TWO
AS EDWARD MADE his way to the royal palace at Vincennes, near Paris, to perform homage to King Charles of France, the countryfolk flocked to see him. Here he was, the son of their Princess Isabella, the grandson of King Philip the Fair, nephew of Charles the Fair and the great-great-grandson of St Louis, the famous crusading king of France. Comeliness, spirituality and royalty all ran hand-in-hand in the French royal family, so each member was a spectacle to be seen, as well as a spiritual marvel. Politically too, he was important. Isabella had maintained her French links, visiting France on several occasions, and had attracted considerable French sympathy when she had been neglected by her husband in favour of Piers Gaveston. This appearance in France of her first-born son and the heir to the English throne was not to be missed.
The splendour of Edward’s procession and his pleasure at meeting his beloved mother, and the widespread satisfaction that he had performed homage for Gascony, was marred by one detail. The bishop of Exeter’s presence was anathema to the queen.1 She held him responsible for the confiscation of her estates. All France hated him because he was thought to be the impetus for the recent arrest of Frenchmen in England.2 When the bishop compounded his unpopularity by indignantly demanding in front of King Charles and the court that Isabella return to England immediately, she was in a strong position to refuse. In a sudden and shocking revocation of her loyalty, she launched a bitter attack on her husband and Hugh Despenser, and the full blast was directed at the bishop:
I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life, and that someone has come between my husband and myself trying to break this bond. I protest that I will not return until this intruder is removed, but discarding my marriage garment, shall assume the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this Pharisee.3
The bishop, outraged, looked to King Charles to overrule his sister, and to order her to return to her husband. But in words which must have infuriated the bishop, the king declined. ‘The queen has come of her own free will’, he declared, ‘and may freely return if she so wishes. But if she prefers to remain in these parts, she is my sister, and I refuse to expel her.’
With those words the division between Isabella and her husband was made permanent. This heralded a crisis for all concerned, including Edward. His mother had effectively broken from his father, and had publicly received the support of the king of France. Bishop Stapeldon too was alarmed, and hearing a rumour that certain Englishmen in France – probably Roger Mortimer – were plotting to murder him, he fled from the palace in the guise of a pilgrim, catching up with his retinue later and returning to England. Somewhere, yet to show his face in the whole business, was the real protagonist of the split: Mortimer, the man in whom Isabella had placed all her trust.
Roger Mortimer and Isabella had much in common. They were both literate, sophisticated, intelligent and aristocratic, and had known each other for upwards of seventeen years. They had both alienated themselves irrevocably from Edward II and the Despenser regime, which they both hated. Hugh Despenser had for the last two years been in something of a state of panic about Mortimer’s possible return to England at the head of an army, and regularly sent scared letters to naval commanders to investigate this trio of German ships or that Hainaulter merchant fleet. He knew from his spy network that Mortimer had gone towards Germany, and had spent some time at the court of Count William of Hainault, but he never envisaged what would happen next. In December 1325 Mortimer returned to France, and Queen Isabella threw herself into his arms. And, together, their attention fastened on young Edward, whose recently confirmed position as duke of Aquitaine gave them the potential to rebuild their authority. They knew that his hand in marriage would command a large dowry from a suitable bride’s father. Regardless of the king’s attempts to marry Edward to a continental princess, together they could use Edward to raise an army and wrest England from its untrustworthy king and his despotic favourite.
At the end of November, King Edward and Despenser realised their blunder. In less than ten weeks from saying farewell to his son at Dover, ‘The Mortimer’ – as Edward II referred to his enemy – had control of his son and was plotting with his queen. And that was not all: Despenser’s spies told him that the revolutionaries had widespread support in England. Letters from Mortimer had been smuggled into the country. The king gave orders for all imported goods to be searched, but his precaution did nothing to allay the fear. Everyone knew that Mortimer and Isabella would eventually return.
What did Edward himself think of all this? We do not know for certain but it is worth noting that Edward was devoted to his mother, and so he was well-placed to understand her choice of companion, whether or not he trusted him. There is little evidence at this stage that he disapproved of his mother’s lover.4 There is even a snippet of evidence that he may have agreed with the broad thrust of Mortimer and Isabella’s plan, in his promising to reward Mortimer with Despenser’s rich lordship of Denbigh if they should be successful.5 We also need to remember that he had much in common with Mortimer. Both men were intelligent, literate, forceful men of action. Both believed sincerely in the virtues of chivalry and knighthood, as can be seen in the way that Edward, when king, enthusiastically shared Mortimer’s love of tournaments and Arthurian display. Both men embraced changing technology in warfare – including gunpowder and cannon – while maintaining and encouraging old-fashioned knightly virtues. In terms of religion, both of them were traditional, not particularly pious, but not sceptical either. Both turned to God at crisis points in their lives yet were sufficiently worldly to see the political uses of religious display. When it came to raising taxes and spending money, Mortimer’s period of ascendancy was almost a blueprint for Edward’s own treasury-busting profligacy. And above all else, Mortimer was a successful leader in battle. Therefore it is likely that Edward saw Mortimer in 1326 as one of the few English lords from whom he could learn something.
Back in England, Edward II knew he could never forgive Mortimer and Isabella, but officially he resisted acknowledging his wife was beyond his control until January 1326. Even then he did not despair of obtaining his son’s return. We can trace the king’s growing frustration through his letters. After hearing the news from the bishop of Exeter, the king wrote to Isabella and King Charles on 1 December 1325. To Charles he said that it was a lie that Isabella feared Hugh Despenser. He claimed he could not believe that she had given this excuse for not returning to England, and he begged Charles to compel her. He terminated his letter with a request to Charles also to ‘deliver up Edward, our beloved eldest son . . . we greatly wish to see him, and to speak with him, and every day we long for his return’.6 The letter he sent to Isabella was the last he ever sent to his wife. He accused her of lying about her hatred of Despenser, and outlined how he had often commanded her to return to him, and complained that she had always disobeyed. At the end he ordered her to return and to bring Edward with her.
The following day the king wrote to his son. His tone in this letter, the first of three attempts he made to recall his son from France, was more considerate:
Very dear son, although you are young and of tender age, may we remind you of what we charged and commanded you at your departure from Dover. You answered then, with duly acknowledged goodwill, that you would not trespass or disobey any of our commandments in any point for anyone. And now that your homage has been received by our dearest brother[-in-law], the king of France, your uncle, please take your leave of him, and return to us with all speed, in company with your mother, if she will come quickly; and if she will not come, then you must come without further delay, for we have a great desire to see you and speak with you. Therefore, do not remain for your mother’s sake, or for anyone else’s, under the king’s blessing. Given at Westminster, 2nd December.7
Edward’s reply was suitably contrite. He admitted that he remembered that he had promised not to agree to a contract of marriage, nor to suffer it to be done for him, and to obey his father. But he could not return, he stated, because his mother would not let him. His protestation would have been backed up in mid-December, when the ladies and knights whom the king had sent with Isabella to France returned home. She had dismissed them, and removed all those loyal to the king from her service, cutting herself and Prince Edward off from the influence of the English court.
In January 1326 the king heard that his son had been betrothed to a daughter of the count of Hainault.8 He wrote to all the sheriffs of all the English counties stating that they should be ready to take arms against the queen, for ‘the queen will not come to the king nor permit his son to return . . . and she is adopting the counsel of the Mortimer, the king’s notorious enemy and rebel’.9 The king’s only hope now lay in trying to persuade Edward to return to him against his mother’s will.
On 18 March, the king wrote to his son again. His letter, which was longer than his last, acknowledged that Edward had done well, and expressed his pleasure in hearing that Edward remembered his promise not to marry without his father’s consent. But there was a note of disbelief in the letter, for the king knew about the marriage contract with Hainault. So he indirectly accused his son of concealing the truth. If Edward had done anything contrary to his promise, then
you cannot avoid the wrath of God, the reproach of men, and our great indignation . . . You should by no means marry, nor suffer yourself to be married, without our previous consent and advice; for nothing that you could do would cause us greater injury and pain of heart. And since you say that you cannot return to us because of your mother, it causes us great uneasiness of heart that you cannot be allowed by her to do your natural duty.
Had Isabella returned to England when ordered to do so, the king added, then she would still be high in the king’s affections. But her pretences for not returning, said the king, were against her duty. Then he added a particularly hurt line:
You and all the world have seen that she openly, notoriously, and knowing it to be contrary to her duty, and against the welfare of our Crown, has attached to herself, and retains in her company, the Mortimer, our traitor and mortal foe, proved attainted and judged, and she accompanies him in the house and abroad, despite of us, of our Crown, and the right ordering of the realm – him the malefactor . . . And worse than this she has done, if there can be worse, in allowing you to consort with our said enemy, making him your counsellor, and allowing you to associate with him in the sight of all the world, doing so great a villainy and dishonour both to yourself and us, to the prejudice of our Crown, and the laws and customs of our realm, which you are supremely bound to hold, preserve and maintain.
Edward could not have been anything but distressed at this letter. Here was his father using words which were an accusation of his mother’s adultery: ‘she accompanies him in the house and abroad’. Worse, it amounted to an accusation of treason on Edward’s part, which would incur the wrath of God as well as his father’s indignation. How on earth was he to make an impression as a monarch when the time came for him to inherit if he was a traitor even before he inherited? But that was not all. The king continued:
We are not pleased with you; and you should not so displease us, neither for the sake of your mother nor for anyone else’s sake. We charge you, by the faith, love and allegiance which you owe us, and on our blessing, that you come to us without delay, without opposition or any further excuse, for your mother has written to us to say that if you wish to return to us she will not prevent it . . . Fair son, do not disregard our orders, for we hear much that you have done which you ought not to have done.
The letter was designed to strike fear into the prince. Among the things he had done which ‘he ought not to have done’ were two royal appointments. When the king had allowed him to travel to France, he had authorised him to renew the appointments of his agents in the duchy of Aquitaine, both the seneschal of Gascony and the constable of Bordeaux. Edward had instead appointed Richard Bury to be constable of Bordeaux, and had appointed a friend of Mortimer’s, Oliver Ingham, seneschal of Gascony. In the latter appointment especially, Edward was probably leaned on by Mortimer, who seems also to have appointed himself Edward’s tutor in Bury’s place.10 But the king was laying guilt on to the young duke with seething indignation, and Edward can have felt no pride in not acquiescing to his father’s demands. If his father thought that he was defying him, he would be deemed traitorous. If the king knew he had no choice in the matter, he would be perceived to be weak.
By May 1326 Edward knew he was going to be used in a battle between his parents. He could not return to England – he was practically a prisoner – and his marriage to a daughter of Hainault had been agreed. Mortimer had secured the initial contact and forged the strategy in 1324. In December 1325 the countess of Hainault – Isabella’s cousin – had travelled to Paris and met Isabella. The pope, seeing that war was likely, despatched envoys to try to secure peace, but their mission was doomed. At the coronation of the queen of France on 11 May 1326, Mortimer carried Edward’s robes, an especially prominent position. The papal envoys travelling to England relayed this news to the king, who was furious. To the bishop of Rochester he shouted: ‘was there not a queen of England once who was put down out of her royalty for disobeying her husband’s orders?’ He was referring to Queen Eadburga, who killed her husband in 802 and was exiled from Wessex.11 The bishop advised the king not to pursue that line of argument any further. But if he hoped thereby to quell the king’s anger, he was to be disappointed. The rebels were gathering in France. Edmund, earl of Kent – the king’s own half-brother – had decided to stay with Isabella and Mortimer, and had married Mortimer’s cousin, Margaret Wake.12Sir Henry Beaumont – one of the guardians of the young prince – had also decided to stay. Isabella was marshalling her finances in the county of Ponthieu to pay for ships to invade England.13
On 19 June the king could bear it no longer. He sent a final series of letters to King Charles, to the bishop of Beauvais, and to his son. The one sent to Edward fumed that he had ‘not humbly obeyed our commands as a good son ought, since you have not returned to us . . . but have notoriously held companionship with Mortimer, our traitor and mortal enemy, who was publicly carried to Paris in your company’. The king insisted that his son had ‘proceeded to make various alterations, injunctions and ordinances without our advice and contrary to our orders’. A key line in the letter was ‘you have no governor other than us, nor should you have’. Once again the king exhorted his son not to marry without his advice and consent. And, finally, there was a postscript to the letter. The last sentence was as cold a threat as the king could have written:
Understand certainly, that if you now act contrary to our counsel, and continue in wilful disobedience, you will feel it all the days of your life, and you will be made an example to all other sons who are disobedient to their lords and fathers.
And with that all communication between the king and his son ceased. Edward probably concluded that, no matter what happened now, he could never be restored to his father.
*
In July 1326 Edward and his mother left France and entered Hainault. Despenser had tried bribing Frenchmen to kidnap Isabella and Mortimer. Several chronicles mention that Isabella was in fear of her life, one even stating that she fled by night, secretly advised of her peril by her cousin, Robert d’Artois.14 They had little time left to organise and mount their invasion. Mortimer had travelled ahead, to see to the arrangement of the fleet. Beyond his presence, and a few disaffected English lords, including the earl of Kent, Henry Beaumont, Sir Thomas Roscelyn and Sir John Maltravers, they would have to rely on Hainaulter mercenaries. And foreign troops on English soil was yet another problem they had to bear in mind. The English were not used to being overrun by foreign armies.
On 27 August it was settled that Edward would marry Philippa, youngest daughter of Count William of Hainault within two years. This was the lynchpin of the plan, agreed in outline in December the previous year. It was on this marriage that Hainaulters’ faith in the whole project rested.
Many stories have been told about the marriage, and how Edward and Philippa first met. Biographers in the past, struggling for something to say about him in his youth, have seized on his relationship with his wife and used it to amplify the romantic element in his character. One tale often told is that Bishop Stapeldon, while engaged on his mission in 1319, looked over Philippa and reported that she was fitting as a bride for the future king. Another appears in the pages of Froissart’s chronicle, that when Edward arrived in Hainault with his mother, Edward paid more attention to Philippa than Count William’s other daughters, and so Edward chose her for his bride. Modernist historians, finding Froissart a fanciful writer, generally dismissed the latter story and accepted the former, stating that Philippa had already been chosen to be his bride, and even claiming that Philippa was born on 24 June 1311 on the assumption that she was the eight-year-old girl Stapeldon saw in 1319. But as a close examination of the evidence shows, it was not Philippa but her older sister, Margaret, whom Stapeldon examined (see Appendix One). As for Froissart’s story, he states that he heard the details from Philippa herself: how Edward met four daughters of the count and liked her the best in the eight days they spent together at Valenciennes. Certainly Froissart could be telling the truth, for he served in the English royal household from 1361, and presented Philippa with his poetic and historical works, and relied on her as a historical source for parts of his chronicle. The specific eight-day stay at Valenciennes is entirely plausible, and he correctly names the four girls, apparently in age order: Margaret, Philippa, Jeanne and Isabella. Perhaps Philippa passed over the fact that her elder sister was already married to Ludwig of Bavaria to make it seem that Edward had preferred her to Margaret, his first intended bride, so that she would not appear a second choice. Either way, there is no reason to doubt Froissart’s statement that Edward took a great liking to Philippa on this occasion,15 especially as they were practically the same age, and got on so well together in later years. We may thus have some confidence that, as Froissart mentions in a later entry, when the eight days were up, and it was time for the English to move on, twelve-year-old Philippa burst into tears at Edward’s departure.
*
The fleet set sail from Brill on 22 September, straight into a storm. After two days of rough seas and high winds, they landed at Walton on the coast of Suffolk, in the lands of the earl of Norfolk, Edward’s uncle. And that was the beginning of another storm, a proverbial whirlwind, as first Norfolk sent one thousand men to their aid, and then other knights and lords joined them. Mortimer’s secret messages, smuggled in barrels and other merchandise, and relayed by word of mouth by men travelling as pilgrims, had worked a political miracle.
England had never seen anything like it. Although the invaders had come with probably only fifteen hundred soldiers, men hastened to support them as soon as they landed.16 Isabella, dressed in her widow’s weeds, played the part of a lady in distress, come to avenge the wrongs of Hugh Despenser. She travelled as if on pilgrimage wherever she went. Mortimer, fearful that his presence would cast doubts on the queen’s morality and the justification of their invasion, kept a very low profile. Edward on the other hand was championed, as earl of Chester and duke of Aquitaine. It was under the royal banner that the army marched, and no one dared to draw a sword against the future king. Although Edward II ordered the largest army ever to have been summoned – more than forty-seven thousand men – most of these troops did not respond at all, and those who did simply joined the insurgent army as it swept across East Anglia into Cambridgeshire.
Five days after landing, the invaders moved into Bury St Edmunds. Edward and his mother lodged at the abbey, playing the part of dispossessed royalty, while Mortimer stayed with the army. In London, authority was collapsing around the king. Although the Tower had been provisioned for a siege, the king soon saw that he and Despenser would not be able to hold out against the citizens, let alone Mortimer’s army. Panic set in, and the king decided to flee westwards before Mortimer cut him off. Already the invading army was moving to the west of London. The royal household and men-at-arms marched out of the gates of the capital in confusion. Weighed down by the sixty thousand pounds of gold that remained in the royal treasury, Edward II and Hugh Despenser began the long journey towards South Wales.
As the king moved westwards, the invaders turned to pursue him. When the king entered the royal fortress of Wallingford on 6 October, they were approaching Baldock. Three days later, as the king marched into Gloucester, they came to Dunstable. On 10 October, while both armies were still far apart, the decisive blow was struck. Edward heard the devastating news that Henry of Lancaster – the most powerful man in the realm, his cousin – had declared for the invaders. Mortimer had succeeded in bringing about the most powerful alliance possible: between the lords of the Welsh Marches, the royal uncles, and the confederacy of northern barons led by Lancaster. This closed off the last avenues of hope for the king. He and Hugh Despenser abandoned their men-at-arms and tried to flee by boat from Chepstow but failed, with the wind against them. They paid a priest to sing a mass in the hope that God would favour them, but God was not listening to his dejected royal supplicant. The wind blew the king back to shore.
Young Edward could never have expected to be greeted with such relief and joy. He and his mother were fêted in town after town across England. His father’s promise to make him an example to all disobedient sons now seemed a complete delusion. But if Edward’s life and position had been saved by Mortimer’s strategic genius, the spectres which Mortimer had summoned up were equally worrying. In London there was anarchy. The mob had broken into the Tower and dragged out Edward’s nine-year-old brother, John, and had set him up as ruler of the city. This was a joke in itself, for there was no rule in the city. Rioters and thieves were on the loose. Anyone suspected of collaborating with the Despenser regime was robbed and killed. Bishop Stapeldon, hearing that his house had been looted and was on fire, rode across the city in armour to confront the robbers. The mob caught him in the churchyard of St Paul’s and dragged him from his horse and down Cheapside, cutting his head off with a bread-knife in their mad fury. They sent the head as a present to Isabella.
If ever there was an example of how devastating the loss of widespread support could be, it was the destruction of royal power in late September and early October 1326. To Edward’s dismay, the country simply jettisoned his father. All the long centuries of dignity, glory, authority, respect, chivalry and honour – everything which was sacred and powerful about royalty – was stripped away. The king had been forced to run, ignominiously, towards Wales, and then forced out to sea. This was distressing for Edward. Mortimer’s political machinations, which had served so well to launch their return to the country, now threatened to destroy the very thing that Edward hoped would be saved for him: the authority of the Crown.
At Wallingford, on 15 October, the invaders issued a proclamation. They declared – in Edward’s name – that the king had accepted the advice of evil men, and through them the Church had been despoiled, the dignity of the Crown had been reduced, lords had been imprisoned without trial, and fined, put to death, or exiled; and the people had been burdened by heavy taxes. The invaders proclaimed they had come to put an end to this despotism. Edward, seeing his name now being used as an authority for political documents, could only hope that that was true. But on the same day as the proclamation was issued, Bishop Orleton preached a sermon to many hundreds of men at Oxford in which he accused the king of being a ‘tyrant and a sodomite’, echoing the charges brought against the disgraced Pope Boniface VIII in 1303.17 It was abundantly clear to Edward that a new tyranny was lurking. His father had now become the target of political lies and anti-royalist propaganda. With Mortimer in charge, the outlook for the royal family was bleak.
On 26 October, Bristol Castle fell to Mortimer. Despite Isabella’s pleas for mercy, Mortimer and the royal earls had the earl of Winchester (Hugh Despenser’s father) beheaded. By then they knew that the king had fled the country. They also knew that he still had the great seal with him, and a huge amount of silver, so there was a real danger he could have set up a government in exile. But Mortimer and his fellow-advisers had an answer for that too. They argued that when the king left the realm he should have left the seal in the hands of a regent. Since the king was now off the coast of Wales, and had not appointed a regent, there could be said to be a technical absence of regnal authority in England. Here was their opportunity. Mortimer and Isabella agreed that Edward should be regent, and had Edward’s new title proclaimed on the same day as Bristol fell.
In the month since the invasion, Edward had seen his father’s authority crumble to nothing. Now he himself was titular head of state. But the greater the position he held in theory, the less his power in practice. He was a pawn, not a king, and he knew it. His mother and Mortimer had taken royal power for themselves. The same day he had been appointed to the regency, Mortimer and Isabella had designated Robert Wyville, Isabella’s clerk, to keep and control Edward’s privy seal. Later they would appoint the Chancellor and Treasurer too. And the man they chose to be Treasurer was Orleton, the bishop who preached the sermon that Edward’s father was a sodomite. Edward was as much on the defensive as his father. The heirs to the throne of Edward I were seeking refuge in the last silent places of their kingdom: in the king’s case, Neath Abbey in South Wales; in Edward’s case, in the quiet counsel of his conscience.
King Edward II and his companions were captured by the earl of Lancaster on 16 December, in open country near Llantrissant. Three men were arrested with him: Hugh Despenser, Simon Reading and Robert Baldock; his other attendants were released. The king was taken to Kenilworth Castle, Lancaster’s great fortress in the Midlands; the other three were taken to receive justice at Hereford, where Isabella and Mortimer awaited them with vindictive delight. Isabella had hoped to make Despenser suffer in London, but already he was refusing food and water: there was a significant risk he would die before he reached London. Besides which, Mortimer wanted him to die publicly on the Welsh borders, and to suffer the atrocious torture which Despenser had carried out on one of his own friends.18 In the debate about carving up the cake that was Hugh Despenser, Mortimer won. At Hereford, on 24 November, Despenser was dragged through the streets of the city, with crowds shouting at him, and with verses from the bible written on to his body. He was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high, beside his henchman, Simon Reading. But Mortimer’s coup de grâce was the torture he had waited to inflict on his enemy for so long. Before the man was dead, he was brought from his gallows, and his heart and penis cut out. They were thrown into a large fire. Everyone could see that justice – in a manner of speaking – had been done.
*
The royal party spent that Christmas at Wallingford Castle, enthusiastically celebrating their victory. Not only had they effected the first conquest of England since 1066, they had done so without great bloodshed, and without losing the goodwill of the country.
First there were the Hainaulter mercenaries to be thanked. From 5 December they began to depart, their job done, while their leader, John of Hainault remained with the royal party. On 26 December the Hainaulter knights who had come in the company of the earl of Kent received presents.19 The victors had no qualms about being generous; they understood that failure to reward men who had risked their lives was a short-sighted strategy. Besides, they had not only the collossal treasury amassed by Despenser on behalf of Edward II, they also had the personal wealth of Despenser and his supporters. One of Mortimer’s knights, Edmund Hakelut, found £1,568 which had belonged to Mortimer’s executed enemy, the earl of Arundel, in Clun Castle.20 The contents of the earl of Winchester’s money chest at Winchester Priory was despatched to Isabella. Hugh Despenser’s own jewels and treasure were found in the Tower. Isabella took delight personally in distributing this hoard to her Hainaulter friends: a gilded silver enamelled cup as a leaving present for John Marbays on 7 December; a gilded silver, enamelled and engraved cup with base and lid for the lord Haucourt on the 26th. The fairy-tale image of the queen distributing treasure to her knights in shining armour was reality that Christmas.
And the armour was shining too. We know because we have records of payments for it being burnished.21 As soon as Mortimer and Isabella took power, and the regency was established, the structures they put in place began to record their activities. Hence in the run-up to Edward’s coronation we have a detailed record of royal expenditure. It is abundantly clear that, although Edward was merely a puppet regent, he was made to look the part of a real ruler, from the top of his nightcap down to the toes of a pair of boots made of cloth-of-gold and silk.22 Perhaps some of this show can be attributed to Edward II’s court. Certainly some should be attributed to Mortimer’s influence, as he was known to be a man for whom lavish appearance was important. But now Edward found himself at the heart of a court which was determined to be seen to be royal, official, rich and powerful. Those first days of royal authority left an indelible impression on Edward. If a king wished to be seen as powerful, he needed to dress the part.
For Mortimer, Isabella and the coterie of earls and bishops around them, there were other matters to attend to, besides celebrations. The big question was what to do with the king? As he had been arrested and taken to Kenilworth, and was now back in England, legally speaking he was king again, and Edward no longer regent. Conscious of the problem, Mortimer and Isabella took the precaution of issuing writs as if they had come from Kenilworth in the king’s name. This was not a situation which could be allowed to continue.
It is easy for us now to think in terms of deposition. In 1326 it was not. No king of England had ever been deposed. Adolf of Nassau, Holy Roman Emperor, had been deposed in 1298, and Edward I had forced his puppet king of Scotland, John Balliol, to abdicate in 1296, but both of these instances were very different from the present situation. The Holy Roman Emperor was an elected post, not an inherited one; thus the real power lay with the electors. As for Scotland, it was at this time a semi-autonomous unit on the periphery of England, so the English king was in a position akin to that of the Empire’s electors, except that he was the sole ‘elector’ of the Scottish king. Unwanted rulers of major kingdoms were invariably killed, not deposed. This was not just because of a vicious streak in the medieval character, it was because removing power from a man ordained by God to wield it was a dangerous business. Edward II himself had on many occasions simply revoked parliamentary decisions which had been forced on him. There was a serious case therefore for killing him, and it is probable that Adam of Orleton, given his public denunciation of him as a ‘tyrant and a sodomite’, led the calls for the king’s execution.23
Isabella would not countenance her husband’s killing. Of the many bishops and magnates at court that Christmas, all must have cast a guarded eye towards Edward, who also did not wish to see his father torn apart by this pack of self-serving hounds. To advocate killing Edward II would secure the lifelong enmity of his son, the king who would immediately replace him. The consensus was thus one of caution. Edward II would be deposed in parliament, and kept safely, in royal dignity, but in prison for the rest of his days.
*
The deposition of Edward II was a display of political theatre, choreographed by Mortimer and the leading bishops. The royal party arrived in London on 4 January 1327. Three days later Edward attended the parliament at Westminster. For the next few days, the bishops preached sermons about how the country should be ruled by Edward, not his father. The archbishop of York, William Melton – who owed everything to Edward II – preferred to see the king abdicate of his own free will. The bishops of London and Rochester agreed. But Mortimer was working hard on twisting arms. He used his contacts among the London merchants, including the mayor, Richard Bettoyne, to intimidate reluctant members of parliament. Outside he convinced the nobles to side with him in a policy of deposition.
On Tuesday 13 January, he was ready to force the issue. Edward was in the palace, but not in the chamber with the barons, knights and ecclesiastical members. Therefore he did not hear the repeated sermons which rang out from nine o’clock. Nor did he hear the speeches which met with the resounding cries of ‘Away with the king!’ Repeated demands for the country to say whether it agreed to the deposition received the answer, ‘Let it be done!’ Finally, when those present had been totally swept up in the fervour of the moment, the aged archbishop of Canterbury was called to speak, and he preached on the theme that the will of the people was the will of God. The next time the parliament was asked whether the king should be deposed and his son take his place, there was a resounding response: ‘Let it be done! Let it be done!’ With the crowd all singing ‘Glory, laud and honour’, Edward was summoned. The doors to the chamber were flung open, and he was led in to witness the tumultuous calls for him to be crowned king.
Edward’s reaction is interesting. He refused the throne. As those present at the parliament came forward and swore homage to him, the archbishop of York, and the bishops of Rochester, Carlisle and London very publicly and loudly declined.24 Their opposition was not to him personally, they explained, but to the process by which his father was to be dethroned. These four men alone were prepared to stand up for the man who had raised them to their positions of authority, and for the rights of the Crown not to be subject to those of parliament. Edward’s refusal was perhaps inspired by these men, especially Melton, a capable man whom he trusted. It was plain to Edward that, if his father could be ousted by parliament, then he too could be removed from power. He preferred Melton’s counsel: if his father would abdicate, Edward would accept the throne. If not, he would not sanction his father’s deposition.25
Edward’s refusal to accept the throne is the first sign that, even though only fourteen, he was not prepared to bend to Mortimer’s will. But Mortimer was a formidable political opponent and a far-sighted manipulator. While he could not be seen to cross Edward, especially now that Edward’s candidacy for the throne had been approved by parliament, he soon came up with a solution. He sent a deputation to see Edward II. They gave him news not only of parliament’s decision, but also the prince’s reluctance to accept it. It was up to the king: either he could abdicate in favour of his son, or he could leave the throne to Mortimer.
On 21 January, in the hall of Kenilworth Castle, dressed in black and weeping, Edward II abdicated. The delegation returned to Westminster on the 24th. The next day it was proclaimed that the king had ‘of his own goodwill and by common counsel and assent of the prelates, earls, barons and other nobles and commonalty of the kingdom, resigned the government of the realm’.26
The reign of King Edward III had begun.
*
Edward was crowned on 1 February 1327. Mortimer had, in fact, fixed the date even before parliament had decided to agree to the deposition of the old king.27 He wanted a quick coronation to confirm the official status of what was effectively his administration. For the same reason, he made sure that all the coronation arrangements were strictly in accordance with the long-standing instructions for the anointing of an English king.28 Edward was dressed in the traditional red samite. Striped cloth lined his path from the palace to the abbey. As he walked along it, surrounded by cheering crowds, with at least ten bishops and many earls and other lords and ladies in the procession, he was accompanied by four knights who held a gold canopy festooned with bells over his head. In the abbey itself, the floor was covered in coloured cloth. The stage – erected specially for the occasion before the high altar – was covered in quilted gold silk. In fact practically everything at the eastern end of the abbey was covered in gold. On the stage the king sat on a gilded throne with gold cushions beneath his feet and gold cloth beneath the cushions, a gold sceptre in one hand, a gold orb in the other and the gold crown of the saint-king Edward the Confessor upon his head. The hangings of the canopy above him were gold with purple cords; the archbishop of Canterbury – who presided over the ceremony – also sat on a seat covered with gold. To anyone staring along the nave, as the Latin chants echoed around the arches, the king would have appeared as the sole man in red at the centre of a dazzling, celestial apparition, in which golden figures moved around him across a golden space and performed the ritual anointing and coronation with golden vessels and golden regalia.
It was thus in an environment of gold, in the most sacred space of the abbey, near the relics of St Edward the Confessor, and the gold-covered remains of his venerated grandfather, Edward I, that Edward swore his vows of kingship. These too were wholly orthodox, consisting of the four-part oath which his father had sworn at his coronation in 1308. Edward III promised to confirm the laws and customs of the people of England, to observe the rights of the Church, to do justice equally to all his people, and ‘to hold and keep the rightful laws and customs that the community of the realm shall choose, and to defend and strengthen them’.29 This last clause had been designed specially to preserve the power of parliament from the encroachments of Edward II’s unpredictable self-mindedness. Now, in its repetition at Edward III’s coronation, Mortimer forced the same safeguard on the son. Parliament had as great a reason to support this reign as it had had to end the previous one. The king’s responsibility to respect the views of parliament was thus confirmed as a permanent feature of the developing English constitution.
Coronations were times for promotion and celebration too. One important part of this was the creation of new knights. After Edward himself had been knighted – either by Lancaster or John of Hainault – Edward set about dubbing knights, as custom dictated.30Unfortunately for him, this was yet another aspect of his coronation controlled by others. Mortimer decided that his own sons should take precedence, and to emphasise their importance – and thus his own – he ordered that they should be dressed in clothes suitable for earls. Edward may have felt a need to retaliate with a few suggestions of his own, and among the knights created on the day of the coronation we find several who served him loyally for many years: Ralph Stafford, John Neville, William Percy, John Meules, Ralph Willington, Gerard Lisle, Hugh Courtenay, Ralph Daubigny, and Peter Mauley, nephew of his old steward.31 All these men were dressed splendidly in scarlet, green and brown cloth, with miniver and squirrel furs. Mortimer’s sons were as splendidly dressed as their father, with even larger furs and cloth of gold adorning their scarlet, green and brown tunics and mantles.
In all these events of early 1327, from the deposition of his father to his own coronation, one senses a certain distance in the young king. It is not so much what is to be read in the records of the events; it is more what one does not read. The king was crowned, but it may as well have been Mortimer’s coronation. Mortimer’s order to dress his sons as earls was an ominous sign: only kings’ sons automatically were accorded the status of earls. On the day of Edward’s coronation, Mortimer was setting himself up as a king. Pomp there may have been, knighthood and lavish feasting too; but there are no references to the king doing anything other than going through with the ceremony. True, there were many gifts given, but they were given to Mortimer’s friends, not Edward’s. On the day of the coronation, Bishop Orleton was given a number of items from the royal treasury.32 Mortimer’s cousin, Thomas Vere, was handed two gilt silver basins engraved with the arms of England and France in lieu of his being chamberlain at the coronation. Another of his cousins, Thomas Wake, was given a gilded silver salt cellar in return for playing the part of pantler. The earl of Lancaster, an older royal cousin whom Edward did not wholly trust,33 was handed a number of silver dishes and spoons stamped with images of leopards in lieu of his being steward on the day. Mortimer’s friend, Richard Bettoyne, mayor of London, who had helped threaten the members of parliament into supporting the deposition, and who acted as chief butler at the coronation, was allowed to keep an engraved gold cup and an enamelled gold ewer.34 Even Isabella, Edward’s own mother shocked him on the day of the coronation, awarding to herself the annual sum of twenty thousand marks (£13,333): probably the largest personal income appropriated by an individual in medieval England. Adam Murimuth, a canon of St Paul’s, was stunned: ‘to her son she left barely the third part of his kingdom,’ he wrote.35 This was not quite accurate, it amounted to only a third of the royal revenue.36But the spirit of his exclamation was correct: the remaining two-thirds were controlled by Mortimer and Isabella.
The impression one has is that of a boy – albeit a king – with few close friends, shuttered off from the world, partly through his unique position and partly through the threatening ambitions of his mother and Mortimer. Around him the majesty of the court was swirling and laughing, delighting in its newly found wealth. But at the eye of the whirling storm he sat alone on his throne, not knowing what was going to happen next.