Friday Facts

More interesting stuff about Edward II, his reign and his family.  :-)

- Edward's grandfather King Fernando III of Castile and Leon captured Seville from the Moors in December 1248, and supposedly mocked his Muslim enemies by riding his horse up the Giralda tower, the minuet of Seville's Great Mosque - perhaps one of the factors which prompted a Muslim writer to describe him as "the tyrant, the cursed one."

- After Edward's ally Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, died in early 1311, his daughter Alice's husband Thomas of Lancaster, Edward's first cousin, inherited Lincoln's lands by right of his wife.  Lancaster had to pay homage to Edward for his new lands, but refused to cross the Tweed into Scotland, where Edward was taking part in one of his unsuccessful campaigns, to do so.  Edward refused to return to England to accept the homage.  Lancaster threatened to take a hundred knights to forcibly enter his lands.  Eventually Edward caved in and agreed to meet his cousin at Haggerston, on the English side of the river, perhaps to save any future legal difficulties because Lancaster hadn't paid homage to him in England.

- Before his accession, Edward was usually named in documents as 'Lord Edward, prince of Wales' (in French, monsire Edward prince de Gales, and in Latin, Dominus Edwardus princeps Wallie).

- After he fled from the field of Bannockburn to safety at Dunbar Castle, Edward granted one William Franceis an income of fifty marks annually in gratitude for the unspecified "kind service he lately performed for the king in his presence at Dunbar."

- On 1 January 1317, Pope John XXII wrote to both Edward 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."

- Edward's father-in-law Philippe IV of France died in a hunting accident on 29 November 1314; on 15 December, Edward ordered the archbishops of Canterbury and York, all the bishops and twenty-eight abbots to "celebrate exequies" for him.  

- Nine days before this order, on St Nicholas's Day, the king had given two pounds to Robert Tyeis, who officiated as boy-bishop in the chapel of his favourite manor of Langley.  In 1316, Edward gave six shillings and eight pence to John, son of Alan of Scrooby, who officiated as boy-bishop in his chapel on St Nicholas's Day, and ten shillings to the unnamed child who acted as boy-bishop in his presence at St Mary's Church in Nottingham on 28 December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

- One of Edward's clerks, Master James de Ispannia ('of Spain'), a canon of St Pauls in London whom the king appointed as one of the Chamberlains of the Exchequer of the Receipt in 1317, appears to have been his first cousin, presumably an illegitimate son of one of Eleanor of Castile's many brothers, though which one is uncertain.

- In August 1320, Edward wrote to the king of Cyprus, asking him to protect three Dominican friars going there to preach to the 'Saracens'.  The king is not named in the letter, which opens "To the magnificent lord prince..., by the grace of God illustrious king of Cyprus," as though no-one was sure what he was called.  In fact, he was Henry II de Lusignan, Edward II's third cousin twice removed via common descent from Eleanor of Aquitaine.