Poems On Piers Gaveston's Death

According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, the death of Piers Gaveston on 19 June 1312 was an enormously popular act throughout England: "When Piers had met his end, and the voice of the people had dinned his death into the ears of all, the country rejoiced, and all its inhabitants were glad…The land rejoices, its inhabitants rejoice that they have found peace in Piers' death."

It is surely an exaggeration to say that all the country rejoiced at Piers' death, though for sure some did, as demonstrated by two contemporary poems, which are in Latin in the original:

"Celebrate, my tongue, the death of Piers who disturbed England, whom the king in love for him placed over all Cornwall; hence in his pride he will be called Earl, not Piers.
This is the work of our salvation, that Piers is dead; all the artfulness of the multifarious traitor has perished;
Henceforth let the good omen rejoice our hearts, for sorrow is past; when the fullness of time which was fit for the thing came, his head is cut off from the juncture of his body; he who raised trouble within is now troubled from without.
He who was unwilling to have an equal, clothed in the extreme of pride, against his will bends his neck to the executioner; of whose merited death this hymn is set forth.
He who placed himself as a head above his equals, loses his own head; justly his body is pierced, whose heart was so puffed up; both land, sea, stars and world, rejoice in his fall.
Ferocious and cruel among all men, he ceases now from his pomp,
Now he no longer behaves himself as an earl, or a king;
The unworthy man, worthy of death, undergoes the death he merits…
May the house of Piers, in which he is held, not be supported in strength;
May the other place [the Dominican friary of Oxford, where Piers' body was taken] be profane, and may it be in disgrace, which the filthy gore spilled from Piers’ body has defiled!
Glory be to the Creator!  Glory be to the earls
Who have made Piers die with his charms!
Henceforth may there be peace and rejoicing throughout England!"

***

"The bad tree is cut down, when Piers is struck on the neck;
Blessed be the weapon which thus approached Piers!
Blessed be the hand which executed him!
Blessed the man who ordered the execution!
Blessed the steel which struck him whom the world would not bear any longer!
O Cross, which allowed to be suffered this wretched misery, do thou take from us all the material of misery.
Thee, highest God in Trinity, we pray earnestly, destroy and crush forever the maintainers of Piers."

(Both poems cited in T. Wright, The Political Songs of England (1839), pp. 258-261.)

According to the Vita, Edward II issued an edict ordering everyone to refer to Piers by his title, earl of Cornwall, rather than by his name (as mentioned in the first poem above), and talks of Piers "scornfully rolling his upraised eyes in pride and in abuse, he looked down upon all with pompous and supercilious countenance…indeed the superciliousness which he affected would have been unbearable enough in a king’s son."  The somewhat later Scalacronica agrees that the "great affection" which Edward bestowed on Gaveston made him "haughty and supercilious" – although the author also calls him "very magnificent, liberal and well-bred" – and Lanercost says that Gaveston "had now grown so insolent as to despise all the nobles of the land."  His behaviour evidently alienated many...

Friday Facts

Another post with some fairly random facts about Edward II and his reign. :-)

- The Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow, Piers Lubaud, was a cousin of Piers Gaveston, according to the Vita Edwardi Secundi. Shortly before Christmas 1312, Edward II sent Lubaud's wife Nichola a palfrey horse worth six pounds and a saddle "with a lion of pearls, and covered with purple cloth" worth five pounds. (Whatever a 'lion of pearls' is.)

- Thomas Cobham, bishop of Worcester, told Pope John XXII that at the Westminster parliament of October 1320 "Holy Father, your devoted son, our lord the king, in the parliament summoned to London bore himself splendidly, with prudence and discretion, contrary to his former habit rising early and presenting a nobler and pleasant countenance to prelates and lords. Present almost every day in person, he arranged what business was to be dealt with, discussed and determined. Where amendment was necessary he ingeniously supplied what was lacking, thus giving joy to his people, ensuring their security, and providing reliable hope of an improvement in behaviour."

- Edward's efforts were rewarded in April 1320 when Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford, who had died in August 1282, was canonised: he had written to Popes Clement V and John XXII half a dozen times between December 1307 and January 1319, asking them to canonise Cantilupe. The two archbishops and all the bishops of England asked Edward to be present at the "translation of the holy body" in Hereford Cathedral on 14 June 1321, as this "would be greatly to the honour of God and Holy Church" and to Edward himself. He responded "it pleases the king to be there." As it turned out, Edward was unable to be present; thanks to the Despenser War, he had far more pressing matters to deal with.

- In England on the day of Cantilupe’s canonisation, according to the Sempringham annalist, "about midnight, there were frightful thunders heard, with lightning, and immoderately high wind."

- Edward wrote to his first cousin and greatest enemy Thomas of Lancaster's adherent and friend Sir Robert Holland (who was destined to be beheaded in a wood in Essex in 1328) on 20 November 1311: "we are very joyous and pleased about the good news we have heard concerning the improvement in our dear cousin and faithful subject Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and that he will soon be able to ride in comfort. And we send you word and dearly pray that, as soon as he is comfortable and able to ride without hurt to his body, you should ask him to be so good as to hasten to us at our parliament." I wonder if he gritted his teeth as he dictated that one.

- At Bannockburn, according to the Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Gray (whose father of the same name fought for Edward there), Edward "struck out so vigorously behind him with his mace there was none whom he touched that he did not fell to the ground." And according to the St Albans chronicler, he fought "like a lioness deprived of her cubs." Not exactly the coward he's been depicted as in some novels, then.

- Edward's nephew Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, killed at Bannockburn, was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire. His heart, however, was buried at Shelford near Nottingham: on 8 August 1317, Edward passed through the village on his way to York with Isabella, and attended masses and distributed five shillings and sixpence in oblations at the conventual church of Shelford in memory of the young earl, "whose heart lies there inhumed."

- Edward's name, in contemporary English documents, was always spelt the way it is today. In letters sent to him from France, however, it appeared as Edouwart, Eduart or Edduvart. Isabella's name was spelt in a variety of ways: Isabell, Isabele, Ysabel, Ysabell, Ysabelle, Yzabel. The name Hugh was often spelt Hughe, Hue, Hew, Hugg or Huge, while the foreign name of Edward II's elder brother Alfonso (November 1273-August 1284) baffled English scribes, who wrote it Anfuls, Aufos or Auffoms.

Friday Facts

A post with some fairly random facts about Edward II and his reign.  :-)

- Sometime before October 1311, Edward's first cousin once removed Fernando IV of Castile asked him "for a loan of money in aid of his war against the enemies of Christ."  Edward politely declined that month, on the grounds that he "had been so engaged since his accession with the war in Scotland and other matters that he is unable to accede to this request."  The 'other matters' presumably meant Piers Gaveston, in large part; Edward was at that time batting against the Lords Ordainer, who were determined to send Piers into exile for the third time.  I'm a very long way from being knowledgeable about Spanish history, but I imagine Fernando's war had something to do with his and Jaime II of Aragon's crusade against the king of Granada.
(Close Rolls)

- Edward sent letters on 2 and 12 June 1319 to Haakon V of Norway regarding debts which the Norwegian king owed to eight English merchants - evidently unaware that Haakon had died on 6 May.  Edward had as a child been betrothed to Haakon's niece Margaret the 'Maid of Norway', queen of Scotland.  (Close Rolls).

- On 16 October 1325, Edward asked Pope John XXII to grant dispensations for his children Eleanor of Woodstock and Edward of Windsor (the future Edward III) to marry Alfonso XI and his sister Leonor of Castile, they being second cousins once removed, and sent letters to Jaime II of Aragon's son Alfonso and the regents of Castile two days later, thanking them for their affection for him and "the gracious and benevolent way” they had handled his affairs.  (Close Rolls).

- On the same day, at Cippenham in Berkshire, Edward gave twenty-five shillings to his porter Will Shene and his new wife Isode as a wedding present.  (SAL MS 122).

- Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke and also Edward's first cousin once removed, died on his way to Paris (the precise location is uncertain, but his biographer Seymour Phillips thinks probably Saint-Riquier near Amiens) on 23 June 1324; the news took only three days to reach the king at Tonbridge in Kent. (Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke 1307-1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II by J.R.S. Phillips)

- During the war of Saint-Sardos (with Charles IV of France, over Gascony) in 1324, an atmosphere of fevered suspicion pervaded England: two letters were sent to Hugh Despenser the Younger, telling him that a fleet of foreign vessels with a hundred armed men aboard each ship had been seen in Falmouth and mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night.  This turned out to be a group of Genoese merchants making their annual trip to the Netherlands, with armed men to guard their valuable cargo.  (Pierre Chaplais, The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents; Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321-1326).


- Edward's brother-in-law Philip V of France sent him a gift of a box of rose-coloured sugar in September 1317.  Edward gave Philip's messenger William de Opere two and a half pounds for bringing it.  (Thomas Stapleton, 'A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the 10th, 11th, and 14th years of Edward II',Archaeologia, 1836)


- Edward's huntsman William Twyt or Twici wrote a French treatise called Le Art de Venerie around 1320; the earliest text on hunting written in England, it opens "Here begins the art of hunting, which Master William Twici, huntsman of the king of England, made in his time to instruct others."  


- "...we command you to watch our affairs that we may be rich and may attain our ends, of which you have good cognisance; and this cannot be attained without pain and diligence on your part."  Hugh Despenser the Younger to Sir John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan, on 18 January 1321; entirely open about his aims and ambitions.  (J. Goronwy Edwards, Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales)


- From 8 July 1315 to 7 July 1316, Edward spent £627 on clothes for his household.  He received in April 1316 two tunics for himself, comprising six ells of scarlet – expensive woollen cloth, not the colour – two ells of yellow cloth for sewing leopards, his heraldic arms, on them, and more scarlet for making bags or purses.   He also received sixteen ells of green medley (dyed in the wool cloth) to make two sleeved tunics and two tabards, while three household knights had twelve ells of the same for their tunics.  Green cloth lined with miniver was also given to Isabella, their son Edward of Windsor, the king's sister the countess of Hereford, his nieces Margaret Gaveston and Eleanor Despenser, and the dowager countess of Warwick.  (Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe).


- In November 1319, Edward wrote to William, count of Hainault, to raise the possibility of a marriage between his son Edward and William's eldest daughter Margaret (who later married the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV; her sister Philippa ultimately married Edward III).  His careless scribe addressed the letter to 'Robert, count of Hainault'.  Names could prove a problem for inattentive scribes: Louis X's queen Clemence was called Elizabeth in a letter sent to her by Edward II in May 1316, and Edward's niece Jeanne de Bar, countess of Surrey, was called Isabella in a writ of 1313.  (Foedera)

My Article

So, great news - my article 'The Adherents of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, in March 1330' has now been published in the English Historical Review, volume 126, pp. 779-805.  :-)  Here's a link to the abstract.  Needless to say, I'm very, very proud and excited to see my name in such a prestigious journal, and I really hope the article goes a long way to demolishing the often-repeated notion that the earl of Kent was stupid and that's why he believed Edward II was still alive in 1330.  He wasn't stupid, you know.  Really not.  Neither were the many dozens of men who supported him in the plot to free Edward and, as far as I can tell, shared his belief in the survival of the former king.  I do hope you'll read the article and enjoy it.  :-)

Chronicles On Edward II's Accession

Here's a look at what some fourteenth-century chroniclers said about the death of Edward I and the accession of Edward II in July 1307:

- Vita Edwardi Secundi (Latin):

"On the day of the Translation of St Thomas in the thirty-fifth year of his reign [7 July 1307], died Edward the First after the Conquest, and his son Edward II began to reign, a robust young man in about his twenty-third year*.  He did not achieve the ambition that his father had set before himself, but directed his plans to other objects.  He recalled Piers Gaveston, who had recently abjured the realm at his father's command.  This Piers had been the most intimate** and highly-favoured member, as soon became abundantly clear, of the young Edward's household when the latter was Prince of Wales and the old king still alive...
If our king Edward had borne himself as well [as Richard Lionheart] at the outset of his reign, and not accepted the counsels of wicked men, not one of his predecessors would have been more notable than he.  For God had endowed him with every gift, and had made him equal to or indeed more excellent than other kings.  If anyone cared to describe those qualities which ennoble our king, he would not find his like in the land...What hopes he raised as Prince of Wales!  How they were dashed when he became King!"

* Edward was twenty-three, born 25 April 1284.
** Doesn't imply sexual intimacy.

- The Brut (Middle English; modernised spelling):

"And after this King Edward, reigned Edward his son, that was born in Caernarfon [Carnaryvan], and went into France, and espoused Isabel, the king's daughter of France...And anon [soon] as the good King Edward was dead, Sir Edward his son, king of England, sent after Piers Gauaston into Gascony*; and so much loved him that he called him his brother; and anon after gave him the lordship of Wallingford; and it was not long after that he gave him the earldom of Cornwall, against all the lords' will of the realm."

* Piers spent his first exile in 1307 in Ponthieu, Edward's inheritance from his mother Eleanor of Castile, not his native Gascony.

- The French Chronicle of London (French):

"In this year, on the Friday after the Feast of St Luke [18 October], King Edward was nobly buried at Westminster.  At this time the Templars were destroyed.  In this year, on the Sunday after the feast of St Peter's Chair [25 February 1308], the King and the Queen, Lady Isabele, were crowned; at which coronation, Sir John Bacwelle, a knight was killed by falling from a wall.  In this year there was a great malady of the eyes, whereby many persons lost their sight*.  At this time came Sir Piers de Gaverstone into England, who had been banished by King Edward the Conqueror; and was made Earl of Cornwall, to the great detriment of all the realm. In this year there was a very great frost on the Thames, so that many persons passed over on foot, upon the ice, to Suthwerk, and back again to London. In this year, judgment was given at Westminster against the franchise, as to the rights of bastardy; to the effect that if any one should die without heir and without testament made, his lands and tenements should escheat to the King."

* Wonder what that was!?

- Chronicle of Lanercost (Latin):

"...this illustrious and excellent King, my lord Edward, son of King Henry, died at Burgh-upon-Sands...in the thirty-sixth year of his reign and the sixty-seventh of his age.*  Throughout his time he had been fearless and war-like, in all things strenuous and illustrious; he left not his like among Christian princes for sagacity and courage...Messengers were sent in haste to my lord Edward Prince of Wales, his son and heir...Thus Edward the younger succeeded Edward the elder, but in the same manner as Rehoboam succeeded Solomon, which his career and fate were to prove."

* Edward I was sixty-eight when he died, born 17 June 1239, and in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, acceded 20 November 1272.

- Scalacronica (French):

"After the death of Edward the First after the Conquest, his son, Edward the Second, reigned in great tribulation and adversity.  He was not industrious, neither was he beloved by the great men of his realm; albeit he was liberal in giving, and amiable far beyond measure towards those whom he loved and exceedingly sociable with his intimates.  Also, in body he was one of the strongest men in his realm."

Edward of Caernarfon and Rotting Animal Corpses

The chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, written around 1350, vividly describes the torments supposedly inflicted on the former Edward II as he was taken from Kenilworth to Berkeley Castle in the spring of 1327, and during his incarceration at Berkeley, paraphrased here:

- Edward's jailers make him travel at night, riding bareheaded despite the cold, and deprive him of sleep. They taunt him by placing a crown of hay on his head, make him shave off his beard with cold, dirty ditch-water - whereupon Edward cries, thereby providing himself with warm water - feed him on rotting food to make him ill, and do their utmost to make him believe he is mad. Once this nightmare journey is over and he arrives at Berkeley, he is incarcerated in a cell with a deep hole nearby into which the rotting corpses of animals are thrown, in the hope that the putrefaction will kill Edward by asphyxiation. This failing, he is murdered by means of a red-hot poker, "the aid of enormous pillows and a weight heavier than that of fifteen substantial men."

Needless to say, this has been grist to the mill for a lot of writers over the centuries (including Christopher Marlowe), and is repeated all over the internet and in numerous published books as certain fact.  But - surprise, surprise - it isn't. Geoffrey le Baker is the only even vaguely contemporary source for the notion that the former Edward II was so cruelly mistreated and abused at Berkeley, and Baker was not writing history but hagiography, at a time when the amusingly implausible campaign to have Edward canonised was well underway. (Miracles were widely reported at his tomb in Gloucester.) Baker's intention was to portray Edward as a Christ-like figure nobly suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the torments of lesser men, the "satraps of Satan" as Baker memorably calls them: the Passion of Edward of Caernarfon. If we accept Baker's story of the former king's fate in 1327 as historical truth, we might as well accept Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard III as the hunchbacked epitome of evil as historical truth.

Geoffrey le Baker was about the only fourteenth-century chronicler who actually liked Edward II, and blamed all his faults and mistakes on the Despensers.  As a corollary, Baker loathed Queen Isabella and portrayed her as, well, a she-wolf*, cruelly taking delight in making her husband suffer.  Although I have to admit I find it quite amusing to see Isabella called 'Jezebel' and 'the iron virago', Baker's portrayal of her is very wide of the mark. Chronicler Adam Murimuth, a royal clerk who knew Edward II and Isabella well, was in the south-west of England in 1327 and is a much more reliable source than Baker (though by no means infallible), says that she sent Edward kind letters and gifts while he was at Berkeley - hardly, one might think, the actions of a woman keen to inflict torments on her husband. After all, after Edward's deposition in January 1327, Isabella had no reason to manipulate him into thinking she still loved him, and no reason to send him letters and gifts unless she wanted to.

* Not a contemporary nickname, as many people think, but invented by Shakespeare for Margaret of Anjou and first applied to Isabella in a 1757 poem by Thomas Gray.

King Edward III was too young in 1327 to be in a position to protect his father, but he wouldn't be fourteen forever, and one day he would take over the governance of his own kingdom.  Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers, appointed custodians of the former king in April 1327, would have been pretty stupid to mistreat the king's father, knowing that one day they would have to answer for their actions - and Edward III never accused them of mistreating Edward of Caernarfon.  Adam Murimuth claims that although Berkeley treated Edward well and humanely, Maltravers did not.  This may be correct, but is not supported by any other evidence - and most fourteenth-century chroniclers, even Murimuth, thought that Maltravers was accused of Edward II's murder, which he certainly wasn't; he was condemned to death in the November 1330 parliament for his role in entrapping the earl of Kent and bringing about his execution. At no point in Maltravers' very long life - he lived until 1364 - did Edward III accuse him of complicity in Edward II's death, or of mistreating and abusing the former king.  Murimuth's statement that Maltravers behaved harshly towards Edward II may be an assumption based on the false (albeit widespread) belief that Maltravers was one of Edward's murderers.

Paul Doherty in his 2003 book Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (p. 119) says that kings and princes, once deposed, have suffered from the actions of their former minions, who were "only too quick to join in the fun of cruel mockery of one who formerly lorded it over them." Well, possibly, but that's missing the point.  Edward II was no longer king in 1327, but he was still royal, the son of a king and, more to the point, the father of the present king. Edward II is unique among the deposed kings of medieval England, not just because he was the first, but because he was the only one succeeded by his son, who would not take kindly to allegations that his father had been abused by those appointed to care for him.  (Incidentally, Paul Doherty, like many other writers, repeats the myth about John Trevisa on which I wrote a post.)

One of the charges against Roger Mortimer at his trial during the November 1330 parliament was that he had had Edward removed to Berkeley in order to have him killed, when "the father of our lord the king was at Kenilworth by the ordinance and assent of the peers of the realm, to remain there at their pleasure in order to be looked after as was appropriate for such a lord." According to the chronicler Jean le Bel, it was decided in early 1327 that Edward "would be well guarded and honestly kept for the rest of his life, according to his estate."  'According to his estate' and 'looked after as was appropriate for such a lord' does not mean 'OK, lads, we can abuse him as much as we want because he no longer wears the crown', it means 'he must be treated with all the respect, deference and courtesy due to a man of royal birth who is the father of the king'.

Paul Doherty (p. 120) also claims that "no real evidence exists that Edward was not mistreated."  OK, here's one: Lord Berkeley bought wax for him, presumably for candles. Wax was expensive, and Berkeley might easily have bought the much cheaper tallow (made from animal fat) instead. But then, if Berkeley and his allies were mistreating Edward, why did they bother to buy him wax (or tallow) at all?  Do people usually buy candles for a man they're keeping incarcerated in a dungeon or pit and trying to asphyxiate with animal corpses?  The Berkeley Castle muniments roll records the purchase of wine, cheese, eggs, beef, capons and spices for Edward (Seymour Phillips, Edward II, p. 541 n. 118, citing rolls 39, 41, 42). Paul Doherty suggests (pp. 119-120) that Edward didn't get this food, but that "the supplies, the delicacies may well have gone to others" and furthermore that the produce purchased for him and Isabella's gifts are "perhaps not evidence enough to reject the allegations of ill-treatment."  This is pure speculation.  I don't see why there's any reason to assume that Edward didn't receive them. These purchases of food were recorded in Lord Berkeley's own household accounts; they were not intended to be presented to the Exchequer as proof that he was feeding Edward of Caernarfon properly. I don't see why Lord Berkeley would lie in his own accounts and record the purchase of food for Edward if the former king wasn't going to receive it.

And here's another piece of evidence: there are several entries on the Close Roll which record payments made to Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers for Edward's upkeep, and refer to the expenses of Edward and 'his household'. There are also references in the Berkeley Castle records to liveries, i.e. clothes, provided for "the household of the king's father," as he was almost always referred to. Yes, Edward had servants at Berkeley.  How many is not clear - a very small fraction of the 400 or 500-strong household he'd had as king, of course - but he wasn't locked up alone with no-one to attend him. Men imprisoned in pits do not, generally, have servants attending them. This evidence is ignored by writers who want to believe the notion that Edward was mistreated, among them Paul Doherty, who - following le Baker - is pushing the notion of Isabella as an evil nasty murderous b*tch and says several times that she desperately wanted Edward dead and to suffer as much as possible first. (If you have the book, notice that Doherty doesn't provide a note for his claim (p. 109) that Isabella publicly called for Edward's execution in early 1327, even before his deposition; that's because he can't back it up with any primary source.  And "Isabella had murder in her heart" regarding her husband in late 1326/early 1327 (p. 108)?  How can Doherty possibly know that?).  An anonymous chronicle which Doherty makes much of claims that workmen at Berkeley Castle heard Edward sighing and groaning when he was incarcerated there in 1327. Maybe that's significant, maybe not. Edward of Caernarfon was a highly emotional man at the best of times, and 1327 was definitely not the best of times for him.  He must have been suffering a great deal emotionally from losing his throne, his wife, his children and Hugh Despenser.

The guides at Berkeley Castle and numerous websites spread the stories of Edward of Caernarfon's mistreatment and supposed horrific red-hot poker murder.  Lurid stories of murdered kings and agonised screams and vile torture and asphyxiation by animal corpse and men getting their just desserts for allowing themselves to be anally penetrated by other men (a theory of the supposed red-hot poker murder frequently repeated as though it's 'truth') bring in the tourists, don't they.  Websites and books about Castle Rising in Norfolk do much the same thing, claiming that Isabella of France was imprisoned there by her son as punishment for her role in the murder of Edward II and subsequently went mad; the story of an imprisoned queen going insane and wailing for her dead lover Mortimer is apparently far more interesting than the truth, which is that Isabella lived a perfectly conventional life after 1330 as queen dowager.  Geoffrey le Baker's tales of the vile abuse inflicted on Edward at Berkeley Castle are contradicted by contemporary evidence, and were concocted with a specific purpose which had little to do with actual historical events as experienced in 1327.  It's a shame that they're still so often repeated as though they're certain truth.

Edward II In Fiction: A Spoof

Apologies for the long delay in posting - a combination of work, checking article proofs, celebrating my birthday and suffering from a health problem.  Many thanks to my dear friend Ashmodiel/Rowan at the Seelenlicht blog for giving me a lovely 'Your Blog is Super' award!  xx  She has a new blog now too, Anam Cara, in English.

Here's Edward II in Fiction, a Spoof, an idea nicked from the hilarious Anne Boleyn spoof on The Anne Boleyn Files. Thanks to some of my friends on Facebook, especially Rachel, Kate and Andy, for their contributions!  (See also this post on how Edward II and Isabella are portrayed in fiction for some background, and Ragged Staff's great post about John Nevill, which lists with painful accuracy a few of the archetypes often seen in histfict.)

**
King Edward II and his lover Sir Hugh Despenser sat in the king's private chamber, listening to music and discussing ways in which they could make the life of Edward's perfectly beautiful desirable queen, Victim!Isabella, even worse than it was already.
Edward stamped his foot.  "It's not good enough!  We have to make my queen suffer even more!" he shrieked, his voice high and shrill and perverted.  "After all, you're completely evil, so that's the kind of thing you do."
"Why on earth are you talking like that, Ned?" EvilHugh asked.
Edward shrugged and pouted.  "I love you, EvilHugh, and we're both men, and I used to love Piers Gaveston and Roger Damory who were also men, and apparently this means I have to behave like a twelve-year-old girl in a snit at all times."  He flung himself face first on his bed and snivelled for a while, then stood up and stamped his foot a few times for absolutely no reason.
"Ah, I see, and that's why I'm usually portrayed as an amalgamation of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and sundry other genocidal dictators," said EvilHugh in sudden understanding.  "Novelists of your reign don't really do subtlety, do they?  Do stop pouting, Ned."
Edward fluttered his hands pervertedly a few times and shrieked again.  "Not so much.  Everything has to be so black and white.  My wife's either a helpless passive victim adored and pitied by everyone or a psycho bitch-queen from hell loathed by everyone, because apparently those are the only two possibilities and authors can't possibly give her a combination of good and bad character traits and make her, you know, an actual human being.  And me, I'm not a real person either, just a walking stereotype of the way authors think gay men should behave."
He sighed in a very girlish and pervertedly unnatural fashion.  "And how many novelists have Gaveston's mother burned alive for witchcraft, although that won't happen in Europe for, oooooh, ages yet?  And even though he was a nobleman and a warrior, hand-picked by my father as a suitable companion and role model for me, the future king of England, yet in fiction he also somehow manages to be a low-born prostitute with a tavern-owning uncle.  Weird, the way that works."
EvilHugh nodded.  "Mind you, it's also pretty weird the way novelists almost invariably miss the fact that I'm a high-born nobleman too and have been married to your niece since long before I became your favourite."
"Isn't it just."  Edward stood up and minced around the room for a few moments.  "Not to forget the way they so often use modern ideals of motherhood as a way of drumming up mawkish sympathy for Isabella because I supposedly stole our children from her when I set up their own households.  They also use the modern belief in equality of the sexes as a stick to beat me with, because I expect my wife to obey me as her lord.  Just like every other man of our era and most others, but of course it's entirely bad and wrong when I do it.  Hel-lo, we live in the fourteenth century, people, not the twenty-first!  If you're going to drag your own society's attitudes into it, why not show a little bit more tolerance for my sexuality while you're at it?"  Edward threw a girly and unnatural tantrum in the corner, flounced out of the room and slammed the door, then came back in again, looking girly and perverted.
EvilHugh rolled his eyes. "Funny how characters in histfict who are intended to be likeable to readers are usually portrayed as holding opinions that would fit seamlessly into the early twenty-first century, while the unsympathetic ones have views which are actually accurate for the society and era they live in.  Talking of which, I'm almost always written as an unsympathetic figure in fiction, so here goes: women are inferior to men!  Anyone who isn't white and Christian is a heretic who deserves to die horribly!  Slavery is awesome and the peasants are revolting!  Watching animals die for our entertainment is fun!"
Edward screamed and tore at his hair.  "Stop it, EvilHugh!" he shrieked.  "The readers will take against you, and who knows what might happen then?"
"It doesn't matter how unpopular I am, dear Ned.  I am your beloved, and no-one will ever be able to touch me, least of all your wife, the victim-queen!"  EvilHugh laughed heartily as the words 'Dramatic Irony' flashed repeatedly above his head.

**
Meanwhile in her own chamber, Queen Victim!Isabella cried hard, her perfectly beautiful desirable face all red and screwed up but still incredibly beautiful and desirable.  She was officially the most beautiful woman in all Europe, but still, life was just so unfair and Edward such a cruel nasty husband.  She was the richest woman in the country with lands in half the counties of England, the anointed queen, influential and connected to half the royals in Europe, incredibly beautiful and desirable, yet she suffered so terribly.  Why, her own husband had not fallen at her feet with helpless lust the first time he saw her!  And she had been promised, promised, that he would, and would madly adore her for the rest of her life, just like every other man who had ever seen her did.  And he had talked to that horrible Piers more than to her at their coronation banquet!  Anyone would think he actually preferred the company of a close friend of his own age than a pre-pubescent girl, the most beautiful pre-pubescent girl in all Europe!  Whoever heard of such a thing?

"I'm so worried about my son's position, with my useless husband on the throne," Victim!Isabella sobbed to her damsels.  Her rosy desirable lips were incredibly rosy and desirable and her body was astonishingly perfect and also desirable.  She was incredibly beautiful, the most incredibly beautiful woman in all Europe.  "I think I should rule the country in place of my husband, because I plan to give away almost all of Gascony to France, sign away my son's claims to Scotland, and bankrupt England.  That'll show everyone how much more politically astute I am than my husband and how much I care about my son's inheritance."  She sobbed beautifully and desirably.

ManlyRoger Mortimer strode into the room unannounced and in an audaciously studmuffinly and heterosexually virile way.  "Never fear, ma belle reine.  I'm the bold manly hero who saves the day," he declared, with a deep virile bow towards the incredibly beautiful and desirable yet desperately suffering and victimised queen.  ManlyRoger caught sight of one of the queen's squires sitting in a window seat, vigorously polishing his sword, and stood and stared for a moment, admiring the young man's broad shoulders, sensual mouth and the pleasing bulge in his hose.  Then he remembered that he was 100% certified unequivocally heterosexual, and hastily desisted.  
Victim!Isabella clapped a hand to her perfectly shaped and incredibly beautiful and desirable mouth.  "Oh my!" she gasped.  "Don't tell me that the brave, audaciously virile and studmuffinly hetero hero with whom I am destined to have Twu Multi-Orgasmic Wuv 4ever and ever is you?"
"For sure it is, ma reine.  Do you know how much I love having sex with girls?  Well, let me tell you: a lot," ManlyRoger boasted.  "And anything you might have heard about me sleeping with my sexy and lusful squires on occasion?  Soooo not true.  You wouldn't believe how many of my squires I haven't had sex with."
Victim!Isabella clapped her beautiful, perfectly-shaped and desirable hands in joy.  "Oh, ManlyRoger.  I have dreamed so long of having real Twu Wuv with an audaciously virile man who, unlike my husband who prefers men, is actually available to me.  Well, apart from the fact that you're married, of course."  Victim!Isabella shrugged beautifully and smiled desirably at her manly new lover.  "I have long wanted to find Twu Wuv of the kind my husband has with Despenser and used to have with Gaveston and Damory, but you know, the proper permitted heterosexual kind, not the kind between two men that's really eeewwwww, icky."
"Yes," agreed ManlyRoger. "Us manly men who are incredibly heterosexual have fantastic sex with girls that's not icky at all, and we absolutely don't think about our sexy squires while we're doing it.  I mean, have you seen how many kids my wife and I have?  There's unequivocal heterosexuality, right there."
Victim!Isabella threw herself into her virile studmuffinly lover's arms.  She looked really, really beautiful and desirable.  "Oh, ManlyRoger!" she cried.  "Take me, take me, and we'll take my husband's kingdom!"
"I will, ma reine," ManlyRoger smirked. "I really fancy you, and not in any way your squire who's sitting over there.  And me fancying you has nothing at all to do with wanting lots of power and wealth thanks to you being the queen of England.  Queen of England?  I barely even noticed. Come to bed, ma reine, and afterwards I'll tell you exactly how I'm going to rule England in your husband's place. Oops, did I say I?  I meant you, of course."
Beautiful, desirable Victim!Isabella sighed with happiness.  No longer would she suffer terribly and beautifully; her super-hetero virile lover would make everything all right, forever.
      

A Week Of Anniversaries

This week is important in Edward II World :) for various anniversaries...

18 June: Edward and Isabella's elder daughter Eleanor was born at the palace of Woodstock in 1318, and named after Edward's mother Eleanor of Castile.  Edward - then thirty-four - had been in Canterbury, apparently on pilgrimage, but arrived in Woodstock on the day of his daughter's birth.  His Wardrobe account records a payment of 500 marks to "Lady Isabella, queen of England, of the king's gift, for the feast of her purification after the birth of the Lady Alienora her daughter."  Eleanor married, shortly before her fourteenth birthday in 1332, Count (later Duke) Reynald II of Gelderland, and had two sons, named after her husband and her father; the marriage to King Alfonso XI of Castile planned for her by Edward didn't come off.  Edward's chamber journal of 1326 reveals that he appointed Jonete Germye (or Jermy) sister of his sister-in-law Alice Hales, countess of Norfolk, as the governess (mestresse) of his two daughters, and paid a messenger five shillings to take his letters to the little girls, then aged eight and five, in Marlborough on 25 July that year.


19 June: I could hardly let the anniversary of Piers Gaveston's death in 1312 pass without comment!  RIP Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall and beloved of a king.  (See Anerje's post remembering him too.)


19 June: the day in 1313 when Edward watched 54 naked dancers perform for him in Pontoise.


19 June: the day in 1320 when Edward set sail for France to pay homage to his brother-in-law Philippe V for Gascony and Ponthieu.


20 June: the day in 1316 when Edward sent his kinsman the earl of Pembroke to deal with the rebellion in Bristol.


23 June: the anniversary of the first day of the battle of Bannockburn in 1314.  Don't think I need to say much about it, really...:)


23 June: the day in 1324 when Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, died suddenly on his way to Paris to negotiate with Charles IV on Edward's behalf.


24 June: the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, one of Edward's favourite saints.  The king marked the day in 1317 wearing (presumably) "a crown of wax of various colours and of various devices" for which he had paid two pounds, and in 1326 spent five shillings playing dice with Sir Giles Beauchamp and unnamed other members of his household in the Tower of London.


25 June: the day in 1308 on which Piers Gaveston was ordered to depart from England (he sailed for Ireland to take up his role as king's lieutenant), in his second exile.


27 June: the day he returned a year later.  :-)


28 June: on this day in 1323, Edward II ordered the bishop of London to prevent people praying and making offerings at a tablet in St Paul's "whereon are depicted statues, sculpture or images of diverse persons," having learned that many people went to "worship it as a holy thing."  The problem was that one of the persons thereon depicted was his cousin Thomas of Lancaster, whom he had had executed the previous year.


29 June: on this day in 1317, five years and ten days after Piers' death, Edward ordered abbot and convent of Thame to take on six additional monks "to celebrate divine service daily in the abbey for the souls of the king’s ancestors, and of Piers de Gaveston, earl of Cornwall."  And in 1320, he paid liege homage to Philippe V at Amiens.

Cartmel Priory

A building I visited a few days ago: Cartmel Priory in South Cumbria, founded in about 1190 by the great William Marshal (1146/47-14 May 1219), earl of Pembroke, lord of Cartmel and regent of England for Edward II's grandfather Henry III.  Via his five daughters (his five sons all died childless), William was the ancestor of most of the English nobility of Edward II's era; his namesake William Marshal, a descendant of one of his brothers, was killed at Bannockburn in 1314.  Cartmel was spelled Kertmel or Kertmele in the early fourteenth century, and there are various references in Edward II's reign to the prior.  The priory was dissolved in 1536, and only the church survives (and was used as a stable by some of Oliver Cromwell's troops in 1643).

Misericords in the choir, which date to 1440

The tomb of Sir John Harington (knighted with Edward of Caernarfon in 1306, died 1347) and his wife Joan.

Blog Break And Links

This is my last post for a little while, as I'm off on holiday!  The second part of my post about Henry of Lancaster will appear after my return, I hope.  :)

In the meantime, here are some blogs to check out, all written by good friends of mine:

- Anerje's blog about Piers Gaveston, which takes in other periods of history as well.  Her latest post is a fascinating one about Piers' health, or rather the lack of it.

- Ashmodiel/Rowan's blogs Seelenlicht (in German) and Wings of Inspiration (with Tricia Danby), with examples of their great artwork and quite a few mentions of Edward II and Piers Gaveston.  :-)

- Paula's blog Sons of the Wolf, with extracts from her fantastic novel of the same name and factual posts about eleventh-century England.

- Christy's blog Rooting for Ancestors, with lots of interesting posts about genealogy and history.

Michael Jecks' novel King's Gold, the latest instalment in his popular Knights Templar Mysteries series, was released in the UK a few days ago.  Many thanks to Mike for sending me a copy and mentioning me in the acknowledgements.

See you in a couple of weeks!