Chapter 4

CONFLICT AND REFORM, 1307–1312

PART ONE

THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD II

Edward I died on 7 July 1307, the feast of the Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury.¹ On the following day, which counted as the first day of the new reign, urgent messages were sent to Prince Edward, the queen, and the earl of Lincoln to tell them the news.²Edward was in or near London when he received the news of his father's death on 11 July,³ and immediately set out for Carlisle which he reached on the 18th. In the meantime the old king's death was kept secret, presumably to avoid giving encouragement to the Scots, and anyone who spread news of it was imprisoned.⁴ On 19 July Edward went to Burgh-on-Sands ‘to weep for his father’,⁵ and on the following day he was proclaimed king at Carlisle castle. ‘And therefore the younger Edward succeeded the elder, but in the way in which Rehoboam succeeded Solomon, as events were to prove.’⁶

Despite the speed with which Edward learned of his accession, the news did not reach the capital formally until Tuesday, 25 July. Until then Edward I's chancellor, Ralph Baldock, the bishop of London, continued to seal writs with the Great Seal, ‘because he had no certain knowledge of the king's death before that day’. The chancellor acted with the advice of members of the old king's council but, significantly, was also assisted by the two senior members of Prince Edward's household, William of Blyburgh his chancellor and Walter Reynolds, keeper of his wardrobe. On Saturday, 29 July, Baldock received letters from Edward recording that Anthony Bek the bishop of Durham, Henry de Lacy the earl of Lincoln, and other earls and barons who had gathered at Carlisle in readiness for the planned campaign in Scotland had done homage and fealty to him there as king, and ordering the chancellor to send him his father's seal. This was duly done on Tuesday, 2 August.⁷ In the meantime, on 22 July, at Carlisle Edward II had issued his first document as king under ‘the privy seal which we used before we undertook the government of the kingdom’.⁸

On 31 July Edward II left Carlisle for Scotland and on 4 August arrived in Dumfries where he took the homage and fealty of the remaining Scottish supporters of the English crown.⁹ Also at Dumfries, on 6 August, Edward issued the first charter of his reign, creating his friend and ‘brother’ Piers Gaveston earl of Cornwall. It was to be one of the most fateful decisions of his career.

THE RETURN AND PROMOTION OF GAVESTON

When Edward I died Gaveston was still in comfortable exile in Ponthieu. The question immediately arose of what would happen to him next. The oaths which Gaveston and Edward had taken the previous February provided for the possibility of Gaveston's recall to England at the king's pleasure. But according to the anonymous author of the Brut chronicle, Edward I had on his deathbed enjoined the earls of Lincoln, Warwick and Pembroke, and Robert de Clifford, to look after the welfare of his son and, above all, not to allow Gaveston to return and lead Edward into a life of riot.¹⁰ While it is possible that Edward I's attitude towards Gaveston had hardened during his brief period of exile, this statement should not necessarily be taken at its face value any more than Walter of Guisborough's highly misleading account of the circumstances leading up to the exile. The earl of Lincoln and the others were in any case among Edward I's main councillors and it was to be expected that they would be asked to give their support to the new king. The new king's pleasure was of course all too certain. Edward II's letters recalling Gaveston were probably sent on or soon after 11 July when Edward first heard of his father's death; and Gaveston himself probably arrived back in England in early August.¹¹ From London he travelled swiftly to Carlisle and from there to Scotland, where he rejoined Edward. Gaveston does not appear to have been at Dumfries on 6 August, the date of his creation as earl of Cornwall, but he was certainly at Sanquhar, 25 miles north-west of Dumfries, by 17 August.¹²

Despite claims in the Annales Paulini that the earls burnt it when Gaveston went into exile for the second time in 1308, the original charter creating Gaveston earl of Cornwall still survives.¹³ In a brilliant piece of research Pierre Chaplais discovered that the charter was not written by a clerk of the chancery, as would be usual, but by Thomas de Neuhay, a clerk of Edward II's wardrobe. He also deduced that, although the charter was probably ordered on 6 August and may even have been written on that date, it could not have been sealed then, since the seal used was Edward I's Great Seal, which had been sent from London on 2 August at the king's orders. On arrival in Scotland the seal had been modified, probably by a local goldsmith, for use in the new reign, and was employed for Gaveston's charter. The latest possible date on which this could have been done was 17 August, after which the Great Seal was no longer with the king.¹⁴ Chaplais is surely right in his conclusion that Edward II ordered the Great Seal to be sent from London to Scotland with the sole purpose of using it to authenticate Gaveston's creation as earl. This implies that Edward had decided that the promotion of Gaveston would be his first act when he became king,¹⁵ and supports the suggestion in the previous chapter that the earldom of Cornwall rather than the county of Ponthieu was the source of the estrangement between Edward and his father earlier in 1307. Gaveston's charter was witnessed by no fewer than seven earls: Lincoln, Lancaster, Surrey, Hereford, Arundel, Richmond and Pembroke. It is hard to believe that they would have allowed their names to be attached if they had not actively approved or at least consented to Gaveston's elevation.¹⁶ However, the absence of the earl of Warwick from the witness list may have been an early indication of his future hostility to Gaveston.¹⁷ On 17 August Gaveston celebrated his new status with a feast at Sanquhar which was attended by the king, the earls of Lincoln and Hereford, and the earl of Lancaster, one of whose minstrels also performed.¹⁸ On 1 November Gaveston's status was even further enhanced when he married Edward II's niece, Margaret, the sister of Gilbert de Clare the young earl of Gloucester. The ceremony held at Berkhamsted was attended by the king and a number of leading magnates, and was followed by another lavish feast.¹⁹

TAKING UP THE THRONE

From Sanquhar Edward II moved to nearby Cumnock on about 20 August. According to a later and unreliable tradition, Edward I had called his son to his side and made him swear that on his death ‘he would have his body boiled in a large cauldron until the flesh could be separated from the bones; that he would have the flesh buried, and the bones preserved, and that every time the Scots should rebel against him he would summon his people, and carry with him the bones of his father; for he believed most firmly, that as long as his bones should be carried against the Scots, those Scots would never be victorious’.²⁰ As Michael Prestwich has remarked, this reflects Edward's later reputation, rather than recording a genuine deathbed scene.²¹ Edward II's movements were not however the prelude to the great campaign which his father had planned. By early September he was back at Carlisle, having first appointed Aymer de Valence as the English commander in Scotland and then on 13 September replacing him with the earl of Richmond.²² Edward left Carlisle and moved south via York, spending most of the second part of September at the royal manor of Clipstone in Nottinghamshire. In mid-October he spent some days at his favourite retreat, Langley in Hertfordshire, and was back at Westminster by 27 October.

Edward II did not appear in Scotland again for another three years and in the meantime the English position there had begun the almost irreversible slide which ultimately led to Scottish independence. Yet it was not, as Geoffrey Barrow has argued, the result of exchanging ‘the masterful directing hand’ of Edward I for ‘the wilful insouciance of the new king’.²³ Edward II was not a reluctant warrior but he had good and urgent political, financial and personal reasons for abandoning the campaign in Scotland.

THE FALL OF LANGTON

Political and financial concerns overlapped in the person of Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry & Lichfield, who had been treasurer and one of the most influential royal advisers since 1295. During that period the royal finances and their administration had deteriorated under the pressures of war into a state of confusion. Although the overall picture could not then be known, it is now estimated that the crown had debts of about £200,000 at the time of Edward I's death and that as much as £60,000 of this was outstanding as late as the 1320s.²⁴ What could not be in any doubt was that the king owed money to many people, ranging ‘from his officials and bankers at one end of the spectrum to infantry soldiers and workmen at the other’. While they might tolerate this situation under a king whom they respected and feared and in aid of a war in Scotland, for which there was general support,²⁵ their toleration was unlikely to extend to a new and untried king. No individual, however powerful, could really be blamed for the mounting financial problems, but Walter Langton was an obvious target, especially since the new king had personal scores of his own to settle with him.

Edward II's determination to bring down Langton therefore came second only to his determination to promote Gaveston. Langton was arrested by three knights acting on the direct orders of the king on about 7 August at Waltham in Essex.²⁶ He ceased to act formally as treasurer on 19 August and was replaced three days later by Walter Reynolds, Edward's old ally and the keeper of his wardrobe as Prince of Wales.²⁷ Langton was first imprisoned at Wallingford, then at Windsor, and finally in the Tower of London; his lands were seized and his personal treasure found and paid into the wardrobe;²⁸ his debts were collected on behalf of the crown; and on 4 October a proclamation was issued in the names of Gaveston and Reynolds inviting individuals to present their grievances against Langton. The proceedings that followed lasted until 1310–11 and produced ample evidence of corruption and abuse of office.²⁹ This completed the fall of a mighty minister, who had exercised power on a scale comparable with a Tudor official, and who had even built himself a palace modelled on Edward II's birthplace at Caernarfon.³⁰

Langton's treasure was not sufficient to meet Edward II's financial needs. Writs of summons for a parliament to meet at Northampton on 13 October had already been issued at Cumnock on 26 August even before the new king left Scotland.³¹ The first item of business appears to have been to secure a grant of taxation, which was duly made by the laity on 13 October. The clergy made a separate grant, possibly following an agreement by the king that Robert Winchelsey, the archbishop of Canterbury, who had gone into exile after falling out with Edward I, could return to England.³² The taxation was urgently needed to finance the continuing war with Scotland,³³ to which the earl of Hereford and fifteen other magnates were sent on 18 October.³⁴ But money was also necessary to pay for the costs first of Edward I's funeral, the date of which was probably settled at Northampton,³⁵ and then of Edward II's marriage and coronation which were also discussed there.³⁶

THE FUNERAL OF EDWARD I

Edward I's body had first been brought from Burgh-on-Sands to Richmond in Yorkshire and afterwards to Waltham abbey in Essex where it lay for over two months.³⁷ On about 18 October the body was taken to London and then to Westminster Abbey,³⁸ where the funeral service was held on 27 October.³⁹ The ceremony was presided over and the eulogy delivered by Anthony Bek, the bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem, an old companion and a recent adversary of Edward I,⁴⁰ but also a good friend of Edward II who was to play an important role in the early years of the new reign.⁴¹ He was assisted by the bishops of Winchester and Lincoln who read the Gospel and the Epistle.⁴² Edward I was remembered elsewhere: the news of his death on 7 July reached Pope Clement V at Poitiers two weeks later and here the pope performed solemn obsequies for him, exalting ‘the strength of his rule, his sense of justice and clemency, his crusading fervour, and his many successes against all enemies’. This was a unique papal tribute in honour of a secular ruler.⁴³ In sharp contrast to the fine effigy and elaborate tomb which were to be constructed over Edward II's body in the 1330s, Edward I was laid in a simple tomb of polished Purbeck marble without an effigy, except for a wooden figure which may have lain on the coffin during the funeral service. Wax candles were kept burning around the tomb and were maintained both by Edward II and by his successors.⁴⁴ The reason for the simplicity of the tomb is unknown, but it was ‘plainly intentional’ and ‘cannot be attributed to Edward II's fecklessness’.⁴⁵ There is nothing to tell us of Edward's behaviour or demeanour at his father's funeral but for him it was the second family bereavement in a few months, his sister Joan of Acre, countess of Gloucester, to whom he was very close, having died the previous April.⁴⁶

MARRIAGE AT LAST

Edward II's marriage to Isabella of France was also a major issue. It had first been agreed in the Treaty of Montreuil in 1299; Edward and Isabella had been betrothed in 1303 following the Treaty of Paris; and twice, in 1305 and earlier in 1307, it had appeared that the marriage would soon take place. On each occasion it had been delayed because of the failure of English and French negotiators to settle outstanding problems over Aquitaine and over the details of the marriage agreement. To make matters even more urgent, Isabella would soon be twelve years old and the canonical age to marry. Edward II would have to make good his promise to marry her or repudiate the contract and provoke a crisis in Anglo-French relations which might even lead to a renewal of war in Gascony.

There is nothing to suggest that Edward II was for any reason unwilling to proceed with the marriage, whether through personal antipathy, the influence of Gaveston or the opinion of any of his advisers.⁴⁷ But, like his father, he first wanted to be sure that the terms offered by France would be sufficient, and a final period of intensive negotiation therefore began. A memorandum drawn up by Philip IV's advisers and sent to England early in the autumn of 1307 shows that Edward II had hoped that Isabella would bring with her a handsome marriage portion and that he hoped that Philip would compromise over such long-standing problems as appeals to the Paris parlement against the decisions of Gascon judges. Philip IV replied bluntly that he was giving with his daughter the duchy of Aquitaine and all Edward's continental lands, which had been properly forfeited to the French crown. This was her portion, and the king of England should be pleased to have it. Had it not been for the marriage and the French king's hopes to see a grandchild hold the lands, he would never have considered relinquishing them. Philip even threatened to charge Edward with the costs of administering his continental territories while they were in French hands and in the last resort to declare the duchy of Aquitaine forfeit once more, as he had done in 1294.⁴⁸

On 6 November Edward appointed the bishops of Durham and Norwich, the earls of Lincoln and Pembroke, and others to go to France to agree the terms of Isabella's dower and to conclude other outstanding matters. The delegation arrived at Boulogne, which had evidently already been agreed as the location of the marriage ceremony, on 25 November, at the same time as a section of the royal household which had been sent ahead to make the necessary arrangements.⁴⁹ In December Edward made his way to the Channel coast in preparation for the crossing to France. He spent Christmas with Gaveston at Wye in Kent, a manor belonging to the abbot of Battle, and on 26 December appointed Gaveston to be custos regni in his absence.⁵⁰ A letter from Edward II to Philip IV dated at Canterbury on 30 December shows that discussions about the marriage were continuing until the last moment. In reply to a proposal from Philip, whom he already addressed as ‘our most dear lord and father’, Edward agreed that they should both arrive at Boulogne on Sunday, 21 January, and that the marriage should take place on Wednesday, 24 January 1308.⁵¹

By the middle of January Edward was at Dover where he made a series of important decisions preparatory to leaving for France. On 18 January Gaveston's authority as custos regni was defined as including the power ‘to issue licences to elect, grant royal assents, make restitution of temporalities, collate and present to prebends and other ecclesiastical offices, and deal with wardships and marriage during the king's absence from the kingdom’.⁵² On the same date the leading clergy, earls and barons were commanded to attend Edward II's coronation at Westminster on 18 February; and on 19 January further orders were issued for a parliament to meet at Westminster on 3 March.⁵³

In the event the king crossed to France on 22 January, a day later than planned.⁵⁴ The slight delay in the crossing was probably caused by something as simple as the weather or by last-minute bargaining on the dower that Edward II would present to his wife on their wedding day, and there is no reason to suppose any deliberate discourtesy on Edward's part.⁵⁵ On 24 January Edward II agreed to increase the value of Isabella's dower from the sum of 18,000 livres tournois (£4,500), initially agreed as far back as 1299, to 20,000 livres tournois (£5,000). The dower was to be drawn from the revenues of the county of Ponthieu, with the addition of revenue from the Agenais in Aquitaine and in England if these were insufficient. Philip IV tried unsuccessfully to make Edward seal a document in which the undertakings concerning the dower were to be made to Philip himself and not to Isabella.⁵⁶ On 31 January Edward II performed his long-delayed homage to Philip IV for the duchy of Aquitaine and also for the county of Ponthieu, and the Treaty of Paris of 1303 was confirmed.⁵⁷ A commission was appointed to settle mutual problems arising from the recent war, but for his pains Edward was also presented with a lengthy list of complaints about the government of his continental lands.⁵⁸

In the midst of all this hard and probably acrimonious bargaining a wedding ceremony did in fact take place on 25 January in the cathedral church of Notre Dame in Boulogne.⁵⁹ The details of the occasion are not recorded but it is known that it was attended by many European figures of the highest rank: as well as Philip IV himself, there were three future kings of France, his three sons, Louis, Philip and Charles, and their wives; Philip IV's brothers, Charles of Valois and Louis of Evreux; Louis de Clermont, Hugh de Bourgogne and his brothers, Robert count of Flanders and his brothers, the lord of Nesle, the count of Namur, John duke of Brabant and his wife Margaret (Edward II's sister), the count of Hainault, Robert of Artois, Louis count of Nevers, Guy count of St Pol, the count of Dreux, and the count of Savoy; as well as many archbishops and bishops.⁶⁰ Those present on the English side are not named directly but certainly included important figures such as Edward I's widow, Queen Margaret who was Philip IV's sister and Isabella's aunt; Anthony Bek, the bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem; Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke (who had close French connections of his own); the earls of Lincoln, Surrey and Hereford; and important baronial figures and royal councillors such as Hugh Despenser and Robert de Clifford. Edward II hosted a celebration of the marriage (festum generale post nupcias Regis) on Sunday, 28 January, and on Tuesday, 30 January, the brothers of the king of France and many French nobles dined with him and his new queen.⁶¹ Philip IV presented his daughter with lavish wedding gifts of jewels, plate, furs, robes and other furnishings, worth a total of over 21,000 livres,⁶² and gave the cathedral a gilded silver reliquary containing a fragment of the True Cross,⁶³while Edward's wedding gift to his new wife was probably the fine illuminated manuscript now known as the Isabella Psalter.⁶⁴

GAVESTON AND EDWARD: ‘TWO KINGS IN ONE REALM’?

Edward and Isabella left Boulogne on 2 or 3 February and crossed in separate vessels to Dover, where they landed on the 7th. On 9 February Gaveston's term of office as custos regni formally ended when the Great Seal, which Edward had taken with him to France, was restored to the chancellor.⁶⁵ However Gaveston's arrogant behaviour, his relations with the king and his supposed influence over the government of the kingdom were such lively issues that the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi remarked of Gaveston's appointment as custos regni, ‘What an astonishing thing, he who was lately an exile and outcast from England has now been made governor and keeper of the same land.’⁶⁶ The St Paul's annalist wrote that there were ‘two kings reigning in one kingdom, one in name and the other in deed’, while the Vita spoke of Gaveston as ‘a second king’.⁶⁷ The chroniclers were uniformly hostile and, like today's tabloids, fed on any gossip about Gaveston that was going and when in doubt exaggerated or made it up. Gaveston was accused of having pillaged the royal treasury, with the active connivance of the king, and of sending vast sums of money to his native Gascony, with the connivance of foreign merchants.⁶⁸ It was also believed that the taxation granted by parliament in August 1307 had been misused and squandered by Gaveston⁶⁹ and that the treasure and other valuables seized from the disgraced treasurer, Walter Langton, had been given to him by the king.⁷⁰ Much was also made of the fact that Edward had sent Philip IV's wedding presents to Gaveston in England, even before his own return from France.⁷¹ Gaveston's appointment as custos regni was in itself a cause of outrage among the nobility, since this was a position that was usually reserved for a king's son or other close relative.⁷² Gaveston was also accused of using his authority to his own advantage, most notably by interfering in the election of a new abbot of Westminster.⁷³ Gaveston did himself no good in the eyes of his fellow earls when on 2 December 1307 he held a tournament at his castle of Wallingford to celebrate his marriage, at which he and ‘almost all the younger and harder knights of the kingdom, whom persuasion or reward could bring together’ roundly defeated the earls of Arundel, Hereford and Surrey and their followers.⁷⁴

Some of the charges that were levelled against Gaveston were inaccurate and malicious. There is no evidence that he plundered royal treasure and sent money abroad, or that he profited financially from the fall of Walter Langton, although he did receive sums of money from the wardrobe at intervals in 1308.⁷⁵ There are a few examples of Gaveston using his access to the king to influence the flow of patronage, but he appears to have exercised his powers as custos regni during the king's absence in France in late January and early February 1308 with caution and circumspection.⁷⁶ Yet his behaviour towards his fellow earls at this time aroused great enmity against him. ‘He adopted such a proud manner of bearing towards them, that the earls coming before him to discuss business were forced to kneel in order to bring their reasons before him, because he did not value them and did not heed the advice of the sage who said: “A sudden reverse awaits those who, raised high in pride from poverty, know neither reason nor measure and have no care”’. ⁷⁷ When Edward II was greeted by his leading magnates at Dover on his return from France he caused offence and added still further to the hostility against Gaveston by allegedly running to him and ‘giving him kisses and repeated embraces’.⁷⁸ Even allowing for some exaggeration, there is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of the picture recorded by the chroniclers.

Pierre Chaplais has convincingly argued that the description in some of the chronicles of Gaveston as Edward II's camerarius⁷⁹ should be understood as referring to Gaveston's formal appointment to the office of chamberlain, or administrative head of the king's chamber, rather than simply to a position of familiarity. He also suggests that this appointment took place between Gaveston's creation as earl of Cornwall in August 1307 and the holding of parliament at Northampton the following October, and that it formed a precedent for the appointment of the Younger Despenser to the same office later in the reign.⁸⁰ If this were the case, it would then be legitimate for valuables, such as Philip IV's wedding gifts, to be sent to Gaveston, ‘who also happened to be at the time keeper of the realm’, for safe lodgement in the king's chamber. Chaplais also argues that in doing so Edward II did not intend to insult Philip IV.⁸¹ This may have been the case, but it is also worth remembering Philip IV's parsimony towards his daughter and son-in-law: Edward may therefore have been making a point after all.⁸² On the other hand Edward II's judgement was seriously at fault if he thought that he could make the man he regarded as his brother into the holder of an earldom closely associated with the crown, appoint him as chamberlain with custody of his most valuable possessions, and also give him the office of custos regni, without arousing hostility both among the English nobility and among a wider public. It was also all too easy for opponents to place whatever spin they wished on Gaveston's activities, especially when Gaveston himself went out of his way to create animosity. To make matters even worse, Edward II had succeeded in arousing the anger of his father-in-law, who was becoming determined that Gaveston should be removed from England, and probably also the hostility of his new wife Isabella.

THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM

On 31 January 1308, the day on which Edward II performed homage for the duchy of Aquitaine, another significant event took place at Boulogne when the bishop of Durham, the earls of Lincoln, Surrey, Pembroke and Hereford, Robert de Clifford and several other magnates and royal administrators sealed an agreement in which they declared that they were bound by fealty to preserve the king's honour and the rights of his crown, undertook to do everything possible to protect and maintain the king's honour, and promised to redress and amend everything that had been done against the king's honour in the past (avant ces heurs) and all forms of oppression against the king's subjects which had occurred and were still happening from day to day.⁸³ None of the parties to the agreement was personally hostile to the king and it is likely that they were thinking chiefly of the consequences of the continuing inconclusive war with Scotland, which had overstretched the royal administration, left the monarchy heavily in debt, and created political tensions between the king and his subjects, who objected to excessive taxation and administrative abuses. These were serious issues, which had been partially suppressed in the closing years of the reign of Edward I but which were bound to resurface in a new reign with a less experienced and less formidable monarch at the helm. It was a good moment, with the coronation due in a few weeks' time, to offer Edward the possibility of achieving financial and administrative reform with the support and encouragement of a group of experienced and loyal subjects. There is nothing to suggest that the Boulogne Declaration was directed against Edward II personally. Neither was it aimed directly against Gaveston in any obvious way, although his behaviour and influence must certainly have been in the minds of those who agreed to it. It is possible too that, in promising to preserve the king's honour and the rights of his crown, they also had in mind the pressures which were then being applied against Edward II by his new father-in-law, Philip IV.⁸⁴ The Boulogne Declaration was essentially designed to help Edward rather than impose restraints upon him, but the warning signs were there and the benign reform programme foreshadowed at Boulogne and possibly, as suggested below, acceptable to Edward II was soon followed by demands for reform of a much more far-reaching and personal kind.⁸⁵

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION

Edward II's plans for his coronation began with splendid intentions but ended in discord and scandal. The palace of Westminster had suffered damage in a fire in 1298 and from subsequent neglect arising from Edward I's lack of money and frequent absences in Scotland. When Edward II succeeded to the throne in 1307 ‘he inherited a half-ruined palace’: everywhere, apart from the Great Hall and the king's own chamber, ‘there were blackened walls, rotten timbers, broken windows and mouldering plaster’.⁸⁶ Repair work began almost at once and continued even after dark by the light of candles. ‘So many men were at work that a great horn had to be blown to summon them in the morning and to dismiss them in the evening.’⁸⁷ The Painted Chamber was retiled and work began, under the supervision of the king's painter Thomas of Westminster, on the restoration of its wall paintings depicting the coronation of St Edward the Confessor and scenes from the Old Testament. Master Thomas also painted two wooden leopards which stood on the gables of the Lesser Hall of the palace and which held metal banners bearing the king's arms. Around the same time a temporary chapel of St Stephen was set up in a building attached to the exchequer to provide a place of worship for the palace. Statues of St Mary and St Stephen were painted and gilded by Master Adam the Imager and placed on two standards.⁸⁸ Altogether more than £3,000 was spent on repairs and embellishments to Westminster Palace during the first year of Edward II's reign.⁸⁹

Temporary buildings were constructed for the day of the coronation. A timber hall extending the whole length of the river wall by the palace and at least 500 feet long was built for the ceremony of the king's enthronement, and was specially strengthened to withstand the pressure of people wishing to see the king upon his throne. The throne was repaired and above it in an arch stood a statue of a king cast in copper and gilded. Fourteen smaller halls were built parallel to the ‘strong and solemn hall’ and extended almost to the gate of the palace, leaving only just enough room for men on foot and on horseback to enter. Forty ovens were built to cook the coronation banquet and ‘every vacant space in the palace and the nearby abbey was filled with forms, trestles and tables’. A fountain, ‘flowing day and night with red and white wine and a spiced drink known as pimento’, and fed by underground lead pipes, was installed.⁹⁰ For the banquet in Westminster Hall there were two high tables, each with a marble top, one of which was renewed for the occasion.⁹¹ Inside Westminster Abbey itself a wooden staging was built in the middle of the choir. The chairs in which Edward II and Isabella would be crowned were set up on this platform which was so high ‘that men at arms could ride on horseback beneath it without stooping’.⁹² The sedilia paintings in Westminster Abbey, depicting two unidentified kings, were probably also made by Master Thomas of Westminster for Edward II's coronation.⁹³

THE CORONATION

The ceremony was originally due to take place in Westminster Abbey on 18 February, a significant date since it was also the feast of the Translation of St Edward the Confessor and probably chosen for that reason. The coronation was however delayed at the last moment until 25 February. This was ostensibly to allow the archbishop of Canterbury more time to come back to England in order to perform the ceremony⁹⁴ but, according to the Annales Paulini, the leading English magnates and the French magnates who had come to England for the coronation refused to allow the ceremony to proceed unless Gaveston was first banished from the kingdom. Edward II was not prepared to concede this but he temporized by allegedly agreeing ‘in good faith to undertake whatever they sought in the next parliament’, which was due to meet on 3 March.⁹⁵ It has also been suggested that another reason for the delay was a disagreement between the king and the magnates about the form of the oath which Edward II would take at his coronation. This topic has exercised historians for many years and this is not the place to rehearse all the arguments put forward.⁹⁶ Briefly, the debate centres on the purpose of the clause which was added to the oath in 1308, and in which Edward swore to uphold ‘the rightful laws and customs which the community of the realm shall have chosen’.⁹⁷ The wording could mean that Edward was being asked to promise that he would accept future legislation which might be imposed upon him and limit his freedom of action. On the other hand, the clause might be intended to avoid a repetition of the actions of Edward I, who had a habit of going back on his promises and who in 1305 had obtained a papal decree releasing him from his undertakings.⁹⁸

There is however an alternative view of the coronation and of the coronation oath.⁹⁹ It is possible that the position of Gaveston and the need for reform were initially at least two entirely separate matters; that, as R.S. Hoyt argued, there was ‘no certain connexion between political events and the oath’;¹⁰⁰ and that ‘Edward II, in an attempt to foster an atmosphere of political amity and cooperation at the beginning of his reign, sought means to restore the rapport between crown and magnates which had been eroded under Edward I.’¹⁰¹ Although H.G. Richardson's suggestion that a clause similar to the one added to the oath taken by Edward II in 1308 had already been part of his father's oath in 1274 can now be shown to be incorrect,¹⁰² his argument that the revision of the coronation order which is known to have taken place at the beginning of Edward II's reign, and consequently of the coronation oath as a part of the order, was undertaken in a leisurely and considered manner should be taken seriously.¹⁰³ It is possible, for example, that the Boulogne Declaration of 31 January arose out of a discussion between the king and some of his leading councillors on the form of the forthcoming coronation and in particular of the coronation oath. It may be significant that several of those who were parties to the Boulogne agreement, the earls of Lincoln, Pembroke and Hereford, played a formal part in the coronation ceremony, while Robert de Clifford, who had been appointed marshal of England on about 3 September 1307 was responsible for the organization of Edward II's coronation.¹⁰⁴ In effect they were offering the new king their support in reforming the royal administration and removing the sources of grievance left over from the reign of Edward I. In return Edward II would accept a new form of coronation oath. In addition to swearing to uphold the existing laws, described symbolically as the laws of St Edward the Confessor,¹⁰⁵ he would also agree to maintain future legislation provided that it was properly approved by himself and the community of the realm. If this line of argument is correct, the coronation oath was not revised with any revolutionary intention but by agreement and without external political pressure from the English magnates. Edward II was in effect offering a coronation charter, such as earlier kings up to Henry III had issued at their accession.¹⁰⁶ This would mean that he would not try to evade his undertakings as his father Edward I had done and that he would offer hope for an orderly redress of grievances in the future. It is therefore arguable that Edward II hoped to make his coronation an occasion of reconciliation as well as one of public display.

Although it is impossible to demonstrate any personal contribution by Edward II to the coronation order and its revision, it is likely that he also wanted the coronation to give a particular emphasis to the sacred quality of his monarchy: not only by his choice of 18 February as the original date for the coronation, but by the reference to the laws of St Edward in his coronation oath, the fact that he would take his oath in close proximity to the shrine of St Edward, and the use of items of regalia associated with St Edward in the coronation ceremony.¹⁰⁷ It has also been suggested that the music associated with the coronation was intended to lay further stress on the holiness of the English monarchy, especially perhaps in the presence of members of the French royal house, whose own family saint, Louis IX, had been canonized as recently as 1297.¹⁰⁸

The coronation may have been delayed, as the Annales Paulini claims, following threats from some of the English and French magnates, but the account in the annals is inclined to exaggeration and tends to telescope fast-moving and highly emotive events.¹⁰⁹ It is also both interesting and probably very significant that the well-informed and perceptive author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi, who is scathing in his criticism of Gaveston's behaviour before the coronation and gives a detailed account of the baronial movement against Gaveston in its immediate aftermath, provides a very different description of the event itself. He says nothing about the coronation being postponed because of dissension between the king and the magnates, and reports that the ceremony was conducted by the bishop of Winchester ‘at the command and with the assent of the archbishop of Canterbury’ who was ‘prevented from being present by illness or continued absence abroad’. All that the Vita says of the occasion is that ‘at the conclusion of the ceremony and the joyful wedding feast everyone went home’.¹¹⁰ The ceremony may genuinely have been postponed in the hope that the archbishop of Canterbury might still return to England in time to preside. But if Edward had intended his coronation to bring peace and harmony, he was to be disappointed. In practice it was impossible to separate the two great issues of Gaveston and reform. Edward was soon to find himself faced with demands which went beyond what he believed he had sworn to at his coronation.¹¹¹

The coronation took place amidst the crush of people that was inseparable from great events and probably took away some of its intended dignity and majesty. John Bakewell, a knight and former seneschal of Ponthieu, was killed when a wall collapsed; the king himself was allegedly forced to leave the palace via a back door on his way to the abbey in order to avoid the crowds; and the ceremony was, again allegedly, conducted in haste by the bishop of Winchester, assisted by the bishops of Salisbury and Chichester.¹¹²It was attended by many distinguished foreign guests including Isabella's uncles, Charles count of Valois and Louis count of Évreux; her brother Charles, the future Charles IV of France; John duke of Brabant and his wife Margaret, Edward II's sister; the duke of Brittany; Count Henry of Luxemburg (soon to become the emperor Henry VII); and the counts of St Pol and Savoy.¹¹³ Edward's half-brothers Thomas and Edmund were there, as was his sister Mary.¹¹⁴ The English earls, barons and knights of the shire and their wives were also present in force by royal summons. Many of the earls played a part in the coronation itself: the king's sceptre was borne by the earl of Hereford, the sword curtana by the earl of Lancaster and two other swords by the earls of Lincoln and Warwick; the royal vestments were carried by the earl of Arundel and others including Hugh Despenser and Roger Mortimer of Wigmore; Charles of Valois put the boot and spur on Edward's right foot. Some of those who took such a public part were to play just as conspicuous a role in the politics of the reign as they unfolded in the weeks and months to come, none more so than the earls of Lincoln and Lancaster, and of course the bitterly resented earl of Cornwall, Piers Gaveston, whose involvement in the coronation was all too conspicuous. He redeemed the sword curtana after the king made an offering of a pound of gold at the high altar; he carried the crown of St Edward before the king; the earl of Pembroke placed the boot on the king's left foot but it was Gaveston who then attached the spur.¹¹⁵

The annoyance that was probably caused by Gaveston's prominent place in the coronation ceremony was magnified by his behaviour during the banquet which followed. Gaveston was clothed in purple trimmed with pearls; the king allegedly preferred the company of Gaveston to that of his new wife and queen;¹¹⁶ while above them hung specially made tapestries bearing not the arms of England and France but those of Edward II and Gaveston.¹¹⁷ Isabella's relatives were enraged by her treatment, and one of the English earls allegedly wished to kill Gaveston on the spot.¹¹⁸

THE EXILE OF GAVESTON

By the end of February 1308 a major crisis in the affairs of the English crown was fast developing, a crisis for which Edward II bore much of the responsibility. It is possible to show that many of the more extravagant charges against Gaveston were ill founded and that the relationship between him and Edward was probably based on a deeply felt sense of brotherhood. It is also fair to note that although Edward had been expecting to marry Isabella since 1299, his new wife and queen was little more than a child whom he still barely knew. Isabella could not for some time to come be a companion and partner in either the emotional or sexual sense. Edward also had outstanding problems in his relations with Isabella's father, over her dower and over Aquitaine. Nonetheless Edward's lavishing of favour upon Gaveston, Gaveston's behaviour and Edward's neglect of Isabella were bound to lead to disaffection in England and to a souring of relations with France. All of this was avoidable. Edward II had spent the early months of his reign with good intentions with regard to reconciliation and reform yet he dissipated goodwill and turned friends into potential enemies by his obsessive attachment to Gaveston.

The intense excitement, the crowds of people gathered in and around Westminster, and the tensions generated during the coronation and the festivities which followed ensured that any crisis would swiftly come to a head. Such a situation arose almost at once with the parliament that had been summoned to meet at Westminster on 3 March. The earls and barons who were to attend were already of course at Westminster for the coronation and so had plenty of opportunity to lay their plans.¹¹⁹

The Annales Paulini records that the parliament met on 28 February and not 3 March,¹²⁰ which suggests that the heated atmosphere created by the events surrounding the coronation forced the king to allow parliament to start several days earlier than planned. The fact that it met in the monks' refectory of Westminster Abbey rather than within the king's Palace of Westminster also suggests that the magnates went ahead with a meeting at a place and time of their own choosing, and that the king had no option but to agree. It appears that the king, continuing in the spirit of goodwill with which he had approached his coronation, invited the magnates to discuss ‘the state of the Church, the state of the Crown which he had newly assumed and how it ought to be governed according to God and to justice, and how the peace of the land might be preserved for his people’. The magnates apparently refused to do this unless they were given a written commission and the king promised to accept their proposals. The parliament ended inconclusively on or shortly before 10 March, when it was ordered to reconvene on 28 April.¹²¹ It appears that the earl of Lincoln, who had earlier been a supporter of the king, was already beginning to take a leading role in opposing him, while his son-in-law the earl of Lancaster who was later to lead the opposition was still loyal.¹²² The real target of the magnates' actions was obviously Gaveston, and his removal from England would have to be conceded before they were prepared to consider any other issues.

Political tension increased sharply in the weeks before the reconvened parliament on 28 April and for a time there was a very real danger of civil war. Between 12 and 18 March Edward II appointed new and loyal custodians, including Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Elder, to a dozen important castles, and on 19 March repairs were hastily put in hand to the Tower of London. On 31 March the king arrived at Windsor castle, where he remained until his return to Westminster for the meeting of parliament on 28 April. Windsor itself was put in a state of defence, while the bridges across the Thames at Staines and Kingston were broken. From his own stronghold at nearby Wallingford, where the king had spent two days on the way to Windsor, Gaveston was also gathering his forces. He then joined Edward for Easter (14 April) at Windsor, where if necessary he and Edward could hold out against a baronial army. The king controlled many of the strongest fortresses in the kingdom but few of the leading magnates supported him, with the exception of the earl of Lancaster and the uninfluential earls of Richmond and Oxford.¹²³ In the meantime the earls had gathered at the earl of Lincoln's castle at Pontefract in Yorkshire to debate what to do next. The result of their deliberations was a document, which was to be presented at the forthcoming parliament. Lincoln was however a moderating influence and it was largely due to him that civil war did not break out in the spring of 1308.¹²⁴

According to the Annales Paulini, the earls and barons came to parliament fully armed, but only for self-defence. The king remained in the palace of Westminster while the earls, as on the previous occasion in February, were in Westminster Abbey.¹²⁵ There was an immediate demand for the exile of Gaveston and the confiscation of his lands; and in order to provide a legal justification for this, the earl of Lincoln presented the document that had been drawn up at Pontefract. The first of the three articles distinguished between the king and his office by declaring that ‘homage and the oath of allegiance (homage et serment) are more in respect of the crown than in respect of the king's person … And, therefore, if it should befall that the king is not guided by reason, then, in order that the dignity of the crown may be preserved the lieges are bound by the oath made to the crown to reinstate the king in the dignity of the crown’. Since it was not possible to reinstate the king by recourse to legal action, because the judges were the king's, ‘the evil must be removed by constraint’. The second article stated that ‘as regards the person who is talked about [i.e. Gaveston], the people ought to judge him as one not to be suffered because he disinherits the crown and, as far as he is able, impoverishes it. By his counsel he withdraws the king from the counsel of his realm and puts discord between the king and his people, and he draws to himself the allegiance of men by as stringent an oath as does the king, thereby making himself the peer of the king and so enfeebling the crown. …’ The third article concluded that

Since the lord king has undertaken to maintain him against all men on every point, entirely without regard to right reason, as behoves the king, he cannot be judged or attainted by an action brought according to law, and therefore, seeing that he is a robber of the people and a traitor to his liege lord and his realm, the people rate him as a man attainted and judged, and pray the king that, since he is bound by his coronation oath to keep the laws that the people shall choose, he will accept and execute the award of his people.¹²⁶

The document is highly significant since it provided a legal and constitutional means for the earl of Lincoln and the other earls to attack Gaveston for encroaching on the power of the crown and to oppose Edward II's support of Gaveston, while at the same time upholding their own oaths of allegiance to the crown which they had so recently affirmed at the coronation. The allusion to the coronation oath shows that, whatever Edward may have thought it meant, the fourth clause of the oath was already being invoked by his opponents. The first article of the declaration, concerning ‘homage and the oath of allegiance’, is doubly significant since it was to be used again in 1321 as part of the proceedings against Hugh Despenser the Younger, another favourite of Edward II.¹²⁷

Edward refused to accept the articles presented by the earl of Lincoln and strongly resisted the attempt to force Gaveston into exile. As suggested in the previous chapter, Edward and Gaveston's withdrawal at Easter 1308 behind the defences of Windsor castle could have been the occasion for the production of a compact of brotherhood between them, as a legal device to protect Gaveston against the expected baronial attempts to oust him. If such an agreement was made in April 1308, Edward's belief that it might provide a shelter against the increasingly determined opposition of the earls was naïve in the extreme. With the significant exception of the earl of Lancaster, whose loyalty was rewarded and, Edward hoped, ensured for the future by his being granted the office of steward of England on 9 May, virtually all the earls, led by Lincoln, were firmly opposed to the king and to Gaveston.¹²⁸ Edward had also been under intense pressure from Philip IV of France since the time of the coronation over issues concerning Isabella's dower and the Templars.¹²⁹ The future of Gaveston was now added to these problems. In the spring of 1308 Philip sent Pierre de Courpalay, the abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and three knights to England. According to two anonymous newsletters, written on 12and 14May, they were sent pro statu de Gaveston deteriorando, while Philip also let it be known that unless Edward expelled Piers Gaveston, whom he regarded as his mortal enemy, from the realm of England, he would also treat all Gaveston's supporters as his enemies. It was rumoured that Philip IV and his sister Margaret, the widow of Edward I, had sent £40,000 to the earls of Lincoln and Pembroke to assist them in their proceedings against Gaveston.¹³⁰ Opposed by nearly all of the leading English magnates, by his father-in-law, stepmother, and also by his wife, Edward II finally gave way on 18 May and agreed that Gaveston should go into perpetual exile on 24 June, and that he should restore the lands of the earldom of Cornwall to the crown.¹³¹ Four days earlier, on 14 May, in a clear concession to Philip IV, Edward assigned to Isabella all the revenues and debts accruing from the county of Ponthieu.¹³² The king wished Gaveston to retain the title of earl, which continued to be used in royal letters of privy seal relating to Gaveston, but was systematically omitted in instruments under the Great Seal, which referred to him simply as Sir Peter de Gaveston, knight. On 19 May the archbishop of Canterbury passed sentence of excommunication on Gaveston should he return. The earls did not however trust Edward II to keep his word and, according to the Lanercost chronicle, gathered an army at Northampton on about 2 June and demanded Gaveston's immediate departure from England.¹³³

The sentence of exile had not specified where Gaveston should be sent. One of Edward II's possessions in France was the most obvious destination. The county of Ponthieu on the Channel coast of France, where Gaveston had spent his brief exile in 1307, was the nearest, but was ruled out since its revenues had just been granted to Isabella and it was soon full of French and English officials surveying its value.¹³⁴ An obvious alternative was to establish him somewhere in Edward II's duchy of Aquitaine in south-west France. On 24 May he was granted lands in Aquitaine worth £2,000 sterling, the grant being replaced on 7 June by another of the same value, which included the island of Oléron and the county of Gaure, close to Gabaston in the neighbouring county of Béarn, from which Gaveston took his name. These lands, together with another £2,000 of revenues from lands in England granted to Gaveston at about the same time, would have given him an income equivalent to that of a substantial earldom in England.¹³⁵ It was presumably intended that he would go to Aquitaine. But the depth of Philip IV's hostility to him might have made any part of France, even a part under English rule, too dangerous a place for him.¹³⁶ Edward therefore looked farther afield for somewhere where Gaveston might be relatively safe from his domestic and French enemies and where he might play a role of some dignity and importance. On 16 June Edward appointed Gaveston as his lieutenant in Ireland, with wide powers. This was clearly a last-minute appointment since the earl of Ulster, the leading member of the Irish nobility, had been appointed to the same office only the day before. On 25 June 1308 Edward saw Gaveston off to Ireland from Bristol and, for the moment at least, the political crisis in England was over and the threat of civil war removed.¹³⁷

RECONCILIATION AND REFORM

In the months that followed Gaveston's departure for Ireland a gradual process of reconciliation between the king and the magnates began. This was greatly aided by Gaveston's absence, and by the wish of many of the earls to restore peace to the kingdom, but was also hindered by a residual distrust of the king's motives. On 21 June Edward II issued a general military summons in which the army was ordered to muster at Carlisle on 22 August for a new campaign in Scotland,¹³⁸ where during the past twelve months Robert Bruce had been taking English-held castles and defeating and expelling English supporters.¹³⁹ The campaign, which would have been the first of Edward II's reign, was urgently needed, but its purpose was probably as much to restore Edward's authority over his magnates as to prevent further advances by Robert Bruce. The campaign did not however take place and, while there was no order cancelling it and there is no recorded evidence of any refusal by the magnates to take part in it, the reason may have been that the earls had unfinished business with the king. This may explain the meeting, understandably but incorrectly called a ‘parliament’ by the Annales Paulini, which was held on 4 August at Northampton. There is evidence from the witness lists of royal charters that a number of earls, including Gloucester, Hereford, Richmond, Warwick and the all-important Lincoln, and royalist barons such as Hugh Despenser the Elder, were present. According to the Annales Paulini the king and the earls were reconciled. The king allegedly took an oath that he would remove Hugh Despenser and five others from his council and that he would abide by the decisions of the earls and barons at the next parliament, which was summoned on 16 August to meet on 20 October. This suggests that the earls intended to prepare a programme of reform which they would present to parliament in October.¹⁴⁰

Even before the Northampton meeting in August there were signs that the king was trying to reconcile himself with individual earls by the careful application of royal patronage and favour, notably towards his nephew the earl of Gloucester and the earl of Hereford. The earls of Lincoln and Warwick were being courted from August, and the earl of Pembroke, who appears to have been strongly opposed to Gaveston, was receiving royal favours by the autumn of 1308.¹⁴¹ This pattern of reconciliation was however counterbalanced by other developments. When Edward II arranged a tournament at great expense at Kennington in the autumn, the earls apparently shunned it.¹⁴² Of much greater importance was the increasing distance between the king and his first cousin, the earl of Lancaster, who had earlier in the reign either been aligned with the king or had at least played a neutral role in the disputes over Gaveston. Lancaster was absent from the meeting at Northampton in August 1308 and disappears altogether from the witness lists to royal charters between early November 1308 and March 1310. The reasons for this estrangement are obscure but its existence seems clear. Whatever the cause, Lancaster was now embarked on the road which led him into open opposition from 1309.¹⁴³

In the summer of 1308 Edward II was playing a skilful yet risky game. While he was attempting, with considerable success, to appease the earls, he was actively preparing the ground for the return of Gaveston to England. Whether the earls were aware of what was happening is unknown but they may well have had their suspicions. As early as 16 June, even before Gaveston had left for Ireland, Edward II wrote to Pope Clement V, asking him to lift the archbishop of Canterbury's sentence of excommunication on Gaveston should he return. On the same day Edward wrote to his father-in-law, Philip IV of France.¹⁴⁴ Both the pope and the king of France responded by sending envoys to England. Arnaud d'Aux, bishop of Poitiers and a future cardinal, and Gaveston's nephew, Bertrand Caillau, came on behalf of the pope and were in England in time for the Westminster parliament in October. Bishop Guy of Soissons and Louis, count of Évreux, the half-brother of Philip IV and a close personal friend of Edward II, were sent on behalf of France and reached England in mid-September.¹⁴⁵

There is no indication that any of the issues that were raised at the meeting at Northampton on 4 August were pursued further when parliament met in late October. This may indicate that the earls were not ready to present the detailed demands for reform which were to be a major feature of the parliaments of 1309, at Westminster in April and at Stamford in July. With the removal of Gaveston, the atmosphere in October 1308 was also largely free of the tensions which had dogged relations between the king and the magnates earlier in the year and had effectively prevented two successive parliaments from conducting any serious business. Although the leading earls were now reconciled to the crown, it is unlikely that Edward formally raised the question of their approval of Gaveston's return to England in the near future. But this issue was certainly uppermost in Edward's mind and had a bearing on some of the decisions that were taken either during or around the time of the parliament. In order to placate both the pope and Philip IV, he gave formal approval to the suppression of the order of the Knights Templar, which he had been resisting since December 1307.¹⁴⁶ He agreed to the release from prison of the former treasurer, Walter Langton, who was duly freed on 9 November.¹⁴⁷ Two Scottish bishops, William Lamberton of St Andrews and Robert Wishart of Glasgow, who had been imprisoned in England since 1306, were also released at papal request.¹⁴⁸ As well as hoping for future assistance from the pope in obtaining Gaveston's return, Edward was hoping for a grant of taxation by the Church, as eventually happened early in 1309. The consecration at Canterbury on 13 October, in the presence of Edward II, of Edward's old ally and treasurer, Walter Reynolds, as bishop of Worcester,¹⁴⁹ was a further sign that relations between the king and the Church were improving. The French envoys, who had arrived in England in September in order to assist in reconciling Edward and his barons, instead arranged a truce between England and Scotland which came into force in November 1308.¹⁵⁰ The truce superseded a decision taken by the king's council, and presumably made during the parliament, to send the earls of Gloucester and Hereford with a large force to Scotland.¹⁵¹ This brought welcome relief but French mediation with the Scots was a two-edged sword, since Philip IV could always threaten to renew the former French alliance with the Scots if Edward II did not do what he wanted. It also brought French approval of Gaveston's return from exile no nearer.¹⁵²

EDWARD AND GAVESTON

Edward continued to pursue his ambition to obtain the recall and reinstatement of Gaveston. Early in January 1309 he called an assembly of bishops and royal administrators, predominantly consisting of earls and barons, to meet at Westminster on 23 February. Altogether nine earls, Gloucester, Lincoln, Lancaster, Surrey, Hereford, Pembroke, Richmond, Warwick and Arundel, and forty-two barons were summoned, a total very similar in number to those called to each of the three parliaments in 1308. These presumably were the men whom Edward II really wished to consult,¹⁵³ and the king must have used the occasion to discover whether the magnates were now prepared to consider allowing Gaveston to return to England. It is also possible that as a quid pro quo, the king promised or hinted that he would be receptive to any proposals for reform that might be put to him in the future. This would have made it all the more urgent for the earls to formulate a detailed plan of reform, for presentation at the next parliament which was summoned on 4 March to meet at Westminster on 27 April.

Also on 4 March Edward wrote to the pope and to the cardinals to announce that he was sending an embassy to Avignon, consisting of the earl of Pembroke (now fully reconciled to the king), the ever-loyal earl of Richmond, Edward's close ally Walter Reynolds the bishop of Worcester and royal treasurer, the bishop of Norwich and others.¹⁵⁴ The business of the embassy was not specified but its purpose was certainly to obtain an annulment by the pope of the sentence of excommunication to be imposed upon Gaveston. Edward probably hoped he could then present the remainder of the earls and their supporters with a fait accompli. The embassy set out for Avignon in early March,¹⁵⁵ visiting Philip IV of France on the way to try to win his approval for the return of Gaveston. The negotiations with France were still incomplete as late as the end of April,¹⁵⁶ but the mission to Avignon was more successful and on about 21 May the pope issued a bull annulling the sentence of excommunication.¹⁵⁷ The pope stated that he had done so because the archbishop of Canterbury had not followed the proper procedures in canon law before passing sentence, and because the king had assured him that he was now reconciled with the English magnates, who were prepared to accept Gaveston's return. Gaveston had however appealed against the sentence before it came into force, and the pope had yet to give a final ruling on the appeal. This left the possibility that if it failed, Gaveston could still be excommunicated.¹⁵⁸

AN AGENDA FOR REFORM

In the meantime the earls were making extensive preparations of their own for the forthcoming parliament. At some point between 20 March and 7 April a tournament took place at Dunstable, which was attended by the earls of Gloucester, Hereford, Lancaster, Warwick, Surrey and Arundel, together with large retinues. The earl of Lincoln was not present, but there is no evidence that this signified disapproval of the actions of his fellow earls.¹⁵⁹ It has been suggested, though it cannot be proved, that the earl of Lancaster was responsible for convening the tournament and that he was therefore beginning to assume leadership of the movement for reform. Whether or not this was the case, it is likely that the occasion was used either to compose or to perfect an existing draft of the articles that were presented at the Westminster parliament on 27 April. There is also evidence that, of those who attended the Dunstable tournament, all six of the earls, at least twenty-five barons, and four or five knights later attended parliament.¹⁶⁰

Edward II's request for the return of Gaveston was rejected.¹⁶¹ His other request for a grant of taxation in aid of the war in Scotland was agreed on 27 April by the lay and ecclesiastical magnates and by the knights and burgesses, who granted him a twenty-fifth of the value of moveable goods. The grant was however conditional on the king's acceptance of a document containing eleven articles of reform.¹⁶² This document was of the greatest significance, since, as Dr Maddicott has remarked, ‘The eleven articles presented in parliament represent a halfway stage between the Articuli super Cartas of 1300 and the much fuller plan of reform embodied in the Ordinances of 1311.’ The petition began with a complaint that the country was not governed in accordance with Magna Carta. Articles 1 and 7 protested at the abuse of purveyance; articles 4 and 5 at the unjust extension of the jurisdiction of the steward and marshal of the household; and article 8 at the wrongful use of royal protections and writs of privy seal to delay the course of common law. These five articles were very similar to complaints which had been made to Edward I's government in 1300 and had then been answered in the second, third, and sixth clauses of the Articuli super Cartas. Two more of the 1309 articles were derived at one remove from the Articuli. Article 10 in 1309, which protested that constables of royal castles illegally held common pleas before the gates of their castles, stemmed from article 7 in 1300, which ascribed this offence to the constable of Dover castle alone; and article 11 in 1309, which stated that the king's escheators unjustly seized the lands of tenants-in-chief and then refused them the right of appeal to the king's court, may have been based on articles 18 and 19 of 1300, which protested at similar, though not identical, abuses committed by the escheators. Thus five of the 1309 articles were directly based on the Articuli super Cartas of 1300 and another two indirectly. Only the remaining four articles of 1309, which called for the abolition of the new customs of 1303 (article 2); an end to the depreciation of the coinage (article 3); the provision of receivers of petitions in parliament to deal with unheard petitions (article 6), and greater control of the issue of pardons to criminals (article 9), appear to have been substantially new.¹⁶³

The enrolment of the articles on the Close Roll states that the document was presented to the king by the community of his realm (par la communalte de son roialme). The term ‘community’ should not however be understood as ‘Commons’ in the sense of the knights and the burgesses. While some of the grievances complained of in the articles were of interest to the knights and burgesses, notably article 6 concerning the hearing of petitions, which states that it came specifically from them, there is no doubt that the articles were substantially the work of the earls and barons, probably with the practical help of legally and administratively experienced advisers who were familiar with such earlier documents as the Articuli super Cartas. To a very large extent the earls and barons still were the ‘community of the realm’, speaking for themselves but also beginning to take into account the interests and grievances of a wider political community.¹⁶⁴ The articles of 1309 also bear a close resemblance both in their form and in the kind of grievances expressed to the petitions of the community (la commune) which were received and answered by Edward III in the parliaments of 1327, 1333 and 1334.¹⁶⁵ The big difference between 1309 and these later occasions was in the political atmosphere: on the one hand a king who was outwardly willing to consider reforms while in the last resort determined to resist anything which affected the exercise of his prerogative; on the other, a king who was conscious of his need for support, and who was receptive and prepared to accept reforms. According to several of the chroniclers, Edward II did not reject the articles but refused to give an immediate answer.¹⁶⁶

GAVESTON'S RETURN AND THE BEGINNING OF REFORM

The papal bull annulling the archbishop of Canterbury's sentence of excommunication on Piers Gaveston should he return to England did not have any effect on the political situation in England until its arrival in early June.¹⁶⁷ On 11 June it was read, on the orders of the king, before the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of London, Winchester and Chichester. Archbishop Winchelsey was unhappy with the bull and sought the written opinions of the bishops of his province, but found little support and was left with no choice but to accept the pope's decree.¹⁶⁸ Winchelsey's attempt to retaliate by ordering John Droxford, the keeper of the king's wardrobe, to be at Canterbury for his consecration as bishop of Bath & Wells two weeks after the planned opening of the Stamford parliament, was met with fury by the king. In the event the consecration did not take place because of Droxford's attendance at parliament. Winchelsey himself did not attend, partly because of ill health, but also because he was deeply unhappy about Gaveston's return and did not want to debate the matter in parliament.¹⁶⁹ Without even waiting for parliament to meet, Edward II set off from Westminster and met Gaveston at Chester on 27 June, the day of his arrival from Dublin.¹⁷⁰

The king was aware that he would have to pay a political price for Gaveston's return. On 18 June and 14 July he ordered measures to prevent the abuses of purveyance (goods requisitioned by the king), which had been bitterly complained of in the articles presented in the Westminster parliament in April, and to expedite the payment of royal debts.¹⁷¹ On 12 June 1309 the sheriffs of England had been ordered to proclaim the ‘Statute of Prises’, forbidding the taking of undue prises (goods taken by a lord from his dependants) from ecclesiastical and lay persons. Like the Statute of Stamford of the following month, it was in effect a rehearsal and confirmation of legislation belonging to the reign of Edward I, in this case of chapter 1 of the Statute of Westminster I of 1275.¹⁷²The proclamation on prises was however counterbalanced on 14 June when the earls of Gloucester, Hereford, Lancaster, Surrey, Warwick and Arundel were ordered not to engage in tournaments. Edward II was evidently afraid of the possibility of the earls bringing armed retainers to the coming parliament,¹⁷³ which had been summoned on 11 June to meet at Stamford on 27 July.¹⁷⁴

When the parliament assembled, Gaveston's return was already a fait accompli, although his full reinstatement as earl of Cornwall was still to be approved. Edward had the support of at least five of the earls, Pembroke, Richmond, Gloucester, Hereford and Lincoln.¹⁷⁵ At least six of the bishops present, Durham, Chichester, London, Worcester, Winchester and Norwich, as well as the bishop-elect of Bath & Wells, were royalist or had royalist sympathies. Since the beginning of the reign Edward had been successful in getting three of his clerks elected to the episcopate, Walter Reynolds to Worcester, Walter Stapeldon to Exeter and, most recently, Droxford to Bath & Wells.¹⁷⁶ Edward finally gave his answers to each of the articles which had been presented during the Westminster parliament in April 1309.The Statute of Stamford then gave legislative effect to those answers. Five of the complaints made to the king at Westminster in April were answered by reciting the relevant causes of the Articuli super Cartas. These concerned purveyance: the quantities which purveyors should take, punishment for excessive purveyance and purveyance without warrant, methods of payment, and the production of warrants. The statute then promised to limit the authority of the steward and marshal of the royal household and that no privy seal writ affecting the common law would be issued. Edward also promised to curb the powers of the constables of royal castles and to give up temporarily the new customs of 1303 to see what the effects were. The king instructed the chancellor and other royal officials to observe the remaining two articles in the April petition without reciting them specifically. On 20 August the county sheriffs were ordered to proclaim the statute.¹⁷⁷

Edward II had answered the articles of April 1309 at the least possible personal cost by issuing what amounted to a confirmation of the Articuli super Cartas granted by his father in 1300. He also got his wish over Gaveston, who was restored to the title of earl and to the lands of the earldom of Cornwall at Stamford on 5 August. On 26 July and 4 August respectively he had surrendered the lands in England and France which he had been granted by Edward II in compensation for the loss of his earldom at the time of his exile in 1308. The form of Gaveston's tenure was however changed. When he was first created earl of Cornwall in August 1307 he received the earldom in fee simple to himself and his heirs; the re-grant of August 1309 was made in fee-tail to Gaveston and his wife and to the heirs of their bodies. The restoration of the earldom of Cornwall to Gaveston was witnessed by many of the most powerful men in the kingdom: the bishop of Durham, the chancellor the bishop of Chichester, the treasurer the bishop of Worcester, and the bishop of London; by the earls of Gloucester, Lincoln, Surrey, Pembroke, Hereford and Warwick; Hugh Despenser the Elder, Henry de Percy and Robert Fitz Payn, the steward of the king's household.¹⁷⁸

On 30 July Edward II turned to Scotland, the business for which the parliament had ostensibly been called, and issued a summons for the army to meet at Newcastle upon Tyne on 29 September 1309.¹⁷⁹ On the same day he wrote to Philip IV of France politely turning down the latter's request, recently brought by a French envoy, Mathew de Varennes, for a meeting with Edward, on the grounds that he would shortly be going to Scotland. On 3 August he wrote more firmly to Philip objecting to one of the letters carried by Varennes in which Robert Bruce of Scotland had been given the title of king.¹⁸⁰

The new-found harmony between the king and the earls and barons was marked by the decision taken during the Stamford parliament to send a letter from the barons to the pope protesting against the practice of papal provisions to benefices and other alleged abuses of papal authority in England. Edward II gave effect to this decision on 6 August when he wrote to the earls and barons asking them to append their seals to the letter when they received it. Twelve earls, Gloucester, Lancaster, Lincoln, Cornwall, Ulster, Surrey, Hereford, Richmond, Pembroke, Warwick, Arundel and Oxford, and thirty-four barons sealed the letter.¹⁸¹

With the restoration of Gaveston settled and the Statute of Stamford agreed, Edward II finally obtained the grant of taxation which had provisionally been given to him in April, and on 26 August commissions were issued to the assessors and collectors to begin their work.¹⁸² But there were still ominous signs. The earls of Lancaster and Arundel, and the archbishop of Canterbury had all been absent from Stamford; and it has been suggested that the partnership of Lancaster and Winchelsey as Ordainers in 1310–11 first came into being at the time of the Stamford Parliament. It had still to be proved whether Edward II was willing or even able to implement the promised controls on purveyance and on royal officials; and there was also the question of how Gaveston would behave in the future.¹⁸³

PART TWO

CRISIS RENEWED: THE APPOINTMENT OF THE ORDAINERS

Within months of the settlement which had apparently been achieved at Stamford in July–August 1309 the political situation in England was again deteriorating rapidly. Although Gaveston's influence over the flow of royal patronage was less evident and exercised more circumspectly than it had been before his exile, his influence was nonetheless widely believed to be extensive and was deeply resented.¹⁸⁴ The well informed author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi recorded that Gaveston had one of the earl of Lancaster's retainers replaced in office by one of his own.¹⁸⁵ This may refer to the dispute over the succession to the lordship of Powys in Wales between Gruffudd de la Pole, who was an important member of Lancaster's retinue, and John Charlton, one of Gaveston's adherents, which began in the summer of 1309 and was to continue far beyond the end of Gaveston's life in 1312.¹⁸⁶ His arrogant behaviour towards his fellow earls was also a cause of resentment, especially when he allegedly chose to bestow offensive nicknames upon the earls of Warwick, Gloucester, Lincoln, Lancaster and Pembroke.¹⁸⁷ Only the earls of Gloucester, Richmond, Surrey and, initially, Lincoln appear to have remained on good personal terms with him.¹⁸⁸ The first overt sign of renewed trouble came on 18 October 1309 when the earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, Warwick, Arundel and Oxford refused to attend a secretum parliamentum at York because Gaveston would be there.¹⁸⁹ This meeting was the occasion of Edward II's decision to issue the summons on 26 October for a parliament to meet at York on 8 February.¹⁹⁰ On 4 November the king wrote to the earl of Lincoln, alluding to the recent council at York and seeking his advice on the order of business for the coming parliament. The king also made the very significant remark that it would not be convenient for him to attend parliament for more than ten to twelve days at the most. When February came his hopes were to be seriously disappointed.¹⁹¹

Apart from the rapidly growing enmity between Gaveston and the other earls, the issue that caused the most serious problems in late 1309 was that of prises and purveyance – the practice by which agents of the king took ‘something for the use of the king by virtue of the royal prerogative’.¹⁹² A system which had originally come into being to provide supplies of food for the use of the royal household as it moved around the kingdom was extensively used from the 1290s by both Edward I and Edward II to provide grain and livestock and transport for royal armies and garrisons in Scotland. As well as the inconvenience that this system caused to those affected, payment was often inadequate and frequently long delayed. The burden of war was thus carried by those who were least able to bear it. By the accession of Edward II in 1307 the accumulated unpaid royal debts resulting from prises and the social stress caused by the system were already acute. Prises and purveyance, together with the rapacity of the royal officials who imposed them, had been bitterly complained of during the reign of Edward I and were one of the major issues in the Articuli super Cartas in 1300. Edward II's use of prises and the protests against them both continued. Matters were made even worse when in 1308 and 1309 the king ordered purveyance of supplies on a vast scale for campaigns in Scotland which never took place.¹⁹³ Even on his own doorstep, his favourite manor of Langley in Hertfordshire, the king and his household were being abused by the local population for their failure to pay their debts.¹⁹⁴

The Statute of Stamford of July 1309 had attempted to address the problem, but with little success. In part this was because prises were a part of the royal prerogative and, unlike taxes on moveables or customs duties, legally did not require the approval of parliament.¹⁹⁵ It was therefore in the interests of the king to resist legal control of prises for as long as he could. Without an alternative system of supply, it would be impossible to continue to wage war in Scotland. A modern observer might think that, if the available resources were inadequate, then the war should be brought to an end and the machinery of government and English society in general given a chance to recover. However, although a truce might be agreed from time to time, there was no doubt in the minds of either the king or his magnates that the war should continue. The prestige of the monarchy and national pride demanded that it should. But even if Edward II had been entirely sincere in agreeing to curb prises and assuming that royal officials changed the habits of a lifetime, it was unlikely in practice that much would or could be done. A system which had been in widespread use for so long could not be replaced overnight. Prises were therefore an important part of all the political crises in the early years of the reign of Edward II and they were to be a central issue in the crisis which led to the appointment of the Ordainers in March 1310. The government's acute shortage of ready cash, the result of accumulated debts from the reign of Edward I and the difficulty in obtaining agreement in parliament for taxes on moveables, made prises and purveyance even more essential. Where it was imperative to have ready cash, this was increasingly being obtained through borrowing from the Florentine banking company, the Frescobaldi, who had been dealing with the English crown since the late 1290s. By 1310 Edward II owed them in the region of £22,000.¹⁹⁶

Although the mustering of the army at Newcastle on 29 September which had been ordered at Stamford on 30 July never took place, Edward II continued to use prises. On 9 November orders were issued for the purveyance of supplies in Ireland and in the counties of Chester and Gloucester, enough for the support of English garrisons but not for a full-scale campaign.¹⁹⁷ On 10 December the collection of the twenty-fifth granted at the Stamford Parliament in July was suspended between 29 December and 16 February 1310 because of the failure to enforce the Statute of Stamford. The collectors were nevertheless to proceed with the assessment of the twenty-fifth and to bring any money already received to the exchequer by 29 December. Significantly, the suspension of the tax was made at the request of the earls of Gloucester, Lincoln and Cornwall, in a rare display of political unity.¹⁹⁸ In the background there were fears of popular resistance to the burden of prises, even to the extent of a possible peasants' revolt.¹⁹⁹ On 12 December, amid these growing signs of political and social unrest, Edward II ordered a change of venue for the forthcoming parliament from York to Westminster.²⁰⁰

The assembly was originally intended to consider how to deal with the ‘enemy, rebel and traitor’, Robert Bruce, and his breach of the recently made truce, but by the time it was due to begin on 8 February the continued tensions over Gaveston and over prises had produced a serious deterioration in the political situation. Edward II and Gaveston had in the meantime spent a convivial Christmas at Langley, where according to the Vita Edwardi Secundi they ‘fully made up for former absence by their long wished-for sessions of daily and intimate conversation’.²⁰¹ Just how serious matters had become is shown very clearly in the account in the Vita that the earls came in answer to the king's summons, as they were legally bound to do, but only as far as London, refusing to attend parliament at Westminster while Gaveston, ‘their chief enemy, who had set the kingdom and themselves in an uproar, was skulking in the king's chamber’. They added that, ‘if it was absolutely necessary to present themselves before the king’, they would do so armed, claiming that they were acting for their own safety and not in order to threaten the king.²⁰² Edward's immediate response was to write on 7 February to the earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke and Warwick, who were the most hostile to the king and to Gaveston, forbidding them to bring armed retainers to parliament. The earls of Gloucester, Lincoln, Surrey and Richmond, who were more sympathetic to the king, were charged by the king with providing for the safe conduct of those attending parliament, with arresting anyone who broke the king's commands, and with settling any quarrels that might arise during parliament.²⁰³ The king eventually sent Gaveston away to a safe place,²⁰⁴ and the parliament finally began on 27 February, after a delay of almost three weeks.²⁰⁵

The king was at once given a petition in the name of the prelates, earls and barons, which may have been presented by the earl of Lancaster himself. Like the Boulogne agreement of January 1308 and the articles against Gaveston of April 1308 there is no record of the petition in the royal archives. Instead it is known from transcripts in the Annales Londonienses, the muniments of the Guildhall, London, and elsewhere.²⁰⁶ All the issues that had been complained of since Edward II's accession in 1307 were contained in the petition. The king was guided by unsuitable and evil counsellors; he was so impoverished that he could neither defend the realm nor maintain his household except through the extortions of his ministers, who took from both Church and people without paying, in breach of Magna Carta. His father had left him all his lands, in England, Ireland and most of Scotland in peace, but he had lost Scotland and dismembered the possessions of the crown in England and Ireland, without baronial assent. The taxes granted to him by the community of the realm at Northampton in October 1307 in aid of the war and at Stamford in July 1309 in return for the relief of prises and other exactions were still being levied and wasted. But the war had made no progress and the people had not been relieved, and were more heavily burdened than ever. The petition concluded by humbly praying the king that these and other dangers should be redressed by the ordinance of the barons, who were bound by their allegiance to maintain the crown.²⁰⁷

Then, according to the Vita a battle of wills began:

This at length, I heard, had been asked for by the barons: namely that, as the state of the king and the kingdom had much deteriorated since the death of the elder king Edward of happy memory, and the whole kingdom had been not a little injured by this, they asked that, with the agreement and consent of the lord king and his barons, twelve discreet and powerful men of good reputation should be elected, by whose judgment and decree the situation should be reformed and settled; and if anything should be found a burden on the kingdom, their ordinance should destroy it; and if there was to be provision for any deficiency in the kingdom, the decision should be taken at their complete discretion.²⁰⁸

Edward at first refused to accept their demands, and did not give way until the barons accused him of breaking his coronation oath and threatened him with deposition.²⁰⁹

On 16 March Edward issued letters patent in which he agreed to the election of Ordainers from among the prelates, earls and barons, and others whom they might decide to summon before them during the period of their authority, which was to last from 29 September 1310 until 29 September 1311. The Ordainers were to have full powers to reform the state both of the kingdom and of the king's household, for the honour of the king and his people, and according to right reason and the king's coronation oath. One weakness in these concessions by the king was that, although he claimed to have acted ‘of his free will’, it was clear to everyone that he had done so only under the most severe duress. Another was the reference to his coronation oath, which raised the possibility that he might repudiate the reforms agreed by the Ordainers if he considered that they were contrary to his oath. These loopholes were to be used with great determination by Edward after the publication of the Ordinances in September 1311.²¹⁰

On the day following Edward's concession, 17 March 1310, the prelates, earls and barons replied with letters patent of their own in which they rehearsed the king's consent to the appointment of Ordainers and undertook that this would not be made a precedent for any future action. The document was dated at London, which suggests that they were keeping at arm's length from the parliament at Westminster until everything had been settled to their satisfaction. The letter was issued in the names of the archbishop of Canterbury Robert Winchelsey and of ten bishops, London, Lincoln, Salisbury, Winchester, Norwich, Bath & Wells, Chichester, Worcester, Exeter, and St David's; eight earls, Gloucester, Lancaster, Lincoln, Hereford, Richmond, Pembroke, Warwick and Arundel; and thirteen barons: Henry of Lancaster, Henry de Percy, Hugh de Vere, Robert de Clifford, Robert Fitz Payn, William Marshal, John Lovel, Ralph Fitz William, Payn Tybetot, John Botetourt, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, John de Grey and John Cromwell.²¹¹

On 20 March the twenty-one Ordainers were elected and sworn in: the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Salisbury, Chichester, Norwich, St David's and Llandaff; the earls of Gloucester, Lancaster, Lincoln, Pembroke, Hereford, Warwick, Richmond and Arundel; and six barons, Hugh de Vere, Hugh de Courtenay, Robert Fitz Roger, John de Grey, William Marshal and William Martin. Within the group of earls there was an even balance between those who were strongly in favour of reform, the earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke and Warwick, and those with more royalist inclinations, Gloucester, Lincoln, Richmond and Arundel. Of all the earls, only Oxford and Surrey, and, of course, Piers Gaveston earl of Cornwall took no part in the events of March 1310. Of the bishops elected, the archbishop of Canterbury had long been an opponent of the misuse of royal authority so far as it applied to the Church. Although his name came first on the list of Ordainers, this was probably more a matter of dignity than an indication that he was their real leader. His primary role in 1310 was that of leader of the English Church and guardian of its interests. The bishops elected included only one of the four bishops closely associated with the crown – Chichester, Bath & Wells, Worcester, and Exeter – whose names had appeared in the letters patent of 17 March. The bishop of Chichester was however replaced as chancellor on 11 May by a close ally of the king, Walter Reynolds bishop of Worcester. Of the barons with connections with the king who had participated in composing that letter, Henry de Percy, Robert Fitz Payn (steward of the household), and John Cromwell (constable of the Tower of London), only Henry de Percy was elected as an Ordainer.²¹² Finally, on 1 April, after all the upheavals of the past weeks, Edward II obtained some additional revenue when orders were issued to the assessors and collectors to finish the assessment of the twenty-fifth conditionally granted in the parliament of April 1309 and to proceed with its collection.²¹³

EDWARD AND GAVESTON IN THE NORTH

The situation in Scotland had changed significantly since the accession of Edward II in 1307. By the end of 1309 Robert Bruce had greatly strengthened his position compared with two years earlier. He had now won control over Buchan, Ross and Argyll, and would soon add Galloway; he had resumed contact with France, raising the possibility of an active alliance; he had won over many prominent nobles; and he had held a parliament at St Andrews at which his authority as king of Scots had been more widely accepted than ever before. ‘If Scotsmen still wanted to fight against Bruce, they must now do so as individual members of the English forces.’²¹⁴ Nonetheless there was a considerable English presence in Scotland. A few Scottish earls, Angus, Atholl, Dunbar and Strathearn, and other nobles, such as Alexander Abernethy and John Mowbray, were still loyal to the English crown, while there were English garrisons as far north as Perth, Dundee and Banff; at Edinburgh and Stirling in the Lowlands; in the south-west at Dumfries and Caerlaverock; and in the south-east at Jedburgh, Roxburgh and Berwick. Many of these were powerful fortresses whose garrisons could easily be supplied by sea.²¹⁵

If Edward had been able to mount a concerted campaign in Scotland, he should have maintained or even improved this position. But this was the problem. Ever since his accession Edward had been preoccupied with domestic issues, complicated by the difficulties in his relations with France. The material and financial resources were not available for warfare in Scotland on the scale of the campaigns mounted by his father, and, as events would show, there was the question of whether the English magnates would be willing to fight in Scotland. Edward had already planned a Scottish campaign in both 1308 and 1309, but without success. Now, in 1310, a new campaign was more than ever necessary. Matters came to a head on or just before 16 June when Edward was told at a council meeting by Alexander Abernethy, Alexander of Argyll and other loyal Scottish magnates that unless he went north in person and quickly, ‘we should lose both the land and those who still remain faithful to us by reason of our default and our laxity’.²¹⁶ A decision was therefore taken to summon the army to Berwick for 8 September.²¹⁷ The proposed campaign also suited Edward personally, since it was a convenient way of putting a distance between himself and the activities of the Ordainers in London while at the same time ensuring the continued safety of Gaveston.²¹⁸

Edward had left Westminster for Scotland by the end of July, but he was joined on campaign only by the earls of Gloucester, Richmond, Surrey, and of course Cornwall. The earl of Lincoln was to be detained at Westminster by his duties as custos regni,²¹⁹ but four others, Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke and Warwick, refused to join the campaign in person.²²⁰ They did however send the minimum service they were legally obliged to provide, representing eight knights' fees in the case of Lancaster and five knight's fees for each of the other three earls.²²¹ Their refusal was justified on the pretext that they were too busy in their work as Ordainers, but the unspoken truth was that they knew that Gaveston would also be in the king's company.

Of the campaign itself the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi remarked that ‘the king entered Scotland with his army, but not a rebel was found to lay a hand upon him or to ambush his men, except that a few from the army, out foraging or on a plundering raid, were cut off’.²²² Although it was not a major campaign in terms of the size of the royal army and its objectives, it was not a negligible undertaking and showed some foresight and planning. With greater resources and a certain amount of luck much more might have been achieved.²²³ The army consisted of about 3,000 infantry, most of them Welsh; 100 crossbowmen paid by the City of London for the defence of Berwick; the retinues of the three English earls and those of other magnates such as the Scottish earls of Angus and Strathearn, John de Segrave, John de St John, Henry de Percy, Roger Mortimer, John Cromwell, Henry de Beaumont, Hugh Audley and Bartholomew de Badlesmere; and the men of the royal household, about 50 knights and bannerets, and 200 men-at-arms. Altogether the mounted force totalled about 1,700. There were also large contingents in the garrisons of Berwick and Roxburgh.²²⁴

In October 1309 a plan had been devised to land a force of nearly 3,000 men from Ireland, led by the earl of Ulster, to help English allies in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland. Transported in Irish ships, supplemented by forty-five vessels from ports in the west of England, this army was intended to arrive in late June 1310, but was delayed and finally cancelled because of bad weather. Instead the earl of Ulster's men were diverted to the defence of the Isle of Man.²²⁵ Despite this serious setback, which undermined the strategy of the campaign, Edward entered Scotland in mid-September, reached Roxburgh on about 16 September, Selkirk on about the 23rd, and Biggar on about the 26th. He was at Renfrew and Glasgow in mid-October, then Linlithgow, and briefly at Edinburgh at the end of the month. Having ensured, so far as he could, the security of the English-held castles south of the Forth, he returned to Berwick-upon-Tweed on about 11 November.²²⁶ Apart from a brief foray with a small force when Bruce made a raid into Lothian,²²⁷Edward was to remain at Berwick until the end of July 1311.

With the exception of the attack on an English foraging expedition, which is described by the Vita, little offensive action was carried out by either side. Bruce gave no opportunity for the English to bring him to battle.²²⁸ The nearest Edward II and his army came to Bruce was in October when spies informed Edward that Bruce's army was on a moor near Stirling, but nothing came of this.²²⁹ Ironically, when Edward did eventually make contact with Bruce and his army at Bannockburn in June 1314, it was in this very same area. During the winter of 1310–11, the English earls followed the king's example by retiring to bases just inside Scotland or near the English border, the earl of Gloucester at Norham, the earl of Surrey at Wark, and the earl of Cornwall at Roxburgh.²³⁰ But it was also during this period that some contacts were made between Edward II and Robert Bruce. According to a letter written in February 1311, Robert de Clifford and Robert Fitz Payn had met Bruce with Edward II's approval at Selkirk on 17 December 1310. A second meeting between Bruce and the earls of Gloucester and Cornwall near Melrose did not however occur because Bruce was warned of possible treachery.²³¹ It was also reported in February, in a letter to the earl of Richmond, that Master John Walwayn, a royal clerk, had been arrested and was imprisoned in Berwick ‘because he suddenly went towards those parts [the vicinity of Perth] to speak with Robert Bruce’.²³² The purpose of the contacts is unclear, but it is possible, as was to be alleged in 1311–12, that Edward was hoping that Robert Bruce would be prepared to offer Gaveston a place of refuge from his enemies in England in return for a truce or even peace.²³³

With the failure of negotiations with Bruce – if that is really what they were – English campaigning resumed in early 1311. In January Gaveston left Roxburgh for Perth, via Dundee, in order to defend the area from Bruce and to prevent him from using it as a recruiting ground. In February the earls of Gloucester and Surrey passed through the forest of Selkirk to receive any of its inhabitants who were prepared to make peace with the king.²³⁴ Gaveston remained at Perth until late March when he returned briefly to Berwick for a meeting with the king, apparently concerning the work of the Ordainers, after which he went back to Perth. Gaveston gave up command at Perth to Henry de Percy and the earl of Angus in early May and moved to Dundee.²³⁵ According to the chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, the king had sent Gaveston against the Scots with a strong army so that he might make a name for himself and win praise. If so, he was to be disappointed, since the Scots kept their distance.²³⁶

This was effectively the end of Edward II's campaigning in the north. Money and supplies were running short;²³⁷ Edward's attempt in May to obtain a grant of one foot soldier from every vill in England for a period of seven weeks at their own expense and without the approval of a parliament met with resistance and was soon abandoned, while his attempt to raise a force of nearly 4,000 men in Ireland and have them shipped to Ayr in Scotland in June 1311 in sixty-two English and Irish vessels was also a failure.²³⁸Edward had stayed in the north in order to fight the Scots, but also in order to evade the Ordainers and their demands for as long as possible. By July 1311 he could no longer resist the pressures to return to Westminster. In the meantime Edward had placed Gaveston for his personal safety in the powerful coastal fortress of Bamburgh in Northumberland, there to await the outcome of events in the south.²³⁹ No sooner had Edward left Berwick than ‘Robert [Bruce] unleashed a savage destruction of northern England’.²⁴⁰

THE MAKING OF THE ORDINANCES

The Ordainers had begun their work even before their formal election on 20 March, with the issuing on 19 March at the house of the Carmelites in London of six preliminary ordinances. These were later incorporated into the Ordinances of 1311 but reflected the issues of greatest urgency in 1310. The first ordinance concerned the protection of the liberties of the Church. The second decreed that the Ordainers were to sit in London, where they would have the protection of the mayor and aldermen of the city, and from where they would have ready access to legal and other expert advice and to the records of the chancery and exchequer. The third stated that no gifts of land, revenue, franchises, or wardships and marriages were to be made without the approval of the Ordainers. The fourth ordered that the revenues of the customs duties were to be paid directly into the exchequer to be used for the maintenance of the king's household and for other proper purposes, so that the king could live from his own resources and not have to resort to prises. The fifth ordered that the foreign merchants who had received the profits of the customs since the death of Edward I should be arrested and their goods seized until they had accounted fully at the exchequer before the treasurer and barons of the exchequer and others to be appointed by the Ordainers. The final ordinance required the upholding of Magna Carta in all its points. Although the king ordered the city of London to protect the Ordainers and their work on 29 May,²⁴¹ he did not promulgate the preliminary ordinances until 2 August.²⁴²

Little is known about how the Ordainers carried out their work or who, if anyone, was the major contributor to the Ordinances which were finally published on 27 September 1311. Several of the earls among the Ordainers, in particular Lancaster, Warwick, Hereford and Pembroke, played an active role;²⁴³ but it has also been suggested that ‘some royal officials, sympathetic to the point of view of the Ordainers’ may have contributed their expert knowledge of the workings of the royal administration and legal system.²⁴⁴ The support of the Church for the promulgation and enforcement of the Ordinances after their publication in 1311 was to be important, but there is little in the Ordinances themselves to suggest that the clergy made any significant contribution to their formulation, least of all that the archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Winchelsey, was a prime mover.²⁴⁵ Until recently no draft or other intermediate document had been known to suggest how the Ordinances developed. However, Michael Prestwich has discovered what appears to be a draft of the Ordinances in the archives of Durham cathedral. The document is undated, but it is likely that it is either a copy of a draft taken to the king by John Botetourt on behalf of the other Ordainers at the end of May 1311, or that it is the text of the Ordinances sent to the king for his approval on 3 August 1311.²⁴⁶ The Durham text contains thirty-two clauses, only one of which is not to be found in the published text of the Ordinances. In addition to numerous minor variations in wording and the division of clause 35 of the Ordinances into two parts, the first six clauses, together with clauses 12 and 18, and the last four clauses do not appear in the Durham version. Clause 11 of the Durham version of the Ordinances, which is not in the official text, provides for the appointment in every parliament of a committee composed of a bishop, two earls and two barons to oversee the receipt of revenue at the exchequer, and required the treasurer and the keeper of the wardrobe to report there annually. Another significant difference between the Durham text and the Ordinances is in the language used to describe Gaveston, who is referred to in the former as an ‘open enemy of the king’, and whose deeds were committed ‘traitorously as a traitor’. In the final published version of the Ordinances the only suggestion that Gaveston was guilty of treason is in the statement that his deeds were committed treiterousement.²⁴⁷ These two differences between the draft and the final version may reflect second thoughts on the part of the Ordainers about, for example, the future role of parliament, but it is more likely that they were the result of resistance to their proposals by the king.²⁴⁸

Edward II had done his best to frustrate the work of the Ordainers by, for example, appointing his close ally Walter Reynolds, bishop of Worcester as chancellor in July 1310 without the consent of ‘the community of England’;²⁴⁹ by failing to promulgate the preliminary Ordinances until 2 August;²⁵⁰ and by ordering on 28 October the removal of the exchequer and both benches from Westminster to York by the following Easter.²⁵¹ This latter move, which was an attempt to remove the practical levers of power from possible influence by the Ordainers,²⁵² caused them great annoyance, including the moderate earl of Lincoln who reportedly threatened to resign from his position as custos regni during the king's absence in the north.²⁵³ Earlier in October the king had shown his continued commitment to Gaveston by appointing him to the influential positions of justice of the forest north of the Trent and constable of Nottingham castle.²⁵⁴ On 27 March 1311 the king wrote to the chancellor, Walter Reynolds, ordering him to see that anything decided by the Ordainers should be submitted to Reynolds and to do nothing concerning these matters without the king's advice and consent.²⁵⁵

Edward's situation was made more difficult by the death of Henry de Lacy the earl of Lincoln on 5 February.²⁵⁶ Lincoln was a man of great experience who was trusted by both the magnates and the king, who had known him well since childhood. Lincoln's death, followed on 3 March by that of Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham another senior figure who had also been close to the king since his early years, removed a moderating force.²⁵⁷ The appointment of Gilbert de Clare the earl of Gloucester as custos regni on 4 March²⁵⁸ was no substitute for Lincoln. Although an Ordainer, Gloucester was young and inexperienced, as well as being Edward II's nephew and Gaveston's brother-in-law. There was therefore little chance that he could persuade his fellow Ordainers to be more sympathetic towards the king.

Gloucester soon found himself at odds with the earl of Lancaster,²⁵⁹ who inherited Lincoln's two earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury through his wife, Alice de Lacy, and also regarded himself as the earl of Lincoln's political heir. As the holder of the earldom of Leicester, Lancaster also saw himself as the political heir of Simon de Montfort. Altogether Lancaster was now in the unique position of holding five earldoms, those of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, as well as the two inherited from Lincoln.²⁶⁰ The value of his estates has been estimated at about £11,000 a year, which placed him far ahead of his nearest rival among the earls, Gloucester, whose lands were worth about £6,000 at his death in 1314. This gave Lancaster the ability to recruit and pay retainers on a large scale and an exceptional opportunity to influence politics at both a local and a national level. All he needed in addition was a measure of personal ability and political skill, and in these he proved to be lacking.²⁶¹

Lancaster was soon at odds with Edward II as well, refusing to join him in Scotland to perform fealty for his newly inherited lands. Lancaster eventually met the king near Berwick, just south of the border, and performed fealty, while at the same time pointedly ignoring Gaveston's presence with the king and causing further offence.²⁶²

PARLIAMENT AND THE PUBLICATION OF THE ORDINANCES

On 4 April an anonymous letter writer sent a message from Alnwick in Northumberland in which he commented that ‘the king is in no mood yet for a parliament, but when the earl of Gloucester and the council meet in London, he will have to do what they order’.²⁶³ Edward had little choice. Sooner or later a parliament would have to be called in order to publish the results of the work of the Ordainers, whose commission was due to expire on 29 September. A parliament was also the only answer to his desperate need of funds. Edward bowed to the inevitable at Berwick on 16 June and summoned a parliament to meet at London on 8 August.²⁶⁴ He left Berwick in late July, arrived in London on 13 August where he lodged with the Dominicans, and on 16 August he met parliament.²⁶⁵ According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, the business of parliament was then delayed by the absence of some of the notables and in the meantime Edward visited the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury before returning to London at the end of August.²⁶⁶

By this time the power of prayer was about all that was left to Edward. The Vita records that

when all those concerned had gathered together, the year's work was produced and the chapters were recited one by one, and a copy was made available to the king's counsellors.²⁶⁷ But the king and his council protested that some things were disadvantageous to him, some devised out of hatred, and he argued and pleaded that he was not bound to give his consent to these, since in the commission granted to them matters touching the king's sovereignty had been excluded. The barons knew, however, that the king's excuses were frivolous and invented and always meant to gain time; they therefore firmly stood their ground, setting the common good above the king's loss. There was, however, one of these Ordinances that distressed the king more than the rest, namely the expulsion of Piers Gaveston and his exile; to this the king could in no way be persuaded or brought to agree. Nevertheless, to satisfy the barons he offered these terms: ‘whatever things have been ordained or decided on’, he said, ‘however much they may redound to my private disadvantage, shall be established at your request and remain in force for ever. But you shall stop persecuting my brother Piers, and allow him to have the earldom of Cornwall.’ The king sought this time and again, now coaxing them with flattery, now hurling threats; but the barons firmly stood their ground putting forward many arguments as the king's faithful subjects consulting the king's interests, and finally, as if with one mind and voice, they added at the end of their reply that either Piers should suffer exile according to the judgement of the Ordainers, or each man would consider how to defend his own life.²⁶⁸

Faced with the threat of civil war and under pressure from his advisers, Edward II finally gave way. On 27 September, only two days before the expiry of the Ordainers' mandate, the Ordinances were published in St Paul's churchyard by the bishop of Salisbury, acting on behalf of the archbishop of Canterbury, in the presence of several bishops, the earls of Lancaster, Pembroke, Hereford, Oxford, Warwick and Arundel, and many barons.²⁶⁹ On 5 October the leading members of the king's council, the earl of Gloucester, Henry de Percy, Hugh Despenser, the chancellor and treasurer, and others also came to St Paul's churchyard and announced the king's acceptance of the Ordinances.²⁷⁰ On the same date a copy of the Ordinances under the king's Great Seal was delivered to the mayor and sheriffs to be published in the city and then to be deposited in a safe place.²⁷¹ On 8 October, the day before the end of the first session of parliament, writs were issued ordering the reconvening of the parliament at Westminster on 5 November;²⁷² and on 10 October a copy of the Ordinances was sent into each county for proclamation by the sheriff.²⁷³ Measures were also taken to implement the Ordinances. On 9 October writs were issued ‘by the king and the whole council’ revoking all grants made in Scotland and Ireland; on the same day orders were given for the collection of the new customs to cease; and on 11 October detailed schedules were sent to the escheators north and south of the Trent ordering them to seize all lands granted since the appointment of the Ordainers on 16 March 1310.²⁷⁴ On 18 October new sheriffs were appointed at the exchequer in the presence of the chancellor and treasurer and other members of the council.²⁷⁵

THE ORDINANCES²⁷⁶

The Ordinances were contained in a lengthy document of forty-one clauses which dealt with a wide range of grievances. In a clear reference to the Scottish campaign of 1310–11, the king was forbidden to go to war or to leave the kingdom without the consent of the baronage in parliament.²⁷⁷ The king was not to make any gifts of land or other grants without the approval of the baronage in parliament and all grants made since the appointment of the Ordainers were to be revoked, until the king's debts had been paid off.²⁷⁸Prises, i.e. the seizure of foodstuffs for royal use and without immediate payment, which were deeply resented and which the Ordainers had feared might lead to popular revolt, were to cease.²⁷⁹ The customs duties were to be paid directly into the exchequer and not to be collected by aliens (a reference to the Italian merchant company, the Frescobaldi of Florence);²⁸⁰ no revenues were to be collected for the direct use of the royal household, which was to be maintained by the exchequer.²⁸¹ These provisions reflected the financial confusion into which the royal government had fallen under the pressures of the Scottish war and had their roots both in the reign of Edward I and in current practice. But they were also designed to ensure that the king could not evade control of his expenditure by collecting revenue locally. In each parliament one bishop, two earls, and two barons were to be assigned to hear the protests of all those who wished to complain of any contraventions of the Ordinances by any of the king's officers, whoever they might be.²⁸² Parliament should meet at least once a year, and if necessary twice, and in a convenient location. This was to ensure that legal cases might be brought to a proper conclusion and that men could bring forward complaints about the activities of royal officials.²⁸³ It is likely that this provision of the Ordinances was intended to address the grievance expressed in the parliament of April 1309 that petitions were no longer being received and answered in parliament. All the leading members of the royal administration, the chancellor and treasurer, the chief justices, the steward, keeper and controller of the king's household, the keeper of the king's privy seal, and other officials were to be appointed in parliament with the advice and approval of the magnates.²⁸⁴County sheriffs were to be appointed by the chancellor and treasurer and other members of the council then present.²⁸⁵ All royal officials, from the most senior to the most junior, were to swear to uphold the Ordinances when they were appointed.²⁸⁶

Up to this point the Ordinances ‘to a very considerable extent restated familiar questions which had been debated under Edward I’ and which had continued into the reign of Edward II.²⁸⁷ However, what gave the Ordinances a distinctive flavour was their insistence on ‘evil and deceptive counsel’ and on ‘evil counsellors’ as causes of the troubles of the king and his kingdom: this was the reason for the appointment of the chancellor, etc. only with baronial advice and approval; ²⁸⁸ ‘all the evil counsellors’ were to ‘be ejected and dismissed altogether’ and replaced by other more suitable persons.²⁸⁹ Gaveston was especially singled out for attention: he ‘has acted badly towards and has badly advised our lord the king and has incited him to do wrong in divers and deceptive ways; in taking possession for himself of all of the kingdom's treasure and sending it out of the kingdom; in drawing to himself royal power and royal dignity; in lording it over the estate of the king and of the crown, to the ruin of the king and of the people; and especially in estranging the heart of the king from his lieges’.²⁹⁰ Gaveston ‘as the evident enemy of the king and of his people’ was to ‘be completely exiled as well from the kingdom of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales as from the whole lordship of our lord the king overseas as well as on this side, forever without ever returning’. He was to leave England from the port of Dover no later than 1 November 1311. In a chilling anticipation of Gaveston's eventual fate, the Ordinances added that if he were found anywhere in the king's dominions after that date he would be treated as an enemy of the king and his people.²⁹¹

From 1311 until their annulment at the York parliament of May 1322 the Ordinances and their enforcement on the one hand and the king's attempts to evade them or to have them annulled on the other were to be a constant source of political tension between the king and his baronial opponents. The most notable of these was the king's first cousin, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, who erected a tablet in St Paul's cathedral to commemorate Edward II's acceptance of the Ordinances.²⁹² One chronicler even went so far as to talk about ‘the Ordinances of the Earl of Lancaster’.²⁹³ This element of personal animosity was present right from the start and it was to colour English politics for the next decade. No resolution was possible until either Lancaster and his (diminishing) band of supporters were victorious over the king or Edward II succeeded in destroying both Lancaster and the Ordinances. But even without such enmities, it is unlikely that the Ordinances could have achieved a successful end to the administrative and, above all, financial problems facing the government of England, whether the king or the magnates were in charge. As Michael Prestwich has perceptively remarked, ‘No regime proved capable of carrying out the programme [of the Ordinances]. What was desirable in the Ordinances was impractical, and what was practical was undesirable. In part, the Ordinances proved unworkable because the administrative mechanisms proposed, notably the payment of all the revenues of the land through the Exchequer, could not be put into effect at a time when the government was placed under very considerable strain. There was no proper mechanism suggested for the day-to-day supervision of government, and the concept of baronial parliamentary consent for many matters was difficult to put into effect.’²⁹⁴

PART THREE

GAVESTON'S LAST EXILE

Soon after the publication of the Ordinances Edward left London for Windsor and Langley, where he spent the next month, probably in a state of mental and physical exhaustion but also determined to fight back. On about 2 October he had a boatload of jewels moved from Westminster to the Tower of London, probably in order to give himself an independent source of revenue through pawning individual items as needed.²⁹⁵ On 12 October, only two days after the general publication of the Ordinances, he sent Robert de Newington and William de Lughtebergh to the pope and to seven English representatives at the Council of Vienne to deliver a protestation asking for the Ordinances to be annulled if they should prove prejudicial to him.²⁹⁶ These or later envoys took a letter asking the pope to absolve Edward from his oath to uphold the Ordinances and to send envoys to England.²⁹⁷ It is also possible that Edward hoped that papal intervention would allow Gaveston's return to England.²⁹⁸

Gaveston did not leave England from Dover on 1 November as required in the Ordinances;²⁹⁹ instead he departed on 3 November from an unidentified place on the Thames. He landed at a place inter Rutenos, which was probably somewhere on the coast of northern France or in Flanders.³⁰⁰ Although the author of the Annales Paulini states that Gaveston went to Bruges in the county of Flanders,³⁰¹ it is not known for certain where he spent his final exile. It is likely that Edward had intended him to go to the comparative safety of the duchy of Brabant.³⁰² Already, on 9 October, he had written to his brother-in-law and his sister Margaret, the duke and duchess of Brabant, asking them to receive Gaveston kindly and treat him honourably; and on 13 October Edward sent one of his household knights, Gerald Salveyn, to Philip IV asking him to give Gaveston safe conduct.³⁰³ Gaveston himself had sent Blasius de Siena, a merchant of the Frescobaldi, to Brabant ‘and elsewhere’ to make financial arrangements. It seems that even Queen Isabella, who might have been expected to be hostile to Gaveston, showed sympathy by offering him financial assistance from the revenues of the county of Ponthieu.³⁰⁴ On the other hand there is nothing to suggest that the king either attempted or was able to provide Gaveston with the financial support he received during his previous exile in 1308–9. It is likely that, for all the commands of the Ordainers, Edward and Gaveston did not expect to be parted for very long.³⁰⁵

Having got Gaveston out of the country, some at least of the former Ordainers then decided to move against his followers and everyone associated with him. At some point between 25 and 30 November a document which is sometimes described as a second set of Ordinances was presented to the king, having apparently been drawn up by the earls of Lancaster and Warwick.³⁰⁶ Although the articles have usually been regarded primarily as an attempt to impose further reform on the king's household,³⁰⁷ the real thrust of the document was the removal from royal service of anyone connected with Gaveston. Of the twenty-seven persons named in the articles, eighteen had links with him, including his nephews Bertrand and Arnaud Caillau who were to follow their uncle into exile.³⁰⁸ It was probably no coincidence that on 30 November the sheriffs of Cornwall, Berkshire and of seven other counties were ordered to take all Gaveston's castles, lands and other possessions into the king's hands. To emphasize the depths of his humiliation he was referred to not as the former earl of Cornwall or even as a knight but simply as Peter de Gaveston.³⁰⁹ All of this happened against a background of extreme tension between the king and the barons, which led to Edward's order on 28 November that the earls of Gloucester, Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke, Warwick and Arundel should remove the armed men whom they had brought to parliament.³¹⁰ There were even rumours that Gaveston had not left the country at all but was lurking somewhere in the West of England. In order to lay the rumours to rest two former Ordainers, Hugh de Courtenay and William Martin, were ordered on 30 November to search everywhere in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset where Gaveston might possibly be hiding.³¹¹

GAVESTON'S RETURN

What followed appears to have been the result of a deliberate decision by Edward II to defy the Ordainers by recalling Gaveston to England and reinstating him in his former position as earl of Cornwall; and to accompany this act of defiance with a public repudiation of the Ordinances. For Gaveston there was the knowledge that his wife Margaret de Clare was at York and about to give birth to their first child. For both Edward II and Gaveston the events of the early months were a desperate gamble, which were to lead to the death of Gaveston and a very real possibility of civil war.

The last act in the tragedy of Gaveston opened on 1 December 1311 when Gerard Salveyn was sent back to the continent by the king. Initially Salveyn's mission was to seek an extension of Gaveston's safe conduct from the king of France, but the length of his absence from England may, as Chaplais suggests, indicate that something more was afoot.³¹² On 19 December, the day after the conclusion of the 1311 parliament, writs of summons were issued for a new meeting of parliament at Westminster on 13 February to consider business left unfinished in the previous parliament.³¹³ So far there was no hint of what was to come, but over Christmas, which Edward spent at Westminster,³¹⁴ he appears to have decided to trust both his own fate and that of Gaveston to the north of England.³¹⁵ Edward set out from Westminster soon after Christmas and on 8 January 1312 arrived at Knaresborough in Yorkshire, where he was joined by Salveyn on 13 January.³¹⁶ It is highly probable that Salveyn was accompanied by Gaveston,³¹⁷ since a draft newsletter addressed to the archbishop of York recorded that on the same date the king, Gaveston (described as earl of Cornwall), and others arrived in York, only 18 miles away from Knaresborough.³¹⁸ It is likely that the king then rushed to York as soon as Gaveston joined him at Knaresborough.³¹⁹ Whether Gaveston had been directly summoned back to England by the king or whether he had decided that the risk of returning was better than the prospect of a miserable and uncertain exile there is no way of knowing. Gaveston had in any case good reason for hastening to York on 13 January, since his wife Margaret de Clare had just given birth to a daughter, Joan.³²⁰ On 20 February Edward II gave Margaret 40 marks to celebrate her churching and held a feast in the house of the Friars Minor at York, at which the guests were entertained by ‘King Robert’ and other minstrels.³²¹ This was to be the last celebration enjoyed by Edward and Gaveston.

It seems unlikely that Gaveston intended returning to his place of exile on the continent after celebrating the birth of his daughter,³²² or indeed that Edward would have allowed him to go. The die was now cast and after 13 January events unfolded quickly. On 16 January the king informed a gathering of Yorkshire knights and other notables that he had consented to the Ordinances under duress and that he had therefore revoked them.³²³ On 18 January the king announced officially that Peter de Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, had joined him at York on his orders, that Gaveston had been exiled against law and custom, and that he was ready to justify himself before the king, who regarded him as good and loyal.³²⁴ On 20 January orders were given for the restoration of all Gaveston's lands.³²⁵ On the same day the king wrote to the earls of Lancaster, Gloucester, Pembroke, Hereford, Surrey, Warwick, Arundel and Oxford, cancelling the summons to parliament, since he could not come to Westminster ‘for certain reasons’.³²⁶ The proclamation of Gaveston's return from exile and reinstatement was read at the Guildhall on 29 January.³²⁷ The anger of the earls at this news cannot have been assuaged by the duplicity of another royal order on the 26th that the Ordinances should continue to be observed ‘so far as they are not prejudicial to the king’,³²⁸ or by the appointment of Walter Langton as treasurer on the 23rd.³²⁹ Langton's volte-face was particularly infuriating. Having been first dismissed from office and imprisoned by Edward II in 1307, he had been released from prison under pressure from the Ordainers, to whose secrets he was privy, and was now once more a close confidant of the king, who undoubtedly needed his experience and financial skills.³³⁰

In the meantime the earl of Lancaster had written to the king demanding either the surrender of Gaveston to the barons or his renewed exile. Edward received and replied to these letters on 30 January, no doubt reacting with a display of defiance.³³¹ Edward was also making limited preparations for the possibility of war. On 28 January he ordered ten castles to be inspected and put in a state of defence,³³² and also gathered men and horses at York.³³³ This was probably the reason for the summons of forty-five notables from the north of England to be at York on 20 February to discuss ‘certain arduous and special matters’.³³⁴ There is nothing however to suggest that the king could have held out unaided against a full-scale onslaught if the magnates had decided to exert all their power. This may help to explain the rumour reported by the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi that Edward had made overtures to Robert Bruce, even offering to recognize him as king of Scots, in return for refuge and protection to Gaveston.³³⁵

THE PURSUIT AND SURRENDER OF GAVESTON

Meanwhile in London the anger of the earls was given free rein at a meeting of prelates and magnates summoned by the archbishop of Canterbury at St Paul's on 13 March.³³⁶ So little did the king appreciate the seriousness of the situation that on 8 March he had written to the archbishop asking him to give a hearing to a number of royal judges and clerks whom Edward was sending to discuss aspects of the Ordinances of especial importance to him.³³⁷ Instead the archbishop excommunicated Gaveston,³³⁸ and the earls then devised a plan for Gaveston's capture. According to the Vita, the earls of Lancaster, Pembroke, Hereford, Arundel and Warwick bound themselves by a mutual oath to act against Gaveston but kept their plans secret to avoid warning the king and Gaveston. The earl of Gloucester, the king's nephew and Gaveston's brother-in-law, was not a party to the plan but agreed to approve whatever the earls did. The earl of Lancaster then went to the north while the other earls proclaimed tournaments in various places as a way of gathering men without causing alarm.³³⁹ The author of the Annales Londonienses gives a more specific account of their plans. The earl of Gloucester was to look after the south (where he would be least likely to come into contact with the king); the earl of Hereford was put in charge of Essex and the east; Lancaster would look after North Wales (Venedocia) and the west; Robert de Clifford and Henry de Percy were to go to the Scottish March to prevent any possible contact between the king and Robert Bruce; and, most crucially, the earls of Pembroke and Surrey were deputed to capture Gaveston and then inform the king.³⁴⁰ The earls of Pembroke and Hereford and John Botetourt were also instructed by the council to prevent Walter Langton from presiding as treasurer at the exchequer, which they succeeded in doing on 3 and 4 April. Langton was told firmly that since he had taken an oath to uphold the Ordinances and he had now accepted appointment from the king as treasurer in breach of their provisions, he had committed perjury. The chamberlains of the exchequer were also told that they were not to deliver any money or treasure to anyone through whom it could reach ‘the enemy of the kingdom’.³⁴¹

Edward and Gaveston were making their own preparations in the north. At the end of February the king was briefly at Scarborough before returning to York where he remained until early April. This was probably when Gaveston was first placed for safety in Scarborough castle, which was on the coast and offered the possibility of reinforcement if besieged or of escape by sea to the continent or to Scotland.³⁴² From the middle of March the garrison and the defences of Scarborough were both strengthened.³⁴³

Gaveston briefly rejoined Edward at York on 31 March when he was given custody of both Scarborough and Carlisle castles.³⁴⁴ On 3 April he was reappointed to the office of justice of the forest north of the Trent, from which he had been removed after the publication of the Ordinances, and was made constable of Nottingham castle.³⁴⁵ On 4 April Edward ordered Gaveston, on pain of forfeiture not to surrender Scarborough to anyone except the king, even if the king himself were brought there a prisoner; and if the king were to die, he should hold the castle for his heirs.³⁴⁶ This was an extraordinary command which shows that Edward was prepared to meet any fate himself, while ironically not allowing for the possibility of Gaveston's own capture and death. It is probably no coincidence that on 28 March Edward had granted 700 marks to the Dominicans for the construction of a house for themselves in the park of the palace of Langley. This fulfilled a vow that Edward had made when in peril to found a house at Langley in which the Dominicans could ‘celebrate prayers daily for the souls of his ancestors, for himself, and for his state’.³⁴⁷ Edward was never more in need of prayer than now, but a further sign of his desperation was his order on 5 April for Gaston de Béarn, count of Foix and over 100 other Gascon lords to come to him with a ‘decent company’ of armed men. No date or place was set for their assembly, nor was it explained how they were to reach England.³⁴⁸ If Edward hoped that they would rally to the aid of their fellow Gascon, he was to be grievously disappointed.³⁴⁹

In early April Edward and Gaveston left York for Newcastle, which they reached on about 10 April and where they remained until early May. It is not clear why they did so. Possibly Edward hoped to make an agreement with Robert Bruce for the protection of Gaveston, but it was more likely an act of desperation not unlike the flight to Wales of Edward II and Hugh Despenser in the autumn of 1326.³⁵⁰ Edward and Gaveston were simply waiting for things to happen, and happen they did. On the afternoon of 4 May Thomas of Lancaster, Robert de Clifford, Henry de Percy and a large body of troops entered Newcastle, hot on the heels of Edward, Gaveston and the pregnant Queen Isabella, who fled for safety to Tynemouth, just downriver. Edward left Newcastle in such a hurry that he was forced to abandon his war-horses and a large quantity of arms and valuables.³⁵¹ On 5 April the fugitives left Tynemouth by sea for Scarborough, which they reached on 10 April and where they left Gaveston. Edward and Isabella then made their way to Knaresborough on 14 May and returned to York on 17 May.³⁵²

By this date the siege of Scarborough by the earls of Pembroke and Surrey, Henry de Percy and Robert de Clifford was already well under way.³⁵³ Gaveston's isolation was complete. Apart from the besieging army, Lancaster placed himself and his men between Scarborough and York, and also contributed men to the siege, so that there was no chance of the king's coming to his aid.³⁵⁴ The king remained in contact with Gaveston by letter during the siege, and may have tried to buy off the besiegers by offering bribes or other inducements.³⁵⁵ According to the Vita, the king took the initiative in offering detailed terms on which Gaveston would surrender, while Gaveston then persuaded Pembroke and the others to accept them.³⁵⁶ On 19 May Gaveston surrendered to the earls of Pembroke and Surrey and the other besiegers. Making it clear that they believed they were acting with full authority, Pembroke and the others promised on behalf of the community of the realm to take Gaveston to St Mary's abbey, York, where they would present the surrender terms to the king and to Lancaster or his representative. If the king were not willing to continue negotiations over Gaveston's future with the prelates, earls and barons between then and 1 August, Pembroke and the others promised to restore Scarborough to Gaveston's custody and to guarantee his safety until that date. Pembroke, Surrey and Percy agreed that they would forfeit all their property if any harm came to Gaveston, who promised in turn not to try to persuade the king to alter any of the terms of the agreement.³⁵⁷

By 26 May Gaveston's captors had joined the king at York, as stipulated in the agreement. There is no mention of Gaveston being with them, but it is reasonable to assume that he was. There is also no reference to the presence of either Lancaster or a representative. This may indicate, as the author of the Vita was to claim, that Pembroke had after all negotiated on his own initiative and without sufficiently consulting the other earls, and that Lancaster therefore did not feel bound by the terms.³⁵⁸ However, it is also likely that, if Lancaster were indeed absent, he already had other plans for Gaveston's fate.³⁵⁹

Lancaster was probably right in suspecting the hand of the king in the generous terms offered to Gaveston. The author of the Vita claimed that Edward hoped that before the August deadline the king of France and the pope would intervene to secure Gaveston's freedom, and that in return Edward was prepared to give up Gascony.³⁶⁰ While there is no evidence to confirm the latter part of the claim, it is known that a royal embassy had been sent to the papal curia in February 1312 and that in May two papal envoys had been appointed to try to make peace in England; a secret royal mission had been sent to France, probably for a similar purpose, between 15 May and 2 June, when the crisis over Gaveston was at its height.³⁶¹

THE DEATH OF GAVESTON

During the meeting with the king at York after Gaveston's surrender Edward allegedly attempted to placate his opponents by promising to satisfy all the earls' demands, while for their part Pembroke, Surrey and Percy renewed their oaths to forfeit their lands if any harm came to Gaveston.³⁶² On 3 June Edward summoned a parliament to meet at Lincoln on 23 July, presumably to discuss Gaveston's status further and still within the period laid down in the surrender agreement.³⁶³ At the end of the York meeting Gaveston was placed in the personal custody of Pembroke, who took him south in early June.³⁶⁴ According to the St Albans chronicler John Trokelowe, they were heading for Wallingford, where there was a powerful castle belonging to the earldom of Cornwall and which had been restored to Gaveston the previous February.³⁶⁵ If this was their real destination, it would have been enough to arouse suspicion in the minds of Gaveston's enemies among the earls, since Wallingford was close to the royal fortress of Windsor and was much more defensible than Scarborough had been.

On 9 June Pembroke and Gaveston reached Deddington in Oxfordshire. Pembroke then left Gaveston there to rest with a few of his retainers and went to visit his wife at his manor of Bampton about twenty miles away.³⁶⁶ In the meantime Edward and Gaveston had remained in contact by letter.³⁶⁷ When the earl of Warwick learned of Gaveston's presence so close at hand he raised a strong force and came to Deddington early in the morning of the 10th. The vivid details in the account of the event given by the Vita Edwardi Secundi cannot be vouched for, but the basic outline of the story is confirmed by the declaration made on 18 June, the eve of Gaveston's execution, by John Botetourt who had been present at his capture:³⁶⁸

Coming to the village … he [Warwick] entered the gate of the courtyard and surrounded the chamber. Then the earl called out in a loud voice: ‘Arise, traitor, thou art taken.’ And Piers, hearing the earl, also seeing the earl's superior force and that the guard which he had been allotted was not resisting, putting on his clothes came down from the chamber. In this fashion Piers is taken and is led forth not as an earl but as a thief; and he who used to ride palfreys is now forced to go on foot.

When they had left the village a little behind, the earl ordered Piers to be given a mare so that their journey might proceed more quickly. Blaring trumpets, yelling people, and savage shouting followed Piers. Now Piers has laid aside his belt of knighthood, he travels to Warwick like a thief and a traitor, and coming there he is thrown into prison.³⁶⁹

On the face of it, the earl of Pembroke's action in leaving Gaveston in a weakly defended place was at worst a deliberate act of treachery and at best one of extreme foolishness. Understandably, several chroniclers reported their suspicions or implied that Pembroke had connived in Gaveston's capture,³⁷⁰ but the vehemence with which Pembroke denied any responsibility and his siding with Edward II after Gaveston's death suggest that he was no more than extremely careless and failed to appreciate the ruthlessness of his former magnate allies.³⁷¹

After lodging Gaveston in Warwick castle, the earl of Warwick awaited the arrival of the earls of Lancaster, Hereford and Arundel before taking further action. On 18 June Lancaster, Hereford, Warwick and John Botetourt individually gave their approval of Gaveston's coming execution and gave one another guarantees of mutual support.³⁷² A semblance of a trial may even have been held before two royal justices, William Inge and Henry Spigurnel, who were then hearing cases in Warwick, and Gaveston condemned to death on the grounds that the Ordinances had declared him to be a traitor.³⁷³ The magnates were determined that Gaveston should not escape yet again but they were equally determined to provide themselves with legal justification for their action. On 19 June Gaveston was taken from his prison in Warwick castle³⁷⁴ and led in the direction of the earl of Lancaster's lands at nearby Kenilworth. Gaveston was taken to the top of Blacklow Hill, about two miles north of Warwick, and there Lancaster handed him over to two Welshmen for execution. One of them ran him through the body and the other cut off his head. Lancaster was informed but refused to believe that Gaveston was dead until he had seen his head. The earls then went their separate ways. Afterwards the Dominicans came and gathered up the body, sewing the head back on, and took it to their house at Oxford; but they dared not bury it because Gaveston had died excommunicate.³⁷⁵

Gaveston's life and death were a tragedy for himself, for his family and for all with whom he came into contact, not least the king. Edward II had begun his reign with the best of intentions but his persistent loyalty to Gaveston led him to make ill-judged and even dangerous decisions, the consequences of which were often complex and unforeseeable. At the same time many of the financial and administrative problems which Edward had inherited from his father and which the Ordainers had sought to resolve continued to defy solution. In the wider world of English politics and government, the death of Gaveston now created an undying enmity between Edward and the earls who were primarily responsible, Lancaster and Warwick. The earls of Pembroke and Surrey, whose reputations had been profoundly damaged, returned permanently to the king's side; and Edward became more than ever determined to annul the Ordinances. The scene was now set for another round of bitterness and upheaval.

¹ Prestwich, Edward I, 556–7 (morning); Chaplais, 23 (afternoon).

² E 101/370/16; Prestwich, Edward I, 557. According to Lanercost, 207, fast messengers (nuncii festini) were sent to the prince. It would be understandable if their messages were primarily oral rather than written. Something similar happened in 1327 when Edward III was informed ‘during the night’ (de deinz la nuyt) of his father's death at Berkeley on 21 Sept.: DL 10/253 (dated at Lincoln, 24 Slept.: letter from Edward III to John de Bohun, earl of Hereford).

³ E 101/373/15, f. 43v. Edward is recorded at both Lambeth and London on 10 July. The daily household roll, E 101/373/7, m. 1, shows he was at Lambeth on 8 July.

The movements of Edward II during his reign can be followed in Itinerary, ed. Hallam, which makes use of evidence from the records of the royal household and other sources. When reference is made to the royal itinerary, it may be assumed that this publication is the source, unless otherwise stated.

⁴ Guisborough, 379 (not Lanercost, 207, as stated in Johnstone, 127, n. 1); Prestwich, Edward I, 557.

⁵ Lanercost, 207. This was also the day on which a collection of silver vessels and plate was handed over to Walter Reynolds for Edward's use: E 101/369/19.

⁶ Lanercost, 209.

⁷ These and other details are recorded on the Fine Rolls and the Patent Rolls: CFR, 1272–1307, 558–9; CPR, 1301–07, 537. The homage of the bishop and the earl was also reported on 30 July in a letter written from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire to Sir Hugh de Neville by one of his valets, DL 34/12.

⁸ Itinerary, ed. Hallam, citing C 47/24/3, no. 1b.

⁹ Lanercost, 209. The chronicler also remarked that ‘despite the fearful vengeance inflicted upon the Scots who adhered to Bruce, the number of those willing to strengthen him in his kingship increased daily’: Lanercost, 207; Barrow, 173.

¹⁰ Brut, i, 202–3. Aymer de Valence did not in fact become earl of Pembroke until Oct. 1307: Phillips, 25.

¹¹ Chaplais, 23–6 (who suggests 6–13 Aug. as the time of his return); Hamilton, 37, 139 (who suggests that Gaveston was in London within two weeks of Edward I's death).

¹² Chaplais, 26: in June 1308 Edward II told both the pope and Philip IV that Gaveston had been absent at the time of the grant and was unaware of it: Foedera, II, i, 49–50; Chaplais, 28. Hamilton, 37, implies that Gaveston was at Dumfries on 6 Aug. but this does not seem possible.

¹³ Chaplais, 27; Hamilton, 146–7, n. 1. The original document is E 41/460; in its enrolled form it is recorded on the Charter Roll, C 53/94, m.9. Photographs of different portions of the charter are published in English Royal Documents, ed. P. Chaplais (Oxford, 1971), 61, plate 8b, and Chaplais, facing 18.

¹⁴ Chaplais, 27–9. While the seal was in the king's custody it was used to authenticate only four documents in total, all of them concerned with the grant of the earldom of Cornwall to Gaveston.

¹⁵ Ibid., 28.

¹⁶ Ibid., 31. This has been a general opinion among modern scholars: Phillips, 27, n. 1; Hamilton, 37; Maddicott, 70–1; Tout, Place of the Reign, 14 and n. 5.

¹⁷ Maddicott, 71.

¹⁸ E 101/373/15, f. 19; Chaplais, 26–7.

¹⁹ Hamilton, 38, 140. It is likely, as Pierre Chaplais suggested, that Gaveston and Margaret de Clare had been betrothed earlier, perhaps even before his creation as earl of Cornwall: Chaplais, 32–3.

²⁰ Prestwich, Edward I, 557, citing the chronicles of Jean Froissart composed much later in the fourteenth century.

²¹ Ibid., 557.

²² Phillips, 25.

²³ Barrow, 173.

²⁴ Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 175–7. The classic account of the financial problems of the reign of Edward I and their consequences is Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance.

On 1 Oct. Edward II gave orders for the treasurer to pay two separate sums of 20,000 marks, one for the expenses of the royal household and the other to Edward I's executors for the expenses of executing his will and of his funeral: C 81/58/ 22, 23. It is not clear whether either order was fulfilled. The order to the chancellor on 25 March 1308 to be at the exchequer daily to decide with the treasurer and other members of his council how the royal household could be kept supplied with money suggests that the situation was desperate: C 81/59/120.

²⁵ Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 176.

²⁶ Records of the Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1307–1312, ed. A. Beardwood, vi (London, 1969), 1.

²⁷ Ibid., 1; Fryde et al., Handbook, 104 (when changes in the holding of offices of state are noted, this is the source unless otherwise stated). At about the same time Ralph Baldock, bishop of London, who had been chancellor only since April 1307, was replaced by John Langton, bishop of Chichester, who had held the same office between 1292 and 1302. Another major office in the articulation of royal government, that of keeper of the privy seal, was filled by William Melton, another confidant of the new king who had earlier served the Prince of Wales as controller of his wardrobe and as chamberlain of Chester. For a more detailed account and discussion of the administrative appointments made at the beginning of the new reign see Tout, Place of the Reign, 69–72.

²⁸ According to Guisborough, 383, the lands were worth 5,000 marks p.a. and the treasure amounted to £50,000 in silver plus gold and jewels. The exact sums are unknown but these figures are certainly much exaggerated: Records, ed. Beardwood, 2, n. 5. In the month of Oct., for example, sums of money totalling nearly 2,000 marks, which Langton had deposited in the abbeys of Thorney and Leicester, and the priory and castle of Kenilworth, were paid into the king's wardrobe: E 101/373/15, f. 2v.

²⁹ Records, ed. Beardwood, 1–7. The details of Langton's debts are preserved in E 13/31, and the complaints against him in JI 1/1344. These are all edited in Beardwood. For a commentary on Langton's trial see Beardwood, ‘Trial of Walter Langton’, 1–45.

³⁰ Hughes, ‘Walter Langton’, 7.

³¹ PW, II, ii, 1–14. For further details see PROME, Parliament of Oct. 1307.

³² The archbishop had been suspended from office by Pope Clement V in Feb. 1306 and was still in exile in France: Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 231–6, 244–6.

³³ Lay Taxes, 29; PW, II, ii, 15–16; Maddicott, 71–2.

³⁴ CCR, 1307–13, 43.

³⁵ Guisborough, 379.

³⁶ The writs of summons state that the funeral, marriage and coronation would all be on the agenda: PW, II, ii, 1.

³⁷ DL 34/12; Prestwich, Edward I, 558.

³⁸ On its arrival in London the body had lain for successive nights in the church of Holy Trinity, then in St Paul's cathedral, before being taken to the churches of the Franciscan and Dominican friars. Masses were said for the former king in each of these, before his body was taken to Westminster Abbey where solemn masses were said by five bishops and by Cardinal Peter of Spain: Guisborough, 379.

³⁹ By comparison, Edward II's funeral in 1327 took place three months after his death. The organization of a royal funeral would have taken some considerable time and would also, as in 1327, have to yield place to other pressing events. There is nothing to suggest that Edward II delayed his father's funeral through any lack of feeling.

⁴⁰ Prestwich, Edward I, 558, where it is suggested that the eulogy known as the Commendatio Lamentabilis and written by John of London contains material from Bek's sermon. See also Weiler, ‘The Commendatio’, 114–30. For the text see Chronicles, ed. Stubbs, ii, 3–21.

⁴¹ The young Edward of Caernarfon had known Bek since at least 1293. On 4 Sept. 1307 Edward II showed his regard for the bishop by restoring to him the liberties of the diocese of Durham: Foedera, I, i, 5. On Bek's career see the article by C.M. Fraser in Oxford DNB.

⁴² Guisborough, 379–80. There are no other details of who was present.

⁴³ Menache, Clement V, 248; Prestwich, Edward I, 558. See also Walter Ullmann, ‘The curial exequies for Edward I and Edward III’, Ecclesiastical History Review, vi (1955), 26, 30–2; and D. L. D'Avray, Death and the Prince (Oxford, 1994), 70–9, 168–71.

⁴⁴ Prestwich, Edward I, 566. P. Lindley, Gothic to Renaissance (Stamford, 1995), 102, however argues that the suggestion of a wooden figure is mistaken.

⁴⁵ Binski, Westminster Abbey, 120. The funeral cost a total of £473, but nothing is known about the making of the tomb. It contrasted in its simplicity with the tombs of his father, his first wife Eleanor of Castile, and his younger brother Edmund of Lancaster, all of whom were buried at Westminster: see M. Duffy, Royal Tombs of Medieval England(Stroud, 2003), 92–9; Binski, Westminster Abbey, 107–20.

⁴⁶ Joan's funeral at Clare priory in Suffolk was attended by Edward and many of the nobility: BL, Cotton Ms., Cleopatra, C.III, f. 293 (extracts from the Dunmow Chronicle).

⁴⁷ As implied in Doherty, Isabella, 42–3.

⁴⁸ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 575–8, citing AN, J 654, no. 8 (the text is printed in ibid., 589–92). Cardinal Peter of Spain, who was present at Edward I's funeral, appears to have continued to offer mediation, while the French were represented by Louis of Évreux, who was Isabella's uncle but also on good personal terms with Edward II. Louis probably brought the memorandum just referred to. His meeting with Edward in London in early Nov. was clearly the prelude to the mission appointed by Edward II on 6 Nov.: E 101/373/7, m.2.

⁴⁹ Foedera, II, i, 11–12; E 101/624/15, m.1; Phillips, 25. See also Lalou, ‘Les Négociations’, 346. Boulogne was a convenient meeting place, in French territory but near to the English-controlled county of Ponthieu.

⁵⁰ Foedera, II, i, 24; CPR, 1307–13, 31; Ann. Paul., 258.

⁵¹ ‘notre trescher seigneur e pere’: Foedera, II, i, 25. A facsimile of the enrolled copy of the letter (C 70/2, m.8) is printed in E. M. Hallam, English Royal Marriages (London, 1981), doc. v. The possible failure of the marriage negotiations had been allowed for in the powers assigned to the envoys appointed by Edward II on 6 Nov.: E.A.R. Brown,Customary Aids and Royal Finance in Capetian France (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 15, n. 9.

⁵² Foedera, II, i, 28; CPR, 1307–13, 43.

⁵³ Foedera, II, i, 27; PW, II, ii, 18–19.

⁵⁴ CCR, 1307–13, 18.

⁵⁵ Cf. Doherty, Isabella, 43.

⁵⁶ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 578–80. The relevant documents are AN, J 633, nos. 29, 29 bis (no. 29 is printed in Brown, ‘The marriage’, 377–9), and AN, JJ 44, f. 67, no. 103 (printed in Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 592–3). The permanent assignment of dower lands to the value of the original £4,500 was not completed until March 1318, after the death of Edward I's widow, Margaret, made some of her own dower lands available for reassignment: CPR, 1292–1301, 451–3; CPR, 1317–21, 115–16.

⁵⁷ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 578; AN, J 633, no. 26. The document states that Edward performed the homage ‘personellement’ to Philip IV ‘solonc les fourmes du pees et des acors’, but does not make any mention of his also performing fealty. When Edward II performed homage to Philip V in 1320 he was also asked to perform an act of fealty and refused to do so, saying that he had neither been asked for nor had done fealty at Boulogne in 1308: Chaplais, Diplomatic Practice, vol. i, 359–60 (no. 199), citing C 47/29/9/25. See also the record of the five acts of homage performed by English kings between 1259 and 1320 in Chartulary of Winchester Cathedral, ed. A.W. Goodman (Winchester, 1927), 62–5 (no. 127).

⁵⁸ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 578, 580–2 (the demands are preserved in C 47/29/6/4).

⁵⁹ Ann. Paul., 258; Flores, 141; E 101/373/7, m.3. There is a depiction of Edward and Isabella at their wedding in a manuscript of Jean de Wavrin's Chroniques d'Angleterre (ending in 1336), made in Flanders, c. 1470–80, for Edward IV: BL, Royal Ms. 15. E.iv, f. 295v.

⁶⁰ Lalou, ‘Les Négociations’, 346, n. 120.

⁶¹ E 101/373/6, m.2. A facsimile of this portion of Edward II's household accounts is printed in Hallam, English Royal Marriages, doc. vi. See also E 101/373/7, m.3.

⁶² The wedding gifts are described and their value given in AN, J 631, no. 4: for the text see W.E. Rhodes, ‘The inventory of the jewels and wardrobe of Queen Isabella (1307–8)’, EHR, xii (1897), 517–21; see also Lewis, ‘Apocalypse’, 225–6. There is no evidence to support claims that Philip the Fair paid Edward II enormous sums as the marriage portion of Isabella or that these sums came from the confiscated treasure of the Templars. Philip was parsimonious in his dealings both with Edward I and Edward II and despite the lavish wedding gifts did not provide Isabella with a traditional marriage portion. This did not prevent him from trying, with mixed success, to obtain an aid for the marriage from his subjects: Brown, Customary Aids, 19, 25–33, and passim. Examples of the resistance encountered by Philip IV can be found in the 34 documents from communities in the diocese of Cahors: AN, J 356 (all dated 1309).

⁶³ Lewis, ‘Apocalypse’, 232: the fragment probably came from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

⁶⁴ Now preserved as Codex Gall. 16 in the Staatsbibliothek in Munich. See also ch. 2. Lewis, ‘Apocalypse’, 234, however argues that the psalter was commissioned by Edward I's widow, Queen Margaret, who was also Isabella's aunt, but presents no evidence other than ‘Edward's scarcely disguised indifference to his bride in preference to his favourite Gaveston’.

⁶⁵ The details are recorded in CFR, 1307–19, 14. See facsimile from C 60/106, m. 8 in Hallam, English Royal Marriages, doc. vii. In the light of later controversies it is significant that one of those present on 9 Feb. was Edward II's first cousin and future opponent Thomas, earl of Lancaster.

⁶⁶ Vita, 8–9.

⁶⁷ Ann. Paul., 259; Vita, 4–5 (‘for the great men of the land hated him, because he alone found favour in the king's eyes and lorded it over them like a second king, to whom all were subject and none equal’). Hugh Despenser the Younger was also accused later in the reign of behaving like a second king: Chaplais, 103, n. 62.

⁶⁸ Trokelowe, 64–5, 8; Haskins, ‘A chronicle’, 75–6; Guisborough, 383; Chaplais, 99–101.

⁶⁹ Lay Taxes, 29; Maddicott, 71–2.

⁷⁰ Ann. Paul., 257; Guisborough, 383; Hamilton, 38, 139; Chaplais, 100–1.

⁷¹ Ann. Paul., 257–8.

⁷² Chaplais, 34–40.

⁷³ Hamilton, 45, 144; Chaplais, 61–4.

⁷⁴ Vita, 6–7; Ann. Paul., 258–9; Hamilton, 45,144. According to the St Paul's annalist, Gaveston caused further anger among the earls and barons at another tournament which he held at Faversham in Kent to celebrate the king's marriage. A third tournament, due to be held at Stepney to mark the coronation, was cancelled by the king when Gaveston reported that the earls would have him killed if he took part: Ann. Paul., 259.

⁷⁵ Hamilton, 38, 139–40; Chaplais, 99–104. In 1311 the Ordainers also claimed that Gaveston had appropriated the royal treasure, even though they must have known this to be untrue: Chaplais, 99, 101, 105.

⁷⁶ Hamilton, 45–6, 144–5. He may however have become too closely involved in the Westminster dispute for his own good: Hamilton, 144, n. 67; Chaplais, 61–4.

⁷⁷ Hamilton, 46, citing the Polistorie of Christ Church, Canterbury, BL, Harley Ms. 636, f. 232. The translation is Professor Hamilton's.

⁷⁸ Trokelowe, 65; Hamilton, 47.

⁷⁹ Vita, 4–5; Ann. Paul., 258–9; Chaplais, 101–3.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 103–4. In 1308 special stables to house Gaveston's horses were built in the section of the palace of Westminster known as the privy palace, the area inhabited by the king and queen, their immediate servants, and any noblemen who enjoyed particular royal favour, such as Gaveston then and Roger Mortimer under Queen Isabella after 1327:KW, i, 534.

⁸¹ Chaplais, 104.

⁸² Brown, Customary Aids, 19, 25.

⁸³ For the text of the Boulogne Declaration see Phillips, 316–17. An original once existed as Cotton Charters, Faustina 24, but is no longer extant; a copy was found in the archives of the earl of Lancaster in 1322 (DL 41/1/37, m.7), but also no longer exists. It is known only through two seventeenth-century transcripts in Bod., Dugdale Ms. 18, ff. iv and 80.

⁸⁴ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 574–82. As already indicated, these pressures related to the duchy of Aquitaine and to Isabella's dower, but Edward II's initial refusal to follow Philip IV's arrest of the Templars in Nov. 1307 should be added to them: ibid., 585–6, 594–5.The best account of Edward II's attitude to the Templars and of the proceedings against them is in M. Barber, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2006), 217–29, esp. 217–20.

⁸⁵ Phillips, 26–8. See also Maddicott, 72–3; Hamilton, 46–7; Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 179.

⁸⁶ KW, i, 505.

⁸⁷ KW, i, 506.

⁸⁸ KW, i, 507, 513. On the history of the Painted Chamber and the details of the paintings (which are known only from 19th-century copies made before their destruction in the fire of 1834) see Binski, Painted Chamber, 17–24, 96–103, between 83 and 84, and at the end of the volume. See also Binski, Westminster Abbey, 127.

⁸⁹ KW, i, 507. Details of the work were recorded in a book of almost 100 folios, now in E 101/468/21. A summary of the repairs made to the palace, 1307–11, is contained in E 101/468/15: KW, ii, App. D, 1041–4. Over £400 was still owed in 1324 for the repairs carried out in 1308: SC 1/17/28.

⁹⁰ KW, i, 506–7.

⁹¹ The tables were already present during the reign of Edward I and were apparently permanent fixed structures rather than trestle tables which could be moved away after use: Biddle, ed., Round Table, 41; KW, i, 544.

⁹² KW, i, 507. The elevated staging was one of the requirements of the new Coronation Order used in 1308: Binski, Westminster Abbey, 130. The chair used by Edward presumably contained the Scottish Stone of Destiny. Edward II was the first English king to be crowned upon it, but it is not clear whether he believed this gave him an additional claim to rule over Scotland.

⁹³ Evans, English Art, 22, n. 1. She suggests that one of the kings is meant to be Edward the Confessor. Binski, Westminster Abbey, 124–6 (incl. a photograph on p. 125), suggests that the kings may represent founders of the abbey, such as Sebert and Edgar. The sedilia painting is reproduced in Saaler, Edward II, facing p. 82, as a depiction of Edward II, and in Prestwich, Edward I, front cover and facing p. 144, where it is described as a ‘figure of a king, very probably either representing, or modelled on, Edward I’.

⁹⁴ Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 246–7; Hamilton, 47. In the event the archbishop's return was to be delayed through illness until 24 March and the coronation was performed by the bishop of Winchester, deputizing for Winchelsey.

⁹⁵ Ann. Paul., 260; Hamilton, 47; Maddicott, 73, 83. A letter written to Edward II by Philip IV on 9 Feb. says that Charles of Valois and the other French representatives at the coronation would inform him more fully by word of mouth concerning ‘certain matters which greatly touch our honour and your own’: SC 1/34/7. The business could of course also have concerned the outstanding issues surrounding Isabella's dower and the duchy of Aquitaine as well as Gaveston.

⁹⁶ In chronological order, some of the main contributions to this debate are: B. Wilkinson, ‘The coronation oath of Edward II’, in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. J.G. Edwards, V.H. Galbraith & E.F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933), 405–16; Richardson & Sayles, ‘Early coronation records’, BIHR (1936, 1936–7, 1938); Richardson, ‘English coronation oath’, TRHS (1940); B. Wilkinson, ‘The coronation oath of Edward II and the Statute of York’, Speculum, xix (1944), 445–69; Richardson, ‘The English coronation oath’, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 44–75; R.S. Hoyt, ‘The coronation oath of 1308’, Traditio, xi (1955), 235–57; Hoyt, ‘The coronation oath of 1308’, EHR, lxxi (1956), 353–83; Richardson, ‘The coronation in medieval England’, Traditio, xvi (1960), 111–202; D. Sturdy, ‘“Continuity” versus “change”’, in Coronations, ed. J. M. Bak (Berkeley, 1990), 228–45, esp. 235–8.

⁹⁷ For the text of the oath see Foedera, II, i, 33 (Latin), 36 (French); Select Documents, 4 (both Latin and French versions).

⁹⁸ In Dec. 1305 Clement V released Edward I from the pledges he had made to the nobility in the Confirmatio Cartarum of 1297 and the Articuli super Cartas of 1300: Menache, Clement V, 251–3; Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 179. Professor Prestwich makes the point that ‘at the time, as later, the clause meant different things to different people’: ibid. However, H.G. Richardson long ago suggested that the actions of Edward I rather than Edward II were the real reason for adding the clause in 1308: ‘English coronation oath’ (TRHS), 135; Tout also argued that it was necessary to take into account the events of Edward I's reign when assessing the beginning of that of Edward II: Tout,Place of the Reign, 71–6.

⁹⁹ I have radically changed my views on the coronation oath since writing the article on Edward II for the Oxford DNB and the Introduction to the March 1308 parliament in PROME.

¹⁰⁰ Hoyt, ‘Coronation oath’ (EHR), 383.

¹⁰¹ Sturdy, ‘“Continuity”’, 237, following the lines of argument developed by Richardson and Hoyt.

¹⁰² Richardson argued that a clause in which the king promised to do nothing affecting the rights of the crown without the counsel of the prelates and great men of the realm had been added in 1274: Richardson, ‘English coronation oath’ (TRHS), 131–5; Richardson & Sayles ‘Early coronation records’, 11 (citing a letter from Edward I to Pope Gregory X, 19June 1275: PW, I, 381–2). However, the recent discovery by Dr Bernadette Williams of Trinity College Dublin of a copy of Edward I's oath suggests that there was no such additional clause on that occasion. I should like to thank Dr Williams for sharing her important discovery with me before publication: Williams, ‘Coronation oath’.

¹⁰³ Richardson, ‘English coronation oath’ (TRHS), 141–4. On the newly revised Coronation Order used for Edward II, technically known as the Fourth Recension, see ibid., 99–102, 107, 110; J. Brückmann, ‘The Ordines of the Third Recension of the Medieval English Coronation Order’, in Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T.A. Sandquist & M. R. Powicke (Toronto, 1969), 99–102. For a description of the Coronation Order, as laid down in the Fourth Recension, see Binski, Westminster Abbey, 130–1. One of the early manuscript copies of the Fourth Recension, which may even be the service book carried by Edward II's confessor John de Lenham, for use at the coronation, is BL, Harleian Ms. 2901. This is not to be confused with the more famous manuscript of the Fourth Recension, the Liber Regalis, made later in the fourteenth century, and now preserved as Westminster Abbey Ms. 38. As Richardson noted, there is no sign in Harleian Ms. 2901 of the coronation oath being added in haste or modified as an afterthought: Richardson, ‘English coronation oath’ (TRHS), 143–4. The royal government's record of the Coronation Order is contained in the Coronation Roll, C 57/1. Again, there is no sign of any last-minute modification of the coronation oath. The oath appears twice in Harleian 2901, once in its Latin form in the main body of the text (ff. 4v–5r) and again at the end in its French form (ff. 49v–50v).

¹⁰⁴ Denholm-Young, History and Heraldry, 116, 131. He held office until March 1308, when forced to resign by the opposition magnates at the Council of Northampton. The planning of the coronation and the revision of the Coronation Order presumably therefore began no later than Clifford's appointment as marshal.

¹⁰⁵ The clause referring to the laws of St Edward was in itself an addition to the coronation oath. Cf. Richardson, ‘English coronation oath’ (TRHS) 149–50; F.W. Maitland, Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1908), 99–100.

¹⁰⁶ Richardson, ‘English coronation oath’ (TRHS), 129–30.

¹⁰⁷ See also the discussion of Edward II and St Edward in ch. 2 of this book. The shrine of St Edward and the regalia were not of course in themselves new in 1308, but gained in significance when combined with other ‘Edwardian’ elements. I have also benefited from an unpublished paper by J.C. Parsons, ‘Rethinking English coronations, 1220–1308’.

¹⁰⁸ A. Hughes, ‘The origins and descent of the Fourth Recension of the English Coronation’, in Bak, ed., Coronations, 197–216. The melody of the Magnificat antiphon was drawn from that for St Edmund, king and martyr; the chant of Unxerunt Salamonem (the coronation anthem now known as Zadok the Priest) was restored to the order after its omission in the previous recension, and gave special emphasis to the anointing of the king with holy oil. Another significant change was the restoration, after two centuries, of Vivat rex, the acclamation of the new king, and its placing at the beginning of the service: ibid., 197–8. See also Hughes, ‘Antiphons and acclamations’, Journal of Musicology, vi, no. 2(Spring 1988), 150–68. Edward decided, after consulting his council, not to undergo a second anointing at his coronation with the Holy Oil of St Thomas, which his sister Margaret, duchess of Brabant, and her husband had brought with them and offered for his use: Phillips, ‘Edward II and the prophets’, 196–7.

¹⁰⁹ Richardson has shown that the account of the events of 1307–8 in the Ann. Paul. is often unreliable: ‘The Annales Paulini’, Speculum, xxiii (1948), 630–40.

¹¹⁰ Vita, 8–9 (for the coronation itself) and 7–9, 9–13 (for the comments on Gaveston). The Vita also says of Edward's marriage that ‘when the marriage had been duly celebrated the king of England returned joyfully to England with his wife’, again giving a picture at variance with that of the Ann. Paul.: Vita, 8–9. See also the discussion of the accounts of the coronation given by the contemporary chroniclers in Hoyt, ‘Coronation oath of 1308’ (EHR), 371–7.

¹¹¹ On 1 April, when political tensions were already fast developing, the chancellor was ordered to write to the Dominicans (an order especially favoured by Edward) who were about to assemble in their general chapter at Padua, asking them to pray for the soul of his late father ‘and also to pray for the king that God may give him grace to govern his realm and people to the honour of God and their profit’. While such statements are usually taken as formalities, it is possible that Edward II really was anxious about his ability to govern well. This side of his character should not be as lightly dismissed as it usually is.

¹¹² Ann. Lond., 261. The author of the Annales may have an axe to grind in his emphasis on everything that he considered to have gone wrong with the coronation and the banquet that followed. Difficulties with crowd control on occasions of great excitement seem to have been common. A wall also collapsed when Clement V was crowned at Lyons in Nov. 1305, killing 12 people including the duke of Brittany; and two knights had been crushed to death when Edward was knighted in Westminster Abbey in May 1306: Menache, Clement V, 16–17; Flores, 132.

¹¹³ Ann. Lond., 260; Flores, 141.

¹¹⁴ E 101/373/7, m.4. They had joined Edward and Isabella, at Eltham and the Tower of London respectively, a few days earlier. Mary had also been at Dover to meet her new sister-in-law, Isabella, on her arrival from France: E 101/373/15, f. 26v.

¹¹⁵ The liturgy of the coronation ceremony and the details of who performed what function are printed in Foedera, II, i, 33–6, from the text in the Coronation Roll, C 57/1. An abbreviated version appears in CCR, 1307–13, 53. See also Chaplais, 42–3. There is a representation of a king at his coronation, which is usually identified as either Edward II or Edward III and depicting a ‘Glory of Regality’, in Corpus Christi College Cambridge Ms. 20, f. 68. This manuscript which contains texts of the Apocalypse and the Coronation Order was made for Henry de Cobham c. 1330–9? (reproduced in J. Alexander & P. Binski, eds, Age of Chivalry (London, 1987), 201). Binski however argues that CCCC, Ms. 20 (and, by extension, the illustration) does represent the coronation of Edward II: Westminster Abbey, 130–1.

¹¹⁶ Ann. Paul., 262; Hamilton, 48.

¹¹⁷ Chaplais, 42–3, citing E 101/325/4, m.2; E 101/373/15, f. 51. The tapestries had been ordered from Ralph de Stoke on 26 Oct. 1307, and were clearly another part of Edward's detailed preparation for his coronation.

¹¹⁸ Ann. Paul., 262. It is necessary to keep saying ‘allegedly’ in relation to this account because of the possibility of exaggeration.

¹¹⁹ See PROME for an account of the Westminster parliament of March 1308. This was an assembly consisting of the magnates, the higher clergy and royal administrators. Knights and burgesses were not summoned.

¹²⁰ Ann. Paul., 262. The date is given as 28 Feb. in Hamilton, 48; Maddicott, 74.

¹²¹ Guisborough, 381–2; cf. Ann. Paul., 262–3.

¹²² Cf. Hamilton, 48–9; Maddicott, 74.

¹²³ For the details see Maddicott, 77–80; Hamilton, 49–50. The timber so recently used for temporary buildings during the coronation was taken downriver to repair the defences of the Tower of London: KW, i, 507.

¹²⁴ Maddicott, 80.

¹²⁵ Ann. Paul., 263.

¹²⁶ English Historical Documents, 1189–1327, ed. H. Rothwell (London, 1975), 525–6; Maddicott, 81–2; Hamilton, 50–1. Since there is no roll for the April 1308 parliament, there is no ‘official’ record of the articles presented by the earl of Lincoln. The complete French text is known only from BL, Burney Ms. 277, f. 5v; a French version of the first article is preserved in the Ann. Lond., 153–4, and a Latin version of the same in the Gesta Edwardi, 33–4, written at Bridlington in Yorkshire: cf. Maddicott, 81.

¹²⁷ PROME, Parliament of 1321, SC 9/24, item 2. On that occasion however Despenser was accused of having employed the declaration for his own purposes.

¹²⁸ Maddicott, 86–7, where it is argued that Lancaster was neutral, awaiting developments.

¹²⁹ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 585–7, citing AN, J 654, no. 25 (the text is printed in ibid., 593–5.

¹³⁰ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 587–8. The newsletters are preserved in Lincoln, Dean and Chapter Muniments, D ii/56/1, nos 39 & 42, and may be part of the papers of Robert Darcy, one of Gaveston's retainers. No. 39 is printed in Maddicott, App. 1, no. ii. See also Maddicott, 84; Phillips, 28. It is not clear whether the sum of £40,000 was in sterling or in livres tournois (equivalent to £10,000 sterling).

¹³¹ Hamilton, 50–3; Maddicott, 83–8; Phillips, 28.

¹³² Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 588; Maddicott, 84. The French envoys and the earls of Lancaster and Richmond dined with Edward II on that date: E 101/373/7 (daily household roll, 1 Edward II).

¹³³ Hamilton, 53; Maddicott, 87–8; Phillips, 28. On the question of Gaveston's title see Chaplais, 45–6. The gathering at Northampton in early June mentioned in Lanercost, 211, is not confirmed by any other source and may be confused with the ‘parliament’ held at Northampton on 4 Aug.

¹³⁴ Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 588.

¹³⁵ Hamilton, 53–5, 146–7.

¹³⁶ Edward II was concerned in 1308 that French agents were about to enter Gascony in order to seize the possessions of the Templars: Brown, ‘Repercussions’, 585–6. The report of John Hastings, seneschal of Gascony, in about 1311, suggests that this did in fact happen: Gascon Register A (Series of 1318–19, ed. G.P. Cuttino, 3 vols (Oxford, 1975), ii, 691–6 (item no. 331). Their presence could also pose an obvious danger to Gaveston.

¹³⁷ Hamilton, 55–6, 147; Maddicott, 83–4, 88.

¹³⁸ CCR, 1307–13, 70.

¹³⁹ For an account of events in Scotland see Barrow, 178–82.

¹⁴⁰ Ann. Paul., 264; PW, II, ii, 22–3; Hamilton, 69; Maddicott, 90. There is no record of any summons being issued by the king to the earls and barons to attend at Northampton on 4 Aug. It was evidently an informal, though highly significant gathering. The other councillors whom the barons wanted to remove were William Inge, William de Bereford, Nicholas de Segrave (a retainer of the earl of Lancaster, who was clearly still regarded as an ally of the king), and two others unnamed.

¹⁴¹ Ann. Paul., 26; Maddicott, 90–2; Hamilton, 67–9, 152–3; Phillips, 28–9. The author of the Vita commented on what he described as the fickleness and lack of principle of the earls: Vita, 15–17. On the other hand Gaveston's departure for Ireland had removed the major cause of grievance. None of the magnates at this stage wanted a renewed danger of civil war.

¹⁴² Ann. Paul., 264.

¹⁴³ Maddicott, 92–4. The latest suggested explanation is that the estrangement had no connection with Gaveston or any of his retainers, as might seem likely, but arose from an initially trivial dispute involving Gerard Salveyn, escheator north of the Trent, and the manor of Wilton near Pickering in Yorkshire, held by one of Lancaster's knights: A. King, ‘Thomas of Lancaster's first quarrel with Edward II’, in Fourteenth-century England, iii, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, Suffolk & Rochester, NY 2004), 31–45, esp. 36–40.

¹⁴⁴ Foedera, II, i, 49–50.

¹⁴⁵ Foedera, II, i, 54, 63–4. Louis of Évreux dined with the king on 12 Sept.: Bod., Ms. Latin Hist. c. 4, m.3

¹⁴⁶ Edward had begun their suppression on 10 Jan. 1308 but had not been convinced of their guilt and delayed taking further action against them: Foedera, II, i, 16–20, 55; Lalou, ‘Les Négociations’, 348. During the summer English envoys had been conducting negotiations concerning Gascony and the Templars with Philip IV at Poitiers. Since the papal curia was then at Poitiers, the envoys were subject to influences from both Philip IV and Clement V: Lalou, 348.

¹⁴⁷ This was done in deference to both the pope and the archbishop of Canterbury: Menache, Clement V, 80–1; Maddicott, 94.

¹⁴⁸ Foedera, II, i, 53, 65; CPR, 1307–13, 94; Maddicott, 94. This was a major concession since Edward II regarded them both as bitter enemies for their support of Bruce: Barrow, 151–3.

¹⁴⁹ Ann. Paul., 264. Reynolds had been elected bishop in Nov. 1307 after considerable pressure from Edward II on the chapter of Worcester and the use of royal influence at the papal curia: Menache, Clement V, 61–2.

¹⁵⁰ Foedera, II, i, 63; Ann. Paul., 265.

¹⁵¹ Ann. Paul., 265. This expedition was presumably intended to replace the general summons for a muster at Carlisle on 22 Aug. which had been issued in June 1308: Maddicott, 106.

¹⁵² According to the Annals of St Pauls, Philip IV of France even summoned both Edward II and Robert Bruce to attend a ‘parliament’ in France: Ann. Paul., 266.

¹⁵³ PW, II, ii, 23–4. See also the Introduction to the Westminster parliament of April 1309 in PROME. It is not known how many of the earls actually attended the meeting. The earls of Lincoln, Richmond and Gloucester were there, since they dined with the king on 3 March (Bod., Ms. Latin Hist. C.5, m.10), and Pembroke must have been present as well, before setting off for Avignon. It is not known whether Lancaster attended.

¹⁵⁴ Foedera, II, i, 69. On the same date, in a gesture directed towards Philip IV, he ordered the collection of the ‘queen's gold’ (the queen's share) of fines levied in the lands of the earldom of Chester since the king's marriage: CCR, 1307–13, 106.

¹⁵⁵ Pembroke's account for the mission ran from 6 March until 17 July: E 101/372/23. On the embassy see also Chaplais, 54–8.

¹⁵⁶ Foedera, II, i, 71; Hamilton, 71, 154.

¹⁵⁷ Registrum Ricardi de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, ed. W.W. Capes (London, 1909), 451, gives the date of the bull as 25 April. However, Chaplais argues convincingly that the date was more probably c. 21 May: Chaplais, 58–9. This seems likely since Pembroke was still at Avignon on 24 May, after which he made a short stay at his estates at Rancon in Poitou before returning to England: Phillips, 29, n. 4.

¹⁵⁸ Reg. Swinfield, 452–3; Hamilton, 73, 155; Chaplais, 59–60; Maddicott, 103. On 27 May the pope also announced his intention of sending an embassy of his own to England: SC 7/10/33.

¹⁵⁹ Ill health is a possible explanation, since Lincoln was now nearly sixty and died early in 1311.

¹⁶⁰ On the Dunstable tournament see especially Maddicott, 95–7, 99–102; and A. Tomkinson, ‘Retinues at the tournament of Dunstable, EHR, lxxiv (1959), 70–89; and also Hamilton, 72; Chaplais, 60.

¹⁶¹ Hamilton, 72, 154. In some quarters however opinion on Gaveston appears to have been changing and becoming more favourable: Chaplais, 60–8, citing a letter to Gaveston from the bishop of Winchester and another from Roger de Aldenham, a monk of Westminster Abbey and previously bitterly opposed to Gaveston.

¹⁶² Maddicott, 97–8; Lay Taxes, 30. For the form of taxation see PW, II, ii, 38–9.

¹⁶³ Here I have drawn heavily on the summary and discussion of the articles in Maddicott, 97–8, 102. See also Hamilton, 72. The original document, written in French, was enrolled as a schedule on the dorse of membrane 22 of the Close Roll for 3 Edward II (C 54/ 127; CCR, 1307–13, 175). The text is not calendared in the Calendar of Close Rolls, apart from the heading ‘Articles for the good government of the kingdom presented by the barons to the king for his acceptance’. The full French text was however published from the Close Roll in RP, i, 443–5 (Appendix to vol. i). The annotated copy of RP in the Public Record Office Library notes that these articles are also to be found in SC 8/294/14698 and that SC 8/14/698 is a fragmentary copy of part of these articles. The French text of the articles was reprinted from the RP edition, but with the omission of articles 3, 7, 9 and 11, in Select Documents, 6–8. The title given in Select Documents,’ The Stamford Articles’, is somewhat misleading since, although Edward II gave his answers to the articles at the Stamford parliament in July–Aug. 1309, the articles were, as the text makes clear, originally presented at the Westminster parliament of 27 April 1309.

¹⁶⁴ See the discussion in Maddicott, 98–102, and also in G.L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), 119–20.

¹⁶⁵ See PROME, Westminster Parliament of Jan.–Feb. 1327, C 65/1; York Parliament of Jan. 1333, C 49/6/20; and the York Parliament of Feb. 1334, C 65/4. The Latin word communitas and the French words commune and communalte are consistently translated in the 1307–37 section of PROME as ‘community’ in order to avoid giving a premature and probably misleading rendering of them as ‘Commons’.

¹⁶⁶ Maddicott, 97, n. 3.

¹⁶⁷ Chaplais, 58–9.

¹⁶⁸ Hamilton, 73, 155.

¹⁶⁹ Maddicott, 103, 105; Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 257–8. On 8 July the king told his chancellor to write to the archbishop forbidding him to perform the consecration during the meeting of parliament and adding that the order was to be issued in such a way that if the archbishop disobeyed he could be attached to answer before the king's court:CCW, 291.

¹⁷⁰ Bod., Ms. Latin Hist. C.5, m.10.

¹⁷¹ Maddicott, 103. Edward put a brave face on things in a letter of 8 July in which he said he had summoned the prelates and nobles to Stamford where ‘with the aid of God and the counsel of the said nobles’ he would ‘ordain much business touching the honour and profit of himself and his crown and realm’: CCW, 291.

¹⁷² SR, i, 153–4. Hamilton, 73, 155; Maddicott, 103.

¹⁷³ CCR, 1307–13, 158–9.

¹⁷⁴ PW, II, ii, 37–8. The only reference to the assembly as a parliament is in the Close Roll enrolment of the articles presented to Edward II at the Westminster parliament in April 1309 together with the answers provided by the king at Stamford in July. The writs of summons were issued on the day on which the papal bull concerning Gaveston was read out.

¹⁷⁵ Maddicott, 103.

¹⁷⁶ Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 259.

¹⁷⁷ For the articles and the king's replies see RP, i, 443–45, and Select Documents, 6–8. For the Statute of Stamford see SR, i, 154–6. The text of the statute also appears in the annals of London: Ann. Lond., 158–61. See also Maddicott, 103–4; Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 181.

¹⁷⁸ Chaplais, 68; Hamilton, 73, 75, 155; Maddicott, 104. The various documents relating to Gaveston's surrender of lands and the re-granting of the earldom are in CCR, 1307–13, 225–6.

¹⁷⁹ CCR, 1307–13, 224–5; Foedera, II, i, 78.

¹⁸⁰ Foedera, II, i, 79.

¹⁸¹ Foedera, II, i, 84; CPR, 1307–13, 180. The full text of the letter, with the names of those who sealed it, appears to be recorded only in Ann. Lond., 161–5. The letter was circulated for sealing, which explains the inclusion of the seals of the earls of Lancaster and Ulster, who were not present at Stamford. The letter was written in response to a list of grievances brought to England and delivered to the king in February 1309 by the papal envoy, Arnald d'Aux, bishop of Poitiers: Ann. Paul., 161, 165–7. The letter is also an indication that the interests of the lay magnates and the prelates did not by any means coincide, even when they were both in conflict with the crown. It also shows how the king was determined to preserve his rights vis-à-vis the papacy, even when he was looking for papal support for the return of Gaveston from exile.

¹⁸² Lay Taxes, 30.

¹⁸³ Maddicott, 104–5. Denton is however sceptical of the argument that Lancaster and Winchelsey were in effect joint leaders of the political movement which led to the appointment of the Ordainers, and argues that ‘whatever Winchelsey's influence in the background, and whatever his involvement in 1310 and after, the opposition which was building up in 1309 was essentially baronial’: Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 260–4.

¹⁸⁴ Hamilton, 75–6, 155–6. As Professor Hamilton points out, the real problem was not so much the gifts Gaveston received from the king for himself as the favours he procured for others which set him apart from his peers.

¹⁸⁵ Vita, 16–17.

¹⁸⁶ There are problems in identifying who was involved in this dispute. See Dr Wendy Childs's discussion in Vita, 16, n. 31; Chaplais, 69–71; Maddicott, 93–4, 138–41. The dispute tended to flare up whenever relations between Edward II and Lancaster were strained. See the article on Charlton by J.F.A. Mason in the Oxford DNB.

¹⁸⁷ Warwick was described as ‘the black dog of Arden’; Gloucester as ‘whoreson’; Lincoln as ‘burst belly’; Lancaster as ‘churl’; and Pembroke as ‘Joseph the Jew’: see Hamilton, 75, 155; Chaplais, 69; Maddicott, 109. The only contemporary chronicles to record Gaveston's behaviour are the Vita, 16–17, which speaks only of ‘base nicknames’, without giving any details, and the Flores, 152, which cites Warwick's nickname. The earliest sources for the other names all date from early in the reign of Edward III. Even though Gaveston was himself the victim of slander, not all of it merited, there is no reason to doubt the general nature of his behaviour and his extreme foolishness. There is a very thorough discussion of Gaveston's use of nicknames and the sources in which they are recorded in Tout, Place of the Reign, 12–13, n. 2. The description of Gloucester as ‘whoreson’ was particularly foolish since it reflected on Joan of Acre, the king's sister, and the mother both of the earl of Gloucester and of Gaveston's own wife. The reference was to Joan's marriage in 1290, to Ralph de Monthermer, which Edward I had strongly disapproved of.

¹⁸⁸ Hamilton, 74, 155.

¹⁸⁹ Guisborough, 384; Maddicott, 110; Hamilton, 76–7.

¹⁹⁰ PW, II, ii, 40–42.

¹⁹¹ Davies, Baronial Opposition, 548–9, App.7. The meeting of 18 Oct. is described as a ‘parliamentum’ only in Guisborough, 384; in his letter to the earl of Lincoln the king describes it as a council.

¹⁹² Maddicott, 106, citing W.S. Thomson, A Lincolnshire Assize Roll for 1298, Lincolnshire Record Soc., xxxvi (Lincoln, 1944), lxvi. See also the important study by Maddicott, English Peasantry.

¹⁹³ For an excellent summary of the issues see Maddicott, 106–8.

¹⁹⁴ Maddicott, citing E 404/5.

¹⁹⁵ Prises were subject only to the customary definition that they should be ‘reasonable’, in much the same way as feudal incidents had been in the reign of John, until these were forcibly defined by Magna Carta in 1215: Maddicott, 106–8.

¹⁹⁶ Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 181–2.

¹⁹⁷ CCW, 1244–1326, 303–4; Maddicott, 108–9.

¹⁹⁸ PW, II, i, 41; Maddicott, 108; Lay Taxes, 30.

¹⁹⁹ Maddicott, 107–8, citing the preamble to the ordinance of 1311 demanding an end to prises: ‘It is to be feared that the people of the land will rise by reason of the prises and the diverse oppressions made in these times’; Maddicott, English Peasantry, 22–4. On 18 Dec. Edward ordered the arrest of those who were spreading false rumours and sowing discord: Foedera, II, i, 101.

²⁰⁰ PW, II, ii, 40–2.

²⁰¹ Vita, 16–17.

²⁰² Vita, 18–19.

²⁰³ CPR, 1307–13, 206–7.

²⁰⁴ Vita, 18–19.

²⁰⁵ Ann. Lond., 167–8; Maddicott, 110; Hamilton, 77.

²⁰⁶ Ann. Lond., 168–9; Munimenta Gildhallae Lond., ed. H. T. Riley (London, 1860) II, i, 198–9; Maddicott, 111, nn. 1 & 2. Of the various documents of protest and grievance received by Edward II in 1307–10, the only one to be recorded officially is the articles presented at the Westminster parliament of April 1309 and answered at the Stamford parliament in the following July. As noted above, this document was entered on the Close Roll.

²⁰⁷ Ann. Lond., 168–9; cf. Maddicott, 111.

²⁰⁸ Vita, 18–19. In the Denholm-Young edition of the Vita Edwardi Secundi, 9, the translation of the last part of this passage reads ‘and if in any emergency the realm should be threatened, by their discretion adequate and appropriate action should be taken’. This is the result of a different editorial reading of the text. See Vita, 18, note.

²⁰⁹ Vita, 18–21. Although there is no direct confirmation of the Vita account from other sources, it probably reports accurately the sense of what happened between 27 Feb. and 16 March when Edward II agreed to the appointment of the Ordainers.

²¹⁰ Edward's letters patent were enrolled on the Patent Roll and are also recorded in the Annales Londonienses: CPR, 1307–13, 215 (the full text is in Foedera, II, i, 105); Ann. Lond., 169–70. Edward II's attempts to have the Ordinances annulled began as early as 12 Oct. 1311: see Phillips, 40–1, 46–8.

²¹¹ The letter is preserved only in Ann. Lond., 170–1, and in Munimenta Gildhallae Lond., II, i, 200–2. See also Maddicott, 111–12.

²¹² Maddicott, 111–12; Hamilton, 80, 157; Phillips, 30. There is a detailed analysis of the backgrounds and political alignments of the Ordainers in J.H. Trueman, ‘The personnel of medieval reform’, Mediaeval Studies, xxi (1959), 247–71. On the role played by the archbishop of Canterbury in 1310 see Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 261–2. Winchelsey took an oath to uphold the work and the decisions of the Ordainers, ‘saving my estate and order and the liberty of the Church of Rome’: Denton, 261. The names of the Ordainers are listed in Ann. Lond., 172. For the form of election see PW, II, ii, 43. A notarial certificate of 17 March relating to the appointment of the Ordainers survives as BL, Cotton Charter XVI. 58. Robert de Clifford replaced Robert Fitz Roger after the latter's death.

Evidence that the French court was kept well informed about events in England in March 1310 can be found in BL, Add. Charter 11241, which contains the barons' petition for the reform of the realm, Edward II's letters patent of 16 March allowing the election of the Ordainers, the five preliminary ordinances issued shortly after their election, and the names of the Ordainers: see P. Chaplais, ‘Chartes en déficit’, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, cix (1951), 96–103.

²¹³ Lay Taxes, 30.

²¹⁴ Barrow, 173–87. For a map of the situation in Scotland, 1307–9, see ibid., 167.

²¹⁵ Ibid., 186, 190–2.

²¹⁶ Letter from Edward II to the earl of Pembroke: SC 1/49/6, cited in Maddicott, 113, and Phillips, 31, n. 2. The letter is published in CDS, iii, no. 95. SC 1/49/6 is part of a rich vein of material concerning the earl of Pembroke preserved in vol. 49 of Ancient Correspondence (SC 1) and elsewhere in TNA, which I used extensively in writing my biography of Aymer de Valence. The preservation of this material is probably the result of Pembroke's personal archives coming into royal hands after his death in 1324.

²¹⁷ According to Edward, the earls of Gloucester, Surrey, Cornwall and Richmond had all agreed to serve in Scotland, and he hoped that Pembroke would join them: SC 1/49/6. It is possible that Edward wrote in similar vein to the other absent earls.

²¹⁸ Gaveston had left court in Feb. and was supposed to be somewhere in the north at Easter (19 April). He was again with the king on 11 May, but had left to prepare for the coming campaign by mid-July. He rejoined the king, by the middle of Sept., possibly as early as the 7th: Hamilton, 82, 158. The Vita, 22–3, reports that Gaveston was even in danger of assassination in 1310–11. Hamilton, 91 & 162, n. 2, (citing CPR, 1307–13, 277) suggests that the Thomas de Walkingham of Yorkshire, for whose death Gaveston and six others had been pardoned in Sept. 1310, might have made an attempt on Gaveston's life.

²¹⁹ His appointment may have been discussed at the council meeting in June, but the actual appointment was not made until 1 Sept. when the king was at Newcastle upon Tyne: Foedera, II, i, 116.

²²⁰ Ann. Lond., 174; Ann. Paul., 269; Maddicott, 114.

²²¹ C 47/5/8; Ann. Lond., 174; Vita, 21–3; Phillips, 31; Maddicott, 114.

²²² Vita, 22–3.

²²³ There are detailed accounts of the 1310–11 campaign in C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces (East Linton, 1997), 47–53; and D. Simpkin, ‘The English army and the Scottish campaign of 1310–1311’, in England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century, ed. A. King & M. Penman (Woodbridge, Suffolk & Rochester, NY, 2007), 14–39.

²²⁴ E 101/374/5, ff. 76–7; McNamee, 49, 69; Simpkin, ‘English army’, 22–3.

²²⁵ McNamee, 48–9, 69; Barrow, 192–3. In the meantime Robert Bruce had also made important advances in Argyll.

²²⁶ Details taken from Itinerary, ed. Hallam. It is often difficult to distinguish the king's movements from those of his privy seal and of his court and household. McNamee, 49, suggests that Edward had already reached Berwick by 3 Nov. He could have travelled from Edinburgh to Berwick by sea.

²²⁷ Lanercost, 214.

²²⁸ Vita, 22–5; McNamee, 49–50.

²²⁹ CDS, iii, no. 33; Hamilton, 84, 158.

²³⁰ Lanercost, 214; Hamilton, 84, 158.

²³¹ CDS, iii, no. 197; McNamee, 51; Hamilton, 84, 158.

²³² CDS, v, no. 554; McNamee, 51–2. As Dr McNamee suggests, Walwayn may have been imprisoned to prevent the news of Edward's secret contacts with Bruce leaking out.

²³³ Vita, 38–41. This report very clearly refers to late 1311 and early 1312, after Gaveston's return to England from his final exile.

²³⁴ Hamilton, 84–5, 158–9; McNamee, 51.

²³⁵ Hamilton, 84–5, 158–9. There is valuable information about these events in two letters written from Berwick on 27 March, one from an unknown writer probably to the chancellor, the other from the king to the chancellor: C 47/22/10/8.

²³⁶ Guisborough, 386.

²³⁷ On 28 Feb. the king wrote demanding 4,000 marks from the executors of the earl of Lincoln; even the money owed to Gaveston for his men's wages was slow in payment: Hamilton, 159–60, n. 54.

²³⁸ McNamee, 52–3, 69.

²³⁹ Ann. Paul., 269; Hamilton, 87, 160.

²⁴⁰ McNamee, 53.

²⁴¹ Ann. Lond., 173–4.

²⁴² The preliminary ordinances are recorded in Ann. Lond., 172–3, and in Foedera, II, i, 113 (proclamation of 2 Aug.) and RP, i, 446–7. See also Maddicott, 112–13; Hamilton, 79.

²⁴³ In Feb. 1311 these four earls were said to be in process of deciding certain matters about which the unnamed writer could not yet tell his correspondent: C 47/22/10/10. The four were also present together in London in July 1311: Councils and Synods, ed. F.M. Powicke & C.R. Cheney ii, part 2 (Oxford, 1964), 1314; Phillips, 31; Maddicott, 113; M. Prestwich, ‘The Ordinances of 1311 and the politics of the early fourteenth century’, in Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth-century England, ed. J. Taylor & W. R. Childs (Gloucester, 1990), 12–14.

²⁴⁴ Prestwich, ‘Ordinances of 1311’, 14.

²⁴⁵ Denton, Robert Winchelsey, 263–4.

²⁴⁶ M. Prestwich, ‘A new version of the Ordinances of 1311’, BIHR, lvii (1984), 193; Maddicott, 116. Botetourt was sent from London by the custos regni and the king's council on 27 May to visit the king at Berwick in order to expound certain matters especially concerning the king. He returned to London on 5 July: Bod., Tanner Ms. 197, f. 44. The Ordinances are not mentioned by name but this is clearly the business involved.

²⁴⁷ Prestwich, ‘New version’, 190, 192–3.

²⁴⁸ Edward was especially resistant to any language that described Gaveston as a traitor. He maintained this opposition after Gaveston's death in June 1312 and eventually won his point in the peace made between himself and Gaveston's former enemies in Nov. 1313.

²⁴⁹ Ann. Paul., 268–9; Maddicott, 113. Another royal ally, John Sandal, replaced Reynolds as treasurer.

²⁵⁰ Foedera, II, i, 113.

²⁵¹ E 159/84, m.13d; Maddicott, 114.

²⁵² This in effect countered the second of the preliminary ordinances by which the Ordainers were to do their work in London.

²⁵³ CDS, iii, no. 177; Maddicott, 114.

²⁵⁴ Foedera, II, i, 116; CFR, 1307–19, 73; Hamilton, 82, 158. These appointments were made on 1 Oct. when Gaveston and the king were at Biggar in Scotland.

²⁵⁵ CDS, iii, no. 204; Maddicott, 116.

²⁵⁶ Ann. Lond., 175; Ann. Paul., 269. The earl was buried ‘with great honour’ in the Lady Chapel of St Paul's cathedral of which he had been a benefactor.

²⁵⁷ Bek does not appear to have played any major part in the events of 1310–11, although his death took place at Eltham in Kent, close to London. He was buried in his cathedral at Durham on 3 May. Since Edward II was still at Berwick, he may well have attended, although there is no record of this. Earlier, on 20 Feb., he had made an offering of a gold cloth at the tomb of St Cuthbert: Bod., Tanner Ms. 197, f. 63v. After the bishop's death the king reserved for his own use Bek's famous Weardale stud of 240 horses and the pick of his jewels, and later bought from his executors his gold plate for 2,075 marks (£1,383). He also bought for £500 Bek's campaign tents, and ten stabuli for destriers and other horses: see the article on Bek by C. M. Fraser in Oxford DNB.

²⁵⁸ Foedera, II, i, 129.

²⁵⁹ Apart from the delicate political situation, there was a feud between one of Lancaster's retainers, Henry de Segrave, and one of Gloucester's, Walter de Berningham: Maddicott, 116.

²⁶⁰ Maddicott, 114–15, 321–2; idem, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), 365–6.

²⁶¹ Maddicott, 5, 9, 22–3.

²⁶² Lanercost, 215; and the account given in the unpublished chronicle, BL, Nero D.X, f. 109v; Maddicott, 115. Lancaster did not perform homage for his lands until 26 Aug. when he did so in London: ibid.

²⁶³ CDS, iii, no. 202; Maddicott, 115.

²⁶⁴ PW, II, ii, 44–56, and Appendix 37–9, 41.

²⁶⁵ Vita, 30–1. The mayor and aldermen of the city of London took precautions for the safekeeping of the city during the parliament: Davies, Baronial Opposition, 366.

²⁶⁶ Vita, 30–1. Edward II's itinerary does not record a visit to Canterbury but it is possible.

²⁶⁷ The statements in Davies, Baronial Opposition, 366, 591; Maddicott, 116; Hamilton, 87, that a copy of the Ordinances was sent to Edward on 3 Aug. 1311 are incorrect. The evidence cited, SC 1/37/110, refers to the preliminary ordinances of 1310 and is dated 3 Aug. that year. See PROME, Westminster Parliament of 1310, App.

²⁶⁸ Vita, 30–3. The translation is that of the editor. While there is no official record of the proceedings of the 1311 parliament, the Vita account probably gives a fair representation of what took place.

²⁶⁹ Liber de Antiquis Legibus, ed. T. Stapleton, Camden Soc., xxxiv (London, 1846), 251.

²⁷⁰ Ibid., 251; SR, i, 167.

²⁷¹ Munimenta Gildhallae Lond., ed. Riley, II, i, 203.

²⁷² PW, II, ii, 57–68.

²⁷³ Liber de Antiquis Legibus, 251–2; CCR, 1307–13, 439; Foedera, II, i, 146.

²⁷⁴ Foedera, II, i, 145; CFR, 1307–19, 108–9; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 386–7. Gaveston's lands were not seized until 30 Nov., which may indicate resistance on the part of the king.

²⁷⁵ E 368/82, m.20 (schedule); Phillips, 31–2. This was in accordance with clause 39 of the Ordinances. The offices of chancellor, treasurer and keeper of the privy seal remained in the hands of loyal supporters of Edward II (Walter Reynolds, John Sandal and William Melton), until 23 Oct. when Walter of Norwich, one of the barons of the exchequer, was appointed as acting treasurer. The Great Seal itself remained in the hands of the king from 28 Sept. 1311 (the day after the first publication of the Ordinances) until 9 Dec. when it was returned to its baronial keepers: Chaplais, 75, n. 26.

²⁷⁶ For a general assessment of the Ordinances see Prestwich, ‘Ordinances of 1311’, esp. 9–15. For a clause by clause discussion see Davies, Baronial Opposition, 368–82, and passim (see index). There are also valuable discussions of the Ordinances in general and of particular clauses in Maddicott (see index). For a convenient English translation of the Ordinances see English Historical Documents, 529–39. The complete French text of the Ordinances can be found both in RP, i, 281–6, and SR, i, 157–67. A more readily available, but incomplete text (some clauses have only a descriptive heading, while others are abbreviated), is available in Select Documents, 11–17. On the texts of the Ordinances see App. to the Westminster parliament of 1311 in PROME.

²⁷⁷ Clause 9.

²⁷⁸ Clause 7.

²⁷⁹ Clause 10.

²⁸⁰ Clauses 4, 5 & 8.

²⁸¹ Clause 8.

²⁸² Clause 40.

²⁸³ Clause 29. Prestwich, ‘Ordinances of 1311’, 10–11. As Prestwich points out, ‘There was no suggestion that biennial meetings were needed so as to ensure that baronial advice prevailed.’

²⁸⁴ Clause 14.

²⁸⁵ Clause 17.

²⁸⁶ Clause 39.

²⁸⁷ Prestwich, ‘Ordinances of 1311’, 10.

²⁸⁸ Clause 14.

²⁸⁹ Clause 13.

²⁹⁰ The charges against Gaveston are very general and do not stand up to detailed scrutiny. See Hamilton, 88, 161, n. 72; Chaplais, 73–4.

²⁹¹ Clause 20. The translation is taken from English Historical Documents, 532. Three other individuals or groups of people were also singled out in the Ordinances. Henry de Beaumont and his sister Isabella de Vescy, who had obtained or procured grants from the king contrary to the Ordinances, were to be removed from the court. Henry was to leave the king's council and not to come near the king except in parliament or during wartime. Amerigo and other members of the company of the Frescobaldi were to render accounts for the money they had received from the crown and their lands and goods were to be seized: clauses 21–3.

²⁹² Bod., Lyell Ms.17, f. 115v; Maddicott, 117.

²⁹³ Chroniques de Sempringham, 344; Maddicott, 119.

²⁹⁴ Prestwich, ‘Ordinances of 1311’, 14.

²⁹⁵ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 82v; Chaplais, 94–5, 106–7. It was not uncommon for kings to pawn some of their valuables to raise money or act as collateral for loans. Edward I, for example, did so in Brabant in 1297 and Edward III did the same in 1339 when he pledged the Great Crown to the archbishop of Trier: Chaplais, 97; E.B. Fryde, ‘Financial resources of Edward III in the Netherlands, 1337–40’, in Fryde, Studies in Medieval Trade and Finance (London, 1983), item VII, 1165.

²⁹⁶ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, ff. 55, 55v; Phillips, 40–1. The English delegation at Vienne was an impressive one, consisting of the archbishop of York, the bishops of London, Winchester and Carlisle, Otto de Grandison (an ally of the English crown of long standing), Amanieu d'Albret (from Gascony), and Master Adam Orleton, canon of Hereford (destined to play a major role in Edward II's reign, especially at its end). Three copies of the protestation were made by public notaries who were paid 40s for their work on 13 Oct.

²⁹⁷ Liber Epistolaris of Richard of Bury, ed. N. Denholm-Young, Roxburghe Club (Oxford, 1950), 104–5: an undated letter but before 14 May 1312. Cf. CPL, 1305–42, 104.

²⁹⁸ There is some evidence for this. Gaveston's nephew Bertrand Caillau was sent to the pope for this purpose, but was arrested and held by Philip IV of France to prevent him from doing so: E 101/375/8, f. 12; Hamilton, 163, n. 10.

²⁹⁹ On 8 Oct. the king had given him a safe conduct lasting until 1 Nov.: CPR, 1307–13, 393.

³⁰⁰ Ann. Lond., 202; Chaplais, 74; Hamilton, 91. There is no evidence that the king, who appears to have been at Windsor in early Nov., saw Gaveston off on his travels.

³⁰¹ Ann. Paul., 271; Hamilton, 91, 162, 163, n. 11.

³⁰² Brussels, the capital of the duchy, although in a different political jurisdiction, is not far from Bruges.

³⁰³ Foedera, II, i, 144; BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 65; Chaplais, 75; Phillips, 41; Maddicott, 117; Hamilton, 91–2.

³⁰⁴ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 83; Chaplais, 75–6.

³⁰⁵ On 22 Oct. Gaveston nominated attorneys to act for him in England for a period of five years: CPR, 1307–13, 397. This does not however mean that he intended to be absent for this long.

³⁰⁶ The rubric in Ann. Lond., 198, describes the document as Ordinationes comitum secundae, but there is nothing in the document itself to suggest that they were supplementary ordinances with the same validity as the original Ordinances. They were in any case drawn up after the expiry of the Ordainers' commission on 29 Sept. There is consequently no official text of the document, which is preserved only in Ann. Lond., 198–202; in the Munimenta Gildhallae Lond., ed. Riley, II, ii, 682–90; and in Canterbury Cathedral Library Ms. K.11, dorse. The text in the Munimenta begins with the rubric Ces sunt les articles qe les countes de Lancastre e de Warrewyke maunderent au roi. The likely date of the document is given by Tout in Chapters, ii, 198, n. 1. For the text of the articles see also Select Documents, 18–19. However this edition omits much of the detail, especially the names of Gaveston's followers.

³⁰⁷ See Tout, Place of the Reign, 86–7; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 382–5.

³⁰⁸ For the full details see Hamilton, 88–9, 161–2.

³⁰⁹ CFR, 1307–19, 117.

³¹⁰ Foedera, II, i, 151.

³¹¹ Ibid., 151; Chaplais, 77; Hamilton, 92, 163. A variant of this rumour was reported by the author of the Vita, who said that, after his return to England from exile, Gaveston was thought to be either in the king's apartments, at his former castle of Wallingford, or at Tintagel in Cornwall: Vita, 38–9. The stories are remarkably like the false reports of Edward II's survival at Corfe and later escape to Italy which circulated after his death at Berkeley in 1327: see Phillips, ‘“Edward II” in Italy’, 209–26.

³¹² BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 65r; Chaplais, 77. Salveyn was away from 1 Dec. until 13 Jan.

³¹³ PW, II, ii, 70–1. This parliamentary summons is not noted in Fryde et al., Handbook of British Chronology.

³¹⁴ Gaveston was not with the king at Christmas either here or elsewhere, as some of the chroniclers claimed: Hamilton, 92–3, 163, n. 18; Chaplais, 79.

³¹⁵ His decision may have been influenced by the letter he received from Gaveston and replied to on 23 Dec.: BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 84; Hamilton, 93, 163, n. 19.

³¹⁶ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 65r; Chaplais, 77–8.

³¹⁷ On his journey from the south of England Gaveston (and probably also Salveyn) had stayed for two days in Nottingham: E 101/375/8, f. 25; Hamilton, 93, 163, n. 20.

³¹⁸ SC 1/37/218 (cited and trans. in Maddicott, 122–3); Chaplais, 78. The others included Walter Langton, the bishop of Coventry & Lichfield, and Henry de Beaumont.

³¹⁹ Chaplais, 78.

³²⁰ Ibid., 78–9. Chaplais worked out that the birth probably occurred on 12 Jan., 40 days before Margaret was churched on 20 Feb.: ibid.

³²¹ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, f. 84v; Hamilton, 94; Chaplais, 78.

³²² As suggested in Chaplais, 79. On the other hand there is some evidence that in Feb. and March 1312 Gaveston was making preparations for a possible return to the continent: Hamilton, 94, 163–4, nn. 33–4.

³²³ SC 1/37/218; Maddicott, 122. See the discussion of the date of this meeting in Chaplais, 80, where both 9 and 16 Jan. are given as possibilities.

³²⁴ Foedera, II, i, 153–4; CCR, 1307–13, 448–9. The king had control of the Great Seal which had been brought north on 7 Jan. by the three chancery clerks in whose custody it had been: CCR, 1307–13, 448. According to a note on the Close Roll the king had personally drafted the proclamation of Gaveston's return. See also Chaplais, 80, n. 40.

³²⁵ Foedera, II, i, 154; CCR, 1307–13, 449.

³²⁶ PW, II, ii, 71–2.

³²⁷ Ann. Paul., 271.

³²⁸ Foedera, II, i, 154; CCR, 1307–13, 449.

³²⁹ CPR, 1307–13, 413.

³³⁰ According to the newsletter mentioned above (SC 1/37/218) Langton was, after Gaveston, the closest man to the king. The author of the Flores was scathing about Langton's duplicity: Flores, 148–9; Chaplais, 83.

³³¹ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.viii, f. 87v; Trokelowe, 74–5; Maddicott, 124.

³³² CPR, 1307–13, 469–70.

³³³ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C.VIII, ff. 63–4, 85; Hamilton, 93, 163, n. 29.

³³⁴ PW, II, ii, 71–2.

³³⁵ Vita, 38–41; Maddicott, 123–4. Bruce is said to have replied that if Edward II could not keep faith with his liege men, whose homage and fealty he had received, he could not possibly do so with him. There is no evidence to support this report but it is possible that Edward did consider such a move. It may also be significant that on 6 Feb. 1312 orders were given for the transfer of Robert Bruce's wife Elizabeth and her followers to more comfortable imprisonment in Windsor castle: CCR, 1307–13, 394.

³³⁶ Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, ed. Flower & Dawes, 418–19; Ann. Lond., 203–4.

³³⁷ que quamplurimum insident cordi nostro: PW, II, ii, 71; Maddicott, 124.

³³⁸ Vita, 40–1, and n. 74. The earls however wanted to avoid open war: Trokelowe, 69.

³³⁹ Vita, 40–3.

³⁴⁰ Ann. Lond., 203–4 (Venedocia has the sense of North Wales, where Lancaster held the lordship of Denbigh, rather than Wales as a whole); Phillips, 32; Hamilton, 95; Maddicott, 123–4.

³⁴¹ E 159/85, m.52(see also Davies, Baronial Opposition, 551–2); Phillips, 32; Chaplais, 85–6. Although Langton may have attended the council on 13 March and have gathered a lot of information, it is unlikely that he would have been allowed to know of the earls' plans and pass them on to the king: cf. Chaplais, 83.

³⁴² Itinerary, ed. Hallam. A disadvantage was that the castle was then in poor condition: KW, ii, 831.

³⁴³ Hamilton, 94, 164; Maddicott, 124.

³⁴⁴ CPR, 1307–13, 454; CFR, 1307–19, 129.

³⁴⁵ Foedera, II, i, 163; CPR, 1307–13, 450–1; CFR, 1307–19, 129.

³⁴⁶ CPR, 1307–13, 454.

³⁴⁷ CPR, 1307–13, 453. On the Dominicans of Langley see Ch. 2 of this book.

³⁴⁸ Foedera, II, i, 163; Chaplais, 86–7.

³⁴⁹ Gaston was also count of Béarn, Gaveston's home territory.

³⁵⁰ On 1 April Edward wrote to Philip IV of France saying that he was about to move towards Scotland in order to counter an expected attack by Robert Bruce on Berwick. On the same date he sent two experienced envoys, Mr Thomas Cobham and Henry de Canterbury, to Philip on unspecified business: Foedera, II, i, 163. Perhaps Edward was hoping that Philip would intervene with the magnates on his behalf, but by this time Edward had run out of rational policy options.

³⁵¹ Vita, 42–3, according to which Lancaster initially intended restoring them to the king. For the details of what was captured see Chaplais, App. 2, ‘The Newcastle Jewels’, citing C 66/138, m.3 and Foedera, II, i, 203–5. In the event they became a bargaining counter in the protracted peace negotiations between the king and the earls in 1312–13: see Phillips, 54–61. It is likely, as Chaplais suggests, that although some of the valuables belonged to Gaveston, most of them came from the royal treasury, and were probably the jewels moved from Westminster to the Tower in Oct. 1311: Chaplais, 91–5, 106–7.

³⁵² The chronology and much of the detail of the events from 4 to 19 May are given in a memorandum on the Close Roll: CCR, 1307–13, 459–60.

³⁵³ CCR, 1307–13, 460: on this date Pembroke, etc., were ordered to stop the siege, which had probably begun almost as soon as the king left Scarborough.

³⁵⁴ SC 8/205/10204; Vita, 42–3; Phillips, 32–3; Maddicott, 125.

³⁵⁵ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C. VIII, ff. 88, 107v; Flores, 150.

³⁵⁶ Vita, 42–3; Ann. Lond., 204.

³⁵⁷ Phillips, 33–4; Maddicott, 125–6; Hamilton, 96, 165. There is no copy of the agreement in the National Archives. It is known from two sources: Ann. Lond., 204–6; Literae Cantuarienses, iii, ed. Sheppard, 388–93. The latter text is derived from Canterbury Register I, ff. 365v–366, which is probably also the source of the text in another Canterbury Ms., BL, Harleian Ms. 636, f. 233.

³⁵⁸ C 53/98, m.2; Vita, 42–3.

³⁵⁹ Lancaster had left before the end of the siege, ostensibly to prevent such a large besieging force running short of food, but perhaps so that he could repudiate the surrender terms if he wished to.

³⁶⁰ Vita, 42–3.

³⁶¹ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C. VIII, ff. 57–8; CPL, 1305–42, 103–4, 106, 117.

³⁶² Trokelowe, 76.

³⁶³ PW, II, ii, 72.

³⁶⁴ Trokelowe, 76; Vita, 42–5; Flores, 150, 336; Murimuth, 17.

³⁶⁵ Trokelowe, 76; CChR, 1300–26, 131; CPR, 1307–13, 429; Phillips, 35.

³⁶⁶ Ann. Lond., 206; Flores, 151; H.M. Colvin, A History of Deddington (London, 1963), 33–4.

³⁶⁷ BL, Cotton Ms. Nero C. VIII, ff. 86, 105.

³⁶⁸ Vita, 44–5; Bod., Tanner Ms. 90, p. 1 (Botetourt's declaration).

³⁶⁹ Vita, 44–5.

³⁷⁰ Trokelowe, 76; Vita, 46–7; Melsa, 327; Vita et Mors, 298; Phillips, 36; Maddicott, 127.

³⁷¹ Pembroke's attempts to regain custody of Gaveston between 10 and 19 June and his appeals for help and vindication were turned down or ignored. The earl of Gloucester reputedly told him that Warwick had acted with Pembroke's counsel and aid (referring to the St Paul's meeting in March) and advised him to be more careful in future, while the clerks and the burgesses of Oxford University and town refused to help him: Vita, 44–7. Pembroke was in a desperate situation since he stood to forfeit all his property.

³⁷² Bod., Laud Misc. Ms. 529, f. 104; Dugdale Ms. 15, p. 293 (Botetourt); Tanner Ms. 90, p. 1 (Botetourt); DL 25/1982 (Warwick); DL 34/13 (Lancaster); Phillips, 35; Maddicott, 127–8; Hamilton, 98.

³⁷³ Vita, 46–7; Gesta Edwardi, 39, 43–4; Maddicott, 127–8.

³⁷⁴ Warwick himself stayed behind in his castle and took no further part: Vita, 48–9.

³⁷⁵ This is the account given by the Vita, 48–9. Another account, in Ann. Lond., 207, states that after Gaveston's execution his body lay until four shoemakers from Warwick collected it and carried it to the earl of Warwick, who refused to accept it. Whether this detail is true or not, it is certain that a group of Dominicans eventually took custody of the body and carried it to Oxford: Hamilton, 99, 166. There is a memorial on Blacklow Hill, known as ‘Gaveston's Cross’ (Ordnance Survey, SP 289 675): Vita, 48, n. 90.