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

by Alison Weir

  Isabella spent most of January and February at Eltham.180 That month, Mortimer was granted yet more of Despenser’s possessions as well as custody of the heir to the earldom of Kildare. In Ireland, he now held the honor of Trim and enjoyed palatine status in his lands in Meath and Uriel (Louth).181

  On 25 January, Parliament was summoned to Winchester to discuss England’s future policy toward France.182 Two days later, Orleton was dispatched to Philip VI to negotiate a new peace treaty that would be cemented by the marriages of Prince John and Princess Eleanor to the daughter and son of Philip VI, matches that had first been suggested at Amiens the previous summer.183

  For more than two years now, the coronation of Queen Philippa had been postponed. Nor had she received her rightful dower, because Isabella had no intention of relinquishing it. Once Philippa was crowned, Isabella stood to lose her status, her income, and her privileges. Now Philippa was visibly pregnant with a possible heir to the throne, and it was unthinkable that she give birth to him without first having been consecrated as Queen. The King was evidently growing increasingly angry at the way she had been slighted, and on 12 February, to pacify him, Isabella and Mortimer surrendered some of their lands to Philippa,184 and arrangements were at last put in hand for her coronation. But Isabella had not the slightest intention of ceding anything else to her daughter-in-law.

  On 28 February, at Eltham, the King formally summoned his estates to Westminster for the coronation of “his dearest Queen Philippa.”185 That day, the court left for the Tower, where the royal couple, following tradition, were to lodge prior to the ceremony.186

  Amid great rejoicings, Philippa was crowned on 4 March 1330, in Westminster Abbey, by Archbishop Meopham.187 Because she was nearly six months pregnant, the ceremony was shortened so as not to tire her.

  After the coronation, the court went via Windsor and Guildford to Winchester, where Parliament had been summoned.188 At Winchester, it took up residence in the castle that had been built by Henry II in the twelfth century on the site of an earlier wooden keep. Henry III, who had been born there, had extended the defenses and converted the royal lodgings into a palatial residence with a magnificent great hall that housed the reputed Round Table of King Arthur, which had in fact been made for Henry III or Edward I. Unfortunately, these royal chambers had been largely gutted by fire in 1302 and never restored. Since then, visiting monarchs had used the Bishop’s Palace by the cathedral, but Isabella and Mortimer wanted to stay in a more secure place for this particular visit and had had some repairs to the royal apartments put in hand before their arrival.189

  Since the previous autumn, Kent had been actively plotting to restore Edward II.190 He had enlisted the support of several opponents of Isabella and Mortimer, notably, William Melton, Archbishop of York; Stephen Gravesend, Bishop of London; and William, Lord Zouche, who had recently abducted and married Despenser’s widow, Eleanor de Clare, and then become embroiled in a bitter struggle with Mortimer over her lands in Glamorgan, which Mortimer held.191 Gravesend had always been loyal to Edward II, but the support of the saintly Melton suggests that this was more than just a plot to overthrow an unpopular regime, and that it was based on credible and convincing evidence.192

  Isabella’s former close friend Lady de Vesci took sides with her brother, Henry de Beaumont, and sent her confessor to act as Melton’s messenger to Kent. The news of Lady de Vesci’s betrayal must have been a bitter blow to Isabella, for she had championed the Beaumonts in the years when the Ordainers had ousted them from court.

  We know that Stephen Dunheved joined Kent’s conspiracy,193 and of course, he could have been the friar who instigated it. Two other Dominicans, Edmund and John Savage, were also involved—Edward II had always had a special affection for their Order—and a number of Dunheved’s original gang of conspirators as well as one or two former adherents of the Despensers.

  Abroad, Henry de Beaumont and Thomas Rosselin, now in Brabant, were in league with Kent, as was the exiled Rhys ap Gruffydd, whose plot to free Edward II in 1327 had prompted Mortimer to order the King’s assassination. Donald of Mar was also involved. As conspiracies went, this one was formidable, since it had drawn together a host of Edward II’s most active supporters.

  In January, the government was alarmed to learn that, at the instance of certain magnates, aliens were entering the realm.194 They could have been go-betweens acting for Kent and Beaumont, and it is likely that at least one of them broke under interrogation and revealed all. Several months later, Mortimer was to confess that he had led Kent into committing treason, and many historians are of the opinion that it was he who originally sent the friar to Kent, but contemporary sources are generally agreed that he discovered an existing plot and then set a trap, hoping to ensnare and then destroy the Earl.195 Given the time frame involved, this probably happened in January, and the reason why Lancaster was dispatched on an embassy to France that month may have been to get him out of the way.196 The surviving evidence makes it clear that Isabella was also deeply implicated in the framing of Kent. He might have been her brother-in-law and the son of her aunt, Queen Marguerite, but now he had become dangerous and had to be liquidated.

  It was probably after the court had left Kenilworth that the two friars, Edmund and John Savage, approached Kent and told him that they had discovered that Edward II was living at Corfe and offered to act as intermediaries between Kent and his brother.197 Kent sent them off to Corfe to establish that Edward was still there. They reported back that many people in the village had told them that the former King was being held in captivity in the castle. The friars added that they had gone up to the castle to check this story and met with two members of the garrison, John Deveril and Bogo de Bayouse,198 who had not denied that Edward was there but had told the Savages that they could not allow them to speak with him. They did, however, permit them to come into the dimly lit great hall at night and observe from a distance a tall man seated at the dinner table on the dais; he bore, they would claim, a great resemblance to Edward II.

  When Kent heard of this from the returning friars, he resolved to remove Edward from Corfe and take him to his own castle at Arundel in Sussex. He wrote to Deveril and Bayouse, demanding an interview with the prisoner. Receiving no response, Kent rushed off to Corfe, offered a bribe to Deveril, and demanded “to be conducted to the apartment of Sir Edward of Caernarvon, his brother.” This time, permission was firmly refused. So Kent wrote a letter to Edward, outlining his plot, and asked the custodians of the castle to give it to him. They sent it at once to Isabella and Mortimer, and on 10 March, an order was issued for the arrest of Kent and several others on charges of treason.199

  Once Mortimer had been made aware of the conspiracy, it would have been easy to enlist the help of Maltravers, the governor of Corfe Castle, who was also to be accused of ensnaring Kent.200 Whether Maltravers actually did arrange for his subordinates to spread rumors in the vicinity about Edward’s being held captive there and then put on that little charade with a look-alike imposter are matters for conjecture, for it is also probable that the two Dominicans acted as agents provocateurs on behalf of Mortimer. Despite being described by Kent as “the chief dealers in the matter,” they were the only two named conspirators who were never arrested.201 The choice of Corfe was an obvious one because Edward had probably been taken there before, by the Dunheveds, in 1327; it was also in the custody of Maltravers, who was loyal to Isabella and Mortimer and had been Edward’s jailer before, which lent credibility to the fabricated story. After these measures were put in place, it was only a matter of waiting for Kent to walk into the trap.

  Those who question the veracity of Fieschi’s letter point out that it would have been impossible for the real Edward II to pass unnoticed at Corfe with all this going on. However, we must remember that until now, most people had believed Edward to be dead and buried. Since rumor apparently had it that he was a prisoner in the castle, no one would have identified him with an unshaven, shorn, and tonsured hermi
t, wearing a hooded homespun habit, and anyone who by an unlikely chance had noticed a resemblance to the former King would probably have dismissed it as pure coincidence. Besides, in view of the rumors flying about, Edward was probably keeping out of sight. Soon, if Fieschi’s account is to be believed, he would prudently leave Corfe and escape to Ireland.

  The accused were apprehended on 11 March, the very day on which Parliament assembled. Kent was hauled before Mortimer and Robert Howell, coroner of the royal household. Mortimer produced three letters and asked Kent if the seal was his. It was, but Kent pointed out that his Countess had written one of these letters. Mortimer then read them out, and they proved to be those that had been written to Deveril, Bayouse, and Edward II. Faced with such incriminating evidence, Kent capitulated and confessed everything. Later, he was made to repeat his confession before a deputation from Parliament.202

  The young King was all for pardoning his uncle,203 but since the Queen had sworn, on the soul of her father, that she would have justice, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and on the twelfth, Kent’s property was taken into the King’s hands.204 On 13 March, Isabella and Mortimer put pressure on a reluctant Edward III to proceed against Kent: “all that day, the King was so beset by the Queen his mother and the Earl of March that it was impossible for him to make any effort to preserve his uncle from the cruel fate to which he had been so unjustly doomed.” Isabella “bade him with her blessing that he should be avenged upon him as upon his deadly enemy.”205 In the end, it was Mortimer who bullied Edward into submission.206 Later that day, Kent, who was not present, was impeached by Parliament, which found him guilty in his absence and condemned him to death. These proceedings were illegal, since Kent, as a peer of the realm, had the right to be tried by the lords in open Parliament.

  The Queen was nervous that Edward III would pardon his uncle or at least commute his sentence, so without his knowledge, she gave orders to the bailiffs of Winchester to have the sentence carried out without delay. In the meantime, she kept Edward busy with state business.207

  At noon on 14 March,208 Kent, wearing only his shirt, was led to a scaffold that had been erected outside the gates of Winchester, only to find that the public executioner had slunk off, unwilling to decapitate one of such high rank. The wretched prisoner was kept waiting until Vespers, since no one willing to behead him could be found. At length, in the early evening, a convicted murderer agreed to dispatch him in return for a pardon, and Kent was made an end of, at only twenty-nine years old. He was buried in the church of the Franciscan friars in Winchester.209

  It was only on 16 March, after his death, that Kent’s confession was finally read out to Parliament.210 During the following week, forty arrests were ordered, then on 21 March and 13 April, commissioners (Maltravers was one of them) were appointed to search out and punish more of Kent’s adherents.211 On 24 March, at the behest of Isabella and Mortimer, the King wrote to the Pope with a full account of Kent’s treason, explaining that his punishment had been intended as an example to other would-be traitors. He pointed out that Kent had known that Edward II was dead because he had been present at his funeral at Gloucester and implied that the tale of the friar conjuring up a spirit was a piece of nonsense.212

  Perhaps it was, for Kent’s confession, as it has come down to us, could easily have been censored or doctored by the government and may not be a true account of what really happened. The tale about the friar’s conjuring up a spirit sounds suspect and may have been invented in order to discredit Kent and Dunheved. It may be significant that the messenger chosen to carry the King’s version of events to Avignon was John Walwayn, the royal clerk who had been at Berkeley at the time of the Dunheved plot. Edward had charged him to supply the Pope with further details of the conspiracy by word of mouth.213 It is almost certain, therefore, that the full truth about this strange affair will never be known.

  Kent had never been popular,214 but there was outrage and revulsion at his death, and the manner of it.215 It was said, with truth, he had been denied a proper trial and executed only on the strength of his confession.216 Even though Kent had certainly been guilty of treason, such a violation of justice amounted to nothing less than tyranny. Lancaster, who had returned from France in February, was irrevocably alienated by these proceedings. Kent had been a king’s son, and executing him seemed almost an act of sacrilege. Now no one, certainly not Lancaster and maybe not even the King, was safe. And no man, according to Knighton, “durst open his mouth for the good of the King or his realm.”

  Isabella and Mortimer had gone too far this time. To most people, it seemed that the chief result of the revolution of 1326–27 had been the replacing of one tyrannical regime with another. Their rapacity equaled or exceeded even that of the Despensers, and their policies seemed to be dictated only by self-interested opportunism. They had undermined the reputation and prestige of the monarchy, ruthlessly eliminated their enemies, and alienated every stratum of society.217

  Mortimer was especially resented, for his presumption had become insupportable. “Roger Mortimer was in such glory and honour that it was without all comparison.” He “honoured whom he liked, let the King stand in his presence, and was accustomed to walk arrogantly beside him,” refusing to cede precedence; he insisted on sharing Edward’s plate at table, as well as the royal chariot, and he was attended by a greater following than the King.218 Isabella’s passive toleration of Mortimer’s lèse-majesté is surely proof of how deeply in thrall she was to her lover.

  Mortimer was now “so proud and high that he held no lord of the realm his equal.”219 He insisted that everyone had to refer to him as “my lord Earl of March.” This was the cause of “great contention” among both the nobility and the common people, who called Mortimer “the Queen’s paragon and the King’s master, who destroys the King’s blood and usurps the regal majesty.” Even Mortimer’s own son named him “the King of Folly.”220

  Public sympathy for Isabella as a wronged wife had long since evaporated, but because she was the King’s mother, she never attracted the opprobrium that extended to Mortimer, although she did come in for her share of criticism for her acquisitiveness, her unpopular policies, and her subversion of the law. One of the petty things objected against her was that she had confiscated books on canon and civil law, worth £10, that Edward II had granted to the Master of his foundation at King’s Hall, Cambridge.

  Because she did so much in partnership with Mortimer, it is impossible to determine how far Isabella herself was responsible for the disasters of the regency. She was certainly accountable for them all insofar as that she allowed Mortimer free rein and used her power to build up his. Without her collusion, he could not have monopolized the government so extensively. Thus, if she was tainted by association with him and his misdeeds, it was her own fault. Blinded by her lust or love for him, and driven by her need to maintain the status quo, she seems gradually to have lost all sense of reality and proportion.

  Had Isabella felt oppressed by Mortimer’s dominance, there were any number of people who would have been willing to help her free herself from it. The fact that she made no effort to dissociate herself from this destructive and much-hated man and his repressive approach to government is proof of his hold over her and perhaps of her deep feelings for him.

  After Parliament had adjourned on 23 March, the court had moved east to Reading, then, on the twenty-ninth, to Woodstock Palace, where Queen Philippa was to remain until the birth of her child. Isabella stayed with her for at least a month.221

  Mortimer was now closing in on his other enemies. On 4 April, the arrest of Kent’s brother-in-law, Lord Wake, was ordered, but he, along with many others, had already fled the country.222 Bishop Gravesend and several others were imprisoned,223 but Gravesend was later released on sureties, while Archbishop Melton, after being indicted for high treason in the Court of King’s Bench, was surprisingly acquitted of all complicity in Kent’s plot.224 Deveril and Bayouse were later rewarded for helping to
uncover the conspiracy.225

  On 5 April, Kent’s treason was publicly proclaimed, and it was announced, in response to rumors to the contrary, that he had confessed before Parliament and then received judgment, which was rather twisting the truth.226 Two days later, his widow gave birth to a second son, John, at Arundel Castle. Because Kent’s property had been declared forfeit, his elder son, Edmund, aged four, was not allowed to succeed to the title. The Countess had been implicated by Kent in his treason, and so, as soon as she had recovered, she and her sons and two daughters, Margaret, three, and Joan, two, were sent to live under house arrest at Salisbury Castle.227

  On 10 April, a new embassy was sent to France to conclude a lasting peace treaty; a settlement with Philip VI was reached on 8 May.

  On 12 April, Queen Philippa formally petitioned the King to grant her more revenues, since the income she had to live on was insufficient. All she got for her efforts was one manor.228 In April, however, she was finally given her own household, although she remained heavily dependent on the King for provisions.229 That month, Isabella, never willing to give up an iota of her wealth, granted herself lands of greater value than those that she had surrendered to Philippa on 12 February.230

  On 13 April, a second proclamation concerning Kent’s treason was issued, ordering the arrest of those who claimed that he had been unjustly condemned and of those persons who were continuing to spread rumors that Edward II was still alive,231 for there was mounting panic at the prospect and “almost all the commons of England were in sorrow and dread” in case the deposed King really had survived.232 Now that these rumors had served their purpose, they were to be quashed once and for all.