I recently found this interestingly detailed entry on the Close Roll of 8 November 1317: assignation of dower to 'Margaret late the wife of Laurence de Tany' in the Hertfordshire manor of 'Estwyke' (i.e. Eastwick, just north of Harlow and not far from Stansted airport). Laurence de Tany's effigy still exists; he and Margaret had no children and his heir was his sister, confusingly also named Margaret. In his father Roger's inquisition post mortem of August 1301 - Roger was himself only in his early twenties at the time of his death - Laurence was said to be two years old, so must have been just eighteen when he died in the autumn of 1317. Margaret the sister and heir performed homage and received livery of her lands on 24 December 1317 (Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 349); Margaret the widow received the following in Eastwick:
"A house called 'the new bakehouse', on the east side of the manor, lying east and west, and a house called 'the dairy' with two doors, lying before the said bakehouse, lying north and south, and a plot of land before these two houses, extending thence to the corner of the porch of the great hall and to the corner of the kitchen and to the garden enclosure; and a new stable with two doors within the inner gate of the manor and with a porch over the doors, of which stable one end is towards the outer gate and the other towards the kitchen; and a third of the barn, to wit one door of the same on the south with all the end of the barn towards towards the common way to the church of Estwyk; and a third of the cowhouse, to wit one door of the same on the east with all the end of the cowhouse from the door to the barn; and all the plot of land from the gate of the enclosure before the barn to the door of the same towards the common way on one side in length, and from the said door to the bottom of the ditch between the cowhouse and garden in breadth, extending the length of the said ditch on the other side from the garden behind the barn to the two parts of the cowhouse that remain to the heir [i.e. Margaret's sister-in-law]; and a small house near the gate on the east. The inner and outer gates of the manor and the plot of land extending from the outer gate to the inner gate in length, and from the gate of the enclosure of the barn to the garden behind the kitchen and stable in breadth, and the plot of land from the inner gate of the manor to the plot before the bakehouse and dairy above assigned to her shall remain in common, so that she shall have free ingress and egress to all the houses and plots abovesaid by day and by night for all her things whensoever she pleases.
There are assigned to her one and a half acres of the garden called 'Isewellegardyn', one end of the one and a half acres begins near the gate of the manor and extends between the kitchen and the common way between the bakehouse and the enclosure of the garden to the field called 'Isewelleschote' on the east; and a third of the garden called 'Wynyard' and of the pasture called 'Roumore' in the same garden, which third contains two and a half acres lying near the field called 'Calstokstret'...[more details of lands assigned, snipped]. There are also assigned to her twenty-five acres of wood in the wood called 'le Perk', whereof one end abuts upon the way to the wood that belonged to W[...] le Parker on the south, and the other end abuts upon the field called 'Wydefordeleye' on the north, and one side near the lord's* wood in the west...There are also assigned to her the rents and services of five free tenants, to wit Robert de Geldeford, William le Frere, William de Westmulle, William de Theydon, and Simon Roche, who render yearly fifty-eight shillings and do suit of court. There are also assigned to her the rents, works and customs of Richard Bosse, customary-tenant in the same manor, of the yearly value of four shillings and four and a half pence; and three capons from certain tenements that John de Farnham and Roger Bataille, free tenants, hold, worth sixpence. There are also assigned to her three messuages with twenty-two acres of arable land that Adam Saeles, Richard le Hunte and Peter le Hopare, villeins, held at one time, which are now in the hands of the lord on account of the default of the tenants, of the yearly value of thirteen shillings and eightpence...and two cottages that belonged to Matilda Coleman and John Cutbert, in the lord's hands for the above cause [default], which are not extended because they are decayed."
It ends by assigning to Margaret part of a fishery and rent from a water-mill, and "pleas and perquisites of court, fines, reliefs and heriots of all the tenants above assigned to her, of the yearly value of twenty pence. [Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, pp. 573-574]
* The lord of Eastwick in 1317 was Thomas Wake, brother of Margaret, future countess of Kent, who was still a minor and in Edward II's wardship.
I love this description of the manor; it's so detailed I feel like I could draw a diagram of it. :-)
24 April, 2012
Something Of A Rant
But first: The words in the image below are part of Edward II's speech when he was forced to abdicate in January 1327, as recorded in the Flores Historiarum: "I greatly regret that I have so utterly failed my people, but I could not be other than I am." The Flores was written in Latin, though anything Edward would have said - and whether or not he really said anything like the words ascribed to him here is anyone's guess - would have been in Anglo-Norman. The design was made by my friend Tim. Thanks for sharing and giving me permission to use it here, Tim!
Talking of trashing people, and referring to what I wrote at the end of my recent post about Hugh Despenser and Isabella, I had the misfortune recently to read part of a novel about Isabella and Roger Mortimer which really made my blood boil. In it - besides the usual tediously predictable stuff about Edward II being a 'coward' and the useless whining pathetic fool and callous uncaring husband he always is in badly-written and researched melodrama - the author has Isabella claiming that Edward couldn't care less about their four children and can barely even remember their names, and that if anything happens to Isabella they'd be better off if he were dead too and they were orphans. That just made me...I cannot believe...I literally have no words. What a laughably blatant and obvious attempt to make Edward II even more unlikeable than he already is to readers of the novel. No-one in the fourteenth century ever accused Edward of not caring about his children, unless you count the Brut chronicle, which repeats a rumour that in 1326 Edward wished to strangle his wife and eldest son to death. The chronicle reports that when this rumour was repeated to Edward after his forced abdication - evidently he hadn't heard it before - he was so upset and horrified that he exclaimed "God knows, I thought it never, and now I would that I were dead! So would God that I were! For then were all my sorrow passed." (The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F.W.D. Brie, vol. 1, pp. 252-253.)
Hideous, and I'm sure that no-one who actually knew Edward believed that he would have ever wished to kill his son, including Isabella and Edward III himself. Edward II is generally accepted to have been a good and loving father, something even Alison Weir, who appears to despise him, admits. It just makes me so furious that modern writers invent this hateful, hurtful nonsense about him (another novelist has him committing 'atrocities' in Wales and having Jewish merchants visiting England during his reign killed, for pity's sake). How would they like it if someone made up crap like that about their families and people they care about? "The writer's late grandfather was a cruel and neglectful husband who cared so little about his children he struggled even to remember their names. Conceiving his children was nothing more than a painful and unpleasant duty for him and he may not even have been their real father; he was a feeble drunken weakling; and his wife despised him and chose to punish him by committing adultery with another man who was much better and manlier than him in every way. He was so evil that he had innocent people murdered for the sheer hell of it, and allowed his lover to rape his wife and torture anyone he felt like." How would these writers who obviously adore the story of Isabella and Roger Mortimer feel if I wrote a novel or story and made out that Roger frequently beat up and raped his wife and treated her with utter contempt as nothing more than a brood mare, and that Isabella was a nasty, spiteful little madam who treated everyone she met like dirt and didn't give a damn about her children except as a means to manipulate her husband and make herself powerful? After all, it would be reasonably easy - given that Roger had a dozen children and that Isabella did use her elder son as a means of striking against her husband in 1326, and sent her daughter Joan away to Scotland when she was only seven - to make these characterisations seem plausible and historically accurate to readers. But I'd never do that, because there is absolutely no basis in fact for such portrayals and it would be an incredibly unsubtle way of making the pair unsympathetic to readers, with the equally unsubtle aim of making Edward II, who would naturally be a candidate for Father Of The Year and a loving tolerant husband who becomes a tragic, even saintly victim of his adulterous wife's cruel manipulations, look much better to readers by comparison. True, you can't libel the dead. True, historical fiction is, of course, fictional and shouldn't be taken as actual historical fact (though lots of people do just that). But why invent and write nasty things about people who aren't around to defend themselves? Such a shame that some writers can't give their characters depth and complexity without resorting to such obvious and lame devices as making Edward II an even worse father than he is a husband - and sheesh, they might as well just have him walk into the novel carrying a neon sign proclaiming 'I AM A HORRIBLE CHARACTER! HATE ME!!!'.
This year, which marks the 700th anniversary of the birth of Edward III, I feel like starting a new blog
feature called Who's Edward III's Father This Week? A friend on Facebook told me the other day about a person of his acquaintance who thinks that Isabella conceived the future king with Sir Robert Holland, on the grounds that - get this - she and he were once supposedly 'in the same vicinity'. What an utterly fabulous, well-thought-out and plausible theory. Don't know about you, but I'm totally convinced. In fact, Sir Robert Holland (whose grandsons, via his second son Thomas who secretly married Joan of Kent, were Richard II's half-brothers) was a close adherent and friend of Thomas, earl of Lancaster; Edward II wrote to Holland in November 1311 about an illness Lancaster was then suffering from. Given the political situation in February/March 1312 when Edward III was conceived, when Edward II and Piers Gaveston were skulking in the north to avoid Lancaster and actually fled from him when he arrived in Tynemouth a few weeks later, anyone as close to the earl as Holland was is incredibly unlikely to have been anywhere near the queen. Still, don't let that stand in the way of a good theory, eh? It strikes me as odd, the way some people who otherwise seem to like and admire Isabella of France are so happy to trash her morals and accuse her of being willing to foist a child of non-royal blood onto the English throne. You'd think they didn't understand the contemporary mindset or hadn't done any basic research at all or something.
(Why does Blogger's formatting always go weird when I include an image in a post?)
Talking of trashing people, and referring to what I wrote at the end of my recent post about Hugh Despenser and Isabella, I had the misfortune recently to read part of a novel about Isabella and Roger Mortimer which really made my blood boil. In it - besides the usual tediously predictable stuff about Edward II being a 'coward' and the useless whining pathetic fool and callous uncaring husband he always is in badly-written and researched melodrama - the author has Isabella claiming that Edward couldn't care less about their four children and can barely even remember their names, and that if anything happens to Isabella they'd be better off if he were dead too and they were orphans. That just made me...I cannot believe...I literally have no words. What a laughably blatant and obvious attempt to make Edward II even more unlikeable than he already is to readers of the novel. No-one in the fourteenth century ever accused Edward of not caring about his children, unless you count the Brut chronicle, which repeats a rumour that in 1326 Edward wished to strangle his wife and eldest son to death. The chronicle reports that when this rumour was repeated to Edward after his forced abdication - evidently he hadn't heard it before - he was so upset and horrified that he exclaimed "God knows, I thought it never, and now I would that I were dead! So would God that I were! For then were all my sorrow passed." (The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F.W.D. Brie, vol. 1, pp. 252-253.)
Hideous, and I'm sure that no-one who actually knew Edward believed that he would have ever wished to kill his son, including Isabella and Edward III himself. Edward II is generally accepted to have been a good and loving father, something even Alison Weir, who appears to despise him, admits. It just makes me so furious that modern writers invent this hateful, hurtful nonsense about him (another novelist has him committing 'atrocities' in Wales and having Jewish merchants visiting England during his reign killed, for pity's sake). How would they like it if someone made up crap like that about their families and people they care about? "The writer's late grandfather was a cruel and neglectful husband who cared so little about his children he struggled even to remember their names. Conceiving his children was nothing more than a painful and unpleasant duty for him and he may not even have been their real father; he was a feeble drunken weakling; and his wife despised him and chose to punish him by committing adultery with another man who was much better and manlier than him in every way. He was so evil that he had innocent people murdered for the sheer hell of it, and allowed his lover to rape his wife and torture anyone he felt like." How would these writers who obviously adore the story of Isabella and Roger Mortimer feel if I wrote a novel or story and made out that Roger frequently beat up and raped his wife and treated her with utter contempt as nothing more than a brood mare, and that Isabella was a nasty, spiteful little madam who treated everyone she met like dirt and didn't give a damn about her children except as a means to manipulate her husband and make herself powerful? After all, it would be reasonably easy - given that Roger had a dozen children and that Isabella did use her elder son as a means of striking against her husband in 1326, and sent her daughter Joan away to Scotland when she was only seven - to make these characterisations seem plausible and historically accurate to readers. But I'd never do that, because there is absolutely no basis in fact for such portrayals and it would be an incredibly unsubtle way of making the pair unsympathetic to readers, with the equally unsubtle aim of making Edward II, who would naturally be a candidate for Father Of The Year and a loving tolerant husband who becomes a tragic, even saintly victim of his adulterous wife's cruel manipulations, look much better to readers by comparison. True, you can't libel the dead. True, historical fiction is, of course, fictional and shouldn't be taken as actual historical fact (though lots of people do just that). But why invent and write nasty things about people who aren't around to defend themselves? Such a shame that some writers can't give their characters depth and complexity without resorting to such obvious and lame devices as making Edward II an even worse father than he is a husband - and sheesh, they might as well just have him walk into the novel carrying a neon sign proclaiming 'I AM A HORRIBLE CHARACTER! HATE ME!!!'.
22 April, 2012
April Anniversaries
Some April anniversaries relating to Edward II:
28 April 1313: Edward orders the release of Isabel MacDuff, countess of Buchan, who had crowned Robert Bruce king of Scotland in 1306, into the custody of his kinsman Henry Beaumont. This is the last mention of Isabel that I know of; she is not named among the Scottish hostages released after Bannockburn the following year.
28 April 1317: Wedding of Margaret de Clare and Hugh Audley at Windsor Castle, in Edward's presence.
27 April 1318: Edward writes to Pope John XXII asking his permission to found a house of Dominican nuns at Langley Priory, which he had founded in 1308. Sadly, nothing came of this until 1349, when Edward III finally established a sisters' house there. (Nice to see Edward III taking an interest in his father's foundation.)
25 April 1284: Birth of Edward II at Caernarfon.
25 April 1287: Birth of Roger Mortimer, lord of Wigmore and earl of March.
25 April 1295: Death of Edward's first cousin Sancho IV of Castile.
25 April 1309: Pope Clement V gives Edward an excellent twenty-fifth birthday present by agreeing to lift the excommunication on Piers Gaveston.
24 April 1316: Edward II asks the Dominicans of Toulouse to pray for him (something he did fairly often, also asking the Dominicans of Pamplona, Marseilles, Paris, Rouen, Citeaux, Florence, Venice, Barcelona and Vienna to say prayers "for the good estate" of himself, Queen Isabella and their children at various times over the years).
23 April 1307: Death of Edward's sister Joan of Acre, countess of Gloucester.
22 April 1355: Death of Edward's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock, dowager duchess of Gelderland, at the age of thirty-six. Duchess Eleanor was buried at Deventer Abbey. She left two sons: Duke Reinald III of Gelderland, then not quite twenty-two, and the future Duke Eduard of Gelderland, then nineteen.
20 April 1314: Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got, dies in Avignon, a month and two days after Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, supposedly curses him from the flames of his execution pyre.
20 April 1315: Edward II holds a great banquet for the archbishop of Canterbury and most of the nobility at Westminster Hall, which is damaged by a fire shortly afterwards.
17 April 1290: At Amesbury Priory in Wiltshire, Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester, signs an agreement with his soon-to-be father-in-law Edward I, acknowledging that after the king's death he will recognise Edward of Caernarfon (not quite six years old) as his liege lord, and, if Edward I dies without fathering more sons and Edward of Caernarfon dies without heirs of his body, then the king's eldest surviving daughter Eleanor will be rightful heir to the throne.
17 April 1306: Edward gives ten shillings each to the watchmen who rouse him from his bed and evacuate his household as flames swept through Windsor Castle.
17 April 1320: Pope John XXII canonises Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford, who had died in August 1282. This was due in part to the efforts of Edward II himself, who wrote to Clement V and John XXII half a dozen times between December 1307 and January 1319, asking them to canonise Cantilupe.
15 April 1318: Edward’s brother-in-law Philip V of France (who succeeded to the throne in November 1316) accepts Edward’s excuses for not travelling to France to perform homage for Gascony and Ponthieu and grants him permission to appoint envoys to do homage on his behalf, around the time of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, or 24 June. Edward manages to put off the dread moment of kneeling to another person until late June 1320.
15 April 1324: The final date by which Edward is meant to perform homage to yet another brother-in-law, Charles IV. His failure to do so precipitates the last great crisis of his reign.
15 April 1326: Edward II informs his kinsman Afonso IV of Portugal that his son Edward will be unable to marry Afonso's daughter Maria, as the Portuguese king has suggested, as the boy is betrothed to Leonor of Castile. (And ultimately marries Philippa of Hainault.)
14 April 1322: Execution of Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere, formerly steward of Edward II's household, who took part in the Contrariant rebellion against the king and was captured by Donald of Mar at one of the manors of his nephew the bishop of Lincoln. Bartholomew is dragged the three miles from Canterbury to the crossroads at Blean, hanged, drawn and quartered - one of only three men I know of who suffered the traitor's death during Edward II's reign, the others being Sir Gilbert Middleton and Hugh Despenser the Younger (and the latter was not done at Edward's order, of course). Poor man; no-one deserves to die like that.
13 April 1326: Edward tells the archbishop and prior of Canterbury and the abbot of St Augustine’s that "an invasion of the realm by aliens is threatened," i.e. his queen and Mortimer's invasion.
10 April 1315: Edward passes legislation ordering the price of various basic foodstuffs to be fixed and regulated in an attempt to mitigate his subjects' misery during the Great Famine.
8 April 1314: Edward spends Easter Monday at Ely Cathedral, quizzing the monks as to their supposed possession of the body of St Alban when he'd just seen it in St Albans Abbey. Heh. "You know that my brothers of St Albans believe that they possess the body of the martyr. In this place the monks say that they have the body of the same saint. By God’s soul, I want to see in which place I ought chiefly to pay reverence to the remains of that holy body."
7 April 1323: Edward orders an inquiry into the recent near-escape of several Contrariants from Wallingford Castle.
4 April 1284: Death of Edward's uncle Alfonso XI of Castile, exactly three weeks before Edward was born.
4 April 1311: An anonymous letter-writer says that "a secret illness troubles [Piers Gaveston] much, compelling him to take short journeys."
3 April 1327: Custody of the former King Edward II is transferred from his cousin Earl Henry of Lancaster at Kenilworth Castle to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, Sir John Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gurney at Berkeley Castle.
2 April 1318: Robert Bruce seizes the port of Berwick-upon-Tweed, following several unsuccessful attempts. Edward's efforts to take it back the following year end in embarrassing failure and it remains in Scottish hands until Edward III recaptures it in July 1333.
1 April 1312: Edward pretends in a letter to his father-in-law Philip IV of France that he is hurrying to Berwick-upon-Tweed, which Robert Bruce is currently besieging, when he is in fact far too concerned with Piers Gaveston's safety to do any such thing. He fails to mention that his own men are holding the Scottish border against him to prevent him sending Piers there.
28 April 1313: Edward orders the release of Isabel MacDuff, countess of Buchan, who had crowned Robert Bruce king of Scotland in 1306, into the custody of his kinsman Henry Beaumont. This is the last mention of Isabel that I know of; she is not named among the Scottish hostages released after Bannockburn the following year.
28 April 1317: Wedding of Margaret de Clare and Hugh Audley at Windsor Castle, in Edward's presence.
27 April 1318: Edward writes to Pope John XXII asking his permission to found a house of Dominican nuns at Langley Priory, which he had founded in 1308. Sadly, nothing came of this until 1349, when Edward III finally established a sisters' house there. (Nice to see Edward III taking an interest in his father's foundation.)
25 April 1284: Birth of Edward II at Caernarfon.
25 April 1287: Birth of Roger Mortimer, lord of Wigmore and earl of March.
25 April 1295: Death of Edward's first cousin Sancho IV of Castile.
25 April 1309: Pope Clement V gives Edward an excellent twenty-fifth birthday present by agreeing to lift the excommunication on Piers Gaveston.
24 April 1316: Edward II asks the Dominicans of Toulouse to pray for him (something he did fairly often, also asking the Dominicans of Pamplona, Marseilles, Paris, Rouen, Citeaux, Florence, Venice, Barcelona and Vienna to say prayers "for the good estate" of himself, Queen Isabella and their children at various times over the years).
23 April 1307: Death of Edward's sister Joan of Acre, countess of Gloucester.
22 April 1355: Death of Edward's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock, dowager duchess of Gelderland, at the age of thirty-six. Duchess Eleanor was buried at Deventer Abbey. She left two sons: Duke Reinald III of Gelderland, then not quite twenty-two, and the future Duke Eduard of Gelderland, then nineteen.
20 April 1314: Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got, dies in Avignon, a month and two days after Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, supposedly curses him from the flames of his execution pyre.
20 April 1315: Edward II holds a great banquet for the archbishop of Canterbury and most of the nobility at Westminster Hall, which is damaged by a fire shortly afterwards.
17 April 1290: At Amesbury Priory in Wiltshire, Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester, signs an agreement with his soon-to-be father-in-law Edward I, acknowledging that after the king's death he will recognise Edward of Caernarfon (not quite six years old) as his liege lord, and, if Edward I dies without fathering more sons and Edward of Caernarfon dies without heirs of his body, then the king's eldest surviving daughter Eleanor will be rightful heir to the throne.
17 April 1306: Edward gives ten shillings each to the watchmen who rouse him from his bed and evacuate his household as flames swept through Windsor Castle.
17 April 1320: Pope John XXII canonises Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford, who had died in August 1282. This was due in part to the efforts of Edward II himself, who wrote to Clement V and John XXII half a dozen times between December 1307 and January 1319, asking them to canonise Cantilupe.
15 April 1318: Edward’s brother-in-law Philip V of France (who succeeded to the throne in November 1316) accepts Edward’s excuses for not travelling to France to perform homage for Gascony and Ponthieu and grants him permission to appoint envoys to do homage on his behalf, around the time of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, or 24 June. Edward manages to put off the dread moment of kneeling to another person until late June 1320.
15 April 1324: The final date by which Edward is meant to perform homage to yet another brother-in-law, Charles IV. His failure to do so precipitates the last great crisis of his reign.
15 April 1326: Edward II informs his kinsman Afonso IV of Portugal that his son Edward will be unable to marry Afonso's daughter Maria, as the Portuguese king has suggested, as the boy is betrothed to Leonor of Castile. (And ultimately marries Philippa of Hainault.)
14 April 1322: Execution of Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere, formerly steward of Edward II's household, who took part in the Contrariant rebellion against the king and was captured by Donald of Mar at one of the manors of his nephew the bishop of Lincoln. Bartholomew is dragged the three miles from Canterbury to the crossroads at Blean, hanged, drawn and quartered - one of only three men I know of who suffered the traitor's death during Edward II's reign, the others being Sir Gilbert Middleton and Hugh Despenser the Younger (and the latter was not done at Edward's order, of course). Poor man; no-one deserves to die like that.
13 April 1326: Edward tells the archbishop and prior of Canterbury and the abbot of St Augustine’s that "an invasion of the realm by aliens is threatened," i.e. his queen and Mortimer's invasion.
10 April 1315: Edward passes legislation ordering the price of various basic foodstuffs to be fixed and regulated in an attempt to mitigate his subjects' misery during the Great Famine.
8 April 1314: Edward spends Easter Monday at Ely Cathedral, quizzing the monks as to their supposed possession of the body of St Alban when he'd just seen it in St Albans Abbey. Heh. "You know that my brothers of St Albans believe that they possess the body of the martyr. In this place the monks say that they have the body of the same saint. By God’s soul, I want to see in which place I ought chiefly to pay reverence to the remains of that holy body."
7 April 1323: Edward orders an inquiry into the recent near-escape of several Contrariants from Wallingford Castle.
4 April 1284: Death of Edward's uncle Alfonso XI of Castile, exactly three weeks before Edward was born.
4 April 1311: An anonymous letter-writer says that "a secret illness troubles [Piers Gaveston] much, compelling him to take short journeys."
3 April 1311: Birth of Edward's niece Margaret de Bohun, future countess of Devon.
3 April 1327: Custody of the former King Edward II is transferred from his cousin Earl Henry of Lancaster at Kenilworth Castle to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, Sir John Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gurney at Berkeley Castle.
2 April 1318: Robert Bruce seizes the port of Berwick-upon-Tweed, following several unsuccessful attempts. Edward's efforts to take it back the following year end in embarrassing failure and it remains in Scottish hands until Edward III recaptures it in July 1333.
1 April 1312: Edward pretends in a letter to his father-in-law Philip IV of France that he is hurrying to Berwick-upon-Tweed, which Robert Bruce is currently besieging, when he is in fact far too concerned with Piers Gaveston's safety to do any such thing. He fails to mention that his own men are holding the Scottish border against him to prevent him sending Piers there.
15 April, 2012
Did Hugh Despenser the Younger Rape Isabella of France?
Almost certainly not. The notion that Hugh may indeed have raped or otherwise sexually assaulted Queen Isabella has become so entrenched in some people's minds over the last few years, however, that an Amazon review of my friend Susan Higginbotham's novel about Hugh's wife Eleanor criticises the novel for not including it. What's the evidence that he ever did such a vile thing?
Basically there isn't any, except modern speculation. The first reference to it appears to be found in (as a friend on Twitter reminded me) Susan Howatch's 1974 novel Cashelmara, which is set in nineteenth-century Ireland but is a re-telling of Edward II's story, with the king renamed Patrick de Salis, Isabella Sarah Marriott, Piers Gaveston Derry Stranahan, Hugh Despenser Hugh MacGowan, and Roger Mortimer Maxwell Drummond. I love the novel, though it's a touch melodramatic in places, and the scene where Edward/Patrick and Hugh both rape Isabella/Sarah is really disturbing. Going somewhat off-topic here, there are some odd notions about Edward II's sexuality in fiction, not least the popular one that he can't have fathered his children. Apart from this, the one that probably irritates me most appears in Maurice Druon's The She-Wolf of France (La Louve de France in the French original), a novel I loathed - I still get occasional comments and emails from Druon fans irate at my review of it - wherein Isabella states that Edward, ummmm, needed help from Hugh Despenser in order to be able to perform with her to conceive their children. As three of their four children were born before Edward's close relationship with Hugh began, this isn't terribly likely.
Paul Doherty's 2003 non-fiction work Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II contains a longish discussion about Edward and Isabella's sex life, which goes on for several pages (pp. 100-102), and discusses the contemporary (albeit not found in any English source) rumour that Edward II had an affair with his niece Eleanor de Clare, Hugh Despenser's wife. Rather than leaving it there, Doherty goes on to speculate about possible 'wife-swapping' involving Hugh Despenser and Isabella, and states "I suspect that Edward may have tried to pressure Isabella into accepting an open marriage in which de Spencer [i.e. Hugh Despenser the Younger] wished to play a part...Wife-swapping is not a phenomenon solely reserved for the twentieth or twenty-first centuries." Ummmmm, OK then. He further speculates "De Spencer's sexual harassment of her would also explain Isabella's conduct with Mortimer. Because of de Spencer's 'intrusion', she may have regarded her marriage as null and void. If her husband insisted on playing the pander and allowing his favourite into her bed, why shouldn't Isabella choose for herself...?". This is fantasy piled on fantasy without a shred of evidence, and I find the bit about Isabella regarding her marriage as 'null and void' particularly silly. The (dreadful) prologue* of Doherty's (otherwise pretty good) 2005 novel The Cup of Ghosts has Hugh Despenser's "heart bubbling with lust to possess Isabella." Given the way Doherty writes Isabella, it's hard to imagine how he thinks anyone of the era wasn't bubbling with lust to possess her, but I digress.
* Which contains such gems as Edward III being described as "screaming, his foam-flecked lips curling like those of a snarling dog" as though he was some kind of maniac, Isabella asking to be buried "next to Mortimer, like a bride beside her lover!", a myth Doherty insists on repeating in his novels, and the statement that Isabella "tore her husband from his throne. She locked him in Berkeley Castle, sealing him up like some rabid animal...". What the hell???
Doherty's theory that Hugh Despenser sexually assaulted or harassed Queen Isabella is based solely on several letters Edward II sent to Isabella and her brother Charles IV in late 1325 and early 1326, after she had refused to return to England. One letter says "The king knows for truth, and she knows, that Hugh has always procured her all the honour with the king that he could, and no evil or villainy was done to her...". To Charles IV, Edward wrote that he "wishes the king of France to know that he could never perceive that Hugh, privately or openly, in word or deed, or in countenance, did not behave himself on all points towards the queen as he ought to have done to his lady." Doherty assumes this means that some 'evil or villainy' was done to Isabella. Her letters to Edward do not survive, only his replies, so possibly she had indeed complained to her husband about some 'evil' done to her by Hugh - although Doherty doesn't mention Edward's claim that the queen had sent several "loving letters" to Hugh while she was in France, or a letter of the queen which does survive (see below). He argues that Isabella "had levelled allegations of a very serious nature against de Spencer. If it was simply the seizure of her estates and household, or a clash over political and administrative issues, this would be apparent. Instead, the king himself does not wish to spell out what de Spencer allegedly said or did to Isabella which she in turn, had reported to the French court. In my view, Edward is referring to some sexual misconduct, which Isabella found offensive and disgusting." In fact it's far more likely that - as discussed below - Isabella had claimed that her life was in danger from Hugh Despenser, not that he had committed any 'sexual misconduct' against her. This is something that Edward II would have been equally reluctant to 'spell out' to Isabella's powerful brother. We shouldn't forget either that Edward's messenger may have transmitted more details orally, details which Edward may not have been willing to commit to a written letter.
This supposed sexual misconduct, in Doherty's view, would explain "her elder son's adherence to her as well as the sustained support she received from both the papacy and the English hierarchy." Isabella's son was only thirteen and not operating under his own agency; Edward of Windsor was essential to Isabella and Roger Mortimer's plans to invade England and they would not have allowed him to return to England and his father even if he wanted to (and whether he did or not is impossible to say). It is most unlikely that Pope John XXII was supporting Isabella over Edward II - whatever his private sympathies may have been, the pope could hardly be seen to condone a wife refusing to return to her lord husband and her marital duties - and in fact appears to have been doing his best to reconcile the couple and avert war between them. As for the support Isabella received in England in 1326/27, this is amply explained by Edward II's gross incompetence, his excessive favouritism towards the Despensers at the expense of his royal kinsmen the earls of Norfolk, Kent and Leicester (i.e. Henry of Lancaster) and others, his greed and barely legal land-grabbing, his callous treatment of many of the Contrariants who took part in the 1321/22 rebellion and their families, his numerous military failures, and so on and so forth. Are we supposed to believe that the English nobility and episcopate knew that Hugh Despenser had sexually assaulted the queen and that this is the sole or main reason why so many of them supported her against Hugh and Edward? I find that argument very unconvincing.
Alison Weir's 2005 book Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England, takes up Paul Doherty's theory and runs with it (pp. 148-150). She cites a letter sent by Isabella to Edward on 5 February 1326, which (unlike the queen's earlier letter(s) to which Edward II responded) still survives, and which says, according to Weir, that Hugh "wished to dishonour her by every possible means". Weir says "The words 'by every possible means', whilst they perhaps refer to to Despenser's vicious campaign to discredit Isabella, the disrespectful and injurious way in which he was to treat her, and his possible homosexual relationship* with her husband, are also suggestive of some serious sexual misconduct towards the Queen herself with the intent of humiliating and intimidating her. Had Hugh thrust himself into her marriage bed, with Edward's connivance, or even raped her? It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, considering his cruelty towards other women."
* The words 'homosexual relationship' really irritate me. Why is it necessary to call it that when neither Weir nor anyone else would write about Isabella and Roger Mortimer's 'heterosexual relationship'? Why not just say 'sexual relationship'?
Notice here that Alison Weir goes further than Paul Doherty, who writes of 'sexual misconduct' and 'sexual harassment' but never uses the word rape. 'It is not beyond the bounds of possibility', she says: weasel words that could be used in support of absolutely anything. Isabella and Roger Mortimer imprisoned eighteen children in Chester Castle as hostages for the good behaviour of the townspeople in 1327 [Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 169, 187-188], had three of Hugh Despenser the Younger's daughters (the eldest of whom was about ten) forcibly veiled as nuns shortly after his execution, and had the earl of Kent's three infant children imprisoned with their mother at the time of Kent's execution in 1330. Maybe Isabella and Roger ate babies. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, considering their cruelty towards other children. The words of their Chester Castle order are suggestive of some serious misconduct towards children with the intent of humiliating and eating them. I mean, you know, if we're going to accuse people of extremely serious crimes on remarkably flimsy evidence.
And I am really not a fan of meaningless rhetorical questions like Weir's "Did Hugh thrust himself into her marriage bed...?" and Paul Doherty's "Did de Spencer, who, after Boroughbridge, was given virtually everything else, demand Isabella as well?" Because yeah, obviously there's no difference at all between Edward giving him lots of other people's lands and giving him sexual access to the royal person of his queen. The 'cruelty to other women' Weir mentions means (presumably) Hugh's alleged torture of Lady Baret, a story I doubt the veracity of, his imprisonment of Elizabeth Comyn until she handed over some of her lands to him, and his threat to Alice de Lacy that she would be burned alive unless she gave him and his father some of her lands. Nasty, very nasty, but not in themselves evidence that he was a rapist.
Seymour Phillips (Edward II, 2010, p. 491) cites and translates much of the queen's letter to her husband of 5 February 1326: Isabella wrote that Hugh "wished to dishonour us by [all means in] his power" and that she had hidden her dislike of him for a long time in order to escape danger (Hughe...nous voudrait deshonurer a son poiar...nous layoms dissimule longtemps pur le peril eschuver). This danger is explicitly stated later as being danger to the queen's life, this being the reason Isabella did not dare to return to "the company of our said lord," i.e. Edward, and that this danger caused her so much grief that she could write no more of it (nous ne pourroms retourner en la compagnie de noster dit seignur saunz nous mestre en peril de mort dount nous sumes en plus graves meschief qe escrivre ne poems; Isabella had also written a few lines earlier that she wished above all else, after God and the salvation of her soul, to return to Edward's company and live and die there, estre en la compaignie de nostre dit seignur et vivre et morir en icele, and had called her husband "our very dear and very sweet lord and friend," nostre treschier et tresdouche seignur et amy). Notice that the letter says Hugh wished to dishonour Isabella a son poiar, literally 'by (or through) his power' in the sense of 'with all his power', not exactly 'by every possible means' as Weir cites it. There's no hint in the letter of any kind of sexual assault carried out or threatened by Hugh Despenser, though it's interesting to speculate in which ways Isabella felt her life to be in danger from him.
This section of Weir's book, incidentally, puts forward the notion that Edward II in 1322 was "being promiscuous with low-born men", who were, she claims, paid "substantial sums" of money to spend time "in his company", which she describes as "hush money". Sadly for this salacious theory, the men she names were in fact members of Edward's household, and the supposed 'hush money' was merely - oh dear - their wages. Weir also claims that Hugh Despenser's influence over Edward "was rooted in a perverted sexual dominance" - needless to say, Roger Mortimer's later presumed sexual dominance over Isabella is not 'perverted' - and that Edward's relationship with Hugh was an "insult" to Isabella's "femininity". Ohhhhhkaaaaay.
The charges against Hugh Despenser at his trial in Hereford in November 1326 include: that he counselled Edward to leave Isabella in peril of her life at Tynemouth in 1322; that he procured discord between the king and queen; that he persuaded Edward to 'oust' her from her lands in 1324; that he had her sent to France in 1325 'meanly, against the dignity of her estate'; that he tried to bribe French courtiers to have her and her son Edward of Windsor 'destroyed'. No mention is made of any kind of physical or sexual assault on the queen. Not that Isabella would necessarily have wanted such an awful experience shouted out in public, of course, but one wonders how all the 'English hierarchy' in 1326 knew of the sexual assault Hugh Despenser supposedly inflicted on Isabella and yet not a trace of it has come down to us in any source. You'd think a chronicler or several would at least hint at it. Perhaps Hugh's attempts to bribe someone in France to - presumably - have Isabella killed are the source of her claims that her life was in danger from him.
Of course, there's no way of proving that Hugh Despenser didn't rape or otherwise sexually assault Isabella, but there's no reason to think that he did, or that he had any sexual interest in her. Before accusing someone of such a serious and awful crime, we should have more evidence than assumptions by a couple of modern writers that his 'dishonour' of the queen might possibly, perhaps, maybe, have meant something sexual. Hugh behaved extremely unpleasantly in many ways, but whatever his track record there is no evidence that he was a rapist, and just because he is so often written nowadays as a one-dimensional cartoonish moustache-twirling villain is no excuse to ascribe serious sexual crimes to him just because an unpleasant person 'might' have committed them. I've noticed a trend in some modern historical fiction to make certain characters highly unsympathetic to the reader by having them commit sexual offences: William, Lord Hastings is written as a rapist and killer of young girls in one novel which portrays the future Richard III, who had Hastings executed without trial in 1483, as not far removed from a saint; the earl of Buchan (d. 1308) is a rapist and beater of his wife Isobel MacDuff, who has what the author obviously considers a deeply romantic affair with Robert Bruce; John Morton, close ally and chancellor of Henry VII, is said to have a taste for young boys. It's bad enough in fiction to see the posthumous reputations of people who really lived trashed in a blatant attempt to make their opponents more sympathetic and 'tragic' to readers. I don't want to see it in non-fiction too.
Basically there isn't any, except modern speculation. The first reference to it appears to be found in (as a friend on Twitter reminded me) Susan Howatch's 1974 novel Cashelmara, which is set in nineteenth-century Ireland but is a re-telling of Edward II's story, with the king renamed Patrick de Salis, Isabella Sarah Marriott, Piers Gaveston Derry Stranahan, Hugh Despenser Hugh MacGowan, and Roger Mortimer Maxwell Drummond. I love the novel, though it's a touch melodramatic in places, and the scene where Edward/Patrick and Hugh both rape Isabella/Sarah is really disturbing. Going somewhat off-topic here, there are some odd notions about Edward II's sexuality in fiction, not least the popular one that he can't have fathered his children. Apart from this, the one that probably irritates me most appears in Maurice Druon's The She-Wolf of France (La Louve de France in the French original), a novel I loathed - I still get occasional comments and emails from Druon fans irate at my review of it - wherein Isabella states that Edward, ummmm, needed help from Hugh Despenser in order to be able to perform with her to conceive their children. As three of their four children were born before Edward's close relationship with Hugh began, this isn't terribly likely.
Paul Doherty's 2003 non-fiction work Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II contains a longish discussion about Edward and Isabella's sex life, which goes on for several pages (pp. 100-102), and discusses the contemporary (albeit not found in any English source) rumour that Edward II had an affair with his niece Eleanor de Clare, Hugh Despenser's wife. Rather than leaving it there, Doherty goes on to speculate about possible 'wife-swapping' involving Hugh Despenser and Isabella, and states "I suspect that Edward may have tried to pressure Isabella into accepting an open marriage in which de Spencer [i.e. Hugh Despenser the Younger] wished to play a part...Wife-swapping is not a phenomenon solely reserved for the twentieth or twenty-first centuries." Ummmmm, OK then. He further speculates "De Spencer's sexual harassment of her would also explain Isabella's conduct with Mortimer. Because of de Spencer's 'intrusion', she may have regarded her marriage as null and void. If her husband insisted on playing the pander and allowing his favourite into her bed, why shouldn't Isabella choose for herself...?". This is fantasy piled on fantasy without a shred of evidence, and I find the bit about Isabella regarding her marriage as 'null and void' particularly silly. The (dreadful) prologue* of Doherty's (otherwise pretty good) 2005 novel The Cup of Ghosts has Hugh Despenser's "heart bubbling with lust to possess Isabella." Given the way Doherty writes Isabella, it's hard to imagine how he thinks anyone of the era wasn't bubbling with lust to possess her, but I digress.
* Which contains such gems as Edward III being described as "screaming, his foam-flecked lips curling like those of a snarling dog" as though he was some kind of maniac, Isabella asking to be buried "next to Mortimer, like a bride beside her lover!", a myth Doherty insists on repeating in his novels, and the statement that Isabella "tore her husband from his throne. She locked him in Berkeley Castle, sealing him up like some rabid animal...". What the hell???
Doherty's theory that Hugh Despenser sexually assaulted or harassed Queen Isabella is based solely on several letters Edward II sent to Isabella and her brother Charles IV in late 1325 and early 1326, after she had refused to return to England. One letter says "The king knows for truth, and she knows, that Hugh has always procured her all the honour with the king that he could, and no evil or villainy was done to her...". To Charles IV, Edward wrote that he "wishes the king of France to know that he could never perceive that Hugh, privately or openly, in word or deed, or in countenance, did not behave himself on all points towards the queen as he ought to have done to his lady." Doherty assumes this means that some 'evil or villainy' was done to Isabella. Her letters to Edward do not survive, only his replies, so possibly she had indeed complained to her husband about some 'evil' done to her by Hugh - although Doherty doesn't mention Edward's claim that the queen had sent several "loving letters" to Hugh while she was in France, or a letter of the queen which does survive (see below). He argues that Isabella "had levelled allegations of a very serious nature against de Spencer. If it was simply the seizure of her estates and household, or a clash over political and administrative issues, this would be apparent. Instead, the king himself does not wish to spell out what de Spencer allegedly said or did to Isabella which she in turn, had reported to the French court. In my view, Edward is referring to some sexual misconduct, which Isabella found offensive and disgusting." In fact it's far more likely that - as discussed below - Isabella had claimed that her life was in danger from Hugh Despenser, not that he had committed any 'sexual misconduct' against her. This is something that Edward II would have been equally reluctant to 'spell out' to Isabella's powerful brother. We shouldn't forget either that Edward's messenger may have transmitted more details orally, details which Edward may not have been willing to commit to a written letter.
This supposed sexual misconduct, in Doherty's view, would explain "her elder son's adherence to her as well as the sustained support she received from both the papacy and the English hierarchy." Isabella's son was only thirteen and not operating under his own agency; Edward of Windsor was essential to Isabella and Roger Mortimer's plans to invade England and they would not have allowed him to return to England and his father even if he wanted to (and whether he did or not is impossible to say). It is most unlikely that Pope John XXII was supporting Isabella over Edward II - whatever his private sympathies may have been, the pope could hardly be seen to condone a wife refusing to return to her lord husband and her marital duties - and in fact appears to have been doing his best to reconcile the couple and avert war between them. As for the support Isabella received in England in 1326/27, this is amply explained by Edward II's gross incompetence, his excessive favouritism towards the Despensers at the expense of his royal kinsmen the earls of Norfolk, Kent and Leicester (i.e. Henry of Lancaster) and others, his greed and barely legal land-grabbing, his callous treatment of many of the Contrariants who took part in the 1321/22 rebellion and their families, his numerous military failures, and so on and so forth. Are we supposed to believe that the English nobility and episcopate knew that Hugh Despenser had sexually assaulted the queen and that this is the sole or main reason why so many of them supported her against Hugh and Edward? I find that argument very unconvincing.
Alison Weir's 2005 book Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England, takes up Paul Doherty's theory and runs with it (pp. 148-150). She cites a letter sent by Isabella to Edward on 5 February 1326, which (unlike the queen's earlier letter(s) to which Edward II responded) still survives, and which says, according to Weir, that Hugh "wished to dishonour her by every possible means". Weir says "The words 'by every possible means', whilst they perhaps refer to to Despenser's vicious campaign to discredit Isabella, the disrespectful and injurious way in which he was to treat her, and his possible homosexual relationship* with her husband, are also suggestive of some serious sexual misconduct towards the Queen herself with the intent of humiliating and intimidating her. Had Hugh thrust himself into her marriage bed, with Edward's connivance, or even raped her? It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, considering his cruelty towards other women."
* The words 'homosexual relationship' really irritate me. Why is it necessary to call it that when neither Weir nor anyone else would write about Isabella and Roger Mortimer's 'heterosexual relationship'? Why not just say 'sexual relationship'?
Notice here that Alison Weir goes further than Paul Doherty, who writes of 'sexual misconduct' and 'sexual harassment' but never uses the word rape. 'It is not beyond the bounds of possibility', she says: weasel words that could be used in support of absolutely anything. Isabella and Roger Mortimer imprisoned eighteen children in Chester Castle as hostages for the good behaviour of the townspeople in 1327 [Close Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 169, 187-188], had three of Hugh Despenser the Younger's daughters (the eldest of whom was about ten) forcibly veiled as nuns shortly after his execution, and had the earl of Kent's three infant children imprisoned with their mother at the time of Kent's execution in 1330. Maybe Isabella and Roger ate babies. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, considering their cruelty towards other children. The words of their Chester Castle order are suggestive of some serious misconduct towards children with the intent of humiliating and eating them. I mean, you know, if we're going to accuse people of extremely serious crimes on remarkably flimsy evidence.
And I am really not a fan of meaningless rhetorical questions like Weir's "Did Hugh thrust himself into her marriage bed...?" and Paul Doherty's "Did de Spencer, who, after Boroughbridge, was given virtually everything else, demand Isabella as well?" Because yeah, obviously there's no difference at all between Edward giving him lots of other people's lands and giving him sexual access to the royal person of his queen. The 'cruelty to other women' Weir mentions means (presumably) Hugh's alleged torture of Lady Baret, a story I doubt the veracity of, his imprisonment of Elizabeth Comyn until she handed over some of her lands to him, and his threat to Alice de Lacy that she would be burned alive unless she gave him and his father some of her lands. Nasty, very nasty, but not in themselves evidence that he was a rapist.
Seymour Phillips (Edward II, 2010, p. 491) cites and translates much of the queen's letter to her husband of 5 February 1326: Isabella wrote that Hugh "wished to dishonour us by [all means in] his power" and that she had hidden her dislike of him for a long time in order to escape danger (Hughe...nous voudrait deshonurer a son poiar...nous layoms dissimule longtemps pur le peril eschuver). This danger is explicitly stated later as being danger to the queen's life, this being the reason Isabella did not dare to return to "the company of our said lord," i.e. Edward, and that this danger caused her so much grief that she could write no more of it (nous ne pourroms retourner en la compagnie de noster dit seignur saunz nous mestre en peril de mort dount nous sumes en plus graves meschief qe escrivre ne poems; Isabella had also written a few lines earlier that she wished above all else, after God and the salvation of her soul, to return to Edward's company and live and die there, estre en la compaignie de nostre dit seignur et vivre et morir en icele, and had called her husband "our very dear and very sweet lord and friend," nostre treschier et tresdouche seignur et amy). Notice that the letter says Hugh wished to dishonour Isabella a son poiar, literally 'by (or through) his power' in the sense of 'with all his power', not exactly 'by every possible means' as Weir cites it. There's no hint in the letter of any kind of sexual assault carried out or threatened by Hugh Despenser, though it's interesting to speculate in which ways Isabella felt her life to be in danger from him.
This section of Weir's book, incidentally, puts forward the notion that Edward II in 1322 was "being promiscuous with low-born men", who were, she claims, paid "substantial sums" of money to spend time "in his company", which she describes as "hush money". Sadly for this salacious theory, the men she names were in fact members of Edward's household, and the supposed 'hush money' was merely - oh dear - their wages. Weir also claims that Hugh Despenser's influence over Edward "was rooted in a perverted sexual dominance" - needless to say, Roger Mortimer's later presumed sexual dominance over Isabella is not 'perverted' - and that Edward's relationship with Hugh was an "insult" to Isabella's "femininity". Ohhhhhkaaaaay.
The charges against Hugh Despenser at his trial in Hereford in November 1326 include: that he counselled Edward to leave Isabella in peril of her life at Tynemouth in 1322; that he procured discord between the king and queen; that he persuaded Edward to 'oust' her from her lands in 1324; that he had her sent to France in 1325 'meanly, against the dignity of her estate'; that he tried to bribe French courtiers to have her and her son Edward of Windsor 'destroyed'. No mention is made of any kind of physical or sexual assault on the queen. Not that Isabella would necessarily have wanted such an awful experience shouted out in public, of course, but one wonders how all the 'English hierarchy' in 1326 knew of the sexual assault Hugh Despenser supposedly inflicted on Isabella and yet not a trace of it has come down to us in any source. You'd think a chronicler or several would at least hint at it. Perhaps Hugh's attempts to bribe someone in France to - presumably - have Isabella killed are the source of her claims that her life was in danger from him.
Of course, there's no way of proving that Hugh Despenser didn't rape or otherwise sexually assault Isabella, but there's no reason to think that he did, or that he had any sexual interest in her. Before accusing someone of such a serious and awful crime, we should have more evidence than assumptions by a couple of modern writers that his 'dishonour' of the queen might possibly, perhaps, maybe, have meant something sexual. Hugh behaved extremely unpleasantly in many ways, but whatever his track record there is no evidence that he was a rapist, and just because he is so often written nowadays as a one-dimensional cartoonish moustache-twirling villain is no excuse to ascribe serious sexual crimes to him just because an unpleasant person 'might' have committed them. I've noticed a trend in some modern historical fiction to make certain characters highly unsympathetic to the reader by having them commit sexual offences: William, Lord Hastings is written as a rapist and killer of young girls in one novel which portrays the future Richard III, who had Hastings executed without trial in 1483, as not far removed from a saint; the earl of Buchan (d. 1308) is a rapist and beater of his wife Isobel MacDuff, who has what the author obviously considers a deeply romantic affair with Robert Bruce; John Morton, close ally and chancellor of Henry VII, is said to have a taste for young boys. It's bad enough in fiction to see the posthumous reputations of people who really lived trashed in a blatant attempt to make their opponents more sympathetic and 'tragic' to readers. I don't want to see it in non-fiction too.
12 April, 2012
Novel Review: The Vows Of The Peacock
Author, Alice Walworth Graham; published in 1955 by Eyre and Spottiswoode.
The novel is narrated in the first person by Elisabeth (spelt with a 's' for some reason) Beauchamp, one of the daughters of Guy Beauchamp, earl of Warwick - the man who abducted Piers Gaveston in June 1312 - and Alice Toeni. Elisabeth is selected in early 1308 to be one of the companions of Isabella, the new queen of England, when she (Elisabeth) is said to be a little younger than the queen and eleven years old, which would place her birth in 1296 or early 1297. The immediate problem with this is that Earl Guy and Alice didn't actually marry until 1309; Alice's first husband Thomas Leyburne, father of her daughter Juliana, died in the summer of 1307. So the choice of narrator is somewhat odd. Perhaps fifty-odd years ago it was assumed that Guy and Alice's marriage had taken place much earlier than it did. Anyway, it gives the author a narrator close to Isabella and Edward II who can see and report on the events and personalities of his reign, though (as sometimes happens when writers choose first-person narrators, especially female ones) events are often reported to her afterwards rather than her experiencing them personally, which can make the narrative seem distant and uninvolving, particularly when the battle of Bannockburn and Edward III's arrest of Roger Mortimer in 1330 are explained to Elisabeth at rather tedious length after they happen.
The novel is extremely descriptive and contains little action; it's a pretty traditional re-telling of Edward II's reign, beginning with Isabella's arrival in England in 1308 and ending - as Edward II novels almost invariably do - with the arrest of Roger Mortimer in October 1330. The novel's title refers to Edward and Isabella's long visit to the court of her father Philip IV in 1313, when the royals swore vows to, variously, go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, defeat Robert Bruce once and for all, promote good relations between England and France, and so forth. Much of the novel is about Elisabeth's marriage to Thomas Astley, and it often feels as though the real story is happening elsewhere while she talks about feasts and hunts and spending time with her in-laws and the endless minutiae of her daily life. (The couple didn't actually marry until the 1330s, and at least one of their children lived into the 1400s.) Piers Gaveston barely appears, except to sneer at the queen and Elisabeth in very sneery fashion, and is described as 'graceless' and 'of low birth', which doesn't sound like the Piers I know. The narrative moves so fast that one minute we're in 1308, then suddenly it's 1312 and Piers is dead, then we're in 1314 and Edward loses at Bannockburn, and a few pages later it's suddenly 1321. Edward II is at first described as extremely handsome, but he soon 'loses his youth' and gains a 'thickened' body and features, and is kind of gross and overweight. (Yes, the sporty athletic Edward II who spent a lot of time outdoors swimming and digging and so on.) He's contrasted unfavourably with the very manly and wonderful Roger Mortimer, with whom Elisabeth is obsessed, who is often talked about in the narrative off doing very manly and wonderful things in Ireland and elsewhere while Edward II drinks and behaves pettishly and very little else. Isabella is a far more complex character than her husband, depicted sympathetically though not uncritically. She despises her husband - not surprising, given the way Walworth Graham has written Edward as astonishingly dislikeable - and falls madly in love or lust with Mortimer. In this novel, you can see why, and they're described several times as lions, fierce, 'snarling and snatching'. Edward, Hugh Despenser, Piers Gaveston, Thomas of Lancaster, in fact all the characters apart from Isabella, Roger Mortimer and the weirdly too-old Elisabeth Beauchamp, are enigmas, barely characterised beyond the absolute basics.
Vows of the Peacock is another of those novels that have to describe Isabella's beauty constantly, which gets really dull (at least for me). None of the other women, except Elisabeth herself, are attractive: Piers Gaveston's wife Margaret de Clare, for instance, is called 'blowsy' and 'florid' in 1308, with breasts that are already starting to sag. Poor Margaret, fourteen years old and already looking like a forty-year-old. Her sister Eleanor is a barely even one-dimensional 'sheep of a woman', and - groooooooooooan - Edward II arranges her marriage to Hugh Despenser in or after 1321 (it's hard to get a sense of the correct date in the narrative), a mere fifteen years too late. Walworth Graham appears confused about the age of the de Clare siblings, and says that the earl of Gloucester was not yet eighteen at the time of his death at Bannockburn - actually he was twenty-three - and yet describes his sister Margaret as already middle-aged shortly after her marriage to Piers a few years earlier. The novel is reasonably accurate historically, although Edward II's sister Joan of Acre is still alive at the time of her daughter Margaret's marriage to Piers, and Margaret's second marriage to Hugh Audley has already taken place in 1313, four years too early. Henry of Lancaster's wife Maud Chaworth appears unaware that she is Hugh Despenser the Younger's half-sister, while Henry himself and his brother Thomas are unaware that they are Isabella's uncles. (In fairness, a lot of writers have missed that, including someone who gained her doctorate writing about Isabella.) Did the English nobility in the 1300s really still think of themselves as solely 'Norman' and the rest of the English as 'Saxons', and the English language as 'barbarous'?
Vows of the Peacock overall is a reasonably good read if you find a copy, though the narrative manages at once to be too slow and endlessly descriptive, and too fast, by skating over most of the major events of the reign. There's a great deal about daily life in the fourteenth century, which some readers will certainly enjoy, though anyone looking for an in-depth historical study and character-driven fiction will probably be disappointed.
The novel is narrated in the first person by Elisabeth (spelt with a 's' for some reason) Beauchamp, one of the daughters of Guy Beauchamp, earl of Warwick - the man who abducted Piers Gaveston in June 1312 - and Alice Toeni. Elisabeth is selected in early 1308 to be one of the companions of Isabella, the new queen of England, when she (Elisabeth) is said to be a little younger than the queen and eleven years old, which would place her birth in 1296 or early 1297. The immediate problem with this is that Earl Guy and Alice didn't actually marry until 1309; Alice's first husband Thomas Leyburne, father of her daughter Juliana, died in the summer of 1307. So the choice of narrator is somewhat odd. Perhaps fifty-odd years ago it was assumed that Guy and Alice's marriage had taken place much earlier than it did. Anyway, it gives the author a narrator close to Isabella and Edward II who can see and report on the events and personalities of his reign, though (as sometimes happens when writers choose first-person narrators, especially female ones) events are often reported to her afterwards rather than her experiencing them personally, which can make the narrative seem distant and uninvolving, particularly when the battle of Bannockburn and Edward III's arrest of Roger Mortimer in 1330 are explained to Elisabeth at rather tedious length after they happen.
The novel is extremely descriptive and contains little action; it's a pretty traditional re-telling of Edward II's reign, beginning with Isabella's arrival in England in 1308 and ending - as Edward II novels almost invariably do - with the arrest of Roger Mortimer in October 1330. The novel's title refers to Edward and Isabella's long visit to the court of her father Philip IV in 1313, when the royals swore vows to, variously, go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, defeat Robert Bruce once and for all, promote good relations between England and France, and so forth. Much of the novel is about Elisabeth's marriage to Thomas Astley, and it often feels as though the real story is happening elsewhere while she talks about feasts and hunts and spending time with her in-laws and the endless minutiae of her daily life. (The couple didn't actually marry until the 1330s, and at least one of their children lived into the 1400s.) Piers Gaveston barely appears, except to sneer at the queen and Elisabeth in very sneery fashion, and is described as 'graceless' and 'of low birth', which doesn't sound like the Piers I know. The narrative moves so fast that one minute we're in 1308, then suddenly it's 1312 and Piers is dead, then we're in 1314 and Edward loses at Bannockburn, and a few pages later it's suddenly 1321. Edward II is at first described as extremely handsome, but he soon 'loses his youth' and gains a 'thickened' body and features, and is kind of gross and overweight. (Yes, the sporty athletic Edward II who spent a lot of time outdoors swimming and digging and so on.) He's contrasted unfavourably with the very manly and wonderful Roger Mortimer, with whom Elisabeth is obsessed, who is often talked about in the narrative off doing very manly and wonderful things in Ireland and elsewhere while Edward II drinks and behaves pettishly and very little else. Isabella is a far more complex character than her husband, depicted sympathetically though not uncritically. She despises her husband - not surprising, given the way Walworth Graham has written Edward as astonishingly dislikeable - and falls madly in love or lust with Mortimer. In this novel, you can see why, and they're described several times as lions, fierce, 'snarling and snatching'. Edward, Hugh Despenser, Piers Gaveston, Thomas of Lancaster, in fact all the characters apart from Isabella, Roger Mortimer and the weirdly too-old Elisabeth Beauchamp, are enigmas, barely characterised beyond the absolute basics.
Vows of the Peacock is another of those novels that have to describe Isabella's beauty constantly, which gets really dull (at least for me). None of the other women, except Elisabeth herself, are attractive: Piers Gaveston's wife Margaret de Clare, for instance, is called 'blowsy' and 'florid' in 1308, with breasts that are already starting to sag. Poor Margaret, fourteen years old and already looking like a forty-year-old. Her sister Eleanor is a barely even one-dimensional 'sheep of a woman', and - groooooooooooan - Edward II arranges her marriage to Hugh Despenser in or after 1321 (it's hard to get a sense of the correct date in the narrative), a mere fifteen years too late. Walworth Graham appears confused about the age of the de Clare siblings, and says that the earl of Gloucester was not yet eighteen at the time of his death at Bannockburn - actually he was twenty-three - and yet describes his sister Margaret as already middle-aged shortly after her marriage to Piers a few years earlier. The novel is reasonably accurate historically, although Edward II's sister Joan of Acre is still alive at the time of her daughter Margaret's marriage to Piers, and Margaret's second marriage to Hugh Audley has already taken place in 1313, four years too early. Henry of Lancaster's wife Maud Chaworth appears unaware that she is Hugh Despenser the Younger's half-sister, while Henry himself and his brother Thomas are unaware that they are Isabella's uncles. (In fairness, a lot of writers have missed that, including someone who gained her doctorate writing about Isabella.) Did the English nobility in the 1300s really still think of themselves as solely 'Norman' and the rest of the English as 'Saxons', and the English language as 'barbarous'?
Vows of the Peacock overall is a reasonably good read if you find a copy, though the narrative manages at once to be too slow and endlessly descriptive, and too fast, by skating over most of the major events of the reign. There's a great deal about daily life in the fourteenth century, which some readers will certainly enjoy, though anyone looking for an in-depth historical study and character-driven fiction will probably be disappointed.
04 April, 2012
Edward II's 'Favourites': A Comparative Study
I was just thinking recently about what a dangerous occupation it was to be beloved of Edward II. Of the five men who can be said to have been the king's 'favourites' - Piers Gaveston, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, William Montacute, Hugh Despenser the Younger - only one survived the reign.
- Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall (c. 1281/83 - 19 June 1312)
A member of the future Edward II's household from 1300, or perhaps even as early as 1298 when Edward was only fourteen, Piers was without doubt the great love of Edward's life, and the king was still remembering him in prayers at the end of his reign. (Whatever Edward II's many faults, he was loyal to those he loved.) Edward's actions in recalling Piers from exile no fewer than three times, particularly in late 1311, seem politically foolish and exasperated many at the time, but clearly stemmed from a deep love and a need to have Piers near him. Piers was beheaded and run through with a sword at Blacklow Hill, Warwickshire on 19 June 1312, at the instigation of the earl of Lancaster. He left a legitimate daughter, Joan, by Edward's niece Margaret de Clare, who died around the time of her thirteenth birthday in January 1325, and an illegitimate daughter Amy, who married and had children.
- Sir Roger Damory (c. late 1270s/early 1280s - 12 March 1322).
Roger rose in the king's favour in late 1315, and numerous grants of lands, income, appointments and wardships in 1316 and 1317 track Edward's growing infatuation with the Oxfordshire/Buckinghamshire knight, which culminated in his marriage to Edward's wealthy niece Elizabeth. He was highly influential at court until Hugh Despenser the Younger displaced him in the king's affections, and subsequently joined the Contrariant rebellion against Edward in 1321/22. Roger Damory died at Tutbury on 12 March* 1322 from wounds sustained while fighting against Edward's army; the king's beloved friend (or whatever he was to Edward) ending up dead in rebellion against him. What a story! See also Hannah's post about his trial and death. Roger left one legitimate child, Elizabeth, who married John, Lord Bardolf and had children.
(* The date of Roger's death is usually given, including in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as 13 or 14 March 1322, but his widow Elizabeth de Burgh commemorated his death on 12 March every year by giving food to the poor: Frances Underhill, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh, p. 30.)
- Hugh Audley, later earl of Gloucester (c. 1289/93 - 10 November 1347)
The only favourite of the king to survive the reign, Hugh thrived in Edward III's, being made earl of Gloucester in 1337. A close(ish) relative of Roger Mortimer, Hugh joined the king's household in late 1311 and rose in his favour in 1316, being rewarded with the other great prize at Edward II's disposal, marriage to Piers Gaveston's widow Margaret. It seems that Edward was not nearly as infatuated with Hugh as he was with Roger Damory, but still Hugh rose much higher than his rank and birth would ordinarily lead one to expect. Hugh also joined the Contrariant rebellion and might well have been executed, except that his wife Margaret pleaded for his life, and he thus survived the reign. Hugh and Margaret's daughter Margaret had five children by her husband Ralph Stafford, via whom Hugh is the ancestor of - oooh, pretty well everyone.
- Sir William Montacute (c. late 1270s - mid-October 1319)
Not entirely a 'favourite' in the sense that the other men were, perhaps, but William was also a great influence at court from about 1316 to 1318 and was named in various chronicles in the same breath as Roger Damory and Hugh Audley (collectively they were deemed 'worse than Piers'). He was knighted with Edward in 1306, and had known the king for a long time. Edward couldn't reward him with the marriage of a niece as William was already married to Elizabeth de Montfort, and in fact William was the only one of the five 'favourites' not married to a de Clare sister. He was sent away from the king in 1318 to be steward of Gascony, in what was officially a promotion but was really intended to remove him from Edward's court, and died there in autumn 1319, of natural causes as far as I know. His son and heir William thrived in Edward III's reign, being the king's closest friend and made earl of Salisbury.
- Hugh Despenser the Younger, lord of Glamorgan (c. 1287/90 - 4 November 1326)
What else can I say about Hugh, haha. He and Edward II must have known each other for many years, as Hugh was knighted with Edward in 1306 and married his niece Eleanor de Clare a few days later, and his grandfather the earl of Warwick had been a friend of Edward I. There is no indication that Edward cared at all about Hugh or even noticed him much until after parliament appointed him the king's chamberlain in 1318, but once he and Hugh had become close in and after 1319, Hugh remained firmly in the king's favour until his grotesque execution on the orders of Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer on 24 November 1326. He left at least nine children, three of whom suffered from Isabella's spiteful vindictiveness by being forcibly veiled as nuns a few weeks after Hugh's death.
- Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall (c. 1281/83 - 19 June 1312)
A member of the future Edward II's household from 1300, or perhaps even as early as 1298 when Edward was only fourteen, Piers was without doubt the great love of Edward's life, and the king was still remembering him in prayers at the end of his reign. (Whatever Edward II's many faults, he was loyal to those he loved.) Edward's actions in recalling Piers from exile no fewer than three times, particularly in late 1311, seem politically foolish and exasperated many at the time, but clearly stemmed from a deep love and a need to have Piers near him. Piers was beheaded and run through with a sword at Blacklow Hill, Warwickshire on 19 June 1312, at the instigation of the earl of Lancaster. He left a legitimate daughter, Joan, by Edward's niece Margaret de Clare, who died around the time of her thirteenth birthday in January 1325, and an illegitimate daughter Amy, who married and had children.
- Sir Roger Damory (c. late 1270s/early 1280s - 12 March 1322).
Roger rose in the king's favour in late 1315, and numerous grants of lands, income, appointments and wardships in 1316 and 1317 track Edward's growing infatuation with the Oxfordshire/Buckinghamshire knight, which culminated in his marriage to Edward's wealthy niece Elizabeth. He was highly influential at court until Hugh Despenser the Younger displaced him in the king's affections, and subsequently joined the Contrariant rebellion against Edward in 1321/22. Roger Damory died at Tutbury on 12 March* 1322 from wounds sustained while fighting against Edward's army; the king's beloved friend (or whatever he was to Edward) ending up dead in rebellion against him. What a story! See also Hannah's post about his trial and death. Roger left one legitimate child, Elizabeth, who married John, Lord Bardolf and had children.
(* The date of Roger's death is usually given, including in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as 13 or 14 March 1322, but his widow Elizabeth de Burgh commemorated his death on 12 March every year by giving food to the poor: Frances Underhill, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh, p. 30.)
- Hugh Audley, later earl of Gloucester (c. 1289/93 - 10 November 1347)
The only favourite of the king to survive the reign, Hugh thrived in Edward III's, being made earl of Gloucester in 1337. A close(ish) relative of Roger Mortimer, Hugh joined the king's household in late 1311 and rose in his favour in 1316, being rewarded with the other great prize at Edward II's disposal, marriage to Piers Gaveston's widow Margaret. It seems that Edward was not nearly as infatuated with Hugh as he was with Roger Damory, but still Hugh rose much higher than his rank and birth would ordinarily lead one to expect. Hugh also joined the Contrariant rebellion and might well have been executed, except that his wife Margaret pleaded for his life, and he thus survived the reign. Hugh and Margaret's daughter Margaret had five children by her husband Ralph Stafford, via whom Hugh is the ancestor of - oooh, pretty well everyone.
- Sir William Montacute (c. late 1270s - mid-October 1319)
Not entirely a 'favourite' in the sense that the other men were, perhaps, but William was also a great influence at court from about 1316 to 1318 and was named in various chronicles in the same breath as Roger Damory and Hugh Audley (collectively they were deemed 'worse than Piers'). He was knighted with Edward in 1306, and had known the king for a long time. Edward couldn't reward him with the marriage of a niece as William was already married to Elizabeth de Montfort, and in fact William was the only one of the five 'favourites' not married to a de Clare sister. He was sent away from the king in 1318 to be steward of Gascony, in what was officially a promotion but was really intended to remove him from Edward's court, and died there in autumn 1319, of natural causes as far as I know. His son and heir William thrived in Edward III's reign, being the king's closest friend and made earl of Salisbury.
- Hugh Despenser the Younger, lord of Glamorgan (c. 1287/90 - 4 November 1326)
What else can I say about Hugh, haha. He and Edward II must have known each other for many years, as Hugh was knighted with Edward in 1306 and married his niece Eleanor de Clare a few days later, and his grandfather the earl of Warwick had been a friend of Edward I. There is no indication that Edward cared at all about Hugh or even noticed him much until after parliament appointed him the king's chamberlain in 1318, but once he and Hugh had become close in and after 1319, Hugh remained firmly in the king's favour until his grotesque execution on the orders of Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer on 24 November 1326. He left at least nine children, three of whom suffered from Isabella's spiteful vindictiveness by being forcibly veiled as nuns a few weeks after Hugh's death.
29 March, 2012
London Sheriffs Court Roll, 1320
The London sheriffs' court roll for 1320 has recently gone on British History Online, and here are some nice extracts from it...
Alice de Stockyngge accused John de Cornhulle, a surgeon, of trespass and theft: She claimed that on 'Wednesday before the feast of St. Barnabas the Apostle', 10 June 1320, John came to her at Fleet Street ('Fletestrete'), and declared that he would cure her "of an infirmity of the feet from which she was suffering, for the sum of half a mark, and applied diverse medicaments against the said infirmity." Sadly, the medication failed to work, and as a result of it, Alice said that she "was within six days unable to put her feet to the ground and her malady became completely incurable." On 23 June, she said that John "entered her house with force and arms and carried off a blanket, two sheets and a super-tunic worth 20 shillings....". John indignantly denied the charged of trespass and theft, and also claimed that he had never undertaken to cure Alice's ailment and "did not infect her feet with his medicaments," but the jury found against him, and awarded Alice £30 16s 8d damages.
Alice de Stockyngge accused John de Cornhulle, a surgeon, of trespass and theft: She claimed that on 'Wednesday before the feast of St. Barnabas the Apostle', 10 June 1320, John came to her at Fleet Street ('Fletestrete'), and declared that he would cure her "of an infirmity of the feet from which she was suffering, for the sum of half a mark, and applied diverse medicaments against the said infirmity." Sadly, the medication failed to work, and as a result of it, Alice said that she "was within six days unable to put her feet to the ground and her malady became completely incurable." On 23 June, she said that John "entered her house with force and arms and carried off a blanket, two sheets and a super-tunic worth 20 shillings....". John indignantly denied the charged of trespass and theft, and also claimed that he had never undertaken to cure Alice's ailment and "did not infect her feet with his medicaments," but the jury found against him, and awarded Alice £30 16s 8d damages.
Hugh of Worcester complained that on 'Thursday before the feast of St. Margaret the Virgin, 14 Edward II', i.e. 18 July 1320, Benet of Feribi, chaplain, Henry of Farenbergh and Bartholomew le Cotiller came to his house in the parish of St Mildred in Poultry and carried off 'two escaped swans' against his will, to his damage of ten pounds. The defendants claimed that they were legally entitled to enter Hugh's house and take the swans, as one Saloman le Cotiller had left ten marks in his will to pay for two chaplains celebrating Mass for his soul in the church of St Mildred, to be provided from the rent from the house where Hugh lived, and the amount had fallen into arrears and they were collecting it. A jury was summoned to hear the case.
Items taken from Robet le Keu and his wife Margery as pledges for a debt of twenty-four shillings they owed to a woman named Emma, last name missing: a chest,worth 18d; a chequer-board worth 12d; eight hard stockfish worth 8d; an old pot with two feet broken, worth 18d; an old brass pan holding two gallons, worth 6d; three old small pans, worth 12d; three [missing] of which two are broken, worth 18d; two [missing] of which one is broken, with a basin worth 9d; one little old iron pan worth 3d; one old and broken grid iron, worth 1d.
On 'Friday next before the feast of St Margaret the Virgin, 14 Edward II', 19 July 1320, John Clerk of the church of All Hallows Hay was accused of assaulting one Warin le White and was said to have "wounded him with a certain lute and inflicted other enormities upon him contrary to the peace and to the damage of the said Warin to the value of £40, as claimed by Warin." On 18 September that year, a jury found him guilty and decided "that John is to be imprisoned until he makes satisfaction concerning these damages, and he is also to make fine to the lord king."
John of Bromptone, chaplain, complained that 'on the Tuesday called Hokeday' (?) in 1319, he had taken a knife and razor to the shop of Simon le Fourbour to be sharpened, and handed them to Robert, Simon's servant, and that Simon later refused to return the items. Simon denied it.
I love this bit: "Gerard le Barber, Nicholas Hurle, Sabine of Hendone appear v. Richard of Redyngge in a plea of debt. The said Richard made default four times, and was attached by two chests and other household utensils."
John of Eye was charged with coming to the house of William of Toppesfelde in the parish of St Bride, Fleet Street, on 9 June 1319, "assaulting him and carrying off night firewood to the value of 100s." The jury found him guilty and awarded William forty shillings damages, and John was committed to prison.
Items taken from Robet le Keu and his wife Margery as pledges for a debt of twenty-four shillings they owed to a woman named Emma, last name missing: a chest,worth 18d; a chequer-board worth 12d; eight hard stockfish worth 8d; an old pot with two feet broken, worth 18d; an old brass pan holding two gallons, worth 6d; three old small pans, worth 12d; three [missing] of which two are broken, worth 18d; two [missing] of which one is broken, with a basin worth 9d; one little old iron pan worth 3d; one old and broken grid iron, worth 1d.
On 'Friday next before the feast of St Margaret the Virgin, 14 Edward II', 19 July 1320, John Clerk of the church of All Hallows Hay was accused of assaulting one Warin le White and was said to have "wounded him with a certain lute and inflicted other enormities upon him contrary to the peace and to the damage of the said Warin to the value of £40, as claimed by Warin." On 18 September that year, a jury found him guilty and decided "that John is to be imprisoned until he makes satisfaction concerning these damages, and he is also to make fine to the lord king."
John of Bromptone, chaplain, complained that 'on the Tuesday called Hokeday' (?) in 1319, he had taken a knife and razor to the shop of Simon le Fourbour to be sharpened, and handed them to Robert, Simon's servant, and that Simon later refused to return the items. Simon denied it.
I love this bit: "Gerard le Barber, Nicholas Hurle, Sabine of Hendone appear v. Richard of Redyngge in a plea of debt. The said Richard made default four times, and was attached by two chests and other household utensils."
John of Eye was charged with coming to the house of William of Toppesfelde in the parish of St Bride, Fleet Street, on 9 June 1319, "assaulting him and carrying off night firewood to the value of 100s." The jury found him guilty and awarded William forty shillings damages, and John was committed to prison.
Alexander le Mazerer was convicted of stealing numerous items from William Broun, goldsmith, and others: four cups, valued by Thomas of St Botulph's and John of Caustone, goldsmiths, at 14s; a robe with a hood of murrey, for a woman, value 14s; two hoods of black stuff, 2s 6d; a woman's robe of green motley, with a cape, 16s; a red tunic, 6s; a green tunic, 6s; a blanket, 4s; a blanket, 18d; a carpet, 2 s. 6d; a blanket, 8d; a cooking vessel, a brass pot, a dish, value 9s; two copper mortar, 20s. 2d; a covelet of green cloth, furred with miniver, valued by Richard Lonekyn, Nicholas of Santone and John of Thorpe at 50s.
- And from the London Assize of Nuisance, also from British History Online:
Friday 9 August 1314: "The mayor and commonalty, by John Dode, chamberlain, complain that Walter le Benere has a house in the parish of St. Lawrence Jewry of which the stone wall extends from the outer gate of the Guildhall to the middle gate of the entrance of which part is ruinous, to the great danger of the passers-by, and although warned by the mayor he has not troubled to repair it. Judgment that he repair it within 40 days etc."
Friday 4 February 1317: "Hugh de Garton complains that the rainwater from John de Sudington's tenement in the parish of St. Peter the Less in Bradestrete falls upon his land and floods it, and that he has windows and other apertures in his party-walls overlooking his tenement. The defendant comes and says that he and all the tenants of the tenement in question have been seised of the easement of the fall of rainwater and the apertures from time out of mind."
Friday 8 December 1318: "Assize of nuisance brought at the instance of Henry le Palmere, who complains that William de Hallyngburi has made a gutter upon a stone wall on his land in the parish of St. Michael de Paternostercherch into which he and his household throw water and all kinds of refuse, which flows out on to the plaintiff's land, so that his timber and all his other property are rotted; and that by reason of the same gutter he cannot build on his land adjoining the same wall; and that the defendant has made windows therein 16 ft. from the ground. The defendant says that the gutter has been in situ for sixty years, and was not therefore made by him, and he puts himself upon the view of the mayor and aldermen."
22 March, 2012
Women Of Edward II's Reign: Margaret Wake, Countess Of Kent
A post today about Margaret Wake, lady of Badenoch and countess of Kent, who married Edward II's half-brother and was the grandmother of Richard II. Writing about women of the early fourteenth century is often an exercise in frustration as they appear so rarely in the records, but anyway, here's some information about Countess Margaret. (And as it's 22 March, let me just quickly mention Earl Thomas of Lancaster's execution on this day in 1322.)
Margaret was born sometime in the mid to late 1290s as the only daughter of John, Lord Wake (d. 1300) and Joan Fiennes; her brother Thomas, their father's heir, was born in 1297 or 1298, and there was also a younger brother, John. She must have been at least a couple of years older than her second husband Edmund, earl of Kent, as her first husband John was killed at the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314 leaving her with a small child or at least expecting one; Edmund wasn't even thirteen in June 1314 (born 5 August 1301). Although the Wakes, who held lands in Cumberland and Lincolnshire, were not a particularly wealthy or influential baronial house, Margaret's ancestry was illustrious. Through her paternal grandmother Hawise de Quincy, she was the great-great-granddaughter of Llywelyn the Great, prince of Wales, and his wife Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John. Her mother Joan Fiennes was the sister of Roger Mortimer's mother Margaret (and the Fiennes sisters were first cousins of Edward II's brother-in-law Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford); her grandfather William Fiennes was killed at the battle of Courtrai in 1302; her great-great-grandfather Jean de Brienne was emperor of Constantinople; her great-great-grandmother Berenguela was the sister of Edward II's grandfather Fernando III of Castile.
In about 1312, Margaret married John Comyn, only son and heir of John 'the Red Comyn', lord of Badenoch and one of the guardians of Scotland, killed in church by Robert Bruce in February 1306. John (the younger) was born sometime in the 1290s; I've previously written a post about his sisters Joan and Elizabeth. After their father's death, the three children were sent to live in England, where they all married and spent the rest of their lives. Little is known of John Comyn, except that Edward II granted him some lands and that he fought at Bannockburn on Edward's side - hardly surprising, given that Robert Bruce had killed his father - and died there, any dreams he might have had of avenging his father's murder in ruins. His lands and the lands of Edmund Comyn, who must have been a relative but I'm not familiar with the Comyn family tree, were taken into the king's hands a few weeks later on 1 August 1314. [1]
John Comyn and Margaret Wake had one known child, a son Aymer, named (presumably) after John's maternal uncle Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke. On 16 August 1314, Edward II granted three manors in Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Berkshire, with a total annual income of almost 140 pounds a year, to "Margaret, late the wife of John Comyn son of John Comyn, who was lately killed whilst on the king's service in Scotland, for her sustenance and that of Aymer their son...". On 26 May 1316, Edward made a grant to Margaret of 30 pounds a year from the Exchequer in place of one of the manors "in aid of her sustenance and expenses"; little Aymer is not mentioned, and had probably died by then. [2] A sad loss for Margaret. The boy's death left his aunts Joan and Elizabeth Comyn as heirs to the Comyn holdings, their claim to the throne of Scotland, and their share of the inheritance of their childless uncle the earl of Pembroke.
Margaret Wake remained a widow for more than eleven years. Her brother Thomas, a ward of Edward II, married Henry of Lancaster's eldest daughter Blanche in 1316, to the great annoyance of the king, who had planned to marry him to Piers Gaveston's daughter Joan. There's very little I can say about Margaret during this period; at least her lack of wealth kept her safe from the rapacious Despensers, unlike her sister-in-law Elizabeth Comyn. Somehow, in 1325, Margaret got to know the man who would become her second husband: Edward II's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, the king's lieutenant in Gascony during the War of St-Sardos. It may be, as Penny Lawne has suggested, that Margaret accompanied Queen Isabella to France in March 1325 and stayed there with her for the next few months, and met Edmund this way. [3] Edmund, a king's son and brother, might have expected to make a better match than with a widow some years his senior who was not an heiress or from an especially influential family. He turned twenty-four in August 1325 and had been earl of Kent since June 1321, and it's interesting to speculate whether Edward II - who, contrary to Edmund's modern and undeserved reputation for stupidity and gullibility, had always shown a lot of faith in his ability - had any bride in mind for him. Edmund's elder brother Thomas had made a rather bizarre (by the standards of the era) marriage to the coroner of Norfolk's daughter Alice Hales, though at least in his case Edward II had entered into negotiations in 1320/21 for Thomas to marry King Jaime II of Aragon's daughter Maria, widow of Pedro of Castile. (Unflatteringly for Thomas, Maria decided she'd rather take the veil.) [4]
Given that Margaret Wake was Roger Mortimer's first cousin, and given also that Edmund supported Mortimer and Queen Isabella against Edward II in 1326, is it possible that Edmund was publicly allying himself with Mortimer and the queen by agreeing to marry her and that this was a reason for their marriage? I doubt it. Pope John XXII granted Kent a dispensation to marry "a woman related to him in the third or fourth degree"* on 6 October 1325. [5] This is a few weeks before the public association of Isabella of France and Mortimer and the queen's refusal to return to England, and if the papal dispensation was granted on 6 October, it must have been applied for at least a few weeks or months previously. Roger Mortimer in the summer and autumn of 1325 was, whatever secret sympathies Edmund may (or may not) have harboured for him, an escaped traitor whom Edward II feared and despised, and this is too early for Kent to have associated himself with him against his half-brother, at least in public; it wasn't until February/March 1326 that he openly backed his sister-in-law Queen Isabella and her favourite. No doubt the family connection helped then to strengthen the two men's alliance, but in the summer and autumn of 1325, it is most unlikely to have been Kent's primary motivation in marrying Margaret and may not have been a factor at all. As Margaret had no lands beyond the dower she received from her marriage to John Comyn and Edmund therefore cannot have married her for her wealth and influence, that leaves us with a love match, as suggested by Penny Lawne. Romantically, this would mean that both of Edward I's sons by Marguerite of France married women of their own choice for (apparently) love. Awww.
* Margaret and Kent were second cousins twice removed via common descent from King John (Edmund's great-grandfather, Margaret's great-great-great-grandfather). Margaret was also Edward II's second cousin twice removed through a different line as well as via the King John connection (King Alfonso IX of Leon and Berenguela of Castile were Edward's great-grandparents and Margaret's great-great-great-grandparents).
The St Paul's annalist says that Margaret and Edmund married around the time that Queen Isabella's uncle and the ancestor of the Valois dynasty, the prolific Charles of Valois, died, which was on 16 December 1325. [6] Edward II appears to have reacted to the marriage by temporarily taking Margaret's lands into his own hands - assuming she's the 'Margaret Comyn' in question, which seems likely - though he changed his mind and countermanded the order on 27 January 1326. (I can't find the original order in the chancery rolls, but it can't have been much earlier than that.) This would seem to indicate that Edmund and Margaret's marriage took place without Edward's knowledge and consent, though whether he interpreted it as Edmund moving into Roger Mortimer's camp is unclear. The king confiscated his half-brother's lands on 24 March 1326, when it became evident that Edmund would not return from France as ordered. [7] In late September 1326, Edmund did return, with Isabella and Mortimer's invasion force and his young nephew the future Edward III. Presumably Margaret travelled back from the continent somewhat later, when it was safer, especially as it is highly likely that she was heavily pregnant. It probably goes without saying that we don't have the faintest idea what she thought about her brother-in-law's deposition and her nephew's accession, or about Edward's supposed murder.
Edmund, earl of Kent and Margaret Wake were married from about mid-December 1325 to 19 March 1330 and had four children, of whom one was born nineteen days after Edmund's execution:
1) Edmund, the elder son, probably born in late 1326, died as a child in the early 1330s.
2) Margaret, the elder daughter, presumably born in 1327 (unless perhaps she was Edmund's twin). She married the Gascon nobleman Amanieu d'Albret and died childless at an uncertain date, at any rate before her brother John in 1352.
3) Joan, the younger daughter, born in September 1328 and her father's ultimate heir. This is the famous Joan of Kent, who was married to Sir Thomas Holland and the earl of Salisbury's son at the same time, and who later married Edward III's eldest son and became the mother of Richard II. Died August 1385.
4) John, the younger son, born posthumously on 7 April 1330; married Queen Philippa's niece Elisabeth or Isabel of Jülich; died childless December 1352, leaving his sister Joan, his only surviving sibling, as his and their father's heir.
Margaret must have spent much of the period of Isabella and Mortimer's regime pregnant. In 1329 and 1330, her husband plotted with many others to free the former Edward II from captivity at Corfe Castle - the plot I have a lot to say about - and was beheaded for treason in Winchester on 19 March 1330, leaving Margaret at least eight months pregnant and with three children under four. Five days before Edmund's execution, Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer ordered her to be imprisoned at Salisbury Castle; "the countess is to be accompanied on the way by only two damsels and her children." The day after Edmund's execution, the pair, having perhaps been informed that Margaret - Mortimer's first cousin - was heavily pregnant and unable to travel the seventy miles from Arundel to Salisbury, allowed her to remain at Arundel. They ordered Roger atte Asshe, keeper of Arundel Castle and the earl of Kent's other lands and manors which had all been taken into the king's hands, to pay Margaret a mark a day for the sustenance of herself, her children and the two attendants they had allowed her. Margaret gave birth to her son on 7 April. Several entries in the chancery rolls reveal Isabella and Mortimer's preoccupation with having her "jewels and other goods" brought to them, and they ordered two men "to enquire as to jewels and other goods of the countess taken away," just in case she had tried to cheat them of anything. [8]
Margaret must have been delighted when her nephew by marriage Edward III overthrew Mortimer and Isabella a few months later. At the November 1330 parliament, the incredibly eventful one when Mortimer was sentenced to death, Edward II's supposed murderers were named and Lord Berkeley made his intriguing statement that he hadn't known of Edward's death till the present parliament, Margaret and her elder son, four-year-old Edmund, presented petitions. Margaret's read:
"To our lord the king, if it pleases him, his liege, Margaret, countess of Kent, prays for herself and for her children [ Margarete countesse de Kent, pur lui et pur ses enfauntz]: that of his grace he be willing to cause to come before him in his present parliament at Westminster the record and the process by which your uncle and her good lord my lord Edmund, late earl of Kent was put to death, considering, among other things, if it pleases you, that Sir Roger de Mortimer, late earl of March acknowledged at his death before the people that the said earl was wrongfully killed...".
The petition was granted and the judgement against Earl Edmund of a few months previously was duly reversed. What I find really funny about the response to Margaret and her son's petitions is the constant repetition that Edward II had been dead in March 1330 and that therefore it had been impossible for Edmund and his allies to free him: "...caused the same earl to understand that the Lord Edward, late king of England, the father of our present lord the king, and brother of the said earl, was alive, when he had been dead for a long time. And they did this to encourage him to purchase the release of his said brother, as if it had been possible to do this"; "...willing to purchase the easement and the release of his same brother, which release was impossible to secure all that time seeing as he was already dead, as is said above"; "he had knowingly wished the said release to the prejudice of the king our present lord, which was completely impossible as is said above"; "...caused the said earl of Kent, who is dead, to understand that our lord the king the father of our present lord the king was alive when he was dead, and for that reason it had been impossible to have secured or purchased his release".
Countess Margaret's brother Thomas, who had fled from England in March 1330 having taken part in the earl of Kent's plot to free Edward of Caernarfon, died childless on 30 May 1349, perhaps of the plague; his widow Blanche of Lancaster lived until 1380, and his eventual heir would be his niece Joan of Kent. Margaret succeeded briefly to the Wake lands before dying on 29 September 1349, in her early fifties, having lived long enough to see her daughter Joan cause a great scandal by being married to William Montacute and Thomas Holland at the same time. Margaret outlived two husbands and at least two of her children (Aymer Comyn and Edmund of Kent, and perhaps also her elder daughter Margaret). She has many modern descendants via her daughter Joan's sons Thomas and John Holland, half-brothers of Richard II.
Sources
1) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 206.
2) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, pp. 164, 657.
3) Penny Lawne, 'Edmund of Woodstock (1301-1330): A Study of Personal Loyalty', in C. Given-Wilson, ed., Fourteenth Century England VI (2010), pp. 37-38.
4) Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, part 1, vol. 1, pp. 64-66.
5) Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 246.
6) Annales Paulini 1307-1340, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 1, Rolls Series, 76, p. 310.
7) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 573; Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 464.
8) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, p. 499; Cal Close Rolls 1330-1333, p. 14.
Margaret was born sometime in the mid to late 1290s as the only daughter of John, Lord Wake (d. 1300) and Joan Fiennes; her brother Thomas, their father's heir, was born in 1297 or 1298, and there was also a younger brother, John. She must have been at least a couple of years older than her second husband Edmund, earl of Kent, as her first husband John was killed at the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314 leaving her with a small child or at least expecting one; Edmund wasn't even thirteen in June 1314 (born 5 August 1301). Although the Wakes, who held lands in Cumberland and Lincolnshire, were not a particularly wealthy or influential baronial house, Margaret's ancestry was illustrious. Through her paternal grandmother Hawise de Quincy, she was the great-great-granddaughter of Llywelyn the Great, prince of Wales, and his wife Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John. Her mother Joan Fiennes was the sister of Roger Mortimer's mother Margaret (and the Fiennes sisters were first cousins of Edward II's brother-in-law Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford); her grandfather William Fiennes was killed at the battle of Courtrai in 1302; her great-great-grandfather Jean de Brienne was emperor of Constantinople; her great-great-grandmother Berenguela was the sister of Edward II's grandfather Fernando III of Castile.
In about 1312, Margaret married John Comyn, only son and heir of John 'the Red Comyn', lord of Badenoch and one of the guardians of Scotland, killed in church by Robert Bruce in February 1306. John (the younger) was born sometime in the 1290s; I've previously written a post about his sisters Joan and Elizabeth. After their father's death, the three children were sent to live in England, where they all married and spent the rest of their lives. Little is known of John Comyn, except that Edward II granted him some lands and that he fought at Bannockburn on Edward's side - hardly surprising, given that Robert Bruce had killed his father - and died there, any dreams he might have had of avenging his father's murder in ruins. His lands and the lands of Edmund Comyn, who must have been a relative but I'm not familiar with the Comyn family tree, were taken into the king's hands a few weeks later on 1 August 1314. [1]
John Comyn and Margaret Wake had one known child, a son Aymer, named (presumably) after John's maternal uncle Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke. On 16 August 1314, Edward II granted three manors in Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Berkshire, with a total annual income of almost 140 pounds a year, to "Margaret, late the wife of John Comyn son of John Comyn, who was lately killed whilst on the king's service in Scotland, for her sustenance and that of Aymer their son...". On 26 May 1316, Edward made a grant to Margaret of 30 pounds a year from the Exchequer in place of one of the manors "in aid of her sustenance and expenses"; little Aymer is not mentioned, and had probably died by then. [2] A sad loss for Margaret. The boy's death left his aunts Joan and Elizabeth Comyn as heirs to the Comyn holdings, their claim to the throne of Scotland, and their share of the inheritance of their childless uncle the earl of Pembroke.
Margaret Wake remained a widow for more than eleven years. Her brother Thomas, a ward of Edward II, married Henry of Lancaster's eldest daughter Blanche in 1316, to the great annoyance of the king, who had planned to marry him to Piers Gaveston's daughter Joan. There's very little I can say about Margaret during this period; at least her lack of wealth kept her safe from the rapacious Despensers, unlike her sister-in-law Elizabeth Comyn. Somehow, in 1325, Margaret got to know the man who would become her second husband: Edward II's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, the king's lieutenant in Gascony during the War of St-Sardos. It may be, as Penny Lawne has suggested, that Margaret accompanied Queen Isabella to France in March 1325 and stayed there with her for the next few months, and met Edmund this way. [3] Edmund, a king's son and brother, might have expected to make a better match than with a widow some years his senior who was not an heiress or from an especially influential family. He turned twenty-four in August 1325 and had been earl of Kent since June 1321, and it's interesting to speculate whether Edward II - who, contrary to Edmund's modern and undeserved reputation for stupidity and gullibility, had always shown a lot of faith in his ability - had any bride in mind for him. Edmund's elder brother Thomas had made a rather bizarre (by the standards of the era) marriage to the coroner of Norfolk's daughter Alice Hales, though at least in his case Edward II had entered into negotiations in 1320/21 for Thomas to marry King Jaime II of Aragon's daughter Maria, widow of Pedro of Castile. (Unflatteringly for Thomas, Maria decided she'd rather take the veil.) [4]
Given that Margaret Wake was Roger Mortimer's first cousin, and given also that Edmund supported Mortimer and Queen Isabella against Edward II in 1326, is it possible that Edmund was publicly allying himself with Mortimer and the queen by agreeing to marry her and that this was a reason for their marriage? I doubt it. Pope John XXII granted Kent a dispensation to marry "a woman related to him in the third or fourth degree"* on 6 October 1325. [5] This is a few weeks before the public association of Isabella of France and Mortimer and the queen's refusal to return to England, and if the papal dispensation was granted on 6 October, it must have been applied for at least a few weeks or months previously. Roger Mortimer in the summer and autumn of 1325 was, whatever secret sympathies Edmund may (or may not) have harboured for him, an escaped traitor whom Edward II feared and despised, and this is too early for Kent to have associated himself with him against his half-brother, at least in public; it wasn't until February/March 1326 that he openly backed his sister-in-law Queen Isabella and her favourite. No doubt the family connection helped then to strengthen the two men's alliance, but in the summer and autumn of 1325, it is most unlikely to have been Kent's primary motivation in marrying Margaret and may not have been a factor at all. As Margaret had no lands beyond the dower she received from her marriage to John Comyn and Edmund therefore cannot have married her for her wealth and influence, that leaves us with a love match, as suggested by Penny Lawne. Romantically, this would mean that both of Edward I's sons by Marguerite of France married women of their own choice for (apparently) love. Awww.
* Margaret and Kent were second cousins twice removed via common descent from King John (Edmund's great-grandfather, Margaret's great-great-great-grandfather). Margaret was also Edward II's second cousin twice removed through a different line as well as via the King John connection (King Alfonso IX of Leon and Berenguela of Castile were Edward's great-grandparents and Margaret's great-great-great-grandparents).
The St Paul's annalist says that Margaret and Edmund married around the time that Queen Isabella's uncle and the ancestor of the Valois dynasty, the prolific Charles of Valois, died, which was on 16 December 1325. [6] Edward II appears to have reacted to the marriage by temporarily taking Margaret's lands into his own hands - assuming she's the 'Margaret Comyn' in question, which seems likely - though he changed his mind and countermanded the order on 27 January 1326. (I can't find the original order in the chancery rolls, but it can't have been much earlier than that.) This would seem to indicate that Edmund and Margaret's marriage took place without Edward's knowledge and consent, though whether he interpreted it as Edmund moving into Roger Mortimer's camp is unclear. The king confiscated his half-brother's lands on 24 March 1326, when it became evident that Edmund would not return from France as ordered. [7] In late September 1326, Edmund did return, with Isabella and Mortimer's invasion force and his young nephew the future Edward III. Presumably Margaret travelled back from the continent somewhat later, when it was safer, especially as it is highly likely that she was heavily pregnant. It probably goes without saying that we don't have the faintest idea what she thought about her brother-in-law's deposition and her nephew's accession, or about Edward's supposed murder.
Edmund, earl of Kent and Margaret Wake were married from about mid-December 1325 to 19 March 1330 and had four children, of whom one was born nineteen days after Edmund's execution:
1) Edmund, the elder son, probably born in late 1326, died as a child in the early 1330s.
2) Margaret, the elder daughter, presumably born in 1327 (unless perhaps she was Edmund's twin). She married the Gascon nobleman Amanieu d'Albret and died childless at an uncertain date, at any rate before her brother John in 1352.
3) Joan, the younger daughter, born in September 1328 and her father's ultimate heir. This is the famous Joan of Kent, who was married to Sir Thomas Holland and the earl of Salisbury's son at the same time, and who later married Edward III's eldest son and became the mother of Richard II. Died August 1385.
4) John, the younger son, born posthumously on 7 April 1330; married Queen Philippa's niece Elisabeth or Isabel of Jülich; died childless December 1352, leaving his sister Joan, his only surviving sibling, as his and their father's heir.
Margaret must have spent much of the period of Isabella and Mortimer's regime pregnant. In 1329 and 1330, her husband plotted with many others to free the former Edward II from captivity at Corfe Castle - the plot I have a lot to say about - and was beheaded for treason in Winchester on 19 March 1330, leaving Margaret at least eight months pregnant and with three children under four. Five days before Edmund's execution, Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer ordered her to be imprisoned at Salisbury Castle; "the countess is to be accompanied on the way by only two damsels and her children." The day after Edmund's execution, the pair, having perhaps been informed that Margaret - Mortimer's first cousin - was heavily pregnant and unable to travel the seventy miles from Arundel to Salisbury, allowed her to remain at Arundel. They ordered Roger atte Asshe, keeper of Arundel Castle and the earl of Kent's other lands and manors which had all been taken into the king's hands, to pay Margaret a mark a day for the sustenance of herself, her children and the two attendants they had allowed her. Margaret gave birth to her son on 7 April. Several entries in the chancery rolls reveal Isabella and Mortimer's preoccupation with having her "jewels and other goods" brought to them, and they ordered two men "to enquire as to jewels and other goods of the countess taken away," just in case she had tried to cheat them of anything. [8]
Margaret must have been delighted when her nephew by marriage Edward III overthrew Mortimer and Isabella a few months later. At the November 1330 parliament, the incredibly eventful one when Mortimer was sentenced to death, Edward II's supposed murderers were named and Lord Berkeley made his intriguing statement that he hadn't known of Edward's death till the present parliament, Margaret and her elder son, four-year-old Edmund, presented petitions. Margaret's read:
"To our lord the king, if it pleases him, his liege, Margaret, countess of Kent, prays for herself and for her children [ Margarete countesse de Kent, pur lui et pur ses enfauntz]: that of his grace he be willing to cause to come before him in his present parliament at Westminster the record and the process by which your uncle and her good lord my lord Edmund, late earl of Kent was put to death, considering, among other things, if it pleases you, that Sir Roger de Mortimer, late earl of March acknowledged at his death before the people that the said earl was wrongfully killed...".
The petition was granted and the judgement against Earl Edmund of a few months previously was duly reversed. What I find really funny about the response to Margaret and her son's petitions is the constant repetition that Edward II had been dead in March 1330 and that therefore it had been impossible for Edmund and his allies to free him: "...caused the same earl to understand that the Lord Edward, late king of England, the father of our present lord the king, and brother of the said earl, was alive, when he had been dead for a long time. And they did this to encourage him to purchase the release of his said brother, as if it had been possible to do this"; "...willing to purchase the easement and the release of his same brother, which release was impossible to secure all that time seeing as he was already dead, as is said above"; "he had knowingly wished the said release to the prejudice of the king our present lord, which was completely impossible as is said above"; "...caused the said earl of Kent, who is dead, to understand that our lord the king the father of our present lord the king was alive when he was dead, and for that reason it had been impossible to have secured or purchased his release".
Countess Margaret's brother Thomas, who had fled from England in March 1330 having taken part in the earl of Kent's plot to free Edward of Caernarfon, died childless on 30 May 1349, perhaps of the plague; his widow Blanche of Lancaster lived until 1380, and his eventual heir would be his niece Joan of Kent. Margaret succeeded briefly to the Wake lands before dying on 29 September 1349, in her early fifties, having lived long enough to see her daughter Joan cause a great scandal by being married to William Montacute and Thomas Holland at the same time. Margaret outlived two husbands and at least two of her children (Aymer Comyn and Edmund of Kent, and perhaps also her elder daughter Margaret). She has many modern descendants via her daughter Joan's sons Thomas and John Holland, half-brothers of Richard II.
Sources
1) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-1319, p. 206.
2) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, pp. 164, 657.
3) Penny Lawne, 'Edmund of Woodstock (1301-1330): A Study of Personal Loyalty', in C. Given-Wilson, ed., Fourteenth Century England VI (2010), pp. 37-38.
4) Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, part 1, vol. 1, pp. 64-66.
5) Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 246.
6) Annales Paulini 1307-1340, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 1, Rolls Series, 76, p. 310.
7) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 573; Calendar of Close Rolls 1323-1327, p. 464.
8) Cal Pat Rolls 1327-1330, p. 499; Cal Close Rolls 1330-1333, p. 14.
16 March, 2012
Edward II's Bad Press
Some of the harsh judgements passed on Edward II by historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
"A more complete ninny than Edward II has seldom occupied a throne. He was indeed a man of commanding presence — tall, strongly built, and very handsome — but his kingly figure was not yoked with a kingly intellect or will. He had no taste and no capacity for kingship, except in the mere matter of military parade and Court ceremony. He preferred to ride a horse, row a boat, dig a pit or thatch a barn, get up masques, and patronise playwrights, try his hand at farming and horse- breeding, to the work of government. As recreations these pursuits might do credit to a great ruler, but when they are the chief occupations of a monarch who cannot rule, they betoken the trifler and the pitiful incapable.": J. Mackinnon, History of Edward III (1900).
"[B]rutal and brainless athlete...incompetent, idle, frivolous and incurious": T.F. Tout, 'The Captivity and Death of Edward of Carnarvon' (1934). Tout does allow that Edward was "not, I suspect, exceptionally vicious or depraved." Gosh.
"A scatter-brained wastrel": Ibid.
"A weakling and a fool": May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399 (1959).
"Weak-willed and frivolous": T.F Tout, The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History (1914).
"A coward and a trifler": Tout again, in Edward the First.
"He has no high aims, no policy beyond the cunning of unscrupulous selfishness. He has no kingly pride or sense of duty, no industry or shame or piety...vulgar pomp, heartless extravagance, lavish improvidence, selfish indolence make him a fit centre of an intriguing court. He does no good to anyone": William Stubbs, A Constitutional History of England (1875). In fairness, Stubbs also describes Edward III as "unscrupulous, selfish, extravagant, and ostentatious. His obligations as a king sat very lightly on him."
And a much older and particularly unpleasant judgement on poor Edward: "Of four sons which he [Edward I] had by his wife Queen Eleanor, three of them died in his own lifetime, who were worthy to have outlived him; and the fourth outlived him, who was worthy never to have been born": Richard Baker, A Chronicle to the Kings of England (1643). That one makes me furious.
Not entirely on-topic, but I had a good giggle at this page, which starts badly (by claiming that the centuries-later story of Edward I deceiving the Welsh by presenting to them a 'prince who could speak no English' is true) and gets worse (by suggesting that "Some doubt could be raised as to whether King Edward II was the genetic father of Prince Edward", AGH!!!). There's also a list of Edward II's supposed bad points, among which are included:
- Flaunted his homosexuality
- Enjoyed good food and wine
- Enjoyed fine, expensive but elegant, showy, bizarre clothes & jewellry- Liked acting or 'theatricals'
- Patron of writers and players
- Enjoyed poetry and wrote some.
- Played kettle drums, loved music & had a troupe of Genoese musicians [2 trumpeters, harpist, horn player and a drummer.]
- With Gaveston he enjoyed jesters, jugglers, actors and singers.
- Collected books on French romances and legends.
It had honestly never occurred to me before that being a patron of writers, enjoying poetry and music, and collecting books could actually be considered bad things. Perhaps the writer means that such cultured hobbies were out of place in a king of the fourteenth century and that they distracted Edward from the real business of making war and killing lots of people. If so, this should really have been stated more clearly. I also wonder about the 'flaunting his homosexuality' bit. There's an awful lot I could say about that particular statement, but I'll limit myself to wondering whether 'flaunting his heterosexuality' would have been considered a bad thing, or even worthy of comment.
"A more complete ninny than Edward II has seldom occupied a throne. He was indeed a man of commanding presence — tall, strongly built, and very handsome — but his kingly figure was not yoked with a kingly intellect or will. He had no taste and no capacity for kingship, except in the mere matter of military parade and Court ceremony. He preferred to ride a horse, row a boat, dig a pit or thatch a barn, get up masques, and patronise playwrights, try his hand at farming and horse- breeding, to the work of government. As recreations these pursuits might do credit to a great ruler, but when they are the chief occupations of a monarch who cannot rule, they betoken the trifler and the pitiful incapable.": J. Mackinnon, History of Edward III (1900).
"[B]rutal and brainless athlete...incompetent, idle, frivolous and incurious": T.F. Tout, 'The Captivity and Death of Edward of Carnarvon' (1934). Tout does allow that Edward was "not, I suspect, exceptionally vicious or depraved." Gosh.
"A scatter-brained wastrel": Ibid.
"A weakling and a fool": May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307-1399 (1959).
"Weak-willed and frivolous": T.F Tout, The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History (1914).
"A coward and a trifler": Tout again, in Edward the First.
"He has no high aims, no policy beyond the cunning of unscrupulous selfishness. He has no kingly pride or sense of duty, no industry or shame or piety...vulgar pomp, heartless extravagance, lavish improvidence, selfish indolence make him a fit centre of an intriguing court. He does no good to anyone": William Stubbs, A Constitutional History of England (1875). In fairness, Stubbs also describes Edward III as "unscrupulous, selfish, extravagant, and ostentatious. His obligations as a king sat very lightly on him."
And a much older and particularly unpleasant judgement on poor Edward: "Of four sons which he [Edward I] had by his wife Queen Eleanor, three of them died in his own lifetime, who were worthy to have outlived him; and the fourth outlived him, who was worthy never to have been born": Richard Baker, A Chronicle to the Kings of England (1643). That one makes me furious.
Not entirely on-topic, but I had a good giggle at this page, which starts badly (by claiming that the centuries-later story of Edward I deceiving the Welsh by presenting to them a 'prince who could speak no English' is true) and gets worse (by suggesting that "Some doubt could be raised as to whether King Edward II was the genetic father of Prince Edward", AGH!!!). There's also a list of Edward II's supposed bad points, among which are included:
- Flaunted his homosexuality
- Enjoyed good food and wine
- Enjoyed fine, expensive but elegant, showy, bizarre clothes & jewellry- Liked acting or 'theatricals'
- Patron of writers and players
- Enjoyed poetry and wrote some.
- Played kettle drums, loved music & had a troupe of Genoese musicians [2 trumpeters, harpist, horn player and a drummer.]
- With Gaveston he enjoyed jesters, jugglers, actors and singers.
- Collected books on French romances and legends.
It had honestly never occurred to me before that being a patron of writers, enjoying poetry and music, and collecting books could actually be considered bad things. Perhaps the writer means that such cultured hobbies were out of place in a king of the fourteenth century and that they distracted Edward from the real business of making war and killing lots of people. If so, this should really have been stated more clearly. I also wonder about the 'flaunting his homosexuality' bit. There's an awful lot I could say about that particular statement, but I'll limit myself to wondering whether 'flaunting his heterosexuality' would have been considered a bad thing, or even worthy of comment.
Finally, and definitely off-topically, today is the 690th anniversary of the battle of Boroughbridge, where Andrew Harclay, sheriff of Cumberland, defeated the earls of Hereford and Lancaster. See here for the Battlefields Resource Centre's pages about the battle, and here for my post on the aftermath of the battle and the possessions of the fleeing Contrariants seized by Edward II's household. Oh, and here for the dishonesty of some modern writers in misquoting the Vita Edwardi Secundi's account of the battle and its aftermath.
13 March, 2012
Blog Visitors
I hadn't checked my blog visitor map for absolutely ages until a couple of days ago, and was thrilled to see all the readers I've had, from all over the world!
The top twenty countries my blog visitors come from are, in order:
United States
United Kingdom
Australia
Canada
Germany
Netherlands
France
India
Belgium
Portugal
Russian Federation
Taiwan
New Zealand
Italy
Spain
Ireland
South Africa
Philippines
Japan
Switzerland
I can't help noticing from the map that I've never had any blog visitors from Madagascar, Siberia or most of Central Africa. Hmph. :-) Great to see that I've had a fair few readers in South America and Asia, though.
Since 2008, the blog has had almost 350,000 page views. Between 150 and 230 people visit the blog every day. My Facebook page about Edward has almost 800 fans now.
I happened to do Google searches for Edward II's friends Sir Roger Damory and Donald, earl of Mar recently, and found that the top results for them are my blog (I have the top three results for Damory!). It's also third on Google's results for Piers Gaveston, with my friend Anerje's blog just behind, yay.
A big resounding THANK YOU to all my readers, whether you're regulars or occasional visitors or one of the many hundreds of people who find my article explaining why William Wallace couldn't have been Edward III's father after watching Braveheart when it's on television yet again. :-) I've been writing this blog for the best part of six and a half years now, since 3 December 2005. Here's to the next six and more years of the Edward II blog, and lots more 'myth-squidging' as someone on Tumblr (linking to the blog) so nicely described it a couple of days ago. :-)
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