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

by Alison Weir

  Edward was campaigning in Scotland in the autumn of 1336 when, on 13 September, his brother, John of Eltham, died at Perth of wounds received in a skirmish, aged only twenty. Already, he had distinguished himself by his harshness toward the Scots, and in 1335, Edward had appointed him Warden of the Northern Marches. The loss of one of her children, the first she had had to bear, must have been deeply painful to Isabella. The King, whose accounts record that his brother’s death gave him nightmares, came south in December, and, on the orders of their mother, Prince John was buried in January 1337 in Saint Thomas’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, Archbishop Stratford officiating. In 1339, in accordance with Isabella’s wishes, Edward ordered his brother’s body to be moved to Saint Edmund’s Chapel, which was nearer the royal tombs. There, the Prince’s bereft relations raised a beautiful tomb and effigy to his memory; it was probably made by the same sculptor and workshop responsible for Edward II’s monument at Gloucester, which is thought to have been completed around this time. One of the female weepers on John of Eltham’s tomb is likely to be Isabella. This figure stands to the left of the one that represents Edward II and wears a figure-skimming gown, a widow’s chin-barbe and wimple, and a crown; in her hand, she holds a scepter.

  John’s death evidently left Isabella preoccupied with her own mortality, for it was at this time that Edward gave her permission to make her will.

  On 16 March 1337, Thomas de Berkeley was finally acquitted in Parliament of all the charges against him and absolved of all responsibility for the death of Edward II.81

  Two days later, William de Shalford, who had disclosed Rhys ap Gruffydd’s plot to Mortimer in 1327 and urged him to find a remedy, was, at the instance of the Earl of Arundel and William de Montagu, rewarded by Parliament for his long service to the Crown.82

  The sudden pardoning of Berkeley and the rewarding of Shalford were almost certainly prompted by Edward III’s receipt of Manuele de Fieschi’s letter. In the months since he had probably received the first intimation of his father’s survival from Nicolinus de Fieschi, efforts had doubtless been made to question the hermit and establish proof of his identity. It now appears that Edward was satisfied that no murder had taken place and that Berkeley was innocent.

  Thereafter, Berkeley went on to command Edward’s armies in Scotland and France. In 1361, he was sent on an embassy to the Pope. He died later that year.

  Isabella may also have been a beneficiary of Fieschi’s revelations. In 1337, Edward restored to her the revenues of Ponthieu and Montreuil, which had been part of her original dower.83

  On 24 May, Philip VI confiscated Gascony, an act that led to the outbreak of what would later become known as the Hundred Years’ War. Later, in October, Edward III declared war on France. That year, Isabella’s former ally Count William of Hainault was killed in Friesland, and his brother John went over to the French.

  In 1338, Edward III formally laid claim to the French Crown, which he asserted was rightfully his in view of his descent through his mother from Philip IV. English propagandists had a field day comparing Edward’s claim with Jesus Christ’s descent from the House of David through His mother, the Virgin Mary.

  During these years, the evidence about Isabella’s life is fragmentary at best. There are various records of grants and gifts made to and by her.84 She was with the King and his court at Pontefract in June 1338.85 Otherwise, little is known of her activities.

  At the beginning of September 1338, Edward III traveled to Germany to be made Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire. When he arrived at Koblenz, a man named William le Galeys (William the Welshman) was secretly brought to him from Cologne, escorted by an Italian called Francisco the Lombard and two men-at-arms, at a cost of 25s. 6d. According to the diplomatic documents of the Exchequer, this man had been “arrested” at Cologne for claiming that he was “the father of the present King.”86 Given his escort, it is more probable that he had not been arrested at all but had been summoned from Lombardy. Francisco certainly came from there, and while he is described as a royal sergeant at arms, there is no other mention of him in the household records. It is more likely that he was in the employ of the Fieschis.

  Edward was crowned Vicar at Cologne on 5 September and had returned to Antwerp by the end of that month. William le Galeys is known to have been with him there on 18 October, and he stayed with the royal party, which included the young Prince Edward, at Antwerp until December, the King outlaying 13s. 4d. a week for his keep, a generous sum for one whose needs were probably modest. On 29 November, during this mysterious man’s stay at Antwerp, Queen Philippa gave birth there to her third son, Lionel. After December, William le Galeys disappears from the records.

  It may be significant that, until January 1339, Nicolinus de Fieschi was also in Antwerp. On 7 September, Edward III had given him a testimonial for his good service. It may have been Nicolinus who led the escort that brought “William le Galeys” to Edward or who arranged the meeting, which lends credence to the theory that William really was Edward II. Royal pretenders were usually dealt with harshly—Edward II himself had hanged one—but this one remained with the King for three or four months, and there was no public or private denunciation of his claim. Furthermore, he had come from Cologne, a place that Edward II had, according to Fieschi, visited in circa 1332. Then there is the pseudonym “William the Welshman”: Edward II had been known as “Edward of Caernarvon,” after the place of his birth, and Caernarvon is in Wales; moreover, Edward had been the first English Prince of Wales. We know that William le Galeys was kept under guard, but this may have been because Edward III did not want him to be recognized. There is a strong probability, therefore, that he was no imposter and that this was a private reunion between father and son, and a chance for the former King to give his blessing to his successor before retiring to Lombardy to end his days as a hermit. Either Edward III had requested the meeting or his father had suggested it. We may even speculate that he knew he did not have long to live and wanted to see his son one last time.

  Edward III had every reason to keep his father’s continuing existence a secret: he did not want him to be the focus of any plots for his restoration, although that was unlikely; he did not want to lose face after having Mortimer publicly convicted of Edward’s murder in Parliament; nor would he have wanted to rake up old scandals that could harm his mother. It was for these reasons that the anniversary of Edward’s death continued to be observed with religious services throughout the kingdom on 21 September every year, right up until the end of Edward III’s reign.87

  Edward now set about the rehabilitation of Maltravers. It is probably significant that, by 1339, Edward was employing Maltravers on official business in Flanders. In 1342, he permitted his wife, Agnes de Bereford, to visit him there for as long as she wished, “notwithstanding that he is banished from the realm of England.”88 Maltravers was still under sentence of death for his enticement of Kent, which is why the King could not openly favor or forgive him, but his use of him as an agent proves that he recognized his abilities and was working toward his eventual rehabilitation. At length, in 1345, Maltravers formally submitted to Edward at Sluys, pleading that he had been condemned unheard for procuring the execution of Kent, and asking for leave to go home. That August, in consideration of the excellent service he had rendered to Edward in Flanders, he was granted the King’s safe-conduct to return to England to face trial.89 Not surprisingly, he remained in Flanders, yet Edward continued to employ him on official business. In 1351, he was received back into favor when he was summoned to sit in Parliament as a baron and made Governor of the Channel Islands. When Parliament met at Westminster in January 1352, it acquitted Maltravers of all the charges against him, and his honors and estates were finally restored to him the following month.90 Thereafter, he served Edward III faithfully until his death in 1365.

  In 1352, after Maltravers’s rehabilitation, Edward summoned Ranulph Higden to come to Westminster with all his manuscripts and papers “to have certain things ex
plained to him.” The King had evidently read Higden’s gory description of Edward II’s being murdered with a red-hot spit and was determined to set the record straight. Whatever was said at this audience, Higden kept quiet about it. Nor did he add any more to his chronicle, although he lived another thirteen years.91

  How would the knowledge that her husband was still alive have affected Isabella? She may well have felt an overwhelming sense of relief that she bore no responsibility, even indirectly, for his brutal murder. She would naturally have wanted to know whether he had forgiven her and what he now thought of her. There is no evidence that they ever met again, although, equally, there is no evidence that they did not. After all, Edward had traveled around Europe in the guise of a humble friar. It would have been easy for him to slip unnoticed across to England to see his wife, especially if the King himself was easing his passage. Yet Edward had now turned to God and was living a celibate and solitary life. He had never been interested in women anyway, and there had been a lot of issues between him and Isabella. He may not have wished to see her or had resolved to put his worldly life firmly behind him. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is probably safe to say that Isabella never set eyes on him again.

  In December 1340, Isabella made a rare visit to London to be present in the great chamber of Winchester Palace in Southwark when the King delivered the Great Seal to the new Chancellor, Robert Bourchier.92

  In defiance of public opinion, on 28 April 1342, Edward ratified Manuele de Fieschi’s retention of his English benefices.93 It is easy to see now why he should have done so.

  Diplomatic negotiations with France had reached an impasse, and the clouds of war were gathering. On 26 January 1340, at a ceremony in the marketplace at Ghent, Edward III assumed the title and the royal arms of the King of France. In the summer, his forces won a great naval battle off Sluys in Holland, destroying a French fleet.

  In November of that year, Isabella was among those who welcomed the King at the Tower of London, on his return from the Continent. She stayed on there to celebrate his birthday with him.94 It must have been around this time that Edward returned Leeds Castle to Isabella. She would now hold it until her death, and both she and the King would pay for repairs to the walls, which had begun to collapse.95 In 1341, Edward made provision for daily Mass to be sung in the chapel of Leeds Castle for the good estate of his mother.

  That year, David II and Queen Joan were at last able to return to Scotland. Joan was now twenty, “seemly and very beautiful,” like her mother, but David neglected her for his mistresses, and the marriage remained childless.96

  On 27 February 1343, Parliament granted Edward III an aid of thirty thousand sacks of wool toward the war effort, but it was agreed that the Queen Mother’s lands should be exempted, since, unlike most noble landowners, she did not sit in Parliament, and “it was unreasonable that a person exempt and not summoned to Parliament should be burdened with aids granted by Parliament.”97

  In March 1343, Edward and Philippa made a pilgrimage to Edward II’s tomb at Gloucester.98 There is no record of any earlier visit by the King, although work on the tomb had probably been going on apace throughout the early 1330s. The likelihood is that the real Edward II had recently died at Cecima, and perhaps been temporarily buried there, and that his body had been secretly brought home to England and buried in the tomb at Gloucester, from which the porter’s body had now been removed.99 Edward’s heart would also have been substituted for the porter’s, which had doubtless been removed from the casket held by Isabella.

  Edward had perhaps died in 1341, when Edward III paid Nicolinus de Fieschi one mark a day plus generous expenses to travel to “divers parts beyond the sea” on what were evasively described as “certain affairs.”100

  There can be little doubt that Isabella’s enthusiasm for the legends of King Arthur had been absorbed early on in life by her son. Edward was passionately interested in the ideal of chivalry, and by 1344, he had decided to found a new order of knights of the Round Table at Windsor. On 1 January that year, it was proclaimed that a great feast and tournament would shortly be held there, and invitations were sent out.

  Isabella was present for at least some of these festivities, which lasted from around 15 to 23 January. She certainly graced the Round Table feast, at which there was “an indescribable host of people to delight in so great a solemnity.” Minstrels played in the gallery and “the most alluring of drinks and dances were not lacking, [nor] embracings and kissings.” Edward spent much of the evening organizing the seating arrangements and personally showing the ladies to their places in the great hall. Isabella was also present at the feast held in honor of Saint George on Sunday, 18 January, which was followed by three days of jousts.101

  It is unlikely that she stayed for these, for she had business to attend to at Westminster, where, on 20 January, she granted certain liberties to the men of her manor of Cheylesmore, which lay to the south of Coventry, “out of consideration” for her eldest grandson, who had been created Prince of Wales the previous year, and to whom she intended the manor to come on her death.102

  She was back at Windsor on 23 January when the King and Queen, “nobly adorned,” led “the Lady Queen Mother” and the rest of the royal family to hear Mass in state in Henry III’s chapel. Afterward, Edward III, wearing his crown and a suit of “very precious velvet,” took an oath on the Gospels before the assembled throng, swearing “that he would begin a Round Table in the manner of King Arthur,” for three hundred knights. Then the trumpets sounded, summoning the guests to yet another feast.103

  In the event, the order of knighthood that Edward founded four years later would be the Order of the Garter. Legend has it that, while dancing with Montagu’s wife, Katherine de Grandison, Countess of Salisbury, the King saw some male courtiers sniggering because her garter had fallen off. Edward picked it up, handed it back to her with a bow, and sternly announced, “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (“Be he disgraced who thinks evil of it”). His words were adopted as the Order’s motto. Recent research has tended to corroborate this picturesque story.

  When, in 1349, Edward admitted Queen Philippa and other ladies to the Order of the Garter as “Dames of the Fraternity,” Isabella was not among them.

  In November 1344, Isabella celebrated Edward’s birthday with him at Norwich,104 probably in the castle. The next year, the King, “of our special favour, and at the request of Isabella, Queen of England, our most dear mother,” granted special privileges to that city.105

  On 16 June 1345, perhaps to mark her fiftieth birthday, Edward bestowed on Isabella further rights in the manor of Cheylesmore, and that year, too, he granted a royal charter to her town of Coventry.106 In 1345 also, Edward stayed for some time with his mother at Castle Rising, as several letters that he wrote to the Pope were sent from there.107

  In September that year, Lancaster died, and Isabella was among the mourners at his state funeral in the collegiate church in The Newarke at Leicester.

  England won a great victory over the French on 27 August 1346, at the Battle of Crécy, during which the Prince of Wales, now sixteen, won his spurs of knighthood. Then, on 4 September, the King laid siege to Calais, which would fall to him after a year.

  The English scored another victory in October, this time against the Scots, who were France’s allies, at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, at which David II was taken prisoner. His shocked wife, Joan, now twenty-five, followed him to England, and Isabella had a chance to catch up with the daughter she had not seen for nineteen years. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that they became very close. David was held in honorable captivity in the Tower of London, where Joan was permitted to visit him,108 while she spent much of her time at Hertford Castle, which was owned by Isabella. The King provided her with a suitable household, and both Isabella and Queen Philippa visited her frequently.109 Isabella herself is known to have stayed there in 1347.

  Hertford Castle was a royal residence that had been built
by William the Conqueror on a stretch of low-lying ground partly encircled by the River Lea. King John improved the fortifications and living quarters, and Henry III provided further embellishments, repairing the hall, commissioning paintings for his chapel and chamber, and building another chapel for his queen. The castle was accessed through a great outer gateway and bridge.

  The castle had been part of the dower of Marguerite of France, but she had transferred it to the late Earl of Pembroke. His widow had surrendered it to Isabella in 1327, and it was among the properties granted to the Queen Mother by Edward III. By now, the castle was falling into disrepair; the curtain wall was crumbling, some of the outer defenses had collapsed, and the roofs needed replacing. Yet there is no record of any repairs being carried out during Isabella’s time.110

  Sometime in 1347, Isabella gave the convent of the Poor Clares, or Minoresses without Aldgate, the advowsons, or right to present a benefice, of three churches. The Poor Clares were the female branch of the Franciscan Order, and this convent had been founded by Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, the father of Earls Thomas and Henry, in 1293; his heart was buried beneath the high altar. Crouchback had been the second husband of Isabella’s maternal grandmother, Blanche of Artois, and it was she who had introduced the Order of Poor Clares into England. It is therefore understandable that Isabella should have wished to patronize this foundation.

  After the fall of Calais, England and France had agreed to a truce, but in September 1348, this had to be extended because of the devastation caused in both countries by the plague known as the Black Death. There had been hopes anyway of reaching a peace settlement, and Philip VI had proposed that Queen Isabella and Jeanne of Evreux, Queen Dowager of France, act as mediators. He suggested that they meet between Calais and Boulogne to discuss terms, but Edward III was having none of it. He was aware of his mother’s poor reputation in France and knew that her involvement in the peace process would do his cause no good. Instead, he sent the new Duke of Lancaster, Henry of Grosmont, while Philip abandoned the idea of sending Queen Jeanne and substituted the Count of Eu.111