5

Death, Birth and Reconciliation

Edward left Westminster for Windsor on 27 December 1311, leaving Queen Isabella behind, although she sent him unspecified ‘precious objects’ for his New Year gift.¹ Sometime in early January, Edward collected his niece Margaret Gaveston from her castle of Wallingford, and headed to Yorkshire with her.² The 200-mile journey must have been dreadfully uncomfortable for Margaret, whose pregnancy was nearing full term, but she arrived safely in York and gave birth there to Gaveston’s daughter Joan, named after her mother and Edward’s sister Joan of Acre, on or around 12 January.³ The king seems to have met Gaveston at Knaresborough on 13 January, and the two men rushed the 17 miles to York that same day, probably so that Gaveston could see his wife and newborn child.⁴ It is possible that Gaveston intended to leave England once he had seen his family and knew they were well, but Edward took the decision out of his hands: on 18 January 1312, the king revoked his friend’s exile and declared him ‘good and loyal’.⁵ Edward had his sheriffs proclaim the news, and two days later, ordered the restoration of the lands of Gaveston’s earldom to him. A memorandum was added: ‘These writs were made in the king’s presence by his order under threat of grievous forfeiture.’ By restoring Gaveston, Edward proved that he adored his friend beyond reason, and could not bear to be without him, and that he was prepared to face civil war for him. The writ revoking Gaveston’s exile was written in French, not the usual Latin, which probably means that Edward himself drafted it; he could not have managed it in Latin. In 1317, he asked the archbishop of Canterbury to translate a papal letter from Latin into French for him, a fact which, with his taking his coronation oath in French, caused historians of the early twentieth century to condemn him unfairly as uneducated and illiterate.⁶ Papal texts were, however, written in a Latin difficult and convoluted even for scholars to follow, and rather than criticise Edward for his lack of education or intelligence, we should perhaps acknowledge the common sense that drove him to ensure that he understood the letter by reading it in his mother tongue, rather than in a language he had learned in childhood but had had little occasion to use since.

The Ordainers, furious, ordered that Edward ‘should not receive from his exchequer so much as a half-penny or farthing’, with the result that he and Gaveston ‘plundered the town and country, because they had not the wherewithal to pay their expenses’.⁷Desperate to protect Piers Gaveston, at any cost, Edward even tried to negotiate with Robert Bruce to take care of his friend, and, amazingly, offered to recognise Bruce as king of Scots if he took Gaveston under his protection. Robert Bruce refused, exclaiming, ‘How shall the king of England keep faith with me, since he does not observe the sworn promises made to his liege men? … No trust can be put in such a fickle man; his promises will not deceive me.’⁸ This offer was simply incredible – Edward was prepared to throw away his claim to overlordship to Scotland, for the sake of Piers Gaveston.

Edward exchanged letters with his cousin and enemy, the earl of Lancaster, in late January. The content of these letters is unknown, but they are unlikely to have been amicable. Probably Lancaster had demanded Gaveston’s surrender or immediate return to exile, which, of course, Edward refused.⁹ He gave a pound each to three minstrels for their performance on 29 January, and sent Queen Isabella the expenses for her journey north in early February.¹⁰ Around the same time, the Ordainers gathered at St Paul’s in London to discuss their next moves. Despite their anger with the king, they were reluctant to wage war on him, a thing not lightly done.¹¹ Five of the earls, Lancaster, Warwick, Hereford, Pembroke and Arundel, bound themselves by oath to capture Piers.¹² In York on 20 February, after Margaret’s churching – the purification ceremony forty days after childbirth – Edward and the proud parents the Gavestons celebrated the birth of Joan, Edward’s great-niece. Edward paid the huge sum of forty marks to celebrate Margaret’s purification, and the guests were entertained by his minstrel ‘King Robert’.¹³ A few days earlier, Edward had given Robert a pound to buy himself a ‘targe’ or shield, to use in a dance involving swords and shields, and paid two pounds to a minstrel sent to him by Queen Isabella’s eldest brother Louis, king of Navarre, who performed for him.¹⁴ Edward took minstrels with him everywhere he went and paid them handsomely, giving his singer Master William Milly two shillings a day, as much as a knight earned.¹⁵ He had in 1305/06 spent the wildly excessive amount of £1,268 on minstrels and buying palfrey horses, a sum of money which reveals much of Edward’s extravagance.¹⁶ Meanwhile, Isabella made her way north, remaining in frequent contact with Edward via her messenger John Moigne and sending him a basket of lampreys. Her 200-mile journey took almost three weeks, which indicates how painfully slow medieval travel could be.¹⁷

Shortly after Isabella’s arrival in York, she and Edward conceived their first child, the future Edward III, who was born on Monday 13 November 1312. Counting back thirty-eight weeks, roughly the length of a full-term pregnancy from the time of conception, brings us to 21 February (1312 was a leap year). On this date, Isabella’s Household Book shows her to have been at Bishopthorpe, just south of York, and she probably arrived in the city later that day, or early the following day.¹⁸ There is no doubt whatsoever that Edward was the father of Edward III, and we may assume that the boy was conceived within a few days of Isabella’s arrival in York. The king and queen remained together in the city until early April, so even if Edward III arrived prematurely, there is no reason to think that Edward was not his biological father. Easter Sunday fell on 26 March in 1312, so Edward and Isabella, now twenty-seven and sixteen respectively, must have conceived their son during Lent, when intercourse was forbidden. This hardly lends credence to the notion that Edward slept with his wife unwillingly; Lent gave him the perfect excuse not to have sex with Isabella, if he didn’t want to.

No record of the fourteenth century gives even the slightest hint that anyone believed Isabella had taken a lover and that Edward was not his son’s real father. It is impossible that the sixteen-year-old queen of England could have conducted an affair and kept it secret. Although Isabella did have a relationship with Roger Mortimer many years later, this occurred when she was in France and beyond Edward’s influence, after their marriage had broken down and long after she had borne her four children by Edward. This cannot be taken to mean that Mortimer, or anyone else, had been her lover years before. It is impossible for Mortimer to have fathered Edward III, as he was in Ireland in 1312. He was also in Ireland when Edward and Isabella conceived their next two children in 1315 and 1317, and away from court in 1320 when their youngest was conceived.¹⁹ It was only in the late twentieth century that speculations about Edward III’s paternity arose, because Edward II has become widely seen as a gay icon and it is therefore sometimes assumed that he must have been incapable of sexual relations with women. However, the existence of Edward’s illegitimate son Adam demonstrates that he wasn’t repelled by intercourse with women, and he may have enjoyed it enormously, for all we know. No one in the fourteenth century doubted that he fathered Isabella’s children, and there is no reason at all for us to doubt it.

Sometime in March 1312, the archbishop of Canterbury ‘seized his sword and struck Piers with anathema’; that is, he excommunicated Gaveston.²⁰ By mid-March, the anathematised Gascon had left York and gone to Scarborough, and Edward gave Gaveston’s messenger the remarkable sum of fifty pounds, the equivalent of many years’ salary, for bringing him ‘good news’ of his friend, whatever that might have been – perhaps that Gaveston had decided to stay in England.²¹ At Easter, Edward continued a pleasant tradition of his father’s: if the king was caught in bed on Easter Monday, his ‘captors’ had the right to drag him out, and he had to pay them a large ransom to free himself. Catching Edward still asleep was a far from difficult task, as he was a late riser, and in 1311 he had paid twenty pounds to three of his household knights who dragged him out of bed.²² Some kind of ceremony was performed at night-time: later in his reign Edward gave gifts of one pound and two pounds respectively to the chamber valets Jack Coppehouse and Jack Pyk for ‘what he did when the king went to bed’, and five pounds to Sir Giles Beauchamp and ten marks (six pounds sixty-six pence) to Sir Richard Lovel ‘for what he did in the king’s chamber when he went to bed’.²³ At Easter 1312, Edward paid Isabella’s ladies and damsels forty marks as their ransom for the pleasant custom of ‘capturing’ him in bed. One of the damsels was Alice Leygrave, Edward’s former wet nurse, called ‘the king’s mother, who suckled him in his youth’.²⁴

By the end of March 1312, Gaveston was back at York, and on 1 April, Edward told his father-in-law Philip IV that he had to hasten to Berwick-on-Tweed, as Robert Bruce was besieging the town.²⁵ However, he had no intention of going there. Piers Gaveston was far more important to Edward than his enemy seizing such a vital port, and besides, his own men were holding the Scottish border against him to prevent him sending Gaveston to Robert Bruce for protection. On 5 April, the two men left for Newcastle, perhaps because it was much further north and they felt safer there. Queen Isabella had joined them by 22 April, but soon moved on the nine miles to Tynemouth Priory, probably because Gaveston was ill: two men were paid ten marks each for looking after him.²⁶ Edward celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday on 25 April, and borrowed forty pounds from the Genoese merchant Antonio di Pessagno to buy ‘large, white pearls’ for Isabella, probably his response to the news of her pregnancy.²⁷ That the king felt himself to be in danger in his own realm is demonstrated by his grant to Gaveston of the custody of Scarborough Castle in early April: he ordered Gaveston to deliver the castle to no one but himself, except ‘if it shall happen that the king is brought there a prisoner’.²⁸

On the day he departed for Newcastle, Edward (unrealistically) ordered his vassals the counts of Foix and Armagnac and the lord of Albret – the three greatest territorial lords in the south of France – and another 120 Gascon viscounts and barons to bring themselves and armed men and horses to him, to aid him in the conflict against his barons, which he knew was inevitable. Three days later, he excused himself from a council of French peers in Paris, which he was eligible to attend as duke of Aquitaine and count of Ponthieu.²⁹ Meanwhile, the earl of Lancaster was slowly making his way north with the intention of capturing Gaveston, holding jousting tournaments on the way as an excuse to assemble armed men. On 3 May, Edward and Gaveston learned of his imminent arrival at Newcastle, which took them completely by surprise. They fled the few miles to Tynemouth to join Isabella, escaping Lancaster by only a few hours, leaving most of Edward’s household behind.³⁰ On 5 May they left by sea, to the secure and fortified castle of Scarborough. Knowing that he and Gaveston would have to spend a few days in a small boat bobbing about on the North Sea, a rough and bleak prospect even in May, Edward sent Isabella by land instead, and they arranged to meet again at York. Isabella was in the first trimester of pregnancy, when the risk of miscarriage is high, and either she or the king decided that travelling by land would be a safer option for her.

The Trokelowe chronicle, written at St Albans (270 miles from Tynemouth) sometime after 1330, claims that Isabella begged Edward in tears not to leave her, but he callously abandoned her anyway despite her pregnancy, concerned only with Gaveston.³¹ This is extremely improbable and no other source mentions the story. It is highly likely that Trokelowe confused this event with another occasion when the queen was at Tynemouth and this time truly in danger, ten years later.³² It took Edward and Gaveston a full five days to sail down the coast from Tynemouth to Scarborough, a long and dreadfully uncomfortable journey, especially for a pregnant woman.³³

King and favourite arrived at Scarborough on 10 May. Edward left Gaveston there and set out for Knaresborough, where he spent several days at Gaveston’s castle and where some of his household joined him after travelling to the town by land. The king then went on to York, where he met Isabella on the 14th, only nine days after he had supposedly abandoned her at Tynemouth.³⁴ Clearly their meeting there was a prior arrangement, and Edward paid the queen’s controller twenty pounds for the expenses of her journey on 16 May.³⁵ Isabella was so anxious to be reunited with her husband that she left most of her belongings behind at South Shields, and ignored a letter sent to her by her uncle the earl of Lancaster, promising that he would rid her of Gaveston’s presence.³⁶ Nothing indicates that Isabella thought her husband had abandoned her or that she was angry with him for doing so, or that she wanted to stay away from him, or that she had any interest in acting against him, or that she disliked him, or even that she particularly desired Piers Gaveston’s removal from her life. Records of Isabella’s pregnancy in 1312 with the future King Edward III of England are sadly missing, though entries from Edward II’s accounts of 1316 when she was pregnant with their second child show that he bought cushions for her carriage so that she could travel in greater comfort, and he is hardly likely to have been less concerned with her welfare in 1312 during a more important pregnancy. Given that Edward had bought his wife expensive pearls in late April, it would be very odd if he carelessly abandoned her to danger only a few days later.

The earl of Lancaster seized the baggage train of Edward and Gaveston, which they had been forced to leave behind at Tynemouth, and which included a gold ring with an enormous ruby called ‘the Cherry’ and a gold cup studded with jewels bequeathed to the king by Queen Eleanor, either his mother Eleanor of Castile or grandmother Eleanor of Provence. Lancaster took possession of sixty-three horses, including a bay and a black rouncy with stars on their foreheads, an iron-grey war-horse and a black horse from Edward’s stud at Woodstock.³⁷ Edward seethed over the loss of his many valuable possessions, and pointed out a few months later that ‘if any lesser man had done it, he could be found guilty of theft and rightly condemned by a verdict of robbery with violence’.³⁸

By leaving Gaveston at Scarborough, Edward made a bad mistake: although the castle was well-fortified, it was not provisioned for a siege. Four men arrived to besiege Gaveston in the castle. One was John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, the only earl loyal to Edward the previous year, but recently persuaded by the archbishop of Canterbury to join the pursuit of the hated favourite. Another was Henry Percy, whose descendants became earls of Northumberland later in the fourteenth century. The third was Edward’s cousin Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, and the fourth Robert, Lord Clifford. Edward desperately tried to raise an army in York, with a conspicuous lack of success, but, just in case, the earl of Lancaster sat with his army between Scarborough and York to prevent the king relieving the siege.³⁹ Gaveston’s sister was in the castle with him when the siege began on 10 May, the day Edward left him there.⁴⁰ A week later, the king ineffectually ordered Surrey, Pembroke, Percy and Clifford ‘to desist from besieging Scarborough Castle’, although he managed to keep in touch with Gaveston via letters.⁴¹ On 19 May, however, with little other choice, Gaveston surrendered. He had few provisions, the castle was under constant assault by siege engines, and he must have known how little support he had and how futile his resistance was.⁴² Certainly, he also knew that Edward would not be able to come to his rescue, and came out of the castle to negotiate terms. They were surprisingly lenient, so much so that the hostile author of theFloresassumed Edward must have bribed Pembroke.⁴³ Another source described the arrangement as the barons submitting to Gaveston, not vice versa.⁴⁴

Gaveston would be held under house arrest at his own castle of Wallingford until he appeared before parliament to account for his actions, and was to be kept safely at all times. If he or the king disputed the terms of the truce, he would be free to return to Scarborough Castle. The deadline given for parliament to decide his fate was 1 August, and if this date passed with no decision, Gaveston would again be free to return to Scarborough.⁴⁵ Edward himself played a large role in this agreement, and the Vita states that ‘the matter had been put forward by his own counsel’.⁴⁶ He surely hoped to come to some arrangement by that date, and free Gaveston. It was even said that he was prepared to grant the king of France custody of Gascony, if he and the pope would help Edward to protect Gaveston.⁴⁷ For Edward even to consider this, and to acknowledge Bruce as king of Scotland is proof of his deep love for Piers Gaveston, and his willingness to do just about anything to keep his friend safe. One wonders why he didn’t just hand over the keys of his kingdom to the barons while he was at it. From around 26 to 28 May 1312, the earls of Pembroke and Surrey, and Henry Percy, met Edward at St Mary’s Abbey. Whether Piers Gaveston was with them is not certain, as he is not mentioned. It is also not clear if he and Edward saw each other at this time; it is possible that Gaveston was under guard, and kept away from the king.⁴⁸ If they did not see each other, then 10 May 1312, the day Edward left Gaveston at Scarborough, was the last time the two men ever met.

Gaveston was placed in the custody of the earl of Pembroke, who took him south, to Wallingford. Edward and Gaveston kept in touch via messengers until 9 June, the day Gaveston and Pembroke reached the village of Deddington in Oxfordshire, about 30 miles short of Wallingford.⁴⁹ Edward gave a pound to one William de la Paneterie for lending him a bow and arrows on or shortly before 4 June, and sent a letter to his father-in-law Philip IV on the 11th pettishly declaring that he was ‘grievously annoyed’ with his subjects.⁵⁰ Probably not half as grievously annoyed as his subjects were with him, however – and not nearly as grievously annoyed as he would have been, had he known what was going on in Deddington. In his worst nightmares, he could hardly have guessed what would happen next.

On the night of 9 June, the earl of Pembroke decided to visit his wife Beatrice, and left Gaveston behind at the priory of Deddington under guard. The earl of Warwick, who loathed Piers Gaveston for his presumption and his insulting nicknames, seized an opportunity for revenge. Guy Beauchamp, about forty in 1312, was one of the few English earls not closely related to Edward II by blood or marriage. His character consisted of an odd mix of brutality, piety and cultured intelligence.⁵¹ Early on the morning of Saturday 10 June, Piers Gaveston woke to the sound of chaos outside, horses’ hooves clattering on the ground and men shouting. The earl of Warwick and a large armed force had surrounded the priory, and Gaveston heard the earl call out, ‘Arise, traitor, you are taken!’⁵² He must have known what terrible danger he was in, although even then his courage didn’t fail him. He looked out of the window and, catching sight of the earl, laughed and shouted down that the ‘black dog of Arden’ had arrived. Beauchamp, shaking with fury that he could not curb Gaveston’s tongue even when he had the Gascon surrounded by armed men, his rage failing to lend him eloquence, hurled back the not terribly witty retort that he was no dog, but the earl of Warwick.⁵³

Warwick’s men overpowered the guards left by the earl of Pembroke, dragged Gaveston out of the priory barefoot and bare-headed, and tore his belt of knighthood from him.⁵⁴ Surrounded by armed men, Gaveston was forced to walk through the streets of Deddington, a large crowd appearing to taunt him as soon as news spread. He was then given a mangy horse to speed his 30-mile journey to Warwick Castle. All the way, ‘blaring trumpets followed Piers and the horrid cry of the populace’.⁵⁵ At Warwick, the earl cast Gaveston into the dungeon, in chains, and waited for the earls of Lancaster, Hereford and Arundel to arrive.

Warwick, Lancaster and the others had every intention of killing Gaveston. Lancaster, whom Gaveston had derided as the Churl and the Fiddler, declared, ‘While he lives there will be no safe place in the realm of England.’ Probably, they could see no alternative to killing him; if they exiled him for the fourth time, Edward would only recall him yet again, civil war would break out, and thus they decided that he should die.⁵⁶ According to the Bridlington chronicler, they called in the royal justices William Inge and Henry Spigurnel to pronounce judgement on Gaveston, though given the trust Edward placed in both men in later years, this seems unlikely.⁵⁷ On 19 June, the earl of Warwick sent a messenger to his prisoner, who insolently told Gaveston, ‘Look to yourself, my lord, for today you shall die the death.’⁵⁸ The royal favourite was taken two miles along the road to Kenilworth until they reached Blacklow Hill, which lay on Lancaster’s lands. The earl of Warwick lost his nerve and remained in his castle, while Lancaster took responsibility for the bloody act. As Gaveston was the brother-in-law of the earl of Gloucester, Lancaster and the others agreed to grant him the nobleman’s death: decapitation, a privilege of rank, as beheading was much quicker than hanging, the method of execution reserved for common criminals. And so ‘they put to death a great earl whom the king had adopted as brother, whom the king cherished as a son, whom the king regarded as friend and ally’.⁵⁹ The Vita has Gaveston sighing and groaning, and making an implausibly long and pious speech which sounds far more like something the author thinks he should have said, rather than anything the courageous and bitingly witty Gascon really would say. While Lancaster, Hereford and Arundel stood some distance away, one of Lancaster’s Welsh men-at-arms ran Gaveston through with a sword, and as he lay dying on the ground, another cut off his head.⁶⁰

The earls demonstrated their contempt for Gaveston by leaving his mutilated body lying on the dusty road, and returned post-haste to the safety of Warwick Castle. A group of cobblers found the body, laid it on a ladder and took it to the castle, where the earl of Warwick refused to have anything to do with it.⁶¹ Ignorant of the etiquette governing this particular situation, and doubtless unwilling to incur the unpredictable king’s wrath by carting his friend’s body around the country, they not unreasonably took it back where they had found it. A group of Dominicans – Edward’s favourite order – from Oxford were the next to come across Gaveston’s body, either by accident or design, and took it to their house, where they embalmed it and sewed the head back on. An enormous ruby set in gold, worth £1,000 and a gift from Edward, was found on Gaveston’s body, as were an emerald, a diamond ‘of great value’ and three more large rubies set in gold.⁶² However, the Dominicans could not bury him, as he had died excommunicate.

And so passed Piers Gaveston, the charismatic and notorious favourite of a king. He was perhaps thirty or so when he died, the father of a five-month-old daughter and an illegitimate daughter, age unknown. So many centuries later, it is hard to see precisely what he did that was so objectionable. His arrogance, his presumption and his ostentation, and supposedly his love of fine clothes, irritated his contemporaries beyond bearing, but hardly merited death.⁶³ Whatever his relationship with Edward might have been, Gaveston did not die merely because the barons believed he was the king’s lover, and it is inaccurate to portray him – as has sometimes been the case – solely as a martyr to his (and Edward’s) sexuality. If Edward had been more even-handed with his favour, if he had defeated Robert Bruce, if he had not been so incapable of ruling his country, it is doubtful that his magnates would have much cared about his private relationship with Gaveston. The favourite was a scapegoat for Edward’s failures, killed by men deeply dissatisfied with their king.

On the day of Piers Gaveston’s death, Edward was at Burstwick with Isabella, now about four months pregnant. The king probably heard the news on or just before 26 June, after he and Isabella had returned to York. His primary reaction was utter rage.⁶⁴ His grief at the loss of his beloved friend must have been shattering. He had loved Gaveston for at least twelve years, nearly half his life, and been emotionally reliant on him to an extraordinary degree. Losing him must have been like losing part of himself, and his recalling Gaveston from exile three times despite the political consequences indicates that he felt he could not live without him. But however much Edward raged and howled in private, he managed to control his emotions in public for once, and said only,

By God’s soul, he acted as a fool. If he had taken my advice he would never have fallen into the hands of the earls. This is what I always told him not to do. For I guessed that what has now happened would occur. What was he doing with the earl of Warwick, who was known never to have liked him? I knew for certain that if the earl caught him, Piers would never escape from his hands.

The writer of the Vita goes on to say, with notable compassion for a man with a low opinion of Edward, ‘When this light utterance of the king became public it moved many to derision. But I am certain the king grieved for Piers as a father grieves for his son. For the greater the love, the greater the sorrow.’⁶⁵

It is doubtful that Edward was telling the truth about guessing beforehand what Warwick would do. His reaction is probably that of a man in profound shock and disbelief, and, perhaps, he felt guilt that he had left Gaveston at Scarborough, or hadn’t made enough efforts to release him from Warwick’s custody, though in reality there was little he could have done. Besides, Edward must have known that Gaveston had not gone with Warwick willingly. The king managed to keep a hold on himself in public while he grieved in private and plotted revenge.⁶⁶ The earl of Lancaster, Edward’s cousin and former ally, had done the one thing he knew the king would and could never forgive him for, and the dire relations between these two powerful men dominated the next decade. The Scalacronica comments on the ‘mortal hatred, which endured forever’ between Edward and Lancaster on account of Gaveston’s murder.⁶⁷ Edward’s later actions speak volumes about his genuine grief for Gaveston. That he adored him is beyond question, and until the end of his reign, he remained devoted to his memory.

Many people in the country rejoiced at Piers Gaveston’s death. One contemporary Latin poem exults, ‘Glory be to the earls who have made Piers die!’ and another says, ‘Blessed be the man who ordered the execution!’ According to the Vita, ‘The land rejoices, its inhabitants rejoice that they have found peace in Piers’ death.’⁶⁸ Some people, however, were horrified at the earls’ brutal and illegal act, and a groundswell of sympathy for the king swept the country. Gaveston’s death strengthened Edward’s position, especially as the earls of Surrey and Pembroke came back to his side, appalled by Gaveston’s murder. The reaction of Gaveston’s widow Margaret is not recorded, but she and Edward paid for two clerks to watch over his embalmed body, which the Dominicans dressed in cloth of gold.⁶⁹ Edward would later demonstrate enormous concern and care for Gaveston’s earthly remains, and paid for Masses to be said for Gaveston twice a year, on 18 July – perhaps his birthday – and on the anniversary of his death, all over England. He asked the Dominicans to pray daily for Gaveston’s soul, and gave them the large sum of eighty pence a day for the purpose.⁷⁰

Edward gave lands worth 2,000 marks a year to Margaret for her sustenance.⁷¹ He also took care of Gaveston’s household, and his daughter Joan, the king’s great-niece, was sent to Amesbury Priory with her cousin Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of the earl of Hereford and Edward’s sister Elizabeth. The king granted them the generous sum of 100 marks a year. Sending girls to grow up at Amesbury was entirely normal, not Edward shoving his favourite’s child out of the way. Several of Joan’s relatives lived at Amesbury, which had been fashionable among royal ladies since Edward’s grandmother retired there in the 1280s: Edward’s sister Mary, his niece Joan Monthermer, and Isabel of Lancaster, daughter of the earl of Lancaster’s brother Henry, were all nuns there.

Probably many of Edward’s subjects sighed with relief that the ‘evil male sorcerer’ who had enslaved him was dead, and looked forward to a future where the king did not fawn over a man and show him excessive favour. However, Edward did not change. Although he did not take another male favourite until years later, emotional reliance on men was an important part of his make-up, and all the barons had achieved was, firstly, to arouse terrible anger and the desire for revenge within Edward, and secondly, to open the door to men who were far worse. Killing Gaveston was the worst hurt anyone could have inflicted on Edward, and he was the kind of man who could nurse a grudge for many years, as Lancaster would find out.

Edward left York on 28 June and travelled south through Lincolnshire towards London, leaving Isabella behind, to keep his pregnant wife out of the way of any danger. She sent him a letter the day after his departure.⁷² Probably in an attempt to take his mind off Gaveston’s death, the king gave a pound to Graciosus the Taborer (drummer) who played for him on 30 June, a pound to Janin the Conjuror for performing tricks in the king’s private chamber at Swineshead Priory on 7 July, and three shillings to a group of acrobats for ‘making their vaults’ before him on 8 July.⁷³ He met the earls of Surrey and Pembroke, Hugh Despenser the Elder and Henry Beaumont in London, and at the house of the Dominicans made an impassioned speech addressed to the ‘good people’ of his capital, remarking on the marvellous situation wherein some of his magnates conducted themselves towards him as they should not, and asking the Londoners to defend the city against Gaveston’s killers. The earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford met at Worcester to discuss their next moves, then brought their army to Hertfordshire.⁷⁴ The Londoners supported Edward for once, and closed the gates of the city. On the other hand, the king summoned the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford to appear before him at Westminster or London, playing a double game, as he often did; Edward had an aptitude for political intrigue, if little else.⁷⁵ Rumours swirled: that Edward intended to seize Lancaster as soon as he entered London; that Lancaster would, with the help of a group of Londoners, capture Edward in the city.⁷⁶

Some of Edward’s adherents tried to persuade him to raise an army and make war on the earls, declaring that what they had done was treason.⁷⁷ Cooler heads advised caution, pointing out the dangers of fighting the powerful Lancaster, and that Edward would place himself at risk of being captured. Edward, understandably, strongly favoured war.⁷⁸ He was especially keen, at this juncture, to avenge himself on Warwick, and intended either to have his head or banish him from the country.⁷⁹ Probably he considered Warwick, as the abductor of Gaveston, as the prime mover in the affair. Later, however, he put all the blame on Lancaster, perhaps having heard that his cousin had taken most of the responsibility for the death on himself. The earls entered London armed, although Edward had expressly forbidden them to do so.⁸⁰ They knew that Edward ‘would, if he could, proceed to take vengeance as though for a wrong done to himself’, as the Vita perceptively points out.⁸¹

Edward’s nephew the earl of Gloucester offered to mediate between the two sides. He told the king that the earls who had killed Gaveston were not, as Edward believed, his enemies, but rather his friends, and that everything they did was for Edward’s own benefit. Edward, not surprisingly, was having none of it. He told his nephew,

I protest that they are not my friends who strive to attack my property and my rights. If I may use my royal prerogative as other kings do, may I not recall to my peace by the royal power a man exiled for any reason whatsoever? Of this right they deprived me by their own authority, for the man to whom I had granted peace, they cruelly put to death … Since they have seized my goods and killed my men, it is very likely that they do not wish to have any consideration for me, but to seize the crown and set up for themselves another king.⁸²

Gloucester took himself off to Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford, who listened to Edward’s complaints and announced that they had merely ‘ordered to be killed a certain exiled traitor who lurked in the land’.⁸³ This was not an argument calculated to appeal to Edward. War did not break out, partly because Edward couldn’t afford to fight one, but mainly because, revenge notwithstanding, he didn’t need to, as his position had been strengthened by the earls’ violent act. Tortuous negotiations between the king and Gaveston’s killers dragged on for many months. Although eventually willing to come to terms with the earls – in public, at least – Edward dug his heels in again and said, ‘Let the barons seek whatever they think may justly be sought; I will bow to their judgement in all things, but I will by no means charge Piers with treason.’⁸⁴

Finally, shortly before Christmas 1312, Edward and the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford signed a peace treaty. The earls were to make obeisance to Edward in the great hall of Westminster Palace ‘with great humility, on their knees’, and would ‘humbly beg him to release them from his resentment and rancour, and receive them into his good will’. The goods Lancaster had seized at Tynemouth were to be restored to the king on 13 January.⁸⁵ For some reason, Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, is not named in the treaty, although he was certainly present at Gaveston’s death. Neither is he mentioned in the numerous pardons granted the following year. Why Edward didn’t feel the need to pardon Arundel for his role in Gaveston’s death is not clear, but perhaps because Arundel tried to help Gaveston, or spoke out for him – or at least, persuaded Edward that he did. Arundel’s subsequent career trajectory is surprising: he became one of Edward’s most loyal allies.

At the end of July 1312, Edward sent an escort to Yorkshire for Queen Isabella, judging that the situation was calm enough for her to return south. He spent the first three weeks of August in Dover and Canterbury, where he gave three shillings to John of Lombardy for ‘making his minstrelsy with snakes before the king’, and met Isabella, who had travelled south very slowly because of her pregnancy, on 9 September.⁸⁶ The king and queen were reunited for the first time since the end of June, and in the middle of September retired to Windsor Castle, where they would remain together for most of the following eight months. The dowager queen Marguerite, Edward’s stepmother and Isabella’s aunt, joined them there, with her brother Louis, count of Evreux.

Edward spent a few days in the park of Windsor on several occasions, perhaps digging a ditch or building a wall, using hard physical exercise as a way of soothing his grief, and gave two pounds to the earl of Pembroke’s Welsh minstrel Coghin, who entertained him – and presumably the heavily pregnant queen – on 12 October.⁸⁷ On 20 October, he granted Isabella authority to make her will; married women needed their husbands’ permission for this, and it was a common thing to do while in an age when pregnancy and childbirth were so risky.⁸⁸ While at Windsor, Edward probably received the news that his brother-in-law Duke John II of Brabant had died in Brussels on 27 October, at the age of only thirty-seven, and that Edward’s twelve-year-old nephew had succeeded as John III.

On the feast day of St Brice, Monday 13 November 1312, Queen Isabella, who was now seventeen or almost, gave birth to a healthy son, the future King Edward III. Edward’s joy at the birth of his heir went some way to assuaging his terrible grief over Piers Gaveston, and he gave his son his title of earl of Chester within days of his birth, and showered him with gifts and lands.⁸⁹ In December, Edward granted the enormous sum of eighty pounds annually to Isabella’s steward John Launge and his wife Joan for bringing him news of the birth (though he was also at Windsor at the time), which gave them a higher income than some knights.⁹⁰ By the time he was a few weeks old, Edward of Windsor had his own household of many dozens of people, and Edward and Isabella visited him occasionally. The Vita expressed a wish that the boy would grow up to ‘remind us of the physical strength and comeliness of his father’; evidently, Edward II’s good looks and impressive physique were the only positive attributes the author could think of to describe him.⁹¹ The baby had seven godfathers, one of whom was his father’s friend Hugh Despenser the Elder. Less than fourteen years later, little Edward would see this godfather hanged in his armour and his body fed to dogs, at his mother’s instigation. To Edward II, the birth of a son and heir represented an enormous public relations coup, as it meant that God was favouring him and not his baronial enemies.⁹² A healthy son and heir was seen as a blessing from God, bestowed on the king and his kingdom. Edward’s subjects, especially in London, celebrated the news of the birth with immense joy and enthusiasm, dancing in the streets and drinking huge amounts of free wine for an entire week.⁹³

Edward spent almost £1,250 on cloth for himself, his wife and son and their retainers in order for the royal family to look as splendid as possible during the festive season at Windsor.⁹⁴ On 19 December, he sent a palfrey horse worth six pounds and a saddle ‘with a lion of pearls, and covered with purple cloth’ worth five pounds to Nichola, wife of Piers Lubaud, the Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow.⁹⁵ Why Nichola was singled out for this honour is not clear, although it is probable that Lubaud was a cousin of Piers Gaveston.⁹⁶ The king, queen and their son travelled to Westminster in late January 1313 to enjoy pageants and other celebrations put on for them, most notably by the Fishmongers’ Guild, then Edward returned to Windsor while Isabella went on pilgrimage to Canterbury to give thanks for the safe birth of her son.⁹⁷ She joined her husband at the beginning of March, and she and Edward spent most of March and April together at Windsor. On 27 April 1313, Edward finally ordered the release of Isabel MacDuff, countess of Buchan, from her prison at Berwick-on-Tweed.⁹⁸ Some years earlier he had freed Robert Bruce’s sister Mary from the cage where his father Edward I had had her imprisoned at Roxburgh Castle; records are missing for Isabel, and one can only hope that the unfortunate lady hadn’t spent six whole years incarcerated in inhuman conditions.

Edward finally received his and Gaveston’s possessions, which Lancaster had seized at Tynemouth the previous May, on 23 February 1313, six weeks late. They included presents from his sisters; a gold crown encrusted with jewels, worth 100 marks; a crystal goblet; silver plates for fruit; a belt decorated with ivory, notched with a purse hanging down from it, ‘with a Saracen face’; a gold buckle with emeralds, rubies, sapphires and pearls, a gift to Edward from the queen of Germany; a silver ship with four gold oars, enamelled on the sides; a gold dragon with enamelled wings; silver forks for eating pears; and many hundreds of other splendid and costly things.⁹⁹

The king and queen spent almost two months in France between May and July 1313, to attend the simultaneous knighting of Isabella’s three brothers, and for Edward to engage in the usual endless discussions with Philip IV regarding his duchy of Gascony. Two days before his departure, Edward sent letters to four men: his correspondent of 1307, Oljeitu of the Ilkhanate; Davit VIII, king of Georgia; Alexios II, emperor of the Trebizond – a successor state of the Byzantine Empire, on the shores of the Black Sea in modern-day Turkey – and Renzong, emperor of Cathay (China). He asked them to give all possible aid to a Franciscan named Guillerinus de Villanova, travelling to preach the word of Christ to the infidels, as Edward named them.¹⁰⁰ Edward’s information was somewhat out of date; King Davit had died two years earlier and been succeeded by his son, Giorgi. Whether Edward’s messengers managed to reach these far-flung places, and to return to England safely, is not recorded. Edward also told the constable of Dover Castle that he was sending six ‘Saracens’ to him, and ordered Kendale to pay them sixpence a day each until his return from overseas.¹⁰¹ Mysteriously, a Gascon called Richard de Neueby, ‘who says he is the king’s brother’, received a large payment of thirteen pounds from Edward at the same time.¹⁰² Perhaps Neueby – an odd name for a Gascon – was an illegitimate son of Edward I, though he is never heard of again. The Vita remarks at this time, ‘Our King Edward has now reigned six full years and has till now achieved nothing praiseworthy or memorable,’ a nicely laconic way of summing up the endless crises of Edward’s reign.

Edward, Isabella and their large retinues departed from Dover at sunrise on 23 May 1313, having left his nephew Gloucester as regent.¹⁰³ Edward was keen to present himself well in France, and spent the astonishing sum of £1,000 on his clothes and jewels. The king and queen passed through Amiens on 28 May, when Edward gave seven pounds and three shillings to his minstrel Jakeminus de Mokenon for his performance, and entered Paris five days later, where ‘the whole city rose up and went forth to meet them’.¹⁰⁴The knighting of Isabella’s brothers took place on 3 June, and Edward belted his eldest brother-in-law Louis, king of Navarre with the belt of knighthood. The two men and Philip IV then knighted about 200 others, including Isabella’s two other brothers Philip and Charles and their cousin Philip de Valois: all of them future kings of France. At noon on Tuesday 5 June, Edward hosted a splendid banquet at St-Germain-des-Prés, which was held in tents open to public view and hung with rich cloths. Torches, candles and lamps burned even in the middle of the day, attendants on horseback served the guests, and Louis of Navarre’s armourer created a ‘castle of love’ as the main attraction.¹⁰⁵ Edward suffered the embarrassment of missing a meeting with Philip IV two days later, as he and Isabella had overslept. The amused commentator Geoffrey or Godefroy of Paris gave their night-time dalliance as the reason, adding that it was hardly a wonder if Edward desired his wife, as Isabella was ‘the fairest of the fair’ and ‘splendid of body’.¹⁰⁶Edward’s appearance as described by numerous fourteenth-century chroniclers – tall, handsome, elegant and enormously strong – makes it seem plausible that the queen also felt physical desire for him. The king stirred himself sufficiently that day to watch a large crowd of Parisians parade from the Île Notre-Dame to the Louvre, from the windows of Philip’s apartments. He and Isabella, surrounded by a throng of ladies and damsels, saw the procession again later from a tower in their lodgings at St-Germain.¹⁰⁷ Geoffrey of Paris in his rhyming chronicle spelt Edward’s name as Oudouart and Isabella’s as Ysabiau and Ysabelot, which sound like affectionate nicknames for her, perhaps used by her family and her husband.

On the first anniversary of Piers Gaveston’s death, 19 June 1313, Edward was at Pontoise, where Bernard the Fool and no fewer than fifty-four naked dancers performed for him; one hopes that all the nude flesh on display went some way to consoling him. He gave the dancers two pounds.¹⁰⁸ At Pontoise sometime after 11 June, a fire broke out in Edward and Isabella’s pavilion during the night, and he gathered up the queen in his arms and rushed outside with her, even though they were ‘completely naked’ (toute nue). In doing so, he probably saved her life, although her arm was badly burnt and the couple lost many of their possessions. This was at least the second time that Edward had escaped from a fire: in April 1306, he gave ten shillings each to the watchmen who roused him from his bed and evacuated his household as flames swept through Windsor Castle.¹⁰⁹ Geoffrey of Paris, an eyewitness to Edward and Isabella’s visit to France, says that Edward was keen to save his queen above all else ‘because he loved her with fine love’.¹¹⁰Geoffrey evidently did not see Isabella as the victim of an uncaring, neglectful husband, and his testimony demonstrates that the couple were on close and intimate terms during the visit. Although we have little evidence of the state of their relationship at other times (as no one recorded it), there is no reason to suppose that the obvious pleasure they took in each other’s company at this time was unusual.

The king had the pleasure of meeting Guillerinus de Villanova, the friar travelling east to convert ‘infidels’ on whose behalf Edward had sent letters a few weeks before, and gave him ‘handsome presents’, also giving twenty-four florins to various friars of Paris and a pound as an offering at the shrine of the Crown of Thorns at Sainte-Chapelle. On his departure, Philip IV presented him with a gift of four horses and armour.¹¹¹ The king and queen passed through the town of Hesdin on their way back to Boulogne and visited Mahaut, countess of Artois, whose daughters Joan and Blanche were married to Isabella’s brothers Philip and Charles.¹¹² Edward and Isabella arrived back at Dover on 15 July at vespers, or sunset, and spent most of August and September 1313 at Windsor. It is possible that Isabella conceived a child while they were there and suffered a miscarriage in November, as the chance survival of an apothecary’s account records two purchases of pennyroyal for her.¹¹³ The traditional medicinal use of pennyroyal is to increase uterine contractions and menstrual flow, and it was used after miscarriages to clear the womb of any infection.

In the autumn of 1313, Edward finally came to terms with the earls of Lancaster, Hereford and Warwick, who continued stubbornly to maintain that they had merely acted against ‘a public enemy of the land’ and that Edward should be grateful to them for killing his beloved Gaveston.¹¹⁴ On 16 October, the king officially pardoned the men and more than 350 of their adherents.¹¹⁵ Gaveston’s embalmed body still lay unburied with the Dominicans at Oxford; Edward could not bear to put him under the ground. Edward told the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford to ‘lay aside all suspicion, and…to come to his presence, and freely obtain the goodwill that they had so often sought’.¹¹⁶ Whatever he was feeling, he again kept control of his emotions as he watched them kneel to him, raised them and kissed them one by one, and absolved them.¹¹⁷ The Sempringham annalist says that the earl of Arundel, whom Edward had not felt the need to pardon for his role in Gaveston’s death, joined Lancaster, Hereford and Warwick in ‘profess[ing] obedience and humiliation to King Edward in the great hall of Westminster.’¹¹⁸ To mark their reconciliation, Edward invited the earls to a banquet, and the following day, they reciprocated.¹¹⁹

Edward had finally learned to conceal his passionate emotions in public, and behaved with all the appearance of friendliness and forgiveness. But later events were to show that Edward had not forgiven. If Lancaster and the others believed that they had done their country a favour by putting the charismatic and aggravating royal favourite to death, they could not have been more wrong. All they had done was ensure that the rift between Edward II and many of his magnates would never be healed, and that Edward’s all-consuming need to avenge his friend’s death would lead, a few years later, to an explosion of political violence and bloodshed unprecedented in English history.