FIFTEEN
THE WAR WAS over. After eight years of struggling to capitalise on his dominant military position, Edward had finally achieved a lasting settlement. All that remained was for King John to relinquish sovereignty of the lands agreed and for Edward formally to renounce his claim on the French throne. In October 1360 he crossed the Channel to Calais to see these things done. A few questions remained about the renunciations, and these clauses had to be removed from the final treaty and inserted into a separate document to be discussed further, but otherwise the Brétigny agreement was ratified at Calais on 24 October. Edward returned to England and summoned parliament to meet after Christmas, the ratification by parliament being the very last stage in ending the war.
As every reader knows, the conflict which Edward believed he had brought to an end after twenty-three years fighting is now known as the Hundred Years War. The name is misleading, for it suggests that it was one great, protracted struggle. At several times in the fourteenth century the war came to an end, and peace treaties were entered into – and ratified – in good faith. We tend to forget that different stages of ‘the war’ broke out for different reasons. Some would say that there was no such thing as the Hundred Years War. What we have so far heard about is just the first phase of the great conflict which was given an ideological unity by presenting the English claim to the throne of France as real. But this first phase was essentially a war of rivalry between Edward III and Philip de Valois, in which Edward’s claim was a means to an end, not an end in itself (unlike later stages of the conflict). Almost every aspect of Edward’s involvement in the war since hearing of Philip’s death had been an attempt to secure a lasting peace on good terms for the English. It is more accurate therefore to think of Edward in 1360 as having achieved a belated but satisfactory end to this war of rivalry.
Edward was now nearing fifty. His original rival was long-since dead. His victories were of such glory and magnitude that he could not have easily repeated them. He was more interested in great building projects than protracted sieges. Besides, his health was not good.1 His wife’s health too was declining. Almost the first thing he did when returning to England in 1360 was to merge his household with Philippa’s, with the implication that henceforth they would be together. He was not going to spend the rest of his days fighting a futile war with France which, in his own mind, he had already won. It was time for him to enjoy the fruits of his labours, in peace, and to spend his last days of companionship with his much-loved queen, creating works of lasting beauty.
Edward and Philippa spent Christmas 1360 at Woodstock with their sons and daughters and the king of France.2 Here Edward wore a coat he had specially commissioned. It was made of black satin embroidered in gold and silk thread with the image of a woodbine – a climbing plant, such as ivy or honeysuckle – and bearing the motto in gold lettering ‘Syker as ye Wodebynd’ (clinging like the woodbine).3 This is the fourth and last of Edward’s known mottoes, and in many ways it is the most mysterious. If the first (‘It is as it is’) is to be associated with the death of Edward’s father, the second (‘Hay, hay the white swan, by God’s soul I am thy man’) is to be loosely associated with the tournaments of 1348–49, and the third (‘Honi soit . . .’) with Lancaster, then we should be looking for another personal subject as the inspiration.4 Without further evidence it is impossible to be certain, but it seems that this motto is Edward’s own comment on himself and his queen: a reflection on his career and the part she had played in his success. She had been the tree around which he had climbed, twisting like ivy. She was like a pillar to him, a source of courage and self-confidence despite his wanderings and adventures, and had been ever since the day they married. His open appreciation of her loyalty and support after more than thirty years is touching, and inclines us to see the kindness and gratitude of the man. But the motto is also interesting in that Edward clearly compares himself to the searching, questioning woodbine. This is apt; since that frightened, lonely boy-king under Mortimer’s dominance, Edward had been feeling his way like the climbing ivy. Even the firm policies on which he relied strategically had been discovered through trial and error: he cannot be said to have inherited them from his father. In looking for the man’s own idea of himself we should not ignore this unique case of self-definition. He had always been searching for the way to be a great king, and, now that he was one, he realised that it had only been possible due to the consistent and devoted support of Queen Philippa. She had been the strong emotional foundation for his experiment in kingship. Later events would prove this to be only too true: as her sickness worsened, so did his leadership. She was essential to his continuing to strive to be a great king.
So what does a warrior-king do when he has won his last battle? What does he do when he has sealed the peace treaty on his last war? What does the climbing woodbine seek? Edward, of course, had already given much thought to this question. There were the permanent structures of the Order of the Garter and his religious foundations. There were his many secular building projects, especially Windsor Castle and Queenborough, to which he now could direct more money than ever before. And there was parliament. When he entered the Painted Chamber in 1361 it was to the smiles and delight of the representatives of a grateful people. Even the most ardent anti-war merchants had to be pleased, for now they could expect to be taxed less. Ratification was predictably swift and complete. On 2 February the first ransom instalment was received from the French and, following oaths in the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury, King John was free to return to his devastated homeland.
The parliament of 1361 was more than a mere congratulatory assembly. It was like the great parliaments of the 1350s: it transformed the enthusiasm of the time and the rapid economic development of the country into business decisions and social legislation. The king and representatives locked together in a debate about power over everyday lives. The Statute of Labourers was reinforced, the earlier legislation regarding weights and measures was renewed. Laws were passed restricting the exportation of corn and banning jurors from receiving bribes. Given Edward’s interest in hunting, it is interesting to note that a law was passed ensuring that the lord who lost a hawk could legally expect its finder to return it to him. But by far the most important legislation of this parliament was an Act which became the basis of local administration in England for the next half-millennium. Edward agreed, at long last, to the principle that local landholders should have the right to arrest, try and punish minor wrongdoers. In each county there were to be four Justices of the Peace to try offenders. Serious cases were still to be tried by the royal assize courts, but local justice had finally arrived. Two years later Edward expanded the JP’s role to include quarterly meetings: the ‘Quarter Sessions’. It was only in the nineteenth century that this structure of local government began to be replaced. The basic legislation empowering JPs is still in force today.
Edward and his contemporaries had every reason to believe that the subsequent decade would be an age of great achievements. Parliament could expect legal battles, the king could build and live in splendour. Few at the parliament of 1361, seeing the peace ratified, and realising that English local government had become a reality, could possibly have guessed how the coming year would be marked not by a glorious peace but by tragedy.
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A number of Edward’s close companions had died over the last year. The young earl of March – marshal of the English army, Knight of the Garter and still only thirty-one – had died in France in 1360. Edward had his body brought back to England and gave expensive offerings at his burial at Wigmore and at his obsequies at Windsor.5 In September 1360 another Knight of the Garter, the earl of Northampton, died. He was Edward’s contemporary, one of his bravest generals and one of the few men left who had been there with Edward that night when Mortimer had been arrested, thirty years earlier. Edward gave several expensive cloths of gold for his funeral too.6 Two more Garter knights were buried at the end of the year: Sir John Beauchamp (standard-bearer at Crécy) and the veteran warrior Sir Thomas Holland, husband of the Fair Maid of Kent and the man who had bellowed across the Seine at the French on the Crécy campaign. Edward’s old friends were disappearing fast.
The biggest blow, however, was Lancaster’s death, on 23 March 1361.7 Lancaster had been Edward’s most trusted friend for about twenty years. He had won several major battles as sole leader, had fought under Edward’s banner, been present at the siege of Calais, and had won countless skirmishes and minor sieges. He had been one of the six earls created in 1337 and the chief negotiator in Edward’s search for peace since 1353. It was probably his garters which had resulted in the emblem being adopted by Edward’s chivalric order. He had wisdom, strength, courage and luck. Furthermore he had that quality which Edward prized above all others: royalty, as the great-grandson of Henry III, like Edward himself. And he had great piety too. In his The Book of Holy Medicines he has left us the most detailed first-hand account of the character of a great magnate at Edward’s court. He was not only literate, he prized being able to write, having taught himself. He could speak English as well as French. He was pious, the general theme of The Book of Holy Medicines being a description of how his five senses had become infected with the Seven Deadly Sins. And with almost Pepysian self-deprecating honesty he admitted to exactly how this had happened over the course of his life. In his youth he had been tall, slim, good-looking, and vain. He had taken great pleasure in regarding the rings on his fingers and his foot in the stirrup. He had loved dancing and music, and had worn the most exquisite clothes (he thought garters particularly suited him). He had made love to many women, sung songs to them, then ‘loved and lost them’. He admitted that he much preferred the embraces of common women to aristocratic ones as they were less censorious of his behaviour. At the time of writing he was in his early fifties, suffering from gout, but still very partial to salmon (his favourite food), spices and strong sauces, and he loved drinking good wine in quantity. Like Edward, in 1360 feasting and hunting were his greatest passions (love-making having fallen by the wayside of middle age), but the song of the nightingale and the scents of roses, musk, violets and lily of the valley were also dear to him. This was the man whom Edward now lost, an intelligent, sensual, brave cousin, a successful commander, the father-in-law of his son John, and his best friend. At his funeral, in the collegiate church at Leicester, Edward gave four cloths of gold Eastern brocade and four of gold brocade of Lucca in his memory.8
Worse was to follow. On 26 February 1361 burning lights had been seen across the sky at midnight.9 Some said they formed the shape of the cross, and many were afraid. There was an eclipse of the sun, followed by a severe drought. Corn, fruit and hay withered and died in the spring. It was said that not rain but blood fell at Boulogne. Others said that men had seen images of two castles in the sky, from which black and white hosts issued to fight one another. All these strange events were soon explained as forewarnings of a calamitous event. The portents may have been illusory but the calamity itself was not. In May the plague returned.
It is easy for us to take the view that the plague of 1361 was not as bad as that of 1348–49. After all, people knew what to expect, and would have been less shocked. But for exactly that reason the return of the plague – with the widespread expectation that itwould be as bad as 1348–49 – must have been deeply unsettling. People had thought that the plague had gone forever; so with its return, they became aware that it had not, but might return again and again, as indeed it did. Children were particularly vulnerable. Anyone not born before 1349 had no resistance, and one chronicler speaks of the plague being the Children’s Plague as a result of the high infant mortality.
For Edward the return of the plague carried a particular resonance. It challenged him again to show his faith that God would protect him by appearing regularly in public. But would God protect him now that he had won his war? Such reasoning was normal in the spiritual climate of 1361. After the 1360 campaign God had seen fit to summon five Knights of the Garter to his heavenly table, their earthly duties done. Lancaster may even have been killed by the plague, as many chroniclers said.10 Would God now kill off Edward too?
During the last visitation of the plague, Edward had ostentatiously held the Order of the Garter tournament at Windsor. Since then the Windsor tournament and mass in St George’s Chapel had become a fixture of the royal calendar. With plague once more encroaching on the spirit of the nation, the Windsor tournament again became the focal point of Edward’s demonstration that royalty did not shrink from mortal diseases. He seized the opportunity to make the 1361 feast of St George every bit as high-profile as its predecessors. As five Knights of the Garter had recently died, he installed other men in their places, including his three sons, Lionel, John and Edmund. Along with the usual blue robes of the Order, black and scarlet lengths of material were ordered in large quantities, possibly for teams of living knights to joust against mourners or the dead. More than two hundred garter emblems were ordered to be sewn, many furs were trimmed as gifts, and more than eight hundred brooches were made to be given out at the king’s will.11
After the tournament festivities Edward went to Sheppey to oversee the foundation laying of his new town and castle. The plague spread, killing thousands. The cemeteries were reopened. Men of substance began to pack up and head off for their most remote estates. On 10 May Edward suspended the actions of all the law courts as a consequence of the pestilence.12 Many lesser men, panic-stricken by the approach of the disease, seized what they thought might be their last opportunity to go on a pilgrimage, to atone for their sins. In this way they spread the disease further. By the summer it was rife.
Edward staged two more high-profile events. These took the form of royal marriages. The first, and easiest to arrange, was the wedding at Woodstock of his seventeen-year-old daughter Mary to the young John de Montfort, claimant to the duchy of Brittany, who had grown up at the English court. The second was a much more controversial match: the prince of Wales and Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent. It seems that, not long after Sir Thomas Holland’s death, the prince moved in on the widow. This was commonly rumoured to have been a love-match, and it seems almost certain that it was. Joan’s marital history was notorious, she had had two husbands already, had given birth to five children and was now about thirty-three years of age. Edward himself had intended his son and heir to marry an heiress from the Low Countries, but the pope had been holding up such a match for years, refusing to grant the necessary dispensation. It was with surprise but no regrets that Edward acquiesced to his son’s desire to marry his second cousin. He wrote to the pope that summer to ask permission for the marriage. This was swiftly granted. With great ceremony, the Black Prince and his fair bride were married by the archbishop of Canterbury, at Windsor on 10 October 1361.
Some chroniclers wrote of their shock at this union. Joan – ‘the Virgin of Kent’ as one writer sarcastically referred to her – was now set to become queen.13 Froissart (who probably met her on several occasions) described her as both the most beautiful woman in England and also the most given over to love. Not only was she bigamous and believed to be adulterous, she was profligate too. She was quite capable of spending £200 on a set of jewelled buttons: a show of outrageous flamboyance worthy of Edward himself.14But Edward, despite the rumours of her unsuitability, seems to have raised no objection to the match. Indeed, he condoned it, sending his own man to ask for the papal dispensation. After the wedding the couple retired to Berkhamsted for the rest of the year, where Edward visited them after Christmas.
No matter how many high-profile events Edward held, no matter how much he tried to show that royal business was proceeding as normal, the plague continued. He could not hold back the tide of death which again swept across the country. After the first suspension of the law courts in May, Edward was forced to suspend them again. Law and order suffered. Women whose husbands had been lost to the disease were forced to marry ‘strangers’ by their manorial bailiffs, or else lose their homes and lands. Edward was forced to suspend the operations of the Exchequer to try to stop the spread of the disease. Taxation and finance suffered. And among the dying there now were people who mattered to Edward. Although he was probably not in the least upset to hear of the death in June of Thomas Lisle, the embittered bishop of Ely, he would have been concerned by the death in September of the bishop of London, Michael Northburgh, co-founder (with Sir Walter Manny) of the London Charterhouse. Far more distressing were the deaths on 4 and 5 October respectively of Sir John Mowbray and Sir Reginald Cobham. The latter especially had been one of the principal architects of the battle of Crécy. A few days later the earl of Hereford died. Two weeks after that, Sir William Fitzwarin, another Knight of the Garter, became another casualty of the plague. The bishop of Worcester was added to the list a month later.
These deaths were all of little import by comparison with the death of his daughter Mary in September.15 She was only just married, only seventeen. Shortly afterwards, Edward’s youngest daughter Margaret also died. Like her sister, she had not been long married, and, like her sister, she probably died of plague. Sadly the royal family made its way to Abingdon to bury the two royal princesses together in the abbey there. Of Edward’s five daughters, he had lost all but one, Isabella.
Blow after blow had rained down on Edward. Death after death. And the questions about his victory in France were beginning to circulate at court. The problems were merely technical, but mere technicalities had undone the peace process before. There were still unresolved doubts about the actual boundary decisions of certain lands which Edward claimed the French had given up, and he demanded that the French king renounce sovereignty of them. John refused, and so Edward refused formally to renounce his claim on the throne of France until the matter was sorted out. This was not a ploy to allow him to begin the war again, as some writers have suggested, for the authority he issued to his son in Gascony clearly anticipated that his claim on the throne would be given up.16 But discussions in plague-stricken London in October 1361 were followed by further discussions in Paris, with no solution. An added complication was that many English soldiers of fortune were trying to make money in France in its crisis years, acting as bands of renegade soldiers, with no political affiliation. In November their antics were brought to Edward’s attention, who commissioned John Hound and Richard Imworth to arrest any English men-at-arms or archers found plundering in France. Even though Imworth was an utterly ruthless man, later described as ‘a tormentor without pity’, it was not easy to stop these self-serving bands of robbers.17 Twenty-three years of war had led to an attitude of self-interest and violence towards France. It certainly was impossible to reverse that trend overnight.
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At the beginning of 1362 Edward was in his fiftieth year, heading for that birthday which would bring up his personal jubilee. This was a significant milestone: with it came the unavoidable awareness that he was entering old age. Although fifty might seem barely middle-aged to the majority of modern readers, it was over the hill for most medieval aristocrats. The average age of the five Knights of the Garter who had died in 1360 was forty-three.18
The one positive, creative policy which emerges over the two years leading up to his fiftieth birthday is Edward’s strategy of giving his sons positions of dignity and responsibility. If he was deeply upset by the loss of his close friends and daughters – and there is no reason to suppose he was not – he seems to have pushed his energies into furthering his sons’ careers. By mid-1362 he had settled his ideas for the eldest three. Edward was to be given the title Prince of Aquitaine in addition to that of Prince of Wales, becoming the resident seigneurial lord of that province. Lionel was to start to put his Irish inheritance to good use, bringing that country back into line with royal authority. And John of Gaunt was to be given the lordship of the north. Clearly Edward’s idea was to create a series of lesser kings under his sovereignty. Rather than being a king who ruled only a prince and a dozen or so earls, he would be a king who ruled over several dukes and a prince, just as King John ruled over the dukes of Normandy, Burgundy, Brittany and Orléans.
The first filial ship to be launched upon the high seas of international politics was Lionel. In 1360 the Anglo-Irish had been in a desperate situation and had written to Edward urging him to send ‘a good sufficient chieftain, stocked and strengthened with men and treasure’ to fight the native Irish and restore English rule in central Ireland. As the earl of Ulster, Lionel was the obvious man for the job. Accordingly in March 1361 Edward announced that twenty-two-year-old Lionel would lead an army to Ireland, as King’s Lieutenant, and started to make preparations to help him win praise in his first commission. The exportation of corn from Ireland was forbidden in readiness for his imminent arrival. All the sheriffs in England were ordered to proclaim that anyone having lands in Ireland was to sail with Lionel and defend them. All shipping which could threaten the second-in-line to the throne was arrested. A clerk was sent to Ireland to ride around announcing Lionel’s arrival. Eventually (after six months) Lionel himself landed, with an army of fifty knights, three hundred men-at-arms and 540 mounted archers.19 In addition he had with him a thousand bows, three thousand sheaves of the best arrows, a ‘copper’ (i.e. bronze) gun and sixteen pounds of gunpowder for it, all directed to his wardrobe by his careful father.20 A further six hundred bows and two thousand sheaves of arrows were despatched in May 1362.
The job which Edward had given Lionel was a tough one. When the Anglo-Irish had written in 1360, their plea was inspired by years of native Irish attacks and English neglect. But neither did they want heavy-handed English intervention. Although Thomas Rokeby had been briefly successful in taming the wilder forces which roamed the borders of the English jurisdiction in the early 1350s, the plague had ravaged Ireland to the point where rebuilding was required, not just reformation. Edward’s instructions of 1350 to reform the land had proved a dead letter: the land was too poor and the people too hard-pressed to obey new laws which were inadequately enforced by a king who had never been to Ireland.
Lionel set about his task with gusto, first attacking resistance from the native Irish in Wicklow and then in Leinster. But soon his campaigning ground to a halt. There was no great army he could attack, no national unity which had to be tamed. There were many small, disparate lords and petty kings, whose allegiances to the English varied in strength. The only way to tackle these men was to leave small garrisons in the castles controlling the roads and territories they ruled. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the ‘English born in Ireland’ were a breed apart from the ‘English born in England’. While the latter were loyal to Edward, the former (the great majority) were loyal only when it suited them. They had marriage ties to the native Irish, dressed in Irish clothes and spoke Gaelic. To all intents and purposes they had ‘gone native’. Lionel was to spend a total of five years wrestling with the problem, installing many garrisons and returning to England to consult with his father. In 1366, with Edward’s approval, he finally enacted the major piece of English legislation in medieval Ireland, the Statute of Kilkenny, which encapsulated Edward’s instructions of 1342 and 1350 and enforced an absolute distinction between the English and the Irish, prohibiting intermarriage and the use of the Irish language, laws and customs by all the English, wherever they were born. In so doing it recognised native Irish independence through cutting off those parts of Ireland that remained outside royal control and more firmly administering those areas in which the English could exercise jurisdiction. This would remain the basis of English rule in Ireland until 1613. 21
Edward’s eldest son, the prince of Wales, had long been marked down for duty in Gascony. Ever since his first campaign there, when the Gascon nobles had actually requested his presence, it had seemed the ideal training ground for his princely qualities. Accordingly, the prince did homage for the duchy of Aquitaine, which his father now elevated into a principality, on 19 July 1362. With his wife he then set out for his new domain, where he arrived the following June, having spent the whole winter on his estates in Cornwall. His administration in the duchy began well, ably led by his constable and fellow Garter knight, Sir John Chandos. Nor did Edward wholly give up decision-making over the principality, unable perhaps to relinquish control of the land which his comrades like Manny and Lancaster had fought so hard to secure. One interesting aspect was a code by which Edward could be sure that letters sent to him purporting to be written by the prince were actually written by him. These were to bear one of the prince’s mottoes, ‘houmont’ (great courage) or ‘ich dien’ (I serve).22
The goodwill towards the English in the region remained strong for several years. It was visible in 1364, when the prince needed to raise money. He instituted a hearth tax, and a high one at that, which should have been very difficult to impose on areas which had largely evaded paying taxes altogether for a number of years. There were questions raised in the Agenais, and the county of Rodez, where the count of Armagnac forbade his vassals from paying the tax, but otherwise this controversial measure was accepted throughout the principality. The prince’s autocratic manner, however, did not endear him greatly to his subjects, and he personally alienated a number of Gascon lords. Nor did he have the administrative and negotiating capabilities of his father. He proved unable to find diplomatic solutions to the boundary disputes occasioned by the Brétigny treaty, and showed himself unwilling or unable to prevent the army of English freebooters from assaulting French possessions on the fringes of the province. In November 1364, when the violence of these freebooting companies had reached desperate levels, the order to put down the violence came not from the prince but from King Edward in England. So it was doubly unwise for the prince to parade himself around in magnificent ostentation: he was undermining his own position by claiming too much credit and undertaking too little responsibility. Thousands turned out to see the christening at Bordeaux of his first-born son, Edward, in 1365, and the occasion should have been used to weld the Gascons more firmly into an English-led unity. But the prince saw the moment as one in which all the glory was for him and his family, not Gascony. Edward of Woodstock had all the courage and martial talent of Edward I and Edward III, but his autocratic attitude and diplomatic skills were reminiscent of Edward II.
Edward’s third son, John of Gaunt, was destined for a northern palatinate, secured on the inheritance of his wife, Blanche, one of the two daughters of the late duke of Lancaster. In April 1362 his inheritance doubled, on the unexpected death of his sister-in-law, Maud. This meant that all of the huge palatinate lordship of the duchy of Lancaster – the richest lordship in England – passed to him. Edward had not expected this to happen, and it is possible that he viewed it as unfortunate, as it gave John a greater income and a larger inheritance than his elder brother Lionel could have hoped to enjoy. John was also the sort of man who made enemies for life. Shortly after inheriting the duchy he was accused of poisoning his sister-in-law. Considerable amounts of money and power were hardly likely to teach him to be more circumspect. Nevertheless, from Edward’s point of view it was better that such a massive inheritance came to his son rather than to someone outside the royal family. And Edward may have recognised that it might yield some unexpected advantages. He had at various times in the past discussed the possibility of John becoming the heir of David II of Scotland. If that were to become a reality, it would help secure the border, as John of Gaunt would not only be king north of the border but the largest landowner in the area directly south of it. As it happened, when the matter was discussed again in November 1363, it was ruled out by the Scottish parliament, whose members were adamant in their view that they should not have John or any of Edward’s sons for their king.
Edward’s plans for his fourth surviving son, Edmund, were concentrated on the Low Countries, and in particular Flanders. His idea was that Edmund should marry the daughter and heiress of Count Louis of Flanders, but in order for this to happen, he needed to persuade the pope. In 1362 Pope Innocent VI died, to be replaced by the pious and studious abbot of Marseilles, who became Urban V. Even this most conscientious of religious leaders was unable to overlook the fact that it would be much more in France’s interest for the heiress of Flanders to marry a French rather than an English prince, and so Edward’s plans were thwarted over and over again.
Edward’s fifth son, Thomas, was still young, only seven in 1362, and as yet remained outside Edward’s pan-European dynastic ambitions. His last daughter, Isabella, also remained outside his scheme. Her role would of course lie in being a bride to a ruler rather than taking a role in government. Edward had proposed a series of matches for her, but none had succeeded. The count of Flanders had at one point been about to marry her but that had fallen through. Then, in 1351, at the age of nineteen, she had simply refused to go through with a marriage to Bernard, the heir of the Gascon Lord Albret. It was her own decision. Edward had declared his readiness that she – ‘our very dear eldest daughter, whom we have loved with special affection’ – should marry the heir, but she refused to embark on the boat waiting to take her to Gascony.23 Extraordinarily, Edward did not hold this against her. Later in the 1350s he gave her annuities and rewards, and she was more constantly with him than any of his other children. It seems that she was set on a love-match, like her elder brother. In 1365, aged thirty-three, she finally chose Enguerrand de Coucy, a lord in England as a hostage for the fulfilment of the Treaty of Brétigny. Edward acquiesced to her desire, and generously endowed de Coucy with a title and made him a Knight of the Garter, but Enguerrand’s heart never lay in England, and, once the initial passion with Isabella had worn off, they separated. He went to fight in Italy and she remained with her two daughters at her father’s court in England.
On 13 November 1362 Edward finally celebrated his fiftieth birthday. To mark the occasion he summoned a parliament, almost entirely consisting of commoners.24 He issued a general pardon to wrongdoers throughout the realm in commemoration of his jubilee. More importantly for the petitioners present, Edward granted a new Statute of Purveyance. In it, all requisitioning of goods for the use of the royal household was done away with except that expressly for the king and queen. The title ‘purveyor’ was removed also, being changed to ‘buyer’. This more clearly emphasised that people should be paid for the goods seized at the time they were requisitioned.25 In addition, restrictions were placed on the buyers for the royal household, rendering them liable to arrest if their behaviour was not deemed to be up to standard. Edward obviously intended this legislation to be a gift to his people. Likewise his confirmation that a parliament should be held every year. The same benevolent intention lay behind his promises that royal officers (escheators) who took wards’ estates into royal custody should not charge fees, that fines for breaking the Statute of Labourers should be handed over to parliament, and that the subsidy of wool would not constitute a precedent for indirect taxation in peacetime. Whether or not the representatives at Edward’s jubilee parliament were grateful we cannot say, but the legislation flowed, and it flowed in the commons’ favour.
The 1362 parliament is today remembered for one piece of legislation above all others: ‘pleas shall be pleaded in the English tongue and enrolled in Latin’.26 This is the first piece of legislation which officially recognised the English language. Since the eleventh century the language of the nobility had been French, and the language of the courts had generally been French, translated into Latin for the permanent record. As this new legislation now recognised, it was not right that men and women should be tried in a tongue they did not understand. But its significance was more than just fairness. The Statute of Pleading, as it was called, gave official recognition to English. It was described as the ‘Tongue of the Country’, and was thus accorded the status of a national language. In doing this, Edward recognised that a great change was taking place. Whereas in 1300 almost no one of importance in England spoke English – it being very definitely the language of the peasantry – by 1400 almost everyone of importance did speak English. Edward himself spoke it and used it in his mottoes. The duke of Lancaster spoke it. Edward’s grandson, Edward of York, translated Gaston Phoebus’s treatise on hunting into English.27 In 1362 John Wycliffe – the man who first translated the New Testament into English – was Master of Balliol College. His opponent, the gifted Simon Langham – abbot of Westminster, archbishop of Canterbury from 1366, and in turn both Chancellor and Treasurer – spoke English. Chaucer – the first great poet since Saxon times to write in the English language – was in royal service. Strikingly, from this date on until the end of the reign, parliament was addressed at its opening in English (three times by Langham).28 By the 1380s English had supplanted French as the language used in grammar schools.29English was coming to the fore, and one of the reasons for its speedy rise was its patronage and use by eminent men, including the king’s ministers and members of the English royal family.30
Just before the end of the parliament, on the actual day of his birthday, Edward promoted his second, third and fourth sons to new, high titles. Lionel became duke of Clarence, in reference to his inheritance of the Clare estates, which, combined with the earldom of Ulster, made him by far the greatest landowner in Ireland. John became duke of Lancaster, acquiring the title of Edward’s late general as well as his estates. And Edmund became earl of Cambridge.31 And of course there was a great feast. On his fiftieth birthday Edward revelled in his great fortune by sharing a little of it out amongst his children, his friends and his people.
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At Edward’s birth, the author of the Life of Edward the Second had expressed the hope that Edward would ‘follow the industry of King Henry the second, the well-known valour of King Richard, reach the age of King Henry [the third], revive the wisdom of King Edward [the first] and remind us of the physical strength and comeliness of his father’. On his fiftieth birthday Edward could be said to have fulfilled all of the chronicler’s hopes for him except reaching the age of Henry III (who lived to sixty-five). But if he looked in the mirror, what did he see? A man at the height of his royal authority, groomed to look the part, admired, famous and feared by his enemies; but also a man who had now achieved his life’s ambitions. The eyes were still bright, the face was still handsome and the mind was still strong, but there was nothing left to yearn for.
It would be too soon in an evaluation of Edward’s life to say that his regnal authority was weakening. In the mid-1360s that authority was stronger than ever. But the key thread of his kingship – his vision of what kingship could and should be, which had given his life and reign such meaning and dynamism – was now all but extinguished. This has nothing to do with failure, and much to do with success. Edward in 1365 resembled the self-penned character portrait of the late duke of Lancaster. Years before he had danced and tourneyed with the best of them but now he resisted all but the occasional passing fancy. Once he had yearned for victories and accolades; now he preferred to feast himself on salmon and strong sauces, and to drink Gascon wine to join in the merriment of the court feasts. Where were the men with whom he used to drink, laugh and urge on to glory? Where were William Montagu, Reginald Cobham, Thomas Dagworth and the earls of Huntingdon, Northampton and Lancaster? Even the friends who were still alive were not with him now. They were old and retired, gone to their estates to tell tales of their glory days.
The cruelty of kingship gradually became apparent to Edward. His vassals – even the heroes among them – could grow old, withdraw from society, and die in relative peace. But not him; not the king. Too much depended on him. Edward could not grow old without growing weak, and if he grew weak, then England grew weak. Any of his earls could gracefully decline to joust, and claim middle age as an excuse. The king had to be seen still to be prepared for war and to risk his life, if need be. It was incongruous, especially now that he was in his fifties and growing fatter. A favourite red velvet belt with gold and pearls had to be sent back to his tailor in 1363 to be made larger.32 New war armour was made for him in the same year. Edward wanted little to do with stratagems, war, the pope, or any other challenge. He had earned a little peace, surely? He wanted to complete his great buildings, to spend time with Philippa, to listen to his minstrels, to hear the chiming of his clocks, to look at his paintings, to show off his jewels, to hunt in summer and to loose his falcons in winter, and to be rowed in the royal barge down to Sheppey where his new castle was being built for him.
This sudden decline of ambition may be attributed to Edward’s age, or his changing nature, but we should also consider his state of health. As mentioned in a previous chapter, this is a particularly difficult subject area. For instance, we cannot simply rely on occasional payments for medicines to know when he was ill. Edward maintained a permanent medical staff as a part of his household, and so most medical functions would have fallen within the scope of their regular duties, requiring no extra payments. Similarly we cannot assume from the continued activity of government that Edward was physically well. Most work was delegated, and what was not depended only on the king’s ability to issue an order, he did not necessarily have to get out of bed. But there is one way we can make a rough estimate of Edward’s state of health: we can assess how many medical practitioners Edward was employing from outside his household. Often these men were not employed but rewarded, and through tracing these rewards and gifts we do get an idea of how many ‘second opinions’ were being sought on his medical condition. Apart from the 1349–50 plague year, no practitioner was rewarded as a second ‘king’s physician’ until the years 1364–67, when John Paladyn and John Glaston were both recorded in this capacity.33 A second physician seems to have been employed regularly in the period 1368–70 and several were employed in the 1370s. As for surgeons, there are various payments to non-household surgeons in 1359, 1362 and from 1368 to his death. It would appear safest to conclude that Edward’s health was already suffering, perhaps intermittently, from 1363–64 if not earlier.
If Edward was indeed ill as early as 1363 he was not letting it show. No chronicler records his sickness at this time. Nor could he have played the ailing king if he felt inclined; warrior status does not admit of physical weakness. And as the payment for war armour shows, he was still having to play the part of the warrior-king. When in November 1363 he and Philippa played host to three kings – those of France, Cyprus and Scotland – a great tournament was held in their honour at Smithfield: it was simply what was expected.34 The regularity of royal tournaments may be considered a second check on the king’s health. Jousts continued to take place but whereas in 1348 there had been a royal tournament every month, now it was rare for there to be two in a year. Where was the pleasure in patronising events which only showed how much younger and stronger the new crop of inexperienced youthful strangers were? But such events could not be given up entirely. That would be admitting of weakness, and unkingly behaviour.
Edward’s favourite pastimes in the 1360s were hunting and falconry, and he now began to spend more time pursuing these. In the early 1350s he had kept a staff of six huntsmen and seven falconers, but in 1360 he and Philippa maintained thirty-one huntsmen and twenty-three falconers, and it is unlikely that the total number engaged in serving their hunting activities dropped below thirty for the rest of the decade.35 There were hunting parks attached to most of the royal houses and castles. Edward spent about £80 per year on his hunting dogs alone.36 He kept fifty or sixty birds of prey – gerfalcons, goshawks, tiercels and lannerets – at his mews, near Charing.37 When we consider the cost of obtaining the birds in the first place, and then feeding them at a rate of at least a penny a day, and the wages of the many keepers and trainers, and their official robes, Edward’s expenditure on hunting can be totalled at around £600 each year, an average baron’s annual income. In 1367–68 he spent this sum on his falcons alone. This was much more than other medieval English kings, and much more than he himself spent in earlier and later decades.
It is perhaps in parliament that we can most clearly detect the lessening of political ambition. After the generous and ground-breaking legislation of 1362, that of the 1363 parliament was highly conservative. Edward attempted to set prices for goods, trying to legislate against inflation. He and his officials set down in codified laws exactly what a servant was allowed to wear and eat, and what craftsmen and yeomen were allowed, what lesser gentlemen and their wives and families were allowed, and what merchants, knights, clergymen and ploughmen were allowed. This second sumptuary law was futile, but it shows the conservatism of Edward’s mind in the mid-1360s.38 This was simply how he and his advisers (who drafted the legislation) believed society should be, in a hierarchical ladder from the king down to the servants. At the same time as he was legislating that servants and people of low status could not wear silk or furs, or any embroidered material, he himself was paying hundreds of pounds for the most lavishly embroidered and fur-trimmed clothes. While stipulating that husbandmen should eat no more than two dishes per day, he ordered that eight dishes were to be set before him at every mealtime, and five before the lords with him, three before his gentlemen, and two before his grooms.39 Even if one takes the view that he was trying to encourage moderation of the ranks of society who felt bound to compete with each other, buying finer clothes than they needed and feasting to excess, his policy of restraint has to be seen as conservative.
Even more telling was the parliament of 1364. It never happened. Although Edward had agreed as recently as his fiftieth birthday that a parliament would take place annually, the meeting due to take place in his thirty-seventh year on the throne did not actually meet until 20 January 1365, four days before the end of the regnal year. Moreover it continued over into the next regnal year, and so Edward managed to avoid having to hold another until May 1366, and that was a brief meeting in which legislation was not discussed. In 1367 he declined to summon a parliament at all, so no more statutes were enrolled until May 1368. This is hardly a sign of eagerness on Edward’s part to engage with parliament, or to use the petitions to address the needs and complaints of his people. And some of the legislation that he did pass was strategically self-defeating. Over the course of 1363–65 he renewed his attempts to establish monopolies for trade.40 In 1364 he tried to reverse the legislation of 1361 providing for the judicial powers of JPs.41 And he renewed his attack upon the pope. Although Urban V was probably the most pious of all the French pontiffs, Edward’s frustration over his failure to grant permission for the marriages of his sons made him reissue the Statutes of Praemunire and Provisors in January 1365, ending any chance he had of coaxing Urban V to compromise over the war. Urban finally gave in to Edward’s demands that there should be an English cardinal, and awarded Simon Langham a red cap in 1368, but this was due to Urban’s judgement, not Edward’s pressure. Edward in fact complained about the appointment.
It was not that Edward had suddenly turned into a neglectful king, it was simply that the ambition to be a better king was no longer there. The emphasis had turned from the king seeking success to one whose measure of success was simply to get through each day in a kingly fashion, and to enjoy himself if he had the chance. As a result, he wanted nothing much to change politically. It was in this spirit that he ordained that every man should practise with the longbow. It made perfect sense to encourage the English to continue their domination of projectile-based warfare, but Edward’s motive was to ensure that things stayed as they had been in 1346. 42 In 1366, he authorised the Statute of Kilkenny, negotiated by his son Lionel, by which Ireland was divided between those whom Edward wanted to command and those who were beyond English control. Again, in the circumstances this was sensible, but it marked the introduction of a policy of conservatism. The young Edward would have personally tried to bring the whole country under his control. This conservatism did not necessarily lead to bad legislation. In one statute passed at this time, Edward ordered that all goldsmiths had to identify their works with their own specific maker’s mark, the origin of the hallmark. We have reason to be grateful; but the motivation was essentially conservative, to keep things as they had been in his heyday.
Edward was not just resting on his laurels, he was preparing to retire on them. He usually confined his movements to the area of the Thames, travelling by the royal barge. One of the reasons for this mode of transport was probably his own declining health. Another was undoubtedly Philippa’s medical condition. From 1365 grants made in her name made provision for the eventuality of her dying before the grantee, and her suffering was probably so great in 1365 that she could not travel easily except by barge and litter.43 It may be that she never properly recovered from the injuries sustained when falling from a horse while hunting with Edward in the summer of 1358; she was making preparations for her tomb as early as 1362.44 In 1366 the king’s own health took a turn for the worse. Payments were made to an apothecary by the king’s physician for medicines for him.45 That summer he left his household for long periods at Windsor Castle and spent considerable lengths of time quietly at his hunting lodges in the New Forest with Philippa, receiving special visitors – such as ‘the son of the king of India’ – but otherwise laying low, avoiding too much pomp.46
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Philippa’s injuries and illnesses go some way to explain one big change in Edward’s life. Until now he had never recognised any illegitimate offspring, and may well have had none. Such was the strength of his relationship with his wife that his dalliances with other women – presuming that he had some – had been restrained, even though he had encouraged a culture of intense sexual excitement at his court. But now a girl appeared before him who caught his attention and, having caught it, did her best to keep it. She was one of Philippa’s ladies-in-waiting. Edward had of course paid attention to Philippa’s female staff in earlier years, giving them grants and presents. The merging of their households in 1360 had brought him into daily contact with them. But to this girl, Alice Perrers, who had – we are told – ‘a seductive voice’ he gave much more than grants and presents.47 About 1364 she bore him his first known illegitimate child.
Alice Perrers is the most famous royal mistress between Henry II’s ‘Fair Rosamund’ (Rosamund Clifford) and Edward IV’s Elizabeth Lambert (better known as Jane Shore). Arguably she eclipses them both. What she is remembered for is not her captivating beauty or her delightful wit but her avarice and her manipulation. But in considering how her relationship with Edward began we must lay aside this aspect of her behaviour and remember that in 1363 she was just a sexually-desirable servant at court. When it was realised that she was pregnant with Edward’s child, she left. She gave birth, perhaps at Southery in Norfolk, to a son who became known as John of Southeray or Surrey.48 When she returned to court, she received presents and grants, but as yet these were at the king’s will. The images of the self-interested, calculating whore and the bewitching she-devil were still a long way from the public mind.
If Edward took a mistress while his wife was slipping into her final illness, we should not be too surprised. He had always had the opportunity to command the sexual availability of women, and adultery on the part of husbands was not considered a great sin. With Edward it is far more surprising that he had not done so more often. He was clearly a potent sire, and therefore if he had had many mistresses, we would expect him to have had a string of illegitimate children, like Henry I (who had more than twenty) and John (who had more than seven). Henry I and John had had these children by a number of women; they were multiple philanderers. Edward III apparently was not. If he was not always loyal to his wife then he was far more circumspect in his romantic interludes than most previous kings. Therefore it is particularly interesting that he now proved loyal also to Alice. She was not paid off but allowed to come and go from court. This is what is strange about this illicit royal union. Edward kept her, and had two more children with her. This was unheard-of in the 1360s. The monastic chronicler Walsingham decided she must have bewitched Edward in order to secure his affections. She may have done, but it was not necessarily in the way that the monk supposed.
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Throughout the 1360s – not just in the plague years – Edward lost those close to him. His sister Joan died in September 1362, two months before his jubilee. His daughter-in-law Elizabeth de Burgh, Lionel’s wife, died the following year. His companion Knights of the Garter died with sad regularity: Miles Stapeldon (a founder member) and Richard de la Vache died in 1364 and 1366. The great soldier Sir Thomas Ughtred, who had been present at Dupplin Moor, had served as an admiral and as a Justice of the Peace, and had fought in all of Edward’s wars, died in 1365. The men who came to take their places were all young, nearly thirty years younger than Edward. They were promoted because of their great inheritances or, in the case of Enguerrand de Coucy, because he was betrothed to Edward’s daughter. As he walked around his newly completed works at Winsdor and Sheen, Edward must have been saddened that the friends with whom he had laughed and jousted when he had ordered their construction were now gone, replaced by men with whom he had little personal affinity. The castle on the Isle of Sheppey in particular was a testament to his military vision, but who was left alive with whom to share the subtle nuances of military design? He dedicated it instead to Philippa and named the town and castle Queenborough in her honour.
The most significant death of this period was that of King John of France on 8 April 1364. He had dutifully returned to England in January – when his ransom had not materialised – and had fallen mortally ill. Herein lay a problem for Edward. Obviously no more of the ransom would be paid, but, far more importantly, John had not formally renounced sovereignty of the agreed territories before his death. That extra addition to the Treaty of Brétigny had never been ratified. The responsibility for the renunciation fell on the dauphin, who became Charles V. Charles had proved very reluctant to acknowledge any ceding of territory, and now saw an opportunity to capitalise on his father’s failure. He could hardly do worse on the field of battle, and, while peace continued, he could rebuild his fortunes and those of France. Any hope of the formal renunciation being made, and a permanent settlement, was thus extinguished.
The problems – although immediately suspected – did not immediately become political reality. In fact the cause of the renewed hostilities came from a quite unexpected direction. In 1362 Edward had agreed an alliance with King Pedro of Castile, known to history by his telling soubriquet ‘the Cruel’. At first Pedro had doubted whether it was in his best interests to ally with Edward. His sole purpose was to protect himself against a strong alliance between Aragon and France. But after the death of the French king, he made his mind up, and ratified the Anglo-Castilian treaty. It was just as well for him that he did, for in 1365 the French hit upon a solution to the English unofficial armies, or ‘companies’, which were ravaging their territories. The great French commander Bertrand du Guesclin offered them the opportunity to attack Castile in the name of Enrique de Trastámara. Back in England Edward realised the danger. English mercenaries were about to fight against his ally. To stop them he issued orders on 6 December 1365 that no Englishmen were to take arms against Pedro. But his orders fell on deaf ears. The English mercenaries commanded by Sir Hugh Calveley, Sir Nicholas Dagworth and Sir William Elmham proceeded with impunity into Castile, under the pretence that they were going on crusade. By the end of March they and du Guesclin had done their work, and Enrique de Trastámara had been crowned at Burgos, the capital. Pedro fled to Bordeaux, a king in name alone.
Although it was the prince who agreed the mission to reinstate Pedro, there is no doubt that it was with Edward’s full approval. Edward felt bound to honour his treaty. The matter was discussed at the brief May 1366 parliament, and Edward sent John of Gaunt to the prince with reinforcements and financial support. By this time the English mercenaries, realising that the prince was going to march into Castile, were only too eager to be paid off. On 3 April 1367, at Nájera, the prince and his Gascon army inflicted a crushing defeat on Enrique de Trastámara, who almost alone escaped the carnage and arrest of his army. Du Guesclin himself was captured, as well as Marshal Audrehem, whom the prince had previously captured and ransomed once already, at Poitiers.
It was a stunning military victory, but the prince had terribly miscalculated. Nájera is one of the clearest examples in medieval history of a tactical victory which proved to be a strategic defeat. For when the campaign was over, and the prince’s clerks worked how much it had cost, the total was 2.7 million florins (£405,000). There was no hope of regaining such a huge amount of money from impoverished Castile. Worse, Pedro the Cruel saw all the prisoners as traitors, not deserving of ransoms, and murdered as many as he could despite the prince’s protestations that these men were valuable to him. Although the prince held a great victory feast when he returned to Bordeaux, in reality he had plunged his principality into chronic debt, having regained about one-eighth of what he had promised in wages of war and supplies.49
The crisis in which the prince now found himself was comparable to that which Edward had faced in 1340–41, when he returned from Flanders incognito owing around £300,000. Edward had then weathered the consequent crisis by taking the argument to his political opponents, compromising, and then reversing his compromise after the storm had blown over. The prince could not do this. The crucial difference was that in England there was no alternative to Edward’s government in 1341, but in Gascony there was an all-too-eager alternative sovereign in the form of the French king. And King Charles, as every Gascon knew, had yet formally to renounce his sovereignty. When the lords who had fought at Nájera realised that not only would they not be paid for their troubles, they would also be taxed to cover the prince’s shortfall, many began to think they would be better served by the weaker, less-assuming French king. It was therefore through the Nájera campaign that the prince precipitated the next stage of the Hundred Years War.
Edward was a relatively passive player in the move to war after Nájera. He was constantly on the back foot, reacting from afar to the plots and strategies emerging in the cauldron of Gascon discontent. But he probably suspected what was happening. In 1333 he himself had been a young king with much to prove and nothing to lose by making war on his enemies. Now King Charles was in a similar position. When the count of Armagnac wrote to Charles in May 1368 appealing against the tax imposed by the prince, the French king saw an opportunity to divide and rule in Gascony. Lord Albret – for many years a die-hard English supporter – felt similarly angry with the prince and openly supported Armagnac. Together with the renewed attacks of the renegade English mercenaries, who had returned from Castile seeking more plunder in France, Charles decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss, and accepted the Gascon invitation to intervene. In so doing, he set himself on the path to war.
Historians have tended to portray Edward’s acceptance of the slide into conflict as a sign of his willingness to resume the fight and an ambition to enlarge on his conquest, as if he was some sort of military automaton.50 But this is a great misrepresentation of his ambitions at this time. He had for years yearned to consolidate his victories in France through a satisfactory peace treaty. He was old, he was ill, and he had lost his companions in arms. More importantly Queen Philippa was dying, and he was determined to stay with her until the end. Already she had commissioned her tomb effigy.51 For Edward and his wife it was just a matter of waiting, spending what little time they had left together.
Edward attended parliament reluctantly in May 1368. Rather than discuss the deep crisis his son was facing in France, he showered praise on the representatives, charming them. He thanked them for all their support over the years, and they rose to the flattery, calling him their ‘highest, most excellent and most redoubted lord’.52 The statutes enrolled were, however, without a clear strategy. It was as if Edward simply waved them through, or peremptorily dismissed those petitions which were too bothersome. The Statute of Labourers was re-enacted to suit the gentry, sheriffs were prohibited from holding their office for more than a year, and he relinquished his attempts to control JPs. He tried to regulate the wine trade by prohibiting English merchants from buying wine in Gascony, a statute which met with unfortunate results.53 The only acknowledgement of the impending doom appears in his statute abolishing the wool staple in Calais, which he admitted was threatened by the French breaking of the peace.54
It was after parliament that the gravity of the situation became clear. Until now he had maintained a laissez faire attitude towards his son’s government in Gascony. The prince, after all, was the heir to the throne, and it was necessary for him to learn how to deal with tricky political situations. Edward would not have helped him by stepping in and removing him from authority. But when King Charles accepted Armagnac’s request to intervene, Edward had to respond. He wrote to Charles demanding to know what he meant by accepting the appeal. Charles deferred his answer, not wanting to provoke an immediate attack. The prince had no doubts as to the seriousness of the situation and ordered men-at-arms and archers to be raised on his estates in England and Wales, and prepared for war. All became clear in November when Charles assumed his sovereign role and summoned the prince to appear in Paris in May 1369. Edward wrote to his son, clearly of the opinion that he was not fit to govern. The prince wrote back, answering those of his father’s ‘advisers’ (it was not seemly to say that the king himself was wrong) who accused him of maladministration and of bringing dishonour on himself.55 But the prince was now sick as well as bankrupt. He had caught a debilitating illness in Castile, and was physically too weak to lead an army. Although the prince wrote to Paris saying that he would accept the summons with ‘a helmet on his head and sixty thousand men at his back’, in truth he was having difficulty even riding a horse.
When news of the prince’s illness reached England it was just another blow to the king, who was now psychologically crushed by the events of the year. In addition to his and Philippa’s own sicknesses, in September he had heard of the death of his daughter-in-law Blanche, the last surviving child of the late duke of Lancaster and wife of John of Gaunt.56 Such news, coming on top of the realisation that war was now imminent, and the illness of his glorious son of whom he had been so proud, was dispiriting. But then came worse news: Lionel was dead. Lionel, his second son, named after his Arthurian hero, probably the most intelligent of all his sons. Where would it end? Lionel had been in Italy, had just made a glorious marriage with the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, lord of Milan. The aged poet Petrarch had himself been there and had lauded the prince. And now he was dead. Messengers came from Italy asking where Edward wanted his son to be buried.57
Edward had great difficulty coping with so many disasters. Old and sick, he dismissed many members of the royal household.58 Expenditure on the royal buildings almost entirely ceased. Any money available would be needed for war. The great palaces of state became silent echoing memorials of his glorious victories and the hope they inspired. At Windsor the winter sun of Christmas 1368 refracted through the glass, and lit up the newly painted walls of the dancing chamber in Philippa’s apartments, but there was no dancing. Servants’ steps rang out as they crossed the empty room. The clock chimed in the Round Tower. The prophecies of his youth had not prepared Edward for this loss of health, children and friends, this loneliness, this death.
But Edward still had his pride. He still had his throne, and he still had his responsibilities. Slowly his mind turned towards the oncoming war. With him that Christmas were the Chancellor, William of Wykeham (now bishop of Winchester), the Treasurer, John Barnet (bishop of Ely), his sons John and Edmund, and the earls of Salisbury, Warwick and Oxford.59 These men, together with the earl of Arundel and Guy de Brian, remained with Edward for the next two months as the court moved first to Sheen and then to Westminster. In that time Edward had repeated bouts of illness, his physician John Glaston being sent to fetch more medicines. 60 But despite his personal frailty, Edward was forming the strategy by which he would once again take on his enemies. The earls of Cambridge and Pembroke and Lord Charlton of Powys were among the many lords despatched to the prince of Wales. Richard Imworth and other sergeants-at-arms were ordered to arrest all ships in readiness for an attack on France. On 26 April a ship laden with a cargo of wine – a lavish present from King Charles to Edward – was sent back, the present refused.61 Archers were selected in their counties, men were arrayed in the towns, stones were ordered to be dug for siege engines, and parliament was summoned to Westminster. On 3 June, Edward asked parliament for its views on the prospect of war. The representatives responded unanimously that they believed Edward should resume the title King of France, and make war on Charles de Valois.
Preparations gathered momentum. Taxation for the forthcoming war was agreed by parliament. Edward wrote to the prince on 19 June that he had reclaimed the title and would invade to reclaim his rights. He seized the revenues of foreign monasteries in England. The peace with Scotland was renewed. He sought also an alliance with Flanders, but Charles got there first, and secured the match by marrying his brother to Count Louis’s heiress. In Castile his hopes of an alliance had been dashed by the murder of Pedro the Cruel in March 1369, after which the pro-French Enrique resumed the throne. Aragon, however, was persuaded to remain a neutral partner. But in Gascony itself the prince was already under pressure. Before Pembroke and his reinforcements arrived, the far eastern part of the principality had been overrun. And in late April the French marched into Edward’s county of Ponthieu. John of Gaunt was sent to Calais, where he had taken up residence by 16 July. It was expected that the army would follow shortly.
The army did not follow. In mid-July Edward received a message from Philippa. She wanted him near her.
They both knew that she was near death. Her years of suffering were coming to an end. He made his way back up the Thames in the royal barge, towards Windsor. When the boat touched the quay there, the old king was helped out and escorted into the great palace he had built within the walls of his birthplace, and he came to the room where Philippa lay. When he entered, she saw him, and extended her right hand from beneath the bedclothes, and put it into his right hand. ‘We have enjoyed our union in happiness, peace and prosperity’, she said. ‘I therefore beg of you that when we are separated, you will grant me three requests.’ Edward was in tears, but answered ‘Lady, whatever you ask, it will be done.’ ‘My lord’, she said, ‘I ask you to pay whatever debts I may have outstanding, both in England and overseas. Secondly I beseech you also to fulfil all the bequests or gifts I may have made to churches, both in England and on the Continent, where I have prayed, as well as the legacies I have made to the men and women who have been in my service. And thirdly, when it pleases God to summon you, do not be buried anywhere else but beside my tomb, at Westminster.’ Weeping, the king granted his beloved wife her final requests.62
Philippa lingered for a few days. Edward suspended the invasion of France while he waited with her. Then on 15 August she died.63 Edward and their youngest son Thomas of Woodstock were with her at the end. England had lost one of its great treasures, a woman whose spirit was strong and yet never domineering, who managed to keep the peace between her ambitious sons, and who had smoothed Edward’s brow as he struggled with his own demons, from the dark figure of the tyrant Mortimer in his early days to the fears and loneliness of his age. She was his oldest and closest companion.
Three months later Edward learnt that another dear friend, Sir Robert Ufford, earl of Suffolk, had died on 4 November. Outside the rain-spattered windows, across the grey cloud-frowned land of England, it had been the worst harvest for half a century.64 Reports were coming to him that the plague had returned for a third time. On 13 November, the day of his fifty-seventh birthday, plague killed his old friend the earl of Warwick. Edward had outlived almost all his friends and companions in arms. All six of the earls created so joyously and proudly in 1337 were dead. His mother, father, sisters and brother were all dead. His daughters Mary, Margaret and Joan were dead, and his son Lionel. He had buried three other children in infancy. All those who had wished him a long life had unwittingly wished on him this most cruel of fates: to be a man who lived his entire life in the company of friends, children and great men, and watched them die.
Edward prepared for Philippa’s funeral with loving care. He could not face leading an army himself, and sent his own retinue across to Calais to join John. But John was more worried about his father than the French, and was back in England by mid-December, intending to spend Christmas with him. John gave precise instructions for a present of thirty fresh rabbits to be presented to his father on Christmas Eve.65 Edward and John spent Christmas together at King’s Langley before being rowed down the river to the Tower of London at the end of the month. Philippa’s embalmed body followed from Windsor on 3 January. Edward had ordered that the solemnities were to last six days. But he must have suspected that for him they would never end.