EIGHT
DESPITE THE TREATY of Esplechin, Edward was not free to go home. The treaty did not erase or even put off his debts, and he remained a virtual prisoner in Ghent. It was an impossible situation: he could not efficiently deal with his financial problems from Flanders, yet he was forced to remain there until he had sorted out his finances. Two months of frustration followed. At the end of October he confronted his creditors, and offered twelve thousand sacks of wool in lieu of his debts; an offer which was not accepted. As his creditors had discovered, too much wool glutted the market and its value dropped. His mood was thus very low when, on 18 November 1340, he wrote to the pope.
Edward’s letter is fascinating. In it he states that he had withdrawn from the siege at the pope’s request ‘even though he had had every chance of success’.1 This claim to the moral high ground was accompanied by a reiteration of his claim to the throne of France, now reinforced with a detailed legal opinion, and a series of firm demands for permanent peace.2 The pope dearly wanted to see peace before he died, but, as he said in his reply to Edward, nothing said or presented to him was inclined to make him confident of a permanent settlement.
The letter was important for personal reasons too. Extraordinarily, Edward claimed that the reason why he had received no money at Tournai was that the archbishop of Canterbury was hoping that he would be killed. It seems that the failure to supply Edward with money had amplified his argument with the archbishop in his mind, so that Edward believed that Archbishop Stratford was trying to stop the war by stopping Edward personally. In his frustration, he had twisted this around to believe the archbishop was trying to kill him.
There was something else, even more extraordinary. The three envoys were instructed to tell the pope that the archbishop had (in Edward’s words) ‘spoken separately to me of my wife, and to my wife of me, in order that, if he were listened to, he might provoke us to such anger as to divide us forever’.3 Historians have not previously given this intriguing claim much attention. However, we have to wonder what the archbishop might have said to Edward about his cherished wife (and to her about him) that it risked the end of their relationship.
Two possibilities are suggested by the evidence (there may, of course, be others). The first is that it was an accusation of conjugal infidelity. It is very unlikely to have been simply an accusation of adultery on the king’s part, for medieval marriages required only the wife to remain faithful, not the husband. Certainly the archbishop may have had other ideas about the sexual mores of kings, and told Philippa of something which Edward had done. But if the archbishop had said the same things about Philippa to Edward – accusing her of adultery – this would have been far more serious. It is almost unbelievable, given that Edward and Philippa had a famously strong marriage. However, it has not previously been noted that Edmund of Langley, their seventh child, might have been conceived while Edward was at Tournai and Philippa at Ghent. To be precise: the boy was born on 5 June 1341, which, assuming a thirty-eight-week gestation, implies conception on or around 12 September 1340.4 As noted above, the siege of Tournai lasted from 23 July until the Treaty of Esplechin, dated 25 September.5 Edward was back at Ghent on 28 September.6 If Philippa remained at Ghent throughout, either Edmund was born at least sixteen days before term or he was conceived as the result of an adulterous liaison between Philippa and another man.
These circumstances are very similar to a recent discussion surrounding the conception of Edward IV, which provides a good framework for considering this matter in more depth.7 The first point is obvious: thirty-five weeks is not particularly premature by modern standards, and occurs in about a tenth of modern confinements. The second – that allegations of bastardy were commonly invented to discredit royal political opponents – does not apply in this case, as whatever the archbishop said to Edward about his wife, it was before he knew that Philippa was pregnant. The archbishop might have invented the story to bring dissent between him and his wife, as Edward supposed, but if so we should wonder why. How could the archbishop have benefited from such claims? No public source mentions the story, not even an enemy one.
The third point of reference for circumstantial evidence of illegitimacy is family relationships. How did Edward behave thereafter towards Philippa? Edward was at the Tower at the time of Edmund’s birth. Although it is unclear exactly when in 1341 Philippa returned to England, she probably went straight to Langley to prepare for her seventh confinement. Edward visited Langley frequently in the first half of the year, presumably because she was there, and this would suggest no disruption in their relationship.8During one of these visits Philippa asked Edward for permission to export wool to pay her debts overseas. Edward agreed on 11 April, but specifically charged her the full rate of duty on each sack she exported.9 This might be seen as a sign of ill-will, but, if so, it is an isolated instance. He attended her churching at Langley in early July 1341, and held a series of jousts to celebrate the occasion and the boy’s baptism.10 He took part in the jousting himself in a new breastplate, and gave a large present of twenty marks to the minstrels who played during the feast.11 If there was any discord, he would appear to have been sufficiently reconciled with Philippa by then to sleep with her, as nine months later their third daughter, Blanche, was born. This suggests that, if there was a rift between husband and wife, it was not a long-lasting one.
The other family relationship which must be considered is that of father and son. Did Edward treat Edmund like his other sons? The answer to this is no. Although he created his eldest three surviving sons earls at very young ages (Edward and John were created earls at the age of two years, and Lionel was married to the heiress of an earldom at the age of three), Edmund was not raised to the peerage as a child, and not created an earl until the age of twenty-one. Similarly, although Lionel was given his own household at a young age, and John of Gaunt was placed in his older brother’s household, Edmund remained at his mother’s side until 1354. 12 When he was finally elevated to an earldom it was the same day as his three older brothers were raised to dukedoms.13 Edmund, John and Lionel were all born within three years of each other, and were all placed in Queen Philippa’s care in November 1342, but only Edmund was not given a title. In 1347, when Edmund’s godfather the earl of Surrey died without an heir, the king allowed him only a minor portion of his godfather’s inheritance. Unlike John, Edmund was not mentioned in his elder brother’s will, nor in his father’s. Lastly, Edmund had fewer leadership qualities than perhaps any other member of the entire Plantagenet dynasty.
The second possible explanation for the archbishop’s seeds of discord is similar to the above, but rather than being concerned with the legitimacy of one of the ancestors of the Yorkist claim to the throne, it concerns the legitimacy of the ancestor of the Lancastrian claim, John of Gaunt. It was said that Philippa confessed on her deathbed to William of Wykeham, the bishop of Winchester, that in Ghent in 1340 she had swapped the baby with that of a Flemish woman, who had had a son about the same time. This has always been taken as a mendacious piece of propaganda against John, and, although there are two different sources for this story, one of them – Thomas Walsingham – was definitely pro-Wykeham and anti-John of Gaunt in outlook.14 It has not previously been linked to the row between Edward and Philippa shortly after the child’s birth. However, there are a number of reasons why we should be sceptical of this theory.15 Most importantly, Edward himself never doubted the legitimacy of John of Gaunt, and promoted him in infanthood, adolescence and adulthood far beyond Edmund, who was only a year younger. John was also the first-named executor of Edward’s will. If Edward ever heard of this rumour, he genuinely did not believe it.
In all this debate we must proceed with caution. It would be very rash to assume that there is a serious case to be made for illegitimacy, not least because both John and Edmund were recognised by Edward III as second and fourth in line to the throne in 1376. We do not have any corroborative evidence that what Stratford had said to Edward about Philippa related to her behaviour or the legitimacy of their children. And Edward spent a lot of time at Langley with Philippa, too much to imagine that they had had a serious disagreement. The important fact is that the royal marriage was strong enough to withstand the most damaging personal accusations made by the senior prelate in England. Without doubt this is testimony to the bond which Edward and Philippa had formed over the first thirteen years of their marriage.
*
With deeply unsettling rumours about his wife coming to his attention, and his money pressures weighing on his shoulders, and paranoic fears that the archbishop of Canterbury wanted him to be killed, Edward was keener than ever to escape the Low Countries. Being Edward, he now did so. Early in the morning of 28 November Edward slipped away from the palace at Ghent, pretending he was going riding in the suburbs of the city with a few companions, namely the earl of Northampton, Sir Walter Manny, Sir John and Sir Guy Beauchamp, John Darcy (his steward), William Kilsby (his secretary), and a clerk, Philip Weston.16 As soon as they could, they galloped to Sluys, and then via Zeeland, they sailed on to England. It was not the way in which Edward had planned to leave Flanders, like a fugitive. Nor was it the best time to try to cross the sea. A winter gale blew up, and caught them in the open, and for three days they laboured against storms. When nearing the mouth of the Thames Edward was very nearly drowned.17Thrashing around in the pitch dark, soaking, on a heaving wooden vessel in danger of sinking did nothing to allay his anger. Finally, the ship’s navigator brought them into the safety of the river, and slowly in the darkness the ship sailed towards the port of London.
It was nearly midnight, 30 November. The ship came to rest at the wharf adjacent to the Tower. Edward disembarked. Movements across the river at night were against the ordinances of the city, so the guards at the Tower should have been alarmed to see a boat approaching. But there was no reaction. Furious at this lack of defence Edward demanded entry and stormed into the castle, demanding to know what was going on. Where was the Lieutenant of the Tower, Nicholas de la Beche? Out of town, came the nervous reply. That was not what Edward wanted to hear. He could barely control his rage. It was immediate confirmation of everything that his control-fixated mind had come to fear. There and then he wanted to see his ministers, especially the Treasurer and the Chancellor. He wanted to see his justices. He wanted to see the London merchants who could have made loans for his campaigns. And above all else, he wanted to see the archbishop of Canterbury.
Much discussion has taken place about the events which followed, which is usually known as the ‘Crisis of 1341’.18 Most of the conclusions have been constitutional in nature. Taking a broader look at the situation in which Edward found himself in December 1340 – narrowly escaping death by drowning, fleeing on horseback with a handful of knights and two clerks from the demagogue of Flanders, his marriage in jeopardy, and above all else, the frustration of being starved of money so that he had to give up the siege of Tournai almost at the point of victory – one can understand his actions much more easily. He could see for himself the powerlessness his father had experienced, and felt it might overwhelm him too. He was reminded of his own experiences as a youthful king, under Mortimer’s sway. However, in trying to counter this fear of powerlessness he exerted power more forcefully, thus emulating his father’s tyranny. Those he now accused – especially the archbishop of Canterbury – were old enough and wise enough to remember how to deal with royal tyrants, especially when they were driven by hot-headed fury, as Edward was now.
Robert Stratford, the archbishop’s brother, was the first to be accused. He was dismissed from his office as Chancellor and charged with failing to supply Edward with his money, and given until 6 January to prepare his case.19 The bishop of Lichfield was likewise dismissed as Treasurer. But Edward soon turned his attention to the archbishop himself, whom he saw as his principal enemy in this matter. In February he issued a document containing the charges he wanted to bring against the archbishop. In it he accused him of withholding money, encouraging opposition to the taxes granted by parliament, impoverishing the Crown and abusing his authority to his own advantage.20 No overt reference was made to Edward’s secret fears that the archbishop was trying to arrange for him to be killed.
The archbishop’s response to the news of Edward’s sudden arrival back in England had been to flee to Canterbury. But having heard the things said about him, he soon angrily counter-attacked. In a particularly vicious letter of 1 January, the archbishop suggested that the king was acting tyrannically. The archbishop made the specific comparison between Edward’s behaviour and that of his father, claiming he was
seizing clerks, peers and other people, and making unseemly process against the law of the land and against Magna Carta, which you are bound to keep and maintain by the oath made at your coronation . . . And since certain [of those] who are near to you do falsely charge us with treason and falsehood, therefore they are excommunicated . . .21
He completed his allusions to Edward’s tyranny with the thinly veiled threat: ‘and what happened to your father, sire, you know well’. Three days later he followed this up with another letter to the king in which he outlined his vision of the constitution. He demanded that he stand trial not before the king but before his peers. Edward’s reaction to the implicit threat of excommunication was to summon the archbishop immediately to his presence. The archbishop refused. On 28 January he wrote again to Edward, this time openly threatening him with excommunication. Two days later he forbade the payment of clerical taxation. Edward responded with a famous (or infamous) document known by the name which the archbishop gave to it: Libellus Famosus (‘notorious libel’). In this letter, Edward heaped scorn and invective upon his ecclesiastical enemy, and accused the archbishop of criminal negligence, of urging clerics not to pay taxes, of failing to support Edward financially as agreed, of impoverishing the Crown and of abusing his position to advance his own career and those of members of his family, implying his recently discredited brother Robert (bishop of Chichester) and his nephew, Ralph (bishop of London). At the end of the document, the archbishop was charged with treason. Edward sent copies of the Libellus Famosus all around the country, and had it read widely. He also sent a copy to the pope, amplifying his earlier, secret comments, and claiming that, as the archbishop was preaching sedition, it was dangerous to allow him to remain in the country. He was planning to exile the archbishop.
The two men were locked in an almighty tussle. Both were strong characters, influential and intelligent. Edward was the better propagandist, but the archbishop had religion and intellectual discipline on his side. He also had one huge advantage: Edward’s taxation had been so punitive – probably the heaviest there ever was in medieval Europe – that he was bound to attract a large degree of popular support, especially when Edward’s agents had been trying to collect the taxation granted by parliament twice over.22Thus, at the end of March, when Edward finally caved in and summoned a parliament, the archbishop was in the ascendant. Edward, however, was still angry, and when parliament assembled in the Painted Chamber at Westminster on St George’s Day 1341 (23 April), the archbishop was barred entry. Instead he was directed to go to the Exchequer to answer two minor charges against him. The next day he turned up at the Painted Chamber again, and was directed again to face minor charges in the Exchequer. This time he refused, and forcefully took his place along with the other bishops. Edward, seeing there was a showdown developing in which the archbishop was playing the role of Thomas Becket, refused even to enter the Painted Chamber, thereby disempowering the parliament.23
On the third day there was no pretence. The archbishop was told flatly by a sergeant-at-arms that he had orders to bar him entry. This time, he refused to leave until receiving the king’s order to do so. John Darcy, his son John, and John Beauchamp proceeded to insult the archbishop where he stood. All this, of course, merely played into the archbishop’s hands, especially when he raised his cross above them and cursed them both in the name of God. The earl of Northampton attempted to intervene, but failed to reach an agreement with the archbishop. It was down to an old hand, the aged earl of Surrey, to open the way to a peaceful solution. Regarding Kilsby, the younger Darcy and others of the king’s friends, he pointed out that this could hardly be called a parliament when those with no right to be there were in attendance and those who should be leading proceedings were barred. These were brave words, and it soon became clear that they represented the thoughts of many less brave men there. Embarrassed, Kilsby and Darcy left. The earl of Arundel (Surrey’s nephew) then proposed that the archbishop’s case be heard. After several days of negotiations, an appeal on the archbishop’s behalf was presented to the king by a number of prelates and magnates, the Cinque Ports, the mayor of London, and the commons. Edward, having seen his accusations refuted, and his personal invective fail to meet with popular support, was forced to receive the archbishop back into his favour.24
The whole episode had been gravely embarrassing for Edward. Parliament had decided that he was in the wrong. But as with his previous clash with parliament in 1340, in one respect he emerges with credit. He could admit that he was wrong, temporarily, at least. What is more, he once more exercised that facility of forgiveness which he had used to his credit so often in the past, with regard to men like Kent’s and Mortimer’s adherents in 1330, and other prisoners like Crabb who proved so valuable. The archbishop was restored to favour and later served again as head of the council of regency, and was even specifically called upon for his advice. De la Beche was appointed to the household of the heir, Prince Edward, and afterwards became seneschal of Aquitaine. In being able to compromise, and admit fault, Edward was immediately able to command loyalty, and reassert his power as king. And when he had reasserted power, he was able to apply it more freely. There is no better example of his doing this than with respect to the statute which the 1341 parliament forced him to accept. This had some important clauses, such as guaranteeing that peers could only be tried by their peers, and that ministers could only be dismissed in parliament. But on 1 October 1341 Edward simply issued letters stating that he had repealed it.25 There was no recourse to parliament. It was contrary to the law of the land, he claimed, and had been forced on him against his will. To make sure parliament did not react immediately he broke one of his own statutory promises and failed to summon a parliament the next year. From the parliamentary point of view this was of course reprehensible. But from Edward’s point of view it was a necessary step in reasserting his royal prerogative. He learned many things from the events of early 1341, but perhaps the most important was that his ministers had to be ruthlessly efficient and utterly loyal to him. He could not rely on parliament to appoint and dismiss such men.
*
Even though the peace treaty was still in force, Edward was wary of a possible French attack. Before 21 June 1341 news reached him that Philip was secretly planning an invasion. A few days later he received a second blow, in the form of a letter from Ludvig of Bavaria stripping him of his imperial title. In itself this was no great loss – the German alliance had proved militarily worthless and financially crippling – but it was encouraging to his enemies, and coupled with Philip’s military preparations it gave cause for concern. When a peace conference was proposed to take place at Antoing, four miles from Tournai, Edward had no hesitation. He sent an embassy consisting of the earl of Huntingdon, the Gascon Bernard le Bret, Sir Bartholomew Burghersh (brother of the late bishop of Lincoln, who had died the previous December), John Offord (archdeacon of Ely) and Niccolinus Fieschi.26 Edward’s representatives were informed that his allies – especially the duke of Brabant – had had enough of war with France, and wanted him to prolong the truce until 24 June 1342.27 With the Scots once more on the warpath, Edward sensibly agreed.
The truce of Esplechin must have been confusing and frustrating to the Scots. Although they were pleased to draw on French support when it was offered, it was obvious to all that their interests and those of France only partially coincided. The nature of Scottish warfare was different too. It was characterised by very small armies looting, burning and destroying, and then melting back into their communities. It was more of a way of life than a military stand-off. As a result, the treaty did not hold in Scotland.
In April 1341 Sir William Douglas dreamed up a strategy for capturing Edinburgh Castle. Seeing as most Scotsmen did not shave their beards but Englishmen did, he gathered two hundred ‘savage highlanders’, made twelve of them shave, and then dressed these twelve in rough clothes, like English coal and corn traders. The remainder of his men hid in and around the city. Taking a boat laden with goods, he and his twelve ‘traders’ disembarked and hauled their wares towards the castle, making sure they arrived very early in the morning. They found only the porter awake, and made a preliminary offer to sell their merchandise cheaply. The porter replied that it was too early to wake the governor or his steward, but gave them entry to the outer ward of the castle. As the great gates swung open, they unloaded their coal sacks in the gateway so that the gates could not be closed and the portcullis could not be dropped. They killed the porter and Douglas blew his horn, the signal for the hidden men to attack. In the ensuing fight they killed all but half a dozen of the English garrison. Edinburgh Castle had fallen.
The following month, delighted at this news, David II left Château Gaillard in France and sailed back to Scotland with his queen and household. He landed on 2 June near Montrose, and very quickly accepted the loyalty of the Scots still fighting for him. With the son of the Bruce in their midst, the Scots felt bold enough again to ride into Northumberland. They pressed all the way to Newcastle, and there set about a siege of the town. David II, however, was an inexperienced commander, and was not confident enough to discipline his captains. As the Scots lay before Newcastle, two hundred Englishmen in the town made an early morning sortie to attack the earl of Moray, who was still asleep in his pavilion. Having captured him and killed many of his men, they returned to the town. When the Scots army realised that one of their leaders had been caught napping, literally, they desperately tried a full-scale attack, which left many of them dead at the foot of the town walls.
On hearing news of the incursion, Edward had appointed the earl of Derby to command the Scottish army. That was on 10 October. Seven days later, the earl was still in London.28 In fact the earl probably did not take charge at all, for at the end of October Edward travelled so rapidly to Newcastle that Derby would have had difficulty keeping up. News of the attack at Newcastle had been brought to Edward by Sir John Neville, who covered the distance (more than 280 miles) in five days, which was very good going for October. Edward seems to have covered the distance almost as fast, assuming personal control of the forces at Newcastle on 2 November.29
The speed of Edward’s advance was almost his only achievement on this campaign. The Scots withdrew at the approach of the English, and Edward had a miserable time in Ettrick Forest, trying to bring them to battle.30 He returned in a despondent mood, and only found a chance to redeem some fragment of glory when he learnt that David planned to hold his Christmas festivities at Melrose Abbey. This gave Edward a strong incentive for remaining in Scotland until then, to make sure that he was the one to stay at Melrose. The earl of Derby was directed to hold Christmas at Roxburgh, to safeguard the border and the security of the castle itself.
The notable feature of this campaign were the jousts of war. These were rare events in which knights rode against each other with their lances uncapped and sharpened, as if in battle. Normally jousts were jousts of peace, with lances capped with coronals, although men were often injured or killed from falls or internal injuries in these events too. Sir William Douglas came to Roxburgh, and with eleven of his knights, challenged the earl and his companions to a joust of war. His motive may have been to joust for the prize of the Scottish castles which remained in English hands, for such jousts were recorded as receiving royal licence, and took place at Roxburgh and Berwick.31 Maybe even the right to hold Christmas at Melrose was decided by a joust of war. If so, Edward’s knights won, for there he remained for the latter part of December. Sir William Douglas was so severely hurt in his joust with the earl of Derby that he had to be carried back to Scotland. At Berwick, where twelve knights jousted on either side, two Scots knights were killed and one English knight, Sir John Twyford.32 The campaign resulted in nothing more than a truce until May. Edward left Melrose on or about 30 December, and came south slowly, through Cornhill, Bamburgh and Alnwick to Newminster, where he remained for two weeks.33 He then set out on his long journey back to the south-east, to attend the great tournament at Dunstable.
*
This brings us to one of the most famous, or infamous, stories about Edward III: his supposed infatuation for, and rape of, the countess of Salisbury, his best friend’s wife.34 It appears in its fullest version in the chronicle of the Hainaulter, Jean le Bel, who had come to England in 1327. In brief, the story goes as follows. On the Melrose campaign, while Edward was still at Newcastle, a castle belonging to the earl of Salisbury was besieged by the Scots. In the castle was the earl’s wife. The governor of the castle was supposedly the earl’s nephew, the son of his sister, also called Sir William Montagu (according to le Bel). This Sir William escaped the siege and came to Edward at Newcastle, and begged him to bring assistance to his lady. Edward charged off to the rescue. The besieging Scots army fled, and Edward camped near the castle. He then decided he would take a dozen knights and visit the countess, one of the most beautiful women in England, whom he had not seen since her marriage. On hearing of his approach, the countess threw open the gates of the castle. She knelt in front of him, thanking him for his help, and led him into the castle. The king was utterly smitten by her, and, after brooding over her all evening, confessed his strong feelings. Her response was to beg him neither to tempt nor mock her, for what he was suggesting would bring dishonour to him, to her and to her husband the earl, who was at that time still in prison in France. Nevertheless, Edward continued to gaze at her longingly, his knights quite surprised to see him so besotted. Nothing untoward happened, however, and the next day he departed, and continued on his campaign, returning to England by a different route. However, in mid-August 1342, after her husband’s return from captivity, Edward invited them both to a great tournament at London, to which the countess – to whom le Bel now gives the name Alice – came dressed as plainly as possible, suspecting the king’s fascination with her was the reason for the invitation. Once again Edward did not pursue her. But, later in the year, when her husband had been despatched to fight in Brittany, Edward returned to her castle under the pretence of inspecting it for security. On this third occasion, in le Bel’s words:
The good lady made him as much honour and good cheer as she could, as she knew she ought to for her lord’s sake, although she would have preferred him to have gone elsewhere, so much she feared for her honour. And so it was that the king stayed all day and night, but never could get from the lady the answer agreeable to him, no matter how humbly he begged her. Come the night, when he had gone to bed in proper state, and he knew that the fine lady was in her bedchamber and that all her ladies were asleep and his gentlemen also, except his personal valets, he got up and told these valets that nothing must interfere with what he was going to do, on pain of death. So it was that he entered the lady’s chamber, then shut the doors of the wardrobe so that her maids could not help her, then he took her and gagged her mouth so firmly that she could not cry out more than two or three times, and then he raped her so savagely that never was a woman so badly treated; and he left her lying there all battered about, bleeding from the nose and the mouth and elsewhere, which was for her great damage and great pity. Then he left the next day without saying a word, and returned to London, very disgusted with what he had done.35
According to the story, the countess was never happy again. In a distraught state, she told her husband what had happened on his return from the Continent. The man was overcome with grief and so angry that he decided to leave England. Having settled half his estate on her and his heir, he went to fight the Moors, and died in the siege of Algeçiras.
When Froissart came to this part of le Bel’s manuscript he was profoundly shocked. Although le Bel had in several places prefaced his description of events with the words that he had only heard of one evil deed which Edward had ever done (and this was it), Froissart omitted the description of the rape altogether. He left only the fact that Edward had been enamoured of the countess. When he completed the second version of his text, he introduced a charming vignette in its place. In this, Edward played chess with the countess, deliberately not playing well so she would win. When she did win, and he pressed her to accept a valuable ring as her prize, she refused, to which Edward answered that she could be sure he would have taken something of hers if he had won. Instead of the rape scene he wrote
You have heard me speak of Edward’s love for the countess of Salisbury. The chronicle of Jean le Bel speaks of this love less properly than I must, for, please God, it would never enter my head to incriminate the king of England and the countess of Salisbury with such a vile accusation. If respectable men ask why I mention that love, they should know that Jean le Bel relates in his chronicle that the English king raped the countess of Salisbury. Now I declare that I know England well, where I have lived for long periods mainly at the royal court and also with the great lords of the country. And I have never heard tell of this rape although I have asked people about it who must have known if it had ever happened. Moreover I cannot believe [it] and it is incredible that so great and valiant a man as the king of England would have allowed himself to dishonour one of the most notable of ladies of his realm and one of his knights who had served him so loyally all his life.36
Clearly the whole episode caused Froissart great worry. When he came to rewrite his chronicle a third and final time, he omitted this careful passage too, so there was no reference at all to the rape.
Later historians have been equally concerned by the story. The great seventeenth-century antiquary William Dugdale would only have known of the ‘romance’ which Froissart relates (le Bel’s version being lost at the time). Dugdale knew that the countess of Salisbury was not called Alice but Catherine. He also was aware that the earl had no nephew called William Montagu; the only other William Montagu in the family was his young son. So he looked around the family tree and focused on the earl’s brother, Sir Edward Montagu. He decided – on what authority is not clear – that the governor of the castle at the time was this Sir Edward, and the ‘countess of Salisbury’ with whom the king fell head over heels in love was the intended bride of William’s son: Joan, ‘the Fair Maid of Kent’. Since his source was the third version of Froissart’s work, and that had dropped any reference to the rape, the story now became merely that Edward had been touched by the beauty of Joan, his cousin (who was actually about thirteen at the time), and had been in a great study over his feelings for her, but next morning had left, as was decent, gone off to fight the Scots, and returned by a different route.
Modern writers have been no less intrigued by this story. The discovery and publication of le Bel’s original chronicle focused attention on the more sordid details, and the discovery of a similar account, including the details of the rape, in a number of continental chronicles further encouraged people to suspect that Edward really was a rapist. However, all the continental stories have a common historiographical root: in other words, they are not all original accounts but copies of one archetypal story.37 So where did that come from? And does it have a basis in fact?
The first thing to note is that whoever composed the story of the rape knew the movements of the king and Salisbury in 1342 correctly. The English chronicles do not mention many details about the Scottish incursion into Northumberland, but le Bel and Froissart give plenty. David II and his army would very probably have passed by a castle belonging to the earl of Salisbury – Wark Castle – as there was a crossing over the River Tweed nearby. Edward’s army also probably stayed near to Wark, for on his return from Melrose in 1341 his wardrobe spent the night of 31 December at the adjacent manor of Cornhill.38 There was a whole series of tournaments that year over which the king presided, Dunstable in February, Northampton in April, and Eltham in May.39Although there is no overt record of a tournament at London in mid-August, there was a great feast, which very probably included jousting, at the Tower on 15 August, when Prince Lionel was married.40 As already noted elsewhere, the earl of Salisbury himself was indeed abroad in captivity at the time of the supposed infatuation but had been released early in June 1342. Finally, it should be noted that the earl did indeed fight the Moors in the Spanish peninsula, and died not long before the siege of Algeçiras (although in England, not Spain). In this respect there is some accuracy in the story as related by le Bel.
The problem is that, although some of the details are verifiable, most are blatantly incorrect. As Dugdale noted, the countess was called Catherine, not Alice, and it is very unlikely that Edward had not seen her since her marriage for she had been married to his best friend for at least thirteen years. There was no nephew of the earl called ‘William Montagu’. There is no evidence of any settlement of the family estates in 1342–44. The version of the story underlying the continental chronicle states that the earl had no heir, which is incorrect. It is very difficult to accept that the countess was at a border fortress during a period of hostility while her husband was overseas. It is even harder to accept that she habitually stayed there. There is no support for the story at all in any English or Scottish chronicle.41
Caught between a string of significant errors and some correct facts, one twentieth-century biographer (Michael Packe) tried very hard to make the story fit. He decided that Dugdale was right – that it was Edward Montagu who was the governor of Wark, who escaped to warn Edward that the castle was about to fall – and added that this was how ‘William Montagu’ was supposed to be the nephew of the ‘countess’. Edward Montagu’s wife was indeed called Alice. Moreover she was also a cousin of Edward’s, being the daughter of the earl of Norfolk, and so may well have been invited to the marriage tournament at London in August 1342. She was about eighteen years of age, and before her marriage to Montagu had been betrothed to his nephew, William Montagu, son of the earl of Salisbury. Packe did not attempt to tackle the question of why Edward Montagu might have left his royal wife and thirteen-year-old nephew in a border fortress during a period of hostility.42 He considered two details conclusive. First, le Bel mentions at one point that the young William Montagu had to pass a message to his aunt the ‘countess’. And second, Alice was supposedly killed by her husband and several other men about ten years later. Packe decided that, because Edward did not pursue his cousin’s killers with dire vengeance, he was somehow compromised by Edward Montagu.43
In all this fact-shuffling and theory-dealing, some fundamental points have been ignored. There are three stories here, rolled into one. They may be connected but they are still separate events: the meeting at Wark, the tournament at London and the rape. One at least – the rape – circulated separately to the others.44 Therefore we must ask how information about these three events at opposite ends of the country – two of which took place in private – could have reached the person who eventually wrote them down. We might ask why a chronicler of no particularly high status should have known what Edward did or did not do in the countess’s bedchamber. Not only that; in order to know what passed between the king and the ‘countess’ at Wark, the original teller of the tale would have had to be one of the dozen knights picked by Edward to visit the castle with him, or one of the lady’s household servants, or a member of the castle garrison. It is exceptionally unlikely that any of these people did not know the woman’s name and correct title. It is equally unlikely that they did not know that the governor of the castle was not the earl’s nephew, and that William Montagu was the earl’s twelve-year-old son. There are too many errors in describing the family to put them all down to ‘Chinese whispers’ when other facts about the campaign are correctly related. The only way in which the story of the infatuation can be considered credible is if the names and relationships had all been distorted through having been standardised by an unreliable intermediary in the process of making this story fit with the two other events, namely the accounts of the rape and the tournament at London.
Taking this approach of assessing the three elements of the story separately, we may come to some more reliable conclusions. Edward did not rape the countess of Salisbury. The record evidence shows that he had very little time after the earl’s departure for France to see the countess.45 In fact it seems likely that the earl and king sailed together: they were certainly both together on Edward’s return journey the following spring.46 After they returned, the earl’s relationship with the king did not break down.47 Indeed, in August 1343 Salisbury went abroad on Edward’s behalf, as a royal plenipotentiary to see King Alfonso of Castile. It is difficult to believe he would have undertaken this if his feelings had been that of an injured husband, nor that Edward would have trusted him with the appointment in such circumstances. Finally, we may be confident that the story is false by closely examining the information underpinning it. The only possible witnesses who could have related the original rape story would have been Edward’s valets (due to his instructions to them in his chamber before the rape) and they would have needed further information about the rape itself, presumably from the countess’s maidservants. The story could not have spread from the valets to become a common rumour without circulating in the royal household. So it is significant that in later years Froissart, despite having far better access to the key members of the royal household than le Bel, was unable to find anyone who could corroborate the story. Hence we may be confident that the rape story was a piece of propaganda invented by one of Edward’s enemies on the Continent.
But who was the ‘countess’ at Wark – if she was a real person – and who was ‘Alice’? Is there any truth in the other parts of the story? As noted above, it is probable that Edward’s army camped near Wark, and it is possible that this was due to a request to relieve the castle. It is also possible that Edward was briefly infatuated with a high-status lady staying at the castle, who may have been called Alice. He may or may not have invited her and her husband to the tournament at London in mid-August 1342. If so, it is highly unlikely that she was the wife of the earl of Salisbury. Le Bel wrote his chronicle in and after 1352.48 By this time there was probably another love story about Edward III circulating: a tale about the foundation of the Order of the Garter (1349). This did relate to a countess of Salisbury, but she was Joan, the ‘Fair Maid of Kent’ – the same girl whom Dugdale suggested – and she was only thirteen in 1341. As for the elder countess of Salisbury, it is very unlikely she was at a Scottish border castle while her husband was in custody in France. If the woman at Wark really existed, it is much more likely that she was the wife of the castellan of the castle, and this might have been Sir Edward Montagu. But the evidence amounts to just three very tenuous facts: Wark was a castle held by her husband’s brother, Edward had not seen her since her wedding (as le Bel claims), as she was married in 1338 and Edward had been abroad, and she did have a young nephew William Montagu, who is quite likely to have served in, or visited, his uncle’s household.
So how come a story about an infatuation (whether true or false) became mixed up with one about a rape and another about a tournament, and became twisted into a scandal involving the wife of Edward’s best friend? The answer to this is simply that the continental rumour mongers of the 1340s and 1350s wanted to present Edward III in an immoral light. The stories together formed a ‘catalogue’ of Edward’s sins – rape, disloyalty to his friend, adultery – which became widely circulated on the Continent. This in itself is not surprising. What is interesting is that le Bel believed the end result, and even Froissart was forced to consider it. Both these men had met Edward. Le Bel had been a footsoldier in his army, and Froissart knew him personally. So it is particularly interesting that le Bel believed this story, and tried partly to excuse it on the grounds that it was ‘motivated by love’. This tallies with Froissart’s view. He could not believe that Edward had raped the countess but he could believe that Edward was attracted to a noblewoman, and even sufficiently overcome with lust that he attempted a seduction. Edward’s liking for women is well-attested. His sexual desire for his wife was evidently compulsive.49 Furthermore, if we examine the gifts that Edward gave out to members of Philippa’s household, we may notice several women benefiting from his largesse. In 1335 he made a grant to Mabel Fitzwarenne, and in 1337 he similarly made grants to Margaret Jorce and Elena Mauley. All these women were ‘damsels of Queen Philippa’. Such grants are not suspicious in themselves, but they alert us to the fact that Edward was aware of his wife’s female companions, and since none of the grants were ostensibly at Philippa’s request we might suspect that Edward himself initiated them. ‘Entertaining ladies’ (to use Sir Thomas Gray’s phrase), in both its sinful and innocent forms, might well have given rise to a single public reputation. Edward acknowledged no illegitimate children in his youth – and so we should not presume he was promiscuous at this time – but he definitely enjoyed and encouraged the multiple flirtations of his sexually-charged court, and he was unashamed about it.
This is probably the most important thing about these stories. It shows Edward’s perceived weakness. No one could accuse him of cowardice. No one could accuse him of failing to listen to his people’s demands. No contemporary could accuse him of idleness, personal greed, or even foolhardiness. Edward’s Achilles’ heel was his love of female company, for it was possible to build a moral case against him by representing it as promiscuity. The author of the Vow of the Heron knew this well, and painted a picture of Edward ruling over a lascivious court. The poem underlying the Vow story was probably composed in the Low Countries, in the 1340s.50 It would thus have been written by a countryman and contemporary of Jean le Bel, at about the same time as the rape story which le Bel heard. Le Bel was particularly biased in favour of Edward, but his informant about the rape scene clearly was not. The count of Hainault himself was somewhat ambivalent, despite being Edward’s brother-in-law. It seems there were anti-Edward polemicists in Hainault, and one of these took a story he had heard about Edward’s brief infatuation with a woman at Wark and turned it into a tale of rape, centred on the family of the famous earl of Salisbury. A Hainaulter audience in 1352 would not have known any better.
*
The discussions about the alleged rape of the countess have tended to obscure two important events which took place at this time. The first was the news that William Epworth, an officer of the Irish Exchequer, had been thrown into prison. Ireland had long been in a semi-autonomous state, and the Irish Exchequer had grown steadily poorer over the years, so when Edward tried to increase his revenues from the country by revoking all grants made since the death of Edward I, he was bound to cause a dispute. William Epworth was one of the men ordered on 24 July 1341 to reclaim all royal lands which had been granted out to other lords. Three days later Edward showed his lack of understanding of the Irish situation by issuing a writ which stated that he would ‘be better served in Irelandby English ministers having incomes and property in England than by Irishmen, or Englishmen who have married and acquired possessions in Ireland and hold nothing in our kingdom of England’.51 This was an overt attack on the independent culture of the Irish and Anglo-Irish nobility. They responded with determination. They met in a parliament at Dublin in October, and then another at Kilkenny in November, and put forward a series of carefully written and constructed petitions, laying the blame for the policy at the door of Edward’s ministers. These petitions gave Edward cause for reflection, and he realised that he was not in a position to lay down the law in Ireland, not without going there. Over the following few months he backtracked, restoring the territories he had tried to take into royal control, giving into almost all the petitions. As with his dispute with Stratford, however much he believed he was in the right, there was a limit to how far he wanted to push an argument.52
The second important event of early 1342 was one of the largest tournaments which Edward ever held. It took place at Dunstable, directly after his return from Scotland, on 11–12 February 1342. According to one account, ‘all the armed youth of England’ were present and no foreigners were invited: the total of knights exceeded two hundred and fifty.53 In a fuller version of the same chronicle it was noted that the earls of Derby, Warwick, Northampton, Pembroke, Oxford and Suffolk all took part, and the other earls were only excused by reason of old age or illness. The king himself fought as a ‘simple knight’.54 A number of barons from the west of England were present. Even Queen Philippa was there, despite being heavily pregnant again (she gave birth the following month to their eighth child, Blanche). Far in the north, the chroniclers in their monasteries noted it. Stabling alone cost more than £113. 55 A tournament on this scale in February was unusual, for it was almost impossible to set up and complete everything in the short space of daylight.56 Indeed, it took so long to organise that it was almost dark before the tournament began.
The reason usually given for the tournament at this time is that it was to celebrate the betrothal of the king’s three-year-old son, Lionel of Antwerp, to the eight-year-old heiress of the earldom of Ulster, Elizabeth de Burgh. This is supported by the royal wardrobe accounts. But one feature about this tournament stands out. This is the first tournament at which Edward is known to have used a personal motto.57 Practically everything made for this tournament was embroidered with the words ‘it is as it is’, in English. Both the king and his son had state beds: Lionel’s had love-knots and leaves on it, powdered with silk roses and his coat of arms. The king’s bed was covered in green cloth embroidered with silk dragons which encircled the arms of England and France. Its top sheet had ‘four circlets in which there are four angels, a final circlet in the middle covered with the helmet and crest of the king, while the field of this sheet is worked with other circlets and scrolls of silk bearing the legend “it is as it is”’.58
Perhaps it was the very mysteriousness of the motto which caused the chronicler who described the tournament, Adam Murimuth, to misunderstand its purpose. Although he was no stranger to heraldic events, he thought it was to celebrate the truce with Scotland. That is hardly likely; truces with Scotland were a common event and never had they been celebrated on this scale by Edward, nor would it have been fitting to have the celebration so far from the border. But more than this, the organisation necessarily rules out the tournament being held at such short notice. Just making the costumes would have taken a considerable amount of time. The accounts reveal that Edward’s tailor was paid for making ‘various robes, tunics, surcoats and many other garments’ for the king and his magnates.59 Many of these were embroidered with ‘it is as it is’. Also, another suit of armour was made for the king bearing the arms of the legendary Sir Lionel, echoing the Dunstable tournament of 1334.
What did it mean, this motto, ‘it is as it is’? To date the only historian seriously to have given this any thought assumed that the legend was ‘fatalistic’ and that its origins were ‘probably literary’.60 A fatalistic message is entirely possible, meaning ‘things are as they are and cannot be changed’ in a negative, resigned sense. Given his recent Scottish expedition and his possible brief flirtation with a woman at Wark, we might say that the resignation suggested by the phrase reflects his feelings about Scotland, or her, or even the recent chaos in Ireland. But it is very unlikely that all the nobility of England would be gathered for such a purpose. A preferable interpretation is that it relates to the claim on the throne of France: ‘it is as it is’ being a cold assertion of the immutability of Edward’s descent from Philip the Fair. Attractive and sensible as this interpretation would be, it is difficult to see why Edward waited four years after first claiming the title, and two years after properly claiming it, before making this show, and why he made this demonstration in England, not France, and with no foreigners present, and in the depths of winter.
Another interpretation is possible. That ‘it is as it is’ was not fatalistic at all, but exactly the opposite: a celebration. If one puts the stress on the first ‘is’, the phrase reads as an achievement – ‘it is as it is’ – meaning ‘things have come to be as they should be’. This is supported by Edward’s order for twelve red hangings to be made, each one embroidered with ‘it is as it is’.61 These were huge: each one was more than twenty feet long and more than ten feet wide. The cost of these twelve banners was almost £30 (the annual income of nine skilled labourers).62 Although the statement was certainly mysterious, Edward wanted everyone to see it, and, for those who understood it, we may assume that it was important.
It is likely that ‘it is as it is’ finally announced the death of the old king, Edward II, to those who knew he had survived Berkeley. We cannot be certain about this, but there are a number of details which support the suggestion. First and foremost, Edward III finally passed on to his son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, the title of ‘Prince of Wales’ – the only title which his father had never given up – in the next parliament (in May 1343), strongly suggesting the old man had died by then. This was the first parliament for two years, and so it would appear that Edward III had heard about his father’s death in the period May 1341–May 1343. Further support for this is that he made a pilgrimage to his father’s tomb at Gloucester – his first such pilgrimage – in March 1343, after a near-death experience, indicating that by then his father had very probably been placed in his tomb.63 An irregularity in a Nottinghamshire chantry ordinance probably arising as a result of Edward II’s survival in 1335 was finally sorted out in January 1343, tempting us to push the terminus ante quem for Edward’s death to 1342 at the latest.64 Given that Edward II was almost certainly still alive in 1339, and probably died in 1341–42, it seems not unreasonable to connect the ‘it is as it is’ message in February 1342 with the arrival of the news of the death not long before. It may well be that the appearance of Niccolinus Fieschi in London in November 1341 marks the critical moment.65
It seems that at last Edward had the chance to lay his father to rest. It might be said that he had been fortunate to have had the services of the Fieschi and Pope John XXII to guard his father and to keep him secretly. But to reflect that he had lived with the problem of his father’s secret survival for the last fourteen years, and had worked his foreign policy, his war and his relations with the pope around this extraordinary situation, and had even managed to meet his father again in Koblenz, is to reflect that Edward had coped successfully with the worst crisis the Plantagenet monarchy had ever faced. He had even managed to initiate and sustain an expansionist foreign policy in spite of it. It also rings a significant change in his life, for Edward from now on could be even more aggressive. From now on, as far as we know, no one had any secrets which could be used to compromise him, or restrain him. From now on, he did not need to tread so carefully. He could be himself like never before.