The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

by Dan Jones

  But far more deadly than all this was the line that had been crossed when Gaveston was tried under a court whose quasi-judicial authority stemmed from the earl of Lancaster and the Ordinances he championed. For all his transgressions, Gaveston’s death could not possibly be a just sentence under the laws of the realm. Rather, when he was run through and beheaded on Blacklow Hill, Piers Gaveston – an earl, whether his peers liked it or not – was murdered. And his murder was political.

  For more than 150 years the Plantagenets had reigned in England by rule of law. Only in the most severe instances had great men died in the course of political and constitutional disputes: Thomas Becket by misadventure; Simon de Montfort on the battlefield; Arthur of Brittany in cold blood in his prison cell. Now a king’s closest companion had been killed in calculated fashion on the order of one of the most senior Plantagenets in the realm.

  Kidnap, violence and murder were commonplace in medieval society, but they were not an acceptable part of the ordinary course of royal government except under the severest circumstances. Now, however, violence had become a political tool in England. Pandora’s box was open. As Edward and Lancaster moved towards implacable hatred, the Plantagenet family was in danger of tearing itself apart – and taking England with it.

  Summer of Promise

  To be in Paris during the summer of 1313 was to know the high delights of medieval France. At the beginning of June the whole population flocked in the city streets, and lodgings were crammed with countless noblemen, young knights, the aristocratic young ladies of Europe and dignified visitors from foreign lands. Great crowds watched public performances, ceremonies and processions. Colourful fabrics decked the streets, while the city bourgeois provided a fountain that sprayed wine into the air, decorated with fabulous creatures: mermaids, lions, leopards and mythical beasts. In a covered market in one part of the city an enclosed wood was built and filled with rabbits, so that revellers could amuse themselves by chasing tame animals. Open-air theatrical performances and musical recitals delighted the population. The French chroniclers averred that this was the most spectacular festival ever seen in France. It was a summer of great pageantry and celebration. King Edward II of England and Queen Isabella were at the heart of it all.

  The king and queen of England had arrived in France on a state visit at the end of May, travelling with the earls of Pembroke and Richmond and other loyalists including Hugh Despenser the elder and Henry Beaumont. They had been invited to France to enjoy the honour of witnessing Edward’s father-in-law, King Philip IV, knight nearly 200 young men, including his sons Louis, king of Navarre, Philip and Charles. The ceremony had echoes of the great Feast of the Swans held by Edward I on the eve of his final Scottish invasion in 1306, at which Edward and all his new knights swore first to conquer Scotland, and then to win back the Holy Land. But as in all matters, the French Crown determined to make the ceremony greater than anything before it: an occasion of unsurpassed glory and magnificence.

  As the English party rode into Paris on 1 June, they were greeted with huge acclaim and celebration. A series of six celebratory banquets was planned to mark their arrival, and the occasion was costing Edward handsomely: he had given his father-in-law nearly 100 oxen and 200 pigs, 380 rams, 200 pike, 200 carp and 80 barrels of wine towards the feasting. At the banquet that the English were to host, Edward planned service on horseback inside tents thrown open for the public to gawp into. The banquet was to be lit even in daylight by hundreds of torches. He had hired famous minstrels and musicians to entertain the guests, and the king of Navarre’s armourer had built a ‘castle of love’ to provide amusement between courses.

  Here were the king and queen of England taking their place in a Capetian family snapshot. Edward was weak and unpopular at home, but in France he was welcomed with reverence into the royal carnival. At home the writer of The Life of Edward II dismissed the first six years of Edward’s reign as a betrayal of Plantagenet values, writing that the king had ‘achieved nothing praiseworthy or memorable, except that he has made a splendid marriage and has produced a handsome son … How different were the beginnings of King Richard, who, before the end of the third year of his reign, scattered far and wide the rays of his valour.’ But in France, Edward was welcomed with dignity as a result of his connection to the Capetian bloodline.

  There were many causes for the English and French royal parties to celebrate together. Philip wished to mark a victory in a long dispute with the papacy, as well as the destruction of the Templars in France, by putting together a great family pageant in Paris, showcasing the far-flung bloodstock and general worshipfulness of the French Crown. Peace between England and France over the state of Gascony was possible and indeed open to arrangement. And the two kings had also made that most Christian of Plantagenet–Capetian accords: an agreement to launch a new crusade against the Muslims of Egypt. On 6 June Philip and Edward took their crusading vows at Notre-Dame, where Edward became the sixth successive Plantagenet king to make the sacred promise.

  How much life had improved since the previous June. Then, the murder of Gaveston had pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Edward had been among the hardest-headed belligerents. Although in public he lamented Gaveston’s idiocy in falling into Warwick’s hands, in private he had considered punishing Lancaster and his allies with a military campaign against them. Only counsel from those around him that civil war would allow Robert Bruce to invade from Scotland prevented Edward from raising an army against his enemies.

  It had taken six months to coax England away from the brink of insurrection and anarchy. But as Edward and Isabella joined the revelries of the Capetian family, they could both reflect that things were on the mend. For a start, they were now parents. Queen Isabella had grown into her role as queen after Gaveston’s death, aided by the presence of her aunt, Margaret of France, who was the king’s stepmother. She had been loyal to her husband through his troubles and finally, on 13 November 1312, she had given birth to a son at Windsor. Resisting pressure from the French to name him Louis or Philip, the boy had been named Edward. According to a monk of St Albans, the boy’s birth had distracted the king from grieving for Gaveston. The queen had written to the citizens of London to announce the birth, and the news was greeted with great rejoicing in the streets of the capital. Edward of Windsor’s birth had been a relief to all – although the child had the dangers of childhood to negotiate, his existence gave a small measure of stability to the weak regime. The boy was made earl of Chester at the age of twelve days. To bolster the status of the royal – or rather, the loyal – Plantagenets, Edward II had followed the birth of his son by raising his twelve-year-old half-brother Thomas of Brotherton to the rank of earl of Norfolk.

  When Edward and Isabella returned from their lavish tour of France in mid-July 1313, it seemed as though their greatest moment of crisis had passed. There was by no means an easy relationship between the king and his baronial enemies, who continued to despise royal companions who remained in the king’s circle, such as Hugh Despenser, who had been virtually the only baron to have stood by the king and defended Gaveston until his death. But at a Westminster parliament in October peace between the two parties was formalized.

  Months of mediation by envoys from France and the papacy had been required to broker peace. But finally Edward agreed to pardon Lancaster, Hereford, Arundel, Henry Percy, Roger de Clifford and their allies for Gaveston’s death. In return, the barons agreed to pardon former allies of Gaveston like Despenser, whom the king kept in place around him. The Ordinances were not mentioned, and nor did the barons demand that any ministers were removed. Gaveston and his supporters were no longer described as enemies of the king and kingdom. It was a step towards peace, if not quite full reconciliation.

  And more good news followed. At the end of November Edward obtained parliament’s consent to wage war against the Scots. In December he went to France to seek his father-in-law’s permission to secure a papal loan against the duchy of Gascon
y. He was successful, and in the spring of 1314 £25,000 was received from Rome, allowing Edward to fund a large campaign in the north. Finally, it seemed, he was about to take up where his father had left off.

  The brief promise, alas, was nothing but an illusion. In a matter of months the joy of the French visit, Prince Edward’s birth and the reconciliation with the magnates had vanished, collapsing back into the grimness of reality, as surely as one of the carnival tableaux that had brightened the streets of Paris in that last, wonderful summer.

  Bannockburn

  Edward’s Scottish campaign began promisingly. On 17 or 18 June the king marched a formidable army out of Berwick. It was well equipped, well funded and well stocked. The wagon train was said to stretch seven leagues (roughly twenty miles) from end to end, while ships hugged the coast to keep the army provided. The army was easily the largest that had been raised for fifteen years, since Edward I’s Falkirk campaign of 1298. The earls of Gloucester, Hereford and Pembroke, Hugh Despenser and Roger Clifford all brought large contingents with them, and there were thousands more knights and infantry recruited both in the king’s personal retinue and in the army at large. Missing, however, were the earls of Lancaster, Warwick, Arundel and Surrey, who sent the minimum number of fighting men to which they claimed they were obliged under law. They argued, falsely, that the campaign was not properly agreed upon in parliament: the true reason was that these most extreme opponents of the king feared that if Edward was victorious in Scotland then he would be quite capable of turning on them and their lands in England.

  At first it seemed like no great loss to a formidable force. Edward marched his men fifty miles north from Berwick, and the thunderous approach of the English army gave the impression, according to the author of The Life of Edward II, that it was ‘quite sufficient to penetrate the whole of Scotland … some thought that if the whole strength of Scotland had been gathered together, they would not have stayed to face the king’s army’. Unfortunately for Edward, that would not be the case. He arrived near Stirling on 23 June to find that Robert Bruce had camped a smaller army, consisting of 500 light cavalry and no more than 6,000 infantry, in the ‘New Park’, a leafy hunting ground on the road to Stirling. Half a mile away lay a stream known as the Bannock Burn, which regularly flooded the land around it, making it boggy and treacherous underfoot, conditions that Bruce’s men had deliberately worsened by digging potholes in the ground, which were disguised under piles of sticks and grass.

  The battle of Bannockburn fell into two phases. The first, which took place on 23 June, was a day of skirmishing between English and Scottish knights. Henry de Bohun, the earl of Hereford’s nephew, challenged Robert Bruce himself to single combat. He had his head split clean in two with a blow of the Scottish king’s battleaxe and died on the spot. The 23-year-old Gilbert earl of Gloucester then wrought dissent in the English ranks by disputing the leadership of the vanguard with Hereford (who was constable of England). The vanguard was the foremost of the three traditional divisions of an army, and the honour of leading it was therefore substantial. Gloucester, however, gained little from winning the argument with Hereford, since he was knocked from his horse in combat and was fortunate to escape with his life. In a separate engagement on the same day, English cavalry aiming to reconnoitre a siege at Stirling castle were attacked by Scottish spearmen. Sir Thomas Gray had his horse killed under him and was captured, along with many other knights.

  If this was an ominous beginning, then it was soon compounded by further divisions among the English ranks. After such a pathetic start, Gloucester argued overnight with the king. The earl believed that the troops, exhausted from the march north, urgently needed rest before they carried on the engagement with Bruce. Edward wished to fight on. He called the earl a traitor and a liar, and a furious argument erupted.

  The following morning, as the armies drew up again for battle, Gloucester attempted to defend his honour. He began the fighting hot-headedly and recklessly by charging the English vanguard at the Scottish infantry. But far from achieving a feat of chivalrous derring-do, Gloucester was surrounded and killed in a seething crush of horses and men. This was the cue for a general slaughter of the English cavalry by Scottish spearmen, arranged in hedgehog schiltroms, as they had been at Falkirk in 1298. On that occasion Edward I’s archers had destroyed them with a deadly rain of arrows. But at Bannockburn, Edward kept his archers in the rear until too late, and his cavalry was run through on the sharp tips of Scottish spears.

  As a battle turned into a chaotic massacre, Edward had to be dragged from the battlefield by the earl of Pembroke and Sir Giles d’Argentein – a man reputed as the third-greatest knight in the Christian world. The king fought bravely as he retreated, smashing at Scottish attackers with his mace, even though his horse was killed. Only through the force and will of Pembroke and Sir Giles was Edward removed from safety and a catastrophic capture averted. But there was a sickening end even to the king’s escape. Sir Giles, mindful of his knightly duty in the face of abject defeat, was hacked to pieces when he left the king in safety and hurtled back into battle.

  Edward and an escort of 500 men escaped Bannockburn and left Scotland in a hurried naval evacuation from Dunbar. They left behind them thousands of doomed men. The Bannock Burn, the river Forth and the boggy ground that lay all around them groaned with dead and dying Englishmen. The Stirling mud thickened with blood, seeping into the tiny crisscrossing streams that covered the battleground. Some of the greatest knights in Christendom were slain by Robert Bruce’s army: butchered on the battlefield by the Scots or drowned attempting to cross the Bannock Burn or the river Forth. Besides Gloucester and Sir Giles d’Argentein, at least 200 knights were killed, including Sir Roger de Clifford. The earl of Pembroke was very lucky to escape alive. Edward’s privy seal was captured in battle. The earl of Hereford was taken prisoner by the Scots, as were numerous other high-ranking knights. As the English fled, the Scots pursued them across the border, their plundered belongings left behind. The author of The Life of Edward II lamented ‘so many fine noblemen, so much military equipment, costly garments, and gold plate – all lost in one harsh day, one fleeting hour’.

  But the gold plate and costly garments were not the principal losses. Although military tactics were turning at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and infantry were beginning to hold sway over mounted knights wherever the two met, the loss at Bannockburn was still humiliating. Bruce was stronger than ever in Scotland, and was free to open a military front in Ireland.

  Edward II, meanwhile, was once again at a grievous disadvantage in his relations with the earls who had tormented him during the Gaveston years. Lancaster, Warwick, Arundel and Surrey, having gambled on Edward’s military incompetence by refusing to serve on the Scottish campaign, were now ascendant. Instead of a victorious king swooping to crush his domestic enemies, a humbled king was returning to face his demons. With the king’s fortunes as low as at any time during his reign, the disgruntled barons were free to press their desire for reform upon him once again.

  New Favourites

  On 2 January 1315 the embalmed body of Piers Gaveston was buried at King’s Langley, one of Edward’s favourite residences. The manor house had belonged to his mother, Queen Eleanor. Edward had visited it as a child, and it had undergone extensive works and restoration to create a sumptuous Hertfordshire residence for the family. The brightly painted halls were lit by large fireplaces, beasts roamed grounds large enough to host tournaments, and within the parkland and vineyards that surrounded the main house there was a lodge known as Little London.

  It was a place of royal delights, and now of royal mourning, as the king’s former favourite was finally given the monument Edward desired for him. Gaveston had almost certainly been absolved of his excommunication by the new and pliant archbishop of Canterbury Walter Reynolds, and could now be transferred from his Dominican morgue in Oxford to Langley’s cold earth. His embalmed corpse was wrapped in cloth of gold that had co
st the king £300, before being buried with honour in the presence of most of the bishops of England.

  The English earls were less well represented at Langley. The attractions of a lavish wake, at which at least twenty-three tuns of wine were drunk, were not enough to gather Lancaster and his allies to watch as the man they had killed was finally laid to rest. Plenty of political tension still existed between Edward and his cousin’s supporters – reconciliation was not likely to be helped along by the ghosts of 1312.

  The years that followed Bannockburn saw the Plantagenet king and the earl of Lancaster make efforts, ultimately fruitless, to coexist and to govern England. Political recovery was marred on both sides – by the intransigence and arrogance of the earl, and the king’s desire to retreat once more into a circle of men whom he trusted – but the rest of the country found it hard to follow.

  The core members of a group that would briefly become the king’s new cabal were present at Langley to watch the old favourite laid to rest. The two most loyal earls – Pembroke and Hereford – attended. One was the king’s saviour at Bannockburn, and the other recently released from captivity under Bruce. Also attending were Henry Beaumont and Bartholomew Badlesmere, who had been one of the late earl of Gloucester’s most important retainers and who was becoming an ever more influential baron in his own right as well as more than fifty other knights and most of Edward’s royal officials. But most important among all the party was Hugh Despenser and his son and namesake, Hugh Despenser the younger.

  The Despensers had never wavered in their loyalty to Edward, and following Gaveston’s death they moved to fill the gap that the king’s favourite had left. Hugh the elder was as close a companion as ever, regularly accompanying the king on foreign visits, and gradually accruing titles and castles in the west of England. The younger Despenser was slowly being introduced to royal company, and was on the road to becoming an even closer friend and ally to the king than his father. These two men would grow to have an ever more profound influence on Edward as his reign spiralled towards disaster.