TEN

Invader

ROGER AND ISABELLA and their small army of mercenaries landed in Suffolk, on the north bank of the River Orwell, on 24 September 1326.¹ Although the chronicler Jean le Bel claimed that a storm had blown them off course during their voyage, and that this was to their advantage since the king knew of their plans, it is likely that they intended to land here. It was within striking distance of London, yet defended by rivers from the king’s forces in the south. It was also within the lands controlled by the Earl of Norfolk, who loathed the Despensers. Le Bel was probably right in one respect, that the king knew of their plans: three weeks earlier Edward had ordered the admiral John de Sturmy to take a defending force of two thousand men to Orwell. Fortunately for Roger and Isabella, de Sturmy’s fleet did not show up, and they were able to disembark quickly and efficiently within a few hours of landing.²

Edward was at the Tower of London when he heard the news. Initially he did not believe it: he had been expecting a large invasion force of many thousands of men. A few boatloads from Hainault represented a comparatively minor threat. A day or so later, when further reports confirmed that Roger and Isabella had indeed landed in East Anglia, he saw his opportunity. His enemies were within his grasp, and protected by a comparatively small number of mercenaries. If he could neutralise any local lords who might be tempted to support them, they would be at his mercy. On 27 September he ordered Robert de Waterville to levy and assemble ‘all the men-at-arms and footmen of the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, Cambridge and Huntingdon, and to pursue the rebels and do what harm they can to them’.³ Other men were ordered to do the same in Kent, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Wales. Orders were sent to all the sheriffs to forbid anyone from assisting the invaders and to muster the feudal levy. The immense total of 47,640 men-at-arms, hobelers, footsoldiers and archers was summoned, a larger army than had ever before been raised in England. More men were ordered to come to the king to defend him the following day. All the murderers and other criminals held in custody were offered their freedom if they would take up arms against Roger: pardons were issued to more than a hundred murderers straightaway. Finally the king placed a reward on Roger’s head. All sheriffs were to proclaim it ‘in fairs, markets, and other places at least two or three times a week’:

Whereas Roger Mortimer and other traitors of the king and his realm have entered the realm in force, and have brought with them foreign strangers for the purpose of taking the royal power from the king, the king wills you to go in force against his said enemies to arrest and destroy them, except the queen, his son and the Earl of Kent, whom he wills shall be saved. And, although in such case every man of the realm is bound by his allegiance to come with all his force and power in defence of the king, of themselves and of the realm, the king nevertheless wills on this occasion, for the ease of his people, that all those who shall come to him to set out with him against his enemies – men-at-arms, hobelers and armed footmen, crossbowmen, archers and other footmen – shall be paid wages according to their value promptly, to wit: a man-at-arms 12d, a hobeler 6d, a footman armed with double garment 4d, armed with a single garment 3d, and an archer 2d a day each … If any person or persons bring and render to him the body of the said Roger or bring his head, the king wills that he or they shall have his charters of peace for any felony, adherence or other matter against his peace, and he grants that he will pay them £1,000 sterling.⁴

At this point Roger’s familiarity with the key members of the court in past years worked to his advantage. They understood his purpose in invading. They knew that he was essentially a loyal servant of the Crown who had been forced into an impossible position, and that his enmity had always been directed at Despenser rather than the king. Even men loyal to the government were swayed. Although a loyal king’s man, Robert de Waterville was a longtime friend of Roger and had been one of the guests at the wedding of young Edmund Mortimer in 1316. Instead of attacking Roger in East Anglia he joined forces with him. Similarly Thomas Wake, Roger’s cousin, deserted the king upon being ordered to take arms against the invaders. The king, suspecting Henry of Lancaster would do the same, did not even send him orders. He was right to be suspicious. Immediately on hearing the news Henry raised an army at Leicester, stole the treasure which the elder Despenser’s agent had deposited in the abbey there, and prepared to march south to join the invaders.

Roger and Isabella spent their first night in England at the Earl of Norfolk’s manor of Walton, on the Suffolk coast. They had planned well. In particular they had given considerable thought to how they might sway popular opinion in their favour. Firstly, and most importantly, they understood the power of the royal banner. The common people could be relied upon to support – or at least not to defy – their future monarch and those bearing the royal arms. Certainly many more people would follow the banner of the future King Edward than that of a famous rebel. It was also important for Roger to distance himself personally from Isabella: if the leaders of the invasion were seen to be living in sin then people might expect God to exert a moral sentence upon them by having them defeated in battle. Although the military impetus came from him, this was ostensibly the queen’s invasion, and it was a moral campaign with the purpose of ridding England of Hugh Despenser the younger. Isabella had to play the part of a lady in distress. She did this so well that her conquests outweighed those of any number of mercenaries. She conquered the hearts of the ordinary people, who might otherwise have mustered against her.

Roger’s role was to plan the strategic movements of the army. The fleet which had carried them from Hainault was ordered to return to the Continent as soon as the army had disembarked. Maybe Roger recalled the tactic employed by Duke William of Normandy in 1066. By ordering the ships to leave he ensured there would be no retreat for the Hainault mercenaries. They would have to fight and die alongside him and the other Englishmen. Roger was also required to discipline the army. At Walton the foreign mercenaries started looting. This was immediately brought to a halt. The queen offered compensation to those whose houses had been affected, and at a stroke regained the confidence of the local inhabitants and obtained the respect of many others who feared her approach. Although Isabella may well have had a hand in planning such gestures, discipline of an army was completely outside her experience, and she was reliant on Roger from the moment they landed. He was in effect her ‘strong arm’, her Field Marshal.

While Roger’s role was publicly played down, Isabella’s was exaggerated. She was given prominence as the religious figurehead of the invasion as well as the mother of the future king. She played on her reputation for religious devotion, travelling ‘as if on pilgrimage’ to Bury St Edmunds. There she stayed in the abbey. This mixing of religion and her righteous grievances was very potent; it gave the invaders’ act of war a holy sanctimony, like a crusade. It also had the advantage of reducing the power of the sheriffs to raise the feudal army. Even those captains and sheriffs willing to support Edward were unable to raise sufficiently large numbers of men to crush the invasion in its infancy. By the time Roger and Isabella reached Dunstable, where they were joined by Henry of Lancaster, their army was far too large to be defeated by a single sheriff. The religious aspect also meant that the bishops who supported the invaders (the Archbishop of Dublin and the Bishops of Hereford, Ely, Lincoln, Durham and Norwich) had no qualms about speaking out in their favour. It was largely due to Isabella that the invasion very quickly acquired the mass support necessary for it to appear a credible opposition to the king.

Edward and Despenser were completely surprised by the growth of the invaders’ power. Although they had known for two years that Roger was planning an invasion, although they had a full Treasury, and money to spare, and although they knew when and where he would attack, they failed to stop him, or even to engage him in battle. Rarely can such a well-resourced and well-established authoritarian government have been so paralysed by just a few hundred mercenaries. But therein lay the problem: the government had proved itself too authoritarian. There may have been £60,000 in the Treasury but Hugh Despenser was adept only at amassing huge sums; he did not know how to spend the money to his and the king’s best advantage. Roger, on the other hand, was adept at spending money strategically. Both men were intelligent manipulators, but Despenser was all calculation and theory while Roger had the ability to put his ideas into practice, and make his physical force quickly and suddenly felt. Despenser’s strengths were the law courts and the Exchequer; Roger’s were his power of command and his sword. When it came to fighting a battle, Despenser could only order other people to fight for him. As events now showed, this was something they were unwilling to do.

Edward had complete faith in Hugh Despenser, and trusted both his loyalty and his judgement. But as September turned into October, his position began to crumble. London was collapsing into anarchy around him, and although the Tower was an immensely strong castle, it was not enough by itself to hold back the citizens and the advancing army. Edward and Despenser were aware that their enemies were in contact with the leading churchmen and merchants. The huge army summoned by the king had not materialised. In all the counties the sheriffs had failed to gather enough men. The most loyal gave excuses, the others remained silent, or set about their business with a lacklustre purpose. The king and his favourite began to realise that they were isolated, and would soon be cut off inside a lawless city, facing forces of barbarity which they could not combat and with which they could not negotiate. In desperation the king sought promises of loyalty from the Londoners. He received a very half-hearted response. Alarmed, he prepared to leave London. On 1 October he arranged for the transfer of Roger’s three sons to the security of the Tower, and on the following day he abandoned his capital.

On Edward’s departure, authority in the city collapsed further. Its inhabitants had hated the Despensers for many years; now they began to persecute their agents. Houses began to be looted, citizens known to be faithful to the king were jeered and harassed. But although the city was turning away from Edward it was not necessarily a safe place for Roger and Isabella to stake their claim to authority. It was fickle, and, like most oligarchies, the controlling forces were principally interested in their own continued prosperity. As Edward left London and rode towards Acton, Roger and Isabella began to turn their army after him. Their pursuit was like the 1321–2 campaign in reverse; this time it was Roger chasing the king across the country from Surrey to South Wales. Although his sons were in the city, and although Isabella’s younger son, Prince John, was also in the Tower, their highest priority was to seize the king and Despenser. Only when they had them in their custody could they address the questions of London, the security of members of their family, and government.

On 6 October, when Roger and Isabella were at Baldock, the king was at Wallingford. Three days later, as the king rode into Gloucester, they were near Dunstable. That day, in response to the £1,000 reward set on Roger’s head, they set a price of £2,000 on the head of Hugh Despenser. The king and the queen, each equally at the mercy of their favourite’s advice, eyed each other across southern England with anger. Their favourites eyed each other with unmitigated and powerful urges to destroy one another. But while Despenser and the king waited at Gloucester, hoping in vain that an army would join them there, Roger and Isabella advanced, their army growing stronger all the time. On 10 October the king learnt that Henry of Lancaster had joined the rebels. Although he had long suspected the earl, the news hit him hard, for he knew now that he had lost control of the country. He sent orders to the garrisons he had positioned across Roger’s estates to give up their defence of Roger’s castles and lands and to join him at Gloucester with all possible speed. He prepared to set out once again for South Wales, to make a defence of his kingdom in the lands of Hugh Despenser.

Roger and Isabella were in the ascendant but they were not guaranteed success. At any time opinion could turn against them, or the king might decide to make a stand with a contingent of Welshmen. He had with him nearly £30,000 to pay an army for the purpose. Roger and Isabella were certainly very cautious as they neared Oxford. This royal town was the first they had approached as an occupying force. It was notoriously prone to violent clashes; it was a place where opinions from all over the realm met and either melded or struck sparks. At any moment there was the danger of an assassin, or the city being barred to them. As a precaution Isabella sent messengers ahead to arrange her lodgings with the Carmelite friars in the town, while Roger and the other leaders of the army arranged lodgings at Osney Abbey outside the walls. Their cautious approach was appreciated by the townsfolk, who, realising that their houses were not going to be looted, sent a presentation silver cup to Isabella as she approached. The invaders had taken their first town, and no blood had been spilt.

At Oxford the Bishop of Hereford joined them and preached a sermon. His text was from Genesis. ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman!’ he declared, comparing Despenser to the snake in the Garden of Eden. Despenser, he claimed, was ‘the seed of the first tyrant Satan, who would be crushed by the Lady Isabella and her son the prince’.⁵ In the congregation were Roger, Isabella and all the rebel leaders who had now converged on Oxford. Men marched through the streets purposefully: an army determined finally to bring Despenser to justice and to stop Edward abusing his royal power. A feeling of triumph was beginning to spread through their ranks. They marched next to Wallingford, Isabella’s own castle, which also surrendered to its lady without a fight.

Edward was now at Tintern, in South Wales, waiting the arrival of his most trusted Welsh knights. At the Archbishop of Canterbury’s house at Lambeth, just south of London, a meeting of six bishops loyal to the king had been forced to break up without agreement. Rioting in the streets prevented them crossing the river to the city itself. All was in disarray apart from the invaders’ army. At this moment, on 15 October, Isabella issued a proclamation that she had come to rescue the country, the Crown and the Church from the evil of Hugh Despenser, Robert Baldock (the Chancellor), Walter de Stapeldon (the Treasurer), and others. The invasion had become a revolution.

De Stapeldon never got to hear of the proclamation. The day it was issued all hell broke loose in London. Hamo de Chigwell, the mayor, one of the judges who had sentenced Roger to death, was dragged into the Guildhall. He was told that John le Marshal, a Londoner, was one of Hugh Despenser’s spies and would be executed. He was told that Walter de Stapeldon was also a traitor who deserved death. He was forced to swear to uphold the cause of the invaders. And then the crowd of Londoners put into effect all their terrible sentences. They dragged John le Marshal from his house and brought him to Cheapside, where they beheaded him. Next they went looking for de Stapeldon.⁶ They burnt down the doors of his house, which were barred against them, and stole his jewels and silver. His official register and many of his books were also burnt. At this point the bishop himself recklessly rode into the city in armour with his squires. Foolishly, when told at Holborn of what was being done to his house, he decided not to flee but to ride through the city to the Tower. Halfway across, frightened by the clamour of the crowd baying for his blood, he and his squires rode for shelter to St Paul’s Cathedral, hoping that there they might find sanctuary. But before they could enter the cathedral the crowd caught them. At the north door they pulled de Stapeldon from his horse, dragged him through the cemetery, down Ludgate Hill and all the way to the cross in Cheapside. There, by the decapitated body of John le Marshal, they stripped the bishop of his armour and sawed through his neck with a bread knife. Two of his attendant squires were killed in a similar fashion.

De Stapeldon’s head was presented to the queen at Gloucester. It is not recorded what she thought of it, but it is probable that she and Roger looked on the bishop’s sunken lifeless eyes with grave disappointment. The murder of a high-ranking prelate, even such a hated one, was a definite setback. Shocking proceedings like this only served to undermine the legitimate nature of their campaign. Just as worrying, the capital was up in arms, with lynch mobs and robber gangs ruling the streets. The law courts had been abandoned, and Roger’s and Isabella’s sons were at the mercy of the mob. The Tower had fallen, and little Prince John had been proclaimed guardian of the city, and forced to swear to uphold the rights of the citizens, but there was nothing he or the city fathers could do to restore order. Not without the army.

Roger and Isabella could not turn back now. Having sent a bodyguard to watch over the nine-year-old prince, they continued in the king’s tracks. From Gloucester they advanced to the walls of Bristol. On their arrival on 18 October the townsfolk threw open the gates of the town to them. But the gates of the castle within the town were barred. Here the Earl of Winchester had decided to make a stand.

Ten years earlier Roger had taken the town of Bristol after a week-long siege. Now he set about attacking the castle at its heart. Fortunately, Hugh Despenser, as lord of Bristol, had recently permitted some houses to be built near the castle walls, and these weakened the castle’s defences. The siege lasted eight days, during which time the elder Despenser desperately tried to bargain for his life. But Roger offered no quarter. The Despensers had not only accused him of despoiling their property in the war of 1321–2, they had turned the king against him and cost him his lordship, his family, his wealth, his status and his reputation, and tried to have him murdered. Nothing but their complete destruction would do. The Lancastrians, who held the Despensers responsible for the death of Earl Thomas, were of a like mind. On the eighth day, 26 October, the army stormed the castle. In a very short time the elder Despenser was in chains.

The king knew that he was in serious danger. His loyal Welsh forces had not come to his rescue, as he had hoped. This was probably partly due to knights like Hugh de Turpington, Roger’s old comrade in arms, who had nominally joined the Despensers the year before but who now disobeyed Edward’s order to guard the Marches.⁷ Also, in Glamorgan, many of Despenser’s tenants remembered Llywelyn Bren’s fate, and would not fight to save the man who had butchered their hero, despite their loyalty to Edward himself. The fact that Edward and Despenser were relying on such men to defend them, together with their inability to mobilise even their most loyal forces, reveals the full extent of their strategic incompetence.

Facing defeat, Edward and Despenser decided to take ship and leave, probably hoping to reach Ireland. On 21 October, while Roger and Isabella were at Bristol, they set sail from Chepstow with Robert Baldock and a small contingent of men-at-arms. For five days they battled against the wind – a friar was paid to pray that the weather might change – but it held firm against them. Eventually they put into port at Cardiff, where the royal household rejoined the king. Moving to Caerphilly Castle, Edward made a final attempt to raise an army, summoning all the people of the lordships of Neath, Usk and Abergavenny to defend him, and men from the Despenser lordships of Gower, Pembroke, Haverford and Glamorgan. But it was too late. With his handful of men-at-arms, he could only wait for the end. On 31 October his household servants deserted him, leaving him only Despenser, Baldock and a handful of retainers.⁸

All organised resistance to the invaders had capitulated. Everyone able to raise a force of men had left the king’s allegiance and joined them, or were keeping quiet. It was now time for Roger and Isabella to take control of the tatters of government. This posed a problem, since the king had taken the great seal and his privy seal with him. Their solution was simple. Since the king had left the country without appointing a surrogate to govern in his absence, they appointed his son. No one could argue with the selection of the prince; indeed, no other person would have been universally acceptable. But by making the prince custodian of the realm, at just fourteen years old and completely under the influence of his mother and her lover, it meant that Roger and Isabella were, in effect, the unofficial joint heads of the government.

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Historians have traditionally regarded the coup d’état of 1326 as Isabella’s personal victory, thereby underestimating or even ignoring Roger’s role.⁹ The reason for this is not hard to find: the invasion was carried out in her name and that of the prince, and the queen was accordingly the figurehead perceived to be in control, both by contemporaries and historians. There is little doubt, however, that it was Roger who planned the invasion and suggested many of the developments which followed, including the transfer of regnal authority to Prince Edward. The most reliable and well-informed chronicler of the end of Edward’s reign, Adam Murimuth, clearly states that Isabella took her direction from Roger and obeyed him in all matters.¹⁰ Roger’s presence in Hainault in 1324, before the queen had even left England, strongly suggests that he initiated discussions with the Hainaulters and was primarily responsible for the invasion strategy, whereas there is no evidence that the queen did more than assume titular leadership of the campaign. Also, while there is abundant evidence from those who knew them best – particularly the king and Despenser – that Roger was greatly feared as a military leader, they did not consider Isabella capable of treason on her own, as shown by the king permitting her to travel to France in 1325. The king’s confidence that his wife would not turn against him by herself was justified, as shown by her considering returning to Edward even after Roger had joined her in Paris. Thus we may be confident that Roger instigated the invasion and put it into effect, not Isabella, although her approbation was essential to the realisation and success of his strategy.

Responsibility for the progress of the campaign directly after the invasion similarly may be seen to lie with Roger. The earliest evidence of this lies, ironically, in a document in which he is not named. Those listed in the declaration of 26 October (in which the prince was chosen to be the guardian of the realm) were the king’s two half-brothers (the Earls of Kent and Norfolk), Henry of Lancaster, Thomas Wake, Henry de Beaumont, William de la Zouche, Robert de Mohaut, Robert de Morley, Robert de Waterville, and ‘other barons and knights’.¹¹ Roger, as the only significant leader of the army not mentioned, is conspicuous by his absence. Isabella would not have excluded him from such a line-up except at his specific direction, nor would any of their episcopal allies, such as Adam of Orleton. Thus it seems the declaration was at Roger’s command. By excluding himself from such official processes he avoided being held to account. No one could challenge his authority because, officially, he had none, and no one could point to his abuse of a position for the same reason. It was a technique he practised for the next four years, and partly it explains why so few writers have examined him as the key figure of the period. Unlike almost every other ruler in history, he tried to cover the tracks of his authority and thereby consciously contributed to his own official obscurity.¹²

When it came to exerting judgement on others, however, Roger was not afraid to take a more prominent role. The day after the proclamation of the prince’s regency Roger assembled a tribunal of six peers to judge Hugh Despenser the elder. The tribunal consisted of himself, Thomas Wake and William Trussel (former retainers of the Earl of Lancaster), Henry of Lancaster (brother of the Earl of Lancaster), and the Earls of Kent and Norfolk. Although Isabella pleaded that the old man’s life should be spared, there was not the slightest chance that such a tribunal would agree. They deliberately conducted the trial to echo that of Thomas of Lancaster. Despenser was not allowed to speak. At the end of the deliberations Thomas Wake read the judgement and the sentence. Despenser was found guilty of encouraging his son’s illegal government, of enriching himself at other people’s expense, of despoiling the Church, and for his part in the illegal execution of Thomas of Lancaster.¹³ He was sentenced to be drawn, hanged in a surcoat of his own arms on the common gallows at Bristol, and beheaded. The sentence was carried out straightaway.

Now there remained only one Despenser to pursue. On the day of his father’s death Hugh Despenser the younger was with the king at Caerphilly. Henry of Lancaster was deputed to go after them. For Roger, this had the added advantage of removing Henry from the new court while he and Isabella established their administration. Henry of Lancaster, who showed every sign of being as troublesome as his late brother, was not the sort of person they wanted interfering in the appointment of government officeholders. After his departure they appointed the Bishop of Winchester as Treasurer, and despatched him to London to take charge of what remained of the Treasury. The various departments of government were set up anew. Even while Edward was still at liberty Roger was consolidating Isabella’s position, ensuring that no one would be able to supplant her in the event of Edward’s cause being championed by a rival or envious lord.

The king retreated to Neath in early November, and attempted to bargain with Roger and the queen through an embassy headed by the Abbot of Neath. The abbot and his companions were sent back with a stern refusal. No terms were acceptable, only complete surrender: just as Roger had been told in January 1322. He did not need to negotiate further. On 16 November, having been informed of the king’s whereabouts by Rhys ap Howel, the pursuing contingent under Lancaster caught sight of Edward, Baldock and Despenser and their few companions in the open country near Neath. They pursued them for a short distance, and caught them. The king’s men-at-arms were released; Baldock and Despenser were taken to the queen at Hereford. Also taken was Despenser’s vassal, Simon de Reading, who had been so presumptious as to insult the queen and to take the lands of Roger’s follower, John Wyard. Lancaster, gleeful at his triumph, took the king himself to Kenilworth. On hearing of the king’s capture, the last royalist castle, Caerphilly, surrendered.

Hugh Despenser knew he could expect no mercy, and, anticipating the sentence Roger would pass upon him, he tried to starve himself to death. Even as Henry de Leybourn and Robert Stangrave took him to Hereford to meet his fate, Roger was exacting revenge for a lifetime of enmity on another of the king’s friends. On 17 November the Earl of Arundel and two of his associates, John Daniel and Thomas de Micheldever, were beheaded. In the words of the chronicler Murimuth, Roger hated these men with a ‘perfect hatred’. The earl had been a sworn enemy of Gaveston ever since the tournament at Wallingford. He had moreover taken arms against Roger’s uncle in 1312. He had opposed Roger and his uncle during the Despenser war, had taken the lands of Roger’s uncle and even some of Roger’s own estates. He had been part of the embassy which had persuaded Roger to surrender at Shrewsbury by giving the false guarantee that his life would be saved. His defence of Hugh Despenser was just another reason for him to suffer the full penalty of the law. Roger procured the official order for the deaths from the queen, who followed his advice in this ‘as she did in everything’.¹⁴

If revenge was a dish best served cold, the Earl of Arundel was merely the starter. The main course was Hugh Despenser. In order to legalise the process against him the tribunal that had sat in judgement on the elder Despenser was reconvened.¹⁵ Roger, the Earls of Lancaster, Kent and Norfolk, and Thomas Wake and William Trussel between them drew up a list of Despenser’s crimes. Their judgement was thorough, extensive and uncompromising. Only the sentence was in doubt. The Lancastrians wanted Despenser to be sentenced and beheaded at one of his own castles, in the same way that the Earl of Lancaster had died at Pontefract in 1322. Roger, on the other hand, wanted to ensure that Despenser suffered a death every bit as horrific as his (Despenser’s) killing of Llywelyn Bren in 1317. Isabella wanted him executed in London.¹⁶ The number of aggrieved parties meant that Despenser was certain to be quartered: every lord wanted a piece to show their followers that they had exacted revenge.

On 24 November Hugh Despenser, Robert Baldock and Simon de Reading were brought to Hereford. A huge crowd had gathered with trumpets and drums, ready to pull Despenser apart with their bare hands if need be. As the prisoners neared the city, with crowns of nettles on their heads and their surcoats bearing their coats of arms reversed, the crowd seized Despenser and dragged him from his horse. They stripped him of his clothes and wrote biblical verses denouncing arrogance and evil on his skin. Then they led him into the city, forcing Simon de Reading to march in front bearing his standard with the arms reversed. In the market square he was presented before Roger, Isabella and the Lancastrian lords. Sir William Trussel read out the list of charges of which Despenser was accused. He had been adjudged a traitor and an enemy of the realm, he declared. In particular, he was guilty of returning to the realm during his period of banishment without the permission of Parliament; of robbing two great ships to the value of £60,000¹⁷ ‘to the great dishonour of the king and the realm and to the great danger of English merchants in foreign countries’; of taking arms against the peers of the realm ‘to destroy them and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta and the Ordinances’; of aiding Andrew de Harclay¹⁸ and other traitors in the ‘murder’ of the Earl of Hereford and others; of falsely imprisoning the Earl of Lancaster and arranging his death in his own castle by illegally assuming royal power; of arranging the executions of seventeen named barons and knights; of putting Roger and his uncle ‘in a harsh prison to murder them without cause except for his coveting of their lands’; of imprisoning Lord Berkeley (Roger’s son-in-law), Hugh Audley the elder (Roger’s brother-in-law) and Hugh Audley the younger (Roger’s nephew), the children of the Earl of Hereford (nephews of the king), and the noblewomen associated with these lords, and even ‘old women such as the lady Baret … whom he had made the butt of ribaldry and whose arms and legs he had had broken spitefully, against his vows of chivalry and against law and reason’; of traitorously assuming royal authority in the war with the Scots and abusing such power, thus endangering the realm; of abandoning the queen at Tynemouth Priory when the Scots were approaching, thus endangering her life; of often dishonouring the queen and damaging her noble state; of cruelty towards the queen; of confiscating illegally the possessions of the Bishops of Ely, Hereford, Lincoln and Norwich and of robbing their churches, and of making war on the Christian Church; of unlawfully procuring for his father the title of Earl of Winchester to the disinheritance of the Crown, and for Andrew de Harclay the title of Earl of Carlisle; of ‘ousting the queen from her lands’; of coming between the king and the queen and hindering their relationship; of persuading the king not to perform his royal duty in going to France to perform homage for Gascony, thereby resulting in the loss of lands to the French; of sending money to France to bribe people to murder the queen and her son the prince, or otherwise to prevent their return to England; of making grants of land to his followers against the law; of putting lords such as Henry de Beaumont unfairly in gaol; and of maliciously counselling the king to leave the realm, and taking with him the treasure of the kingdom and the great seal, contrary to the law. Trussel concluded by describing what would be done to the wretched man’s body:

Hugh, you have been judged a traitor since you have threatened all the good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, and by common assent you are also a thief. As a thief you will hang, and as a traitor you will be drawn and quartered, and your quarters will be sent throughout the realm. And because you prevailed upon our lord the king, and by common assent you returned to the court without warrant, you will be beheaded. And because you were always disloyal and procured discord between our lord the king and our very honourable lady the queen, and between other people of the realm, you will be disembowelled, and then your entrails will be burnt. Go to meet your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade; go to receive your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!¹⁹

And with that a huge roar went up and Despenser was roped to four horses – not just the usual two – and dragged through the city to the walls of his own castle, where an enormous gallows had been specially constructed, with a great fire at its foot. Simon de Reading was dragged behind him. Both men had nooses placed around their necks, and were lifted into the air. Simon de Reading was lifted just to the normal height, a few feet off the ground. Despenser was raised a full fifty feet, up above the walls of the castle, high for all to see. Then he was lowered on to a ladder. A man climbed up alongside him and sliced off his penis and testicles, flinging them into the fire at the foot of the gallows.²⁰ Then he plunged his knife into Despenser’s abdomen, and cut out his entrails and heart, throwing them into the fire below, to the huge delight of the revenge-crazed crowd. The corpse was finally lowered to the ground, and the head was cut off, and raised to a chorus of ecstatic cheers. It was later sent to London, and Despenser’s arms, torso and legs were likewise sent to be displayed above the gates of Newcastle, York, Dover and Bristol. Justice was very visibly and viscerally done.

Baldock, who, as a clergyman, had to be handed over to his fellow clergymen for trial, met a similarly brutal fate, albeit an unofficial one. He was taken to London, but there the mob broke into the house in which he was held, beat him almost to death, and threw him into Newgate prison, where he was soon finished off by the inmates.

Roger and Isabella had every reason to be overjoyed at their success. The day of Despenser’s death was a mere two months after their landing in Suffolk, and there had been no innocent casualties except those caught up in the London riots. A year earlier Edward had peremptorily ordered the queen to return and urged the King of France to send Roger back to England in chains. Now Edward was in chains and both Despensers and Arundel, Baldock, and de Stapeldon were dead. In two months they had achieved what no one had managed since the Conqueror. But, in the wake of their victory, it was clear that life could not return to the way it was before Despenser rose to power. Roger’s uncle was dead. Many other lords, knights and commoners were dead as a result of the Despenser war. Many more innocent people had lost their lands in the subsequent tyranny. On the personal level, Roger and Isabella were no longer lovers in exile; they were in the same country as their spouses, and had at least to appear faithful for the sake of the government. On the political level, they had to decide the fate of the king and how to keep rival and potentially dangerous lords under control. It was clear, as Christmas approached, that victory brought a new set of problems to the fore.