NOTES

Introduction

1. See Morgan, ‘Apotheosis’ for an overview of Edward’s post-mortem reputation.

2. Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, p. 333.

3. Only four medieval English kings lived longer: Henry I (67), Henry II (66), Henry III (65) and Edward I (68). The first English ruler to live to seventy was Richard Cromwell, who died aged eighty-six. Elizabeth lived to sixty-nine. The first English monarch to live to seventy and remain king was George II (1683–1760).

4. This was the first prose biography. There had been an earlier verse sketch of his reign in Thomas May’s The Victorious Reign of King Edward the Third (1635). Earlier still was the anonymous play The Reign of King Edward III, printed in 1596 and 1599, and sometimes ascribed to Shakespeare’s authorship.

5. Barnes, Edward III, pp. 910–11. The spelling and capitalisation have been modernised.

6. John Kenyon, The History Men (2nd ed., 1993), p. 133.

7. RE3, p. 182, quoting William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England (4th ed., 3 vols, Oxford, 1906), ii, p. 393.

8. Longman, Life and Times, ii, pp. 296–7.

9. Longman, Life and Times, ii, pp. 297–8.

10. Warburton, Edward III, vii.

11. Warburton, Edward III, p. 248.

12. Warburton, Edward III, p. 251.

13. MacKinnon, History of Edward III, p. 616.

14. MacKinnon, History of Edward III, p. 618.

15. MacKinnon, History of Edward III, p. 620.

16. Tout, Chapters, iv, pp. 287–8, discussing CPR 1343–45, p. 371. Another example of Edward trying to remove evidence relating to his father’s survival possibly lies in the eradication of details of the visit of the woman who performed the embalming of the corpse buried as that of Edward II in 1327. See Moore, ‘Documents’, p. 226; GT, p. 293.

17. Paul Johnson’s The Life and Times of Edward III (1973) is the relevant volume in a well-known illustrated series. Michael Packe’s Edward III is highly entertaining, but he died before it could be completed and it is very slight on the later years and carries many errors. Bryan Bevan’s Edward III: Monarch of Chivalry (1992) is the third.

18. Perroy, Hundred Years War, xxvii.

19. Perroy, Hundred Years War, p. 86. Perroy here is presenting this as the judgement of ‘the most recent historians’ but does not say who they are; and although he presents their view of Philip and applies his own clarification of it, he does not similarly qualify this judgement on Edward, except to add that he was ‘an opportunist of genius, who used his adversaries’ difficulties to the full, and constantly modified the detail of his plans in order to adapt them to changing circumstances’ (p. 87).

20. Perroy, Hundred Years War, p. 69.

21. McKisack, ‘Edward III and the Historians’, pp. 1–15.

22. Aberth, ‘Crime and Justice under Edward III’, p. 92.

1: Childhood

1. Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon, p. 64.

2. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 28.

3. See Hamilton, Gaveston; Chaplais, Gaveston, pp. 6–22; GT, pp. 18–19, 28–30, for the nature of Edward’s relationship with Gaveston. An alternative view is Hamilton, ‘Ménage à Roi’.

4. A mark of the complexity of the man may be noted in the work of Tout, who, in his Edward I (1890), refers to Edward as ‘a coward and a trifler’ (p. 225). However, the St Albans chronicler states he fought bravely ‘like a lioness bereft of her cubs’ in trying to save his men at Bannockburn. See Riley (ed.), Trokelowe, p. 86. Tout actually quotes this passage in his Edward II, p. 10.

5. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 32.

6. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 36.

7. Riley (ed.), Trokelowe, p. 79. See Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, p. 5 for doubts on authorship, which might be more appropriately attributed to William Rishanger.

8. Riley (ed.), Trokelowe, p. 79.

9. CPR 1307–13, p. 619.

10. It still had not been paid in November 1322. CPR 1318–23, p. 611. This was not Edward’s fault; the sheriffs had previously ignored an order of 1314 to pay the sum (CCR 1313–18, p. 54). Even in 1322 they were trying to get away with paying only half.

11. Smallwood, ‘Prophecy of the Six Kings’; Taylor, Political Prophecy, pp. 160–4.

12. William Hardy (ed.), Recueil des Croniques et Anchiennes Istories de la Grant Bretainge . . . par Jehan de Waurin: from Albina to AD 688 (1864), p. 230.

13. My thanks to Susannah Davis for pointing this out to me.

14. The version given in BL Harley 746, transcribed in the appendix to Taylor, Political Prophecy, pp. 160–4, does not give the place of birth of Edward of Windsor (as later versions do) but does mention the eagle who will come out of Cornwall, very probably Gaveston. This specifically says that Edward II would die in foreign lands ‘il vivera tout son temps en enui et en travaille et en paenie morra’. Previously in this same version ‘paenie’ is used to describe France, so perhaps should not be read strictly as ‘pagan’ lands, but overseas in a more general sense.

15. TNA E101/393/4, quoted in E3&Chiv, p. 170. Also see ibid, p. 51 which notes that a close friend of the Black Prince, Simon Burley, owned a Brut and related Arthuriana.

16. The Fieschi letter notes that the dethroned Edward II went to Brabant after seeing the pope in about 1331, after his supposed murder, which may be connected with his faith in the oil’s power.

17. Lewis Thorpe (ed.), Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks (1974, paperback reprinted, 1985), pp. 104–6.

18. GT, pp. 15–16.

19. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 36.

20. See Tout, Chapters, iv, p. 70. There is no record of the creation itself, and it is possible that the girding of a sword – the usual custom for the creation of an earl – was intended to happen at a later date. Edward was styled earl of Chester before Christmas 1312.

21. CFR 1307–19, p. 158.

22. Grant dated 4 August 1313. See CCW 1244–1326, p. 392.

23. Grant dated 25 July 1317. CCR 1307–13, p. 5; CCR 1323–27, p. 7.

24. Grant dated 25 May 1318. CPR 1317–21, pp. 141, 162.

25. For examples of writs directed to the earl of Chester before the age of seven, see CPR 1313–17, pp. 190, 373, 476; CPR 1317–21, p. 200; CPR 1321–24, pp. 72, 96; CCR 1313–18, pp. 158, 373; CCR 1318–23, pp. 23, 254.

26. Riley (ed.), Trokelowe, p. 79; Riley (ed.), Walsingham, p. 134. This was not in itself such an outrageous suggestion; Edward I’s eldest son, Edward II’s older brother, who has also been born at Windsor, had been named Alfonso to mark the relationship between the king and the ruling house of Castile which gave him his queen, Eleanor. It was probably vetoed by the king’s advisers on account of the hostilities which were so fresh in the minds of the English lords, Edward and Isabella’s marriage being part of a peace deal. Ormrod in his ODNB article on Edward III states that the name preferred by the French was Philip.

27. Studies of Isabella include Doherty ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis); and his somewhat briefer book based on the same study, Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II. See also Menache, ‘Isabelle of France’, which focuses on the reappraisal of Isabella’s character, and John Carmi Parsons’ article on her in the ODNB.

28. GT, pp. 145–7.

29. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 52. Murimuth was at the time administering the diocese of Exeter after the death of the bishop, James Berkeley of Berkeley, and was comparatively well-informed about the ex-king’s incarceration.

30. Menache, ‘Isabelle of France’, p. 108.

31. Brown, ‘Diplomacy, Adultery, and Domestic Politics’.

32. Strickland, Queens of England, i, p. 481.

33. See TNA E101/393/4 and E101/333/29. The lists of books in Isabella’s possession at her death appear in E3&Chiv, p. 170 (where the date of her death is given incorrectly as 1352; she died in 1358).

34. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 39.

35. Margaret, wife of Stephen the Chandler, nurse of Edward, received the manor of Overstone in Northamptonshire in return for her services when Edward was fifteen months old. See CFR 1307–19, p. 189. I have found no proof that she was the same woman as ‘Margaret of Daventry, nurse of Edward the king’s son’, but it seems likely in view of the fact that the manor granted to the wife of Stephen the Chandler was only twelve miles from Daventry. In ODNB, Ormrod states in his article on Edward III that Margaret of Daventry and Margaret Chandler were two different women who both nursed Edward.

36. The name of Margaret of Daventry appears at the foot of the lists of king’s clerks in the royal household for the years 1328 and 1330. See the appendices to the CMR 1326–27, pp. 374, 378. She also appears on the Close Rolls for 10 February 1327 as ‘the king’s nurse’ and was the subject of an order to the sheriff of Lincoln in May 1332, when Edward ordered the sheriff to restore all her goods to her, which had been confiscated because Henry Thorp ‘formerly her husband’ had been accused of murder. See CCR 1327–30, pp. 21, 485.

37. Tout, Chapters, iv, pp. 70–1; CFR 1307–19, p. 190.

38. The grant is dated 4 August 1313, when the king was at Bisham, which was where the prince had been on 6 July (according to Tout, Chapters, iv, p. 70) and probably where he was at the time of the grant. See CCW 1244–1326, p. 392.

39. TNA E101/375/3.

40. On 7 April 1314 the sheriff of Oxford was ordered to sell the leftover wine provided for the expenses of the household of the earl of Chester who had been staying there lately. See CFR 1307–19, p. 190. On 24 April 1314 the keeper of Ludgershall forest was ordered to provide twenty leafless oaks for Edward’s household as it was anticipated that he would be staying at the manor for some time. He was also ordered to provide three oaks for shingles to repair the houses. See CCR 1313–18, p. 53.

41. CCR 1313–18, p. 57.

42. On 6 June 1314 Hugh Leominster was still at Ludgershall, receiving payments on Edward’s behalf. TNA E179/377/7.

43. The king allocated the revenues from Wallingford Castle and Honor to Edward’s household on 13 June; one month later the keeper of Henley Forest was ordered to supply Edward of Windsor with thirty leafless oaks for firewood, indicating an anticipated long stay there. See CCR 1313–18, pp. 64, 106.

44. Tout, Chapters, iv, p. 71. As Tout remarks, on 26 July 1314 John Sapy is to be found acting as steward (CCR 1313–18, p. 191). This may have been a temporary appointment. It is worth noticing that Sapy had served in Gaveston’s household, amongst others. SeeGT, p. 42.

45. Tout, Chapters, iv, p. 71. CPR 1292–1301, p. 502. He had been appointed on 10 July 1295. CCW 1244–1326, p. 132. He was still Edward’s treasurer on 22 July 1316. See Tout, Chapters, iv, p. 71 n. 7. He seems to have been favoured by Isabella, who on 16 May 1313 succeeded in persuading her husband to grant the first good benefice that became available to him. See CCW 1244–1326, p. 389.

46. He retired to a room within the precincts of the Dominican house at Ely in 1317. CCR 1313–17, p. 452.

47. CCR 1313–17, p. 430.

48. CCW 1244–1326, p. 485. This shows that Damory was appointed ‘keeper of the body’ etc. before 11 April 1318. Although this is the only explicit reference in the published calendars to his acting in this capacity, in the appointment to enquire into the negligence of the bailiffs of Chester and Flint, dated the same day, he is the first-named (CPR 1317–21, p. 134). Similarly he was the first-named when acting on behalf of the prince in conjunction with Robert Mauley (prince’s steward) and Nicholas Hugate (keeper of the prince’s wardrobe) on 16 January 1319 (CFR 1307–19, p. 389), and in conjunction with the same men, described in the same capacities, on 5 June 1320 (CPR 1317–21, p. 453).

49. CPR 1317–21, p. 134.

50. CCW 1244–1326, p. 485.

51. In 1300, when he was appointed one of the keepers of the peace for Oxfordshire, he received special dispensation to follow his lord to Scotland in the king’s army. See CCW 1244–1326, p. 111.

52. Haines, Edward II, p. 408, n. 104, quoting Davies, Baronial Opposition, pp. 209–10, who in turn uses the fact that Damory witnessed several charters granted by Despenser, as well as the fact that he remained in office for three years after Despenser assumed authority.

53. CFR 1307–19, p. 389. This states that Edward’s siblings had already been living with him ‘for some time’. The date of the grant is 16 January 1319; Eleanor had been born on 8 June 1318. Initially the king had provided lands in Cheshire and Derbyshire for John and Eleanor’s sustenance, but these were transferred to Edward’s keeper in January 1319. Later in 1319 Edward also received further grants of lands from his father, including Macclesfield and Overton and the Channel Islands, for their upkeep. See Tout,Chapters, iv, p. 72; CFR 1307–19, p. 392.

54. We cannot be sure that Edward obeyed the summons, but there is no reason to doubt that he did. His father certainly knew how old he was, and the series of summons sent to him from this date suggest a very clear decision to invite him to witness proceedings.

55. Denholm-Young, Vita, p. 109.

56. CP, iv, p. 46.

57. In 1321 Lord Tyeys was fined £1000 for his evil practices in the Isle of Wight. See CPR 1317–21, p. 546; CP, xii/2, pp. 103–4.

58. For summons to him as earl of Chester see CCR 1318–23, pp. 413 and 515 (to provide men for the army), p. 527 (to attend parliament), p. 533 and p. 558 (to attend and supply men for the Scottish campaign).

59. Glover (ed.), Livere de Reis, p. 345.

60. GT, p. 121; TNA E101/379/10.

61. Brie (ed.), Brut, i, p. 224.

62. Smallwood, ‘Prophecy of the Six Kings, p. 576.

63. Cusance became keeper of the wardrobe on 23 June 1323 and was removed from that position on Christmas Eve 1325. His records were all lost in the disturbances in London following the invasion of 1326. CPR 1333–37, p. 41.

64. Tout, Chapters, iv, p. 72.

65. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), pp. 93–4.

66. GT, p. 161.

67. There is some evidence that Edward II – usually presumed to be a homosexual king – was having a liaison with Eleanor Despenser. See Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 139, which mentions frequent visits and gifts, and quotes one Hainault source (Willelmi Capellani) which states they were lovers. See also Doherty, Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II, pp. 101–2 which continues the theme. However, Eleanor Despenser was his own niece, and so one tends to want to reserve judgement on this matter, as to accuse him of adultery with Despenser’s wife is one thing; accusing him of incest is quite another. While one cannot rule out the possibility raised by Doherty in Isabella and the Strange Death that Despenser sought to impose his sexual will on Isabella – and that this was the ‘dishonour’ which he had wrought upon her, we should wish for further details before positively asserting that this was the case. On Edward’s homosexuality see Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, pp. 7–11; Ormrod, ‘Sexualities of Edward II’, and Mortimer, ‘Sermons of Sodomy’.

68. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 96.

69. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 101.

70. CCR 1318–23, pp. 679, 699–700.

71. Trotter, ‘Pre-marital inspection’; Buck, Politics, Finance, p. 126. Vale (in her ODNB article on Philippa) and many others besides Trotter and Buck have incorrectly presumed that the girl was Philippa. See Appendix One for a clarification of this issue.

72. CCR 1318–23, pp. 118, 132, 365.

73. Letter of response dated 6 June 1323. CCR 1318–23, p. 713. Charles was Edward’s great-uncle.

74. Letter of 30 March 1324 to James, CCR 1323–27, p. 171. The embassy was despatched 1 October 1324. CCR 1324–27, p. 32.

75. CCR 1323–27, p. 344. CPR 1324–27, pp. 103–4. At this time it was proposed that Edward’s sister, Joan of the Tower, should marry Alfonso, heir of Aragon.

76. It has been suggested that Robert Holkot wrote Bury’s Philobiblon, but he was almost certainly no more than Bury’s amanuensis. For the disparaging of the story that Bury was Edward’s tutor, see Tout, Edward II, p. 336.

77. Crump, ‘Arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabel’, pp. 331–2.

78. Tout, Edward II, p. 340.

79. On 14 July 1324 the king granted Edward ‘La Sauveye’ near the stone cross without the bar of New Temple, London, CPR 1324–27, p. 4.

80. TNA E101/393/4, E101/333/29. As noted above, she had more than thirty volumes in her possession. She also probably borrowed many more. Borrowing volumes was common among the élite in medieval England.

81. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 171.

82. The age ascribed to Bury here is based on his age as given at the end of the Philobiblon, that he was fifty-eight on the day he completed it, 24 January 1344/5.

83. In the Philobiblon, Bury mentions Ptolemy, Socrates, Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, Theocritus, Pindar, Euclid, Zeno and Aristotle among the Greeks; Averroës and Avicenna among the Arabs; and dozens of writers from the Roman world, including the historians Aulus Gellius, Suetonius, Sallust and Cassiodorus; the poets Ovid, Virgil, Martial and Lucretius; the grammarians Priscian and Donatus; the orators Cato the Elder and Cicero; the philosopher Macrobius; the natural history writer Pliny the elder; and a number of Church fathers, Tertullian, Boethius, Jerome, Origen, Augustine. Very few English writers were named in Bury’s book: John of Salisbury was one; the Venerable Bede was another. In Bury’s view, Aristotle reigned supreme. He was ‘the arch-poet whom Averroës regards as the law of Nature’, by comparison with whom Plato was ‘before him in time, but after him in learning’.

84. John Paynel is mentioned as superintending Edward’s education in letters. See Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB.

85. Nederman (ed.), Political Thought, p. 40.

86. For a succinct account of the origins of the War of Saint-Sardos, see Chaplais, War of St Sardos, ix-xiii. See also GT, pp. 137–9.

87. CPR 1324–27, p. 171.

2: A Treasonable Youth

1. GT, p. 142; Blackley, ‘Isabella and the Bishop of Exeter’, p. 230.

2. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, pp. 142–3.

3. Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita, p. 143.

4. There is only one recorded incident which suggests that Edward was sceptical or hostile towards Mortimer at this time. This is an incident reported by Despenser to the bishop of Rochester, who claimed that Isabella would have returned to England straightaway if it had not been for Mortimer, who threatened to murder her if she should try (Doherty, ‘Isabella’, p. 135; Wharton (ed.), Anglia Sacra, i, p. 365). Edward may also have heard this. Three years later Edward III himself accused Mortimer of telling the queen ‘that if she went to him (the king) that he would kill her with a knife or in another manner murder her’ (RP, ii, p. 53). However, we must seriously question who the ‘he’ was in this statement. Does it mean Mortimer was warning Isabella that the king would kill her? Or was it – as Despenser thought – that Mortimer would kill her? The answer is almost certainly the former. The bishop of Hereford preached a sermon in October 1326 that Edward II kept a knife hidden in a sandal so he would be able to kill the queen if she should come near him, or he would otherwise kill her with his teeth, if he had no other weapon (Hingeston-Randolph (ed.), Register of John de Grandison, iii, p. 1542; Mortimer, ‘Sermons of Sodomy’). It seems likely that those who have considered this detail have mistakenly presumed that Edward believed that Mortimer threatened to kill the queen if she should leave him, in an act of passion. I am not exempt from this criticism. See GT, p. 147.

5. Edward’s promise to give this lordship to Mortimer was made while they were in France. As that lordship was in the hands of Despenser at the time (CChR 1327–41, p. 55), the implication is that Edward agreed that this would be Mortimer’s reward for the removing of Despenser, which suggests that he sympathised with his mother’s and Mortimer’s hatred of the man. However, it is difficult to be sure that we are not simply witnessing Isabella’s promises made in her son’s name.

6. Halliwell (ed.), Letters of the Kings of England, i, pp. 25–7.

7. CCR 1323–27, pp. 579–80; Halliwell (ed.), Letters of the Kings of England, i, p. 29.

8. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 142.

9. GT, p. 146.

10. Haines, Edward II, p. 170.

11. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), pp. 137–8.

12. GT, p. 147.

13. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 144.

14. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, pp. 8–9.

15. Further support for this lies in the appropriateness of the illustrations of the wedding present which Philippa gave to Edward in 1328. See Michael, ‘Manuscript Wedding Gift’; Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 180. In particular, Shenton points out that in this book Philippa had had Edward depicted with a hawk on his arm. This was an image of himself he liked to project; not only does he appear pictured likewise in Milemete’s treatise, he also appears as one of the weepers with a falconry glove in his hand on the tomb of his brother, John, in Westminster Abbey. Although this figure has been previously associated with Edward II (e.g. Mary Saaler, Edward II (1997), plate 3), the use of the falconry glove (with his falcon absent) is far more likely to represent Edward’s specific commission.

16. For the size of the invasion force see GT, p. 149.

17. Mortimer, ‘Sermons of Sodomy’.

18. This was Llywelyn Bren, whom Despenser had had brutally hanged and eviscerated. See GT, pp. 87–8.

19. TNA E101/383/8, f.24r, f.24v.

20. TNA E101/383/8 f.5r.

21. TNA E101/383/3, m.1.

22. TNA E101/383/3, m.1.

23. Hingeston-Randolph (ed.), Register of John de Grandison, p. 1542; Mortimer, ‘Sermons of Sodomy’.

24. Wharton, Anglia Sacra, i, p. 367.

25. Riley (ed.). Walsingham, i, p. 186.

26. CCR 1327–30, p. 1.

27. GT, p. 170.

28. Shenton, ‘English Court’, pp. 135–41. The details of furnishings for the coronation are taken from this source.

29. Shenton, English Court’, p. 136.

30. GT, p. 170 and p. 288 n. 17.

31. TNA E101/382/8, m.2.

32. TNA E101/383/8, f.25r.

33. This is made on the basis of Lancaster’s behaviour towards the king a year later. See GT, p. 213.

34. TNA E101/383/8, f.25v.

35. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 52.

36. WCS, p. 4 n.13, quoting Sir J.H. Ramsay, Revenues of the Kings of England, 1066–1399, Volume 2: Edward I – Richard II (Oxford, 1925), Table I (facing p. 292).

3: The Devil for Wrath

1. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 199.

2. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, pp. 27, 205.

3. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 204.

4. For example, TNA E101/383/3, mm. 1–3.

5. TNA E101/383/3, m.1.

6. Doherty, ‘Isabella’, pp. 214–17.

7. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB.

8. The best account of the Weardale campaign is to be found in E3&S, chapter three.

9. TNA E101/383/3, m.2.

10. Michael Prestwich, ‘Piety of Edward I’, in Mark Ormrod (ed.), England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 124; Haines, Edward II, p. 14.

11. See GT, pp. 179–80, where it is suggested that Roger Mortimer was responsible for this decision. However, Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 80, states it was ‘some men of the Marches’ who advised this, meaning men of the Scottish Marches.

12. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 23.

13. Both Froissart, quoting le Bel, and Brut agree on the figure of two hundred. See Brie (ed.), Brut, p. 251; Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 24. The moonlight is mentioned in Brut.

14. Bond (ed.), Melsa, ii, pp. 356–7.

15. TNA DL 10/253.

16. The cause of death here is taken from the copies of the earliest lay chronicle, the shorter continuation of the French Brut. Most manuscripts state illness, and it seems likely that the original specified grief-induced illness. See Mortimer, ‘Sermons of Sodomy’.

17. TNA E101/383/3 m.1.

18. TNA E101/383/3 m.3.

19. TNA E101/383/3 m.3.

20. TNA E101/383/3 m.6.

21. TNA E101/624/14.

22. TNA E101/383/3 m.2. This notes gold thread purchased for decorating purple harnesses for the tournament at Clipstone, and appears between pennons for the Stanhope campaign and commissions for his father’s funeral. The tournament probably took place around 15–16 November, when the king was at Clipstone. The following membrane, m.3, includes payments for six harnesses made for the tournament at Worcester between 25–30 November 1327, and harnesses for the tournaments at Clipstone and Rothwell between 24 November-12 December 1327. The king was at Clipstone on 29–30 November 1327 and 9–15 January 1328, and at Rothwell on 18 January 1328.

23. Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 35.

24. For the events of September-December 1327, see Mortimer, ‘The death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’. This is outlined in brief in Appendix Two.

25. See Appendix One.

26. Michael, ‘Manuscript Wedding Gift’, pp. 582–99; RE3, p. 47; Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 857; Shenton, ‘English Court’, pp. 149–50. The music included in the book may have been sung at the ceremony.

27. Most secondary sources give the date as 24 January, following the Bridlington chronicler. Shenton points out that there is doubt, however, noting that the St Paul’s chronicler gives the date as 30 January. Shenton suggests 25th or 26th as the household expenditure was highest on those two days, indicating the largest feast which normally would have followed the ceremony. See Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 149.

28. TNA E101/383/3 m.3 mentions fifteen shillings ‘paid out to those working on manufacturing a harness for the tournament at York and for the twenty-four pennons bearing the arms of St George’.

29. John Wyard was carrying out secret business for the king on 30 March 1327 and 1 January 1328. See TNA E101/383/3 m.6 and E101/383/8 f.25v. On the latter occasion he was given a gold cross bearing a stone and twelve pearls for his secret dealings at Lichfield.

30. Stones, ‘Anglo-Scottish Negotiations of 1327’; Harding, ‘Regime of Mortimer and Isabella’, pp. 224–8.

31. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 731.

32. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 234, stating parliament was ordered to assemble on 26 April. RE3, p. 193, states 24 April.

33. Dryburgh, ‘Roger Mortimer’, Appendix One (Itinerary of Roger Mortimer), quoting BL Harley 1240 ff.43v -44r and Add MS 6041 f.7v, which show Mortimer at Brecon on 20 March 1328; and BL Harley 1240 f.117 and Add MS 6041 f.45r, which show him at Abergavenny on 6 April 1328.

34. TNA C53/115, nos 70, 71, 73, 74, 76.

35. TNA C53/115, nos 72 and 69. Neither man attested charter nos 86, 77, 76, 74, 73, 71 and 70.

36. Letters nominating attorneys granted to Pecche 13 February 1328, he going overseas with his wife Eleanor (CPR 1327–30, p. 234). Also complaint dated 18 February 1328 against John Pecche and Thomas de Rous for removing eight horses and £28 in money at Warwick (CPR 1327–30, p. 280). He had previously obtained protection for two years, going overseas, 14 February 1327 (CPR 1327–30, p. 11). With regard to his position at Corfe, see CP, x, p. 343; CFR 1327–1340, pp. 168–9; Mortimer, ‘The death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’.

37. Among the terms of this treaty was one promising that the Stone of Destiny (of the Stone of Scone) should be returned to Scotland. A letter from Queen Isabella is extant saying that this was intended (Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 144). It did not happen until recent times, however. The Stone was finally returned to Scotland in November 1996.

38. E3&S, p. 52.

39. Shenton, ‘Edward III and the Coup of 1330’, p. 21.

40. Harding, ‘Regime of Mortimer and Isabella’, p. 243.

41. Lumby (ed.), Knighton, p. 451.

42. Brie (ed.), Brut, p. 261.

43. For a full analysis of this possibility see GT, pp. 221–4.

44. For example, Prestwich, Three Edwards, p. 99.

45. Mortimer, ‘The death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’.

46. John Asphale, a friend and accomplice of Kent’s, had appointed attorneys to manage his affairs while he was abroad with Kent on 25 April 1329 (CPR 1327–30, p. 385). He himself appointed attorneys on 21 May (CPR 1327–30, p. 391).

47. Other men planning to travel with Kent still had not left by 1 June 1329. See CPR 1327–30, p. 415.

48. For the reason why Kent has been labelled stupid or foolish in the past, and why we may be sure that this is wrong, see Mortimer, ‘Death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’.

49. Crump, ‘Arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabel’, pp. 331–2.

50. For example, Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 85.

51. Crump, ‘Arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabel’, p. 332.

52. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 775. That the invasion was part of Kent’s plot is made clear in Kent’s confession and the explanatory letter sent to the pope later. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 253–5; Foedera, ii, 2, pp. 783–4; E3&S, p. 63.

53. On 7 January 1330 Kent witnessed a royal charter. See TNA C53/116, no. 1.

54. The coronation of Queen Philippa had been intended to take place in early 1328, soon after the wedding, but had been delayed. Shenton suggests it was due to the queen’s young age; this is a possibility. Another possibility is that it was due to Isabella’s will to remain queen, not just queen mother, she being able to wield better influence in that position. The matter remains unclear. For the details of the planned coronation of 1328, see Shenton, ‘English Court’, pp. 145–6.

55. This and following entries are taken from TNA E101/385/12.

56. Warwickshire County Record Office: CR 136/C/2027. I am indebted to Elizabeth Danbury for drawing my attention to this document. Her publication of the letter is eagerly anticipated.

57. GT, p. 217.

58. The fullest account of the proceedings against Kent are to be found in Brie (ed.), Brut, i, pp. 263–7, from which this and the other quotations have been taken.

59. GT, p. 235.

60. TNA E101/385/4 m.75.

61. Devon (ed.), Issues of the Exchequer, pp. 143, 160. The man’s name was Thomas Prior.

62. Brie (ed.), Brut, i, p. 269.

63. CChR, iv, p. 199.

64. Shenton, ‘Edward III and the coup of 1330’, pp. 25–6; GT, pp. 237–8.

65. Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 86.

66. TNA E372/177/38; TNA E101/469/15.

67. Harding, ‘Isabella and Mortimer’, p. 317, quoting E403/253.

68. There is a chamber in the south-west tower of the south-west gatehouse at Corfe Castle which apparently has no doors and no windows. The chamber could only have been entered from a trapdoor in the room above. I noted this on a visit to the castle, but it is relevant that in 1331 (note the date) this room was referred to as the prison chamber. See HKW, ii. p. 622 n. 6; however also see ibid, p. 621 n. 12, in which it is noted that in the sixteenth century the Butavant Tower (now largely demolished) was also known as the Dungeon Tower. Evidence that Edward was actually held at Corfe Castle is outlined in Mortimer, ‘The death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’. In particular the role of Sir John Pecche is pertinent, as is the prosecution of Maltravers for encompassing the earl of Kent’s death while he was custodian of Corfe. Also refer to the rumours of Edward’s custody there in Brie (ed.), Brut, pp. 263–4 and Thompson (ed.), Murimuth p. 52, and in the Fieschi letter. See GT, pp. 251–2 for the latter.

69. TNA E101/469/15 reads ‘pro claustra domini Rogeri de Mortuo Mari, domini Galfridi filii sui et Simoni de Bereford in turello iuxta cameram domini regis de dicto turello usque gardinum xii d’.

4: Absolute Royalty

1. CPR 1330–34, p. 97; GT, pp. 85–6. The office of King’s Lieutenant was viceregal.

2. Haines, Edward II, p. 461 n.202 quoting CCR 1330–33, p. 67.

3. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 319.

4. CEPR, ii, p. 498. The pope wrote that he had heard the news on 3 November, and in a letter dated 7 November gave details of the plot, showing he had unquestionably heard by then. On the same day he wrote stating he had received further news about Isabella’s treatment after 19 October at Edward’s hands. This is a very telling detail for long-distance communications in 1330. The message had been carried accurately nearly two hundred miles from Nottingham to Dover (presumably: this was the fastest crossing point), across the sea to France, and then more than five hundred miles to Avignon in less than two weeks (20 October to 3 November).

5. RP, ii, p. 57. Literally, ‘he had not heard about the king’s death’.

6. Mortimer, ‘The death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle’. This demonstrates how Berkeley was allowed to change his plea from one of not knowing the king was dead to a complete falsehood which Edward knew was a complete falsehood but which he preferred nonetheless.

7. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 62.

8. John de Melburn was the man appointed to look into the estates of the countess of March. See CPR 1330–34, p. 13. It was at least six years before a final resolution was reached about Joan’s Irish lands.

9. CEPR, ii, p. 499.

10. Burghersh was the only man apart from the king to be included with Mortimer’s family members in his chantry bequest of 1329–30. See GT, p. 222.

11. Maltravers was first given letters of safe conduct to return to England to face a retrial for the earl’s death in 1345; he did not return however until 1352. On that occasion he was completely acquitted. For his secret visit in 1335, see CPR 1334–37, pp. 88, 89, 111, 112. Those he met included Lord Berkeley, Maurice Berkeley, William Montagu, John Molyns and Edmund Bereford. This was almost certainly in response to Maltravers’ letter of March 1334 stating that he had information concerning ‘the honour, estate and well-being of the realm’, in response to which Montagu was sent to see him in Flanders. See Harding, ‘Mortimer and Isabella’, p. 332.

12. This was before 1333. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 870.

13. Doherty ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 320.

14. Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 88.

15. TNA E101/385/4 m.79. These games do not appear in the list of tournaments given in E3&Chiv, p. 172.

16. E3&Chiv, p. 175.

17. The best work on this question is E3&Chiv, especially chapter 4: ‘“Ludi” and “Hastiludia” at the court of Edward III’ (pp. 57–75). However, there are many ‘games’ (as opposed to jousts and tournaments) recorded in the wardrobe accounts which are not noted in E3&Chiv.

18. The design of the painting on the table dates from the early sixteenth century but Edward III certainly knew of it, for he had it made into a centrepiece at Winchester, and had it mounted on the wall there (Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 22). Given the closeness of the number of knights on the Winchester table to the Order of the Garter, the sixteenth-century painting may reflect an earlier painted or traditional arrangement, perhaps the unofficial Companionship of the Garter (see Chapter Eleven).

19. See Shenton, ‘Edward III and the coup of 1330’ for a description of these aketons and their significance.

20. RE3, p. 48.

21. Keen, Chivalry, p. 179.

22. Keen, Chivalry, p. 181.

23. Taylor, Political Prophecy, pp. 161–2, quoting BL: Harleian MS 746.

24. See TNA E101/386/14. Although this is dated 11 March 1333, there had been some considerable delay in payment, as the goldsmith, Thomas Walpole, had begun to complain about his £146 17s 8d and had started to seek alternative ways of reimbursement.

25. CEPR, ii, p. 500.

26. He asked again about ‘crossing the sea’ in April 1332 in a letter concerning France. CEPR, ii, pp. 503–4.

27. Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, pp. 248, 253.

28. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 63. The reason for supposing this was sudden is the itinerary of Edward’s wardrobe, which remained at Eltham from 2 April while he himself reached Dover the next day. On this question, there is a payment in a later wardrobe account for ‘120 ells of russet to be used in the production of twenty tunics and cowls in the monastic style [ad modum monachorum] for the king and others of his chamber’ (TNA E101/387/14 m.1). If this payment relates to this occasion, then the monastic costumes would have had to be made in advance, and, given the speed of travel, and the lack of preparation otherwise, it is unlikely. These monastic costumes probably relate to another escapade sometime before the date of the document (1334–35). The event is also noted in the Annales Paulini. See Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, i, p. 353.

29. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 112.

30. Perroy, Hundred Years War, pp. 83–4.

31. Hunter, ‘Measures taken for the apprehension of Thomas Gurney’, p. 80. Giles of Spain was also instructed to return two other men concerned in the Berkeley Castle plot who had fled to the Continent: Robert Lynel and John Tylli. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 850.

32. CCR 1330–54, p. 366. The wording has been slightly paraphrased.

33. The event is described in the Annales Paulini. See Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, i, p. 353.

34. E3&Chiv, p. 62.

35. Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, i, p. 353.

36. Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, i, p. 354.

37. This is discussed more fully in E3&Chiv, p. 62.

38. The collapse of the stand is described in the Annales Paulini (see Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, i, p. 354). The forgiveness of the workmen is noted in Hamilton (ed.), Hemingburgh, ii, p. 303, n.2.

39. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 872.

40. RE3, p. 94, using RP, ii, pp. 62, 446.

41. Musson, ‘Second “English Justinian”’, p. 73.

42. When England and Scotland bound themselves to mutual defence in 1328, France was specifically excepted, due to Scotland’s prior treaty with the French. See Perroy, Hundred Years War, p. 89.

43. E3&S, pp. 76, 97.

44. TNA E101/386/3 f.4r. Although the New Year technically began on 25 March, 1 January (the feast of the Circumcision) was when presents were exchanged at court.

45. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 831. The following list is based on the same source.

46. See Appendix Eight.

47. E3&Chiv, p. 63.

48. TNA E101/386/2 m.7.

49. E3&S, pp. 81–3. They had set sail on 31 July.

50. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, pp. 270–1.

51. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 842.

52. The distinction is more than just a historical nicety. David II was the king of Scotland, as his father Robert Bruce had been. Balliol’s father – a client king – is usually referred to by the term King of Scots, and this term is usually used to designate client kings unrecognised by many of their Scottish contemporaries.

53. E3&S, p. 120. See also Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, ii, p. 274.

54. E3&S, p. 96.

55. RE3, p. 95.

56. E3&S, p. 107.

57. E3&S, pp. 121–2.

58. E3&S, pp. 121–2.

59. This is now in the Statens Historika Museum, Stockholm.

60. This was using variant forms of modern gunpowder. See Medieval Gunpowder Research Group, Report no. 2 (Middelaldercentret, Denmark, August 2003). This is available online at http://www.middelaldercentret.dk/gunpowder2003.pdf at the time of writing (May 2005).

61. GT, p. 181, quoting Barbour, The Bruce, ii, p. 479.

62. Tout, Chapters, iv, pp. 470–5.

63. E3&S, p. 121. Edward requested only one old siege engine to be assembled for use at Berwick; the other two were to be newly made.

64. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 856. Most of the following list of events are drawn from the same source.

65. TNA E101/386/3 f.2r.

66. Bond (ed.), Melsa, ii, p. 368.

67. Brie (ed.), Brut, i, p. 281.

68. TNA E101/386/10 m.1.

69. CCR 1333–37, p. 152.

70. E3&S, p. 124.

71. Wyntoun, quoted in Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 95, states that there were more Seton boys, but this is not borne out by the daughter of Sir Alexander Seton inheriting his lands.

72. E3&S, p. 129.

73. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 859, n.57.

74. Childs and Taylor (eds), Anonimalle, p. 167.

75. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 51.

76. E3&S, p. 138.

77. Childs and Taylor (eds), Anonimalle, p. 167. The Anonimalle chronicler does not mention the previous wave of the attack led by Balliol. See Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 279.

78. Brie (ed.), Brut, i, p. 285.

79. E3&S, p. 138.

5: Warrior of God

1. Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, p. 291.

2. James and Simons (eds), Laurence Minot, p. 26.

3. TNA E101/386/8 m.9.

4. TNA E101/386/10, m.2.

5. For example: Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 69.

6. TNA E101/386/10, m.2.

7. By far the best work on Edward’s religion is Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’. A subsequent short article by Bryce Lyon, ‘What were Edward III’s Priorities: the pleasures of sports or charity?’ used this and added some conclusions based on his edition of William Norwell’s wardrobe account book (TNA E36/203). However, Lyon’s methodology is highly reductive and his conclusions should be discounted. He argues that, because Edward’s special alms-giving in the period 1338–40 amounted to £439, plus daily alms-giving of £137, and yet hunting cost him £873 (total household expenditure being £23,746), this amounts to alms-giving having a lower ‘priority’ than hunting. One cannot sensibly compare financial payments for purchases which are completely different in nature and infer that such payments are quantifications of will, inclination or some ill-defined ‘priority’. The laws of demand and supply affected prices for commodities then as now, and Edward’s payments reflect externally determined prices as much as personal taste. Also Lyon’s work disregards some basic facts: that Edward was in an unusual situation (in a foreign land, having to entertain foreign potentates); that many religious gifts were in kind and occasional (such as his foundations of religious institutions); and that the total of alms-giving noted by Lyon – in excess of £300 per year – would have been more than that of any other individual in England.

8. Ormrod states that ‘there is very little to suggest that Edward was aware of the great theological debates raging in Oxford, even though William of Ockham, Thomas Bradwardine, Richard FitzRalph and John Wyclif were all at some stage employed in the service of the crown’ (Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 854). This is almost certainly true. However, he was aware of the men who were conducting the debates, even if he did not understand what they were saying. The employment of Ockham at any stage of his career is notable. Similarly the employment of the Aristotelian Walter Burley on a mission to Avignon to request the canonisation of Thomas of Lancaster is a good sign that Edward was familiar with how others are likely to have viewed him. Burley was also probably entrusted with educating Edward’s son and heir, Edward of Woodstock. Also we must note Edward’s appointment of the future archbishop Thomas Bradwardine as his own chaplain and confessor in 1338. Bradwardine was the well-respected scholar who wrote denouncing the error of Pelagius regarding free will; he remained in Edward’s service for several years, until appointed archbishop of Canterbury just before he died in 1349.

9. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, pp. 862–5.

10. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 874.

11. TNA E101/386/3 ff.1–3.

12. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 857.

13. TNA E101/388/5 m.15. This is described in context in Chapter Six.

14. TNA E36/204 f.75r, relating to the early 1340s, records a second visit to this statue. Another cult he patronised was that of St Thomas of Canterbury, especially visiting the point of the sword which killed the saint, which was still at Canterbury, venerated as a relic in its own right.

15. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 895.

16. Edward was fourteen at Stanhope Park, when 1800 pennons of Saint George were carried with him.

17. TNA E101/386/18 m.23.

18. On 22 February 1333, before the Berwick campaign, Edward sent Richard Bury and John Shorditch to Avignon to see Pope John XXII. Their mission was ‘to negotiate secret business of the king and business relating to his kingdom’ (TNA E101/386/11). No expense was spared in trying to assist the passage of Bury’s affairs. The king and council wrote to three of the pope’s kinsmen who had been engaged as royal councillors in the previous reign – Arnold de Unsa, Peter de Via and Arnold de Trie – asking them to support Bury and Shorditch. Funds were made available for much gift-giving to soften them up. These three councillors were all given silver-gilt goblets from the king. The pope was given ‘a silver-gilt goblet worth £66.13s.4d. purchased at Avignon with a stand and lid and decorated with various gemstones’ (TNA E101/386/11, m.1). Several cardinals were given pensions of fifty marks per year, including Napoleone Orsini Frangipani, cardinal deacon of Saint Adrian; Gaucelin d’Euse, cardinal bishop of Albano; Annibale Gaetani di Ceccano, cardinal bishop of Naples; Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget, the pope’s nephew; and Peter Montemart, cardinal priest of St Stephen in Celiomonte. Whatever Bury’s and John Shorditch’s business was, it was clearly of the highest importance to Edward III. Part of their secret business was to discuss Scotland, but there was more to it than that. On 5 July Bury agreed to pay four thousand florins ‘each florin worth 3s 4d’ (£666 13s 4d) per year to the pope, supposedly in lieu of papal taxation in England and Ireland (Foedera, ii, 2, p. 864; E101/386/11 m.1). Having made over all this money they waited until October 1333 for the pope to answer whatever was the last part of their secret business. When he finally answered he declined to address the matter of Scotland, but with regard to the other matter he was inclined to give ‘a favourable response’ (CEPR, ii, p. 512). What that was we do not know. Bury and Shorditch returned to England in November. The pensions of fifty marks for the cardinals were paid once and never again. If taxation was really the purpose of Bury’s mission, it is difficult to see why it was described as ‘secret business’ in the royal accounts, and why he did not return more swiftly. One possible explanation lies in the instigation of the ‘secret business’ coinciding with the arrival at court of Niccolinus Fieschi (TNA E101/386/9, where he appears under his alias ‘Cardinal’). Niccolinus was later to become closely involved with much of Edward’s secret foreign business, and was a relation of the author of the Fieschi letter (see Appendix Three). Hence his appearance at court in February 1333, and the robes he was given as a reward, might suggest that Edward finally had some information as to his father’s protector at that time.

19. Edward restored to her her dower lands of Ponthieu and Montreuil on 24 September 1334. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 893.

20. CEPR, ii, p. 512.

21. CEPR, ii, p. 501.

22. Philippa’s churching was at Woodstock on 8–10 March 1334, with by far the greatest expenses due on the 9th; so it seems reasonable to suppose that Joan was born about thirty-three days earlier, on 9 February 1334. See TNA E101/386/16 m.7. However, if the biblical sixty-six-day ‘uncleanness’ applied (as this was a female child), then this would indicate a January birth. See Appendix Eight. See also Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 160.

23. This was set in motion in June 1335. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 910.

24. Set in motion in July 1334. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 890.

25. I have been unable to determine what the ‘M’ might have stood for.

26. TNA E101/386/18 m.58.

27. For the list of armourers in 1330 see CMR 1326–27, p. 381. The names given in the text for 1333–34 are drawn from TNA E101/385/7 (esp. m.2, where John of Cologne is specifically paid for providing tunics ‘in the German style’), E101/386/18 and E101/387/15. Late in November 1333 the king had received a delivery of Italian and French plate armour (TNA E101/386/11 m.2).

28. TNA E101/388/13 m.3.

29. Laking, Arms and Armour, i, p. 145.

30. TNA E101/386/18 m.59.

31. For example, the ‘hood of brown scarlet circled with pearls made for the king which he gave to Robert Ufford’. See TNA E101/386/18 m.59.

32. For example, ‘the seven hoods of brown scarlet fringed with feathers, gold and pearls; the fringe of each hood having 408 pearls: one hood for the king, one for the earl of Cornwall, one for William Montagu, one for Edward Bohun, one for William Bohun, one for Robert Ufford, and one for Ralph Neville. The fringe of the king’s hood is lined with large pearls.’ See TNA E101/386/18 m.59.

33. TNA E101/386/18 m.59.

34. TNA E101/387/14 m.70. This includes a payment for ‘a palfrey saddle given to the earl of Chester’ at some point between 20 March and 20 August 1334. The prince would have been four years and two months old on the latter date. The reference to his armour is from Barber, ‘Edward of Woodstock’, ODNB.

35. TNA E101/386/15 m.1. Payments included saltpetre and sulphur.

36. E3&Chiv, p. 172.

37. E3&S, p. 170.

38. Indirect taxation was brought to bear upon dioceses which had recently lost their bishops. See Bryant, ‘Financial Dealings of Edward III’, pp. 761–3.

39. The subsidy allowed by parliament was assessed in a new way, with the emphasis on the sum required from a community, not individuals’ ability to pay. See Willard, ‘Taxes upon moveables’, pp. 69–74.

40. TNA E101/387/15 m.23; E3&S, pp. 175, 178.

41. E3&S, p. 176.

42. E3&S, p. 177.

43. Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, ii, p. 120.

44. Wages were reduced when an army crossed the border, on the basis that the men were free to steal when on enemy territory.

45. E3&S, p. 193.

46. Waugh, England in the Reign of Edward III, p. 80.

47. E3&S, p. 198.

48. It had previously been ordered to assemble on 11 June. See E3&S, p. 198.

49. E3&S, p. 200.

50. CChR, iv, p. 348.

51. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 291; E3&S, p. 205. Given the low levels of compensation paid – £10 and £20 – it is unlikely that the damages amounted to the destruction of either monastic house, as Nicholson suggests. See also Barnes, Edward III, p. 96.

52. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 291.

53. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 145.

54. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 293.

55. E3&S, p. 217, n.5.

56. E3&S, p. 224.

57. E3&S, p. 226.

58. Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, pp. 291–2.

59. 15 March 1336, at Westminster, the king dined with the papal nuncios and the envoys of the king of France, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Lincoln, the earls of Warwick and Buchan and other magnates of England. See TNA E101/387/19.

60. TNA E101/387/19 m.3.

61. CPR 1334–38, pp. 246, 252.

62. CPR 1334–38, p. 247; Foedera, ii, 2, p. 937.

63. TNA E101/386/9. This states that ‘Cardinal’ and his companion received a robe each on 23 February. Protection was granted for Bury on 26 February (CPR 1330–34, pp. 408–9). The secret nature of Bury’s business is stated in TNA E101/386/11 m.2: ‘for secret negotiations touching the the king and his kingdom’.

64. See Appendix Three.

65. On 14 July 1341 Niccolinus Fieschi was commissioned by Edward to treat with Philip de Valois (Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1168). Six days later he was summoned to the king in Flanders for the making of a treaty at Antoing (CCR 1341–43, p. 268; Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1169). See also the safe-conduct for Niccolinus Fieschi going to the pope as an envoy from the king to treat of peace with France, 1 September 1344 (CPR 1343–45, p. 341).

66. That Luca and his family were kinsmen of Edward I, II and III is stated several times in the English records, but precisely how they were related is unclear. See Appendix Three, n.11, for contemporary references to consanguinity and suggestions regarding a blood connection.

67. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge (1959), ii, pp. 209–10.

68. Welander Gloucester Cathedral, notes five visits before 1330 and then one in 1334 and none until a flying visit in 1349. I cannot find the source of his reference to a visit in 1334. No letters patent or closed were issued from Gloucester in the period from July 1330-September 1337. To his list I can add the 1337 visit (TNA E101/388/5 m.4); 1342 (CCR 1341–43, p. 578); 1343, (Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 135; TNA E36/204 f.75v); and 1353 (TNA E101/392/12 f.18v)).

69. Welander, Gloucester Cathedral, pp. 155, 160. Abbot Wygmore died 28 January 1337, having been abbot for seven years.

70. In 1337 the choir of the church around the tomb of the supposed Edward II was begun to be rebuilt. It was reconstructed in the new London style of architecture (later known as Perpendicular), previously employed only at two royal chapels, both of which had been overseen by the Surveyor of the King’s Works, William Ramsey, Edward’s chief mason. Ramsey only oversaw £4 of building work at St Stephen’s, Westminster, in 1337, and in 1338 there seems to have been no work carried out. Not until 1340 did serious works resume there. It is therefore probable that in 1337–39 he concentrated on the work at Gloucester, directing works carried out at the expense of the Gloucester monks. See HKW, i, pp. 177, 182, 207–8, 279, 515–17. If he oversaw the placing of the body of Edward II into the tomb it would not be surprising, as many years after his death, it was his daughter who placed Edward II’s heart in Isabella’s tomb.

71. TNA E101/387/19 mm.4–6.

72. Sumption claims John of Eltham presided; the wardrobe account of Ferriby suggests it was the queen. See Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 162; TNA E101/387/19 m.6.

73. Barnes, Edward the Third, p. 103.

74. Bothwell, ‘Edward III, the English Peerage and the 1337 Earls’, pp. 36–7.

75. See the entries for John in DNB and CP (under ‘Cornwall’). The last wedding had been agreed on, and papal approval had been obtained.

76. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 855.

77. TNA E101/388/5 m.14 for the bad dream about John.

78. Balfour-Melville in his Edward III and David II (p. 11) states that Edward had already left Perth. This might be true: his wardrobe accounts suggest as much (TNA E101/387/19 mm.8–9). But Edward was not with his wardrode. He stayed at Perth. See note 82 below.

79. ‘Morrust de bele mort’ in Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 101.

80. For example, a Leicester writer states he was ill; a canon of St Paul’s emphasises that his death was not due to war. See respectively Lumby (ed.) Knighton, i, p. 477; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 78. Also see James, ‘John of Eltham’, esp. pp. 67, 73–4.

81. Barnes, Edward III, p. 107.

82. Although his wardrobe was at Berwick on 13 September, Edward himself seems to have remained at Perth until the 16th. See TNA E101/387/19 mm.8–9; CCR 1333–37, p. 703. CPR 1334–38, p. 362. See also James, ‘John of Eltham’, p. 76, showing that a letter from Edward was written at Perth on 7 September, after the household had left the town (it left on the 3rd, and was at Kinkell Bridge on the 4th, contrary to James’s assertion). This is supported by the Close Roll entries for 7–8 September (CCR 1333–37, p. 701). See also James, ‘John of Eltham’, p. 77, quoting an entry in Edward’s name entered on the Rotuli Scotiae for his presence at Perth on the 13th. Contrary to James’s assertion that ‘there is no doubt that Edward was at Berwick on 12 September’ the Close Rolls specify that a writ issued at Perth on 12 September was ‘by the king’ (CCR 1333–37, p. 705). Although James’s suggestion on p. 77 – that the chancery was split up in transit at this time – is probably correct, it is unlikely that the part which issued the letter ‘by the king’ was not the one with him at the time.

83. Edward’s route probably followed that of his wardrobe, from Perth to Kinkell Bridge, then Cambuskenneth, Stirling, Berwick, Belford, Newcastle, Bishop Auckland, Darlington, Knaresborough, Blyth and finally Nottingham. If he reached Nottingham on 22 September (see next note), and presuming the reference to his presence at Perth on 16 September relates to a morning activity, this equates to about 380 miles or more in a maximum of seven days, which is very fast progress indeed. An alternative explanation is that Edward moved with his wardrobe, and the references to his letters of 4–16 September at Perth relate to clerks’ carrying out his business in response to his verbal instructions after he had actually left the town. The only evidence that this was the case, however, is the large amount spent on household expenses at Newcastle on 14 September, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and this by itself seems inconclusive. If Philippa had been there, for example, she might have hosted a major feast in Edward’s absence.

84. TNA E101/387/19 m.9 states that 22 September was the first day of the council at Nottingham (HBC has 23rd). The chancery (part of it at least) would appear also to have made it to Nottingham by then, as shown by a charter (10 Edward III, no. 15) dated then, and CPR 1334–38, p. 363; CCR, p. 706. Sumption dates Edward’s arrival to 24 September (Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 165).

85. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 169.

86. The king’s progress south meant that his wardrobe reached the capital on 8 January; a local chronicler states the body entered the capital on 10 January. See TNA E101/387/19 m.13; Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles, i. p. 365.

87. The date of the Gloucester tomb has usually been assumed as early to mid-1330s. This is based largely on the assumption that Edward II died in 1327. Such a date is possibly correct nonetheless, as Edward III certainly wanted the public to believe that his father was buried there, and an ostentatious tomb, with regular masses in its vicinity to the man’s memory, was a good way to persuade people. The use of the French royal arms as a border to the English leopards on John of Eltham’s tomb suggests the tomb was crafted before 1340, when Edward quartered his mother’s arms with his own, giving prominence to France. If one craftsman made both exceptional and pioneering alabaster effigies, as is probable, it is unlikely that the Gloucester one was made as much as ten years before the Westminster one. Similarly, both canopies to the two tombs have been attributed to William Ramsey, who also provided the alabaster effigy of Edward’s daughter Blanche in 1343. One is inclined to believe that Ramsey was responsible in whole or in part for all the royal tombs at this time, and his appointment as Surveyor of the King’s Works in 1336 is a crucial date. No records survive to allow certainty, but at present a date of 1336–39 for the completion of both Edward II’s and John of Eltham’s tomb monuments seems probable.

88. TNA E101/387/19 m.13.

89. Barnes, Edward III, p. 108.

6: The Vow of the Heron

1. This is a greatly shortened account of the Vow of the Heron. A full version appears in an English translation, with notes, in James and Simons, Laurence Minot, pp. 69–83. This was the edition I used in writing this book. A more recent edition, with an introduction which redates the poem to about 1346, is J.L. Grigsby and N.J. Lacy, The Vows of the Heron (Les Voeux de héron): a Middle French Vowing Poem (New York, 1992).

2. The description of Edward’s claim on France being ‘absurd’ is taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed., 1939), vol. 11, p. 888.

3. For the linkage between Edward’s claim on the throne of France and his rights in Aquitaine see Craig Taylor, ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, pp. 155–69; Templeman, ‘Edward III and the beginnings of the Hundred Years War’, pp. 71–3.

4. CEPR, ii, p. 561.

5. See Perroy, Hundred Years War, p. 91. The invasion threat of September 1336 is when Perroy suggests Edward decided war was inevitable.

6. Taylor, ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, p. 157.

7. See Bothwell, ‘Edward III and the “New Nobility”’, which questions whether this should be seen as a new nobility, as Edward failed permanently to ennoble more than a handful of his followers. This argument presupposes a definition of nobility itself which did not change; it seems that Edward pushed men into quasi-noble positions, and elevated men to less permanent positions of nobility, somewhat akin to his avoidance of employing feudal armies in favour of paid trained men and mercenaries. Indeed, the two might be regarded as similar means of military resourcing.

8. The skilled labourer here is a thatcher. The daily rate for a master thatcher at this time – 3d – has been taken from Dyer, Standards of Living, p. 215. Presuming 250 working days per year, this equates to an annual income of about £32s 6d. Comparisons with other artisans are available in this same work.

9. TNA E101/388/2 m.2.

10. See Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 185–95 for a full description of the background to this. In fact Edward gave d’Artois a pension of £800 per annum (on 3 May) and the rights to dwell in three royal castles (23 April); it is therefore very unlikely that he ever seriously contemplated surrendering him; and thus Sumption is very probably correct in saying these were ‘final’ demands. Everything points to these being diplomatic niceties continued for the sake of form.

11. Montagu’s doubts are expressed in Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 104.

12. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 303.

13. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War 1336–40’, p. 245.

14. See Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 212–13 for a neat description of this economic strategy proposed by William de la Pole and Reginald Conduit.

15. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 976.

16. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 207–10.

17. RE3, p. 193; Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French war 1336–40’, p. 252; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 80. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 211, refers to a council between 18 and 26 August. It was on 21 August that Edward appointed the archbishop of Canterbury and the earl of Northampton to explain to the people of Kent about the decision of the council at Westminster, but that was probably the July council (Foedera, ii, 2, p. 990). Sumption’s referenced sources (Foedera and Scalachronica) do not mention the dates of the council. HBC (2nd ed., p. 520) mentions the councils noted in the text for May, July and 26 September, summoned on 18 August.

18. Templeman, ‘Edward III and the beginnings of the Hundred Years War’, p. 77. The example of the archbishop of Canterbury and the earl of Northampton speaking to the people of Kent comes from Foedera, ii, 2, p. 990.

19. Each year would have amounted to some £38,000, thus three years amounted to about a third of his total borrowing. See Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War 1336–40’, p. 248.

20. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1001. The matter of precedence is discussed in Ormrod, ‘Problem of Precedence’, pp. 133–53.

21. CEPR, ii, p. 565.

22. CEPR, ii, p. 566.

23. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 80–1.

24. See Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 218–20 for some excellently written passages on Burghersh. Sumption is wrong in one respect, however. On p. 217 he states that Edward declined to give the cardinals safe passage until November: letters of safe conduct were sent on 13 October. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1002. See also Fryde, ‘Dismissal of Robert de Wodehouse’.

25. Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and the Peruzzi’, p. 155. In 1339 his debts were put at £300,000 (Fryde, ‘Dismissal of Robert de Wodehouse’, p. 75), but this does not take into consideration the repayments which must have been made before then, as implied by Hunt. Stratford, in arriving at the figure of three hundred thousand, was probably presenting the worst case scenario he could justify documentarily in 1339. In late 1337 his borrowing was probably no more than a third of this total.

26. TNA E101/388/8 m.4.

27. TNA E101/388/8 mm.4, 6. These included ‘fifty-six surcoats of red stiffened cindon decorated with oak leaves lined with white cameline cloth . . . thirty-seven hoods of blue cloth . . and a further sixty surcoats of red cloth lined with white cloth and blue hoods’ for the knights taking part.

28. TNA E101/388/8 m.6.

29. At these games, Edward, William Montagu and the earl of Derby were resplendent in tunics of white cloth, trimmed with fur and green cloth, ‘decorated with the image of a castle made of silk and trimmed with gold, displaying towers, halls, chambers, walls and other such things, and within the walls divers trees of gold, and on the breast of each tunic an embroidered figure in gold standing under a canopy on the battlements; the hems of these tunics being designed in such a way as to resemble the moats and ditches of this castle surrounded by a green field’.

30. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War 1336–40’, p. 246.

31. Harris, ‘War and the emergence of the English Parliament’; Richardson and Sayles, The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, chapter xxi, parts i and ii.

32. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War 1336–40’, pp. 244, 249–50.

33. Specific instructions to pillage were included in the ordinances for the Norman-French invasion of March 1338. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 257–63.

34. This is based on Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 232, and p. 606, n.92. But note that Sumption dates the letter being carried to France to May 1338, and then on p. 295 dates it to November 1337, a much more likely date, a month after it was written. Also note that Edward again made provision for an embassy on 21 June 1338 to treat with ‘our cousin of France’, which also carried letters addressed to ‘King Philip’ as a diplomatic stand-by. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1043.

35. For William of Pagula and purveyance see Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 44; Nederman (ed.), Political Thought, pp. 63–139. Purveyance is a central theme to his work; the old woman’s hen quotation in Given-Wilson repeated here appears on p. 86 of this edition.

36. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1027

37. Foedera, ii, 2, pp. 1024–5. On 16 March he was at the Tower; on the 23rd at Newcastle, on the 28th at Berwick, and back at Langley on the 6th. According to an inspeximus of a charter, he was back at Langley by the 5th.

38. TNA E101/388/5 m.15.

39. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 314.

40. Lyon et al. (eds), Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, L. The editors are rather slipshod in supposing that Edward, duke of Cornwall disembarked with them. The heir to the throne remained in England as regent, appointed on 11 July. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1042. The reference to John Chaucer comes from DNB, presumably using Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1042. Sumption states that Philippa only followed at a later date; it is not clear what his source is for this. The Norwell accounts include a payment for maintenance of her household from 22 July, without specifying that she was then in England. See Lyon et al. (eds),Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, p. 226. The wardrobe account TNA E101/388/13 m.2 mentions her being transported from Westminster by boat on 19 October, but the same account notes Edward being transported by boat from Westminster at the same time, and it is exceptionally unlikely that he returned to England at this juncture. The date may relate instead to the date of satisfaction of the debt.

41. TNA E101/388/9 f.23v. The basins given to Isabella were given at Bury St Edmunds on 11 July; those to Joan were given on 30 June at Walton.

42. Wyon and Wyon, The Great Seals of England, pp. 30–1; Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1050.

43. TNA E101/388/8 m.4. See E3&Chiv, p. 79 for other references to streamers and ships. It is likely that streamers bearing St George’s arms were also used, made not for this but for a previous occasion.

44. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1053.

45. Lyon et al. (eds), Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, Lxxix. On the strength of the persuasive arguments advanced by Edwin Hunt regarding the business of the Bardi and the Peruzzi, it seems very unlikely indeed that such high levels of lending as £70,000 were obtained in this period as a single outstanding balance of debt from the Italian banking companies. Norwell’s account book states less than £8,700 came from them at this point; and the level of borrowing by Edward over the period 1336–39 is perhaps best viewed as sustained by constant, if erratic and irregularly documented, repayments, including the donation of wool to their southern Mediterranean monopoly. See Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and the Peruzzi’, and its later summing up in his book, Medieval Super-Companies, which deals with the Peruzzi.

46. Lyon et al. (eds) Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, p. 212.

47. Lyon et al. (eds) Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, p. 206. It appears as £65 10s in Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 860. It could be that Ormrod has silently corrected Lyon et al.; I have not checked the original.

48. The interpretation of events in this and the following passages is drawn from Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 241–3.

49. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 84–5, n.10.

50. TNA E101/388/8 m.1.

51. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 47.

52. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1058.

53. Dino Forzetti or Forcetti was the English agent of the Bardi in the 1320s and the 1330s; Francesco Forcetti was the Sicilian agent of the Peruzzi from 1299 to 1341.

54. Lyon et al. (eds), Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, p. 212.

55. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1067.

56. CPR 1340–43, p. 45. This, like all but two of the later references to Forzetti concerned shipping wool to the Bardi and Peruzzi. The two exceptions are for a cargo on board a Barcelona ship, which Forzetti was ordered to take intact to Bristol, with its crew, in December 1342 (CPR 1340–43, p. 569) and for him to guard a manor of Tedisio Benedicti de Falcinello, one of Philippa’s esquires and a papal sergeant-at-arms, in November, 1344 (CPR 1343–45, p. 565).

57. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 240.

58. Barnes, Edward the Third, p. 136.

59. CEPR, ii, p. 569.

60. CEPR, ii, p. 570.

61. Fryde, ‘Dismissal of Robert de Wodehouse’.

62. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1065.

63. Fryde, Parliament and the French War 1336–40, pp. 2153–4

64. Bothwell, ‘Edward III and the “New Nobility”’, p. 1127.

65. CEPR, ii, pp. 574–5.

66. The letter appears in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 91–100; Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, pp. 201–8. A translation is in Barnes. Edward the Third, pp. 126–30.

67. Taylor, ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, p. 156.

68. Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, pp. 206–7; Barnes, Edward the Third, p. 129.

69. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 149. Perroy does much the same thing in his Hundred Years War, p. 106.

70. The letter from Benedict which appears in Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, pp. 208–13 is wrongly placed by Walsingham, correctly being 1 November 1338. The mistake has been followed by Barnes in his Edward the Third, pp. 130–3.

71. EHD 1327–1485, p. 65; Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 64. Sumption dates this event to 10 October. See Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 284.

72. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 54.

73. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War 1336–40’, p. 257.

74. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War 1336–40’, p. 259. Although Fryde states that there was no exaggeration in the amount of three hundred thousand pounds, it is likely – given more recent findings – that the amounts owed to the Italian bankers at least had been reduced by repayments which have not been recorded as systematically as the debts. The same points raised by Edwin Hunt regarding the Peruzzi should also be considered with regard to William de la Pole. See Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and the Peruzzi’.

75. See Appendix Three. If Edward II was being held by the Fieschi on papal instructions, then this might explain the reluctance to claim the throne of France between October 1337 and January 1340, despite the frequent assertion that Philip had intruded illegally.

76. WCS, p. 1.

77. Obviously neither Magna Carta (1215) nor the first invitation to the commons to send representatives to a parliament (1264) was a royal initiative (both were baronial). The Norman Conquest was, of course, the initiative of William as duke of Normandy, not as a king of England.

7: Sluys and Tournai

1. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 248.

2. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 66.

3. CEPR, ii, p. 579.

4. This was stretching the facts, as Charles of Navarre, to whom the pope had been referring, had not been born in 1328, when Edward claimed he should have inherited from his uncle, King Charles.

5. Foedera, ii, 2, pp. 1107–8, 1126.

6. Bond (ed.), Melsa, ii, p. 386; Barnes, Edward the Third, pp. 157–8.

7. Ormrod, ‘Problem of Precedence’, p. 147.

8. RE3, pp. 20, 22, 83 etc; Waugh, England in the Reign of Edward III, p. 215. Natalie Fryde suggests that this was another tenth merely called the ‘Ninth’ as it required the ninth sheep of every ten to be given to the Crown as opposed to the ‘Tenth’ or tithe, which was given to the clergy. See Fryde, ‘Edward III’s Removal of his Ministers’, p. 152.

9. Originally sheriffs had been Exchequer appointees. On Edward’s departure from England in 1338 he had ordered in the Walton Ordinances that each county’s sheriff should be elected by the coroner and four knights of the shire. This was now done away with, and the right of appointment was once more given back to the Exchequer. See Jewell, English Local Administration in the Middle Ages, p. 193.

10. This was the old law dating back to the Conquest which stated that if a man was found slain, he was presumed to be Norman unless proved to be English. If it could not be proved that he was English, those living in the hundred in which he was found were fined.

11. RE3, p. 51.

12. EHD 1327–1485, p. 70.

13. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 312.

14. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 312–17.

15. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1120.

16. Calender of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice and Other Libraries of Northern Italy 1202–1509 (1864), i, pp. 8–9.

17. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 311.

18. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 323. Differing figures with a full discussion appear in WCS, pp. 192–3. Rogers agrees that there were many fewer ships in the English navy, either 120 or 147. Records suggest about 3,700 men-at-arms, knights and infantry and just under 8,000 archers, plus sailors.

19. Barnes, Edward the Third, p. 182.

20. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 106. Nicolas in his Royal Navy states that he waited for the tide, and that no writer mentions the wind, apparently not noticing Murimuth’s words on the subject.

21. Small boats full of stones had been hoisted up the masts for the purpose of preventing the English boarding the larger vessels. See Nicolas, Royal Navy, ii, p. 52.

22. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 327; Nicolas, Royal Navy, ii, p. 57.

23. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 327 has 190 ships; Rogers corrects this misreading in WCS, p. 193.

24. Nicolas, Royal Navy, ii, pp. 39, 60.

25. De Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, p. 70.

26. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 313.

27. Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 28–9. It is thought that John was named after his godfather, John of Brabant.

28. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 861. Nicolas, Royal Navy, ii, p. 60, quoting Froissart.

29. De Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, p. 72.

30. Hunt, Medieval Super-Companies, pp. 208–9.

31. De Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, p. 72, states that Edward cut off the water supplies. This is presumably on the evidence of chronicles which state that he damned the river (see ibid, pp. 87–8). However, damming the Scheldt would have been a difficult task. Also it would not have affected the water table height, and a city like Tournai would have had many wells. It seems more reasonable to agree with Sumption on this point; Edward created bridges over the running river, not dams. See Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 349–54.

32. Barnes, Edward the Third, p. 188.

33. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 352; de Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, p. 73.

34. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 355–7; de Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, pp. 73–4.

35. CEPR, pp. 581–2.

36. De Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, p. 75, quoting Alfred Burne and May McKisack. See also ibid, p. 77.

37. E3&Chiv, p. 66.

38. See de Vries, ‘Siege of Tournai’, pp. 73–4. Although E.B. Fryde is quoted as saying that the failure of the siege of Tournai cannot be blamed entirely on money, which is true, the alternative perspective is not considered: what if the siege had been successful? Since this consideration would also have affected Edward’s judgement in calling off the siege, the money problem needs to be seen as the real battle, not the siege itself.

8: Chivalry and Shame

1. CEPR, ii, pp. 583–4.

2. Taylor, in his ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, p. 164, thinks that the November 1340 document simply served as a ‘positioning paper’ to set before the pope and cardinals, with the more detailed dossier to follow in 1344. Even so, the synopsis of the argument put forward at this time is hardly lightweight. See CEPR, ii, pp. 584–8. To these three negotiators the pope added the now-freed Niccolinus Fieschi, on Edward’s behalf, his argument apparently being distinct from that of the other three.

3. CEPR, ii, p. 585.

4. The date of birth is recorded in Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 253. The terminus ante quem for the churching appears to be before 8 July, according to Ormrod, ‘Royal Nursery’, n.34, so certainly the birth cannot have been any later than 5 June. Ormrod suggests the birth might actually have been earlier than 5 June, not later, thus increasing the likelihood of Edmund being illegitimate.

5. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1135.

6. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 360.

7. Michael K. Jones, Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle (2002). For the continued debate see Michael K. Jones, ‘The Debate: was Edward IV illegitimate?’ in Ricardian Bulletin (Summer 2004), pp. 18–24, including the response by Joanna Laynesmith.

8. Edward was at Langley from 30 January to 7 February, on 12 and 15 February, 5–19 March, 2–20 April and 5–10 June, and from 20 June-6 July (information supplied by Professor Ormrod from his unpublished notes on the itinerary of Edward III). Subsequently Edward remained at London or Westminster. Philippa was said by the old DNB to have returned with Edward in November 1340, but this seems unlikely in view of Murimuth’s detailed list of the men who fled from Ghent with the king and the manner of their escape: high-speed flight on horseback would not have been appropriate for a pregnant and possibly sick queen with none of her ladies. She may have stayed in London with Edward prior to moving to Langley.

9. CCR 1341–43, pp. 59–60 (11 April); p. 180 (15 April). The full rate was forty shillings. Edward had not long before given permission for one of the cardinals to export sixty sacks of wool every year, entirely free of duty; and in 1342 he gave permission for Robert d’Artois to export wool at the old rate of 6s 8d per sack. See Foedera, ii, 2, pp. 1141, 1215.

10. TNA E101/390/2. The earls of Salisbury and Surrey joined him in the lists. A total of thirteen shields made for the king and covered in gold and silver leaf, decorated in the arms of each of the two earls, suggest a small but intimate party. Interestingly, the godfathers chosen for the baby were the abbot of St Albans (who baptised him) and the old earl of Surrey and his nephew, the earl of Arundel: the same two men who had persuaded Edward to relent and hear the archbishop’s case in parliament the previous month. See CP, xii, pp. 895–6.

11. TNA E101/388/11; E101/389/8 m.19.

12. Ormrod ‘Royal Nursery’; CP, xii (2), pp. 895–6.

13. Thomas of Woodstock was also not created an earl until his early twenties, but Thomas was very much younger, nearly fourteen years younger, than Edmund, and to make him an earl in infancy would have drawn attention to Edmund’s comparatively low status.

14. Thompson (ed.), Chronicon Angliae, pp. 107, 398; Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 61. In Walsingham’s (St Albans) account Philippa gave birth to a girl, not a son, and so swapped the children. A more credible reason is given by the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle, who explains that a nurse accidentally suffocated the baby – presumably laying on it in bed – and swapped it for John. See Galbraith (ed.), Anonimalle, pp. 104–5.

15. It is very unlikely that it was the subject about which the archbishop of Canterbury spoke to Edward and Philippa ‘apart’ (unless he spoke through messengers) because Philippa had not returned to England since giving birth to John. In addition, Philippa had not felt the need to conceal her daughter Isabella of Woodstock. Also, Wykeham never claimed this himself in any extant source; chroniclers claimed it on his behalf, possibly as a result of rumours. Lastly, but importantly, this story was not original. In 1318 John of Powderham had claimed that he was the genuine heir of Edward I, having been ‘taken from the cradle’, and that Edward II was an impostor, the child of a carter ‘subtly brought into the Queen’. For this see Denholm-Young (ed.), Vita Edwardi Secundi, p. 86; Stubbs (ed.), Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, i, pp. 282–3; Hingeston (ed.), Capgrave, pp. 185–6; Bond (ed.), Melsa, ii, pp. 335–6.

16. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 116–17.

17. Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 112.

18. See for example Fryde, ‘Edward III’s Removal of his Ministers’; Lapsley, ‘Archbishop Stratford and the Parliamentary Crisis of 1341’; Jones, ‘Rex et Ministri: English Local Government and the Crisis of 1341’.

19. RE3, p. 83.

20. RE3, p. 83.

21. EHD 1327–1485, p. 72.

22. Lapsley, ‘Archbishop Stratford and the Parliamentary Crisis’, p. 15. For Edward’s taxation being the worst in medieval Europe, see WCS, p. 21.

23. Lapsley, ‘Archbishop Stratford and the Parliamentary Crisis’, p. 194. For the parliament to be properly so, the king or his designated representative had to be present.

24. How far he was received into favour is debatable. Ormrod in RE3 (p. 84) claims that the power of the Stratford family was permanently eclipsed by this episode. But Murimuth relates several occasions when Edward specifically sought advice from Stratford after this. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 157, 159, 160. Also it should be noted that in 1350, when Edward was asked to put forward two candidates to become English cardinals (a very rare distinction), one of the two men Edward proposed was Ralph Stratford, bishop of London (Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 112).

25. RE3, pp. 25, 52.

26. Foedera ii, 2, pp. 1168, 1169.

27. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 383, 385.

28. Hardy, Syllabus of Rymer’s Foedera, i, p. 324. Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 37, states 7 October.

29. Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1181; Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 37.

30. Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 112.

31. See Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, p. 112; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 123; E3&Chiv, p. 66.

32. Lumby (ed.), Knighton, ii, p. 23.

33. TNA E36/204/f.20v.

34. The best discussion of the event is Gransden, ‘Alleged Rape’. The details of le Bel and Froissart are given considerable attention by Packe, Edward III, pp. 103–23.

35. Packe, Edward III, p. 120.

36. Gransden, ‘Alleged Rape’, p. 334.

37. Gransden, ‘Alleged Rape’, p. 335.

38. TNA E36/204 f.20v.

39. E3&Chiv, p. 173.

40. TNA E34/204 f.28v.

41. Edward made an arrangement on 22 October 1341 to pay Edward Montagu wages of war. This might mean he had received word from him at Wark, or he might have been with him in England. See CPR 134–44, p. 269.

42. Packe, Edward III, p. 117.

43. Packe, Edward III, p. 122. Despite Packe’s theory, the circumstances of the death of Alice, wife of Edward Montagu, do not constitute evidence that she was the rape victim. Any number of other reasons could have arisen for her husband to have killed her, and the death was many years after the supposed rape. Also it would have been difficult to hold a man guilty in law for murdering his wife when she was his chattel, even if she was the king’s cousin german. This does not mean she was not the woman of the narrative, but the fact is incidental to the story under consideration.

44. The version in the French chronicles only deals with the rape. See Gransden, ‘Alleged Rape’, pp. 333–4.

45. The crime is supposed to have been committed between Salisbury’s departure overseas and Edward’s own sailing. The navy assembled at the port of Sandwich on 29 September, and then waited for favourable winds, skirting around the coast to Portsmouth, from which Edward finally sailed on 23 October (TNA E36/204 ff.32r-33r; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 128). Although Salisbury was preparing to sail on 3 September, he was still in England on 26 September, when he was present at a dinner with the royal family and various other magnates (TNA E136/204 f.31v).

46. CCR 1341–43, p. 9.

47. The countess supposedly confessed all to her husband on his return from the Continent. As mentioned above, the earl and king returned together. Soon afterwards Edward wrote to an emissary of the Grand Master of the Knights of St John requesting that a cousin of the earl’s be allowed admittance to that order of knights: a small favour to the earl, not a sign of any great upheaval. There is no sign of any settlement of the earl’s estates in the period 1342–44. Finally, when Montagu died, it was not fighting the Moors but two weeks after a great tournament held by Edward at Windsor, in which Montagu had taken part (Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 232).

48. Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, p. 84. This was when he was back in Hainault.

49. In the first twenty years of their marriage, Philippa was pregnant for nine of them. This is remarkable for the period, considering Edward was away from her for much of the time.

50. Gransden, ‘Alleged Rape’, p. 341.

51. Quoted in Frame, ‘Crisis of 1341–1342’, p. 91.

52. This passage is largely drawn from Frame, ‘Crisis of 1341–1342’; Otway-Ruthven, History of Medieval Ireland, pp. 259–60.

53. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 223.

54. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 123, 124.

55. E3&Chiv, p. 140, n. 107, quoting E36/204 f.21v.

56. Edward had held January tournaments in the past, including one large-scale one at Dunstable in 1334, but they were rare. See E3&Chiv, pp. 172–3.

57. TNA E101/390/1 m.2: ‘cum sermonibus Regis it is as it is’. It is worth noting that Lionel’s bed of state did not carry this motto, suggesting the double purpose of the event. Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 152 associates all of this account with the marriage of Lionel in London on 15 August 1342. TNA E101/389/14 m.2 does not suggest this. However, if Shenton is right, then the points made here would apply to the marriage/announcement later in the year. It is quite possible, given the way these accounts were written up, that some confusion of items purchased for two distinct events has occurred, or that confusion has arisen from them being reused.

58. TNA E101/389/14 m.2.

59. Among these were ‘a long robe with a short, flouncy, buttoned surcoat made in advance from cloth given to the king by the duke of Cornwall’, ‘three flounced, buttoned tunics of green Brussels cloth for the king and two knights’ and ‘thirty-two tunics of striped cloth with individual white hoods to be trimmed for the king’s squires’. See TNA E101/389/14 m.1.

60. E3&Chiv, p. 65.

61. TNA E101/390/1 m.2.

62. The skilled labourer here is a thatcher. The daily rate for a master thatcher at this time – 3d – has been taken from Dyer, Standards of Living, p. 215. Presuming 250 working days per year, this equates to an annual income of about £3 2s 6d. Comparisons with other artisans are available in this same work.

63. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 135. See Doherty, Isabella and the Strange Death, p. 140 for a description of the unusual lead coffin.

64. The final rewriting of the ordinances for the chantry at Sibthorp to reflect the fact that Edward II was definitely dead was in January-February 1343. The rewriting to reflect an ambiguity – that he may have been alive – was written in 1335. See Appendix Three.

65. Niccolinus probably returned before 3 December when an order to pay him the arrears of his wages was made. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1183. He was still in London on 22 December 1341 when he dated a receipt for £50 at London (TNA E40/508 i). He remained in London while the knights were all at Dunstable. Another receipt of his is dated 11 February 1342 at London (TNA E40/508 ii).

9: The Advent of the Golden Age

1. For the progress of the war in Brittany see Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 370–410. This part has been drawn from pp. 387–91. See also Perroy, Hundred Years War, pp. 114–17.

2. Bradbury, Medieval Archer, pp. 93–4. He quotes 130,000 sheaves; I presume these were regular sheaves of two dozen arrows each.

3. Johnes, (ed.), Froissart, i, pp. 106–7.

4. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 400; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 128–9.

5. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 405.

6. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 407.

7. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 135.

8. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, pp. 324–5. The Lanercost chronicle was at this time being composed in Carlisle by a Franciscan friar. Only later was it edited at Lanercost.

9. TNA E36/204, f.42v.

10. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 135; Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 80.

11. TNA E36/204, f.75v.

12. On this note, it is worth remembering that these saintly figures were the closest not only to Edward but the royal family. Edward I and Edward II had also strongly supported the Virgin and St Thomas of Canterbury. The offerings to them at Canterbury after this storm are in particular reminiscent of Queen Margaret, Edward I’s first wife, who believed St Thomas had saved her life during a storm and had named her first-born son Thomas in recognition of the fact in 1300.

13. RP, ii, p. 135. This was despite a law of 1313 forbidding the presence of armed men in parliament.

14. For the parliament of 1343 see RE3, pp. 25, 60, 61, 102, 120, 155–7, 174.

15. RE3, pp. 67, 174.

16. Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and Peruzzi’, pp. 155–6. The records are published in Sapori, I Libri dei Comercio dei Peruzzi. See also Hunt, Medieval Super-Companies (especially chapter eight: ‘The Collapse’).

17. Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and Peruzzi’, p. 150, quoting E.B. Fryde, ‘Public Credit, with Special Reference to North Western Europe’, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, 1965), iii, p. 460.

18. Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and Peruzzi’, pp. 162.

19. Hunt, ‘Dealings of the Bardi and Peruzzi’, p. 150; Villani, Nuova Cronica, book 13, chapter 55. It is of course possible that the Acciaiuoli and other firms suffered due to the defaulting of creditors ruined by the Peruzzi crash, a point which Hunt does not explore; but it would be an assumption simply to presume that this was the reason, especially given the figures which Hunt and Fryde have determined.

20. The notes on coins have been drawn from Seaby’s Standard Catalogue of British Coins (24th ed., 1989) and AC, pp. 490–2.

21. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 141–2.

22. A.D.M. Barrell, ‘The Ordinance of Provisors of 1343’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), pp. 264–77. In this article the Ordinance is shown to have been supported by direct action to confiscate provisions and prohibit clerics from acting on such provisions. Letters to the sheriffs to carry out its threats are also extant.

23. Mollat, Popes at Avignon, p. 263.

24. The great crown was redeemed in 1344. Measures to redeem Queen Philippa’s crowns had been taken in September 1342. See Foedera, ii, 2, p. 1210.

25. TNA E101/390/2, m.1.

26. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 146, 230–1; E3&Chiv, p. 173.

27. The date here is not straightforward. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 231 states 8 February, a Sunday, which was the usual day for a major tournament to start. However, this same account states that the earl of Salisbury was present, and was wounded, and died eight days later. Salisbury died on or before 31 January, as proved by CFR 1337–1347, p. 358, when the escheator was sent to make an inquisition into his lands. The inquisition itself suggests he died the previous day, 30 January. An alternative date (19 January) appears on p. 155, but this was a Monday. However, it might relate to the day that the jousting started, as no fighting at a tournament took place on the first day, a Sunday, only prayers and eating. If the meeting began on Sunday 18 January, and the jousting started on the 19th, then the last day would indeed be eight days before the 30th, when Salisbury died.

28. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 231 quoted in translation in EHD 1327–1485, p. 74.

29. HKW, ii, p. 870; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 156; Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 263.

30. E3&Chiv, p. 173 suggests four years. However, Barber, Black Prince, pp. 45–6 states that Edward took part in the Lichfield tournament on 9 April 1346. Unfortunately he does not reference his source for this detail.

31. Mollat, Popes at Avignon, p. 263.

32. CEPR, iii, p. 7.

33. RP, ii, p. 147.

34. WCS, p. 221.

35. For example, statutes passed at the 1344 parliament included reforms such as ceasing commissions of enquiry, the appointment of Justices of the Peace, the right to purchase wool, the freedom of the seas, the law of trespass and when soldiers’ wages were to be paid. Also there was a Statute of the Clergy, making a distinction between rights for secular and temporal judges, among other things. See Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, i, pp. 240–5.

36. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 19.

37. For the strength of the English claim, see Taylor, ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, pp. 161–2, 168.

38. Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 49.

39. Derby witnessed almost every charter granted from January to June 1345. See TNA C53/131 nos 2, 3, 4 and 8; C53/132 nos 13, 15–21.

40. CEPR, iii, pp. 15–16.

41. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 142.

42. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 461–2.

43. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 145.

44. TNA E101/391/1; Riley (ed.), Walsingham, ii, p. 266.

45. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 158.

46. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 173.

47. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 175.

48. James and Simons (eds), Laurence Minot, p. 86.

49. Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 56; Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 465; Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 130.

50. Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 468–9.

51. Maxwell (ed.), Lanercost, p. 325.

52. Matthews, Royal Apothecaries, p. 29.

53. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 486; Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 149.

54. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 497, who gives this number of ships and suggests 7,000 to 10,000. The matter of the size of the army – and the figure of fifteen thousand men – is discussed in greater depth in WCS, pp. 423–6.

55. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 200–1.

56. A discussion about whether this was the intended destination appears in Appendix Five.

10: Edward the Conqueror

1. WCS, p. 229; Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 500; Barber, Black Prince, p. 49; Barnes, Edward III, p. 342.

2. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 496.

3. This of course does not include the defeat at Mons in 1304, Mons being then part of Hainault.

4. His daughter Margaret was born at Windsor on 20 July.

5. See also Appendix Five for further discussion on the choice of Normandy as the landing place in 1346.

6. WCS, p. 218, quoting Villani, Cronica.

7. WCS, p. 218, quoting Villani, Cronica.

8. WCS, p. 241.

9. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 506.

10. Barber, Black Prince, p. 53; WCS, p. 245.

11. They came to Caen ‘at the hour of nones’ according to Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 361. Sumption (Trial by Battle, p. 508) assumes this is nine o’clock in the morning. However, the medieval clock counts from the first hour, approximately 6 a.m. See OED under ‘nones’.

12. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 213–14.

13. The details of the attack on Caen are very muddled, both in original sources and in various writers’ interpretations. I have broadly followed Rogers, using Froissart, Avesbury and Murimuth as a supplement. Sumption’s account differs from Rogers in several respects.

14. WCS, p. 248; Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 510; Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 156.

15. WCS, p. 252; Barber, Black Prince, p. 55.

16. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 510.

17. This date is taken from WCS, pp. 252–3. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 513, has the date of 3 August and states that Edward received them at Lisieux. Barber, Black Prince, p. 56, also states that Edward received the cardinals at Lisieux; Rogers however points out that Edward had kept them waiting for several days.

18. Both Sumption and Rogers in their considerations of Edward’s strategy at this time presume that Edward could have attacked Paris and that it would have been in his interest to do so. Given the points raised in the text here, this seems very unlikely. Paris was a walled city, with an adult male population of at least fifty thousand, and many women would have fought for the city too, dropping heavy objects from upper storeys if nothing else. The city could be divided along the lines of the river, if necessary, and thus leave it as four separate parts (north bank, south bank, Île de la Cité and Île Saint-Louis). Edward would have been unable to use his archers as an organised force in the narrow streets. With the French army combined, Edward would have lost the advantage of his archers’ trapping the enemy in its crossfire, would have faced several thousand Genoese crossbowmen, and the hand-to-hand fighting would have been between about twelve thousand Englishmen and eighty thousand Frenchmen, the Parisians fighting on familiar ground and protecting their homes and families. To my mind Edward would not have put his forces in this situation under any circumstances, and thus would not have attacked Paris except to burn it. Even then the geography of the city astride an island in the river would have prevented much more than the southern third from being burnt. In mid-August 1346, the prospect of engaging Philip’s army in battle was considerably more attractive.

19. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, pp. 149–50.

20. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 517 estimates eight thousand men-at-arms, six thousand Genoese besides a large number of infantry.

21. Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 514.

22. WCS, p. 255.

23. Barber, Black Prince, p. 58; Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 370; WCS, p. 256, where the variations in the numbers of dead are mentioned.

24. James and Simons, Laurence Minot, p. 74.

25. WCS, p. 260, quoting TNA C66/219 m.21v and CPR 1345–48, pp. 516–17. Rogers adds a useful discussion on the variant forms of this letter.

26. WCS, p. 262; Sumption, Trial by Battle, pp. 521–4.

27. Avesbury, in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 370.

28. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 162; Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 216.

29. The king’s household stopped twice at Crécy in May/June 1329 (I am grateful to Dr Paul Dryburgh for this information). Although this does not prove that the king himself passed this way, it makes it very likely. The TS itinerary of Edward III in the Map Room at TNA does not mention Crécy, but if Edward himself did not stay at Crécy or date any documents there, one would not expect it to do so.

30. Northampton is not usually named among those who decided on the battlefield, but given his experience and his pioneering use of the archers’ strategy at Morlaix, it is inconceivable that Edward did not consult him on this matter. Sir Richard Stafford was included in Froissart’s first redaction as one who chose the battlefield. See WCS, p. 264, n. 149.

31. Tout, Chapters, iv, pp. 470–1; Tout, ‘Firearms’, p. 670. The latter mentions that there were about one hundred ribalds, as well as some heavier pieces expressly made for the passage to Normandy in 1345. In his earlier (1905) volume of Longman’s Political History of England, p. 364, Tout had expressed his belief that there were only three cannon present, a view which his own researches in the administrative records revised. See also Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 528, who follows Tout. Although Tout (‘Firearms’, p. 671) notes that no payments for shipping them abroad were recorded until after the battle of Crécy, this is consistent with Edward’s usual practice of payment in arrears, often long in arrears, and so should not be taken as evidence that these cannon were not the ones at the battle. Burne in his Crécy War mentions the cannonballs found later on the battlefield.

32. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 83.

33. That the cannon were fired in conjunction against the Genoese in this first wave of attack is mentioned by Villani. See also Burne, Crécy War, pp. 193–203.

34. Froissart expressly states his source was John of Hainault, who was with Philip in the latter stages of the battle, and who was almost certainly with him at this point. Hence this exclamation, which normally would have been suspect, is probably genuine.

35. Barber, Black Prince, pp. 68–9, noting that a chaplet of pearls engraved with his motto had been paid for before the Crécy expedition set out. The motto appears in his own hand on a writ and on his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, and the ostrich feathers appear on his crest, so there is no doubt that he personally adopted them both, the only question is exactly when. Arderne (possibly his own physician) stated he adopted the ostrich feather from the king of Bohemia; although there is no sign that the feather was the king’s crest, this does not invalidate the story, as Edward may have picked it up believing it belonged to the late king.

36. WCS, p. 270.

37. For a full discussion of the historiographical developments concerning the 1346 campaign, see WCS, pp. 217–37, and the same author’s Alexander Prize-winning essay ‘Edward III and the Dialects of Strategy’.

38. See Burne Crécy War, pp. 204–7 for the view that ‘the Hundred Years War might have been concluded in a single campaign’ if Edward had marched on Paris at this time. Burne, as a soldier himself, did not consider the political consequences of success, only the ways of achieving it.

39. See for example Barber, Black Prince, p. 73; Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 537.

40. WCS, pp. 273–85.

41. This is shown by a letter dated 4 September 1346. See de Vries, ‘Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI’, p. 146.

42. Some small-scale attacks took place, according to some chroniclers. See de Vries, ‘Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI’, p. 140; Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 558.

43. WCS, p. 273, making use of the pay records, and Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 537, using the same sources, state that thirty thousand troops came and went at various times. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’, ODNB states thirty-two thousand were present. Sumption,Trial by Battle, p. 578, reasonably suggests that the numbers steadily grew, so that they started at ten to twelve thousand and reached thirty-two thousand by July 1347, when the French were about to attack. Alternatively we may consider that many might have gone home, in which case we should disregard the figure of thirty thousand and expect there to have been between twelve and thirty thousand.

44. De Vries, ‘Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI’, p. 141.

45. Chroniclers vary on whether Edward allowed these men to pass or let them starve in the ditch. Henry Knighton, writing about fifty years later, states that they were forced to starve in the ditch, a view followed by Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 577. Le Bel, writing earlier, is of the contrary view. See de Vries, ‘Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI’, p. 142.

46. WCS, pp. 278–9.

47. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 386–8.

48. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 391–5.

49. For the debate about the challenge, see Barber, Black Prince, p. 77; Sumption, Trial by Battle, p. 580; de Vries, ‘Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI’, pp. 149–52; WCS, pp. 278–81.

50. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 186.

51. Froissart only mentions four of the six, and states that de Vienne was not one. A manuscript found in the Vatican Library in 1863 is the source for the other two, according to descriptions of the famous Rodin sculpture, but I am unaware of the precise reference of this. Rodin-centred writing tends to differentiate between Jean de Vienne and Jean de Fiennes, as Rodin made de Fiennes the youngest of the burghers and altogether a different man to the keeper of the town. But it would have been hard for the captain not to put himself forward as one of the men if he accepted the terms of the surrender. De Fiennes is simply the spelling of de Vienne found in the Vatican manuscript. This assertion is supported by Baker, who also states that Vienne came to the king, mounted, and offering his sword. See Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 91. A similar story is related by the Meaux chronicler. See Bond (ed.), Melsa, iii, p. 67.

52. According to Froissart, Philippa was heavily pregnant at the time. However, William of Windsor was probably born about 24 May 1348 as Philippa’s churching was held on 24 June (TNA E101/391/14 m.3). This would suggest he was conceived exactly two weeks after the surrender of the city, on 18 August. See Appendix Eight. Paul Strohm has used this accentuation of the queen’s royal child-bearing status to emphasise her female, intercessory role. Although there probably is much dramatic exaggeration in Froissart’s account (and that of le Bel underlying it), Strohm’s argument ignores the fact that as much interceding was done by men as women in fourteenth-century chronicles, including Froissart’s. Walter Manny had just successfully pleaded with the king in this instance; later the king would withdraw from France after the intercession of the duke of Lancaster, according to Froissart (see Chapter Fourteen). The key thing is that the intercession was made in each case by the closest person to Edward present, which is what one would expect. The gender reading here says much more about the modern reader’s quest for novel interpretation than the historical events of 1347. See Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow (Princeton, NJ, 1992), pp. 99–105.

53. CPR 1334–38, p. 486.

54. Quoted in WCS, p. 282.

55. Bond (ed.), Melsa, iii, p. 65. Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, p. 544 mentions deaths due to the flux.

56. Bond (ed.), Melsa, iii, p. 74.

57. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 138. Baker has 14 October: see Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 96. Barber gives no source for his assertion that Edward landed in early November (which must be a mistake as the official letters in Foedera do not support a November date). It was probably the Meaux chronicler, who states 1 November: see Barber, Black Prince, p. 78; Bond (ed.), Melsa, iii, p. 67. For the storm see Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i. p. 271.

58. TNA E101/391/15 mm.9–10. A translation appears in E3&Chiv, p. 175.

59. TNA E101/391/15 m.9.

60. Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 272.

11: An Unassailable Enemy

1. Barnes, Edward III, p. 417. This actually relates to the second parliament in 1348. See RP, ii, p. 201.

2. Bellamy, Law of Treason, p. 78; RE3, p. 107.

3. RE3, pp. 106–7; Musson, ‘Second “English Justinian”’, p. 81.

4. RP, ii, p. 174.

5. RP, ii, p. 165; RE3, pp. 176, 179.

6. RP, ii, pp. 201–4.

7. E3&Chiv, p. 71; the dating is revised in Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 19.

8. TNA E101/391/15 m.6.

9. TNA E101/391/15 mm.6–7. This states that coats with hoods were made ‘for the person of the king and those of eleven knights of his chamber – Walter Manny, John de Lisle, Hugh Courtenay, John Grey, Robert de Ferrers, Richard de la Vache, Phillip de Spenser, Roger Beauchamp, Miles Stapelton, Ralph Ferrers and Robert Mauley – so that each receives two ells of blue cloth for their coats and three-quarters of half an ell of white for their hoods’. Here we have the livery of the later Order of the Garter being purchased for non-Garter knights, indicating the Order had not been established as an exclusive body of knights by this time. The like costumes were purchased for Giles Beauchamp and his son John, John Beauchamp of Warwick, Peter Brewes, Thomas Lancaster, Joanna Brocas, the earl of Lancaster and twelve of his knights, Isabella, the king’s daughter and her ladies, the ladies Juliers, Wake, Segrave and Darcy, and several of their damsels, Eleanor Merkyngfeld, Phillippa Bohun, Alice Belet, Joanna de la Mote and Burga Vaux.

10. Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 19, elaborating on dates in E3&Chiv, pp. 172–4. The Westminster tournament (if it took place) very probably predates 5 September as thereafter there were no tournaments during the period of mourning for two of the royal children.

11. TNA E101/391/14 m.3.

12. TNA E101/391/15 m.13.

13. Ormrod, ‘Royal Nursery’, n. 83, quoting E101/391/17, which states that John Badby returned to England after the princess’s death on 1 July.

14. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 97.

15. Agnolo di Tura, Cronaca Senese, quoted in William Bowsky (ed.), The Black Death (New York, 1971), pp. 13–14, in turn quoted in Gottfried, The Black Death, p. 45.

16. Zeigler, Black Death, pp. 119–21. Avesbury’s date, quoted on p. 120, does not relate to 29 June, which is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, but the feast of St Peter ad Vincula (clearly stated in the text) and thus 1 August. See Avesbury in Thompson (ed.),Murimuth, p. 406.

17. Hingeston-Randolph, Register of John de Grandison, ii, pp. 1069–70.

18. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 175. Prior to this, on 8 October, Edward had ordered that men-at-arms who wished to travel with the king were to assemble at Sandwich on 26 October.

19. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 407.

20. See Ormrod, ‘English Government and the Black Death of 1348–49’, p. 175. Edward seems to have been at Westminster on 1 December and at the Tower on the 10th. The latter reference especially seems to indicate his actual presence in London, as it was a ratification of a treaty by the king himself sealed at the Tower. See Foedera, iii, 1, p. 178.

21. E3&Chiv, p. 175, quoting TNA E372/207, m.50; E101/391/15.

22. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 407.

23. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 99.

24. Manny was ennobled at the fall of Calais or soon after. See CP, viii, p. 573.

25. EHD 1327–1485, p. 90.

26. For the precise date of the foundation of the Order see Appendix Six.

27. For the rains, see Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, p. 301. Here the author states that the rain fell from Christmas to Midsummer (24 June). In Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 272 Walsingham states that the rains fell every day from Midsummer to Christmas.

28. Eight months before the foundation of the Order, in August 1348, he founded the college of priests at Windsor which was to serve it. See Appendix Six.

29. Ormrod, in ‘For Arthur and St George’, shows how frequently Edward was at Windsor in the first half of 1348, and argues that the idea for the development of the Order should be dated to this time.

30. E3&Chiv, p. 84, quoting Register of Edward the Black Prince, iv, pp. 72–3. The companionship of twenty-four knights plus the king is incidentally the same number as there are spaces for on the round table which hangs at Winchester (see Chapter Four). This was probably mounted on the wall of the hall in 1348/9 (Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 22).

31. The most recent attempt is Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, esp. p. 24. See also E3&Chiv, pp. 80–2; Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 3; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB. Barber in his article on Edward of Woodstock in ODNB also states that the foundation was political, ‘reflected in the choice of heraldry and motto: the gold and blue of France is combined with words that refer to Edward’s claim to France: “Shame on him who thinks evil of it.”’ This is a succinct summing-up of an academic consensus for which there is no actual evidence. In addition, Barber’s statement is slightly misleading: the robes of the Order were not blue and gold but blue with a silver lining. The garter itself (a less visible item) was blue and gold, but this colour scheme might just as readily relate to the colours of the mythical coat of arms of King Arthur – whose Round Table was inspiration for the earlier company established at Windsor in 1344 – as those of the kingdom of France.

32. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB.

33. For example, in Winner and Waster, the context is Edward’s chivalric situation judging the classes of society. In Gawain and the Green Knight, the words appear at the end of the manuscript, without a specific setting, but the theme of the poem is moral (like the motto) not political. The possible appearance of a similar phrase in the Vow of the Heron is possibly no more than a common turn of phrase of the time, but, even if not, it is of foreign authorship; therefore one would be surprised if it did not have a political context. See Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George, pp. 24–7.

34. Edward ordered payments for ‘a pair of pearl garters’ along with other jousting equipment for his own use in February 1333 (TNA E101/386/9 m.12) and ‘a pair of pearl garters encrusted with gold’ for himself in March 1334 (TNA E101/386/18 m.58). These are characterised by their pearls, however, not their motto like later garters. With regard to Lancaster’s garters, see Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 194. Although there is no proof that Lancaster wore garters before 1348, several observations have led the present writer to conclude that it is very likely that he did, and that it was originally a personal badge. Firstly, the garter bearing a motto (as opposed to pearls) does not appear before 1346–47, and so may be connected temporally with the conquests of 1345–46, of which Lancaster’s was the most impressive campaign before Crécy. Secondly, writing about his misspent youth in 1354, he mentions his vanity in wearing rings, shoes, armour and garters. The passage reads ‘Et par surquiderie est orgoil tant entree en moi par mes pieez come autrement, quant jeo me siu meismes mal avisee, il me semble, ceo qe nul autre ne sembloit: ceo estoit qe le piee me seoit bien en l’estru, ou autrement de chausure ou de armure, ou de daunser ou legier piee, et les garters qe bien me seoient a mon avys – qe gaires ne vaut; et si jeo en oïse poynt parler, ma fole joie en estoit greignure de tant et passoit mesure tout outre’ (version taken from web edition of the Livre de Seyntz Medicines provided by the Anglo-Norman Online Hub, http://www.anglo-norman.net/texts/). His statement that his garters ‘suited me well in my opinion – that were worth but little’ (qe bien me seoient a mon avys – qe gaires ne vaut) suggests a personal vanity, not something thrust upon him through the ceremony of an institution. If it meant the latter, he would be saying that wearing garters as a Knight of the Garter was something which puffed him up with sinful pride, bringing the Order itself into disrepute. It would also mean that in his opinion the badge for the Order of the Garter was worth ‘but little’. It was clearly not his intention in this work to cast any doubt on the merits of the Order or its badge. Also, as he was writing in 1354, it is unlikely he was referring to the recent past, or the period after 1345 (when he was in his mid-thirties, hardly a youth any more). As Fowler says, ‘these were the reflections on youth of a middle-age man suffering from gout’ (King’s Lieutenant, p. 194).

35. This point is made by Barber in his article on Edward of Woodstock in ODNB.

36. Although the prince had not fought in Gascony, he had certainly been with Lancaster and the king at Calais, and this companionship may well have formed as a jousting fraternity around the earl during the siege. As to whether the record of this payment was an advance order for garters to be handed out at the inaugural tournament of the Order (and only described as a companionship informally), it should be noted that the early references to garters as gifts (including those mentioned in Nicolas, ‘Observations on the Order of the Garter’) do not add up to twenty-six. There is little room for doubt that an informal, smaller companionship existed before the Order.

37. Nicolas, ‘Observations on the Order of the Garter’, pp. 34, 40–1, 119–21.

38. Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines is extant in two manuscripts, at Stonyhurst College and Cambridge University (Corpus Christi College). Although he claimed to be ill at ease with French (see the ODNB article on him), this was clearly nothing more than a self-effacing statement of a man who was conscious of the fact his writing in French was not up to literary standards. See Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 196. Had he been more conversant with English (an exceptionally unlikely situation for an aristocrat born in about 1310), he would have written in that language.

39. The same principle applies to the inscriptions on Edward’s coins: they were not in English because they were struck in the knowledge that they would have an international audience.

40. This story is related in some late fifteenth-century chronicles and was mentioned by the antiquary John Selden, writing in 1614. But Froissart – who did not shy away from such romantic interludes, and who elaborated on the previous story of the ‘countess of Salisbury’ – does not mention her or any other lady in this respect. Barber in his article on Edward of Woodstock in ODNB states the story ‘seems to have no basis in reality’. See also Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 28, where a fuller description of the identifiable origins of the story is to be found.

41. ‘No one now believes in the authenticity of this story’, according to Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 28.

42. As quoted in Barber, Black Prince, p. 94.

43. Lumby (ed.), Knighton, ii, p. 58.

44. Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 28.

45. For the old identification and its lack of credibility today see Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 29 n. 71, citing Galway and Barber.

46. With regard to her age, her parents married in about 1326. She cannot have been born after 1329, due to her father’s execution in March of 1330 and the birth of her brother John in April of that year. She was Edward’s first cousin on his father’s side and his second cousin through his mother.

47. See Wentersdorf, ‘Clandestine Marriages of the Fair Maid of Kent’; Barber, ‘Joan suo jure countess of Kent’ in ODNB. Whether she had really married him (or just claimed she had) is not clear.

48. Chamberlayne, ‘Joan of Kent’s Tale’, p. 8.

49. In addition it is worth noting that she later married another participant in the tournament, the Black Prince.

50. E3&Chiv, p. 53.

51. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 407.

52. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 51.

53. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 191. This was dated 1 December.

54. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 193.

55. Barber, Black Prince, p. 96.

56. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 195.

57. Froissart states forty Castilian vessels. Forty-four is the figure given by Barber, Black Prince, pp. 99–100, and Burne, Crécy War, p. 228. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 66–7 follows Avesbury in saying that there were twenty-four great Spanish ships. See Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 412.

58. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 199.

59. See Barnes, Edward III, p. 452. Fourteen is the number in Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 199; seventeen in Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 111; twenty-four in Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, p. 304.

60. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 67, states that the victory was inconclusive, perhaps following Barnes, Edward III, p. 452, who claims that night prevented the English from obtaining an ‘absolute victory’. However, a battle in which about half of the enemy ships were captured and none of one’s own, and in which the enemy is put to flight is a victory by any reckoning. Barnes’ notion that this did not constitute an absolute success – meaning the destruction of every enemy ship – would be out of proportion with the idea of a success in a land battle, in which to kill half the enemy and put the rest to flight would be an overwhelming success.

12: At the Court of the Sun King

1. The French Order of the Star was founded in 1351; the Neapolitan Order of the Knot in 1352, the Holy Roman Emperor’s Order of the Golden Buckle in 1355, and the Savoyard Order of the Collar in 1363. See Keen, Chivalry, p. 179. The sole predecessor to the Garter which Keen notes is the Order of the Band, founded by Alfonso of Castile in ‘about 1330’.

2. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 112; Barnes, Edward III, p. 453; Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 275.

3. Edward I actually only spent eighty thousand pounds; Edward II spent a further fifteen thousand pounds on the eight Welsh castles, bringing the total construction costs to ninety-five thousand pounds (an average of about twelve thousand pounds each). HKW, i, p. 161.

4. The ‘largest residential castle in the world’ comes from the Guinness Book of Records (21st ed., 1974), p. 118, which incidentally also claims that the major part of the castle is of twelfth-century date, underlining how Edward III is generally not associated with the building today.

5. HKW, ii, p. 872.

6. Brown, English Castles, p. 209.

7. HKW, ii, p. 881.

8. HKW, ii, pp. 881–2.

9. HKW, i, p. 514.

10. AC, p. 498.

11. HKW, i, p. 518.

12. Stone, Sculpture in Medieval England, pp. 160–2, 190. The employment of a carver from Nottinghamshire at St Stephen’s suggests alabaster would have been used there, as well as at Windsor, which is documented.

13. E3&Chiv, p. 53.

14. Devon (ed.), Issues of the Exchequer, p. 160. He was employed on the chapel of Windsor Castle that year.

15. E3&Chiv, p. 52.

16. AC, p. 21.

17. Harvey and Mortimer, Funeral Effigies, p. 34.

18. Ormrod, Personal Religion, p. 873.

19. Ormrod, Personal Religion, p. 858.

20. The remains of the medieval palace of Eltham include nothing of Edward III’s work. The extant hall was built by Edward IV and the fragments of masonry in the retaining wall were commissioned by Queen Isabella. See HKW, ii, p. 932.

21. HKW, ii, pp. 931–2.

22. HKW, ii, p. 961.

23. HKW, ii, p. 992.

24. HKW, ii, p. 1017.

25. HKW, ii, pp. 587, 593, 599, 623, 639, 655, 659, 699–701, 725, 731, 768, 788, 811, 818, 831, 838–9, 850–1, 863. There are some exceptions to Edward keeping royal castles in good condition. Most interesting is his almost total neglect of Canterbury Castle, which although being seriously in need of repair in 1335 was completely ignored by Edward. He spent less than two pounds on the upkeep of the castle in his reign.

26. HKW, ii, pp. 917, 959.

27. HKW, ii, pp. 762–3.

28. HKW, ii, pp. 995–7.

29. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 31; Harvey and Mortimer, Funeral Effigies, p. 37.

30. Salzman, Building in England, p. 276.

31. Salzman, Building in England, p. 276.

32. For example copper pipe was purchased for the wardrobe in 1347–49. See TNA E101/391/14 mm.8–9.

33. HKW, ii, p. 663.

34. Brown, English Castles, p. 136.

35. HKW, ii, pp. 946–7.

36. He was there in early 1361, when work began. See Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 33.

37. For the foundation stone, see AC, p. 498. Edward visited both Eltham and Windsor in 1353. See TNA E101/392/12.

38. The only parallel which Brown draws is with the Castel del Monte in Apulia, Italy, which Edward would never have seen. See Brown, English Castles, p. 135.

39. Tout, ‘Firearms’, p. 675.

40. HKW, ii, p. 793.

41. Gimpel, Medieval Machine, p. 153, indirectly quoting Robert the Englishman.

42. Gimpel, Medieval Machine, p. 156. The meeting (recorded by Walsingham) is most likely to have taken place in February 1332, as from 1334 Abbot Wallingford was physically disabled and the only date Edward seems to have visited St Albans between 1330 and 1334 was on or about 21 February 1332, according to the itinerary in TNA Map Room.

43. Brown, ‘King Edward’s Clocks’, p. 285.

44. Morgan, ‘Apotheosis’, p. 861. For comparison, the modern bell, ‘Big Ben’ weighs thirteen tons, and was cast in 1858.

45. E3&Chiv, pp. 49–51.

46. Devon (ed.), Issues of the Exchequer, p. 143. The question of what this book was is interesting. It was purchased from Isabella of Lancaster, a sister of the earl of Lancaster. It is possible that it was an early copy of the pro-Lancastrian longer continuation of the French Brut, which would certainly have been described as a ‘romance’ and which had been written up at York around 1333. It is unlikely therefore that Edward already had a copy. Also it contains an update of the Prophecy of the Six Kings, in which Edward III is amplified as the conqueror of Europe. This might explain the unprecedented price and Edward’s personal association with the book. See Brie (ed.), Brut, pp. 74–5.

47. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 857.

48. Alexander, ‘Painting and Manuscript Illumination’, pp. 141–3. These manuscripts are Walter Milemete’s De Nobilitatis Sapientiis et Prudentiis Regum (Christ Church, Oxford, E.11), the Secreta Secrorum presented by Milemete to Edward at the same time (BL Add. 47680), a small psalter (Dr Williams Library, London, Ancient 6), a lavishly illuminated larger psalter (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Douce 131), another psalter (BL Harleian MS 2899). Another item might be the psalter confiscated in the sixteenth century and given to Queen Mary (BL Royal 2 B vii). To these should be added Philippa’s wedding present to Edward.

49. For examples of liturgical books see E101/386/3 ff.2–3; for presents of romances see for example E101/390/7, which mentions a romance delivered to the queen. Isabella owned many such books at her death.

50. Devon (ed.), Issues of the Exchequer, p. 142.

51. French et al., Medicine, p. 34, mentions his alchemical interests and gives further references. His historical interests are shown by his borrowing of the history of the Normans (E3&Chiv, p. 52) and his borrowing of William Newburgh’s Historia Rerum Anglicarum (Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 857). Perhaps one could add to these his summoning of the chronicler to bring all the chronicles in his keeping to him in 1352 (Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 43). These are just lucky survivals of references: there were very probably many more borrowings of historical works.

52. French et al., Medicine, p. 49, n. 73.

53. Shenton, ‘English Court’, pp. 168–9.

54. For example the music in the wedding present manuscript.

55. AC, p. 435.

56. Wyon and Wyon, Great Seals of England, p. 38.

57. Isabella was buried in the church of the Greyfriars, London; Lionel was initially buried at Pavia but was later reburied in Clare Priory, Suffolk; John of Gaunt was buried in old St Paul’s Cathedral.

58. Although the painted coats of arms have long-since gone from beneath these weepers, the central east-facing weeper on the tomb (in the choir of St Mary’s, Warwick) is similar to the image of the Black Prince on Edward’s own tomb at Westminster and the figure of the prince on his Gascon coins. It is counterbalanced on the western side, in the centre, by an elderly king in a long robe which is highly reminiscent of images of Edward himself. Thomas died in 1369.

59. Harvey and Mortimer, Funeral Effigies, pp. 30–5.

60. Henry III’s total accounted expenditure on his buildings was in the region of £160,000. Edward’s total was well over £130,000. See HKW, i, pp. 109, 162. In comparing the artistic expenditure of Edward and Henry the authors of HKW state that Edward rivalled Henry and that Windsor, St Stephen’s and Queenborough ‘need fear no comparison even with the royal buildings of the thirteenth century’. Edward I’s expenditure was of a much more military character; his Welsh castles (which accounted for about two-thirds of his total expenditure) were not intended to be royal residences like Henry III’s and Edward III’s works.

13: Lawmaker

1. RP, ii, p. 225.

2. RP, ii, p. 227.

3. Although in the long run, the provisions of the statute were unsuccessful, this was because it took time for the benefits to landowners of a flexible market to become apparent. Not least of these was the local administration of breakers of the law, an important step in contributing to the legal authority of the gentry. See RE3, p. 32; McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 335.

4. See G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge, 1949), p. 126 for an old and rather extreme interpretation of this as representing a break from Rome.

5. RE3, p. 162.

6. RP, ii, pp. 226–7.

7. That Edward was positively pleased to be able to reverse the judgement on Maltravers is shown by his letter of October 1351 to the steward of his chamber praising Maltravers, specifically mentioning his ‘goodwill and loyalty’, and stating that ‘he wished to do something grandiose for him’. See TNA E101/391/8, m.2.

8. In England it was reported that eleven Frenchmen had been appointed. See Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, pp. 111–12.

9. See Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 143–50 for a résumé of the situation 1350–55 in Scotland.

10. Unwin (ed.), Finance and Trade, p. 226.

11. Bellamy, Law of Treason, pp. 59–101; RE3, p. 52; McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 257; Musson ‘Second “English Justinian”’, p. 82.

12. Mortimer’s crimes are repeated or touched upon in many of those specified in the great Statute of Treasons. He had conceived of the death of the king (Edward II) in that he had pretended the man was actually dead. He had violated the king’s wife (Isabella) in the sense that he had become her lover. He may well have ‘conceived of the death’ of the king’s son and heir – Edward III – in the plot against him at Nottingham in 1330. Mortimer had also taken an army against the king in 1321–22 and 1326, although he had not actually fought with him on either occasion. Pro-Mortimer supporters had killed the Chancellor (Robert Baldock) in 1326, although he was not conducting his office at the time.

13. The wording of this is ‘quant home fait compasser ou ymaginer la mort nostre Seigneur le Roi’.

14. Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, i, p. 261.

15. For example, McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 257, states that ‘the primary object of the statute was probably legal, rather than political’. Bellamy only considers the law of treason in its legal and historical context. Even though he states that ‘the dominant theme in the history of treason under the first two Edwards was then the development of conviction on the king’s record’ (p. 55) he does not consider a biographical aspect to the statute apart from Edward’s apparent immunity from plots. Instead he takes the view (quoting Sir William Holdsworth) that ‘the king’s intent was primarily to extend treason for political purposes’. See Bellamy, Law of Treason, p. 60.

16. Gransden, Historical Writing, ii, p. 43. In this context it needs to be noted that Higden was more responsible for the spread of the story about the death of Edward II being due to a red-hot poker than anyone else. The story of the ‘anal rape’ murder first appears in the longer continuation of the Brut chronicle, written in the mid-1330s, but it achieved its widest publicity through Higden’s Polychronicon which survives in more than 160 Latin manuscripts, and (like the Brut) informed most of the chronicle-writers of the later middle ages.

17. Ormrod, Personal Religion, p. 855.

18. TNA E101/392/12 f.18v. He left the region to attend a council at Westminster on 23 September.

19. TNA E101/392/12 ff.33r; 34v; 35r.

20. TNA E101/392/12 f.34v. Both visits were personal, in that the household did not attend. In September the wardrobe was at Gloucester; in November at Northampton.

21. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 89–90. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, pp. 116–17.

22. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 91.

23. Foedera, iii, 1, pp. 239–45.

24. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 96.

25. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 94 notes that French chroniclers put Bentley’s army at 1,500, but suggests that the actual figure was about half this.

26. See Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 415–17; Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 120; Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 94.

27. E3&Chiv, pp. 73–4, drawing on the work of Sir Isaac Gollancz, points out the similarities between the king’s dress in the poem and the dress known to have been worn at this time by Edward.

28.Dyer, Standards of Living, p. 87.

29. Perroy accuses him of being a self-seeking courtier in Hundred Years War, p. 129. Sumption is more generous in Trial by Fire, p. 112.

30. TNA E101/392/12 f.8r.

31. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 100–1.

32. TNA E101/392/12 f.13r.

33. TNA E101/392/12 ff.13r–18v.

34. For example, all letters close dated to this year – 27 Edward III – were issued from Westminster with only six exceptions (out of about five hundred). The exceptions were issued from the Tower (4 March, 20 January and 23 February); Windsor (23 April, 29 May) and Eltham (30 March). See CCR 1349–54, pp. 525–626 (pp. 532, 537, 543, 576, 589, 590 for the exceptions). Much the same can be said for the years 1351, 1352 and subsequent years, and for some earlier years.

35. RE3, p. 70.

36. Woolgar, Great Household, p. 195.

37. TNA E101/392/12 f.43v. Damages were often paid by the royal household, especially for the large numbers of houses they burnt down. In this year (1353) £66s was paid on 18 May 1353 to Alice Mande and £5 to John Benefield as compensation for their houses having been burnt down during the king’s stay at Mortlake. Nor were priories exempt: on 5 December 1353 the prior of St Andrew’s, Northampton, was paid £1 for damage caused during the king’s stay.

38. HKW, ii, p. 984.

39. TNA E101/392/12 f.17r. This was probably John Adam, born in Lucca but raised in London. For some of Edward’s apothecaries, including John Adam of Lucca, William Stanes, John Donat, and Bartholomew the Spicer, see Matthews, Royal Apothecaries, pp. 26–9. For further references to John of Lucca, William Waddesworth and John Donat see TNA E101/392/12 f.17r; E101/398/9 f.25r; and E101/396/2 f.40v respectively. See also Appendix Seven.

40. For example Henry, earl of Lancaster (d.1345), William Montagu, earl of Salisbury (d.1344) and Thomas Holland, Knight of the Garter (d.1360) all were supposed to be blind in one eye.

41. Matthews, Royal Apothecaries, p. 26.

42. Master Jordan of Canterbury was in receipt of several grants around this time. For example: CPR 1350–54, pp. 321, 357, 501. The last relates to his daughter.

43. For example, the case of Mortimer’s claim on the earldom of March mentioned earlier in this chapter. Historians in the past have too readily divided petitions and royal assent, but it seems Edward himself suggested that some petitions should be put forward. This probably also applies to the Statute of Treasons as a whole, for this seems to have had a strong support from the community and been part of Edward’s revisiting of the past at this time. If Edward himself was behind more of the petitions presented to him in parliament (for example: requesting that views put to him unofficially by courtiers and visitors should be put to him formally in parliament), current thinking on the king’s role in the formation of Statute Law needs to be reconsidered. It was not a straightforward contest between king and parliament.

44. Musson, ‘Second “English Justinian”’, p. 88.

45. Royal household expenses increased from about £36 per day to £49 on 22 December, £61 on the 23rd, £102 on the 24th, £223 on Christmas Day itself, £126 on the 26th (St Stephen’s Day), and remained at a level between £50 and £100 for the next fortnight. See TNA E101/392/12 f.27v.

46. Barber, Black Prince, p. 105.

47. This was easy to argue against however, as at the time of the death of King Charles the Fair (1328) Charles of Navarre had not been born, and his mother – as a woman – could not have inherited the French throne. See Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 122; Taylor, ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, pp. 159–62.

48. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 124–5; Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 122.

49. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 128–30; Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 126.

50. For the alternative view that Edward was on the back foot at this time, see Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 130. See also Rogers, ‘Anglo-French Peace Negotiations’, pp. 195–7. For the cardinal’s shady dealings see Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 131.

51. Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, i, p. 285.

52. During the nine-year period the king would be on parole, his behaviour guaranteed by the presence in England of the heirs of twenty of the leading magnates. See Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 152.

53. Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, pp. 135–8.

54. E3&Chiv, pp. 63, 174. The tournament took place on 22 Februuary.

55. Although the English often have been blamed for the failure of this treaty, this stems largely from a misreading of a late chronicle by the influential historian le Patourel. The matter was convincingly settled by Rogers, ‘Anglo-French Peace Negotiations’, pp. 196–200. Although published slightly earlier, Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 140–2 arrives at the same conclusion.

14: The Pride of England

1. Usually it is said to be beer that they were drinking; the account in Avesbury states wine. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 422–3. Pouring drink over the head of a regrator or bad seller of drink was the practice usually adopted in towns for the punishment of unscrupulous merchants.

2. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 424. For the safe conducts for the nuncios, see Foedera, iii, 1, p. 297.

3. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 424; WCS, p. 294. Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 20–1, discusses the strength of the army and concludes that the actual figures were slightly lower.

4. WCS, p. 296, quoting Jean le Bel.

5. WCS, p. 297.

6. WCS, p. 297, quoting Jean le Bel.

7. WCS, pp. 299–300, quoting Jean le Bel.

8. RP, iii, pp. 264–5. A grant of indirect taxation for this length of time was not made again until the reign of Henry V, after the battle of Agincourt.

9. Molyns was at times uncontrollably violent. Although of great service in the early part of Edward’s reign, taking part in Mortimer’s arrest, for example, and acting as the king’s agent in arresting all the Italians in 1337, he was arrested in 1340 and locked in the Tower of London. He escaped from the Tower and then refused to answer the justices. He lost his lands, committed murder, and was only gradually restored to royal favour. War saw him flourish again, but in the peaceful years of the 1350s he found himself the subject of attack in parliament for his excessive fines and his use of violence. Despite his charitable donations, he spent the last years of his life in prison, at Nottingham and later at Cambridge. His tomb is said to be in the church at Stoke Poges.

10. Aberth, ‘Crime and Justice under Edward III’; Wilkinson, ‘A Letter from Edward III to his Chancellor and Treasurer’.

11. Avesbury transcribed the charter, giving the date. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 453.

12. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 450–6; Lumby (ed.), Knighton, ii, pp. 84–6; Balfour-Melville, Edward III and David II, p. 17; Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 188–90.

13. As Rogers points out, the peace was specifically between Northampton and Douglas but this was tantamount to a peace between the two countries, as Northampton was Edward’s appointed lieutenant on the border. Given the speed with which the negotiations resumed, and the failure of the Scots to accept the earlier suggestions of 1350–51 (when it was proposed that one of Edward’s sons should be David’s heir), it seems that the reason Edward took away Balliol’s title in advance of the Burnt Candlemas campaign was to remove him from the equation when talks resumed afterwards.

14. See WCS, pp. 336–40, for a similar argument. For the payment at Candlemas, see Balfour-Melville, Edward III and David II, pp. 17–18. The Candlemas association means we should not assume that the eventual Scottish peace negotiations were due to the victory at Poitiers.

15. See RE3, p. 87 for an exposition of the English situation. He shows that the campaigns of 1355–56 cost a total of just £110,000, at a time when the customs revenues alone could provide £87,500 per annum.

16. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 195–205.

17. See the newsletters sent to the bishop of Winchester about this campaign transcribed by Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 434–49. The campaign is discussed in Barber, Black Prince, pp. 110–30; Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 174–87; WCS, pp. 304–24; Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 43–77.

18. WCS, p. 314, quoting Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 442.

19. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 458–68; WCS, pp. 344–7.

20. The journal of Lancaster’s raid, covering 22 June-16 July, is in Avesbury’s chronicle, in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 462–8. The journal of the Black Prince’s expedition, covering the period 4 August-2 October 1356, is in Haydon (ed.), Eulogium Historiarum, iii, pp. 215–26.

21. For the Durham endowment see Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 855. For the pilgrimage in 1346 and will-making, see Barber, Black Prince, p. 46.

22. Barber, Black Prince, p. 132.

23. Avesbury in Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 468.

24. Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 138, 194.

25. Quoted in Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, p. 139.

26. WCS, p. 377, gives the most detailed breakdown of the figures.

27. Quoted in Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, p. 132.

28. The early stages of the battle are very confused. Most primary accounts vary considerably, and most secondary accounts differ even more. In trying to put a brief description together I have only used WCS, pp. 373–84; Barber, Black Prince, pp. 138–44; Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 238–42; and last (and surprisingly least) Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 118–21.

29. Barnes, Edward III, p. 518.

30. Lumby (ed.), Knighton, ii, p. 94.

31. Rogers, ‘Anglo-French Peace Negotiations’.

32. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 353.

33. Barber, Black Prince, p. 152.

34. The Robin Hood stories were famous by the time of the earliest extant literary reference to him in Piers Plowman, written about 1377. See Holt, Robin Hood, pp. 16, 158.

35. Barber, Black Prince, p. 152.

36. Numbers of captured members of the French royal family are drawn from Lumby (ed.), Knighton, ii, p. 90.

37. Barber, Black Prince, p. 155. See n.8 where it is noted that March borrowed £1,000 from the prince probably to pay for the jousting.

38. Maxwell (ed.), Scalachronica, i, p. 128. As Barber notes, Fowler in King’s Lieutenant, p. 197 doubts whether Lancaster was there; that he was is shown by the household account book of Isabella, who was certainly there. She had dinner with Lancaster and the prince on 19 April, when she was on the way to Windsor. See Barber, Black Prince, pp. 155, 260 n.8; Bond, ‘Last days of Queen Isabella’, p. 459.

39. Sumption refers to this treaty as the Treaty of Windsor, due to its ratification there, thus distinguishing it from the Second Treaty of London. This is pragmatic but inconsistent, as he describes the Treaty of Brétigny as such (referring to the place of negotiation) rather than as the Treaty of Calais (where it was ratified). Most historians since Roland Delachenal, who worked out the sequence of peace treaties in his Histoire de Charles V (1909), have used First and Second Treaties of London (8 May 1358 and 24 March 1359 respectively).

40. Rogers, ‘Anglo-French Peace Negotiations’, p. 202; Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 298–304.

41. Doherty, ‘Isabella’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 325. See Chapter Nine for references to tournaments and hunting.

42. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 170. The plan, however, came to nothing, and she did not leave England.

43. French et al., Medicine, pp. 34, 49 n.73.

44. Isabella’s books are listed in E3&Chiv, p. 170. The original is TNA E101/393/4, supplemented with E101/333/29. In 1357 she also loaned two Arthurian books to the king of France in his captivity. See Bennet, ‘Isabelle of France’, p. 219.

45. For Edward’s nine minstrels see Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 298 n.126. Isabella’s rewards to the minstrels of visitors, including the minstrels of the earls of March and Salisbury, appear in Bond, ‘Last Days of Queen Isabella’.

46. TNA E101/393/4, f.9r.

47. For the bath see Bond, ‘Last Days of Queen Isabella’, p. 465. For the make-up see French et al, Medicine, p. 84.

48. See Bond, ‘Last Days of Queen Isabella’. The days Edward ate with her were 26 October 1357; and 20 March, 29 April and 2 May 1358.

49. Bond, ‘Last Days of Queen Isabella’, p. 467; Bennet, ‘Isabelle of France’, p. 222.

50. Bond, ‘Last Days of Queen Isabella’, pp. 462–3, 469.

51. Bond, ‘Last Days of Queen Isabella’ on all points. The frequent visits by men such as the count of Tancarville, Marshal Audrehem and the sire d’Aubigny show that the French were very welcome in her household, whether she was staying at Hertford Castle or at her house in London.

52. TNA E101/393/4 f.4v.

53. For Isabella’s alabaster effigy, see HKW, i, p. 468; Duffy, Royal Tombs, pp. 131–2. For the iron railings see TNA E101/393/7 m.14 and Duffy, ibid. Although no accounts survive for either Edward II’s or Isabella’s effigy, the appearance of early alabaster sculptures on both tombs, as well as John of Eltham’s tomb, suggests that all three were royal commissions. The earlier ones were probably all made by William of Ramsey. The first effigy of Blanche of the Tower was provided by William Ramsey (see Duffy,Royal Tombs, p. 131), and the now-vanished canopy over the tomb of John of Eltham has been attributed to him, as has the tomb of Edward II at Gloucester (on the strength of similarities between the canopies of this and that of John of Eltham).

54. TNA E101/394/10 m.2.

55. According to Stow, writing in the sixteenth century, the heart of Edward of Carnarvon was buried beneath Isabella (Haines, ‘Afterlife’, pp. 73–4, 84 n.76). Agnes Ramsey, the daughter of William Ramsey – the royal master mason who had probably overseen the works at Gloucester at the time when Edward II was most probably interred there – was paid £10 and £96 18s 11d in connection with the construction of the tomb ‘as a result of an agreement made with the queen’s council made during her life’ (TNA E101/393/7 m.13). It appears likely that the Ramsey family had not only taken care of the body of Edward II but his heart also, and had probably been guarding the latter for the best part of the last seventeen years.

56. WCS, p. 389.

57. This was in February 1358. See Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 312.

58. Bennet, ‘Isabelle of France’, p. 218. For the presents of barrels of wine, see Foedera, iii, 1, p. 411. Later he lodged him in Hertford Castle (Isabella’s residence at the time of her death) and Somerton Castle. See Foedera, iii, 1, p. 442.

59. Rogers, ‘Anglo-French Peace Negotiations’, pp. 205–8.

60. Holmes, ‘Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March and Earl of Ulster’ in ODNB, gives 1358. An allowance from the Mortimer estates was made in 1360 for the maintenance of Philippa. See CP, viii, p. 447.

61. TNA E101/393/10 m.1.

62. Barber, Black Prince, p. 155.

63. Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion’, p. 872.

64. He issued instructions for his brother’s body to be moved to the Confessor’s chapel and asked that the best places in that chapel be reserved for him and his family. See Duffy, Royal Tombs, p. 125.

65. Sir Walter Manny was ennobled in 1347, being first summoned to parliament as Lord Manny on Edward’s thirty-fifth birthday (CP, viii, p. 574).

66. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 425.

67. Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 428.

68. Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 440–2.

69. Froissart quoted in Rogers, ‘Anglo-French Peace Negotiations’, p. 212.

70. Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 289; Haydon (ed.), Eulogium Historiarum, iii, pp. 228–9; Lumby (ed.), Knighton, ii, p. 112. Further references to the extreme cold are given in Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 623 n.73 and Barnes, Edward III, p. 583.

71. Barnes, Edward III, p. 583.

72. Edouard Perroy regarded the whole campaign as a ‘lamentable escapade’, and had no doubt that it constituted a ‘failure’ (Perroy, Hundred Years War, p. 138). Writing in 1959, with little understanding of Edward’s complicated negotiating strategy and no sympathy for his religious outlook, Professor le Patourel regarded the subsequent peace as a French ‘victory’ because Edward was unable to impose the terms of the Second Treaty of London (le Patourel, ‘Treaty of Brétigny’, p. 33). Others are discussed in WCS, p. 417.

73. Froissart’s account has the duke ending his speech with the warning that ‘we might lose in a single day all that we have gained in twenty years’, but this is doubtful. It is difficult to see how Edward could have lost anything in a single day, unless Black Monday was to be repeated. There was no French army in the field.

74. Prior to May 1360, household expenditure was low, around £16-£22 per day. After landing at Rye it climbs to nearly £109 on 1 June and £135 on the day after (TNA E393/11 f.50r). Then the daily amount drops back to about £15 or less until about the end of August.

15: Outliving Victory

1. Master Adam of Pulletria, the king’s surgeon, was in attendance on him in late 1360. See TNA E101/393/15 m.2.

2. Thompson (ed.), Chronicon Angliae, p. 49.

3. TNA E101/393/15 m.5. See OED for the earlier meaning of ‘woodbine’.

4. Similarly the Black Prince’s motto ‘Ich Dien’ (I serve) has a personal source rather than a literary one. The origin of his other motto, ‘houmont’ is unknown, but no literary source has been found. It seems rather unlikely therefore that literary sources were the origins of the fourteenth-century royal mottoes, as Vale suggests in E3&Chiv, p. 65.

5. TNA E101/393/11m. f.61v.

6. TNA E101/393/15 m.10.

7. Ormrod, ‘Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster’, in ODNB. CP has 24 March.

8. TNA E101/393/15 m.14.

9. The following portents are taken from Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, pp. 313–14; Haydon (ed.), Eulogium Historiarum, p. 229; Riley (ed.), Walsingham, p. 290.

10. Most chroniclers claim this, but in the form that places his name in the roll-call of the dead for the whole year. However, his making his will ten days before he died, in early March, suggests a death not from plague but a slower decline. This was before the plague spread, an event usually associated with May 1361 and later.

11. TNA E101/393/15 mm.1, 7, 14.

12. Foedera, iii, 2, p. 616.

13. For a description of the marriage arrangements see Barber, Black Prince, pp. 172–5.

14. Barber, Black Prince, p. 174.

15. Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 42, states that Mary died before 13 September 1361. She died thirty weeks after her marriage, according to the entry (under Richmond) in CP, vol x, p. 823.

16. For example, Ormrod in his article on Edward in ODNB suggests the possibility that Edward forced the compromise at Calais because he still had dreams of conquering more of France. Barber in Black Prince, p. 178, points out that the letters of authority issued to the prince in Gascony assumed the renunciations had already been made, a fact which can hardly have been unknown to John Freton, the author of the grant of Aquitaine. While Edward himself may not have authorised this anachronism, an irregularity such as this in a chancery as experienced and sophisticated as Edward’s can only have been authorised by a very senior figure, almost certainly the Chancellor himself, William Edington, who would have known Edward’s mind on the matter.

17. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 53. Imworth had his house burnt down and was dragged from sanctuary and beheaded during the Peasants Revolt (1381).

18. March was 31, Northampton 48, Lancaster about 50 (according to Ormrod in ODNB), Beauchamp about 44 and Holland about 40.

19. Lionel landed on 15 September 1361. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 231–2; the complement of men is from Ormrod, ‘Lionel of Antwerp’ in ODNB.

20. TNA E101/394 m.3. The small amount of powder suggests that this was a handgun, perhaps one for Lionel himself to use on the unsuspecting Irish.

21. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 233.

22. Barber, Black Prince, p. 178. The practice is reminiscent of Edward’s own codewords ‘Pater Sancte’ in his own hand when writing to Pope John XXII in 1329.

23. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his family’, p. 409; Gillespie, ‘Isabella, Countess of Bedford’, in ODNB.

24. Only thirty-eight magnates were summoned compared to 174 commoners representing 86 cities, towns, etc. See RE3, pp. 92, 180.

25. The prompt payment clause was consistently ignored. See Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 45–6.

26. Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, i, p. 311. For a full discussion of this legislation, and the wording on the parliament roll and the statute roll, see Ormrod, ‘Use of English’.

27. Barber, Black Prince, p. 187.

28. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 524.

29. Ormrod, ‘Use of English’, p. 751, quoting Trevisa.

30. A somewhat contrary view is put forward in Ormrod, ‘Use of English’. Ormrod suggests that the Statute of Pleadings performed one of three purposes: 1. as part of a package of concessions offered by Edward in return for renewed taxation; 2. to affirm the authority of the Justices of the Peace; and 3. a statement of English independence from France. None of these are particularly convincing. With regard to the last of these, while independence may have informed a decision underlining English authority, one has to ask why this did not happen at an earlier date, say 1340? The answer surely lies in the limited uses of English among the nobility and their households. As for the local justices, this may have been a pragmatic gesture on their behalf, certainly, but if so it amounts to little more than a recognition that for effective local government there needed to be an effective mode of communication, and so this again reflects developments in language beyond the king’s control. The most likely of these three explanations is the first, but it surely is too cynical to link the recognition of the language purely with taxation. The recognition of English served many purposes – nationalist, pragmatic, etc. – but it also and probably most importantly linked the king and his government with the people. In this reading, the Statute of Pleadings was more about Edward’s view of kingship as much as any cynical bartering with parliament.

31. It is not known why Edmund was only created an earl when his two brothers (who were not much older) were created dukes. As discussed above it might be because Edward wondered about his legitimacy (see Chapter Eight). It might be, however, that Edward simply did not like or trust him as much, or that Edmund was just not interested in a responsibility-laden political position. But Edward had installed him as a member of the Order of the Garter, and clearly had plans for him in the marriage with Flanders.

32. TNA E101/394/16 m.6.

33. See Appendix Seven for a detailed list, with references.

34. TNA E101/392/15 m.13.

35. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 278.

36. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 61.

37. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 61–2.

38. For the legislation see Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, i, pp. 315–16; for the comments of Thomas Walsingham see Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 299.

39. Henisch, Fast and Feast, p. 176.

40. Unwin (ed.), Finance and Trade under Edward III, p. 246.

41. He was prevented from doing so by parliament in 1368. See Ormrod, ‘Edward III’, ODNB.

42. Bradbury, Medieval Archer, p. 93.

43. Juliet Vale, ‘Philippa of Hainault’ in ODNB.

44. Haydon (ed.), Eulogium Historiarum, p. 227 (fall); Duffy, Royal Tombs, p. 133.

45. TNA E101/396/2 f.40v. The physician in question (John Glaston) also left court for twenty-two days in order to obtain further medicines. These were ‘for the king’s person’ so there is no doubt that it was Edward who was ill, not Philippa.

46. TNA E101/396/2 f.38v (king of India); HKW, ii, p. 985 (times spent in New Forest). The wardrobe was based at Windsor from 12 April-24 July 1366, then shifted to Havering until 10 September, then came back to Windsor for the period 12 September-31 January 1367. See TNA E101/396/2 ff.3r-29r. I have been unable to find out who this ‘king of India’ might have been.

47. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 43.

48. Galway, ‘Alice Perrers’s son John’, p. 243; Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, p. 138.

49. Barber, Black Prince, pp. 208–9.

50. For example, Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 572, whose view is that Edward did not want to renew the peace precisely so he could enlarge his claim on France, and Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB, whose view is similar, although more cautiously expressed than Sumption’s.

51. Work on her tomb began in 1362. In 1367 she commissioned the tomb effigy. See Duffy, Royal Tombs, p. 133.

52. RE3, p. 68.

53. One result of this was that the 1368 vintage remained in the warehouses at Bordeaux, unbought, unshipped and undrunk, with the consequent loss of the wine tax to the prince. See Barber, Black Prince, p. 213.

54. Ruffhead (ed.), Statutes at Large, i, p. 327.

55. Barber, Black Prince, pp. 217–18.

56. Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 46.

57. Duffy, Royal Tombs, p. 133.

58. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 78, 82.

59. TNA C53/151 no.1. This appears in the Calendar of Charter Rolls as Westminster but the MS states Windsor. The date of this charter is 23 December 1368.

60. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’, in ODNB, quoting TNA E101/396/11.

61. Foedera, iii, 2, p. 864.

62. Johnes (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 428. The wording has been modernised.

63. Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 47 gives 15 August. Duffy, Royal Tombs, p. 133 gives 10 August. Ormrod in his OBNB article on Edward gives 15 August; Vale in her article on Philippa gives ‘shortly before 14 August’. The 15th appears to be correct; see TNA E101/401/2 f.38r.

64. McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 336.

65. Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 47.

16: A Tattered Coat Upon a Stick

1. Those alive in 1370 were the prince, the Captal de Buch, the earls of Stafford and Salisbury, Lord Mohun, Sir Hugh Wrottesley, Sir Neil Loring and Sir Walter Paveley. The three knights who survived him were Wrottesley, Loring and the earl of Salisbury.

2. Other countries remained neutral: Flanders and Navarre, for example, which each signed a treaty. Scotland also remained neutral, despite pressure from the French. David II, falling behind with the payment of his ransom, came to London to visit Edward and to explain the failure to raise the money. Edward allowed him to defer payment on the condition that he did not fail a second time. See Balfour-Melville, Edward III and David II, p. 21.

3. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 72.

4. In his ODNB article on Edward, Ormrod states that the speed of his medical decline should not be exaggerated: ‘at least until the mid-1370s there is evidence that he continued to take an active, if sporadic, part in the business of government’. But this is a limited view. Government – as in the issuing of instructions – did not need Edward to be physically able, just sane and coherent. Most of Edward’s other activities did require him to be physically able, and so it is misleading to use the issuing of orders as a measure of his health. The very long period of medical assistance detailed both in the records of medicines and medical practitioners inclines the present writer to take the opposite view, that we should not exaggerate his healthiness. This view is further supported by the decline in the volume of his business, his isolation, and the lack of travelling. Even the level of his hunting reduced.

5. Lydon, ‘William of Windsor’, pp. 253–4; Foedera, iii, 2, pp. 924, 928.

6. Rogers (ed.), Wars of Edward III, p. 194.

7. It is noticeable that Isabella’s three brothers died between the ages of 27 and 33, and Edward’s own brother died at twenty, and the sons of his sister Eleanor also died in their thirties. Of course it is perfectly possible that this was a coincidence – that they all just happened to die relatively young – but another explanation would be a hereditary illness, such as an X-chromosome-related weakness which affects only men (although carried by women). If it was carried to John of Eltham by Isabella, and also affected her brothers, the X-chromosome in question would have to have been inherited from her mother, Joan of Navarre, and in this context it is interesting to note that her father Enriques died at about 30. However, so many royal people died young in the fourteenth century that we should not rush to any conclusions. Also it is obvious that Edward did not die young, so if his uncles, brother and nephew were all carried off by an X-chromosome problem, it would be unlikely also to explain his decline, for it would appear that the 50% chance of inheriting the relevant chromosome from his mother would have gone in his favour.

8. We might say that Chaucer had fallen in with Alice Perrers and her circle, and that the reward was really her doing. This idea is explored in Braddy, ‘Chaucer and Dame Alice Perrers’ and revisited in the same author’s ‘Chaucer, Alice Perrers and Cecily Chaumpaigne’. The date of the gift being the feast of St George and the gift being so akin to the annual present of wine accorded to later poets laureate might incline us to suspect that this was a reward for a reading of his poetry. Certainly Chaucer had already composed The Book of the Duchess on the late wife of John of Gaunt by this time. Also it should be noted that Chaucer was receiving his pitcher of wine while Alice was banished from court in 1376. She did not return until 22 October, but Chaucer was being given a gallon of wine every day on 14 October. See TNA E101/398/9 f.28v.

9. Foedera, iii, 2, p. 989.

10. Foedera, iii, 2, p. 990.

11. Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 148; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB.

12. As she wrote her will in 1400, it is unlikely that she was born much before 1340, and quite likely that she was born after that date. It is therefore unlikely that she was older than her early twenties, and may have been a teenager when she met Edward.

13. See Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 60 for the regulation of these women.

14. Alice was Edward’s mistress from at least 1364, and possibly from the union of Edward’s and Philippa’s households in 1360, until Edward’s death. It is not known how long Elizabeth Lambert or Shore, otherwise known as Jane Shore, was Edward IV’s mistress, but it was unlikely to have been anything like as long as thirteen years. In any case, Edward IV had several other concubines throughout his period of enjoyment with Elizabeth.

15. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 21.

16. Nichols (ed.), A Collection of All the Wills, pp. 66–77.

17. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, pp. 38–9.

18. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 51.

19. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 46, n.56.

20. Devon (ed.), Issues of the Exchequer, p. 200. Alice was banished from court at this time, so this is very probably Edward’s action, not her buying a chest to lock away the accusations against her husband.

21. TNA E101/397/20 m.29.

22. Galbraith (ed.), Anonimalle, p. 95; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB states that the problem at this time was a large abscess. An impostume was the word used for various ailments. The definition in the earliest English dictionary composed by a doctor of physic, Dr Bullokar’s English Expositor (1616), is ‘a quantity of evil humours gathered into one part of the body. There are two kinds hereof. One when inflamed: blood, being turned to corrupt matter, filleth some place. The other when without any inflamation: nature thrusteth those humours into some part apt to receive them’.

23. Raine (ed.), Letters from Northern Registers, pp. 410–11.

24. TNA E101/397/20 m.29.

25. Nichols (ed.), A Collection of All the Wills, pp. 59–65.

26. His executors were John of Gaunt, the bishop of Lincoln, the bishop of Worcester, the bishop of Hereford, William Latimer, the Chancellor John Knyvett, the Treasurer Robert Ashton, the Chamberlain Roger Beauchamp, the Steward John de Ypres, and Nicholas Carrew, Keeper of the Privy Seal. For the disinheritance of the earls of March, see Bennet, ‘Edward III’s Entail’, especially p. 592.

27. TNA E101/397/20 m.7.

28. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 59.

29. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 57.

30. TNA E101/397/20 m.8.

31. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’ in ODNB.

32. Taylor, Childs and Watkiss (eds), St Albans Chronicle, p. 103.

33. On 5 May 1377 various exotic cloths and one thousand golden nails, a peck of muslin and three woollen scarlet carpets were brought to Sheen for making of a throne for the king so that he might sit up in his chamber. TNA E101/397/20 m.10.

17: Edward the Gracious

1. TNA E101/397/20 mm.11–12, 20, 30–32; E101/398/9 f.31v.

2. Stephen Hadley, a member of the household, was reimbursed £22 4s 11d for an effigy in the likeness of the late king, a sceptre, an orb, and a cross with a silver gilded crucifix, as well as for divers other costs incurred in preparing the body for burial (TNA E101/398/9 f.23v). For the most recent work on the wooden effigy, which is still extant, see Harvey and Mortimer, Funeral Effigies, pp. 31–5.

3. TNA E101/397/20 m.12.

4. TNA E101/398/9. Cooking expenses at the coronation were just in excess of this, at £585 (Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 135).

5. This translation has been taken from Morgan, ‘Apotheosis’, p. 861.

6. Brie (ed.), Brut, ii, p. 333.

7. This has been slightly modernised for ease of reading.

8. Riley (ed.), Walsingham, i, p. 327.

9. Morgan, ‘Apotheosis’, p. 863, quoting Bodleian Eng. Poet. MS a.1.

10. Morgan, ‘Apotheosis’, p. 866, quoting BL Harley MS 1808.

11. Keiser, ‘Edward III and the Alliterative “Morte Arthure”’.

12. See Appendix Eight for the reasoning underlying this statement.

Appendix 1

1. The original is now in Devon Record Office, Exeter, ref: Chanter 2.

2. Hingeston-Randolph (ed.), Register of Walter de Stapeldon (1892), p. 169.

3. Trotter, ‘Pre-marital inspection’, p. 3.

4. Nederlandse Genealogische Vereniging, ‘Karel de Grote (I)’, Gens Nostra, nos. 10/11, Oct/Nov 1990, 382.

5. CCR 1318–23, p. 132.

6. CPR 1317–21, p. 336.

7. Devon Record Office: Chanter 2, f.142r.

8. See Hingeston-Randolph, Register of Walter Stapeldon, p. 555 for his itinerary.

9. A. Wauters, Table chronologique des Chartes et Diplômes imprimés concernant l’Histoire de la Belgique, viii, 1301–20 (Brussels, c. 1907).

10. DNB, quoting Luce (ed.), Froissart, i, p. 285.

Appendix 3

1. In contemporary English sources arestati can mean ‘conscripted’ or ‘commanded’, as well as ‘arrested’. One finds the word used to describe the enlisting of craftsmen and painters for Edward’s works at Westminster, for example.

2. Norwell’s account book has been published. For these references see Lyon et al. (eds), Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, pp. 212, 214. The entries are also published in Cuttino and Lyman, ‘Where is Edward II?’, p. 530.

3. Alessandra Sisto, Genova nel duecento: il Capitolo di San Lorenzo, Collana Storica di Fonti e Studi 28 (Genoa, 1979), p. 167.

4. GT, pp. 259–60.

5. Foedera, ii, 2, pp. 1107, 1126.

6. Niccolo was the son of Luca’s sister Flisca and Alberto Malaspina, Marchese di Oramala (Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol 48 (Rome, 1997), p. 502; Fayen (ed.), Lettres de Jean XXII, no. 203).

7. In October 1340, January 1341, March 1341 and June 1342 he was appointed in connection with the collection and shipping of wool on behalf of the Societies of the Bardi and Peruzzi. See CPR 1340–43, pp. 45, 75, 145, 174. On the strength of this we might speculate that he was related either to Dinas Forcetti or Forzetti, a Florentine agent of the Bardi in England. There is no evidence in Sapori’s edition of the records of the Peruzzi that he was related to Francesco Forcetti/Forzetti, the Sicilian agent of the Peruzzi.

8. CPR 1340–43, p. 569; CPR 1343–45, p. 565.

9. CEPR, iii, pp. 3, 11, 23.

10. CPR 1334–38, p. 467. Antonio was Luca’s nephew. Giffredus was the attorney of Bernarbo Malaspina, the bishop of Luni, another nephew of Luca and brother of Niccolo Malaspina. Bernarbo had accompanied Luca to England in 1317 and witnessed his will at Avignon in 1336.

11. As stated in Chapter Five, there is no doubt that Luca Fieschi and Edward II acknowledged each other as kinsmen, as many records describe Luca as ‘the king’s kinsman’. For examples, see Hilda Johnstone, Letters of Edward. Prince of Wales 1304–5 (1931), p. 54; CCW, pp. 388, 511; CPR 1292–1301, p. 608 (relating to Luca); CPR 1317–21, p. 14; Timmins (ed.) Melton Register, v, no. 423 (relating to Luca’s nephews Adrian and Innocent respectively) and Foedera, ii, 1, p. 274 and CPR 1313–17, p. 340 (relating to Carlo, Luca’s brother). How the Fieschi were related to the Plantagenets is harder to establish. In approaching this question we may first examine which members of the Fieschi were – and which were not – acknowledged as royal kinsmen. Those specified above as being connected were all descended from Tedisio Fieschi (d. abt 1248). All the Fieschi descended from Tedisio’s brothers, Opizzo (d. abt 1268) and Alberto (d. before 1226) – including Manuel Fieschi and his cousins and uncles – were never described as relatives of the royal family. So the connection must lie in Tedisio’s marriage or later. Next we may observe that no Fieschi claimed kinship with the English royal family prior to 1278. This includes all of Tedisio’s children, namely: Alberto (d. 1278), Ugolino (d. abt 1274), Niccolo (d. abt 1304), Cardinal Ottobono (Pope Adrian V, d.1276), Rolando (fl.1267), Percevalle (d.1290), Vernazio, Federico (d.1303), Agnese, Caracosa and Beatrice (d.1283). This is significant, as at least three of these sons visited England in the later thirteenth century. The first reference to a blood connection is a petition written in July 1278 by Brumisan, widow of the aforementioned Ugolino, son of Tedisio, on behalf of her son Raimondo, who had been given an English income of fifteen marks per annum by the aforesaid Cardinal Ottobono which had not been paid for some years (Foedera, ii, 1, p. 559). This cannot relate to a Fieschi relationship, as Brumisan specifically claimed that she was a kinswoman of Edward I’s through her father, whom she says was descended from the counts of Savoy. This checks out: she names her father as ‘Jacobo de Cateto’ (Giacomo del Caretto), who was the son of Enrico del Caretto (d.1231) and Agate (d.1247), daughter of Guillaume II (d.1252), count of Geneva, whose mother was of the Savoy family and whose sister, Beatrice of Geneva, married Tomasso I (d.1233), count of Savoy and was thus the grandmother of Eleanor of Provence, Edward I’s mother. This makes Brumisan a third cousin of Edward I, not her husband. As a result, we may be certain that the earliest reference to a kinship tie between a male member of the Fieschi and the English royal family is that of 1301, when Luca first visited England (CPR 1292–1301, p. 608). This implies that the kinship probably has nothing to do with the marriage of Beatrice Fieschi (d.1283) and Tomasso II (d.1259), count of Savoy, which took place in about 1250, as this marriage never led to claims of royal kinship by Beatrice’s brothers when they came to England in the later thirteenth century, and would not have entailed a blood connection anyway. The only remaining possibility is that Luca and Carlo were connected with the Plantagenets through their mother, Leonora or Lionetta (wife of Niccolo Fieschi), whose maiden name is unknown. As Luca claimed to be also connected to Jaime II of Aragon when he was appointed a cardinal, this indicates that his mother was almost certainly descended from the house of Savoy, as Jaime II’s mother, Constanza (d. 1302), was the daughter (by her second husband) of Beatrice of Savoy (d.1257), daughter of the above-mentioned Tomasso I (d.1233), count of Savoy. As Leonora was probably born in the 1230s (Luca was born about 1275), it is just possible that she was a daughter of Beatrice of Savoy by her first husband, Manfred III (d.1244), count of Saluzzo. This would in turn connect her to the earls of Lincoln, and it is perhaps significant that several ecclesiastical incomes granted to the Fieschi were in the diocese of Lincoln. So, although we may be sure the connection was through her, and that she was descended from the counts of Savoy, we cannot be certain of the exact link until we know the name of her father.

12. CPR 1324–27, p. 119.

13. Brocklesby (ed.), Melton Register, iv, no. 638.

14. Brocklesby (ed.), Melton Register, iv, no. 757.

15. In 1326 Edward II was definitely alive. But in 1335 the passage relating to him and Edward III (as king) was phrased very strangely: ‘et nostra ac inclite memorie domini Edwardi filii regis Edwardi secundi’ (Hamilton Thompson, English Clergy, p. 258). This has to relate to Edward II somehow (as Edward III’s charter of July 1338 states that it does) but the only way it can do that is to read ‘domini Edwardi secundi, filii regis Edwardi’, which it does not. Also this would exclude Edward III, whose name should also appear. It certainly appears very prominently among those benefiting from prayers in the 1343 version, which unambiguously separates the dead Edward II from Edward III. It is possible that the wording is deliberately ambiguous. However, it is also possible that a mistake has been made in copying the ordinances into the register.

16. Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses, p. 328 (1342 foundation); TNA C143/274/14 (endowment).

17. Cuttino and Lyman, ‘Where is Edward II?’, p. 531.

Appendix 5

1. Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, pp. 200–1.

2. WCS, p. 232.

3. WCS, p. 218.

Appendix 6

1. See for example, Ormrod in RE3, p. 27, whose view is that honour was the only criterion for ‘election’ to the order.

2. E3&Chiv, p. 82.

3. E3&Chiv, pp. 53, 82, 83.

4. E3&Chiv, p. 84, quoting Register of Edward the Black Prince, iv, pp. 72–3.

5. Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 20, referring to E3&Chiv, p. 83, and mentioning that it was accepted by two other recent writers on the subject: D’A.J.D. Boulton, Knights of the Crown (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 115–16; Hugh Collins, Order of the Garter(Oxford, 2000), p. 13.

6. TNA E101/391/15, m.6. The account itself dates the Lichfield tournament to 9 April 1348 but Professor Ormrod disagrees, suggesting May, in line with Edward’s itinerary. Among those knights who would be founder knights are John Lisle, Hugh Courtenay, John Grey, Miles Stapeldon, John Beauchamp and the earl of Lancaster. Among those who were not founder members are Walter Manny, Richard de la Vache, Philip Despenser, Roger Beauchamp, Ralph Ferrers and Robert Mauley.

7. According to Barnes, Edward III, p. 419, the prince of Wales, Sir John Grey, Sir Robert Mauley, Sir John Chandos, Sir Roger Beauchamp, the earls of Lancaster and Suffolk and Sir John Beauchamp were at the Canterbury tournament. Most of these men were founder members of the Order, but Mauley and Suffolk were not. See Ormrod, ‘For Arthur and St George’, p. 19 for the dating of the Canterbury tournament. After 5 September, there were no tournaments (due to the death of the royal prince and his sister) until April 1349.

8. This statement is based on the assumption that there was no formal constitution of the exclusive membership between the Canterbury tournament and Edward’s journey to France, on 29 October 1348. No tournament is known to have taken place during this period.

9. Thompson (ed.), Galfridi le Baker, p. 109.

10. E3&Chiv, p. 83.

11. Foedera, iii, 1, p. 182.

12. HBC, p. 129.

13. E3&Chiv, p. 84; Barber, Black Prince, p. 84.

14. Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 194, quoting the earl’s own Livre de Seyntz Medicines. See Chapter Eleven.

Appendix 7

1. CPR 1334–38, pp. 43, 50, 117, 172, 507. The last is the final reference to him as the king’s physician, being dated 30 August 1337.

2. Lyon et al. (eds), Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, pp. 303, 348, 389, 439. De Controne received a gift from Edward on the last day of August 1339 of £1,000. He crossed to the Low Countries with Edward in 1338 with six esquires and twenty-two horses. He was reimbursed at the rate of 4s per day for his services and 4d per day for each of his six esquires.

3. Ormrod, ‘Royal Nursery’.

4. Martha Carlin, ‘John Gaddesden (d. 1348/9)’, ODNB.

5. He is first described as the king’s physician on 20 November 1338, when he was granted twenty marks annually at the Exchequer until a stable income could be arranged for him. See CPR 1334–38, p. 194.

6. Lyon et al. (eds), Wardrobe Book of William Norwell, p. 303.

7. CPR 1343–45, p. 380; CPR 1345–48, p. 509.

8. He was still in office on 16 September 1359. See CPR 1358–61, p. 274. See also Gask, ‘Medical Staff of Edward the Third’, pp. 50–3.

9. CPR 1345–48, pp. 229, 330, 552.

10. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society, p. 111; Foedera, iii, 2, p. 703 (1 June 1363); CPR 1367–70, p. 58.

11.£20 annuity for life 23 March 1364 CPR 1361–64, p. 477; TNA E101/396/2 f.40v (1366); E101/396/11 (1369, quoted in ODNB); E101/397/5 f.36r (1371–72); f.79r (1372); E101/398/9 f.25r (1376–77).

12. CPR 1367–70, pp. 103, 412; CPR 1374–77, pp. 352, 354, 368; TNA E101/397/20 m.8.

13. TNA E101/398/9 f.25r.

14. CPR 1340–43, p. 84.

15. CPR 1345–48, pp. 394, 447.

16. TNA E101/393/15 m.2. This is dated 1360.

17. CPR 1354–57, p. 542; CPR 1358–61, p. 105; CPR 1361–64, p. 138; CPR 1370–74, pp. 202, 401.

18. TNA E101/397/20 m.8; CPR 1358–61, p. 231; CPR 1361–64, p. 270; CPR 1367–70, pp. 46, 402; CCR 1369–74, p. 153; CPR 1370–74, pp. 135. 140; Gask, ‘Medical Staff of Edward the Third’, pp. 53–5; Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 217.

19. TNA E101/397/20 m.8.

Appendix 8

1. For Roger of Clarendon see Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, pp. 143–6. It is almost certain that John de Galeis was not a son of the Black Prince, as he is not mentioned in the will, nor was he brought up at court.

2. The date of 16 June comes from CP, ii, p. 69 which does not cite its source. The date of March 1332 is in Alison Weir, Britain’s Royal Families (Pimlico, 2002), p. 95, based on the understanding that Philippa was churched on 30 April. This is incorrect. Philippa’s churching in 1332 was held on Sunday 19 July (see E3&Chiv, p. 173; TNA E101/386/2 m.7). Shenton states that Isabella was born in May as her churching took place in June, but this reasoning seems to be based on the presumption that Philippa had to be with the royal household, which left Woodstock as mentioned in Chapter Five before the end of June. Edward returned to Woodstock (where Philippa had probably remained) in July. However, we do not know exactly what the royal custom was – in the case of female children – between birth and churching. If the biblical period for a female child was observed (Leviticus xii, 2–5), this would entail a wait of eighty days between the birth and the churching. This means that it is possible that Isabella was born in May, but not for the reasons which Shenton gives. See Shenton, ‘English Court’, pp. 157, 159.

3. DNB; CP, ii, p. 70 (date of death).

4. For example, Alison Weir, Britain’s Royal Families (Pimlico, 2002), p. 95, has ‘before May 1335’. The confusion probably stems from some late payments for the baptism of the king’s daughter which date from April 1335. For example TNA E101/387/9 m.5 (17 April 1335). Some contemporary documents refer to her as ‘Joan of the Tower’, confusing her birthplace with that of her aunt.

5. TNA E101/386/16 m.7.

6. Normally churchings were held on a Sunday, forty days after the birth of a male child, and possibly eighty after a female (although we cannot be certain that biblical practice was adhered to). However, in 1355 Philippa was not churched after Edmund of Langley’s birth until 22 February, Edmund having been born on 7 January (see E3&Chiv, p. 174). It might have been a difficult birth. Either way, the period of forty days should not be too rigidly adhered to.

7. Foedera ii, 2, p. 880.

8. Ormrod, ‘Royal Nursery’, n.83.

9. Shenton claims that William was born ‘just before Christmas 1336’, but this is on the strength of the wardrobe being at Hatfield on 20–21 December. This is more probably the time when the king accompanied Philippa there, and then departed. The king returned to Hatfield for the churching, which certainly took place on 16 February 1337.

10. TNA E101/388/2 m.1.

11. Murimuth states that Gaunt was born ‘in principio mensis Februarii’, which Shenton translates as 1 February. If this was the case, it has to be wondered why the more usual ‘primo die Februarii’ was not used. It is thus more likely that this should be translated as ‘at the beginning of February’. See Thompson (ed.), Murimuth, p. 104; Shenton, ‘English Court’, p. 162.

12. With regard to his birth, HBC (pp. 36, 419) has his birth in June 1342, which on the face of it would explain how come he may have been conceived despite his father’s absence from his mother in September 1340 (see Chapter Eight). However, TNA E101/388/11 clearly has Philippa’s churching at Langley in 1341, so the widely accepted date of 1341 is correct, not 1342. As to the specific date, Shenton has argued that the churching took place on 7 or 8 July, on the strength of a payment to a minstrel. This is probably too late, as shown by Ormrod in his ‘Royal Nursery’, n.34.

13. TNA E101/391/14 m.3.

14. See ODNB; Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, pp. 136–7.

15. Galway, ‘Alice Perrers’s son John’.

16. TNA E101/397/20 m.9; Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, p. 138.

17. Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, pp. 136–7.

18. These were (1) Elizabeth Mortimer (1371–1417) who married Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy (1361–1403); (2) Constance Holland (1387–1437) who married (2ndly) Sir John Grey (d. 1439); (3) John Holland (1395–1447), duke of Exeter; (4) Edmund Beaufort (1406?–1455), duke of Somerset; (5) Elizabeth Ferrers (d. 1434), who married John Greystoke (d. 1436); (6) Mary Ferrers (d. 1458), who married Sir Ralph Neville (d. 1458); (7) Richard Neville (d. 1460), earl of Salisbury; (8) William Neville (d.1463), earl of Kent; (9) George Neville (d. 1469), Lord Latimer; (10) Edward Neville (d. 1476), Lord Abergavenny; (11) Eleanor – the illegitimate daughter of Thomas Holland and Constance (daughter of Edmund of Langley) who married James Touchet (d. 1459), Lord Audley; (12) Richard Plantagenet (1411–1460), duke of York; (13) Humphrey Stafford (1402–1460), duke of Buckingham; (14) Henry Bourchier (c. 1408–1483), earl of Essex; (15) William Bourchier (1412?–1469?), Lord Fitzwarin; (16) John Bourchier (1415?–1474?), Lord Berners. In addition, the following five great-grandchildren of Edward III intermarried with the above or their children and had offspring by them: Anne Stafford (d.1411), who married John Holland (1395?–1447), duke of Exeter; Isabella (1409–1484) who married Henry Bourchier (c. 1408–1483), earl of Essex; Anne Neville (d.1480) who married Humphrey (1402–1460), duke of Buckingham; Cecily Neville, who married Richard Plantagenet (1411–1460), duke of York; Eleanor Neville (d.1472) who married (2ndly) Henry Percy (1392–1455), earl of Northumberland. In the above reckoning lines which died out before 1500 have been ignored. Joan Beaufort (d.1445), who married James I of Scotland and later Sir James Stewart, has also been ignored in order to eliminate overestimating the number of descendants in England (as opposed to Scotland) and the descendants of Humphrey (1390–1447), duke of Gloucester (through his illegitimate daughter, Antigone) have also been ignored to eliminate overestimating the number of descendants in England (as opposed to Wales).

19. It was almost certainly no higher than the 2.77 million which has been widely accepted as the population in 1541. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871 (1981), pp. 531, 566.

20. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871 (1981), p. 531.

21. This factor is because 113 descendants would have been required to make every hundred marriages which included a descendant.

22. This includes the children of Gaunt who were later legitimised but not the illegitimate children of Edward himself or Edward the Black Prince (whose lines have not been included in the determination of 436 descendants by 1500). The twenty-two descendants here mentioned being: King Richard II; Mary and Philippa (daughters of Isabella of Woodstock); Philippa, countess of March (d.1380) and her four children (Elizabeth, Roger, Philippa and Edmund Mortimer); John of Gaunt and his four legitimate children (Philippa, Elizabeth, Henry IV and Katherine), plus his four Beaufort offspring (John, Henry, Thomas and Joan); Edmund of Langley and his three children (Edward, Constance and Richard), and finally Thomas of Woodstock (1355–1397).

23. Somewhat strangely, this analysis is independently supported by the work of a group of American, French and Argentinian research physicists who concluded in 1999 that ‘by going about thirty generations into your past, you and all your contemporaries will be related to everyone who lived then, at least to those who had offspring and who lived within that particular geographical or cultural realm’. This was based on a statistical analysis of the properties of the genealogy of Edward III back to Charlemagne. Although fewer generations than this separate Edward III from us – twenty to twenty-four being the average – the level of genetic saturation the physicists were looking for was nothing less than 100%. However, it is not clear to what extent the vagaries of class and geography were taken into account in this study. See ‘Physics News Update’, No. 428 (American Institute of Physics, 1999).

24. These three left no children, except Richard I, who did have one illegitimate son, Philip, to whom he gave the lordship of Cognac.