The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty

by J. S. Hamilton

  Henry III summoned parliament to meet at Winchester in September. The king tried to impose some order on the confused state of property rights in the aftermath of civil war, taking the lands of some 254 Montfortian supporters into his own hands. These lands were subsequently redistributed to 71 royalists, particularly members of his own family, suggesting that even now Henry had not learned his lesson in terms of the balanced distribution of patronage. The result was a continuation of resistance and warfare, a situation relished by the Lord Edward, anxious for revenge, if not by the king himself. The last great rebel stronghold, Montfort’s castle at Kenilworth, was besieged in June 1266. The king’s difficulty in taking it led to a negotiated settlement, the Dictum of Kenilworth, prior to the castle’s final capitulation in December. The dictum, revised in the following summer, allowed the former rebels to redeem their lands over a period of years. Henry also brought closure to his longstanding conflict with Llywelyn of Wales, in the Treaty of Montgomery, negotiated by the papal legate Ottobuono in September 1267. The subsequent Statute of Marlborough, issued in parliament in November, once again affirmed the charters, the Dictum of Kenilworth, and in a modified form, the Provisions of Westminster.

  When the Lord Edward decided in June 1268 to join the proposed Crusade of Louis IX to Tunis, Henry allocated the revenues of London, along with several counties and royal castles, to his heir in support of this venture. He could ill afford this loss of revenue, but funds were otherwise unavailable. It was only in April 1270, after long negotiation, that parliament finally agreed to a crusading tax of one-twentieth on movables in support of Edward’s expedition. Meanwhile, the king presided over a pair of royal weddings, again at considerable expense.

  Edmund married Avelina de Forz, heiress to the lordships of Holderness and the Isle of Wight, along with the earldom of Devon, on 8 or 9 April 1269. Henry of Almain married Constance de Béarn, the heiress to the lands of titles of the mercurial Gaston VII in an elaborate ceremony at Windsor on 21 May 1269.

  This union was intended to reinforce Plantagenet power in Gascony and, at the same time, pre-empt any claim by the surviving sons of Simon de Montfort to the county of Bigorre, but Henry of Almains’s subsequent assassination in southern Italy by the sons of Simon de Montfort would further confuse the situation.

  Richard of Cornwall had meanwhile married for the third time, to Beatrix of Falkenburg, a niece of the previously hostile Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne at Kaiserslautern on 16 June 1269. These marriages brought renewed prestige to the royal house, as did the translation of the relics of Edward the Confessor on 13 October 1269. Although the reconstruction of Westminster Abbey was far from complete, Henry III, the Lord Edward, Prince Edmund and Richard of Cornwall bore the relics of the saint-king on their shoulders to the magnificent new shrine. In many ways, this was the culmination of Henry’s long reign.

  On 4 August 1270, the Lord Edward took his leave of his father in Winchester and set off on his crusading journey. He was never to see his father alive again.

  Henry seems to have been ill throughout the remaining 2 years of his life. He was unable to travel to France for the commemoration of the death of his brother-in-law Louis IX in the autumn of 1270, and in March 1271 he was so ill that Richard of Cornwall was named protector of the realm. Although the king recovered, he hardly left Westminster after this, and chose not to, or was unable to, attend the funerals of Henry of Almain at Hailes in May, and of his grandson John in Westminster Abbey itself in August. He was ill again at Christmas 1271, and in spring 1272 he excused himself from performing homage to the new king of France, Philip III, on the grounds of his failing health. He died at Westminster on 16 November 1272 at the age of 65, having ruled for 56 years.

  Henry III, whose first coronation in 1216 had been such a rushed and imperfect affair, may have sought to make partial amends for this at his passing, for he was buried in coronation regalia, possibly that which had been used at his second, more traditional, coronation in 1220. Following his death, the king’s heart was quickly removed for eventual transport to Fontevrault, to be interred among the remains of his ancestors. His body, however, was buried on 20 November before the high altar in Westminster Abbey. The king was buried wearing a dalmatic and tunic, and bearing a royal rod. Unlike his father and his Anglo-Norman forebears, Henry III was not buried with a sword. The rod surmounted with a dove was an evocation of his patronage of St Edward, and a symbol unique to the king himself.

  But one legacy of the Confessor was too precious for Henry to take with him to his grave, ‘the diadem of the most saintly king Edward’. This would be left to adorn the head of the next Plantagenet king of England, Edward I.

  CHAPTER 2: EDWARD (1272 – 1307)

  Edward I was born on the night of 17–18 June 1239 at Westminster, the first child of Henry III and his young queen, Eleanor of Provence. He was named after his father’s patron saint, Edward the Confessor, and his birth occasioned great joy not only in the royal court and the capital, but throughout the kingdom. Little is known about his childhood, although he was given his own household early on, and raised with other aristocratic children, including his cousin, Henry of Almain. He was placed into the care of Hugh Giffard and his wife Sybil and, following Hugh’s death in 1246, into that of Bartholomew Pecche. Every indication is that his education was that typical of his age, with a greater emphasis on military training than academic studies. He may have developed a taste for romance from his mother. His only known act of literary patronage came in the middle of his life when he commissioned Rustichello of Pisa to produce a new work in 1272, the result of which was an Arthurian romance called Meliadus. Although frequently sick as a child – in 1246, his mother stayed with him at Beaulieu Abbey for 3 weeks until he had recovered from an unspecified illness – by his teens he had grown to be strong and athletic, becoming an avid tournament knight, participating in his first as early as 1256 at Blyth, while still just 17 years old.

  By the time of his tournament debut, the Lord Edward, as he was generally known in his youth, had already married. His marriage to Eleanor of Castile, half-sister of Alphonso X the Wise, had been arranged in response to the threat to Gascony posed by the Spanish kingdom of Castile. In order to arrange the match, Henry III had agreed to endow his son with substantial landed property valued at £10,000 per annum, including the earldom of Chester, the town and castle of Bristol, and substantial lands in Ireland and Wales, as well as Gascony, Oléron and the Channel Islands. Similarly, Eleanor was to be ‘dowered as fully as any queen of England ever had been.’1 Arrangements were made for the prince to be knighted and the wedding to take place in Castile on 13 October 1254, the feast day of Edward the Confessor, which was so significant to Henry III.

  Unfortunately, there were delays, and in the end Edward appears to have been knighted by King Alphonso on 18 October, with the wedding taking place a fortnight later on 1 November 1254, at the Cistercian monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos. Edward was 15 years old and his bride was 12 years old.

  By the end of November, the royal couple had returned to Gascony and, on 15 December, they made a ceremonial entry into Bordeaux, the city having been lavishly decorated and perfumed at its four corners with incense and spices.

  As Henry III had already begun his return journey to England, the prince was able to exercise his own authority, probably for the first time. In Bayonne, on his return from the wedding, he had styled himself as ‘now ruling Gascony as prince and lord’,2 a clear indication of his intention to assert his own identity.

  Not only did he engage in military activity, pacifying La Réole and besieging Gramont in July 1255, but he must also have delved into the complex municipal politics of Bordeaux, because following his own return to England, in September 1256, he entered into a treaty with Gaillard de Soler that was designed to give the prince control over the mayoralty of Bordeaux. This was certainly part of a broader policy, as similar arrangements were also made in Bayonne and other towns. Here, we can see some of th
e administrative acumen that Edward would demonstrate in England, more than a decade prior to his coming to the throne.

  Throughout the years to 1258, the Lord Edward can be associated with his mother’s relatives, the Savoyards, but in that year he made a dramatic switch in allegiance to his father’s Lusignan half-siblings. Edward, always hard-pressed for cash throughout his father’s reign, granted Stamford and Grantham to his uncle William de Valence in return for a loan. More significantly, perhaps, Edward planned to install another of these Poitevin uncles, Geoffrey de Lusignan, as seneschal in Gascony, with Geoffrey’s brother Guy becoming keeper of Oléron and the Channel Islands. These arrangements certainly suited the Lusignans with their traditional power base in Poitou, but were considered highly suspect and were widely criticized by contemporary English observers.

  As we have seen in the previous chapter, the Lord Edward was swept up in the current of baronial reform and revolt in 1258. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of his participation in the struggle between his father and Simon de Montfort was his penchant for repeatedly changing sides and the resultant reputation he earned for inconstancy. His pursuit of personal quarrels, and the methods with which he pursued them, further tarnished his image during this period. For instance, in late 1263, Edward revealed an unattractive ruthlessness when – having entered the New Temple by means of a ruse – he proceeded to seize vast quantities of cash that had been placed there for safekeeping, leading to riots in London. Although Edward withdrew to Windsor, which he garrisoned with foreign mercenaries, conditions in the city were so unsettled that the queen was prevented from joining him there when angry Londoners hurled both insults and debris at her barge from atop London Bridge, forcing her to retreat back down the Thames and take refuge at the bishop of London’s house.

  In the armed conflict that followed the Mise of Amiens, Edward showed himself to be a capable military commander, although, again, his behaviour in the civil war did not always redound to his credit. In early 1264, he forced an entry into Gloucester, but agreed to a truce when confronted by a superior baronial force under the command of the earl of Derby, Robert de Ferrers. Following Derby’s own withdrawal, however, Edward returned to extract his revenge – in the form of a heavy ransom – on Gloucester and its citizens. In April, Edward played an important role in the assault on Northampton, but also spent considerable time, energy and resources pursuing his own personal feud with Derby, devastating his lands and seizing Tutbury Castle (Edward and Derby would each pursue the other’s undoing until 1269 when the prince finally prevailed and the earl was obliged to recognize a debt of £50,000 to Prince Edmund, effectively thereby surrendering his earldom). At the battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264, Edward led the cavalry on the right wing of the royalist army and would have distinguished himself, had he been able to restrain and reorder his troops after they overran the Londoners who faced them on the baronial side. In the aftermath of the battle, with the king a prisoner, both Edward and his cousin Henry of Almain agreed to become hostages, and Simon de Montfort dictated terms for the governance of England in the so-called ‘mise of Lewes’.

  Edward was imprisoned for nearly a year until March 1265, when he agreed to accept the reforms, surrendering Bristol as a guarantee of his adherence to his promise. Even then, he was kept under close surveillance until late May when he managed to evade his minders in Hereford and ride to Wigmore Castle, the seat of Roger Mortimer. Edward played a crucial role in the fighting that culminated at Evesham on 4 August 1265, where Simon de Montfort was defeated and killed.

  Although the battle of Evesham was decisive, it was not final and desperate rebels dug in throughout the country. Edward, rather than Henry III, led the royal forces that inexorably ground down the resistance over the next 2 years. In the campaigning that ensued in the aftermath of Evesham, one incident (in particular) is worth noting. While moving through Hampshire, Edward encountered a force under the rebel leader Adam Gurton in Alton Forest. Although the incident has subsequently been romanticized to make Edward more chivalric than appears to have been the case, the fact of the matter is that the Lord Edward did engage Gurton in single combat and overcame him, demonstrating both his personal valour and martial skills. The end of resistance finally came with the success of the prolonged siege of Kenilworth and the settlement known as the Dictum of Kenilworth on 31 October 1266, by which the former rebels were allowed to buy back their former estates over a specified period of years. The last of the rebels, in the Isle of Ely, surrendered on 11 July 1267.

  Shortly after the capitulation of the last of the English rebels, Wales was also stabilized through the Treaty of Montgomery that was sealed with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd on 29 September 1267. Llywelyn was to receive the homages of the other Welsh princes (except for Maredudd ap Rhys) and have a wide general authority, in return for his own homage to the English king and an annual payment of £2,000 to the exchequer. In the end, this treaty left too many disputed issues unsettled, and Edward I would once again face Welsh rebellion early in his reign, but for the moment the area was relatively calm. Meanwhile, in November 1267, the Statute of Marlborough was issued. Drawing extensively upon the Provisions of Westminster, this statute can be seen as a legal lynchpin, connecting the work of the reforming barons of Henry III with the future reforms of Edward I, although it is unclear how much, if any, involvement the prince had in the actual drafting of this legislation.

  In the aftermath of the civil war, Edward was at the centre of a group of young English aristocrats who responded to the preaching of the papal legate Ottobuono and took the cross at Northampton on 24 June 1268. Among his fellow crucesignati were his brother Edmund and his cousin Henry of Almain, his uncle William de Valence, and the earls of Surrey and Gloucester. Edward seems to have been motivated in taking the cross by his status as heir apparent to the throne, his martial nature, and his respect for Louis IX, under whose leadership the crusade was being organized. There may also have been a penitential element (or at least a spirit of thanksgiving) in his decision. A contemporary poem states that Edward took the cross ‘desirous of performing a worthy service to Christ, who had delivered him from this whirlwind of war.’3 In late August 1269, the prospective crusaders met in Paris, where Louis promised some 70,000 livres tournois (£17,500 sterling) to Edward, who in turn promised to arrive at Louis’s Mediterranean port of Aigues-Mortes by 15 August 1270. Edward contracted 225 knights in England, presumably at a rate of 200 l.t. (£50) apiece, while Gaston de Béarn (to whom Louis had designated 25,000 of Edward’s total 70,000) was to raise another 125. Several of the individual contracts survive, including one between Edward and Adam of Jesmond, and another in which Payn de Chaworth and Robert Tiptoft each contracted to serve for 1 year with five knights apiece in return for payment of 600 marks each. Delayed by strained relations with Gilbert de Clare, Edward postponed his embarkation from its scheduled date of 24 June to early August. Even then, he was confronted with unfavourable winds, and despite moving his force from Portsmouth to Dover, was still in England late in August. He finally reached Aigues-Mortes not later than 28 September, but as this was 6 weeks after the agreed-upon date, it must have come as no surprise to him that Louis IX’s fleet had sailed without him. Undaunted, Edward sailed on to Tunis, only to discover that Louis had died of dysentery and that Louis’s brother Charles of Anjou had entered into negotiations with the Tunisian emir for a settlement.

  Remaining committed to his crusading vow, Edward sailed on to Sicily and, in the spring, made for the Holy Land. After obtaining provisions in Cyprus, in May 1271 he landed at Acre, the site of the triumph of his predecessor Richard the Lionheart. Edward faced a critical shortage of horses – he was so desperate that he had to arrange for palfreys to be sent out all the way from England. The campaign that followed was desultory at best, and when Hugh III of Cyprus, titular king of Jerusalem, agreed to a 10-year truce with the Mamluk sultan Baibars, Edward’s crusade came to a premature end. He, nonetheless, remained in the east until the follow
ing September. He may have been inspired to seek further deeds at arms by an edition of Vegetius’s De Re Militari that Queen Eleanor commissioned for him at this time, an edition that was updated with reference to Edward’s own recent success at the siege of Kenilworth. Meanwhile, on 12 June 1272, Edward was gravely wounded in an attempt on his life by a member of the mysterious Shi’ite sect, the Assassins. He is said to have killed his assailant with the Assassin’s own knife, but was seriously wounded in the arm by the same poisoned blade. The wound was only healed after a considerable amount of flesh was cut away.

  It is unlikely that there is any truth to the romantic tale that Eleanor of Castile sucked the poison from the wound and thereby saved her husband’s life, but she did give birth to two daughters while in Acre, only the younger of whom, Joan, survived. Eleanor’s pregnancy and Joan’s birth may also help to explain Edward’s delay in departing the Holy Land. Regardless, Edward remained committed to the ideal of the crusade, and in the 1280s he worked to achieve European peace towards this end. He took the cross for a second time in 1287, but he was never able to embark on another crusade, and with the fall of Acre in 1291, the cause of the crusade in the Holy Land became increasingly chimerical.

  As soon as he landed in Sicily, Edward learned not only of the death of Henry III, but also of the passing of his own 5-year-old son John. When Charles of Anjou expressed puzzlement at Edward’s lack of remorse at the death of his son, Edward replied in words reminiscent of the callous response of John Marshal, father of William Marshal, at the siege of Newbury in 1152 that it was easy enough to beget more sons.4 In spite of the news of his father’s death, Edward’s return to England can only be described as leisurely. In February, he reached Rome and was received by Pope Gregory X in Orvieto. From there, he travelled north by way of Reggio, Parma and Milan, and crossing the Alps through the Mont Cenis Pass he made his way to Savoy, in which his father had put such store. On 25 June 1273, Count Philip of Savoy performed homage to Edward I for the castles he held of the English king, and Edward was treated with lavish hospitality throughout his stay at St Georges d’Esperanche, in the count’s newly built castle. It would be the Savoyard architect James of St George who would travel to England later in the decade to become the master designer behind the Edwardian castle-building programme in Wales. It is worth noting that the core of Edward’s crusading companions – men such as Roger de Clifford, Otto de Grandson (himself a Savoyard) and John de Vescy – were still with him long after their original contracts had expired. After leaving Savoy, Edward made his way to Châlons-sur-Marne, where he participated in a tournament at the invitation of Count Peter. Indeed, Edward proposed to field his own knights against those of the count and all other comers. Despite urgent entreaties to his own knights in both Gascony and England, Edward took the field outnumbered by two to one. At the outset of the mêlée, the count is said to have charged together with a company of 50 knights directly at Edward and, when he proved unable to overcome the king with swordplay, he attempted to unhorse Edward by grabbing him round the neck and pulling. This decidedly unchivalric manoeuvre failed miserably when the king turned the tables on the count and, in fact, threw him to the ground.