THIRTEEN

Lawmaker

WHEN EDWARD PREPARED to face parliament in February 1351, he was a very different man to the eighteen-year-old who had so eagerly awaited his first parliament after taking power, twenty years before. Then he had looked to the forum as a proving ground. Now he had proved everything, and parliament had bowed to his kingship. But although representatives were satisfied with his past performance, one of the developing functions of parliament was to question the king on his policy and, if possible, hold him to account. This was the first parliament he had held for three years, and only the third he had attended since 1344. His promise to hold a meeting with representatives every year was looking frail. It was also the first gathering at Westminster since the Black Death. There were men present who wanted to know what could be done to ameliorate the downturn in the kingdom’s fortunes. Some may have wondered what their king had done to incur God’s wrath, so that England had not been saved from the horrors of the plague. As for Edward himself, he was well aware that the peace in France would not hold. The new French king, John, was bound to try his luck, hoping to show himself more successful in battle than his father. So Edward faced a difficult task. He needed to buy back public confidence, and to reassure parliament, but at the same time he had to convince a country just emerging from economic collapse to grant him a further subsidy towards the war.

This is, on the surface, how things stood in February 1351. But such an analysis pays no attention to how Edward himself had changed. As Edward’s cultural patronage shows, after 1350 he was less anxious to fight and more interested in creating permanent structures. In Shakespeare’s famous analogy, Edward was emerging from the fourth age of man, the soldier, ‘jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth’ and entering the fifth, the justice ‘with eyes severe and beard of formal cut’. He said as much in his opening address at that parliament. ‘We desire always to do right to our people and to correct wrongs and defaults wherever they may be found in our realm.’¹

From Tuesday 15 February Edward began to hear petitions. The first asked him to confirm Magna Carta and the statutes of his ancestors and to revoke the subsidy on the country because of the plague.² Predictably enough, Edward agreed to the confirmation of the law but refused to relinquish the tax. The next petition asked him to prevent labourers neglecting their manorial dues in the wake of the plague. Edward responded that a statute would follow. This is interesting: although the remedy to the problem had been devised eighteen months earlier, in the Ordinance of Labourers, it was as a result of a petition in parliament that it became enshrined in law.³ No less significant was the next petition, which begged Edward to prevent papal appointments to English benefices. Parliament objected to overseas clergy taking the income from their English benefices without even visiting the country. This, of course, had been a cornerstone of Edward’s policy since 1344. But whereas then he had merely tried to prevent overseas clergy from taking their positions, now in the Statute of Provisors he made the pope’s provisions illegal.⁴ A little later another important petition was presented, requesting the return to free trade, a theme from an earlier parliament. Edward assented, and so the Statute of Free Trade was placed firmly on the law books.⁵ Three of the most important statutes of the fourteenth century were thus agreed in principle over a couple of mornings’ debate.

Edward’s professed desire ‘to do right’ at that parliament pushed justice high up his list of priorities. This raised some spectres from the past. One was Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, whose father Edmund had been done to death by Roger Mortimer without trial way back in 1326. He now wanted confirmation of his inheritance and assurance it would pass to his heirs.⁶ Similarly, hovering in the background, was Sir John Maltravers. In June his outlawry was annulled. These were old misjudgements which required correction, which Edward was pleased to consider.⁷ Justice of a different sort was needed in the case of Chief Justice William Thorp, who had been arrested and found guilty of corruption the previous year. Edward had declared that corrupt officials would face death, so that was the sentence looming over him when he came to parliament in 1351. Edward, always prepared to order the most extreme punishment, was not always eager to see it carried out. He was therefore looking to remit the death penalty. Thorp was tried before his peers and found guilty, but not sentenced to death. Some years later he was given the chance to redeem himself, and entered Edward’s service again.

From all points of view, the parliament of 1351 was a success. Edward managed to secure his wool subsidy for a further two years, despite pleas not to levy it because of the plague. Those deserving justice received it, those requiring the correction of injustices mostly were satisfied, and those putting forward petitions for new laws were mostly rewarded with a positive result. Questions remained in the air about financial burdens and taxation, but the accommodation reached was acceptable to parliament. So it was fitting that, at the end of the parliament, Edward held a second mass creation of higher lords. Harking back to the parliament of 1337, when he had made six earls and a duke, he now created three earls and a duke. Henry of Lancaster now became the duke of Lancaster, in honour of his great achievements in Gascony. Edward’s sons Lionel and John were officially granted the titles held for them since infancy: Earl of Ulster and Earl of Richmond. And Ralph Stafford was raised from his barony to become the earl of Stafford. None of these lords were new, in the sense that they were commoners beforehand, but nevertheless, the raising of three men to comital rank, and the raising of Henry to a dukedom, were all in keeping with the style and largesse of a king whose reign was beginning to be viewed in terms of greatness.

*

Not long after King Philip died, Edward had asked the pope to appoint an English cardinal. To put an English voice among the many French ones at Avignon would have been a very sensible move, at least partly correcting the massive pro-French bias there. The pope had responded with a request for Edward to put forward two suitable candidates. Edward suggested William Bateman, the bishop of Norwich, and Ralph Stratford, the bishop of London. The pope, however, saw fit to throw sand in all their faces. On 17 December 1350, in the presence of the newly crowned King John II of France, the twelve cardinals he created included eight more Frenchmen, three Spaniards and one Italian. The English candidates were ignored.⁸ In this light it is not surprising that Edward was keen to pass the subsequent petition for a statute prohibiting papal appointments.

French antagonism was extreme in 1351. The feeling in France – and the fear in England – was that King John needed to begin his reign by taking the fight to the English. In March the French won a minor symbolic victory in Brittany in the ‘Battle of the Thirty’, a joust between thirty French and thirty English and Breton knights. Another blow was struck for French pride when Sir Thomas Dagworth was ambushed and murdered. But it was the English under Sir John Cheverstone who won the more important victory at Saintes on 1 April 1351, capturing the French commander Guy de Nesle. Unfortunately de Nesle was soon ransomed, and the French reversed the English success by capturing the strategic fortress of Saint-Jean-d’Angély, which had been in English hands since its capture by Lancaster in 1346. The English responded with a few raids in Brittany under Dagworth’s successor, Sir Walter Bentley, and around Calais under Lord Manny. It was a situation which could not be called war, yet it was hardly peace.

Then disaster struck. The English garrison of Calais, commanded by John Beauchamp, was ambushed on its way back from a raid. Beauchamp and several other knights were taken prisoner, leaving Calais undefended. The news was immediately taken to England, where Edward was already concerned about an imminent Flemish switch of allegiance to supporting the French king. Emissaries were promptly sent out in all directions. The duke of Lancaster was sent to negotiate with the count of Flanders, heir to the count killed at Crécy, who was more acceptable to his people than his father. Lancaster was told even to offer the hand in marriage of John of Gaunt if it was necessary. The bishop of Norwich and the earl of Huntingdon were despatched to France to seek a permanent peace, hoping thereby to stave off a French advance until Calais could be secured. Edward himself set about raising an army as quickly as he could to secure the town. But the English position was weak. The count of Flanders openly went to King John and threw off his allegiance to England. It was just as well that Bishop Bateman and the earl of Huntingdon were able to secure a truce in September. Edward had suffered two setbacks – Saint-Jean-d’Angély and the Flemish alliance – and King John was able to celebrate in November by establishing a chivalric order of his own, the Order of the Star.

*

Edward was undoubtedly relieved not to be going to war in 1351, and he quickly cancelled his plans to take an army to Calais. The amount he was spending on construction at Windsor, Westminster, Calais, Eltham and Henley could not easily be transferred to fund-raising for war. Nevertheless the encroachments and raids of 1351 had alerted him to the dangers of ploughing all his resources into stone and all his time into hunting and domestic politics. A serious attempt to achieve permanent peace with Scotland was on the point of collapse, even when King David was allowed to leave the Tower of London in February 1352 to return to Scotland to try to persuade his subjects to accept Edward’s proposals.⁹ A message from France in January reminded Edward very forcibly that there might still be occasions when war would prove advantageous. Edward was thus once more mulling over the prospect of war and its costs as parliament arrived at Westminster.

The parliament of 1352 marks a particularly high point in the relationship between fourteenth-century kings and the country’s representatives. A long list of petitions was presented by the representatives in the expectation that Edward would be asking for several years of direct taxation. In the past, parliament had been asked to agree to taxes in the belief that the king would then, afterwards, listen to their petitions. This time, the order of things was altered. Edward’s Chief Justice, Sir William Shareshull, positively encouraged parliament to prepare petitions for Edward to right wrongs or to amend the law. When parliament eventually came back to Edward the deal was that they would agree to the taxation on the condition that he gave a prompt and favourable reply to their petitions.¹⁰

Edward could not be forced into granting petitions, and it remained up to him whether he accepted the deal or not. In theory, he could have simply imposed taxation and refused any and all terms. But there was an excitement about parliament at this time, and the way it was developing held an attraction for Edward too. The petitions presented to him in 1352 contained a ready-made legislative programme, setting straight a large number of outstanding legal matters going right back to the beginning of the reign. The question of preventing feudal aids being levied without parliamentary consent was raised, so was the problem of purveyors for the royal household abusing their positions, and the enforcement of standard weights and measures throughout the country. Debts owing by Italian merchants, sub-standard coinage, the abuses of forest keepers, and the practice of levying men-at-arms from large non-feudal properties were openly discussed. Edward assented to all of these petitions and many others. In fact, every one of the twenty-three chapters of the great statute of 1352 directly related to the list of petitions handed to Edward by parliament. The laws themselves may have been precisely worded by Edward’s civil servants but it cannot be denied that Edward had listened to parliament’s demands. Parliament had effectively listed what it considered were Edward’s legislative shortcomings to date, and Edward – always eager to be seen in a good light – had done what he could to correct them.

In the midst of this long list of laws were several very important pieces of legislation. There was a new Statute of the Clergy and a law allowing for the payment of fines by those guilty of breaking the Statute of Labourers to go towards reducing the amount of direct taxation necessary. But without any doubt the most important statute made at this parliament was the great Statute of Treasons.¹¹

Given the large number of treason trials and executions which took place in the first twenty years of Edward’s life, it is surprising that treason had never previously been defined or codified. The word tended to be bandied around very loosely, its references only connected through a sense of a criminal betrayal of trust. But it was clear to all that a servant who murdered his master was not guilty of the same crime as a magnate who went to war with the king. A statute was required to distinguish between general or petty treason and high treason, which was an act against the king and his government. The statute was also required to define exactly what constituted an act against the king. The result was a very interesting list of crimes, in which Edward and his justices referred back to the deeds of Roger Mortimer.¹² Thus we read that High Treason was when a man ‘considered or imagined’ the death of the king,¹³ or of his queen, or their eldest son and heir, or if he violated the queen, the king’s eldest unmarried daughter or the wife of his eldest son, or if he went to war with the king in his realm, or adhered to the king’s enemies, or if he killed the Chancellor or the Treasurer, or the king’s justices, when they were performing their office.¹⁴ These parts of the statute are still in force today. Other parts subsequently repealed state that High Treason included counterfeiting the king’s great or privy seal, or coinage of the realm.

Many writers have found it surprising that the Statute of Treasons was passed in 1352, after twenty-five years of Edward’s reign, at the very point when the English monarchy was at its most secure. It had been many years since treason had been a feature of the political landscape. But there was an obvious reason, obvious to contemporaries at least. Sir John Maltravers had been found guilty of treason in his absence; now he had been forgiven. Arundel’s father had been declared guilty of treason and was found wrongfully adjudged to have been sentenced. The same could be said for Kent in 1330. What crime was it that these men had committed? For if it could be so easily reversed, was treason anything more than going against the king’s will? In this new, parliamentary age, it was very dangerous if political representatives could be judged guilty of treason for simply disobeying the king.

It thus appears that the Statute of Treasons was a logical consequence of Edward’s determination to rule fairly for all, including the survivors of the dictatorship of Mortimer. This is certainly the way that most modern scholars understand it.¹⁵ Yet we should not presume that there was no more to it than that. It cannot escape a biographer’s attention that in these years 1351–54 Edward revisited the events of 1327–30 several times. Maltravers himself returned from Flanders. The Arundel estates were restored and the dead earl pardoned. In 1352 Edward summoned the chronicler Ranulph Higden, one of the most popular chroniclers of the period, to come to a meeting of the great council ‘with all your chronicles and those in your charge to speak and treat with the council concerning matters to be explained to you on our behalf’.¹⁶ The same year a special inquiry was ordered to find out whether the archbishop of Cashel (Ireland) had fulfilled his side of a bargain to endow six chaplains in his cathedral to celebrate masses for Edward II.¹⁷ The following year, 1353, Edward himself revisited his father’s tomb at Gloucester and remained in the area for about a month.¹⁸ In an unprecedented move he sent his sons to celebrate that year’s anniversary of the ‘death’ of Edward II at Gloucester (he being unable to attend in person due to a council meeting at Westminster on the 23rd). He also paid for offerings to be made on behalf of the dead at Gloucester on the following day, and gave gifts of gold spinet to lay on the tomb on the 24th.¹⁹ Most interesting of all, he seems to have made two visits to Leintwardine in September and November 1353. Leintwardine was a small, out-of-the way place in north-west Herefordshire, a long way off Edward’s usual routes, especially as he usually confined himself these days to the Thames valley. But Leintwardine was where the elder Roger Mortimer had founded a collegiate chantry to sing masses for himself and his family and Edward and the royal family. It was the place in which the souls of Edward II, Edward III and Mortimer were united. In September Edward gave a cloth of gold at the statue of the Virgin there, and in early November he may have made a second visit to Leintwardine to make an offering at the same figure.²⁰ Finally in 1354, Roger Mortimer the grandson presented a petition in parliament to have all the processes against his grandfather tried. Edward cannot have been surprised by this, and must have discussed it with the heir in advance, for he not only granted the petition, he went so far as to reverse all the accusations against the grandfather on the basis that he had not had a fair trial. At the same time he restored to the grandson the title of Earl of March which the grandfather had outrageously demanded in 1328. Had he wished merely to honour the grandson, he could have granted him a new, less contentious title. But with that reversal of his judgement on Mortimer, Edward was finally able to let go of the terrible events of 1330. It seems clear that, from Edward’s point of view, the Statute of Treasons was part of a wider revisiting of the past, and was not just a legal formality, as usually thought. We might sum up the personal dimension by saying that, having legally codified what constituted a threat to the Crown, Edward could now wipe the slate clean, and reverse those injustices, semi-injustices and dubious measures which he had been forced to commit in 1330 to enforce his royal authority.

*

While the parliament of 1352 was still assembling, Edward received some extraordinary news, which, problematic though it was, must have made him smile. Despite the truce, an English squire called John Dancaster had led an attack on the castle of Guines. Guines was six miles to the south of Calais, considered impregnable, and the greatest threat to the security of the English town. On the night of the attack, the castle commander was being honoured as a founder member of the new Order of the Star. As the commander of Guines ate off a gold plate in King John’s presence, Dancaster and a few other squires in service at Calais, with their faces blackened, climbed over the walls into Guines, killing the sentries and seizing the castle. It was an almost-unbelievable piece of good fortune. But Edward could not ignore that it was a violation of the truce. It had been French emissaries – not an English messenger – who had brought the news to him. Dancaster was refusing to say in whose name he was defending Guines.

It was a serious problem. On the one hand it was so tempting to acknowledge Dancaster’s victory as an English success. On the other hand, to resume the war at this juncture was not Edward’s highest priority. It threatened to jeopardise his domestic projects. It would also place him very clearly in the wrong, for Edward’s justification of the war had arisen in response to Philip’s antagonisms, not John’s. John was only Edward’s enemy because he was his father’s son, and thus bound to lead the French in war. On the other hand it could be argued that the French had abused the truce in the same way as Dancaster, when they had attacked and seized Saint-Jean-d’Angély the previous year. As parliament was assembling, Edward took the opportunity to present the question to the representatives. Those who spoke on the matter in his presence were all for war. Edward decided to follow their advice and his own inclination, and to keep Guines. To the dismay of the French, he pardoned Dancaster for any wrongdoing and rewarded him.²¹

The French reaction was immediately to fight. An army assembled at Rennes in Brittany under Guy de Nesle, intended to besiege Plo¨ermel; another assembled at Saint-Jean-d’Angély and Saintes, and a third assembled near Guines.²² Edward’s response was slow, far slower than it should have been. He underestimated the fury that his decision would unleash. In early March he appointed the newly created earl of Stafford to take command in Gascony. But it was not until 20 April that Sir Walter Bentley was ordered to survey the castles of Brittany and put them in a defensive state. Although the Genoese were already fighting for John in Brittany, only on 6 May did Edward ask them not to assist his enemy. Eventually, on 24 May the writs went out to draw spearmen from Wales and archers from the English counties. Even then Edward was cautious about getting too deeply involved. He waited another three weeks before ordering the coast to be readied for war and equipping fifteen ships for the forthcoming crossing. He seems to have been deeply reluctant to take the necessary steps to fight in France in 1352.²³

When the English defence did get under way, it proved stunningly effective. A contingent from Calais joined the men at Guines in attacking the French and burning their siege engines, so that the French commander Geoffrey de Charny was eventually forced to retreat. In Gascony, Stafford was successful in striking panic into the hearts of the citizens of Agen, and won a battle at Marmande in August in which he captured seven knights of the new Order of the Star.²⁴ He then proceeded to relieve the siege of Taillebourg. But the most successful of all was Sir Walter Bentley in Brittany. He relieved the siege of Plo¨ermel before Guy de Nesle could stop him and then met de Nesle face-to-face on a hill near Mauron, on 14 August 1352. When de Nesle saw how few men Bentley had – the chronicler Avesbury estimated about six hundred – and that they were drawn up in the open, with no protection, no water, no woods, nothing to save them at all, he offered the English the chance to surrender honourably.²⁵ But Bentley was the successor in office to the famous and fearless Sir Thomas Dagworth, and his reputation was at stake. There was no such thing as an honourable surrender in Brittany. De Nesle ordered his men to advance on foot, hoping to overwhelm the English through force of numbers. The armies clashed ‘between the hour of vespers and sunset’ and the result was very bloody. Bentley commanded from the front and was himself badly wounded. But the English were victorious. It was yet another extraordinary English success: when his men piled up the surcoats to count the number of dead they reckoned they had killed one hundred and forty knights and five hundred esquires, plus an uncounted number of footsoldiers. A further hundred and sixty men of rank were captured. As the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker noted, the reason why the number of dead knights was so high was because there had been a large number of knights of the Order of the Star present, and at their inaugural feast they had sworn never to retreat. It might have been a noble promise in the hall, but King John’s knights paid dearly on the battlefield for giving up one of the most practical of all military manoeuvres.²⁶

*

In 1352 Edward held a great ceremony at Windsor to celebrate Christmas. He had just turned forty, which was well into middle-age by medieval standards. For this year’s celebrations thirteen devils’ costumes were ordered, thirteen Dominican friars’ costumes and thirteen merchants’ costumes. Edward himself was decked out in a robe embroidered with gold falcons. This would all have no more meaning for us than the most obscure of the games of earlier years if it were not for a single rare manuscript survival. An East Midlands poet seems to have been present at this or a similar games soon afterwards, and was inspired by the occasion to write a poem on the economic state of England.²⁷

Poems about economic theory are exceptionally rare, and this one is unique in English medieval history. It is a sophisticated allegory. The poet dreams that he sees two armies come together, and overseeing them is Edward ‘worthier in wit than anyone else / to advise, to read and to rule the anger / that both armies had in hatred for the other’. Edward is described as ‘the comeliest king crowned with gold’ and takes his seat on a silk-covered bench in a pavilion, which is decked out in red with gold bezants and blue garters. High in the canopies are woven the words ‘Evil to him who thinks evil of it’, the motto of the Order of the Garter. Then the tournament begins. One army is led by ‘Winner’ and is made up of merchants, lawyers and friars. The other is led by ‘Waster’ and is composed of men-at-arms and esquires. ‘Winner’ on behalf of the lawyers, merchants and friars declares his hatred for ‘Waster’, and accuses the men-at-arms and esquires of spending their money frivolously on drink, good food and having a good time.

This allows us to see the probable format of Edward’s regular games and entertainments, so well recorded with regard to clothing but so poorly described as to actual proceedings. Edward was regally on show, presiding, as if he were viewing a tournament. But rather than actually fighting with lances and armour, the armies of protagonists were making declarations in their various costumes. Edward’s games in this instance seem to be a form of drama. It is of course possible that the costumes were for specific people to assume other identities for the sake of parody. But the overriding impression is that of political commentary. As we have already seen, satire, especially when it involved the power of the pope, was appealing to Edward.

The poem is also interesting in that it gives us an insight as to how a well-informed and well-connected political commentator viewed the social changes of the first half of Edward’s reign. The rising professionals are presented as competing on an equal footing with the landed gentry. This is a novelty in itself; previously the gentry had stood socially head and shoulders above the merchants and all but the most eminent lawyers. It is a recognition of Edward’s own policies to date, extending parliamentary power into the gentry and merchant classes, knighting merchants, permitting wealthy men and their families to dress like lords. But if we look at what the poem is really saying, we see there are great tensions arising from this. On one level there is a complaint against the uselessness and selfishness of the old feudal aristocracy, somewhat redundant as a fighting force since Crécy.²⁸ But the poem is even more subtle than that, for ‘Waster’ retorts with a devastating attack on ‘Winner’ and his practice of storing up money and selling goods in times of dearth. Thus this is not just a capitalist’s complaint, it is a juxtaposition of the avarice of capitalism contrasted with old-fashioned lordly privilege. The moral of the story is that the rising class of merchants and lawyers are not necessarily more virtuous than those who inherit their wealth, for they will not sustain the poor or anyone else except themselves.

From our point of view, the poem is most interesting for the role the king assumes in all this disputation. Edward was most certainly a champion ‘waster’, in the sense that he spent more money, was more privileged, and indulged himself more frequently and to a greater extent than anyone else in the kingdom. Yet he is raised above the contest, and placed as a judge. No scandal attaches to his name, nor that of the monarchy; this is not a criticism of his kingship. Rather it is the opposite: it is a vision of society developing and changing under the king’s authority. The relatively humble poet selected Edward – and no one else – to preside over this social and moral controversy. Not the pope, not the archbishop of Canterbury, or the prelates en masse, nor any duke, prince or combination of earls, nor the Chancellor or justices of the realm, nor the mayors. Not even God, the Devil or the poet himself. In 1352 it was Edward who was seen as the man on whom all the realm depended for its leadership and judgement. At a time of European-wide social unrest, we should not take this for granted. If ‘Winner and Waster’ had been written in France, we might seriously doubt whether King John would have been presented as the best man to preside over his warring estates of merchants and gentry. And if it had been written in Scotland, the less said about David II (imprisoned at the Tower), the better.

*

On 6 December 1352 Pope Clement VI died. Within days yet another Frenchman had been elected. His successor, Innocent VI, had been one of the cardinals who had approached Edward during the Crécy campaign, and had grossly underestimated the degree of respect which Edward felt he was due as a war leader and heir to the French throne, with the result that the cardinal had been dismissed from Edward’s presence. Fortunately for Edward, the change of regime at Avignon also opened up an opportunity for a much younger man, Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, to take a lead in bringing England and France to the negotiating table.

Guy of Boulogne is one of those individuals about whom historians have strong opinions. To some he was quite genuine in his attempts to stop the war, to others he was a ‘self-seeking courtier’.²⁹ There is no doubt that he tried to connect his advantageous birth – he was the son of the count of Boulogne and the uncle of the queen of France – with his peacemaking ambitions. Having the ear of King John and being a cardinal made him a doubly dubious agent as far as Edward was concerned, but it did mean that someone, at last, could lay out clearly for King John exactly what was required to make Edward discuss a permanent peace. The problem was clear to him: Edward was never going to pick up the scraps under the king of France’s negotiating table, and he was certainly not going to accept French overlordship of any of his hard-won lands. So land had to be given away in sovereignty first in order for the French to achieve the peace and prosperity necessary to make a new start.

Guy’s initiative coincided with Edward’s own ambitions for a permanent peace. As Edward ordered work to commence on his new house at Rotherhithe, the archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Lancaster and the bishop of Norwich crossed the Channel to begin negotiations at Guines in March. What they heard – the offer of sovereignty of Gascony being given up in exchange for Edward dropping the title of king of France – was a breath of fresh air, very much in line with what they imagined Edward himself wanted. Discussions came to an end with a promise to follow them up in May 1353, along similar lines. It looked as though a permanent peace might at last be achieved.

Edward was at Eltham that Easter, overseeing the building works of his new palace, giving further directions and having the traditional great feast on Easter Day.³⁰ His vision of the future in France had so far amounted only to giving up Brittany to Charles de Blois (who was still his prisoner, kept at the Tower) in return for an acknowledgement that Brittany would never fight for either side.³¹ A permanent peace was something he had not properly considered. Now, sixteen years after the fight had begun, he found himself pondering the question seriously for the first time. What precisely was it he wanted from the French conflict? His claim had begun as a denial of Philip’s insistence on his vassal status and French incursions in Gascony. Edward had originally not meant his claim to the throne of France to be more than a bargaining position, but now that he had been so incredibly successful . . . Was it possible that he could go the whole way and actually claim the throne?

Edward seems to have found it difficult to decide. On 4 April 1353 he appointed John Avenel to take over the lieutenancy of Brittany to implement the terms of the agreement with Charles de Blois. He moved off to Chertsey and Windsor, to inspect the progress of his college there and to hold the tournament and celebrations for the feast of St George. Still he had made no decision about France. At Windsor he and Philippa presided over a gathering of the Knights of the Garter and then took the royal barge back down the river to Thurrock, on the north coast of the Thames. Perhaps he was waiting to hear what the French king thought of what had been proposed at Guines? Still he waited, caught in the indecision of not knowing what he wanted, not wanting to settle for anything less than the maximum, and not knowing what that maximum might be.

Edward’s indecision was justifiable in one respect. In May it became apparent that Guy of Boulogne’s proposed compromises were too much for King John. He was outraged that his kingship was expected to suffer on account of his father’s failings. French refusal, coupled with distrust of Cardinal Guy, was probably why Edward wavered, and delayed sending back his negotiators. John, eager to shrug off thoughts that he might relinquish sovereignty of parts of France, prepared to put his country back on a war footing. But although the attempt to secure a permanent peace had failed for the time being, it had in one sense been successful. It had posed the question which had to be asked in order for there to be a permanent peace. When all the fighting was done, what terms would Edward find acceptable?

*

From Thurrock Edward returned by barge to Westminster. There, on 6 June, he held a feast at which he entertained a number of French lords, as well as the duke of Lancaster and the fourteen-year-old John de Montfort, ‘the duke of Brittany’, Charles de Blois’ rival.³² Clearly the war was still a talking point. But Edward did not remain at Westminster to discuss the conflict but went down to Wiltshire, where he stayed until August, when he moved to Gloucestershire and the Welsh Marches.³³

Edward’s lack of energy at this time, and the apparent lack of business conducted should make us wonder what he was doing. On 12 July he had ordered the truce to be prolonged until November, but otherwise all the charters and writs emanating from the government were coming from Westminster.³⁴ Edward had for some years now established his chancery and its subsequent offices permanently at Westminster, so that all charters were written up there and sealed with the great seal. Letters patent and even letters sealed with the privy seal were written up in the king’s absence. Edward himself had a third secretariat, the secret seal, which travelled with him.³⁵ A high level of business must have been delegated. But even if all the letters emanating from the hall at Westminster were written in response to instructions from Edward’s secret seal (which they were not), Edward was certainly not overly busy with paperwork in 1353.

Given Edward’s preferred recreations, it would be reasonable to suggest that he was hunting or falconing. The chroniclers all mention Edward’s love of the chase, and we have proof of it in the huge amounts he spent on hunting and the costly garments he commissioned for hunting parties. At about this time he ordered a perch to be constructed inside his chamber at his new house at Rotherhithe for his favourite falcons to sit on.³⁶ In August he had to pay compensation to one John Forrester, who had owned three pigs until they were killed by Edward’s hunting dogs.³⁷ The following year he ordered the enclosure of the park at Lyndhurst in the New Forest for hunting.³⁸ But the likelihood of this explanation does not mean that it is the right one. On 31 July 1353, while Edward was at Clarendon Palace near Salisbury, the king’s apothecary John of Lucca, was paid £16 16s 8d for various medicines delivered for the king’s use.³⁹

Illness is a difficult subject, for the biographer as well as for the sufferer. Had this reference not survived we would not presume Edward was ill at this point in time. Chroniclers – almost always writing in hindsight – tended not to treat illnesses as subjects for comment unless it was a very serious affliction, or coloured the man’s personality, or resulted in his death. By comparison, hunting, immorality and tourneying were subjects which they were quite happy to mention in summing up a man’s life. As a result we have a picture of medieval knights all heartily and joyfully jousting and hunting together and never once suffering from bad health until they became old or died. This is ironic, given that we also know that these men were charging into each other and seriously wounding each other in peacetime, and brutally maiming each other in war. Many are reported to have been blind in one eye as a result of injuries.⁴⁰ Also plague had brought with it a wave of illnesses and morbidity not solely connected with rats. Generally speaking, noblemen born between 1350 and 1450 tended to live shorter lives than their forebears, even if they died peacefully.

Edward was not exempt from the diseases and ailments floating around fourteenth-century England. He had fallen seriously ill in Scotland in 1345. His awareness of his physical vulnerability meant that he maintained a physician and a surgeon as part of his regular household. The employment of these medical men as officers therefore does not mean that he was ill. One reason to have them on hand was the danger of warfare, as shown by the huge discrepancies between the amounts paid to his medical staff for peacetime and wartime service.⁴¹ But another was prophylactic: to maintain the king in good health. The physician advised him about what he should and should not eat at mealtimes, and which astrological periods were the optimum in which to let blood. The surgeon was responsible for his outward appearance, not just his injuries. Even if we knew which medicines were being administered, we would not know how ill he was, or what was wrong with him. All we know for certain is that he required medicines, that his rate of business dropped, and that he left most of his household staff at Salisbury and spent time alone with his closest companions and probably his physician.⁴² The other fact we may note is that his illness – whatever it was – did not incapacitate him for long. From Wiltshire he moved into Gloucestershire, and later into Herefordshire. Edward made his trip to the Mortimer shrine at Leintwardine in September. He also went to the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe at Hereford, then sent his sons to celebrate the obsequies of his late father at Gloucester, and returned to Westminster.

*

Edward’s principal purposes in summoning his council in September were to outlaw foreign courts dealing with English affairs (the Statute of Praemunire), to request an extension of the subsidy, and to discuss the Ordinance of the Staple. The wool staple – the place where all English wool had to be sold – was currently situated in Bruges, Flanders. In June 1353, while ill in Wiltshire, Edward had decided to return the wool staple to England, thereby satisfying English merchants’ demands at the same time as removing an important overseas privilege from the Flemish. By 1353 the count of Flanders (now fully in command in Bruges) had openly sided with John of France, and had refused to renew his alliance with Edward despite the best efforts of the duke of Lancaster. So there was no further advantage in forcing English merchants to export their wool to Flanders only for cloth buyers to have to re-import it at great expense.

Edward hoped the removal of the staple from Flanders and the establishment of domestic staples for wool, leather, lead and hides would be a sufficient concession to the commons to allow for this business to be dealt with in council. The taxation element meant that the commons had to be involved somehow, but in order to prevent a long list of parliamentary petitions, Edward summoned only a single knight from each shire and a small number of representatives of the towns, and called the meeting a ‘great council’, not a parliament. The representatives were happy to agree to the removal of the staple from Flanders and the prohibition of courts – especially the courts at Avignon – from dealing with any and all matters touching on English benefices and the rights of the English Crown, and they agreed to the extension of the wool subsidy. What they were not happy with was Edward’s attempt to avert the need for holding a full parliament. Petitions were put forward as if Edward had summoned a parliament. Edward realised that he could not avoid his newly acknowledged parliamentary reponsibilities simply by calling a small parliamentary assembly a ‘great council’. He listened to the petitions. Hence the council of 1353 ended up passing statutes dealing with the granting of pardons, the sale of cloth, the freedom to import Gascon wine at any port and regrating (selling bad or low-quality goods). And to make sure that Edward recognised how parliament saw its position in the legal framework, he was asked to confirm the Statute of the Staple – an important concession to English merchants – in the next full parliament.

The reason for going into the details of these parliaments of 1351–53 at some length is to illustrate the deep engagement which existed between king and parliament at this time. Edward was a man who listened to his representatives, and held dialogue with them, even if he did not or could not agree to their demands. Although it is the mass of legislation passed by his grandfather, Edward I, that caught the attention of early legal historians, prompting them to call that king ‘the English Justinian’ (referring to the great Byzantine Emperor who codified the Roman Law), Edward III was no less of a legislator. But his methods were different: he was a lawmaker, not a lawgiver. He made laws by responding to parliamentary demands. Sometimes these demands allowed him to promote his own agenda for legislation; at other times the measures were all but forced upon him as a result of his need to maintain a high level of taxation. Sometimes even he had his own wishes presented to him in the form of a petition from a magnate.⁴³ But the parliaments of Edward III are remarkable for the breadth and depth of the parliamentary dialogue between king and people. So great was Edward’s contribution that one modern scholar has assigned him the title of ‘Second English Justinian’, putting him on a footing equal to that of Edward I, the codifier of English Common Law.⁴⁴

*

Christmas 1353 was spent at Eltham, feasting every day for the traditional twelve days, and then a few days more.⁴⁵ In the new year there was an Epiphany tournament, at which Prince Edward (the Black Prince), Sir John Chandos and Sir James Audley took part, dressed in armour covered with red and black velvet.⁴⁶ Later in January Edward made his way into East Anglia. His life had become routine. Success and peace had led to building projects and parliaments becoming the events of his reign. Hunting, feasting, falconry, gift-giving and discussions about diplomatic marriages had become the stuff of his private life. Jousts and war were things of the past. Had his life continued in such a manner, one could look at the rest of it as being simply glitteringly rich, dominated by economic and social issues and architecturally splendid. Fortunately for Edward’s biographers, there was more to it than that.

The origins of the approaching discontent lay in the political machinations of King Charles of Navarre, one of French history’s most duplicitous and least likeable characters. He and his equally unlikeable brother Philip were second cousins of King John, being the sons of Philip d’Evreux and his wife Jeanne, daughter of King Louis X. They were thus royal princes on both their father’s and their mother’s side, and through their mother it had been claimed that Charles had a prior claim to the throne of France before Edward as well as King John.⁴⁷ Charles was also John’s son-in-law. In January 1354 the brothers decided they would murder the constable of France, Charles of Spain, a close confidant of King John. Philip entered the inn at which Charles of Spain was staying and had his men stab him eighty times while he tried to escape, naked, from his chamber. He reported the news to his elder brother, who assumed reponsibility for the killing, claiming he himself had ordered it to be done.⁴⁸

Charles of Navarre’s behaviour was a deliberate antagonism to the French king, and he rightly expected to be castigated for his crime. He therefore sought the support of the duke of Lancaster, to arrange for an English army to invade France if it should come to war. Lancaster referred the question back to Edward. After a little deliberation, Edward put forward excessive demands for supporting Charles, amounting to a division of the whole of France between them, with Edward being crowned king at Rheims. These were acceptable to Charles of Navarre. In the circumstances, he was likely to agree to anything in return for military aid.

Lancaster was sincere, and himself promised to fight for Charles of Navarre. Edward was also sincere, and promptly gave orders for an army to be raised. Charles himself was anything but sincere. When Cardinal Guy of Boulogne was empowered to make peace with Charles, he used his diplomatic skills to good effect, and managed a cold but clear reconciliation between Charles and John at Mantes, on 22 February. John offered substantial gifts and concessions to Charles, despite his crime, and pardoned him. Then Cardinal Guy left the French royal party to write a sarcastic letter to Lancaster telling him the news. The English had been used and betrayed.⁴⁹

Lancaster was amazed at Charles of Navarre’s abuse of his trust. One of Cardinal Guy’s comments – that ‘the hole by which he (Lancaster) had hoped to slip into France had now been sealed’ – infuriated him, and he responded by pointing out that there were many other holes known to him, and the cardinal could not hope to stop them all. The cardinal – who did not approve of the crimes committed – responded by suggesting that Lancaster might find it advantageous sometime to murder one of Edward III’s closest friends. It was only half a joke. As the cardinal was well aware, when members of the French royal family murdered royal servants and were rewarded, French politics had reached a new low.

Lancaster was deeply embarrassed and protested his innocence vehemently. He did not need to worry; Edward had no doubts about his friend’s integrity. And Edward – or, more probably, one of his far-sighted negotiators – realised the situation was actually to England’s advantage. Looking beyond the mere failure of the invasion to the reasons why the intrigue failed, it was obvious that it was due to the weakness of the French monarchy. John was so desperate for support and so devoid of ideas about how to strengthen his realm that he had paid off a hated murderer and rival rather than risk his opposition. The man who had advised him to do this was Cardinal Guy. If Guy was in the ascendant, shadily dealing with all parties secretly, and if he still understood that sovereignty was the key to peace between England and France, might not Guy be the way to bring King John to heel? Moreover, if Edward, with an army in the field, still went ahead and invaded, did Cardinal Guy not stand to lose the most? Edward saw a golden opportunity, and sent the bishop of Norwich and the earl of Huntingdon to reopen negotiations.⁵⁰

It was the right thing to do. Within days of the negotiators’ arrival at Guines the basis of a permanent settlement had been agreed. Edward was to renounce the war and his claim on the kingdom of France in return for full sovereignty of the whole of Aquitaine, Poitou, Limousin, parts of the Loire and the town and area around Calais. Both series of delegates agreed, and sealed the provisional treaty, and agreed further that the treaty should be ratified by the pope in October. Edward, it would seem, had finally decided what he wanted. After seventeen years of war, the way to peace was clear at last.

*

On Wednesday 30 April 1354 Edward entered the Painted Chamber at Westminster and met parliament. The discussions at Guines had been secret, and he was obliged not to reveal their content, so the initial address did not mention what had been agreed. Instead it was announced that there were three principal matters to attend to: the Statute of the Staple, to hear petitions of representatives, and the damage to the realm which had been occasioned by the great cost of the war with France. Edward – unable to restrain himself in this moment of victory – promised to reveal the terms of the proposed treaty before the departure of parliament.

So parliament went into session. The petitions of Roger Mortimer and Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel for the reversal of the sentences on their forebears were read out and agreed, with the result that Roger Mortimer now became the second earl of March. A spin-off was the important law that henceforth no man of whatever estate should be imprisoned or condemned without him first answering charges against him, a law commendable for its brevity (one single sentence) as well as its fairness.⁵¹ A further fifteen petitions were granted, ranging from a prohibition on exporting iron to confirmation that the Marcher lords should answer for their Welsh estates to the king (as they always had done in the past), not the prince of Wales. But the great event of the parliament was, without doubt, the moment when the ageing chamberlain, Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, announced to the magnates and prelates that there was now a distinct hope that the war could finally and agreeably be brought to a close. As the king had always placed matters of peace or war before parliament, Burghersh asked aloud: ‘Would you assent to a treaty of perpetual peace?’ And ‘unanimously and entirely’ the representatives and magnates responded ‘Yes! Yes!’

There was huge optimism after this. Edward carried on spending money on his buildings and forest enclosures as if he would need it for nothing else. Philippa was pregnant again, expecting their twelfth child, and England was in a relatively prosperous state. The wool staple was restored to England, and the merchants were satisfied. The prospective end of the French war allowed Edward to renew negotiations for the return of David II to Scotland, and to propose a long period of payment for the king’s £60,000 ransom, which would prevent the Scots making incursions into northern England for at least nine years.⁵² Edward’s only anxiety was that King John would change his mind before the pope ratified the treaty. To this end he instructed Lancaster well in advance. He told him exactly how he wished him to approach the pope at the time they would meet, humbly recognising God’s goodness to him and stating that he wished to fight God’s enemies. If there was any problem in ratifying the treaty of Guines, Lancaster was to give up Edward’s claim to Normandy, Cahors, Quercy and Angoulême, and to renegotiate other combinations of lands. Any boundary disputes could be submitted to the pope for arbitration. He was ordered to entertain all the great men in Avignon, lavishly giving gifts, distributing wine, so that all would see the richness of the English court. The cost of the trip reflects these exorbitant entertainment expenses, amounting to more than £5,000.⁵³

Lancaster arrived in Avignon on Christmas Eve and met the pope at a great feast in the papal palace on Christmas Day. The mood was optimistic, and negotiations began in the papal palace there and then. Meanwhile in England, Philippa gave birth to Edward’s seventh son, Thomas, at Woodstock, on 5 January 1355. Edward enthusiastically ordered a great tournament to take place in February, on the occasion of Philippa’s churching.⁵⁴ But not long after this order was given, dire news arrived from Avignon. The French negotiators were not discussing the treaty of Guines.⁵⁵ Indeed, it was clear that Cardinal Guy was not fully in touch with the king in Paris, and had fallen out of favour. King John was rather thinking that it was now to his advantage to begin the war again, so he could punish Charles of Navarre and launch a massive attack on Gascony. The French negotiators at Avignon were just going through the motions, playing for time.

In the end the negotiations, the lavish display of wealth and the hopes for peace were all in vain. The entire diplomatic assembly achieved nothing more than a brief renewed alliance with the untrustworthy Charles of Navarre and an agreement to extend the truce until Midsummer’s Day 1355. Lancaster left Avignon in a furious mood, loudly declaring that Edward was the rightful king of France. The disappointment in the English camp, and through all of England, was bitter. No one could forgive the French king for this. It might even be said to mark the biggest French diplomatic failure of the war so far. The negotiators between April 1353 and February 1355 had achieved nothing for France but they had focused Edward’s mind on the question of what he wanted from the war. Now he had decided, he resolved to do everything within his power to get it.