Chapter 6

WAR, POLITICS, MONEY AND WEATHER, JUNE 1314 TO AUGUST 1316

AFTER BANNOCKBURN

For Edward II the defeat in Scotland was a profound personal humiliation, which showed that despite his extensive experience of campaigning, he had, unlike his father, little capacity as a military commander.¹ He did not lead another campaign against the Scots until 1319 but in the meantime the war continued, inflicting misery on the inhabitants of the northern counties of England and also, from May 1315, in Ireland. The misery was compounded by a prolonged period of wet weather, which began in the late summer of 1314, resumed on a much greater scale in 1315,² and led in succeeding years to food shortages, high prices, disease among humans and their livestock, and famine. The defeat at Bannockburn also undid completely the political and financial stability which Edward had achieved in 1313. As a result the kingdom of England was to undergo a further period of internal upheaval and external conflict which lasted until yet another political settlement was achieved in the autumn of 1318.

Edward reached Berwick on 27 June and remained there until about 9 July. No doubt stragglers from the battle were continuing to arrive there by whatever means were available. Leaving a strong garrison to defend this key position, he then made his way back to York, where he arrived on about 17 July, accompanied by the earl of Pembroke, Hugh Despenser, Henry de Beaumont, and Bartholomew de Badlesmere, the leading retainer of the dead earl of Gloucester. It was a measure of the insecurity of the time that he apparently began his journey by sea, landing at Hartlepool before making his way inland.³

One of Edward's first actions, on 29 July, was to summon a parliament to meet at York on 9 September to discuss the threat from the Scots.⁴ On 7 September the earl of Pembroke and the bishop of Exeter were authorized to open the assembly and to continue its business in the king's name until his arrival, since for ‘arduous and special affairs touching the king’ Edward could not be present at the beginning.⁵ Edward had good reason to absent himself since he immediately came under pressure from the earl of Lancaster and others to restore the Ordinances, which by this time had been in abeyance for over two years. According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, Edward said that ‘he was prepared to do everything ordained for the common good, and promised that he would observe the Ordinances in good faith’. There then followed a wholesale removal and replacement of royal officers, following the procedures laid down in the Ordinances.⁶ On 26 September John Sandal was appointed as chancellor in place of Walter Reynolds the new archbishop of Canterbury, and was replaced as treasurer by Walter of Norwich. The sheriffs of thirty counties were also replaced between 8 October and 16 January.⁷ There were also substantial changes within the royal household. These were assisted by the death of Edmund Mauley, the steward of the household, at Bannockburn. Ingelard Warley, whose removal as keeper of the wardrobe had been demanded by the barons three years earlier, was succeeded in November by William Melton, the former controller and a royal household clerk who had not attracted any baronial criticism in the past; John of Ockham, the cofferer of the wardrobe, another official whose removal had been sought, left office at the same time.⁸ But the new appointments were not in reality to the king's disadvantage. John Sandal, for example, was a royal clerk of long standing and had, as acting treasurer, been very active in royal affairs in 1312 and 1313. It also made practical sense for the newly consecrated archbishop of Canterbury to step down from the office of chancellor. William Melton was a trusted royal supporter, who had served Edward both as Prince of Wales and as king, and was to become archbishop of York with royal support in 1317. Edmund Mauley had already been replaced as steward in July by a royal knight, John Cromwell; while Roger de Northburgh, the keeper of the privy seal, had resumed office by November 1314 after his release from captivity in Scotland.⁹ The king was even able to resist the removal of some of his closest advisers, Hugh Despenser the Elder, and Henry de Beaumont, although Despenser was apparently forced to keep out of the way for a time.¹⁰ So far the changes were more symbolic than real. The impression one gets is that baronial pressure on Edward II was growing but was not yet strong enough to force him to agree to anything he did not wish to accept. It may be significant that, although the Ordinances were clearly in the forefront of everybody's mind, no formal confirmation of them was issued on this occasion.¹¹

According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, discussion of the struggle against Robert Bruce and the recovery of Scotland was postponed until the next parliament because the earl of Hereford and the other barons held captive had not yet returned. The king's sister, Elizabeth, meanwhile ‘lamented for her husband, the earl of Hereford’.¹² There were however considerable contacts between the English and the Scots. In late August and early September 1314 Robert Bruce and his brother Edward Bruce wrote to Edward II with a view to negotiating peace between the two kingdoms. On 20 October Scottish envoys met John de Botetourt and other English representatives in Durham; in November the archbishop of York, the bishop of Durham and the abbot of St Mary's, York, went to Scotland. Other unnamed English envoys went to Dumfries but had returned to England by 26 December. It is likely that the English entered negotiations partly at the instigation of Philip IV of France and partly in order to obtain a truce which would prevent a threatened Scottish invasion of England: a truce of sorts did come into force in the Scottish March on 6 October.¹³ Just as urgent was the need to secure the freedom of English prisoners. In October 1314 the most important of these, the earl of Hereford, was finally released after lengthy negotiations but in return Edward had to free Robert Bruce's wife Elizabeth de Burgh, his daughter and sister, as well as Edward I's and Edward II's bête noire the aged Robert Wishart, bishop of Glasgow.¹⁴

GAVESTON AGAIN

Since his death in June 1312 Gaveston's body, embalmed and covered in cloth of gold, had remained in the custody of the Dominican friars of Oxford, who watched over it and cared for it. Gaveston was remembered regularly both there and in the king's chapels; and in 1313, on the king's orders, a Dominican friar, Brother Walter de Ashridge, made a tour of abbeys and other religious houses, lasting 122 days and covering nine counties to ask for prayers for Gaveston's soul.¹⁵ Gaveston could not be buried since he had died excommunicate, while it was also rumoured that Edward would not allow the burial until he had avenged himself on Gaveston's killers.¹⁶ It is possible, as the Vita remarked, that Edward proceeded with the burial when he did since ‘those from whom the king seemed to seek vengeance have been readmitted to friendship’, however uneasy that reconciliation might have been in reality.¹⁷ It is also possible, as has been suggested, that Gaveston had been granted a posthumous papal absolution from the sentence of excommunication imposed upon him by Archbishop Winchelsey.¹⁸ On the other hand there is no known evidence to support this conclusion. Pope Clement V, who had been so accommodating to the needs of the English crown, had died in April 1314, and no successor had yet been elected.¹⁹ The presence at the funeral of the new archbishop of Canterbury Walter Reynolds, Edward II's close ally, and other leading clergy strongly suggests that the way had been cleared by Reynolds acting on his own authority.²⁰

On 2 January 1315 the burial of Gaveston took place in the church of the Dominicans at the king's palace of Langley, the body being wrapped in three cloths of gold costing £300.²¹ Altogether Edward II spent over £600 on preserving Gaveston's body and on prayers for his soul between the time of his death and burial.²² The ceremony took place in the presence of the king, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Winchester, Worcester, and Bath & Wells, thirteen abbots, ‘innumerable religious of the order of mendicants’,²³ the earls of Pembroke and Hereford, Hugh Despenser the Elder, Henry de Beaumont, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, and over fifty knights (presumably royal household knights), together with the chancellor, treasurer, royal household officers, royal justices, and the mayor of London.²⁴ The guests were also entertained with large quantities of wine and food.²⁵

Despite the large attendance it appears that Edward had wanted many more of the barons to be present than in fact appeared: enmity towards Gaveston still remained even in death.²⁶ The extent of the absences is unknown, but certainly included the earls of Lancaster and Warwick, who had been responsible for Gaveston's death. It is also not clear whether Edward II's queen, Isabella, was present. Gaveston's burial was really an act of defiance at a time when Edward's enemies abroad and at home were closing in on him once more. The number and rank of those present show clearly that Edward II was making a statement that, no matter what his opponents may have thought of Gaveston, he was still devoted to his memory. Edward was to continue to commemorate Gaveston through prayers and through the careful maintenance of his burial place at Langley up to the very end of his reign.²⁷

Among those who attended Gaveston's funeral was Hugh Despenser the Younger, the son of one of Edward II's most influential and most disliked counsellors, who was married to Eleanor de Clare, the king's niece and one of the three sisters of the earl of Gloucester who had been killed at Bannockburn. The earl had died leaving a widow who claimed to be pregnant. Should this turn out to be true and she not give birth to a son, Despenser and his wife would inherit a third share of the most valuable earldom in England. Despenser was also intensely ambitious, and within a few years became a new royal favourite, exerting political power and influence on a scale far beyond either his father or even Gaveston. More than any other factor, Despenser was to be responsible for Edward II's eventual downfall in 1326–7. Had anyone but known it, Edward II's living nemesis was also present at Langley on 2 January 1315.²⁸

A NEW POLITICAL ORDER

The York parliament of September 1314 was only the beginning of the political upheavals which the defeat at Bannockburn brought in its train, with the stage now set for a return to political influence by the most prominent of the former opposition magnates, the earls of Lancaster and Warwick. One early sign of changing times had come in October 1314 when separate letters supporting the urgent collection of the clerical tenth were sent to the bishops of Bath & Wells and of Exeter by both the king and Lancaster, almost as if the latter were vetting and approving royal acts.²⁹ Shortly before 27 November Edward II also made a detailed account of his debts to Antonio Pessagno, and on 4 December, in response to a demand which had been made at the York parliament, the exchequer was ordered to list all gifts and grants made contrary to the Ordinances since March 1310.³⁰

On 20 January 1315, less than three weeks after Gaveston's burial, a new parliament met to continue on the course begun at York.³¹ Although it was summoned to Westminster the account in the Vita Edwardi Secundi speaks of the earls and barons meeting at London ‘to discuss the state of the king and the realm, and the conquest of the Scots’, which may indicate that the magnates had a preliminary meeting before they attended at Westminster. All the chronicles are however agreed on the length of the parliament which, according to the Vita, dragged on almost to the end of Lent.³² Two of the most objectionable of the king's councillors, Hugh Despenser the Elder and the unpopular former treasurer Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry & Lichfield, were removed from the council, steps were taken to reduce the expenditure of the royal household,³³ and on 14 February orders were given for the reobservance of the Ordinances, followed on 3 March by orders to resume grants made since 1310.³⁴ Before the end of the session on 9 March a grant of taxation was approved in aid of the war in Scotland;³⁵ and on 14 March a royal ordinance on prices was issued.³⁶

The parliament was also marked by the receipt and the answering by the king and his council of over 200 petitions on a great variety of subjects. With the exception of the parliament held in August 1312, this was the first occasion during the reign of Edward II when such business was transacted and might almost be regarded as a sign of normality. A large number of pent-up grievances could now be aired by individuals and local communities, as well as by the community of the realm. Most of the petitions have no obvious connection with the ‘grand politics’ which had occupied most of Edward II's reign since 1307, but a few do. One such item was the common petition from the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons and others of the community of the realm, complaining about the high prices that were being charged for oxen, sheep and pigs, and other food items. The ordinance on prices was issued in response to this.³⁷ Another common petition, which does not appear to have survived, asked for the observation of the Ordinances, Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forest, the perambulations of the forest, and other matters concerning the welfare of the people. In a letter to the sheriffs on 20 April the king indicated that he had conceded these requests and asked for them to be observed.³⁸ In another petition the prelates, earls and barons complained that scutage was being levied on the number of knights' fees for which their ancestors had owed military service rather than the much smaller number for which they currently provided service to the king.³⁹ This was clearly a reference to the king's attempt to levy scutages for the campaigns of 1305 and 1306 in November of 1314 and helps to explain Edward's lack of success in collecting them.⁴⁰ On 11 June, after the end of the parliament, but arising out of complaints made during it, the king issued orders to curb the abuse of purveyance and also for the observance of the Statute of Westminster the First.⁴¹

On the face of it the king's opponents were now in the ascendant. However, the reality was probably more complex. Although it is not possible to specify the influence of Lancaster and Warwick, their frequent appearance as witnesses to royal charters during the time of the parliament suggests that they were active both in parliament and as members of the king's council.⁴² The author of the Annales Londonienses went so far as to claim that Warwick was appointed as head of the king's council.⁴³ Certainly he seems to have been involved in the royal administration until the first half of June 1315, after which he withdrew because of illness, dying at Warwick castle on 12 August.⁴⁴ Warwick had probably been more active than Lancaster, who left Westminster soon after parliament was prorogued for Easter on 15 March but did not return when the session was resumed on 13 April.⁴⁵ Lancaster's appetite for and application to administrative work seem to have been limited, very much like his first cousin Edward II himself.

But other members of the council, such as the earls of Pembroke and Hereford, the chancellor, treasurer, and the archbishop of Canterbury, were no less active.⁴⁶ During the parliament, for example, the earls of Pembroke and Hereford, together with Lancaster's steward, Michael de Meldon, were deputed by the other magnates and prelates present to make a formal complaint at the exchequer about the king's attempts to collect scutage.⁴⁷ On 15 March the archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor and the earl of Warwick assigned a notary to make a copy of the ‘Great Cause’ recording Edward I's determination of the succession to the Scottish throne after the death of Margaret of Norway in 1290.⁴⁸ On the following day the king sent instructions concerning payment of a royal debt to the earls of Richmond and Hereford, following advice from Pembroke, Warwick and Arundel;⁴⁹ and orders issued on 6 and 7 May were made in the presence of the archbishop, Pembroke, Hereford and Warwick.⁵⁰ There are also some indications of Lancaster's influence in, for example, the granting of a pardon on 17 March, the appointment of a sheriffin Ireland on 20 May, and the granting of safe conducts on the same date for the men of Bristol to discuss their dispute with Bartholomew de Badlesmere, the royal constable and warden of Bristol castle and town.⁵¹ On 8 June Lancaster, Warwick and the chancellor John Sandal mediated on the king's behalf between Badlesmere and the citizens of Bristol.⁵² Their activity in England was balanced by the appearance on the same date of Pembroke, the bishop of Exeter and others before the council of Louis X of France at Vincennes in the latest attempt to improve Anglo-French relations.⁵³

The likelihood is that although Lancaster and Warwick were clearly exercising influence in the spring and early summer of 1315 there was an uneasy political balance, in which the realignments brought about by the events of 1314 were still working themselves out. It was too much to expect that magnates who had so recently been bitterly at odds, not only with the king but also among themselves, should suddenly find the means to work together in harmony. There are indeed hints that a certain amount of bargaining was going on between the king, his sympathizers and opponents. While, for example, the Ordinances were being applied to revoke royal grants and to order a perambulation of the forests, there were a few cases in which grants which had been revoked in March were restored a month or two later.⁵⁴ Another factor may have been that, apart from the earl of Warwick who was soon removed from the scene by death, the earl of Lancaster had few friends or even allies. Among the clergy, Archbishop Winchelsey had been replaced by Walter Reynolds, a friend of the king; among the barons, Henry Percy, for example, had died in the autumn of 1314. The earls of Hereford and especially Pembroke were close allies and valued councillors of the king, while the loyalty of Arundel and Surrey was unreliable.⁵⁵

There were also signs of bitterness and suspicion between Lancaster and his fellow earls and between him and the king. There was ill-feeling, for example, between Pembroke and Lancaster over their rival claims to possession of lands at Thorpe Waterville in Northamptonshire, which Lancaster had forced Pembroke to give up during the York parliament in September 1314. Retainers of the two earls had nearly come to blows in February 1314. The whole episode was typical of the way in which Lancaster managed to settle disputes in his own favour through threats of violence,⁵⁶ and is a further explanation of his lack of true friends. When Lancaster's only real ally, the earl of Warwick, died in August 1315 it was rumoured that he had been poisoned by persons close to the king.⁵⁷ Nor is it surprising that Edward II built himself a fortified tower or peel in the grounds of his palace of Clipstone in Nottinghamshire to provide added security against Lancaster's castles in the area.⁵⁸

RELATIONS WITH FRANCE

No matter how preoccupied Edward and his government were with internal politics and problems, relations with France were never off their agenda. In early May 1315 it was decided that the earl of Pembroke and bishop of Exeter should go to Paris to present a set of petitions relating to the duchy of Aquitaine.⁵⁹

The mission was intended to secure confirmation by the new king of France, Louis X, of the concessions made by his father during Isabella's mission to France in March 1314, as well as the continuation of the Process of Périgueux begun in 1311.⁶⁰Accompanied by Antonio Pessagno and an expert adviser, Master Henry de Canterbury, Pembroke and the bishop set out for France in mid-May and probably reached Paris before the end of the month.⁶¹ At Vincennes on 8 June the bishop of Saint-Malo gave the French replies to the English requests.⁶² Louis X agreed that commissioners should be appointed by himself and Edward II to implement the peace treaties between England and France, that written law should continue to be the basis of Edward II's rule in the lands he held from the French crown, as Philip IV had granted in 1313, and that appeals from Edward II's subjects in Aquitaine should be adjourned until the next session of the Paris parlement or beyond. On behalf of the English delegation, the bishop of Exeter replied that English commissioners would be appointed as soon as possible,⁶³ and successfully requested that Louis X withdraw his summons to Edward II to send troops to serve in the French campaign in Flanders.⁶⁴ On 15 June Louis X also remitted punishments for alleged offences committed by English officials in Aquitaine, revoked all acts by his own ministers which contravened Philip IV's concessions of 1313, and limited the number of adherents whom Gascon appellants could bring to Paris.⁶⁵Another possible issue, the need for Edward II to perform homage once more for his French lands, Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu, does not appear to have been raised by either side.⁶⁶

SCOTLAND

The English embassy to Paris was important but it was only a passing interlude in the most urgent problem facing Edward II and his government: the war with Scotland. Within weeks of his victory at Bannockburn Robert Bruce resumed raids on the northern counties of England,⁶⁷ both Northumberland and the area around Carlisle coming under attack in August 1314.⁶⁸ But there were significant differences from the raiding in which the Scots had engaged after 1311. Their attacks were now conducted over longer distances, using the mobility given by their light cavalry forces, and were also designed to put pressure on Carlisle and Berwick, the two key points at either end of the Anglo-Scottish border which were essential both for the defence of England and for launching and sustaining any future English attacks upon Scotland. In May 1315 the Scots added a new theatre of warfare when they invaded the lordship of Ireland, one of the most important possessions of the English crown, whose resources were also vital for the English war effort in Scotland.⁶⁹

Apart from the measures to ensure the defence of Berwick and the appointment in August 1314 of the earl of Pembroke as captain of the royal forces between Berwick and the Trent, Edward's government did little in the immediate aftermath of Bannockburn to secure the north against the Scots.⁷⁰ It was also unfortunate that in 1314–15 deaths in battle or from natural causes removed several magnates with long military experience and with a personal interest in the defence of the north: Robert de Clifford whose lands were in Cumberland and Westmorland and included the castle of Appleby, and who also held the important castle of Skipton-in-Craven in Yorkshire; Henry de Percy who held extensive lands in Yorkshire and Northumberland, including Alnwick castle; and the earl of Warwick, who was lord of the powerful castle at Barnard's Castle in Durham. Other magnates with northern interests, such as Anthony Lucy, John de Clavering and John de Eure, had been held prisoner after Bannockburn.⁷¹ In January 1315 twelve of the northern lords were excused attendance at parliament to allow them to concentrate on defence against the Scots, while on 3 January the archbishop of York and bishop of Durham held an assembly of clergy and magnates at York for the same purpose.⁷² In February the earl of Pembroke made a personal commitment to the defence of the north when he purchased the castle of Mitford in Northumberland.⁷³

These were all temporary measures and something more substantial had to be done as soon as possible. Important decisions were taken during the Westminster parliament. On 15 March the heads of ninety religious houses were asked to loan sums totalling almost £9,000, and on the same date the bishops were asked to hasten the collection of the tenth they had just granted in aid of the war.⁷⁴ On 28 May the earl of Warwick, the chancellor John Sandal and Bartholomew de Badlesmere were authorized by the king to discuss the defence of the Scottish March with Lancaster, whom they met at Kenilworth or Warwick in early June.⁷⁵ Warwick, Sandal and Lancaster joined the king on 11 or 12 June, and on the 20th it was announced that Pembroke, Badlesmere, Robert de Monthaut and Richard de Grey had undertaken to go to Newcastle upon Tyne for service between 1 July and 1 November.⁷⁶ Between them they produced a total of just over 300 cavalry,⁷⁷ fewer than the 500 men recorded by the Vita but still a very valuable mobile force.⁷⁸Pembroke was given further responsibility on 5 July when he was appointed keeper and lieutenant between the Trent and Roxburgh.⁷⁹ Earlier, on 18 April, Maurice de Berkeley, one of his leading retainers, had been appointed by the council to command Berwick for one year from 11 May, and set to work without delay.⁸⁰

Pembroke's force reached Newcastle in early August but was then diverted to the relief of Carlisle which the Scots had been besieging since 22 July. They forced the Scots to break off the siege and pursued them with the aid of Andrew Harclay, the commander of Carlisle, as far as Lanercost to the north of Carlisle by 16 August.⁸¹ The threat to Carlisle had been averted for the time being but the city had been shown to be vulnerable. In response the earl of Lancaster was appointed as captain of all the royal forces in the area on 8 August. Pembroke was ordered to recognize his authority but this was probably because he happened to be in the vicinity at the time. In practice it seems more likely that the two earls were intended to share the defence of the north, one at the western end of the border and the other in the east.⁸²

After returning to Newcastle in late August Pembroke's force advanced northwards to counter an expected Scottish raid into Northumberland. He briefly entered Scotland before returning to the Newcastle area in early October.⁸³ Lancaster meanwhile was more vocal in expressing his desire for a campaign against the Scots than active in pursuing one. He appears to have done nothing after his appointment in August, and in October his attention was diverted to suppressing the revolt in Lancashire by Adam Banaster, one of his own retainers.⁸⁴

Between 30 August and 1 September Edward held an assembly of magnates, senior clergy and royal officials at Lincoln to consider the situation in the north of England and the recent Scottish landing in Ireland. Pembroke was still absent in the north but the presence can be identified of the earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Richmond and Surrey, the justice of Wales Roger Mortimer of Chirk, Henry of Lancaster the brother of the earl, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops of Norwich and Carlisle, as well as the keeper of the privy seal and the chancellor.⁸⁵ On 30 August Edward announced that, with the advice of the earls, he had decided to remain in the north for the winter and that they and the other magnates present had agreed to stay with him with their retinues at their own expense. Edward summoned sixty-six other magnates to join him on 1 November on the same terms,⁸⁶ while orders were given for the raising of men to resist the Scots, under the terms of the Statute of Winchester, and for the collection of the subsidy in aid of the Scots war which had been granted by the clergy.⁸⁷ Since the contracts of Pembroke and Badlesmere were due to expire on 1 November, Henry de Beaumont was appointed on their advice as commander of the eastern March during the coming winter.⁸⁸ This impressive-sounding military effort turned out to be more show than substance. Little or nothing was achieved during the winter of 1315–16 beyond holding the line. It was fortunate that the end of the siege of Carlisle proved to be the beginning of a lull in Scottish raids into England lasting for almost a year.⁸⁹

MONEY

One of the limitations on English military activity in 1315 was lack of money. With the single exception of the Bannockburn campaign in 1314, Edward II and his government had battled against a shortage of ready money since the beginning of the reign; and they were to continue to do so until after Edward's crushing victory over his baronial opponents in the civil war of 1321–2. The financial resources which had made it possible to recruit and sustain such a large army in 1314 had been exhausted and could not easily be replenished. This is why Edward attempted in the late summer of 1314 and in 1315 to obtain unpaid infantry service from several English counties;⁹⁰ and why in the autumn of 1315 the magnates summoned to the defence of the north had been asked to serve without pay.⁹¹ Money in aid of the Scottish war was raised in 1315, principally in the form of the subsidy granted in parliament in January which yielded about £37,000, the clerical tenth which produced nearly £16,000, and the loans from religious houses amounting to about £9,000.⁹² In June Edward and his council decided to send Thomas of Cambridge and Sir John Benstede to Gascony in an attempt to persuade Edward's subjects there to provide a subsidy in aid of the war with Scotland. But any revenues from this source would inevitably take a long time to win approval and even longer to collect.⁹³ An attempt was also made to raise money in Ireland to aid the Scottish war but with little success.⁹⁴ All of the money received from the parliamentary subsidy and the clerical tenth, and more, was allegedly used up by the force led by the earl of Pembroke in the summer and early autumn of 1315.⁹⁵ Edward still of course had to repay the money he had borrowed from the pope and from Antonio Pessagno to fund the Bannockburn campaign.⁹⁶ It was hardly surprising that English commanders in the north, such as John de Castre a member of the Carlisle garrison, Maurice de Berkeley the constable of Berwick, and Richard de Grey one of Pembroke's companions in the Scottish March, complained bitterly about the government's failure to send adequate supplies of money or even to pay their wages.⁹⁷ Berkeley managed to beat off a Scottish attack on Berwick on 7 January 1316 but in March that year he warned the king that Berwick was in grave danger and ‘if you lose it you lose all the remainder of the north’.⁹⁸

WEATHER

In England the late summer of 1314 was wet; the rains began again in 1315 around Pentecost (11 May) and were still falling in October; the summer, such as it was, was also abnormally cold. After another harsh winter, the pattern repeated itself in 1316; 1317 was better but conditions then deteriorated again after another wet autumn in 1320 and a disastrous harvest in 1321. Only from 1322 did the situation return to normal. The rains were followed by floods, crop failure, high mortality among animals from starvation and disease, food shortages, high prices, and sickness and famine among the human population. England was badly affected; so too were Scotland, Wales and Ireland, as well as most of north-western Europe. The bad weather was the harbinger of disaster and suffering on a scale which was to be remembered for generations.⁹⁹

If it was a hard time for the population of England,¹⁰⁰ it was also a difficult time for Edward II and his government. Royal finances were affected, for example, by disease among sheep, which led in turn to a sharp decline in England's major export, raw wool, and to a fall in customs receipts at a time when the crown could least afford it. Revenue from wool exports fell from £12,200 in 1312–13 to £7,100 in 1315–16, when the garrison of Berwick was, in theory at least, costing about £8,000 per year.¹⁰¹ Shortages of food and increased prices, together with the lack of ready money, made it difficult to supply English garrisons, such as Berwick and Carlisle.¹⁰² Some grain for the support of English castles along the Scottish border was imported from the Mediterranean through the agency of Antonio Pessagno, but this of course placed a further strain on the king's financial resources.¹⁰³ The attempt at price control made during the 1315 parliament was a failure and had to be repealed only a year later at the Lincoln parliament of 1316.¹⁰⁴ English armies were not the only ones to suffer privation from the bad weather and lack of food. Their Scottish enemies also experienced great hardship,¹⁰⁵ as did the armies of France: the French invasion of Flanders in the summer of 1315 was practically immobilized by flooding and roads which had turned into quagmires.¹⁰⁶

THE SCOTS AND IRELAND

It was small comfort to Edward II and his government that friends and enemies were also facing problems, since a new and major crisis had begun to unfold on 26 May 1315: the landing at Larne in the north-east of Ireland by a Scottish army led by Robert Bruce's brother, Edward Bruce, earl of Carrick. This was the reason for the reduction in Scottish raids against the north of England. The army was probably small, but what it may have lacked in numbers, it made up for in quality and determination. In addition to Edward Bruce himself, it included other experienced commanders, such as Thomas Randolph the earl of Moray, John Soules and Philip de Mowbray, the former constable of Stirling who had changed sides after Bannockburn.¹⁰⁷ On 6 June 1315 Edward Bruce was inaugurated as king of Ireland, with the support of Donal O'Neill of Tyrone and others.¹⁰⁸ The Scottish intention was nothing less than the conquest of the lordship of Ireland, which the English crown had held since the time of Henry II, and with it the removal of the Irish resources in manpower, money and food supplies which had played a vital part in English military operations against both Wales and Scotland since the time of Edward I.¹⁰⁹ About £30,000, for example, of the estimated £80,000 total cost of building Edward I's castles in Wales came from the Irish exchequer.¹¹⁰

The Bruce invasion of Ireland is one of the most important and yet until recently one of the most neglected aspects of the reign of Edward II.¹¹¹ Just as Edward I had sought to create an ‘English empire’ through his conquest of Wales and attempted conquest of Scotland,¹¹² the Scottish attacks on northern England after Bannockburn and the Scots intervention in Ireland in 1315’ inaugurated a period of over four years when English power in the British Isles was challenged in a fashion which had not been witnessed since the reign of Stephen, if even then’.¹¹³ As Rees Davies has also noted, both England and Scotland ‘were expansionist and acquisitive kingdoms in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; both were bringing their northern and western outer zones within the reach of their military and political power’.¹¹⁴ As well as threatening Edward II's ability to govern and especially to tax the northern counties of his own kingdom,¹¹⁵ the Scots now wished to deprive him of his lordship of Ireland and also sought to raise revolt against his rule in his own principality of Wales.¹¹⁶ ‘It is hardly too much to say that during this brief period [1315–18] the future political shape of the British Isles depended on the outcome of an often obscure series of campaigns and alliances in Ireland.’¹¹⁷ In the end the Bruce invasion of Ireland failed, in part because of a lack of support in Ireland and the effects of the period of severe weather and famine with which it coincided, but also to a significant extent because of the way in which Edward II's government both in Ireland and in England handled the crisis.

One of Edward Bruce's first actions after landing was to besiege the strategically placed castle of Carrickfergus which protected English communications between Ireland and Scotland and conversely threatened his own. Although the castle did not fall until over a year later, it was in the meantime largely neutralized.¹¹⁸ On 1 September 1315 Bruce defeated an army led, ironically, by Robert Bruce's father-in-law, Richard de Burgh earl of Ulster, at Connor in Down, after which the earl withdrew from Ulster to pursue his other interests in the west of Ireland; in December Bruce defeated Roger Mortimer of Wigmore at Kells, in Meath, although he failed to take Mortimer's great fortress at Trim.¹¹⁹ The withdrawal from Ireland before the end of 1315 of both Mortimer and of another of the leading magnates, the former justiciar Theobald de Verdon, left both parts of the former de Lacy lordship of Meath to the north of Dublin without resident defenders, and left Dublin itself open to possible attack.¹²⁰ Dublin was prepared for a Scottish siege,¹²¹ but was instead bypassed by the Scots, who entered Kildare, where they were confronted at Ardscull near Athy on 26 January 1316 by an Anglo-Irish army whose leaders comprised most of the prominent magnates in the southern half of the lordship. Although no one could have foreseen it at the time, this was a turning-point in the Scottish campaign in Ireland. The Anglo-Irish force was anxious and uncertain, was the last available army for the defence of the lordship of Ireland, and understandably stood on the defensive. The Scottish attack on the other hand appears to have been half-hearted. Exhausted by several months of hard campaigning, far from their base in Ulster, and suffering from food shortages exacerbated by the weather, the Scots did not press the attack. Had they done so and defeated the army of the lordship, they might have gained much greater support among the Gaelic Irish leaders, Dublin would probably have fallen and with it any prospect of continued English rule in Ireland. It is hard to see what Edward II and his government in England could then have done to counter such an outcome. If Ireland had passed out of English control, it is possible that Edward Bruce's desire to raise a revolt in Wales would also have been achieved. Instead, the battle is a classic example of the ‘fog of war’. The Scots withdrew into Ulster to fight another day, letting slip an opportunity of victory which they never regained.¹²² The battle of Ardscull, in which little happened and few casualties were suffered by either side, may in fact have been a turning-point both in the Scottish campaign in Ireland and in the future political alignments of Britain and Ireland. In its way it was as important an event as Bannockburn less than two years earlier.

Edward Bruce remained in his base in Ulster for the rest of 1316; Carrickfergus finally surrendered in September, but otherwise there was little to show for the year's fighting. In January 1317 Robert Bruce arrived in person, probably to try and restore some momentum to his brother's campaign, and in response to the knowledge that Edward II had sent Roger Mortimer of Wigmore to Ireland as king's lieutenant. In February 1317 Edward and Robert Bruce again advanced out of Ulster, causing devastation as they went. Again Dublin prepared itself for attack but, as in 1316, the Scots changed direction. They advanced through Leinster and Munster, until they approached Limerick in early April. An Anglo-Irish army, led by Edmund Butler, shadowed the Scots but did not attempt to bring them to battle. Failing to take Limerick, lacking anticipated Irish support and short of food, the Scots once more withdrew. Robert Bruce went back to Scotland and the final act of his brother's tragedy began.¹²³

Little is known of Edward Bruce's activities between the spring of 1317 and the summer of 1318, but it was during this period that the document commonly but erroneously known as the Remonstrance of the Irish Princes was composed and forwarded to the recently elected pope, John XXII, at Avignon. The Remonstrance was in effect a detailed commentary on the alleged failure of the English crown and its officials, the English clergy, and the English settlers in Ireland to observe the terms of the papal bullLaudabiliter of about 1155 in which Pope Adrian IV had authorized Henry II of England to come to Ireland ‘to enlarge the boundaries of the church, to reveal the truth of the Christian faith to unlearned and savage peoples, and to root out from the lord's field the vices which grow in it’. The reigning pope, John XXII, was invited to annul Laudabiliter, which had been one of the principal legal supports of the English crown's claims to lordship over Ireland since the twelfth century, and to replace it by giving his approval of Edward Bruce's rule as king of Ireland. There is no evidence however that the Remonstrance was either influenced or approved by the native Irish princes of Ireland. In reality the Remonstrance, which was probably composed on Bruce's behalf by a Franciscan from Armagh, was a partisan work of propaganda which can be seen almost as an act of desperation, written in the hope that the pope might give Edward Bruce and his Irish allies the success which military actions alone had not achieved.¹²⁴

Finally in October 1318 Bruce made one last movement out of Ulster, again more in desperation than with any clear plan in mind. This time he was faced by an Anglo-Irish army led by the justiciar Edmund Butler and John de Bermingham, lord of Tethmoy, which had had time to prepare and had confidence in its own abilities. The two armies met at Faughart near Dundalk on 14 October. According to the account in the Lanercost chronicle, ‘The Scots were in three columns at such a distance from each other that the first was done with before the second came up, and then the second before the third, with which Edward was marching, could render any aid. Thus the third column was routed, just as the two preceding ones had been. Edward Bruce fell at the same time and was beheaded after death; his body was divided into four quarters, which were sent to the four chief quarters of Ireland’,¹²⁵ while his head was sent to Edward II in England. In return for this grisly present and one of the few clear-cut victories in battle during his reign, John de Bermingham was made earl of Louth.¹²⁶

The Scottish invasion of Ireland in 1315 had forcibly drawn the attention of Edward II's government to events across the Irish Sea, but this was by no means the first occasion on which Edward had concerned himself with Irish affairs.¹²⁷ His appointment in 1308 of Gaveston as his lieutenant in Ireland may have been a convenient way of getting the favourite safely out of England, but it turned out well. Gaveston led successful military expeditions against Irish rebels in the Wicklow mountains to the south of Dublin and saw to the defences of key royal castles in the area. By the time he left Ireland in 1309, Leinster was more securely under English control. Arguably the lordship was better able to defend itself from the Scottish attack when it came in 1315.¹²⁸

The use of Irish resources in Scotland itself, which had begun during the reign of Edward I, continued into that of his son. A planned expedition to Argyll in the west of Scotland by 3,000 Irish troops in the summer of 1310 was frustrated by bad weather; in 1311 another force of 4,000 men from Ireland was intended to land at Ayr in Scotland, but this too failed to materialize.¹²⁹ In 1311 or early 1312 Edward ordered that in future Irish revenues should be used in Ireland in order to keep the peace because ‘divers Irish of our land of Ireland, our felons and rebels, both because of this same lack of money and their customary pugnacity … [are] day by day perpetrating burnings, homicides, robberies, and other innumerable and intolerable transgressions’.¹³⁰ The timing of the letter was probably influenced by the administrative reforms which were then being introduced in England by the Ordainers, rather than by any realization by Edward that he was draining Ireland of its resources, but the wording of the letter suggests that it was also a response to a plea for assistance from the justiciar of Ireland and his colleagues in Dublin.¹³¹ This did not however bring about any change in government policy. In 1314, the planning for the campaign which came to its disastrous conclusion at Bannockburn included an intended substantial contribution from Ireland. In March Edward wrote summoning twenty-seven of the Anglo-Irish lords to join the campaign, and also to twenty-six of the leading Gaelic Irish chieftains, who could not be required to participate but were nonetheless asked to take part. Four thousand infantry were also summoned from Ireland. All were to be under the overall command of Richard de Burgh, the earl of Ulster and the leading Anglo-Irish magnate.¹³² John MacDougall, the ousted lord of Argyll and Lorn, was appointed as admiral of the western fleet to escort this force,¹³³ and also given the task of preventing any interruption in the supplies of food coming from Ireland to the port of Skinburness near Carlisle.¹³⁴ It is likely that this force was intended, as in 1310 and 1311, to land in western Scotland rather than take part in the main campaign to relieve Stirling. Although none of the Irish forces, cavalry or infantry, are known with certainty to have reached Scotland,¹³⁵ John of Argyll was instrumental in early 1315 in the partial recovery of the Isle of Man from the Scots. This was soon to prove vital in the struggle to prevent the Scots gaining control of the Irish Sea and thus supporting their attempt to conquer the lordship of Ireland.¹³⁶

After Bannockburn Irish resources were needed more than ever for the English war effort. In August 1314 the English clerk John de Hothum, a former associate of Gaveston and a former chancellor of the Irish exchequer, and soon to become bishop of Ely, was sent to Dublin to discover how much money could be raised there in aid of the Scottish war and to enlist the cooperation of the Anglo-Irish magnates. He apparently met with little success, but on his return to England in November, Hothum was at least able to provide Edward II and his government with an up-to-date report on the situation in Ireland.¹³⁷ On 12 March 1315 the Irish administration was ordered to purvey supplies for the English forces on the Scottish border: this was very much in the tradition of employing Irish resources in English wars. But two days later Edward II wrote to sixteen of the leading clergy, twenty-two of the leaders of Gaelic Ireland, thirty-six of the most important Anglo-Irish magnates, and to six urban communities, and the chief officials in the Irish administration, asking them to listen to a message which would be expounded to them orally on his behalf by the justiciar Edmund Butler, the chancellor Richard Bereford, and the treasurer Walter Islip. There is no indication of what the message was to be but it was clearly important. It may have been just another request for assistance in the war against the Scots on the island of Britain, such as had been made in 1314,¹³⁸ but there is some evidence that as early as March 1315 Edward II's government had indications that the Scots were planning to invade Ireland and that Edward may therefore have been looking for support against them or in effect warning anyone who might be inclined to join them.¹³⁹ This would have given a particular resonance to the proposed contacts with the leaders of Gaelic Irish society; described in Edward's letters as duces, some considered themselves kings of their own territories. It was ironic, to say the least, that one of those addressed was Donal O'Neill of Tyrone, the apparent instigator of Edward Bruce's expedition to Ireland.¹⁴⁰

Although the actual time and place of the Scottish landing in Ireland in May 1315 probably came as a surprise, Edward II and his government acted promptly when news of the invasion reached England. On 10 July 1315 Edward wrote to all the leading Anglo-Norman magnates in Ireland, asking them for information on the activities of the Scots and appealing for their assistance in resisting the invasion.¹⁴¹ On 1 September the great council of magnates held by Edward II at Lincoln to discuss the war with Scotland decided to send John de Hothum back to Ireland to report on the situation and to co-ordinate resistance to the Scots.¹⁴² Despite being delayed on his journey at Chester, for fear of the pirate Thomas Dun who had raided the harbour of Holyhead in Anglesey on 12 September and carried off a royal ship, the James of Caernarfon, Hothum arrived in Dublin on 5 November.¹⁴³ He then carried out his mission with considerable success. Hothum organized the defences of Dublin against a possible Scottish attack during the autumn and winter of 1315–16. At the critical time in early 1316, when it seemed that the Scots were about to overrun the lordship of Ireland, Hothum also applied all his diplomatic skills and experience to the task of encouraging the Anglo-Norman magnates, whose confidence and mutual trust had been severely undermined by the Scottish victories at Connor and Kells in September and November 1315. The drawn battle fought at Ardscull in Kildare on 26 January 1316 was as much the product of Hothum's energies and of the foresight of Edward II's government in sending him to Ireland as it was the result of Scottish exhaustion and hunger.¹⁴⁴

By early May 1316 Hothum had returned to England, where he reported to the king's council. Between them they then drafted a memorandum for Edward II recommending the rewards to be given to the Irish magnates for their past support and to ensure their continued loyalty, most notably the creation of John Fitz Thomas as earl of Kildare. In November 1316 Roger Mortimer, who was lord of Wigmore and Ludlow in the Welsh March and lord of Trim and Leix in Ireland, was sent to take command in Ireland,¹⁴⁵but otherwise the defence of the lordship of Ireland on land was conducted for the remainder of the war with little reference to England.¹⁴⁶ Even the attempt that had been made in September 1314 to send 1,000 marks to Ireland to pay the wages of Irish troops who were supposed to go to Scotland failed when the messenger was robbed near Denbigh in North Wales. Hothum's mission to Ireland cost the English exchequer £1,700 but none of this was available to assist with the defence of the lordship, which had to depend on the inadequate resources of the Irish exchequer. The only money sent from England for use within Ireland during the period of the Bruce invasion was a sum of £400 paid in April 1316, which was borrowed from an Italian merchant company, the Ballardi of Lucca.¹⁴⁷ Instead English financial resources, such as they were, had to be used for the defence of the north of England and also to ensure that all the royal castles in Wales were in good repair and well garrisoned in case of a Welsh revolt in sympathy with the Scots in Ireland.¹⁴⁸

There was however one other important theatre of English military operations which had a more direct effect on the war in Ireland: the naval campaign in the Irish Sea. As early as June 1315 orders had been given to use all the available Irish revenues to maintain a royal fleet in the Irish Sea, but the orders came too late since the Scots had already landed in Ireland.¹⁴⁹ Shortage of money often hampered naval operations: an elaborate plan agreed with Antonio Pessagno to hire five Genoese galleys, with a total of 1,000 men, to operate in the Irish Sea in the summer of 1317 never came to fruition,¹⁵⁰ while the order for John of Athy to muster fifteen ships to attack the Scots in the seas between Scotland and Ireland at about the same time apparently resulted in the provision of only six ships.¹⁵¹ But on 2 July 1317 John of Athy did succeed in defeating and killing Thomas Dun, the most notorious of the pirates or privateers in Scottish service.¹⁵² It is difficult to assess the exact contribution of the naval war to the eventual defeat of Edward Bruce at Faughart in October 1318, but it is hard to believe that it had no effect. Although there is little doubt that the Bruce invasion contributed in the longer term to the declining effectiveness of English rule in Ireland, in the short term the defeat and death of Edward Bruce marked one of the few definite military successes of the reign of Edward II.

As to the Irish Remonstrance, this proved to be of no benefit to the Scottish cause in Ireland. Edward II could rely on the papacy for support against the Scots, whose king Robert Bruce had been excommunicated for the murder of his rival John Comyn in 1306. This meant that when a new pope, John XXII, was elected in August 1316, ending the vacancy since the death of Clement V in 1314, Edward II could appeal confidently to him for assistance.¹⁵³ In April 1317 the pope issued bulls ordering the Scots to observe a truce in their war with England, until the arrival of two papal envoys¹⁵⁴ in England to negotiate a permanent settlement. The papal orders applied equally to the Scottish campaigning in the north of England and in Ireland.¹⁵⁵ Predictably, Robert Bruce took no notice, and refused even to take delivery of the bulls, on the grounds that the pope did not give him his rightful title of king.¹⁵⁶ This was the very period when the Irish Remonstrance was being composed and transmitted to Avignon. It is hardly surprising that the Remonstrance, with its litany of justifiable complaints against English rule in Ireland, made so little impact at Avignon or that John XXII's admonishment of Edward II amounted to little more than a gentle slap on the wrist.¹⁵⁷ In return for papal support, Edward's own envoys had promised at a meeting held in Avignon in April 1317 that Edward would pay an annual tribute of 1,000 marks for England and Ireland.¹⁵⁸ This tribute (of 700 marks for England and 300 marks for Ireland) had first been promised by King John in 1213 as part of the solution to his dispute with Pope Innocent III¹⁵⁹ and since then had frequently fallen into arrears: by 1317 these amounted to £16,000 (24,000 marks). Edward's envoys paid the tribute for 1316–17; further sporadic payments were made until 1320 when they ceased altogether; but nothing was paid off the arrears. Neither did Edward II take any notice of the pope's further demand that he should render homage and fealty, which was the other part of the package agreed in 1213.¹⁶⁰

On a totally different front, Edward II exploited his good relations with the papacy to ensure that whenever possible senior appointments in the Irish Church would not go to native Irishmen. This was partly a reaction to the emergency of the Bruce invasion, but it was also a continuation of a policy which had seen, for example, the appointment since 1306 of a series of archbishops of English origin to the primatial see of Armagh.¹⁶¹ In 1317 Edward II gained approval of the appointment of the chancellor of Ireland, William Fitz John, as archbishop of Cashel: as in Armagh eleven years earlier, this involved introducing an English prelate into a province which had previously been under Irish control. In contrast, the confirmation of the appointment of an Englishman, the former treasurer, Alexander Bicknor, as archbishop of Dublin, at about the same time, was routine. Edward was also very anxious about the seditious preaching of certain Irish Franciscans on behalf of Edward Bruce: in August 1316 he sent an English Franciscan, Geoffrey of Aylsham, to see Michael of Cesena, the minister-general of the Franciscan order, to persuade him to stop the hostile preaching. In 1317 the pope duly obliged with a denunciation of such friars.¹⁶² There are now grounds for suspecting that one of these disloyal friars, the Franciscan Michael Mac Lochlainn, the unsuccessful Irish candidate for the see of Armagh in 1303 and a future bishop of Derry, was the author of the Irish Remonstrance.¹⁶³ In the battle to exert influence at the papal curia Edward Bruce and his allies were no match for Edward II and his government.

LANCASTER COMES TO POWER

In the weeks following the assembly of magnates and senior royal administrators held at Lincoln in late August and early September 1315 the influence of the earl of Lancaster grew rapidly, to the extent that Edward II was communicating regularly both with his council in London and with Lancaster.¹⁶⁴ On 4 October, for example, Edward forwarded to the chancellor in London a letter from Lancaster dated at Castle Donington on 30 September and asking for an inquiry into the death of one of his valets. The chancellor was instructed to do as Lancaster requested.¹⁶⁵ On 19 October Edward sent William Melton and Hugh Audley from Sawtrey to Castle Donington to ask for Lancaster's advice in applying the anti-Scottish measures agreed at Lincoln, and on receiving his replies on 20 October promptly sent them to the council. On the 25th another letter from Lancaster, dated at Castle Donington on 23 October and referring to the affairs of the widowed countess of Lincoln, was passed to the council with instructions for action.¹⁶⁶ In early November the king sent Ingelard Warley, William Melton and William de Montacute from Clipstone to visit Lancaster at Wigan, where Lancaster was engaged in suppressing the revolt by his former retainer Adam Banaster. At the end of November Lancaster's advice was again sought when Edward sent Richard Lovel and Edmund Bacon to visit him, his replies being received at Clipstone on 7 December.¹⁶⁷ In mid-December another meeting between the king and some of the leading magnates was held at Doncaster and was intended, like the earlier assembly at Lincoln, to discuss the state of the realm. Apart from Edward, those attending included the earls of Lancaster, Richmond and Hereford. Scotland and Ireland were certainly high on the agenda, but the presence of Roger Mortimer of Chirk, the leading royal officer in North Wales, shows that Wales was also discussed. The council was also preparing the ground for the parliament which had been summoned on 16 October to begin at Lincoln on 27 January 1316.¹⁶⁸

Although nominally called to discuss the continuing threat from the Scots, the parliament was to be dominated by the problem of reaching an agreement on Lancaster's future role in the royal government. The result was a game of cat and mouse played between Edward II and his first cousin which first delayed the proceedings of the parliament and then threatened to reduce them to farce.¹⁶⁹ The broad outlines of what happened are recorded on the Parliament Roll but the details of the negotiations between Edward and Lancaster which must certainly have taken place are hidden from us.¹⁷⁰ On 27 January, the day the parliament was supposed to open, Lancaster was still at his castle of Kenilworth in Warwickshire.¹⁷¹ The political embarrassment this caused was temporarily concealed the following day when the king entered a chamber in the lodgings of the dean of Lincoln and announced to the prelates, earls and others present through William Inge, one of the justices of the Common Bench, that he wished the business of the parliament to be conducted as speedily as possible. On the same day it was agreed that petitions from all the king's dominions, in England, Ireland, Gascony, Wales and Scotland, would be received as was customary until 3 February and arrangements were made to deal with them. The chancellor and treasurer, and the justices of both benches, were also ordered to have business pending before them, which could not be determined outside parliament, set down briefly in writing, and to bring it before the parliament so that appropriate action could be taken on it there. On 29 January it was agreed to proceed with hearing petitions until the arrival of the earl of Lancaster and of other absent magnates, and auditors were appointed for this purpose. On 31 January the earl of Hereford gave answers on behalf of the king to the petitions presented by the clergy. Lancaster was still absent on 1 February when Edward appointed the earls of Pembroke and Richmond, and the bishops of Norwich and Exeter, to act in Edward's place until Lancaster's arrival.¹⁷²

Lancaster arrived in Lincoln only on 9 or 10 February, possibly accompanied by armed retainers, but the real business of the parliament did not begin until his attendance on 12 February.¹⁷³ After the enactment of a statute governing the appointment and removal of sheriffs and the repeal on the 14th of the ordinance on the price of victuals issued in the 1315 parliament, the most important matters were reached on 17 February, when the bishop of Norwich announced that the king had agreed to the enforcement of the Ordinances and to the observation of the perambulation of the forest which had been carried out in 1300.¹⁷⁴ On the same day the bishop ‘said some things on behalf of the king to the earl of Lancaster’.¹⁷⁵ A week later, on 24 February, their nature became evident when ‘some words were further spoken to Thomas earl of Lancaster on behalf of the lord king, to remove a certain doubt which the earl was said to have entertained about the king, informing him that the lord king bore a sincere and wholehearted goodwill towards him and the other magnates of his realm’. Lancaster was then asked on behalf of the king and of the prelates and magnates present in parliament if he would accept appointment as the head of the king's council. Thanking the king for the offer, Lancaster ‘humbly begged that he might consider it, and answer later’; the consideration evidently did not last long since Lancaster decided to accept the king's request and was sworn in as chief councillor. In the form of his appointment Lancaster stated that he had agreed to lead the council because of the king's promise to uphold the Ordinances and to reform the administration of his household and government. No major decisions were to be made without the council, and councillors who gave bad advice were to be removable in parliament on the demand of the king and Lancaster. Lancaster's appointment also contained the vital provision that he could discharge himself from the council without incurring any ill-will, if the king did not accept the advice given by him and the council.¹⁷⁶ It followed naturally from the terms of Lancaster's appointment that, at the same time, the king consented to the formation of a commission consisting of the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Llandaff, Chichester, Norwich and Salisbury, the earls of Pembroke, Hereford, Arundel, Richmond and Lancaster, and Bartholomew de Badlesmere, who were instructed to consider means of reforming the realm and the household, as well as the removal from the household of men whom they regarded as unsuitable.¹⁷⁷ Important as Lancaster's position now was, the names of his colleagues on the reform commission and those of the bishops of Norwich, Chichester, Exeter and Salisbury, who were added to the council on 1 February,¹⁷⁸ show that in practice he would be working with existing royal councillors and sympathizers and not with any of his own supporters. Lancaster's imposition as head of the council might appear a revolutionary step, but he would require personal qualities of a high order if he were to impose himself on long-established royal sympathizers. He would also have to display a degree of application to official business which he had not shown in the past.¹⁷⁹

THE BUSINESS OF PARLIAMENT

As soon as Lancaster's new status seemed settled, attention could be given to Scotland, the business for which the Lincoln parliament had originally been summoned. On 20 February the king received two separate grants of taxation in aid of the war with Scotland, a sixteenth from the ‘magnates and community of the realm’, and a fifteenth from the ‘citizens, burgesses and knights of the counties’. The service of an armed foot soldier from every vill in the kingdom was also granted by the magnates and community; on the same date the army was ordered to muster at Newcastle on 8 July in readiness for a Scottish campaign,¹⁸⁰ and on 28 February every landholder with land worth £50 or more was ordered to take up knighthood.¹⁸¹ Whether these military arrangements would have any useful effect would depend in part on how the new political relationship between Edward II and Lancaster worked in practice.

THE KING AND THE CLERGY

The Lincoln parliament also marked a stage in defining the relations between the crown and the English Church. The bargaining between king and clergy was given urgency by the clergy's unwillingness to make any grant of taxation to the king until their grievances had been satisfactorily addressed. These were administrative and jurisdictional in nature and included ‘such matters as violent hands upon clerks, royal interference with ecclesiastical property, burdens placed by the crown upon religious houses, and denial of clerical privilege in the correction of criminous clerks … royal interference with the process of excommunication, with the rights of sanctuary and abjuration, with the examination of clerks presented to benefices, and with the process of ecclesiastical elections’. On 31 January the earl of Hereford gave answers on behalf of the king and in the king's presence to the petitions presented by the clergy. The responses of the king and his council, which answered only some of the grievances of the clergy, were later embodied in theArticuli cleri, which was issued at York on 24 November 1316. In the meantime, in October and earlier in November, the two provinces of the English Church had finally made the grants of taxation which the king had been looking for at Lincoln.¹⁸²

THE GLOUCESTER INHERITANCE

Many other matters occupied Edward II and his council both during the time of the Lincoln parliament and long after it had ended, some of them time-consuming such as Hugh de Courtenay's claim to the inheritance of Isabella de Forz, countess of Aumale;¹⁸³others both time-consuming and politically sensitive, such as the long-running dispute between the king's chamberlain John Charlton and one of Lancaster's retainers, Gruffudd de la Pole, over possession of the lordship of Welshpool which had been in progress since 1309 and continued until the early 1330s;¹⁸⁴ another lengthy dispute was that between the citizens of Bristol and Bartholomew de Badlesmere, the royal constable of Bristol castle.¹⁸⁵

Most delicate of all was the fate of the possessions in England, Wales and Ireland of Gilbert de Clare, the late earl of Gloucester, who had been killed at Bannockburn in June 1314, leaving a wife who was thought to be pregnant and lands worth over £6,500 per year.¹⁸⁶ Gilbert also left three sisters, who might each be entitled to a third of the remaining Clare lands, after first allowing for one third as the dower of Gilbert's widow during her lifetime. In 1314 only one of the three sisters was married: Eleanor who had been the wife of Hugh Despenser the Younger since 1307. At the time the marriage was a sign of the royal favour enjoyed by his father Hugh the Elder: the marriage in itself did not bring with it the likelihood that the younger Hugh might one day become a wealthy and powerful man in his own right. In 1314 the other two sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth were both widows, one the former wife of Piers Gaveston and the other of John de Burgh, the son of the earl of Ulster. The immediate question had been whether Gilbert de Clare's widow was pregnant or not. It was apparent long before January 1316 that she had not been, leaving Gilbert's three sisters as his joint heirs. Hugh Despenser the Younger had been quick off the mark and at some point in 1315 had appeared first in chancery at Westminster and then before the council to ask for his wife's share of the Clare lands. He had been told to raise the matter at the next parliament, and this he duly did at Lincoln in February 1316. A further question was who would marry the remaining Clare heiresses and each scoop a third share of the jackpot. This was of course a political and patronage problem of the highest order and one which Edward II and his council were eager to postpone for as long as possible, knowing that whatever the solution it would cause trouble. On 4 February a leading Anglo-Irish magnate, Theobald de Verdun, seized his opportunity and married Elizabeth de Clare near Bristol castle where she was then living, against the king's wishes and greatly to his annoyance. For his pains Theobald was summoned before the council to explain himself and claimed that he and Elizabeth had been betrothed in Ireland. Theobald did not however live to profit by his act of defiance, dying the following July.¹⁸⁷ In the meantime, although the king and his council could not bring themselves to answer Despenser's claim and delayed a decision on technicalities, the issue could not be postponed indefinitely and would come back to haunt the king and poison English politics.

Despenser was undoubtedly disappointed and this may help to explain an extraordinary incident which occurred during the Lincoln parliament. This was Despenser's attack on John de Roos after the latter allegedly tried to arrest one of his knights, Ingelram Berenger. The attack took place in Lincoln cathedral on Sunday, 22 February in the presence of the king and the prelates and magnates assembled in parliament. The reasons for the animosity between Despenser and Roos are obscure but the incident was an ominous foretaste of the power which Despenser craved and which he was soon to wield.¹⁸⁸

WALES

The apparently ‘final’ conquest of Wales by Edward I in 1282–3 had been followed by revolts in 1287 and especially in 1294–5. As Rees Davies has so eloquently put it, ‘the conquest of Wales left a deep legacy of despair and bitterness among Welshmen’.¹⁸⁹Although the despair and bitterness had dimmed with the passage of time and with the often successful attempts by Edward I and by his son, both as Prince of Wales and as king, to build bridges towards the Welsh community,¹⁹⁰ ‘grievances there remained in abundance … Wales was still politically volatile. Indeed in 1315–17 the country seemed once more to be on the brink of revolt.’¹⁹¹ In Glamorgan, for example, a revolt had already broken out in 1314–15 shortly after the lordship was taken into royal hands following Gilbert de Clare's death at Bannockburn.¹⁹² The Scottish invasion of Ireland in the summer of 1315 raised fears that if Edward Bruce succeeded there ‘he would at once cross to Wales, and raise the Welsh likewise against our king. For these two races are easily roused to rebellion; they bear the yoke of slavery reluctantly, and curse the lordship of the English.’¹⁹³ A letter probably written in the autumn of 1315 indicates that Edward II and his government were acutely aware of the dangers in Wales and were taking urgent measures to prevent trouble. Edward was concerned that the Scots might land in Anglesey or elsewhere in North Wales. He also wanted his officials to provide for the safekeeping of the area ‘without stirring the Welsh’ and to ‘do all in their power to persuade the Welsh to agree to send some of their children and others of their kindred to the king, to be of his company, for the king has long desired it’. ‘On the other hand, if they see that the Welsh are inclined to misbehave because of hardship and duress done to them concerning their inheritances and their franchises or in other ways, let them freely promise on the lord's behalf that the matter will be speedily and thoroughly redressed’. In a significant concluding remark, the king's officials were instructed to consult with Sir Gruffydd Llwyd, one of the most influential of Edward II's Welsh supporters.¹⁹⁴

Gruffydd Llwyd, another Welsh knight Morgan ap Meredudd, and the bishop of Bangor visited Edward II at Clipstone in early December to discuss the situation in Wales; orders were also given to put the royal castles in North Wales into a state of defence;¹⁹⁵and during the Lincoln parliament, on 7 February 1316, Edward made a number of concessions to the communities of North, South and West Wales, in answer to the grievances they had expressed in their petitions. Edward also ordered that the ordinances he had issued at Kennington in 1305, when he was Prince of Wales, should be fully observed.¹⁹⁶

This prompt and energetic response on the part of the king and his council was all the more necessary since they had no recent news of events in Ireland. Details of the battle of Ardscull, fought on 26 January, the day before the opening of the Lincoln parliament, were not received by Edward until 26 February.¹⁹⁷ For all anyone in England knew, the Scots might have won further victories and even taken Dublin. The unsuccessful Scottish attack on Berwick in early January was another sign of just how serious the military situation might become.

Revolt in North Wales was prevented but in Glamorgan the unrest that had existed since the summer of 1314 broke out once more in early 1316 under the leadership of Llywelyn Bren, the grandson of the former lord of Senghenydd who had been dispossessed by the earl of Gloucester in 1266.¹⁹⁸ The royal government had been aware since early December that tensions were rising in Glamorgan and had taken precautions against possible trouble. On 28 January Llywelyn attacked the great castle of Caerphilly, capturing the constable while he was holding a court outside the walls, but failing to take the castle itself. Llantrisant castle was seized and a great deal of damage done elsewhere in the lordship of Glamorgan.¹⁹⁹

On 6 February the king began his response. William de Montacute and Hugh Audley were appointed to lead a force of men-at-arms into Glamorgan; five days later the earl of Hereford, who was also lord of Brecon, was put in overall command, and was later joined by other marcher lords, including Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, newly arrived back from Ireland. The campaign was soon over. On 18 March Llywelyn surrendered and was afterwards sent to the Tower of London, together with his wife and sons. It had taken a force of 150 men-at-arms and 2,000 foot soldiers to suppress the rising, a considerable diversion of resources and of money at a time when these were in short supply.²⁰⁰

There is no reason to think that Edward Bruce was in any way connected with the revolt in Glamorgan,²⁰¹ and indeed the English government's fears of a Scottish intervention in Wales in 1315–16 were probably much exaggerated. However, in an ironic postscript, there were some contacts during the winter of 1316–17 between Edward Bruce and Gruffydd Llwyd. Some correspondence appears to have passed between them suggesting treasonable intent by Gruffydd.²⁰² As a result he was arrested in December 1316 and held at Rhuddlan, before being taken to meet the king at Clarendon and then in April 1317 transferred to the Tower of London. The imprisonment seemingly did not last long and Gruffydd later resumed his loyal service of the crown.²⁰³ Wales had not in the event turned against Edward II during the crucial period of the Scottish campaigns in Ireland, while Edward and his government had dealt with Welsh grievances and averted any general revolt.²⁰⁴

THE SIEGE OF BRISTOL

While the revolt of Llywelyn Bren was being suppressed, just across the water from Glamorgan another crisis was reaching its climax in the important port town of Bristol. Since 1313 a dispute had been in progress between the people of Bristol and Bartholomew de Badlesmere, the royal constable and warden of the castle and town.²⁰⁵ Attempts to resolve it in 1315 and at the Lincoln parliament at the beginning of 1316 were unsuccessful.²⁰⁶ On 13 June the sheriff of Gloucestershire entered Bristol but was prevented from arresting six of the townspeople who had been outlawed because of their defiance of royal authority. When the sheriff returned to carry out the arrests he found the town fortified against him. On 20 June the earl of Pembroke, William Inge one of the royal judges, and others were appointed to inquire into these events and authorized to punish the community if they refused to return to their allegiance to the king.²⁰⁷ By 7 July Pembroke, Badlesmere and one of Pembroke's retainers, Maurice de Berkeley, the lord of the nearby Berkeley castle, had reached Keynsham close to Bristol. The people of Bristol again defied royal orders, believing wrongly that because the king was planning a campaign in the north against the Scots he would have to withdraw. Instead Pembroke ordered the town to be placed under siege, after which he and Badlesmere returned to London to report to the king. On about 19 July Badlesmere returned to Bristol with William de Montacute and, with the aid of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and Maurice de Berkeley, began the siege, which ended with the town's surrender on 26 July.²⁰⁸ In December Bristol was pardoned by the king and its liberties restored. The final outcome was therefore satisfactory for the crown, but it was yet another diversion of energy and resources at a critical time.

LANCASTER IN AND OUT OF GOVERNMENT

In the weeks following his appointment on 24 February 1316 as the head of the king's council Lancaster appears to have been playing an active part in the government of the kingdom. He was being consulted as early as 26 February when John de Hothum's report on events in Ireland and other material relating to Ireland and Scotland was passed to him for comment. Lancaster had not however begun his duties with the council by that date,²⁰⁹ nor had he done so by 3 March when the king forwarded letters dealing with the situation at Berwick to Pembroke, the archbishop of Canterbury and the chancellor and treasurer.²¹⁰ On 6 March Lancaster was at Kenilworth and cannot be traced with the council in London until 14 March, when he was in the company of the archbishop, the bishop of Chichester, the earls of Pembroke and Richmond, and Bartholomew de Badlesmere.²¹¹ On 15 March the king sent two letters from the constable of France to Lancaster, the archbishop and other members of the council in London, and further letters were sent to them on 17 and 19 March.²¹² On 23 March Lancaster, the chancellor and treasurer and other unnamed members of the council were in session at St Paul's, London.²¹³ Shortly afterwards Lancaster left London and on 30 and 31 March he and one of his leading retainers, Sir Robert de Holland, were at Langley to report on the work of the council, which had remained in London.²¹⁴ After leaving the king, Lancaster moved to his castle at Kenilworth, which he had reached by 8 April, perhaps intending to spend Easter there. There is however no evidence that he rejoined the council after Easter or at any other time in the following months, and by 28 April he had moved on again to Castle Donington in Leicestershire.²¹⁵ Ironically, on this same date Lancaster, Robert de Holland, the earl of Pembroke and Badlesmere were authorized to give safe conducts in the king's name to Robert Bruce himself or to other Scottish envoys who were coming to England to discuss a truce or even peace. The meeting was to take place at Leicester, one of Lancaster's own possessions. Yet on the same day the order was cancelled and reissued in the names of two royal clerks and a royal knight.²¹⁶ Had Lancaster therefore withdrawn from the council and from an active part in the royal government by the end of April 1316, only two months after his appointment as head of the council?

At some point he did withdraw. In a letter written over a year later, in July 1317, Lancaster claimed that he had done so because Edward had failed to observe the Ordinances, refused to accept the reform proposals drawn up in London by himself and the reform commission established at the Lincoln parliament in January 1316, and had surrounded himself with new favourites.²¹⁷ There is however no prima facie evidence to support these claims in relation to the events of 1316. There are on the other hand clear indications during Lancaster's association with the council of attempts to enforce the Ordinances. Between 6 March and 12 April orders were given for the sheriffs to publish the Ordinances as often as was necessary, for the resumption of grants that had been made contrary to them, for the prohibition of illegal prises, and for the payment into the exchequer of the entire receipts of the customs.²¹⁸ The proposals made to the king by the reform commission at this time are unknown but there is nothing to suggest any abrupt rejection of them, and indeed on 17 March Edward went so far as to express his complete trust in the council and to ask them to continue their work as they had begun.²¹⁹ There is no evidence that any new royal favourites were yet conspicuous, unless the ambitions of Hugh Despenser the Younger were causing more disturbance than is shown in the records. It is possible that Lancaster fell out with the king when he visited him at Langley in early April, but if so the records are again silent.

Even if there were some truth in the charges in relation to the spring of 1316, it is more likely that in making the charges over a year later Lancaster was attempting to rationalize his withdrawal in 1316 in the light of more recent events. The underlying hatred and lack of trust between Edward and Lancaster were no doubt part of the explanation, even if there was no spectacular breach between them. But so too was Lancaster's lack of capacity for the role he had undertaken at Lincoln. He had little administrative experience, one contemporary writer noting his habit of leaving even his own affairs in the hands of others.²²⁰ It is likely that he also lacked the ability necessary to act as head of the council and to deal with the complexities of government. It was easier to demand reform of the government while on the outside than to bring it about when in office, even assuming that the king and the other members of the council were wholeheartedly in favour. Lancaster's insistence on the implementation of the Ordinances was little more than a mantra, betraying his lack of any original ideas of his own. The Ordinances had not been a solution to the problems of government when they were first published in 1311, and they were not a solution in 1316. The continuing pressure from the Scots in the north of England and in Ireland, the shortage of money, and the effects both on the government and on the population at large of the bad weather and the resulting hardships indicate the scale of the real burden which Lancaster had naively undertaken to shoulder. It is also very probable that Lancaster found difficulty in his relations with his fellow councillors. As in 1315, he had few if any friends or allies on the council. Lancaster probably also misunderstood his role as head of the council, seeing himself in modern terms as a chief executive officer rather than as chairman of the board. Frustration at his incapacity and poor relations with his colleagues may therefore have caused Lancaster's departure from the council and made him, once he had departed, disinclined to return. It is likely that initially at least neither Edward II nor even Lancaster himself realized that the withdrawal would be final. Fortunately for Lancaster, the condition made at the time of his appointment, which allowed for his possible withdrawal, permitted him to go with some dignity.²²¹

EDWARD

In the midst of all the intense politicking and the stresses of warfare, weather and financial problems, it is easy to lose sight of Edward II himself. It was a very bad time for him personally. The burial of his friend and ‘brother’ Piers Gaveston in January 1315 may have brought closure of a kind but cannot have done much to alleviate the pain Edward had suffered from Gaveston's death or to relieve the humiliation he had experienced at Bannockburn. In early May 1316 he also suffered the loss of his sister Elizabeth, the widowed countess of Holland and currently the wife of the earl of Hereford. Elizabeth and Edward were close in age and also close friends.²²²

Even social events in his life came close to disaster. When he gave a great feast in Westminster Hall, on 20 April 1315, marking the end of parliament and attended by the archbishop of Canterbury and many earls and barons, the hall caught fire.²²³ In September 1315, while he was apparently on holiday at Fen Ditton near Cambridge and engaged in rowing, one of his favourite leisure pastimes, Edward had a narrow escape from drowning.²²⁴

It is probably no coincidence that this low point is the period in which several examples of personal criticism of Edward are recorded. In July 1314, the month after Bannockburn, Robert de Newington in Kent, a messenger in the royal household, remarked that Edward could not be expected to win battles if he spent the time when he should have been hearing mass in ‘idling and applying himself to making ditches and digging and other improper occupations’.²²⁵ During the parliament of January 1315 a London goldsmith, John Bonaventure, complained that he had been imprisoned by the marshals of the king's household on an accusation by John of Lincoln of having said ‘certain evil and shameful things about the king’.²²⁶ In 1316 a clerk named Thomas de Tynwelle was accused of saying publicly in the park of north Oxford on 19 December 1315 that Edward II was not his father's son. It is not clear whether Thomas meant this to be taken literally or whether he was in effect remarking that Edward II ‘was not the man his father was’, which was after all a common opinion.²²⁷ In late December 1314, the chancellor of Oxford University, Master Henry Harclay, preached a sermon to commemorate the murder in December 1170 of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of Henry II's knights and implied that final punishment for Becket's death might be visited upon the fourth generation, apparently referring to Edward II.²²⁸ Another ecclesiastical protest, this time in the form of a letter addressed by ‘a certain regular of admitted authority’ to the king's confessor, is recorded by the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi under the year 1316:

Since a king is so styled from the fact of ruling, as one who should rule his people with laws, and defend them with his sword from their enemies, he is fittingly called king while he rules well; but when he despoils his people he is rather adjudged to be a tyrant. Indeed our king, passing through the country, takes men's goods and pays little or nothing or badly. In fact, those to whom something is owed from such a cause, in order to save trouble, often make an agreement to remit a percentage, so that the balance may be paid more quickly. Formerly, indeed, the inhabitants rejoiced to see the face of the king when he came, but now, because the people are injured by the king's arrival, they look forward greatly to his departure and as he leaves they pray that he may never return. The king, moreover too often [visits] religious houses…²²⁹

The one moment of unalloyed joy for Edward during this dismal period was the birth at Eltham on 15 August 1316 of his and Isabella's second child, a boy who was named John. It is likely that he had been conceived during Edward II's long stay at Clipstone in Nottinghamshire at the end of 1315.²³⁰ Lancaster was invited to attend the christening but did not do so.²³¹ It was yet another indication of the newly embittered state of English politics.

¹ For all his experience of warfare, Edward I fought in only three pitched battles (at Lewes and Evesham in 1264 & 1265; and at Falkirk in 1298). Edward III's only full-scale battles on land were at Halidon Hill in 1333 and Crécy in 1346. This is an indication of the rarity of such engagements: Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 306.

² Vita, 110–11, which indicates that the 1314 harvest was impeded by heavy rain, but that much worse was to follow in 1315. See also Jordan, Great Famine, 18–19, 194; I. Kershaw, ‘The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England 1315–1322’, Past & Present, 59 (May 1973), 6; Maddicott, 162–3.

³ C 53/101, m.22; Vita, 98–9; Phillips, 76.

⁴ PW, II, ii, 126–35; C 219/3/4.

⁵ CPR, 1313–17, 169. Initially Henry de Beaumont was also to assist at the opening, but his name was then omitted on the same day, probably because his presence would have been too provocative to the earl of Lancaster and his allies.

⁶ Vita, 98–101; Lanercost, 229.

⁷ CCR, 1313–18, 197–8; CPR, 1313–17, 178; CFR, 1307–19, 220–1; Phillips, 76; Maddicott, 164–5. Although Reynolds had been appointed as chancellor in 1310, he was generally described from early 1312 by the lesser title of keeper of the Great Seal.

⁸ Maddicott, 165; Tout, Place of the Reign, 316–17.

⁹ Tout, Chapters, ii, 294–5.

¹⁰ Flores, 339; Vita, 100–1; Maddicott, 165.

¹¹ I have modified the views I expressed in Aymer de Valence, 76; cf. also Maddicott, 164–5; and Tout, Place of the Reign, 90–2.

¹² Vita, 100–1. Edward allegedly gave his sister all the Scottish captives, some of whom had been held in England since the time of Edward I, as bargaining counters for the return of her husband, but the situation cannot have been as simple as this.

¹³ Lambeth Ms. 1213, f. 32; Foedera, II, i, 254–6; Letters from Northern Registers, nos cl, clii, cliii (pp. 233–8); McNamee, 77–8. The mission of the three clergy may have been an attempt to gain protection for their localities against Scottish raiding. But it is also known that between Sept. 1314 and March 1315 the archbishop paid out about 1,250 marks to ransom prisoners held by the Scots: Letters from Northern Registers, no. clx (pp. 1248–9).

¹⁴ Vita, 100–1; Lanercost, 229; Barrow, 231.

¹⁵ E 101/375/8, f. 15; Hamilton, 166, n. 79.

¹⁶ Vita, 100–3; Hamilton, 99–100; Chaplais, 110–11.

¹⁷ Vita, 100–3.

¹⁸ Hamilton, 99–100; 166, n. 81.

¹⁹ Edward II expressed his concern for the early election of a new pope in letters to the cardinals on 29 June 1314: Foedera, II, i, 249–50. Allegedly Edward was concerned because the continued vacancy would delay the crusade he and Philip IV of France had undertaken in 1313. But Edward probably had other matters in mind, such as the affairs of Aquitaine and the rehabilitation of Gaveston. The new pope, John XXII, was not chosen until Aug. 1316.

²⁰ Cf. Hamilton, 166, n. 8; Chaplais, 111.

²¹ E 101/375/16, m.1; E 101/375/15; E 101/376/2; Hamilton, 100; 166, n. 82. Hamilton gives the date as 3 Jan. but 2 Jan. seems more likely: Phillips, 83. Chaplais, 111, suggests that the date may have been chosen since it fell within the octave of the Holy Innocents, ‘a point which would have appealed to Edward: what had Piers done which merited death?’

²² Hamilton, 100; 166, n. 84.

²³ Presumably these were the Dominicans of Langley, but friars from other orders may well have been present.

²⁴ BL, Cotton Mss. Cleopatra D.III, f. 56d (Hailes abbey chronicle); Trokelowe, 88; E 101/375/17, m.1.

²⁵ Hamilton, 100, 166, n. 82. On 25 Dec. 1314 the king's butler was ordered to send 23 tuns of wine to Langley for use at the funeral: CCR, 1313–18, 139.

²⁶ Trokelowe, 88.

²⁷ For the details see Hamilton, 100; 166, n. 85. The last reference to prayers for Gaveston is on 28 June 1326: CPR, 1324–27, 281. There is nothing to indicate the nature of Gaveston's tomb or even whether Edward II intended Langley to be Gaveston's permanent resting place.

²⁸ An indication of what was to come had already appeared in the list of summons to the York parliament of Sept. 1314. The parliament was not only the first occasion on which Hugh Despenser the Younger received a personal summons but he and his father also appeared together almost at the head of the list of barons summoned: RDP, iii, 241.The only baron whose name appeared above them was Henry de Percy.

²⁹ HMC, Tenth Report, part 3, 300; Register of Walter Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, 1307–1326, ed. F.C. Hingeston-Randolph (London, 1892), 429–30; Phillips, 82; Maddicott, 165–6.

³⁰ CPR, 1313–17, 203–6; CCW, 407.

³¹ For details of the parliament, which had been summoned on 24 Oct. 1314 shortly after the end of the York parliament, see the Westminster parliament of Jan. 1315 in PROME.

³² Vita, 102–3. Ann. Lond., 232; Ann. Paul., 278, both give Westminster as the place of meeting.

³³ Vita, 102–3; 102, n. 198; Phillips, 83; Maddicott, 167.

³⁴ ‘Deeds enrolled on the de Banco Rolls’, ed. E.A. Fry (National Archives typescript, 1927), 58; CFR, 1309–19, 240, 243–4; Phillips, 83; Maddicott, 167, 179. According to Gesta Edwardi, 47, Edward II confirmed the Ordinances ‘so that he would be better able to win the earls' sympathies’.

³⁵ Lay Taxes, 32–3.

³⁶ Foedera, II, i, 263, 266; Maddicott, 163. The pressure in parliament for such an ordinance was the result of price inflation in the years since about 1300 rather than of any immediate shortages of food supplies: Kershaw, Great Famine, 6; H.E. Hallam, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ii, 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 718–19, 753, 794.

³⁷ PROME, Parliament Roll of 1315, SC9/18, item 35.

³⁸ Harriss, 120 and 120, n. 2.

³⁹ PROME, Parliament Roll of 1315, item 23.

⁴⁰ PROME, Parliament Roll of 1315, item 23; Lay Taxes, 31–2.

⁴¹ Ann. Lond., 234–6.

⁴² C 53/101, mm.5, 6; Phillips, 84; Maddicott, 166.

⁴³ Ann. Lond., 232: Phillips, 84, n. 3; Maddicott, 166. The chronicler was possibly anticipating Lancaster's formal appointment as head of the council in 1316. Davies dates this reference to Warwick to 1314: Baronial Opposition, 395. Tout saw Warwick as replacing the incompetent Lancaster, but the latter had not yet taken a leading role in government and his abilities were as yet untested: Place of the Reign, 93.

⁴⁴ He had probably returned to Warwick by 11 July; his will was dated there on 28 July but his death was already expected on 18 July: BL, Add. Ms. 28024, f. 70; Bod., Dugdale Ms. 12, ff. 478–9; CFR, 1307–19, 255; Phillips, 92, n. 1.

⁴⁵ CCR, 1313–18, 163; Trokelowe, 90; Phillips, 83; Maddicott, 166, 168. Many other magnates also failed to return. Lancaster was at Kenilworth on 20 March, Donington on 14 May, Warwick on 8 June, and Melbourne on 13 June: Maddicott, 168.

⁴⁶ CCW, passim; C 53/101, mm.1–17; Phillips, 84.

⁴⁷ E 159/88, m.144; Phillips, 85.

⁴⁸ E 101/376/7, f. 18; Phillips, 85; Maddicott, 166–7. For a study of the ‘Great Cause’ see Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, 1290–1296, ed. E.L.G. Stones & G.G. Simpson, 2 vols (Oxford, 1978).

⁴⁹ E 101/376/7, f. 18; SC 1/45/ 186; Phillips, 85.

⁵⁰ CPR, 1313–17, 279; SC 1/45/186 (endorsement); Phillips, 85.

⁵¹ CPR, 1313–17, 263, 289; CFR, 1307–19, 248; Phillips, 85.

⁵² SC 1/35/135, 135A; Phillips, 87; Maddicott, 169. This meeting took place at Warwick.

⁵³ C 47/27/8/34; Phillips, 87.

⁵⁴ CPR, 1313–17, 296; CFR, 1307–19, 240, 251 (grant to Hugh Audley); Phillips, 85. The fresh confirmation of the Ordinances and the perambulation of the forest ordered during the Lincoln parliament in Jan. 1316 might also imply that these had not been fully enforced in 1315.

⁵⁵ Maddicott, 158–9, 161.

⁵⁶ Phillips, 77–82, 226–7; Maddicott, 154–7. Lancaster did not want an ally of the king to control Thorpe Waterville which was close to one of Lancaster's holdings at Higham Ferrers. Other examples are Lancaster's dispute with the earl of Surrey in 1317–18 over lands in the Welsh March and in Yorkshire and the long-running contest between John Charlton and Lancaster's retainer, Gruffudd de la Pole, over possession of the lordship of Powys: Maddicott, 156.

⁵⁷ Walsingham, 137; Maddicott, 170. There is no evidence to support the rumour.

⁵⁸ The peel tower had first been planned in Jan. 1312 after Gaveston's final return from exile and construction took place in 1316–17. Lancaster had important castles at Leicester and Castle Donington in Leicestershire, Kenilworth in Warwickshire, Tutbury in Staffordshire, and a new castle built at Melbourne in Derbyshire in 1313–14. These added to pressure on the important royal castle at Nottingham and also made Clipstone vulnerable: see D. Crook, ‘Clipstone peel’, in Thirteenth Century England, x, ed. M. Prestwich, R. Britnell & R. Frame (Woodbridge, Suffolk & Rochester, NY, 2005), 187–95, esp. 190–1.

⁵⁹ Phillips, 86–7; the petitions are recorded in E 36/187, p. 53 published as Gascon Calendar of 1322, ed. Cuttino: see items 442–6.

⁶⁰ See Brown, ‘Diplomacy,’ 71–3. On the Process of Périgueux see Cuttino, English Diplomatic Administration, 87–100. In 1315 it suited the English to continue the process indefinitely and in the summer of 1314 an English clerk, Elias de Joneston, had twice gone to France to ensure that this was the case. The reasoning behind Pembroke's mission in 1315 was laid out in a memorandum recorded in E 175/2/5/ [1], and in C 47/27/8/31: Brown, ‘Diplomacy’, 72–3; 73, n. 91; 78–80.

⁶¹ Phillips, 86–7.

⁶² The French and English replies are all contained in C 47/27/8/34; Phillips, 87.

⁶³ The French appointed their commissioners on 26 June: Foedera, II, i, 270. Although it was intended that the earl of Warwick and Hugh de Vere should act as commissioners, the death of both men and the pressure of the war with Scotland prevented the appointment of English commissioners until early in 1316: CCW, 423; SC 1/37/33; Brown, ‘Diplomacy’, 73; Chaplais, Diplomatic Practice, i, no.152 (text of SC 1/37/33).

⁶⁴ This was an important symbolic concession since Edward II was prepared to perform homage for Aquitaine to the king of France but did not want this to have any practical results such as providing military service. However in September 1315 Edward ordered all the Flemings in England to be banished, in accordance with a decree issued by Louis X in July, and also offered France naval assistance against Flanders: Foedera, II, i, 272, 277; Vale, 58–9. Edward had good reason to do this since in May the Scots had invaded Ireland with assistance from Flanders.

⁶⁵ Foedera, II, i, 269–70; C 47/32/11/2; Phillips, 87; Brown, ‘Diplomacy’, 73.

⁶⁶ Edward II never did perform homage to Louis X, who died in June 1316.

⁶⁷ For details of the Scottish raids into England, 1314–15, see the maps in McNamee, 73, and Barrow, 234–5 (this covers the whole period 1311–27).

⁶⁸ McNamee, 72–4; Maddicott, 160–1.

⁶⁹ McNamee, 74; Barrow, 236–8. On the crucial role of Ireland in financing, supplying and fighting English wars in Scotland see, for example, J. Lydon, ‘Edward I, Ireland and the war in Scotland, 1303–1304’, in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Lydon (Dublin, 1981), 43–61; repr. in P. Crooks, ed., Government, War and Society in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2008).

⁷⁰ Vita, 98–9; PW, II, ii, 122; Phillips, 88.

⁷¹ Maddicott, 161.

⁷² PW, II, i, 138–9, 435; SC 1/35/ 142, 142A; CCR, 1313–18, 205; Register of William Greenfield, Archbishop of York, 1306–1315, ed. W. Brown & A. Hamilton Thompson, Surtees Soc., cxlv (Durham, 1931), i, no. 359; Maddicott, 167–8; Phillips, 88.

⁷³ E 163/4/1/2; CPR, 1313–17, 254; Phillips, 88.

⁷⁴ Foedera, II, i, 263–4.

⁷⁵ SC 1/35/135, 135A; CPR, 1313–17, 291; CCR, 1313–18, 233; Phillips, 88; Maddicott, 169.

⁷⁶ PW, II, ii, 158; E 403/174, mm.2, 4; E 101/376/7, ff. 60, 60v; Phillips, 88–9; Maddicott, 169.

⁷⁷ E 101/376/7, ff. 60, 60v; E 101/15/6; C 81/1736/46, 51; Phillips, 89; Maddicott, 169.

⁷⁸ Vita, 104–5. The Vita may have been broadly right since at various times in 1315 Pembroke was accompanied by 70 extra men-at-arms, 400 hobelars and 170 archers: Phillips, 89.

⁷⁹ PW, II, ii, 159; Phillips, 89.

⁸⁰ E 101/68/2/35; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 566–7; Vita, 104–5; Phillips, 87–8. Since Berkeley succeeded Simon Ward, who was possibly a follower of Lancaster, and his appointment was made in the presence of the earls of Pembroke, Richmond and Hereford and in the absence of both Lancaster and Warwick, there may have been some element of politics in it: Maddicott, 165; Phillips, 88.

⁸¹ Lanercost, 230–2; Guisborough, 397; Phillips, 89; Maddicott, 169–70; McNamee, 80–1.

⁸² PW, II, ii, 159, 161; Phillips, 89–90; Maddicott, 170.

⁸³ Phillips, 90.

⁸⁴ Maddicott, 170, 172, 174–7. There is a detailed account of this episode in G.H. Tupling, South Lancashire in the Reign of Edward II, Chetham Soc., 3rd ser., i (Manchester, 1949).

⁸⁵ E 101/376/7, ff. 11, 11v; C 53/102, mm.16, 17; Phillips, 92; Maddicott, 171.

⁸⁶ Foedera, II, i, 275; Phillips, 92–3; Maddicott, 171.

⁸⁷ CPR, 1313–17, 350; PW, II, ii, 162–3; Phillips, 92–3; Maddicott, 171.

⁸⁸ This is recorded in a letter from Edward II to Pembroke on 18 Oct.: SC 1/49/32; Phillips, 90, n. 7.

⁸⁹ McNamee, 81.

⁹⁰ In Aug. 1314, for example, the infantry forces of Yorkshire had been assigned to the command of the earl of Pembroke but at the expense of the vills from which they came. These and other attempts to extend the bounds of military obligation met with mixed success and became a source of grievance: Maddicott, 171–2; M.R. Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England (Oxford, 1962), 142.

⁹¹ Foedera, II, i, 275; Phillips, 92–3; Maddicott, 171.

⁹² Foedera, II, i, 263–4; Maddicott, 172.

⁹³ See E.A.R. Brown, ‘Gascon subsidies and the finances of the English dominions, 1315–1324’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, viii (Lincoln, NB, 1971), 33–163. By the end of January 1316 Edward's commissioners had obtained pledges amounting to £12,500 sterling from the towns, communities, nobility and clergy of the duchy, equivalent to about one third of the subsidies granted by the English parliament in 1315 and 1316: Brown, 63–113. The sums pledged are listed in ibid., App. ii, 154–63. In the event collection was slow and Edward received much less than had been pledged; the tactics used by Edward's commissioners were also resented and helped to create feelings of disloyalty to the English crown which surfaced during the Anglo-French war of 1324–5: Brown, 98–9, 114–15, 142–5.

⁹⁴ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 66; 80, n. 38.

⁹⁵ PW, II, ii, 96–7; Maddicott, 172. This was claimed by Edward in Sept. when he asked the clergy to hasten collection of their promised subsidy. The large sums of money just cited took time to collect and were not necessarily available when most urgently needed.

⁹⁶ Pessagno was rewarded for his service to the crown by being made a royal knight on 1 Nov. 1315: E 101/376/7, f. 41v. In Aug. 1315 Edward II had appointed Charles Fieschi, Pessagno's relative by marriage and one of the leading figures in Genoa, to be a member of his council. Fieschi's role was probably to ensure the future smooth flow of Genoese finance and shipping in the direction of England: Foedera, II, ii, 274.

⁹⁷ E 101/14/5; CCW, 422, 428, 435; E 404/483/17/7; CDS, iii, 89–91; Phillips, 91; Maddicott, 162.

⁹⁸ E 101/376/7, f. 41v; CCW, 438; CDS, iii, 91 (no. 477); Phillips, 91; Maddicott, 162. Berwick eventually did fall to the Scots in April 1318.

⁹⁹ Jordan, Great Famine, 18–19, 194; and the earlier work of H.S. Lucas, ‘The great European famine of 1315, 1316, and 1317’, in Essays in Economic History, ii, ed. E.M. Carus-Wilson (London, 1962), 49–72. On the situation in England see Kershaw, ‘Great Famine’, 6–16; Maddicott, 162–3.

¹⁰⁰ See Maddicott, English Peasantry, 69–75.

¹⁰¹ This draws heavily on Maddicott, 163.

¹⁰² Phillips, 91; Maddicott, 162–3.

¹⁰³ E.g., CPR, 1313–17, 603 (16 Dec. 1316), 636 (1 Apr. 1317).

¹⁰⁴ Foedera, II, i, 263, 266, 286.

¹⁰⁵ The famine was to be one of the major reasons for the failure of the Scottish invasion of Ireland between 1315 and 1318.

¹⁰⁶ Jordan, Great Famine, 20.

¹⁰⁷ McNamee, 169–71. Larne on the Antrim coast, where the Bruce family held lands, is the most likely landing place but Glendun is also mentioned by some chronicle sources.

¹⁰⁸ Professor Duncan has shown convincingly in his paper ‘The Scots' invasion of Ireland, 1315’, in The British Isles, 1100–1500, ed. R.R. Davies (Edinburgh & Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1988), 109–10, that Bruce's inauguration took place in June 1315 and not in May 1316, as used to be thought. The exact circumstances of the Scottish invasion of Ireland will probably never be known. While the Irish tract Cath Fhocairte Brighite, which refers to an invitation from Ireland, has now been shown to be a 19th-century fabrication, this does not rule out such an invitation. The fact that Edward Bruce was inaugurated as king of Ireland so soon after his arrival is in itself a strong indication of a previously laid plan: see S. Duffy, ‘The Gaelic account of the Bruce invasion Cath Fhochairte Brighite’, Seanchas Ard Mhacha, xiii, no. 1 (Dundalk, 1988–9); J.R.S. Phillips, ‘The Irish remonstrance of 1317’, Irish Historical Studies, xxvii (1990), 126, n. 57; S.Duffy, ‘The “Continuation” of Nicholas Trevet’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, xci, Section C, no. 12 (Dublin, 1991), 308–9, 314. In apparently inviting Edward Bruce to come to Ireland in 1315 Donal O'Neill was playing a political game in his own interests, but the Bruces had close connections of their own with Ireland and had been in contact with local Irish rulers (presumably including O'Neill) since at least 1306–7: see S. Duffy, ‘The Bruce brothers and the Irish sea-world, 1306–29’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, xxi (1991), 64–5, 70–6.

¹⁰⁹ For a discussion of the possible Scottish motives and intentions, which are not as straightforward as I have presented them, see R. Frame, ‘The Bruces in Ireland, 1315–18’, in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170–1450 (London, 1998), 71–8.

¹¹⁰ J. Lydon, ‘The impact of the Bruce invasion’, in New History of Ireland, ii, ed. Art Cosgrove (Oxford, 1987) 196; and Lydon, ‘Edward II and the revenues of Ireland in 1311–12’, IHS, xiv (1964), 56–7.

¹¹¹ There is a short but perceptive account in M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307–1399 (Oxford, 1959), 41–5, but surprisingly little about the Irish campaign in, for example, Barrow's Robert Bruce. There is now however a substantial body of work on the subject, most notably Frame's classic paper, ‘The Bruces in Ireland’, reprinted with revisions to take account of advances in scholarship in Frame, Ireland and Britain, which provides an overall interpretation of the origins, course and significance of the Bruce invasion of Ireland; the best narrative account of the war in Ireland, 1315–18, is now to be found in McNamee's Wars of the Bruces, which also has valuable maps of the various stages of the war (172, 178, 183); for an analysis of the complex relationships between Gaelic Ireland and Scotland see Duffy, ‘The Bruce brothers’, 55–86.

¹¹² See Davies, The First English Empire. This superb study is of course about far more than Edward I.

¹¹³ Ibid., 173–4.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., 189. On this process in Scotland see, for example, ‘The winning of the West’, in G.W.S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity (London, 1981).

¹¹⁵ By the summer of 1315 no less than a fifth of the kingdom was paying tribute to Robert Bruce of Scotland with the tacit approval of Edward II: Phillips, ‘Mission’, 62, citing J. Scammell, ‘Robert I and the north of England’, EHR, lxxiii (1958), 385, 393–4.

¹¹⁶ Bitterness and grievances ‘in abundance’ were a central feature of Wales after Edward I's conquest so there were plenty of ingredients for a possible revolt against English rule. There is evidence that in 1316–17 Edward Bruce was negotiating with native Welsh leaders in the hope of provoking one. One important figure, Gruffydd Llwyd, who had previously been and was later again to be a loyal servant of the English crown, seems to have responded and was briefly imprisoned: Davies, Conquest, 379–88. For the relationship between events in Ireland and those in England and Wales during this critical period see also Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd’; idem, ‘Edward II and the allegiance of Wales’; McNamee, 191–4, 204.

¹¹⁷ Frame, ‘The Bruces in Ireland’, 3; Frame, Ireland and Britain, 1170–1450 (London, 1998), 71.

¹¹⁸ G.O. Sayles, ‘The siege of Carrickfergus castle, 1315–16’, IHS, x, no. 37 (1956–57), 94–100; reprinted in Sayles, Scripta Diversa (London, 1982), 212–18; McNamee, 171, 175.

¹¹⁹ For an account of these episodes see Phillips, ‘Mission’, 68, 71; McNamee, 171–9.

¹²⁰ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 71. Mortimer went to Glamorgan in South Wales to assist in putting down the revolt of Llywelyn Bren, while Verdon went to England where he pursued his ambition to marry Elizabeth de Clare, one of the heiresses to the earldom of Gloucester.

¹²¹ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 68.

¹²² Ibid., 68–71; Phillips, ‘Edward II and Ireland’, 10; McNamee, 177–9.

¹²³ McNamee, 179–84; Phillips, ‘Edward II and Ireland’, 10; R. Frame, ‘The campaign against the Scots in Munster, 1317’, IHS, xxiv, no. 95 (1985, 361–72; repr. in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 99–112).

¹²⁴ There is a critical edition of the Remonstrance in Scotichronicon, vi, pp. xxi–xxv, 384–404, 465–83. In its appeal to history, both real and imaginary, the Remonstrance closely resembles the documents concerning English claims to superiority over Scotland sent to the pope by both Edward I and the Scots in 1301 and the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. See Phillips, ‘Irish remonstrance of 1317’, 121–4.

¹²⁵ Lanercost, 225–6; McNamee, 185–6.

¹²⁶ Lydon, ‘Impact’, ii, 293–4.

¹²⁷ For a survey of relations between England and Ireland during the reign of Edward II see Phillips, ‘Edward II and Ireland’, 1–18.

¹²⁸ Hamilton, 57–61, 148–9. There is also a detailed treatment of Gaveston's time in Ireland in A.A. Taylor, ‘The career of Peter of Gaveston’ (MA, London, 1939), ch. 4.

¹²⁹ McNamee, 48–9, 52–3, 69; Barrow, 192–3. See also ch. 4 of this book.

¹³⁰ Lydon, ‘Impact’, ii, 201–2; idem, ‘Edward II and the revenues of Ireland,’ 52–3.

¹³¹ The language used in Edward II's letter closely resembles the appeals for assistance which were regularly addressed to the royal government in England by the king's officials in Ireland during the 13th and 14th centuries. This particular letter has not survived but there are many such documents in the National Archives class of Ancient Correspondence, SC 1.

¹³² Phillips, ‘Mission’, 65–6; 79, nn. 34–5; McNamee, 61; Barrow, 204. On 12 March Edward ordered that Robert Bruce's wife, Elizabeth, who was the earl of Ulster's daughter and had been a prisoner in English hands since 1306, should be moved from the custody of the abbess of Barking in Essex to more secure confinement in Rochester castle:CCR, 1313–18, 43.

¹³³ McNamee, 61. For the role of the MacDougalls of Argyll as supporters of the English crown against Bruce see Barrow, 163, 178–82, 192–3.

¹³⁴ McNamee, 61.

¹³⁵ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 65–6; Barrow, 204, notes however that the earl of Ulster was with Edward II at Newminster on 29 May 1314, and that 50 years later Barbour recorded that Edward had with him ‘a great following from Ireland’.

¹³⁶ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 66. On the chequered history of the Isle of Man at this time see Barrow, 192–3.

¹³⁷ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 66.

¹³⁸ Foedera, II, i, 245, 262–3; Phillips, ‘Mission’, 65–6.

¹³⁹ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 66–7. A Scottish envoy/spy named Henry had been a prisoner in Dublin castle since 16 Feb. He may have been circulating copies of a letter in which Robert Bruce spoke of the ties of ancestry between the Irish and the Scots and proposed an alliance between them: R. Nicholson, ‘A sequel to Edward Bruce's invasion of Ireland’, SHR, xlii (1963), 31, 38–9. The letter may however date from as early as 1306–7. For a discussion of it and its date see Frame, ‘The Bruces in Ireland’, 5, n. 7; and Frame, Ireland and Britain, 72, n. 6. The English government also learned that the Scots were planning some kind of venture since at the end of March Sir John Botetourt was ordered to take an English fleet to intercept 13 large cargo ships which the Scots were loading with arms and food at the Flemish port of Sluys: CCR, 1313–18, 218–19; CCW, 415 (where the date is wrongly given as 26 May instead of 26 March).

¹⁴⁰ According to the Remonstrance, about two years before its composition some of the Irish princes had made a written approach to Edward II, using Hothum as an intermediary, but no details of these contacts have survived. On Gaelic Irish kingship at this period see the recent discussion by B. Smith, ‘Lordship in the British Isles, c. 1320–c.1360’, in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. H. Pryce & J. Watts (Oxford, 2007), 153–6.

¹⁴¹ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 65–7; the sending of the letters (though not their contents) and the names of their recipients are recorded in E 101/376/7, f. 74; the replies are recorded in C 81/93/3594. At least 11 of the 30 men written to are known to have replied. This and other material is edited in Phillips, ‘Documents on the early stages of the Bruce invasion of Ireland, 1315–1316’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, lxxix, C, no. 11 (1979); see also Phillips, ‘Mission’, 71–4.

¹⁴² Phillips, 92–3. No replies had so far been received from any of the magnates addressed on 10 July (there were often long delays in the delivery of the king's letters; the three earliest replies of the 11 eventually received were dated 8 Sept. and the latest 2 Nov.) but news of Ireland had been obtained on 25 July from a messenger of the earl of Pembroke and on or just before 21 Aug. from Hugh Canon, an official emissary of the Dublin administration: E 101/376/7, ff. 13, 43; E 101/376/25, m.13; Phillips, ‘Mission’, 71–3.

¹⁴³ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 67–8. Hothum had to assemble an escort of eight ships and 86 armed men before he could cross in safety. Dun was in Scottish service but may have been from Downpatrick in Ireland.

¹⁴⁴ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 68–71. For the pledges of loyalty to Edward II which were made by nine of the leading Anglo-Irish magnates on 4 Feb. 1316 and for the reports on the battle by John de Hothum and by one of his clerks see Phillips, ‘Documents’, 251–7.

¹⁴⁵ The justiciar Edmund Butler had already been made earl of Carrick in Sept. 1315, but this did not take effect partly because he was unable to visit England for his creation: for details of the rewards and privileges granted in May 1316 see Phillips, ‘Mission’, 63, 74–5; the conciliar memorandum is C 49/File 4, no.19, published in Phillips, ‘Documents’, 268–9.

¹⁴⁶ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 76.

¹⁴⁷ Ibid., 66, 70, 74, 76, 82, n. 77. Hothum's account for his mission is published from E 101/309/19(4) in Phillips, ‘Documents’, 266–8.

¹⁴⁸ Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd’, 463–7; McNamee, 191–4, 204; CCR, 1313–18, 147, 148; Davies, Conquest, 387–8.

¹⁴⁹ Phillips, ‘Mission’, 67.

¹⁵⁰ McNamee, 181; CPR, 1313–17, 603 (16 Dec. 1316). Pessagno was also to supply large quantities of grain and other victuals for use by English garrisons in the north of England.

¹⁵¹ E 101/531/15: accounts for naval operations in the Irish Sea under the command of John of Athy, 25 April to 24 June 1317.

¹⁵² McNamee, 184.

¹⁵³ John XXII was personally less favourable to Edward II than his predecessor Clement V, who had a particularly close relationship with the English monarchy, but his overriding interest in preserving the peace of Christendom so that the great military powers, especially France and England, could embark on a new crusade, made him unsympathetic to the Scots. For a discussion of Anglo-papal relations during the pontificates of Clement V and John XXII see Wright, The Church and the English Crown, esp. 168–73; Watt, The Church, 183–97.

¹⁵⁴ Cardinals Luke Fieschi and Gaucelin d'Eauze.

¹⁵⁵ The English diplomatic mission to Avignon in early 1317 which led to the appointment of the papal envoys and to the issue of the bulls directed against Scottish intervention in Ireland is discussed in Phillips, 107–11.

¹⁵⁶ Barrow, 246–7.

¹⁵⁷ CPL, 1305–42, 440; Vetera monumenta, ed. Theiner, 201–2. See Phillips, ‘Irish Remonstrance of 1317’, 112–29.

¹⁵⁸ They met in the chamber of the cardinal of Pellegrue: Vitae Paparum Avenionensium, ed. E. Baluze, ii (Paris, 1927), 130.

¹⁵⁹ Watt, The Church, 84.

¹⁶⁰ W.E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 166–9. Since the 1213 agreement between John and Innocent III was a fundamental document in English claims to exercise authority in Ireland, it is surprising that neither Edward II's Scottish nor his Irish opponents appear to have used the failure to pay tribute or to perform homage and fealty as a legal weapon against him at the papal curia. Instead the Remonstrance of 1317 concentrated on the alleged English failure to observe the terms of an even earlier document, Adrian IV's bull, Laudabiliter, of c. 1155. On the place of Laudabiliter in 14th-century Anglo-Irish relations see Phillips, ‘The Remonstrance revisited: England and Ireland in the early fourteenth century’, in Men, Women and War, Historical Studies, xviii, ed. T.G. Fraser & K. Jeffrey (Dublin, 1993), 16–17, 23–4; J.A. Watt., ‘Laudabiliter in medieval diplomacy and propaganda’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 5th ser., lxxxvii (Jan.–June 1957), 420–32.

¹⁶¹ John Taaffe (1306–7); the Dominican friars, Walter Jorz (1307–11) and Roland Jorz (1311–22); and Stephen Segrave (1323–33)

¹⁶² Watt, The Church, 185–6.

¹⁶³ For the possible authorship of Mac Lochlainn who had grievances of his own against the English in Ireland, esp. against English members of his own order see Phillips, ‘Remonstrance revisited’, 17–20, 24–7.

¹⁶⁴ Phillips, 93; Maddicott, 179–80. The king spent the second half of Sept. at Fen Ditton near Cambridge, before settling himself in early Nov. at his manor of Clipstone near Nottingham, where he was to spend most of the time until late Jan. 1316. Lancaster in the meantime stayed at Castle Donington in Leicestershire and elsewhere in the Midlands and in Lancashire.

¹⁶⁵ SC 1/35/155; C 81/93/3570.

¹⁶⁶ SC 1/34/106, 107; CCW, 431–2. The most prominent royal councillors then in London were the archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor, treasurer, and earl of Hereford. The earl of Pembroke is known to have joined the king on two occasions, at Dalby in Lincolnshire on 26 Oct. and at Clipstone on 16 Nov., with a short return visit to the north of England to free the widow of Robert Clifford from captivity at Barnard's castle, before rejoining the council in London: Phillips, 94.

¹⁶⁷ E 101/376/7, ff. 18, 41; Phillips, 93; Maddicott, 176.

¹⁶⁸ E 101/376/7, f. 11; E 101/376/26, m.5; C 53/102, mm.14,15; CPR, 1313–17, 421; PW, II, ii, 152–8.

¹⁶⁹ For a detailed account of the parliament and the records of its proceedings see PROME, parliament of January 1316. During the parliament Edward stayed in the lodgings of the dean of Lincoln, while the proceedings were held in various locations, including the hall of the dean, the chapter house of the cathedral, and the house of the Carmelites.

¹⁷⁰ This is ironic since the record in the Parliament Roll (SC 9/20) of the events leading up to the appointment of the earl of Lancaster as chief councillor is ‘the first official narrative account of any parliament to appear’: Maddicott, 180. Many of the earlier parliaments of the reign had also dealt with highly contentious and delicate political business (as in 1308, 1309, 1310, etc.) but none of this has left any trace in any surviving official record. Of the 14 parliaments which preceded the Lincoln parliament of 1316, a Parliament Roll exists only for those of Aug. 1312 and Jan. 1315.

¹⁷¹ SC 8/71/3534. The king was at Lincoln between 27 Jan. and 23 Feb.: E 101/376/26, m.6.

¹⁷² PW, II, ii, 169. The chronology of the parliament from 28 Jan. until 14 Feb. is recorded in PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 1. In Aymer de Valence, 95, I wrongly gave the date of the appointment of Pembroke and the others to act for Edward II as 8 Feb.

¹⁷³ C 49/File 66/23; PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 1; Maddicott, 180.

¹⁷⁴ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 2; Phillips, 95; Maddicott, 181. The full text of the Statute of Sheriffs was included in the Parliament Roll: PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/19, item 49; SC 9/20, item 8, and the Statute Roll (SR,i, 174–5). The statute was the result of ‘the representations of the prelates, earls, barons, and other magnates of the realm summoned to that parliament, and through the grievous complaints of the people’. The petition or petitions, which lay behind these representations, have not survived. See Harriss, 120, and 120, n. 1.

¹⁷⁵ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 2.

¹⁷⁶ Ibid., item 3 (this contains an enrolled copy of the terms of Lancaster's appointment) & item 4 (the original of the terms of appointment, sewn on to the roll). Although Hilda Johnstone argued that the date of Lancaster's actual appointment was 17 Feb. and not 24 Feb. as stated here and as argued by Tout, the date is clearly given in the Parliament Roll as the Tuesday before Lent, i.e. 24 Feb.: H. Johnstone, ‘The Parliament of Lincoln of 1316’, EHR, xxxvi (1921), 53–7; Tout, Place of the Reign, 95.

¹⁷⁷ These details are not recorded on the Parliament Roll and are known only from a letter from Lancaster to the king in July 1317 which is preserved in Murimuth, 271–4, and the Bridlington chronicler's Gesta Edwardi, 50–2; Phillips, 97, 121; Maddicott, 182. Significantly, Hugh Despenser the Elder was not to be a member of the reform commission.

¹⁷⁸ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 1.

¹⁷⁹ Phillips, 96; Maddicott, 181.

¹⁸⁰ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 2; CCR, 1313–18, 322.

¹⁸¹ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 2; PW, II, ii, 158–9, 161–3, 166–7, 464; Lay Taxes, 33; Powicke, Military Obligation, 142–3.

¹⁸² Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 187–91; J. Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds and ecclesiastical politics, 1313–1316’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Brooke et al. (Cambridge, 1976), 262–9; SR, i, 171–4, 175–6; CPR, 1313–17, 607. This is a greatly simplified account of a very complex set of problems. See also J.H. Denton, ‘The making of the “Articuli Cleri” of 1316’, EHR, ci (1986), 564–95. The clerical gravamina presented at Lincoln, together with the royal responses, are printed in Denton, ‘Walter Reynolds’, 590–5.

¹⁸³ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/19, items 1–19 (this business was still unsettled in 1318). Hugh de Courtenay was the cousin and heir of Isabella who had died as long ago as 1293, leaving a claim to the earldom of Devon which Courtenay finally obtained in 1335.

¹⁸⁴ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, items 11–12. See the article on John Charlton by J.F.A. Mason in Oxford DNB, and Maddicott, 140–1, 143–5, 184.

¹⁸⁵ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 14.

¹⁸⁶ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, items 7, 9–10; Phillips, 243.

¹⁸⁷ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 7; BL, Cotton Ms. Faustina B VI, f. 80; Phillips, ‘Mission’, 71, 83. Edward II did not let his niece escape his control again. The draft of a royal letter dated 12 Sept. 1316 shows that Elizabeth was under considerable pressure to marry as she was told: SC 1/63/150; Phillips, 132. In Feb. 1317 Elizabeth, who was pregnant at the time of Theobald's death, gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, who was baptized at Amesbury priory in Wiltshire; Edward's sister Mary and Queen Isabella were godmothers: F. A. Underhill, For her Good Estate (Basingstoke, 1999), 16–18.

¹⁸⁸ PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, items 5, 6. Despenser was pardoned for his offence at the York parliament of Jan. 1320 and the record was cancelled in the Parliament Roll for 1316, SC 9/20. By 1320 Despenser had become, along with his father, one of the most powerful and most hated men in England. John de Roos is probably to be identified with the follower of Henry of Lancaster who became steward of the royal household in Feb. 1327 after Edward II's deposition, so the brawl in Lincoln cathedral could have been connected with the strained relations between Thomas of Lancaster and the king. Another possible explanation is the recent marriage between John de Roos and Margaret Goushill, widow of Despenser's younger brother Philip, who had died in 1313.

¹⁸⁹ Davies, Conquest, 379.

¹⁹⁰ See the discussion in ch. 3 of this book of Edward II's creation as Prince of Wales in 1301 and of his own relations with Wales and the Welsh.

¹⁹¹ Davies, Conquest, 386–7. In a letter to the pope in May 1317, recommending Thomas Charlton as bishop of Hereford, a diocese which lay on the borders of Wales, Edward spoke of his desire to avoid the ‘dangers which arose from the accustomed rebellion of the Welsh against himself and his kingdom’ (desiderantes obviae pericula que ex rebellione consueta Wallensium nobis et regno nostro): C 70/3, m.1. The hardships caused by the severe weather and the famine that followed in its wake made the situation even more volatile.

¹⁹² J. B. Smith, ‘The rebellion of Llywelyn Bren’, in Glamorgan County History, iii, The Middle Ages, ed. T.B. Pugh (Cardiff, 1971), 72–4.

¹⁹³ Vita, 106–7.

¹⁹⁴ SC 1/55, 31: ed. and trans. in Calendar of Ancient Correspondence concerning Wales, ed. J.G. Edwards, 2 (Cardiff, 1935), 253–4. The letter bears no address but is clearly from one royal official to another; the editor dates it as probably late July 1315 but Beverley Smith's suggested date of Oct. is more likely: Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd’, 464–5; cf.CCR, 1313–18, 253. Thirty-three Welsh hostages from North Wales were held in Chester castle from 29 Aug. 1315 until 18 Oct. 1317: E 368/89, m.190.

¹⁹⁵ E 101/376/7, ff. 41, 11v; CCR, 1313–18, 267.

¹⁹⁶ CPR, 1313–17, 433–4; Foedera, II, i, 283–4. The petitions are dated and printed in Calendar of Ancient Petitions relating to Wales, ed. Rees, 28–9 (from SC 8/4/187).

¹⁹⁷ CCW, 435; Phillips, ‘Documents’, 250. Hothum's report on the battle was dated 15 Feb.: ibid., 251–3.

¹⁹⁸ For an account of this revolt see Smith, ‘Rebellion’, 72–86; and R.A. Griffiths, ‘The revolt of Llywelyn Bren’, Glamorgan Historian, ii (1965), 186–96. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi devoted considerable attention to the revolt: Vita, 114–21.

¹⁹⁹ Smith, ‘Rebellion’, 74–5, 78–9. Ironically, Llantrisant was the castle for which Edward II was heading in Nov. 1326 when he was captured by his enemies.

²⁰⁰ Ibid., 79–83, 86.

²⁰¹ McNamee, 194; Davies, Conquest, 388.

²⁰² The correspondence, known only from a seventeenth-century source, is discussed and printed in Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd’, 466–74, 477–8. It is possible, as Smith suggests, that Gruffydd's behaviour was a protest against the oppressive actions of the justice of Wales, Roger Mortimer of Chirk, rather than opposition to the crown; other possibilities are that he was acting as an agent of the crown in replying to Bruce's initial letter and that the plan went wrong, or that ‘a reply to Bruce's approaches was fathered upon Gruffydd Llwyd by adversaries bent on discrediting him’: ibid., 274–5.

²⁰³ SAL Ms. 120, f. 20v; Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llwyd’, 466–8; Davies, Conquest, 387–8. He was back in royal service by late 1318.

²⁰⁴ Davies, Conquest, 387.

²⁰⁵ The dispute was a complicated one but a central issue was the reluctance of Bristol to pay the tallage imposed on towns and cities by Edward II at the end of 1312. On the subject of tallage and the history of the Bristol dispute see J.H. Hadwin, ‘The last royal tallages’, EHR, xcvi (1981), 344–58; E.A. Fuller, ‘The tallage of 6 Edward II and the Bristol rebellion’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, xix (1894–5), 171–278.

²⁰⁶ See PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1316, SC 9/20, item 14.

²⁰⁷ CPR, 1313–17, 489–90; CFR, 1307–19, 286.

²⁰⁸ SAL Ms. 120, f. 19; CCR, 1313–18, 347, 424; Vita, 122–7; Fuller, ‘Tallage’, 188; Phillips, 103; Maddicott, 184–5.

²⁰⁹ Phillips, ‘Documents’, 250–65; Phillips, 96. Lancaster was sent the originals of all these documents while the transcripts, now preserved as C 81/93/3594 and edited in Phillips, ‘Documents’, were sent to the chancellor and treasurer to be put before the council.

²¹⁰ C 81/94/3604; Phillips, ‘Documents’, 265; Phillips, 96.

²¹¹ C 53/102, m.6; Liber Albus of Worcester Priory, ed. J.M. Wilson, Worcestershire Historical Society (London, 1919), 46; Phillips, 96.

²¹² SC 1/34/156, 157; SC 1/35/126; SC 1/45, 190, 191; Phillips, 96.

²¹³ Calendar of the Letter-Books of the City of London: E, ed. R.R. Sharpe (London, 1900–3), 59–60; Phillips, 96–7.

²¹⁴ CCW, 440; CPR, 1313–17, 476; Phillips, 97.

²¹⁵ DL 25/1652; Liber Albus of Worcester Priory, 46; Phillips, 97.

²¹⁶ CPR, 1313–17, 450–1; Maddicott, 183. There is no mention of such contacts in Barrow, and no negotiations are known to have occurred.

²¹⁷ Murimuth, 271–4; Gesta Edwardi, 50–2; Phillips, 97, 121; Maddicott, 182.

²¹⁸ CCR, 1313–18, 328; CFR, 1307–19, 275–7; Phillips, 97.

²¹⁹ SC 1/45/190; Phillips, 97. Although expressions of trust were often formalities, there is no indication of an impending crisis at this time.

²²⁰ Polychronicon, 312–15.

²²¹ Phillips, 96–7. Dr Maddicott agrees that Lancaster withdrew from the court in the spring of 1316 but explains it more in terms of the failure of Edward II to govern effectively than of any inadequacies in Lancaster himself. He also suggests that the final breach between Edward and Lancaster did not occur until July 1316. The essential point is that Lancaster was clearly no longer acting as head of the council from the previous April: Maddicott, 186–7.

²²² Elizabeth was born at Rhuddlan in Aug. 1282. On New Year's Day 1316 Edward had given her two items of jewellery worth 17 marks and £30. Gifts were also received by her husband the earl of Hereford and by Gaveston's widow the countess of Cornwall and her sister Eleanor de Clare, the wife of Hugh Despenser the Younger: E 101/376/7, f. 99.

²²³ The fire occurred ‘at about the ninth hour’. Fortunately the damage does not appear to have been serious: Ann. Paul., 279; KW, i, 527. There is no reference to the cost of repairs in the account of the clerk of works for the following year.

²²⁴ Flores, 173.

²²⁵ Johnstone, ‘The eccentricities of Edward II’, 264–7, citing the Memoranda Roll for 1315–16, E 368/86, m.32d. A modern observer might have commented that Edward should have been training for war rather than saying his prayers!

²²⁶ de rege sinistra aliqua et inhonesta dixisse in contemptu regis: PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1315, SC 9/18, item 145. There is no more detail and the charges were probably used by John of Lincoln to try to blacken the name of his opponent, John of Bonaventure. In any event the latter was found not guilty of any offence against the king. This is part of a series of petitions by Bonaventure against John of Lincoln and his sons concerning events in London and within the palace of Westminster: PROME, Parliament of Jan. 1315, SC 9/18, items 140–6. Bonaventure had a shady past, having been one of a number of London goldsmiths who in 1303 had handled items of royal treasure stolen from the crypt of Westminster Abbey: Doherty, Great Crown Jewels Robbery, 126–7.

²²⁷ Memoranda Roll, 9 Edward II, E 368/86, m.94. The episode was first noted by Johnstone in Edward of Carnarvon, 130, where it is taken literally. There may have been some grudge at the back of the story, possibility a town/gown dispute. Some of Thomas's accusers seem to have been local tradesmen from Oxford, but some of those in whose presence he made the remarks were from other parts of England and were possibly students at university, as Thomas de Tynwell may himself have been. After a number of hearings in 1316 Thomas was eventually acquitted.

²²⁸ Kemp (the bishop of Chichester), ‘History and action’, 349–53.

Although Edward II had been on bad terms with Archbishop Robert Winchelsey until the latter's death in 1313, there had never been any question of a violent resolution as in 1170. It is likely that Harclay was more concerned with the controversial appointment by the pope in Oct. 1313 of Walter Reynolds, the royal chancellor and an ally of Edward since he had been Prince of Wales, in place of the renowned scholar, Thomas Cobham, who had been the choice of the monks of Canterbury. Harclay was also an opponent of the privileges exercised in the university by the Dominicans who were favoured by Edward II: Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 5, 243–6.

²²⁹ Vita, 128–31. The text breaks off at this point. There is nothing to indicate the identity of the ‘regular’ (i.e. a member of a religious order), but since the king's confessor was always a Dominican friar and had an easy and intimate access to the king, it is worth speculating that the ‘regular’ was a member of the same order. The letter refers to issues such as the purveyance of goods for the king's household which had been a source of political tension since the time of Edward I.

²³⁰ Isabella is known to have been at Clipstone at this time: E 101/376/20, f. 1; Doherty (D.Phil.), 62.

²³¹ SAL Ms. 120, f. 15.