14

The Queen Takes a Favourite

Edward of Windsor, earl of Chester and now duke of Aquitaine and count of Ponthieu, had joined his father in Kent by late August 1325, accompanied by his household and his nine-year-old brother John of Eltham. The young duke sailed from Dover on 12 September, his father’s injunctions not to marry without his approval no doubt ringing in his ears.¹ The boy performed homage for Gascony and Ponthieu to his uncle Charles IV at Vincennes on the 24th, in the presence of his mother and others.²

Edward II, who happily had no way of knowing that he would never see his son again, travelled via Leeds Castle to the village of Maresfield in Sussex, where he spent ten days at the end of September. Maresfield, on the edge of Ashdown Forest, was a royal deer hunting reserve and presumably Edward hunted while here. Surprisingly, given his recent certainty that his life would be in danger without the king’s presence, Hugh Despenser did not remain with Edward but went instead to Tonbridge in Kent, where Edward sent him letters.³ The king travelled slowly through Surrey to Westminster, staying at Banstead, a manor he had given to Isabella in 1318, and Bletchingley, forfeited in 1321 by his former favourite Hugh Audley, where the living quarters and the chapel were hastily cleaned and refurbished before his arrival.⁴ While at Bletchingley, Edward himself bought a ‘red cow’ from one Maud Croweprest, and at Maresfield gave a parker who had once served in his household ten shillings to buy himself a cow.⁵ He arrived at Banstead late in the evening of 5 October, and at midnight sent out messengers ordering the array of his army on land and sea to be renewed because of ‘some news which he had heard’, also summoning the treasurer, his friend and close ally William Melton, and other members of his council to come to him at Banstead on the 7th, ‘at the king’s rising’.⁶ On the day he returned to Westminster, 9 October, Edward gave ten shillings to Jack the Trumpeter of Dover, who had bought forty-seven caged goldfinches for Edward to give to his niece Eleanor Despenser.⁷ Edward stayed at his palace of Sheen from 12 to 18 October, with Eleanor, paying her expenses and ordering forty bundles of firewood for her chamber.⁸ Hugh Despenser, for his part, set off for Wales: he was at Caerphilly on 9 October, and still away from court on 19 November, when Edward wrote to him.⁹ On 16 October, Edward asked the pope to grant dispensations for his children Eleanor of Woodstock and Edward of Windsor to marry Alfonso XI and Leonor of Castile, and sent letters to Jaime II of Aragon’s son Alfonso and the regents of Castile on the 18th, thanking them for their affection for him and ‘the gracious and benevolent way’ they had handled his affairs.¹⁰ He left Sheen for Cippenham that day, and bought fish from five Thames fishermen as he travelled along the river; his clerk carefully noted that it was Edward himself, not one of his servants, who purchased the fish. Edward also gave a hundred shillings to the bailiff of Kingston to repair the bridge there, because, he said, the last time he passed that way, he had noticed defects in it. While at Cippenham, the king gave a pound to a woman who had brought him a gift of ale, bread and more fish, and twenty-five shillings to his valet Will Shene and his new wife Isode as a wedding present.¹¹He gave the large sum of ten marks each on 20 November to three members of his household whom he had sent hastily to Wales to bring him news of Hugh Despenser’s welfare, having heard from Jack Pyk, a valet of his chamber, that Despenser had been killed. They returned to reassure him that the chamberlain was, ‘by God’s mercy’, perfectly well.¹²

In the meantime, Edward’s half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, perhaps unwilling to return to England and face the king and Despenser’s wrath over his mishandling of the La Réole siege, had joined Edward’s enemies. Kent received permission from John XXII on 6 October to marry a woman to whom he was related in the third or fourth degree, and married Margaret Wake sometime in December.¹³ A woman from a minor baronial house was hardly a great match for a king’s son, so this almost certainly represents an alliance with Roger Mortimer: Margaret was his first cousin. Kent loathed the royal favourite, resenting – understandably – the fact that Despenser had deprived him of his position at court and political influence with his half-brother. He continued, however, to write to Edward assuring him that his intentions were not treasonable and that he had done nothing against the king’s wishes, and Kent’s later actions demonstrate that in 1326 he sought the downfall of the Despensers, not necessarily Edward himself. Edward confiscated his lands in March 1326.¹⁴

Sometime in the late autumn or early winter of 1325, Queen Isabella made the momentous decision not to return to England and her husband. The news may have been brought to Edward by Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter, whom Edward had sent to France with his son. Stapeldon, seen by many as a close associate of the Despensers, fled from Paris dressed as a common traveller, in the belief that some at the French court meant him harm. A furious Isabella sent him a sharply worded letter on 8 December accusing him of being more obedient to Hugh Despenser than to her, and of dishonouring herself, Charles IV and Edward.¹⁵ Isabella declared,

I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life, and that someone has come between my husband and myself trying to break this bond; I protest that I will not return until this intruder is removed, but discarding my marriage garment, shall assume the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this Pharisee.

The French Chronicle of London confirms that she took to wearing clothes ‘as a lady in mourning who had lost her lord’.¹⁶ Isabella’s speech and wearing widow’s weeds have usually been interpreted as defiance of her husband and an open declaration of rebellion against him, and not seen for what they really are: exactly what they seem to be, an expression of her genuine sorrow at the breakdown of her marriage and fury at the role played in it by the ‘Pharisee’ Hugh Despenser. Isabella expressed no hostility towards Edward himself either at this time or later, and explained that she was unable to return to him because she felt herself to be in physical danger from Despenser.¹⁷ The real meaning of Isabella’s speech has been overlooked because of the frequent and wrong assumption that the royal marriage was nothing but a tragic disaster and that she despised her husband. But Isabella hated Despenser, not Edward, because she thought Despenser had destroyed her marriage, which implies that she felt it had been a successful one before his intrusion into it. Her speech indicates that she hoped to bring Edward back to his senses, to shock him so that he would send Despenser away and she could resume her normal married life with him, and makes it seem unlikely that at this point she was in love with Roger Mortimer and had been plotting with him for years against her husband. Edward, emotionally or politically reliant on Hugh Despenser, refused.

Isabella’s servants, whom she could no longer afford to pay, began arriving back in England in early December, and Edward reimbursed their costs and gave them cash gifts. Roger Querndon, his son’s Dominican confessor, had also returned by early 1326, when Edward gave him two pounds by the hands of his own confessor, Robert Duffield.¹⁸ Henry Beaumont, who had witnessed Edward of Windsor’s homage to Charles IV on 24 September, must have returned to England, as the Sempringham annalist says that he was imprisoned in February 1326 ‘because he would not swear to the king and to Sir Hugh Despenser the son, to be of their part to live and die’. He was certainly in prison at Warwick Castle by early August 1326.¹⁹ John Stratford, bishop of Winchester, also returned to England in late 1325, despite the appalling way Edward had treated him.²⁰

The king stopped his wife’s expenses in mid-November, and, short of funds, Isabella was forced to borrow 1,000 Paris livres from Charles IV on 31 December 1325.²¹ This was less than a month’s income for Isabella even on the reduced amount imposed on her in September 1324, and was a loan, not a gift – hardly a sign of her brother’s great favour towards her, as it has sometimes been interpreted. Parliament, the last Edward would preside over, began on 18 November 1325 at Westminster, though the king stayed a dozen miles away at Isleworth throughout. No official record of this parliament survives, but it is reasonable to assume that the queen’s refusal to return or to send Edward’s son back to him dominated. According to the Vita, Edward reminded parliament that Isabella had gone to France to make peace and should have returned immediately once this was achieved,

and on her departure she did not seem to anyone to be offended. As she took her leave she saluted all and went away joyfully. But now someone has changed her attitude. Someone has primed her with inventions. For I know that she has not fabricated any affront out of her own head.

This ‘someone’ was most probably not Roger Mortimer, who had not returned to the French court at this point, and it is likely that Edward was referring to the earl of Richmond, his cousin and the queen’s; Edward said in March 1326 that he had ordered Richmond many times to come to him but the earl was staying with Isabella and urging her not to return, and the king condemned Richmond’s disobedience and ingratitude. Richmond wrote to Edward explaining his actions, ‘which excuses the king deems wholly frivolous’.²²

Edward’s priority at this point was to defend Despenser before parliament, and he claimed that his chamberlain was ‘much cast down’ by Isabella’s hostility to him. The king’s obstinate refusal to see Isabella’s point of view and his continuing to put Despenser’s interests and feelings above hers must have hurt her even more. Edward repeated his conviction that Isabella ‘has been led into this error at the suggestion of someone, and he is in truth wicked and hostile whoever he may be’. He asked all the English bishops to write to her, ‘that she whom the teaching of evil men incites to guile, may be led back to the due path of unity’.²³ The bishops repeated obediently in their letter that Despenser had ‘solemnly demonstrated his innocence before all’ and produced the friendly letters the queen had sent him from France as evidence.²⁴ How Edward felt about Isabella’s declaration that she felt like a widow is unknown – surely he too regretted that he had allowed their marriage to deteriorate to this point – but her refusal to return to him with their son was a public humiliation, not to mention a huge political danger.

Edward’s utter refusal to send Despenser away from him, listen to his wife or take her seriously left Isabella with no choice but to stay in France and act on her threat to avenge herself on Despenser. To this end, in late 1325 she arranged a betrothal for their son Edward of Windsor, without Edward II’s consent. William, count of Hainault, had long held grievances against Edward II for his failure to do justice to the count’s men who had been robbed in England, and although Edward offered safe-conducts for the count’s envoys to come and ‘treat with the king or his deputies touching damages on both sides’ in September and November 1325 and again in 1326, it was too late, and the count threw in his lot with Isabella.²⁵ William’s wife Joan de Valois, Isabella’s first cousin, was in France between 1 December 1325 and 19 January 1326 with her daughter Philippa to visit her father the count of Valois, who died on 16 December.²⁶ This was presumably the first time that Edward of Windsor met Philippa of Hainault, his second cousin and future wife. Edward II wrote to his kinswoman Maria Diaz de Haro, lady of Biscay, on 1 January 1326, vehemently assuring her that his son was not going to marry in France. Just two days later, his certainty was given the lie by his pleas to the pope not to grant a dispensation for his son’s marriage to any member of the French royal family without his consent. John XXII respected Edward’s wishes, and did not grant the dispensation until late August 1327, seven months after Edward’s deposition.²⁷ Edward’s greatest error was not just to send his son to France, but to send him unmarried. Without military support provided by the father of young Edward’s fiancée, the exiles would not have been able to raise enough money, ships and troops for an invasion; if this had been possible, they would have struck against Edward II before 1326.

At some point after Isabella’s refusal to return to England, Roger Mortimer came into her life. The first reliable evidence that they were allies or more comes from Edward II’s proclamation of 8 February 1326, when he said that Isabella ‘is adopting the counsel of the Mortimer, the king’s notorious enemy and rebel’.²⁸ Edward also wrote to Charles IV and Edward of Windsor on 18 March to complain that his wife ‘draws to her and retains in her company of her counsel the Mortimer, the king’s traitor and mortal enemy’.²⁹Isabella first saw Roger Mortimer when she was twelve. He attended her wedding at Boulogne in January 1308, and was one of the four bearers of the royal robes at her and Edward’s coronation the following month. Whether they had had any personal contact before late 1325 is unknown, and Mortimer’s feelings for the queen are difficult to determine. Given the enormous benefits which accrued to him from becoming the queen’s favourite – he ruled England through Isabella and Edward III from early 1327 to October 1330, granted himself an earldom and became at least as wealthy as Despenser had been – it seems overly convenient that he just happened to fall in love with her, just as one would doubt that Hugh Despenser genuinely fell in love with Edward. Neither Mortimer nor Despenser was the kind of man to whom things just happened; both of them were ruthless and ambitious men who could wait years for their opportunity and then grab it with both hands. Without Isabella and her son, Mortimer had no chance of revenge against Edward and the Despensers or of seeing his home and family again.

Isabella and Mortimer, whose wife Joan was still incarcerated in 1326, may have had a sexual relationship: Lanercost reports a rumour that at the time of Mortimer’s downfall in 1330 ‘there was a liaison suspected between him and the lady queen-mother, as according to public report’, and Geoffrey le Baker’s scurrilous and unreliable Vita et Mors Edwardi Secundi of the 1350s says that Isabella was ‘in the illicit embraces’ of Mortimer.³⁰ Adam Murimuth, a royal clerk, wrote that they had ‘an excessive familiarity’, a remark reminiscent of chroniclers’ statements about Edward and Piers Gaveston.³¹ Edward himself said in a letter of March 1326 that Isabella ‘keeps his [Mortimer’s] company within and without house’, usually assumed to be a euphemistic reference to adultery, though the phrase occurs in the context of Edward’s complaining about Isabella’s retention of Mortimer as a member of her council.³² One chronicle refers to Mortimer as Isabella’s amasius, ‘lover’, though three chroniclers use the same word to describe Gaveston’s relationship to Edward, and others describe Mortimer only as ‘chief of her council’ or even just as a member of Isabella’s faction.³³ For a relationship inevitably said by modern writers to have been sexual, there is surprisingly little evidence that it certainly was. The reticence of the chroniclers and the fact that the many enemies Isabella and Mortimer made during their regency of 1327 to 1330 never used adultery or sexual impropriety as an accusation against them suggests that if they were indeed lovers, they were very discreet and no one was sure what was going on, contrary to the frequent statement in modern accounts that the two flaunted their affair or that Isabella openly took Mortimer as her lover. Their supposedly passionately sexual five-year affair produced no children; the unreliable Jean Froissart claimed a few decades later that Isabella was pregnant in the autumn of 1330, but no other source even hints at this.

It is very likely that, at least at the beginning, Isabella and Mortimer’s relationship was a political alliance between two people who loathed Hugh Despenser and who needed each other to bring him down. When they decided that Edward II should also be brought down, or even if they agreed that he should be, is impossible to say. No one had ever deposed a king before in English history; no one could have known for sure if it was even possible or how they might achieve it, for all the empty threats of deposition aimed at Edward throughout his reign. Events of 1325 to 1327 have been interpreted with decades or centuries of hindsight and knowledge of Edward II’s downfall, and it has always been assumed that Isabella and Mortimer must have plotted for months or years to destroy the king and planned it with the help of Charles IV and others. This is not necessarily the case, especially as Isabella’s presumed desire to overthrow her husband is predicated on an assumption that the royal couple detested each other, which they certainly did not.

Edward wrote to Isabella on 1 December 1325, the last letter he would ever send his wife, defending Hugh Despenser and saying that the favourite had ‘always procured her all the honour with the king that he could’. Given Despenser’s efforts since 1322 to reduce Isabella’s influence with her husband and even her ability to see him, and her statement that Edward and Despenser’s behaviour made her feel like a widow, this was either a blatant untruth or proof of an astonishing capacity for self-deception on Edward’s part. Edward reminded Isabella that her duty was to be in his company and to obey his commands, and ordered her to come to him with all speed, bringing their son, as ‘the king has a great desire to see and talk with him’. Edward resisted for as long as possible the notion that Isabella would not return, renewing letters of protection for her retinue as late as 26 January 1326.³⁴

This was not in fact a vain hope. In a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury of 5 February 1326, the queen declared that no one must think she had left her husband ‘without very great and justifiable cause’, writing that Hugh Despenser wished to ‘dishonour us by all his power’ and that she had hidden her hatred of him to escape danger, as he was in full control of the king and realm. Isabella wrote, ‘We desire, above all else, after God and the salvation of our soul, to be in the company of our said lord [Edward] and to live and die there.’ The queen referred to Edward in her letter as her ‘very dear and very sweet lord and friend’, which is very unconventional (conventional would be simply ‘very dear lord’) and indicates her strong feelings for him. Isabella certainly did not feel ‘profound revulsion’ for her husband as a modern writer has claimed; her letter and much of her behaviour in the 1320s imply genuine hurt and bafflement at Edward allowing Despenser to come between them and ruin a marriage in which she had been happy.³⁵Later in 1326, the queen wavered and talked of returning to Edward. For her to rebel not only against her husband and lord but an anointed king, must have been enormously difficult for her, and it would be astonishing if she didn’t have second thoughts on occasion.

Edward also wrote on 1 December to Charles IV and others, asking them to do all in their power to return Isabella and his son to him, as ‘the king is very uneasy because he has such loss of her company’ and greatly wished to see his son, also showing himself excessively anxious to defend Hugh Despenser against Isabella’s hostility.³⁶ Edward, although highly emotional himself, was not good at reading other people’s emotions, or capable of much insight. Because he loved Despenser, he could see no faults in him, and the tone of his letters implies that he was genuinely astonished that Isabella didn’t think Despenser was as marvellous as he did. The king wrote a short letter to his son on 2 December, reminding him that he must remember what Edward had enjoined on him at Dover – not to marry – and to travel back to England, with his mother if possible but alone if she refused.³⁷ Edward was desperate to have his son back in England, well aware of the dangers of his heir slipping out of his control. That night, he travelled down the Thames from Westminster to Sheen to pay a quick visit to Eleanor Despenser, gave his niece a remarkably generous gift of a hundred marks, and went back to Westminster the same night. He took eight of his chamber valets to attend him during the visit, including Syme Lawe, Wat Cowherd and Jack Edriche, all of whom received four shillings in the boat ‘in the king’s presence’ to buy themselves boots for the water. Eleanor Despenser must have been heavily pregnant at the time or had just given birth, as Edward made an offering of thirty shillings on 14 December to the Virgin Mary, in gratitude that God had granted Eleanor a ‘prompt delivery of her child’. Edward also ordered his almoner John Denton to give sixpence each in alms to forty ‘poor pregnant women’.³⁸

The king spent a quiet Christmas, his last as a free man, at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and gave a pound to the messenger who brought him letters from Eleanor Despenser.³⁹ Edward saw her in 1326 at Haughley near Stowmarket, and received a palfrey horse with saddle and all other necessary equipment from Eleanor as her New Year gift to him. He visited his half-brother Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, for a few days in early January with a large retinue.⁴⁰ Norfolk, as annoyed with the king and Hugh Despenser as their brother the earl of Kent was, was probably in touch with Kent in France, and hastened to join Isabella and Mortimer on their arrival later in the year. Not only had Edward allowed Despenser to buy Norfolk’s lordship of Chepstow for a ridiculously small amount, he also temporarily confiscated Norfolk’s hereditary office of Earl Marshal, actions seemingly designed to alienate his brother from him, although Edward did try to make amends by giving Norfolk a gift of £200, making him commissioner of array in seven counties and putting his sister-in-law Joan Jermy in charge of the household of his daughters Eleanor and Joan in February.⁴¹ Edward spent a week at South Elmham in Suffolk, giving Hugh Despenser’s Carmelite confessor Richard Bliton two pounds ‘for what he did in the park of South Elmham when the king ate’, and arrived at Norwich on 18 January, where he paid thirty shillings for fourteen ells of Coggeshall cloth to make tunics (cotes) for the wives of five of his chamber valets. The cloth, however, was found to be too stiff for the purpose, and the king bought instead eighteen ells of ‘bright blue English cloth’ to make cotes hardies (close-fitting, sleeved coats or gowns) with hoods for the women, at twenty pence an ell.⁴²

While Edward was at Norwich, he heard the shocking news that Roger Belers, chief baron of the Exchequer, had been stabbed to death on 19 January at Rearsby in Leicestershire, by the la Zouche brothers, the Folville brothers and others. Roger Belers was pardoned for adherence to Thomas of Lancaster in 1318, though had switched sides to the Despensers by 1321, and Hugh Despenser appointed him as his attorney in July 1322.⁴³ Belers’ murder can therefore perhaps be interpreted as hostility towards Despenser, though at the time of his death he was on his way to dine with Thomas of Lancaster’s brother Henry, no friend of Despenser although the men were brothers-in-law.⁴⁴ Edward appointed several men, including the earl of Arundel, Donald of Mar, his steward Thomas le Blount, his former steward Richard Damory, and Henry of Lancaster himself to investigate the murder.⁴⁵ The Folville brothers fled abroad but returned with Roger Mortimer’s invasion in the autumn, and subsequently became the most notorious of the criminal gangs who roamed England during Edward III’s reign.⁴⁶

Edward co-founded Oriel College at Oxford with his almoner Adam Brome on 21 January 1326, and the foundation charter says that love of the Blessed Virgin and a desire to increase her ‘divine cult’ motivated him to establish the college. The king declared his zeal for sound learning and religious knowledge, granted Brome, the first college provost, and the scholars permission to acquire sixty pounds’ worth of lands and property, and specifically requested that five or six of the first ten scholars be students of canon law.⁴⁷ The foundation was originally named the Hall of the Blessed Mary; the name ‘Oriel’ comes from a house called La Oriole granted to the college after Edward’s deposition. Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, informed Edward at this time that a joint invasion by France and Hainault could be expected shortly, though Henry Eastry, prior of Canterbury, doubted the story and believed that Charles IV had no real intention of invading England. Edward himself evidently believed that Charles would indeed invade England on his sister Isabella’s behalf, though whatever he may have thought, this was highly unlikely; the French king may well have wanted, out of fraternal affection, to protect Isabella, but this did not extend to invading a sovereign country on her behalf.⁴⁸Edward told Count William of Hainault on 22 January that he was willing to satisfy all reasonable demands of the count’s subjects who had been robbed and slain by Englishmen, a proposal that offered too little, and came too late.⁴⁹ William was committed to the thought of his daughter being queen of England. Edward was equally committed to a Castilian alliance, and again informed the king and queen of Portugal that his son was marrying the king of Castile’s sister.⁵⁰

Edward appointed Hugh Despenser’s eldest sister Aline Burnell as constable of Conwy Castle in North Wales, presumably at Despenser’s request, on 30 January.⁵¹ It was a rare honour for a woman to be put in charge of such an important stronghold. The king dined with his sister-in-law Alice, countess of Norfolk, on the same day, at Burgh in Suffolk, and gave a pound each to the minstrels – Henry Newsom, harper, and Richardyn, citoler – who performed for them. He gave her sister Joan Jermy a silver cup worth seventy-five shillings, and remained in touch with Alice, paying her messenger a hundred shillings on 5 June for bringing him her letters.⁵² Edward spent the first few days of February 1326 at Walsingham, and presumably visited the shrine of Our Lady there. He bought two pounds’ worth of ‘masts, cables and other equipment for ships’ from a merchant of Lynn, which his clerk carefully recorded as being ‘for the king’s use’, and several weeks later invited a group of shipwrights from London to visit him at Kenilworth.⁵³

On 4 February, Edward ordered numerous sheriffs, mayors and bailiffs to search anyone leaving the country to make sure that they were not taking armour, horses, gold, silver or money with them without his permission. Five days later he issued a proclamation that no one except merchants, who were to be searched and made to swear an oath that they were not carrying weapons or letters prejudicial to Edward or his subjects, might leave the country without his special licence.⁵⁴ This proclamation had already been issued in December 1325, and would be repeated several more times in 1326.⁵⁵ Edward also ordered all his sheriffs and John Sturmy and Nicholas Kyriel, admirals of his fleet, to be prepared to set out against ‘the aliens, strangers and enemies of the king who may attack the realm’. The recipients of the letter were ordered to receive Isabella and Edward of Windsor ‘honourably and courteously’ and to treat all the others as the king’s enemies but ‘to save the bodies of the queen and Edward’.⁵⁶

The king ordered an inquisition a few days later into a whale cast ashore at Walton, and wrote to Jaime II of Aragon’s son Pedro, count of Ribagorza, and to Eleanor Despenser.⁵⁷ A rather fascinating entry in Edward’s chamber account of 7 February records a very large payment of twenty marks to his squire Oliver de Bordeaux ‘when the king sat beside his bed a little before midnight’ at Harpley in Norfolk.⁵⁸ Another indication of the familiarity between the king and his household staff and their families is a royal gift of twenty shillings to Edward Pymock, son of another of Edward II’s squires: Pymock was said to be the king’s confrere, brother or companion, and he is elsewhere called le petit Pymock, ‘the little Pymock’. An odd nickname for one of Edward’s chamber staff was le petit Cotel le Roi, ‘the king’s little Knife’. Edward gave a gift of twenty shillings later in 1326 to be shared among six of his (more than thirty) chamber valets who woke up at night whenever he himself awoke, in recognition of their hard work.⁵⁹ His Household Ordinance of December 1318 stated that he should choose four of his thirty sergeants-at-arms to sleep outside his chamber ‘as near to it as they can’, with the other twenty-six to remain in the hall ‘to be nearby when the king needs them’.⁶⁰ In addition to the four sergeants outside his chamber door, and the six or more valets presumably inside, Edward had a sergeant porter ‘who will guard the door of there where the king sleeps’.

Edward and Hugh Despenser were apart once again, and the king sent frequent letters to his chamberlain in London between 11 February and 31 March while he himself stayed in Leicestershire and Staffordshire and at the great Warwickshire stronghold of Kenilworth.⁶¹ He gave a gift of forty shillings to a retired sailor he met while riding through Tamworth, who had become destitute and a beggar.⁶² Sailors paid out of the king’s accounts earned three pence a day, so this represented almost half a year’s wages in the man’s former job. A pleasant interlude took place on 11 March, when Edward gave, with his own hands, fifty shillings (two and a half pounds) to his painter Jack of St Albans for dancing before him on a table and making him laugh; he intended the money to support Jack’s wife and children. Edward was evidently coping with the stress of Isabella and Mortimer’s impending invasion better than Hugh Despenser, who was said to have ‘made a small affray’ in Northamptonshire in late February.⁶³

Also in late February, Edward ordered all his keepers of the peace to be ‘more active in dispersing unlawful assemblies and arresting malefactors, as the king is astonished to hear that these evils are now more frequent than before their appointment, which may be set down to their negligence and connivance’.⁶⁴ Knowing that an invasion was coming and that his enemies abroad had many supporters in England, Edward did all he could to avoid his fate; but in fact there was little he could do, nearly two decades of misrule ensuring that he was widely unpopular and that there were few men indeed who would fight to save him. Discontent had been rife in England since 1322, but there was no one in the country capable of organising and leading a revolt against the king and the Despensers. Queen Isabella and her son served as powerful figureheads for the rebels abroad, who had – and must have known that they had – considerable support in Edward’s kingdom. There is little to indicate that Isabella enjoyed much popularity in England before 1326, although several chroniclers comment approvingly on her efforts to negotiate and make peace between her husband and his barons.⁶⁵ The Lanercost chronicler, apparently attempting the world record for the number of times he could write ‘England’ in one short sentence, says ‘it was publicly rumoured in England that the queen of England was coming to England’. Not to be outdone in repetition, Edward ordered men in Portchester and Southampton to arrest everyone ‘entering the realm to spy out the secrets of the realm in order to do certain things prejudicial to the king and his realm’ on 10 March.⁶⁶ The Lanercost chronicler thought that Isabella wanted to avenge herself on the Despensers for the execution of her uncle the earl of Lancaster.⁶⁷ Even more damaging than the rumours of invasion, however, were the rumours that Edward had publicly declared his wife and son to be his enemies and exiled them from his realm, and intended to harm them. He wrote to the pope indignantly refuting this, and his surviving proclamations make clear that although he named Isabella’s allies as ‘the king’s enemies’, he specifically excluded Isabella herself, Edward of Windsor and the earl of Kent, even after the invasion.⁶⁸ According to the Brut, Edward was informed after his deposition that people suspected him of wanting to strangle his wife and son to death. He responded, ‘God knows, I thought it never, and now I would that I were dead! So would God that I were! For then were all my sorrow passed.’⁶⁹ If Edward truly was informed that people believed him capable of murdering his own wife and son, it is hardly a wonder that he was deeply upset.

The king seized the lands of the men refusing to return to England with the queen in March 1326, and told the constable of Dover Castle to arrest anyone bringing in or taking out of the realm letters contrary to his proclamation of a few weeks earlier, as ‘the king is astonished to hear that many enemies and rebels continue to do so and are not arrested’.⁷⁰ His only hope in averting an invasion lay in persuading his son to come home to him or persuading Charles IV to send the boy back, and he wrote to both of them on 18 March. Isabella had told Charles that she ‘greatly wished to be with the king and in his company, as a good wife ought to be with her lord’, but reiterated that she was afraid of Despenser. Edward once more devoted many lines to defending his ‘dear and faithful nephew’ Despenser to Charles, complained about Isabella retaining Mortimer in her council, and asked his brother-in-law not to have ‘regard to the wilful pleasure of woman’. He promised that Isabella did not ‘receive evil or villainy from the king or from anyone else, and the king would not suffer her to do so for anything’. Edward of Windsor had also written to his father, saying that he remembered the king’s injunctions to him at Dover not to marry, and promised always to obey Edward’s orders with all his power. He had supposedly claimed that he ‘cannot come to the king so speedily as the king has ordered him, by reason of his mother, who is … in great uneasiness of heart’ and that it was his duty not to leave Isabella for long in her unhappiness, which sounds far more like something dictated by the queen herself than by an adolescent boy. Edward, in ‘wrath and indignation’, threatened his son with forfeiture of all that he had if he did not return to England.⁷¹

Isabella, in using her son as a weapon against her husband, forced Edward of Windsor to choose between his parents: young Edward could either betray his father, or abandon his mother. The Vita says that the boy hated Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester, and he can hardly have felt any less hatred for Hugh Despenser, his father’s favourite and perhaps his lover.⁷² Almost certainly, he desired the Despensers’ removal from his father’s side as much as his mother did. If Edward of Windsor stayed with his mother and helped her and her allies destroy the Despensers, however, he would be committing treason, betraying and disobeying his father, and would ultimately invade his kingdom with an army. If he went back to his father, he would leave his mother with a choice of returning to England and her husband, perhaps to be imprisoned or sent to a convent, losing her income and her position, or remaining in France with her brother, where she would be dependent on Charles IV for income, reduced to the status of a petitioner. As for the boy himself, whichever parent he chose, he would lose the other. The emotional strain inflicted on a thirteen-year-old, faced with this dilemma, can only be imagined. Although Isabella told Edward that she would not prevent their son returning to him, this was untrue. The boy was little more than a prisoner.⁷³

Edward II spent the whole of April 1326 at Kenilworth and most of May in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, giving generous amounts of cash to those members of his wife and son’s households still straggling back to England, supposedly for their expenses but presumably also for showing loyalty to him.⁷⁴ While at Kenilworth, he ordered his chamber valets to help a group of workmen dig and enclose a ditch and palisade in the castle park, and the valets received a gift of two barrels of ale from the mother of a local resident as they worked.⁷⁵ On 13 April, Edward told the archbishop and prior of Canterbury and the abbot of St Augustine’s that ‘an invasion of the realm by aliens is threatened’, ordering them to prepare themselves to defend the realm, and told his admirals John Sturmy and Nicholas Kyriel two weeks later to prepare and equip as many ships as possible, as he wished ‘to provide for the safety of his realm and to escape the machinations of the evil wishers who are scheming to aggrieve him and his realm by sudden attacks’. He also ordered Sturmy and Kyriel to ‘cause the actions of those men beyond sea to be spied upon diligently and watchfully’.⁷⁶ Meanwhile, relatives of Contrariants executed in 1322 were doing their best to make trouble for the king in England: the castle of Tickhill, where Edward’s friend, the none too scrupulous William Aune, was constable, was besieged that April by John Mowbray’s fifteen-year-old son and Roger Clifford’s brother, among others.⁷⁷ In many ways, however, Edward’s life continued in much the same way as it always had: he gave five shillings to his page Little Will Fisher for ‘what he did when the king mounted his horse’ at Kenilworth, another five shillings to a man who gave him twelve chickens, and varying amounts of money to many others who brought him presents of fish and other food – all of which he handed over to his subjects with his own hands. Edward also bought himself many splendid jewels and clothes, including two gold crowns studded with rubies, pearls and emeralds which cost ninety pounds, a silver crown, a gold chaplet, a white velvet hat lined with miniver, and several hats of vermilion velvet, one decorated with bells and another ‘powdered with diverse animals’.⁷⁸

On 11 May 1326, Charles IV’s young wife Jeanne of Evreux was crowned queen of France at Sainte Chapelle in Paris. Isabella was an honoured guest, and although Roger Mortimer had not been invited, perhaps out of respect to Edward II, he went anyway and carried Edward of Windsor’s train.⁷⁹ Edward II was furious and sent a bitter complaint to his son on 19 June, although the boy had surely had little say in the matter. This letter was the last contact he ever had with his son. Edward’s fury and anguish are apparent, especially as his son had told him untruthfully that Mortimer was not an adherent of himself or his mother, ‘whereby the king considers himself very evilly paid’. Edward wrote that his son had not behaved as a good son should by obeying his father’s commands, once more threatened him with forfeiture if he did not return, and ordered him again not to marry. He ended the letter by writing that if his son was ‘contrary and disobedient hereafter to his will … he will ordain in such wise that Edward [of Windsor] will feel it all the days of his life, and that all other sons shall take example thereby of disobeying their lords and fathers’.⁸⁰ As it turned out some months later, this was an empty threat, but it must have pained the young duke of Aquitaine to read such harsh words. The king distracted himself from his woes on 19 May by attending the wedding of Hugh Despenser’s niece Margaret Hastings to Robert Wateville in Marlborough, where he must have seen his daughters Eleanor and Joan – as far as Edward knew, the future queens of Castile and Aragon – who were living there. He gave a pound to the servant Will Muleward, ‘who was for some time with the king and made him laugh greatly’; despite the crisis he was facing, Edward’s sense of humour remained intact. There are many references in his chamber journal of May and June 1326 to his playing cross and pile, and he celebrated the Nativity of John the Baptist on 24 June – exactly twelve years after his defeat at Bannockburn – by playing dice with Giles Beauchamp, a knight of his chamber. He also bought four cows to provide ‘milk for the mouth of the king and Sir Hugh [Despenser]’.⁸¹ Edward was in dire straits in 1326, but at least he was getting enough calcium.

Pope John XXII in Avignon was exerting himself to bring about a reconciliation between the king and queen and avert civil war, and sent envoys, the archbishop of Vienne and the bishop of Orange, to both Edward and Isabella ‘to remove the dissension’ between them. The envoys had full powers to ‘remove any obstacles’ which hindered the couple’s reconciliation.⁸² The main obstacle was Hugh Despenser, but Edward would not send him away, even at this desperate stage. The Rochester chronicler thought that the envoys’ mission was to ensure the safe return of the queen, her son and the earl of Kent to England, while Henry Eastry believed that they had persuaded Isabella to return on condition that the Despensers retired from court and that the queen was fully restored to her estates.⁸³ Edward granted the envoys a safe-conduct to travel to England, and sent a letter to the constable of Dover Castle ordering him to treat them ‘courteously and amiably’.⁸⁴ This contradicts the beliefs of several contemporary chroniclers: the Annales Paulini claim that the envoys were ‘anxious and afraid’ at the thought of meeting the king, and the French Chronicle of London says, ludicrously, that Edward had threatened them with death. This rumour reached the ears of John XXII, who informed Edward that he did not believe the king would mistreat them.⁸⁵

The envoys stayed at the archbishop of Canterbury’s castle of Saltwood in Kent. Edward arrived there at the end of May, and, keen as ever on the outdoors and physical exercise, went into the park with his steward Thomas le Blount, Hugh Despenser’s nephew-in-law Robert Wateville and others to play a ball game.⁸⁶ He then met the envoys and did his best to allay their fears by spending a convivial few days in their company, and paid all their expenses. Hugh Despenser also met them and rebutted the accusations the queen had made against him (Despenser and Edward talked to the envoys in French, their words later translated into Latin for the pope). Although Isabella had sworn by God and all the saints that she would not return to England unless her enemies the Despensers were removed from her husband’s side, she did inform Roger Mortimer in the spring or early summer of 1326 that she had decided to return to Edward.⁸⁷ A furious Mortimer ‘caused her to believe if she came to him [Edward] he would have killed her with a knife or murdered her in another manner … and by his other subtle scheming, he caused the said queen not to come to her said lord’. Mortimer’s rage is understandable; if Isabella returned to England with her son, his plans and his daring escape from the Tower would count for nothing, and he would be forced to remain an impoverished exile on the Continent, with no chance of seeing his home and his family again. It is unclear whether the ‘he’ who would kill Isabella meant Mortimer or Edward, though Hugh Despenser thought Mortimer was referring to himself when he (Despenser) related the story to the bishop of Rochester soon afterwards. Whether she believed Mortimer’s threats or not, Isabella changed her mind again and decided to go ahead with the plans for invasion.

John XXII wrote frequently to Hugh Despenser, telling him in February 1326 that

his participation in the king’s government is given by the queen as a reason for her being unable, without personal danger, to return to the king. The pope suggests that Hugh should retire, and should devise methods by which the queen may no longer fear to return to her husband.

The pope, evidently irritated with Despenser, asked him in April ‘to abstain from provoking enmities, and to study to promote friendships’. He had evidently recovered from his irritation two weeks later when he commended Despenser for his ‘good offices’ in promoting concord between Edward and Isabella, and urged him to continue.⁸⁸ John was doing his best to remain neutral, and wrote several times to Isabella urging her to reconcile with her husband, also saying that he ‘supposes that the queen has not delayed … to betake herself to the king’s presence’ on the advice of others.⁸⁹ As late as May 1327, more than three months after Edward’s deposition, John XXII was urging Charles IV to use his influence to bring the couple back together, and there is no reason to suppose that the pope, despite his annoyance with the king over his mistreatment of some of the English bishops, favoured Isabella over Edward.⁹⁰

Edward gave another generous gift of twenty marks to Eleanor Despenser in early June, sent pomegranates to two members of Hugh Despenser’s household lying ill at Saltwood, and gave a pound to a fiddler for an especially pleasing performance.⁹¹ On their way to London in mid-June, the king and Despenser met Hamo Hethe, bishop of Rochester, at Boxley Down in Kent; during the journey, Edward borrowed three shillings from his usher Peter Bernard to give to ‘a poor man’ he encountered.⁹² Hethe had long been an ally of Edward, and almost uniquely was kindly disposed towards Despenser, and rode with the two men for a while. According to the Rochester chronicler William Dene, an associate of Hethe, Despenser informed the bishop that the papal envoys had sought guarantees for the safe return of Isabella, her son and Kent, and pointed out that no such guarantees were necessary as they could return to England in safety at any time. Despenser also told Hethe that Roger Mortimer had threatened to kill Isabella should she return to Edward. The king and Despenser spent the night of 15/16 June at Rochester with Hethe, and Edward asked the bishop if it were true that a queen of England who had defied her husband had been put down out of her royalty, perhaps an indication that he was by now considering an annulment of his marriage, though if he was, there is no confirmation of it in any other source. The following day, Hethe accompanied Edward and Despenser as far as Gravesend, and Edward told him ruefully, ‘You have not asked me for anything. For you have done many things for me and the Lord Hugh, and I have not rewarded you. I have done much for those who are ungrateful, whom I promoted to high rank, and who are now my chief enemies.’⁹³

In late June, Edward sent envoys to negotiate with Robert Bruce, yet again.⁹⁴ Bruce had signed a treaty with France in April, which provided for mutual military aid against Edward – clearly a breach of the 1323 truce – and some Scotsmen attempted to seize Carlisle Castle and four castles in Northumberland.⁹⁵ Edward could not, however, have known the astonishing fact that Isabella and Mortimer had come to an agreement with Bruce that they would recognise him as king of Scots, and Scotland as an independent kingdom, if he agreed not to invade England at the same time as their own invasion and thus prejudice their chances of success.⁹⁶

Things went from bad to worse for Edward II in the summer of 1326: in addition to the growing tension with Scotland and the impending invasion of England, the situation with France deteriorated again. Edward set out his claims to be ‘guardian and administrator of Gascony’ in Edward of Windsor’s name in late June, in an attempt to limit the damage caused by the loss of his son. Charles IV, claiming to be protecting his nephew’s rights in the duchy, began reoccupying the areas of Gascony from which he had been in the process of withdrawing, and Edward would end his reign once more at war with France. He asked the citizens of Bayonne on 6 July to ‘annoy and injure’ all Charles IV’s subjects, and, still fearing an invasion from that country, ordered all monks who were citizens of France and who lived near the coast to be moved inland.⁹⁷ Charles IV arrested all English people in France and seized their goods, and Edward retaliated in kind as soon as he heard the news.⁹⁸ Edward appointed Oliver Ingham as steward of Gascony in March 1326. Ingham raised an army of Gascon and Spanish mercenaries and regained Saintonge and the Agenais from the French, and on 7 July Edward gave twenty marks to two sailors of Bayonne who brought him letters from Ingham, informing him that two great cities which had been opposed to him had been taken back into his hands out of the power of the king of France.⁹⁹ Isabella, however, handed all these lands back to Charles IV in March 1327 when she signed a humiliatingly one-sided treaty with him, also agreeing – astonishingly – to give up the whole of Gascony with the exception of a narrow coastal strip to France and to pay her brother 50,000 marks in reparation.¹⁰⁰ Edward II gave ten marks on 9 June 1326 to his chamber squire Garsy Pomit ‘for what he did in the king’s chamber when he ate, in aid of the said Garsy because his son came with news from the parts of Gascony’, though the news was unspecified.¹⁰¹

Edward, perhaps remembering happier times and never a man to forget someone he had loved deeply, asked the convent of Leeds in Kent on 28 June 1326 to pray for Piers Gaveston’s soul, fourteen years and nine days after Gaveston’s death.¹⁰² He spent early July at Sheen, Byfleet and Henley-on-Thames, where he gave a pound to a Spanish minstrel who played the gittern and lute for him, and on 11 July dined with his niece Eleanor Despenser in the park at Windsor. The king gave his cook Will Balsham, formerly of the queen’s retinue in France, two pounds to buy a hackney horse on which to follow the pair into the park; the money was given to Balsham ‘by the king’s own hands between two silver dishes’. Edward was at his Westminster cottage of Burgundy on the 15th, where twenty-eight men were hired to clean the ditches around it ‘in the king’s presence’ – he paid for drinks for them – and visited Sir Robert Wateville, Hugh Despenser’s nephew-in-law, at his London house on the 20th.¹⁰³ The king returned to his palace of Sheen where he spent two days with Eleanor Despenser, then travelled by water to Byfleet still in Eleanor’s company; he also gave or lent her husband Hugh a manuscript of the doomed love story of Tristan and Isolde around this time. Edward, as he so often did, handed out generous gifts to fishermen and women, and bought roach and dace for Eleanor. A John of Walton, who ‘sang before the king every time he passed through these parts by water’ and presented the king with a bucket of fish, received two shillings for his efforts. Edward wrote to his daughters in Marlborough on 25 July and to Hugh Despenser in Wales at the same time, the king and his favourite being apart yet again.¹⁰⁴ The Annales Paulini say that there was a great drought in England in the summer of 1326. On 24 July, Edward met several of his subjects at or near Sheen: he gave six pence to Jack le Frenche, who brought him fresh well-water at his command (perhaps an indication of the heat); six pence to Robyn atte Hethe, ‘who suffers from a great illness’; three pence to Wille de Pykingham, who retrieved a knife one of Edward’s squires had dropped in the Thames; twelve pence to Jack Meryn, who brought him a gift of lampreys; and five pence to Edward le Parker, who brought the king two pike and needed the money ‘to repair his house’.¹⁰⁵

Roger Mortimer’s uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk died in the Tower of London on 3 August 1326, though as he was about seventy, well beyond average life expectancy for the era, and had outlived all his siblings by decades, there is no reason to suppose that his death was suspicious.¹⁰⁶ Maurice, Lord Berkeley and Hugh Audley the Elder, father of Edward’s former favourite, also died in 1326, still in captivity. The king dined on or shortly before 8 August with Hugh Despenser’s sister Isabel Hastings, formerly in charge of his daughters’ household, who had been replaced in February by Joan Jermy. Edward gave Joan a gift of twenty marks, and forty shillings to her damsel Jonete.¹⁰⁷ On 22 August, at the royal palace of Clarendon in Wiltshire, Edward himself joined in when twenty-two men made hedges and a ditch in the park, and he borrowed twelve pence from his servant Elis Pek to give to a man named Gibbe working with him in the ditch, so that he could buy himself shoes.¹⁰⁸

On 27 August, Edward’s son was formally betrothed to Philippa, daughter of the count of Hainault and granddaughter of Charles of Valois. As King Charles IV still had no son, Valois’s son Philip was heir to the French throne. There was a chance that Queen Isabella might try to claim the throne for her son, who was, apart from his younger brother John of Eltham, Philip IV’s only grandson. The Valois family therefore had an interest in allying with Isabella so that she would renounce her son’s claim to the French throne. Edward’s reaction to his son’s betrothal is not recorded, but he must have been furious and anxious. At some point before this date, Isabella had left France and gone to Hainault; whether she left France of her own accord or was expelled by her brother Charles IV is a matter of some debate. The Brut says that Hugh Despenser sent masses of silver to the French court as a bribe to send her back, but that his envoy was captured and Isabella herself seized the money.¹⁰⁹ The Flores claims that Charles IV and the entire nobility of France had promised to help Isabella’s invasion of England, a ludicrous statement, although the dramatic story that Charles was about to arrest her and she fled to Hainault in the night after receiving a warning from her cousin Robert of Artois is also unlikely.¹¹⁰ Charles did nothing to prevent Isabella’s invasion, but there is nothing to indicate that he actively helped her, either.

Once more at war with France, Edward could use Charles as a useful scapegoat for all his problems, and wrote in May 1326 that Charles was detaining his son, ‘whom the king, trusting to his affection, sent to him, against the king’s will’.¹¹¹ Edward found it easier to pretend that Charles was detaining Isabella and his son than to admit that the queen did not want to return because of Hugh Despenser and that it had been his own error – however understandable when seen in its proper context – to send Edward of Windsor to France. Edward II asked for the prayers of the Dominicans of Paris, of all places, on 12 April and from the Dominicans of Oxford on 6 September, on behalf of himself and his realm; for the first time, Isabella and Edward of Windsor were not included in the prayers.¹¹² On or around 31 August, the king attacked Normandy with a force of about 140 ships, possibly in an attempt to seize his son, said in 1327 to have been ‘in those parts’ – though the king told the archbishops of Canterbury and York and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge that his intention was ‘to restrain the malice of the men of the king of France in case they wish to enter the realm’. The force was repulsed with heavy losses, the last thing Edward needed with his wife’s invasion imminent, though a French ship called la Dorre was captured and taken to Winchelsea.¹¹³ Hugh Despenser, aware that the invasion could come at any moment, withdrew a massive £2000 from his Italian bankers the Peruzzi on 16 September.¹¹⁴

Edward was at the Tower of London on 27 September when he received the shocking news. The invasion force of Queen Isabella, Roger Mortimer and their allies had finally arrived.