When Queen Isabella arrived in England in 1308, she was 12 years old and relegated to an inferior position in the king’s affections. The chroniclers repeatedly bemoan the king’s love for Gaveston in the early years of the reign, describing it with terms such as ‘beyond measure and reason’, ‘immoderate’, ‘inordinate’ and ‘excessive’. ‘Indeed’, wrote the contemporary author of the Vita, ‘I do not remember to have heard that one man so loved another...Our king was ...incapable of moderate favour.’ Although the author goes on to say that Gaveston was thus accounted a sorcerer, Robert of Reading goes even farther in the Flores Historiarum, asserting that Edward entered into ‘illicit and sinful unions’, subsequently rejecting the sweet embraces of his beautiful young wife. 13 Yet, as time went on, and even before the capture and execution of the favourite, the king must have found time for these sweet embraces. For instance, a certain intimacy between the households of the king and queen is suggested by the fact that on Easter Monday 1311, the king was ‘drawn forth from his bed’ and ransomed for 40 marks by Joan de Villars, his former nurse, Alice de Legrave and other ladies of the queen’s chamber. More importantly, on 13 November 1312, Isabella, still barely more than a girl of 16 years old herself, gave birth to the future Edward III. She and Edward went on to produce three more children, another son and two daughters, between 1316 and 1321. Comparisons between the itineraries of Edward and Isabella indicate that, although they did not spend a great deal of time together, they did cohabit at the essential times to suggest the king’s paternity of her children.
As the mother of the heir to the throne, Isabella’s stature at court must have risen, and indeed she played a significant political role over the following decade, both at home and abroad, several times serving as a diplomatic agent to France.
Isabella enjoyed a very favourable image among contemporary writers. While French sources tend to emphasize her beauty, English writers show tremendous sympathy for her mistreatment by the king, and also point to her role as a mediator between the king and his magnates on a number of occasions. In 1313, she was an important mediator, along with the earl of Gloucester, in resolving the conflict between Edward and his magnates following Gaveston’s execution. In that same year, she accompanied her husband to France, attending the Pentecost celebrations in which her brothers were knighted. Both Edward II and Isabella joined the king of France and others present on this occasion in taking a crusading vow, Isabella carefully stating that she would undertake the crusade only in the presence of her husband. During this visit, while at Poissy, considerable concessions relating to Gascony were obtained from Philip IV. While at Poissy, the dwelling in which the English royal couple were residing caught fire. Isabella’s hand and arm were injured; she was to require medical attention relating to this injury for the rest of her life. It is unlikely, however, that she suffered a miscarriage, as has sometimes been reported. Nevertheless, in the autumn and early winter of 1313–1314, she was unwell, making it more noteworthy that she was soon dispatched to France once again on diplomatic business.
By late January 1314, a plan was constructed to send Isabella to France, ostensibly as persona privata, under guise of a pilgrimage, to negotiate on Gascony.
Her entourage included not only intimate courtiers such as Isabella de Vescy and her brother Henry de Beaumont, but also Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, and most significantly, for the true nature of her business, William Inge, a household knight who had often served Edward on delicate legal and diplomatic business. She crossed the channel in a flotilla of some 26 ships and 13 barges on 28 February and returned to England 2 months later. Although in the interim she visited shrines in Amiens and Chartres, she spent the first half of April, as well as several shorter periods, in Paris. There, she attended a session of the parlement.
The original petition that she presented to her father, along with his favourable responses, has survived to demonstrate her significant role in this diplomatic exchange. That her husband was pleased with her performance in France is indicated by the grant to her of the reversion of the property held by her aunt, Margaret, widow of Edward I. She was also in Paris at the time of the Tour de Nesle scandal, in which a pair of brothers, Philippe and Gautier d’Auney, confessed that they were the adulterous lovers of Philip the Fair’s daughters-in-law, the cousins Marguerite and Blanche of Burgundy, the wives of Louis of Navarre and Charles of La Marche, respectively. Isabella has often been suggested as the informant, triggering the brutal executions of the d’Auney brothers and the imprisonment of her brothers’ wives, but there is little evidence, even of a circumstantial nature, to support this claim, which has done much to sustain Isabella’s notorious image as the ‘She-Wolf of France’.
On 15 August 1316, Isabella gave birth to a second son, John of Eltham. Her role as a peacemaker may be reflected in the fact that she invited the earl of Lancaster to stand as sponsor at the prince’s baptism. Two years later, in July 1318, she gave birth to her first daughter, Eleanor of Woodstock. By this time, Isabella had been granted possession of the symbolically important lands of the earldom of Cornwall, and she continued to play an essential role in avoiding open hostilities between the king and the baronial opposition as they negotiated the agreement that would be known as the Treaty of Leake. Demonstrating her diplomatic skills in another area, in the same year of 1318 she managed to arrange the provision of her protégé Louis de Beaumont to the bishopric of Durham through a direct appeal to John XXII, in opposition to her husband, the chapter at Durham and the earls of Hereford and Lancaster.
The importance of the queen is underscored by the 1319 attempt by James Douglas to capture Isabella at York. The author of the Vita states that ‘Indeed if the queen had at that time been captured, I believe that Scotland would have bought peace for herself.’ Sympathy for the queen was once again aroused in 1321 when, pregnant, she was forced to flee from the Scots at Byland. Later that summer, in late June or early July, she gave birth to her fourth and final child, Joan of the Tower, who would soon be married to David Bruce. Also in 1321, she was active along with Aymer de Valence in renewing the peace that resulted in the removal of the Despensers from court. Isabella’s growing distrust of the Despensers proved to be well founded, but at this point the consequences of her antipathy were not yet clear.
Rather than by the queen, the middle years of the reign were dominated by a royal cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, who until his death in 1322 played a central role in English politics. Thomas was born in around 1282, the eldest son of Edmund of Lancaster, younger brother of Edward I, and Blanche of Navarre. Very little is known of his early life prior to his marriage to Alice de Lacy, daughter of the earl of Lincoln, sometime between 1292 and 1294. In 1296, he succeeded to the earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, and in 1311, with the death of Henry de Lacy, he added the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury to consolidate a massive patrimony that generated an annual income in excess of £11,000, making him far and away the wealthiest and most powerful noble in England. Although he supported the king in the first year of the reign, by 1309 he had become a leading figure in the opposition to the king and Gaveston. Given his ancestry, patrimony and massive military retinue, his leadership was almost inevitable.
Moreover, as earl of Leicester, Lancaster appears to have seen himself as a political heir to Simon de Montfort. Lancaster had been one of the driving forces behind the Ordinances, and his dogmatic insistence upon their strict enforcement had been his justification for not participating in the Scottish campaign of 1314. Now, in the aftermath of Bannockburn, he finally had his opportunity to implement thoroughgoing reform of the king’s government.
Lancaster’s programme of reform emerged clearly as early as the York parliament of September 1314 and the subsequent Westminster parliament of January 1315. On the one hand, he committed himself to the vigorous and precise enforcement of the Ordinances, particularly as this related to the king’s household and his dispensation of patronage, while on the other, he advocat
ed an aggressive Scottish policy. In 1315, there was an attempt to mount a new campaign against the Scots, with the earl of Pembroke and Bartholomew Badlesmere dispatched north with a force of some 500 men-at-arms. They were unable, however, to achieve much more than to relieve the siege of Carlisle. In August, the earl of Lancaster was appointed king’s lieutenant and superior captain of northern forces and given his opportunity to revive the English fortunes of war. But Lancaster could not have taken command at a worse moment in the reign of Edward II. In addition to the danger posed by the Scots themselves, the earl was confronted by several other problems. The Scottish incursions of recent years, greatly intensified after Bannockburn, had led to near-anarchy in the north. To make matters worse, England was entering the throes of a great famine, 2 years’ of failed harvests and cattle epidemics that added greatly to the already substantial level of human suffering of the day. The contemporary author of the poem ‘On the Evil Times of Edward II’, paints a bleak picture:
I am adred that God [us] hath left out of his honed,
Thorow wetheris that he hath sent, so cold and unkynde ...
He sente derthe on erde an made hit for smert.14
A case in point of the shortages affecting England comes from Lancaster’s attempt in 1315 to raise horses and carts from 36 northern religious houses in support of his war effort. His total receipt was a mere 22 horses and 14 carts.
At the Lincoln parliament of January 1316, Lancaster was named chief of the king’s council, although he was careful about the terms by which he accepted this appointment. At this parliament, enforcement of the Ordinances was thoroughgoing, especially the resumption of royal grants made since 1310. Among those who lost lands were some of the courtiers who were most closely associated with the king – men such as the elder Despenser, Henry de Beaumont, Roger Damory and the younger Hugh de Audley. In the spring, Lancaster was to have led a group of four commissioners, including Pembroke, Badlesmere, and his own retainer Sir Robert Holand, to meet Robert Bruce and a Scottish delegation at Leicester.
This meeting never took place, however, and 1316 was a year of crises throughout the kingdom. Not only was the famine at its height, further reducing royal revenues already stretched to the breaking point; in addition, widespread disorder pointed out the ineffectual nature of royal government. In Wales, the king faced the revolt of Llewelyn Bren, while in Bristol discontent with Badlesmere led to riots that ultimately necessitated a full siege of the city. Elsewhere on the Welsh march, the dispute over the lordship of Powys between John de Charlton and John Giffard was renewed with great violence. Against this background, it is no wonder that there was no Scottish campaign in 1316; yet in November, the king’s replacement of Lancaster with Arundel as captain of royal forces in the north clearly signalled a vote of no confidence, and a renewed break between Edward and his cousin Thomas.
In February 1317, Lancaster chose not to attend a colloquium at Clarendon. The earls of Surrey and Hereford did attend, as did the elder Despenser and William Montagu, and perhaps also the younger Despenser, Damory and Audley. Lancaster again failed to answer a summons to a subsequent meeting at Westminster in April and was therefore declared an enemy of the king and kingdom. Lancaster excused himself from yet another meeting in July, arguing that it was not a legitimate parliament as required by the Ordinances, although he did promise to appear at the muster in Newcastle in August. Meanwhile, on 11 April 1317, John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, had kidnapped Lancaster’s wife, Alice de Lacy, from Canford in Dorset. But this was no romantic rivalry. Warenne was said to have done this merely ‘in contempt of Lancaster’. The opposition to Lancaster further coalesced on 1 June when, in the king’s presence, the leading courtiers – Damory, Audley, Montague and both Despensers – entered into bonds of loyalty to each other for the extraordinary amount of £6,000. During the same period, Edward also entered into indentures with a number of magnates, including the earl of Hereford, Badlesmere, John Giffard and John de Cromwell, while in November 1317 the earl of Pembroke entered into a mutual bond with Badlesmere and Damory.
To a very large degree, the struggle was now between Lancaster and the barons, not the king and his barons. Moreover, Lancaster had made his isolated position even less tenable in September when he was almost certainly involved in the attack on Louis de Beaumont, bishop-elect of Durham. Louis was the brother of Henry de Beaumont, who had been a target for removal from court in the Ordinances. The election of Louis de Beaumont, with the queen’s support, over the claims of Lancaster’s own candidate seems to have been too great an affront for the earl to bear. So, Gilbert Middleton, a notorious northern knight, in collusion with the Scots, kidnapped the party in which the bishop-elect was travelling, and held them to ransom. But there was a serious miscalculation, even beyond collusion with the Scots, and that was the fact that Beaumont was accompanied by two cardinals who were to attend his consecration and were also attempting to reconcile Lancaster with the king. The pettiness and lack of calculation evident in Lancaster’s actions in 1317 was further illustrated not only by his occupation of various estates belonging to Earl Warenne, but even more so by the seizure of the royal castle at Knaresborough from Damory by Lancaster’s retainer, Sir John Lilburn, in October. This led to a siege by a coalition of northern magnates, not just courtiers, and, although the situation was finally resolved by negotiation rather than force, it was the rumour that the Scottish earl of Moray was coming to relieve the siege that led to these negotiations, further tarnishing Lancaster’s reputation.
Attempts at reconciliation between the king and Lancaster were undertaken by various prelates in late 1317 and early 1318, leading to a meeting at Leicester in April 1318. Here, it became clear, once again, that enforcement of the Ordinances remained a precondition for any settlement with Lancaster, along with the removal of evil counsellors and the resumption of royal grants. By June, the king had largely agreed to these terms in principle, and his inner circle of favourites – the elder Despenser, Damory, Audley, Montague and John de Charlton – had undertaken not to impede or threaten Lancaster or his men in any way. A further meeting between the representatives of the king and those of Lancaster took place at Tutbury shortly thereafter. The king and earl finally met face-to-face on 7 August, exchanging the kiss of peace, and their reconciliation was soon thereafter embodied in the so-called Treaty of Leake. This was further elaborated in the parliament held at York in October, by which a standing council of prelates, earls and barons was formed to provide or deny assent to all actions taken outside parliament; and the York parliament once again reaffirmed the Ordinances.
This standing council has been seen as a revolutionary constitutional innovation, and it does appear to have functioned for the first year or two after its establishment, but in actual fact it seems to have strengthened the king rather than Lancaster, who was hardly represented by those who sat on this council. Furthermore, royal grants since 1310, while reviewed and in some cases modified, were generally approved by the council, and this cannot have suited Lancaster. The York parliament did, however, see the removal of some of the favourites from court. Montagu stepped down as steward of the king’s household, while Damory and Audley seem to have left court of their own accord. The great irony, of course, is that in their place a new favourite was to emerge, the younger Hugh Despenser, who was confirmed as chamberlain of the king’s household in this same parliament.
In 1319, Lancaster joined the king on campaign in Scotland for the first time in a decade, but this only undermined their relations rather than improving them. The crucial border fortress of Berwick had fallen to the Scots in April 1318, while the king and Lancaster squabbled over their differences through intermediaries. Its recovery was an urgent necessity, and Edward mounted the first serious offensive since Bannockburn, ultimately raising some 14,000 troops, including contingents from all the leading magnates. But the siege of Berwick, which began on 7 September, proved difficult. Meanwhile, the Scots ravaged the north of England, with Sir J
ames Douglas threatening York and nearly capturing Queen Isabella. When Edward decided to maintain the siege of Berwick regardless, Lancaster, for reasons that may have had as much to do with his continuing antipathy to courtiers such as the younger Despenser and Roger Damory as with his concern for his own northern lands, unilaterally withdrew his own troops, forcing the king to follow suit and abandon the siege after just 10 days.
Although Edward certainly deserves his share of the blame, once again demonstrating the indecisiveness and the lack of an effective command structure that had been the case at Bannockburn, Lancaster was widely blamed for this failure. There were even rumours that he had been involved in treasonous communications with the Scots throughout the campaign, rumours made more credible by his almost certain collusion with the Scots in 1317. Lancaster once again withdrew from public life following Berwick, failing to attend parliaments in York and Westminster in 1320, while becoming increasingly critical of the king’s favourites, particularly the Despensers.
At the York parliament of January 1320, it was decided that Edward should travel to France in order to perform homage to Philip V for Aquitaine. This trip did not actually take place until 19 June when the king was accompanied to Amiens by Queen Isabella and a considerable number of prelates and magnates, as well as favourites, such as the younger Despenser and Damory. In the meantime, another delegation, led by the elder Despenser, Badlesmere, and the king’s half-brother, the earl of Norfolk, was sent to the pope at Avignon. They succeeded in convincing him to release Edward from his oath to uphold the Ordinances, marking a victory over Thomas of Lancaster. Although the Westminster parliament of October 1320 was notable for its moderation – the king even called for the continued enforcement of the Ordinances – it was a short-lived episode. Tensions in the kingdom would soon run high again, this time as a result of the inordinate advancement of the Despensers.
The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty Page 18