Edward II's Mood, As Revealed By His Correspondence

Although I have to exercise caution when using Edward II's extant correspondence to gauge his personality and feelings - Edward couldn't possibly have seen more than a fraction of all the letters, writs and so on sent out in his name, and the vast majority of them are purely conventional - there are occasions when he emerges abruptly in his correspondence and it's clear that Edward himself must have dictated a letter, or part of it.  Here are some examples.

- Edward sent a letter to Isabella in France on 1 December 1325, after he had heard that she was refusing to return to him.  The letter (in French) opens abruptly with Dame, 'Lady'.  That's Edward's own voice, at the beginning of a very personal missive in which Edward seeks above all else to defend Hugh Despenser the Younger to his wife, having heard that Isabella was refusing to come back to him because she was afraid of Hugh and angry that he had come between her and Edward, which must have irritated her profoundly.  His clerks wouldn't have dared address the queen like that.  The letter starts "Lady, often we have summoned you to us, both before the homage and after..."  [Close Rolls 1323-7, pp. 580-81; Foedera 1307-27, p. 615; the translation of the French on the Close Roll is not particularly good.]  Edward also addresses Isabella as 'Lady' elsewhere in the letter, as in "And, Lady, we have heard that...".  It comes across as angry, bitter and somewhat sarcastic.  This would be the last letter he ever sent his wife.

- A letter from Edward to Pope John XXII on 10 June 1326 refers to Isabella as "the queen of England, our wife."  When Edward was happy and content with her in 1313, he called her "our very dear consort, our dear lady, Lady Isabella queen of England."  Spot the difference.  [Foedera 1307-1327, p. 629]

- On a similar note, Edward wrote a letter on 3 October 1326 after Isabella's invasion, pointedly referring to her simply as "the king's wife," not even acknowledging her as queen, not using her name.  And obviously not with the conventional "our very dear consort" before her name either.  In his chamber account of this period, however, she is still called ma dame la roine, "my lady the queen."  [Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 582]  And it is not the case, as the French Chronicle of London claims, that Edward had it publicly proclaimed in 1326 that "the queen of England might not be called queen."  For all Edward's anger with Isabella, he certainly never took it that far.

- Edward II's letters to his father-in-law and second cousin Philip IV of France always began with the same style of address: "To the very excellent and very puissant prince, his very dear and beloved father, Philip, by the grace of God noble king of France, greetings and very dear affection."  On 3 August 1309, however, Edward was deeply annoyed with Philip, having learnt that the French king had smuggled letters to Scotland hidden in the breeches of his messenger which acknowledged Robert Bruce as king.  In his letters to Edward and in a letter which Philip sent openly to Scotland, not hidden away, Philip talked of Bruce only as earl of Carrick and thus pretended that he had not addressed him as king.  Furious at his father-in-law's two-faced, deceptive behaviour, Edward's letter opened with "To the king of France, greetings."  Again, spot the difference.  That's clearly Edward's own order to his clerks, who wouldn't have dared address the king of France in such terms without his say-so.

- Unwilling to take responsibility for his own failures in Scotland, Edward II sent a bitterly sarcastic letter on 10 February 1323 to his second cousin Louis Beaumont, bishop of Durham.  In 1316, Edward had abandoned the support of his own candidate for the bishopric and supported Louis instead on being told by Louis's brother Henry that Louis, if appointed, would be "a defence like a stone wall" against the Scots in the north of England, in stark contrast to the negligence of Louis's predecessor Richard Kellaw.  Edward reminded Louis of all this, and fumed "the king knows actually that greater damage is done in the bishopric by the bishop's default, negligence and laziness than in the time of his predecessor, neither the bishop, nor his friends or relations giving counsel or aid according to their promises."  [Close Rolls 1318-23, p. 697; Foedera, p. 506]  Yes, that's Edward II accusing someone else of laziness and negligence.  "Dear Kettle, you are black.  Much love, Pot."

- In 1305, twenty-one-year-old Edward of Caernarfon sent this delightful letter to Philip IV's half-brother Louis. count of Evreux, his frequent correspondent: "We are sending you a big trotting palfrey which can hardly carry its own weight and stands still when it is laden, and some of our misshapen greyhounds from Wales, which can well catch a hare if they find it asleep, and some of our running dogs which can follow at an amble, for well we know how you take delight in lazy dogs. And, dear cousin, if you want anything else from our land of Wales, we can send you plenty of wild men, if you wish, who will well know how to teach breeding to the young sons and daughters of the nobility."  This letter clearly demonstrates Edward's sense of humour, and has often been misunderstood.

- And finally for today, a memorandum on the Close Roll of 20 January 1312 also reveals much about Edward. It was appended to the order to return the earldom of Cornwall to the newly-returned Piers Gaveston, and says "These writs were made in the king's presence by his order under threat of grievous forfeiture."  The writ restoring Gaveston's earldom is in French, not the usual Latin, which almost certainly means that Edward II himself had drafted it.  The memorandum indicates that Edward's chancery clerks were reluctant to write out the writs (presumably because they knew how Edward's magnates would react), and he stayed in the room to make sure they did it, then lost his temper and threatened them. It's so easy for me to imagine Edward stomping around, dictating the writ, noticing that his clerks were unwilling to write it down and yelling "Oi, do it right now or I'll confiscate every single damn thing that you own!"