCR, 1323–27, 580–1 (Edward's letters of 1 Dec. to Isabella and to Charles IV); Buck, 157, esp. n. 207; Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 230. The Vita Edwardi Secundi, 240–3, stresses the hostility to Stapeldon at the French court because he was allegedly responsible for advising Edward II to seize Isabella's lands and to arrest her French servants.

¹⁸⁴ Buck, 157–8. In the angry letter which Isabella wrote to Stapeldon from Paris on 8 Dec. she said that Stapeldon claimed to have left on orders from Edward II but refused to show her the instructions. Significantly however she also said that she had promised to protect the bishop from any harm, which confirms that he was in some danger while in Paris: Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 230–1 (incl. a photograph of Isabella's letter, SC 1/49/ 118). Buck, 158, misreads Isabella's letter as stating that Stapeldon had promised to protect her rather than the other way round.

¹⁸⁵ Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 231; Buck, 158–9. Although Stapeldon did not forward Isabella's letter to the king until 15 Jan. 1326 from Morton in Somerset, it is unlikely that there was anything in it that Edward did not already know: Buck, 158.

¹⁸⁶ PW, II, ii, 334–47.

¹⁸⁷ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B. V, f. 45v; Buck, 157.

¹⁸⁸ Foedera, II, i, 611.

¹⁸⁹ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B. V, ff. 45v–46r; Buck, 158.

¹⁹⁰ Vita, 242–5.

¹⁹¹ Vita, 244–7: ‘But notwithstanding these mother and son refused to return to England’. This is the very last entry in the Vita. The text of the bishops' letter is generally similar to those addressed by Edward II on 1 Dec. to Isabella and Charles IV: CCR, 1323–27, 580–1.

¹⁹² Haines, Stratford, 161–2. Stratford left England from Dover on 28 Oct. and returned from Wissant on 18 Nov. It is possible that during his outward journey he met Walter Stapeldon on his hasty return from Paris: from a review of Buck by R.M. Haines in Speculum, lx (1985), 131.

¹⁹³ CCR, 1323–27, 580–2; the original French texts are in Foedera, II, i, 615.

¹⁹⁴ Foedera, II, i, 616.

¹⁹⁵ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B. V, f. 46r; Buck, 158.

¹⁹⁶ SC 1/49/58; SAL Ms. 122, pp. 46, 49, 52; Doherty (D.Phil.), 127.

¹⁹⁷ Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 120v; Doherty (D.Phil.), 127.

¹⁹⁸ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B. V, f. 46r; Murimuth, 45–6.

¹⁹⁹ Foedera, II, i, 619; CCR, 1323–27, 543.

²⁰⁰ Foedera, II, i, 623 (‘a lui se acompaigne en houstel et de hors’); CCR, 1323–27, 578.

²⁰¹ Foedera, II, i, 630–1; CCR, 1323–27, 576–7. Charles IV had recently married Jeanne d'Évreux as his third wife. Another important occasion attended by Isabella and Edward in 1326 was the laying by themselves and Louis X's widow, Clemence of Hungary, of the foundation stone of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Paris on 18 May. There is no mention of Mortimer's presence: R. Cazelles, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris de la fin du règne de Philippe Auguste à la mort de Charles V (Paris, 1972), 62. Ironically Edward II had made a contribution towards the building of the church: J. Sumption, Trial by Battle (London, 1990), i, 4, 6.

²⁰² Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 221, citing N. Denholm-Young's introduction to his edition of the Vita Edwardi Secundi (London, 1957), xiii, n.1, and Davies, Baronial Opposition, 107.

²⁰³ Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 129, 145, 284.

²⁰⁴ Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 221–4; Fryde, 147.

²⁰⁵ Doherty (D. Phil.), 125–6; but in his book, Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II, 87–8, he suggests that it could have begun earlier. This is a good place to acknowledge the insights I have gained from Dr Doherty's very thorough and scholarly researches.

²⁰⁶ Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 223–4 (where the date is wrongly given as 1322), citing SC 1/37/45 (the full text is given in 223, n. 16); Davies, Baronial Opposition, 107; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 129; Doherty (D.Phil.), 98–9. Joan was being held by the sheriff of Hampshire.

²⁰⁷ Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 129.

²⁰⁸ Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 222–3; Chronographia Regum Francorum, ed. H. Moranville, i (Paris, 1891), 267–8.

²⁰⁹ Doherty (D.Phil.), 99; SC 1/37/4. As Blackley points out, Isabella's letter could have been simply an act of kindness, but since Joan was also a member of the great French noble family of de Joinville, representations may have been made on her behalf from France: Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 224; Doherty (D.Phil.), 99–9.

²¹⁰ Saint-Sardos, 267–70; Hunter, ‘Journal’, 242–57.

²¹¹ Saint-Sardos, 270.

²¹² Hunter, ‘Journal’, 254. It is tempting to think that this symbol of kingship was somehow connected with the purpose of her visit.

²¹³ Saint-Sardos, 5, 72, 102–3. Hainault was under the jurisdiction of the emperor, at this time Ludwig of Bavaria, and hence part of ‘Germany’.

²¹⁴ His relatives in Ponthieu, from the family of his mother Margaret de Fiennes, were another possible point of contact between Mortimer and both France and England. Another line of communication was with the city of Bruges in Flanders in which the wool staple for English merchants had been established in 1324. In May 1325 Edward II appointed the London merchant Richard de Béthune as mayor of the staple, a move which has been described as ‘a political error of the first magnitude’ since Béthune had been involved in Roger Mortimer's escape from the Tower in 1323. In Sept. 1326 he came out openly in support of Mortimer and Isabella: Williams, Medieval London, 291–5.

²¹⁵ The letter is described in Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 234, citing Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem, ed. R. Twysden (London, 1652), col. 2766 (recte 2767–8), where it is printed in full. Although it forms part of Adam Orleton's Apologia of 1334, defending his conduct in 1326–7, there is no reason to doubt its authenticity. The letter also appears in the copy of the Apologia entered in the Winchester Cathedral Cartulary, but is only briefly calendared in the printed edition: Chartulary of Winchester Cathedral, ed. Goodman, 107. Some of the letter's contents appear in Edward II's letter to Charles IV on 18 March: Foedera, II, i, 622–3; CCR, 1323–27, 578–9.

²¹⁶ ‘nostre treschier et tresdouche seignur et amy’.

²¹⁷ ‘saunz trop graunt cause et resonable’.

²¹⁸ ‘et si ceo ne fust pur le peril de nostre corps eschuver’.

²¹⁹ ‘et pur la doute de dit Hughe qad le government de noster dit seignur et de tout son Roialme, et qi nous voudrait deshonurer a son poair sicome nous esumes bien certaings et bien lavoms esp, coment qe nous layoms dissimule longtemps pur le peril eschuver’.

²²⁰ ‘Et certes nous desyroms sur toutes riens, apres Dieu et la sauvete de nostre alme, estre en la compaignie de nostre dit seignur et vivre et morir en icele’.

²²¹ ‘Car en nule manere nous ne porroms retourner en la compaignie de noster dit seignur saunz nous mestre en peril de mort, dount nous sumes en plus graves meschief qe escrivre ne poems’.

²²² It is of course possible or even likely that Isabella was concealing her real feelings, since she could scarcely admit publicly to a relationship with Mortimer. Nonetheless I am inclined to take the letter at face value.

²²³ Stones, ‘The Folvilles’, 119–20. See also the article on Belers by J. Röhrkasten in the Oxford DNB. Fryde also describes another attack on a member of the regime: the brutal murder in July 1325 of the deputy keeper of contrariant castles in Wales and the theft of his records: Fryde, 176.

²²⁴ Blackley, ‘Isabella’, 234–5; Buck, 161. On 2 Jan. 1326 Edward ordered the seizure of his lands; and his arrest on 13 March:, E 159/102/m.71d; Foedera, II, i, 622, 630.

²²⁵ Buck, 161. Their lands were seized in March: CCR, 1323–27, 463–4; CFR, 1319–27, 374.

²²⁶ Saint-Sardos, 277, n. 1; Foedera, II, i, 622. On Airmyn's career see the article by M.C. Buck in the Oxford DNB.

²²⁷ CPR, 1323–27, 216–18. The order was repeated on 24 Jan.: ibid., 220–1.

²²⁸ Buck, 160; E 159/102.

²²⁹ CPR, 1323–27, 206.

²³⁰ Foedera, II, i, 617, 619; CPR, 1323–27, 208–10.

²³¹ Reported by the archbishop of Canterbury on 22 Jan.: SC 1/49/92; CDS, v, 256.

²³² Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem, ed. Twysden, cols 2767–8.

²³³ Literae Cantuarienses, ed. Sheppard, i, 172–4. It is possible that there was some ground for hope of a peaceful resolution, since on 8 March Edward still thought that Isabella and their son Edward would come home of their own accord in royal ships: Foedera, II, i, 619. On 11 March a messenger claiming to be sent by the earl of Kent came to Canterbury with letters for the king in which the earl said he would return to England if he could do so without penalty but would otherwise stay where he was and await better times: Literae Cantuarienses, i, 173.

²³⁴ SC 1/49/91. The indefatigable Henry of Eastry had picked up this news or gossip from travellers passing through Canterbury.

²³⁵ Foedera, II, i, 611–12. On these negotiations, which were still in progress as late as the summer of 1326, see Childs, ‘England in Europe’, 107–9.

²³⁶ Foedera, II, i, 618.

²³⁷ The original plan for Edward to marry Margaret, the daughter of the count of Hainault and Holland, had long since lapsed: Buck, 126. In Nov. 1320 Edward II asked the pope for a dispensation for the marriage of Edward and Margaret, but in March 1321 wrote to tell the count that he had not yet had a reply and that the king of Aragon and others (not named) were making proposals for the marriage of Edward: Foedera, II, i, 437, 446. Margaret instead married the emperor Ludwig of Bavaria in 1324. On English relations with Hainault and Holland see Childs, ‘England in Europe’, 102–4.

²³⁸ Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and his Legend of St Wenceslas, ed. B. Nagy & F. Schaer (Budapest, 2001), 26–7; Fryde, 180–1. Charles was brought up at the French court.

²³⁹ K. Petit, ‘Le Mariage de Philippe de Hainaut, reine d'Angleterre (1328)’, Le Moyen Age, lxxxvii (1981), 375. There is also evidence that the countess wrote to Isabella in Feb. 1326: Doherty (D.Phil.), 142. Isabella's visit to Charles of Valois on 16 Oct. might therefore have been more than a visit to a sick uncle. Her journey to Reims in Nov. 1325 could also have been connected with the marriage plans.

²⁴⁰ Foedera, II, i, 618.

²⁴¹ SC 1/49/92 (22 Jan.); Literae Cantuarienses, ed. Sheppard, i, 172–3 (12 March).

²⁴² Sumption, Trial by Battle, 204.

²⁴³ Vale, 241–4. Before 1 Oct. 1327 the English submitted a long list of requests for the restitution of lands occupied by the French in 1324–5 and later: Saint-Sardos, 257–66.

²⁴⁴ Foedera, II, i, 626, 632–4; Vale, 244–7.

²⁴⁵ The future Edward III's experiences in France in 1325–6 and his knowledge of the intense diplomatic pressures placed upon his father by Charles IV and the French negotiators may have contributed to his determination to assert his own rights and claims against the French when he became king in 1327.

²⁴⁶ Foedera, II, i, 622–3; CCR, 1323–27, 578–9: ‘volentrine pleisaunce de femmes’.

²⁴⁷ CPL, 1305–42, 473, 475.

²⁴⁸ Edward denied these rumours in a letter to the pope on 15 April: Foedera, II, i, 625.

²⁴⁹ Foedera, II, i, 628–9; CPL, 1305–42, 478.

²⁵⁰ Ann. Paul., 312: ‘trepidi et timorati accesserunt’. Edward was at Saltwood between around 1 and 6 June 1326. Although Saltwood belonged to the archbishop of Canterbury, he and the other bishops were not allowed to meet the envoys: Doherty (D.Phil.), 134; HMC, Various Collections, i (1901), 271–2.

²⁵¹ Foedera, II, i, 629 (this can all be gleaned from Edward's reply to the pope on 10 June).

²⁵² CCR, 1323–27, 580.

²⁵³ Foedera, II, i, 629.

²⁵⁴ Foedera, II, i, 629. Edward said his responses to the envoys were given in French but to enable the pope (who was a speaker of the Occitan rather than northern French) to understand them better they had been translated into Latin.

²⁵⁵ ‘in omni dulcedine veri amoris, cordis, et animi, quoad nos, Deus novit’.

²⁵⁶ Foedera, II, i, 629.

²⁵⁷ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B.V, ff. 46v–47r, printed in Historia Roffensis, Anglia Sacra, i, ed. Wharton, 365. The date is given by Edward's itinerary. The record was composed by William Dene, one of the bishop's clerks, and the author of the Historia Roffensis. Hamo de Hethe, the bishop of Rochester, was one of the few people who could speak to the king with complete frankness.

²⁵⁸ Doherty (D.Phil.), 138.

²⁵⁹ This was a reference to the Saxon queen Eadburga who murdered her husband Beorhtric, king of Wessex, in 802: Doherty (D.Phil.), 137–8.

²⁶⁰ This was a reference to the Persian king Ahasuerus and his Jewish queen Esther: Doherty (D.Phil.), 138; Book of Esther, 7: 10.

²⁶¹ ‘Et Rex ait: Non pepercisset tibi, Domine Hugo, episcopus in predicando’: Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, i, 365. The bishop was certainly not teasing Despenser: cf. Doherty (D. Phil.), 138.

²⁶² Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, i, 365–6.

²⁶³ Foedera, II, i, 630–1; CCR, 1323–27, 576–7. It is not clear what Edward meant by this threat, but it may have referred to the resumption of control over the administration of Gascony which he announced on 27 June: Foedera, II, i, 632–3. It is possible however, as Paul Doherty has argued, that Edward was thinking of barring his son from the succession to the throne by divorcing Isabella: Doherty (D.Phil.), 137.

²⁶⁴ Charles IV made wills in Oct. 1324 and just before his death in Jan. 1328: AN, J 404, nos 29, 29bis. In neither of them is there any mention of Isabella.

²⁶⁵ Fryde, 181–2, citing J. Viard, ‘Philippe de Valois avant son avenement au trône’, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, xci (1930), 324. Isabella duly obliged after Edward II's overthrow by renouncing her son's claim.

²⁶⁶ Edward II referred to these opinions in his letter to Charles on 12 June: Foedera, II, i, 631; CCR, 1323–27, 577.

²⁶⁷ Doherty (D. Phil.), 141; Chronographia Regum Franciae, ed. Moranville, i, 280; Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, xxiii, ed. H. Welter (Paris, 1894), 419–20.

²⁶⁸ Historia Roffensis, Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, i, 365.

²⁶⁹ This was one of the charges against Roger Mortimer at his trial in Nov. 1330: PROME, Parliament of Nov. 1330, C 65/2, item 1. This evidence is misunderstood in Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 147, 285, n. 33, where it is argued that Mortimer and not the king would have killed her.

²⁷⁰ Doherty (D.Phil.), 140–1, 266. The author of the Scalacronica, Sir Thomas Gray, claimed that Despenser had bribed the French council to have her sent back to England: Scalacronica, 90–3. In the indictment against him in Nov. 1326 Despenser was accused only of sending large sums overseas to procure the destruction of Isabella. But there was no direct mention of Charles IV's councillors: Holmes, ‘Judgement’, 266.

²⁷¹ Historia Anglicana, i, 179, which also claimed that Edward tried bribery.

²⁷² Natalie Fryde may be technically correct that Isabella was not forced to leave France, but in practice life was clearly becoming increasingly difficult for her: Fryde, 181.

²⁷³ Le Bel, 13–17; Froissart, 43–51.

²⁷⁴ Eustace d'Aubrecicourt probably did provide some kind of assistance to Isabella since in Oct. 1330 he was rewarded by Edward III: Froissart, ii, 504.

²⁷⁵ Doherty (D.Phil.), 144–5; AN, J 237, no. 105. There is also evidence that Isabella obtained some financial and other help from Gascony, including sailors from Bayonne and possibly even from Oliver Ingham, the seneschal of Gascony: Foedera, II, i, 647; Doherty, 145–6. A further agreement with the men of Ponthieu was made at Ostrelte on 17 Aug. and confirmed by Isabella in Brabant on 5 Sept. In it they provided security for the invasion fleet and agreed to pay Isabella £3,000 in return for certain concessions: Doherty (D.Phil.), 146, n. 5; BN, Paris, Collection Moreau, vols 225, f. 84, 255, f. 89. There is no evidence to support Fryde's statement that Philippa's dowry paid for the invasion of England; this would not in any case have been payable until the marriage actually took place: Fryde, 182.

²⁷⁶ Doherty (D.Phil.), 145; Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, ed. Welter, 66.

²⁷⁷ Petit, ‘Le Mariage’, 376; Doherty (D. Phil.), 144; Table chronologique des chartes et diplomes, ed. A. Wautier (Brussels, 1896), 220.

²⁷⁸ Doherty (D. Phil.), 145; Groot Charterboek der Graven van Holland, ed. F. Mieris (Leiden, 1754), ii, 393–4. Isabella also pledged compensation for any losses against the revenues of Ponthieu. If she defaulted, Charles IV was to be the ultimate guarantor. There is no indication however as to whether Charles was aware of his potential liability.

²⁷⁹ Inventaire analytique du chartrier de la Tresorerie des comtes de Hainaut, ed. G. Wymans (Brussels, 1985), nos 574–6, pp. 128–9; Petit, ‘Le Mariage’, 376–7. The texts of two of the four documents, Edward's marriage contract and the undertaking by the earl of Kent, are also printed in Froissart, ii, 502–4. On 13 April 1981 the contract was sold for £16,000 at Sotheby's, London, as Lot 41 of Bibliotheca Phillippica: Catalogue of English Charters and Documents: M. Michael, ‘The iconography of kingship in Walter de Milemete's treatise’, Journal of Warburg & Courtauld Institutes, lvii (1994), 38, n. 26; Given-Wilson & Curteis, Royal Bastards, 22. So far as I have been able to discover, the marriage contract is not preserved in English records.

²⁸⁰ Doherty (D. Phil.), 146; Rekeningen van de Herberge van Joanna van Valois, 1319–1326, ed. H. Smit, Koninklijk Nederlands Historisch Genootschap, 3rd ser., xlvi (1924), 260.

²⁸¹ Petit, ‘Le Mariage’, 377; Archives du Nord, Lille, série B 3271, ff. 1, 9, 10; Doherty, (D. Phil.), 148; Rekeningen, ed. Smit, 261.

²⁸² Petit, ‘Le Mariage’, 377–8.

²⁸³ PW, App., p. 201, no. 191; Ann. Paul., 314; Knighton, i, 431–2; Doherty (D.Phil.), 149.

²⁸⁴ Various figures are quoted, ranging from 500 to as high as 2,500: see Doherty (D.Phil.), 148; Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 149.

²⁸⁵ See Doherty (D.Phil.), 150, for a detailed breakdown of the figures.

²⁸⁶ The 21 Sept. was the day after Isabella's last appearance at Brill in the accounts of the countess of Hainault. However Petit, ‘Le Mariage’, 378, n. 13, apparently using the same sources, gives Dordrecht and 22 Sept. as the place and date of departure. Dordrecht, which was upstream from Brill, is given as the place of departure by both Jean le Bel and Froissart and seems the more likely: Le Bel, 18; Froissart, ii, 66.

²⁸⁷ Foedera, II, i, 636–9.

²⁸⁸ Saint-Sardos, 72; CPR, 1324–27, 31.

²⁸⁹ One possible source of information, William Weston, was detained at Antwerp in Brabant. Although the duke of Brabant, John III, appears to have been sympathetic to Isabella, his mother Margaret, the widow of John II, was also a sister of Edward II and was apparently still alive in Sept. 1326: Foedera, II, i, 643; CCR, 1323–27, 648.

²⁹⁰ CPR, 1324–27, 315–16.

²⁹¹ CCR, 1323–27, 612–13.

²⁹² Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 120v; SAL Ms. 122, p. 84; Fryde, 184; E 403/218, m.18;E 101/17, nos 24–7.

²⁹³ CPR, 1327–30, 10; CPR, 1324–27, 344.

²⁹⁴ Fryde, 184–5; CPR, 1327–30, 10: Edward III's pardon to Felton for the damage he caused in Normandy ‘dum eramus in partibus illis’, which could imply, as Dr Fryde suggests, that Edward was there at the time of the attack. However, in partibus illis could also refer in a more general way to Edward's sojourn on the continent. Dr Fryde's statement that Edward was not with Isabella when she landed in England on 24 Sept. is contradicted by, for example, Foedera, II, i, 643–4; Ann. Paul., 313. French Chroni., 51, refers to the attack on Normandy but makes it appear the action of a force which went to plunder Normandy rather than defend England and Despenser's cause.

²⁹⁵ Ann. Paul., 313–14. The earl's wife, Margaret Wake, was the daughter of Joan de Fiennes, the sister of Roger Mortimer's mother. Their marriage, probably in Paris in Dec. 1325, cemented the earl's alliance with Mortimer: Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 147, 285.

²⁹⁶ Ann. Paul., 313–14. If the ship was captured, the landing may have been a closer run thing than it appears.

²⁹⁷ Foedera, II, i, 643–4: this is the first indication that Edward knew.

²⁹⁸ This may have been a possession of the earl of Norfolk.

²⁹⁹ Ann. Paul., 314.

³⁰⁰ Ann. Paul., 314–15; Anonimalle, 126–7 (this dates her presence at Baldock).

³⁰¹ Anonimalle, 122–5.

³⁰² Doherty (D.Phil.), 153; E 101/17/20.

³⁰³ It is very likely that Isabella had contacted potential supporters even before her arrival: Foedera, II, i, 642. After the landing Isabella sent letters to London and other towns announcing her arrival; her status as queen of England and the presence of her son, the heir to the throne, gave her appeals greater authority than if Mortimer had been their author. It was therefore much easier for anyone with a grievance against Edward II and the Despensers to join Isabella without appearing to commit an act of treason.

³⁰⁴ Historia Anglicana, 180; Murimuth, 46; Lanercost, 255; Le Baker, 21. It is not known when and where this took place, but the earl had lands in the area and may well have had advance warning of Isabella's arrival. The earl of Norfolk had personal grievances against the Younger Despenser who had forced him to give up his valuable lordship of Chepstow in 1323, and against his brother the king who had temporarily deprived him of the office of marshal of England: see the article on Thomas of Brotherton by S.L. Waugh in the Oxford DNB.

³⁰⁵ Knighton, i, 435; Murimuth, 46; Lanercost, 255; Le Baker, 21. He had multiple grievances against Despenser, beginning with the execution of his brother Thomas of Lancaster in 1322 and most recently Edward II's refusal to restore him to the earldom of Lancaster.

³⁰⁶ The dioceses of Lincoln and Ely were near to the landing place so their bishops, Henry de Burghersh and John de Hothum, did not have far to go. Burghersh had suffered since 1322 from being Bartholomew de Badlesmere's nephew. Hothum had previously been a loyal servant of the crown. Adam Orleton, the bishop of Hereford, came from Hereford and joined her at Oxford in mid-Oct.: Haines, The Church and Politics, 165, 227. It is not known when and where Alexander Bicknor the archbishop of Dublin joined her.

³⁰⁷ Foedera, II, i, 643–5; CPR, 1324–27, 327–31. If the forces had actually been raised they would have amounted to over 50,000 men. Over 100 men guilty of homicide and other felonies were also pardoned on condition they served the king.

³⁰⁸ Williams, Medieval London, 295.

³⁰⁹ Ann. Paul., 315; French Chroni., 51; Anonimalle, 124–5; Williams, Medieval London, 295.

³¹⁰ Anonimalle, 126–7 (‘grant compaignie des gentz darmes’); Melsa, 351–2 (‘cum copia armatorum’) (the Meaux chronicle appears to be drawing on the Anonimalle at this point). There is no indication of the size of the force Edward had with him. However, he had had at least £29,000 when he left London: Fryde, 105; E 101/17/18; E 159/103, m.24. Large sums continued to be paid out by the exchequer for several days after Edward left London: Buck, 218, n. 17; E 403/219, mm.1, 2.

³¹¹ As well as the exchequer, under the recently appointed treasurer Walter de Norwich, the royal justices such as Geoffrey le Scrope and Hervey de Stanton, were still in London: Buck, 220.

³¹² Historia Anglicana, 181; French Chroni., 54; Knighton, 434. Knighton also remarked that Eleanor had been behaving as if she were queen during Isabella's absence abroad.

³¹³ Anonimalle, 124–7 (this includes the French text of the letter, dated at Baldock on 6 Oct.); Ann. Paul., 315; French Chroni., 51–2; Williams, Medieval London, 295; Buck, 218–19.

³¹⁴ See Williams, Medieval London, 290–5.

³¹⁵ On 29 Aug. 1326 the king had summoned a council of prelates and magnates to meet at Stamford on 13 Oct. 1326 to discuss the growing emergency. On 14 Sept. he wrote from Portchester to the archbishop of Canterbury asking him to be at Stamford on 13 Oct. and to cancel his provincial council summoned for the same date. The archbishop had duly obliged and postponed his council until 3 Nov. but evidently decided to stick to his original plan after the news of Isabella's landing: PW, II, ii, 349.

³¹⁶ Haines, Stratford, 171–3, citing the very detailed account in the Historia Roffensis, BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B.V, ff. 47v–48r.

³¹⁷ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B.V, f. 48r; Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, ff. 121v–122r; French Chron., 51–2; Ann. Paul., 315–16; Anonimalle, 126–9; Murimuth, 48; Williams, Medieval London, 295–6; Haines, Stratford, 173; Buck, 220–1.

³¹⁸ BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B.V, f. 48r; Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, ff. 122r; E.L.G. Stones, ‘Sir Geoffrey le Scrope (c. 1285–1340), Chief Justice of the King's Bench’, EHR, lxix (1954), 4, n. 1; Haines, Stratford, 173; Buck, 220–1.

³¹⁹ French Chron., 53–4; Williams, Medieval London, 296; Buck, 221.

³²⁰ Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 122v–123r; French Chron., 54; Knighton, 434; Buck, 222. John of Eltham was still however in considerable danger until the end of October when his mother sent eight men-at-arms to see to his safety: Doherty (D.Phil.), 162; E 101/382/3.

³²¹ Haines, The Church and Politics, 161, 227: he was buried at Wigmore on 14 Sept. by Adam Orleton the bishop of Hereford, who thus gave a clear indication of his loyalties, even before Isabella's return to England.

³²² French Chron., 54; Buck, 222.

³²³ Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 123r; French Chron., 54; Buck, 222.

³²⁴ French Chron., 55.

³²⁵ Ann. Paul., 318; French Chron., 55; Williams, Medieval London, 296–7.

³²⁶ Davies, Conquest, 410.

³²⁷ CPR, 1324–27, 325. On the careers of these two men see Davies, Conquest, 409–10 (Gruffudd Llwyd), 410, 415–16 (Rhys ap Gruffudd); R.A. Griffiths, The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages (Cardiff, 1972), 99–102 (Rhys ap Gruffudd).

³²⁸ Griffiths, Principality, 100; Fryde, 189–90. The chamberlain of North Wales, Robert Power, was active in ensuring the security of North Wales: this may have included preventing Gruffudd Llwyd from bringing any assistance to the king: Fryde, 189–90; List of Welsh Entries in the Memoranda Rolls, 1282–1343, ed. N. Fryde (Cardiff, 1974), 81, no. 693.

³²⁹ CPR, 1324–27, 326.

³³⁰ Historia Anglicana, 181.

³³¹ Reflecting the fact that he did not hold all of Aquitaine.

³³² Foedera, II, i, 645–6.

³³³ ‘se monstre apert tyrant et enemy’.

³³⁴ ‘nostre treschier seigneur le Roy’.

³³⁵ Genesis, 3: 15. The reference was to the enmity between Despenser on the one hand and Isabella and her son, the young Edward, on the other: Haines, The Church and Politics, 164–5. Orleton later had to defend himself against the charge that he caused enmity between Isabella and her husband: ibid. Professor Haines's explanation of the purpose of Orleton's sermon and his argument that Isabella's stay in Oxford occurred after she had been at Wallingford and not before are both convincing. Cf. Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor, 154–5; Doherty, (D. Phil.), 158–9; Buck, 122.

³³⁶ E 101/382/1; SAL Ms. 122, p. 90.

³³⁷ Lanercost, 256–7; Murimuth, 49; Anonimalle, 130–1; Frame, English Lordship, 138–9; Phillips, ‘Edward II and Ireland’, 14–15. Geoffrey le Baker speaks only of Edward's attempt to reach Lundy, but says nothing about Ireland: Le Baker, 23. See also P. Dryburgh, ‘The last refuge of a scoundrel?’, in The Reign of Edward II, ed. G. Dodd & A. Musson (Woodbridge, Suffolk & Rochester, NY, 2006), 119–39, esp. 119, 134–9. Dr Dryburgh is more sceptical about Edward II's possible escape to Ireland, but does not appear to rule it out.

³³⁸ CCR, 1323–27, 133–4; Frame, English Lordship, 165–8. In March and July 1326 Edward II had tried to contact Edmund and Hugh de Lacy, Irish magnates who had a potential claim to Mortimer's lordship of Trim and his other Irish lands. Nothing came of these approaches: Dryburgh, ‘Last refuge’, 132.

³³⁹ These were likely destinations for any crossing of the Irish Sea beginning in the Bristol Channel.

³⁴⁰ Phillips, 233–4; Frame, English Lordship, 169. The lordship of Carlow might also have been sympathetic, although it belonged to the earl of Norfolk, who had joined Isabella.

³⁴¹ Phillips, 261, 268.

³⁴² Frame, English Lordship, 139, 174–82. The inauguration in 1327 of Donal Mac Murrough as king of Leinster, the first such inauguration since the 12th century, may have been an Irish reaction to the events in England, based perhaps on a belief that the deposition of Edward II had removed the legitimacy of English rule in Ireland: J. Lydon, ‘The impact of the Bruce invasion’, New History of Ireland, ii, Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534, ed. A. Cosgrove (Oxford, 1987), 302.

³⁴³ Frame, English Lordship, 138–40. The well informed Lanercost chronicler recorded the fears of Edward II's opponents ‘that if the king could reach Ireland and gather an army there, he might cross to Scotland and, with the help of the Scots and the Irish, invade England’: Frame, citing Lanercost, 256–7.

³⁴⁴ Such as Gruffudd Llwyd in the north and Rhys ap Gruffudd in the south. Rhys was with Edward at Neath abbey on 11 Nov.: Foedera, II, i, 647.

³⁴⁵ Rhys ap Gryffudd: Griffiths, Principality, 100; McNamee, 240. Another ally was the Scottish earl, Donald of Mar: McNamee, 240; Barrow, 252. A third potential ally may have been none other than Robert Bruce himself: Barrow, 252–5.

³⁴⁶ The situation in England was probably far more fiuid than the rapid fall of Edward II in the autumn of 1326 would seem to suggest. Although Edward II and Despenser had many enemies, not all of them were certain that exchanging the rule of the king and his favourite for that of Isabella and Mortimer was a good bargain. The hostilities between Henry, earl of Lancaster, and Mortimer in the winter of 1328–9, the execution of Edward II's half-brother the earl of Kent in March 1330, and Mortimer's own fall and execution in Oct. 1330 show how close England was to a renewed civil war. The persistent rumours that Edward II was still alive and might be restored to his throne only served to stir the pot even more vigorously.

³⁴⁷ CMR, 1326–27, 36, no. 212. The sum of £10,000 which John Langton sent by water from Gloucester, and which was received at Chepstow by 17 Oct., was probably part of the overall total of £29,000 rather than an addition to it: Fryde, 189 & 267, n. 67. The 26 barrels, each containing £500 in silver pennies, which were later found among Edward II's possessions in Despenser's castle at Caerphilly near Cardiff, were probably the residue of the sum of £29,000: E 352/120, mm.39r, 39v (1 Ed. III): account of John de Langton, clerk, for the treasure, goods and chattels found at Caerphilly. Langton was the exchequer official who had delivered the £29,000 to Edward II on 20 Oct.

³⁴⁸ SAL Ms. 122, p. 90; Lanercost, 256–7; Murimuth, 49; Anonimalle, 130–1; Le Baker, 23.

³⁴⁹ Foedera, II, i, 646; CPR, 1324–27, 333–5.

³⁵⁰ Murimuth, 47–8; Anonimalle, 130–1; Flores, 233. Edward learned of her arrival before Bristol on 18 Oct.: SAL Ms. 122, f. 90. On the way there she had taken Berkeley castle and restored it to its owner, Thomas de Berkeley, but not before her men had done considerable damage to some of its neighbouring properties. Ironically, Edward II's future prison was now ready: Murimuth, 48; Berkeley Castle Muniments, Select Rolls 41 (steward's account) & 42 (account of Ham manor).

³⁵¹ ‘a regno suo Anglie … recedente’: Foedera, II, i, 646; CCR, 1323–27, 655–6.

³⁵² The archbishop of Canterbury meanwhile was keeping out of sight and dithering over whether to maintain his loyalty to the king or to join the queen: Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 273–4; Haines, Stratford, 175. William Melton, the archbishop of York, and apparently still loyal to Edward II, was engaged on business in the north. He did not take any role in Edward's deposition and did not attend Edward III's coronation in Feb. 1327, but he did perform the marriage of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault in York Minster in 1328: see article on Melton by R. Hill in the Oxford DNB.

³⁵³ The arrival from the north of England of Thomas Wake, the earl of Leicester's son-in-law, Henry de Percy, and others showed that Edward II had no hope of support from that part of the country: Murimuth, 47. The earl of Surrey's attempt earlier in Oct. to gather forces in Yorkshire to help Edward had clearly failed: Fryde, 105, 189.

³⁵⁴ Foedera, II, i, 646; CCR, 1323–27, 655–6. The duke began to exercise authority on the same day, using his own privy seal, since the king still had custody of the Great Seal.

³⁵⁵ PW, II, ii, 350–66; CCR, 1327–30, 101–2; RDP, iii, 369–72. The legality of both the original summons of 28 Oct. and of the prorogation of 3 Dec. until 7 Jan. is highly questionable.

³⁵⁶ His formal restoration to the earldom occurred on 3 Feb. 1327, as one of Edward III's first acts after his coronation.

³⁵⁷ Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, f. 123v; Ann. Paul., 317–18 (which includes the French text of his judgment).

³⁵⁸ As it did under the command of the Younger Despenser's son, also named Hugh: Historia Anglicana, 183–4. The siege lasted from Dec. 1326 until 20 March 1327: W. Rees, Caerphilly Castle and its Place in the Annals of Glamorgan (Caerphilly, 1974), 81–4. The inventory of Edward's goods drawn up after the siege also shows that the castle contained £1,000 in cash belonging to Despenser and large quantities of weapons and food supplies belonging to him and the king: Rees, 109–21.

³⁵⁹ For Edward's movements see Itinerary, ed. Hallam. There is also a useful account in R.W. Banks, ‘King Edward II in South Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 5th ser., iv (1887), 161–82.

³⁶⁰ E 352/120, mm.39r, 39v (1 Ed. III); Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 84–6. The full details of all the items found after the fall of Caerphilly in 1327 are given in the inventory in E 352/120, mm.39r, 39v, printed in Rees, 109–21.

³⁶¹ Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 78–9. The money was found in Neath castle by the earl of Leicester, who retained it for several years: CCR, 1327–30, 445; W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward II at Neath Abbey, 1326’, Neath Antiquarian Society Trans. 1988–89 (Neath, 1988), 110–12.

³⁶² CPR, 1324–7, 336–7; Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 78.

³⁶³ The ending of Edward's chamber account and of his daily household roll on 31 Oct. (SAL Ms. 122, p. 90; E 101/380/1, m.6) may signify, as Paul Doherty has suggested, that his household clerks had left him (Doherty (D.Phil.), 164), or that they had given up in despair.

³⁶⁴ Foedera, II, i., 647; CPR, 1324–27, 336.

³⁶⁵ Kidwelly, with its powerful castle, was not far to the west of Neath.

³⁶⁶ Ann. Paul., 319; Anonimalle, 130–1; Murimuth, 49; Flores, 234; Historia Anglicana, i, 184.

³⁶⁷ Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 80: it is not certain that this place-name is connected with Edward II's capture, but it is likely.

³⁶⁸ Foedera, II, i, 646; CCR, 1323–7, 655. Possibly Martley in Worcestershire but more probably Much Marcle in Herefordshire: Haines, The Church and Politics, 166.

³⁶⁹ CFR, 1319–27, 422.

³⁷⁰ Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 111.

³⁷¹ CMR, 1326–27, no. 832; Tout, Place of the Reign, 298; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 568, no. 49.

³⁷² Here I have borrowed from Matthew Strickland's description of the Feast of the Swans, 1306: Strickland, ‘Treason, feud’, 104.

³⁷³ Knighton, 436.

³⁷⁴ Anonimalle, 130–1. Ann. Paul., 321; Knighton, 436. Arundel had also been concerned in the execution of Thomas of Lancaster and had allegedly caused harm to the queen during her absence: Knighton, 436.

³⁷⁵ Knighton, 436–7; Ann. Paul., 320–1: he died on 28 May 1327, but despite the odium in which he had been held his fellow canons of St Paul's received his body honourably and buried him in the canons' cemetery on 30 May.

³⁷⁶ Brut, 239–40.

³⁷⁷ Ann. Paul., 319–20; Gesta Edwardi, 87; Knighton, 437.

³⁷⁸ The charges and judgment are printed in Holmes, ‘Judgement’, 264–7; the known manuscript copies of the text are discussed ibid., 263. There is another printed version in Knighton, 437–41.

³⁷⁹ Trinity College Cambridge Ms. R.5.41, ff. 123v–124; Historia Anglicana 185; Anonimalle, 130–1; Ann. Paul., 320. One of Despenser's knights, Simon de Reading, who had been captured with him and had been a particular enemy of the queen, was executed immediately after him on a gallows 10 feet lower: Historia Anglicana, 185.

³⁸⁰ Brut, 240; Knighton, 436; Strickland, ‘Treason, feud’, 97 (similar imagery was used when Wallace and Simon Fraser were executed by Edward I in 1305 and 1306).

³⁸¹ ‘Why do you glory in malice, you who are mighty in iniquity?’ (Psalm 51 in the Vulgate; Psalm 52 in King James Bible): BL, Arundel Ms. 17, f. 40r. This comes from the annals of the Cistercian abbey of Newenham, near Axminster in Devon which provide valuable information on the events between 1326 and 1330. The annals appear in BL, Arundel Ms. 17, ff. 40–4, under the title Memorabilia facta tempore Regis Edwardi secundi in Anglia. The psalm is also referred to in Historia Anglicana, 185, and Knighton, 437.

³⁸² The cutting off of his genitals marked not only Despenser's own death but also the intended destruction of his family line. This can be compared with the mutilation of Simon de Montfort's corpse after the battle of Evesham in 1265 when his head and genitals were removed and sent as a trophy to the then Roger Mortimer's wife at Wigmore: Prestwich, Edward I, 51; Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, 342; Strickland, ‘Treason, Feud’, 87. ‘Barbarous yet highly symbolic multiple punishments such as hanging, drawing, disembowelling, beheading and quartering as the potential penalty for treason’ already existed by the 1320s and were not devised specially for Despenser in 1326, having been undergone for example by William Wallace and Simon Fraser: Strickland, 86–7. However, Despenser's castration was seen in a different light by the Hainault chronicler, Jean le Bel, who was in England in 1327 (though not it seems in 1326 when Despenser was executed) and wrote that Despenser's genitals were cut off because ‘he was a heretic and a sodomite, even, it was said, with the king’: Le Bel, 28.

³⁸³ Anonimalle, 130–1; Ann. Paul., 320; Knighton, 441.

³⁸⁴ The 5 Dec. is the first date on which Edward can be placed at Kenilworth: CPR, 1324–27, 337.

³⁸⁵ Inquests were held at Swansea on 3 Oct. 1328, 23 April 1331 and 15 June 1339; various individuals were named as suspects but the authorities were evidently only partially successful in recovering the items plundered in 1326: E 368/111, m.35d (13 Ed. III, 1338–9); E 159/115, mm.235d, 255 (13 Ed. III); E 159/107, m.350d (5 Ed. III, 1330–1);List of Welsh Entries, ed. Fryde, no. 922. For details of some of the items lost both at Neath and Swansea at this time and the crown's attempts to recover them see C.H. Hartshorne, ‘Inquisition on the effects of King Edward II’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser., ix (1863), 163–7; Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 92–5; Ormrod, ‘Edward II at Neath Abbey’, 110.

³⁸⁶ A hoard of 150 silver pennies, mostly from the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, was found while demolishing an old manor house at the Plas in Swansea in the 1850s, and two more small hoards of the same period, wrapped in cloth and evidently abandoned in a hurry, were found while 1956–7 in the ruins of Neath Abbey during restoration work: Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 95; Ormrod, ‘Edward II at Neath Abbey’, 110–11. Neither of course was necessarily left by Edward II himself but there is a strong possibility.

³⁸⁷ D. M. Williams, Gower (Cardiff, 1998), 36. The brooch is dated c. 1320–40, and the cameos to c. 1250. See Alexander & Binski, eds, in Age of Chivalry, no. 653, p. 456 (with a colour photograph). While there is no certainty that the brooch belonged to Edward II, its date is about right and one of the men suspected of plundering Edward II's possessions was Robert de Penres, from Penrice, which is very close to Oxwich castle.

³⁸⁸ It was formerly on display in the Royal Institution of South Wales, Swansea (now the Swansea Museum). The document is in the form of letters patent of the count of Évreux, duke of Burgundy and duke of Brittany, dated 20 May 1303 and rehearsing the details concerning the proposed marriage. It seems to be the counterpart of the letters patent of the English envoys. It was discovered when a local physician, Dr Nichol of Swansea, was given it in lieu of payment by a patient who produced it in a small box, containing this and other documents, from a hiding-place in the thatch. It was presented to the Royal Institution by Dr Nichol shortly after it opened in 1835. See Francis, ‘Original contract’; R.W. Banks, ‘The marriage contract of King Edward II’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 5^th ser., iv (1887), 53–7; Rees, Caerphilly Castle, 95–6.