FOUR

Absolute Royalty

ON 26 NOVEMBER 1330 Edward had Mortimer dragged before parliament, bound and gagged. He sentenced him to death for fourteen specific crimes, most of which were prefaced by the accusation that Mortimer had ‘accroached the royal power’. It has generally been assumed that this marks the moment when Edward took absolute control of his kingdom, and it is true that with Mortimer’s downfall the major obstacle to Edward’s direct rule was removed. But many challenges remained. Before he could recognise his ambitions, Edward would have to wait until he was older, more trusted as a leader, and more confident.

First there was the problem of what to do with the old regime, its victims as well as its supporters. There was the issue of the lands and treasure which Mortimer and his friends had amassed, including the fortune gathered by Isabella. What should Edward do with the people they had obstructed or disempowered, and the estates of those they had executed, such as Hugh Despenser and the earl of Kent? Disinherited lords could be reinstated, as with the earl of Kent’s son; but what about those whom Mortimer had locked up for good reason? What about Mortimer’s family and the families of his supporters? And what about their actions before 1326? One of Mortimer’s Irish tenants, Hugh Lacy, came to court seeking redress for accusations of treason brought against him in 1317, when Mortimer had been a highly respected King’s Lieutenant of Ireland.¹ Such grievances had to be treated on their individual circumstances. It would have been unwise simply to revoke all of Mortimer’s actions.

Edward proceeded cautiously. On the way south from Nottingham, just four days after the arrests, he ordered Mortimer’s treasure to be handed over to Richard Bury, along with that of Queen Isabella.² Mortimer’s lands were confiscated. Isabella voluntarily surrendered her vast estates at the end of November.³ The pope was very quick to get involved, writing to Edward immediately requesting that he deal leniently with Isabella and Mortimer.⁴ In fact, so seriously did the pope take the matter that he sent two copies of his letter on behalf of Isabella to Edward, in case one should be lost. The pope wrote at the same time to Queen Philippa, the earl of Lancaster, William Montagu and the bishop of Winchester exhorting them all to use their influence to help Isabella, Mortimer and the bishop of Lincoln. Such intentions were not lost on Edward, who knew he would need the pope’s support in the years to come. Isabella was placed temporarily under house arrest. The bishop of Lincoln was left unmolested.

The real problem facing Edward was how to proceed against those who were the closest intimates of Mortimer, the handful of men who knew what had happened to Edward II. This was a matter of the greatest delicacy. The strategy he adopted was brilliant: Mortimer had concocted the ‘death’ of Edward II; so Edward III would maintain that his father really was dead, and that he had been murdered on Mortimer’s orders. In this way, although he had no idea where his father was, he could set aside any attempts to restore him during his own minority, just as Mortimer had done. He also could restore the son of the earl of Kent to his rightful inheritance and pardon his poor dead uncle, which he did. But this strategy did carry one great difficulty. It raised the question of how Edward should treat the men who thus were implicated in a fictitious royal murder. Obviously he would have to take action against them. Fortunately, all the ringleaders fled except one. Lord Berkeley remained. Defiantly he maintained in parliament that the ex-king was not dead.⁵ Edward showed great awareness and intelligence in his response. He quickly took the initiative and came to an understanding with Berkeley. The official announcement of the death would be maintained, but Berkeley himself would not be held guilty of the fictitious death.⁶

In this context, Mortimer was the least of Edward’s worries. He was sentenced to be dragged to the gallows at Tyburn, then hanged. On the day of his execution he was made to wear the black tunic he had worn at Edward II’s funeral.⁷ Isabella’s movements were restricted for several months. Then she received her liberty and the income she had held before the ascendancy of the Despensers: the substantial sum of £3,000 per year. Edward waited a week after the parliamentary trials before ordering the arrest of Maltravers for arranging Kent’s death and the arrests of the other men involved in the supposed ‘murder’ of Edward II. They had already fled, of course, but Edward had to be seen to be taking action against the supposed killers of his father. Moreover, he wanted one of Mortimer’s supporters in particular brought to him. This was Thomas Gurney, the man who had originally brought him the news of his father’s ‘death’, knowing it was false. Gurney was arrested in Spain, and died three years later of a sudden illness on the way back to England. As for other members of the Mortimer faction, the dictator’s widow, Joan, eventually received her lands back, with a full recompense for her lost income.⁸ Lord Berkeley was notionally held over on the charge of appointing the men who were supposed to have killed Edward II, but he was neither incarcerated nor deprived of his lands or revenues.

In this way Edward coped with a serious dilemma. On the one hand he had to be seen to take firm action against Mortimer’s adherents. On the other, he had to be careful lest he be accused of creating false ‘crimes’ in order to discredit men for the sake of his own reputation, especially in the case of Lord Berkeley. Only two men – Mortimer himself and his henchman, Simon Bereford – were executed as a result of the coup. Even Geoffrey, Mortimer’s son, who was walled up with his father in the Tower, was released without charge. Mortimer’s eldest son, Edmund, was allowed to inherit some of his family estates within a few months of his father’s execution. Edward never even pursued Sir John Maltravers, the other man responsible for the ex-king’s security, along with Lord Berkeley.

Not only would it have been unwise for Edward to persecute those who had supported Mortimer, it would have served no purpose. Mortimer had surrounded himself with the cleverest and most able men of his generation. Indeed, virtually all the prominent men at court in the last year of Mortimer’s ascendancy were retained by Edward III in the first year of his. We know this by assessing who witnessed royal charters in the period before and after the coup of 19 October 1330 (See Appendix Four). Bishop Burghersh of Lincoln, who spent more time at court in 1330 than any other bishop, was retained by Edward III even though he was no longer Chancellor. The pope wrote commending his skills to Edward, who acknowledged in his reply that Burghersh had ‘more good in him than all the other bishops’.⁹ This is remarkable in view of Burghersh being Mortimer’s closest friend and adviser.¹⁰ Nor was he the only Mortimer ally to win Edward’s approval; even Oliver Ingham attested a charter in 1331, despite being a Mortimer agent; and two years later he was appointed seneschal of Aquitaine. Leaving aside the steward of the household (who attested charters by virtue of his office), all but one of the fifteen men who had witnessed more than three charters in 1330 under Mortimer’s period of influence performed the same courtly function in 1331, the exception being Geoffrey Mortimer. Edward restricted his reforms to replacing the Treasurer and Chancellor with men of his own choosing. The men he selected for these posts were William Melton (archbishop of York) and John Stratford (bishop of Winchester) respectively.

All this points to another significant feature of Edward’s character: forgiveness. Edward was not averse to executing his enemies, as later events would show, but if a man could prove useful to him, he did not let past enmity stand in the way of reconciliation. Already by 19 October 1330 Lancaster – the rebel of 1328 – had been restored to favour. More surprisingly, Geoffrey Mortimer was permitted to live quietly on his estates in France. Although Maltravers was sentenced to death for his part in procuring the death of the earl of Kent, he too was allowed to live untroubled in Flanders. He was allowed to return to England secretly for a conference with Edward’s advisers in 1335, was employed by Edward in Flanders and Ireland not long after that, and eventually restored to his estates and lordship.¹¹ Bartholomew Burghersh, who had shadowed Montagu’s mission to the pope, was appointed seneschal of Ponthieu.¹² Such an ability to forgive meant Edward did not permanently alienate key magnates and prelates from court. He did not disable his government by vindictiveness upon the disempowered ministers. Nor did he create new enemies. In fact, so much did he sympathise with the judgement of those who had supported Mortimer that a year later, in January 1332, he announced that a grant made before October 1330 was not questionable merely on the grounds that it was made in the time of ‘evil counsellors’.¹³ Mortimer had not been a bad administrator. He had committed only one unforgivable sin in Edward’s eyes. He had appropriated Edward’s royal power.

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It is particularly unfortunate for the biographer that the sorts of documents which survive from the fourteenth century – financial accounts, administrative and legal records, royal writs and chronicles written by clerks with one eye on posterity and the other on morality – rarely give an impression of how much fun was had at court. The weight of evidence is always on the side of business, whether the king’s or God’s. Nevertheless, we can be confident that Edward was ecstatic at his success in capturing Mortimer, and, as soon as the man was dead, he revelled in his position. As Sir Thomas Gray put it, ‘so this king led a gay life in jousts and tournaments and entertaining ladies’.¹⁴

Edward certainly enjoyed the jousts and tournaments which Gray mentioned. We can point to a whole gamut of tournaments, games, staged battles, promenades and masked events provided by Edward, rather like a Roman Emperor providing games for the entertainment of his citizens. These events, whether private (for a few dozen nobles and knights) or public (for the citizens of London) all helped Edward recreate the cult of kingship. They were dramatic events too, with the emphasis on spectacle. For the games at Guildford, on 1 and 6 January 1331, Edward ordered canvas and Spanish wool to be purchased to make ‘the hair and hides of men and deer’, perhaps to be used in mock hunts.¹⁵ For the same games he also ordered two banners and four pennons to be made, presumably for the two ‘armies’ which would compete in the tournament, and ‘ten dozen false faces complete with beards, both for knights and squires’. Masks became a common element of Edward’s games. So too were mock animals and mythical beasts. The costumes of merchants, friars, devils, dragons, angels and women never ceased to be popular, and were still being invented for Edward’s entertainments twenty years later.¹⁶

What is often overlooked about all this display is that it was not just an occasional happening, it was a regular occurrence. To get an idea of just how regular, we have to examine Edward’s accounts for references to payments for armour and costumes. Of course, many festivities have left little or no trace, when only a small amount of armour was purchased specially. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to estimate that Edward attended some sort of ‘games’ on a monthly basis in the summer and on the major feast days in winter: so a total of about ten or eleven tournaments per year, each lasting between two and four days.¹⁷ In between these were the preparations for the events. And of course the events themselves were in many respects training exercises for real battles and duels. Edward was encouraging his subjects to live the romantic chivalric life. For Philippa and her ladies at court this took the form of a massive display of wealth through their rich and varied appearance, and extravagance in practically everything they did. For Edward’s knights, it took the form of regular displays of prowess in the joust, and dressing up and acting archetypal roles from popular culture and imagination. Edward was leading the royal family in a recreation of a semi-legendary realm. His purpose was a demonstration of absolute royalty. It was the biggest pro-royal propaganda statement since his grandfather Edward I had constructed a whole series of castles in the newly conquered north of Wales, including one (Carnarvon) modelled on Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman empire. If Froissart’s chronicle with its tournaments and feasts, romantic deeds and chivalric honour seems far-fetched, it is not because it was trying to misrepresent Edward’s court, it is because it was trying to represent it faithfully.

Absolute royalty in 1331 harked back to one figure above all others, King Arthur. The Arthurian legends had, for a number of years, offered various kings the model for a band of knights who were indomitable and who would win fame, love and virtue. In his old age Edward I had tried to create just such a band to wage war against the Scots; it had failed, partly due to its size (more than two hundred knights) and partly due to Edward II’s lack of determination to continue his father’s war. Edward III imagined his band of knights in a new way. If he was to be the new Arthur, then he too needed a band of close-knit, peerless Knights of the Round Table. The late thirteenth-century Round Table, which now hangs at Winchester, has places for twenty-four knights as well as the king.¹⁸Later Edward formed a chivalric band with a similar number of knights (twenty-six as opposed to twenty-five). Over and over again in Edward’s accounts of the 1330s we read of aketons (embroidered, padded tournament jackets), tunics and mantles being made for small groups of men. Edward’s vision of his companionship was simple: a group of about two dozen friends, brothers-in-arms. From the beginning of his reign there was an attempt to make the Arthurian legends come true. If the Round Table could be made a reality, there was no reason why Edward’s knights could not actually sit around it, nor any reason why they should not be as brave as the legendary knights of King Arthur. They had already begun to show their courage. It is no coincidence that the first set of aketons for a band of courtiers was made for the men who had assisted in the capture of Mortimer.¹⁹

Edward III’s vision of kingship cannot be separated from the legends of King Arthur. So strong was their pull that Edward visited Glastonbury – Arthur’s legendary burial place – soon after he took power, in December 1331.²⁰ There were other examples of bonded knighthood for him to draw upon too. In Castile, Alfonso XI had recently established his Order of the Band, a group of knights distinguished by their extravagant dress.²¹ Before that even, in the 1290s, the Count of Holland had established a tourneying society.²² And then there were the religious knights. Edward’s first home as baby, Bisham Priory, had been a house of the Knights Templar. He would have remembered nothing of this place from his living there, but he would have passed it many times in later years, and he cannot have been unaware that once there had existed in England an order of knights who dedicated themselves to fight for the patrimony of Jesus Christ, the Holy Land. The very oaths sworn by knights when they received knighthood exhorted them to noble deeds and Christian virtues: to higher purposes than self-aggrandizement. It was these higher purposes which Edward hoped would appeal to his own company of knights.

We might have expected this burst of knightly expectation, tourneying and chivalric virtue to have been accompanied by a range of rewards liberally scattered amongst the men who had freed Edward from Mortimer. This was not the case. The rewards were few. Montagu was rewarded with the lordship of Denbigh for leading the plot to arrest Mortimer, which was fitting, as that lordship had been Mortimer’s reward for freeing the country from the previous royal manipulator, Hugh Despenser. Men such as the earl of Lancaster and the lawyer Geoffrey le Scrope were also rewarded, and certain knights who had taken part in the arrest received charters in their favour. But there were no huge grants of land and titles. For several years no knight who had assisted in the attack of 1330 was advanced in rank. Edward was fastidiously careful not to be seen to appoint another favourite who would grow rich, ambitious and assume Mortimer’s place. Men under Edward III would have to earn their titles and glory. Relieving the king of Mortimer’s influence was merely a first step.

There were other reasons not to distribute rewards liberally so early in his career. Edward was still under age – he only turned nineteen in November 1331 – and although he had taken control of the realm he had yet to prove himself as a leader. His letters at this time are marked by his eagerness to ask for advice, whether from parliament or the pope. His approach to his royal status was hands-on and immediate, but his approach to overseas and military affairs was tentative. Would his lords and knights trust his judgement on the field of battle? Would men follow his orders in the face of danger? Although it had been prophesied that he would be an all-conquering king, that was not prophesied to happen during his father’s lifetime, and Edward did not yet know whether his father was alive or dead. All he knew in 1331 was that it had been foretold that his father would lose all his lands and then regain them and more, and that he would die overseas.²³ His father had now lost all his lands. If Edward were to leave the realm and if some lord seized the opportunity to reinstate his father, if he was still in Britain, the prophecy might yet come true.

Thus we can see that the consolidation of his reign was Edward’s priority in 1331. Every statement was carefully designed to reflect his royalty, from the organising of a tournament to the creation of his crest: a crown surmounted by a gem-encrusted gold eagle.²⁴But although we may see the process of ‘absolute royalty’ as layer on layer of propaganda, we should not presume it was cynically done. This was part of his real identity: he was reinforcing his legitimacy, unlike Mortimer whose propaganda had been concealing his illicit use of authority. We cannot separate the image that Edward wanted to project – his vision of kingship – from the nineteen-year-old man himself. In Edward’s own eyes, he really was the new Arthur. It had been prophesied thus; now it was up to him to make the prophesies come true.

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In 1331 Edward wrote to the pope asking whether he should go to Ireland ‘which needed much reformation’.²⁵ At the same time he asked about ‘crossing the sea’, by which he seems to have been asking a question about whether he should go on crusade.²⁶ The pope’s answer to the latter question was that all Christian princes should go on a crusade. His answer to the former was that, if England was safe, then Edward could travel, if his presence in Ireland would do some good, although he ought to delegate the ‘reformation’ of the country to someone else. Edward summoned the young earl of Ulster and the archbishop of Dublin to come secretly to him in England to advise him on his planned trip to Ireland, and even set a date for his journey there in 1332.²⁷ But one has to wonder why Edward was asking the pope about visiting a part of his own kingdom, and why he needed the earl to come to him to advise him on his going there, especially since he never actually went.

Traditional explanations of Edward’s Irish interest have been based on the lawlessness of Ireland in 1331. One might reasonably speculate that Edward was trying to impress the pope with his concern for the more lawless reaches of his kingdom and the Holy Land. Every Christian ruler in the middle ages was engaged in a constant public relations battle with the pope, who organised much international diplomacy, acted as a mediator in conflicts, appointed the archbishops, bishops and archdeacons throughout Christendom, and thus had much influence in the internal and external affairs of any country. But with a man so given to secret business and propaganda as Edward, it is worth asking a much more radical question. Was Edward seeking information from the pope regarding his father’s possible whereabouts in Ireland?

This is an exceedingly difficult question to answer. But it is worth considering in regard to these requests of 1331. Edward may have been eager to go to Ireland not just for the reformation of the country but perhaps also to ransack Mortimer’s castles there for information regarding his father’s whereabouts. In this respect there is some evidence that Edward II was taken to Ireland after Kent’s execution. This is a document known as the Fieschi letter: an account of Edward II’s later life up to and including the year 1335 written at Avignon by a papal notary, Manuel Fieschi. This has hitherto been considered by scholars to be a contemporary forgery. However, the main reason for supposing this was the long-held assumption that Edward II had died in Berkeley Castle in 1327. That we now know that Edward II was alive in 1330 does not automatically make the Fieschi letter genuine, but it allows us to consider its contents seriously, and there are a number of reasons to consider that it was written in good faith (see Appendix Three). In particular it states that Edward II was taken to Ireland after Kent’s death. If this was the case, Edward might have heard from one of Maltravers’ men that his father had been taken to Ireland in 1330, and might have presumed he was still there, or Mortimer’s agents there knew what had happened to him.

Alternatively, we might consider another possible attempt to locate his father. The Fieschi letter suggests that, after Mortimer’s execution, Edward II was released from captivity in Ireland and crossed to Normandy in the guise of a pilgrim. This would have been in early 1331. On 3 April 1331 Edward III suddenly departed from court with about twenty men, all dressed as if going on pilgrimage, to Northern France. Adam Murimuth noted the king’s journey in his chronicle. He stated that Edward, Montagu and the bishop of Winchester, with about fifteen other knights crossed the sea dressed as merchants. They had it proclaimed in their absence that they had gone abroad ‘on pilgrimage and for no other reason’, and that John of Eltham was appointed custodian of the realm until the king returned.²⁸ Murimuth supposed that Edward had gone in disguise to cover up the fact that he was going to swear homage to King Philip for Aquitaine. Modern scholars have tended to agree, on the basis that Edward had failed to do homage properly before, and therefore needed to repeat his aborted performance of homage to Philip’s satisfaction.²⁹ But this is far from certain, not least because Philip had just agreed – on 9 March 1331 – that no fresh performance of homage was necessary; all Philip required was a letter assuring him that Edward had meant to swear to be Philip’s liege man.³⁰ Even though Edward did indeed meet Philip at Pont-Sainte-Maxence, his journey may have had a double purpose, especially as it was clearly arranged in great haste and he was hot on the heels of his father, according to the Fieschi letter. It is also significant that in setting off, Edward rode at very high speed, travelling from Eltham to Dover in a day. We cannot rule out the possibility that a merchant with royal connections had informed Edward that his father was travelling with pilgrims in Normandy, causing Edward to set off immediately with a number of trusted men to look for him.

Both of these possible attempts to find Edward II are tentative, and from a historical perspective it is safest to presume that Edward had no second agenda in going to Normandy or Ireland in 1331. However, from a biographical perspective it is important to be aware that Edward may have been conscientiously undertaking a search for the man, in the most extreme secrecy. In addition, there are other circumstantial indications that he was trying to discover his father’s whereabouts. On 31 May he despatched Giles of Spain to seek out Thomas Gurney on the Continent and to bring him back to England.³¹ It is very interesting that the man he chose for the task of rounding up the ‘murderers’ was one of the earl of Kent’s supporters, and thus a man who knew Edward II was probably still alive. Later in the year Edward became aware of a dispute between his clerk, John Melburn, and William Fieschi (a kinsman of Manuel Fieschi). William had been removed from his prebend at Strensall in May 1330 and Edward had caused it to be given to John. Before October 1331 Edward discovered that William was attempting ‘to draw John into a plea outside the realm concerning certain matters which ought to be brought to the king’s attention’.³² Edward prohibited his preferred candidate, John, from leaving the country until October, and then, when he did let him go to Avignon, he had strict instructions not to engage in other matters apart from his right to the prebend. The evidence – as so often with Edward’s secret business – permits nothing more than a question to be raised, but when the question is so important it cannot be ignored. It might well be that Edward heard hints as early as 1331 of as to where his father might be, or where he might be going, and how safe he was, or how compromised.

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After his incognito dash to France, Edward threw himself back into promoting his chivalric regality in England. At the beginning of May he and his men took part in a tournament at Dartford. It was hosted by William Clinton, and Edward fought as a knight on Clinton’s side. This is the first recorded instance of him taking part in a tournament as a common knight, not as the commander. In putting himself at risk, he was encouraging his knights to respect him for his valour and for his own qualities, not just his rank. And he did put himself at risk. At the end of this tournament, as he was leaving the field, his horse – a magnificent destrier (warhorse) – threw him to the ground. So displesed was Edward, and so angry, that he changed it for a humble palfrey. Although several of his knights were surprised, and declared it was not becoming for him to ride such a modest steed, Edward was later proved to have been fortunate, for his hot-tempered and sweating destrier threw its rider into a deep part of the river. Had Edward still been riding it, dressed in his armour, he would have drowned.³³

One month later Edward took part in another tournament at Stepney, a four-day event held to celebrate the first birthday of his son, Edward of Woodstock.³⁴ This event was proclaimed by Robert Morley, who fought against all comers with fifteen men, all dressed in green cloaks decorated with golden arrows.³⁵ In late September yet another tournament was held, this time at the invitation of William Montagu. Unusually, it was held in the very centre of the city of London, in Cheapside. After a mass sung in memory of his father, and the usual pittances had been doled out to paupers in order to keep up the appearance of his father’s decease, Edward joined Montagu and his other chosen knights in dressing as Tartars and leading in procession the ‘most noble and most beautiful women of the realm’, all dressed in red velvet tunics with white hoods (the colours of St George). Each woman was led by a silver chain attached to a knight’s right hand.³⁶ Edward himself led his sister, Eleanor, in the procession, but no doubt paid attention to the damsels around him. Extending invitations to ladies of merchant class was novel. Although the reference to their beauty might explain Montagu’s readiness to invite them, in Hainault it was customary for the nobility to fraternise with the richest merchants, and thus the inspiration may have been Queen Philippa’s, not Montagu’s. Either way, the extension of royal favour to the merchant class was a marked development of Edward’s reign, and led to many leading merchants and mayors being knighted.³⁷

Unfortunately on this particular occasion, there was a less than glorious start to proceedings as the high wooden stand in which Queen Philippa was sitting collapsed, and many ladies and knights were injured. Edward furiously declared he would take revenge on the workmen, but before he found the men responsible – whom he would probably have hanged on the spot – Queen Philippa herself begged for him to spare their lives.³⁸ It was typical of Queen Philippa that she should seek mercy for the men. And it was equally typical of Edward that he should immediately respond to the challenge of disaster with threatened force. Edward did spare the workmen; it did not matter to him whether they lived or died, only that he was the one who made the decision. But perhaps the most telling point with regard to this anecdote is that despite the near death of his wife, he ordered the tournament to continue. Edward was a young man who needed to control events, and, though he might have been persuaded not to hang his negligent workmen, nothing was going to turn him from his intended path.

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Edward’s strong mental grasp of a situation, and instinct to control it, was very similar to that exhibited by his grandfather, Edward I. Edward felt a strong affinity towards ‘the Hammer of the Scots’, as his grandfather was called, who had died six years before he was born. He regularly made spiritual gifts at his grandfather’s tomb in Westminster Abbey and treasured the knife that an assassin had used in an attempt to murder Edward I in the Holy Land (on which occasion Edward I had overpowered and killed his assailant).³⁹ We might also fairly assume that the genes of the elder Edward conditioned the temperament of the younger. But just as important was the legacy of the man’s reputation. For the Hammer of the Scots had not just been a warrior, he had been a great lawgiver and a great leader.

Edward had made much progress in the year since Mortimer’s fall, but in terms of leadership he had hardly proved himself. His entertainments were glorious spectacles, but so had been his father’s musical interludes and carnivalesque capers. Tournaments were entertaining, and they showed personal mettle, and his companions’ collective spirit, but they were not an indication of responsibility, and hardly a measure of political judgement. For that, Edward needed another proving ground, and one in which his grandfather had excelled. Parliament.

A week after the Cheapside tournament, parliament met at Westminster. Edward had agreed the previous year that parliament should meet annually, and although later in his reign he did not always abide by this resolution, for the moment it suited his purposes to do so. It gave him the perfect opportunity to assert himself – and more importantly, to be seen to assert himself – over his nobles. He also came with a specific agenda. He asked the lords to give up the unpopular practice of ‘maintenance’: shielding their tenants from the law when they had committed a crime.⁴⁰ This had been going on for some years, and Edward was directly confronting his nobles by issuing what was in effect a manifesto of fair rule for all, in line with the coronation oaths he had sworn.⁴¹ His request that they give up such practices – rather than forbidding them outright – indicates vestiges of nervousness, or uncertainty, but he clearly hoped to mark out a policy. Unfairness and extrajudicial processes were aspects of lordly domination which he had known only too well.

One particular question raised at the parliament of 1331 was whether England should go to war with France. Edward wanted to know specifically whether he should seek to recover the lands lost to the English Crown in the war of Saint-Sardos by force or by diplomacy. Parliament responded that diplomacy was the preferred course. Edward consequently embarked on a tortuous series of diplomatic negotiations to try to recover the Agenais. Edward himself probably felt that the time was not right for a continental campaign. But the real question here is why he asked parliament at all. Surely, now that Mortimer was dead, and the consolidation of the reign was Edward’s priority, he did not need a war? Was the question just put to demonstrate to parliament that he was prepared to listen to their advice?

The diplomatic situation in France was stable but not to Edward’s advantage. To paraphrase his mother’s words, he had been forced to do homage to the son of a count. France was a sore in his mind. After his claim to the throne of France had been withdrawn, his rival, King Philip, had very soon led the French to a remarkable victory at Cassel against the Flemish. Philip had exhorted his men to feats of daring and chivalry, and they had responded to his leadership. Philip was determined to win glory for France by leading a crusade. Philip’s name was becoming synonymous with all the virtues which Edward wanted associated with his own. After Edward’s renewal of homage in 1331, Philip had even greater superiority in the chivalric pecking order. Although Philip was much older – he was thirty-eight in 1331 – Edward saw the new French king as a definite rival in fame as well as power and royalty. When Philip first expressed his desire to go on crusade, Edward, not to be outdone, supported him. Thus there was a personal dimension to the struggle. Lastly, Scotland rankled with Edward no less than France, and both kingdoms were bound by an alliance to defend the other against England. When Edward suggested using force to reclaim the Agenais, he was not just suggesting war with France, he was suggesting an armed struggle which would force the Scots to join France and attack England, and thus break their truce.⁴²

Edward’s relations with Scotland were complicated. He had been forced to ratify the Treaty of Northampton by which he recognised the independence of Robert Bruce’s kingdom of Scotland. Bruce had died in 1329, leaving the country in a weak state, with no obvious leader, but Bruce had done his best to ensure the succession. Edward’s ten-year-old sister Joan had been married to the seven-year-old king, David II, and her coronation was planned for November 1331. On the other hand, there had been many lords who had never accepted the ‘shameful’ treaty, due to the loss of their lands north of the border. Edward himself had never forgotten the ignominy of being forced to relinquish part of his kingdom. Nor had he forgotten that the Scots nicknamed his little sister ‘Joan Makepeace’ on the day she was taken north. He had not forgotten their insults at Stanhope Park, nor their dealings with Isabella and Mortimer rather than him, when he had been the rightful king. As for his sister’s marriage, although she was married to his enemy, she was still under age, and so the marriage could not yet have been consummated. That of course was a technicality. The important fact was that Edward was not going to let her status be the cause of his own disinheritance.

As it happened, parliament’s decision not to pursue a war in the Agenais was overtaken by events. Edward Balliol emerged as a leader of the claimants of Scottish lands, ‘the Disinherited’ as they came to be known. Balliol was the son of the ousted king of Scots, John Balliol, who had ruled the country under Edward I. It made perfect sense for Edward to allow this adventurer to try his luck. If he was successful, he would rule Scotland as Edward’s client king, and, by keeping the northern border secure, he would permit Edward to concentrate on France. If he was unsuccessful, he would tempt the Scots to break the terms of the truce, so that they would probably appear the aggressors in any subsequent war. Balliol swore homage to Edward, and Edward tacitly gave his approval for Balliol to use English ports to gather and launch his invasion.⁴³ Several of Edward’s friends decided to go with Balliol, including Sir Walter Manny and Sir Thomas Ughtred, and they went with his blessing. Although Edward issued written orders for the sheriffs to stop the invasion, this was almost certainly a smokescreen; it is likely that he also issued verbal orders for the written orders to be disregarded.

For Edward, this new Scottish strategy meant a period of waiting. He spent Christmas 1331 at Wells with Philippa, who was three months pregnant with their second child. They stayed there until the completion of the games on the night of Epiphany (6 January). Presents were exchanged; Philippa gave Edward a silver goblet and ewer, the goblet being ‘enamelled on the outside with images of beautiful castles, ships and beasts, and on the inside with a great castle at the base with its banners unfurled and the king seated in the middle, and enamelled on all sides with the arms of England among leopards bearing the same arms’; the ewer was enamelled with legendary figures: Julius Caesar, Judas Maccabeus, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver, Arthur, Gawain and Lancelot of the Lake.⁴⁴Philippa must have commissioned this herself, and it is striking that several of the heroes from books in Richard Bury’s library are represented. The conqueror of Jerusalem (Judas Maccabeus) sat alongside the conqueror of Europe (Caesar). Philippa knew her husband’s tastes well.

While Edward waited for the resolution of Balliol’s gamble, he had many other claims on his attention. He was still considering going to Ireland in August 1332.⁴⁵ He was concerned about the state of the University of Cambridge. He ordered the arrest of renegade friars wandering around the country. He ordered the bishop of Winchester to arrange the marriage between his sister Eleanor and Reginald, count of Guelderland. He ordered the repair of his castles in Gascony. He responded to the news that Thomas Gurney had been caught in Bayonne. He received ambassadors from Armenia (in relation to a crusade there), Savoy, and the pope: the last exhorting him not to fight the French. He sent ambassadors to Flanders, Rome, France, Portugal and Spain. In March, he urged parliament to encourage Flemish weavers to come to England to teach the English how to improve the making of domestic cloth, his first foray into economic policy. In April, despite parliament’s expressed desire that he should put off going on a crusade with Philip of France for three years, he sent the bishop of Winchester to negotiate this, and wrote to the pope about the plan.

As this list shows, economics, family relations, foreign policy, defensive strategy and crusading were all bubbling together in one great royal melting pot. This was merely what a king did. Throughout 1332 we see Edward moving around the country – rarely spending a week in the same place – feasting on the major saints days, attending mass, holding parliament, receiving ambassadors, jousting and granting charters. For relaxation he indulged in hunting, gambling with his friends, and being told chivalric stories of military and romantic prowess. At the end of April the court came to rest at the royal manor of Woodstock, at which it had been decided Philippa would have her next child. There, on 16 June, his first daughter, Isabella, was born.⁴⁶ Two weeks after the birth, the king was off again, travelling through Burford to Devizes, to his manor at Clarendon; then, via Abingdon, back to Woodstock to attend the churching of Queen Philippa. Of course, there was a lavish tournament in celebration. No expense was spared in the decoration. The altars of the church itself were decorated in purple silk embroidered with birds, beasts, baboons and snakes, and Philippa’s state bed hangings were similarly decorated with these animals and the arms of England and Hainault.⁴⁷ The feast that day (19 July) cost more than £292: about ten times the usual daily expenditure on feeding the royal household.⁴⁸

On 12 July, at Woodstock, Edward decided to delay his Irish campaign until Michaelmas, in order to learn the results of Balliol’s adventure. Balliol and the disinherited lords landed with eighty-eight ships and fifteen hundred men at Kinghorn on 6 August.⁴⁹They soon met with considerable opposition. Although the southern Scottish forces, under Patrick of Dunbar, were too far away to prevent the landing, the huge army of Donald, earl of Mar, confronted them four days later. Balliol had been led to believe that Donald of Mar would come over to his side, but, now he was actually there, he found Mar planned to slaughter him and all the Disinherited. On the night of 10 August, knowing that thousands of men were ranged against them, and knowing even more men were on their way to assist in the massacre, Balliol and his experienced military adviser, Henry Beaumont, made a desperate decision. They decided to seize the initiative and fight. The longer they delayed, the greater the risk of having to resist an even larger army. The other lords with them were aghast, and accused Beaumont of leading them into a trap. ‘By no means’, he replied, ‘but since the affair has gone so far, for God’s sake, let us help ourselves. For no man knows what God has in store for us. Let us think of our great right so as to show we are descended from good knights.’ Most inspiring of all, he found a Scotsman who was prepared to show them the ford across the River Earn. That night, while the men-at-arms loyal to the earl of Mar drank the night away on the moor, and their footsoldiers slept, Balliol and Beaumont led their men across the Earn and slaughtered the Scottish footsoldiers in their tents. But as light came up, to their amazement they realised they had only engaged half the enemy, and now the great mass of Mar’s men was ranged against them. Desperate measures were called for. Facing death, the English men-at-arms dismounted, and set themselves to form a defensive line of pikes, with archers on the flanks. Beaumont ordered the pikes set into the ground, and the archers to aim at the faces of the oncoming Scottish riders.

Desperate measures they may have been, but what happened that day was truly remarkable. The English archers, well-organised and well-trained, stood their ground and drove the flanks of the Scottish army into the centre of the charge, where they disabled their own compatriots. For centuries the great charge of a body of knights – the utterly destructive fast-moving mass of armoured power – had held sway on the battlefields of Europe. Here, on the slopes of a Scottish moor, Dupplin Moor, everything changed. The archers destroyed the force of the charge. When the Scots front line had finally staggered on to the English pikes, they drove the English back twenty or thirty feet. At that point Lord Stafford cried out: ‘Englishmen! Turn your shoulders instead of your chests to the pikes!’ A little later another Englishman cried out ‘Cheer up, Englishmen, and fight like men, for the Scots in the rear have now begun to fly!’ As the chronicler who noted these exclamations recorded, the English took heart, and the Scots were dismayed. The battlefield became a slaughter ground. The same chronicler adds ‘a most marvellous thing happened that day, such as was never seen or heard of in any previous battle: the pile of dead rising up from the ground was more than a spear’s length in height’.⁵⁰

Back in England, Edward was still thinking about his expedition to Ireland.⁵¹ On 4 August, alarmed at the discontent he was hearing from the Scottish Marches, he gave orders that Lord Percy was to hold the Scottish border, in case the Scots under Patrick of Dunbar invaded. He empowered Percy to raise the men of five counties. Then, at Wigmore on 10 August, he heard that Balliol had landed. A few days later he was told the news of Dupplin Moor. Three Scottish earls had been killed in the battle, along with many thousands of footmen and men-at-arms. English losses were put at two knights, thirty-three esquires and no archers or footsoldiers. It was extraordinary, and Edward could not have anticipated such an outcome. It presented something of a problem too, as Balliol was now in a position to make himself King of Scots or even King of Scotland.⁵² Parliament was ordered hastily to assemble on 9 September. Taxes were granted for Edward to place the kingdom on a war footing, if necessary. It was agreed immediately to remove the administration to York, and to hold another, fuller discussion there. The Irish campaign was cancelled.

The strangeness of Balliol’s campaign was not yet complete, however. The Scots had regrouped under Sir Andrew Murray and Sir Archibald Douglas. They had also employed the services of the pirate, John Crabb, a man whose viciousness on the seas struck fear into land-loving knights. Crabb set out from Berwick to attack the English vessels, and, though he managed to capture one, the rest of the fleet managed to drive him off. Crabb himself was later captured by Sir Walter Manny.⁵³ Even more extraordinarily, Murray managed to fall into the hands of his enemy. According to the Lanercost chronicler, he tried to separate Balliol from his army by breaking down the bridge at Roxburgh. Balliol’s army ‘repaired the bridge with utmost speed, and some of them, not waiting till this was done, plunged into the great river, armed and mounted, and swam across and pursued the flying Scots for eight miles’ in which pursuit Murray was seized.⁵⁴ Both Crabb and Murray were sent to Edward.

If a man like Crabb had fallen into the hands of Edward I or Edward II, he would have been summarily executed in the most public place possible. Edward did not kill Crabb. Herein we may catch another glimpse of his strategic forgiveness. Crabb was a destructive weapon, and a rare one at that, being used to maritime warfare. He was also a man without loyalty, and so as a weapon he could be turned to anyone’s advantage. Having received the man in chains from Sir Walter Manny, Edward could offer Crabb a reason to be loyal: to serve the man who would permit him to live. This was not just opportunism, it was forethought too. Through it Edward gained a man who would one day prove very useful.

Balliol was crowned King of Scots at Scone Abbey on 24 September. Two months later he wrote to Edward laying out how he saw his relationship with the English king. Sensitive to the fact that he had, by his coronation, disinherited Edward’s sister, he kindly offered to marry her (if she was willing) and to make her queen of the Scots. Parliament discussed the coronation in early December. Edward’s lawyer, Geoffrey le Scrope, laid out the three alternatives: to support David II in line with the 1328 agreement, to support the new king, Balliol, or to dispense with them both and allow Edward to assert his rights in Scotland by force as overlord of the kingdom. Edward himself made clear he wanted the 1328 treaty to be considered null and void on account of it having been made while he was still a child. But as to what he should do otherwise, parliament could not decide.

This would have left Edward with a problem but for the next event in Edward Balliol’s strange saga. Sir Archibald Douglas and Patrick of Dunbar managed to surprise Balliol at Annan in a night attack during the Christmas festivities. Most of the men with Balliol were killed in their nightshirts; Balliol himself only escaped by smashing through a partition wall, and jumping on to a horse and riding away bareback, without a harness, towards Carlisle. In losing his kingdom as suddenly as he had won it, Balliol had avoided being betrayed by Edward, whose definite preference was to reclaim all of Scotland as his own.

Parliament was still cautious. Edward was now twenty, eager to prove himself and desperate to avenge the treaty of 1328. Those who arrived at York in January could see that the young man was determined to lead his band of knights to war. A cautious parliament was no match for him. Although he would have preferred all the lords, prelates and commons to support him in his military endeavour, he also wanted parliament to remember that they were merely there to advise him. They might have agreed to his father’s deposition but they were still ruled by him, not vice versa. He had made a statement to that effect, in the parliament of September 1331, when he had refused a petition to restore Edmund Mortimer to all his ancestral lands.⁵⁵ He had replied that such a matter was his own prerogative, and he would do as he saw fit. Now he did as he saw fit again. When the Chancellor declared that parliament had failed to come to a conclusion on the Scottish situation, Edward took matters out of their hands. He appointed a council of six wise men to advise him. These were the archbishop of York, the bishop of Norwich, Henry Percy, William Clinton, William Denholme and William Shareshull.⁵⁶

As the knights and representatives of the counties made their way homeward from York, they may have reflected on the events and presumed that the situation was a difficult one. If so, they were deluding themselves. The situation was simple. Edward wanted war, and Edward was now old enough, trusted enough and most of all confident enough to have his chance of glory. Parliament had disempowered itself with regard to foreign policy. Had it been united, and if the lords and commons had spoken together against any war in Scotland, then Edward would have been restrained. But they had not been united, and Edward had encouraged their disunity by having Geoffrey le Scrope offer a variety of strategies: to support David II, Balliol, or Edward himself. What le Scrope had not suggested was that nothing should be done. The only way parliament, if divided, could restrain the king was by witholding necessary taxation. But parliament had already voted sufficient funds to be allocated to the defence of the north. The six wise men were not chosen to advise on whether to go to war but, as ‘wardens of the Marches’ to help Edward make the attack seem like a defensive manoeuvre. That was at least how Edward justified his actions to the pope. He was defending the north of his kingdom.

*

Edward spent March 1333 at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, making arrangements for the attack. He already had a strategy. He would besiege Berwick, the prosperous town on the north of the River Tweed. This was shadowed by the strong castle which had fallen to the Scots in 1318 but which had resisted the English the following year. It was the sole southern Scottish castle of sufficient importance to the Scots that they had reinforced its defences rather than destroy them. Before Edward left Pontefract he sent orders for two great siege engines to be built and shipped to Berwick, and for teams of quarrymen to make hundreds of large stone missiles.⁵⁷ He also gave orders for gunpowder to be obtained from a York apothecary.⁵⁸

Gunpowder – or, more precisely, the use of firearms – was a recent innovation. Although gunpowder had been known in Britain for at least eighty years, the first unequivocal documentation attesting to the use of cannon in Europe dates to 1326. In that year, Walter Milemete included an illustration of a cannon in his On the Nobility, Wisdom and Prudence of Kings (presented to Edward). That same year, orders were given by the Council of Florence for metal cannons and cannonballs to be made: the earliest certain appearance of cannon in Italy. Milemete’s gun was shaped like a tall bronze vase lying on its side, and an example of just such a bronze gun was discovered at Loshult in Sweden in the nineteenth century.⁵⁹ Modern tests have shown that it probably had a range in excess of three-quarters of a mile.⁶⁰ Edward probably saw examples used in 1327 on the Stanhope campaign, when Mortimer had employed ‘crakkis of wer’ (as the Scottish chronicler called them).⁶¹ So, in 1333, Edward was employing the most recent military technology, tried perhaps only once previously in British military history.

The really startling thing about this is not that Edward was prepared to try new methods; it is the irony that he – the great king of chivalry, the champion of the joust – was the man who more than any other medieval leader was responsible for the development of the gun, the instrument which ultimately led to the destruction of both chivalry and jousting. It seems paradoxical, until we recall that knighthood was a means of channelling military strength and encouraging men to fight. Newly made knights often died in their first battle, attempting to prove themselves worthy. Knighthood was basically a ritualised form of motivating and mobilising society for war, and the men around Edward – his new Arthurian knights – were highly motivated and well-equipped. This is why in March, knowing the country was on the verge of conflict, Edward had ordered every man of sufficient income – forty pounds per year – to become a knight. Edward’s chivalric ethos was not just a romantic, wistful throwback to the days of yore, but a military operation. In later years he organised the casting of guns and the manufacture on a large scale at the Tower of London: more than two tons of gunpowder being made there in the year 1346–47.⁶²

In his adoption of new techniques and strategies, it is evident that Edward had the ability to grasp new ideas quickly and exploit their potential. He seized on the principle underlying the victory at Dupplin Moor and summoned Henry Beaumont to advise him at Berwick. New types of siege engines were probably another innovation.⁶³ And the presence and use of ships under the captured Flemish pirate, John Crabb, again shows an instinctive grasp of how best to direct his resources. Crabb knew the walls of Berwick inside out, including their weaknesses. He had defended them successfully against the English in 1319.

In April the country mobilised. Men marched towards Berwick from across England and Wales. Corn was transported by road from sixteen counties in preparation for the siege. The abbot of St Mary’s, York, was directed to act as an unofficial war treasurer.⁶⁴The men of Tadcaster were ordered to assist in buying more stones for the siege engines. The archbishops of York and Canterbury were both requested to ‘exhort’ their clergy to pray for the success of the siege. On 10 April Edward made an offering of a red and silk cloth embroidered with gold at Durham Cathedral.⁶⁵ On the 23rd the siege began, in advance of his arrival, and by the 30th Edward arrived at Alnwick. After responding to the pro-Scottish entreaties of King Philip of France with the statement that the Scots had invaded his land several times, he proceeded to Tweedmouth, just across the river from the fortified town and castle. With the king’s arrival there on 9 May, the siege proper began.

Edward ordered the water supply to the town to be cut off. The four aqueducts were broken.⁶⁶ Then, day after day, the siege engines projected boulders into the town, and the guns blasted away at the walls. Edward had made a ‘fair town of pavilions outside the walls’ and built ditches around them, so that the attackers themselves were well-defended.⁶⁷ Within Berwick houses were destroyed and churches razed to the earth. Food began to grow short in the town, but still the people held out, hoping that the main Scots army would arrive and relieve the siege, despite Crabb’s purposeful directing of the guns.

The siege dragged on. While Edward waited he gave some time to family concerns. He organised the raising of money towards his sister’s marriage to the Count of Guelderland from the prelates (which had taken place the previous year), and he gave to his three-year-old son, Edward, the title of earl of Chester, which he himself had received as a baby. He took his wife Philippa to visit the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne and its monastery. Then, having returned her to the safety of Bamburgh Castle, he returned to the pavilions, and the waiting. He played chess and dice, losing seventy-six shillings on 8 June. Two days later he lost another five shillings. Tedium set in, between the ear-splitting blasts of the guns and the distant crash of stone shot smashing into the wooden houses of the town. The ennui was slightly relieved the following week, when he heard that his sister had given birth to his first nephew. But soon it was back to gambling. Having lost twelve pounds in his pavilion on 25 June, Edward ordered a direct attack on the castle.⁶⁸

On 27 June, in an assault carefully planned by someone with knowledge of tides as well as Berwick’s mural weaknesses – one thinks immediately of John Crabb – the English ships and landward soldiers went into action. Seeing the ships approaching the town, at high tide, the Scots set alight a quantity of pre-prepared tar-soaked faggots, and launched them at the assailants. But their strategy met with disaster, for some of the faggots went awry and were blown back over the walls. These set some houses alight. The fire then spread to other buildings, until their desperate defence against the English had become a defence against the ravages of the fire. Edward watched, contented, and when they sent to him begging for a truce, he assented, on condition that Sir Alexander Seton, commander of the castle and town, surrender twelve hostages. The hostages were all to be children of the prominent men of the town.⁶⁹ The truce was to last fifteen days; if the Scots army had not come to relieve the town by then (thus allowing Edward a pitched battle), then its occupants would surrender.

Seton had already lost two sons in the war against England. The eldest, Alexander, had been killed resisting Balliol the previous year. The next, William, had drowned the previous day while fighting off the English attack from the Tweed. He had tried to jump from one Scottish boat on to an English one, but a sudden surge in the river, which was tidal, swept his vessel away, and he had fallen between the two boats and drowned. Now Seton’s last remaining son, Thomas, was sent with eleven other sons of prominent men to Edward as hostages. Sir Alexander probably thought that this would be taken as a gesture of sincerity. Ironically, his own compatriots would destroy all hope of that.

On the last day of the truce, Sir Archibald Douglas reached Berwick. Behind him marched the whole Scottish army, drawn from all over the kingdom.⁷⁰ His men forded the Tweed and razed the English settlement of Tweedmouth on the other side of the river, killing the inhabitants and burning the buildings. Edward could only look across the river as the smoke rose, and as the Scots crossed back over by low tide to hurl meat and bread over the walls of Berwick to the besieged. Some of the Scots under Sir William Keith even tried to cross the bridge, which had been in ruins for the last thirty years; and after a sharp engagement with Sir William Montagu, they managed to enter the town. Keith claimed that he had relieved the siege, and, in view of this, he replaced Seton as commander of the town and the castle. Counter to Seton’s orders, he declared there would be no surrender.

Edward was utterly furious, not just because of the relief of the town on the last day of the truce but by the continued defiance of his will. The relief had come from the English side of the river, he claimed, and therefore was not valid. He wanted a battle. But most of all he was angry because the Scots were not yet afraid of him. He wanted them to bend to his will. He was determined to rid them of the notion that he was as weak as his father. When Douglas brashly sent messengers announcing that the Scots would now attack England, and in particular Bamburgh Castle, where Queen Philippa was lodged, Edward decided only a vindictive and personal attack on the Scots’ leadership would make an impression. He ordered a particularly high gallows to be erected outside the gates of the town. And then, when it stood there, defying the Scots, he dragged out young Thomas Seton, the last and youngest of the Seton sons, and hanged him there and then, in front of his father’s eyes.⁷¹ He sent a message to Seton and Keith that each day he would hang two more of the boys, until they were all dead. And that would teach the Scots to break their covenants.

It was a hideously cruel act. But the hanging of Thomas Seton more than anything else impressed Edward’s seriousness upon his adversaries. They now saw that this was no self-indulgent Edward II-figure; this was a new Hammer of the Scots, with the capacity for utter ruthlessness. Rather than see the high gallows used again, Keith sent messengers to seek another truce. On 15 July it was agreed that if the castle and town had not been relieved by vespers on 19 July, the following day everything would be handed over to Edward. Keith was confident that the huge number of men with Douglas and their long years’ experience of fighting the English would prove more than a match for Edward’s army. Under the terms of the new agreement, Keith left Berwick and crossed the Tweed to find Douglas, who was destroying the neighbourhood of Morpeth in an attempt to draw Edward’s attention away from Berwick.⁷² The two men decided they would meet the English in a full-scale battle.

On the morning of Monday 19 July the Scots began to move over the hills towards the English position. Even though they tried to approach from the north, hidden by the higher ground, Edward’s scouts soon established where they were. The Scots intended to appear on the higher hill in the full force of their numbers, which chroniclers on both sides state far outnumbered the English, hoping to terrify their enemy. Edward arranged his army on Halidon Hill, a carefully chosen position. To reach it the Scots would have to descend and cross a marsh, and then climb the steep slope. In case they tried to relieve the town from another angle, by skirting the English, Edward despatched five hundred men to guard the approach to the town.

The Scots drew up their forces, and waited. Edward had set his army into three battalions, facing them. The battalion on his right was commanded by his uncle, the earl of Norfolk, and Sir Edward Bohun. That on his left was placed under the command of Edward Balliol. Edward himself assumed command of the central battalion. Then, with Dupplin Moor in mind, Edward ordered all his knights to do a very unknightly thing: they were all to dismount and fight on foot. Edward alone remained mounted, but only so he could ride up and down the lines of his men, urging them to win honour for their country, and to avenge the murders which the Scots had perpetrated in the north of England. Then he too dismounted, and sent his warhorse away. This was the moment he had been trained for, and for which he had waited all his life. Above him, and all around him, the cross of St George flapped on a thousand pennons. Beside him, was displayed the banner of St Cuthbert, whose shrine he had visited at Durham.⁷³ This was the ultimate test of royalty. He took his place on foot in the front line of his battalion.

The Scots delayed, waiting for the tide to shift. With superior numbers they believed they could force the English back into the swollen river.⁷⁴ Their champion, a giant called Turnbull, stepped forward and challenged any Englishman to single combat. A Norfolk knight, Sir Robert Benhale, begged Edward to allow him to answer this challenge. Edward assented. Benhale proved the better man, his sword play being quicker than that of the giant, whose limbs he sliced off.⁷⁵ It was a good sign for Edward. But then, among men nervous with the approach of battle, he watched as the Scots advanced. There were thousands of them. And as they advanced he heard Sir Archibald Douglas call out the chilling declaration: ‘No prisoners’. No one was to be taken for ransom.⁷⁶ Edward had no choice but to respond with a similar call. The English too would fight to the death.

Edward and his commanders had chosen the site well, knowing the Scots would have to come at them in order to relieve the town. The Scots’ only alternative was an indirect approach between the hill and the river, and that was too dangerous by far. But the Scots had the advantage of numbers, and now they chose to charge directly at the English ranks. As they lumbered forward, they were slowed by the marsh and the slope. The English watched, and waited, and when the Scots were committed, the trumpets sounded for the English archers to attack. Immediately wave after wave of arrows flew down the slope into their enemies’ faces. Then Balliol’s own trumpets blasted the infantry advance, and his men rushed forward to engage the front line. The Scots, turning their heads away from the arrows, could not muster their courage to charge and found themselves trapped between their fellow men still advancing behind them and the deadly arrows ahead. So it was with those facing the central English battalion. Edward himself was the first man to throw himself into the difficult, hand-to-hand combat.⁷⁷ Soon the whole hill was a mass of bitter, fighting, dying men, terrified by the arrows, furiously battling for every inch of hillside. Ranks of brave Scotsmen came forward, but none could break through the English lines, not even those who had been detailed specially to cut their way through to the town under Archibald Douglas. These men especially won the respect of the English, their fighting spirit pushing them on far beyond the point when their adversaries believed they would retreat.

Towards evening, the men fighting uphill, wearied by the effort and dispirited by the constant raining down of arrows, began to slip back. Balliol’s battalion broke through the Scots’ lines, forcing them to retreat and then flee. As soon as this first section was in flight, Edward knew it was only a matter of time before the others too would break. He pressed his advantage, yelling encouragement to his hard-pressed men. And they responded. Although the earl of Ross shouted a challenge for all the Scots to fight to the death, and made a stand, the rearmost had already begun to make their escape. The second and third lines of the Scots retreated, then turned and ran for their lives. The earl of Ross stood his ground, and fought on, as the men beside him were hacked down one by one, until eventually he too was killed.

Now Edward sent for the horses. He wanted revenge for the insults, peace treaties, disrespect, and the hostility shown lately to his queen. He had much to prove. The Scots were now set to pay for the years of humility which had been forced upon him by Bruce, Philip of France and Mortimer. And having offered no quarter, despite facing the king of England – their overlord, in Edward’s opinion – they could expect no mercy. He rode with his knights here and there in pursuit of the Scots, striking down everyone whom he could reach. As one contemporary put it:

there men might have seen the doughtiness of the noble King Edward and of his men, how manly they were in pursuit of the Scots, who ran in dread. And there might men have seen many a Scottish man cast down on to the earth, dead, and their banners displayed and hacked to pieces, and many a good hauberk of steel bathed in their blood, and many times the Scots regrouped in companies, and every time they were defeated.⁷⁸

The devastation was utter. No quarter had been ordered and no quarter was given. Most of the earls of Scotland who had not been killed at Dupplin Moor lay dead: Carrick, Ross, Lennox and Menteith. Sir Archibald Douglas himself was killed. Chroniclers reckoned the Scottish dead in tens of thousands. Berwick had fallen. The Scots had been defeated. But far more than this, Edward had proved himself in battle, and against superior numbers. His enemy had flaunted its strength at him, and had issued the challenge of a fight to the death, and he had responded. He emphasised his point on the day after the battle, when he ordered one hundred captured Scotsmen to be beheaded.⁷⁹ No prisoners. The town and castle of Berwick was a smoking, dilapidated wreck, largely destroyed by his guns and siege engines. Amid the gore and terrible destruction, Edward had proved himself a terrifying king.