Edward II's Return to England, February 1308

Today marks the 701st anniversary of Edward II's return to England after marrying Isabella of France in Boulogne. On 7 February 1308, around three in the afternoon ('the ninth hour'), the king and his bride arrived in Dover, and Isabella got her first look at the country that would be her home for the next half a century.

Edward and Isabella's arrival is mostly famous, or infamous, for Edward's greeting of his friend Piers Gaveston, whom he had - scandalously - left behind as regent. Ignoring everyone else, Edward is said to have "run to Piers among them, giving him kisses and repeated embraces; he was adored with a singular familiarity. Which special familiarity, already known to the magnates, furnished fuel to their jealousy." [1] The fourteenth century was a tactile age when demonstrative greetings were entirely normal, and the king's behaviour doesn't necessarily imply that the men were lovers - it was the fact that Edward singled Piers out for attention that was the problem.

A scene where a horrified/angry/disgusted/shocked Isabella watches her new husband hug and kiss his Gascon friend is practically obligatory in novels featuring Edward II, and in a few works of non-fiction too. But this entry on the Fine Roll makes it clear that Edward and Isabella didn't land ashore together:

"Be it remembered that on Wednesday after the Purification, 1 Edward II, the king, returning from beyond seas, to wit, from Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he took to wife Isabel, daughter of the king of France, touched at Dover in his barge about the ninth hour, Hugh le Despenser [the Elder] and the lord of Castellione in Gascony being in his company, and the queen a little afterward touched there with certain ladies accompanying her." [2]

So whether Isabella even saw Edward hug and kiss Piers is debatable. (Though possibly this became a common enough sight for her over the next few years.) A group of noblemen and women greeted the king and queen on their arrival:

- Edward's sister Elizabeth, countess of Hereford.
- Alicia, dowager countess of Norfolk and sister of the count of Hainault and Holland. Her niece Philippa of Hainault would marry Edward and Isabella's son twenty years later.
- Henry, brother of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, Isabella's uncle and Edward's first cousin.
- Robert Mohaut and Amaury St Amand. Why those two men particularly, I don't know - they seem kind of random.

Evidently, the king and queen arrived later than expected - Piers Gaveston, as regent, had sent out orders to the above on 22 January to be at Dover on the Sunday after the Purification, three days before Edward and Isabella in fact arrived. [3]

The royal couple spent two or three days at Dover, then travelled through Kent towards London. On the way, they spent five days at the palace of Eltham, which Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem, had given to Edward in 1305. Edward granted it to Isabella in 1311. On 21 February, the mayor and aldermen of London rode out to greet the new king and queen, and in great procession, cheered by a crowd of thousands, Edward and Isabella rode through the city to the Tower. London was rather less filthy than usual and the streets had been lavishly decorated, so that the city annalist wrote with pride and enormous exaggeration that it resembled "a new Jerusalem." [4] Edward and Isabella spent three nights at the Tower of London, then moved on to Westminster, where on Sunday 25 February their coronation and the farcical banquet took place.

Sources

1) Chronica monasterii S. Albani. Johannis de Trokelowe, et Henrici de Blaneforde, monachorum S. Albani, p. 65.
2) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 14.
3) Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 51.
4) Annales Londoniensis, p. 152.