Here's a list of books owned by Edward II:
- A romance (which meant any kind of fiction, not necessarily a love story) in French, which had belonged to his grandmother Eleanor of Provence and was delivered to him in 1298, when he was fourteen.
- An illuminated biography of Edward the Confessor in French, which cost 58 shillings from William, bookbinder of London, in May 1302.
- A Latin primer, which cost two pounds, made for "the use of the Lord Edward, the king's son" in 1299 by William the bookbinder. (I can't help imagining Edward as a bored, sulky adolescent, forced to sit and listen to droning Latin at Langley and staring out of the window, thinking about all the things he'd rather be doing instead, like repairing a wall or thatching a roof, but OK, that's just me.)
- A book bound in red leather described as De Regimine Regum, On the Ruling of Kings, which might mean Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum, written c. 1280 for the future Philip IV of France.
- Edward I bought a book for his son in February 1301, maybe to commemorate his becoming prince of Wales, called De Gestis Regum Angliae, The Deeds of the Kings of England.
- In October 1326, Edward gave a manuscript of Tristan and Isolde, the famous story of doomed love, to his favourite Hugh Despenser.
- In November 1315, Edward paid five pounds to one Nicholas Percy for making a book about the life and times of Edward I for him.
In December 1320, he paid William the bookbinder of London - probably the same man who had made the Latin primer and the biography of Edward the Confessor - three shillings and four pence "for binding and newly repairing the book of Domesday, in which is contained the counties of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk." This manuscript is now known as 'Little Domesday'. Kudos to Edward for helping to preserve an important piece of England's heritage!
Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter and treasurer of England, made an inventory of the Exchequer in 1323. In a coffer painted green and fastened with iron hinges were found the following:
- a booklet written "in a language unknown to the English," which was in fact Welsh and appears to have been a collection of poetry.
- De regula Templariorum, the Rule of the Knights Templar.
- De Vita sancti Patricii, the Life of St Patrick.
- the chronicle of don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo, who died in 1247. (Edward II's uncle Sancho became archbishop of Toledo in 1251 at the age of eighteen.) This presumably was Rada's De Rebus Hispaniae.
Stapeldon also found an unfastened plain iron coffer, containing many other documents in Welsh, which his baffled clerk, clueless as to what language it actually was, described as "an idiom very strange to the English." (Totally off-topic here, but English ignorance about Wales in the fourteenth century is nicely illustrated by the statement in the French Chronicle of London and the Anonimalle that Edward II was captured in November 1326 "near Snowdon," i. e. in North Wales. He was taken near Neath, 150 miles away in South Wales.)
In August 1313, Edward ordered the treasurer and the barons of the exchequer to deliver to Friar Philip Baston, who was then to deliver them to Edward at Windsor Park, the following:
"three books of the Institutes with a little volume, four sums of the Decretals, two new Digests with four old Digests, a Forsad, two apparatus of the Decretals of Innocent IV, two lectures upon the new Digest, two books of Decretals, a book of Decretals, two lectures of the Codex, a book of lectures of law, a book called Actor et Reus, a book of autentica of the constitution of the emperor Justinian, an antiphoner with two quires of the dedication of churches, a sum of Tanered, three codices, and one book of diverse lectures of the Codex and other books of the Corpus Juris."
Apparently Edward felt like a bit of light reading! Seriously, he probably gave some of them to Langley Priory, which he had founded in 1308, and certainly gave books on canon and civil law worth ten pounds to his foundation of King's Hall at Cambridge in 1317, most probably including some of the books mentioned here.
- Edward once borrowed two books - the lives of St Thomas Becket and St Anselm - from the library at Canterbury Cathedral, and failed to return them. There was a royal library in the Tower of London, containing at least 340 volumes, which Edward no doubt used on occasion.
When Edward fled from London in the autumn of 1326 after the arrival of his wife's invasion force, he left some items behind in the care of the merchant Simon Swanland (who became mayor of London in 1329 and who was the recipient of William Melton's letter of 1329 or 1330, saying that Edward was still alive). The items included:
- two 'good and fine' Bibles, one covered in red leather and the other in tanned leather.
- this entry is unfortunately damaged: "the sixth book of ...vel, well-glossed, covered with untanned leather." This probably means that the book was written in Latin and glossed into French.
- a missal with a cover of black leather.
Edward probably owned far more books that were never recorded anywhere, or the records haven't survived. Queen Isabella owned a good many books herself, including an encyclopedia, a genealogy of the French royal family, lots of religious works, and the romances The Deeds of Arthur and Percival and Gawain. (Unlike his wife, father and son, Edward II seemed to have had little interest in the exploits of King Arthur.) Isabella bequeathed her book/manuscript collection in 1358 to her two surviving children, Edward III and Joan, queen of Scotland.
Sources
- Susan Cavanaugh, 'Royal Books: King John to Richard II', The Library, 5th series, 10 (1988), pp. 305-309.
- Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307 (1946), p. 18.
- Ian Mortimer, The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (2008), pp. 271-272.
- May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399 (1959), p. 2.
- J. Harvey Bloom, 'Simon de Swanland and King Edward II', Notes and Queries, 11th series, 4 (1911), pp. 1-2.
- Michael Prestwich, 'The Court of Edward II', in The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (2006), p. 69.
- Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 10.
- 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 (1837), p. 135.
- Constance Bullock-Davies, A Register of Royal and Baronial Domestic Minstrels 1272-1327 (1986), p. 147.
19 February, 2009
16 February, 2009
Brief Biographies (4): Malcolm Musard
A post about yet another of those fourteenth-century bad boys! Malcolm Musard, aka Malculin, Maculun, Maculmus or Masculm, as his name was often spelt in his own lifetime - 'Malcolm' being a highly unusual name then - was a notorious gang leader who frequently switched sides during Edward II's turbulent reign.
Malcolm came from and owned lands in Worcestershire, was the son of Nicholas (died 1300) and Christina Musard, was married to a woman called Isabella, and was also lord of Saintbury in Gloucestershire. I don't know even his approximate date of birth, but his father was born in about 1240 and his grandfather Ralph Musard in about 1207, and I'd guess Malcolm was born about 1270 or 1275. He had a daughter old enough to be married and to have a manor settled on her in 1315. One of the earliest mentions I've found of him is in 1296, when he was imprisoned for committing trespass in Sherwood Forest - which would prove to be only the first of many incarcerations. [1]
In 1304, Malcolm and his men attacked the rectory of Weston Subedge in Worcestershire, with bows and arrows, having been paid to do so by an aggrieved former rector who had been evicted. [2] A petition of the early 1300s, either from the end of Edward I's reign or sometime during Edward II's, said that Malcolm and his followers "are indicted of many felonies, robberies and homicides" in Worcestershire, but had left the county so that they could not be brought be to justice. [3] In February 1316, Edward II ordered three men to investigate "diverse oppressions and other offences alleged to have been committed in the counties of Worcester and Warwick by Malcolm Musard." [4] He was famous or infamous as a poacher, robber, raider and assaulter, if that's a word, and got on the wrong side of Hugh Despenser the Younger after he attacked two manors belonging to Aline Burnell, Despenser's sister.
Malcolm in fact was a long-term associate of the Despensers - he gave his Gloucestershire manor of La Musardere or Greenhamstead to "his lord" Hugh Despenser the Elder in 1296, and the manors of Martley and 'Sheldeslegh' to him in 1305. [5] He went overseas with Despenser the Elder in 1305, with such well-known Despenser adherents as Ingelram Berenger, John Haudlo, Ralph Gorges and Ralph Camoys. [6] There are plenty of references on the calendared rolls and in the National Archives which indicate that Malcolm was closely associated with Despenser in the late 1290s and early 1300s.
In 1318, however, Malcolm was pardoned as an adherent of Edward II's cousin and enemy Earl Thomas of Lancaster, who loathed Despenser the Elder - although in the same year, he was accused of theft in Wiltshire with, among others, Ingelram Berenger's son John. [7] On 21 May 1321, Malcolm was appointed keeper of Hugh Despenser the Younger's Worcestershire castle of Hanley; the Marchers had just attacked Despenser's castles and manors, and he surrendered all his lands into the king's hands in an attempt to save them from further destruction (it didn't work). [8] In January 1322, Edward II ordered Malcolm to arrest some of the leading Marchers, including the earl of Hereford, Roger Damory and Hugh Audley, and a few weeks later ordered him to raise 500 footmen in Worcestershire during his campaign against them. [9]
For some unknown reason, though, Edward II came to believe that Malcolm had aided or adhered to the Marchers, and sent Richard de Retlyng to arrest him on 12 December 1323. [10] (Unknown to me, that is. I'm sure Edward knew why.) Malcolm was imprisoned in the Tower of London by 19 June 1324, on which date he and seven other men were ordered to appear before the justices of the King's Bench "concerning the causes, indictments, right suspicions and accusations against them." [11] Hugh Despenser the Younger asked for Malcolm's appointment as keeper of the peace in Worcestershire - yes, a notorious criminal was appointed keeper of the peace - to be revoked on the grounds of his 'unsuitability', probably because he had attacked Aline Burnell's manors. [12]
On 6 August 1326, Malcolm, 'to save his life and have his lands again', acknowledged that he owed 100 pounds to Queen Isabella - not Edward - and was pardoned the following day for adherence to the Contrariants, as Edward called the Marchers of 1321/22. He was also pardoned for "outlawry in the county of Worcester...touching a plea of trespass of Aline Burnel." [13]
Given that Edward II had imprisoned Malcolm for well over two years, it would hardly be surprising to find that he threw in his lot with Isabella's invasion force a few weeks later. He didn't. Edward ordered Malcolm on 12 October 1326 to lead 3000 archers and all the men-at-arms in Worcestershire to him, and evidently Malcolm obeyed or at least tried to, as on 20 May 1327 Isabella seized his lands, goods and chattels on the grounds that he had supported Hugh Despenser the Elder against herself and her son. [14]
On 21 November 1327, a commission of oyer et terminer was issued against Malcolm and other men for committing theft at various places in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire; one of the men co-accused with Malcolm was Richard de Burcheston, a member of the Dunheved gang who had temporarily freed Edward II from Berkeley Castle that summer. [15] Given Malcolm's long criminal career, it's quite possible that the thefts were genuine, but also possible that this was an attempt to find and arrest men suspected of freeing Edward from Berkeley. Malcolm was in prison yet again at Winchester by 8 November 1327, when the sheriff of Hampshire was ordered to take him to Worcester "immediately upon sight hereof, at the king's cost." The sheriff of Worcestershire was ordered "to cause him to be kept safely in Worcester castle until further orders." [16]
I don't know when Malcolm was released, but in 1329/30, he became embroiled in the earl of Kent's plot to free his - supposedly dead - half-brother Edward from Corfe Castle. According to the chronicler Adam Murimuth, Malcolm ('Maucelym Musarde') "did travail and take pains" to aid Kent. [17] I haven't found any references to his being imprisoned for the umpteenth time, so presumably he either fled abroad, as a few of Kent's other adherents did, or went into hiding. On 8 December 1330, a few days after Roger Mortimer's execution, Edward III pardoned Malcolm and restored his lands to him. [18]
Malcolm is a fairly important character in Sandra Wilson's romance novel Alice - which features Piers Gaveston, yay, as the hero - though in fact he's really Stephen Dunheved and uses the name Malcolm Musard to disguise his true identity. (Or something - it's a while since I read it.) That's kind of odd, as Stephen and Malcolm were definitely two different people, though for sure they knew each other - Stephen was another of the men who freed Edward in 1327, and also joined Kent in 1330.
Malcolm Musard was dead by 29 March 1332, leaving a son, John, and a daughter Alice, wife of Ralph Dapetot or d'Abitot. [19] John Musard's career ran along much the same lines as his father's. Edward III granted the manor of La Musardere - formely Malcolm's and forfeit to the Crown after the execution of the Despensers - to the dowager countess of Kent, and John was determined to get it back. In July 1338, Edward said that "John, son of Malcolm Musard, and others, reflecting that the king is going beyond the seas, have formed confederacies to work evil while he shall be staying there and have entered the manor with armed power, assaulted her [the countess of Kent's] men and servants, have carried away her goods and now detain the manor from her." [20] The abbot of Evesham in 1344 accused John, with Simon and Walter Musard - presumably his brothers or cousins - of gathering malefactors to harass the abbot and his servants, killing three of them, lying in wait for them, mutilating and 'atrociously wounding' some, stealing his animals and entering his woods with armed men and preventing the abbot and his men carrying wood out of them. [21]
And that's about all I have on the subject of Malcolm Musard, except that if you run a Google search for his name, it brings up, not entirely helpfully, lots of hits for mustard.
Sources
1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1288-1296, pp. 473-474.
2) Ian Mortimer, The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, p. 240; Colin Platt, Medieval England, p. 104.
3) The National Archives SC 8/342/16149.
4) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, p. 429.
5) Cal Pat Rolls 1292-1301, p. 536; TNA E 40/927, E 40/928, E 40/4685, E 40/934. E 326/1653 names Malcolm's wife as Isabella; E 40/927 and 8 name Malcolm as the son of Nicholas Musard.
6) Cal Pat Rolls 1301-1307, p. 382.
7) Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, pp. 233, 278.
8) Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, p. 585.
9) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 62-63, 78, 97.
10) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 358, 396.
11) Cal Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 125.
12) Nigel Saul, 'The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II', English Historical Review, 99 (1984), p. 16; Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 304.
13) Cal Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 638; Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 304.
14) Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 326; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-1337, p. 43.
15) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 216-217.
16) Cal Close Rolls 1327-1330, p. 182.
17) Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, p. 257.
18) Cal Close Rolls 1330-1333, pp. 76-77.
19) TNA E 156/28/88, E 210/7590; Cal Fine Rolls 1327-1337, p. 308.
20) Cal Pat Rolls 1338-1340, p. 133.
21) TNA SC 8/46/2252; Cal Pat Rolls 1343-1345, pp. 288, 295, 409-411.
Malcolm came from and owned lands in Worcestershire, was the son of Nicholas (died 1300) and Christina Musard, was married to a woman called Isabella, and was also lord of Saintbury in Gloucestershire. I don't know even his approximate date of birth, but his father was born in about 1240 and his grandfather Ralph Musard in about 1207, and I'd guess Malcolm was born about 1270 or 1275. He had a daughter old enough to be married and to have a manor settled on her in 1315. One of the earliest mentions I've found of him is in 1296, when he was imprisoned for committing trespass in Sherwood Forest - which would prove to be only the first of many incarcerations. [1]
In 1304, Malcolm and his men attacked the rectory of Weston Subedge in Worcestershire, with bows and arrows, having been paid to do so by an aggrieved former rector who had been evicted. [2] A petition of the early 1300s, either from the end of Edward I's reign or sometime during Edward II's, said that Malcolm and his followers "are indicted of many felonies, robberies and homicides" in Worcestershire, but had left the county so that they could not be brought be to justice. [3] In February 1316, Edward II ordered three men to investigate "diverse oppressions and other offences alleged to have been committed in the counties of Worcester and Warwick by Malcolm Musard." [4] He was famous or infamous as a poacher, robber, raider and assaulter, if that's a word, and got on the wrong side of Hugh Despenser the Younger after he attacked two manors belonging to Aline Burnell, Despenser's sister.
Malcolm in fact was a long-term associate of the Despensers - he gave his Gloucestershire manor of La Musardere or Greenhamstead to "his lord" Hugh Despenser the Elder in 1296, and the manors of Martley and 'Sheldeslegh' to him in 1305. [5] He went overseas with Despenser the Elder in 1305, with such well-known Despenser adherents as Ingelram Berenger, John Haudlo, Ralph Gorges and Ralph Camoys. [6] There are plenty of references on the calendared rolls and in the National Archives which indicate that Malcolm was closely associated with Despenser in the late 1290s and early 1300s.
In 1318, however, Malcolm was pardoned as an adherent of Edward II's cousin and enemy Earl Thomas of Lancaster, who loathed Despenser the Elder - although in the same year, he was accused of theft in Wiltshire with, among others, Ingelram Berenger's son John. [7] On 21 May 1321, Malcolm was appointed keeper of Hugh Despenser the Younger's Worcestershire castle of Hanley; the Marchers had just attacked Despenser's castles and manors, and he surrendered all his lands into the king's hands in an attempt to save them from further destruction (it didn't work). [8] In January 1322, Edward II ordered Malcolm to arrest some of the leading Marchers, including the earl of Hereford, Roger Damory and Hugh Audley, and a few weeks later ordered him to raise 500 footmen in Worcestershire during his campaign against them. [9]
For some unknown reason, though, Edward II came to believe that Malcolm had aided or adhered to the Marchers, and sent Richard de Retlyng to arrest him on 12 December 1323. [10] (Unknown to me, that is. I'm sure Edward knew why.) Malcolm was imprisoned in the Tower of London by 19 June 1324, on which date he and seven other men were ordered to appear before the justices of the King's Bench "concerning the causes, indictments, right suspicions and accusations against them." [11] Hugh Despenser the Younger asked for Malcolm's appointment as keeper of the peace in Worcestershire - yes, a notorious criminal was appointed keeper of the peace - to be revoked on the grounds of his 'unsuitability', probably because he had attacked Aline Burnell's manors. [12]
On 6 August 1326, Malcolm, 'to save his life and have his lands again', acknowledged that he owed 100 pounds to Queen Isabella - not Edward - and was pardoned the following day for adherence to the Contrariants, as Edward called the Marchers of 1321/22. He was also pardoned for "outlawry in the county of Worcester...touching a plea of trespass of Aline Burnel." [13]
Given that Edward II had imprisoned Malcolm for well over two years, it would hardly be surprising to find that he threw in his lot with Isabella's invasion force a few weeks later. He didn't. Edward ordered Malcolm on 12 October 1326 to lead 3000 archers and all the men-at-arms in Worcestershire to him, and evidently Malcolm obeyed or at least tried to, as on 20 May 1327 Isabella seized his lands, goods and chattels on the grounds that he had supported Hugh Despenser the Elder against herself and her son. [14]
On 21 November 1327, a commission of oyer et terminer was issued against Malcolm and other men for committing theft at various places in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire; one of the men co-accused with Malcolm was Richard de Burcheston, a member of the Dunheved gang who had temporarily freed Edward II from Berkeley Castle that summer. [15] Given Malcolm's long criminal career, it's quite possible that the thefts were genuine, but also possible that this was an attempt to find and arrest men suspected of freeing Edward from Berkeley. Malcolm was in prison yet again at Winchester by 8 November 1327, when the sheriff of Hampshire was ordered to take him to Worcester "immediately upon sight hereof, at the king's cost." The sheriff of Worcestershire was ordered "to cause him to be kept safely in Worcester castle until further orders." [16]
I don't know when Malcolm was released, but in 1329/30, he became embroiled in the earl of Kent's plot to free his - supposedly dead - half-brother Edward from Corfe Castle. According to the chronicler Adam Murimuth, Malcolm ('Maucelym Musarde') "did travail and take pains" to aid Kent. [17] I haven't found any references to his being imprisoned for the umpteenth time, so presumably he either fled abroad, as a few of Kent's other adherents did, or went into hiding. On 8 December 1330, a few days after Roger Mortimer's execution, Edward III pardoned Malcolm and restored his lands to him. [18]
Malcolm is a fairly important character in Sandra Wilson's romance novel Alice - which features Piers Gaveston, yay, as the hero - though in fact he's really Stephen Dunheved and uses the name Malcolm Musard to disguise his true identity. (Or something - it's a while since I read it.) That's kind of odd, as Stephen and Malcolm were definitely two different people, though for sure they knew each other - Stephen was another of the men who freed Edward in 1327, and also joined Kent in 1330.
Malcolm Musard was dead by 29 March 1332, leaving a son, John, and a daughter Alice, wife of Ralph Dapetot or d'Abitot. [19] John Musard's career ran along much the same lines as his father's. Edward III granted the manor of La Musardere - formely Malcolm's and forfeit to the Crown after the execution of the Despensers - to the dowager countess of Kent, and John was determined to get it back. In July 1338, Edward said that "John, son of Malcolm Musard, and others, reflecting that the king is going beyond the seas, have formed confederacies to work evil while he shall be staying there and have entered the manor with armed power, assaulted her [the countess of Kent's] men and servants, have carried away her goods and now detain the manor from her." [20] The abbot of Evesham in 1344 accused John, with Simon and Walter Musard - presumably his brothers or cousins - of gathering malefactors to harass the abbot and his servants, killing three of them, lying in wait for them, mutilating and 'atrociously wounding' some, stealing his animals and entering his woods with armed men and preventing the abbot and his men carrying wood out of them. [21]
And that's about all I have on the subject of Malcolm Musard, except that if you run a Google search for his name, it brings up, not entirely helpfully, lots of hits for mustard.
Sources
1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1288-1296, pp. 473-474.
2) Ian Mortimer, The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, p. 240; Colin Platt, Medieval England, p. 104.
3) The National Archives SC 8/342/16149.
4) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, p. 429.
5) Cal Pat Rolls 1292-1301, p. 536; TNA E 40/927, E 40/928, E 40/4685, E 40/934. E 326/1653 names Malcolm's wife as Isabella; E 40/927 and 8 name Malcolm as the son of Nicholas Musard.
6) Cal Pat Rolls 1301-1307, p. 382.
7) Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, pp. 233, 278.
8) Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, p. 585.
9) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 62-63, 78, 97.
10) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 358, 396.
11) Cal Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 125.
12) Nigel Saul, 'The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II', English Historical Review, 99 (1984), p. 16; Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 304.
13) Cal Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 638; Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 304.
14) Cal Pat Rolls 1324-1327, p. 326; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-1337, p. 43.
15) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 216-217.
16) Cal Close Rolls 1327-1330, p. 182.
17) Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, p. 257.
18) Cal Close Rolls 1330-1333, pp. 76-77.
19) TNA E 156/28/88, E 210/7590; Cal Fine Rolls 1327-1337, p. 308.
20) Cal Pat Rolls 1338-1340, p. 133.
21) TNA SC 8/46/2252; Cal Pat Rolls 1343-1345, pp. 288, 295, 409-411.
14 February, 2009
Edward II's Valentine to Piers Gaveston
Courtesy of the Valentine Generator, via Susan Higginbotham:
To my gorgeous Gascon,
You are the castle of my earl of Cornwall. I want to swoon with you more than any Wallingford in the whole jousting tournament.
The first time we hunted, I felt glowing in my shoulders, and I was so joy that I could barely adore. I knew that we would worship together for whole lives.
Whenever you idolise, it makes me blaze eternally and hug like a flamboyant lance.
I will soar with you wildly until the knight sighs and the passion dies.
Burnished Valentine's Day!
Love, your supercilious beauty
Edward, roi d'Angleterre
Happy Valentine's Day!
To my gorgeous Gascon,
You are the castle of my earl of Cornwall. I want to swoon with you more than any Wallingford in the whole jousting tournament.
The first time we hunted, I felt glowing in my shoulders, and I was so joy that I could barely adore. I knew that we would worship together for whole lives.
Whenever you idolise, it makes me blaze eternally and hug like a flamboyant lance.
I will soar with you wildly until the knight sighs and the passion dies.
Burnished Valentine's Day!
Love, your supercilious beauty
Edward, roi d'Angleterre
Happy Valentine's Day!
10 February, 2009
Nineteen Things You Never Knew About Piers Gaveston
Dedicated to my blog buddy Anerje, who is, with me and Edward II, Piers Gaveston's Greatest Fan Ever. :-)
1) On 7 September 1310, Edward II pardoned Piers and six of his retainers for the death of one Thomas de Walkyngham of Yorkshire. What that was about - an unprovoked attack? Self-defence? An accident? - I have no idea. Piers was also pardoned "for all other felonies and trespasses with which he has been charged." What these were, and who charged Piers, I don't know either, as this was a year before the Ordainers ordered him to be banished from England for the third time. ("We, the Lords Ordainer, charge you, Piers Gaveston, with having a vicious tongue, a supercilious manner and an over-developed dress sense.") (This is a joke, by the way. Not a fact.)
2) An anonymous letter of 4 April 1311 said "A secret illness troubles him [Piers] much, compelling him to take short journeys." On 26 April 1312, Edward paid two men - physician William de Burntoft and Brother Robert de Bermingham - ten marks each for looking after him during another illness.
3) Piers' birthday might have been 18 July, as Edward II kept his anniversary on this date and on 19 June, the day of his death. The year of his birth is not known, but was sometime between 1281 and 1283. In my opinion, 1282 is the likeliest date, which would mean that Piers was a month short of his 30th birthday when he was killed, and twenty-one months older than Edward.
4) Piers went on campaign to Scotland with Edward in August 1310, and stayed at Roxburgh with his wife Margaret (Edward and Isabella were at Berwick) for the next few months. In January and February 1311, he paid £464 for provisions for his household, including 12,000 stockfish at £7 10s per 1000, 1000 cod, 12 'lasts' of red herring at £5 per last, 30 casks of wine at £5 6s and 8p per cask, and 12 casks of flour.
5) John of Canterbury, chaplain of John of Brittany, earl of Richmond, claimed in 1309 that Piers loved Richmond "beyond measure." He also said that Piers and Richmond called each other 'father' and 'son' in their correspondence. Richmond, grandson of Henry III and Edward II's first cousin, was born in 1266 and was therefore about 16 years older than Piers. In the only letter between the two men which survives, Piers addressed Richmond conventionally as 'very dear cousin' (trescher cosin).
6) In or about 1305, Piers and his elder brother Arnaud-Guillaume de Marsan* petitioned Edward I, asking - among other things - that four Gascon castles be taken into the king's hand and that the testament of their mother 'the lady de Marsan' might be carried out. Claramonde had died shortly before 4 February 1287 - and was certainly not burned as a witch, as some novels and older works of non-fiction say. The petition spells their names 'Arnaud Guilhem de Marsan and Perrot de Gavastun'.
* Piers' full brother, but used their mother's name.
7) Piers' name, in his own lifetime, was spelt Peres, Pieres or Pieris, and he was known by the pet name 'Perrot'. His last name was spelt Gavaston, Gavastun, Gavastone, Gavastoun, Gavastoune, Gaveieston, even Kavaston, Causton, etc, but never 'Gaveston'. The family took its name from the village of Gabaston in Béarn, near Pau in the modern Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
8) One of Piers' sisters was with him in Scarborough Castle when he was besieged there, 10 to 19 May 1312. What became of her isn't recorded (that I know of).
9) On 17 August 1307, Piers, just returned from exile and the brand-new earl of Cornwall, gave a banquet for Edward II at Sanquhar in south-west Scotland. Edward gave a pound each to the Welsh trumpeters Yevan and Ythel who performed for them. Piers also entertained Edward at Knaresborough Castle from 9 to 12 September that year.
10) During his 1307 exile, Piers went to Edward's county of Ponthieu in northern France, rather than Gascony as ordered by Edward I. Edward (of Caernarfon) had been expecting to visit Ponthieu - in the end, he didn't - and plenty of food had been laid in there against his arrival. Piers received 13 swans and 22 herons from the supplies.
11) When Piers was exiled for the second time in June 1308, Edward II granted lands worth £2000 annually to him and his wife Margaret in England, and another £2000 of lands to Piers alone in his homeland of Gascony. They included the island of Oléron, the city of Bayonne and the county of Gauré, near Toulouse and nowadays in the Haute-Garonne département. In later years, Edward appointed Piers' kinsman Arnaud Caillau - they were probably first cousins - as keeper of Oléron.
12) Edward II's demands for prayers for Piers' soul could prove onerous. In the spring of 1317, Edward asked Tupholme Abbey in Lincolnshire to take in his servant Robert de Crouland on his retirement, and the abbey replied "Although they would gladly obey him in all things, their very small income is already heavily burdened with the charge of finding a chaplain to say mass for the soul of Sir Pieres de Gavaston, formerly earl of Cornwall." They begged Edward to understand and forgive their "trespasses." Evidently Edward did, and sent Robert to Reading Abbey instead.
13) When Piers was killed in 1312, he was carrying:
- a great ruby, set in gold, worth £1000
- 3 large rubies in rings, an emerald and a diamond "of great value," all in an enamelled silver box
- 2 peridots, 1 in silver and 1 in gold
- a chalcedony, which Piers had put in his purse
- 1 large 'vessel'
- 1 small 'vessel', and "and from the small vessel a key hangs down, on a sterling cord."
Among the possessions of Edward II and Piers Gaveston seized by the earl of Lancaster in May 1312 were included "other diverse garments with the arms of the said Sir Piers, with the shoulders decorated and embroidered with pearls" and "a pair of gold-plated silver basins, with escutcheons with the arms of the said Sir Piers on them."
14) The Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow, Piers Lubaud, was a cousin of Piers, 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.)
15) Edward and Piers spent less time together after Edward's accession than you might think. From late June 1308 to late June 1309, Piers was in exile in Ireland. From August 1310 to August 1311, the men were on campaign in southern Scotland, living in castles 30 miles apart, though Piers did visit Edward (and Isabella) on occasion. Edward went south to parliament in August 1311, when the Ordainers forced him to banish Piers, and the men can't have seen each other for more than a few days before Piers departed the country. Even when they were both in England, they weren't always together: Edward didn't attend Piers' great jousting tournament at Wallingford in early December 1307, for example (he was at Kings Langley). They were together at Christmas 1309, at Langley, when the Vita says they spent the time "making up for former absence by their long wished-for sessions of daily and intimate conversation," and most probably at Christmas 1307, though at Westminster, not Wye in Kent, as stated by the Pauline annalist. Although several chronicles say they spent Christmas 1311 together after Piers' return from his third exile, this is almost certainly incorrect.
16) The Lanercost chronicler says that when the earl of Lancaster swore homage to Edward II in February 1311 for the lands he had just inherited from his father-in-law the earl of Lincoln, he "would neither kiss him [Piers], nor even salute him, whereat Piers was offended beyond measure." Piers' biographer Jeffrey Hamilton has pointed out that it is highly unlikely that Piers was even present when Lancaster met Edward, but hey, it's a great story. :-)
17) The Brut called Piers "the cursed Gascon," the Pauline annalist called him "an evil male sorcerer" and said that Edward did Piers great reverence and worshipped him as though his friend were a god, and the Vita also said that Piers "was accounted a sorcerer." These statements may be the origin of the much later invention that Piers' mother was burned as a witch.
18) Edward referred to his friend in speech as "my brother Piers" and addressed him in writing as "our dear and faithful brother" (nostre cher frere et foial) - exactly the same way as he addressed his real brothers Thomas and Edmund and his brother-in-law the earl of Hereford.
19) Not about Piers as such, but this amused me: in the Oxfordshire town of Deddington, where Piers was captured by the earl of Warwick in June 1312, there's a road called Gaveston Gardens. (I want to move there, right now. Though as houses are currently selling for half a million quid upwards, maybe not.) There are also Gaveston Roads in the towns of Didcot, Leamington Spa, Slough, Leatherhead and Coventry, and Gaveston Closes in Warwick and Byfleet.
Sources
1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 277.
2) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-1357, p. 40; J. S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall 1307-1312, p. 95.
3) Wardrobe Accounts bundle 376, no. 7, folio 5.
4) Cal Docs Scotland, p. 39.
5) Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother, pp. 56, 67, 123. (dominus Petrus de C. ultra modem diligit dominum suum Johannem antedictum et in litteris suis vocat eum patrem et ipse econverso filium).
6) The National Archives SC 8/291/14546.
7) Too many sources to mention.
8) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 24.
9) Richard Rastall, 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England' (PhD thesis, Univ. of Manchester, 1968), vol. 2, p. 57.
10) Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307, p. 124.
11) Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 74, 78-79; Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 466 (Caillau).
12) TNA SC 8/197/9804.
13) Hamilton, Gaveston, pp. 122- 125; Foedera, II, i, pp. 202-204.
14) Cal Docs Scotland, pp. 58-9; Vita, p. 48.
15) Vita, p. 8; Hamilton, Gaveston, p. 93, that Edward and Piers were apart at Christmas 1311. It is apparent from numerous sources that Edward was not at Wallingford in early December 1307, or at Wye that Christmas.
16) Chronicle of Lanercost, p. 192; Hamilton, Gaveston, p. 159.
17) The Brut, ed. F. W. D. Brie, p. 222; Annales Paulini, ed. W. Stubbs, pp. 259, 262; Vita, p. 15.
18) Lanercost, p.184; Annales Paulini, pp. 259, 273; Vita, pp. 7, 17, 28, 104; other chroniclers say much the same thing.
1) On 7 September 1310, Edward II pardoned Piers and six of his retainers for the death of one Thomas de Walkyngham of Yorkshire. What that was about - an unprovoked attack? Self-defence? An accident? - I have no idea. Piers was also pardoned "for all other felonies and trespasses with which he has been charged." What these were, and who charged Piers, I don't know either, as this was a year before the Ordainers ordered him to be banished from England for the third time. ("We, the Lords Ordainer, charge you, Piers Gaveston, with having a vicious tongue, a supercilious manner and an over-developed dress sense.") (This is a joke, by the way. Not a fact.)
2) An anonymous letter of 4 April 1311 said "A secret illness troubles him [Piers] much, compelling him to take short journeys." On 26 April 1312, Edward paid two men - physician William de Burntoft and Brother Robert de Bermingham - ten marks each for looking after him during another illness.
3) Piers' birthday might have been 18 July, as Edward II kept his anniversary on this date and on 19 June, the day of his death. The year of his birth is not known, but was sometime between 1281 and 1283. In my opinion, 1282 is the likeliest date, which would mean that Piers was a month short of his 30th birthday when he was killed, and twenty-one months older than Edward.
4) Piers went on campaign to Scotland with Edward in August 1310, and stayed at Roxburgh with his wife Margaret (Edward and Isabella were at Berwick) for the next few months. In January and February 1311, he paid £464 for provisions for his household, including 12,000 stockfish at £7 10s per 1000, 1000 cod, 12 'lasts' of red herring at £5 per last, 30 casks of wine at £5 6s and 8p per cask, and 12 casks of flour.
5) John of Canterbury, chaplain of John of Brittany, earl of Richmond, claimed in 1309 that Piers loved Richmond "beyond measure." He also said that Piers and Richmond called each other 'father' and 'son' in their correspondence. Richmond, grandson of Henry III and Edward II's first cousin, was born in 1266 and was therefore about 16 years older than Piers. In the only letter between the two men which survives, Piers addressed Richmond conventionally as 'very dear cousin' (trescher cosin).
6) In or about 1305, Piers and his elder brother Arnaud-Guillaume de Marsan* petitioned Edward I, asking - among other things - that four Gascon castles be taken into the king's hand and that the testament of their mother 'the lady de Marsan' might be carried out. Claramonde had died shortly before 4 February 1287 - and was certainly not burned as a witch, as some novels and older works of non-fiction say. The petition spells their names 'Arnaud Guilhem de Marsan and Perrot de Gavastun'.
* Piers' full brother, but used their mother's name.
7) Piers' name, in his own lifetime, was spelt Peres, Pieres or Pieris, and he was known by the pet name 'Perrot'. His last name was spelt Gavaston, Gavastun, Gavastone, Gavastoun, Gavastoune, Gaveieston, even Kavaston, Causton, etc, but never 'Gaveston'. The family took its name from the village of Gabaston in Béarn, near Pau in the modern Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
8) One of Piers' sisters was with him in Scarborough Castle when he was besieged there, 10 to 19 May 1312. What became of her isn't recorded (that I know of).
9) On 17 August 1307, Piers, just returned from exile and the brand-new earl of Cornwall, gave a banquet for Edward II at Sanquhar in south-west Scotland. Edward gave a pound each to the Welsh trumpeters Yevan and Ythel who performed for them. Piers also entertained Edward at Knaresborough Castle from 9 to 12 September that year.
10) During his 1307 exile, Piers went to Edward's county of Ponthieu in northern France, rather than Gascony as ordered by Edward I. Edward (of Caernarfon) had been expecting to visit Ponthieu - in the end, he didn't - and plenty of food had been laid in there against his arrival. Piers received 13 swans and 22 herons from the supplies.
11) When Piers was exiled for the second time in June 1308, Edward II granted lands worth £2000 annually to him and his wife Margaret in England, and another £2000 of lands to Piers alone in his homeland of Gascony. They included the island of Oléron, the city of Bayonne and the county of Gauré, near Toulouse and nowadays in the Haute-Garonne département. In later years, Edward appointed Piers' kinsman Arnaud Caillau - they were probably first cousins - as keeper of Oléron.
12) Edward II's demands for prayers for Piers' soul could prove onerous. In the spring of 1317, Edward asked Tupholme Abbey in Lincolnshire to take in his servant Robert de Crouland on his retirement, and the abbey replied "Although they would gladly obey him in all things, their very small income is already heavily burdened with the charge of finding a chaplain to say mass for the soul of Sir Pieres de Gavaston, formerly earl of Cornwall." They begged Edward to understand and forgive their "trespasses." Evidently Edward did, and sent Robert to Reading Abbey instead.
13) When Piers was killed in 1312, he was carrying:
- a great ruby, set in gold, worth £1000
- 3 large rubies in rings, an emerald and a diamond "of great value," all in an enamelled silver box
- 2 peridots, 1 in silver and 1 in gold
- a chalcedony, which Piers had put in his purse
- 1 large 'vessel'
- 1 small 'vessel', and "and from the small vessel a key hangs down, on a sterling cord."
Among the possessions of Edward II and Piers Gaveston seized by the earl of Lancaster in May 1312 were included "other diverse garments with the arms of the said Sir Piers, with the shoulders decorated and embroidered with pearls" and "a pair of gold-plated silver basins, with escutcheons with the arms of the said Sir Piers on them."
14) The Gascon sheriff of Edinburgh and constable of Linlithgow, Piers Lubaud, was a cousin of Piers, 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.)
15) Edward and Piers spent less time together after Edward's accession than you might think. From late June 1308 to late June 1309, Piers was in exile in Ireland. From August 1310 to August 1311, the men were on campaign in southern Scotland, living in castles 30 miles apart, though Piers did visit Edward (and Isabella) on occasion. Edward went south to parliament in August 1311, when the Ordainers forced him to banish Piers, and the men can't have seen each other for more than a few days before Piers departed the country. Even when they were both in England, they weren't always together: Edward didn't attend Piers' great jousting tournament at Wallingford in early December 1307, for example (he was at Kings Langley). They were together at Christmas 1309, at Langley, when the Vita says they spent the time "making up for former absence by their long wished-for sessions of daily and intimate conversation," and most probably at Christmas 1307, though at Westminster, not Wye in Kent, as stated by the Pauline annalist. Although several chronicles say they spent Christmas 1311 together after Piers' return from his third exile, this is almost certainly incorrect.
16) The Lanercost chronicler says that when the earl of Lancaster swore homage to Edward II in February 1311 for the lands he had just inherited from his father-in-law the earl of Lincoln, he "would neither kiss him [Piers], nor even salute him, whereat Piers was offended beyond measure." Piers' biographer Jeffrey Hamilton has pointed out that it is highly unlikely that Piers was even present when Lancaster met Edward, but hey, it's a great story. :-)
17) The Brut called Piers "the cursed Gascon," the Pauline annalist called him "an evil male sorcerer" and said that Edward did Piers great reverence and worshipped him as though his friend were a god, and the Vita also said that Piers "was accounted a sorcerer." These statements may be the origin of the much later invention that Piers' mother was burned as a witch.
18) Edward referred to his friend in speech as "my brother Piers" and addressed him in writing as "our dear and faithful brother" (nostre cher frere et foial) - exactly the same way as he addressed his real brothers Thomas and Edmund and his brother-in-law the earl of Hereford.
19) Not about Piers as such, but this amused me: in the Oxfordshire town of Deddington, where Piers was captured by the earl of Warwick in June 1312, there's a road called Gaveston Gardens. (I want to move there, right now. Though as houses are currently selling for half a million quid upwards, maybe not.) There are also Gaveston Roads in the towns of Didcot, Leamington Spa, Slough, Leatherhead and Coventry, and Gaveston Closes in Warwick and Byfleet.
Sources
1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 277.
2) Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-1357, p. 40; J. S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall 1307-1312, p. 95.
3) Wardrobe Accounts bundle 376, no. 7, folio 5.
4) Cal Docs Scotland, p. 39.
5) Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother, pp. 56, 67, 123. (dominus Petrus de C. ultra modem diligit dominum suum Johannem antedictum et in litteris suis vocat eum patrem et ipse econverso filium).
6) The National Archives SC 8/291/14546.
7) Too many sources to mention.
8) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 24.
9) Richard Rastall, 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England' (PhD thesis, Univ. of Manchester, 1968), vol. 2, p. 57.
10) Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon 1284-1307, p. 124.
11) Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, pp. 74, 78-79; Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 466 (Caillau).
12) TNA SC 8/197/9804.
13) Hamilton, Gaveston, pp. 122- 125; Foedera, II, i, pp. 202-204.
14) Cal Docs Scotland, pp. 58-9; Vita, p. 48.
15) Vita, p. 8; Hamilton, Gaveston, p. 93, that Edward and Piers were apart at Christmas 1311. It is apparent from numerous sources that Edward was not at Wallingford in early December 1307, or at Wye that Christmas.
16) Chronicle of Lanercost, p. 192; Hamilton, Gaveston, p. 159.
17) The Brut, ed. F. W. D. Brie, p. 222; Annales Paulini, ed. W. Stubbs, pp. 259, 262; Vita, p. 15.
18) Lanercost, p.184; Annales Paulini, pp. 259, 273; Vita, pp. 7, 17, 28, 104; other chroniclers say much the same thing.
07 February, 2009
Edward II's Return to England, February 1308
Today marks the 701st anniversary of Edward II's return to England after marrying Isabella of France in Boulogne. On 7 February 1308, around three in the afternoon ('the ninth hour'), the king and his bride arrived in Dover, and Isabella got her first look at the country that would be her home for the next half a century.
Edward and Isabella's arrival is mostly famous, or infamous, for Edward's greeting of his friend Piers Gaveston, whom he had - scandalously - left behind as regent. Ignoring everyone else, Edward is said to have "run to Piers among them, giving him kisses and repeated embraces; he was adored with a singular familiarity. Which special familiarity, already known to the magnates, furnished fuel to their jealousy." [1] The fourteenth century was a tactile age when demonstrative greetings were entirely normal, and the king's behaviour doesn't necessarily imply that the men were lovers - it was the fact that Edward singled Piers out for attention that was the problem.
A scene where a horrified/angry/disgusted/shocked Isabella watches her new husband hug and kiss his Gascon friend is practically obligatory in novels featuring Edward II, and in a few works of non-fiction too. But this entry on the Fine Roll makes it clear that Edward and Isabella didn't land ashore together:
"Be it remembered that on Wednesday after the Purification, 1 Edward II, the king, returning from beyond seas, to wit, from Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he took to wife Isabel, daughter of the king of France, touched at Dover in his barge about the ninth hour, Hugh le Despenser [the Elder] and the lord of Castellione in Gascony being in his company, and the queen a little afterward touched there with certain ladies accompanying her." [2]
So whether Isabella even saw Edward hug and kiss Piers is debatable. (Though possibly this became a common enough sight for her over the next few years.) A group of noblemen and women greeted the king and queen on their arrival:
- Edward's sister Elizabeth, countess of Hereford.
- Alicia, dowager countess of Norfolk and sister of the count of Hainault and Holland. Her niece Philippa of Hainault would marry Edward and Isabella's son twenty years later.
- Henry, brother of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, Isabella's uncle and Edward's first cousin.
- Robert Mohaut and Amaury St Amand. Why those two men particularly, I don't know - they seem kind of random.
Evidently, the king and queen arrived later than expected - Piers Gaveston, as regent, had sent out orders to the above on 22 January to be at Dover on the Sunday after the Purification, three days before Edward and Isabella in fact arrived. [3]
The royal couple spent two or three days at Dover, then travelled through Kent towards London. On the way, they spent five days at the palace of Eltham, which Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem, had given to Edward in 1305. Edward granted it to Isabella in 1311. On 21 February, the mayor and aldermen of London rode out to greet the new king and queen, and in great procession, cheered by a crowd of thousands, Edward and Isabella rode through the city to the Tower. London was rather less filthy than usual and the streets had been lavishly decorated, so that the city annalist wrote with pride and enormous exaggeration that it resembled "a new Jerusalem." [4] Edward and Isabella spent three nights at the Tower of London, then moved on to Westminster, where on Sunday 25 February their coronation and the farcical banquet took place.
Sources
1) Chronica monasterii S. Albani. Johannis de Trokelowe, et Henrici de Blaneforde, monachorum S. Albani, p. 65.
2) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 14.
3) Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 51.
4) Annales Londoniensis, p. 152.
Edward and Isabella's arrival is mostly famous, or infamous, for Edward's greeting of his friend Piers Gaveston, whom he had - scandalously - left behind as regent. Ignoring everyone else, Edward is said to have "run to Piers among them, giving him kisses and repeated embraces; he was adored with a singular familiarity. Which special familiarity, already known to the magnates, furnished fuel to their jealousy." [1] The fourteenth century was a tactile age when demonstrative greetings were entirely normal, and the king's behaviour doesn't necessarily imply that the men were lovers - it was the fact that Edward singled Piers out for attention that was the problem.
A scene where a horrified/angry/disgusted/shocked Isabella watches her new husband hug and kiss his Gascon friend is practically obligatory in novels featuring Edward II, and in a few works of non-fiction too. But this entry on the Fine Roll makes it clear that Edward and Isabella didn't land ashore together:
"Be it remembered that on Wednesday after the Purification, 1 Edward II, the king, returning from beyond seas, to wit, from Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he took to wife Isabel, daughter of the king of France, touched at Dover in his barge about the ninth hour, Hugh le Despenser [the Elder] and the lord of Castellione in Gascony being in his company, and the queen a little afterward touched there with certain ladies accompanying her." [2]
So whether Isabella even saw Edward hug and kiss Piers is debatable. (Though possibly this became a common enough sight for her over the next few years.) A group of noblemen and women greeted the king and queen on their arrival:
- Edward's sister Elizabeth, countess of Hereford.
- Alicia, dowager countess of Norfolk and sister of the count of Hainault and Holland. Her niece Philippa of Hainault would marry Edward and Isabella's son twenty years later.
- Henry, brother of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, Isabella's uncle and Edward's first cousin.
- Robert Mohaut and Amaury St Amand. Why those two men particularly, I don't know - they seem kind of random.
Evidently, the king and queen arrived later than expected - Piers Gaveston, as regent, had sent out orders to the above on 22 January to be at Dover on the Sunday after the Purification, three days before Edward and Isabella in fact arrived. [3]
The royal couple spent two or three days at Dover, then travelled through Kent towards London. On the way, they spent five days at the palace of Eltham, which Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham and patriarch of Jerusalem, had given to Edward in 1305. Edward granted it to Isabella in 1311. On 21 February, the mayor and aldermen of London rode out to greet the new king and queen, and in great procession, cheered by a crowd of thousands, Edward and Isabella rode through the city to the Tower. London was rather less filthy than usual and the streets had been lavishly decorated, so that the city annalist wrote with pride and enormous exaggeration that it resembled "a new Jerusalem." [4] Edward and Isabella spent three nights at the Tower of London, then moved on to Westminster, where on Sunday 25 February their coronation and the farcical banquet took place.
Sources
1) Chronica monasterii S. Albani. Johannis de Trokelowe, et Henrici de Blaneforde, monachorum S. Albani, p. 65.
2) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 14.
3) Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 51.
4) Annales Londoniensis, p. 152.
31 January, 2009
Edward II and Minstrels
Here are a few details about minstrels and other performers in Edward II's era. This is a very, very long way from being an exhaustive list, of course - that would fill a book! Unfortunately, the kind of songs or music that minstrels performed before the king is rarely stated, but I've given as much detail as I can.
Anyone interested in medieval music definitely needs to read Richard Rastall's fantastic thesis 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England', where some of the info in this post comes from. It's available online: Part 1 and Part 2. There's also Constance Bullock-Davies' Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (1978) and A Register of Royal and Baronial Domestic Minstrels 1272-1327 (1986).
To get an idea of how generous Edward was to his minstrels, bear in mind that a typical wage for the majority of people in the country was 1 to 3 pence a day. So although Edward giving a pound to a minstrel might not sound like much, it was a few months' wages for most people.
£1 = 240 pence, or 20 shillings
1 mark = 160 pence, or 13 shillings and 4 pence
July 1290: 426 minstrels perform at the wedding of Edward's sister Margaret to the future duke of Brabant.
Christmas 1296: 12-year-old Edward gives 2 shillings to the famous acrobatic dancer (or tumbler, saltatrix) Matilda Makejoy, who "made her vaults before the Lord Edward, the king's son" at Ipswich, almost certainly naked. Matilda was still performing for Edward in 1311.
c. 1300: A bawdy, farcical play (in English) called The Interlude of the Clerk and the Damsel appears, wherein a clerk unsuccessfully practises his seduction techniques on a young woman. A fragment survives, including the line "but his arse ly withouten door". Given that Edward II loved watching plays, I wonder if he ever saw this one.
5 January 1303: Edward (aged 18) gives half a mark to 3 clerks of Windsor playing interludes before him.
February 1303: Edward goes swimming with his fool Robert Bufford, and has to pay him compensation for playing a trick on him in the water.
May-October 1303: the Genoese violists Bestrudus and Beruche spend a few months in England, and receive £5 and 16 shillings from Edward. They return in August 1304, and get another 30 shillings from him.
1305: Edward sends "Richard, our rhymer" to the abbot of Shrewsbury, to learn the 'crwth' or crowd. In 1302/03, a man called 'Teguareth le Crouther' lives in Edward's household and is given shoes for the entire year, and Edward has another crowder called Matthew in 1305/06.
1305-06: a taborer called Martinettus is in the household of Edward's little half-brothers Thomas and Edmund. Edward I pays 11 pence to repair his drums, which the boys have broken.
22 May 1306: for the knighting of Edward of Caernarfon and nearly 300 others, Edward I spends a total of 200 marks on hundreds of minstrels. This includes a payment of five marks each to men called the king of Champagne, King Capenny (also called Capiny, King of the Heralds), King Baisecue, King Marchis and King Robert. Other performers are:
- The famous Matilda Makejoy
- Pearl in the Eye (Perle in the Eghe; given in English, not French, in the original. Apparently he was blind, suffering from cataracts.)
- Reginald 'The Liar' (le Menteur)
- Lion de Normanville
- "The minstrel with the bells"
- "The gitarer"
- Grendone, Mellet, Fairfax and Monet (identified only by their first names)
- Bandettus le Tabourer, Hugethun the harper and Janin the organist
- Edward of Caernarfon's harper Amekyn, his crowder Nagary, his trumpeters Januche and Gillot and his "five boy-trumpeters"
25 and 26 May 1306: 2 harpers and various other minstrels perform at the weddings of Edward's nieces Jeanne de Bar and Eleanor de Clare to the earl of Surrey and Hugh Despenser at Westminster. Edward I, who attends both weddings, pays them over £37.
1306-07: in his first year as king, Edward II has 4 'young minstrels' in his household: Little Andrew, John Scot, Roger the trumpeter and Francekinus the nakerer.
17 September 1307: Edward gives £2 to his trumpeter Richard to help him build a house.
1 November 1307: Edward pays a total of £20 for minstrels at the wedding of Piers Gaveston and Margaret de Clare. (He also gives 5 shillings to a local resident for "damage done by the king's party" to his property.)
September 1310: Edward gives 2 shillings to the harper Willekyn Fox to buy himself a furellus, whatever that is.
March 1311: Edward pays his minstrel Grillo 31 shillings and 4p, which he owes him for wages.
20 February 1312: Edward pays 40 marks to celebrate the purification of his niece Margaret Gaveston after the birth of her daughter Joan. The guests are entertained by 'King Robert'.
30 June/7 July 1312: on his way from York to London after Piers Gaveston's death, Edward gives a pound each to the minstrels Graciosus and Janin 'the Magician' (or 'Conjuror', tregettour), the former performing before him at Howden and the latter in the king's chamber at Swineshead Priory.
16 August 1312: Edward gives 3 shillings to John of Bologna, "making his minstrelsy with snakes before the king" at Canterbury.
12 October 1312: the oddly-named Ooghmus, minstrel of the earl of Pembroke, performs for Edward and, presumably, the heavily pregnant Queen Isabella, as they await the birth of their first child at Windsor Castle. Edward gives him £2.
20 May 1313: Edward gives "Ivo Vala the citoler and Thomas Dynys, his fellow" £4 17s 8p to buy themselves hackneys and saddles.
18 June 1313: on his French trip, Edward gives a pound to the dwarf of the count of Armagnac.
19 June 1313: here's the original entry (translated from Latin) regarding the naked dancers of a recent post: "To Bernard le Fol and 54 of his fellow actors, coming naked into the presence of the king and dancing, of the king's gift, 40s [£2]".
June 1314: Edward takes his poet, the Carmelite friar Robert Baston, with him to Bannockburn to make songs about his glorious victory. Oops. Baston is captured by the Scots and forced to write about their victory instead.
June 1314: on the way to Bannockburn, Edward, appropriately enough, listens to bagpipers, fiddlers, a trumpeter and others.
June or July 1315: Edward gives 20 ells of striped cloth to William de Forsham and 3 others "for singing before the king in his chamber at Westminster."
August 1315: During the Great Famine, Edward issues a proclamation which states, among other things, that only 2 or 3 minstrels a day should visit great households, and they should not go to "smaller people" at all - "unless requested to do so," he adds helpfully.
1 November 1316: Edward gives the very large sum of £5 to Robert Daverouns, minstrel of his second cousin Philip, prince of Achaea.
December 1318: An Ordinance for Edward's household states that he will have 2 minstrels and 2 trumpeters with him at all times and as many others as he wants, "who will make their minstrelsy before the king at all times that it will please him."
September 1319: Edward takes minstrels sent to him by his brother-in-law the king of France to the siege of Berwick.
12 May 1321: the earl of Pembroke's violist Merlin performs for the king at Westminster, 8 days after the start of the Despenser War.
After March 1322: the execution of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, inspires a song in Latin, which calls him "the blessed Thomas" and the "flower of knights," and says "the pouring out of prayers to Thomas restores the sick to health; the pious earl comes immediately to the aid of those who are feeble." Yes, that's Thomas of Lancaster. But in a world where there was a campaign to canonise Edward II *pauses for hysterical laughter*, anything is possible.
March 1322: minstrel John le Boteler, who uses the name 'Fiery King', is captured at the battle of Boroughbridge.
October 1322: Edward grants John le Boteler's forfeited houses in Pontefract to his harper William Morley, called 'King of the North'.
28 October 1322: smarting from his recent ignominious near-capture by the Scots at Rievaulx Abbey, Edward gives a pound to Sourelius, minstrel of the earl of Louth, who plays for him in York.
January 1323: Edward gives £2 to 4 clerks of Snaith, Yorkshire, for "playing interludes in the hall at Cowick before the king and Sir Hugh [Despenser]".
February 1323: gives a pound to his 'piper minstrel', Laurentin.
February 1323: Edward gives a mark to John, his nakerer. This may be the Janinus the nakerer who had perfomed for the king as early as 1303 (Edward gave him money to buy skins to cover and repair his nakers). Nakerers called Janotus and Januche also appear, possibly the same man with a variety of spellings of his name.
1323: Edward listens to northern women singing songs about Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester (killed at the battle of Evesham in 1265 fighting against Edward's father).
6 January 1325: Edward gives an Epiphany gift of 50 shillings to his minstrels, and 2 shillings to his piper Little Alein for his performance.
12 February 1325: Edward gives 20 pounds compensation (a huuuuge amount of money!) to 2 squires of his chamber, Giles of Spain and Berduk de Till, who burnt their arms - and thighs as well, in Berduk's case - while "playing before the king." What they were doing unfortunately isn't stated. This took place at Burgundy (Borgogne), a hut or cottage in the precincts of Westminster Abbey where Edward spent quite a bit of time in the last couple of years of his reign, shunning all his luxurious accommodation in and around London. Bless his little peasant heart.
24 February 1325: Thomelyn Sautriour ('psalterer') of London plays before the king in his chamber at the Tower, and receives a pound.
1331: in Edward III's reign, Roland le Fartere performs by "making a leap, a whistle and a fart." :-)
Anyone interested in medieval music definitely needs to read Richard Rastall's fantastic thesis 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England', where some of the info in this post comes from. It's available online: Part 1 and Part 2. There's also Constance Bullock-Davies' Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (1978) and A Register of Royal and Baronial Domestic Minstrels 1272-1327 (1986).
To get an idea of how generous Edward was to his minstrels, bear in mind that a typical wage for the majority of people in the country was 1 to 3 pence a day. So although Edward giving a pound to a minstrel might not sound like much, it was a few months' wages for most people.
£1 = 240 pence, or 20 shillings
1 mark = 160 pence, or 13 shillings and 4 pence
July 1290: 426 minstrels perform at the wedding of Edward's sister Margaret to the future duke of Brabant.
Christmas 1296: 12-year-old Edward gives 2 shillings to the famous acrobatic dancer (or tumbler, saltatrix) Matilda Makejoy, who "made her vaults before the Lord Edward, the king's son" at Ipswich, almost certainly naked. Matilda was still performing for Edward in 1311.
c. 1300: A bawdy, farcical play (in English) called The Interlude of the Clerk and the Damsel appears, wherein a clerk unsuccessfully practises his seduction techniques on a young woman. A fragment survives, including the line "but his arse ly withouten door". Given that Edward II loved watching plays, I wonder if he ever saw this one.
5 January 1303: Edward (aged 18) gives half a mark to 3 clerks of Windsor playing interludes before him.
February 1303: Edward goes swimming with his fool Robert Bufford, and has to pay him compensation for playing a trick on him in the water.
May-October 1303: the Genoese violists Bestrudus and Beruche spend a few months in England, and receive £5 and 16 shillings from Edward. They return in August 1304, and get another 30 shillings from him.
1305: Edward sends "Richard, our rhymer" to the abbot of Shrewsbury, to learn the 'crwth' or crowd. In 1302/03, a man called 'Teguareth le Crouther' lives in Edward's household and is given shoes for the entire year, and Edward has another crowder called Matthew in 1305/06.
1305-06: a taborer called Martinettus is in the household of Edward's little half-brothers Thomas and Edmund. Edward I pays 11 pence to repair his drums, which the boys have broken.
22 May 1306: for the knighting of Edward of Caernarfon and nearly 300 others, Edward I spends a total of 200 marks on hundreds of minstrels. This includes a payment of five marks each to men called the king of Champagne, King Capenny (also called Capiny, King of the Heralds), King Baisecue, King Marchis and King Robert. Other performers are:
- The famous Matilda Makejoy
- Pearl in the Eye (Perle in the Eghe; given in English, not French, in the original. Apparently he was blind, suffering from cataracts.)
- Reginald 'The Liar' (le Menteur)
- Lion de Normanville
- "The minstrel with the bells"
- "The gitarer"
- Grendone, Mellet, Fairfax and Monet (identified only by their first names)
- Bandettus le Tabourer, Hugethun the harper and Janin the organist
- Edward of Caernarfon's harper Amekyn, his crowder Nagary, his trumpeters Januche and Gillot and his "five boy-trumpeters"
25 and 26 May 1306: 2 harpers and various other minstrels perform at the weddings of Edward's nieces Jeanne de Bar and Eleanor de Clare to the earl of Surrey and Hugh Despenser at Westminster. Edward I, who attends both weddings, pays them over £37.
1306-07: in his first year as king, Edward II has 4 'young minstrels' in his household: Little Andrew, John Scot, Roger the trumpeter and Francekinus the nakerer.
17 September 1307: Edward gives £2 to his trumpeter Richard to help him build a house.
1 November 1307: Edward pays a total of £20 for minstrels at the wedding of Piers Gaveston and Margaret de Clare. (He also gives 5 shillings to a local resident for "damage done by the king's party" to his property.)
September 1310: Edward gives 2 shillings to the harper Willekyn Fox to buy himself a furellus, whatever that is.
March 1311: Edward pays his minstrel Grillo 31 shillings and 4p, which he owes him for wages.
20 February 1312: Edward pays 40 marks to celebrate the purification of his niece Margaret Gaveston after the birth of her daughter Joan. The guests are entertained by 'King Robert'.
30 June/7 July 1312: on his way from York to London after Piers Gaveston's death, Edward gives a pound each to the minstrels Graciosus and Janin 'the Magician' (or 'Conjuror', tregettour), the former performing before him at Howden and the latter in the king's chamber at Swineshead Priory.
16 August 1312: Edward gives 3 shillings to John of Bologna, "making his minstrelsy with snakes before the king" at Canterbury.
12 October 1312: the oddly-named Ooghmus, minstrel of the earl of Pembroke, performs for Edward and, presumably, the heavily pregnant Queen Isabella, as they await the birth of their first child at Windsor Castle. Edward gives him £2.
20 May 1313: Edward gives "Ivo Vala the citoler and Thomas Dynys, his fellow" £4 17s 8p to buy themselves hackneys and saddles.
18 June 1313: on his French trip, Edward gives a pound to the dwarf of the count of Armagnac.
19 June 1313: here's the original entry (translated from Latin) regarding the naked dancers of a recent post: "To Bernard le Fol and 54 of his fellow actors, coming naked into the presence of the king and dancing, of the king's gift, 40s [£2]".
June 1314: Edward takes his poet, the Carmelite friar Robert Baston, with him to Bannockburn to make songs about his glorious victory. Oops. Baston is captured by the Scots and forced to write about their victory instead.
June 1314: on the way to Bannockburn, Edward, appropriately enough, listens to bagpipers, fiddlers, a trumpeter and others.
June or July 1315: Edward gives 20 ells of striped cloth to William de Forsham and 3 others "for singing before the king in his chamber at Westminster."
August 1315: During the Great Famine, Edward issues a proclamation which states, among other things, that only 2 or 3 minstrels a day should visit great households, and they should not go to "smaller people" at all - "unless requested to do so," he adds helpfully.
1 November 1316: Edward gives the very large sum of £5 to Robert Daverouns, minstrel of his second cousin Philip, prince of Achaea.
December 1318: An Ordinance for Edward's household states that he will have 2 minstrels and 2 trumpeters with him at all times and as many others as he wants, "who will make their minstrelsy before the king at all times that it will please him."
September 1319: Edward takes minstrels sent to him by his brother-in-law the king of France to the siege of Berwick.
12 May 1321: the earl of Pembroke's violist Merlin performs for the king at Westminster, 8 days after the start of the Despenser War.
After March 1322: the execution of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, inspires a song in Latin, which calls him "the blessed Thomas" and the "flower of knights," and says "the pouring out of prayers to Thomas restores the sick to health; the pious earl comes immediately to the aid of those who are feeble." Yes, that's Thomas of Lancaster. But in a world where there was a campaign to canonise Edward II *pauses for hysterical laughter*, anything is possible.
March 1322: minstrel John le Boteler, who uses the name 'Fiery King', is captured at the battle of Boroughbridge.
October 1322: Edward grants John le Boteler's forfeited houses in Pontefract to his harper William Morley, called 'King of the North'.
28 October 1322: smarting from his recent ignominious near-capture by the Scots at Rievaulx Abbey, Edward gives a pound to Sourelius, minstrel of the earl of Louth, who plays for him in York.
January 1323: Edward gives £2 to 4 clerks of Snaith, Yorkshire, for "playing interludes in the hall at Cowick before the king and Sir Hugh [Despenser]".
February 1323: gives a pound to his 'piper minstrel', Laurentin.
February 1323: Edward gives a mark to John, his nakerer. This may be the Janinus the nakerer who had perfomed for the king as early as 1303 (Edward gave him money to buy skins to cover and repair his nakers). Nakerers called Janotus and Januche also appear, possibly the same man with a variety of spellings of his name.
1323: Edward listens to northern women singing songs about Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester (killed at the battle of Evesham in 1265 fighting against Edward's father).
6 January 1325: Edward gives an Epiphany gift of 50 shillings to his minstrels, and 2 shillings to his piper Little Alein for his performance.
12 February 1325: Edward gives 20 pounds compensation (a huuuuge amount of money!) to 2 squires of his chamber, Giles of Spain and Berduk de Till, who burnt their arms - and thighs as well, in Berduk's case - while "playing before the king." What they were doing unfortunately isn't stated. This took place at Burgundy (Borgogne), a hut or cottage in the precincts of Westminster Abbey where Edward spent quite a bit of time in the last couple of years of his reign, shunning all his luxurious accommodation in and around London. Bless his little peasant heart.
24 February 1325: Thomelyn Sautriour ('psalterer') of London plays before the king in his chamber at the Tower, and receives a pound.
1331: in Edward III's reign, Roland le Fartere performs by "making a leap, a whistle and a fart." :-)
28 January, 2009
The Great Famine, 1315 to 1317
A post about the natural disaster which affected northern Europe in the early fourteenth century.
In the mid-1310s, the climate was bizarre in the extreme, and it rained heavily and constantly for much of the summer of 1314 and most of 1315 and 1316. (I wonder if it rained during the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314?) This torrential rain, inevitably, caused flooding; crops rotted away and livestock drowned in the waterlogged fields. The result was the Great Famine, which is estimated to have killed at least five per cent, and perhaps much more, of the population of England. The rest of northern Europe suffered a similar or higher death toll. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi, evidently unaware that this was a pan-European disaster, knew exactly where to apportion blame: on the English people themselves, who "excel other nations in three qualities, in pride, in craft, and in perjury." Therefore, "the hand of God appears to be raised against us…I firmly believe that unless the English Church had interceded for us, we should have perished long ago...All this comes from the wickedness of the inhabitants." He also blamed the fact that Saturn had been in the ascendant for three years, but now that Jupiter was about to succeed, the rain would cease and the fields be filled with abundance.
The shortage pushed up prices enormously. Anonimalle and Lanercost say that a quarter of "badly cleaned and scantly weighed" wheat cost forty shillings or more, six or eight times the normal price, Anonimalle that "two little onions" cost a penny – a few hours’ wages for most people – at Cheapside in London, while the St Albans chronicler gives the price of a quarter of salt as a staggering thirty-five shillings. (Imagine having to work half a day or more just to be able to afford two small onions!) The Sempringham annalist says "there were great floods of water throughout England, and the wheat was destroyed, and the hay also, and there was great famine and great dearth of wheat throughout the land." He gives the price of a quarter of wheat as twenty-four shillings and more, a quarter of barley as sixteen shillings and a quarter of oats as twenty shillings, many times the usual price. Such bread as was available could not satisfy hunger, as the grain was soaked from the endless rain and had to be dried in ovens before it was cooked, and contained minimal nutrients.
In March and April 1315, Edward II did his best to mitigate his subjects’ misery by ordering the price of basic foodstuffs, grain and various kinds of meat, to be regulated. According to the Anonimalle, Edward passed these regulations with the advice of his privy council and without the consent of the magnates, and the chronicler, rather unfairly, calls Edward’s council "feeble" and the regulations "foolish," claiming that the king and his advisors were trying to "deceive the common people." The Vita, on the other hand, says that the earls and barons themselves developed the regulations, "looking to the welfare of the state." Edward’s attempts to improve the situation inevitably resulted only in traders refusing to sell what few goods they had at an artificially low price. In August 1315, Edward proclaimed that the magnates of the realm should limit the number of courses served at their tables, on account of the "excessive and abundant portions of food" they were accustomed to enjoying.
According to the St Albans chronicler, when Edward visited St Albans from 10 to 12 August 1315 even he had difficulties buying bread for himself and his household. Still, the king was in a far better position than the majority of his subjects: in Northumbria, already weakened and despoiled by Scottish raids, "dogs and horses and other unclean things were eaten," says the Vita, and the St Albans chronicler says that horse meat was precious and that "fat dogs" were stolen. The port of Berwick-on-Tweed suffered particularly. Its warden, Maurice Berkeley, sent anguished letters to Edward and the royal justice William Inge between October 1315 and February 1316, telling them "no town was ever in such distress," that the garrison were deserting, dead of hunger or reduced to eating horses, and that if Edward failed to send help immediately, "the town will be lost by famine." Berkeley ended one letter by saying "Pity to see Christians living such a life."
And for others, imminent starvation drove them to far worse horrors than eating pets or horses. Rumours of cannibalism were rife, and the St Albans chronicler even claims, I hope with great exaggeration, that some people resorted to eating children. After the famine came a "severe pestilence," which claimed many more victims. Dead bodies were so numerous they could hardly be buried. In their misery and starvation, many people begged for food, stole whatever they could, and murdered others for what little food they had.
Even in a hand-to-mouth economy where food shortages were common, nothing as bad as this had ever been seen before: "Such a scarcity has not been seen in our time in England, not heard of for a hundred years," says one chronicler, and others agree, talking of misery "such as our age has never seen" and "such a mortality of men in England and Scotland through famine and pestilence as had not been heard of in our time." The unsuccessful regulations concerning the price of foodstuffs were abolished at the Lincoln parliament of early 1316, which met the approval of the Bridlington chronicler: "How contrary to reason is an ordinance on prices, when the fruitfulness or sterility of all living things are in the power of God alone, from which it follows that the fertility of the soil and not the will of man must determine the price."
The weather finally improved in 1317, and gradually the famine loosened its dread grip. But for the long-suffering inhabitants of Europe, far worse was to come: the first great outbreak of the Black Death lurked three decades round the corner.
Sources
- Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. Noel Denholm-Young (1957), pp. 63-70.
- Annales Londonienses 1195-1330, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 1 (1882), pp. 238-239.
- Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in Stubbs, Chronicles, volume 2 (1883), pp. 47-48.
- The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307-41, from Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor (1991), p. 90.
- Le Livere de Reis de Britanie e le Livere de Reis de Engletere, ed. John Glover (1865), pp. 331-333.
- The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell (1913), p. 217.
- Johannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley (1866), pp. 92-93.
- Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 306.
- Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-1357, pp. 85, 89-91.
In the mid-1310s, the climate was bizarre in the extreme, and it rained heavily and constantly for much of the summer of 1314 and most of 1315 and 1316. (I wonder if it rained during the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314?) This torrential rain, inevitably, caused flooding; crops rotted away and livestock drowned in the waterlogged fields. The result was the Great Famine, which is estimated to have killed at least five per cent, and perhaps much more, of the population of England. The rest of northern Europe suffered a similar or higher death toll. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi, evidently unaware that this was a pan-European disaster, knew exactly where to apportion blame: on the English people themselves, who "excel other nations in three qualities, in pride, in craft, and in perjury." Therefore, "the hand of God appears to be raised against us…I firmly believe that unless the English Church had interceded for us, we should have perished long ago...All this comes from the wickedness of the inhabitants." He also blamed the fact that Saturn had been in the ascendant for three years, but now that Jupiter was about to succeed, the rain would cease and the fields be filled with abundance.
The shortage pushed up prices enormously. Anonimalle and Lanercost say that a quarter of "badly cleaned and scantly weighed" wheat cost forty shillings or more, six or eight times the normal price, Anonimalle that "two little onions" cost a penny – a few hours’ wages for most people – at Cheapside in London, while the St Albans chronicler gives the price of a quarter of salt as a staggering thirty-five shillings. (Imagine having to work half a day or more just to be able to afford two small onions!) The Sempringham annalist says "there were great floods of water throughout England, and the wheat was destroyed, and the hay also, and there was great famine and great dearth of wheat throughout the land." He gives the price of a quarter of wheat as twenty-four shillings and more, a quarter of barley as sixteen shillings and a quarter of oats as twenty shillings, many times the usual price. Such bread as was available could not satisfy hunger, as the grain was soaked from the endless rain and had to be dried in ovens before it was cooked, and contained minimal nutrients.
In March and April 1315, Edward II did his best to mitigate his subjects’ misery by ordering the price of basic foodstuffs, grain and various kinds of meat, to be regulated. According to the Anonimalle, Edward passed these regulations with the advice of his privy council and without the consent of the magnates, and the chronicler, rather unfairly, calls Edward’s council "feeble" and the regulations "foolish," claiming that the king and his advisors were trying to "deceive the common people." The Vita, on the other hand, says that the earls and barons themselves developed the regulations, "looking to the welfare of the state." Edward’s attempts to improve the situation inevitably resulted only in traders refusing to sell what few goods they had at an artificially low price. In August 1315, Edward proclaimed that the magnates of the realm should limit the number of courses served at their tables, on account of the "excessive and abundant portions of food" they were accustomed to enjoying.
According to the St Albans chronicler, when Edward visited St Albans from 10 to 12 August 1315 even he had difficulties buying bread for himself and his household. Still, the king was in a far better position than the majority of his subjects: in Northumbria, already weakened and despoiled by Scottish raids, "dogs and horses and other unclean things were eaten," says the Vita, and the St Albans chronicler says that horse meat was precious and that "fat dogs" were stolen. The port of Berwick-on-Tweed suffered particularly. Its warden, Maurice Berkeley, sent anguished letters to Edward and the royal justice William Inge between October 1315 and February 1316, telling them "no town was ever in such distress," that the garrison were deserting, dead of hunger or reduced to eating horses, and that if Edward failed to send help immediately, "the town will be lost by famine." Berkeley ended one letter by saying "Pity to see Christians living such a life."
And for others, imminent starvation drove them to far worse horrors than eating pets or horses. Rumours of cannibalism were rife, and the St Albans chronicler even claims, I hope with great exaggeration, that some people resorted to eating children. After the famine came a "severe pestilence," which claimed many more victims. Dead bodies were so numerous they could hardly be buried. In their misery and starvation, many people begged for food, stole whatever they could, and murdered others for what little food they had.
Even in a hand-to-mouth economy where food shortages were common, nothing as bad as this had ever been seen before: "Such a scarcity has not been seen in our time in England, not heard of for a hundred years," says one chronicler, and others agree, talking of misery "such as our age has never seen" and "such a mortality of men in England and Scotland through famine and pestilence as had not been heard of in our time." The unsuccessful regulations concerning the price of foodstuffs were abolished at the Lincoln parliament of early 1316, which met the approval of the Bridlington chronicler: "How contrary to reason is an ordinance on prices, when the fruitfulness or sterility of all living things are in the power of God alone, from which it follows that the fertility of the soil and not the will of man must determine the price."
The weather finally improved in 1317, and gradually the famine loosened its dread grip. But for the long-suffering inhabitants of Europe, far worse was to come: the first great outbreak of the Black Death lurked three decades round the corner.
Sources
- Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. Noel Denholm-Young (1957), pp. 63-70.
- Annales Londonienses 1195-1330, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 1 (1882), pp. 238-239.
- Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in Stubbs, Chronicles, volume 2 (1883), pp. 47-48.
- The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307-41, from Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor (1991), p. 90.
- Le Livere de Reis de Britanie e le Livere de Reis de Engletere, ed. John Glover (1865), pp. 331-333.
- The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell (1913), p. 217.
- Johannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley (1866), pp. 92-93.
- Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 306.
- Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland 1307-1357, pp. 85, 89-91.
23 January, 2009
The Minor Misdeeds of Hugh Despenser the Younger
I know I keep failing to write the promised post on the Great Famine, but it's definitely coming soon. Definitely. In the meantime, here's a post on everyone's favourite fourteenth-century tyrant.
As well as being a pirate, extortionist and despot who took lands from vulnerable widows, who used the king's favour to make himself the richest and most powerful man in England, and who [insert your favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger crimes here], Despenser committed a series of less infamous and less serious offences...
1) In October 1311, Queen Isabella had to make alternative arrangements for transporting the baggage of Eleanor Despenser, her lady-in-waiting, because "the lord Hugh le Despenser her husband stole away from her her sumpter-horses and other carriage necessary for her at Eltham."
2) When he was constable of Odiham Castle in Hampshire between February 1320 and June 1321, Despenser removed the parker, Wiliam of Odyham, from his position. The reason? Odyham had once raised the hue and cry against Despenser's mother Isabel Beauchamp, the earl of Warwick's sister, for taking five deer from the park without a licence. Isabel Beauchamp died in May 1306. Evidently, Despenser had a long memory. As for Odyham, he had to wait until Edward III's reign to seek restitution.
3) Probably in 1325, Despenser and his allies Robert Baldock (chancellor of England) and Robert Holden (controller of Edward II's wardrobe) imprisoned 31 men at Portchester Castle for 6 or 7 days until they agreed to buy a few dozen tuns of "rotten and putrid" wine. "The men received [the wine] by force and fear against their will, and were forthwith compelled to pay the late king [Edward II] £20 therefor."
4) Edward II seized Despenser's five manors on 9 January 1310, because "he had gone to parts beyond sea contrary to the king's inhibition." On learning a few weeks later that the manors in fact belonged to Despenser the Elder, who had granted the income from them to his son "for his maintenance," he returned them (Despenser held practically no lands until his wife's share of her brother Gloucester's inheritance was given to them in November 1317, and evidently couldn't support his family properly).
5) At the Lincoln parliament of February 1316, Despenser attacked Sir John Ros, a) in the cathedral, b) in front of the king and c) on a Sunday. Oops. Apparently Ros had tried to arrest Ingelram Berenger, one of the household knights of Despenser's father, though Despenser may have been unfavourably disposed towards Ros anyway, as Ros had married Margaret Goushill, widow of Despenser's brother Philip, less than 7 months after Philip's death. Despenser punched Ros in the face repeatedly till he drew blood, and "inflicted other outrages on him in contempt of the lord king," forcing Ros to draw his sword in self-defence. Despenser later claimed, with amusing implausibility, that he had merely stretched out his hand to defend himself and accidentally hit Ros in the face with his fist, after Ros "heap[ed] outrageous insults on the same Hugh [and] taunted him with insolent words," and rushed at him with a knife. Despenser was fined the whopping sum of £10,000, which he never paid.
On the other hand, Despenser had himself been the victim of assault some years before: in late 1311, the Lords Ordainer ordered that Robert Darcy, Edmund Bacon and the other members of Edward II's household who had attacked Despenser be removed from court.
6) Also at the February 1316 parliament, Despenser claimed, not entirely unreasonably, that the dowager countess of Gloucester couldn't possibly be pregnant by her husband, who had died at Bannockburn in June 1314, and therefore, could he and his wife possibly have their share of her late brother's lands? The royal justices Geoffrey le Scrope and Gilbert Touthby told him that although the birth was delayed, "this ought not to prejudice the aforesaid pregnancy," and reprimanded him and his wife Eleanor for failing to apply to Chancery for a writ "to have the belly of the aforesaid countess inspected by knights and discreet matrons." As they had not observed due process, their negligence would redound to their own shame and prejudice.
Sources
1) British Library MS Cotton Nero C viii, folio 137d.
2) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) 1308-1348, no. 988; The National Archives SC 8/160/7986.
3) Calendar of Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 143-4, 147-8; Cal Inq Misc 1308-1348, nos. 987, 993; TNA SC 8/169/8443, SC 8/169/8437, SC 8/157/7803, SC 8/293/14641, SC 8/209/10408.
4) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 54; Cal Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 198.
5) Parliament Rolls Of Medieval England (attack on Ros); Annales Londonienses 1195-1330, p. 200 (attack on Despenser).
6) PROME.
As well as being a pirate, extortionist and despot who took lands from vulnerable widows, who used the king's favour to make himself the richest and most powerful man in England, and who [insert your favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger crimes here], Despenser committed a series of less infamous and less serious offences...
1) In October 1311, Queen Isabella had to make alternative arrangements for transporting the baggage of Eleanor Despenser, her lady-in-waiting, because "the lord Hugh le Despenser her husband stole away from her her sumpter-horses and other carriage necessary for her at Eltham."
2) When he was constable of Odiham Castle in Hampshire between February 1320 and June 1321, Despenser removed the parker, Wiliam of Odyham, from his position. The reason? Odyham had once raised the hue and cry against Despenser's mother Isabel Beauchamp, the earl of Warwick's sister, for taking five deer from the park without a licence. Isabel Beauchamp died in May 1306. Evidently, Despenser had a long memory. As for Odyham, he had to wait until Edward III's reign to seek restitution.
3) Probably in 1325, Despenser and his allies Robert Baldock (chancellor of England) and Robert Holden (controller of Edward II's wardrobe) imprisoned 31 men at Portchester Castle for 6 or 7 days until they agreed to buy a few dozen tuns of "rotten and putrid" wine. "The men received [the wine] by force and fear against their will, and were forthwith compelled to pay the late king [Edward II] £20 therefor."
4) Edward II seized Despenser's five manors on 9 January 1310, because "he had gone to parts beyond sea contrary to the king's inhibition." On learning a few weeks later that the manors in fact belonged to Despenser the Elder, who had granted the income from them to his son "for his maintenance," he returned them (Despenser held practically no lands until his wife's share of her brother Gloucester's inheritance was given to them in November 1317, and evidently couldn't support his family properly).
5) At the Lincoln parliament of February 1316, Despenser attacked Sir John Ros, a) in the cathedral, b) in front of the king and c) on a Sunday. Oops. Apparently Ros had tried to arrest Ingelram Berenger, one of the household knights of Despenser's father, though Despenser may have been unfavourably disposed towards Ros anyway, as Ros had married Margaret Goushill, widow of Despenser's brother Philip, less than 7 months after Philip's death. Despenser punched Ros in the face repeatedly till he drew blood, and "inflicted other outrages on him in contempt of the lord king," forcing Ros to draw his sword in self-defence. Despenser later claimed, with amusing implausibility, that he had merely stretched out his hand to defend himself and accidentally hit Ros in the face with his fist, after Ros "heap[ed] outrageous insults on the same Hugh [and] taunted him with insolent words," and rushed at him with a knife. Despenser was fined the whopping sum of £10,000, which he never paid.
On the other hand, Despenser had himself been the victim of assault some years before: in late 1311, the Lords Ordainer ordered that Robert Darcy, Edmund Bacon and the other members of Edward II's household who had attacked Despenser be removed from court.
6) Also at the February 1316 parliament, Despenser claimed, not entirely unreasonably, that the dowager countess of Gloucester couldn't possibly be pregnant by her husband, who had died at Bannockburn in June 1314, and therefore, could he and his wife possibly have their share of her late brother's lands? The royal justices Geoffrey le Scrope and Gilbert Touthby told him that although the birth was delayed, "this ought not to prejudice the aforesaid pregnancy," and reprimanded him and his wife Eleanor for failing to apply to Chancery for a writ "to have the belly of the aforesaid countess inspected by knights and discreet matrons." As they had not observed due process, their negligence would redound to their own shame and prejudice.
Sources
1) British Library MS Cotton Nero C viii, folio 137d.
2) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) 1308-1348, no. 988; The National Archives SC 8/160/7986.
3) Calendar of Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 143-4, 147-8; Cal Inq Misc 1308-1348, nos. 987, 993; TNA SC 8/169/8443, SC 8/169/8437, SC 8/157/7803, SC 8/293/14641, SC 8/209/10408.
4) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 54; Cal Close Rolls 1307-1313, p. 198.
5) Parliament Rolls Of Medieval England (attack on Ros); Annales Londonienses 1195-1330, p. 200 (attack on Despenser).
6) PROME.
16 January, 2009
Edward II's Trip To France, 1313
In 1313, Edward II and Queen Isabella spent nearly two months in France, between May and July, to attend the simultaneous knighting of her three brothers and for Edward to meet his father-in-law Philippe IV to discuss Gascony. Edward was now twenty-nine, Isabella seventeen or eighteen. This was her first visit to her homeland for nearly five and a half years.
Edward and Isabella left Dover with their large retinues at sunrise on 23 May 1313 and arrived at Wissant the same day, the king casually disregarding the Ordinance of 1311 which stated that he needed the consent of the baronage in parliament to leave the country. Edward has often been criticised, in his own time and ever since, for leaving his kingdom at such a turbulent time; the negotiations between himself and Piers Gaveston’s killers were still dragging on. Shortly before they left, in a fruitless attempt to forestall criticism, Edward issued a proclamation that he was travelling to France at the personal invitation of both the king of France and the pope, and intended to return "with the utmost despatch." (Nearly two months would hardly count as 'utmost despatch'.) He left his nephew the earl of Gloucester in England as regent. Keen to present himself well, Edward paid the astonishing sum of £1000 for his clothes and jewels, and during the trip, he spent money with wild abandon: he gave gifts to the French court worth more than £3000 and paid almost £4500 merely on wine, truly staggering amounts.
The king and queen entered Paris on 2 June, where "the whole city rose up and went forth to meet them." The knighting of Isabella’s three brothers took place the following day, and Edward belted his eldest brother-in-law Louis, king of Navarre and the future Louis X of France, with the belt of knighthood. The two men and Philippe IV then knighted about 200 others, including Isabella’s two other brothers Philippe and Charles and their cousin Philippe de Valois - all of them future kings of France. Another new knight was Robert of Artois, Edward's cousin (great-grandson of Edward's grandfather Henry III).
Over the next few days, Edward II and Isabella attended banquets given by Philippe of France and Louis of Navarre, and Philippe's brothers the counts of Valois and Evreux. Philippe also hosted a feast for his daughter Isabella and daughter-in-law Marguerite, queen of Navarre. At midday on Tuesday 5 June, Edward himself gave a splendid banquet at St-Germain-des-Prés near Paris, which was held in tents open to public view and hung with rich cloths. Torches, candles and other lights burned even in the middle of the day, and attendants on horseback served the guests. The amount of food eaten during Edward's stay in France is astonishing: Philippe IV gave Edward and Isabella 189 pigs, 94 oxen, 380 rams, 160 pike, 200 carp, 80 barrels of wine, and much else.
Two days after giving his banquet, Edward suffered the embarrassment of missing a meeting with Philippe IV, as he and Isabella had overslept. The amused chronicler Geoffrey of Paris gives their night-time 'dalliance' as the reason, and says that it was hardly a wonder if Edward desired his wife, as Isabella was "the fairest of the fair" (c'est des belles la plus belle). Wouldn't you think though that someone might have woken them up? And how did Geoffrey of Paris know the reason for the oversleeping - did Edward hang a 'Do Not Disturb: Post-Coital Fatigue' notice on the door? I hope the weather that day was better than it had been the day before, when Paris was lashed by wind and rain. Later in the day he and Isabella overslept, Edward stirred himself sufficiently to watch a parade of Parisians from the Ile-Notre-Dame to the Louvre, from the windows of Philippe's apartments. He and Isabella, surrounded by a throng of ladies and damsels, saw the procession again later from a tower in their lodgings at St-Germain.
On the first anniversary of Piers Gaveston's death, 19 June 1313, Edward watched Bernard the Fool and fifty-four naked dancers perform for him at Pontoise, and gave them forty shillings. I wonder if all that nude flesh went some way to consoling him. Also at Pontoise on an unknown date, Edward and Isabella suffered a disaster when a fire broke out in Edward's wardrobe one night, and they were forced to run out into the street in their night-clothes. They lost many of their possessions, and poor Isabella's arm was badly burnt.
Just before their departure from England, Edward had sent letters to the emperors of China, Trebizond and the Tartars, and the king of Georgia, asking them to help a friar named Guillerinus de Villanova who was travelling east to convert the infidel (as Edward called them). At Poissy in early July, Edward had the pleasure of meeting Villanova, and gave him "many handsome presents." The king gave an offering of twenty shillings at the shrine of the Crown of Thorns in Sainte-Chapelle, twenty shillings to his minstrel William Craddock - probably for performing during Edward's banquet on 5 June - forty shillings to Philippe IV's minstrel Hurel, twenty-four gold florins to various friars of Paris, and ten marks to the English friar John Dunkhull setting out for the Holy Land. He also gave thirty shillings to the church of St-Pierre in Pontoise in compensation for the damage done to its meadows by his oxen while they were pastured there.
Philippe IV gave Edward four horses and armour as a leaving present. The king and queen arrived back at Dover on 15 July, quite probably a few pounds heavier than they had been a few weeks earlier!
Sources
- Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 588.
- The National Archives E 101/375/8, fo. 32.
- Chronique métrique de Godefroy de Paris, ed. J.-A. Buchon (1827), p. 194.
- Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Nancy Freeman Degalado, ‘Le grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of His Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, in Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn Reyerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (1994), pp. 57-86.
- Elizabeth Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household, 1307-1328 (1984), pp. 98-102.
- Alison Weir, Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England (2005), pp. 91-92.
Edward and Isabella left Dover with their large retinues at sunrise on 23 May 1313 and arrived at Wissant the same day, the king casually disregarding the Ordinance of 1311 which stated that he needed the consent of the baronage in parliament to leave the country. Edward has often been criticised, in his own time and ever since, for leaving his kingdom at such a turbulent time; the negotiations between himself and Piers Gaveston’s killers were still dragging on. Shortly before they left, in a fruitless attempt to forestall criticism, Edward issued a proclamation that he was travelling to France at the personal invitation of both the king of France and the pope, and intended to return "with the utmost despatch." (Nearly two months would hardly count as 'utmost despatch'.) He left his nephew the earl of Gloucester in England as regent. Keen to present himself well, Edward paid the astonishing sum of £1000 for his clothes and jewels, and during the trip, he spent money with wild abandon: he gave gifts to the French court worth more than £3000 and paid almost £4500 merely on wine, truly staggering amounts.
The king and queen entered Paris on 2 June, where "the whole city rose up and went forth to meet them." The knighting of Isabella’s three brothers took place the following day, and Edward belted his eldest brother-in-law Louis, king of Navarre and the future Louis X of France, with the belt of knighthood. The two men and Philippe IV then knighted about 200 others, including Isabella’s two other brothers Philippe and Charles and their cousin Philippe de Valois - all of them future kings of France. Another new knight was Robert of Artois, Edward's cousin (great-grandson of Edward's grandfather Henry III).
Over the next few days, Edward II and Isabella attended banquets given by Philippe of France and Louis of Navarre, and Philippe's brothers the counts of Valois and Evreux. Philippe also hosted a feast for his daughter Isabella and daughter-in-law Marguerite, queen of Navarre. At midday on Tuesday 5 June, Edward himself gave a splendid banquet at St-Germain-des-Prés near Paris, which was held in tents open to public view and hung with rich cloths. Torches, candles and other lights burned even in the middle of the day, and attendants on horseback served the guests. The amount of food eaten during Edward's stay in France is astonishing: Philippe IV gave Edward and Isabella 189 pigs, 94 oxen, 380 rams, 160 pike, 200 carp, 80 barrels of wine, and much else.
Two days after giving his banquet, Edward suffered the embarrassment of missing a meeting with Philippe IV, as he and Isabella had overslept. The amused chronicler Geoffrey of Paris gives their night-time 'dalliance' as the reason, and says that it was hardly a wonder if Edward desired his wife, as Isabella was "the fairest of the fair" (c'est des belles la plus belle). Wouldn't you think though that someone might have woken them up? And how did Geoffrey of Paris know the reason for the oversleeping - did Edward hang a 'Do Not Disturb: Post-Coital Fatigue' notice on the door? I hope the weather that day was better than it had been the day before, when Paris was lashed by wind and rain. Later in the day he and Isabella overslept, Edward stirred himself sufficiently to watch a parade of Parisians from the Ile-Notre-Dame to the Louvre, from the windows of Philippe's apartments. He and Isabella, surrounded by a throng of ladies and damsels, saw the procession again later from a tower in their lodgings at St-Germain.
On the first anniversary of Piers Gaveston's death, 19 June 1313, Edward watched Bernard the Fool and fifty-four naked dancers perform for him at Pontoise, and gave them forty shillings. I wonder if all that nude flesh went some way to consoling him. Also at Pontoise on an unknown date, Edward and Isabella suffered a disaster when a fire broke out in Edward's wardrobe one night, and they were forced to run out into the street in their night-clothes. They lost many of their possessions, and poor Isabella's arm was badly burnt.
Just before their departure from England, Edward had sent letters to the emperors of China, Trebizond and the Tartars, and the king of Georgia, asking them to help a friar named Guillerinus de Villanova who was travelling east to convert the infidel (as Edward called them). At Poissy in early July, Edward had the pleasure of meeting Villanova, and gave him "many handsome presents." The king gave an offering of twenty shillings at the shrine of the Crown of Thorns in Sainte-Chapelle, twenty shillings to his minstrel William Craddock - probably for performing during Edward's banquet on 5 June - forty shillings to Philippe IV's minstrel Hurel, twenty-four gold florins to various friars of Paris, and ten marks to the English friar John Dunkhull setting out for the Holy Land. He also gave thirty shillings to the church of St-Pierre in Pontoise in compensation for the damage done to its meadows by his oxen while they were pastured there.
Philippe IV gave Edward four horses and armour as a leaving present. The king and queen arrived back at Dover on 15 July, quite probably a few pounds heavier than they had been a few weeks earlier!
Sources
- Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-1313, p. 588.
- The National Archives E 101/375/8, fo. 32.
- Chronique métrique de Godefroy de Paris, ed. J.-A. Buchon (1827), p. 194.
- Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Nancy Freeman Degalado, ‘Le grant feste: Philip the Fair’s Celebration of the Knighting of His Sons in Paris at Pentecost of 1313’, in Barbara Hanawalt and Kathryn Reyerson, eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (1994), pp. 57-86.
- Elizabeth Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household, 1307-1328 (1984), pp. 98-102.
- Alison Weir, Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England (2005), pp. 91-92.
09 January, 2009
Happy (Freezing) New Year
A Happy New Year to you all, and I hope you had a great festive season. I certainly did, having eaten approximately three times my own body weight in chocolate and mince pies and drunk enough sherry and mulled wine to sink the Titanic.
The very cold weather in Britain and Germany lately - it's minus 15 C, or 5 F, here at the moment - got me thinking about the weather in Edward II's era. Cold winters seem to have been the norm back then. The London annalist vividly describes the Great Frost of 1309/10: "There was such cold and such masses and piles of ice on the Thames and everywhere else that the poor were overcome by excessive cold." He adds that the Thames froze over so solidly, bonfires could be lit on it. The winters of 1308/09, 1310/11, 1312/13 and 1313/14 were also bitterly cold, as was the winter of 1321/22, when Edward II went on campaign against the Marcher lords who had destroyed the lands of his favourite Hugh Despenser the previous spring. The Rochester chronicler says that snow lay on the ground for most of the first three months of 1322, and when the earl of Lancaster was led out to his execution on 22 March, a jeering crowd threw snowballs at him, according to the Brut. The Bridlington chronicler says that Hugh Despenser had prostated himself in the snow before Edward a few days before Lancaster's execution, arms outstretched, begging the king not to unfurl his banners against their baronial enemies.
The Rochester chronicler also says that the icy, snowy roads impeded Edward's progress during the campaign. Evidently, there was a temporary thaw during the second week of March 1322, when the Sempringham chronicler writes that Edward lost many supplies "through a great flood of water." The thaw is confirmed in a letter by Edward himself, who announced that he had been unable to cross the Trent because of the flooding, the melted snow having presumably raised the level of the river.
The Sempringham chronicler often described climactic conditions, and thus we learn that on 1 December 1319 "there was a general earthquake in England, with great sound and much noise," on 26 January 1320 "in the morning, there was a wonderful eclipse of the moon of many various colours," and on 17 April that year, "about midnight, there were frightful thunders heard, with lightning, and immoderately high wind."
Although people must have suffered during the terrible cold - and let me say here that, soft modern person that I am, I am exceedingly grateful to live in a world with central heating - it was the exceptionally wet years of 1314 and 1315 which caused the worst suffering. The endless rain rotted crops and led to the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317, the subject of the next post.
Swans navigating the ice, New Year's Day:
The very cold weather in Britain and Germany lately - it's minus 15 C, or 5 F, here at the moment - got me thinking about the weather in Edward II's era. Cold winters seem to have been the norm back then. The London annalist vividly describes the Great Frost of 1309/10: "There was such cold and such masses and piles of ice on the Thames and everywhere else that the poor were overcome by excessive cold." He adds that the Thames froze over so solidly, bonfires could be lit on it. The winters of 1308/09, 1310/11, 1312/13 and 1313/14 were also bitterly cold, as was the winter of 1321/22, when Edward II went on campaign against the Marcher lords who had destroyed the lands of his favourite Hugh Despenser the previous spring. The Rochester chronicler says that snow lay on the ground for most of the first three months of 1322, and when the earl of Lancaster was led out to his execution on 22 March, a jeering crowd threw snowballs at him, according to the Brut. The Bridlington chronicler says that Hugh Despenser had prostated himself in the snow before Edward a few days before Lancaster's execution, arms outstretched, begging the king not to unfurl his banners against their baronial enemies.
The Rochester chronicler also says that the icy, snowy roads impeded Edward's progress during the campaign. Evidently, there was a temporary thaw during the second week of March 1322, when the Sempringham chronicler writes that Edward lost many supplies "through a great flood of water." The thaw is confirmed in a letter by Edward himself, who announced that he had been unable to cross the Trent because of the flooding, the melted snow having presumably raised the level of the river.
The Sempringham chronicler often described climactic conditions, and thus we learn that on 1 December 1319 "there was a general earthquake in England, with great sound and much noise," on 26 January 1320 "in the morning, there was a wonderful eclipse of the moon of many various colours," and on 17 April that year, "about midnight, there were frightful thunders heard, with lightning, and immoderately high wind."
Although people must have suffered during the terrible cold - and let me say here that, soft modern person that I am, I am exceedingly grateful to live in a world with central heating - it was the exceptionally wet years of 1314 and 1315 which caused the worst suffering. The endless rain rotted crops and led to the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317, the subject of the next post.
Swans navigating the ice, New Year's Day:
Frosty sunrise in South Cumbria, 8.45am, 5 Jan
uary.
uary.
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