July Anniversaries

1 July 1308: Edward II remembered that in six days it would be the first anniversary of his father Edward I's death, and wrote to his chancellor John Langton, bishop of Chichester: "As next Sunday, 7 July, will be the anniversary of the king's father, and the king wishes that the service for his soul on that day shall be done so well and solemnly on all points that nothing shall fail and it shall be to the king's honour; the king prays the chancellor dearly to be at the said service at Westminster, both at the Saturday before at placebo and dirige and on the Sunday at mass, and to take pains with the other bishops and the treasurer, who will be there, that the service be well ordered."

1 July 1324: Day originally arranged for Edward II to pay homage for his French lands to his brother-in-law Charles IV of France. Edward made excuses, didn't go, and soon found himself at war with Charles.

5 July 1321: Birth of Edward and Isabella's youngest child Joan of the Tower, future queen of Scotland.  Edward was thirty-seven at the time of his daughter's birth, Isabella twenty-five or twenty-six.

5 July 1321: Edward authorised the foundation of several houses for teaching logic and theology at Cambridge University, at the request of his clerk Roger Northburgh, shortly to become bishop of Coventry and Lichfield on the death of Walter Langton.

5 July 1321: Wedding of Edward's kinsman Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, who was then about fifty, and the much younger Marie de St Pol.

5 July 1324: Wedding of Edward's brother-in-law Charles IV of France and Jeanne of Evreux, who was the daughter of Philip IV's half-brother Louis, count of Evreux and thus Charles' first cousin. Although lots of people nowadays claim that their wedding date is unknown or that Charles and Jeanne married in July 1325, the date is in fact known for certain from a letter sent to Edward II by his envoys to France on 10 July 1324: "..we found him [Charles IV] at Annet on the Thursday next before the feast of the Translation of St Thomas, where he had married on the same day the sister of the present count of Dreux [sic]." (...lui trovasmes a Annet' le joedy prochein devant la feste de la Translacion de Seint Thomas, ou il avoit espouses mesmes le jour le soer le conte de Drews [sic] qore est.)  The Translation of St Thomas Becket is 7 July, a Saturday in 1324.

5 July 1325: On Joan of the Tower's fourth birthday, Edward sent envoys to negotiate a marriage between her and one of the sons of Charles, count of Valois, Queen Isabella's uncle, although he was also negotiating a marriage for her in Aragon (with Jaime II's grandson the future Pedro IV) at the same time. The boy in question was not named, but can only have been Valois' youngest son Louis, count of Chartres, born in 1318, whose mother was Marie de St Pol's sister Mahaut.

6 July 1332: Birth of Elizabeth de Burgh, only child of William Donn de Burgh, earl of Ulster and Maud of Lancaster (one of the six daughters of Edward II's first cousin Henry, earl of Lancaster). Elizabeth was sole heir to her father's earldom and to the third of the vast de Clare inheritance of her paternal grandmother, Edward II's niece Elizabeth de Clare. She married Edward III's second son Lionel of Antwerp, who was a few years her junior, and had one daughter, Philippa, who married Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.

7 July 1307: Death of Edward I, aged sixty-eight, at Burgh-by-Sands near Carlisle; accession of twenty-three-year-old Edward II, duke of Aquitaine, prince of Wales, earl of Chester and count of Ponthieu as king of England and lord of Ireland.

7 July 1317: Edward II founded the King's Hall (Aula Regis) at Cambridge University as a place to educate the children of his chapel; the Hall maintained thirty-two scholars from 1319.  In 1546, Edward's descendant Henry VIII incorporated King's Hall and Michaelhouse – founded in 1324 by the chief justice Hervey Staunton, a staunch supporter of Edward II – into his new foundation of Trinity College.  Edward II was the first king of England to found colleges at Cambridge and Oxford (he also founded Oriel College at Oxford in 1326), and is one of only a handful of people throughout the centuries to establish colleges at both universities.

7 and 8 July 1312: Travelling to London from York after Piers Gaveston's murder, Edward gave a pound to Janin the Conjuror for performing tricks in his private chamber at Swineshead Priory, and three shillings to a group of acrobats for "making their vaults" before him at Surfleet.

8 July every year: The first day of Edward II's regnal year.

8 July 1313: Edward hosted a great banquet in Amiens, France, and gave the enormous sum of twenty pounds to Robert, 'King of Heralds' and other unnamed minstrels who performed there.

11 July 1307: The date on which Edward II, in or near London, heard that he had acceded as king of England.  His first act as king, almost certainly, was to recall Piers Gaveston from exile.

12 July 1380 (or shortly before): Death of Blanche, Lady Wake, eldest and last surviving child of Edward II's first cousin and Isabella of France's uncle Henry, earl of Lancaster (and sister of Maud of Lancaster, above).  Blanche was born in about 1302 in the reign of Edward I, and lived into the reign of his great-great-grandson Richard II.

13 July 1389: Death of Elizabeth, Lady Berkeley, youngest and last surviving child of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare, and thus Edward II's great-niece.  Elizabeth was fortunate to escape Isabella of France's vindictive forced veiling of three of her older sisters at the beginning of 1327, as she was either a baby or perhaps still in utero (the eldest sister, Isabel, also escaped the forced veiling because she was already married).  Elizabeth's eldest son Thomas, Lord Berkeley, also died on 13 July, in 1417.

14 July 1322: Five men – the mayor of London, three justices of the court of Common Pleas and the chief baron of the exchequer – condemned Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and his uncle Mortimer of Chirk to death.  Eight days later, Edward commuted the two men's sentence to life imprisonment, surely the biggest mistake he ever made given what happened in 1326.

15 July 1313: Around sunset, Edward and Isabella returned from their long visit to France, during which Edward saved his wife's life when a fire broke out in their lodgings and consoled himself on the first anniversary of Piers Gaveston's murder by watching 54 naked dancers perform for him.

15 July 1319: Edward knighted his half-brother Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, who was then nineteen, born on 1 June 1300 (sixteen years the king's junior).

16 July 1212: Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, a resounding victory for the Christian kings Alfonso VIII of Castile, Pedro II of Aragon, Sancho VII of Navarre and Afonso II of Portugal over the forces of the Almohad caliphate, rulers of Al-Andalus, led by Muhammad al-Nasir. The battle fatally weakened Almohad rule in Spain and would prove to be a decisive moment in the Spanish Reconquista. In the 1230s and 1240s, towns and cities across Al-Andalus were recaptured by Alfonso VIII's grandson Fernando III of Castile (Edward II's grandfather!), with the greatest prize of all, Seville, falling to the king on 23 November 1248. The death toll among the Almohad forces during the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa is estimated at over 100,000; the defeated al-Nasir died in Marrakech a few months later.  Many thanks to my friend Kasia for informing me of a letter sent by Edward II's great-grandmother Berenguela, daughter of Alfonso VIII and mother of Fernando III, to her sister Blanca or Blanche, future queen of France: "Our father, the king and lord, conquered Miramamolin [Muhammad al-Nasir] in a pitched battle; we believe this to be a signal honour, because until now it was unheard of that the king of Morocco should be overcome on the battlefield."

17 July 1328: Wedding of seven-year-old Joan of the Tower and Robert Bruce's four-year-old son David, who succeeded his father as king of Scotland the following year.  The marriage would prove to be unhappy and childless.  Joan died in England in 1362 at the age of forty-one, and David - who had no children with his second queen either - died in 1371 to be succeeded by his half-nephew Robert II (grandson of Robert Bruce and his first wife Isabella of Mar), who rather oddly was eight years his senior.

18 July 1290: Edward's father Edward I expelled the entire Jewish population from England.

18 July 1317: Beginning of a meeting of the king's great council at Nottingham, which Edward's cousin and greatest enemy Thomas, earl of Lancaster, failed to attend.  On the 21st, Edward sent Lancaster a letter, repeating the summons and remonstrating with him for holding private assemblies and for employing an unusual number of armed retainers, "whence the people are considerably frightened." 

20 July 1307: Edward II was proclaimed king of England and lord of Ireland "by descent and heritage" at Carlisle Castle.

20 July 1319: Edward asked the two archbishops and all the bishops of England to pray for him on his way to Berwick-on-Tweed, taken by Robert Bruce the previous year, but then didn't arrive in Berwick until 7 September.  (Predictably, Edward's siege and attempt to recapture the vital port ended in utter failure.)

Sometime between 20 and 24 July 1318: Execution of John of Powderham, royal impostor, who claimed to be the rightful son of Edward I.

21 July 1324: Now at war with France and with his French lands confiscated, Edward did the only thing he could to retaliate and ordered all French subjects in England to be arrested and their goods seized.

25 July 1317: Edward granted Queen Isabella the county of Cornwall.

25 July 1326: Edward gave two shillings to John de Walton, who "sang before the king [chaunta deuant le Roi] every time he passed by water through these parts," and also gave Edward a present of loach.

26 July 1316: End of the rebellion in Bristol.

26 July 1316: Edward left a very pregnant Queen Isabella - their son John was born on 15 August - at Eltham Palace in Kent to travel north for a campaign in Scotland which he then cancelled.  

27 July 1309: Opening of parliament at Stamford in Lincolnshire; Piers Gaveston, who had recently returned from his year in exile as lord lieutenant of Ireland, appeared at Edward II's side and was re-granted his earldom of Cornwall during the parliament.

28 July 1321: Edward created Edmund of Woodstock, the younger of his two half-brothers, earl of Kent.  Edmund was then almost twenty, born on 5 August 1301.

29 July 1304: Edward I granted the wardship of seventeen-year-old Roger Mortimer, whose father Edmund had recently died, to Piers Gaveston (who must have been at least twenty-one at the time and was probably quite a bit older than that).

29 July 1321: Edward and the Despensers' enemies the Marcher lords, who had recently despoiled the Despensers' lands in England and Wales and whom Edward soon took to calling the 'Contrariants', arrived in London, two weeks late for parliament.  The Londoners refused to admit them, and Edward also refused to meet them or even to listen to their demands that the Despensers be perpetually exiled from England, and they and their heirs disinherited "as false and traitorous criminals and spies." The Marchers placed themselves and their armies around the city walls, at strategic locations, to prevent the king leaving the city. Two days earlier, the Marchers had sent two knights as envoys to Edward, to tell him that they held both Hugh Despensers "enemies and traitors to you and to the kingdom, and for this they wish them to be removed from here [i.e. England]."  Edward refused to meet the envoys, offering the rather feeble excuse that they had no letters of credence.

Eleanor of Provence and her children (guest post)

Today I'm delighted to bring you a guest post by my lovely talented friend Sarah, formerly of Sarah's History, who now runs a fab new blog about Edward II's grandfather Henry III (see end of post for link).  Sarah tells us all about Henry's queen Eleanor of Provence and her relationship with her children and grandchildren, including the future Edward II.

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Eleanor of Provence was not a faultless woman. In her time as queen she made many enemies, both within her court and among her subjects. She was skilled politically, but often advanced her Savoyard relatives ahead of those who were of English birth, which of course did nothing for her own reputation. The king, Henry III, advanced his own Lusignan relatives, causing further rifts within royal circles. During the struggles of the 1260s, the Simon de Montfort led barons of England called for all those of foreign birth to be expelled from the country, so angry were they with Eleanor’s influence (Simon de Montfort himself was, of course, not of English birth, but that didn’t seem to matter). The monarchy’s survival, for over a year, hung in the balance.

Putting political issues to one side, Eleanor and Henry were an extraordinarily close couple, loyal to one another throughout their marriage. Eleanor raised troops for Henry in 1264 following his defeat at Lewes, stood side by side with him throughout the struggles he faced during his reign, and was thought to have been at his bedside as he died (Howell, p.253). There was not a whiff of sexual scandal during their marriage, no mistresses, no lovers. Eleanor and Henry had five children together, and through them over twenty grandchildren.

Eleanor’s family was important to her, and this is demonstrated by her actions with regards to them. I’ve briefly spoken of her commitment to her husband so will say no more of that; today, I want to discuss Eleanor’s relationships with her children and grandchildren.

Of her five children, the relationship which is best documented is that between Eleanor and her eldest son, Edward, who was born at the Palace of Westminster in June 1239 and baptised at the abbey a few days later (Morris, p.5). Edward was very quickly installed with his nurses at Windsor Castle. His parents spent over £10,000 making improvements to Windsor, which of course means Edward was raised with the best of everything; stone chambers, fireplaces, tiled floors, beautifully painted walls and hygienic privy chambers- having enough hygienic toilet facilities, as well as their maintenance and condition, was important to Henry III (Wade-Labarge, p.25). Edward ate from a silver plate and wore clothes of the finest fabrics (Morris, p.6); he was raised in wonderful comfort. His education, too, was of the utmost importance. Though the exact details of what Edward learned are as yet unknown to us, we can safely assume he was taught to read, though not necessarily how to write (Morris, p.8), as well as languages, knightly skills, history and theology.

Eleanor, as queen, was required to move around the country with Henry III, so she did not spend every day with her children. She did visit Windsor often, however; the queen on average spent more than half of the year, every year, with her children at Windsor Castle (Morris, p.6). This was, by the standards of the time, a lot of time to be spent with one’s children. King Henry, too, spent a lot of time at Windsor with his family, though not quite as much as Queen Eleanor. Edward was joined quickly by three siblings; Margaret was born in 1240, Beatrice in 1242 and Edmund in 1245. All of the royal children were raised at Windsor with the help of nurses, guardians and the queen’s relatives from Savoy.

As the children grew older the love of their mother and the concern for their welfare remained constant. One incident that demonstrates the depth of the love held by Queen Eleanor is that of when Edward fell sick while travelling with his parents in 1246. The family had travelled to Beaulieu for the rededication of the royal Cistercian foundation, and while there, Edward suddenly became extremely ill - so ill that it was thought too dangerous to move him. The queen decided quickly that Edward was to stay at Beaulieu and that she would stay with him (Howell, p.101). A woman staying within the walls of a Cistercian abbey was unheard of as it seriously breached their rules, but Eleanor would not move. She stayed with her son for three weeks, refusing to leave him in the care of doctors, nurses or monks, risking her own health at a time when medicine was not what it is now.

Eleanor showed a similar display of concern, it could be argued, soon after Edward married Eleanor of Castile in November 1254. Eleanor of Castile had almost certainly fallen pregnant soon after her marriage and given birth to a stillborn daughter the following May (Morris, p.22); a heartbreaking incident, which had stirred King Henry and Queen Eleanor into wanting to protect the thirteen year old princess. Henry III requested that Lord Edward travel to his lands in Ireland, while his wife was to be received by the king and queen in England; the separation would obviously mean that Eleanor would not fall pregnant again soon, protecting her health and safety from the dangers of being pregnant so young. Edward defied his parents and travelled to England instead, arriving home six weeks after Eleanor of Castile (Morris, p.23). It would seem the older couple had the younger couple’s interests at heart, though were probably thought of by the young prince as interfering. The worry about a daughter in law dying in childbirth became a tragic reality when in 1274 Aveline, the wife of Eleanor’s second son Edmund, died while giving birth to twins.

In 1253 a daughter had been born to Eleanor and Henry after an eight-year period with no children. Little Katherine was not in good health; she is thought to have been born deaf and mute, as Matthew Paris described her as muta et inutilis, and she was not strong like her siblings. She died in her fourth year, in November 1256 (Howell, p.101). The king and queen were devastated, both so deeply grieved their little daughter that they became sick, the queen dangerously so (Howell, p.101). Masses were said daily for the little girl’s soul, a demonstration of the love and affection felt by the king and queen for their lost daughter. She had not been betrothed or served any political purpose yet; she was grieved so deeply simply because she was loved. Henry and Eleanor loved all of their children. Messengers were frequently travelling between their courts and the new courts of their older, married daughters; excellent marriages were made for the four surviving children, with the girls not endangered by early consummation; and though they were grown and left home Eleanor’s daughters visited often.

Eleanor of Provence was widowed in November 1272 and entered into a new phase of her life as queen dowager. Just before he died Henry III placed Windsor Castle in Eleanor’s custody, and it was to here that she moved (Howell, p.288). Just like her children, the households of some of Eleanor’s grandchildren were established at Windsor- Edward I’s son Henry and daughter Eleanor were both there. When she was awarded her dower lands by her son the following summer, Eleanor established herself a household at her palace at Guildford, her grandchildren with her.

It is with her grandson Henry, named after her husband, that Eleanor seems to have had the closest relationship. He was a sick child, and as she had cared for his father in 1246 she cared for his son. Physicians that were held in high esteem by the dowager queen were appointed to care for young Henry (Howell, p.289) and on one occasion he was bathed in a gallon of wine, at a cost of 4d, as the process was thought to be strengthening (Wade-Labarge, p.26). Henry died aged just six years old in October 1274, shortly after his parents had returned from crusade and had been crowned king and queen. He died at his grandmother’s palace at Guildford (Howell, p.289); presumably, she had been with him as he died too, just as she was likely with his grandfather. It was at the dowager queen’s insistence that a gift of £10 a year for Henry’s nurse was made permanent, and it was she that founded a Dominican priory at Guildford in his memory (Howell, p.289). These are the actions of a woman who is clearly grieving for someone beloved. The following year both of Queen Eleanor’s daughters died, too; the chronicler Thomas Wykes commented that the grief of losing her daughters was only comforted by the joy Eleanor found in their children.

After Eleanor left Windsor for Guildford, she was frequently visited by her grandchildren, and more were still to come. In April 1284 Edward of Caernarfon was born, who quickly became heir apparent when another of the dowager queen’s grandchildren, ten year old Alfonso, died later that year. By this time Eleanor was making preparations to enter the convent at Amesbury for the rest of her days, though she still took an active interest in the well-being of her grandchildren. Edward I was advised by his mother not to take young Edward north, for the fear of the cold weather making him ill.

Eleanor entered Amesbury in July 1286, shortly after her two granddaughters were veiled; Eleanor of Brittany was the ten year old daughter of Beatrice, and Mary the six year old daughter of Edward (Howell, p.300). The girls took their vows with other girls from noble families in grand ceremonies in March and August of 1285 respectively. Eleanor is often accused at this point of acting selfishly; the installation of her granddaughters would of course make life at Amesbury more appealing. However, the entry of girls into convents was regarded as an act of great piety, and Eleanor may have been thinking of the well-being of her family’s souls as well as her own interests. The younger Eleanor and Mary were protected from the danger of dying in childbirth, they were protected by God as nuns and their lives were not as restricted as one might think, as both girls visited their families at the royal courts and Mary took part in several pilgrimages. Eleanor of Brittany eventually became an abbess, and both women lived long lives in good health.

Eleanor of Provence is an often maligned queen and was politically unpopular in her time. She was, however, a loving and committed wife, mother and grandmother, and while this was not politically important in the grand scheme of things, it gave her immediate descendants a love and security that is often thought to be missing in medieval families. Eleanor and Henry, and their children and grandchildren, experienced love, trust and a familial closeness that would be difficult to replicate in their times.

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Bibliography:

Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth Century England, Blackwell Publishing, 2001

Margaret Wade-Labarge, Mistress, Maids and Men: Baronial Life in the Thirteenth Century, Phoenix Books, 2003 (Originally published in 1965)

Michael Prestwich, Edward I, Yale English Monarchs Series, 1997 (Originally published in 1988)

Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain, Hutchinson/Random House, 2008

Seymour Phillips, Edward II, Yale English Monarchs Series, 2010

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Sarah is currently studying for a Bachelor of History with Latin degree at an English university and regularly blogs at her site: http://henryofwinchester.wordpress.com/

7 July 1307: Death Of Edward I

Edward I, king of England and lord of Ireland, died at Burgh-by-Sands near Carlisle on 7 July 1307.  He was sixty-eight and on his way to yet another campaign in Scotland, this one against Robert Bruce, who had had himself crowned king of Scots at Scone the previous year.  Around the middle of the afternoon on the feast day of the Translation of St Thomas Becket, and with Scotland in sight across the Solway Firth, King Edward raised himself from his bed to take some food, and fell back dead in his attendants' arms.

Edward's twenty-three-year-old son Lord Edward (of Caernarfon), duke of Aquitaine, prince of Wales, earl of Chester and count of Ponthieu, was in or near London at the time of his father's death, nearly 320 miles away, and probably heard the news on the 11th.  His first act as king almost certainly was to recall his beloved Piers Gaveston from exile on the continent, and the two men were reunited in southern Scotland a few weeks later.

As I've already written a post about Edward II's accession, today I'll take a look at the wider stage, at who was reigning in other European countries in 1307.  The king of France was Philip IV 'le Bel', then in his late thirties, Edward II's future father-in-law and second cousin (their paternal grandmothers Marguerite and Eleanor of Provence, queens of France and England, were sisters).  On Friday 13 October 1307, Philip would arrest the Knights Templar in France, and the new king of England would do his best to protect them, refuse to believe the charges against them and arrest them in his own country, even after receiving the papal bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae on 14 December.

The king of Germany and duke of Austria in 1307 was Albrecht or Albert von Hapsburg, then in his early fifties, who would be murdered on 1 May 1308 by his nephew Johann of Swabia.  Albrecht was one of the many children of Rudolf I, king of Germany (died 1291), and the brother of Hartmann, who was once betrothed to Edward II's sister Joan of Acre and who drowned in 1281.  Another European king was Edward I's first cousin (his mother was Beatrice of Provence) Charles, king of Naples and Albania, prince of Salerno, Achaea and Taranto, then also in his fifties, who died on 5 May 1309.

The king of Castile was twenty-one-year-old Fernando IV, Edward II's first cousin once removed via Edward's mother Eleanor of Castile.  According to a contemporary English newsletter, a Castilian cardinal named Pedro, visiting England in late 1306, announced that the Castilian magnates had decided that if Fernando died without a son, Edward of Caernarfon should succeed him as king.  Fernando IV and Constanca of Portugal's son Alfonso XI was finally born in 1311, nine years after their marriage.  The king of Aragon in 1307 was forty-year-old Jaime II, successor of his brother Alfonso III (died 1291), who had long been betrothed to Edward II's sister Eleanor but died before the wedding took place.  In later years, Edward and Jaime, or rather their representatives, took part in various negotiations for marriages between members of their families - Edward's half-brother Thomas of Botherton to Jaime's daughter, Edward's son Edward of Windsor to another of Jaime's daughters, Edward's daughter Joan of the Tower to Jaime's grandson the future Pedro IV - but ultimately nothing came of them.  The king of Portugal in 1307 was Diniz, whose mother Beatriz of Castile was Edward II's first cousin.  Diniz also offered his daughter Maria in marriage to Edward's son Edward of Windsor in the 1320s, but as the latter was then betrothed to Leonor of Castile, daughter of Fernando IV and sister of Alfonso XI, Edward had to refuse.  (Maria of Portugal later married Alfonso XI of Castile, who had previously been betrothed to Edward II's daughter Eleanor of Woodstock; Leonor of Castile married Jaime II's son Alfonso IV of Aragon, father of Pedro IV by a previous marriage.  Alfonso XI and Maria of Portugal's son Pedro I 'the Cruel' was due to marry Edward III's daughter Joan in 1348, but she died of plague on the way; Pedro's daughters with Maria de Padilla, Constanza and Isabel, later married Joan's brothers John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley.  Alfonso XI of Castile and his queen Maria of Portugal were first cousins on both sides of the family, his father Fernando IV and her mother Isabel of Castile being brother and sister, and his mother Constanca of Portugal and her father King Diniz being brother and sister.  Diniz's wife Elizabeth of Aragon, canonised in 1625, was the sister of Jaime II.  It's all so confusing.)

Other rulers in 1307 were: Duke Arthur II of Brittany, Edward II's first cousin; Duke John II of Brabant, Edward's brother-in-law; Andronikos II Palaiologos, Byzantine Emperor, whose second wife Eirene (born Yolande of Montferrat) was Edward II's first cousin once removed; Henri de Lusignan, king of Cyprus and titular king of Jerusalem; Károly or Charles I, king of Hungary, whose sister Clemence married Edward II's brother-in-law Louis X of France in 1315; Hugues V, duke of Burgundy and titular king of Thessalonica, whose sister Marguerite was Louis X's first wife; Leo III, king of Armenia, to whom Edward wrote shortly after his accession and who was assassinated in November 1307; Oljeitu or Öljaitü, also called Mohammed Khadobandeh, great-great-great-grandson of Genghis Khan and the ruler of the Il-Khanate from 1304 to his death in 1316.  The Il-Khanate was one of the four khanates of the Mongol Empire, and covered modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and western Pakistan. Edward II wrote to Oljeitu twice in October and November 1307.

Friday Facts

More random Edward II stuff :-)  Today, 5 July, is the anniversary of the birth of Edward and Isabella's youngest child Joan of the Tower in 1321, incidentally.

- According to the Westminster chronicle Flores Historiarum, Edward II often broke his word, "forgetting in the morning what he had said in the evening."  This is somewhat reminiscent of what the  author of the Song of Lewes said about his father Edward I: that he was inconstant and unreliable, making promises but forgetting them.

- After the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314, a member of Edward's own household was arrested for speaking "irreverent and indecent words" against the king: Robert le Messager commented that nobody could expect the king to win a battle when he spent all his time idling, digging and ditching, when he should be hearing Mass.

- For their wedding in Boulogne on 25 January 1308, Isabella wore a red mantle lined with yellow sindon, over a gown and tunic in blue and gold; fifty years later, she would be buried with the mantle. Edward wore a satin surcoat and cloak embroidered with jewels, and both wore crowns glittering with precious stones.

- Edward's cousin King Fernando IV of Castile asked him in the autumn of 1311 to donate money for a crusade.  Edward politely refused, informing Fernando that "he has been so engaged with the war in Scotland and other matters that he is unable to accede to this request."

- On 9 October 1325, Edward gave ten shillings to Jack the Trumpeter of Dover, who had bought forty-seven caged goldfinches for Edward to give to his niece Eleanor Despenser, and also paid his clerk Will of Dunstable to look after the birds until Eleanor took possession of them.

- At least four fourteenth-century chronicles claim that Edward bribed Pope Clement V in 1313 to appoint his (Edward's) friend Walter Reynolds, bishop of Worcester, as archbishop of Canterbury.  The Flores and Vita Edwardi Secundi both say that "a large amount of gold and silver" passed between king and pope.  Bridlington puts the amount at 32,000 marks, Meaux at a mere 1000 marks.

- In May 1317, Edward gave twenty ells of striped cloth to William de Horsham and three others for "singing before the king in his chamber," and two pounds to his violist Richard to help support his wife and children.

 
- Edward (without his queen, as Isabella was visiting France) spent the end of March and beginning of April 1314 at St Albans Abbey, and made an offering of a gold cross decorated with precious stones, which contained relics of St Alban. The St Albans chronicler 'Trokelowe' comments approvingly on his munificence to the abbey.

- The Scalacronica of the 1360s says that Edward "amused himself with ships, among mariners, and in other irregular occupation unworthy of his station, and scarcely concerned himself with other honour or profit, whereby he lost the affection of his people."

- No less a person than Pope John XXII condemned Edward's "childish frivolities."

- In the spring of 1317, the king asked Tupholme Abbey to take in a former servant of his and give him "sustenance in their house for term of life," but they replied "although they would gladly obey him in all things, their very small income is already heavily burdened with the charge of finding a chaplain to say mass for the soul of Sir Piers Gaveston, formerly earl of Cornwall." They humbly asked Edward to understand and forgive their "trespasses." Evidently Edward did, and sent his servant, Robert de Crouland, to Reading Abbey instead.

Book Review: Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II

Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II by Paul Doherty (London: Constable and Robinson, 2003), 266 pages.  See also here for my review of one of Doherty's novels featuring Edward II and Isabella.

Paul Doherty is a very popular and prolific writer of historical mystery novels who gained a doctorate from the University of Oxford for his thesis on Isabella of France in 1977.  His 2003 Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II purports to be a work of non-fiction.  Yet after the prologue, the very first paragraph of the book is this:

"Isabella was a fairy-tale princess.  The chroniclers attest to her loveliness, to her beautiful blonde hair, which she inherited from her father, Philip le Bel, and her slightly arabic [sic] features from her mother Johanna of Navarre.  We have no accurate pictorial representation of Isabella; however, her face and striking features are faithfully represented by a carved statue which decorates John of Eltham's tomb, her second son, in Westminster Abbey."

Oh dear, this is pure fiction.  1) Isabella was not a 'princess', as the daughters of kings were not called such until centuries later, and seriously, Dr Doherty, 'fairy-tale princess'?  2) Although some chroniclers of the fourteenth century do call Isabella beautiful, most of them do not 'attest to her loveliness' (!!) or indeed mention it in any way.  3) The colour of Isabella's hair is not stated anywhere; neither are her 'slightly arabic', written with a small 'a' for some weird reason, features, whatever 'slightly Arabic features' may be and how they came to exist in a woman, Joan of Navarre, who was of mostly French and northern European, partly Spanish, origin.  Surely Doherty can't be assuming that Isabella's father Philip IV's nickname in English, 'the Fair' in the sense of 'handsome', necessarily meant that he had fair hair?  It's extremely unusual for anyone's hair colour in the Middle Ages to be mentioned in a primary source, and Isabella's is no exception.  For all we know, her hair was black or red or chestnut brown, and by whose evaluation was it 'beautiful'?  4) I'm not sure why Doherty chose to spell the name of Isabella's mother Queen Joan (or Jeanne or Juana) in such a German or Nordic-looking way, 'Johanna'.  5) The tomb of John of Eltham (1316-1336) in Westminster Abbey is indeed decorated with statues of crowned people as 'weepers' and one of the female figures is certainly meant to be Isabella, but there is no way of knowing which one as the carved figures are not identified, and given that Doherty himself states correctly that we have no accurate pictorial representation of Isabella, how on earth can he know that any of the statues 'faithfully' depict what she really looked like?  Which statue does he think must be hers, and why?  What is he comparing it to?  Was sculpture of the mid-fourteenth century really capable of 'faithfully' depicting what a person looked like?  6) Lastly, the awkward writing evident in this passage, which makes it appear as though Isabella's second son was 'John of Eltham's tomb', sets the tone for the whole book.

At least this first paragraph makes it evident what the reader is getting in Strange Death: pure inventions stated as though they're certain fact, awkward writing, a cavalier disregard for historical accuracy.  It is apparent from the very first sentence that this is not a book anyone who knows anything about the early fourteenth century can take seriously.  I find it odd that Paul Doherty got his doctorate from Oxford about Isabella, yet makes the most remarkably basic errors about her family and Edward II's throughout the book: Louis IX was the grandfather of Isabella's father Philip IV, not his great-grandfather (p. 12); her brother Charles IV succeeded to the throne in January 1322, and the king of France in the summer of 1320 was their elder brother Philip V, not Charles (p. 64); her mother Queen Joan died in 1305, not 1302 (p. 16); Edward II's sister Elizabeth did not marry Count Floris I of Holland (who died in 1061!) but John I, son of Floris V; Edward's sister Eleanor married Count Henri III of Bar, not 'the duke of Bar', a title which did not yet exist (pp. 13-14).  Probably the worst mistake is Doherty correctly calling Edward II's niece and Piers Gaveston's wife Margaret de Clare on p. 39, then inexplicably changing her name to 'Joan of Gloucester' on p. 50.  Aaaggghhh!  I really don't understand how anyone with a doctorate on Queen Isabella doesn't know which of her brothers was king of France in 1320, or which year her mother the queen of France and Navarre died, or the correct name of her niece by marriage, one of the greatest English noblewomen of the era.  True, anyone, no matter how knowledgeable, can slip up on names, titles or dates now and then.  But this book is full of such mistakes.

There are other sloppy little errors which should have been picked up by Doherty himself or an editor: e.g., Isabella is said to have been born in 1296 (pp. 11, 13, 16, 100), yet is "the nine-year-old Princess [sic]" in 1303 (p. 18) and said to have been twenty-three in 1321 (p. 66).  So was she was born in 1294, 1296 or 1298?  I suppose this doesn't matter greatly, or affect the narrative, but such irritating mistakes don't give the book the feel of a quality product which the reader can trust.  The whole thing feels rushed, and in fact the book often reads like a first draft, with awkward sentence constructions such as "New favourites might emerge?" (in which universe is that an English sentence?) and "During those first few months at Paris" - months at Paris, really?  Contradictions abound: Doherty claims several times that Edward II "was in no hurry to...enter into connubial bliss", but then we are told that "Edward was seemingly captivated when he eventually met his young bride" and it is alleged that he "neglected the war in Scotland because of his desire to marry the beautiful Princess [sic] as soon as possible" (p. 44).  On the next two pages, we get the story of Edward and Isabella's coronation banquet and the statement that Edward "chose the occasion to publicly insult both his bride and his guests by sitting with the Gascon [Piers Gaveston] rather than his Queen."  So Edward was unwilling to marry Isabella, then suddenly desperate to marry her and captivated by her, but then belittled her in public by behaving as though Piers Gaveston was his consort instead?  The 'source' cited for Edward's supposed desire to marry Isabella as soon as possible is Agnes Strickland's nineteenth-century Lives of the Queens of England.  Hmmm.  Edward II was a complex and often contradictory man, but I think I'm on pretty safe ground by saying that he is most unlikely to have been 'captivated' by a pre-pubescent girl.  (Even if she did have 'beautiful blonde hair'.  Allegedly.)

There are some good parts in Strange Death which remind me that Paul Doherty really is a fourteenth-century scholar when he puts his mind to it: there is a long and excellent discussion of Edward II's possible fate in and after 1327 and of the men who temporarily freed him from Berkeley that year, and Doherty has discovered a link between an associate of the Dunheved gang and Edward II's cousin Henry of Lancaster, which opens up some fascinating possibilities into who may have been secretly aiding and financing the gang in 1327.  I'm also glad to see that he recognises the tall tale that 'Edward abandoned Isabella in May 1312 when she was pregnant' for the nonsense it is, and that unlike in his 'factual novel' Death of a King acknowledges that Edward II was indeed the father of Edward III and Isabella's other children.  But overall, Strange Death is a disappointing, error-strewn work from a man whose doctoral thesis on Isabella is (for the most part) superb scholarship.  I think it's a shame that such an excellent historian chose to go down the route of wild inaccuracy and sexing up of a story which is already fascinating and dramatic enough.  For instance, Doherty devotes three pages to a salacious discussion of Edward, Isabella, Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare's sex lives, in which we are informed that "[w]ife-swapping is not a phenomenon solely reserved for the twentieth or twenty-first centuries" and are asked the pointless rhetorical question "Did de Spencer [i.e. Hugh Despenser], who, after Boroughbridge, was given virtually everything else, demand Isabella as well?"  (No. He didn't. See here for my take on this.)

As is often the case with biographers, Doherty overstates his subject's importance and involvement in events, so that Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger's plotting against the Marcher lords who had attacked Despenser and his father's lands in 1321 becomes "Edward and Isabella's strategy" (p. 70), and when Isabella remains in Paris in 1325/26 at her brother Charles IV's court and refuses to return to Edward, this somehow becomes "Isabella set up an alternative government in Paris" (p. 83).  Doherty claims (p. 79) that after Edward and the Despensers' victory over the Marchers/Contrariants in 1322, "[n]obles like Henry de Beaumont were being forced to take great oaths on the gospels, 'To live and die with the de Spencers'.  Isabella was offered such an oath but refused to take it."  For this extraordinary statement that the queen of England was asked to take an oath of loyalty to a nobleman, Doherty cites Le Livere de Reis de Brittanie, ed. John Glover, p. 354.  What the Livere actually says is "The same year [1326], in the month of February, Sir Henry de Beaumont was arrested by the king, and sent under guard to Kenilworth Castle, because he would not swear to the king and Sir Hugh Despenser the son, to be of their part to live and die.  Wherefore the king caused possession to be taken of all his lands and possessions, which he had previously given to his sister, the lady Isabel de Beaumont."  (Usually known nowadays as Isabella Vescy, her married name; Henry Beaumont's imprisonment at Kenilworth is confirmed by an entry on the Close Roll of August 1326.)  I'm utterly baffled as to how Doherty can possibly have interpreted this passage as Queen Isabella being asked to take a vow to the Despensers and refusing, when clearly she is not mentioned at all, and in any case she was in France, not England, in February 1326, when Beaumont was arrested.  As the Livere has been translated into English, it can't be a case of Doherty misunderstanding the French original.  Just bizarre.

But then, Doherty isn't averse to misquoting or exaggerating primary sources to make them say what he wants them to say.  He claims (p. 80) that in 1324 "[e]ven greater cruelty was to come: the Queen's young children were removed from her and entrusted to Eleanor de Spencer, Hugh the Younger's wife [and Edward II's niece], and another court favourite, Isabella Hastings."  It is entirely typical of the book that Doherty doesn't appear to realise that Isabella Hastings was not merely 'another court favourite' but Hugh the Younger's sister, which would have strengthened his argument.  I've dealt with the erroneous notion that Edward II cruelly 'removed' Isabella's children from her in September 1324 at length in a recent post, and will just point out here that the source Doherty cites for the story - which he himself invented in his 1977 thesis - is Edward II's Wardrobe account for his sixteenth regnal year, 8 July 1322 to 7 July 1323, and thus cannot possibly refer to the king's 'removing' his children to punish the queen in or shortly after September 1324, despite the notion being repeated as 'fact' by just about every writer on the subject since Doherty invented the story several decades ago.  Quack quack oops.

On p. 74 we get the statement, for which no source is cited in the endnotes, that after Edward II's executions of twenty or twenty-two of the baronial rebels in March/April 1322 and the imprisonment of a few dozen other rebels, and their wives and children in some cases (this period is emotively described by Doherty as a "reign of terror," "blood-letting," "these horrors" and "dreadful events"), "[e]ven the Pope intervened and begged the King to show some restraint."  I have scoured the Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, Foedera 1307-1327 and the National Archives for 1322 and 1323, and cannot find any letter where John XXII says anything even remotely along these lines.  The pope, in fact, wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury in April 1322 "[c]ongratulating him on the news contained in his letters of the king's success [over the Contrariants], and the return of peace to the realm, and exhorting him to watch over the good estate of the realm, and to persuade the king to ascribe the victory to God."  Shortly afterwards, far from showing any sympathy to the men whom Edward had executed and imprisoned, John XXII asked the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of Winchester and Ely to "publish the sentence of excommunication promulgated by the pope against those nobles and magnates who attack the king and his realm."  The bishop of Lincoln was sent a "[m]andate to desist from and correct his offences in encouraging and assisting the rebels, and to endeavour to appease the king."  [Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 448; The National Archives SC 7/25/14.]  You can't just make up a statement claiming that John XXII was opposed to and horrified by Edward II's actions in 1322 when his letters demonstrate the opposite to be true.  How many people besides me are ever going to dig through John XXII's letters of 1322 and find out what he really said to Edward?  Pretty well no-one; readers will simply take Doherty's statement at face value, even though it doesn't bear even a passing acquaintance with actual historical fact.

Doherty says (p. 81) that "[t]he Pope also wrote to de Spencer complaining at the harsh treatment of Edward's Queen and sharply upbraided him for his lack of good government."  For this statement, he cites five pages (pp. 461, 468, 469, 475, 477) in the Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341.  The first three of these pages merely ask Hugh Despenser the Younger to intercede with Edward II on behalf of two English bishops (Adam Orleton of Hereford and Willian Airmyn of Norwich), and urge him to continue to promote peace between France and England to the king.  In March 1326, John XXII told Despenser that "his participation in the king's government is given by the queen as a reason for her being unable, without personal danger, to return to the king.  The pope suggests that Hugh should retire, and should devise methods by which the queen may no longer fear to return to her husband.  The pope has sent the above-named nuncios [the archbishop of Vienne and bishop of Orange], and begs Hugh to listen to their advice."  The pope also wrote to Hugh "Persuading him, instead of causing grievances to prelates and princes, to abstain from provoking enmities, and to study to promote friendships."  A few weeks later, however, John XXII wrote to commend Despenser's "good offices" in "the promotion of concord between the king and queen."  Describing the pope's letters as his "complaining at the harsh treatment of Edward's Queen" is not really accurate.  John XXII states Isabella's reason for her reluctance to return to Edward, her fear of Hugh Despenser, neutrally; although he suggests that Despenser should retire from court, he doesn't actually say whether he believes the queen has good reason to fear him or not, let alone 'complain' about her alleged 'harsh treatment'.  John XXII sent dozens of letters to Edward II and Hugh Despenser between September 1324 and the king's downfall two years later, none of which complain about their treatment of the queen, or even mention it.  Doherty is, however, determined to see harsh treatment of Isabella everywhere, such as in 1308 when she was newly married (pp. 47-8).  She arrived in England on 7 February 1308 and was granted the revenues of Edward's northern French county of Ponthieu (not, as Doherty states, merely "certain estates" there) on 14 May, which hardly seems an undue or unusual delay by fourteenth-century standards, especially as the lands normally held by the queen of England were still in the hands of the dowager queen Marguerite (Isabella's aunt and Edward's stepmother) and alternative arrangements had to be made.  But of course, Doherty has to interpret this slight delay as a deliberate insult to the twelve-year-old Isabella and Edward treating her 'harshly', and ties it in to Edward's relationship with Piers Gaveston by stating, wrongly, that Isabella only received lands and income after Gaveston's departure into exile in late June 1308.

Another example of how basically everything Edward II and Piers Gaveston did is wrong in Paul Doherty's eyes - apart from Alison Weir's 2005 biography of Isabella, I've never seen a book so determined to put a negative spin on absolutely everything Edward II ever did or didn't do - comes on pp. 44-45, talking about the noblemen and women who greeted the king and queen on their arrival in Dover on 7 February 1308 after marrying in Boulogne: "Gaveston must have taken great pleasure in issuing the summons himself, deliberately bringing them to Dover at least four days before the new bride arrived, an uncomfortable sojourn in a bleak channel port in the dead of winter."  But of course this was done deliberately and maliciously!  There's no other logical explanation!  As we all know, international travel in the middle of winter 700 years ago was not even remotely dependent on the weather or how rough the sea was on a given day and could be reliably planned down to the hour, nay, minute.  Edward II no doubt texted Piers with all his travel details from his spiffy new iPhone, and Piers cackled to himself and thought "Haha, it would be great fun to bring a bunch of nobles to Dover a few days too early on purpose and watch them getting colder and angrier when the king and queen don't appear!  What jolly japes!".  And clearly they all had to hang around uncomfortably at the docks of the 'bleak channel port' for days on end, because, yanno, it's not like there was a big splendid royal castle in Dover where they could have stayed or anything.  Good grief.

Doherty too often infers evidence of absence from absence of evidence: he complains that Edward of Caernarfon never sent letters or gifts to Isabella before their wedding and thus can't have been interested in her (p. 17).  Maybe he did and they just don't survive, like the overwhelming majority of letters Edward sent before his accession to the throne.  Then again, theirs was a marriage arranged at the highest level to make peace between two nations; were letters and gifts usually exchanged in such situations?  Before Isabella, Edward was betrothed to Philippa of Flanders, and no letters from him to her survive either.  It means precisely nothing.  With regard to Edward's confinement in 1327 after his deposition, Doherty follows the later story by the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker that Edward was tormented and abused, and claims (p. 120) that "no real evidence exists that Edward was not ill-treated."  Evidence to prove a negative?  Doherty also claims that for the last twenty-eight years of Isabella's life after 1330, apart from donations to charity on the anniversary of Edward II's supposed death on 21 September 1327, "the record is silent on any memory of or regret for Edward of Caernarvon" and "there is little sign that [Isabella] felt any compassion for [Edward's] remains or for his soul."

Isabella mostly disappears into obscurity after 1330 and only her household accounts for the last few months of her life in 1357/58 happen to survive, which do mention Edward II's death on 21 September and the charitable donations made on that day, which were also made on the anniversaries of the deaths of Isabella's son John of Eltham (d. 1336) and her parents (though not, however, on the anniversary of her other dead child, Eleanor of Woodstock, who died in 1355).  For goodness' sake, it's not as though we have a full record of the last twenty-eight years of Isabella's life, complete with thousands of letters and diaries and who knows what else, in which Edward II is entirely ignored.  Doherty misses or ignores the fact that Isabella set up and endowed a chantry for her husband's soul in Coventry in 1342.  He also ignores the fact that her extant accounts of 1357/58 don't mention Roger Mortimer at all.  One might as well argue that Isabella never gave Roger Mortimer a second thought after 1330, which makes as much sense and is backed up by as much (or as little) evidence as Doherty's claim that Isabella felt nothing for her husband and never thought of him again.  I'm not arguing that is indeed the case, of course, merely pointing out that we're on dangerous ground declaring what people must have felt and thought when the evidence is simply not there.

Paul Doherty's novels where Isabella is a character always feature a scene where she is buried in the Greyfriars church in London next to Roger Mortimer, a romantic but false notion which Doherty must know is not true, but does his best to hint at it in Strange Death by suggesting that Isabella chose this church for her burial because it "had received the hanged corpse of her beloved Roger Mortimer."  Isabella died on 22 August 1358 and her funeral took place on 27 November that year, "almost on the anniversary" of Mortimer's execution on 29 November 1330, which Doherty seems to think is significant.  The funeral also took place almost on the anniversary of Hugh Despenser the Younger's execution on 24 November 1326, and almost on the anniversary of the death of Isabella's father Philip IV on 29 November 1314, and almost on the anniversary of the death of Edward II's mother Eleanor of Castile on 28 November 1290, for what it's worth.  Anyway, it wasn't Isabella herself but her son Edward III who decided when her funeral would take place, so I'm really not sure what the significance of the date is meant to be, unless we're supposed to imagine that Isabella begged the king on her death-bed "Bury me almost but not quite on the anniversary of Roger Mortimer's execution!" for some inexplicable reason.  It was entirely usual for royal burials to take place several months after death: Edward I, died 7 July 1307, buried 27 October; Edward II, died (?) 21 September 1327, buried 20 December; Philippa of Hainault, died 15 August 1369, buried 9 January 1370.

Frankly, I'm really not a fan of Paul Doherty's take on Isabella: as in his novels featuring her, he focuses far too much on her 'loveliness' for my liking, but otherwise depicts her as a cruel manipulative bitch, pardon the language, and Doherty seems to think he knows what was going on inside her head with no evidence whatsoever.  So, he tells us that "Isabella had murder in her heart" regarding her husband in 1327, and that "[i]n her eyes Edward became a non-person" after his deposition, and that she was "secretly delighted" at the news of his death (pp. 108, 133, 141), as though these statements are certain fact communicated to him nearly 700 years later by mental telepathy.  He also makes the truly astonishing claim that at the council meeting held at Wallingford over Christmas 1326 which discussed Edward II's fate "there were calls for the King's execution, prompted by Isabella..." (p. 109).  No source is cited for this,which is not surprising, as of course there isn't one.  At Christmas 1326, Edward II, though imprisoned and powerless, was still the crowned and anointed king of England, and still Isabella's husband.  For her to have called publicly for his death, in front of much of the English episcopate and nobility, would have made her look monstrous.  Too often, Doherty states his own assumptions and suppositions as though they're fact: Isabella's near-capture by the Scots during Edward II's disastrous campaign of autumn 1322 is explained as (p. 75) "[t]he de Spencers decided once again to place the Queen in danger."  Actually Doherty's subsequent account of events makes it apparent that Isabella "had once again been caught up in the chaos."  If she was, by his own admission, 'caught up in the chaos' of the Scottish counter-invasion of the north of England, how had the Despensers deliberately placed her in danger, given that they had no way of knowing in advance that the Scottish army would invade?  It's a weird argument, especially as Hugh the Younger's wife Eleanor was with the queen and it's probably reasonable to assume that he wasn't trying to place her in danger, a fact Doherty conveniently fails to mention.  Doherty states (p. 64) that in June 1320, Edward II and Isabella went to France "to meet her brother Charles IV...the new French King" because Edward "was now determined to crush the baronial opposition and, once again, was looking for French assistance."  Nonsense.  Edward went to France in June 1320 to pay homage for his French possessions of Gascony and Ponthieu to Philip V, who had another eighteen months left to live before being succeeded by Charles IV.  Secondly, what baronial opposition in 1320 was Edward seeking to 'crush'?  That flared up again a few months later with the Despenser War of May 1321.  I boggle: does Doherty really not know which of Isabella's brothers was king of France in 1320?

To sum up, despite an interesting and informative discussion of Edward II's possible fate past 1327, this book is a rushed and often badly-written piece of work containing far too many assumptions stated as fact and numerous basic errors which would be bad enough in an undergraduate essay and are simply unforgivable given that Paul Doherty has an Oxford doctorate on the subject.  It might just about be worth reading for an absolute beginner who's looking for an easy introduction to Isabella of France, Edward II and their lives, but even then I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend it.

17 June 1239: Birth of King Edward I

Today, or rather the night of 17-18 June, marks the 774th anniversary of the birth of Edward II's father King Edward I at the palace of Westminster in 1239.  His father Henry III was then thirty-two and had been king of England since 1216, while his mother Eleanor of Provence was probably about sixteen.  Edward was followed by three siblings who lived into adulthood, as well as at least one other sister who died young: Margaret, born only fifteen months later in September 1240, who married King Alexander III of Scotland; Beatrice, born in June 1242, who married the future Duke John II of Brittany (she was never duchess, as her father-in-law outlived her); Edmund, born in January 1245, who was earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby and married Blanche of Artois, niece of Louis IX of France and dowager queen of Navarre; and Katherine, who was born much later than her siblings in November 1253, was deaf and mute, and sadly died at the age of three and a half, to the terrible grief of the king and queen (whatever the many faults of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, there is no doubt that they were loving, devoted parents).

Matthew Paris, the great chronicler of thirteenth-century England, reports that Queen Eleanor had been feared to be barren, which from my perspective is utterly ridiculous; she married Henry in January 1236 and became pregnant in September 1238 two years and nine months later, which hardly seems like an unusually long delay.  Also, Eleanor was extremely young when she married Henry, probably only twelve or thirteen.  As with their grandson Edward II, whose queen Isabella of France was only twelve at marriage and conceived their first child four years later, the delay in conceiving hardly seems a reason to criticise Eleanor for 'failing' to become pregnant sooner, or Henry for failing to do his royal duty or of being incapable (which, given that Eleanor became pregnant at least five times, he obviously wasn't).  As I've pointed out before, recent claims that Henry III was not Edward I's real father can be dismissed as fatuous nonsense.

Edward I was born as heir to the throne of England, and the citizens of London celebrated wildly, dancing in the streets in torchlight with drums and tambourines (as also happened in the city 73 years later when the future Edward III was born in November 1312 as heir to the throne, though not to the same extent when Edward II was born in April 1284, as his ten-year-old brother Alfonso was still alive).  According to Matthew Paris, when Henry III received gifts from his subjects congratulating him on his son's birth, he felt that some were not extravagant enough and sent them back demanding better ones, prompting the acerbic observation "God gave us this child, but the king is selling him to us!".  Henry named his first-born child after his favourite saint, Edward the Confessor, the king of England who died in January 1066.  The name Edward had, like most other Old English names, fallen almost entirely out of use since the Norman Conquest and must have sounded hopelessly old-fashioned by 1239.  Henry's choice, however, and the fact that the three kings of England between 1272 and 1377 were all called Edward, ensured the name's popularity for ever more both in England and in other European countries.  As the son of a thirteenth-century king, Edward of Westminster was not a 'prince', but was called Lord Edward, Dominus Edwardus in Latin or Monsire Edward in French, from birth.  He was christened at Westminster Abbey a few days after birth by the papal legate Otto, in the presence of, among others, his uncles Richard, earl of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester.

Edward I, 'Longshanks', stood six feet two inches tall, and had fair hair in childhood which darkened as he grew older and turned white when he was old.  From his father Henry III he inherited a drooping eyelid.  The author of the Song of Lewes (a battle Edward and his father and uncle Richard of Cornwall lost to his other uncle Simon de Montfort in 1264) famously likened him to a leopard, brave, proud and fierce, but inconstant and unreliable, making promises but forgetting them.  When he was fifteen, on 1 November 1254, Lord Edward married Infanta Doña Leonor de Castilla, a marriage which lasted for thirty-six years and produced at least fourteen children.  Edward I also had three children with his second queen, Marguerite of France, his first cousin once removed.  He succeeded his father as king of England in November 1272 and died at the age of sixty-eight on 7 July 1307, "fearless and war-like, in all things strenuous and illustrious" (Chronicle of Lanercost).

Other important anniversaries this week:
18 June 1318: Birth of Edward II and Isabella of France's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock, duchess of Gueldres.
19 June 1312: Execution, or murder, of Edward II's beloved Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall.
21 June 1377: Death at the age of sixty-four of Edward II and Isabella of France's son Edward III.
23 June 1324: Death probably in his mid-fifties of Edward II's kinsman Aymer de Valence, whose father William was Henry III's half-brother.

Edward of Caernarfon's Family in 1284

Edward II was born in Caernarfon on Tuesday 25 April 1284, St Mark's Day, and sixteen days after Easter Sunday.  His father Edward I was then almost forty-five (born 17 June 1239) and had been king of England for just under eleven and a half years, since the death of his father Henry III on 16 November 1272.  Of Edward I's three siblings who had survived childhood, only one was still alive in 1284: Edmund, earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, who was married to Blanche of Artois, niece of Louis IX of France and dowager queen of Navarre.  The couple had two sons, Edward of Caernarfon's first cousins Thomas and Henry, born in about 1278 and 1281 respectively.  Edmund lived until 5 June 1296, and Blanche until 2 May 1302.

Edward of Caernarfon's mother Queen Eleanor (d. 28 November 1290), born Infanta Doña Leonor de Castilla and known as Alianore in England, was probably forty-two at the time of her youngest child's birth (and it is virtually certain that Edward was indeed her youngest child; his alleged younger sisters Beatrice and Blanche, who appear in two of Alison Weir's books, are inventions of much later centuries).  Eleanor's brother Alfonso X of Castile died exactly three weeks before Eleanor gave birth to Edward, so presumably she spent the end of her pregnancy in mourning for him.  He was succeeded as king by his second son Sancho IV, who ignored the claims of his young nephews, the two sons of his dead older brother Fernando de la Cerda.  Of Queen Eleanor's fourteen siblings - who included the archbishops of Seville and Toledo - only two were still alive on 25 April 1284: her sister Berenguela, a nun at the abbey of Las Huelgas near Burgos, northern Spain, and the colourful Don Enrique, lord of Écija, Medellín, Dueñas and many others, senator of Rome, mercenary in North Africa and (later) regent of Castile for his great-nephew Fernando IV, who in 1284 was sixteen years into a thirty-year imprisonment in Naples.

Edward of Caernarfon was not born as heir to the English throne, as his ten-year-old brother Alfonso of Bayonne, named after their uncle and his godfather Alfonso X, was then still alive.  Alfonso died suddenly on 19 August 1284, thus sadly depriving England of its King Alfonso, and the four-month-old Edward then did become their father's heir, the sole survivor of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's four sons (John and Henry having already died in 1271 and 1274).  Three days before young Alfonso's sudden death, Edward of Caernarfon's second cousin and future father-in-law got married, probably in Paris.  Sixteen-year-old Philip, eldest surviving son of Philip III of France whom he succeeded as king the following year, married Joan (or Jeanne or Juana), probably then eleven years old and queen of Navarre and countess of Champagne and Brie in her own right.  Joan was the only surviving child of Edward of Caernarfon's aunt by marriage Blanche of Artois, above, and her first husband King Enrique I of Navarre.  Philip and Joan's marriage produced four children who lived into adulthood: Louis X, Philip V, Charles IV and Edward II's queen Isabella of France.

Five of Edward of Caernarfon's numerous (at least ten) older sisters were still alive at the time of his birth, and also survived into adulthood: Eleanor (born 1269), Joan (born 1272), Margaret (born 1275), Mary (born 1279) and Elizabeth (born 1282).  The only one of his grandparents alive in 1284 was his paternal grandmother Eleanor of Provence, dowager queen of England and widow of Henry III, who was probably in her early sixties at the time and lived until June 1291.  Edward's paternal aunts Margaret and Beatrice had been dead for nine years, but their husbands were still alive.  Alexander III, king of Scotland, widower of Margaret, was in his early forties, and died in an accident on 19 March 1286 when he rode his horse off a cliff during a fierce storm, leaving as his sole heir his little granddaughter Margaret of Norway, to whom Edward of Caernarfon was betrothed in 1289.  And finally, Duke John II of Brittany, widower of Edward I's sister Beatrice, lived to the ripe old age of sixty-six and died in a bizarre accident in November 1305: a wall fell on him and crushed him to death as he led the horse of the newly elected pope, Clement V, around Avignon.

Knaresborough Castle

I visited the lovely little Yorkshire town of Knaresborough again this week, and unlike the last time I was there in September 2008, managed not to delete all my photos of the place from my camera before I'd uploaded them to my laptop.  ;-)  Knaresborough was one of the many castles and lands given by Edward II to Piers Gaveston when the king made Piers earl of Cornwall on 6 August 1307.  The two men were there from 9 to 12 September 1307, and met there on 13 January 1312 after Piers' return from his third exile (and see also here for the aftermath of his return).

The ruins of the castle stand in a public park.  Both times I've been there, plenty of local inhabitants have been using the space, walking their dogs, sitting on the benches, paying their respects at the war memorial which is also there, kids playing football, and so on.  I really like the way it feels as though the castle is part of the community.

Beneath the castle: the River Nidd, railway bridge and Marigold Café and Boating.

A latrine shaft :-)

The railway bridge; the castle ruins are on a hill on the other side of it.

Two pics of the parish church of St John the Baptist in Knaresborough, which was first mentioned in 1114, so was already at least 200 years old in Edward II's time.