The Perfect King

by Ian Mortimer

  It is very easy, tempting even, to regard the campaign of 1359-60 as a failed siege followed by a trail of wanton destruction. It does not appear an edifying form of conflict. We prefer to read of well-conceived daring exercises being successfully and bravely carried out to achieve specific strategic aims. But warfare is very rarely as neat and tidy as that, and often the most effective methods are the most horrific. And there is no doubt that, after lifting the siege, Edward was able to put far more pressure on the French government by using tactics of shock and horror, similar to those adopted by modern generals with superior firepower at their disposal. Each act in itself was wanton and pitiless, but taken together they constituted a powerful strategy which undermined French resistance. Having no army to bring against Edward, the French administration could only respond with diplomatic entreaties, channelled through the services of the papacy. Five weeks spent besieging Rheims had had little or no effect, but five weeks of widespread destruction left France reeling. After seven weeks it began to yield the desired result. A papal delegation came to Edward requesting a peace conference. Edward's terms were no less than the implementation of the Second Treaty of London, and the French withdrew, professing amazement at his harshness. So the next day the village of Orly was attacked and its population massacred in the parish church. The next day more villages were completely destroyed, their women raped and their men killed. A Benedictine priory where twelve hundred people had taken refuge was burnt by its French garrison after the refugees made an attempt to surrender. Nine hundred died in the fires which the French garrison lit, and the remaining three hundred were killed by the English as they fled. At the gates of Paris a battle between thirty newly dubbed English knights and sixty French knights resulted in the vanquishing of the French. Lord Manny led a contingent to burn the suburbs. All the portents were grim for the French. With the smoke of the burning villages visible to the south, the Parisians started to destroy those last few extra-mural buildings which Manny had left standing.

  And then dawned Monday 13 April: Black Monday as it would be known for centuries in England. Even Edward had never seen anything to compare with the weather that day. A storm broke, but it was not just a storm. As the skies darkened and thunder crashed above them, the temperature dropped so suddenly that a wall of ice fell. Huge hailstones rained down, killing men and animals in their thousands. Out in the open, just to the south of Paris, Edward's men had little hope of finding shelter. With the landscape lit by lightning and the thunder above them, and everywhere ice missiles descending, it must have been terrifying. In later years the chroniclers all wrote in awe of the event. Froissart wrote that 'it seemed as if the heavens would crack, and the earth open up and swallow everything'. Thomas of Walsingham stated that several thousand men and horses died. The author of the Eulogium Historiarum wrote that many men died of snow, hail and rain. Henry Knighton wrote that hail killed six thousand horses and a large number of men. Other sources put the number of dead men at one thousand, including the eldest son of the earl of Warwick, who died of injuries sustained in this storm two weeks later.

  There is no doubt that Black Monday was a momentous event, and no doubt that it affected Edward's strategy. But exactly how and to what extent remains a mystery. The view of contemporaries and writers prior to the eighteenth century was that 'Edward, like a good and pious prince, looked upon it as a loud declaration of divine pleasure: wherefore alighting immediately from his horse, he kneeled down on the ground, and casting his eyes towards the church of Our Lady of Chartres, made a solemn vow to Almighty God that he would now sincerely and absolutely incline his mind to a final peace with France, if he might obtain good conditions.' Twentieth-century writers, less inclined to understand divine signals as a motivation, were far more cynical, and regarded Black Monday simply as an excuse. But Edward did believe in the connection between God's will and the weather, six thousand dead horses and up to one thousand dead men in a hailstorm was a clear indication that God was not pleased. Therefore we have to ask, was Edward finally brought to the negotiating table by the difficulties of sustaining an army in the field? Or was it down to his belief that on Black Monday he had been spoken to by God?

  Edward was forty-seven years of age. Much had happened since Halidon Hill, after which he had given thanks to God for his first great victory. After that he had gone on many pilgrimages, often after surviving a storm or winning a battle. There is no evidence that this was ever a cynical ploy, to make him look religious, let alone that it was cynically motivated on every single occasion. Such was the regularity of his acts of thanksgiving that we must lay aside the postulation that Edward's shows of religion were merely routine. His personal religious zeal might not have been unusual, but we must remember that Edward was living in a deeply religious age. He may have been a great warrior, but so was Lancaster, and Lancaster wrote a book on religious salvation. Also Edward's spirituality had probably increased since the 1330s, not lessened. There had been some significant religious acts over the years, such as donating a figure of St Thomas to Canterbury Cathedral, the pardon to Cecilia Ridgeway, and a commission to search for the body of Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury Abbey in 1345. All these do not force us to believe that Edward was a holy man, but neither do they suggest a cynical approach to manifestations of divine will. Edward certainly believed that there was a connection between extreme, life-threatening storms and divine providence. The most obvious example of this is his four pilgrimages, including one to Canterbury from London on foot, and his gift of a valuable golden ship to each shrine after being saved from the storm in March 1343. Therefore Black Monday may well have been pivotal in convincing Edward that the time had come to stop the destruction, settle his military account and accept the best terms that the French were prepared to offer.

  The French were of course fully aware of the effects of the storm, and they had been protected in their houses from the worst of it, but they had seen and suffered enough. If Edward was having problems supplying his army in the field, they all knew that he would simply turn in a new direction and savage another place, another string of villages, another few towns. His armies had swerved this way and that between Rheims and Paris, devastating a huge area. The time had come for them to swallow their pride. The question they placed on the table now was whether the territorial concessions of the First Treaty of London, coupled with the reduced ransom demand of £500,000 for all the French prisoners, would be sufficient to appease Edward? In all probability Edward had already decided that this would be the basis for a permanent peace, but, playing the part of a wrathful, Old Testament king, he could not be seen to acquiesce so easily. As with his acts of mercy, he preferred to be asked to temper his fury by others. According to Froissart, it was his greatest friend, the duke of Lancaster, who now assumed this role. 'You can press on with your struggle and pass the rest of your life fighting', the duke is supposed to have said, 'or you can make terms with your enemy and end the war now with honour.' Edward had come to the end of his war. He wisely chose the latter.

  The negotiations took place at Br6tigny from 1 May 1360 and were finalised on 8 May. Edward agreed in principle to relinquish his claim on the French throne in return for sovereignty of all the territories he had inherited as a vassal and many of those he had subsequently obtained by conquest. Details remained to be sorted out with the captive French king, but Edward was satisfied. He had achieved his aims, and secured everything he had fought for. The claim on the French throne had proved a very powerful negotiating position indeed, but, like the territorial claims of the Second Treaty of London, it had served its purpose, and could now be dispensed with. Edward ordered the English army to march to Honfleur, from which he sailed on 18 May. After landing at Rye, there was feasting in the royal household every day for two weeks.

  He had returned in triumph.

  FIFTEEN

  Outliving Victory

  The war was over. After eight years of struggling to capitalise on his dominant military pos
ition, Edward had finally achieved a lasting settlement. All that remained was for King John to relinquish sovereignty of the lands agreed and for Edward formally to renounce his claim on the French throne. In October 1360 he crossed the Channel to Calais to see these things done. A few questions remained about the renunciations, and these clauses had to be removed from the final treaty and inserted into a separate document to be discussed further, but otherwise the Bretigny agreement was ratified at Calais on 24 October. Edward returned to England and summoned parliament to meet after Christmas, the ratification by parliament being the very last stage in ending the war.

  As every reader knows, the conflict which Edward believed he had brought to an end after twenty-three years fighting is now known as the Hundred Years War. The name is misleading, for it suggests that it was one great, protracted struggle. At several times in the fourteenth century the war came to an end, and peace treaties were entered into - and ratified - in good faith. We tend to forget that different stages of 'the war' broke out for different reasons. Some would say that there was no such thing as the Hundred Years War. What we have so far heard about is just the first phase of the great conflict which was given an ideological unity by presenting the English claim to the throne of France as real. But this first phase was essentially a war of rivalry between Edward III and Philip de Valois, in which' Edward's claim was a means to an end, not an end in itself (unlike later stages of the conflict). Almost every aspect of Edward's involvement in the war since hearing of Philip's death had been an attempt to secure a lasting peace on good terms for the English. It is more accurate therefore to think of Edward in 1360 as having achieved a belated but satisfactory end to this war of rivalry.

  Edward was now nearing fifty. His original rival was long-since dead. His victories were of such glory and magnitude that he could not have easily repeated them. He was more interested in great building projects than protracted sieges. Besides, his health was not good. His wife's health too was declining. Almost the first thing he did when returning to England in 1360 was to merge his household with Philippa's, with the implication that henceforth they would be together. He was not going to spend the rest of his days fighting a futile war with France which, in his own mind, he had already won. It was time for him to enjoy the fruits of his labours, in peace, and to spend his last days of companionship with his much-loved queen, creating works of lasting beauty.

  Edward and Philippa spent Christmas 1360 at Woodstock with their sons and daughters and the king of France. Here Edward wore a coat he had specially commissioned. It was made of black satin embroidered in gold and silk thread with the image of a woodbine - a climbing plant, such as ivy or honeysuckle - and bearing the motto in gold lettering 'Syker as ye Wodebynd' (clinging like the woodbine). This is the fourth and last of Edward's known mottoes, and in many ways it is the most mysterious. If the first ('It is as it is') is to be associated with the death of Edward's father, the second ('Hay, hay the white swan, by God's soul I am thy man') is to be loosely associated with the tournaments of 1348-49, and the third ('Honi soit. . .') with Lancaster, then we should be looking for another personal subject as the inspiration. Without further evidence it is impossible to be certain, but it seems that this motto is Edward's own comment on himself and his queen: a reflection on his career and the part she had played in his success. She had been the tree around which he had climbed, twisting like ivy. She was like a pillar to him, a source of courage and self-confidence despite his wanderings and adventures, and had been ever since the day they married. His open appreciation of her loyalty and support after more than thirty years is touching, and inclines us to see the kindness and gratitude of the man. But the motto is also interesting in that Edward clearly compares himself to the searching, questioning woodbine. This is apt; since that frightened, lonely boy-king under Mortimer's dominance, Edward had been feeling his way like the climbing ivy. Even the firm policies on which he relied strategically had been discovered through trial and error: he cannot be said to have inherited them from his father. In looking for the man's own idea of himself we should not ignore this unique case of self-definition. He had always been searching for the way to be a great king, and, now that he was one, he realised that it had only been possible due to the consistent and devoted support of Queen Philippa. She had been the strong emotional foundation for his experiment in kingship. Later events would prove this to be only too true: as her sickness worsened, so did his leadership. She was essential to his continuing to strive to be a great king.

  So what does a warrior-king do when he has won his last battle? What does he do when he has sealed the peace treaty on his last war? What does the climbing woodbine seek? Edward, of course, had already given much thought to this question. There were the permanent structures of the Order of the Garter and his religious foundations. There were his many secular building projects, especially Windsor Castle and Queenborough, to which he now could direct more money than ever before. And there was parliament. When he entered the Painted Chamber in 1361 it was to the smiles and delight of the representatives of a grateful people. Even the most ardent anti-war merchants had to be pleased, for now they could expect to be taxed less. Ratification was predictably swift and complete. On 2 February the first ransom instalment was received from the French and, following oaths in the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury, King John was free to return to his devastated homeland.

  The parliament of 1361 was more than a mere congratulatory assembly. It was like the great parliaments of the 1350s: it transformed the enthusiasm of the time and the rapid economic development of the country into business decisions and social legislation. The king and representatives locked together in a debate about power over everyday lives. The Statute of Labourers was reinforced, the earlier legislation regarding weights and measures was renewed. Laws were passed restricting the exportation of corn and banning jurors from receiving bribes. Given Edward's interest in hunting, it is interesting to note that a law was passed ensuring that the lord who lost a hawk could legally expect its finder to return it to him. But by far the most important legislation of this parliament was an Act which became the basis of local administration in England for the next half-millennium. Edward agreed, at long last, to the principle that local landholders should have the right to arrest, try and punish minor wrongdoers. In each county there were to be four Justices of the Peace to try offenders. Serious cases were still to be tried by the royal assize courts, but local justice had finally arrived. Two years later Edward expanded the JP's role to include quarterly meetings: the 'Quarter Sessions'. It was only in the nineteenth century that this structure of local government began to be replaced. The basic legislation empowering JPs is still in force today.

  Edward and his contemporaries had every reason to believe that the subsequent decade would be an age of great achievements. Parliament could expect legal battles, the king could build and live in splendour. Few at the parliament of 1361, seeing the peace ratified, and realising that English local government had become a reality, could possibly have guessed how the coming year would be marked not by a glorious peace but by tragedy.

  *

  A number of Edward's close companions had died over the last year. The young earl of March - marshal of the English army, Knight of the Garter and still only thirty-one - had died in France in 1360. Edward had his body brought back to England and gave expensive offerings at his burial at Wigmore and at his obsequies at Windsor. In September 1360 another Knight of the Garter, the earl of Northampton, died. He was Edward's contemporary, one of his bravest generals and one of the few men left who had been there with Edward that night when Mortimer had been arrested, thirty years earlier. Edward gave several expensive cloths of gold for his funeral too. Two more Garter knights were buried at the end of the year: Sir John Beauchamp (standard-bearer at Crecy) and the veteran warrior Sir Thomas Holland, husband of the Fair Maid of Kent and the man who had bellowed across the Seine at the French on the Cr6cy campaign. Edward's old f
riends were disappearing fast.

  The biggest blow, however, was Lancaster's death, on 23 March 1361. Lancaster had been Edward's most trusted friend for about twenty years. He had won several major battles as sole leader, had fought under Edward's banner, been present at the siege of Calais, and had won countless skirmishes and minor sieges. He had been one of the six earls created in 1337 and the chief negotiator in Edward's search for peace since 1353. It was probably his garters which had resulted in the emblem being adopted by Edward's chivalric order. He had wisdom, strength, courage and luck. Furthermore he had that quality which Edward prized above all others: royalty, as the great-grandson of Henry III, like Edward himself. And he had great piety too. In his The Book of Holy Medicines he has left us the most detailed first-hand account of the character of a great magnate at Edward's court. He was not only literate, he prized being able to write, having taught himself. He could speak English as well as French. He was pious, the general theme of The Book of Holy Medicines being a description of how his five senses had become infected with the Seven Deadly Sins. And with almost Pepysian self-deprecating honesty he admitted to exactly how this had happened over the course of his life. In his youth he had been tall, slim, good-looking, and vain. He had taken great pleasure in regarding the rings on his fingers and his foot in the stirrup. He had loved dancing and music, and had worn the most exquisite clothes (he thought garters particularly suited him). He had made love to many women, sung songs to them, then 'loved and lost them'. He admitted that he much preferred the embraces of common women to aristocratic ones as they were less censorious of his behaviour. At the time of writing he was in his early fifties, suffering from gout, but still very partial to salmon (his favourite food), spices and strong sauces, and he loved drinking good wine in quantity. Like Edward, in 1360 feasting and hunting were his greatest passions (love-making having fallen by the wayside of middle age), but the song of the nightingale and the scents of roses, musk, violets and lily of the valley were also dear to him. This was the man whom Edward now lost, an intelligent, sensual, brave cousin, a successful commander, the father-in-law of his son John, and his best friend. At his funeral, in the collegiate church at Leicester, Edward gave four cloths of gold Eastern brocade and four of gold brocade of Lucca in his memory.