The Three Edwards

by Thomas B. Costain

  There had been some trouble earlier between the queen and this furious beldame. This added a still more violent tincture to the report of the extraordinary incident which reached the ears of the king. Badlesmere himself added fuel to the flames of the royal wrath by writing an explanation, couched in impudent terms, in which he excused the action of his wife in closing the castle to the queen. Edward spluttered with a degree of anger he had seldom felt before and decided to take action at once to avenge the affront.

  The Ordainers, in whose hands rested all authority, seemed little disturbed over the incident. Lancaster, with his gift for doing the wrong thing, chose to be stiffly hostile. The queen’s indignation mounted with each day and hour, so Edward finally decided to take the punishment of the Badlesmeres on his own shoulders. He made an announcement accordingly that, inasmuch as his beloved consort had been treated with violence and contempt, a general muster of all persons between the ages of sixteen and sixty was called to attend the king in an expedition against Leeds Castle.

  It was London which responded with the greatest good will to this summons. The queen was still the darling of the citizens, and the trained bands turned out in force to avenge the injury which had been done her. They kept pace with the mounted knights in their eagerness to have a hand in the punishment of the castellan and his wife. Badlesmere himself, after having defended his wife’s folly, had been very careful not to join her in the castle. He had, in fact, gone in great haste to Stowe Park, which was the seat of the Bishop of Lincoln, his nephew, which seemed a reasonably safe place. The belligerent chatelaine expected that Lancaster would come to her support and she defied the royal forces when they appeared before the castle. She did not fully understand that dilatory gentleman. Lancaster had come to see that he was on the wrong side of things in this instance and he had no intention of involving himself. The virago of Leeds was left to face alone the storm she had raised.

  The attack launched against the castle was a spirited one, and in a matter of a few days the garrison surrendered. The punishment was first vented on the garrison, who had been guilty only of obeying orders; the usual procedure in these chivalrous days. The seneschal, one Walter Colepepper, was taken up to the battlements and there hanged with eleven of his men. Lady Badlesmere was taken to the Tower of London. It has been said that she thus became the first woman prisoner to be lodged in the White Tower. This is not correct, for an unfortunate and lovely lady, a daughter of Robert Fitz-Walter and best known as Maud the Fair, was kept in the Tower by King John and was killed there finally by a poisoned egg sent to her by that worthy king.

  Lady Badlesmere was promised a hempen ending, which would have pleased the people of London who had followed her through the streets, jeering and storming at her and calling her Jezebel. But after a long imprisonment she was released. Her husband was not to fare so well.

  The capture of Leeds Castle was Edward’s first successful military exploit. It seems to have gone to his head. He returned to London with the forces which had rallied to his support, which included no fewer than six earls, in a mood to assert himself and reclaim the royal prerogatives which had slipped from his hands. Nothing could have been more fortunate for him than this incident provided by the Badlesmere woman. The baronial strength had been so sharply split that Edward could have found parliamentary support for almost any steps he might dictate. The queen, moreover, was showing how much she resembled her implacable father. The hanging of a few minions had not satisfied her, and she was now urging the king to take action against the barons, even Lancaster, who had been responsible in a sense for the humiliation she had suffered. The time was indeed ripe to come to grips, to toss aside the ordinances, to defy the Ordainers, to break the power of Lancaster.

  Unfortunately Edward’s first thought seems to have been to take advantage of his new popularity to bring the Despensers back. On December 10 he appeared at a convocation of the clergy and won from the bishops an opinion that the banishing of the precious pair had been illegal. With this backing he summoned the Despensers to return.

  The familiar pattern was being repeated. If there had been a grain of sense in the king’s head, he would have seen that the end must also be the same.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The King in the Saddle

  1

  EDWARD realized that he must cross the Severn if he expected to break up the noisy rebellion the Marcher barons had started along the borders of Wales. When he reached Shrewsbury and rode along the peninsula, it seemed to him that he was unlikely to accomplish his objective. There were armed men in large numbers on the other side, wearing the green and yellow. Mortimer again! That obnoxious fellow, who had blocked the way at Bridgnorth, had kept pace along the other side of the river and was prepared, obviously, to dispute any attempt to pass over.

  It is probable that the king had always disliked Mortimer of Wigmore. As a minor and an orphan, Mortimer had been put under the guardianship of Piers de Gaveston, an arrangement that promised to be most profitable to Brother Perrot. By some legal wriggling the guardianship had been broken, much to Edward’s annoyance. Mortimer was almost the complete antithesis of the slothful, careless king. He was brisk, fiery, keen, and acquisitive. He had, moreover, a dark kind of good looks, accentuated by a lively black eye, which made him popular with the other sex. He had, as might be expected, married an heiress, one of the most eligible in the kingdom, Joan de Glenville. His wife’s holdings included much land in Shropshire, the town and castle of Ludlow, and a generous share of County Meath in Ireland. In passing, one might conjecture that in this period of history some disability may have attended these amassers of unusual wealth which made it possible to beget handsome daughters but no sons. All the great estates at one time or other fell into the possession of heiresses, some of whom allowed themselves to be trapped into matrimony by handsome but unscrupulous young men such as Mortimer.

  Mortimer had not been particularly active against Edward but he had been made one of the Ordainers and had been on the commission to reform the royal household. His active resistance had started with the rise in favor of the Despensers. He hated them both, the mealymouthed father and the pushing son. Their greed, as it happened, had prompted them to separate Mortimer from some lands he regarded as his own, and that was something he could not forgive. And so here was Roger de Mortimer and his uncle of Chirk with a solid little army on the other side of the Severn, prepared seriously to block the king’s progress.

  To Edward’s great surprise, however, he found that they were no longer in a fighting mood. Lancaster, as usual, had failed to keep his promises. It had been agreed that he would bring his strength down from the north to support the Marcher barons in their resistance to the king, but instead he was dawdling around his castle of Pontefract and showing no inclination to help. The king was allowed to cross the river, therefore, and on the other side he was met by an angry and disappointed pair with an offer to lay down their arms. All they demanded was a safe-conduct.

  Ever since the capture of Leeds, Edward had been riding on the crest of a wave. Everything had been going right for him, but this was, clearly, the best stroke of all. He packed his two prisoners off to London, to be incarcerated in the Tower pending the disposition of their case. He was carrying in his pocket a petition from the common people who had endured the harshness and tyranny of the Mortimers and were asking that no grace be shown them. In spite of the letters of safe-conduct, it was not in Edward’s mind to be lenient. He appointed a commission to try them, but when a sentence of death for treason was pronounced on the pair, he seemed to relent. The sentence, at any rate, was commuted to life imprisonment in the Tower.

  As it turned out, this was an evil mischance for the king. Mortimer in the Tower could be more harmful than Mortimer ruffling it on the borders of Wales.

  With the capture and disposal of the Mortimers, the resistance in the west collapsed. The king took the castles of all the other dissenting barons and then spent Christmas at Cirencest
er in a mood of deep satisfaction. He enjoyed the jests of the Lord of Misrule and the other mumming antics of yuletide. He dipped a gold mug in the wassail bowl with no thought but to enjoy himself again as in the old days at King’s Langley.

  On February 11 he issued a writ for the recall of the Despensers.

  2

  All that remained for Edward to do now was to deal with Cousin Lancaster.

  The latter found himself in a desperate dilemma because of his inability to make up his mind. Several courses had been open to him, but he had taken none. He could have moved down to support the Marcher barons, as he had promised to do before they took up arms, in which case the king would have found himself between two arms of a pincer. He could have disbanded his troops and announced his intention of supporting the king. He could have run away, either to Scotland or the continent. He could have gone into hiding. The castle of Pontefract stood on a high hill covering eight acres and had many secret subterranean chambers in the rock beneath it Here he could have remained until the storm blew over, as the Jacobite leaders did later in caves in the Highland glens. But he did none of these things. He sat around and waited while everything went wrong. And then suddenly he found himself alone in arms against the king, who was hurrying north with a victorious army to deal with him.

  Still the earl did nothing. Perhaps he believed himself above any form of personal punishment, being of royal blood and first cousin to the king. If so, he was sadly mistaken. The king had conceived as great a hate for him as he had for the king, and it would be a sad day for Cousin Lancaster if he fell into Edward’s hands. It may have been that he did not believe the king could take advantage of the situation; this fumbling and stupid king who never before had done anything right. Perhaps, having a firm belief in his own military capacity, he was certain he could beat Edward if it came to a clash at arms.

  Whatever the reason, he sat at Pontefract while the king captured Berkeley Castle and began his march to the north. He heard the news of the capture of Kenilworth and Tutbury and of the death of Roger d’Amory. He knew the Mortimers were realizing the extent of their mistake in trusting themselves to the king’s mercy. Finally, he was well aware that Sir Andrew Harclay, who was in command of royal troops to check Scottish raids, had thrown himself across his, Lancaster’s, line of retreat. His main supporter, the Earl of Hereford, joined him at Pontefract, full of alarm and convinced that nothing could save them.

  Then Lancaster did the worst thing possible. He made a halfhearted effort to prevent Edward from crossing the Trent, thereby stamping himself as a traitor. Then he turned with such troops as were left him and ran for it.

  Harclay took prompt measures at this point. He brought his troops down to intercept the runaway earls and defeated them easily at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire. Hereford was killed while crossing the bridge. A soldier hidden under the bridge thrust a lance into him through a crevice in the boarding. Lancaster was taken prisoner. He was turned over at once to the king.

  3

  It was on March 6, 1322, that Lancaster fell into the hands of Harclay. Six days later he was tried at his own castle of Pontefract on charges of treason. It could not properly be called a trial; rather, it was a formal hearing conducted before the king and a group of prominent peers, with the verdict decided upon in advance.

  It is unfortunate that little was recorded of the event, for it is one of the most dramatic in English history. Lancaster, as the eldest son of Edmund Crouchback, was cousin to the king and the second man in the kingdom. He had taken full advantage of his rank to oppose Edward at every step during the latter’s fifteen years on the throne, constituting himself the leader of all discontent. Finally he had, with the backing of the baronage, assumed the role of virtual dictator. Legally he still exercised the powers granted him in July 1316 by the Parliament meeting at Lincoln.

  And yet here he stood, with head bent and face pale, at one end of the great hall in his own castle while the king, who had always seemed to him an oaf and a weakling, sat at the other end with the crown on his head. It was a warm day, with a bright sun (how often this happens when someone faces the violent death prescribed by law!), but the thoughts in Lancaster’s mind would have been better tuned to dismal clouds and raw winds. He had always believed he should have been the king. He had been compelled to watch the sad performance of Edward II on the throne which might have been his save for the accident of parentage which had brought Edward I into the world ahead of Edmund Crouchback. It is doubtful that he felt regrets for the course he had followed as he heard himself denounced as a traitor. He had never seen himself as others had, as an indecisive man of little capacity who had been actuated by personal spite rather than by patriotic impulses. But he must have been filled with a despairing realization of the folly which had brought him to this sorry pass.

  Edward, being of shallow character, was prone to quick and angry reactions rather than to the harboring of deep hatreds; but for this cousin who had balked him at every turn, who had been guilty of the cruel dispatch of Gaveston, who had stood on the battlements above the hall, where they were now convened, to jeer at him as he passed in his moment of most bitter humiliation, for this man there was in him no inclination to mercy.

  Seated about the king were many of the greatest peers of England: Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent and the king’s half brother; John de Dreux, Duke of Brittany; the earls of Pembroke, Surrey, Arundel, Atholl, Angus; Lord Hugh Spencer (meaning the elder Despenser, who had lost no time in rushing home), and Lord Robert de Malmesthorp, chief justice.

  A formidable list, and not one face in the group with any hint of friendliness for this overweening man who had been brought, without his armor on his back or his sword by his side, to stand trial before them.

  The voice of Lancaster was not raised during the proceedings. He was informed that inasmuch as his traitorous actions were known to all and had already convicted him he would not be asked to plead, nor would he be allowed to speak in his own defense. The hearing must have been brief, consisting of the reading of a long statement in lieu of a legal indictment.

  “With banners displayed,” ran the statement, “as in open war, in a hostile manner … resisted and hindered our sovereign lord the king, his soldiers and faithful subjects, for three whole days so that they could not pass over the bridge of Burton-upon-Trent … and there feloniously slew some of the king’s men.”

  Later in the statement there was a reference to the train of incidents which weighed heavily on the mind of the king: when he and Brother Perrot had played the hares before the baronial hounds, with Lancaster sounding the horn to harry them out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and to lead finally to the tragedy of Blacklow Hill. “When our said lord the king had got together provisions, horses and armor, jewels and several other goods and moveables of great value and in large quantities; which goods and moveables the said Earl Thomas, with horse and arms, and a great power of armed men, took, despoiled and carried off.”

  The most damaging piece of evidence was proof found on the slain Earl of Hereford of an effort made to form a confederacy with Robert the Bruce. Lancaster had been corresponding with the Scottish king earlier, using the nom de plume King Arthur, an indication, clearly, of the high vaulting nature of his inner ambitions. It will be recalled also that the country had seethed at one stage with rumors that Lancaster was actually in the pay of the Scottish king. The communication found on Hereford’s body contained a direct invitation to come into England with an army, offering in recompense the good offices of Lancaster in getting for Scotland “a good peace.”

  The prisoner listened while the statement was read, if not with penitence or fear, at least with a conviction of the conclusion to be reached. The king, who is not reported to have taken any part in the proceedings, may not have followed it with equal concentration. It is more likely his mind was filled with the memories which had hardened his resolution: the voice of his friend Gaveston raised in defense of his life, the derisive laughter whic
h had reached him from the battlements of the castle, the letters to the archenemy of the kings of England, signed so vaingloriously King Arthur.

  Finally the droning voice of the clerk intoned the words of summation:

  “Wherefore our sovereign lord the king, having duly weighed the great enormities and offences of the said Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and his notorious ingratitude, has no manner of reason to show any mercy on him, in reference to pardoning those crimes.… Nevertheless, because the said earl Thomas is most highly and most nobly descended, our sovereign lord the king, having due regard to his high birth and quality, of his own mere good pleasure, remits the execution of two of the punishments, as aforesaid, viz. That the said Thomas shall not be drawn and hanged; but only that execution be done upon the said earl, by beheading him.”

  The aides who had been captured with Lancaster, not having high birth and quality, were not so well treated. They were condemned to die with all the refinements reserved for traitors. They were hanged, drawn, and quartered.

  The sun was still high in the heavens and the air pleasant when Cousin Lancaster was taken to St. Thomas’ Hill, which lies some distance from the town, although it could be seen from the eight tall towers at Pontefract. He made the journey on the back of a small gray pony. As he passed through the town he was pelted with stones and offal by the people in the streets, many of whom were his dependents.