Philippa of Hainault's Romanticising

On 27 August 1326, Edward II's queen Isabella of France arranged the future marriage of her then thirteen-year-old son Edward of Windsor, who became King Edward III of England five months later, and Philippa, daughter of Willem, count of Hainault and Holland and Jeanne de Valois. Philippa was then about twelve, and was her future husband's second cousin: they were both great-grandchildren of Philip III of France and his first queen Isabel of Aragon. They married on or about 25 January 1328, the twentieth wedding anniversary of Edward's parents Edward II and Isabella, and were to be married for forty-one and a half years and to have a dozen children together.

Many years after 1326, Queen Philippa supposedly told the chronicler Jean Froissart that in August 1326, Edward of Windsor preferred her to her sisters and favoured her company over theirs, that she knew him better than her sisters, and that he chose her over them. Froissart says that he heard this romantic tale from directly from Philippa herself, "the good lady who was queen of England" (la bonne damme qui fu royne d'Engleterre), and it has often been repeated in fiction about Edward III and even in some non-fiction as though it is certainly true. What a lovely story, the future king of England, not even fourteen yet (Edward was born on 13 November 1312), spending time with a group of girls, and falling in love with one and choosing her over her sisters as his wife. Awwww. But does it have any basis in reality? Well, not really.

As I pointed out in a recent post, Froissart thought that Philippa was the second of Willem and Jeanne's four daughters, when in fact she was the third of four or the fourth of five. Philippa's older sisters Margareta and Johanna had been married for two and a half years by August 1326: their double wedding to Ludwig of Bavaria and Wilhelm of Jülich took place in Cologne in February 1324. The shadowy other older sister, Sibilla, assuming she had existed at all and was not merely a clerical error in an English document, is highly likely to have been long dead by this point, being only mentioned in 1319. In August 1326, there were two unmarried daughters of the count of Hainault and Holland who could be proposed as future brides for Edward of Windsor: Philippa and her younger sister Isabella, who, given that she later married a man born in the mid-1320s, is unlikely to have been more than a toddler in August 1326. For Edward to prefer the company of a girl close to his own age to that of a toddler or baby is hardly surprising. 

Assuming Froissart recorded Philippa's words correctly, the queen was romanticising later in life when she told him this tale. Either she had genuinely convinced herself that Edward had to choose between herself and her sisters and preferred her, or perhaps she felt she had to make up a pleasant story because the true circumstances surrounding her betrothal could hardly have been less romantic. Given the enormous affection that later grew between the couple and their highly successful marriage of four decades, it is of course not at all unlikely that they did indeed like each other very much and enjoy each other's company in 1326, but Edward of Windsor had no say whatsoever in whom he married, and their betrothal was a hard-headed political decision and had nothing at all to do with the whims and personal wishes of two adolescents. Philippa's betrothal was to do with the provision of ships and mercenaries to carry out an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, and with the overthrow of her father-in-law by her mother-in-law, and with her fiancé being used as a weapon against his own father. Edward of Windsor and Philippa of Hainault's betrothal was unlawful to boot: Edward at the time was officially engaged to King Alfonso XI of Castile's sister Leonor, and his legal guardian, his father Edward II, stood in firm opposition to the Hainault betrothal and did not consent to it. Philippa's wish to draw a veil over all of this some decades later, and to turn the circumstances around her betrothal into a sweet and pretty romantic fantasy, reveals something of her character. (Again, assuming that Jean Froissart didn't just make it up.) Philippa must have known that her eldest sister Margareta had been proposed as Edward's bride between 1318 and 1321, and that in 1326 she was 'next in line' among the Hainault daughters to marry and of far more suitable age for Edward than her much younger sister Isabella. Queen Philippa rewriting her own past wearing rose-coloured spectacles is all very nice and lovely, but it should be seen for what it is, not repeated as though it's definitely true.

Constanza of Castile, Queen of Castile and Leon, Duchess of Lancaster (2)

Second and final part of my post about Constanza; the first part is here.

Far from being ugly or ill-favoured, Constanza of Castile evidently was a very attractive woman: in 1371 at the time of her wedding to John of Gaunt, the author of the Anonimalle chronicle called her 'a very beautiful young lady' (une tresbele damosel). [Anonimalle Chronicle 1333 to 1381, ed. Galbraith, p. 69] The Spanish chronicler Pedro Lopez de Ayala called her mother Maria de Padilla very beautiful and intelligent, and stated that her father Pedro the Cruel was tall and muscular, with very fair hair and skin and blue eyes. So no, Anya Seton, Constanza wasn't some unattractive 'skinny, black-haired' smelly religious fanatic to be contrasted unfavourably to the amazing and fragrant beauty of her husband's mistress Katherine Swynford. (I find that quite revolting, and simply a blatant attempt to manipulate reader sympathy in Swynford's favour.) Judging by the descriptions of Constanza of Castile's father and her daughter Catalina of Lancaster, queen of Castile - Catalina was said to be extremely tall for a woman, and to be 'pink, white and blonde' - it is highly likely that Constanza was blonde-haired, fair-skinned and tall. Henry VIII's first wife Katherine of Aragon was the great-granddaughter of Constanza's daughter Catalina (and was named after her), and also had fair hair. It is often assumed that Queen Katherine must have inherited her fairness from her English ancestors, but as we see here, this is not necessarily the case.

On 9 February 1372, a few weeks after Constanza's arrival in England, her brother-in-law Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales and Aquitaine, duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester, Edward III's eldest son, hosted a ceremony to mark her official entry into London as queen of Castile. The Anonimalle chronicle says that numerous people attended, keen to 'see the beauty of the young lady.' The procession ended at the Savoy, the great London palace which Constanza's husband John of Gaunt had inherited from his first father-in-law Duke Henry, and where Constanza would now make her home, or rather one of her many homes. A few days before this ceremony, Gaunt had officially proclaimed himself king of Castile and Leon, and thereafter was known as monseignour d'Espaigne, 'my lord of Spain' or more accurately, 'my lord of Castile'. As the elder surviving child of King Pedro of Castile, Constanza was the rightful heir to the throne. Her father had been stabbed to death by his illegitimate half-brother Enrique of Trastamara in March 1369 when he was only thirty-four, and Trastamara now sat on the Castilian throne as King Enrique II, supported by Charles V of France. King Pedro is known to history as 'the Cruel', and although it is beyond all doubt that he was indeed capable of cruelty, not least in his appalling treatment of his unfortunate young wife Blanche of Bourbon, he wasn't as black as he was painted by the propaganda of his supplanters. One of Pedro's more attractive traits, to the modern mind if not to the fourteenth-century one, was his religious tolerance: he called himself king of the three faiths, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, had Muslim and Jewish soldiers in his armies, and hired Muslim craftsmen to design and build his great palace in Seville, the Alcazar. The facade of Pedro's building at the Alcazar declaring 'Only Allah is victorious' in Arabic can be seen to this day.

Pedro's building at the Alcazar in Seville (my photo)

John of Gaunt and Constanza of Castile had only one surviving child together: Catalina, born sometime before 31 March 1373, when her grandfather Edward III paid the messenger (none other than Katherine Swynford; see the first part of this post) who brought him news of her birth. Constanza also bore a son who died in infancy, and may have had miscarriages and stillbirths we don't know about. Catalina had three older half-siblings from her father's first marriage to Blanche of Lancaster: Philippa, queen of Portugal; Elizabeth, duchess of Exeter and countess of Huntingdon; and Henry, King Henry IV of England. Extant letters in John of Gaunt's Registers show that he referred to Catalina as nostre tres chere et tres ame file Kateryne, 'our very dear and beloved daughter Kateryne'. Constanza of Castile's younger sister Isabel married Gaunt's brother Edmund of Langley, earl of Cambridge and later duke of York, in 1372, and had three children, who shared all four grandparents with Catalina of Lancaster: Edward, duke of York, killed at Agincourt in 1415; Constance, named after her aunt (and godmother?) Constanza, who married Thomas Despenser, great-grandson of Hugh the Younger; and Richard, father of Richard, duke of York and grandfather of Edward IV and Richard III. If Isabel of Castile was tall and blonde like her father King Pedro and her niece Catalina of Lancaster, as seems entirely probable, this raises an interesting point about the appearance of her great-grandson the very tall Edward IV and from whom he inherited his height and assumed fairness, as Brian Wainwright points out. There is a possibility that Isabel's youngest child Richard was not the son of her husband Edmund of Langley but of Richard II's half-brother John Holland (who was married to Catalina of Lancaster's half-sister Elizabeth), but that's getting beyond the scope of this post, so I'll leave others to discuss it.

Also in the Alcazar, the baths of Constanza's mother Maria de Padilla.

The baths of Maria de Padilla.

John of Gaunt referred to Constanza in letters as nostre tres chiere et tres amee compaigne la Royne, dame Constance, 'our very dear and beloved companion the queen, Lady Constanza', though this is a conventional form of address and doesn't necessarily say very much about their relationship or his feelings for her. Throughout the 1370s he fathered four children with his mistress Katherine Swynford: John, Thomas, Henry and Joan Beaufort. On 15 May 1372, Gaunt wrote a letter confirming a grant of twenty marks a year to Swynford "for the good and pleasant service which she gives and has given to our very dear companion [Constanza]...and for the very great affection which our said companion has towards the said Katherine." [Gaunt's Register, vol. 1, pp. 169-70] So was the 'very great affection' for Katherine Swynford really Constanza's, or was John of Gaunt putting his own affection for her in the mouth of his wife, unwilling to acknowledge her as his mistress in a formal letter? I don't know, but relations between Constanza and Katherine were doubtless much more complex and interesting than one might assume.

Constanza lived through the Great Uprising of 1381, when a London mob destroyed her and Gaunt's home of the Savoy; Gaunt was deeply unpopular. By good fortune Gaunt was not in London at the time, or his head would surely have ended up at the end of a pike, but his fourteen-year-old son Henry was in the Tower of London and only evaded capture when the mob invaded the Tower because a quick-thinking servant hid him in a cupboard.

John of Gaunt never managed to dislodge Enrique of Trastamara or claim the kingdom of Castile in anything more than name, and finally gave up. Instead, a marriage was arranged between his and Constanza's daughter Catalina and the house of Trastamara, which united the two branches of the Castilian royal family. Enrique of Trastamara, King Enrique II, Constanza's half-uncle who had murdered her father Pedro in March 1369, died on 29 May 1379 and was succeeded by his son Juan I. Juan died at the age of only thirty-two on 9 October 1390, leaving his eleven-year-old son Enrique III as king. Enrique had married Catalina of Lancaster, who was five or six years his senior, a little over two years before. Catalina and Enrique's son King Juan II was the father of the great Isabel, queen of Castile in her own right, who married Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and the grandfather of Henry VIII's first wife Catherine of Aragon.

Constanza of Castile was married to John of Gaunt for twenty-two and a half years. For sure she wasn't the love of his life - he chose to be buried next to his first wife Blanche of Lancaster and married his third wife Katherine Swynford in 1396 after she had been his mistress for many years - but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were unhappy together or that Gaunt (or Swynford for that matter) despised his second wife. Constanza knew how things worked; she herself was born illegitimately to her father's mistress while his wife languished in the prison he had put her in, and wouldn't have expected a love marriage or her husband to be faithful to her. She died on 24 March 1394, aged forty or almost, and was buried at the Collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady in the Newarke at Leicester, which her husband's first father-in-law Duke Henry had founded and where he (Henry) was buried. The year 1394 took a heavy toll on the women of the English royal family: as well as Constanza, Richard II's queen Anne of Bohemia died at the age of only twenty-eight, and so did Mary de Bohun, wife of Constanza's stepson the future Henry IV and mother of Henry V, who was even younger. Personally, I think Constanza of Castile should be remembered as a heck of a lot more than merely the obstacle standing in the way of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford's Amazing Love Affair, who finally does the decent thing and removes herself from the path of True Love by dying and allowing them to finally fulfil their romantic destiny. She was the daughter, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law of kings, queen of Castile in her own right (even if she never sat on the throne because her uncle murdered her father) and was the great-great-great-grandmother of Mary I Tudor, queen of England, and the great-grandmother of the great Isabel la Catolica, also queen of Castile in her own right and one of the most powerful women of the European Middle Ages.

The Date of Birth and Siblings of Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England

King Edward III of England married Philippa of Hainault in York on 24 or 25 January 1328, just about exactly on his parents' twentieth wedding anniversary (Edward II and Isabella of France married in Boulogne on 25 January 1308). The young king was fifteen at the time of his wedding, born on 13 November 1312. Philippa's age and date of birth are unknown for certain; here's a post about it, and about her siblings and their birth order.

The first thing to note is that we do not know Philippa's date of birth for certain. The date often ascribed to her online, including on her Wiki page, is 24 June 1314, but this is merely the date of birth of her eldest sister Margareta wrongly assigned to Philippa coupled with an assumption (a reasonable one, admittedly) that she was born in 1314. I repeat: there is no record of Philippa of Hainault's exact, or even approximate, date of birth, so if you see someone claiming she was born on 24 June 1314, either they've stolen a march on all other historians by finding a contemporary document which records the date (highly unlikely) or they haven't done their research properly (infinitely more likely). Neither was Philippa the second daughter of her parents, as is usually stated. This is based on a statement by the chronicler Jean Froissart, who gives the names of the sisters as Margareta, Philippa, Johanna and Isabella, in that order (in the original spelling, Margerite, Phelippe, Jehanne et Ysabiel). Froissart was wrong; Philippa was the third or fourth daughter of her parents. She also had one brother, Willem, as well as several other siblings who died in infancy and whom I won't deal with here.

Before examining the evidence for Philippa's date of birth and the birth order of her and her sisters, I'm going to take a quick look at her background. Philippa's father was Willem, born in about 1286 or 1287 and count of Hainault and Holland in the Low Countries. He inherited Hainault from his father, grandfather and a long family line of counts of Hainault, and Holland from his father, who had inherited it from his cousin Floris V's son Count Jan I when Jan died childless aged fifteen in 1299, having been married to Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's youngest daughter Elizabeth. Philippa's mother Jeanne de Valois was the third child and second daughter of Charles, count of Valois, brother of Philip IV of France, and his first wife Marguerite of Anjou-Naples. Charles and Marguerite's first daughter Isabelle, who married the future Duke John III of Brittany and died when she was seventeen before her husband succeeded his father, was born in 1292, and their first son King Philip VI of France in 1293. Jeanne therefore was probably born in 1294 or 1295, unless she was a twin of Isabelle or Philip. Three more children – the countess of Blois, the count of Alençon and a daughter who died in infancy – followed Jeanne before the premature death of Marguerite of Anjou-Naples (eldest daughter of Edward I's first cousin Charles, king of Naples, and Marie of Hungary), aged about twenty-six, in 1299. Philippa of Hainault, via her mother, was the niece of Philip VI of France and the great-niece of Philip IV. Her mother was the first cousin of Edward II's queen Isabella, Philip IV's daughter, which meant that Philippa and her husband Edward III were second cousins. Jeanne de Valois and Count Willem of Hainault and Holland married at Chauny in Picardy, northern France on 19 May 1305, the year after Willem succeeded his father. Jeanne cannot have been more than thirteen and was probably only ten or eleven; Willem was about eighteen.

Given Jeanne de Valois's youth at the time of her marriage in 1305, she is unlikely to have given birth much before 1310. She and Count Willem had several children, mostly daughters; establishing their exact number, birth order and the date of birth of their daughter Queen Philippa is tricky. They had a son Willem who was their only son to live past infancy and who died childless in 1345, and Margareta must have been their eldest daughter, as she inherited the counties of Hainault and Holland on the younger Willem's death. Margareta was born on 24 June 1310 or 24 June 1311. This date is based on a famous description of her by Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter, when he visited Hainault in 1319 to negotiate for a marriage between Margareta and Edward of Windsor, the future Edward III of England. The girl described was not Philippa, as is often assumed, though the description has sometimes, bizarrely, been used as 'evidence' that Philippa was England's first black queen, which is absolute nonsense. Stapledon wrote that the girl he met being considered as the future king of England's bride, almost certainly Margareta, though it might also have been Sibilla (see below; Stapeldon would have done us all a big favour if he'd bothered to record the girl's name), would become nine years old at the next Nativity of John the Baptist, which is 24 June. Depending on when in 1319 he wrote this, it means that Margareta was born on or shortly before 24 June 1310 or 24 June 1311. [See Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King, pp. 403-4] 24 June or a little before was Margareta's birthday, not Philippa's.

Margareta, as she ultimately inherited the counties of Hainault and Holland on her brother's death, was certainly the eldest daughter (or in the interests of strict accuracy, let's say at least the eldest surviving daughter) of Willem and Jeanne. This is beyond doubt. The second daughter was not Philippa, however, but Johanna, as the chronicle of 'Willelmi, capellani in Brederode' states: it twice calls Johanna the secunda filia of Count Willem. [Willelmi, capellani in Brederode, postea monachi et procuratoris egmondensis chronicon, ed. Cornelis Pijnacker Hordijk, pp. 145, 244] Margareta and Johanna married in a double wedding in Cologne on 26 February 1324; Philippa wasn't betrothed to Edward of Windsor until August 1326 and married him in January 1328, which also makes it virtually certain that she was younger than Johanna. Margareta married Ludwig or Louis von Wittelsbach, duke of Bavaria and Holy Roman Emperor. She was twelve or thirteen at the time of her wedding in February 1324, depending on whether she was born in June 1310 or June 1311, and Ludwig, born in 1282, was much her senior, older than her parents, in fact. The second sister Johanna married Wilhelm, later duke of Jülich, in February 1324. It is possible, though I'm only speculating here, that Margareta and Johanna were twins, with Margareta the elder and her father's ultimate heir. If not, then Johanna must have been born in 1312 or 1313 and been only ten or eleven at marriage (her husband Wilhelm of Jülich was born in about 1300).

Count Willem of Hainault and Holland had, between 1318 and 1321, been involved in negotiations with King Edward II of England regarding the future marriage of one of Willem's daughters and Edward's son Edward of Windsor, the future Edward III. Although Edward III later married Philippa, she was not the daughter in question at this time, as is sometimes assumed. A marriage between England and Hainault was on the cards sometime before 10 December 1318, when Edward II asked Pope John XXII to issue a dispensation for his son Edward and Willem's daughter Margareta to marry; they needed one as they were second cousins, both great-grandchildren of Philip III of France and Isabel of Aragon. [Foedera 1307-27, p. 381] To complicate matters, however, there was apparently another sister, Sibilla, who on 2 November 1319 was named as the potential future bride of Edward of Windsor, not Margareta, in various letters sent by Edward II. Either Sibilla had been substituted for her sister, or this was an error by Edward II's clerk, who carelessly named the count of Hainault as Robert instead of William in the letters (the count of nearby Flanders was called Robert, so presumably he mixed the names up). [Foedera, p. 405] On 9 November 1320, in a further letter about the potential betrothal of Edward of Windsor into Hainault, Margareta was again named as the future bride, though a frustrated Edward II merely referred to 'your daughter', unnamed, in yet another letter to Count Willem about the matter on 30 March 1321. [Foedera, pp. 437, 446] Edward II was still evidently keen on the alliance well over two years after it was first proposed, but Willem had for some reason grown cold on the idea. The king of England gave up and began negotiating with King Jaime II of Aragon for a match for his son (which ultimately also proved unsuccessful). Her proposed English marriage having failed, Magareta married Ludwig von Wittelsbach in 1324.

Sybil or Sibilla could be used as a pet name for women and girls named Isabella in the fourteenth century, rather than being an independent name. Philippa of Hainault certainly had a sister named Isabella, but she must have been considerably younger than Philippa, as she married Robert of Namur, son of John I, count of Namur. Robert was born in about 1323 or 1326, and is thus unlikely to have married a girl born before 1320, an age gap which would have been considered too great given that it would have limited the number of Isabella and Robert's fertile years together. The Sibilla mentioned in English documents of 1319 may therefore have been yet another sister, and she probably died as a child or adolescent as she does not appear again in any other known source of the period and did not marry. (Unless she was simply a figment of an inattentive English clerk's imagination.) Philippa of Hainault therefore had two or three older sisters, Margareta, Johanna and perhaps Sibilla, as well as a younger sister Isabella, born in the 1320s and perhaps named after her dead older sister Sibilla and ultimately after their great-grandmother Isabel of Aragon, first wife of Philip III of France.

As mentioned above, it is possible that there was a set of twins among the sisters, perhaps Margareta and Johanna (as they married on the same day in 1324) or Margareta and Sibilla (as they were both proposed as brides for the king of England's son), with Margareta as the elder twin who inherited Hainault and Holland. But we don't and can't know that for sure. Their brother, called Willem after their father, married Johanna of Brabant, eldest child and ultimate heir of Edward II's nephew Duke John III of Brabant, but had no children with her. The younger Willem's date of birth is not known; presumably in the mid to late 1310s, or even after 1320. His wife Johanna was born in 1322. Margareta, Johanna and Philippa were the only three Hainault siblings who had children (Johanna's daughter Elisabeth of Jülich married Edward II's nephew John, earl of Kent, the posthumous son of Edward's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock).

1314 seems to me a reasonable year of birth for Philippa of Hainault, though when exactly in that year is impossible to say. Jean Froissart says she was 'on the point of becoming fourteen' when she married Edward III, but as he says that Edward was seventeen at the time when actually he was fifteen and gets the birth order of Philippa and her sisters wrong, we shouldn't necessarily place too much weight on that. Anyway, it seems likely to me that Philippa was about thirteen or fourteen at the time of her wedding in January 1328 and fifteen or sixteen when she gave birth to her eldest child Edward of Woodstock on 15 June 1330. Her youngest child Thomas of Woodstock was born on 7 January 1355, when she would have been forty or so, and she died on 15 August 1369, in her mid-fifties.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Courtesy of the Valentine Generator, and remembering this post, here is Isabella of France's Valentine card to her husband Edward II in 1313, using words from my forthcoming biography of Isabella.

To my pious postern gate,

You are the destrier of my Greyfriars Church. I want to consolidate with you more than any drought in the whole cherries.

The first time we suckled, I felt predictable in my arm, and I was so distraught that I could barely banish. I knew that we would bribe together for Terce until Vespers.

Whenever you revoke, it makes me conspire amicably and flaunt like a virile discontent.

I will joust with you unspeakably until the rebellion seizes and the Household Ordinance negotiates.

Enamelled Valentine's Day!

Love, your sulky Lucca cloth.

And, because I'm in a silly mood today, some anagrams, from here:

Edward of Caernarfon

forewarned fad acorn

forwarded farce anon

forwarded fear canon

forwarded oaf canner

Edward II, king of England

reawakening find old dig

reawakening fold gin dig

I faded a rekindling gown

on a faded rekindling wig

Isabella of France, queen of England

a conquerable offending fallen sea

a false conquerable offending lane

no conquerable deafening safe fall

Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall

a waterproofing coveralls lens

waterproofing loveless carnal

waterproofing enclave ass roll

Roger Mortimer, earl of March

refrigerator charm room elm

geometrical harm from error

rigmarole retch reform rom

remarriage chloroform term

lightface armorer mom error

Hugh Despenser, lord of Glamorgan
profoundness haggled her glamor
profoundness herd hog germ gall
profoundness harem hag egg droll

Constanza of Castile, Queen of Castile and Leon, Duchess of Lancaster (1)

In this post I'm going somewhat outside my usual blog parameters to write about a Spanish woman who was (to link her to the subject of the blog) Edward II's granddaughter-in-law, the second wife of his grandson John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. I'm writing about Constanza basically because I get sick of the way she's so often ignored in favour of the long-term extra-marital relationship between her husband and Katherine Swynford, and because she's a fascinating person who led a fascinating life. Constanza appears in Anya Seton's wildly popular 1950s novel Katherine as a smelly religious fanatic who makes John of Gaunt's skin crawl because she prays to her dead father and rarely washes. Yuck. Surely she deserves a lot better than that. Constanza was, after all, a person and a very important one, a heck of a lot more than the barely even one-dimensional cardboard cut-out who brought Gaunt a claim to a kingdom and who eventually did the decent thing by conveniently dying so that Gaunt and Swynford could fulfil their fabulously romantic destiny and get married, as she so often appears.

Constanza of Castile was probably born in 1354, and was the elder surviving daughter of Pedro 'the Cruel' (also known as 'the Just'), then the reigning king of Castile, and was the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Edward II's grandfather Fernando III. The Castilian royal family of her era had connections to the English one: Constanza's father Pedro would have married Edward III's second daughter Joan in 1348 had she not died of the plague in the south of France on her way to Castile, and Pedro's father Alfonso XI was betrothed to Edward II's daughter Eleanor of Woodstock in 1324, a marriage which failed to go ahead after Edward's forced abdication in early 1327 changed the political situation. In addition, Edward of Windsor, the future Edward III, was betrothed to Alfonso XI's sister Leonor at the same time.

Pedro 'the Cruel' was born on 30 August 1334 as the only son of Alfonso XI, then twenty-three, and his queen Maria of Portugal. Alfonso and Maria were first cousins on both sides - his father Fernando IV of Castile and her mother Beatriz of Castile were siblings, his mother Constanca of Portugal and her father Afonso IV of Portugal were siblings - which means that they had all four grandparents in common and that their son Pedro had only four great-grandparents instead of the usual eight. Alfonso and Maria's marriage was not a success, and he had a mistress Leonor Guzman, with whom he had ten children. Alfonso XI died in March 1350 at the age of only thirty-eight, and was succeeded by his only legitimate son Pedro. One of the fifteen-year-old new king of Castile's first acts was to have his father's mistress Leonor Guzman killed, an act which a few years later was to have profound implications for Pedro himself and for his daughter Constanza.

Joan of England having died on her way to marry him, Pedro of Castile instead married the French noblewoman Blanche de Bourbon, whose mother was a half-sister of Philip VI of France and whose sister Jeanne de Bourbon married Charles V of France and was the mother of Charles VI. Blanche, however, was not Constanza of Castile's mother: her new husband Pedro imprisoned her days after their wedding, and kept her in prison for eight years until 1361, when she died, either by murder or of natural causes is not certain. (The people who love to moan endlessly about what a horribly bad and neglectful husband Edward II was to Isabella of France might like to think about what this other royal woman had to suffer in marriage in comparison.) Pedro went off with his mistress Maria de Padilla, the mother of Constanza and her younger sister Isabel (born c. 1355). The two girls were declared legitimate by the Cortes of Castile in 1362, after the unfortunate Queen Blanche's death, on the grounds that Pedro had secretly married Maria before he went through a wedding ceremony with Blanche. Constanza and Isabel had a younger brother Alfonso, who would have been Pedro's heir but died in infancy. Constanza as the elder daughter was thus their father's heir. Quite honestly, given how inter-bred Pedro's family was, bringing in the blood of a woman entirely unrelated as their mother surely wasn't a bad thing for his daughters.

The eldest surviving son of King Pedro's ten illegitimate half-siblings, his father's children with the murdered Leonor Guzman, was Enrique of Trastamara, also sometimes known as the Bastard of Trastamara or the Bastard of Castile. Enrique was only seven months older than his legitimate half-brother, born in January 1334. Understandably furious at Pedro's murder of his mother, Enrique fled to France, and to cut a very long story short, with the aid of Charles V of France and Pedro's enemy Pedro IV of Aragon, defeated Pedro at the battle of Montiel in March 1369. A few days later Enrique of Trastamara personally stabbed his half-brother to death. Two years before, Pedro had defeated Enrique at the battle of Najera with the help of Edward III's sons Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales and Aquitaine, and John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. In September 1371 near Mont-de-Marsan in the south of France, John of Gaunt married Pedro's seventeen-year-old elder daughter and heir Constanza, and at some point not long afterwards, his younger brother Edmund of Langley married Constanza's sister Isabel. Gaunt proclaimed himself king of Castile and Leon, though his title was in name only: he never managed to shift Enrique of Trastamara, now King Enrique II of Castile, from the throne.

Constanza and Isabel had been raised at the court of Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales and Aquitaine, since 1366, though had spent their early years in their father's kingdom, probably mostly in Seville, where Pedro built a great palace (the Alcazar). Their mother Maria de Padilla died in Seville in July 1361; she was a noblewoman, and was described in a contemporary chronicle as very beautiful and intelligent, small and slender. King Pedro himself was described as about six feet tall and muscular, with very light blond hair, pale skin and blue eyes. This gives us some idea of what his daughter Constanza might have looked like. (Not six feet tall and muscular, obviously.)

Constanza arrived in England with her new husband John of Gaunt in November 1371. It is easy to imagine that damp chilly England in early winter came as something of a shock to a teenage girl used to the climate of Spain and the south of France. The royal couple sent Constanza's father-in-law Edward III valuable Christmas gifts (W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III, p. 532) and at some point Constanza must have met her stepchildren, John's children with the late Blanche of Lancaster: Philippa, future queen of Portugal, born in 1360; Elizabeth, future countess of Pembroke and duchess of Exeter, born in 1364; and Henry, future king of England, born in 1367.

Constanza and John's only surviving child, Katherine or Catalina of Lancaster, was born sometime before 31 March 1373, when the girl's grandfather Edward III paid twenty marks to the person who had brought him news of her birth, Interestingly, this person was none other than Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt's long-term mistress, whose eldest son with Gaunt, John Beaufort, was born in roughly the same time period as his half-sister Catalina. It's also very interesting that Catalina may even have been named after Katherine Swynford, unless Constanza revered Saint Katherine, or her daughter was born on or around Saint Katherine's feast day, 25 November. Katherine was an unusual name in the English royal family, and had previously only been used for Henry III and Eleanor of Provence's youngest child, who was born on 25 November (i.e. St Katherine's day) in 1253, and her niece, the eldest daughter of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile. Both these girls died young, so the name was hardly propitious. At any rate, Constanza sending her husband's mistress to the king with news of her child's birth, knowing that the king would generously reward Katherine for it, hardly hints at any conflict between the two women; quite the opposite. On the other hand, Katherine Swynford continued to bear John's children, the Beauforts, throughout the 1370s, whereas Constanza had no more surviving children.

Telling the Time and Writing Dates in Edward II's Reign

In the nineteenth century, Agnes Strickland in her Lives of the Queens of England made up a story that Edward II and Isabella of France's eldest child the future Edward III was born at exactly 5.40am on Monday 13 November 1312. For this curiously precise time, she cites a memorandum in Foedera 1307-1327. I have this document, and the memo, in Latin, says nothing whatsoever about the time of Edward III's birth, never mind that he was born at exactly 5.40am. This is hardly surprising, as no-one in England in November 1312 would have known (or cared) that it was 5.40am, for all that this fabricated 'fact' has made its way into numerous books since. Goodness knows what Strickland thought she had read.

The memorandum of Edward III's birth from Foedera.

(Translation: "Memorandum that Isabella, queen of England, consort of King Edward son of King Edward, bore the king his first-born son in the king's castle of Windsor, on the Monday next after the feast of St Martin in winter, in the year of grace one thousand three hundred and twelve, and in the sixth year of the king's reign." It then goes on to say that the boy was baptised by the cardinal-priest of Santa Prisca in the chapel of St Edward in the castle the following Thursday, and names his seven godfathers. Nothing at all about the time of birth.)

People in England in 1312, and, specifically in the context of this post, Edward II's household, told the time using the canonical hours: Prime or about 6am; Terce or the third hour or about 9am; Sext or the sixth hour or about midday; None or the ninth hour or mid-afternoon; or Vespers, i.e. sunset. The other canonical hours are Matins (roughly midnight), Lauds (roughly 3am) and Compline (about 9pm, which in summer in England would be earlier than Vespers/sunset), though I've never seen these used in Edward II's accounts, because the king and most of his household were asleep or relaxing at those times. His clerks did use the word 'midnight' on occasion, for example in Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 569 and SAL MS 122, p. 50, and the Sempringham annalist talked of a violent thunderstorm which took place on 17 April 1320 at 'around midnight' (entour la mye noet). Evidently, to them this meant 'an indeterminate time in the middle of the night when most people are in bed, but probably not as late as the early hours of the morning', or 'gosh, the king is still up and awake and issuing orders long after dark' rather than a precise clock time - and of course the fourteenth-century French word la my(e) noet (modern French minuit) and the English word midnight originally just meant 'in the middle of the night'. If Edward III's time of birth had been recorded, it would have been 'around Prime'. People told the time in three-hour chunks, the sixth hour, the ninth hour and so on, not in ten-minute slots.

An entry in Edward II's chamber account of February 1326, SAL MS 122, talking about la my noet, 'midnight'

On Wednesday 7 February 1308, Edward II and his new queen Isabella of France arrived in England after marrying in Boulogne, and an entry on the Fine Roll states that they landed at Dover 'on Wednesday after the Purification...about the ninth hour', or roughly in the middle of the afternoon. [Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-19, p. 14] Edward and Isabella returned to England from their long visit to France in the summer of 1313 on 'Monday before St Margaret the Virgin, at vespers, in the seventh year of his reign,' which means around sunset or simply just 'late evening' on Monday 16 July 1313 (a time of year when the hours of daylight in northern Europe are very long). [Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-18, p. 66] This was as detailed as telling the time got in England in the early fourteenth century. Edward I was said by a chronicler to have died on 7 July 1307 'at the ninth hour', or around 3pm, or simply just in the middle of the afternoon. In this context, to talk of someone being born at precisely '5.40am' is nonsense.

In Edward II's household accounts, the date was normally written as e.g. 'the thirtieth day of January', in French or Latin, with Roman numerals used (le xxx iour de janv').  More usually, in letters and in the chancery rolls and in e.g. the memorandum recording Edward III's birth, saints' feast days were used: 'the Tuesday before the Translation of St Thomas Becket' or 'the morrow of St Hilary' or, as we see above, 'the Wednesday after the Purification' and 'the Monday before St Margaret the Virgin'. Edward III was born on the feast day of St Brice, 13 November, but Brice is an obscure saint and many chroniclers in 1312 didn't know that it was his feast day, so instead wrote that the future king was born on 'the Monday after St Martin' (St Martin is 11 November). Edward II himself was born on the feast day of St Mark the Evangelist (25 April), which is how he would have thought of the date. Sometimes religious days were also used in Edward's accounts, such as his hiring a boy-bishop in 1316 from 'the feast of St Nicholas until the Feast of the Holy Innocents', that is, 6 to 28 December. His clerks often recorded 1 January as the Feast of the Circumcision. 25 December was le iour de noel, Christmas Day.

To figure out any given date in a fourteenth-century English document, as well as having to know saints' days, you have to know the date on which the present king became king and the year he succeeded to the throne, because almost invariably English clerks recorded dates using kings' regnal years. Edward I died on 7 July 1307, Edward II's reign began on 8 July 1307, and thus his regnal year ran from 8 July to 7 July every year. His father Edward I's regnal year ran from 20 November to 19 November, and his son Edward III's from 25 January to 24 January. 8 July 1307 to 7 July 1308 was Edward II's first regnal year, 8 July 1323 to 7 July 1324 his seventeenth, and so on. Edward III was born on 13 November 1312 in his father's sixth regnal year (which ran from 8 July 1312 to 7 July 1313), and died on 21 June 1377 in his own fifty-first regnal year, which had begun on 25 January 1377. Edward II was born on the feast day of St Mark the Evangelist in the twelfth year of his father's reign, 25 April 1284, Edward I died on 7 July 1307 in his thirty-fifth regnal year, and Edward II was forced to abdicate his throne to his son in his twentieth regnal year, January 1327. Occasionally, but only very occasionally, English clerks would write 'the year of grace one thousand three hundred and twelve' (as in the memorandum above recording Edward III's birth), but also invariably added the king's regnal year.

To give a couple of examples: Edward II lost the battle of Bannockburn on the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist near the end of his seventh regnal year, 24 June 1314, a fact of which Edward must have been painfully aware, as John the Baptist was one of his favourite saints. 27 August 1321 would be written as 'the Friday before the Beheading of St John the Baptist in the fifteenth year of the reign of our lord King Edward.' Often, in order to clarify which king was meant, clerks would write 'King Edward son of King Edward'. The whole formula doesn't exactly have the virtue of conciseness. Edward II was almost never called 'Edward II' in documents of his era, only 'King Edward son of King Edward', sometimes 'King Edward son of King Edward son of King Henry'. On occasion, however, you see a document referring to 'King Edward the second of this name after the [Norman] Conquest'. Somewhere, I can't remember now where I've seen it, there's a document in which the new king Edward III in 1327 is called 'King Edward son of King Edward son of King Edward son of King Henry.' His clerks evidently realising that this would be a most inefficient way to refer to their fourteen-year-old king on every occasion for the rest of his life, he began to be called Edward III, often with the cautious addition of 'after the Conquest' (there were three kings of England before 1066 with this name: Edward the Elder, Edward the Martyr and Edward the Confessor, so really Edward II should be Edward V).

28 January 1271: Death of Isabel of Aragon, Queen of France

Isabel of Aragon was the paternal grandmother of Edward II's queen Isabella of France, who was presumably named after her. Today is the 745th anniversary of her death.

The years 1270/71 took a heavy toll on the French royal family. While taking part in an unsuccessful crusade in Tunis, King Louis IX died on 25 August 1270, at the age of fifty-six. His twenty-year-old fourth (but second surviving) son Jean Tristan had died three weeks earlier, also in Tunis; it is likely that both men died of dysentery. (Jean Tristan had been born in Damietta, Egypt in 1250 during Louis's first crusade.) Louis's eldest daughter Isabelle, queen of Navarre, died on 27 April 1271, not quite thirty. His third daughter Marguerite, duchess of Brabant, died shortly after childbirth sometime in July 1271, aged only sixteen. His brother Alphonse of Poitiers died on 21 August 1271, and Alphonse's wife Jeanne of Toulouse four days after her husband, on the first anniversary of Louis's death.

Yet another casualty of these tragic years for the French royal family was Louis IX's daughter-in-law Isabel of Aragon, who had married his second (but eldest surviving) son Philip, the future Philip III, in 1262 when she was about fifteen and he seventeen. Isabel was one of the daughters of King Jaime I el Conquistador of Aragon and his second wife Violante or Yolande of Hungary, daughter of Andrew II, king of Hungary and Croatia. Isabel's eldest sister Violante of Aragon married Edward II's uncle Alfonso X of Castile and was the mother of Sancho IV. Her eldest brother Pedro III succeeded their father as king of Aragon and was the father of Alfonso III (betrothed for many years to Edward II's sister Eleanor) and Jaime II, and her second brother Jaime became king of Majorca.

Isabel bore four children, of whom two survived: Philip IV, king of France, father of three kings of France and the queen of England, born sometime in 1268, and Charles, count of Valois, born on 12 March 1270 and father of Philip VI of France. In January 1271, barely even in her mid-twenties, Isabel of Aragon was thrown from her horse in the town of Cosenza in southern Italy, on the royal family's way back from Tunis to France. She was pregnant with her fifth child. Sadly, she died a few days after her accident, on 28 January, and her unborn child with her. She had been queen of France for a mere five months.

Isabel of Aragon was the grandmother of four kings of France (Louis X, Philip V, Charles IV and Philip VI) and the great-grandmother of Edward III, king of England and of Joan II, queen of Navarre. Via her son Charles of Valois, she was the ancestor of the Valois dynasty of French kings, and via Edward III, of all the kings and queens of England since 1327. Queen Isabel was also a descendant of Harold Godwinson, the king of England killed at the battle of Hastings in 1066, and Harold's daughter Gytha of Wessex and her husband Vladimir Monomakh, grand prince of Kiev. (Harold Godwinson - Gytha of Wessex - Mstislav the Great, grand prince of Kiev - Euphrosyne of Kiev - Bela III, king of Hungary - Andrew III, king of Hungary - Violante of Hungary - Isabel of Aragon). The blood of Harold Godwinson thus returned to the English royal family when Isabel of Aragon's great-grandson Edward III came to the throne in 1327.

The Two Joans of Burgundy, Queens of France

So there's Philip V, king of France, and his wife Joan of Burgundy, and his first cousin Philip VI, king of France, and his wife Joan of Burgundy. Another Joan of Burgundy. So no, that's not confusing at all. There was a county of Burgundy, also known as the Franche-Comté, and a duchy of Burgundy, which shared a border but were not the same place. Also not at all confusing.

Joan of Burgundy, queen of Philip V (the second of the three brothers of Edward II's queen Isabella) was the elder of the two daughters of Othon IV, count of Burgundy, and Mahaut, countess of Artois in her own right. Joan was born in about 1287 or 1288, according to historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown, an expert on the French royal family of this period (Joan's Wiki page gives her date of birth as 15 January 1292, but I have no idea where that comes from). Mahaut, a major character in Maurice Druon's series of novels The Accursed Kings, was born in 1268 or 1269, and inherited her father Robert's county of Artois in preference to her brother Philip's son Robert of Artois (born 1287). Mahaut was the niece of Blanche of Artois, queen of Navarre and countess of Lancaster, the maternal grandmother of Philip V, which makes Philip and Joan of Burgundy second cousins. The couple married in 1307. Joan had a younger sister Blanche, born in 1295 or 1296, who married Philip V's younger brother Charles in January 1308, the week before their sister Isabella married Edward II. Joan and Blanche also had a brother, Robert of Burgundy, who died unmarried and childless in 1317 (his future marriage to Edward I's youngest child Eleanor had been proposed shortly after her birth in May 1306). As the elder sister, Joan inherited Burgundy from Robert and ultimately from their father Othon (died 1302), and inherited Artois as well when Mahaut died in 1329. Blanche of Burgundy was imprisoned for adultery in 1314, her marriage was annulled in 1322, and she died in late 1325 or early 1326, still only thirty.

Philip V's elder brother Louis X was born on 4 October 1289 and his younger brother Charles IV on 18 June 1294, but his own date of birth is not known. He was said to be thirty when he died at the beginning of 1322, which would place it sometime in 1291. Philip was thus some years younger than his wife Joan. Their eldest child, another Joan, was born in 1308 when Philip was still only a teenager. Joan of France later inherited the counties of Burgundy and Artois from her mother, and was also duchess of Burgundy by marriage to Odo IV (see also below). Philip V and Joan of Burgundy's other daughters were Marguerite, countess of Flanders, Isabella, dauphine of Vienne, and Blanche, a nun; their two sons Philip and Louis died young. Philip V was thus succeeded by his brother Charles IV when he died at the age of only thirty, having been king of France for only five years. His widow Joan of Burgundy also died at a fairly young age, in January 1330, only a few weeks after her mother Mahaut.

The other Joan of Burgundy married Philip of Valois, the future Philip VI of France (who succeeded his first cousin Charles IV in 1328 when Charles also died without sons) in July 1313. Joan and Philip were first cousins once removed: she was the granddaughter of Saint Louis IX of France and Marguerite of Provence, Philip their great-grandson. Joan was the third daughter of Louis IX's youngest child Agnes of France (c. 1260-1327) and Duke Robert II of Burgundy, and was born in about 1293, the same year as her husband; her siblings included Duke Hugh V, Duke Odo IV (who married Philip V and the other Joan of Burgundy's eldest daughter, as above), and Marguerite, who married Louis X of France as his first wife and was imprisoned for adultery in 1314. Marguerite was the mother of Queen Joan II of Navarre.

This Joan of Burgundy was apparently lame, and grossly unpopular: she was known as la male royne boiteuse, 'the evil lame queen'. She was the mother of King John II of France, born in 1319, and Philip, duke of Orleans, who married Charles IV's posthumous daughter Blanche of France, his only child who lived into adulthood. Joan died in 1348, and her widower Philip VI married the forty years younger Blanche of Navarre, also sometimes known as Blanche of Evreux, who was the daughter of Queen Joan II of Navarre and who, like Joan of Burgundy, was Philip's first cousin once removed. Blanche of Navarre/Evreux's parents Joan II of Navarre and Philip of Evreux were first cousins once removed. The parents of Blanche of France, duchess of Orleans - Charles IV and Joan of Evreux - were first cousins. Joan of Evreux was the sister of Philip of Evreux, who married Joan II of Navarre and was the father-in-law of Philip VI. Charles IV's daughter Blanche of France and her husband Philip, duke of Orleans were second cousins. Louis X of France and his wife Marguerite of Burgundy were first cousins once removed, and Philip VI and his wife Joan of Burgundy, Marguerite's sister, were also first cousins once removed. Philip IV of France and his wife Joan I of Navarre, parents of Louis X, Philip V, Charles IV and Edward II's queen Isabella, were second cousins. Charles II 'the Bad', king of Navarre, son of Joan II of Navarre and Philip of Evreux, married Joan of France, daughter of King John II and granddaughter of Philip VI and Joan of Burgundy: they were second cousins. These people were so interrelated, it makes my brain explode.

All three sons of Philip IV of France, and his nephew Philip VI, married women of Burgundy. Saint Louis IX of France's youngest son, Robert, count of Clermont, Agnes of France's brother and thus the uncle of Philip VI's wife Joan of Burgundy (and the great-uncle of Louis X and his brothers and Philip VI), also married a woman of Burgundy. She was Beatrice of Burgundy, the heiress of Bourbon, a first cousin of Joan of Burgundy who married Philip VI and of Marguerite of Burgundy who married Louis X: all of them were grandchildren of Duke Hugh IV of Burgundy. My brain actually exploded at that point.

Naked Edward II Saves Isabella: 'Love Made Him Do It'

This is a post about a dramatic incident which took place in the summer of 1313, during Edward II and Queen Isabella's long visit to her homeland of France, which isn't well-known at all and thoroughly deserves to be.

Between 10 and 30 June 1313, Edward and Isabella stayed at Pontoise, twenty miles from Paris where they had been staying since the beginning of June, before travelling on to Poissy where Isabella's great-grandfather Saint Louis IX had been born, exactly seventy years to the day before Edward II as it happens, on 25 April 1214. They then returned to England, having spent a couple of days at Hesdin with Mahaut, countess of Artois and Burgundy, mother-in-law of Isabella's brothers Philip and Charles, on the way. The royal couple landed at Dover on (says a memorandum on the Close Roll) "Monday before St Margaret the Virgin, at vespers, in the seventh year of his [Edward II's] reign," which sounds like sunset on 16 July 1313 to me. It was during the stay at Pontoise that Edward famously paid Bernard the Fool and fifty-four naked dancers for performing for him on the first anniversary of Piers Gaveston's murder on 19 June 1312. (And I can never mention that delightful fact often enough.) The English royal couple, new parents - their first child the future Edward III had been born the previous November - seem to have had a whale of a time during their visit, eating, drinking and generally making merry.

It was also during the stay at Pontoise that the dramatic incident took place. Edward and Isabella appear to have been sleeping in a silken pavilion - it may have been pretty warm in mid or late June, I can imagine, and this was probably more comfortable than sleeping inside a building. The chronicler Geoffrey or Godefroy of Paris, who was an eyewitness to the couple's French visit, describes what happened. A fire somehow broke out in their sleeping quarters the middle of the night, and Edward and Isabella had to leave behind their rich possessions, which were lost to the fire. Fortunately they woke up in time, and Isabella tried to rescue some of her things from the fire. In doing so, she suffered bad burns to her arms for which she was still being treated months later. Edward had the presence of mind to scoop Isabella up in his arms and rush outside with her, and managed to get them both to safety and mostly unharmed. He may well have saved her life. Geoffrey of Paris comments that even though the king of England was 'completely naked' (toute nue) at the time, he saved members of his entourage from the fire as well, which presumably means that as soon as he had taken Isabella outside and ensured his wife's safety, he ran back inside the burning pavilion (or wherever their retinues were sleeping), and rescued other people too. Apparently while still naked.

This incident is almost entirely unknown to modern readers, though it appears (briefly) in my biography of Edward and (at greater length) in my forthcoming Isabella book, so I'm doing my best to make an event which shows Edward II in a much better light than usual as well-known as it deserves to be. Geoffrey of Paris was extremely impressed with the English king's actions, and in his rhyming chronicle wrote that Edward "was brave against the fire" and "well proved himself bold by his actions." He also commented that Edward "saved her [Isabella] with his bravery, and many more people" (la sauva por proesce, et plusors), and that he was keen to rescue her above all else car cele amoit-il d'amor fine, "because he loved her with amor fine," i.e. 'fine love' or 'courtly love'. Finally, Geoffrey comments Mes amor le fesoit ouvrer, "But love made him do it."

But of course, certain modern writers just know that Edward hated Isabella really. Totally loathed every fibre of her being, neglected her and didn't give a damn about her. She suffered terribly from his lack of care and concern. Yeah.

Incidentally, the bit about Edward sleeping naked presumably in the same bed as Isabella, coupled with the fact that on 5 June he'd missed a meeting with her father Philip IV because he and Isabella had overslept - which an amused Geoffrey of Paris put down to their night-time dalliances and Edward being unable to keep his hands off his beautiful desirable wife - gives a very pleasant insight into Edward and Isabella's marriage and sex life. There's also the fact that on the same day they overslept, they watched a parade together in Paris from a tower in their quarters in Saint-Germain surrounded by a large group of ladies and damsels, which also sounds pleasantly intimate and jolly. I get the strong impression that they were really enjoying each other's company in France, and there's no reason to think that this was the only time they did. These comments by a French writer who observed them at close quarters give us some fascinating glimpses into the marriage of Edward II and Isabella of France, and it sure as heck wasn't the hateful, unhappy disaster other writers would have you believe.

Source: Chronique métrique de Godefroy de Paris, ed. J.-A. Buchon (Paris: Verdière, 1827), pp. 196-7 (in fourteenth-century Parisian French, my translations).

The Parliament of January 1327

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful festive season.

Today, 7 January, marks the anniversary of the start of the parliament held in London in 1327 which deposed Edward II. I've never written a proper post about this parliament or about Edward's deposition/forced abdication, because to be honest the subject bores me. (There, I said it.) Edward himself was in comfortable captivity at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire at this time, in the care of his first cousin Henry of Lancaster. Edward was deposed in, or by, the January 1327 parliament, though publicly it was presented as the king carefully considering his options, then deciding to abdicate his throne to his fourteen-year-old son Edward III, which decision was subsequently accepted by his subjects. There was nothing in English law which provided any procedure for the subjects of an unsatisfactory king to rid themselves of him, but 1327 set a precedent which would followed again, most notably by the deposition of Edward II's great-grandson Richard II in 1399. Some sources claim that a delegation was sent to Kenilworth to ask Edward to attend, but he refused, which refusal was reported to parliament when the delegates returned to London on 12 January. I'm not sure whether this is true; appearing at parliament might have allowed the king to arouse sympathy and to remind his subjects of the oath of loyalty they had sworn to him. It was probably only when Edward's refusal to attend parliament – whether real or pretended – was reported to the participants that the possibility of replacing him with his son began to be seriously considered. 

All the contemporary chroniclers who wrote about the deposition record Edward II's reaction to it in much the same way: he was contrite, humble, pious and acquiescent, dressed all in black and half swooning, begging his subjects' forgiveness for his many trespasses against them. This is, of course, only the official story which was allowed to come out; Edward's real reaction cannot be known. The Westminster chronicle Flores Historiarum has the former king saying "I greatly lament that I have so utterly failed my people, but I could not be other than I am," which. whether Edward really said it or not, I can't help but find moving. The reign of his son Edward III officially began on 25 January 1327 (coincidentally, the nineteenth wedding anniversary of Edward II and Isabella of France).