The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty

by J. S. Hamilton

  The chroniclers express little surprise, if some disappointment, at all of this. Yet it is worth noting that virtually all of the earls appended their seals to the grant to Gaveston and there were no immediate signs of discord between the king and his magnates. The following months were crucial in establishing the tone for the new reign, and these months were not without opportunities for the king to enhance his prestige. Unfortunately, however, he seems quickly to have squandered the initial goodwill shown to him, and to have succeeded in alienating a large section of both the aristocracy and the chroniclers. Edward never really recovered from this initial, failed, exercise in kingship, and his entire reign is best understood in terms of the personal dynamics of distrust and distaste engendered in the first year and crystallized over the next 5 or 6 years. An understanding of these years is central to any explanation of the king’s subsequent failures; at the heart of it all lies the intensity of his attachment to Piers Gaveston.

  In the meantime, the beginning of the new reign required some sort of formal closure with the reign of Edward I. The body of the late king was conveyed south by stages, stopping at Richmond (Yorks), and then for a long time remaining at Waltham Abbey, before being conveyed into London, where it rested first in Holy Trinity, Aldgate and then St Paul’s. The king’s remains were thence borne in procession to the family mausoleum, the rebuilt Westminster Abbey, where the king was buried on 27 October. In contrast to the splendour of Henry III’s tomb, Edward I was laid to rest in a tomb of Purbeck marble – remarkable as much for its severity as its simplicity. It has recently been convincingly argued that this burial represented Edward I’s sense of gravitas rather than any lack of respect from his son. The old king – like his adversary Robert Bruce – had apparently wanted his heart to be buried in the Holy Land, but he got no closer than to have the nominal patriarch of Jerusalem, Antony Bek of Durham, preside over his funeral.

  This was just as well, perhaps, as within 3 days of the funeral, the Holy Land itself was scandalized, with word reaching England of the shocking suppression of the Knights Templar; this had been undertaken by Philip the Fair of France just 2 weeks earlier, at dawn on 13 October 1307. The detailed charges were stunning: in their rite of initiation, the Templars were said to have denied Christ’s divinity and spat on the Cross, worshipped idols and engaged in obscene homosexual acts. After an initial protest against the violation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction entailed in the arrest and trial of the French Templars, the recently elected Gascon pope, Clement V, soon enjoined the other kings of Western Christendom to participate in the suppression of the Order. Remarkably, one of the least enthusiastic of the European kings in his reaction to the charges against the Templars was the young English king, Edward II.

  To convince the English court of the justice of the charges, King Philip had sent his trusted clerk, Master Bernard Pelet – who was intimately familiar with the affair, having helped to draft the accusations against the knights – with letters detailing the charges. These letters were duly read before the king and his magnates, eliciting a reply in which Edward said that the charges against the Templars were literally incredible: ‘ultra quam credi potest’. Indeed, on the advice of his council, Edward decided to gather further information, from the seneschal of Agen, William de Dene, in whose region these horrible rumours had apparently originated. Despite the strenuous efforts of Bernard Pelet to convince him, Edward II had, and continued to have, serious doubts about the business.

  On 4 December 1307, from Reading, he wrote to the kings of Portugal, Castile, Sicily and Aragon, urging them not to give credence to the defamation of the Templars, brought forth ‘as we believe, not in zealous righteousness, but excited by cupidity and a spirit of envy’. On 10 December, the king wrote to the pope from Westminster, expressing his continuing disbelief in the rumours, ‘terrible to consider, horrible to hear’. Shortly thereafter, however, Edward was constrained to muffle his criticisms, for in December he received the papal bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae ordering him to arrest the Templars on the pope’s behalf. He issued orders to this effect on the very next day. A little later, he wrote again to the pope from Boulogne, the site of his impending marriage with Isabella of France, assuring him that he would attend to the Templar business in the swiftest and best fashion. Even so, all the evidence clearly indicates that the king’s ideas of how ‘best’ to deal with the Templars were at considerable variance with those of the pope, let alone with those of the king of France.

  This early foray into international diplomacy and politics reflects well on Edward II. He had withstood the bullying tactics of his future father-in-law and, while complying with the letter of the law in his dealings with the papacy, he certainly flouted it in spirit. In the end, after going through the motions of various inquisitions, which resulted in none of the spectacular confessions that had been forthcoming in France, the English Templars were largely absorbed into other orders in 1313, and quietly faded from the scene. Nonetheless, Edward has received very little credit for this admirable behaviour. In part, this may be due to the fact that he certainly profited financially from the Templars’ fall. For instance, a substantial portion of the resources required to support the 1308 Scottish campaign was derived from Templar revenues. Setting aside the economic benefits, however, Edward ultimately bartered his support for the suppression of the Templars, lukewarm as it was, for papal consent to Gaveston’s return from his second exile. This obvious quid pro quo has undoubtedly coloured interpretations of his defence of the Templars, but is not entirely fair. By the time Edward II exploited the situation for his own benefit, the final suppression of the order had become inevitable. A different king, with a reputation for strong character, might well have been praised for his astute statesmanship in profiting both financially and politically from an unfortunate situation. But Edward, whatever his shortcomings, deserves credit for seeing through the farce of the Templars’ destruction and for mitigating the severity of this with regard to the English Templars. Perhaps we again see something of his genuine, if simple, faith: he simply could not believe that Christian knights could blaspheme in this way, although in the end he was powerless to stop a process that had the full support of both the king of France and the pope.

  If his response to the Templar crisis reflects well on him, his behaviour in other areas during this same period did little to enhance his stature or to strengthen his relationship with his magnates. Less than a week after his father’s funeral, he was present at a ceremony of a very different nature. On 1 November 1307, he further dignified Gaveston, as his favourite was married to Margaret de Clare, sister of the young earl of Gloucester and niece of the king himself, in a lavish wedding at Berkhamsted. This union of the upstart favourite with the great house of Clare appears not to have received the same sort of endorsement, however grudging, as Gaveston’s elevation to the earldom of Cornwall had done. Among the earls, only Pembroke can be shown to have attended the wedding, although the bride’s brother, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, must also have been present. The king spent in excess of £100 on a variety of gifts, including jewels and horses for the bride and groom, on minstrels to entertain the guests, and on coins to be tossed over the heads of the newly married couple. Edward even paid five shillings in damages to Richard le Kroc, whose adjoining property was apparently damaged in the merry-making that accompanied the wedding.

  Gaveston’s growing status and unpopularity (and, by extension, the king’s) was reinforced by his performance in a tournament held in his honour of Wallingford early in the following month. Although the tournament was attended by the earls of Arundel, Hereford and Warenne, the outcome led to further divisions, rather than reconciliation, between the king and his favourite on the one hand, and the magnates on the other. Opinions about the exact nature of Gaveston’s conduct here vary among the chroniclers, the most charitable reporting that all the younger and more athletic knights were arrayed on Gaveston’s side, while other writers accuse the favo
urite of outright fraud, fielding a team of 200 knights when the previously agreed number was 60. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi dates the onset of the animosity felt by Earl Warenne for Gaveston to this contest, and other magnates would soon join him in turning against the king and his favourite.

  The chroniclers, and surely the political community in England, were taken aback, if not outraged, when on 20 December 1307, Gaveston – who was celebrating the Christmas season with the king as guests of the abbot of Battle at his manor of Wye – was named to serve as custos regni when the king sailed to France in January for his impending marriage to Isabella, the young daughter of Philip IV of France. It was during the king’s brief sojourn to France that the first signs of opposition to his rule began to emerge. The source of discontent was not Gaveston’s direct exercise of authority. Unlike Edward’s later favourite, the younger Despenser, Gaveston had virtually no interest in politics, per se. He seldom witnessed royal charters, and until now had been involved in only one political action, joining with the new treasurer, Walter Reynolds, on 4 October, to issue a proclamation inviting complaints to be brought against the unpopular former treasurer, Walter Langton.

  Although he himself was the recipient of considerable royal patronage, what seems to have been most resented was his perceived ability to channel the patronage of the king to others. The Annals of St Paul’s in London observed that, ‘if any of the earls or magnates sought the king’s special grace with regard to any business, the king sent him to Piers’. 7 His regency, therefore, although it was both brief and uncontroversial, further reinforced the notion that Gaveston stood as a barrier between the king and his natural councillors and was thereby disrupting the political fabric of the kingdom. It was in many ways reminiscent of the discontent that had been occasioned by Henry III’s Savoyard and Poitevin kinsmen half a century earlier.

  The wedding of Edward and Isabella did little to dissipate the growing discontent. The wedding had long been planned. Isabella had been born in 1296 – the only, and much loved, daughter of Philip IV and Joan of Navarre. Within 2 years of her birth, she appears in English sources, betrothed to Edward of Caernarfon through the peacemaking efforts of Pope Boniface VIII, the terms of the marriage being further discussed the following year in the Treaty of Montreuil. Shortly after the death of his father, Edward had presented Philip with a series of requests to be considered in light of the pending marriage. These requests apparently included various concessions to be made by the French king regarding such thorny issues as appeals from Gascony to the court of France, as well as the issue of Isabella’s marriage portion, which had not yet been specified. Philip’s stern response was that Isabella’s marriage portion was the return of Aquitaine, which had been forfeited during the reign of Edward I. He also castigated the new king for his temerity in making such impertinent requests.

  Nevertheless, the English king made the crossing from Dover to Boulogne on 22 January 1308, and the nuptials took place 3 days later at St Mary’s, Boulogne, after some hard dealing between the two kings’ representatives, including a substantial increase of the annual value of Isabella’s dower. The wedding itself seems to have been a lavish affair, attended by some 32 dukes and counts from the Continent, as well as Edward’s own entourage, which included four earls. Edward was showered with gifts of horses, plate and jewels, and he in turn performed homage to his father-in-law for the lands he held of him in France. On 7 February, the king returned home with his young bride; Isabella had in all likelihood just turned 12 years old, while Edward was 23 years old.

  While in France, a group of prominent nobles – including the four earls, the bishop of Durham and a number of barons – entered into a compact that has come to be known to historians as the Boulogne Agreement. In this document, the nobles stated that their fealty to the king bound them to safeguard both his honour and his crown. In essence, they separated loyalty owed to the person of the king from loyalty owed to the crown itself. This doctrine of ‘capacities’ would be more fully articulated and openly stated by the earl of Lincoln and others in parliament in April 1308, but it presents a clear sign of the growing tension between Edward and his nobles at a very early stage of the reign.

  As he had done through the extravagant promotion of his favourite in the aftermath of his father’s death, on returning from France the king quickly expended whatever political capital he had acquired through the French marriage. Indeed, he must have unintentionally reinforced the convictions of those who had sealed the Boulogne Agreement. When he and his wife landed at Dover, he afforded the young queen and the rest of his audience with a powerful demonstration of her relative position in his affections. According to Trokelowe’s chronicle, Edward ran to Gaveston and showered him – and him alone – with hugs and kisses. Moreover, the chroniclers allege that the king conveyed to Piers all of the wedding gifts that he had received from the king of France. There may well be some substance to these rumours, as among the baggage abandoned by Gaveston during his final flight from his enemies in 1312 were several goblets and pieces of plate decorated with the arms of England and France, as well as extraordinary quantities of jewels and precious metals. Unfortunately, this extravagant show of immoderate affection and familiarity was not an isolated incident, and the rapid decline in relations between king and magnates was further exacerbated shortly thereafter at the coronation and subsequent banquet for the royal couple.

  The coronation of Edward II took place on 25 February 1308, a week later than originally planned. The reason for the delay seems to have been a last-minute demand from both the English magnates and the French royal family that Gaveston be sent back into exile. The coronation appears to have gone forward only after the king agreed to submit himself to the guidance of the next parliament to be held. Moreover, a novel fourth clause was inserted into the traditional coronation oath, which was taken in French rather than Latin. This new clause, the significance of which has been much debated, required the king to swear that he would be bound by such laws as the community of the realm would choose in future. The irregularities of the actual ceremony – which seems to have been rushed by the presiding bishop, Henry Woodlock of Winchester – were completely overshadowed by the extravagant prominence afforded to Gaveston.

  Although the procession was led by William Marshal bearing the king’s gilded spurs, followed by five of the earls – including Lincoln, Lancaster and Warwick – the treasurer, the chancellor and various magnates, it was the earl of Cornwall who walked directly in front of the king, carrying the crown of St Edward. It was also he who redeemed the ceremonial sword Curtana, and who fastened the spur onto the king’s left foot – the right spur having been fastened by the queen’s uncle, Charles of Valois.

  If Gaveston’s prominence in the coronation ceremony was shocking, contemporaries found his – and the king’s – comportment at the subsequent banquet even more outrageous and offensive to the dignity of the crown. As early as the previous October, the king had ordered the production of tapestries bearing the arms of the king and those of the earl of Cornwall, specifically for display at the coronation; but the decoration of the hall could not compare with the decoration of the favourite himself. When Gaveston, ‘seeking his own glory rather than the king’s’, arrived dressed in regal purple trimmed in pearls, one chronicler remarked that he appeared ‘more like the god Mars than a mere mortal’. 8 Many present at the feast were outraged that the king spent so little time on the queen’s couch, compared with Gaveston’s. We are told that the queen’s uncles, Louis of Evreux and Charles of Valois, were so deeply offended by this behaviour that they soon departed the kingdom in indignation, while an unnamed earl was said to have been so infuriated by this spectacle that he wished to kill the favourite then and there. Soon, there were reports of Philip the Fair bringing his vast resources and power to bear against the favourite. Isabella is said to have written to her father in the spring of 1308 complaining of her ill treatment, and rumours quickly spread throughout England t
hat the king of France was conspiring against the favourite (if not against the king) with leading figures in the baronial opposition.

  Just 3 days after the coronation, parliament met at Westminster on 28 February 1308. The main business of the session was an attack on Gaveston. Led by the earl of Lincoln, the magnates initially sought a written commission from the king authorizing parliament to undertake measures of reform, before addressing the needs of church and state. Interestingly, the demand for this written commission seems to have been balked by an unlikely partnership of the earl of Lancaster and the elder Hugh Despenser. Although later in the reign they would be implacable enemies, in 1308 these two were seen as the strongest royalists among the magnates at this time. Edward, in any case, declined to provide such a written commission and the business of parliament was put off until after Easter. During the next 2 months, the king attempted to strengthen his grip on the kingdom, not least by replacing the custodians of numerous royal castles, in several cases removing men who had sealed the Boulogne Agreement and replacing them with trusted friends such as Gaveston, Despenser and Robert Fitzpain, the steward of the king’s household. Meanwhile, considerable sums were allocated for the fortification of the Tower and Windsor Castle, to which the king and favourite retreated. At the same time, the magnates seem to have assembled at the earl of Lincoln’s castle at Pontefract.

  Parliament reconvened on 28 April, with the earl of Lincoln once again leading the call for Gaveston’s immediate exile, along with the confiscation of all his lands. This demand was not casually made, as the earl supported his case with a brief, although legalistic, tract containing three articles in justification of the demands. The first article fully enunciated the doctrine of capacities that had been implicit in the Boulogne Agreement – the king’s subjects owed their homage and allegiance to the crown rather than to the person of the king, and therefore must act ‘to reinstate the king in the dignity of the crown’, should he act unreasonably. The second article pointed to just such a case of unreasonable behaviour, the aggrandizement of Gaveston. The third article said that, since the king and his courts would not act against Gaveston, they, the people, must act on the king’s behalf. Clothed in innocuous legal language, this was a revolutionary challenge to the king’s authority to rule, as threatening as anything conceived by Simon de Montfort.