by Ian Mortimer
This was the third great worry (along with France and Scotland) that weighed on Edward Hi's mind in the summer of 1328. In 1327 there had been three attempts to rescue his father from prison: what if it were to happen again? Edward would then be entirely dependent on Mortimer to protect him. But how did Kent know? In 1330 he confessed that a friar had conjured up a devil, who had told him; but this was merely a ruse to cover up his true source. This was almost certainly Sir John Pecche, a man of fluctuating loyalty, who returned unexpectedly from abroad in about January 1328. He was the keeper of Corfe Castle, where the old king was being held.
Edward, still only fifteen-and-a-half, was under huge pressure when parliament gathered at Northampton. War with France was being discussed. The independence of Scotland threatened England. And the earl of Kent's knowledge was potentially the greatest danger of them all. Disempowered by his mother and Mortimer, and separately undermined by his uncle, what could he do but try to manoeuvre himself between their contests, and look to his own safety, while trusting that others would speak out on his behalf? Lancaster, as head of the council of regency, did speak up. But he and Mortimer were so hostile to one another by this stage that Mortimer had no qualms about using Edward's name and authority to threaten his rival. When Mortimer declared outrageously that he spoke for the king, and the king's will was that Scotland should be independent, Lancaster declared that this 'shameful peace' was none of Aw will. Mortimer stood firm, knowing Edward could not oppose him. As everyone was in some way compromised by, or afraid of, Mortimer, no one else followed Lancaster's lead. Edward was forced to ratify the treaty.
Parliament broke up, and Edward had to acknowledge he had lost a part of his kingdom. Once more he had failed to live up to his responsibilities. Once more he had been publicly humiliated.
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It is easy to dismiss Mortimer's role in 1328 as that of a self-interested dictator. But even Edward would have acknowledged that his adversary was more than that. Mortimer believed he had relieved the country of a tyrant, and was now acting in the manner of a benign governor. He had done so before - quite legitimately and successfully - in Ireland in 1317-20. However, now his position was complicated by his illegal appropriation of royal authority. Even if his actions had been enlightened they would never have been agreeable to Edward. Mortimer's mere existence was a blow to royal authority, for it prevented him from ruling in the proper capacity of a monarch.
As a result, the strains on the relationship with his mother and Mortimer were felt most acutely by Edward. After Northampton, Mortimer and Isabella dragged Edward and Philippa to Hereford, there to attend the double wedding of two of Mortimer's many daughters and the post-nuptial tournament. This was another opportunity for Mortimer to spread his largesse, and to be seen as rich and powerful. But simply by being there, at Mortimer's beck and call, was a humiliation for Edward. And so it went on, day after day. From Hereford the royal party slowly made their way to Mortimer's castle at Ludlow. After two days hawking and jousting, they made their way back south to Worcester. There they waited for Henry of Lancaster, so Mortimer and Isabella could discuss the war with France. It might have been Edward's inheritance they were discussing, but it was Mortimer, Isabella and Lancaster who were doing the talking.
Faced with such humiliations, we might wonder why Edward did not speak out more often against Mortimer and Isabella. He probably did, but his opinions rarely reached the distant chroniclers. Also he was still young, only fifteen, and relatively insecure. He did not yet have the circle of determined supporters of later years; his contemporaries were relatively young. We must also remember that he was fond of his mother. And as for Mortimer, he did have his uses. At least he acted as a protection against Lancaster. At Worcester it became clear to Edward that, while Lancaster might argue with Mortimer about France and Scotland, what Lancaster most wanted was to control die king. Lancaster realised that Mortimer had outwitted him; he had to diminish or destroy Mortimer if he wished to take his place.
Mortimer's and Lancaster's arguments at Worcester were met with an outburst by Edward himself. In defiance of his two over-mighty magnates, Edward tried to impose his own will, to resist the demands on him to attend the marriage of his sister Joan with the son of Robert Bruce. Mortimer and Isabella in turn countered that these matters had already been agreed at Northampton. But this time Edward did not back down. People had already cruelly renamed her Joan Makepeace', as if she were just a diplomatic tool. He refused to attend the wedding. He would stay in England while they went north. It was argued that this would damage the value of the alliance; but in Edward's eyes there was no alliance, for there was no peace. Seeing that there was nothing they could do to force him to come with them, his mother and Mortimer had no choice but to leave him behind.
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In August 1328 Edward's brother, John, turned twelve years of age. Like Philippa, he was a natural ally against the growing oppression of Mortimer. Having been raised as a prince under the guardianship of a king, John could see the situation entirely from Edward's point of view. He was now being ruled by a baron. This led to what was probably Edward's next stand. When Mortimer demanded that, at the forthcoming Salisbury parliament, he be given the hugely significant tide of Earl of March, Edward countered by pushing his brother forward to receive the rich earldom of Cornwall.
By this stage relations between Mortimer and Lancaster, and between both men and Edward, had reached a new low. On 7 September, Lancaster had threatened Mortimer and the king with an army at Barlings Abbey, near Lincoln. Edward was clearly shocked. A London rebellion was being planned also, and Edward was again dependent on Mortimer to send men to eliminate opposition from that quarter. Lancaster issued a whole string of accusations against Mortimer. As the date for the Salisbury parliament approached, it looked as if only pro-Mortimer supporters would attend. Lancaster's faction were preparing not for discussion but for war. That Edward was personally in danger was not in doubt. At the end of September Lancaster sent an armed force to capture him in East Anglia. It was only Edward's speedy reaction - forcing the court to travel 180 miles westwards in six days, towards the relative safety of Mortimer and Isabella at Gloucester - which saved him from falling into Lancaster's hands. If that had happened, Mortimer and Isabella would have lost their royal power, and Lancaster would have gained it. Civil war would have ensued.
Lancaster failed to arrive at the Salisbury parliament. The agenda was thus Mortimer's. No statutes were enrolled. The main items of business were the civil disturbances, the likelihood of war, and Mortimer's title. On the last day of October Edward ceremonially strapped the sword on to his mother's lover, and exchanged the kiss of peace with him, and in so doing created him earl of March. It must have been a far greater pleasure for him to do the same for his young brother, John, and the twenty-three-year-old James Butler, whom he created earl of Ormond.
Mortimer's tide only infuriated Lancaster more. Throughout the latter part of 1328 it looked as though a great battle would be fought to establish who had the right to rule in Edward's name. At Winchester, Lancaster was persuaded to retreat at the very hour that Mortimer's vanguard arrived in the city. Skirmishes took place, but the two armies narrowly avoided one another. In London, Mortimer harangued the citizens who had dared to take Lancaster's side. Finally, at the end of December, Mortimer declared war on Lancaster in Edward's name. The young king could not have known what to think as his mother also donned armour and took part in a sudden overnight charge which resulted in Lancaster's capitulation near Bedford.
The year 1328 had seen Edward being fought over by Mortimer and Lancaster, like a wounded gazelle being trapped between two lions. Victory for Mortimer hardly made Edward's sleep any easier. The real danger for the gazelle begins when one lion has defeated the other and may safely consume its prey.
Edward's uncles, the earls of Norfolk and Kent, had initially sided with Lancaster. They had deserted him at the last, rather than take arms against the king. Like Edward
himself, they saw no victory in Lancaster's defeat. Kent in particular wanted to see Mortimer removed from power: that was why he had sided with Lancaster in the first place. And in his opinion Edward was too young and inexperienced to throw off the irons of Mortimer's authority. In spring 1329 Kent took matters into his own hands. He planned a mission overseas to see Pope John XXII and began his arrangements for the rescue of Edward II.
Edward was also planning an overseas trip; or, rather, Mortimer and Isabella were planning one for him. Isabella had been persuaded to relinquish her claim to the French throne on Edward's behalf, largely because the risk of civil war made an overseas expedition impossible. Instead she had been persuaded reluctantly to recognise Edward's cousin, Philip de Valois, as king. But this rankled with her, as indeed it did with Edward himself. When Philip had demanded that Edward come to France to do homage for his French possessions, Isabella retorted that 'the son of a king would never do homage to the son of a mere count'. This infuriated Philip. He confiscated the revenues of Gascony and sent envoys to demand that Edward do homage as initially stated. Edward could see his French possessions slipping from his grasp as quickly as his Scottish ones. Mortimer agreed that he should do what was required of him-, and perform homage. After a flurry of diplomatic missions, Edward appointed his younger brother, John, custodian of the realm during his absence. He said farewell to him, his mother, and Mortimer at Dover at the end of May.
Edward had many men with him, including Hugh Turpington and John Maltravers, Mortimer's most loyal knights. He also had close friends in William Montagu, Thomas West, Geoffrey le Scrope, Pancio de Controne and Robert Ufford. Montagu, now aged about twenty-seven, had been at court since his father's death in 1319, when he had become a royal ward. Thus he had known Edward since the age of six. Thomas West was one of Montagu's retainers. Ufford was thirty years old, and had known Edward as long as Montagu. The Italian de Controne was Edward's personal physician. Le Scrope was the prominent lawyer who had assisted in Edward's household many years earlier. With the possible exception of le Scrope, all these friends of Edward's had seen their hopes for the future threatened by Mortimer. To them Mortimer represented the traumas of the old reign. And they knew Edward needed their help. He had already lost his rights to Scotland, and was on the verge of surrendering his rights to France. His royal power had been held from him, his father held prisoner, his uncle Kent alienated from court. We do not know when Edward began to confide in Montagu and Ufford, but we might assume from their presence on this trip that they were there at Edward's insistence, and that Edward was already closer to them than he was to Mortimer's henchmen.
Edward and his men landed at Wissant on 26 May, after a two-day crossing. They made their way via Crecy and Montreuil to Amiens, where on 6 June, in the choir of the cathedral, Edward swore homage to Philip. Something about the ceremony, however, was not right. Various writers later postulated that Edward had not put his hands between Philip's when swearing the oath; others thought that he had not sworn fealty, and thus refused to serve Philip in war. One thought Philip was planning to arrest Edward after the ceremony.4' Another story was that Isabella summoned him to return immediately.42 Whatever the truth of what happened, Edward left France in a hurry. He did not beg leave of the French king; he simply left.-Within six days he was back on English soil. Two days later he was at Canterbury.
Why did Edward depart so suddenly? So many problems were billowing like smoke out of England that it is difficult to know which was the most important. One is the possibility that Isabella was pregnant, with Mortimer's child. This would have threatened Isabella especially, and it may be that she and Mortimer immediately sought Edward's acquiescence, if not his approval. However, it is unlikely that Isabella would have upset a diplomatic agreement for the sake of not telling Edward such news for a few more days. It is more probable that something directly threatened Edward as well as Isabella and Mortimer. This is very unlikely to have been a French plot to arrest him. The message would have been poorly directed if it had reached him having travelled via England. Also, on his return to England, Edward authorised the negotiations for a marriage between his brother John and a daughter of the king of France. The most likely explanation is that this was the point at which Mortimer and Isabella discovered the nature of Kent's plot to rescue Edward II.
Historians have traditionally assumed Edward II had been dead for the last two years. If any acknowledged that this was not certain, they still assumed that Edward II had disappeared from English politics altogether, and that he may as well have been dead. But it has become clear that this was not the case: Edward II's shadow haunted Edward III far more than has hitherto been realised. Edward was a nervous young man, beset by troubles. And the knowledge that his father was alive, and that he himself, through his royal position, had helped create the lie of his father's death, troubled him mightily. In later years it became usual for members of the royal family to be buried with their faces exposed, precisely to avoid the confusion which now beset Edward and his contemporaries. The news that Kent had gone to the pope to inform him that Edward II was still alive must have alarmed Edward as much as it did Mortimer and Isabella.
Kent had been planning his trip for several months, since at least April if not earlier. But he was still in England in May, and seems not to have left until early June. It seems that Isabella may have ordered Edward to hurry home in the fear that Kent, after his support for Lancaster, might himself have sought to kidnap Edward while in France, possibly to stage his own coup d'etat. Kent was no fool, despite often being referred to as one, and he too could have used custody of the young king to steal power in England, just like Mortimer or Lancaster. All we know for certain is that, as Edward was swearing homage to King Philip on 6 June, his uncle was crossing or about to cross the Channel with a view to taking action against Mortimer and Isabella's regime by replacing Edward on the throne with his secretly imprisoned father.
The situation would have been made clear to Edward on his arrival back in England. If we are right in thinking that Isabella was pregnant at this time, Edward would have been forced to grapple with that fact also. Problem after problem seemed to loom before him. And Mortimer, the architect of so many of these problems, seemed more confident than ever. That autumn he held a great feast at his newly rebuilt castle of Wigmore, at which he (Mortimer) played the part of King Arthur in the king's presence. The symbolism was unambiguous. Mortimer was playing the king himself in front of Edward, the real king. This was more than mere play-acting.
Although not yet seventeen, Edward realised he had to take steps to reclaim power. He decided that his first move must be to convince the pope of his integrity. A week after the tournament at Wigmore, he sent William Montagu to Avignon. The mission was secret: ostensibly Montagu was to see Otto, lord of Cuyk, whom Edward said he wished to employ. But Mortimer was quick. On learning of Montagu's trip, he instructed his own man, Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, to accompany Montagu. Undaunted, Montagu did what Edward had bade him, and saw Pope John XXII. On the journey he may have been able to persuade Burghersh to change allegiance, at least tacitly, for he was able to see the pope and tell him of the plight in which Edward found himself, and how the country was being run against his wishes by Mortimer and Isabella. Pope John told Montagu to return to England and let Edward send him a secret letter bearing a sign or cipher by which he could discern which letters to him came with Edward's blessing and which did not.
Sending Montagu to Avignon meant Edward was temporarily without his most trusted friend. But others were beginning to rally to his cause. Most important of these was Richard Bury, Edward's old tutor, whom he had managed to keep with him. Bury had been a cofferer in 1327, and keeper of Edward's wardrobe from August 1328. On 24 September he was raised to the position of keeper of the privy seal. This was crucial: it meant that one of Edward's trusted servants had custody of the means by which his personal instructions could be authenticated. It marked a distinct setback for Mortimer and
Isabella, and the best-informed chronicles begin to note that at this time Mortimer was beginning to perceive Edward as a threat. In particular, when the pope asked Montagu to arrange the means by which he could distinguish between Edward's and Mortimer's written intentions, Bury wrote a letter which Edward himself signed with the words 'Pater Sancte' (Holy Father). This is today the earliest surviving writing in the hand of an English monarch.
Everyone was playing a deadly game. Mortimer could see his influence waning. But as the basis for his confidence diminished, Edward saw him growing more arrogant and more dangerous. The child which may have been born to Mortimer and Isabella at Kenilworth in December 1329 would have made nothing easier for any of them. Isabella too was vulnerable. Lancaster, only superficially forgiven for his rebellion, was out of the country, on a diplomatic mission, possibly coordinating activity from France. To make matters more dangerous still, rumours about Lancaster's return, or Kent's return, with an army of mercenaries were circulating. On 7 December 1329 Mortimer and Isabella issued a warrant to arrest anyone spreading such rumours. Feelings were running high, and, at the height of these feelings, Kent returned. The man with the knowledge and power to blow the whole situation sky high was back in England.