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.

Edward II's Christmases

I've written plenty of Christmas posts in previous years: see here, here, here, here, here and here.  Unbelievably, this is the ninth Christmas since I started the blog on 3 December 2005!  It's scary how fast time passes.  Don't worry; even after more than eight years and 500 posts, I'm not going anywhere, and the Edward II blog will continue for many more years yet.  Oh yes!

Here's a guest post by me on Ivan Fowler's excellent blog, about what Edward II ate and drank and the ceremony around dining at his court.  Do check out Ivan's blog; he's doing a lot of terrific work on Edward's afterlife in Italy, and has a novel about it too, Towards Auramala.  And if you're in the mood for a great Robin Hood novel set in Edward II's reign, I definitely recommend Steven McKay's Wolf's Head, which has lots of very positive reviews.

In this post I'm going to look at where Edward II spent each Christmas of his reign, and where possible add a little information too.

- Christmas 1307: Twenty-three-year-old Edward, not yet crowned king, was at Westminster, which is apparent from a few entries in the chancery rolls and in Exchequer documents.  Although the Annales Paulini claims that he spent Christmas at Wye in Kent with Piers Gaveston, Edward did not in fact arrive at Wye until 3 January 1308, on his way to Dover from where he sailed to France on 22 January to marry Isabella in Boulogne.  On 26 December 1307 (at Westminster), Edward took the extraordinary step of appointing Piers custos regni, keeper of the realm, while he travelled to France to marry Isabella (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-13, p. 31).  The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi surely spoke for many when he exclaimed "An astonishing thing, that he who had lately been an exile and outcast from England should now be made ruler and guardian of the realm."

- Christmas 1308: At Windsor, with the queen.  Piers Gaveston was then in exile.

- Christmas 1309: At his favourite residence of (King's) Langley in Hertfordshire, with the queen and Piers Gaveston.  According to the Vita, "the lord king and Piers with the whole household directed their steps to a place of which the king was fond.  The place is called Langley, near the town of St Albans.  There they passed the festive season, fully making up for former absence by their long wished-for sessions of daily and intimate conversation."

- Christmas 1310: At the port of Berwick-upon-Tweed, with the queen.  Eight days before Christmas, Edward sent Sir Robert Clifford and Sir Robert FitzPain to Selkirk to "speak with Robert de Brus," and sometime before 19 February 1311 sent his nephew the earl of Gloucester and Piers Gaveston to Melrose for the same purpose, "but it was said he [Robert Bruce] had been warned by some he would be taken, and therefore departed, so they have had no parley." (Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-57, p. 39.)

- Christmas 1311: At Westminster, with Isabella.  The fortunate survival of Isabella's household book at this time makes interesting reading: the queen despatched "various precious goods" to the very pregnant Margaret Gaveston at Wallingford Castle as a New Year gift, and sent letters to Edward II's sister Mary the nun, Lady Mortimer, either the mother or wife of her future favourite Roger Mortimer, and Hugh Despenser the Elder, whom she would have executed in 1326.  Although even the usually very well-informed Vita Edwardi Secundi claims that Edward spent Christmas with Piers Gaveston, as do Annales Londonienses and the Bridlington chronicler, this is not the case: Edward gave Piers' messenger a pound on 23 December for bringing him Piers' letters (as pointed out by J.S. Hamilton in his biography of Piers).

- Christmas 1312: At Windsor with the queen and their six-week-old son Edward of Windsor, earl of Chester.  The king spent almost £1250 on cloth for himself, his wife and son and their retainers in order for the royal family to look as splendid as possible during the festive season at Windsor.  On 19 December, he sent a palfrey horse worth six pounds and a saddle "with a lion of pearls, and covered with purple cloth" worth five pounds to Nichola, wife of Piers Lubaud, the Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow.  Why Nichola was singled out for this honour is not clear, although it is probable that Lubaud was a cousin of Piers Gaveston.

- Christmas 1313: At Westminster, presumably with the queen.  The situation in England was calmer as Edward had on 16 October issued pardons to all the men responsible for "all causes of anger, indignation, suits, accusations, &c., arisen in any manner on account of Peter de Gavaston, from the time of the king's marriage with his dear companion Isabella, whether on account of the capture, detention, or death of Peter de Gavaston, or on account of any forcible entries into any towns or castles, or any sieges of the same; or on account of having borne arms, or of having taken any prisoners, or of having entered into any confederacies whatever, or in any other manner touching or concerning Peter de Gavaston, or that which befell him." (Patent Rolls 1313-17, p. 21.)

- Christmas 1314: At Windsor, with the queen.  On 6 December, the feast day of St Nicholas, the couple had been at Langley, where the king gave two pounds to Robert Tyeis, who officiated as boy-bishop in his chapel.  Edward played the board game of 'tables' on Christmas Eve with members of his entourage.  On 27 December, he gave the chancellor and scholars of Oxford University twenty pounds to pray for Piers Gaveston's soul, and on 2 or 3 January 1315 finally buried him, two and a half years after his death, at the Dominican priory at Langley which he had founded in 1308.

- Christmas 1315: At the royal hunting lodge of Clipstone, with the queen.  Although they probably didn't yet know it, Isabella was recently pregnant with their second son John of Eltham, who was born on 15 August 1316.

- Christmas 1316: At Nottingham, having been eighteen miles away at Clipstone again on Christmas Eve.  As was Edward's habit, he played at dice on Christmas Eve, spending a massive five pounds on this occasion (more than most of his subjects lived on in a year).  He 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.

- Christmas 1317: At Westminster with the queen, who was about three months pregnant with their third child Eleanor of Woodstock.  Edward spent one pound, thirteen shillings and six pence on a "great wooden table" to be placed in the palace hall, and also paid thirty pounds to Thomas de Hebenhith, mercer of London, for "a great hanging of wool, woven with figures of the king and earls on it, for the king’s service in his hall, on solemn festivals."  By New Year, someone had realised that constantly taking the hanging up and down was damaging it, so Edward paid Thomas de Verlay six shillings and three pence to make and sew a border of green cloth around it.

- Christmas 1318: At Beverley in Yorkshire.

- Christmas 1319: At York, where, as I pointed out in the last post, Edward invited the thirty-two scholars of his 1317 foundation at the University of Cambridge to join him.  Only seven of them arrived on time.

- Christmas 1320: At Marlborough in Wiltshire, probably with Isabella, who was once again pregnant, with their youngest child Joan.  Edward spent nearly sixty pounds on the festivities for Christmas and Epiphany.

- Christmas 1321: At Cirencester in Gloucestershire, where he had ordered his army against the Contrariants to muster.  He spent eighty-seven pounds on the festivities, and 115 pounds for "sixteen pieces of cloth for the apparelling of ourselves and our dear companion [Isabella], also furs, against the next feast of Christmas," also ordering more cloth and linen for Isabella and her damsels and "other things of which we stand in need, against the great feast."

- Christmas 1322: At York after the failure of his latest and last campaign in Scotland; I'm not sure if Isabella was with him or not. Edward paid two women for singing for him in the garden of the Franciscans on 26 December, presumably a mild day. The much later chronicler Thomas Walsingham says that Edward "showed a joyful expression" over the Christmas season "though his heart was savagely tormented," and that he was hated in the north of England for his failures in Scotland and his "witless behaviour."

- Christmas 1323: At Kenilworth with the queen, where Edward gave a pound each to two minstrels of the bishop of Ely who performed for them. He also gave half a mark each to three of his vigiles or watchmen to buy themselves "winter tunics for their night vigils."

- Christmas 1324: At Nottingham, and again, I'm not sure whether Isabella was with him or not.   Edward gave an Epiphany gift of fifty shillings to his minstrels and two shillings to his piper Little Alein for his performance.

- Christmas 1325: At Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Edward's last as a free man.  Isabella was in France and refusing to return to him.

- Christmas 1326: At Kenilworth in captivity, while a council at Wallingford debated his fate.  Edward's state of mind, given that he was imprisoned and his friends executed, can hardly be guessed at.

This will be the last post for a little while as I'm on holiday, so I'll take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and happy New Year, from me and Edward II! :-)

Edward II and Oxbridge (2)

This is a continuation of my earlier post detailing Edward II's foundation of two Oxbridge colleges: King's Hall at Cambridge University in 1317 and Oriel College at Oxford University in 1326.

How did Edward II celebrate the tenth anniversary of his succession to the throne, on 7 July 1317?  By founding a college at Cambridge University, of course!  To quote from W.W. Rouse Ball's The King's Scholars and King's Hall (1917), on that date "Edward II issued a writ to the sheriff of Cambridgeshire directing him to pay out of royal moneys in his hands the sums necessary for the maintenance in the University of Cambridge of certain scholars whom the king proposed to send there...Two days later the first ten [or perhaps twelve; see below] scholars, with John de Baggeshot their warden, arrived in Cambridge, and took up their residence in a house hired for them at the expense of the crown."  By Christmas 1319, when the scholars of King's Hall (as it became known) spent the festive season with the king in York, there were thirty-two of them, maintained clothes and all at Edward II's expense.

W.W. Rouse Ball's excellent work on King's Hall and its early history details the lives of the scholars.  They received around nine yards of cloth annually at Christmas to make their robes and were also given shoes, while the warden received two sets of robes a year, the winter set fur-lined.  The warden Simon de Bury was given a tunic and a long tabard with hood, lined with budge (sheep's wool) in 1325.  The scholars also received pocket money: half a mark (six shillings and eight pence) twice a year.  They had to be at least fourteen years old and with a good knowledge of Latin to be accepted, and of course of good knowledge and ability in general.  The journeys of the thirty-two scholars from Cambridge to York to spend Christmas 1319 with Edward II is documented by Rouse Ball: six of them plus the warden left Cambridge on 20 December and arrived 150+ miles away in York on horseback a mere four days later on Christmas Eve, which was making excellent time given the vagaries of travelling in the dead of winter, while the remaining twenty-six left on the same day but didn't arrive until 28 December.  (Edward II's reaction to their tardiness is sadly unrecorded.)  While in York, one scholar was involved in an assault on a man named William Hardy, presumably a local resident, and was left behind in disgrace when the others returned to Cambridge.

Alan B. Cobban's The King's Hall Within the University of Cambridge in the Later Middle Ages also contains a wealth of information about Edward II's foundation.  It was properly designated at the time as Aula scolarium Regis Canterbrigiae, or Aula Regis for short.  Cobban cites the beginning of Edward's writ of 7 July 1317: Come nous eioms envoiez noz chers clercs Johan de Baggeshote et douze autres einfaunz de notre chapelle a luniversite de Cantebr' a demorer y et demody a nos coustages..., "As we have sent our dear clerk John Bagshot and twelve other children of our chapel to the university of Cambridge to remain there and to be at our expense...".  In 1546, the King's Hall was incorporated into the new foundation of Trinity College, along with Michaelhouse College, founded in 1324 by Edward's ally Hervey Stanton or Staunton, chief justice of the King's Bench.

Edward II also co-founded Oriel College at Oxford with his clerk Adam Brome on 21 January 1326, and the foundation charter says that love of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a desire to increase her "divine cult" motivated him to establish the college.  The king declared his zeal for sound learning and religious knowledge, granted Brome, the first college provost, and the scholars permission to acquire sixty pounds worth of lands and property, and specifically requested that five or six of the first ten scholars be students of canon law. The foundation was originally named the Hall of the Blessed Mary; the name 'Oriel' comes from a house called La Oriole granted to the college after Edward's deposition, and the college's full name is still "The House of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, commonly called Oriel College, of the Foundation of Edward the Second of famous memory, sometime King of England."

Part of the entry on the Charter Roll relating to the foundation of Oriel states:

"Ordinance for a college of scholars studying in theology and dialectic in the university of Oxford, to be governed by a provost, to which office Adam de Brom, king's clerk, is appointed; and for the habitation and support of the said provost and scholars, gift to them of a messuage, five shops, five solars and one cellar in Oxford in the parish of St Mary, late of Roger le Mareschal, parson of the church of Tackeley, and of a messuage in the suburbs of Oxford called ' La Perilloshalle'..." (Calendar of Charter Rolls 1300-1326, pp. 481-2, 485-6).

Whatever Edward II's numerous faults, flaws, mistakes and ineptitude, his establishment of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge universities is something that should be remembered and acknowledged.  Edward is sometimes, for reasons which escape me, deemed to be 'stupid'.  To this I can only respond that 'stupid' people generally don't care about learning to the extent that they found and endow colleges at the only two universities which existed in his kingdom then, which Edward, incidentally, described as "the twin jewels of our crown."  Hardly anyone else in the entire long history of Oxford (founded before 1096) and Cambridge (founded in or before 1209) has founded colleges at both universities, Edward's descendant Henry VI, who founded King's College at Cambridge and All Souls at Oxford, being the only other person I can think of.  So the next time you see someone sneering at Edward II for being an utter disaster, you might like to remind them of that particular achievement.

Anniversary and Wrongness

Have just realised that I missed the eighth anniversary of the blog two days ago!  Yes, I began the Edward II blog on 3 December 2005, and this is the 505th post.

Anniversaries in Edward II Land this week:

- 1 December 1319: According to the Sempringham annalist, "there was a general earthquake in England, with great sound and much noise." On the same day, Edward granted powers to four men to make a truce with Robert Bruce.  Robert confirmed it on the 22nd.

- 1 December 1325: Edward wrote to Isabella, then in Paris refusing to return to him until Hugh Despenser was removed from his side. This is the last (known) letter he ever sent to his wife.

- 2 December 1307: Piers Gaveston held a famous jousting tournament at his castle of Wallingford.

- 4 December 1307: Edward II wrote to the kings of Sicily, Castile, Portugal and Aragon, telling them that he believed the charges of his soon-to-be father-in-law Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V against the Knights Templar were nothing more than "the slanders of ill-natured men, who are animated…with a spirit of cupidity and envy," asking them to remember the Templars' devotion, honesty and long service to the Christian faith, and saying that belief in the accusations was "hardly to be entertained."

- 6 December 1318: the leading members of Edward II's household - Bartholomew Badlesmere, steward; Hugh Despenser the Younger, chamberlain; Roger Northburgh, treasurer; Gilbert Wigton, controller of the Wardrobe - created a Household Ordinance, the second oldest extant in England.

- 8 December 1321: Edward issued a safe-conduct for Hugh Despenser the Younger to return to England, "in pursuance of his petition that the judgement of exile and disherison lately passed upon him by certain magnates contains errors and should be annulled."

- 10 December 1307: Edward wrote to Clement V with reference to the Templars, saying that he had heard "a rumour of infamy, a rumour indeed full of bitterness, terrible to think of, horrible to hear, and detestable in wickedness" and declaring that "we are unable to believe in suspicious stories of this kind until we know with greater certainty about these things."

 

Now I'm going to respond to some hideously wrong things I've seen posted about Edward II and Isabella online in the last few weeks:

We are told that Isabella "was a slender, pale-skinned blonde with sparkling blue eyes and a full mouth."  No source records Isabella’s appearance, other than that she was very beautiful.  This account, presented as fact, is pure fiction.  We have no idea whether her hair was blonde or black or chestnut brown or auburn, whether she was slender or plump, short or tall, pale-skinned or darker, whether she had blue or green or hazel or brown eyes.

"Like the female progeny of all the Royal Households of Europe, Isabella was a pawn in the Affairs of State and whilst still an infant she was betrothed to the future King Edward II of England. The sexual proclivities of the older Edward were already being questioned and it was early suggested that the marriage would be neither happy nor fruitful."

I am so, soooooo bored with this endless, stupid 'pawn' business to describe royal and noble women in the Middle Ages.  Edward II had no choice about marrying Isabella either, and was first betrothed in the interests of his father's foreign policy when he was only five, but no-one calls him a 'pawn', do they?  No-one calls their son Edward III a 'pawn' because Isabella used him to make an alliance with Hainault in the summer of 1326.  No-one suggested beforehand that Edward and Isabella’s marriage would not be happy or fruitful, and although her uncles who attended her and Edward's coronation were supposedly angry at the king's preferential treatment of Piers Gaveston there, any comments that Edward and Isabella's marriage was therefore doomed (doomed, I tell you, dooooooomed!) were written with hindsight many years later.  They had four children together.  How was their marriage not fruitful? As I've suggested before (and here), their relationship was for many years far more successful than is commonly supposed.  And finally, I wonder who exactly was already 'questioning' Edward of Caernarfon's 'sexual proclivities' as early as 1299 when he was only fifteen, and where were they doing this?

"Isabella arrived in England in 1307, aged 15 and it was rumoured that the elderly Edward I himself deprived Isabella of her virginity because he doubted his homosexual son’s ability to do so."  

AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  Isabella and Edward I never met.  She arrived in England after her marriage on 7 February 1308 when she was twelve, seven months after the death of Edward I.  I repeat: Isabella of France and Edward I never met.  Where the hell does this nonsense about a lecherous Edward I in his late sixties sleeping with his daughter-in-law come from?  I've seen it before and it baffles me.  I presume it's based on his character as invented in Braveheart.

"...Edward adored the gowns just not on her. Her jewellery he gave away to his favourite Piers Gaveston who proceeded to wear as much of it as possible whenever he was in her presence. She was humbled and humiliated time and time again particularly as her husband took a string of low-born male lovers. She hated the way he openly flaunted his homosexuality, the hugging and kissing in public displays of affection, the dancing with young men or balancing them on his knee at banquets."

 The tedious old 'Edward gave Isabella's jewels to Piers’ story AGAIN.  He didn't.  Piers deliberately wore the jewels in front of the queen?  Fiction.  Edward dancing with young men and balancing them on his knee?  Fiction.  He 'adored the gowns'?  Oh really?  Stereotype of gay men, and fiction.  A 'string of low-born male lovers'?  Fiction.  If that means Piers Gaveston, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and Hugh Despenser, none of them were 'low-born'.  Piers' father was one of the leading barons of Béarn; Hugh Audley was closely related to the Mortimers; Roger Damory came from a long line of Oxfordshire knights; Hugh Despenser was nephew and grandson of earls of Warwick.  

"Throughout this period of instability [around Piers Gaveston's death], Isabella, who had herself taken the ambitious Sir Roger Mortimer as a lover, conspired with her husband’s enemies."

Much, much, much too early for Isabella to take Roger Mortimer 'as a lover', which didn't happen until late 1325 or early 1326, certainly not 1312 when Roger wasn't in England anyway.  And there is precisely no evidence that Isabella was opposed to Piers Gaveston or welcomed his death or had anything to do with it or that she 'conspired' with Edward's enemies.  Fiction, fiction, fiction.  People confuse Isabella's actions against the Despensers in the 1320s and project them back to fifteen years earlier, and assume that because she hated Hugh Despenser, she must also have hated Piers Gaveston and wanted rid of him.  But Piers and Hugh were very different men and to hate one was not automatically to hate the other.

"Safe in the Royal Court of her brother and with her son the heir to the throne in her possession she now openly declared her liaison with Sir Roger Mortimer, condemned her husband’s homosexuality, and declared her intention to invade England with an army raised in France."

So how did she do that then?  State in public 'I condemn my husband's homosexuality'?  I don't think so.  Interesting how very much a lot of people in modern times care so darn much about Edward II's sexuality, or what they think his sexuality was.  And notice how Isabella's teenage son the future Edward III is said to have been 'in her possession', as though he wasn't a human being at all but an object.  Odd, to moan about Isabella being a 'pawn' in affairs of state yet applaud her for arranging her thirteen-year-old son's marriage and keeping him little more than a prisoner to further her own ambitions.  This is something Isabella's fans do over and over again.

"On 3 April, 1327, Edward was removed in secret from Kenilworth to the more remote Berkeley Castle near Gloucester. A few months later Isabella was heard to remark “Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est” (Do not be afraid to kill Edward, it is good). According to Sir Thomas More what happened next was unequivocal in its brutality:

“On the night of 11 October while lying on his bed (the King) was suddenly seized and while a great mattress held him down and suffocated him, a plumbers iron, heated intensely hot, was introduced through a tube into his private parts so it burned the inner parts of his intestines.”

A hot rod pushed up his rectum was a truly horrible and painful way for Edward to die, but the insertion of a tube ensuring there would be no marks guaranteed that for Isabella and Mortimer it was a clean death. It was a death that had been designed specifically for him by a vengeful Queen, a punishment she felt befitted his crime."

Because when you're talking about something that happened in 1327, you really want to take Thomas More of all people as a source, especially when he gets the date so wrong (11 October instead of 21 September).  The Latin letter with the misplaced punctuation supposedly ordering Edward's death was discredited many decades ago.  The idea that Edward's murder by red-hot poker was ordered by the queen in 'revenge' for his 'crime' (of fancying men more than he fancied her, presumably - the horror!) is of course pure invention.  I often see stuff like this about Isabella and Edward posted online as though it's factual, when it's almost entirely taken directly from the pages of historical fiction.  I'm getting pretty sick of people thinking about how they might have felt in Isabella's situation and assuming she must have felt the same way, and presenting such speculation as 'fact'.

And of course it just wouldn't be the internet if we didn't see the 2329546th variation of the feeble old joke about gay kings really being 'queens': "A gay royal would give a great deal of humor to "God save the queen.""  Ba-doom-tish!  Give that person an originality prize!

The de Clare Lands

When Edward II's twenty-three-year-old nephew Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, was killed at the battle of Bannockburn on 23 June 1314, he left behind lands in England, Wales and Ireland valued at over £7000 a year.  This figure had made Gilbert the second richest nobleman in England behind his kinsman Thomas, earl of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, Lincoln and Salisbury (with whom Gilbert, incidentally, had some kind of feud in 1311: a letter written by an anonymous author on 14 April that year said that he feared a great riot when the two men and their followers were in London at the same time, because of the grossour, quarrel or anger, between them).  [1]

Gilbert came from a long line of de Clares: Richard fitz (i.e. son of) Gilbert de Clare came to England in 1066 with William the Conqueror, and his great-grandson Gilbert de Clare was created first earl of Hertford by King Stephen in about 1138.  This Gilbert's great-grandson, also Gilbert, born in 1180, married his third cousin Isabella Marshal, one of the five daughters of William Marshal, earl of Pembroke and his wife Isabella de Clare (from another branch of the de Clare family, who had become earls of Pembroke also by creation of King Stephen in 1138).  Gilbert de Clare and Isabella Marshal were the parents of Richard, earl of Gloucester and Hertford (1222-1262), himself the father of Gilbert 'the Red' born in 1243 and died in 1295, who married Edward I's daughter Joan of Acre in 1290 and was the father of Gilbert born in 1291.  The Gilbert de Clare who lived from 1180 to 1230 and married Isabella Marshall inherited the earldom of Gloucester from his mother Amicia and her sister Isabel (or Hawise or Avisa) of Gloucester, the latter the first wife of John, king of England, granddaughters and heiresses of Henry I's eldest illegitimate son Robert, earl of Gloucester.

Dower was assigned to Gilbert de Clare's widow Maud de Burgh, the customary one-third of his lands and with a value of £2222 a year, on 5 December 1314.  [2]  As Maud continued to claim to be pregnant until at least February 1316, the division of Gilbert's lands among his three sisters Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth, his co-heiresses, was delayed, and was delayed still further when some of the juries taking part in the Inquisitions Post Mortem for him held in numerous counties wrongly declared that one of his heirs was named Isabel rather than Elizabeth.  Isabel de Clare was Gilbert's much older half-sister and not his heir.  Edward II finally ordered the partition of the de Clare inheritance among the three sisters in April 1317, and they and their husbands took possession of them that November.  The schedules dividing up the lands still exist in the National Archives in Kew (C 47/9/23, C47/9/24, C 47/9/25).

The eldest sister Eleanor de Clare and her husband Hugh Despenser the Younger had lands in England, Wales and Ireland to the value of £1497 plus a reversion of £946 on the death of Countess Maud in 1320, to a total of £2443.  Eleanor and Hugh's most important possession was the rich lordship of Glamorgan in South Wales.  The second sister Margaret de Clare and her husband Hugh Audley had lands in England, Wales and Ireland to the value of £1384 plus a reversion of £928 in 1320, making a total of £2314.  The third sister Elizabeth de Clare and her husband Roger Damory had lands in England, Wales and Ireland to the value of £1391 plus a reversion of £881 in 1320, to a total of £2274.  This wealth immediately catapulted all three men to the forefront of the nobility.

Eleanor's share passed on her death in June 1337 to her eldest son Sir Hugh Despenser, who was then in his late twenties.  Hugh died childless in 1349, and the lands passed to his nephew Edward, born in 1336, eldest son of Eleanor de Clare's second son Edward, who was killed at the battle of Morlaix in 1342.  On the death in 1375 of the younger Edward - the famous Kneeling Knight of Tewkesbury Abbey - the Despenser lands passed to his son Thomas, born in 1373, who was briefly earl of Gloucester in the late 1390s and summarily beheaded in January 1400 after taking part in the Epiphany Rising to restore the deposed Richard II to the throne.  Thomas's sons died young and his heir was his posthumous daughter Isabel, born on 26 July 1400 six and a half months after Thomas's death, who married two men called Richard Beauchamp.  The second of these was the powerful earl of Warwick (1382-1439), guardian of the young Henry VI in the 1420s.  Isabel Despenser and Richard Beauchamp's ultimate heir (after the death of their son Henry and his young daughter) was their daughter Anne Beauchamp, born in 1426, who took the Despenser lands  and the earldom of Warwick with her on her marriage to Richard Neville, the 'Kingmaker'.  I assume the Despenser lands and thus the third of the de Clare inheritance of 1314 then passed to either George of Clarence or his brother Richard of Gloucester, Anne Beauchamp and Richard Neville's sons-in-law, but I don't know which one.

Margaret's share passed in 1342 to her daughter Margaret Audley, born c. 1320, her only surviving child after the death of Joan Gaveston in January 1325.  Margaret Audley was abducted and forcibly married to Ralph Stafford, later first earl of Stafford, in 1336, and her inheritance of the third of the de Clare lands passed to her eldest surviving son Hugh, second earl of Stafford, born in about 1341, and then through a long line of Staffords in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  Margaret Audley's great-grandson Humphrey Stafford, born at the beginning of the 1400s, was created first duke of Buckingham; other descendants who inherited the de Clare lands included Duke Henry, executed by Richard III in 1483, and his son Duke Edward, executed by Henry VIII in 1521.

Elizabeth's share: Elizabeth's only son William Donn de Burgh, earl of Ulster, was killed in June 1333 when he wasn't even twenty-one years old, leaving a baby daughter, Elizabeth de Burgh, born in July 1332, who inherited the earldom of Ulster and her paternal grandmother's third of the de Clare lands in 1360.  The great heiress was married to Edward III's second son Lionel, duke of Clarence, and her inheritance passed to her only daughter Philippa, born in 1355, who married Edmund Mortimer, earl of March (great-grandson of Roger Mortimer executed in 1330).  Thus Elizabeth de Clare's inheritance came to the Mortimer family and stayed with them until the death of Edmund Mortimer, grandson of Philippa of Clarence and Edmund Mortimer, in 1425, when it passed to his sister Anne's son Richard, duke of York (1411-1460), who was also the heir of his paternal uncle Edward, duke of York (killed at Agincourt in 1415).  Duke Richard was the father of Edward IV and Richard III.

Sources

1) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-1357, p. 41.
2) Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, pp. 131-139; T.B. Pugh, 'The Marcher Lords of Glamorgan and Morgannwg, 1317-1485', Glamorgan County History, III: The Middle Ages, ed. T.B. Pugh (1971), p. 167.

Edward II's Nieces and Nephews

A post about the children of Edward II's siblings Eleanor, countess of Bar; Joan of Acre, countess of Gloucester; Margaret, duchess of Brabant; Elizabeth, countess of Hereford; Thomas, earl of Norfolk; and Edmund, earl of Kent.

Edouard I, count of Bar (1294/95-1336)

Edouard, named presumably after his grandfather Edward I, was the only son of Edward II's eldest sister Eleanor, and succeeded his father Henri III as count of Bar - on the eastern side of France - when Henri died in 1302 (or rather, a few years later when Edouard came of age).  He married Marie of Burgundy, two of whose sisters were queen consorts of France: the disgraced Marguerite, wife of Louis X, and Joan 'the Lame, wife of Philip VI.  In May 1321, Edouard's uncle Edward II gave ten pounds to the messenger who brought him news of the birth of Edouard and Marie's only son, the future Count Henri IV of Bar.  Edouard died off the coast of Cyprus in 1336, when his ship sank.

Joan of Bar, countess of Surrey and Sussex (1295/96-1361)

The other child of Edward's eldest sister Eleanor, who died in 1298 when her children were still very young.  On 25 May 1306 in the presence of her grandfather Edward I, when she was only ten or eleven, Joan married the almost twenty-year-old John de Warenne, earl of Surrey and Sussex.  As I've written before, this marriage proved to be spectacularly disastrous, unfortunately for both of them.  Although John de Warenne (who died in 1347) fathered at least nine children with other women, he had none with Joan.  Joan's first cousin Elizabeth de Clare, below, left her "an image of St John the Baptist" in her will of 1355.  She lived until her mid-sixties, and I hope she found some measure of happiness despite the failure of her forty-year marriage.

Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford (May 1291 - June 1314)

Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's eldest grandchild, the first child of Joan of Acre and Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, born a year after their wedding.  Gilbert married the earl of Ulster's daughter Maud de Burgh in Essex in September 1308, with Edward II present, in a double wedding with his sister Elizabeth and Maud's brother John, heir of their father Richard, earl of Ulster.  Maud's many sisters included the queen of Scotland (Robert Bruce's wife Elizabeth de Burgh), the countesses of Kildare, Desmond and Louth, and Eleanor, a companion of Edward of Caernarfon's youth, whose son John Multon was betrothed to Piers Gaveston's daughter Joan in 1317.  Gilbert and Maud are believed to have had a son in 1312 who died soon after birth, and when he was killed at the battle of Bannockburn he left no children.  Maud, however, famously claimed to be pregnant until at least 1316.

Eleanor de Clare, Lady Despenser (Oct/Nov 1292 - June 1337)

Second child and eldest daughter of Joan of Acre and Gilbert 'the Red'.  Eleanor married Hugh Despenser the Younger on 26 May 1306 when she was thirteen and a half, and their first child, Edward I's eldest great-grandchild Hugh the Even Younger, was born in 1308 or 1309.  (Edward I, not, not, NOT Edward II as so many people continue to state, arranged Eleanor and Hugh's marriage.)  Eleanor was extremely close to her uncle Edward II, who was only eight and a half years her senior.  She and her two younger sisters were heirs to their brother's earldom of Gloucester.

Margaret de Clare, countess of Cornwall and Gloucester (1294 - April 1342)

Second daughter of Joan of Acre and Gilbert 'the Red'. Margaret married two of her uncle Edward II's 'favourites': Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, in 1307 when she was about thirteen and a half, and Hugh Audley, later earl of Gloucester, in 1317.  She is often assumed in modern times to have been 'tragic' and 'complaisant', presumably on the grounds that she made no recorded objections to her two marriages, but I don't know about that.  Personally I can't imagine that any child of Joan of Acre and Gilbert 'the Red', of all people, was a shrinking violet.  Margaret was a countess twice over, and until her husband Hugh Audley rebelled against the king in 1321/22, appears to have been on good terms with her uncle Edward II.

Elizabeth de Clare, Lady Burgh (September 1295 - November 1360)

Fourth and youngest child of Joan of Acre and Gilbert 'the Red', and only a few weeks old when her father died.  Elizabeth was married three times and lived almost forty years as a widow, and was a remarkable woman who founded Clare College at Cambridge in 1338.  Many of her household accounts are extant and demonstrate her kindness to her Despenser and Audley nieces and nephews, although events of the 1320s evidently fractured the relationship of the three de Clare sisters.

Mary de Monthermer, countess of Fife (October 1297 - after 1371)

Eldest child of Joan of Acre and her second husband Ralph de Monthermer, and half-sister of the four de Clare siblings.  Mary married Duncan MacDuff, earl of Fife, some time after 4 November 1307 when the pope granted a dispensation for them to marry.  Duncan returned to his native Scotland in November 1314 after the battle of Bannockburn, and thereafter remained loyal to Robert Bruce, despite being Edward II's nephew-in-law.  Countess Mary lived until well into her seventies.  Her and Duncan's only child Isabella MacDuff was countess of Fife in her own right and married four times.

Joan de Monthermer, a nun (1299 - ?)

Joan was the second child of Joan of Acre and Ralph, and followed in the footsteps of her aunt Mary, Edward II's sister, by becoming a nun at Amesbury Priory.  Unfortunately I know nothing about her at all, not even her approximate date of birth.

Thomas de Monthermer (October 1301 - June 1340)

Third child of Joan and Ralph.  Despite being Edward II's nephew, he played little role in the king's reign, and seemingly first became embroiled in politics when he joined the unsuccessful rebellion of his kinsman Henry, earl of Lancaster against Roger Mortimer and Isabella of France in late 1328.  Thomas married a widow named Margaret Tyes; their only child Margaret was born in October 1329, and her son John Montacute became earl of Salisbury in 1397.  Thomas de Monthermer was killed at the naval battle of Sluys in 1340.

Edward de Monthermer (April 1304 - late 1339/early 1340)

Fourth child of Joan and Ralph, and the youngest of Joan of Acre's eight children.  Given that he was a grandson and nephew of kings, Edward is oddly obscure.  One of the few things I know about him is that in 1330 he joined the conspiracy of his uncle Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent (Edward I's youngest son) to restore Edward of Caernarfon to the throne.  He appears to have been close to his half-sister Elizabeth de Clare, who arranged and paid for his funeral, and evidently he was living in her household when he died.  Edward never married.

John III, duke of Brabant (1300-1355)

Only child of Edward II's third sister Margaret, born sometime in 1300 and succeeded his father John II as duke of Brabant in 1312.  John married Marie d'Evreux, daughter of Philip IV of France's half-brother Louis, count of Evreux, whose younger sister Jeanne married their first cousin Charles IV of France as his third wife in 1324.  Duke John had six legitimate children with Marie, and at least twenty illegitimate ones.

John de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex (November 1306 - January 1336)

Oldest surviving son of Edward II's fifth sister Elizabeth and her second husband Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex (she had no children with her first husband Count John I of Holland, who died at fifteen).  John married the earl of Arundel's daughter Alice in 1325, but had no children, and died at the age of twenty-nine, to be succeeded by his brother Humphrey.

Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex (December 1309 - October 1361)

Second surviving son of Elizabeth and Humphrey, and succeeded his brother John as earl.  Humphrey never married, and thus on his death his heir was his nephew, another Humphrey, son of Humphrey's younger brother William, below.  It may be that both John and Humphrey de Bohun suffered from some kind of illness or disability.

William de Bohun, earl of Northampton (1312/13 - September 1360)

Third surviving son of Elizabeth and Humphrey; he had a twin named Edward, who drowned in Scotland in 1334.  William married Elizabeth Badlesmere, whose father Bartholomew was executed in 1322 by Edward II and who was the widow of Roger Mortimer's son and heir Edmund Mortimer.  Edward III created his cousin earl of Northhampton in 1337.  William and Elizabeth's son Humphrey (1341-1373) succeeded his father as earl of Northampton, and his uncle Humphrey as earl of Hereford and Essex.  The younger Humphrey was also, via his mother, a half-brother of Roger Mortimer, second earl of March (1328-1360).

Eleanor de Bohun, countess of Ormond (1304-1363)

Oldest surviving child of Elizabeth and Humphrey, and married James le Botiler or Butler, earl of Ormond, and secondly Thomas Dagworth.  Eleanor had five children with her two husbands.

Margaret de Bohun, countess of Devon (April 1311 - December 1391)

Second surviving daughter of Elizabeth and Humphrey, and married Hugh Courtenay, future earl of Devon in 1325.  They had numerous children, and both lived to a ripe old age: Margaret died at eighty, Hugh at almost seventy-four.  There is a persistent story online that Margaret was married firstly to a distant cousin from Scotland called 'Sir Richard le Bon de Bohun' (?!) and had a son with him called John, but her family had the marriage annulled.  This is pure fiction, an invention of centuries later without a shred of contemporary evidence to back any of it up.

Margaret of Norfolk, duchess of Norfolk (c. 1322-1399)

Eldest child of Edward II's half-brother Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, and his heir.  The last survivor of all Edward I's grandchildren, and the first Englishwoman to be made a duchess in her own right.  Her brother Edward died as a child, and her sister Alice was beaten to death by her husband in the early 1350s.

Joan of Kent, princess of Wales and countess of Kent (1328-1385)

Joan was the third of the four children of Edward II's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, and Margaret Wake.  Famous for being married to two men at the same time in the 1340s, William Montacute, earl of Salisbury and Thomas Holland, in 1360 she married her first cousin once removed, Edward III's eldest son Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales.  Joan gave birth to the future King Richard II in early 1367, in her late thirties.  Of her siblings, her elder brother Edmund died as a child; her younger brother John died childless at the age of twenty-two; her elder sister Margaret died childless sometimes before 1352.  Joan was thus the heir of her father, and of her maternal uncle Thomas, Lord Wake (died 1349).  A fourteenth-century chronicler sarcastically called her 'the virgin of Kent', which makes me cackle with laughter. :-)