Sigh. Roger Mortimer was **NOT** the father of Edward III! Please, people!

Recently I came across a blog post which names me and refers to my post demonstrating that it is as sure as sure can be that Edward II was the father of Isabella of France's children.

To quote from the blog post (which I'm not linking to): "It is possible that Edward III was in fact the son of Roger Mortimer, not Edward II.  In even saying this I am in direct conflict with Kathryn Warner who carries out a non stop campaign to defend Edward II’s reputation. Simplistic histories have Mortimer in Ireland from 1308 until 1318. However it is recorded elsewhere that Mortimer travelled continuously alternating between his estates in Ireland, his estates in the Welsh marches and attendances at court."

Ian Mortimer's The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327 to 1330 (Pimlico, 2003) gives Roger's itinerary as fully as it can be determined, and frankly I'll take Ian Mortimer and his research any day over a stranger on the internet who wants to think that Roger could possibly have fathered Edward III and Isabella's other children.  Edward III, born on 13 November 1312, must have been conceived around late February 1312.  Queen Isabella had joined her husband Edward II in York on about 20/21 February, and the king and queen remained in the city together until early April.  There is no doubt whatsoever that the royal couple were together for a few weeks at the time when Edward III must have been conceived, and as I've pointed out before, Edward and Isabella conceived their son during Lent, when intercourse was forbidden.  (Tsk!)  As for Roger Mortimer, we know that he was in Dublin 270 miles from York in April and May 1312 (Greatest Traitor, pp. 49-50, 305).  No, we can't conclusively 100% prove that he wasn't in or near York in late February that year having sex with Isabella.  But why on earth would he have been?  How could he possibly have slept with the sixteen-year-old queen while she was with her husband without either Edward or Isabella's household of 180 people noticing?  The queen had less privacy than anyone else in the country, yet we're supposed to imagine that she could have had sex with one of her husband's leading barons without anyone noticing?  Let me reiterate here the absolutely key point that no-one at all until the 1980s ever suggested that anyone but Edward II was the father of Edward III and Isabella's other children.  So why are people making up these weird fantasies?

The blog post again: "Kathryn is not simplistic she has the records which place Isabelle and Edward together in York from the 22nd February 1312 exactly full term before Edward III’s birth on 13 November."  Wow, thanks!

"These dates apparently make it impossible for Mortimer to be the father of Edward III. However the relationship between Roger and Isabelle was known in France at the time of the Tour Nestlé affair in 1313."

Firstly, it's the Tour de Nesle, not 'Nestlé', which is the name of a modern multinational food and drink company.  Secondly, the Tour de Nesle affair was the revelation in 1314 (not 1313) that two of Isabella's sisters-in-law, Marguerite and Blanche of Burgundy, were committing adultery with the d'Aulnay brothers in Paris, for which the men were executed and the women imprisoned.  Although it may have been Isabella who discovered these adulterous relationships (though this is not certain), the whole business has nothing whatsoever to do with Isabella's much later relationship with Roger Mortimer, which began in late 1325 or early 1326.  The blog writer here appears to be confusing and conflating three different things: 1) the long visit of Edward II and Isabella to France in 1313 (and see also here); 2) the revelation of the Tour de Nesle affair in 1314, while Isabella was again visiting Paris, without her husband this time; and 3) the relationship of Isabella and Roger Mortimer which began in Paris in late 1325/early 1326.

"There is also the question of what was happening in the period leading up to the 22nd of february. Isabella took the whole of this month to travel north from london and then the last four days to travel the last four days from Doncaster to York, a distance of less than thirty miles. She could have conceived on any of these days. The person who gave her safe conduct in Tynemouth was Thomas of Lancaster. His major stronghold was Pontefract Castle near Wakefield. The deviation from doncaster would have taken an extra eighteen miles. Just suppose that Isabelle made the deviation to negotiate her own safety. Just suppose that Mortimer already unhappy with aspects of Edward II’s rule attended the meeting seeking her support against Gavescon [sic]."

Just suppose that we focus on things that we actually know, rather than piling fantasy on fantasy and speculation on speculation.  We have no evidence that Roger Mortimer was in England in February 1312.  We have no evidence that he was already unhappy with Edward II's rule, or acting against the king and Piers Gaveston, and in fact his biographer Ian Mortimer makes it quite clear that Roger supported Edward and Piers, whom he knew well (his wardship had been granted to Piers by Edward I in 1304).  We have no evidence that Roger had any kind of relationship with Isabella, beyond the usual courtly one between the queen and a magnate, before the mid-1320s.  We have no evidence that Isabella met or went anywhere near her uncle Thomas of Lancaster at this time.  We have no evidence that Isabella 'deviated' anywhere on her journey north in February 1312.  Yes, it was a very slow journey.  Travel in the thirteenth/fourteenth centuries often was, especially in winter.  In August 1289, at the height of summer, it took Edward I's children, including the five-year-old Edward of Caernarfon, two weeks to travel the 100 miles from Langley to Dover to greet the king and queen on their return to England.  Travelling could be painfully slow.  Perhaps Isabella was ill and couldn't travel far each day, or a lot of her household were ill, or perhaps there was really bad weather and they were unable to go very far each day in the driving rain or howling snowstorm, or the roads were horribly muddy or icy and nearly impassable.  There are lots of possible reasons for the slowness; we don't have to invent stories about the queen secretly meeting and having sex with Roger Mortimer.

I genuinely don't understand why people do this, why they insult Edward II and Isabella by painting them as a cuckold and an adulteress willing to foist a non-royal child onto the English throne.  Do they think it's romantic and sweet?  I suppose if you really wanted to, you could construct similar elaborate and implausible fantasies about the paternity of any other king.  Edward II himself was conceived in Wales in July or August 1283, and if you tried hard enough you could probably come up with some scenario that has Eleanor of Castile travelling somewhere and secretly sleeping with, I dunno, Othon de Grandisson, who is then really the father of her youngest child.  But why would you?  It's daft.  So is this silly scenario about Isabella and Roger Mortimer.  Yes, she did have a relationship with him, many years later, long after all her children were born.  This does not in any way prove that she was already sleeping with him, or willing to do so, as early as 1312.  By late 1325, Edward II and Isabella's relationship had broken down and Isabella needed an ally to act with her against the Despensers and restore herself to her rightful position and her lands.  This cannot in any way be taken to mean that in 1312, she would have been willing to sleep with Roger Mortimer or anyone else.

"This is all supposition and then again there is the fact that in the period leading up to 1322 she had not one but four children. Could Mortimer have fathered all four children?"

No.  He couldn't.  Edward II and Isabella of France's younger three children were conceived in or around late November 1315, September 1317 and October 1320.  Roger was then in Kells (6 December 1315), Drogheda and Dublin (September 1317) and Dublin/on his way to court back in England in October 1320 (Greatest Traitor, pp. 69-70, 87, 100-01, 305-09).  I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Roger Mortimer, but I'm pretty sure that even he wasn't capable of impregnating a woman who was in another country at the time, 'unequivocally heterosexual' though he may well have been.  And again, we have the fact that Isabella was with her husband when all her children were conceived.

"after edwardii’s death isabelle plans to marry mortimer and to have a legitimate child whho could well force through a claim to the french throne and thereby limiting edward III’s own prospects"

I'd love to know how Isabella could have planned to marry a man who was already married.  Good one.

"if edward III is the son of mortimer then he is noble but undeniably illegitimate and therefore entitled to nothing"

Edward III was the son of Edward II.  I'm as certain of this as I am of anything.  If there'd been even the slightest iota of doubt in anyone's mind, why would they have been willing to make him king in 1327?  Why did the French never accuse him of illegitimacy?  It would have been an obvious thing to do, to damage his reputation and harm his chances of claiming the French throne, if he didn't even have a right to the English one.  I am so bored with people claiming that English kings were not really the sons of their fathers and only they, centuries later, have been clever enough to discover The Real Truth!!!  Bollocks.  Edward I was the son of Henry III, Edward III was the son of Edward II.  Stop fantasising and stop insulting their memory.

Queen Isabella Makes A Will, October 1312

On 20 October 1312, Edward II granted his queen Isabella of France permission to make her will.  Isabella was then about eight months pregnant with their eldest child the future Edward III, who was born on 13 November.  As a married woman, Isabella needed her husband's permission to make her will, and it was a common thing for pregnant women to do in an age when pregnancy and childbirth were so risky.  Professor Seymour Phillips suggests in his Edward II (2010, p. 204) that Isabella was having a difficult pregnancy and feared death in childbirth, and that Edward was thus probably concerned with his wife's spiritual welfare.  Phillips also points out, however, that a copy of Edward's permission and his granting her all her movable goods (see below) survives in the Archives Nationales in Paris, which suggests that the French envoys then in England to negotiate between the king and Piers Gaveston's killers had suggested that Isabella make a will to ensure that the terms of her dower continued in case of her death.

Unfortunately Isabella's will itself has not survived, which is a real shame.  Edward's permission and granting to her of her goods and lands, however, appears in Rhymer's Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, vol 2, part 1, p. 184, in the original French, and is briefly calendared on the Patent Roll (1307-1313, p. 508: "The king grants authority to queen Isabella to dispose of her goods and jewels by will.")  Here's my translation of the long Foedera version:

*
Edward, [by the grace of God king of England] etc, to all those who see and hear these present letters, greetings in our Lord.

Be it known to all that because we know well that nothing is as certain as death, nor less certain than the hour at which it may come, we give and grant permission to our very dear consort Isabella, by the same grace queen of England, lady of Ireland and duchess of Aquitaine, that she may make and draw up her testament or her last will regarding the temporal goods which God has given to us and to her; at the same time and by this testament or last will, accomplished and carried out by the hand of her executors, we give and grant to her now all the movables which are and will be hers; all her vessels of gold and silver; all her jewels in whatever place they are or will be found.

Further, we give and grant her all the county of Ponthieu, and the land of Montreuil, and all the other lands which she holds and will hold of our gift, whether in the realm of England or in France, or elsewhere, that it may be levied or exploited by the executors or at their command, for three years continually [I've chopped this bit talking about lands and rents, as it's really boring].

And further, by our leave and special permission, we wish that, wherever it may best please her, she may have the said executors purchase 1000 pounds sterling of land which by our present letters we will alienate for her holding, to make and establish a hospital where poor people will be rescued, lodged and laid to bed, for the safeguard of our [Edward and Isabella's] souls.

And because all the things stated above shall be valid and binding for always, without ever being opposed by us or by others, whoever they may be, we have had these open letters sealed with our great seal.

Given at Windsor on the twentieth day of the month of October, year of grace one thousand, three hundred and twelve, and the sixth of our reign.

*

Edward II was, to my knowledge, the only medieval king of England who died intestate.  His father  Edward I made his will when on crusade in the Holy Land on 18 June 1272, when his father Henry III was still alive, and oddly enough never updated it, despite living for another thirty-five years.  He made it in Acre, to be precise, where his daughter Joan, countess of Gloucester, was born, probably around the same time.  Edward II's father-in-law Philip IV of France made his main will in May 1311, and added a codicil to it on 28 November 1314, the day before he died (when he presumably knew that he was dying).  Philip's main will does not mention Isabella, but in the codicil he left her two rings, one of which she had previously given him, and a cup, which she had also given him.  (Seymour Phillips, Edward II, p. 223.)  Edward and Isabella's son Edward III made his will at Havering-atte-Bower on 7 October 1376, a few months before he died and several months after the death of his eldest son Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales.

Edward II's Feuds With Bishops In The 1320s

As though Edward II didn't have enough enemies in the 1320s, having alienated most of his magnates and executed, imprisoned and/or fined over a hundred men after the Contrariant rebellion, and generally behaving like a greedy unpleasant tyrant, the king evidently decided that what he really needed to do was to alienate yet more influential people.  Accordingly, he began a series of pointless and often quite vicious feuds with a number of his bishops.  Great plan, Edward, oh yes, very sensible of you.  The feuding demonstrates that when he felt like it, Edward II could be quite astonishingly vindictive and spiteful.  Trying to see it from his point of view, he was a fiercely emotional man who tended to react to people and situations with his heart, not his head, and without thoughtful consideration, especially when he felt (correctly or not) that he'd been betrayed by someone he thought he could trust.  Still, these feuds show him in a very bad light.  Here's what happened.

Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford (died 1345)

Appointed bishop of Hereford by Pope John XXII in 1317 and later moved to the see of Worcester (1327) and then Winchester (1333).  Adam may have come from the Herefordshire village of Orleton, a Mortimer manor, and in 1322 Edward II accused him of aiding Roger Mortimer and his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk during the Contrariant rebellion by sending them armed men.  It's impossible to say whether that's true or not; Adam most probably sympathised with the Mortimers and showed loyalty to the family, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he aided them in a rebellion against the king.  Edward, however, was determined to think the worst of the bishop.  When the king arrived in Hereford during his campaign against the Marchers, the Contrariants as he called them, in late January 1322, he publicly upbraided Adam for supporting the rebels and went hunting in his parks with his half-brother the earl of Kent, without Adam's permission.

It was Roger Mortimer's escape from the Tower in August 1323, however, that really prompted full-out attack by Edward II on Adam Orleton.  Unable to recapture Roger, in 1324 Edward lashed out at some of Roger's family and adherents, and the unfortunate Adam was the main victim of the king's vengeance.  Edward accused him of treason, and at a special assize the bishop was found guilty of having sent armed men to the Mortimers some years earlier (which I certainly wouldn't assume means he actually was guilty).  Edward had Adam's lands and goods seized, and even allowed his goods to be thrown into the street and ransacked by passersby.  Despite the best efforts of Pope John XXII and his envoys who visited England, nothing and no-one could mitigate Edward's rage against Adam, and he lived in some poverty for the rest of the king's reign.  It is entirely unsurprising to find that he supported Roger Mortimer and Isabella in 1326/27.

John Droxford, bishop of Bath and Wells (died 1329)

Appointed bishop of Bath and Wells by Clement V in 1309, at Edward II's request.  John Droxford was for many years a loyal servant of Edward II and high in his favour, and was one of the bishops who supported the king at the time of Piers Gaveston's return from his second exile in 1309.  In 1321/22, however, he sympathised with the Contrariants, or at least the king believed that he did, and Edward sent a series of furious and highly emotional letters to John XXII about him, Adam Orleton (above) and Henry Burghersh (below), calling them 'the worst poison' and saying that they were 'descended from the race of traitors' and had brought manifold disasters to his kingdom.  He demanded that John XXII translate the three men to sees outside England, as he could no longer bear the scandal of having them in his kingdom, and asked him to replace John Droxford as bishop with his (Edward's) close personal friend William, abbot of Langdon in Kent.  The pope refused, and clearly was deeply annoyed with Edward.

Henry Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln (died 1340)

Appointed bishop of Lincoln by John XXII in 1320, with Edward II's approval, though he was still under thirty.  Henry was the nephew of Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere, steward of Edward II's household who later joined the Contrariant rebellion and - poor man - suffered the traitor's death in April 1322.  Henry's brother Bartholomew Burghersh was imprisoned in the Tower of London after the rebellion, and remained there until the end of Edward II's reign.  The king's wrath also fell on Henry, and as early as 8 December 1321, he wrote to John XXII to tell him that he had been deceived as to Henry's ability and suitability for his post, and was now totally convinced that Henry was unsuited to be bishop.  Of course you were, Edward, of course, and that had nothing at all to do with your loathing of his uncle, did it?  Henry was one of the three men about whom Edward sent a series of highly emotional and overwrought letters to the pope, above.

John Stratford, bishop of Winchester (later archbishop of Canterbury; died 1348)

Apppointed bishop of Winchester by John XXII in April 1323, to the great annoyance of Edward II, who had wanted the see for his and Hugh Despenser the Younger's clerk Robert Baldock. The king asked the pope to revoke the appointment, and also asked three men – Archambaud IV, count of Périgord, Bernard Jordani, lord of L'Isle Jourdain, and Peter de Via, the pope's relative – to use their influence with John in the matter, but to no avail: John XXII informed him that he had already consecrated John Stratford when he received Edward's letters recommending Robert Baldock.

Edward pettishly refused to grant the petition of one Raymond de Busselers in the summer of 1323 because it was supported by Stratford, with whom he declared himself "exceedingly incensed" and described as "faithless and ungrateful."  [1]  In November 1323, Edward ordered the keepers of more than seventy ports and the sheriffs of twenty counties not to permit John to leave the country, claiming that John had refused to meet the king's counsellors and "withdrew himself by subterfuge" from him.  [2]  He forced John to acknowledge a huge debt of £10,000 to him in June 1324, and began proceedings against him before the King's Bench.  [3]  John XXII wrote to Hugh Despenser, whom he frequently addressed as "one able to influence the king," thanking him for his efforts in attempting to reconcile Stratford and Edward and asking him to continue his exertions.  Hugh responded in typical fashion by extorting £1000 from the unfortunate bishop, which he deposited with his Italian bankers, the Peruzzi.  Superficially the king and bishop were reconciled in June 1324, and Stratford worked on Edward's behalf in France in 1325, but in 1326/27 supported Isabella and Roger Mortimer, and was one of the authors of the articles of deposition.

[1) Foedera, p. 527.
2) Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 546; Close Rolls 1323-27, pp. 147-8.
3) Foedera, p. 541; Close Rolls, p. 198.]

John Hothum (or Hotham), bishop of Ely (died 1337)

Appointed to the bishopric of Ely in 1316, and for many years high in Edward II's favour; John acted as Piers Gaveston's attorney in 1311, and Edward made him treasurer then chancellor of England in 1318 and 1320.  For some obscure reason John seems to have angered Edward, and he acknowledged a massive debt of £2000 to Hugh Despenser the Younger in November 1324 (Close Rolls 1323-27, p. 325).  I don't know what that was about, but John joined forces with Isabella after the invasion.

William Airmyn (or Ayreminne), bishop of Norwich (died 1336)

Another bishop on whom Edward II's wrath fell after William was made bishop of Norwich in July 1325, John XXII once again passing over Edward's choice, Robert Baldock.  Edward had previously favoured William, and had asked John XXII some months earlier to provide Airmyn to the bishopric of Carlisle, unsuccessfully; John Ross gained the position.  Edward, in his usual fashion when someone annoyed him, decided unfairly to blame and to scapegoat William for the unfavourable peace treaty of summer 1325 with his (Edward's) brother-in-law Charles IV of France, and summoned William twice to appear before King's Bench on a charge of maliciously and treacherously agreeing that the king of France should continue to hold some of Edward's inheritance (the Agenais).  He even ordered the arrest of William's two brothers when he failed to appear.  Thus persecuted by the vengeful vindictive king, William Airmyn fled to France and joined Isabella sometime between March and June 1326.  It has often been wrongly assumed that William was chosen as bishop of Norwich because Isabella had intervened with the pope on his behalf, but in fact it is clear from John XXII's letters to Edward II that he thought he would be pleasing the king with the appointment (given that Edward had only recently asked the pope to provide William to a bishopric), and that Isabella's letters had reached him too late to have any effect on his decision.

*

And so Edward II alienated yet another man who would have been a very useful ally to him.  I should point out here that the king did stay on good terms with other English bishops in the 1320s, especially William Melton, archbishop of York, Hamo Hethe of Rochester, John Ross of Carlisle, Thomas Cobham of Worcester and Stephen Gravesend of London.  Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter and former treasurer of England (and founder of Exeter College at Oxford University in 1314) died for his loyalty to Edward, suffering the horrible fate of being beheaded with a bread knife in London after Isabella and Roger Mortimer's invasion in 1326, his head sent to Isabella.  Archbishop Melton and Bishop Gravesend were involved in the plot of Edward's half-brother the earl of Kent to free him in 1330.  Neither was Edward II the only king to have problems with his bishops: Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury, was a fierce opponent of Edward I and was forced into exile from England in 1305, and Edward III and Archbishop John Stratford went through their own crisis in 1340/41.  And yet, Edward II's alienating so many influential men played an important role in the revolution of 1326/27 and in his forced abdication; Adam Orleton and John Stratford were among the prime movers of these events.  Even Edward's long-term friend Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, hesitated to support him after the invasion in 1326 and then enthusiastically joined Isabella's side.  Edward's losing his temper with him at some point in the 1320s and screaming in his face, so that Walter pretended he had to make an urgent visitation to his cathedral in order to escape from the king's presence, can't have helped.

Most of Edward II's behaviour in the 1320s really leaves me shaking my head...

Further Reading

- Roy Martin Haines, The Church and Politics in Fourteenth-Century England: the Career of Adam Orleton, c. 1275-1345 (1978)
- Roy Martin Haines, Archbishop John Stratford: Political Revolutionary and Champion of the Liberties of the English Church, ca. 1275/80-1348 (1986)
- Kathleen Edwards, 'The Personal and Political Activities of the English Episcopate During the Reign of Edward II', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 16 (1938)
- Kathleen Edwards, 'The Political Importance of the English Bishops During the Reign of Edward II', English Historical Review, 59 (1944)
- J.L. Grassi, 'William Airmyn and the Bishopric of Norwich', English Historical Review, 70 (1955)
- Seymour Phillips, Edward II (2010)
- Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II: His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284-1330 (2003)

Isabella, Braveheart of France by Colin Falconer: Book Review

Isabella, Braveheart of France, novel, published by Cool Gus Publishing in September 2013, 218 pages.

"Do you know what it is to have someone who understands your very soul?  This love your minstrels sing of, must it always be a knight and a lady?  Who made this law?  Was it God?  Then God is a trickster, for there is no one else will do for me."

The novel is narrated in the present tense in close third person, entirely from Isabella's point of view, and begins just before Isabella's wedding to Edward II in January 1308 (as novels about her invariably do).  I'm not really a fan of present tense in fiction, usually, but here it worked fine for me, more or less.  The chapters are short and the writing style somewhat terse and dispassionate, which I liked, though I've seen reviews of the novel on Amazon and Goodreads which find it choppy and distant.  I don't like the title at all, but at least the subject of the novel is made clear to the many people who've seen the film Braveheart, I suppose.

Novels about Edward II and Isabella of France generally fall into two groups.  The larger category is sympathetic to Isabella and paints Edward as a horrible abusive cruel husband, often a grotesque caricature of a gay man who 'snivels' and stamps his foot frequently and 'insults' Isabella and her femininity by being attracted to men (as though he chose his sexuality on purpose to hurt her, for pity's sake).  The smaller category is more concerned with Edward's relationships with Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser, and reduces Isabella to an improbably irrelevant cipher.  It's tiresome to me, the way so many writers - both of fiction and non-fiction - are so unable or unwilling to write both Edward and Isabella as rounded, sympathetic characters, and instead somehow feel that the only way to create reader sympathy for and interest in Isabella is to make Edward one-dimensionally awful.  So it was extremely refreshing to read Colin Falconer's novel, which portrays both of them as real, flawed people, likable in many ways.

Isabella throughout the novel yearns for great love, is envious of her husband for finding it with Piers Gaveston, and wishes more than anything that he loved her as much as he loves Piers.  In the hands of a lesser writer, her relationship with Roger Mortimer would of course fill this gap, and that's what I was expecting to find, as I have in pretty well every other novel ever written about Isabella.  This generally seems to require Mortimer to be written as the antithesis of Horrid Gay Edward, the anti-Edward, as it were.  Colin Falconer is a far more skilled and subtle writer than that, however.  Fans of the Isabella and Roger Twu Wuv Forever school of thought are probably not going to like this one, but Falconer's take on their relationship is much more in line with the way I see it myself.  The way he writes Edward and Isabella's own relationship is also gratifyingly different from the same old, same old I've read time and again.  Even as late as 1327, Isabella finds herself wanting to throw her glass of wine into Edward's face when he tells her that Piers was his great love and his madness, and a jealous Isabella, even after nineteen years, still can't bear to hear it - this conversation is my favourite scene in the novel.  Edward is honest with his wife about his limitations and tells her that he loves and honours her as much as he is capable of.  This rings true to me and I thoroughly enjoyed Falconer's portrayal of Edward and Isabella's complex and nuanced relationship, far more interesting and plausible than the usual rubbish that their marriage was nothing but a disaster from start to finish.  I genuinely think that Edward II (the real Edward, not the fictional character) did love Isabella in his way, not in the intense, passionate, obsessive, you-will-be-with-me-till-I-die way he loved Piers Gaveston - to the point of madness as Falconer suggests, perhaps - but as much as he was able to, and I also believe that Isabella loved Edward.  Piers loves Edward too, here.  The scene in Braveheart of France where Isabella witnesses Edward's reaction to Piers' death in 1312, where he literally keels over in the mud with grief, is genuinely moving.  So is the scene near the beginning where a twelve-year-old Isabella falls in love with Edward at first sight at their wedding, or at least believes that she does: "He is tall, and blue eyed, and smiles at her with such easy charm it makes her blush. It is love at first sight...She closes her eyes and imagines him. He is hers. Her father was right, she is fortunate. He is beautiful, he is a king and he is all hers."  Given that Isabella is shortly to find out that this perfect man is already deeply in love with another man, I find that poignant.

The novel ends shortly after Edward's death in 1327, when Isabella rejoices that after almost twenty years she has her husband's heart to herself at last, quite literally.  There's a short epilogue, which I found very satisfying: I don't want to give it away, but Colin Falconer doesn't follow the traditional line of what happened to the former king in 1327.  Shame that there's no author's note at the end to explain what happened to Roger Mortimer and Isabella and perhaps to provide further reading on the whole subject, a definite, albeit small, criticism I have of the novel.  I did find myself liking and admiring Isabella a lot in this one, and I like Edward a lot in it too.  Often in novels, I can't stand either of them.

I'm always delighted to find a book (fiction or non-fiction) about Edward II and Isabella that doesn't use Edward's non-heterosexuality as a cheap way of creating sympathy for the queen.  It would of course be weird and anachronistic to portray everyone in the early fourteenth century as accepting of Edward's sexuality, that's not my issue, it's that some authors seem to share fourteenth-century prejudices and expect their readers to do so as well, by constantly describing Edward as unnatural and perverted because he loves men.  Some books about Edward II, fiction and non-fiction, make me deeply uncomfortable.  (I'm not going to mention them here and give them any publicity, so if you'd like to know which ones I mean, drop me an email.)  There's absolutely none of that here, and Edward's love of men is handled sympathetically.  And let's face it, an author only has to make Edward II's children really his children rather than some other random bloke's to make me want to weep with gratitude.

Colin Falconer clearly did his homework for the novel, which included reading my blog and taking my research and ideas on board (he kindly emailed me a few months ago to let me know).  I appreciate his fairness to Edward.  Some small errors remain, such as Roger Mortimer saying that he has a daughter of Isabella's own age - in fact he was only about eight years older than the queen - and Hugh Despenser the Younger being older than Edward, but nothing major and nothing which ruined my enjoyment or jolted me out of the story.  There are some nice flashes of humour: I loved the bit about Hugh Despenser the Younger and his wife Eleanor where Isabella imagines that Hugh keeps a ledger of every time they have intercourse and holds Eleanor to account for all the occasions that don't result in pregnancy.

In short, I really enjoyed Isabella, Braveheart of France, and would definitely recommend it.  It's not a novel that's going to appeal to fans of the highly romanticised modern take on Isabella and Roger Mortimer, however, or to people who want to believe all the silly myths about Edward II which are currently popular, but I find it far more accurate and plausible than all but a handful of other Edward II and Isabella of France novels, and in its rather dry way it's a touching take on the complex and difficult relationships between these complex and fascinating people.  It's a thousand times better than the caricatured nonsense full of thinly-veiled prejudice masquerading as fiction I've so often read about Edward II, and my beloved king emerges as his deeply flawed, unconventional, capricious self without any tedious author moralising or ill-disguised contempt.

February Anniversaries

1 February 1327: Coronation of fourteen-year-old Edward III at Westminster, while his father the former King Edward II was held in captivity at Kenilworth Castle.  Must have been strange for the former king to see his son being crowned in his stead, in his own lifetime.  I'd give a great deal to know what both of them were thinking and feeling.

2 February 1282: Birth of Maud Chaworth, who in or before 1297 married Edward II's first cousin Henry of Lancaster and had seven children with him, including the marvellous Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster.  Maud was the elder half-sister of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Aline Burnell.

2 February 1286: Birth of Joan Geneville, first countess of March, heiress to lands in England, Wales, Ireland and France, wife of Roger Mortimer (25 April 1287 - 29 November 1330) and mother of twelve children (her daughter Blanche Grandisson and her magnificent tomb in the village of Much Marcle has been much in the news recently).  Joan lived to be seventy and to see her many grandchildren, and is to my mind a far more interesting and worthy person than she's generally made out to be in historical fiction and even non-fiction, where she's far too often painted as a dull, sexless nobody understandably thrown over by her husband for the gorgeous queen.  Yuck.

3 February 1267: Birth of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, who was Roger Mortimer's first cousin and whose son Earl Edmund was executed by Roger in November 1326.

3 February 1281: Birth of Gilbert de Clare, lord of Thomond, nephew of the earl of Gloucester, a companion of Edward of Caernarfon before he became king, and first husband of Hugh Despenser the Younger's sister Isabel.  More coming on Gilbert very soon, when I write a post about Isabel.

4 February 1316: Wedding at or near Bristol Castle of Edward II's widowed niece Elizabeth de Burgh née de Clare and Theobald de Verdon, whose first wife Maud was Roger Mortimer's sister.  Whether Elizabeth consented to the marriage, I don't know.

5 February 1311: Death of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, aged around sixty, sometimes a close ally of Edward II and sometimes not, father of Alice.

5 February 1345: Wedding of Eleanor of Lancaster, fifth daughter of Henry of Lancaster and Maud Chaworth, and her second husband Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, son of Edmund executed in 1326.  Richard was probably the richest man in England in the entire fourteenth century, and I can't help but dislike him because of his shabby treatment of his and Isabel Despenser's son Edmund.

6 February 1322: Surrender of Maurice, Lord Berkeley and Hugh Audley the Elder to Edward II during the failed Contrariant rebellion.

7 February 1308: Arrival of Edward II and his new wife Isabella of France in England.

9 February 1250: Death at Mansoura (Egypt) of Robert, count of Artois, brother of Louis IX of France.  Robert's daughter Blanche, queen of Navarre by her first marriage, married Edward II's uncle Edmund of Lancaster and was the mother of Thomas of Lancaster and the maternal grandmother of Isabella of France.

9 February 1321: Wedding of seven-year-old Richard Fitzalan, son and heir of the earl of Arundel, and Hugh Despenser the Younger's eight-year-old daughter Isabel.  The marriage ended disastrously; see link under the entry for 5 February 1345.

10 February 1306: Robert Bruce stabbed his rival John the Red Comyn, lord of Badenoch, to death in the Greyfriars church in Dumfries, and soon afterwards had himself crowned king of Scots.

11 February 1310: Wedding of Edward II's nephew Edouard I, count of Bar, and Marie of Burgundy, two of whose sisters were queens of France. Edouard was then around fifteen.

13 February 1322: Imprisonment of Roger Mortimer and his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk in the Tower of London during the Contrariant rebellion.

14 February 1318: Death of Edward II's stepmother Marguerite of France, queen of England, not yet forty years old.  She left two sons Thomas, earl of Norfolk and Edmund, later earl of Kent, then aged seventeen and sixteen.  On 8 March, Edward II sent two pieces of Lucca cloth to Marlborough to lie over her body, and sent six more pieces after it was moved to London shortly afterwards. The king visited his stepmother's remains at St Mary's Church in Southwark on 14 March, and attended her funeral at the Greyfriars Church the following day, purchasing six pieces of Lucca cloth for himself and two pieces each for two other people, his sister Mary the nun and Sir Roger Damory, his current court favourite, to wear.

16 February 1364: Death of Sir John Maltravers, one of Edward of Caernarfon's custodians in 1327.  He must have been at least in his mid-seventies.

19 February 1322: Edward II captured Kenilworth Castle, the great Warwickshire stronghold of his cousin and enemy Thomas, earl of Lancaster, during the Contrariant rebellion.

19 February 1325: Edward II made arrangements for his youngest child Joan of the Tower, aged three (born July 1321), to marry the future King Pedro IV of Aragon, then five (born September 1319).  Joan was to marry David II of Scotland in 1328 instead.

20 February 1312: Churching and purification of Edward II's niece Margaret de Clare; celebration of the birth of her and Piers' daughter Joan Gaveston, paid for by the king.

22 February 1316: First indication that Edward II probably knew that Isabella of France was pregnant with their second child John of Eltham, born on 15 August: he asked the dean and chapter of the church of St Mary in Lincoln to "celebrate divine service daily for the good estate of the king and queen Isabella and Edward of Windsor their first-born son."

22 February 1316: Attack by Hugh Despenser the Younger on Sir John Ros at the parliament of Lincoln.  Hugh repeatedly punched John in the face until he drew blood, and "inflicted other outrages on him in contempt of the lord king," forcing John to draw his sword in self-defence. Hugh claimed after his arrest, with amusing implausibility, that he had merely stretched out his hand to defend himself and accidentally hit John in the face with his fist, after John "heap[ed] outrageous insults on the same Hugh [and] taunted him with insolent words," and rushed at him with a knife.

25 February 1303: Eighteen-year-old Edward of Caernarfon paid four shillings' compensation to his fool Robert Buffard or Bussard, because the two men went swimming together that day at Windsor and Robert was injured in some way by "the trick the Prince [of Wales] played on him in the water."  :-)

25 February 1308: Coronation of Edward II and Isabella of France as king and queen of England.

26 February 1275: Death of Edward's aunt Margaret of England, queen of Scotland, at the age of only thirty-four.  Margaret was the second child of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, and married Alexander III of Scotland.

26 February 1307: The aging Edward I, who had only four and a half months left to live, ordered Piers Gaveston to leave England.

27 February 1313: Thomas, earl of Lancaster finally returned to Edward II the goods and horses belonging to the king which he had seized at Newcastle the previous May.

28 February 1261: Birth of Edward II's first cousin Margaret of Scotland, queen of Norway, eldest child of Alexander III and Margaret of England.

The Tournament of Wallingford, 1307

A post about Piers Gaveston's jousting tournament held at Wallingford on 2 December 1307, with thanks to my friend MRats for the suggestion. :-)

Piers Gaveston was made earl of Cornwall by the new king Edward II on 6 August 1307, and married Edward's niece Margaret de Clare on 1 November that year.  (He would also be appointed regent of England on 26 December, to take effect when Edward travelled to France to marry Isabella.)  1307 was, in short, Piers Gaveston's year, and, being the great jouster and competitor he was, it's no surprise to find him holding a tournament to celebrate his good fortune.  The tournament was held at his castle of Wallingford, a dozen miles from Oxford, on 2 December 1307.  Edward II encouraged him to hold the tournament, though evidently he didn't attend himself, as his itinerary on that day places him firstly at Langley, forty-five miles away from Wallingford, then at Reading, twenty-five miles from Wallingford.  [1]  Edward had been at Langley since about 10 November, stayed at Reading for several days from 2 December, then travelled back to Langley via Bisham on the 6th.  There is nothing to indicate a ride to Wallingford to watch Piers jousting, unfortunately.

The tournament was, however, attended by the earls of Surrey (Edward II's nephew-in-law John de Warenne), Hereford (Edward's brother-in-law Humphrey de Bohun) and Arundel (Edmund Fitzalan), and apparently other earls and magnates who are not named, as the Vita Edwardi Secundi (ed. Denholm-Young, p. 2) says that "there were ranged on one side three or four earls with a strong troop...and not a few barons."  The Vita also says that "Sir Piers' side could not raise an earl, but almost all the younger and more athletic knights of the kingdom, whom persuasion or hope of reward could bring together, assisted him."  The Annales Paulini (ed. Stubbs, pp. 258-9) accuse Piers, whether correctly or not I don't know, of fielding 200 knights instead of the agreed sixty, and the St Albans chronicler 'Trokelowe' (ed. Riley, p. 65) says that Piers and his knights "most vilely trod underfoot" the opposition.  Oh dear, seems as though the high and mighty earls were defeated by Piers and his team and really didn't like it, and surely if Piers had tried to cheat by so dramatically increasing the number of knights on his side, the earls could simply have refused to compete.  Here's the Vita, which incidentally doesn't confirm the story in the St Paul's annals and Trokelowe that Piers cheated in some way: "So it was in this tournament his [Piers'] party had the upper hand and carried off the spoils, although the other side remained in possession of the field.  For it is a recognised rule of this game that he who loses most and is most frequently unhorsed, is adjudged the most valiant and the stronger."

The Annales Paulini say that Piers organised another tournament at Faversham to celebrate Edward's marriage to Isabella.  There is no other information about this, and nothing that I know of to confirm that this tournament did indeed take place, though Edward and Isabella's route from Dover (where they arrived on 7 February 1308) to London (where they arrived on 21 February) would have taken them past or through Faversham, so it seems possible.  The Annales also claim that this tournament caused anger among the barons, and that a third tournament which Edward II planned to hold at Stepney to celebrate his coronation on 25 February had to be cancelled when Piers told him he feared that the earls would have him killed if it went ahead and he participated.  For the record, I don't know of any occasion when Edward II is known to have jousted.  I wonder if his father forbade him from competing in his youth, given that the old king lost three sons in childhood and that for many years Edward of Caernarfon was his only male heir, and given the dangers of the sport.  The earl of Surrey's son and heir William de Warenne was killed jousting in 1286 when Edward was only two, and Duke John I of Brabant, father-in-law of Edward's sister Margaret, in 1294.

The Vita Edwardi Secundi says that the tournament of Wallingford "roused the earls and barons to still greater hatred of Piers."  Whether he broke the rules or not, the fact remained that he and his knights had destroyed the earls' dignity by knocking them off their horses into the mud, to their humiliation and anger.  Not only did Piers Gaveston dominate Edward II's favour to an incredible degree, the earls could match him neither in wit nor in military prowess.  Having said that, John de Warenne, earl of Surrey (whose father William was killed jousting in 1286), following a long period of hostility to Piers, changed his mind on Piers' return from his second exile in the summer of 1309: "Earl Warenne who, ever since the conclusion of the Wallingford tournament, had never shown Piers any welcome, became his inseparable friend and faithful helper."  No wonder the author of the Vita, who records this, exclaims in exasperation "See how often and abruptly great men change their sides...The love of magnates is as a game of dice, and the desires of the rich like feathers."  (pp. 7-8).


1) Elizabeth Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household, 1307-1327, p. 26; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 13-26; Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 9-13.

Women of Edward II's Reign: Aline Burnell

Part one of a two-part post about two of Hugh Despenser the Younger's sisters, Aline (or Alina), Lady Burnell and Isabel(la), Lady Hastings.  Hugh, Aline and Isabel were the oldest of the six Despenser siblings; the younger three were Philip, who died in 1313 leaving a baby son of the same name, Margaret, who married John, Lord St Amand, and Elizabeth, who married Ralph, Lord Camoys.

Hugh, Aline and Isabel's parents were Hugh Despenser the Elder, born on 1 March 1261, created earl of Winchester in 1322 by Edward II and executed by Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer in 1326, and Isabel(la) Beauchamp (died 1306), daughter of William Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (c. 1237-1298) and sister of Guy Beauchamp, the earl of Warwick who kidnapped and imprisoned Piers Gaveston in 1312.  Isabel Beauchamp's first husband Patrick Chaworth, with whom she had a daughter Maud, died in July 1283; Maud married Edward I's nephew Henry of Lancaster in or before 1297.  Isabel was the first cousin of, among others, Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster and Robert, Lord Clifford, killed at Bannockburn in June 1314.  I'd also like to reiterate that the Despensers were a very well-connected noble family, absolutely not the jumped-up nobodies of modern myth.  Hugh Despenser the Elder's mother Aline Basset (died 1281), heiress of her father Philip Basset, was countess of Norfolk by her second marriage to Roger Bigod, and Hugh married the earl of Warwick's daughter.  Edward I himself arranged the marriage of Hugh Despenser the Younger to his eldest granddaughter Eleanor de Clare in 1306.

Hugh Despenser the Elder and the widowed Isabel Beauchamp married probably in 1286; on 8 November 1287 Edward I acquitted Hugh of a debt of 2000 marks (£1333) for marrying Isabel without royal licence, though by then Hugh had paid almost £1000 of it.  [1]  Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing the Despenser children's dates of birth.  That of their older half-sister Maud Chaworth is known, 2 February 1282, as she was her father's heir and it was recorded in his Inquisition Post Mortem.  Likewise, we know Hugh Despenser the Elder's date of birth as it was recorded on the Fine Roll (1272-1307, p. 152), because he was his mother's heir and was allowed possession of his lands shortly before he turned twenty-one.  There was no reason, however, for anyone to note his children's dates of birth, and so they weren't recorded.

Aline, Lady Burnell

Aline, named after her paternal grandmother Aline Basset, countess of Norfolk, was the eldest of the Despenser daughters.  I'd also speculate that she was the eldest Despenser child and older than her brother Hugh the Younger, as she married in 1302 and he in 1306, and I'd estimate her date of birth as about 1287.  On 1 January 1296, Aline's father acquired a grant of "the marriage of the heirs of Philip Burnel, tenant in chief."  [2]  Philip Burnel or Burnell's son and heir was Edward Burnell, born around 22 July 1286 and thus nine years old at the time, who was also heir to his great-uncle Robert Burnell, chancellor of England and bishop of Bath and Wells (d. 1292), a close ally of Edward I.  Edward Burnell, almost certainly, was named in honour of Edward I.  His mother Maud Fitzalan was the sister of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel (d. 1302), which makes Edward the first cousin of Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel executed in 1326, like Edward's father-in-law Hugh Despenser the Elder, by Roger Mortimer and Isabella of France.  I've previously written a post about Edward Burnell's mother and sister and their matrimonial adventures.

Letters patent of 3 May 1302 record a grant of 1000 marks from Hugh Despenser the Elder to Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham (and patriarch of Jerusalem!), "of the marriage of Edward, son and heir of Sir Philip Burnel, for the purpose of marrying him to Alina, Sir Hugh's eldest daughter."  [3]  (I'm not sure why Hugh paid the money to Anthony Bek when in 1296 he himself had been granted the Burnell marriage; haven't investigated that part.)  Edward and Aline probably got married soon afterwards, so when Edward was sixteen or almost, and Aline perhaps a year or so younger.  On 6 December 1307, the escheator was ordered to deliver Edward's lands to him, as he was now twenty-one and had done homage to the king for them.  [4]

Edward and Aline had no children in their thirteen years or so of marriage, and rarely appear on record, apart from some acknowledgements of debts recorded on the Close Roll.  Edward died on 23 August (the eve of St Bartholomew) 1315 at the age of only twenty-nine.  [5]  His heir was his younger sister Maud, aged twenty-four or twenty-five, then the widow of Sir John Lovel (killed at Bannockburn in June 1314), who shortly afterwards married the Despenser adherent Sir John Haudlo.  Aline was assigned a fairly sizeable dower on 3 February 1316 during the Lincoln parliament, though in July 1317 "Alina late the wife of Edward Burnel, puts in her place Henry de Laverdon to sue for her dower in chancery of her husband's knights' fees and adowsons."  Only three days later, these were granted.  [6]

Aline spent many years living quietly as a well-off widow.  As is almost always the case with people who lived in the early fourteenth century, it's impossible to know what she felt or thought about anything; whether she and Edward Burnell had a happy marriage or not, what she thought of her brother Hugh the Younger's rise to power and in Edward II's affection from 1318 onwards.  It is notable, however, that despite outliving her husband by almost half a century, she never re-married.  The notorious gang leader Malcolm Musard, formerly an adherent of Aline's father, attacked a manor of hers sometime before 7 August 1326, when Edward II pardoned him "for the outlawry in the county of Worcester published against him while he was in prison on that account, for non-appearance before the king to answer touching a plea of trespass of Alina Burnel, on condition that he surrender forthwith to gaol, and stand his trial if the said Alina will proceed against him...".  [7]

The most important and interesting fact about Aline Burnell is that on 30 January 1326, when he was at Burgh in Suffolk - a day when I know he was having dinner with his sister-in-law Alice Hales, countess of Norfolk, and paying two musicians to perform for them - Edward II appointed her as custodian of the great North Wales castle of Conwy, where he had taken the homage of his Welsh lords as the new prince of Wales in the spring of 1301: "Appointment during pleasure of Aline Burnel to the custody of the castle of Coneweye, so that she answer for the safe custody thereof at her peril."  [8]  Aline's appointment was perhaps thanks to the influence of her powerful brother Hugh the Younger, royal chamberlain and 'favourite'.  It was a most unusual honour for a woman to be appointed to such a position, especially of an important castle such as Conwy.  The only other contemporary example I know of (though it had happened in earlier times) is Isabella Vescy, Edward II's second cousin, being appointed constable of Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland by Edward I in 1304 and confirmed in the role by Edward II on 23 November 1307, both grants made to her for life (the earlier one made on condition 'that she marry not').  [9]  Aline Burnell was replaced as constable of Conwy on 20 October 1326 by Sir William Erkalewe or Arcalowe, sheriff of Shropshire and Staffordshire.  [10]  Given the timing, when Edward II had fled to South Wales after the invasion, I'm sure the change came about only because he wanted an experienced military man in charge of such a strategically important castle, and that this replacement doesn't say anything at all about Aline's loyalty to the king or her abilities.  Erkalewe was closely associated with the Despenser family; in later years he was the steward of Aline's nephew Sir Hugh Despenser (d. 1349), and on 26 April 1338 Aline was granted "alienation in mortmain...to two chaplains to celebrate divine service daily in the chapel of St Giles, Lolleseye [Lulsley, Worcestershire] for the souls of the said Edward [Burnell] and Alina, Hugh le Despenser, her brother, and Hugh le Despenser, her cousin [recte nephew], William de Ercalewe and Walter de Lench."  [11]  Definitely no hard feelings, then.  Aline's inclusion of her notorious brother Hugh the Younger perhaps indicates that she remembered him with affection.

After the downfall and hideous executions of her father and brother in the late autumn of 1326, and the imprisonment of her sister-in-law Eleanor de Clare, Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer, to their credit, left Aline alone.  She did of course still have influential relatives, being for example the sister-in-law of Queen Isabella's uncle Henry, earl of Lancaster (her half-sister Maud Chaworth had died in about 1321).  On 8 October 1327, the reversion of Aline's Worcestershire manor of Martley - granted to her for life many years previously by her father Hugh the Elder - was awarded to Roger Mortimer's adherent John Wyard, at the request of Edward III's uncle Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent.  [12]  This of course was just a couple of weeks after the public announcement of the former King Edward II's death at Berkeley Castle.  I wonder how Aline felt about that.

Another interesting entry relating to Aline appears on the Patent Roll on 4 March 1327, only a few weeks into Edward III's reign, when she, William Erkalewe, ten other named men and unnamed others were accused by Richard de la Ryvere, former sheriff of Gloucestershire, of attacking his manor of 'Wyk Fokeram', Somerset, assaulting his servants and cutting down his trees.  [13]  When this took place, or what on earth was going on, I really don't know, but the entry is part of a flurry of similar complaints against former Despenser adherents and others around this time, many of them involving the Dunheved brothers and their followers, who later in 1327 temporarily freed the former Edward II from Berkeley Castle.  On 3 November 1329, and again on 24 April 1330 and 3 February and 4 June 1331, Aline was given letters of protection to travel to Santiago de Compostela on pilgrimage, and appointed two attorneys to act for her during her absence.  [14]

Born probably in Edward I's fourteenth or fifteenth regnal year, Aline Despenser Burnell lived into the thirty-seventh regnal year of his grandson Edward III.  She died on 16 May 1363, in her mid-seventies.  The dower lands she held from her marriage to the long-dead Edward Burnell reverted to Edward's heir, his nephew Nicholas Burnell, eldest surviving son of Edward's sister Maud and her second husband Sir John Haudlo, who took his mother's name (see my post attempting to untangle the complicated Burnell/Lovel/Haudlo situation).  An order to the escheator to take the lands of 'Alina late the wife of Edward Burnel, knight' into the king's hands was issued on 24 May 1363; she held lands in Norfolk, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.  Aline's heir was her brother Hugh the Younger's grandson Edward, Lord Despenser, born in 1336, who inherited from her the manors of Compton Dando in Somerset, Bushley and Suckley in Worcestershire, and Little Rissington and Sodbury in Gloucestershire.  [15]  On 16 November 1338, a commission of oyer and terminer had been granted to Aline's nephew Sir Hugh Despenser (uncle of her heir Edward Despenser), William Erkalewe, John Inge (also a long-term Despenser adherent and former sheriff of Glamorgan) and Alan de Asshe on the grounds that half a dozen men and women had attacked her manor of Compton Dando, stolen her goods and assaulted her servants.  [16]  Aline outlived her husband by forty-eight years, survived the grotesque deaths of her father and brother intact, and lived through Edward II's turbulent reign, the first decades of the Hundred Years War and the first two awful outbreaks of the Black Death in 1348/49 and 1361.  I wish we could know more, or indeed anything at all, about her inner life, and those of her contemporaries!

Sources

1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1279-1288, p. 462; Martyn Lawrence, 'Rise of a Royal Favourite: the Early Career of Hugh Despenser the Elder' in The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives (2006), ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson, p. 208. See also Close Rolls 1279-1288, p. 184: c. April 1282, Hugh acknowledges that he owes William Beauchamp, earl of Warwick 1600 marks.  A memo added later says he gave the earl the money for his marriage, which the earl claimed belonged to him of the king's gift.  Calendar of Patent Rolls 1272-1281, p. 439, 28 May 1281, is the grant to Warwick "of the marriage of Hugh le Depenser, tenant in chief."
2) Patent Rolls 1292-1301, p. 179.
3) A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte, vol. 4, no. A. 6278.
4) Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 13.
5) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1307-1327, pp. 390-394; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 254; C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, vol. 1, p. 166.
6) Close Rolls 1313-1318, pp. 263-264, 487-488, 557.
7) Patent Rolls 1324-1327, p. 304.
8) Patent Rolls 1324-1327, p. 215.
9) Fine Rolls 1272-1307, p. 528; Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 36.
10) Fine Rolls 1319-1327, p. 421.
11) Patent Rolls 1338-1240, p. 50.
12) Patent Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 180-181.
13) Patent Rolls 1327-1330, p. 85.
14) Patent Rolls 1327-1330,  pp. 454-455, 514; Ibid. 1330-1334, pp. 69, 84, 123.
15) Fine Rolls 1356-1368, pp. 277, 284; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1361-1365, pp. 371-373.
16) Patent Rolls 1338-1340, p. 183.

Round-Up

In which I trawl through the internet to see what's been said about Edward II lately, good and bad...

Jules' fantastic blog about Hugh Despenser the Younger and all things Edward II has a new address and a new look.  Check it out!  This is my favourite post of hers, about the practically unknown rescue by Hugh of Margaret, Lady Badlesmere (his wife Eleanor's first cousin) when she was attacked and besieged by a large group of miscreants in Hertfordshire in 1319.  See!  He wasn't all bad!

Why can't you spell properly?

Just spotted this delightful and semi-illiterate comment on a blog post about the many historical inaccuracies in Braveheart. What a charming, polite person!

Totally bonkers and extremely hard to follow comment seen on a history forum: "I don't think Eddy II was he was [sic] born in Wales that title was just hearsay. He came across this possibility when was 16. The proof as the hearsay does not stack up, it is not possible."  Ummmm what?  There is no doubt whatsoever that Edward II was born in Wales.  In his own lifetime he was often known as Edward of Caernarfon.  Caernarfon is in North Wales.  QED.  I don't understand the rest of the statement, even though it was written by a native speaker of English, so can't comment.

From a book review: "Isabella finds herself nothing more than a political pawn in a loveless marriage."  You could say exactly the same thing about Edward II himself being a 'political pawn', no?  I am so bored with this endless modern 'Royal women in the Middle Ages were mere pawns in marriage!' whine, as though royal men had any choice in who they married either (with the exception of Edward IV).  Both Edward and Isabella were raised with the knowledge that they'd have to marry another royal person for reasons of foreign policy and political expediency (both of them were betrothed for the first time as little more than infants); they weren't twenty-first-century people dropped into the fourteenth century with the expectation of marrying for love; their marriage ended disastrously but for many years was pretty successful, and certainly wasn't 'loveless'.

I loved the following comment on a history forum.  Yes yes yes!  Let's face it, it can't have been easy, being the son and heir of a man like Longshanks.

From the sublime to the ridiculous:

Aaaggghhhh!!  A reminder of why I sometimes cannot stand historical fiction, because it spreads this kind of nonsense.  Hugh Despenser didn't become Edward's 'favourite' until 1318 or later, by which time three of Edward and Isabella's four children had been born, so let's throw this particular notion into the rubbish bin where it belongs.

Stereotypes R Us!

Stereotypes R Us, part 2!

I love this comment on Tumblr, from a poster who's very well-informed about Edward II and clearly reads my blog.  Well said!

From a great comment on Tumblr to a truly awful one:

Firstly, Isabella was not a 'princess'.  The daughters of kings were not called that until the sixteenth century.  Isabella, like the daughters of other kings in her era, was addressed from birth as ma dame in French or domina in Latin, 'lady' or 'my lady'.  Edward of Caernarfon likewise was monsire Edward or dominus Edwardus from birth, '(my) lord Edward'.  As prince of Wales from February 1301, he was addressed as 'my lord Edward, prince of Wales' or sometimes just 'the prince' for short, but never - this is a key point - as 'Prince Edward'.  The only princess in England in the Middle Ages was Joan of Kent (1328-1385), Edward II's niece, who married his grandson Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales.

I'm uncomfortable with assertive declarations about the sexuality of people who lived 700 years ago, as in, assuming that Edward II was certainly 100% gay (which all too often leads to the notion that he couldn't possibly have been the father of his children*), or that Roger Mortimer was certainly straight or even 'unequivocally heterosexual'.  There are plenty of people I personally know very well about whom I couldn't, and wouldn't wish to, declare that their sexuality is 'unequivocally' anything, and I find it ludicrous to make such statements about people nearly 700 years dead.  It's presumptuous for one thing, and as Roger Mortimer wouldn't have thought of himself as heterosexual, let alone 'unequivocally' so, who are we to claim that he was?

* The history forum poster who made the comment above that 'Eddy II' might not have been born in Wales also made this assertion: "We all know he was gay. How come he was able to perform in the bedroom, he had four children. Edward, John, Eleanor and Joanna. I believe his wife had a lover called Roger Mortimer, Earl of March. Did he have some help in this direction?"  And "Sorry there has been to much recorded about him being gay, not to mention what happen with his death. I have known quite a few gay men and I know enough to say the last thing they would is go with a women. Although gay men like to talk and be friends with women, that where it stops there."

'Their princess was stood to the side, while the king ruled with his loverboy'.  Isabella was a queen consort, not regnant.  It wasn't her place to rule England.  And 'loverboy', oh please.

Yet again, we see the assumptions that Edward II and Isabella had only one child together, when in fact they had four, and that Isabella overthrew Edward when their only child was a toddler and they'd been married for about five minutes.  And we see yet again the malign influence of Braveheart, which gives the impression that Isabella - pregnant by William Wallace, of course - will rebel against her husband and rule England shortly after her father-in-law dies.  Edward and Isabella married in January 1308 and so had been married for nineteen years at the time of his forced abdication in January 1327, though admittedly they hadn't seen each other since March 1325.  That's still over seventeen years of marriage, however - hardly a short time.

January Anniversaries

Edward II-related things which happened in January.

1 January 1317: Pope John XXII wrote to both Edward II and Robert Bruce to confirm a two-year truce between them, addressing Edward as "our dearest son in Christ, Edward, illustrious king of England," and Robert as "our beloved son, the noble man, Robert de Bruce, holding himself king of Scotland."

2 (or possibly 3) January 1315: Funeral of Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, at Langley Priory, which Edward had founded in 1308.  Edward spent the vast sum of £300 on three cloths of gold to dress Piers' body, also paying fifteen pounds for food and sixty-four pounds for twenty-three tuns of wine, around 22,000 litres (I think).

3 January 1322: Death of Edward's brother-in-law Philip V of France, at the age of about thirty.  As Philip's two sons had died young, he was succeeded by his brother Charles IV.  Edward and Philip appear to have been on reasonably good terms: Philip sent Edward a gift of grapes in October 1316 and a box of rose sugar in September 1317, and Edward gave a massive twenty marks to the messenger who brought him news of the birth of Philip's son Louis in June 1316 (the boy died a few months later).

3 January 1323: Meeting at Lochmaben of Andrew Harclay, earl of Carlisle, and Robert Bruce, during which Harclay told Bruce that Edward II would acknowledge him as king of Scots.  Edward executed Harclay for treason exactly two months later.

5 January 1303: Edward of Caernarfon (aged eighteen) gave half a mark to three clerks of Windsor playing interludes before him.

8 January 1323 or before: Death by peine forte et dure of Robert Lewer, once a close ally of the king who loathed the Despensers and turned against Edward, and frankly was a bit of a thug.  Well, more than a bit.

9 January 1310: Edward seized the lands of Hugh Despenser the Younger, who had gone overseas without permission to take part in a jousting tournament.

9 January 1317: Coronation of Philip V as king of France.

11 January 1323: Near-escape of Maurice, Lord Berkeley and other Contrariants from Wallingford Castle.

11 January 1372: Death of Eleanor of Lancaster, countess of Arundel, whose father Henry was Edward's first cousin.

c. 12 January 1312: Birth in York of Piers Gaveston and Margaret de Clare's only child Joan Gaveston, Edward's great-niece, who died at Amesbury Priory on 13 January 1325.

12 January 1321: Death of Marie of Brabant, dowager queen of France, widow of Philip III (died 1285) and stepmother of Philip IV.  Marie outlived all her three children, who included Edward II's stepmother Queen Marguerite.

13 January 1312: Reunion of Edward II and Piers Gaveston in Knaresborough; they travelled the seventeen miles to York the same day so that Piers could see his wife and newborn daughter.

14 January 1330: William Melton, archbishop of York and long-term friend and ally of Edward II, told the mayor of London that the former king was still alive and in good health (over two years after Edward's funeral).

16 January 1245: Birth of Edward II's uncle Edmund, earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, youngest surviving child of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence.

17 January 1334: Death of Edward's first cousin John of Brittany, earl of Richmond, son of Edward I's sister Beatrice and Duke John II of Brittany, brother of Duke Arthur II, in his mid-sixties at the time of his death (born 1268).  Oddly, John never married.

18 January 1297: Wedding in Ipswich of Edward's fourteen-year-old sister Elizabeth and twelve-year-old Count John I of Holland.  Edward of Caernarfon, also twelve, gave them a gold cup as a wedding gift.

18 January 1312: Edward declared the newly returned Piers Gaveston "good and loyal," and restored the earldom of Cornwall to him.

19 January 1326: Murder of Sir Roger Belers, chief baron of the Exchequer.

20 January 1327: A deputation from parliament visited Edward in captivity at Kenilworth Castle to persuade him to give up his throne to his son.  Various chroniclers say that Edward wore black and wept, which may well be true, though there's no real way of knowing what actually happened that day.  I doubt that he fainted as is also claimed in some chronicles - Edward certainly doesn't strike me as a fainting type - or that he believed an alleged threat that if he didn't abdicate, an unnamed other person, presumably Roger Mortimer, would take the throne instead (a very silly and improbable story).  According to the Flores Historiarum, Edward said "I greatly lament that I have so utterly failed my people, but I could not be other than I am."  One of the members of the deputation sent to Kenilworth was William Trussell.  I find it hard to escape the conclusion that Trussell was sent deliberately in order to inflict maximum emotional pain on Edward, as he had pronounced the death sentence on Hugh Despenser the Younger on 24 November.  If so, the plan backfired: Trussell "knelt before our lord the king and cried him mercy, begging him to pardon his trespasses against him, and he [Edward] pardoned him and gave him the sign of peace in front of them all." (Pipewell Chronicle)

21 January 1326: Edward founded Oriel College at Oxford University.

22 January 1322: Surrender of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk to the king at Shrewsbury, during the Contrariant rebellion.

24 January 1327: Last day of Edward II's reign, after nineteen and a half years.  For the first time ever in England, a king had been forced to abdicate, and was still alive when his son took the throne.

25 January 1308: Wedding of Edward II and Isabella of France in Boulogne, attended by much of the European royalty and nobility.

25 January 1327: Official start of the reign of fourteen-year-old Edward III, nineteen years to the day after his parents' wedding.

25 or 26 January 1328: Wedding of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault in York Minster.

26 January 1316: The Welsh nobleman Llywelyn Bren attacked the great South Wales stronghold of Caerphilly, built by Edward's brother-in-law Gilbert 'the Red' in the 1270s.

27 January 1316: Start of an eventful parliament in Lincoln.

28 January 1271: Death of Isabella of France's grandmother Isabel of Aragon, queen of France - wife of Philip III and mother of Philip IV - after whom Isabella was presumably named.

28 January 1312: Birth of Joan or Jeanne, only child of the future Louis X of France and his first wife Marguerite of Burgundy, later queen of Navarre in her own right.

29 January 1312: Shortly after Piers Gaveston's return from his third exile, Edward gave a pound each to his minstrels Peter Duzedeys, Roger the Trumpeter and Janin the Nakerer for performing for him.

30 January 1326: Edward appointed Hugh Despenser the Younger's sister Aline Burnell constable of Conwy Castle in North Wales, a very rare honour for a woman.

31 January 1308: Sealing of the Boulogne Agreement by a group of English noblemen in France attending the king's wedding, including the earls of Pembroke, Lincoln, Surrey and Hereford. This document attempted to separate the two sides of kingship: the king as a person, and the Crown, and stated that the barons' loyalty was due less to the current king than to the Crown itself. This theory, the 'doctrine of capacities', was to rear its head again during Edward's reign. The Agreement probably demonstrates the enormous concern over Edward's reliance on Piers Gaveston, though it also reflects the conflicts which arose between the king and the barons at the end of Edward I's reign, and Piers was not in fact mentioned.

Was Edward II Violent?

Recently I was reading through the Polychronicon, a chronicle written around 1350 by Ranulph or Ralph Higden, a monk of Chester.  It has this to say on the subject of Edward II:

"A handsome man, of outstanding strength...He forsook the company of lords, and fraternised with harlots, singers, actors, carters, ditchers, oarsmen, sailors, and others who practise the mechanical arts...He was prodigal in giving, bountiful and splendid in living, quick and unpredictable in speech...savage with members of his household, and passionately attached to one particular person, whom he cherished above all..." (Bold mine).  [1]

The part 'savage with members of his household' immediately grabbed my attention.  I've also seen it quoted as 'lashed out at members of his household' or as 'cruel to his household'.  Frankly I find this quite astonishing.  There's no doubt at all that Edward II had a vile temper, as did most of the Plantagenet kings, and certainly he was a capricious and unpredictable person prone to difficult moods - he can't have been an easy man to be around sometimes - but I've never seen any confirmation anywhere else that he was ever actually violent, and definitely not with members of his own household.  All the evidence I've seen from Edward's household accounts indicates mutual affection between the king and the men who served him closely.  The only possible indications that he was capable of violence are, to my mind, unreliable: statements by Roger Mortimer and later Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford, that if Queen Isabella returned to her husband in 1326/27 her life would be in danger from him, and in the very pro-Lancastrian Brut chronicle there's a passage wherein Edward was informed after his deposition that people suspected him of wanting to strangle his wife and son Edward III to death.  He responded "God knows, I thought it never, and now I would that I were dead! So would God that I were! For then were all my sorrow passed."  [2]  Edward's horrified reaction, that he would rather be dead than have people think him capable of murdering his wife and child, is surely an indication that he had never thought such a thing.  Isabella needed an excuse in 1327 not to return to her lawful husband; claiming that he might potentially hurt or even kill her provided a cast-iron one, and Roger Mortimer and their ally Orleton are hardly unbiased witnesses.

I can't, however, conclusively prove that Higden was mistaken in his assertion.  Perhaps Edward II did indeed lash out at members of his household when in a rage, and there's just no other evidence of it which survives.  This lack of corroborating evidence in itself doesn't necessarily make Higden wrong, of course, and the rest of his description of the king seems very accurate.  (Higden also says that Edward habitually drank too much, and spilled state secrets while in his cups.  That strikes me as entirely plausible.)  I'm inclined to think, however, that at least in this instance, Higden confused Edward with his father.  We do know that Edward I assaulted servants on occasion - he had to pay twenty marks' compensation to a squire at his daughter Margaret's wedding in 1290 after hitting him with a stick - and then there are the famous stories when he assaulted his own son Edward of Caernarfon near the end of his life and pulled out handfuls of his hair, and the earlier occasion when he was so exasperated with his daughter Elizabeth he tore the coronet off her head and threw it in the fire.  There's also Edward I's cruelty as a young man, when for example he and some of his followers had another young man they encountered mutilated for very little reason.  Here, for the record, is an example of Edward II's temper: on one occasion in the 1320s he flew into such a screaming rage with his ally Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, that the archbishop pretended that he had to make an urgent visitation to his cathedral in order to escape from the king's presence.  OK, shouting and ranting in an archbishop's face isn't very pleasant behaviour, but given that Edward's great-great-grandfather Henry II had the archbishop of Canterbury assassinated and his great-grandson Henry IV had the archbishop of York executed, it's hardly that bad.  Edward II's first cousin Sancho IV of Castile, incidentally and to put Edward's relations with his barons into some kind of perspective, killed dissident nobles with his own hands.  (Which was perhaps something Edward wished was possible in England in the weeks and months after Piers Gaveston's execution.)

As for Edward being cruel or savage to his household in ways that didn't necessarily involve violence, well, perhaps, but I don't really see it.  I've pored over Edward II's household accounts and only see the king's frequent generosity towards his servants.  The fact that many members of his household joined the Dunheveds' attempts to free him from Berkeley in 1327 and the earl of Kent's plot to free him in 1330 - willing to help him long after his downfall and even years after his alleged death - doesn't indicate to me that he had been cruel towards them.

In conclusion, no, I tend not to think that Edward II was physically violent towards anyone and especially not his servants, despite his temper and occasional rages.  If he had been, I'm sure we'd have more evidence of it in chronicles, or, as we do for his father, records of compensation paid to injured servants (even the king wasn't allowed to hit people with impunity!).  There is, for example, a record of Edward of Caernarfon as prince of Wales in February 1303 paying four shillings in compensation to his Fool Robert Bussard or Buffard for accidentally injuring him by playing some unspecified trick on him while they were swimming in the river at Windsor.  Although it seems highly likely that Edward drank too much sometimes, alcohol seems to have made him liable to talk too much rather than aggressive.  For all Edward II's numerous faults, I rather doubt that being violent was one of them, and I think that probably Ranulph Higden mistakenly had his father in mind when he thought that Edward assaulted his servants.

Sources

1) Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, monachi Cestrensis, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby (1857), vol. viii, p. 299.
2) The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie (1906) vol. 1, pp. 252-253.