The Three Edwards

by Thomas B. Costain

  The French king had been right. Wars could be won by not fighting battles.

  Further proof of this came in every day. The French forces, not meeting any opposition, soon overran the province of Ponthieu, capturing Abbeville, St. Valery, and Crotoy in one week. This was especially galling for Edward of England. It meant that the field of Crécy, where he had won so much glory that the whole world had wondered, went back into his rival’s hands. This seemed the most bitter blow that could be dealt him, for Crécy had ceased on that eventful day to be a village in France and had become a great page in English history.

  But Charles of France did not have anything like the same respect for the historic battleground. The blame for that shattering defeat rested on the memory of his grandfather, and in the royal family there was no great regard for that bitter and unsuccessful man. Charles had his eyes fixed on a spot farther north, the ancient city of Calais, washed by the waters of the Channel on one side and ringed by marshes on the other, the key to France which that same Philip had allowed the English to take while he sat far back with his futile army. Calais was much more than a piece of hillside where a defeat had been suffered. It was the bridgehead which the English needed so much, an arrow pointed straight at the heart of France.

  The French king was so concerned about Calais that he kept relays of mounted couriers riding day and night between Paris and the north, bringing him news of everything that happened, hoping that someday there would be a hint of a development he could use. As he walked up and down in his map-hung room in Paris, he kept his head turned in order that his eyes might always be fixed on that important corner of France which remained captive.

  When John of Gaunt sailed for England, Bertrand du Guesclin came out in force and proceeded to storm or to starve into subjection castle after castle and town after town, until he became master of all Saintonge and Angoumois. It was not long before the English possessions had been reduced to Bayonne and Bordeaux and the handful of land around Calais.

  By this time the objective of the English had changed. They were no longer thinking in terms of a conquest of France or even the retention of a large part of their holdings. They were realizing that the best they could hope for now was to retain the important points of entry—Calais, Brest, and Bordeaux.

  If England could retain the mastery of the seas won at the naval battle of Sluys, it would be relatively easy to maintain bridgeheads on the continent. When the French laid siege to the port of La Rochelle and the Spaniards sent a large fleet to attack that city from the sea, Edward saw that he must act at once. He assembled a great fleet to go to the relief of La Rochelle. It cost nearly a million crowns to secure and equip the ships of war, the largest sum yet expended in carrying on this costly war. Everyone knew the importance of the stake, and the hopes of the nation went with the sails of the great armada when it put to sea under the command of the Earl of Pembroke.

  The Spanish fleet proved to be much more powerful than had been expected. As it happened also, the advantage of the wind was with the Castilians when battle was joined. The English commander seemed unable to overcome the handicaps he faced, although he continued to fight grimly for two days. In the end every English ship was either captured or sunk and every Englishman was killed or made prisoner. Pembroke himself was held in rigorous confinement for several years before the French king would consent to having him ransomed.

  It should be understood that although the term “navy” has been used in dealing with the war at sea, there was no such thing as a navy in England. The way a fleet was put together was an example of the ruthless methods employed at the time to organize national defense. There were two admirals acting for the king in much the manner that a marshal had charge of land operations. The admirals were always soldiers of some experience and high in the echelons of the aristocracy but with little or no knowledge of the sea. One was in charge of operations in the North Sea and the other had for his share the English Channel. When a fleet was needed, the admirals would be notified to begin, and the first step was to impound every ship that sailed the seas, from the largest cog to the smallest shallop; all of them privately owned, of course. No ship would be allowed to leave any port until the admiral and his aides had selected those which seemed best suited to war service. Not until this had been done and the ships for use had been manned by methods similar to the “press gangs” of later centuries (by which armed parties would come ashore and seize for duty every able-bodied man they could find loose) were the rest of the vessels allowed to proceed with their regular function, the carrying of goods to and from England.

  The admirals were in general notoriously unfitted for the work. They would prove so slow that for long periods all the merchant ships of England would be tied up in port, their hulls accumulating barnacles, their sails rotting, while the blue-blooded incompetents boggled about the task of getting the fleet equipped and ready. It happened thus that during these times of incompetent preparation the English flag would be off the seas. Piracy would spring up, with no way of checking it, and the fleets of other nations could ravish the coasts of England.

  Edward III had always recognized the extreme importance of commanding the sea but he took no steps to create a national navy. When the need arose, it would be possible to get together a fleet by this time-honored incompetence. When the Good Parliament was sitting at Westminster, the French and Spanish ships were sweeping the seas and burning English ports and fishing villages. The Speaker, bold and outspoken Peter de la Mare, brought the situation up during the attacks made on the disorganization at Westminster. “There used to be more ships in one port,” he exclaimed, “than can be found today in the whole kingdom!”

  When the Earl of Pembroke sailed for the relief of La Rochelle with the fleet which had been gathered at such monumental expense, every able-bodied seaman from the ports and creeks of Cornwall was aboard, many of them having been “pressed” into the service. This meant that the coasts of Cornwall were left unprotected and French vessels swarmed across the Channel to burn the towns and steal everything they could get their hands on. None of the Cornishmen came back from that ill-fated venture.

  4

  At this black juncture in what had been such an exciting and brilliant reign, with the king in his dotage, the Black Prince close to death’s door, and the war which had been won being now as surely lost, a strange story gained circulation in England. It was told in whispers, for it was treasonable stuff and a man might hang on the nearest gallows for the repeating of it.

  On her deathbed, so ran the story, Queen Philippa had made a confession to William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester: that Duke John of Gaunt was not her son, nor the son of Edward III. The child she had brought into the world at Ghent had been a girl and through some carelessness had been suffocated. Fearful of the ire of the king, they had persuaded a porter in Ghent, whose wife had given birth to a son at the very same hour, to let them pass his child as the son of the queen. This story the queen swore to with almost her last breath and, moreover, she had laid an injunction on the bishop “that if ever it chanced this son of the Flemish porter affecteth the kingdom, he will make his stock and lineage known to the world lest a false heir should inherit the throne of England.”

  It was pure invention, of course. John of Gaunt resembled his father more nearly than any of the others. He was of the identical commanding height and he had the same long profile, the same straight nose, and the same eye, restless, intelligent, and vibrant. This may have been one of the reasons why the king had a preference for Duke John over the others. The Black Prince was courteous but austere and reserved; Lionel was an amiable giant; Edmund of Cambridge was of shallow character; Thomas of Woodstock was quarrelsome, intolerant, and fiercely opinionated. On the other hand, Duke John was a brilliant talker, a fine raconteur, an urbane companion. He and his father could talk far into the night over their wine.

  The true key to the character of John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster, has never been found. He wa
s in his day, and still is, a mystery. Intensely ambitious, he never involved himself, in spite of many opportunities, in any definite move to seize power. It was not a lack of courage which held him back, for the valor of all the brothers was apparent. Perhaps it was a scrupulous reserve which came to the fore when he found himself facing desperate measures. The people of England sensed in him these inward desires for a larger part in the affairs of England than his position on the family tree warranted, and they based their estimate of him on that score, not allowing him any credit for not putting the thought into action.

  He is charged with playing an evil part in the last years of his father’s life. There is a rather strong case against him and yet there are circumstances which make it hard to accept the verdict of history which depicts him as a rather low kind of criminal, a combination of pander and thief.

  A small and ignoble coterie in the offices at Westminster had seized the reins which had fallen from the fumbling hands of the prematurely old king. Some were members of the Royal Council, two belonging to the second order of nobility, the third a wealthy merchant of London. Around this group had gathered a motley crew of hangers-on—thieves, smugglers, and swindlers; and between the lot of them, they were stripping the royal cupboard bare.

  The chief villain seems to have been the London merchant, Richard Lyons by name, wealthy, unscrupulous, and able. He provided the funds. The other leader was William, fourth Baron Latimer.

  The opportunities for corruption were unusually favorable, owing to the absence of a watchful eye from the throne. All goods exported to the continent were routed through Calais, where the government tax was collected. The members of the “ring” began to sell the right to unscrupulous merchants to export through other ports where the tax would not be collected. Richard Lyons was appointed farmer of the customs at Calais and took advantage of the chance to assess a higher duty than the government had set and to pocket the difference.

  The most glaring activity of the inner circle was in connection with the debts of the king. For thirty years Edward III had been spreading his “paper” about, on the continent as well as in England, in the form of promises to pay for money advanced him on loan. Few of these notes had ever been redeemed, and the unfortunate holders, denied the right of suing the king, had long since despaired of getting their money back. Lyons and his aristocratic crew now went to the king’s debtors and bought the notes at a staggering discount, paying no more than ten, or even five, per cent of the amount due. They then took the redeemed notes to the Exchequer and had them paid for at face value, using their control of the Royal Council to compel payment by the crown officers. The profits in this highly shady business were nothing short of enormous and, as the loss was being sustained by the government, the guilt of the participants was of the blackest variety.

  Finally they were guilty of “cornering” the market in commodities for public use. When certain goods were imported from the continent, these honorable gentlemen would buy up all available supplies and charge the public at a much-enhanced figure, claiming that the reason was a shortage in supply. Sometimes, for better measure, they would devise means of bringing the goods in free of duty in the first place, before proceeding to “squeeze” the poor public.

  It was claimed that Duke John was the “boss” of this circle of unscrupulous rascals and that it was because of his power over the king that they were able to operate safely. His guilt was accepted pretty generally at the time, and he became so unpopular throughout the country, and particularly in London, that people clamored for his head. Through the ages historians have been inclined to believe in his guilt without much question, although it has been impossible to produce any form of positive evidence to prove his participation in the thievery.

  It is hard to believe that a man of his intelligence and ambition would have been so shortsighted as to involve himself in this plundering of the public funds. There was something so mean and repulsive in the operations of the graft-ridden council that one of the duke’s background and training would have turned from it with disgust. Because of his first marriage to the Lancaster heiress he was the wealthiest man in England, holding more land and more titles than any of the other princes and peers. Would he stoop to such low practices as the shaving of his father’s notes and the juggling of customs duties to increase his fortunes? For him to take the lead in the knavery of graft-ridden Westminster would be proof of bad judgment amounting almost to idiocy.

  There are still surer grounds for refusing to believe that John of Gaunt was as venal and stupid as he has been made out. His great ambition was to become a king; of England first or, failing that, of Castile. This is not based on surmise. When the Parliament was summoned in 1376, which was to become known as the Good Parliament, he was very active in a move to introduce the Salic Law into English acceptance. His reason was this: the first son of the Black Prince, the little Edward who had occupied such a warm place in the heart of that great warrior, had died before the health of the prince compelled him to return to England, and this meant that his second son, Richard, was now heir to the throne. Young princes had often been passed over or put out of the way. But if anything happened to little Richard, the next in line for the crown would be Philippa, the daughter of Prince Lionel, the second son, who had died in Italy. Philippa had married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and her claim to the throne could not be brushed aside in favor of John of Gaunt, save by the application of the Salic Law. Duke John was so anxious to clear this obstacle from his path that he conducted a busy campaign of buttonholing (buttons did exist in those days but not in large quantities) among the members of Parliament, but without winning many adherents. The point arises now: If circumstances removed the obstacles from his path, would John, who was openly a candidate for the throne, allow his reputation to become besmirched by participation in the looting of the government funds and in the lowest forms of fraud and thievery? Would he throw away his chance for the insignificant fruits of dirty politics?

  John of Gaunt was a man of extreme elegance and sophistication as well as the possessor of a quick intelligence. He could not conceivably have been guilty of such shortsightedness. His course later, which is generally advanced as proof of his complicity, will be shown to have been dictated solely by his deep desire to feel the crown of England on his brow.

  It should be explained at this point that Duke John’s marriage with Constance of Castile was not proving a happy one. He had fallen in love with a beautiful woman, Catherine, the daughter of a knight of Hainaut, Payne Roelt, and the widow of Hugh Swynford. The fair Catherine, whose sister was the wife of Geoffrey Chaucer, had been given charge of the duke’s children after the death of his first wife, and she had fallen in love with her handsome and fascinating employer. She had become his mistress very soon thereafter but, being of fine character and a gentle susceptibility, she had insisted on a careful screening of her compliance. Now, with his second marriage proving a failure, John allowed his infatuation for the beautiful widow to show.

  The populace, always willing to believe the worst of him, took a hostile view of the affair. Bishop Brunton of Rochester, a man of passionate convictions as well as eloquence, attacked the duke from the pulpit, calling him “the adulterer and pursuer of luxury.” The duke’s love for Catherine, which later led to his marriage with her and the legitimatizing of their children, was linked in the public mind with the shoddy affair of the old king with Alice Perrers. It was charged that the duke stood by his father in the matter of the brazen Alice in order to keep the king from interfering in his own tangled affairs.

  5

  The Exchequer was empty. There was nothing new about this, because the extravagances of the king and his family had kept the government on the verge of bankruptcy ever since Edward had come to the throne. At this particular moment, however, the emptiness of the national “till” was accentuated by the activities of Messires Latimer, Lyons, et al. It was decided, reluctantly, to summon Parliament and ask for a vote of
supplies.

  The Parliament which came to Westminster in the late spring of 1376 was made up, fortunately, of men with a serious regard for the public weal and a stoutness of courage to stand out for reform in high places. The members were acquainted with the corruption in the Royal Council and they were determined to do a thorough piece of house cleaning before agreeing to vote supplies.

  At no other time in the reign of Edward had there been such a tense atmosphere in advance of a session of the House. The country was in a bad way, the royal family had broken into two sections, the king was soon to die, and the succession had become almost a fighting issue. The Black Prince had watched things from a sickbed in his castle at Berkhampstead with so much apprehension that he now forced himself to rise and be driven to London. He realized that he would have to fight for the succession of his son and that in doing so he would find himself in opposition to the king.

  The division of the two houses had not been accomplished then, although the knights from the shires and the citizens from the towns had fallen automatically into one body, while the barons and bishops formed an upper house. The lower house elected a speaker whose duties were not merely to preside and pass on points of procedure. He was the leader, the voice of the commons. It happened that in this crisis there was a bold and convincing voice ready to hand, Peter de la Mare, one of the two knights sent up to represent Hereford. He had been filling the post of seneschal in the household of the Earl of March, which placed him among the opponents of John of Gaunt.

  The history of the Commons is a record of great men; fearless, honest, able leaders who risked their lives and sometimes forfeited them to protect the rights of the people. No bolder figure ever arose in a moment of stress than Peter de la Mare.