NINE
MEDIEVAL SHIP CAPTAINS preferred to sail within sight of land. Having no means of calculating longitude, it was very easy for them to lose direction, and especially so in high winds. When Edward set sail from Sandwich on 5 October 1342 there were gales to contend with, and rough seas, so his captains carefully hugged the coast all the way to Portsmouth. Even then they had to wait for the wind to change direction, so they could proceed across the Channel. Only on 23 October did the coast of England finally disappear from Edward’s view, and that of Brittany appear on the horizon.
The choice of Brittany was a profoundly sensible one. Like Flanders, it was a semi-autonomous part of France. If Edward could control it, he would have both a bridgehead in Philip’s kingdom and a means of protecting his shipping lanes to Gascony. For years he had toyed with this idea, and had taken care to remain on good terms with John, duke of Brittany. Almost alone among French peers after 1337, John was allowed to keep his English estates and title (the earldom of Richmond). Thus it may be seen that, even when Edward had been trapped in his alliance with the German princes, he had had an alternative strategy in the back of his mind. The opportunity to capitalise on that far-sightedness finally arose in May 1341. As the king was being castigated, denounced and threatened with excommunication by the archbishop of Canterbury, the news arrived that the duke of Brittany had died, without leaving an obvious heir.
As Edward had expected, the duke’s death precipitated a bitter inheritance dispute between his half-brother, John de Montfort, and his niece, Jeanne. Normally there was little doubt that a male sibling of the half-blood took precedence over a daughter of a full-blood brother, but the late duke had disliked his synonymous half-brother. So to make sure that John de Montfort did not inherit, the duke arranged the marriage of his niece Jeanne to Charles de Blois, nephew of King Philip. Whatever the law said, John de Montfort would have to fight for his inheritance, and not only with Jeanne and her husband but with the king of France too.
John de Montfort was not unaware of the situation, and he was not unprepared. The moment his brother was laid to rest he took a force and seized Nantes – the administrative centre of Brittany – as well as his half-brother’s treasure and most of the other castles of the region. Charles de Blois was left standing, wondering. King Philip proved similarly hesitant. Edward, in contrast, had been waiting years for this opportunity. Having settled the Crisis of 1341 by superficially capitulating to the archbishop’s supporters, he sent a knight to John de Montfort to discuss a possible treaty for mutual aid when the truce with France expired.
At this point de Montfort himself hesitated. The problem was not his opposition to Edward but his justifiable anxiety in case his association with the English king should compromise his future standing in France. Philip assured him that he would have a fair hearing with regard to his inheritance in the French parliament. It is possible that John actually believed him, to the extent that he supposed Jeanne’s inheritance would be judged unlawful, as the relationship by which she claimed to be the heiress was the same as that by which Edward III claimed to be king of France. But such subtleties were lost on Philip. The French parliament similarly saw the question not in terms of inheritance law but power. On 7 September 1341 they ruled that Philip’s nephew, Charles de Blois, should be duke, inheriting through his wife. Before this judgement was given, however, Philip unwisely reprimanded John de Montfort for consorting with the English king, and ordered him to remain in Paris to await the judgement. John de Montfort fled.
Very few people in France in 1341 would have realised what a catastrophic decision their parliament had made. It threw John de Montfort and his legal claim straight into Edward’s hands. Perhaps the French parliament thought that Edward, who had just agreed to extend the truce sealed at Esplechin for another year, would be disempowered by the treaty from helping de Montfort. Perhaps they thought de Montfort could be arrested, or paid off, or killed, leaving Charles de Blois free to strengthen the royal hand in Brittany. But if so they reckoned without the determination of John de Montfort’s supporters, and in particular his wife, another of those redoubtable fourteenth-century women who did not flinch from the task of leading her troops into battle.
Edward probably understood the situation better than anyone else, and certainly better than the consensus of the French parliament. But having agreed to extend the truce until 24 June 1342, there was little direct action he could take before then. He waited to assess the strength of the support for the de Montfortist faction. All across the region castles and towns fell to the French. At l’Humeau, de Montfort came face to face with de Blois in a surprise encounter, and their armies battled each other for two days before de Montfort retreated to Nantes. After a week the Nantesians forced de Montfort to surrender himself. He went to Paris under the protection of a safe conduct. When he refused to give up his inheritance Philip immediately imprisoned him, disregarding what this said about the value of his own guarantees of safety, and believing too soon that this marked his victory. But Lady de Montfort held out. In fact she did more than just hold out. Having secured Rennes, she led an army to Redon, which she took by force, marching on to establish herself in the walled town of Hennebont, on the southern coast. With a stern realism she proclaimed her two-year-old son as the head of the de Montfortist faction in case her husband was put to death in Paris. And she wrote to Edward imploring him to come to her aid.1
Edward was eager to get involved in the battle for Brittany. He did not actually need a lady in distress to heighten his ambitions in that part of France. Nevertheless her example inspired him and many others, and it required him to take action before too late. He ordered a small advance party to set off in April 1342 under the command of Sir Walter Manny. He gave the earl of Northampton and Robert d’Artois command of an expeditionary force to set off later. In the meantime he built up his military reserves at the Tower. Seven thousand longbows were ordered, and three million arrows.2 As soon as the terms of the truce would allow, he would invade.
Time was running short for all parties. Rennes fell in early May, and Charles de Blois advanced on Hennebont itself, sending his brother to besiege the other de Montfortist stronghold at Vannes. In England, Edward was experiencing delays in sending Northampton and d’Artois. But Manny was underway, and savaging the lands of the Bretons who had failed to support de Montfort. Truce or no truce, he could not afford to wait too long before attempting to help the countess. Manny was a practical and hardbitten man, very experienced and abounding in courage. Although Lady de Montfort worsted Charles de Blois’ advance forces in a skirmish at the walls of Hennebont, Manny knew that unless she received assistance quickly, there would be no de Montfortist cause to support, and no bridgehead for Edward in northern France. Thus, despite the truce, Manny set sail for Hennebont.
Within the town the countess was doing her best to inspire her men. She wore armour, and rode around the streets of the town on a destrier, calling on the inhabitants to fight and defend what was theirs and hers. According to Froissart, she ascended a tall tower to observe the attack on the walls, and seeing that the enemy camp was almost unguarded while the assault was on, she took three hundred men-at-arms with her and made a sortie from the town, burning Charles de Blois’ supplies and slashing the ropes and walls of his tents and pavilions.3 There would be no surrender at Hennebont. Charles ordered his commanders to begin a siege, and to starve the inhabitants into submission. Promises were made and rewards offered to all those who would desert the de Montfortist cause. One of the countess’s advisers – the bishop of Léon – was won over, and returned to hold a council in which he tried to persuade the countess and her vassals to agree to terms. The discussions went on for two days. The bishop spoke eloquently, and persuaded some of the Breton lords that their cause was lost. With his words ringing around the tower room in which the discussions were taking place, and with the continual thumping of the siege engines ringing in her head, the countess got up from where she was sitting and walked to the window. Looking down, she could hardly believe the sight that greeted her. She gasped: ‘I see the help we have been promised for so long has arrived!’ Sailing up the estuary were Sir Walter Manny’s ships, their sails bearing the cross of St George.
The bishop of Léon might have spoken eloquently but the cross of St George was even more persuasive. Manny’s force was small, and its commander had crossed the divide between courage and recklessness so often as not to notice it existed (he later made a sortie just to destroy a single French siege engine at Hennebont because it was disturbing his meal) but it was a significant token of future support. By July the truce had come to an end. The English were on their way.
*
Edward landed in Britanny on 26 October. Already the English had won several significant victories. Lady de Montfort still held Hennebont, her forces now augmented with English troops, and that was a victory in itself. More significantly the port of Brest – where Edward landed – had fallen to the earl of Northampton. The earl had even had the satisfaction of burning a dozen Genoese galleys in the service of the French. Most important of all at Morlaix on 30 September, Northampton had moved to confront a French army under the command of Geoffrey de Charny and had won a decisive victory. Having marched through the night and dug in, and having ordered all his men to fight on foot, he had seized more than one hundred and fifty knights and killed fifty others, besides thousands of men-at-arms and infantry. Back in England the result was wonder, admiration and excitement. Murimuth dutifully recorded incorrectly that ‘a few English, namely a force of five hundred men’ defeated three thousand French knights in battle. It was more like three thousand Englishmen and Bretons against five thousand Frenchmen, but that was not the way it was reported.4
Edward decided that Vannes would be his principal objective. The French had taken it not long before, and thus controlled its harbour, which was of strategic interest to the English. But it was not an easy target. Edward decided on a two-pronged assault by land and sea. He despatched Robert d’Artois with the ships which remained in Brittany while he himself led the overland advance. D’Artois was a brave leader but an unlucky man, and the very last vestige of his little luck was now used up. He was attacked on the way by Spanish and Genoese ships. Leading an attack on Vannes itself with the remains of his navy, he was overpowered and mortally injured. With his death a few weeks later Edward lost a trusted and likeable friend, a man who had never betrayed him but who had never lived up to the confidence he had placed in his military abilities.
Despite the personal loss, it was to Edward’s benefit that the positions of command in the field now fell to English lords. There were at least half-a-dozen very able commanders with Edward, including the earls of Derby, Warwick, Huntingdon, Northampton and Salisbury and Sir Walter Manny. Allowing these men to exercise their strengths and to fulfil their ambitions marked a new stage in the development of Edward’s success as a king. Thirty years earlier, Robert Bruce in Scotland had run rings around the English by encouraging a cadre of commanders who would seek personal glory and yet be part of a collective struggle. Through encouraging the likes of Black Douglas and Sir Thomas Randolph, Bruce had wrested Scotland from the English. When Edward had begun his French war he had failed to pursue a similar course of action. Instead he had relied on the chivalric ambitions of other heads of state: the indecisive count of Hainault, the wary duke of Brabant, the merchant van Artevelde, and the mercenary Emperor Ludvig. His trust in them was misplaced: they were never going to share his strategic objectives or be part of the confraternity of warriors which would defeat Philip. They would never feel personally bound to Edward’s peculiarly English quarrel, and still less to his personal command. But as soon as those responsibilities and expectations passed to his vassals, everything changed. In Brittany Edward began to reassert himself as the King Arthur of a chivalric court of victorious warriors who vied with each other for glory. As Edward destroyed the region around Vannes, the earls of Northampton and Warwick destroyed that around Nantes. The earl of Salisbury devastated the area around Dinan.5 Throughout Brittany, the army and the supporters of Charles de Blois were on the retreat. The endgame in Brittany was approaching.
Edward had a weakness, however. Being so far from home, he had difficulty raising supplies, and living off the land for any length of time in winter was not easy. He had lost many of his ships. His armies were dispersed across Brittany, and there were not enough of them to face a full French onslaught. In December the main French army approached. It joined up with Charles de Blois’ companions who had survived Morlaix, and presented Edward with a force several times the size of his own. It stopped eighteen miles short of the English army. Despite this show of force, as at Esplechin, Edward managed to negotiate a compromise which did not reflect the precariousness of his situation. His treaty negotiators were like his commanders, enthused and personally committed to the struggle which he had started. In this respect it has to be said that Edward’s judgement of men to do the job was impeccable. On 19 January 1343 the Treaty of Malestroit was agreed. Edward had to lift the siege of Vannes, but otherwise almost every term was in his favour. The allegiances, gains and losses in Brittany were to be respected, and no further war was to take place in Gascony, Scotland or elsewhere. John de Montfort was to be released. Flanders would remain outside the orbit of French control. The truce was to last for more than three years.6 Edward had effectively added one more frontier to his war on Philip de Valois. He had conquered a corner of France, and managed to call himself king of it without incurring serious loss.
*
When Edward had opted to lead the land army to attack Vannes he may well have been expressing a personal preference. Although he had commanded at the significant naval victory at Sluys, he was not lucky out on the open sea. Or perhaps we should say that hewas lucky, for he seems to have survived more near-death experiences at sea than in battle. In 1326 he had been blown off course by a storm when returning to England with Mortimer and his mother. In 1340 he had almost died in a storm at the mouth of the Thames. He had suffered in the gales on his crossing to Brittany. And now, in February 1343, on his return trip he got caught in a catastrophic tempest which seriously threatened his life once more. Several ships in his fleet were lost: swept over and smashed to pieces by the waves. There was, of course, no respite from drowning for anyone on board those unfortunate boats. The whole fleet was dispersed, the sailors doing all they could simply to bring their vessels to port. Murimuth noted how the surviving ships put into ports wherever they could across southern England.7 The ship carrying Lady de Montfort ended up drifting into a port in Devon. Wreck stories clearly had a wide popular appeal, as most chroniclers note Edward’s escape, even the far northern ones. A Franciscan chronicler on the Scottish border noted that Edward
incurred many dangers in returning from Brittany, especially from flashes of lightning and unprecedented storms, whereby nearly all his ships were scattered from him and several were sunk in the sea. It is said that not one of his sailors or soldiers was so cheerful amid these storms and dangers as himself, who ever remained fearless and unperturbed through them all; whence he was delivered by God’s grace and the Blessed Virgin’s intercession, whom he always invoked and chose as his particular patron in all dangers.8
On 1 March, he was blown to shore at Melcome Regis, in Dorset.9 He set off immediately for London, and reached the capital three days later. But this was one storm which had deeply affected him. He seems to have sworn at the height of the gales to go on a whole series of pilgrimages if he was saved. He even seems to have prayed to his recently deceased father to save him. He performed the promised pilgrimages straightaway. In London he gave thanks at the high altar of St Paul’s Cathedral. He then took a handful of men and went to his father’s tomb at Gloucester, and gave thanks at the high altar there, and at Walsingham Abbey. He went on foot to Canterbury, and gave thanks at the altars dedicated to St Thomas Becket and the Virgin Mary.10 At each place he promised a costly gift, and a golden incense boat in the shape of a ship was later delivered to each shrine.11 If Edward stood alone and unafraid on the deck of his storm-beleaguered ship, it was only because he was praying in the fury of the storm, and believed the Virgin Mary, St Thomas Becket and his late father were all looking out for him.12
*
On 28 April 1343 Edward opened the first parliament held since the Crisis of 1341. There was much to discuss. One interesting preliminary was to ordain that in future no representatives should come to parliament in armour or with long knives or other weaponry as they had sometimes done in the past.13 The first main item on the agenda was the Treaty of Malestroit. In the now-accepted fashion, the two houses of parliament deliberated separately, and delivered their verdicts on 1 May. Both houses approved of the treaty, and of the continued search for peace. But if no adequate peace could be obtained, they approved of Edward continuing his quarrel with the French king, and would support him in this. It was a conciliatory statement, made in the light of the military successes in Brittany but also in the wake of Edward’s refusal to summon a parliament for two years. Even more conciliatory was parliament’s acceptance of Edward’s revocation of the statute forced on him on that occasion. Parliament and Crown had reached an understanding: although the prelates and representatives of the shires and towns might press for reform, the king would not accept extremist measures, or changes which might undermine his ability to run the government efficiently. As a result, the 1343 parliament was a success for Edward. He not only achieved support for his foreign policy, he renewed his royal authority over parliament, so much so that for the next thirty years representatives never questioned Edward’s authority over ministerial appointments, nor his right to give royal estates to his chief vassals.14
Along with parliamentary acknowledgement of the possibility of renewed hostilities came the agreement to fix wool customs, and a grant of duty to the king on wool for the next three years.15 Gradually Edward was bringing his finances back under control. He dealt with some of his Continental allies by responding to their demands for payment with letters stating that if he had failed to pay them by a certain date, then their obligations to him would lapse. The debt then was strategically neglected. Not all debts could be treated in this way, of course. Those owing to the Bardi and Peruzzi were a particularly difficult problem. If Edward simply backed out of these, there would inevitably be international repercussions. Indeed, shortly after this, both the Bardi and the Peruzzi banking houses collapsed.
The responsibility for the failure of the Bardi and the Peruzzi has traditionally been ascribed solely to Edward’s refusal to honour his debts. This is a serious accusation; it amounts to personal responsibility for the biggest banking crash before modern times. But the view that Edward simply backed out of his financial commitments is mainly based on the opinion of a well-respected Florentine writer, Giovanni Villani, whose brother Filippo was a member of the Peruzzi. Villani said that Edward owed the Bardi 900,000 gold florins (£135,000),fn1 and the Peruzzi 600,000 (£90,000), and that his refusal to pay caused an economic collapse across Florence and much further afield. Such an opinion is neither independent nor justified. Edward never refused to pay his debts. Moreover, recent research has shown that the Peruzzi (whose records survive) did not have the capital to lend Edward this much money, not even a fraction of it.16 For Edward to have owed them 600,000 florins, they would have needed to have raised further capital in England. They may have done this, but if so they must have received further income or actual repayments, for which Villani does not account. From the English records we may estimate what these repayments were. The total amount borrowed over the period 1337–41 has been calculated at 687,000 florins (£103,000) from the Bardi, and 474,000 florins (£71,000) from the Peruzzi.17 Some of this was repaid in cash, and some was repaid through royal grants, especially grants of wool, which allowed the Italians to recoup much of their original investment and to build up their capital. In other words, the total of more than one million florins represents only the borrowings, not the repayments, and thus not the balance owing. It is now thought that the actual amount which Edward defaulted on was nearer the amount he later acknowledged, a mere £13,000.18 Edward’s failure to repay this amount would have dented the companies’ profitability, but it would not by itself have proved disastrous. Historians tend to regard the internal disputes in Florence as the cause of the crash, not Edward’s failure to repay his debts. It is a telling fact that the third largest Florentine banking house, the Acciaiuoli, also suffered heavily in the 1340s, and many other smaller Florentine banking firms collapsed, despite the fact that they had not lent any money to Edward.19
The other important financial measure discussed in the parliament of 1343 was the currency. For the last five hundred years practically the only coins minted in England had been silver pennies. Henry III had tried to introduce a ‘gold penny’, worth 20d, in 1257, but it had failed. Edward I had issued a new silver coinage in 1279, which resulted in the minting of silver groats (4d), halfpences and farthings, as well as pennies. But most international trade, and much domestic business, was conducted in florins (around 3s) and marks (13s 4d), so silver pennies were of limited use, as they were needed in their hundreds. Edward knew that a successful gold currency would be exported, and English gold coins would be handled and looked at in Avignon, Genoa and Paris as well as more Anglophile cities such as Ghent and Bruges and English dominions such as Gascony. The principle to which he was aspiring was very similar to the modern idea of trademark advertising. Edward would circulate artistically scuplted pieces of gold all around Europe showing him as a truly international monarch. As a result of these discussions, the first important English gold coins appeared in 1344. The largest of these was closely modelled on the French gold currency, showing Edward enthroned, with a leopard on the other side (Edward’s own emblem and the heraldic beast on the English coat of arms). These first gold coins proved unsuccessful, being undervalued in relation to the value of the gold, so later in the same year (1344) he ordered the minting of the mighty ‘noble’, a gold coin worth half-a-mark (6s 8d). This showed the king standing on the deck of a ship. The ship logo drew attention to his victory at Sluys, but even more importantly it showed Edward as a king crossing seas, giving him that international status which he craved. This was a medieval power statement of the first order. It took a few reissues to get the balance of gold and nominal value right, but Edward would not allow his moneyers to fail. The figure of Edward standing on his ship, bearing a shield with the arms of France and England quartered, became one of the most widely known and enduring images of fourteenth-century kingship, being copied in the gold coinage of every subsequent medieval English king.20
It was also in 1343 that parliament first pressed Edward to limit the power of the pope. It seemed to parliament that foreigners were increasingly being appointed to the most lucrative benefices in the English church. Edward seized on this. It gave him a weapon with which to attack Pope Clement VI, the newly elected successor to the peace-loving Benedict XII. Clement was, like his predecessor, a Frenchman; in fact he had previously served as Chancellor under King Philip. But his predecessor had been a man with whom Edward could do business, being genuinely concerned to find a peaceful solution to the Anglo-French problem. Clement saw that Benedict’s policy had failed. As a Frenchman living at Avignon he naturally decided that the only way forward was to bring such pressure to bear on Edward that the English king would have to back down. During this parliament Edward wrote to Clement stressing how papal appointees often failed to perform their duties. With so many hospitals, monasteries, chantries and other foundations having been endowed by the English for the English, what benefit could arise from their revenues going abroad? Edward argued that God’s work was at peril, souls were in danger, and churches were falling into disrepair.21 By the Ordinance of Provisors, Edward prohibited the receipt in England of papal letters against his interests, and the appointment of any clergy to ecclesiastical positions by such letters.22 Not only was it enacted with force, with several papal provisions being confiscated, it also resulted in the arrest and banishment of the proctors of the papal peace envoys.23 Edward realised that he could bring pressure to bear on the pope by representing the nationalist perspective. This was a question of enduring importance to the English. It would not be laid to rest until Henry VIII settled the matter two hundred years later, by removing the Church of England from papal authority altogether.
*
The latter part of 1343 and early 1344 was a time of relative calm and stability for Edward. He was now thirty-one years of age, and stronger than ever. He was approaching solvency once more, and could afford to remedy some of the embarrassing measures he had taken in 1338, such as redeeming his and Philippa’s golden crowns from pawn.24 The pattern of his life reflected the way he had lived ten years earlier: a proud young king going from tournament to tournament and from hunt to hunt, always in the company of knights and women. Among his accounts we find reference to mulberry-coloured Turkish cloth and taffeta for Queen Philippa, Queen Isabella and four countesses to go on a hunting expedition with the king.25 The same account allows us a glimpse of Edward and the earl of Northampton dressed in white, with eleven earls and knights dressed in green Turkish cloth, and fifteen royal squires waiting on them, all dressed in green. Another reference reveals Edward participating in a tournament at Smithfield on 24 June 1343, jousting for three days against thirteen knights dressed up as the pope and twelve cardinals.26 No diplomatic niceties here: this was loud and clear political commentary, in which Edward was very clearly setting himself up as England’s champion against the pope.
After a summer of tournaments, hunting and sending increasingly uncompromising letters to Avignon, Edward prepared for the next great public event. This was the second of his great winter tournaments at Windsor. On 18 January 1344 he gathered all the armed youth of England, including the earls of Derby, Salisbury, Warwick, Arundel, Pembroke and Suffolk, and many other knights and barons.27 As usual, he also invited large numbers of women: nine countesses were present, the wives of London merchants and barons, as well as Queen Philippa and their younger children. His mother, Queen Isabella, was also there. With all the other nondescript men, women and servants it amounted to ‘an indescribable host of people’. Prince Edward, now thirteen, was given a prominent role, although he probably did not take part in the jousting. Everyone ate and drank liberally and, ‘dances were not lacking among the lords and ladies, embraces and kisses alternately intermingling’.28 Foreign knights came to join in the jousting, and the action – involving Edward, his son and eighteen other knights, who took on all comers – went on for three days. Gifts of money, precious objects and clothes were given, and minstrels played throughout. A great banquet was given on the Monday in which all the women ate in the hall with no men present except two French knights who waited on them. Finally, on the Wednesday evening, at the end of the tournament, Edward spoke to the crowd, and gave instructions that no one was to go home but everyone was to stay the night and hear an announcement he would make the following day.
On Thursday morning Edward was up early. He dressed in his finest new clothes and wore over everything a mantle of exquisite velvet and his crown. The queens likewise were specially dressed, and accompanied him into the castle chapel to hear mass. After the ceremony, led by two earls from the chapel, he stood outside and addressed the crowd. He took a bible, and, turning to the gospels, he swore a vow that he would begin a Round Table in the true spirit of King Arthur, and maintain in it three hundred knights. He added that he would build a great round building within the castle at Windsor where all these men and their ladies could eat together. The building would be two hundred feet in diameter, and surpass any previously seen in Europe. Every year, at Whitsun, he would hold a great tournament at the castle, like this they had just experienced. The earls present joined him in his oath, and afterwards there was more dancing to the minstrels and drums, with a great feast of exotic dishes, before all went home after their five days of merrymaking.
One man had already gone home. In the jousting, William Montagu, earl of Salisbury and for many years Edward’s best friend, had been badly injured. On 30 January, eight days after the Round Table tournament ended, he died. The man who had delivered Edward his kingdom, and had dutifully followed him in his expeditions to Scotland, the Low Countries, France and Brittany, was no more. He was taken the short distance to Bisham Priory, which he had founded in the place of Edward’s first childhood home, and was buried in the church there.
Edward was back at Westminster when he heard of Salisbury’s death. There are no signs of any great outpouring of grief, nor of expensive arrangements for the burial, but nor would we necessarily find these in royal accounts. The official records simply note the bureaucratic process of winding up the earl’s affairs. It is perhaps surprising that the chroniclers hardly mention Salisbury’s death, and none mention any signs of grief from Edward. If the king attended his funeral then it was in a private capacity, with little fuss. Maybe from this we should wonder whether there was some truth in Froissart’s confused story of Edward’s lust for the countess. However, there is one sign that the death of his one-time friend caused Edward to stop and think. More than any other man, Salisbury was Edward’s partner in chivalric role-playing. He had participated in most of the many tournaments Edward had attended in the seventeen years since he had become king. It was thus no surprise that he was there, jousting alongside Edward, when the Round Table was announced. The loss of Salisbury might therefore be the reason why he only half-heartedly set about the building project.29 Work began in February as planned, but was soon scaled back due to the expense, and stopped altogether in November. There would be no Round Table. The half-built huge stone circular walls stood empty. It seems the harsh reality of death had stripped the romance away from the tournament at Windsor. Indeed, tournaments altogether lost their appeal for him. Several years were to pass before he lifted a lance in sport again.30
*
By the time Edward walked into the Painted Chamber at Westminster to meet parliament again on 7 June 1344, the war of words with the pope had escalated to condemnations as fierce as those Edward had exchanged with the archbishop of Canterbury during the Crisis of 1341. Pope Clement threatened Edward with excommunication, and told him he was in ‘rebellion’.31 This was not likely to result in a comfortable atmosphere for the delegation negotiating peace with France. Things could only get harder for them when Clement openly denounced the English claim to the French throne. In January 1344 Edward responded by directly condemning the papal custom of providing benefices to his companions, and followed this up with an accusation that Philip had broken the truce, as some of Edward’s allies had been executed in Paris. Edward’s envoys claimed this was a renewal of hostilities, and that English emissaries to the pope were no longer safe in France.32 The pope expressed his disquiet but did little more. As far as he was concerned Philip was in the right, if only because the politics of restraint demanded that Edward had to be in the wrong.
In parliament Edward put forward the breaking of the truce in the most uncompromising terms. Philip, he declared, had ‘falsely and maliciously’ put his allies to death with the assent of the French parliament, he had raised armies and attacked Gascony and Brittany, seizing castles, towns, manors and fortlets, and occupying English royal lands.33 The answer was unanimous. Everyone – lords, prelates and commons alike – all asked Edward to bring this war to a close, ‘either by battle, or a suitable peace, if he could get one’. Moreover they asked unanimously that he should confront Philip, and not be delayed by papal intervention, or the peacemaking efforts of anyone else. Parliament wanted an end to this war, and the people of England, who by now had borne a heavier tax burden than any other people in history, wanted closure on their own terms.34 To this end they added an interesting clause to the grant of a new subsidy: the money was conditional on Edward personally crossing over to France with an army to force Philip to submit.
All seemed set now for Edward’s next invasion of France. Parliament and king were in accord, over this and many other issues, from opposing papal interference to domestic legal reform.35 But still Edward did not rush to war. Instead he used parliament’s resolutions to bring more pressure to bear on the pope. He made one last attempt to negotiate, repeating his claim to France in a meticulously worded document presented to the pope by an experienced team of negotiators: the bishop of Norwich, John and Andrew Offord, Thomas Fastolf and Niccolinus Fieschi.36 Clement himself presided over the discussion, perhaps unnerved a little by how strong the arguments were in favour of Edward’s claim.37 Biased he most certainly was, but neither his bias nor his acuity could break the stone wall of Edward’s negotiators. They had powers only to discuss the claim to the French throne, which Edward would not under any circumstances give up. When offered money or a new title, Edward’s representatives expressed indignation. In this they did well, for they did exactly what Edward wanted them to do. In December 1344 the conference broke down, with the pope, the cardinals and the French delegation failing to persuade Edward’s redoubtable negotiators to admit to any weakness in his position.
*
Edward spent the latter part of 1344 attending to the discussion with the pope, receiving and delaying papal nuncios, and planning his next move in great detail. So concerned was he with this that he seems not to have attended Philippa’s churching after the birth of his fourth daughter, Mary, who had been born at Waltham, near Winchester, in October. Instead he remained at Westminster or at the Tower, before moving off to Norwich for Christmas. He had now extricated himself from his financial embarrassment, having redeemed the last of his pawned jewels in October. He was more popular at home than he had been for years. Now he simply needed to put all his assets – armies, inspirational commanders, revenues, diplomatic alliances and technical strategic superiority – simultaneously to good effect.
In January Sir Hugh Neville returned from Avignon to report on the failure of the negotiations under the pope’s auspices. Edward met him at Westminster, accompanied by the earls of Derby and Northampton, the archbishop of Canterbury and the archbishop’s nephews, the bishops of Chichester and London (the Stratford family having been restored to favour). Edward’s thinking until now had been to follow up his intransigent stance by sending Derby to the pope on a secret mission, but he changed his mind.38 As his advisers told him, diplomacy would achieve nothing unless he could bring real pressure to bear on Philip, and that required action. The longer the truce prevailed, the more Philip could chip away at his authority by pressurising the Gascon nobles and committing minor infringements of the truce in Brittany and Flanders.
Edward’s thinking in the spring of 1345 was to divide the command of his army between himself and his two most experienced and successful commanders, the earls of Derby and Northampton. Throughout the first half of the year Derby remained with him, discussing plans and strategies.39 The earls of Northampton, Huntingdon and Arundel assisted, the latter two being admirals of his fleets. The plan they came up with was to gather a huge fleet of more than four hundred ships at Portsmouth, Sandwich and Southampton to bring a devastating three-pronged attack against the French in Brittany (led by Northampton), Gascony (led by Derby) and Flanders (led by Edward). This would force Philip to break up his army, and, with sufficient archers, the English had a chance to prevail.
The pope, hearing of Edward’s preparations, sent a letter in March requiring him to seek peace. He tried to increase the moral pressure on the king by stating that Edward had broken his promise to send further negotiators, and by asking him to join a crusade. These letters came on top of others in which the pope expressed his displeasure at hearing that rumours were circulating in England that he had empowered two cardinals to ‘publish processes and fulminate sentences’ against the English.40 Edward had, at the time, refused to give these cardinals safe conducts to come to England, but had eventually received them, in order to say to them personally that he would not countenance any removal or restriction of his rights. The pope was in a weakening position. He only had diplomatic tools and religious threats, and these were ineffective weapons with which to control a man like Edward. No English contemporary doubted Edward’s spirituality or his patriotism, whereas practically all the cardinals at the papal court were French, and therefore neither liked nor trusted in England. Even more significantly, the pope underestimated the collective determination of the English camp. He presumed he was dealing with an intemperate and opportunistic leader whose people wanted peace above all else, and would eventually desert their high-taxing king. It was not that Clement was unwise but that he was prejudiced, and thus he believed what he wanted to believe. This did not equip him to understand the situation in England. He also suffered from the unavoidable papal disadvantage of being of advanced years: he could not possibly understand the latest developments in warfare. The very idea that Edward could meet the much larger army of France in battle, and win, was not only outside his experience, it was beyond his imagination.
By the summer of 1345 the three fleets were ready. The earl of Northampton left for Brittany in early June, and, in late July, Derby sailed for Gascony. There he was supported by the recently appointed seneschal, Ralph Stafford, who had mustered the Gascons and laid siege to Blaye after Edward had formally renounced the truce on 14 June. Edward himself was preparing to sail from Sandwich, but at the end of June urgent news arrived from Flanders. There had been an armed rising, and van Artevelde was on the defensive. The count of Flanders stood poised to return. Not knowing what the situation would be in Flanders if he waited any longer, Edward ordered his fleet to set sail on 3 July. He arrived at Sluys two days later, and held a conference with van Artevelde on board his great ship, the Catherine.41
The events of the next three weeks were momentous for Flanders. To some men of Ghent, van Artevelde was pursuing the alliance with the English for his own personal gain. When van Artevelde returned from Sluys, he was seized and beaten to death by a mob.42 Edward shrewdly used the murder of his ally as an excuse more directly to intervene. To the count of Flanders he offered the chance of rehabilitation if the count would swear homage to him as the king of France. The count refused, and so Edward was free to neglect his interests and directly to negotiate with the merchant leaders of the three major towns, Bruges, Ypres and Ghent. The burghers of these places found themselves negotiating with a king who controlled the supply of wool to their weavers, and conveniently had an army of two thousand men-at-arms anchored off the coast. Edward made his case, the Flemings all agreed to continue to accept his kingship, and Edward agreed to rid the country of the count of Flanders’ supporters. At the end of the month, Edward gave orders for his fleet to sail to a secret destination. Unfortunately his luck with storms once more proved decisive, and his ships found themselves sailing northwards for two days. The secret destination – wherever it was – remained secret. No sailors reached it. Edward realised he needed to regroup and returned to England.
*
Van Artevelde’s murder was just one of a series of deaths which cast a shadow over the summer of 1345. Only a few days earlier, while Edward was at Sluys, his trusted confidant John Shorditch was murdered. Shorditch had undertaken much secret business on Edward’s behalf, and Edward was furious when told of his death. He had the killers tracked down and summarily executed. In September, at Worms, Edward’s brother-in-law and erstwhile ally, the count of Hainault, was killed, leaving no obvious heir. He had betrayed Edward by swearing allegiance to Philip, and his death left Hainault without any leadership except that of his uncle, John of Hainault (the same John who had accompanied Edward to England in 1326). Despite their long association, John now swore allegiance to France, angered that Edward had not paid the money he had previously promised to the count.43 Edward showed what he thought of this by immediately trying to claim Hainault in right of his wife, even though she was not the eldest of the count’s sisters. John retaliated by ensuring that the county passed to Albert, son of his niece Margaret and her husband Ludvig of Bavaria, who was now allied to Philip.
Natural deaths of men close to Edward also occurred at this time. Foremost of these was that of his old ally, Henry, earl of Lancaster, who died on 22 September. One of the now ageing guard who had taken part in the seizure of Mortimer, he was trusted to his dying day. When Edward had gone to Flanders in July, Henry had been appointed one of the advisers of seven-year-old Prince Lionel, keeper of England. Edward and Philippa attended the earl’s funeral in person, specially buying black cloth for mourning clothes for themselves and their household.44
Less emotional but diplomatically much more important were the deaths of various bishops. When Thomas Charlton, the bishop of Hereford, had died in 1344 the pope had acted quickly to appoint his successor, to enforce his rights.45 As relations with the pope worsened over the following twelve months it became clear that the next bishop to die would trigger a struggle between the king and the pope. As it happened, the next to go was the bishop of Durham, Richard Bury, who died in April 1345. Perhaps because of the special relationship between this bishop and the king, Edward won this round of episcopal nominations, achieving the election of his clerk Thomas Hatfield to the vacant see. (The pope’s words on Hatfield were that he would have appointed a jackass if Edward had nominated one.) But Edward lost the next round of this game of dead bishop’s shoes, in June, when the pope’s man, Thomas Lisle, was appointed bishop of Ely. Edward decided to make an example of the next church body which dared to oppose him. When Adam of Orleton died the next month, and the monks of Winchester elected John Devenish in his place, against the king’s will, Edward took the bold step of fining the monks two thousand pounds.46 Levying a fine against men who had supposedly given up their worldly wealth only hardened the pope’s attitude, which was already hard enough. Clement responded by delaying any appointment to Winchester and maintaining his refusal to permit an arranged marriage between Edward’s eldest son and the daughter of the duke of Brabant. Such obduracy was guaranteed not to soften the hearts of the English. Anti-papal propaganda began to circulate: it was rumoured that Clement had declared that the English were ‘good asses’ who would bear whatever load was thrust upon them.47 By the autumn of 1345 the English were as eager to fight the pope as they were King Philip. Opposition to the French pope increasingly fused with opposition to the French king. The diatribes written against the French at this point were extreme. ‘France, womanish, pharisaic, embodiment of might, lynx-like, viperish, foxy, wolfish, a Medea, cunning, a siren, cruel, bitter, haughty: you are full of bile’ was how one contemporary poem began.48 The English view of the truce was not much better: ‘King, beware of truces, lest you perish by them’ warned the same writer. Ironically, the only thing holding the English back from launching a full-scale invasion of France at this stage was Edward, and that was only because he already had two armies in the field.
On the death of his father, the earl of Derby had inherited the title Earl of Lancaster. In keeping with his elevation, he had success from the moment he had landed. The siege of Blaye had been an unambitious affair, and he persuaded Stafford to negotiate a local truce. That done, both forces joined together under Lancaster’s command and boldly marched to Montcuq, a Gascon castle besieged by the French. After a surprise night march, Lancaster shocked the besiegers into flight, and pursued them north to Bergerac, an important French town on the Dordogne. Barely pausing for breath, Lancaster and his knights (including the ever-present Sir Walter Manny) set about attacking the town. After a number of assaults it surrendered, on 24 August.49 Thereafter success followed success. Castles fell, valuable prisoners were captured, towns capitulated. Huge amounts of treasure were obtained by Lancaster and Manny. All of this fell to them personally, encouraging them to carry on the fight. And carry on they did, in style. Declining to attack the well-defended city of Périgueux, Lancaster left garrisons at all the surrounding fortified places he could capture. When the French responded by sending a substantial army to recapture one of these, Auberoche, he turned back on himself. Forcing his men on another surprise night march he came upon the French army at dawn on Tuesday 21 October. The result was utter confusion among the French, torn apart by the devastating effect of the English arrows. Despite their superior numbers they could not properly engage the English until the battle was well underway. Just when the French seemed to be stabilising their position and getting the upper hand, Lancaster brought up his mounted knights and men-at-arms, and the garrison of the castle made a sortie to attack the French from the rear. The pendulum of confidence swung in England’s favour at the crucial moment of the battle. The rest was devastation. Among the valuable prisoners taken by Lancaster were a count, seven viscounts, three barons, twelve bannerets, many knights, and last, but certainly not least, one of the pope’s nephews.50
In Brittany the earl of Northampton had success of a much less dramatic kind. He recaptured the Channel Islands but then found himself picking up the pieces of Edward’s broken strategy. It was no mistake or defeat which laid his campaign low: it was simply that John de Montfort suddenly fell ill at his castle of Hennebont, and died there on 26 September. It was a devastating blow. As a military leader de Montfort was replaceable but as the heir in whose name the English were fighting, he was not. Worse, back in England, his lion-hearted wife had gone mad, and was unfit to return to Brittany. Not even the six-year-old heir, John’s son, was on hand to provide nominal leadership; he too was in England, at Edward’s court. The earl of Northampton was forced to maintain his army in the field simply to keep the de Montfortist claim – and Edward’s strategy – alive.
The news of de Montfort’s death caused Edward to reflect deeply on his situation in October 1345. News of the battle of Auberoche and the subsequent victories of the earl of Lancaster had yet to reach England. The prime strategic factor guiding Edward was the instruction he had received in parliament the previous year: to bring this war to a swift conclusion with no concessions to French interests. It was clear to him now that this meant an English-led attack, entailing huge numbers of English troops, and thus extended supply lines into France, and the assembly of the biggest English military fleet ever assembled. And that was just to get a large enough army across the Channel: the military strategy on the ground was another consideration, the defence of the northern border was another, and the implications of victory yet another. Some necessary preparations could be undertaken straight away. Men could be raised, ships could be acquired and the Scottish border could be secured. But many unknowns remained. Much depended on the progress of the two armies in the field. If Northampton could wrest control of one of the major Breton ports, then Brittany might prove an ideal landing place. If Lancaster continued to enjoy success in Gascony, there might be an argument for taking the army there. In the circumstances Edward did exactly the right thing: he set the date for the navy and army to muster in the spring – 1 March 1346 – and left the details to be decided nearer the date. This left his commanders plenty of time to achieve their respective immediate strategic objectives and allowed him time to gather the huge number of vessels needed for the crossing and to arrange for the defence of the north.
Thus it was that, as Lancaster was wreaking havoc on the French armies in Gascony, and the French king was desperately trying to arrange for the defence of the Agenais and surrounding lands, Edward marched north to the Scottish border. On 8 November Lancaster turned the tide in the Agenais by walking into La Réole, one of the strongest towns in the region, at the invitation of the citizens. Five days later – but long before he heard the news – Edward set off on a high-speed march to the Scottish border. If the October discussions had not specifically recommended that Edward go north, the need became evident on 25 October, when the Scots invaded by Carlisle, and wasted many places in Cumberland.51 Although Edward himself fell very ill, his purpose in going had been to issue orders, not to lead a campaign.52 From his sick bed he sent word to the local commanders informing them that a massive invasion of France would take place the following spring, and that they could expect a concerted drive from the Scots at that time. Their task was to resist it.
By Christmas, Edward was back at Westminster and his health improving. He knew there was another papal nuncio on hand, waiting to introduce two further cardinals to lay Clement’s proposals for peace before him. But he had instructions from the 1344 parliament not to delay his conclusion of the war for papal negotiators, and he refused at first to see the nuncio, or even to grant the cardinals safe conduct. Besides, he himself had no wish to see any of them. His grand scheme was now well underway, and he was not for a moment going to entertain sacrificing such an ambitious military expedition for the sake of Clement’s pro-French diplomacy. In Brittany, Northampton had won a bitter battle for La Roche-Derrien, and in Gascony the successes which Lancaster was winning were extraordinary. First it had been Bergerac, then Auberoche, then La Réole. Subsequently then almost every citadel and fortress in the Agenais had fallen to the English. Although Edward did not yet know it, Angoulême too had temporarily fallen to John of Norwich. As victory after victory was reported in England, his popularity rose higher and higher. It was, after all, his kingship – his encouragement of a band of worthy knights – which had brought these victories about. In contrast, the pope’s popularity had already sunk irretrievably low in the parliament of 1344. Edward had just covered the length of the country and had been left in no doubt that the whole kingdom was behind him. Let Clement put the country under an interdict, and let him excommunicate him! Edward was rediscovering the sort of kingship which England had not seen for fifty years: confident, popular, patriotic and defiant. When he decided eventually to admit the papal nuncio into his presence, it was so he could lecture him on how his cause was just and right, and how it had been Philip who had broken the truce by executing his Breton subjects.
So began 1346, one of the truly momentous years in European history. In the north of England, Edward was preparing for a militia resistance against a Scots incursion. The Scots, aware of the scale of the attack planned on France, were waiting for Edward to leave England. The French were hastily trying to reclaim as much of Gascony as they could, using the army under the command of Duke John of Normandy. They brought thousands of men – Froissart claims no fewer than one hundred thousand – to besiege Aiguillon, where Sir Ralph Stafford and Sir Walter Manny were holed up with about six hundred archers and three hundred men-at-arms.53 The Genoese were sending galleys – slowly – in support of the French. As for Edward himself, as was made clear at a great council meeting in February, he was set on the path of war. There could be no turning back now. Although a delay set in due to his old enemy the weather, which scattered the ships as they tried to gather in March, nothing was going to deter him from invading France. More than just the French throne was at stake: this was as much about him honouring his promises to the English as his defiance of France and the pope. When the weather turned bad he simply put the muster date back to 1 May. The date had to be set back again, but Edward was not to be deterred. By the end of May approximately fifteen thousand men were gathered in and around Portsmouth, ready to embark on seven hundred and fifty ships.54 Edward himself was at Porchester Castle from 1 June, waiting. And all of Europe was waiting too. In their towns, parishes and cities across France, Gascony, Flanders, Brittany, Castille and Genoa, they were waiting; in the monasteries and castles, manor houses and street tenements. For no one knew where he would land. Edward had kept his destination a complete secret. Would it be Gascony? Brittany? Flanders? Or somewhere else, somewhere entirely new?
We do not know when Edward made his decision. Neither he nor his closest advisers told anyone. The destination was chosen before he set sail, as the captains of the ships all had sealed instructions where to land in the event of being separated by a storm, but the actual place remained a closely guarded secret. Edward ordered no ships to leave England for a week after the fleet departed, with the exception of a diversionary expedition, due to sail to Flanders under Hugh Hastings. The destination was still a secret on 28 June, when Edward boarded his flagship. Hundreds of vessels followed the great English warships flying their magnificent streamers as they headed westwards, hugging the English coast. The ships had all been equipped with sufficient rations to reach Gascony, and Froissart indicates that that was widely believed to have been the planned destination. A letter written after the landing by Sir Bartholomew Burghersh also states that the king originally intended to go to Gascony.55 But it was not a Gascony-bound breeze which Edward was waiting for. On 11 July, two weeks after setting out, the strategy was made known. That morning, in the clear sun, the trumpets from Edward’s flagship blared out, and the great ships of the English navy unfurled their sails, turned their prows and started sailing south. They were heading towards the Normandy beaches.56
fn1 After 1340 the conversion rate used for the florin is 3s, rather than 3s 4d. See Author’s Note.