Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England

by Alison Weir

  That same day, Parliament assembled at Bishopsthorpe near York, and Henry de Beaumont, the Queen’s old friend, was arrested. Angry at the King’s censure of his brother, the Bishop of Durham, he had refused to give any advice on negotiating the Scottish truce, and when he appeared in Parliament, he was told to leave. “Nothing would please me more!” he retorted, at which he was apprehended for contumacy.25 Isabella may have been a witness to this scene; she and Edward were at Selby on 10 June and at York on 3 and 4 July.26 Possibly there had been a patching up of sorts between them, but the arrest of Beaumont would have been cause for further resentment on both sides, especially when Beaumont refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Despenser and was consequently cast into prison.27 After his removal from court, Isabella would have felt even more isolated.

  On 1 August 1323, Roger Mortimer made a dramatic escape from the Tower, a feat that had been achieved only once before, by Ranulf Flambard in 1101. That day was Roger’s birthday and the feast day of Saint Peter ad Vincula, the patron saint of the Tower garrison. Evidently, the rigors of Mortimer’s imprisonment had been relaxed, for by now he had won over the sympathies of Gerard d’Alspaye, the Sub-Lieutenant of the Tower, who had brought him a crowbar and a pick so that he could bore a hole in the stone wall of his cell. It was with d’Alspaye’s connivance that, on this night, Mortimer hosted “a great feast, inviting there Sir Stephen de Segrave, Constable of the Tower,” and his own guards. But the wine was drugged, and the guests were soon in a comatose state. Once it was safe to do so, d’Alspaye helped Mortimer to escape through the hole in his cell, which appears to have been located in the Lanthorn Tower;28 this building stood next to the Hall Tower (now the Wakefield Tower), which had a guardroom downstairs and royal chambers upstairs. Beyond were the great hall and the Queen’s apartments.

  Once through the hole, Mortimer and d’Alspaye found themselves in the King’s kitchen. They climbed up the great chimney to the roof of the Hall Tower, from which they apparently crossed to the leads of the adjacent Saint Thomas’s Tower. Using rope ladders, they managed to scale down the stout wall of the outer bailey to the wharf. D’Alspaye had ensured that a boat was waiting to take him and Mortimer across the Thames to the Surrey shore, where some of Roger’s friends were waiting with horses. The small party then galloped through the night to Netley on the Hampshire coast. A boat carried them out to a waiting ship, which had been provided by a London merchant called Ralph de Botton; it sailed for France the next day, landing in Normandy.

  Mortimer and his friends then made straight for Paris to seek the protection of the French King,29 who received him “with great honour,” provoking a bitter complaint from Edward II.30 Charles’s warm reception of Mortimer must have been particularly galling to Despenser, who had been driven out of France and placed under sentence of banishment in 1321 during his pirating days, and consequently had no love for the French.31 Even more galling was Charles’s response to Edward’s complaint: he said he would banish all the English exiles from France if the King would in turn banish any French exiles from England—meaning, of course, Despenser.32

  Strickland quotes “an old chronicle” that asserts that “the sleepy drink” was provided by the Queen for Mortimer’s use and incorrectly claims that Mortimer swam across the Thames to the Surrey shore, “the Queen doubting much of his strength for such an exploit, as he had been long in confinement.” No other original source claims that Isabella was involved in Mortimer’s escape, and there is no evidence that she was even in London, let alone residing in the Tower, at this date. In fact, the first English writer to assert that Isabella helped Mortimer to escape was the dramatist Christopher Marlowe in Edward the Second, written in 1593. He was followed by Michael Drayton, whose claims appear in three plays written between 1596 and 1619.33

  Nevertheless, many writers still follow Strickland in asserting that Isabella was Mortimer’s accomplice. It has been argued that d’Alspaye, who had a responsible post, would not have put his career and even his life on the line to aid a landless traitor who could offer him nothing in reward unless he had been promised the patronage of some important person, possibly Isabella.34 But that is perhaps to underestimate the convictions of both Mortimer and d’Alspaye. It may be that when Mortimer had finished cozening him, d’Alspaye was indeed prepared to risk all if it would help to bring down the Despensers, or he might have had reasons of his own for wishing to do so.

  Yet we cannot discount the possibility that Charles IV’s warm reception of Mortimer was extended not just as a result of his antipathy toward the Despensers and his concerns about the way in which they were slighting his sister but also on the basis of Isabella’s own private recommendations. Charles cannot but have been aware of the Despensers’ tyranny, and he must have seen in Mortimer, their deadly foe, a means of somehow counteracting it and thus aiding Isabella. England was not then at war with France, so what other reason could Charles have had for welcoming such a notorious traitor? As for Isabella herself, she had probably been instrumental in the commuting of the death sentence on Mortimer, and she had certainly tried to assist his wife, possibly at his request. She had probably realized by now that Mortimer was the only person capable of resisting the tyranny of the Despensers and that, as such, he could prove very useful to her. By using her influence with her brother, she perhaps indirectly assisted in his escape, and if this is so, then she must have known about it in advance.

  Michael Drayton also claimed that Mortimer’s ally Bishop Orleton helped him to escape, a claim that is well supported by contemporary evidence. Adam Orleton had been born on one of Mortimer’s Herefordshire manors, had been elected Bishop of Hereford in 1317, and before that had spent most of his hitherto distinguished career at the papal Curia. In recent years, he had become a close friend and ally of Roger Mortimer, his patron. He had sent men to assist Mortimer in the offensive on the Despenser lands and had staunchly supported the Mortimers in their attack on the Despensers in Parliament. Even now, when they lay in prison, convicted traitors, he did not withdraw his support. On the contrary, he remained one of the most active opponents of the Despensers.

  Orleton’s reputation has suffered because of a piece of character assassination by the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker that is demonstrably untrue. Far from being as unscrupulous as Baker claims, Orleton was a clever politician, lawyer, and diplomat who took his ecclesiastical responsibilities seriously and genuinely deplored the misgovernment of Edward II and the Despensers and the embarrassment this caused him in European diplomatic circles. He also had an inflated respect for the dignity of popes and bishops and was a friend of the astute John XXII.35 Archbishop Reynolds held a high opinion of Orleton’s capabilities, but Orleton’s overt approval of Mortimer’s acts of rebellion now made him a natural target for the King’s wrath.

  In February 1324, in an unprecedented action against a bishop, Despenser accused Orleton in Parliament of treasonably having aided and counseled the enemies of the King and of having provided the weapons and horses that had enabled Mortimer to escape. Relying on his episcopal immunity, Orleton refused to answer the charges, declaring that he was only responsible to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his fellow clergy, and when Edward ordered that he be committed into the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he provoked a furor in the ecclesiastical nation, which led to Archbishops Reynolds and Melton, and Alexander Bicknor, Archbishop of Dublin, placing Orleton under their protection and threatening with excommunication anyone who dared lay violent hands on him.36 This was the first time that Reynolds, who had hitherto been a staunch friend, had defied Edward, and it must have come as a shock to him. Nevertheless, he had his justices declare Orleton guilty, confiscated his estates and personal property, and kept him in custody.37

  In April 1324, the King complained to the Pope about Orleton’s treason, and in May, he demanded that he be deposed from his bishopric,38 but, as in the case of Burghersh, the Pope refused to cooperate because of the lack of evidence to
support the charge of treason.

  Edward had also called for the deposition of John of Drokensford (now Droxford), Bishop of Bath and Wells, a worldly and unscrupulous liberal who had also shown himself a friend to Mortimer and was a close associate of Orleton and Burghersh. Burghersh, however, had been so frightened by the King’s stern treatment of Orleton that he had made his groveling (and insincere) peace with Edward, offering his unconditional loyalty and obedience. This ploy helped him regain some of his former favor and the restoration of his temporalities.

  Yet it is unlikely that Orleton himself arranged Mortimer’s escape, although he may have solicited the Queen’s help. Ian Mortimer, in his biography of his namesake, has put forward a compelling argument that it was Mortimer himself who masterminded it, relying for the practicalities on d’Alspaye and his own contacts in the City of London, where he enjoyed great popularity;39 among the latter were two prominent citizens, Richard de Béthune and John de Gisors.40 It later emerged that, through them, Mortimer had been in contact with a number of influential supporters, including Orleton, and that his escape had been part of a broader master plan to raise the Despensers’ opponents. And if it had been Isabella who had interceded for Mortimer the previous year, then it was perhaps Orleton who, knowing of this, had told her of the planned escape attempt and solicited her intercession with King Charles. Some chroniclers, sickened by the oppressive regime of the Despensers, regarded Mortimer’s escape as an act of God, claiming that he had, like Saint Peter, been guided by an angel from his cell.41 Isabella may have viewed it in the same way.

  Now that he was at liberty, Roger was potentially the focus for a concerted opposition. In a panic, the King made strenuous efforts to find and recapture him, alive or dead, raising the hue and cry all over England, but he sent his officers to look in all the wrong places. Until the end of August 1323, Edward was convinced that Mortimer would have gone to either Wales or Ireland.42 It was only in late September that he learned that his quarry was staying with his kinsfolk in Picardy,43 beyond the King of England’s reach.

  Even in exile, Mortimer was to prove a deadly threat to the Despensers. In November, he sent an assassin from Saint Omer to England to murder them and their closest associates. The attempt failed—the man got as far as London but was then arrested and questioned44—but it proved just how far Roger was prepared to go to be revenged upon these most hated enemies, and it gave rise to fears on Edward’s part that Mortimer, succored by Charles IV (who by then had quarreled with Edward II), might even invade England for the purpose of destroying the Despensers. Edward now accused Charles and his uncle, Charles of Valois, of having assisted Mortimer in his escape.45 This has sometimes been cited as evidence that Isabella was also involved, but if Edward—and, more to the point, the Despensers—had suspected as much, as a result of the comprehensive official investigations into the escape, they would surely have accused her of treason.

  Thereafter, Edward received conflicting intelligence of Mortimer’s whereabouts. On 6 December, he was informed that Roger was in Hainault and making his way to Germany; then, around 13 December, came a report that he had gone south to Toulouse with the Count of Boulogne.46

  Isabella again disappears from the records until 13 October 1323; possibly she had resumed her pilgrimage. She was with Edward at Lichfield on 19–20 December and then traveled south with him to Sutton Coldfield47 before going to Kenilworth Castle, formerly owned by Lancaster, where the court celebrated Christmas with great magnificence. In January, the King and Queen were guests of Despenser at his castle on the River Trent at Hanley, and in February, they visited Gloucester and nearby Berkeley Castle before returning to London.48

  Edward had now plunged into a fierce dispute with Charles IV. In September, Charles had summoned his brother-in-law to pay homage, a summons Edward managed to avoid complying with on the grounds that he could not at present safely leave his kingdom—in other words, the Despensers did not want him to go, fearing that their enemies would pounce in his absence. Although Charles agreed to postpone the homage until July 1324, his harboring of Mortimer had led to mistrust and resentment on Edward’s part. There was already a lot of ill feeling on both sides when, in October, a dispute broke out over a bastide, or fortified town, that the French had begun building on the site of the priory of Saint Sardos in the English-held Agenais; Edward’s Gascon subjects reacted with hostility to this possibly illegal encroachment and attacked the bastide, killing a French sergeant. Although Edward had not sanctioned the attack, indeed, had known nothing about it, there were fears that this incident might lead to war between England and France—the very thing that Isabella’s marriage had been intended to prevent. The French, however, were outraged, and Mortimer, seizing his opportunity, promptly offered his sword to Charles IV, traitorously volunteering to fight against his liege lord, Edward II, in Gascony.49

  In January 1324, Charles made it clear that he accepted Edward’s protestations of innocence in the Saint Sardos dispute. But in February, when it became clear that Edward was doing very little to rectify the situation and was also proving dilatory about paying homage, the French King threatened to seize Gascony. A crisis was looming, and Parliament met on 23 February at Westminster to discuss it.

  In March, Edward suddenly ceased to pay certain of his debts to Isabella.50 Did he—perhaps encouraged by the hostile Despensers—fear that her sympathies lay with Charles IV? In April, he made Isabella send a plea to her brother not to seize Gascony, instructing her to remind Charles that her marriage had been contracted to secure a lasting peace between the two kingdoms.51 The implication was that, if war broke out, the marriage would have failed. It may be significant that, during that spring, an unidentified person wrote to Isabella, advising her to instruct a French knight, who had been sent to England by Charles IV, to tell his master upon his return that the matter of the dispute over Gascony should in the first case be dealt with by Despenser and Pembroke in council. Was this a warning to Charles not to involve Isabella further in the matter?

  We know very little of Isabella’s activities or movements at this time, other than that, on 27 June, she wrote to Chancellor Baldock to request the appointment of Pembroke and others as justices of oyer and terminer for her forest of Havering. It seems likely that she was still out of favor and wisely, in view of her husband’s unpredictable behavior and the fear and confusion it engendered,52 keeping her head down.

  Pembroke had been sent to France to mediate with Charles IV over Gascony, but he died there suddenly, probably of apoplexy, on 23 June. There were rumors that he had been “murdered suddenly on a privy seat,”53 but whatever the cause of it, his death removed the last moderate restraining influence on Edward, who was now hopelessly in thrall to the Despensers. In July, reneging on his word, he instructed his envoys at the French court to refuse to hand over to Charles IV those English subjects who had offended at Saint Sardos. Then, to add insult to injury, he again asked for his homage to be postponed. At this point, Charles lost patience and declared Gascony forfeit. The next month, he sent an army into the duchy to take possession of it.

  In response, Edward appointed his inexperienced and unpopular twenty-two-year-old half brother Edmund, Earl of Kent, King’s Lieutenant in Gascony. This did not prove a wise choice, since Kent, although a magnificent young man of great stature and strength, was also a feeble and gullible individual who thought nothing of sanctioning acts of brutality or violating the laws of sanctuary. He immediately alienated the Gascons by extorting money from them, allowing his household officials to plunder at will, and abducting a young girl who took his fancy.54 When Charles of Valois led an army against Kent, the latter proved disastrously ineffective in a military capacity and, after several losses, was tricked by Valois into signing a six months’ truce, in a desperate effort to save what was left of Gascony. However, its terms left the French in possession of the greater part of the duchy.55

  The outbreak of hostilities between England and France had a devasta
ting impact on Isabella’s life, for it gave Despenser the chance to treat her as an enemy of the state, further undermining her position as Queen and annihilating what little influence she had left. At first, he insisted she swear an oath of loyalty to him personally, but she refused,56 just as Henry de Beaumont had done. Then, on 18 September, the Queen’s estates were suddenly sequestered and taken back into the King’s hands, depriving her of much of her income.57 Allegedly, Bishop Stapledon had advised the King that this was necessary for security reasons,58 reminding him that the Queen’s lands in Cornwall, with their valuable tin mines, were particularly vulnerable to invasion.59 But this was, at bottom, an overt attack upon the Queen, for Stapledon was hand in glove with Despenser,60 and there can be little doubt that Despenser had maliciously persuaded the King that Isabella, as a Frenchwoman, was quite capable of plotting treachery against him with her brother. Back in 1317, Queen Marguerite’s estates had been briefly sequestered when war with France had seemed imminent, creating a precedent. But Marguerite had been compensated with a substantial allowance; not so Isabella. On 25 and 26 September, Edward changed the arrangements he had made for the financial support of his wife, and on 28 September, her allowance for her personal expenses was cut from 11,000 marks to a miserly 1,000 marks per annum.61

  Isabella was outraged. She was not a woman to countenance such affronts to her dignity and her regal position, and she blamed both Despenser and Stapledon for the loss of her dower—Despenser was charged with this in 1326.62 In medieval times, money was no fair exchange for property, which conferred its own special status, and Isabella was more than ordinarily acquisitive. But there was worse to come. On 28 September—again, purportedly on Stapledon’s advice—Parliament ordered the banishment of all subjects of the King of France from the King’s household and that of “our dearest consort,”63 which effectively deprived Isabella of the loyal service of those French servants who had been with her for many years, some since she had first come to England as a bride of twelve. On 9 October, the King ordered a general levy of all gold due to the Queen, which went straight into his own coffers, along with money that he owed her; and on the fourteenth, the payment of her daily expenses was made the responsibility of the Exchequer.64 In practice, however, the Despensers “sent her from the King’s coffers what they would.” In effect, Isabella, one of the greatest landowners in the realm, had been reduced to the status of a humble pensioner.65