by Ian Mortimer
Isabella returned to Paris. By evening she dined with her family and advisers, and entertained distinguished visitors. By day she spent her time visiting churches. She was a devout Catholic, and a keen observer of holy relics, but she now spent more time than usual in contemplation. Her mind was preoccupied, possibly with thoughts of Roger.20 She must also have been concerned that, as soon as the treaty was signed, Edward would order her to return. He would come to France to perform homage, and Despenser might be arrested; but how would Edward treat her after that? She realised she would have to betray her husband, whom she had sworn holy oaths to obey, and to whom she had sworn to remain faithful. And what if the plot eventually failed? What if Despenser escaped arrest until the king returned? There was no doubt that, in her husband’s kingdom, royal status was no guarantee of immunity from prosecution for treason, especially in the case of an undesired woman.
Roger was still in Hainault, at the court of Count William of Hainault, living off the money his son had acquired by mortgaging his recently inherited lordships in France to Charles IV.21 From there he was able easily to send messages both to France and to magnates in England, who were now collectively turning against Despenser. Hainault also kept him at a safe enough distance from Isabella for Edward not to suspect them of collusion. But even more importantly, Hainault offered an enormous diplomatic opportunity. Some years earlier a proposal had been made to marry one of the five daughters of William of Hainault to Edward’s son, Prince Edward. Nothing had come of it; but Roger knew that, if the count was still willing, and if the boy could be procured and married to one of the daughters, the financial and military weight of Hainault would be at Isabella’s disposal. Such a plan depended on King Edward sending his son to France. That was not impossible, especially while the question of homage for Gascony remained unsettled. If Edward did not come in person to do homage, then the only alternative Charles would accept was the homage of the prince.
On 31 May 1325 Isabella ratified the terms of the peace treaty between England and France. The terms were heavily in France’s favour. Far from the whole of Gascony being granted to Edward, it was first to be surrendered wholly to Charles and then partially regranted. A French official was to ratify Edward’s appointments there, and he was not able to raise an army from the land. He kept control of the castles and the military infrastructure, but the area around Agen was to be submitted to a judicial review; if it was judged that Edward had a claim to the title, he was to be liable for the costs incurred by the French army which had invaded it. It was a treaty humiliating and economically depressing, arising not out of Isabella’s poor handling but out of an impossible situation.
Edward ratified the treaty on 13 June. He had no choice: he was not in a position to hold out for a better settlement. But there remained the question of who was going to perform homage. Edward insisted that he should go in person, to prevent his son falling into Isabella’s hands. Hugh Despenser desperately sought members of the council to prevent the king from leaving England, but failed. The deciding voice was that of Henry of Lancaster. He strongly urged the king to go. Despenser, knowing his own life would be in danger, tried equally hard to dissuade him. It seemed the anti-Despenser faction was about to get its first opportunity to overthrow the favourite. Only later, when Despenser was able to speak to the king privately, was he able to impress upon Edward how vulnerable he would be in the king’s absence. Remembering Gaveston’s fate, Edward changed his mind and, feigning illness, at the last moment refused to leave England. Henry of Lancaster and the Earl of Norfolk, two men who might have been waiting to act against Despenser, had to bide their time.22 Instead of going to France himself the king sent the Bishop of Winchester to negotiate an alternative arrangement.
As Charles, Isabella and Roger all knew, there was only one acceptable alternative to the king’s attendance, and that was the visit of Prince Edward. Isabella dined with the Bishop of Winchester on 2 September, and suggested then that her son be sent to perform homage for Gascony. The bishop agreed to present this proposal formally to Edward. But just when Isabella might have thought that Edward was playing into her hands, the bishop sprung a surprise upon her. He carried Edward’s order for her to return to England forthwith.23 And to ensure that she complied, her funding was cut off with immediate effect.
This presented Isabella with a dire problem. If she had to return to England, she could not possibly hope to get control of her son. She managed to delay while the bishop returned to Edward with Charles’s formal permission that Prince Edward could be invested with Gascony and perform homage. Now it was Edward who was under pressure. He decided that he would invest Prince Edward with the title of Duke of Aquitaine, and send him with a strong party to demand Isabella’s immediate return. Prince Edward accordingly set out for Paris in the company of Henry de Beaumont and the Bishops of Winchester and Exeter, arriving there on 22 September. Isabella and her son were reunited, and overjoyed to see one another. Isabella was less pleased to see the Bishop of Exeter, Walter de Stapeldon. It had been on his advice that she had had her estates confiscated the previous year.24 She refused to dine with him, and attempted to ignore him. But de Stapeldon was not easily ignored. At some point shortly after the prince had performed homage to Charles, the bishop laid before her Edward’s demand that she return home immediately, and he did so in public, in front of the king and the court. Edward would not tolerate any excuse, he declared in the hearing of all assembled. He went on to say that he had money to pay her expenses in France, but he would not do so unless she returned to England with him, as she was legally and morally obliged to do. This was the final word, he declared; she had no choice in the matter.25
The bishop was wrong. Isabella did have a choice. Now that the matter of homage for Gascony had been resolved, and Prince Edward was with her, there was no longer any point in continuing the charade. Moreover, she felt humiliated by this public demand made on her by the bishop. ‘I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life,’ she replied in a loud voice, ‘and that someone has come between my husband and myself trying to break this bond. I protest that I will not return until this intruder is removed, but, discarding my marriage garment, shall assume the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this pharisee.’
Isabella’s words amazed and delighted the French court. The bishop had spoken in Charles’s presence in the belief that Isabella would not be able to defy him. Now she had made herself plain. De Stapeldon fully expected Charles to rebuke his rebellious sister for her treason. But Charles had played a very clever tactical game for the last two years, and he was not going to let an English bishop jeopardise his plans. ‘The queen came of her own free will, and may freely return if she so wishes. But if she prefers to remain in these parts, she is my sister, and I refuse to expel her.’
With the utterance of these words, Roger’s and Isabella’s lives changed for ever. Isabella had openly defied her husband, and the King of France had supported her. She had declared herself against Hugh Despenser and against her husband the king. She had effectively joined Roger’s rebellion.
Now it was the bishop’s turn to be alarmed. Isabella was not the only one to detest him. In his time as Treasurer he had made himself rich through extortion. He was universally loathed, and was one of four Englishmen (along with the two Despensers and Robert Baldock, the Chancellor), of whom it was said that, if they were ever found in France, they would be tortured.26 Within days, fearing for his life, he fled from Paris. Some said he fled disguised as a pilgrim. The men of his household hurried after him and returned with him to England, and went straight to the king to report the news. De Stapeldon told Edward that the men who had threatened his life were ‘certain of the king’s banished enemies’. From earlier intelligence reports sent back to England, the English exiles seem to have moved about the Continent with Roger as a body. This indicates that now, with the prince safely in the queen’s custody, Roger had retur
ned to France.
Over the subsequent days, Isabella’s companions realised the implications of her stance. Most of them had been picked because of their loyalty to Edward and Despenser, and most of them refused to accept that they would not be returning home with the queen. The queen did indeed dress as a widow, and played the part of a woman in mourning.27 For those who remained loyal to Edward, the knowledge that the queen was in communication with Roger, and that he was in France despite his exile, was too much. Isabella gave them an ultimatum: if their loyalty lay with the king then they should return to England. If, however, they were loyal to her, they should stay. Rather than defy the king and Despenser, most returned.
This turning point did not come as a shock to Isabella. She had been preparing for it since the beginning of September, when the Bishop of Winchester had demanded that she return. Her reply on that occasion had been that she would not return ‘for danger and doubt of Hugh Despenser’. Edward referred to this earlier refusal when he wrote back to her again at the start of December. He stated that he did not believe that she disliked Despenser, and that:
The king knows for truth and she knows that Hugh has always procured her all the honour with the king that he could; and no evil or villainy was done to her after her marriage by any abatement and procurement, unless peradventure sometimes the king addressed to her in secret words of reproof, by her own fault, if she will remember, as was befitting …28
Isabella must have been infuriated by this reply. Why should she have to be grateful that Despenser was supposed to have helped advance her? She was the queen, and he a mere baron’s son! She should not need his approval. But the king’s complete lack of respect for his wife is discernible not in his pretence that Despenser had helped her, nor in his implication that Despenser was her superior, but in his refusal even to listen to her. Her will was something he sought to tame and control. Having sent this letter he made another crass attempt to control her through the bishops. Knowing she would accept the order to return more readily if it came from a clergyman, he ordered all the bishops in England to write to her, telling her that it was her duty to come home. As if that were not enough, he dictated to all of them exactly the text they should send, as if they were all her ‘fathers’ beseeching their ‘dear daughter’ to return.
Isabella did not care that members of her household were leaving her. As far as she was concerned, the more disloyal men and women who left her service the better. She had no use for spies. Especially not when, in December, Roger came openly to court. There is no evidence that she had seen him since she left him in the Tower, nearly four years earlier,29 and we cannot be certain what her feelings had been for him over those years. But now she made no secret of her love, and neither did he. Roger was with her: not the defeated, humiliated and half-starved lord he had been in the Tower but the champion of free England, and the man she loved more passionately than any other in her life.
The relationship between Roger and Isabella is one of the great romances of the Middle Ages. To see them as they were in December 1325, openly defying Edward, is to see two people bound to each other against all the law and authority in the secular and spiritual world. Yet their affection for each other is rarely commented on by historians. In essence it was a relationship formed in adversity. Adultery, especially on the part of a woman, was a terrible sin in the fourteenth century, and doubly so for a queen, for whom it also carried the stain of treason. Isabella’s religious fervour made her feel this intensely: breaking solemn vows of fidelity was not something lightly done. Nor was it easy for Roger. Joan, his wife of twenty-five years’ standing, was suffering. He was betraying her in her darkest hour, while she was in her cell in Skipton Castle. But their attraction to each other was irresistible, and their affection for each other unshakeable.
For Isabella’s part, the rush into Roger’s arms seems to have been a reaction against years of self-control and self-denial. All her suffering had resulted in nothing but a husband and who was trying to manipulate her and shame her. She was threatened. She needed someone she could trust, someone, moreover, who would share the risks she was taking. She needed a steadfast and mature adviser on whom she could rely. At thirty-eight, Roger fitted the bill perfectly.
Roger’s new companion was one of the most beautiful and intelligent women of the age. She was, furthermore, ten years younger than his wife, whom he had not seen for five years. Her status as the wife of the man who had sentenced him to death, and the chance publicly to cuckold him, added a certain piquancy. If their relationship ended with their executions at the command of the King of England, then so be it. They would go down fighting together.
For a few weeks they tried to keep their closeness a secret. Edward was probably not fully aware of the depth of their relationship until 23 December, when the members of Isabella’s household loyal to Edward returned to England. From that day on there was no further pretence. It was a sober Christmas at the English court. For Isabella and Roger, however, it was a Christmas like no other. Not only were they together, and free, they were able to plan the invasion of England. While they had to be careful, aware that Despenser had agents everywhere, and aware too of the dangers of the murderer in the night, or the poisoner in the kitchen, they were relatively safe in the palace of King Charles.
The events of 1323–6 must have been profoundly shocking to the misogynist King Edward. Never before had such an important prisoner escaped from the Tower, and never before had that prisoner been so favoured by heads of state and nobles on the Continent. But worse, far worse for Edward, was this new eclipse of his authority. He, the King of England, had been cuckolded by his enemy. The humiliation was extreme. It was made even worse by the threatened invasion, which Edward was now convinced would come from France. He could do nothing but wait, set up watch beacons, hide his treasure, order the ports watched, and threaten any potential rebels within the kingdom. Such was the personal slight to Edward that he decided he would seek revenge on members of Roger’s family. He sent soldiers to old Lady Mortimer, Roger’s mother, to accuse her of hosting seditious meetings. They were to take her, immediately, to Elstow Priory, where she was to remain at her own cost, for the rest of her life.30 When she could not be found, Edward sent more men to seek her out at Radnor and Worcester. A further order to the same effect in April 1326 indicates that she had, like her son, outwitted her would-be captors.
On 8 February 1326 Edward publicly admitted that the queen had turned against him. He sent letters to all the sheriffs in the country ordering them to proclaim that all men should be ready to take arms and protect England against the queen, because, he claimed, ‘the queen will not come to the king nor permit his son to return, and he understands that the queen is adopting the counsel of the Mortimer, the king’s notorious enemy and rebel’. Four days later an array for the purpose of defending the southeast was ordered. Letters similar to those to the sheriffs were sent to the admirals patrolling the coasts. Edward renewed his orders for searches for messages to be conducted at the ports. Despenser hid his treasure in Caerphilly Castle. All exports of gold were stopped out of fear that aggrieved English lords would help fund the invasion, and all letters leaving the realm were to be inspected for treasonable contents.
Edward had finally realised his blunder. While he might have dismissed his wife as a French irritation, he knew his son to be every bit as royal as himself. Edward took his own royalty very seriously indeed, and recognised that many Englishmen would willingly fight for their future king. When his son refused to obey his order to leave the queen, claiming that out of duty he should stay with her in her great unease of mind and unhappiness, he wrote back to him in the strongest terms, saying of the queen:
… if she had conducted herself towards the king as she ought to have done towards her lord, the king would be much harassed to learn of her grief or unhappiness, but as she feigns a reason to withdraw from the king by reason of his dear and faithful nephew Hugh Despenser, who has always served the king
well and faithfully, Edward can see and everybody can see that she openly, notoriously, and knowingly contrary to her duty and the estate of the king’s crown, which she is bound to love and maintain, draws to her and retains in her company of her council the Mortimer, the king’s traitor and mortal enemy, approved, attainted and adjudged in full Parliament, and keeps his company within and without house, in despite of the king and of his crown and of the rights of his realm, which Mortimer the King of France had banished from his power as the king’s enemy at the king’s request at another time, and now she does worse, if possible, when she has delivered Edward to the company of the king’s said enemy, and makes him Edward’s councillor, and causes Edward to adhere to him openly and notoriously in the sight of everybody, to the great dishonour and villainy of the king and of Edward …31
At the same time he summoned back from France John de Cromwell and the Earl of Richmond, both of whom had stayed with the queen and Roger. The Earl of Kent, the king’s own half-brother, had also decided to stay, having married Roger’s cousin, Margaret Wake.32 Despairing that he was losing his authority, Edward further ordered his son not to enter any marriage contracts with anyone in his absence from England. As the king must have known, however, these matters were not in the prince’s hands. They were now entirely in the hands of Roger and Isabella.