The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  For Edward, this new Scottish strategy meant a period of waiting. He spent Christmas 1331 at Wells with Philippa, who was three months pregnant with their second child. They stayed there until the completion of the games on the night of Epiphany (6 January). Presents were exchanged;

  Philippa gave Edward a silver goblet and ewer, the goblet being 'enamelled on the outside with images of beautiful castles, ships and beasts, and on the inside with a great castle at the base with its banners unfurled and the king seated in the middle, and enamelled on all sides with the arms of England among leopards bearing the same arms'; the ewer was enamelled with legendary figures: Julius Caesar, Judas Maccabeus, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver, Arthur, Gawain and Lancelot of the Lake.44 Philippa must have commissioned this herself, and it is striking that several of the heroes from books in Richard Bury's library are represented. The conqueror of Jerusalem (Judas Maccabeus) sat alongside the conqueror of Europe (Caesar). Philippa knew her husband's tastes well.

  While Edward waited for the resolution of Balliol’s gamble, he had many other claims on his attention. He was still considering going to Ireland in August 1332. He was concerned about the state of the University of Cambridge. He ordered the arrest of renegade friars wandering around the country. He ordered the bishop of Winchester to arrange the marriage between his sister Eleanor and Reginald, count of Guelderland. He ordered the repair of his castles in Gascony. He responded to the news that Thomas Gurney had been caught in Bayonne. He received ambassadors from Armenia (in relation to a crusade there), Savoy, and the pope: the last exhorting him not to fight the French. He sent ambassadors to Flanders, Rome, France, Portugal and Spain. In March, he urged parliament to encourage Flemish weavers to come to England to teach the English how to improve the making of domestic cloth, his first foray into economic policy. In April, despite parliament's expressed desire that he should put off going on a crusade with Philip of France for three years, he sent the bishop of Winchester to negotiate this, and wrote to the pope about the plan.

  As this list shows, economics, family relations, foreign policy, defensive strategy and crusading were all bubbling together in one great royal melting pot. This was merely what a king did. Throughout 1332 we see Edward moving around the country - rarely spending a week in the same place -feasting on the major saints days, attending mass, holding parliament, receiving ambassadors, jousting and granting charters. For relaxation he indulged in hunting, gambling with his friends, and being told chivalric stories of military and romantic prowess. At the end of April the court came to rest at the royal manor of Woodstock, at which it had been decided Philippa would have her next child. There, on 16 June, his first daughter, Isabella, was born.46 Two weeks after the birth, the king was off again, travelling through Burford to Devizes, to his manor at Clarendon; then, via Abingdon, back to Woodstock to attend the churching of Queen Philippa. Of course, there was a lavish tournament in celebration. No expense was spared in the decoration. The altars of the church itself were decorated in purple silk embroidered with birds, beasts, baboons and snakes, and Philippa's state bed hangings were similarly decorated with these animals and the arms of England and Hainault. The feast that day (19 July) cost more than £292: about ten times the usual daily expenditure on feeding the royal household.

  On 12 July, at Woodstock, Edward decided to delay his Irish campaign until Michaelmas, in order to learn the results of Balliol's adventure. Balliol and the disinherited lords landed with eighty-eight ships and fifteen hundred men at Kinghorn on 6 August. They soon met with considerable opposition. Although the southern Scottish forces, under Patrick of Dunbar, were too far away to prevent the landing, the huge army of Donald, earl of Mar, confronted them four days later. Balliol had been led to believe that Donald of Mar would come over to his side, but, now he was actually there, he found Mar planned to slaughter him and all the Disinherited. On the night of 10 August, knowing that thousands of men were ranged against them, and knowing even more men were on their way to assist in the massacre, Balliol and his experienced military adviser, Henry Beaumont, made a desperate decision. They decided to seize the initiative and fight. The longer they delayed, the greater the risk of having to resist an even larger army. The other lords with them were aghast, and accused Beaumont of leading them into a trap. 'By no means', he replied, 'but since the affair has gone so far, for God's sake, let us help ourselves. For no man knows what God has in store for us. Let us think of our great right so as to show we are descended from good knights.' Most inspiring of all, he found a Scotsman who was prepared to show them the ford across the River Earn. That night, while the men-at-arms loyal to the earl of Mar drank the night away on the moor, and their footsoldiers slept, Balliol and Beaumont led their men across the Earn and slaughtered the Scottish footsoldiers in their tents. But as light came up, to their amazement they realised they had only engaged half the enemy, and now the great mass of Mar's men was ranged against them. Desperate measures were called for. Facing death, the English men-at-arms dismounted, and set themselves to form a defensive line of pikes, with archers on the flanks. Beaumont ordered the pikes set into the ground, and the archers to aim at the faces of the oncoming Scottish riders.

  Desperate measures they may have been, but what happened that day was truly remarkable. The English archers, well-organised and well-trained, stood their ground and drove the flanks of the Scottish army into the centre of the charge, where they disabled their own compatriots. For centuries the great charge of a body of knights - the utterly destructive fast-moving mass of armoured power - had held sway on the battlefields of Europe. Here, on the slopes of a Scottish moor, Dupplin Moor, everything changed. The archers destroyed the force of the charge. When the Scots front line had finally staggered on to the English pikes, they drove the English back twenty or thirty feet. At that point Lord Stafford cried out: 'Englishmen! Turn your shoulders instead of your chests to the pikes!' A little later another Englishman cried out 'Cheer up, Englishmen, and fight like men, for the Scots in the rear have now begun to fly!' As the chronicler who noted these exclamations recorded, the English took heart, and the Scots were dismayed. The battlefield became a slaughter ground. The same chronicler adds 'a most marvellous thing happened that day, such as was never seen or heard of in any previous battle: the pile of dead rising up from the ground was more than a spear's length in height'.

  Back in England, Edward was still thinking about his expedition to Ireland. On 4 August, alarmed at the discontent he was hearing from the Scottish Marches, he gave orders that Lord Percy was to hold the Scottish border, in case the Scots under Patrick of Dunbar invaded. He empowered Percy to raise the men of five counties. Then, at Wigmore on 10 August, he heard that Balliol had landed. A few days later he was told the news of Dupplin Moor. Three Scottish earls had been killed in the battle, along with many thousands of footmen and men-at-arms. English losses were put at two knights, thirty-three esquires and no archers or foot-soldiers. It was extraordinary, and Edward could not have anticipated such an outcome. It presented something of a problem too, as Balliol was now in a position to make himself King of Scots or even King of Scotland. Parliament was ordered hastily to assemble on 9 September. Taxes were granted for Edward to place the kingdom on a war footing, if necessary. It was agreed immediately to remove the administration to York, and to hold another, fuller discussion there. The Irish campaign was cancelled.

  The strangeness of Balliol’s campaign was not yet complete, however. The Scots had regrouped under Sir Andrew Murray and Sir Archibald Douglas. They had also employed the services of the pirate, John Crabb, a man whose viciousness on the seas struck fear into land-loving knights. Crabb set out from Berwick to attack the English vessels, and, though he managed to capture one, the rest of the fleet managed to drive him off. Crabb himself was later captured by Sir Walter Manny. Even more extraordinarily, Murray managed to fall into the hands of his enemy. According to the Lanercost chronicler, he tried to separate Balliol from his army by breaking down the br
idge at Roxburgh. Balliol’s army 'repaired the bridge with utmost speed, and some of them, not waiting till this was done, plunged into the great river, armed and mounted, and swam across and pursued the flying Scots for eight miles' in which pursuit Murray was seized. Both Crabb and Murray were sent to Edward.

  If a man like Crabb had fallen into the hands of Edward I or Edward II, he would have been summarily executed in the most public place possible. Edward did not kill Crabb. Herein we may catch another glimpse of his strategic forgiveness. Crabb was a destructive weapon, and a rare one at that, being used to maritime warfare. He was also a man without loyalty, and so as a weapon he could be turned to anyone's advantage. Having received the man in chains from Sir Walter Manny, Edward could offer Crabb a reason to be loyal: to serve the man who would permit him to live. This was not just opportunism, it was forethought too. Through it Edward gained a man who would one day prove very useful.

  Balliol was crowned King of Scots at Scone Abbey on 24 September. Two months later he wrote to Edward laying out how he saw his relationship with the English king. Sensitive to the fact that he had, by his coronation, disinherited Edward's sister, he kindly offered to marry her (if she was willing) and to make her queen of the Scots. Parliament discussed the coronation in early December. Edward's lawyer, Geoffrey le Scrope, laid out the three alternatives: to support David II in line with the 1328 agreement, to support the new king, Balliol, or to dispense with them both and allow Edward to assert his rights in Scotland by force as overlord of the kingdom. Edward himself made clear he wanted the 1328 treaty to be considered null and void on account of it having been made while he was still a child. But as to what he should do otherwise, parliament could not decide.

  This would have left Edward with a problem but for the next event in Edward Balliol's strange saga. Sir Archibald Douglas and Patrick of Dunbar managed to surprise Balliol at Annan in a night attack during the Christmas festivities. Most of the men with Balliol were killed in their nightshirts; Balliol himself only escaped by smashing through a partition wall, and jumping on to a horse and riding away bareback, without a harness, towards Carlisle. In losing his kingdom as suddenly as he had won it, Balliol had avoided being betrayed by Edward, whose definite preference was to reclaim all of Scotland as his own.

  Parliament was still cautious. Edward was now twenty, eager to prove himself and desperate to avenge the treaty of 1328. Those who arrived at York in January could see that the young man was determined to lead his band of knights to war. A cautious parliament was no match for him. Although he would have preferred all the lords, prelates and commons to support him in his military endeavour, he also wanted parliament to remember that they were merely there to advise him. They might have agreed to his father's deposition but they were still ruled by him, not vice versa. He had made a statement to that effect, in the parliament of September 1331, when he had refused a petition to restore Edmund Mortimer to all his ancestral lands.35 He had replied that such a matter was his own prerogative, and he would do as he saw fit. Now he did as he saw fit again. When the Chancellor declared that parliament had failed to come to a conclusion on the Scottish situation, Edward took matters out of their hands. He appointed a council of six wise men to advise him. These were the archbishop of York, the bishop of Norwich, Henry Percy, William Clinton, William Denholme and William Shareshull.

  As the knights and representatives of the counties made their way homeward from York, they may have reflected on the events and presumed that the situation was a difficult one. If so, they were deluding themselves. The situation was simple. Edward wanted war, and Edward was now old enough, trusted enough and most of all confident enough to have his chance of glory. Parliament had disempowered itself with regard to foreign policy. Had it been united, and if the lords and commons had spoken together against any war in Scotland, then Edward would have been restrained. But they had not been united, and Edward had encouraged their disunity by having Geoffrey le Scrape offer a variety of strategies: to support David II, Balliol, or Edward himself. What le Scrape had not suggested was that nothing should be done. The only way parliament, if divided, could restrain the king was by witholding necessary taxation. But parliament had already voted sufficient funds to be allocated to the defence of the north. The six wise men were not chosen to advise on whether to go to war but, as 'wardens of the Marches' to help Edward make the attack seem like a defensive manoeuvre. That was at least how Edward justified his actions to the pope. He was defending the north of his kingdom.

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  Edward spent March 1333 at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, making arrangements for the attack. He already had a strategy. He would besiege Berwick, the prosperous town on the north of the River Tweed. This was shadowed by the strong castle which had fallen to the Scots in 1318 but which had resisted the English the following year. It was the sole southern Scottish castle of sufficient importance to the Scots that they had reinforced its defences rather than destroy them. Before Edward left Pontefract he sent orders for two great siege engines to be built and shipped to Berwick, and for teams of quarrymen to make hundreds of large stone missiles. He also gave orders for gunpowder to be obtained from a York apothecary.

  Gunpowder - or, more precisely, the use of firearms — was a recent innovation. Although gunpowder had been known in Britain for at least eighty years, the first unequivocal documentation attesting to the use of cannon in Europe dates to 1326. In that year, Walter Milemete included an illustration of a cannon in his On the Nobility, Wisdom and Prudence of Kings (presented to Edward). That same year, orders were given by the Council of Florence for metal cannons and cannonballs to be made: the earliest certain appearance of cannon in Italy. Milemete's gun was shaped like a tall bronze vase lying on its side, and an example of just such a bronze gun was discovered at Loshult in Sweden in the nineteenth century. Modern tests have shown that it probably had a range in excess of three-quarters of a mile. Edward probably saw examples used in 1327 on the Stanhope campaign, when Mortimer had employed 'crakkis of wer' (as the Scottish chronicler called them). So, in 1333, Edward was employing the most recent military technology, tried perhaps only once previously in British military history.

  The really startling thing about this is not that Edward was prepared to try new methods; it is the irony that he - the great king of chivalry, the champion of the joust - was the man who more than any other medieval leader was responsible for the development of the gun, the instrument which ultimately led to the destruction of both chivalry and jousting. It seems paradoxical, until we recall that knighthood was a means of channelling military strength and encouraging men to fight. Newly made knights often died in their first battle, attempting to prove themselves worthy. Knighthood was basically a ritualised form of motivating and mobilising society for war, and the men around Edward - his new Arthurian knights - were highly motivated and well-equipped. This is why in March, knowing the country was on the verge of conflict, Edward had ordered every man of sufficient income - forty pounds per year - to become a knight. Edward's chivalric ethos was not just a romantic, wistful throwback to the days of yore, but a military operation. In later years he organised the casting of guns and the manufacture on a large scale at the Tower of London: more than two tons of gunpowder being made there in the year 1346-47.

  In his adoption of new techniques and strategies, it is evident that Edward had the ability to grasp new ideas quickly and exploit their potential. He seized on the principle underlying the victory at Dupplin Moor and summoned Henry Beaumont to advise him at Berwick. New types of siege engines were probably another innovation. And the presence and use of ships under the captured Flemish pirate, John Crabb, again shows an instinctive grasp of how best to direct his resources. Crabb knew the walls of Berwick inside out, including their weaknesses. He had defended them successfully against the English in 1319.

  In April the country mobilised. Men marched towards Berwick from across England and Wales. Corn was transported by road from sixteen coun
ties in preparation for the siege. The abbot of St Mary's, York, was directed to act as an unofficial war treasurer. The men of Tadcaster were ordered to assist in buying more stones for the siege engines. The archbishops of York and Canterbury were both requested to 'exhort' their clergy to pray for the success of the siege. On 10 April Edward made an offering of a red and silk cloth embroidered with gold at Durham Cathedral. On the 23rd the siege began, in advance of his arrival, and by the 30th Edward arrived at Alnwick. After responding to the pro-Scottish entreaties of King Philip of France with the statement that the Scots had invaded his land several times, he proceeded to Tweedmouth, just across the river from the fortified town and castle. With the king's arrival there on 9 May, the siege proper began.

  Edward ordered the water supply to the town to be cut off. The four aqueducts were broken. Then, day after day, the siege engines projected boulders into the town, and the guns blasted away at the walls. Edward had made a 'fair town of pavilions outside the walls' and built ditches around them, so that the attackers themselves were well-defended. Within Berwick houses were destroyed and churches razed to the earth. Food began to grow short in the town, but still the people held out, hoping that the main Scots army would arrive and relieve the siege, despite Crabb's purposeful directing of the guns.

  The siege dragged on. While Edward waited he gave some time to family concerns. He organised the raising of money towards his sister's marriage to the Count of Guelderland from the prelates (which had taken place the previous year), and he gave to his three-year-old son, Edward, the title of earl of Chester, which he himself had received as a baby. He took his wife Philippa to visit the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne and its monastery. Then, having returned her to the safety of Bamburgh Castle, he returned to the pavilions, and the waiting. He played chess and dice, losing seventy-six shillings on 8 June. Two days later he lost another five shillings. Tedium set in, between the ear-splitting blasts of the guns and the distant crash of stone shot smashing into the wooden houses of the town. The ennui was slightly relieved the following week, when he heard that his sister had given birth to his first nephew. But soon it was back to gambling. Having lost twelve pounds in his pavilion on 25 June, Edward ordered a direct attack on the castle.