Margaret of Scotland, Queen of Norway

A new blog feature, where I look at the lives of some of Edward II's first cousins. Today, it's Margaret of Scotland, queen of Norway (February 1261 - April 1283). I hope the post isn't too confusing, with three successive generations of women named Margaret!

Margaret was the eldest child of Alexander III, king of Scotland (September 1241 - March 1286) and Margaret of England (September 1240 - February 1275), daughter of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence and sister of Edward I. Alexander and Margaret (who was probably named after her aunt Marguerite of Provence, queen of France) married in York on 26 December 1251, when he was ten and she eleven; he had succeeded his father Alexander II in July 1249, and his kingdom was being ruled by a squabbling group of regents during his minority. The Lanercost chronicler calls Margaret of England, queen of Scotland, "a woman of great beauty, chastity, and humility." [1] Henry III and Queen Eleanor, a couple I otherwise find it very hard to warm to, were, for all their numerous faults, devoted parents: on learning that Margaret was deeply miserable, kept apart from her youthful husband and little more than a prisoner of Alexander's regents, they themselves rode up to Edinburgh to set matters to rights. Her natal family, which also included her younger siblings Beatrice and Edmund, appears to have been devoted to each other and to have spent as much time together as possible, and at some point Margaret received a "cup of gold with feet" from her brother Edward I, which was apparently returned to him after her death, as it appears in his Wardrobe account of 1276/77. [2]

Alexander III and Queen Margaret visited England in the autumn of 1260; Margaret was met at St Albans by her fifteen-year-old brother Edmund (who eighteen or so years later became the father of Thomas of Lancaster), and was reunited not only with her parents but with her uncle Richard of Cornwall, king of Germany, and his second wife, Eleanor of Provence's sister Sanchia. (The Flores Historiarum waxes lyrical about this meeting of three kings and three queens.) [3] Margaret discovered during the trip that she was several months pregnant, and asked her husband for permission to stay in England with her parents until after she gave birth. Alexander agreed, but, understandably reluctant to leave his newborn child, possibly the future king of Scotland, under the control of the king of England - father-in-law or no - requested on 30 September 1260 that Henry III make the following oath:

"Should the mother [Queen Margaret] die, he promises to return the child, and should the child die, to let the mother return freely. Should the king its father die, or other unforeseen event occur to him, the king [Henry] promises that the bishops of St Andrews, Aberdeen, Dunblane and Whithorn, the earls of Fife, Buchan, Strathearn, Dunbar and Mar, and John Comyn, Alexander the Steward of Scotland, Alan Doorward and Hugh Abernethy, barons, or any four or three of them, shall receive and take the child to Scotland, the state of neither country being taken into consideration." [4]

And so Margaret of Scotland was born at Windsor Castle on 28 February 1261, her mother then twenty and her father, who had returned to his kingdom the previous November, nineteen. Henry III had promised to return Queen Margaret and her child to Scotland by Easter Sunday, 24 April 1261, but in the end - perhaps because of complications or an illness after childbirth or the young queen's reluctance to leave her parents and her homeland - they remained in England until the end of May. Margaret of Scotland was probably the eldest of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence's grandchildren (precisely when Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's first child was born is unclear, though they certainly had a daughter by 1264). Inevitably, little is known of her childhood. Her brother, named after their father and the heir to the Scottish throne, was born on 21 January 1264, and after a very long gap, another brother, David, was born on 20 March 1273, four months after the death of their grandfather Henry III. The two elder children met their uncles Edward and Edmund in the summer of 1267, when the young men visited Scotland; this was Longshanks' first visit to that country, though most definitely not his last, as decades later he was to turn his late brother-in-law's kingdom into a war zone. Marion Campbell says "There was no protocol for English state visits to Scotland - most such visitations had not been of a social nature - and Edward and Edmund came informally." [5]

Margaret of Scotland lost her mother just before her fourteenth birthday: Margaret of England, queen of Scotland, died on 26 February 1275 at the age of only thirty-four. By unhappy coincidence, her younger sister Beatrice, wife of the duke of Brittany's heir, also died less than a month later, to the grief of their mother Eleanor of Provence. The Lanercost chronicler, who although frequently a useful source for Scottish events was unfortunately also prone to writing rubbish on occasion, wrote "Richard of Inverkeithing, bishop of Dunkeld, departed from the world, treacherously poisoned, and it is believed by many that the aforesaid queen [Margaret] perished in the same manner." [6] Although the cause of Margaret's death is unknown, there is absolutely no reason to give credence to this allegation. King Alexander III remained a widower for the next decade, which would prove with hindsight to have been a most unwise decision.

King Magnus VI of Norway, whose father Haakon IV Alexander III had defeated at the battle of Largs in 1263, died on 9 May 1280, and within weeks Alexander had opened negotiations for Magnus's grandson and heir Erik II to marry Margaret. Erik was born sometime in 1268, so was at least seven years younger than Margaret and at the time of the wedding negotiations only eleven or twelve to her nineteen; despite his striking nickname of 'Priest-Hater', he seems to have grown up to be a rather mild and ineffectual young man. Here's how the Lanercost chronicle reports the negotiations: "At this time the king of Norway died, leaving as successor his son called Magnus [sic]; who hearing that the king of Scotland had an amiable, beautiful and attractive daughter, a virgin, of suitable age for himself (being a handsome youth of about eighteen [sic] years) could not rest until a formal mission, divines as well as nobles, had been sent twice to obtain her as his spouse and consort on the throne." [7] Margaret's feelings about marrying a boy a few years her junior are a matter for speculation, though she did send a letter (in French) to her "very dear uncle" Edward I sometime in 1280 - whether before or after the marriage negotiations is hard to say, as she didn't date the letter - telling him that she was "healthy and cheerful" (saine et haite) by God's mercy. She ended by wishing Edward "a thousand greetings," mile saluz, and requested that he constantly inform her of his own health and his wishes towards her. [8]

The wedding negotiations were completed on 25 July 1281, and Margaret sailed from Leith on 11 August with a huge dowry of 14,000 marks, arriving in Bergen on 15 August; among those accompanying her were the earl and countess of Menteith and the abbot of Balmerino. She was greeted in her new land with "demonstrations of great joy." Her wedding to thirteen-year-old Erik, and her coronation as queen of Norway, both took place at the Mariakirken in Bergen on 31 August; a wedding hymn in Latin has fortuitously survived, the first stanza of which Marion Campbell translates as: "From you has risen, o gentle Scotland, a light which gleaming Norway truly acknowledges, at whose transit you sigh deeply because your king's daughter is taken from you." Little can be said about Margaret's rather brief tenure as queen of Norway, though she appears to have been very popular, and was said in her new country to be "she who made our king a man." [9] She became pregnant in the summer of 1282; one might speculate that Erik's fourteenth birthday, at which age he would have been considered old enough to consummate his marriage, had recently passed.

Tragedy struck in early 1283: Margaret of Scotland, queen of Norway, died on 9 April (or 28 February, her birthday, according to Lanercost), aged twenty-two, shortly after giving birth to a daughter. King Erik II was now a father and a widower at the age of only fourteen or fifteen. Their daughter was named Margaret after Margaret herself and her mother the queen of Scotland - Erik's daughter by his second wife, Robert Bruce's sister Isabel, was named Ingiborg after his own mother - and is known to history as the Maid of Norway. The Lanercost chronicler, who for some reason really had it in for poor Alexander III - who has always struck me as a very pleasant and likeable man, as well as a strong and excellent king - blames Margaret's death on her father and says that it came about "in order that God's long-suffering should by many afflictions soften to a proper degree of penitence the heart of the father through whose wrong-doing these things came to pass." He also blames the early deaths of Alexander's queen and his sons on Alexander's "sin." [10] Strange.

Further tragedy struck Alexander III, and Scotland, in January 1284, when his elder son Alexander died a few days after his twentieth birthday (the king's younger son David had died aged only eight in 1281). Young Alexander was married to yet another Margaret, one of the many daughters of Guy de Dampierre, count of Flanders, but left no children. (Guy's daughter Philippa was betrothed to the future Edward II some years later, with her sister Isabella as 'back-up'.) Edward I granted Margaret, called the widow of 'Monseignur Alexandre', a safe-conduct to return through England to Flanders on an unspecified date, at the request of her father Count Guy. [11] According to Lanercost, young Alexander prophesied shortly before he died that "My uncle [Edward I] shall fight three battles; twice he will conquer; in the third he will be overthrown." [12] I bet lots of people, then and now, wish that prophecy had come true.

This left Queen Margaret of Norway's baby daughter Margaret the Maid of Norway as sole heir to her grandfather, as Alexander III acknowledged in a letter to his brother-in-law Edward I on 20 April 1284, five days before the birth of Edward II in Caernarfon: "though death has carried off all of his [Alexander's] blood in Scotland, one yet remains, the child of his own dearest daughter the king's [Edward's] niece, the late queen of Norway, now under divine providence the heir apparent of Scotland." All thirteen Scottish earls and countless barons including the Bruces, Balliols and Comyns, however reluctantly, acknowledged the Maid as heir apparent to the Scottish throne at a meeting held in Scone on 5 February 1284: "...we shall all receive our illustrious child Margaret, daughter of the daughter of our said lord king, Margaret of good memory, sometime queen of Norway, by the illustrious Lord Erik king of Norway; and as she descends with full legitimacy we shall receive her as our lady and right heir of our said lord king..." [13]

To have a baby foreigner, female to boot, as sole heir to the throne was hardly a desirable situation, and Alexander III married for a second time in October 1285, a French noblewoman named Yolande or Joleta de Dreux - his mother Marie de Coucy, second queen of Alexander II, was also French - in order to sire more children. He was riding to see Queen Yolande on 19 March 1286 during a terrible storm, when his horse fell off a cliff and he died of a broken neck. Alexander was still only forty-four, a vigorous and extremely able man in the prime of life, and his early death was to have disastrous consequences for Scotland. His little granddaughter died at the age of seven on her way to her kingdom and marriage to the future Edward II in the autumn of 1290; three centuries of conflict and bloodshed between Scotland and England were to be the tragic result.

Sources

1) The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 9.

2) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1272-1307, p. 21.

3) Flores Historiarum, ed. H.R, Luard, vol. II, pp. 459-460.

4) Marion Campbell, Alexander III, King of Scots, p. 122.

5) Campbell, Alexander III, p. 172.

6) Lanercost, pp. 9-10.

7) Ibid., p. 21.

8) Cal Docs Scot, p. 60.

9) Campbell, Alexander III, pp. 214-216, for the wedding hymn, quotation and Margaret's dowry and journey.

10) Lanercost, pp. 9, 32.

11) Cal Docs Scot, p. 73.

12) Lanercost, p. 32.

13) Cal Docs Scot, p. 73; Campbell, Alexander III, pp. 219-221.

Edward II And English

Following a recent post about Edward II's use of French and Latin, here's one about his use of the language spoken by the vast majority of his subjects: English. Unfortunately, direct evidence to tell us to what extent Edward spoke and understood the language is lacking. Edward I's biographers Michael Prestwich and Marc Morris, however, say that Edward I learned English from a young age from his tutors and nurses, and Edward I's uncle Richard, earl of Cornwall, also spoke the language, as demonstrated by a statement in the chronicle of Matthew Paris - who knew Richard well - which says with reference to Richard's election as king of Germany in 1257 that he would have no problems learning German, as he already knew English. [1] Edward II's son Edward III certainly had at least some knowledge of English, as he used the language for his personal slogans at jousting tournaments far more often than he used French [2], though how well he spoke it or how often is impossible to say for sure.

Given that Edward II's father and son knew English, it is highly likely that he did too. Edward was criticised by various fourteenth-century chroniclers for enjoying the company of the lowborn, which is borne out by other evidence: he went on holiday for an entire month in the autumn of 1315 with "a great concourse of common people"; he drank in Newcastle with an unnamed but evidently lowborn woman in 1310; he dined privately in 1325 with a group of carpenters, and a group of sailors on another occasion; he went to a forge to talk to his blacksmith John Cole in 1323; he spent what seems like excessive amounts of time in the 1320s chatting to fishermen and often bought fish from them "with his own hands." There are numerous other such examples. Carpenters, fishermen, blacksmiths and the like would not have spoken French, and I find it hard to imagine that Edward would have taken as much pleasure as he obviously did in the company of the lowborn, and spent as much time with them, if he'd had to rely on interpreters to communicate with them. Although direct evidence is lacking, it seems to me that Edward II must have enjoyed a fluent command of English.

I find it interesting to see that English words occasionally crept into French texts of the early fourteenth century. I've written about Edward's Household Ordinance of 1318, where 'hackneyman' and 'cup house', among others, appear in English. In Edward I's 1306 order that the countess of Buchan should have one or two English women to attend her in her cage on the walls of Berwick Castle, the word 'English' is written in English (Englesche) rather than in French (engleis). Edward II's chamber account of 1325 records a gift of forty-seven caged goldfinches for his niece Eleanor Despenser, written in French with 'goldfinches' in English: xlvij Goldfynches en vne cage. Other English words crept into the chamber journal, such as 'shipbord' and 'shipwreghtes' (shipwrights). I wonder why; was there no equivalent French word, or did the clerk writing the journal just not know it?

The nobility of the early fourteenth century wrote their letters in French, and Edward II's letters were usually in French though sometimes (when writing to correspondents outside England) in Latin, but neither the king nor his nobles ever wrote in English, and therefore, as Seymour Phillips has pointed out, the great difficulty in establishing how much English they knew lies in 'catching them at it'. [3] I've written before about Hugh Despenser the Younger's literacy in French: various letters of his written in 1324 make clear that he read his correspondents' letters out loud to Edward II, though the extent of his literacy and ability in English remains unknown. Sometimes the concept of how bilingualism in fourteenth-century England worked in practice intrigues me; the charges against Despenser at his (so-called) trial of November 1326 in Hereford were written in French and presumably were also delivered in that language, not least because if they'd been read out in English it's doubtful that Isabella of France would have understood them. (Did Isabella learn any English? I have no idea.) Yet chroniclers record that a great roar of approval went up from the watching crowd when Despenser's death sentence was read out. As most of these people were not of the nobility and wouldn't have understood the French, does this mean that an interpreter was simultaneously translating the charges into English for their benefit?

To what extent, or whether at all, Edward II and his court used English as a means of communication among themselves is impossible to say for sure. Various scholars claim that although French was the daily language of the law courts and of baronial administration, by about the middle of the thirteenth century it had become an acquired language in England, and that most French speakers were native speakers of English; Michael Prestwich describes the French spoken in England in this period as "an increasingly artificial language, lacking the vitality to change and develop," in contrast to English. [4] The marvellous Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster, Edward II's kinsman and one of my favourite people of the fourteenth century, wrote a treatise in French called Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines, the Book of Holy Medicines, in 1354. He wrote at the beginning "if the French is not good, I must be excused, because I am English and not much accustomed to French" (si le franceis ne soit pas bon, jeo doie estre escusee, pur ceo qe jeo sui engleis et n’ai pas moelt hauntee le franceis). Obviously this was a literary device to demonstrate Henry's modesty, as his French was completely fluent, even cultured. I can only speculate as to the fluency or otherwise of Henry's English, however, and it's worth pointing out that, whether he spoke much English in his daily life or not and whether it was his first language or not, French, in the middle of the fourteenth century, was still the language he chose to write in. It's interesting to compare Hugh Despenser the Younger, whose many extant letters are all in French, with his grandson Thomas, Lord Berkeley (1353-1417), for whose benefit John Trevisa translated the Polychronicon from Latin - into English, not French.

I'm going to end this rather hotch-potchy post with a couple of paragraphs about a text called Le Tretiz, The Treatise, written by Walter de Bibbesworth in about 1250 for Dionysia (Denise) de Munchesney, the stepmother of Joan, countess of Pembroke (1230s-1307), who was the granddaughter of the great William le Marshal and married Henry III's French half-brother William de Valence. The Tretiz was intended to teach Dionysia and her children the specialised French vocabulary they would need for estate management and husbandry. To quote from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it "consists of approximately 1134 rhyming octosyllables and survives in sixteen manuscripts...The French vocabulary denoting the practices of rural life is equipped in many of the manuscripts with English glosses, the bulk of which stem from the author." What makes the Tretiz so fascinating is the insight it gives into what Bibbesworth expected Dionysia to understand of the French language; he assumes that English is her native language and states that she is already familiar with the fraunceis ki chescun seit dire, "the French which everyone knows" ('everyone' meaning everyone of her class, not everyone in England, presumably), but that he needs to teach her the "French which is not so common," fraunceis noun pas si commoun. The text is in French, and any words which are assumed to be unfamiliar to Dionysia are glossed into English. Bibbesworth himself, a knight of Essex, says that he himself had acquired French in a similar manner. [5]

Here's an example page from the Tretiz. I love line 256, Louwe oule, chein baie, with the first two words glossed into English as wolfe (wolf) and yollez (howls) and the fourth as berkes (barks). Notice that Bibbesworth didn't feel the need to gloss the third word, chein, as 'dog', evidently assuming that Dionysia would know such an everyday word. In lines 250, 275 and 282, every French word is glossed into English, but other lines appear only in French with no English translations: a good indication of the level of French Bibbesworth expected Dionysia to know. As for Edward II a few decades later, he seems to have been entirely comfortable speaking French in public and to have been fluent, articulate and confident in the language - and for sure he must have frequently spoken it in private with the French Isabella and the Gascon Piers Gaveston - but was French his native language, or did he learn English as his mother tongue from the people around him? Was he completely bilingual? I wish I knew...

Sources

1) Michael Prestwich, Edward I, p. 6; Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain, p. 8; N. Denholm-Young, Richard of Cornwall, pp. 86-87; T.W.E. Roche, The King of Almayne, pp. 134-135.
2) Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation, pp. 199-201, 265.
3) Seymour Phillips, 'The Place of the Reign of Edward II', in The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson, p. 225, note 30.
4) C.M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England, p. 101; Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225-1360, p. 557.

5) Tony Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England, vol. 1, pp. 13-14.

Some Scottish Earls Of Edward II's Reign

Here's a post about six Scottish earls connected to Edward II (I've already written a post about Earl Donald of Mar, a close friend and ally of the king). Firstly, a very quick and rather simplistic overview of Scottish political history of the era: in March 1306, Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick and lord of Annandale, was crowned king of Scots at Scone, a few weeks after stabbing his greatest rival John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, to death in the Greyfriars church in Dumfries. (Comyn was the nephew of John Balliol, king of Scots from 1292 to 1296.) With little support among the Scottish nobility, Robert Bruce fled to the west of Scotland or perhaps to Ireland soon after his coronation. Edward I of England, furious, captured and executed three of Bruce's brothers, several of his brothers-in-law, and a few other Bruce adherents in 1306 and 1307. Bruce's wife Elizabeth, his sisters Mary and Christina, his young daughter Marjorie, young nephew Donald of Mar, the countess of Buchan and the bishops of Glasgow and St Andrews were captured by the earl of Ross and imprisoned in England (Mary Bruce and the countess of Buchan in cages on the walls of castles, nastily). The death of Edward I on 7 July 1307 - he died at Burgh-by-Sands near Carlisle, on his way to campaign against Robert Bruce - and the accession of Edward II made Bruce's attempts to make himself king of Scots in more than name only immeasurably easier. He spent the next few years consolidating his position, a task aided by his defeat of Edward at Bannockburn in June 1314, and the earls and lords of Scotland, over time, either submitted to him and recognised him as king, or removed themselves to England. The Scottish prisoners in England were released after Bannockburn; Donald of Mar chose to remain with Edward II.

Duncan MacDuff, earl of Fife (1289/90-1353)

Donnchadh Mac Dhuibh in Gaelic. Duncan was born in late 1289 or early 1290 as the posthumous son and heir of Earl Duncan, murdered by some of his own followers in September 1289, and through his mother Joan de Clare was the grandson of Gilbert 'the Red', earl of Gloucester (1243-1295), and his first wife Alice de Lusignan. The de Clare siblings Gilbert, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth, children of Gilbert the Red's second marriage to Edward II's sister Joan of Acre, were thus Duncan's half-uncle and aunts, though they were younger than he was.

Duncan grew up in England, and in the early 1300s Edward I arranged a marriage for him: to the king's granddaughter Mary de Monthermer, eldest child of Ralph de Monthermer and Joan of Acre, second wife of Duncan's grandfather Gilbert the Red. (For the de Clare siblings, this meant, confusingly, that their half-nephew married their half-sister.) Edward II asked Pope Clement V to grant a dispensation for the couple to marry - they were third cousins via common descent from King John's wife Isabella of Angoulême - on 6 September 1307, and this was duly granted a few weeks later, Clement stating that "the marriage is to be contracted as a confirmation of the peace made between the English and the Scots." [1] Mary, Edward's niece, was born in October 1297 and thus was not quite ten at the time; Duncan was seventeen or eighteen. Unfortunately, I don't know when their wedding took place. Their only child, Isabella, wasn't born until around 1320.

As far as I can tell, Duncan seems to have remained in England during the Bannockburn campaign, fighting neither for Robert Bruce not for his uncle-in-law Edward II. Edward granted permission and a safe-conduct in December 1314 for Duncan ('Donkan') to go on pilgrimage to France and to return to England, at the request of his (Duncan's) father-in-law Ralph de Monthermer. [2] At the Cambuskenneth parliament in November 1314, Robert Bruce had declared that any Scottish lords who held lands in England would forfeit their lands and titles in Scotland, and thus Duncan made what must have been a momentous decision and returned, possibly by April 1315 and certainly by October 1316, to the homeland he hadn't seen for many years, to reclaim his earldom, considered the senior earldom in Scotland. [3] His wife Mary was still in England in January 1320, or at least had returned there for a while, but must have travelled to Scotland by May 1321, when Edward granted a safe-conduct for her servants to travel to England "to make purchases in London for her chamber." [4] In August 1317, Edward granted two manors in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire formerly held by Duncan (his name here spelt 'Donegal de Fyf'), his mother Joan de Clare and stepfather Gervase Avenel to Hugh Despenser the Younger, whose wife Eleanor was Joan's decades-younger half-sister, "because they lately adhered to his [Edward's] Scots enemies." [5]

Duncan supported Robert Bruce for the rest of Bruce's life, and subsequently Bruce's son David II. He died in 1353 in his mid-sixties, leaving an only child, Isabella, and his widow Mary de Monthermer, who lived until at least 1371.

John Comyn, earl of Buchan (1250s-1308)

John was the cousin of John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, killed by Robert Bruce in 1306. His father was Alexander Comyn, earl of Buchan (d. 1289), and his mother Elizabeth was one of the three daughters and co-heirs of Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester (d. 1285). The Comyns and Bruces were hereditary rivals, and after the murder of the lord of Badenoch, there was of course no chance that John would be anything but an implacable enemy of Robert Bruce. John's wife Isabel, however, a MacDuff by birth and either the sister or aunt of the earl of Fife above (I always thought she was his sister, but the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says she was his aunt, the daughter of Earl Colban who died c. 1270), crowned Bruce as king of Scotland, which was the hereditary right of the MacDuffs. For this 'crime', Edward I imprisoned her in a cage on the castle wall of Berwick-on-Tweed. John Comyn was the only person who might have persuaded Edward I to release her; presumably furious at her betrayal, he didn't.

John was one of the Scottish lords who swore fealty to Edward II at Dumfries, where his cousin the lord of Badenoch had been killed, in early August 1307. On 20 May 1308, Edward wrote to thank John for his "good service" to him and Edward I, but around this time, John suffered a heavy defeat to Robert Bruce at the battle of Inverurie. [6] He fled to England, and Edward welcomed him, appointing him joint warden of the western marches, that is, Annandale, Carrick and Galloway, the seat of Robert Bruce's power. [7] In John's absence, Bruce ravaged his lands, an act known as the Harrying or Herschip (hardship) of Buchan, to ensure that the Comyns - the most powerful family in Scotland in the thirteenth century - would never rise again. John did not live long after his flight to England: he was dead by 27 November 1308, when the "lands late of John Comyn, earl of Boghhan, deceased, tenant in chief" were taken into the king's hand. Edward granted custody of them, and the marriage of John's heirs, to Hugh Despenser the Elder on 5 December. [8] John left no children, and his heirs were his nieces Alice and Margaret; Alice was a lady-in-waiting of Isabella of France, and married the influential Henry Beaumont, who claimed the earldom of Buchan by right of his wife. John's widow Isabel was released from captivity into Beaumont's care in late April 1313, having been freed from the awful cage a few years before; her subsequent fate is unknown. [9] John Comyn and Isabel MacDuff are major characters in Barbara Erskine's novel Kingdom of Shadows, where John, unfortunately for him, is portrayed as an abusive, violent wife-beater.

Robert Umfraville, earl of Angus (c. 1277-1325)

Second but eldest surviving son of Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus (who died shortly before 13 October 1307), and, through his mother Elizabeth, the nephew of John Comyn, earl of Buchan (above) and first cousin of Patrick, earl of Dunbar (below). The Umfravilles were English barons who inherited the earldom of Angus through Robert's grandmother Maud, countess of Angus in her own right, who married Gilbert Umfraville of Northumberland. Robert's father Gilbert, who was born in about 1245, was the ward of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Robert's elder brother, Gilbert III, who died childless in about 1303, was married to Margaret de Clare, later Lady Badlesmere. As his brother pre-deceased their father, Robert succeeded as earl.

Robert served Edward II faithfully throughout his reign. The king appointed him and William Ros on 8 November 1307 to "defend the county of Northumberland against the incursions of the king's enemies and to punish rebels," i.e. the Scots, and in June 1308 appointed them "to be the king's lieutenants and keepers in Scotland," a demonstration of his great trust in Robert. [10] Robert fought for Edward at Bannockburn in 1314 with his younger brother Ingram, and both of them were captured at Bothwell Castle after the battle with Edward's brother-in-law the earl of Hereford and held in Scotland for about a year. Unlike Duncan MacDuff of Fife, Robert chose to settle in England rather than Scotland after Robert Bruce's Cambuskenneth declaration of November 1314, although the earldom of Angus technically remained in his hands until near the end of Bruce's reign, when Bruce finally granted it to Sir John Stewart of Bunkle. [11]

Edward gave Robert Umfraville a silver cup as his New Year gift in 1317/18, and Robert took part in the king's unsuccessful siege of Berwick against Robert Bruce in 1319 and accompanied him to France in June 1320, when Edward performed homage to Philip V for his French lands. In November 1320, Robert and the earl of Atholl (see below) were empowered by Edward II to "receive into his peace those Scots who feel their conscience troubled by the Papal excommunication [of Robert Bruce], as secretly as he can, and to attend the king personally if he wishes further instructions." [12] Robert fought for Edward during his campaign against the Contrariants in 1321/22, and was one of the men who condemned the earl of Lancaster to death in March 1322, although he seems - rather oddly, for such a staunch supporter of Edward II - previously to have been a member of Lancaster's retinue (exactly when is unclear). [13] Earl Robert was married firstly to Lucy Kyme, an heiress in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and secondly to a woman named Eleanor who is believed to have been a member of the de Clare family, though the precise connection remains elusive. He died shortly before 12 April 1325, leaving a fifteen-year-old heir, Gilbert, a daughter and two younger sons. [14]

Patrick of Dunbar, earl of Dunbar (or of March) (c. 1285-c. 1369)

Son of Earl Patrick, who died in 1308 and was known as 'Patrick with the black beard'. Through his mother Marjorie Comyn, the younger Patrick was the nephew of John Comyn, the earl of Buchan above, and was the first cousin of Robert Umfraville, earl of Angus. He was married first to a woman named Ermigarda, who was pregnant in 1304, and secondly to Agnes, daughter of Robert Bruce's ally and friend Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray, who was known as Black Agnes, presumably because of her dark complexion. She was many years his junior, born in about 1312.

Patrick took part in the siege of Caerlaverock Castle in 1300, probably aged fifteen, on Edward I's side, and must have met the future Edward II, who was close to his own age. He remained in Scotland after Robert Bruce's rise to power, but did not submit to Bruce; on 14 December 1307, he was one of the men whom Edward II, "about to set out to Boulogne" to marry Isabella of France, requested to "keep the peace" in Scotland in his absence, along with the earls of Buchan, Ross, Angus and Lennox, two men named Gilbert Glenkarny, Dougal MacDowell, five bishops, nine abbots and several others. [15] Patrick did not fight at Bannockburn in 1314, but helped Edward II after the battle by opening Dunbar Castle to him and finding a boat for the king to sail down the coast to safety. Having - understandably - lost all confidence in Edward, Patrick submitted to Robert Bruce shortly afterwards, and was one of the men who helped take the port of Berwick-on-Tweed from English hands in 1318 and who signed the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath (as did Duncan MacDuff of Fife). Edward II made reference in January 1317 to the "rebellion of Patrick de Dunbar, a Scotsman." [16] The date of Earl Patrick's death is not certain, but he was still alive in June 1368 and had died by 1371, and therefore lived to be over eighty.

Malise of Strathearn, earl of Strathearn (early 1260s-c. 1317)

Maol Íosa in Gaelic. Son of Earl Malise and Maud, daughter of the earl of Orkney and Caithness, Malise succeeded his father as a child in 1271. His wife Agnes (or perhaps Emma) was the sister of John Comyn, earl of Buchan, who was related to absolutely everybody.

Although Malise didn't attend Robert Bruce's coronation as king of Scots, it is possible that he fought on Bruce's side at the battle of Methven in June 1306 - when Edward I's cousin Aymer de Valence, later earl of Pembroke, defeated Bruce - and certainly he was captured around this time and sent to England, where he was imprisoned at Rochester Castle. He claimed that Bruce had captured him and forced him with threats of death to perform homage to him, but to no avail, and Malise spent the rest of Edward I's reign in prison. Edward II ordered the constable of Rochester Castle to send him (his name spelt 'Malisius') to York in November 1307, "under safe custody and honourably, not in irons," and ordered the sheriff of Yorkshire to guard him "without irons." Malise's wife Agnes/Emma shared his captivity, and Edward allowed Malise two servants and two yeomen and Agnes two damsels. They were also allowed a chaplain, who had to be an Englishman. A 'Cristin de Stratherne', presumably a relative, is also mentioned as a prisoner in 1309. [17]

Malise was freed in November 1308, Edward II declaring that he had been loyal to his (Edward's) father and himself and had been acquitted of "evil fame," and judged him "legally competent in all things" (frank de sei en toutes choses). Malise was at Berwick with Edward during the king's Scottish campaign of 1310/11, and in January 1313, Edward paid him ten marks "by his own hands, to account of his allowance from the king." [18] The divided loyalties of the era are illustrated by events of later in 1313: Malise, helping to defend Perth Castle for Edward II, was captured by his own son Malise, who was loyal to Robert Bruce. Bruce spared Malise's life, but compelled him to give up his earldom to his son.

Malise died in or shortly before 1317 leaving four children, including his heir Malise (d. c. 1329) and a daughter Maud, who married the English nobleman Robert de Toeni (1276-1309), brother of the countess of Warwick and one of the men who absconded from the Scots campaign in 1306 to go jousting in France with Piers Gaveston, Roger Mortimer and Giles Argentein. Malise's widow Agnes/Emma was implicated in an unsuccessful plot to murder Robert Bruce in 1320.

David de Strathbogie (or Strabolgi), earl of Atholl (mid to late 1280s-1326)

Son of John de Strathbogie, earl of Atholl and Marjorie, sister of Gratney, earl of Mar; nephew by marriage of Robert Bruce and first cousin of Donald, earl of Mar (Bruce's first wife Isabella, mother of his daughter Marjorie and grandmother of King Robert II, was also Gratney's sister); son-in-law of John Comyn, lord of Badenoch murdered by Bruce in 1306. David's father John was a staunch supporter of Bruce, and was executed by Edward I in London on 7 November 1306. John de Strathbogie was the great-grandson of Richard, one of the illegitimate sons of King John, Edward I's grandfather, and was thus closely related to the king; a relationship which did not prevent Edward hanging John on a high gallows and having him decapitated and his head stuck on London Bridge. John was the first earl to be executed in England since Waltheof in 1076.

David de Strathbogie submitted to Edward I in May 1307 and recovered his father's earldom and lands for a payment of 10,000 marks. At first, he remained loyal to Edward II, who commended him for good service in May 1308, and joined Edward on his Scottish campaign of 1310/11. He switched sides in 1312, however: he was with Edward II in August that year, but attended Robert Bruce's parliament at Inverness three months later, and Bruce appointed him constable of Scotland. Before too long, though, David switched sides again. Supposedly, he was furious with Bruce's brother Edward (yes, yet another one) for seducing his (David's) sister and refusing to marry her, and although he did not fight for Edward II at Bannockburn, he took revenge on the Bruces by attacking the Scottish stores at Cambuskenneth on the eve of the battle; another example of the intensely personal politics of the era.

Thereafter, David remained loyal to Edward II, for which he forfeited his title and lands in Scotland. Edward addressed him affectionately as "the king's cousin Sir Davy," though like the earl of Angus he served in the earl of Lancaster's retinue at some point and was pardoned as an adherent of Lancaster in October 1318. [19] David took part in Edward's campaign against the Marcher lords in 1321/22 as constable of the king's army, and was, with the earl of Angus, one of the men who sentenced the earl of Lancaster to death in March 1322. Edward granted David in December 1321 the castle, manor and honour of Chilham in Kent, the inheritance of his ancestor Rose of Dover, who married King John's illegitimate son Richard; in return, David "binds himself to adhere to the king against all men and to maintain his quarrels against all men." Edward II granted a safe-conduct for a Scotsman with the excellent name of Tassyn de Loran to visit England to speak to David in November 1323, as long as Tassyn didn't come more than ten leagues beyond the Scottish border. [20] David and Edward's nephew-in-law John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, led Edward's army to Gascony in the spring of 1325, during the Anglo-French war of St-Sardos. He died sometime between 18 December 1326, when he was called the "surviving husband" of his wife Joan, and 11 January 1327, when Henry Beaumont was granted custody of his son; his wife Joan Comyn, one of the heirs of her maternal uncle the earl of Pembroke, had died in July 1326. [21] He left a son David, born on 1 February 1309, who married Katherine Beaumont, eldest daughter of Henry Beaumont and Alice Comyn (niece and co-heir of the earl of Buchan) and sister of the duchess of Lancaster. The younger David joined Earl Henry of Lancaster's unsuccessful rebellion against Isabella and Roger Mortimer in 1328/29. [22]

Sources

1) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 5; Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 30.

2) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, p. 203; Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-1357, p. 78.
3) G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, . pp. 390-391; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

4) Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, pp. 415, 587.

5) Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, pp. 5-6, 10.

6) Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 66; Foedera 1307-1327, p. 45.

7) Cal Docs Scot, p. 9; Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, p. 92; Cal Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 69.

8) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 32; Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, p. 95; Cal Docs Scot, p. 12. The lands were first granted to Ralph de Monthermer on 3 December.

9) Cal Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 529.

10) Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 14, 79, 415. Robert's father's death before 13 Oct 1307 is in Cal Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 4.

11) Barrow, Robert Bruce, p. 386.

12) Thomas Stapleton,'A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth years of King Edward the Second', Archaeologia, 26 (1836), p. 344; ODNB; Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, p. 455; Cal Docs Scot, p. 134; Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 280.

13) G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England, pp. 140, 142; J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, pp. 56, 274, 312.

14) Cal Fine Rolls 1319-1327, p. 342.

15) Cal Docs Scot, pp. 5-6.

16) Cal Docs Scot, p. 103.

17) Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, p. 19; Cal Close Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 5, 9, 10; Cal Docs Scot, pp. 16-17.

18) Cal Docs Scot, pp. 22, 42, 59.
19) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 427; Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, p. 227.
20) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 452, 462, 509-510, 522; Cal Docs Scot, p. 154.
21) Cal Docs Scot, p. 162; Cal Fine Rolls 1319-1327, p. 431.
22) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, p. 274; Cal Close Rolls 1327-1330, p. 529.

The Earl Of Ross Makes A Journey

Here's a post with some really nice details I saw recently in the Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, taken from the 350-mile journey of William, earl of Ross from London to Berwick-on-Tweed in the autumn of 1303, to join Edward I. [1] Earl William had been a supporter of John Balliol, king of Scotland from 1292 to 1296, and was therefore hostile to the Bruce family; in September 1306 at Tain, William captured the relatives and supporters of Robert Bruce, who had been crowned king at Scone several months earlier, as they were fleeing from Kildrummy in charge of the earl of Atholl (the castle had just fallen to Edward of Caernarfon and Aymer de Valence). William sent them to Edward I, and their subsequent fate is well-known: imprisonment in England for the women and children, two of them in cages on the walls of castles, and execution for the men, including the earl of Atholl. Edward II's accession changed the situation drastically, however: Robert Bruce, having supposedly declared that it was easier to take an entire kingdom from the son than a foot of land from the father, set about making himself king of Scotland in more than name only by attacking his enemies and their lordships, including William of Ross, until they either fled to England (such as the earl of Buchan) or submitted to him. William sent Edward II a desperate letter in 1308, begging for his aid: "May help come from you, our lord, for in you, Sire, is all our hope and trust." It will come as no surprise to anyone to learn that Edward sent no help, and William submitted to Bruce a few months later and remained loyal to him until his (William's) death in 1323. [2]

Anyway, here's the account of the provisions purchased for him and his household on his journey north to meet Edward I from 29 September to 17 October 1303. The abbreviation 'd' means pence, 's' is shillings and 'l' is pounds.

- London, Sunday 29 September 1303: Shoeing the earl's four horses, 2d; four grooms' wages, 6d; William de Whitelay arranging the retinue, harness and others, 12d; making 20lb wax into torches and candles, 10d. Total 3s 4d.

- London, Monday 30 September: The earl started, reaching St Albans the same day. Wastells* for soup, 1d; young pigeons for a roast, 3d [roll mutilated and unreadable]; horse provender, 4 bushels oats, 3s. Total 12s 7d.

[* Wastell: expensive bread made from fine white flour.]

- Dunstaple, Tuesday 1 October: Bread for breakfast there, 8d; three flagons of wine, 12d; beer 6½d; butcher meat, 6d; 6 hens, 9d; larks, 1d; almonds, 2½d; herrings, 1d; hay for horses, 6d; bread for them, 7d; shoeing, 6½d.

- Newport Pagnell, same day: Bread, 8d; wine, 8d, beer, 15d; poultry, 5½d; young pigeons, 5½d; 100 eggs, 4½d; herrings, 1½d; eels and 'pikerells', 20d; mustard for store, 4d; 'vergus', 2d; 'gingibo', 3d; hay for 24 horses, 12d; 4 bushels oats, 3s; lard for the cresset lamp, 1½d; hiring beds, 2d. Total 16s 5d.

- Northampton, Wednesday 2 October: 2lb candles, 2d; salt, 1d; eggs and milk for soup, 3d; 100 herrings, 12d; [hay for horses as above]; bran for a sick palfrey, 1d; litter for beds and horses, 15d; mending and filling new saddles for the earl's palfreys and sumpters, 8d; hire of beds, 2d; mending the fur of the earl's cape, 1d. Total 17s 6½d.

- Suleby, Thursday 3 October: Hay by gift of abbot of...[mutilated] Total 9s 3½d.

- Leicester, Friday 4 October: Herrings, 8d; lampreys, 12d; eels, 6d; horse provender, litter and hire of beds and hay as before, and later in account. Total 13s 4½d.

- Nottingham Saturday 5 October: Flounder, roach and eels, 14d; shaving and washing for the earl, 6d. Total 15s 10½d.

Blyth, Sunday 6 October: Bread for breakfast at Allerton, 10½d; 5 partridges, 10d; baking them, 2d. Total 16s 0½d

- Sherburn, Monday 7 October: Bread for breakfast at Wentbrug, 10d; herrings and cheese for those hungry, 1d; hay and bread for the horses at Doncaster and Wentbrug, 11d; pears, 1d; hire of a hackney for the earl's harness from Blyth to Sherburn, 7d; and its keep, as one of his sumpters could go no further and was delivered to John de Drokensford keeper of the Wardrobe at Blyth. Total 16s 0½d

- York, Tuesday 8 October: 2 flagons of white wine, 10d; red wine, 8d; 4 geese, 15d; lampreys, 2d; roach and perch, 6½d. Total, 18s 6halfd.

- York, Wednesday 9 October: 60 fresh herrings, 8d; haddock and codling, 16d; eels, 8d; roach and dace, 8d; butcher meat for Sir Francis [?], 2d; onions, 1½d; fur for the coverlet of the earl's bed, 7d; mending the coffer of candles, ½d. Total 19s 4d

- York, Thursday 10 October: Swine's flesh, 7d; mutton, 7d; four geese, 14d; and baking them, 2d; hiring dishes for the kitchen, 3d. Total, 15l 0s 3½d.

York, Friday 11 October: Apples and pears, 2d; white peas for soup, 2d; almonds, 1d; salmon, 12d; lampreys, 6d; 'alle' (garlic?) and onions for store, 4d. Total, 12s 3½d.

- Northallerton, Saturday 12 October: Bread for breakfast at Thirsk, 6d; making 'sauf napier', 2d; freshwater fish, 2s; the earl's washing, 6d. Total, 15s 10½d

- Durham, Sunday 13 October: Young pigeons for breakfast and dinner, 9d; larks, 2d; bread and hay for 24 horses on the road at Darlington, 8d; ferrying the earl's horses and baggage at Nesham across the Tees, 3½d. Total, 12s 4½d.

- Newcastle-on-Tyne, Monday 14 October: Mending the earl's hood and furs, 6d; trappings for his palfrey, 16d. Total, 15s 11d.

- Morpeth, Tuesday 15 October: A hood for the earl's palfrey, 1½d; [rest missing]

- Bamburgh, Wednesday 16 October: Bread and hay for the horses on the road at Alnwick, 7d.

- Berwick, Thursday 17 October: Carrying the earl's baggage from the waters of the Tweed to the castle, 3d; ferrying across Tweed, 3d.

- Note: Friday, 18 October: Thomas atte Welle and all the other Londoners and John the candle-bearer, with six horses and six grooms, returned to London. The earl and the others remained at Berwick five days longer, when the account ends.

On 12 December 1303, Earl William of Ross arrived "with his whole retinue" at Perth to meet the nineteen-year-old Edward of Caernarfon, and Edward paid all their expenses "at the king's command." William left on 3 February, and "had by order of the king and council for his expenses, 21 loaves, 18 flagons of wine, 3 beeves, a sheep, 1½ bacon, 500 herrings, 30 cod, and 20lb of wax."

Sources

1) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1272-1307, pp. 360-361, 392.
2) G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland, pp. 249-252.

A Welsh/Scottish Plot To Free Edward Of Caernarfon In 1327

In August 1327, Sir Edward of Caernarfon, formerly King Edward II, was being held in captivity at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, having been forced to abdicate his throne to his fourteen-year-old son Edward III the previous January. Edward must have been in despair in 1327; he had lost everything, his throne, his freedom, his children, whom he wasn't allowed to see, and his beloved Hugh Despenser, grotesquely executed in November 1326. Although it's hard to deny that Edward had brought most of his misfortunes on himself, it's easy to feel sympathy for him; whatever wrongs he had committed, he was certainly paying for them and then some. The former king was not, however, entirely friendless: in June or July 1327, a gang of men led by the Dunheved brothers managed, at least temporarily, to free him (more information about the men involved here and here). And another plot to free Edward from Berkeley was hatched late that summer by a group of Welsh men, and was betrayed to William Shalford, Roger Mortimer's deputy justiciar of North Wales, shortly before 14 September.

Unfortunately it's impossible to say for certain what the aims of this Welsh plot were - merely to free Edward and hide him somewhere in Wales or abroad, or to attempt a political coup? - how far it had advanced, or how well-equipped and organised the men were (or not). What little is known about it comes from a handful of entries in the chancery rolls, and the records of King's Bench in 1331, when one of the 1327 plotters, Hywel ap Gruffydd, accused William Shalford of complicity in Edward II's murder.

The ringleaders of the 1327 plot were two men who had long been staunchly loyal to Edward II: Sir Gruffydd Llywd (also known as Gruffydd ap Rhys) of North Wales, lord of Dinorwig and Tregarnedd, sheriff of Anglesey and Merioneth, and his kinsman Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd of South Wales, lord of Narberth and sheriff of Carmarthen. There are numerous records throughout Edward II's reign demonstrating how much responsibility and trust the king placed in these two men; he appointed them to search for Roger Mortimer after his escape from the Tower in August 1323, for example, and both men played key roles in Edward's campaign against the Marcher lords in 1321/22. Rhys ap Gruffydd remained loyal to Edward until the very end, and was one of the men Edward sent as an envoy to his wife Isabella on 10 November 1326, a few days before his capture. [1] Edward II was rather popular in Wales, the land of his birth, even long after his death; in the late fourteenth century, the (English, admittedly) chronicler Thomas Walsingham wrote "the Welsh in a wonderful manner cherished and esteemed him, and, as far as they were able, stood by him grieving over his adversities both in life and in his death, and composing mournful songs about him in the language of their country, the memory of which lingers to the present time, and which neither the dread of punishment nor the passage of time has destroyed." [2]

So who were the other men involved in the Welsh plot to free Edward from Berkeley? Sometime before 26 October 1327, thirteen men were imprisoned at Caernarfon Castle (spelling of their names as it appears on the Close Roll): Gruffydd Llywd ('Griffin ap Rees'); Madoc Loithe; Griffin ap Howel; Jorverth ap Griffith; David Vagh'; Llywelin ap Ken'; David ap Ath'; Welim ap Phelif'; Howel ap Luspa; Ken ap Griffith; Ath' ap Eignon; Howel ap Griffith and Jorverth his brother. [3] The Close Roll entry doesn't specify what they had done - not that we would really expect it to - but is merely an order to the justiciar of North Wales, i.e. an order from Roger Mortimer to himself, to have the men "lately taken at Kaernarvan Castle and imprisoned there, to be released by mainprise or for hostages to be delivered to him [Mortimer] for them..." It wasn't until 1331 that the reasons for this imprisonment were made public (see below). These thirteen were prominent men: J.B. Smith has pointed out that "[a]n examination of the names leaves no doubt that the men concerned represented a very powerful force in the community of North Wales. It is at the same time clear that men of South Wales were also deeply implicated." [4] Although the writ of 26 October ordered the release of the men, Gruffydd Llywd at least remained in prison for eighteen months, according to a petition he presented after Mortimer and Isabella's downfall (qil ad este enprisone atort et saunz desert, et puis detenu en la prisone nostre seignur le Roi par un an et demy; "that he had been imprisoned wrongfully and undeservedly, and then detained in our lord the king's prison for one and a half years.") [5] Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd fled to Scotland with some of his co-plotters, who are named on the Patent Roll as (original spelling) Morgan Thloyt ap Rees Kethin; Howelin ap Griffith ap Howel; Herbert de Ferrers; Griffin Waghan ap Griffith ap Gronou; David Vaghan ap David ap Yevan; Howelin Wachel ap Howel and William Hire. [6]

I'm speculating, but I wonder if Rhys and the others went to Scotland in the company of the adherents of Donald, earl of Mar, Robert Bruce's nephew and one of Edward II's closest friends and allies; it was said in the summer of 1327 that Donald's supporters "lately went to Scotland in the company of Dunald de Mar, a rebel, and have returned to do what mischief they can to the king and his realm" (and presumably took themselves off to Scotland again afterwards). Donald of Mar had - like Rhys ap Gruffydd, whom he must have known very well as they were both members of Edward's chamber staff - loyally remained with Edward II until shortly before his capture in November 1326, then fled to the homeland he had barely visited for twenty years. Donald, usually called "the king [Edward III]'s enemy and rebel" after Edward II's deposition, was in the north of England in the summer of 1327 leading one of his uncle Bruce's armies against the new regime, but several of his adherents gathered in the Marches, near both Berkeley and the Welsh border, "to do and procure the doing of what evils they can against the king and his subjects." In short, this meant trying to aid Edward of Caernarfon; the Lanercost chronicler says that Donald "returned to Scotland after the capture of the king, hoping to rescue him from captivity and restore him to his kingdom, as formerly, by the help of the Scots and of certain adherents whom the deposed king still had in England." [7]

Roger Mortimer and Isabella evidently perceived Donald of Mar, nephew of the king of Scots, an earl and a man whose loyalty to the former king was unwavering, as a threat; they ordered the arrest of two of his adherents in Staffordshire in August 1327 merely for sending letters to him, ordered the arrest of several of his other adherents for making 'mischief', and on 14 July told the justice of Chester - Sir Richard Damory, brother of Edward II's former favourite Roger - to keep Richard le Brun, former mayor of Chester, "safely in the king’s prison" for adherence to Donald. (It's interesting to note in this context that the Dunheved brothers and several of their allies, men willing to risk imprisonment, exile and death for Edward of Caernarfon's sake, were in Chester in early June 1327, and Damory was ordered to arrest and imprison them.) [8] Mortimer and Isabella were evidently also keen to see Rhys ap Gruffydd back from Scotland and under their watchful eye, and in February and April 1328 offered him pardons for "disobedience to the king's command to come to him, putting himself beyond the king's power, and adhering to the Scots" three times. The Welshmen who had fled with him were also offered pardons, though only once. [9] Rhys, however, although he demonstrated great loyalty to Edward III for many years after the young king seized power, was not interested in returning to an England and Wales ruled by the dowager queen and her favourite.

Donald, earl of Mar, Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd and Gruffydd Llywd's son Ieuan were also involved in the earl of Kent's plot to rescue the supposedly dead Edward of Caernarfon from Corfe Castle in 1330, and their opposition to Isabella and Mortimer continued even after Kent's execution that March: Adam Murimuth says they were planning an invasion of England, Donald from Scotland and Rhys, with other men hostile to Roger Mortimer and Isabella, from Brabant, whose Duke Jan III was Edward's nephew. The impending invasion forced Isabella and Mortimer to array knights and men-at-arms up and down the country "to set out against certain contrariants and rebels who lately withdrew secretly from the realm and who have assembled a multitude of armed men in parts beyond the sea and have prepared ships of war and other things and who propose entering the realm to aggrieve the king and his people." Mortimer, now justiciar of the whole of Wales (to which position he had appointed himself for life) ordered himself on 8 August 1330 to "arrest and imprison all those of Wales whom he finds to be adhering or consenting to Rhys ap Griffyn...as Rhys is charged with adhering to Edmund de Wodestok, late earl of Kent, and has gone to parts beyond sea without the king's licence, and proposes to enter the realm with certain other enemies with a multitude of armed men, and the king understands that many in Wales, both relations of Rhys and others, are of his confederacy and alliance." [10] I'm afraid I can't help but smile at the fact that Mortimer and Isabella were now facing the same fate, armed invasion against their unpopular regime, that they themselves had inflicted on Edward II, though ultimately it never went ahead and it was Edward III who overthrew them a few weeks later.

Returning to the plot of August/September 1327, somehow William Shalford, Roger Mortimer's deputy justiciar of Wales, got to hear about it, and informed Mortimer. In 1331, Hywel ap Gruffydd accused Shalford "of counselling and encompassing the death of Sir Edward, father of our present lord the king, whom God absolve, who was feloniously and treacherously killed and murdered...on the Monday next after the Nativity of Our Lady in the first year of the reign of our lord the present king [14 September 1327], whom God absolve, at Rhosyr (Newborough) on Anglesey, this same William ordained and had a letter made, and sent it to Sir Roger Mortimer at Abergavenny, in which letter was stated that Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd and others of his faction were assembling their power in North Wales and South Wales [en Northgales et en Southgales], with the assent of some of the magnates of the land of England, to forcibly deliver the said Sir Edward, father of our said lord the king, who was then detained in Berkeley Castle; and he gave him to understand by the said letter that if the said Sir Edward was delivered in any manner, that the said Sir Roger and all his followers would die an evil death, and be completely destroyed. Whereupon the said William, treacherously, as a traitor, by the said letter counselled the said Sir Roger that he should ordain such a remedy regarding the aforesaid things that neither the said Sir Rhys, nor anyone else of England or Wales, would ever think of making his [Edward II's] deliverance." [11] (My translation.)

The usual, or one might even say clichéd, interpretation of all this is that William Shalford's letter inspired Roger Mortimer to order Edward of Caernarfon's murder in order to protect himself and his position; Shalford's letter goes on to say that Mortimer sent William Ockley to Berkeley Castle with the letter, and certainly Ockley was convicted of Edward II's murder in the parliament of November 1330. Edward's fate in 1327, however, and the bizarrely implausible timing of Shalford writing a letter on Anglesey on 14 September, Mortimer in Abergavenny making the decision to murder Edward, sending William Ockley to Berkeley, Edward of Caernarfon being murdered on 21 September and Edward III hearing the news of his father's death in Lincoln on 23 September - that is, a journey of close to 400 miles in nine days, Rhosyr to Abergavenny to Berkeley to Lincoln, crossing the Menai Strait, riding through most of a sparsely-populated, mountainous country, crossing the Severn to Berkeley, riding across a large part of England, in nine days - are topics for another day. I've wittered on enough anyway, and I hope this post has gone some way to demonstrating that Edward of Caernarfon was not completely abandoned and friendless after his deposition. William Shalford's statement (via Edward's ally Hywel ap Gruffydd several years later, admittedly) that Rhys ap Gruffydd and his allies had the "assent of some of the magnates of the land of England," assent dascuns des grantz de la terre Dengleterre, in their plot to free Edward is interesting, no? Even if that is not true, the 1327 plot of the Dunheveds and their allies was also said by a more disinterested observer, the Pauline annalist, to have had the support of "certain magnates." [12] Edward may have lost the support of very many of his subjects in 1326/27; but he was not alone.

Sources

1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1321-1324, p. 335 (their names are spelt Res Apgriffit and Griffin Apres); Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 336; J.B. Smith, 'Edward II and the Allegiance of Wales', Welsh History Review, 8 (1976), pp. 159-161.

2) Historia Anglicana Thomas Walsingham, ed. H.T. Riley, vol. 1, p. 83.

3) Calendar of Close Rolls 1327-1330, p. 182.

4) Smith, 'Edward II and the Allegiance of Wales', p. 167.
5) J.G. Edwards, 'Sir Gruffydd Llywd', English Historical Review, 30 (1915), pp. 596-598; Calendar of Ancient Petitions 319/E388.
6) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 272-273.
7) Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 2, p. 96; The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. H. Maxwell, pp. 256-577; Scalacronica: The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III as recorded by Sir Thomas Gray, ed. H. Maxwell, p. 73; Cal Close Rolls 1327-1330, p. 212; Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 139, 180, 183, 191, 258. For the record, Donald of Mar's named adherents were: Ralph Chopcok; Ralph Lightred; Adam le Parker; John de Lodyngton; Richard de Egremond; John Lespicer; Stephen Morel; Thomas atte Wall; William de Seint More; William Skakeloc; William and John de Makeseye.
8) Cal Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 142, 157, 212; Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 139, 153, 183.
9) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 238, 242, 256.
10) Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, pp. 255-257; Cal Close Rolls 1330-1333, pp. 51, 147, 151; Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 544, 563, 570-572; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-1337, pp. 169-170.

11) T.F. Tout, 'The Captivity and Death of Edward of Carnarvon', Collected Papers of Thomas Frederick Tout, vol. iii, pp. 184-185.

12) Annales Paulini 1307-1340, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 1, p. 337.

Marguerite Of France (2)

The second and final part (part one) of my post about Marguerite of France, second queen of Edward I and stepmother of Edward II. There is evidence to suggest that Marguerite was on close terms with Edward of Caernarfon - who was only about five years younger than she was - at least before his accession in 1307. In 1299, a few weeks after Marguerite's marriage to Edward I, her household was merged for a time with that of her fifteen-year-old stepson. Edward (of Caernarfon) sent her a gold ring set with a ruby as a New Year gift in January 1303, and in the regnal year of November 1302 to November 1303 gave her, and members of her household, jewels, rings, cups and belts to the value of a little over fifty pounds. Oh, and here are some nice details I forgot to mention in the first part: as her wedding gift in September 1299, Edward I gave his new wife jewels which had once belonged to her great-grandmother Blanche of Castile, queen of Louis VIII: a gold crown, a gold coronet and a gold belt, all adorned with precious stones. For New Year 1304, Edward I gave Marguerite a gold cup with foot and cover, and a gold pitcher; three years previously, she had given him a gold goblet with cover and "two silver platters called 'Lechefrithe'." [1]

Several hundred of Edward of Caernarfon's letters happen to survive for a few months in 1304/05, eight of them to Marguerite. [2] He usually addressed her as "my very dear lady and mother" (ma treschere dame e mere); references to Marguerite after Edward's accession to the throne almost invariably call her "the king's mother," though Edward also addressed his former wetnurse Alice Leygrave in the same terms and in 1305, rather poignantly given that he can barely have remembered Eleanor of Castile, called his much older kinswoman Agnes de Valence "our good mother" (nostre bone mere) and called himself her son. (Bless him.) It was in the summer of 1305 that Queen Marguerite really came into her own, acting as a liaison between Edward and his father the irascible sixty-six-year-old king: the two men fell out for a few weeks, supposedly after Edward of Caernarfon insulted Walter Langton, the treasurer, with "gross and harsh words" and went hunting, with Piers Gaveston, in Langton's parks without permission. [3] Edward wrote several letters to Marguerite during this period asking her to intercede with his father on his behalf, especially in the matter of Piers Gaveston and Gilbert de Clare, whom the king had, with many others, removed from his household: "if we should add those two to the others, we would feel much comfort and alleviation of the anguish which we have endured, and continue to suffer, by the ordinance of our aforementioned lord and father. My lady, will you please take this matter to heart, and pursue it in the most gracious manner that you may, so dearly as you love us." Marguerite evidently did so, the quarrel was soon resolved, and on 1 September 1305 Edward sent her a courteous letter of gratitude: "We thank you as dearly as we may for the distress which you have endured for us, and for the goodwill with which you have carried out the business touching us" (Nous vous mercioms si cherement come nous pooms des travals que vous avez endure pur nous, e du bien que vous avez mis en les busoignes que nous touchent; my translation).

Edward II's closeness to his stepmother, as well as to numerous other women such as his sisters (who, to judge from the surviving letters of 1304/05, thought the world of him), various nieces and other kinswomen, and the women who populate the pages of his chamber journals dining, drinking and otherwise spending quality time with him, goes a long way to disproving the notion that he was "hostile to women" (to cite a fairly recent review on Amazon which refers to him), a theory evidently based on some bizarre idea that men who love men must automatically hate women. To return to Marguerite, there are various entries which make it apparent that she followed her husband to Scotland on his campaigns of the early 1300s, which would seem to point to a close relationship. (Isabella of France also accompanied Edward II on his unsuccessful Scottish campaign of 1310/11 and spent a few months with him at Berwick-on-Tweed, a fact often missed or ignored; she also travelled as far north as Berwick with her husband in June 1314 when he went to fight at Bannockburn.) Marguerite must have been disappointed in the summer of 1305 when the planned trip to England of her mother Marie of Brabant and her brother Louis of Evreux was cancelled. Edward of Caernarfon, keen to present himself well during the visit of his royal relatives, had ordered "two palfreys which are beautiful and suitable for our proper mounting."

The death of sixty-eight-year-old Edward I on 7 July 1307 left Marguerite a widow in her late twenties with three children, Thomas, Edmund and Eleanor, aged seven, almost six and fourteen months. The now dowager queen was well dowered with lands, Edward II had bound himself to provide for her children, his half-siblings, and perhaps Marguerite looked forward to a continuation of the close relationship they had long enjoyed. Within months, however, Edward's obsessive favouritism towards Piers Gaveston began to fray this relationship, and it is possible that the dowager queen's opposition to the new earl of Cornwall was at least partly rooted in concern for her niece Isabella, daughter of Marguerite's half-brother Philippe IV of France and the queen of England from February 1308. Marguerite seems, however, not to have offered the twelve-year-old girl advice on how to deal with the complicated situation, but to have retired from court. According to a newsletter of May 1308, Marguerite and Philippe IV offered the English barons opposed to Piers Gaveston the enormous sum of £40,000, which sounds like one of those wild exaggerations so beloved of medieval chroniclers (to put the sum into perspective, Marguerite's dower gave her an income of £4500 a year). Another point of conflict between Marguerite and Piers arose over the castle of Berkhamstead, which was part of the dowager queen's dower but had previously belonged to Edmund (died 1300), Edward I's cousin and the previous earl of Cornwall; Edward II seems to have granted possession of the castle to Piers, and the royal favourite certainly married Margaret de Clare there in November 1307. Although it was sometimes stated in Edward II's lifetime, and still is nowadays, that Edward I had intended the earldom of Cornwall for one of his sons by Marguerite, a document which the king drew up in August 1306 states that Thomas should receive the earldom of Norfolk and Edmund unspecified lands worth 7000 marks a year, with no title mentioned. (See here: no mention of the earldom of Cornwall going to either son.)

Marguerite attended the wedding of Edward II to her niece Isabella in Boulogne on 25 January 1308; her mother Queen Marie and half-brother the king of France were also among the guests. Her opposition to Piers Gaveston later that year, however, appears to have cooled her relationship with her stepson, and for the remaining ten years of her life it is hard to say anything much about Marguerite of France - anything much that's interesting, at least - and she certainly played little if any role in politics. Edward briefly confiscated her castles of Gloucester, Berkhamstead (certainly hers after Piers Gaveston's death in 1312), Leeds and Odiham in October 1317, but soon restored them to her, and most of the references to Marguerite in the chancery rolls after 1308 concern her lands and are therefore pretty dull. [4] It's hard to say anything much about what kind of person she was; her successful relationship with a man four decades her senior and willingness to intercede with him on her stepson's behalf suggest a pleasant, accommodating personality. Various historians of the nineteenth century, foremost among them Agnes Strickland, record that Marguerite was "good withouten lack," though I don't know what the primary source for that quotation is. (I'm sure I could find out easily enough, but to be honest my interest in it only goes so far.)

Queen Marguerite died on 14 February 1318, probably not yet forty years old, at her castle of Marlborough in Wiltshire. On 8 March, Edward II sent two pieces of Lucca cloth 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. Edward appointed his half-brothers Thomas and Edmund, aged seventeen and sixteen, as executors of their mother's will. Isabella of France, then about six months pregnant with her and Edward's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock, also attended her aunt's funeral, apparently without the benefit of new Lucca cloth; forty years later she would be buried in the same church. [5]

Marguerite was survived by her brother Louis, count of Evreux, her mother Marie of Brabant, dowager queen of France, and two of her three children. Her younger son Edmund, earl of Kent, was beheaded in March 1330 at the age of twenty-eight after plotting to rescue the supposedly dead Edward II from Corfe Castle; her elder son Thomas, earl of Norfolk, died aged thirty-eight in August 1338 after a career which, to be frank, failed by some distance even to achieve mediocrity. Marguerite's granddaughters Joan of Kent (Edmund's daughter) and Margaret Marshal (Thomas's daughter) produced offspring from whom Marguerite has numerous illustrious descendants: Richard II, her great-grandson; all the kings and queens of England from Edward IV onwards; all the kings and queens of Scotland from James II (1430-1460) onwards; three of Henry VIII's wives, Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr; and my friend at the Nevill Feast blog might be interested to learn that Isobel Ingoldisthorpe was Marguerite's five greats-granddaughter and Richard Nevill, earl of Warwick, her four greats-grandson.

Sources

1) Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II, p. 4; Alison Marshall, 'The Childhood and Household of Edward II's Half-Brothers, Thomas of Brotherton and Edmund of Woodstock', in The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson, p. 197, note 43; Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adopted Brother, p. 99; Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1272-1307, pp. 325, 370, 376.
2) Hilda Johnstone, ed., Letters of Edward, Prince of Wales 1304-5, pp. 44-45, 73-74, 88-90, 111, 127; J.S. Hamilton, 'The Character of Edward II', in Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, pp. 16-17.
3) See Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307, pp. 96-102, for a detailed account of the quarrel.
4) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1317-1321, pp. 38, 46, for the confiscation of the queen's castles.
5) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 360; Thomas Stapleton, 'A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth years of King Edward the Second', Archaeologia, 26 (1836) p. 337.

Marguerite Of France (1)

The first part of a post about Edward II's stepmother, Marguerite of France, second wife of Edward I and the queen of England - albeit uncrowned - from September 1299 to July 1307. Edward II was the first king of England since before the Norman Conquest to have a stepmother; the next would be his great-great-grandson Henry V, as Henry IV's second wife Joan of Navarre outlived him by twenty-four years.

Marguerite was the daughter of King Philippe III of France and his second wife Marie of Brabant. Philippe was born in 1245 as the fourth child and eldest surviving son of Louis IX and Marguerite of Provence, and succeeded his father as king in 1270; Marie was born between about 1254 and 1260 as the daughter of Duke Hendrik III of Brabant and Adelaide, daughter of Duke Hugues IV of Burgundy, and was the aunt of Edward II's brother-in-law Duke Jan II of Brabant. Philippe III and Queen Marie married on 21 August 1274, two and a half years after the death of his first wife Isabel of Aragon, mother of Philippe IV and Charles, count of Valois (ancestor of the Valois dynasty), and had three children: Marguerite, Blanche and Louis, count of Évreux. Only Louis of Évreux's date of birth is known, 3 May 1276. Marguerite is said by the Liber de antiquis legibis [1] to have been twenty when she married Edward I on 10 September 1299, which would mean that she was born sometime between 11 September 1278 and 10 September 1279; her date of birth is often given in books and online as 1282, but there is no evidence for this. Blanche is likely to have been the youngest of the three siblings, as between 1291 and 1294 she was betrothed to the future Edward II, who was born in April 1284. There is a story, repeated as fact on Marguerite's Wikipedia page but completely without foundation, that Edward I wanted to marry Blanche because she was very beautiful but was tricked by Philippe IV into marrying Marguerite instead: perhaps the confusion arose from Blanche's betrothal to Edward of Caernarfon. Blanche ultimately married Rudolf, duke of Austria and (after Blanche's death) king of Bohemia and Poland, and died childless in 1305. Their brother Louis of Évreux, who died in 1319 and was a friend and correspondent of Edward II before his accession, married Marguerite of Artois and had five children, including Jeanne, queen of France, who married her first cousin Charles IV.

Marguerite of France's father Philippe III died in October 1285 when she was probably six, and her seventeen-year-old half-brother acceded as Philippe IV. Her mother Marie of Brabant outlived Philippe III by thirty-six years (Queen Marie in fact outlived all her three children and her stepson Philippe IV). Inevitably, almost nothing is known of Marguerite's childhood or of her relations with her siblings and half-siblings, and the first significant reference to her comes in 1294, when she was about fifteen. To cut a very long story short, it was first proposed that year, by her mother Queen Marie, Edward I's brother Edmund of Lancaster and Edmund's stepdaughter Jeanne, queen of France and Navarre (Philippe IV's wife), that Marguerite should marry Edward I in order to prevent a war between Edward and Philippe over Gascony; sadly the situation soon deteriorated and war did in fact break out. The betrothal of Edward's ten-year-old son to Marguerite's sister Blanche was terminated and little Edward betrothed instead to the count of Flanders' daughter Philippa, while Edward I's own marriage to Marguerite was cancelled. By 1299, however, diplomacy had won out: it was decided that Edward and Marguerite's marriage would go ahead after all, while his son, now fifteen, would marry the only surviving of Philippe IV's three daughters, Isabella. As she was only three or four in 1299, however, this marriage was of necessity postponed for a few years; but Marguerite's wedding to Edward I went ahead immediately.

Marguerite married Edward, who had been a widower for nine years since the death of Eleanor of Castile in November 1290, in Canterbury Cathedral on 10 September 1299; she was (apparently) twenty and he sixty, born in June 1239. They were first cousins once removed, Edward's mother Eleanor of Provence being the sister of Marguerite's grandmother, Louis IX's queen Marguerite. Edward's eldest surviving child Joan of Acre, countess of Gloucester, born in 1272, was about seven years older than her new stepmother, and his youngest child Edward of Caernarfon about five years younger. As far as one can tell, the marriage proved a happy one despite the age difference of four decades, although Edward never had Marguerite crowned queen. Their eldest child Thomas, later earl of Norfolk, was born on 1 June 1300 - nine days short of nine months after the wedding - at Brotherton in Yorkshire, one of the archbishop of York's manors. Sixteen-year-old Edward of Caernarfon, whose three brothers, none of whom he had ever known, had all died young, seems to have been delighted at the birth of his half-brother: he gave twenty pounds to the messenger who brought him the news, and generous gifts to the baby's nurses. [2]

Marguerite's second son, Edmund, later earl of Kent and destined to die on the scaffold in March 1330 for his support of his half-brother Edward II, was born fourteen months after his brother, on 5 August 1301 at the royal manor of Woodstock. Marguerite and Edward I also had a daughter, Eleanor, born on 4 May 1306 when the king was a few weeks shy of his sixty-seventh birthday. (There is some debate as to when Edward I's eldest child was born, but it was most probably in the early 1260s, meaning there was around forty-five years between the births of his eldest and youngest children. Edward I's eldest grandchild Gilbert de Clare, born in 1291, was fifteen years older than his little half-aunt; his eldest great-grandchild Hugh, Lord Despenser, son of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare, was only two or three years younger than little Eleanor, his great-aunt.) Marguerite's Wikipedia page says that her allowing her daughter to be named after her husband's first wife Eleanor of Castile is evidence of her "unjealous nature," though one wonders how much choice she really had; besides, her Wikipedia page is astonishingly inaccurate even by Wikipedia standards. Little Eleanor was betrothed at a mere four days old to Robert of Burgundy, born in 1300 as the son and heir of Othon IV, count of Burgundy and Mahaut, countess of Artois. Sadly, the little girl died at the age of five in the autumn of 1311; her half-brother Edward II paid £113 "for the expenses and preparations made for the burial of the body of the Lady Eleanor, the king’s sister" at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. (Her fiancé Robert died unmarried in 1315; his eldest sister Jeanne inherited their parents' lands and became queen of France in 1316 by marriage to Philippe V.) [3]

In the next post, I'll look at Marguerite of France's relations with her stepson Edward II, before his accession and afterwards - there is much evidence of closeness before 1307, but her opposition to Piers Gaveston, as you'd expect, did not go down well with the king - and at other aspects of her life.

Sources

1) John Carmi Parsons, 'Margaret of France (1279?-1318)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
2) Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307, p. 46.
3) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1301-1307, pp. 431, 460; Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer: Being A Collection of Payments Made Out of His Majesty’s Revenue from King Henry III to King Henry VI Inclusive, p. 124.

Edward II Prefers Speaking French To Latin And Therefore Is Stupid, 'Experts' Claim

Edward II's mother tongue was French, or rather the version of it used in medieval England, which is usually called Anglo-Norman today. In February 1308, Edward made his coronation oath in French, rather than in Latin as previous English kings had done (though records are missing for Edward I's coronation in 1274, and it may be that he made the oath in French too). In January 1312, the writ declaring that Piers Gaveston had returned to England from his third exile and that the king considered him "good and loyal" was written in French rather than the usual Latin, and a memorandum declares that the king himself had dictated the form of the writ (la dite forme fu fete par le Roi meismes). And in 1317, Pope John XXII thanked the archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Reynolds, for translating a papal bull from Latin into French for Edward's benefit. [1]

These factors caused various historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to condemn Edward II for 'laziness', 'stupidity' and 'illiteracy' because he had failed to master Latin. [2] This is completely and utterly ridiculous. Edward I's biographer Professor Michael Prestwich says that the king "had some understanding of Latin," [3] but I've never seen anyone condemn Edward I for 'laziness', 'stupidity' and 'illiteracy' because he wasn't completely fluent in the language. Funny, that, isn't it? I've never seen anyone claim that Edward III was stupid because he took his coronation oath in French not Latin in 1327, or Richard II in 1377, or Henry IV in 1399, or the other kings who also did. Pope John XXII asked Edward II's brother-in-law Charles IV of France in 1323 to write to him in Latin in the future, not in French as Charles was wont to do, as his (the pope's) knowledge of French, or rather the Parisian form of it, was inadequate. [4] Has anyone ever called Charles IV stupid and lazy for sending letters in his native language rather than in Latin? Of course not.

Hmmm. If you didn't know better, you might even think that some writers have been biased against Edward II and determined to think the worst of him in any and every situation. (God forbid.) Using Latin to give the responses during the coronation oath would have required the king to learn a mere five words (Servabo; Faciam; Concedo et promitto) by heart, assuming he didn't know them already, which he more than likely did. How on earth could Edward II, who might not have qualified for Mensa membership but who was certainly not stupid*, have been unable to learn five words by heart? A ludicrous notion. [5] It is virtually certain that Edward did learn Latin as a child, as his father and son did and his mother Queen Eleanor most probably did too, growing up at the sophisticated and literary Castilian courts of her father Fernando III and half-brother Alfonso X. [6] Despite his education, however, Edward II wasn't a great Latin scholar. Of course he wasn't; nobody would ever have expected him to be. His father and son weren't either. And regarding his coronation, it may be that Edward or his advisers decided that he should give his responses in French because it was the native language of just about everyone attending, and perhaps also out of respect for the large French delegation present, who included Queen Isabella's uncles the counts of Valois and Evreux and her brother, the future Charles IV.

* Some modern commentators have sneeringly described Edward as stupid, but they're wrong, as wrong as older commentators who sneered at him for supposedly being illiterate and lazy. Sneering at Edward II on highly dubious grounds (his rustic hobbies being a favourite excuse for a good old-fashioned lip curl, with his sexuality coming a close second) has been a popular pastime for more than a century, but that's no reason why we should take any notice of these people.

As for the 1317 translation by the archbishop of Canterbury, papal bulls, letters and so on were often written in a Latin difficult and convoluted even for scholars to understand, as Hilda Johnstone has pointed out. Edward's request for a translation does not demonstrate ignorance; for pity's sake, how many people would be able or willing to read a complex text in a language they had learned twenty years previously but had had little occasion to use since? If some commentators weren't so eager to slam Edward II for every single damn thing he ever did, they might realise that his wish to read the letter in his native language is far more likely to have arisen from common sense - because he wanted to ensure that he understood it correctly - than from ignorance. For myself, I can read French and German pretty fluently and have enough knowledge of various other languages to get the gist of, say, some newspaper articles and other texts that don't have an advanced level of vocabulary, but I'd still much rather read material in English if a translation is available. I don't think anyone would argue that this makes me stupid, ignorant or lazy. As anyone who's ever read (or tried to read) a contract will know, legalese is hard enough to grasp in your native language, never mind in a language you learned at school decades previously. Same for the writ declaring Piers Gaveston loyal in 1312; why should Edward have done it in Latin, when dictating it to his clerks in his native language was obviously going to be far more precise and to the point than struggling to find the right Latin words?

I'll end this post with the two memoranda appended to this writ and the one following, which restored Piers to his earldom and lands (and was written in Latin). The first begins, as stated above, with "this form was made by the king himself" and continues "he took the writs as soon as they were sealed and put them on his bed." The second reads "these writs were made in the king's presence by his order under threat of grievous forfeiture." Needless to say, Edward was not usually present, and indeed couldn't be owing to time constraints, whenever his clerks wrote and sealed writs, charters, letters and the like, but these two involved the return of Piers Gaveston; the king's emotions were therefore fully engaged and are easily visible from that second memo. It creates a vivid image in my mind of Edward II striding about telling his clerks what he wanted them to write about Piers and losing his temper when they were reluctant to do it - probably because they knew the effect Piers' restoration was going to have on Edward's barons - to the extent that he shouted dire threats at them. (Edward always did have a pretty vile temper.) The king's personality and emotions suddenly spring into view, not for the first time, in what would otherwise be a dry legal document.

Sources

1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 448-449; Foedera 1307-1327, pp. 153-154; Pierre Chaplais, English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages, pp. 128, 130; T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of England, vol. 2, pp. 199-200.
Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307, pp. 19-20, and J.R.S. Phillips, 'The Place of the Reign of Edward II', in The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson, pp. 221-223, make valuable points about some historians' insistence on Edward's 'stupidity' and 'illiteracy' and the lack of foundation for these claims.

2) For example, V.H. Galbraith, 'The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings', Proceedings of the British Academy, 21 (1935), p. 215, and W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, vol. 2, p. 332.

3) Michael Prestwich, Edward I, p. 6.
4) Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, vol. 1, pp. 21-22.
5) The full text of Edward II's coronation ceremony is given in Foedera 1307-1327, pp. 33-36, in Latin. The French and English versions of his oath are in the sidebar on the left.

6) See Phillips, 'Place of the Reign of Edward II', pp. 224-225.

For interest's sake, here's the original text and my translation of the January 1312 writ restoring Piers Gaveston, which Edward II himself dictated and addressed to all the sheriffs of England:

Come monsieur Peres de Gavaston, counte de Cornwaill', n'adgueres fust exile hors de nostre reaume, contre les leis et les usages de mesmes le reaume, as queus garder et meintenir nous sumes tenez par le serment, que nous feismes a nostre coronement; en le quel exil il fu nome autre que bon et leal; Et meismes celui counte, par nostre maundement, seit ja revenu a nous en dit reaume, prest d'ester a droit, devant nous, a touz que de rien li vodront chalanger, solom les leis et les usages avanditz; Par quei nous li tenoms bon et loial, et a nostre fei et a nostre pees, et unqes a autre ne li tenismes: Nous, de nostre real poer, vous commandoms ceste chose facez par tote vostre baillie publier.

As Sir Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, was lately exiled from our realm contrary to the laws and customs of the same realm, which we are held to keep and to maintain by the oath which we made at our coronation; in which exile he was named as other than good and loyal; And this same earl, by our order, has now returned to us in the said realm, and is ready to stand trial [literally 'stand to right'], before us, of everything he may be accused of, according to the laws and customs aforesaid; Wherefore we hold him good and loyal, and in our allegiance and in our peace, and at no time will we hold him otherwise; We, of our royal power, command you to have this judgement published throughout your whole jurisdiction.