The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty

by J. S. Hamilton

  Much as his grandfather had done, Edward III attempted to build a grand coalition in the Low Countries. His connections with Hainault facilitated this, but the policy proved unrealistically expensive, as generous subventions were paid to various local rulers and to the Holy Roman Emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria.

  Even with loans of more than £100,000 from the Italian bankers, the Bardi and Peruzzi, in 1337, Edward was hard-pressed to meet his financial obligations. The Lanercost Chronicle details the composition of the grand alliance of Edward III, no doubt inflating the numbers of every contingent. Even so, his estimate of the cost of this coalition at ‘one thousand marks a day, according to others two thousand pounds’, 5 is only slightly exaggerated, and probably reflects the general public perception of this astronomically expensive venture.

  Edward finally landed at Antwerp in July 1338, but only desultory fighting ensued. Despite the subventions, all of which were in arrears in any case, his allies balked at attacking the king of France until Edward managed to convince the emperor to name him imperial vicar for all Germany in September. Even then, there continued to be disagreements about how to proceed and, in November, Edward formally agreed to follow the advice given to him by his council, now including not only English councillors such as the bishop of Lincoln and the earls of Derby and Salisbury, but also the count of Guelders and the Marquis of Juliers.

  It was not until the following summer that Edward III would finally initiate his first French campaign. Meanwhile, as Edward, desperately short of cash, awaited his allies at Antwerp, the French made progress on several fronts. In Gascony, French armies captured the key fortresses of Bourg and Blaye, and advanced all the way to Bordeaux. At the same time, a French fleet burned Hastings, and the French also provided assistance to the Scots, who had broken the truce and were besieging Perth, which fell in August.

  Finally, on 20 September 1339, Edward III began his first campaign in France, marching out from Valenciennes to Cambrai. Although the Cambrésis was devastated, the city itself was not taken. Philip VI advanced north but would not cross into imperial territory. Edward, although he failed to convince the count of Hainault, did finally persuade his other allies to cross into the Vermandois, into France. Once in France, he elevated Laurence Hastings to the peerage as earl of Pembroke and knighted more than a dozen esquires. But Philip would not take Edward’s bait and offer battle, despite several promises to do so. Edward was reduced to conducting a chevauchée, brutal and devastating, but ultimately insignificant. While Philip may have suffered some loss of honour for his unwillingness to face the Anglo–German army on French soil, Edward gained little honour and an ever-increasing burden of debt.

  On 26 January 1340, in the marketplace of Ghent, Edward III launched a different sort of assault against his French rival, as he assumed the arms and title of king of France. By this public assertion of his claim to the French throne, Edward hoped to shore up the resolve of his continental allies. More importantly, he added a new ally, Jacques van Arteveldt, a wealthy burgess of Ghent who brought the Flemish wool towns into Edward’s camp and opened another front in the conflict with the Valois. In February, Edward returned to England and summoned a parliament to assemble at Westminster in late March. With his debts to his allies far in arrears, and having undertaken new commitments of £140,000 to van Arteveldt and the Flemings, Edward was once again desperately short of money. Unfortunately, the parliamentary commons were far from sympathetic.

  After some hard bargaining, the king received a grant of a ninth, as well as the continuation of the maletolt, a tax of 40 s on every sack of English wool. In return, Edward conceded that royal tax collectors be accountable to parliament and that abuses in the system of purveyance be checked.

  Even before Edward returned to the continent, the English campaign of 1340 had begun badly, with the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk taken prisoner during a skirmish outside Lille. There was, however, some comfort in the fact that a French attack on Valenciennes proved equally unsuccessful. Nonetheless, it was imperative for the king to take personal command as soon as possible.

  Philip VI and his government had undertaken preparations for an invasion of England to be led by Philip’s son, the duke of Normandy, commanding a force of 30,000 men. The accompanying French naval buildup posed a genuine threat to Edward’s crossing. Indeed, when he sailed from Orwell on 22 June 1340, there was genuine anxiety about his safety. Not only the ever-cautious chancellor, Archbishop Stratford, but also the king’s two most trusted naval officers, Robert Morley and John Crabbe, advised the king against challenging the French fleet.

  Edward is reported to have answered, ‘I will cross despite you, and you who are afraid, when there is nothing to fear, you stay at home!’6 Both men sailed with the king, who was accompanied by fewer than 150 ships and perhaps 15,000 men altogether. Although word did not reach England until several days later, within 48 hours of his departure Edward III had achieved the first significant victory over the French in generations. The naval battle that was fought at Sluys on 24 June was a stunning victory. The French fleet was trapped in the estuary of the Swijn as its commanders bickered over seniority of command and tactics.

  The English had the further advantages of wind and tide, allowing their smaller force to overwhelm the enemy. Still, it must be said that Edward III seized his opportunity, perhaps foreshadowing the battle-seeking policy that is associated with the later Crécy campaign. Without heavy artillery, a medieval naval battle resembled a land battle at sea and, at Sluys, English archers played a crucial role in softening up the French resistance prior to grappling and boarding manoeuvres. In a letter written to the Black Prince and meant for more general circulation, the king claimed to have captured 166 of 190 enemy ships and to have killed 30,000 out of 35,000 French combatants. The numbers of the ships involved is probably accurate, as is also the scale of casualties, although the absolute numbers of the French dead are probably exaggerated by a third to a half. English losses were remarkably low, although a number of ladies making their way to the queen at Ghent were drowned when their ship went down after being hit by a shot from a cannon. The king himself was wounded in the thigh and was forced to remain aboard his flagship, the Thomas of Winchelsea, for several weeks while he recuperated.

  The campaign that followed was rather less successful. A two-pronged attack on Tournai and St Omer proved unsuccessful. On 26 July, Edward sent a letter to Philip VI offering him a choice of single combat, a fight between the two kings with one hundred vassals each, or an all-out battle on the fields beyond Tournai within 10 days. Philip, of course, demurred, saying only that he would drive Edward out of France ‘when it seems good to us’. 7 He also added that Edward’s offer was unreasonable as he risked nothing of his own, and invited him to include England in the stakes to be fought for. Edward then turned his focus to the siege of Tournai, in the hope that he could force the French to offer battle to relieve the city, much as the Scots had done at Berwick. But Philip VI was resolute, and Edward’s allies, particularly the duke of Brabant, their wages and subsidies far in arrears, refused to prolong the siege past mid-September.

  The truce that was agreed at Espléchin on 25 September, while providing an honourable end to hostilities throughout France, England and Scotland, can only have been viewed as a failure by Edward III. He had once again failed to provoke the French king into battle, and he was now on the point of bankruptcy owing an unfathomable sum of £400,000. Indeed, before he could return to England and try to raise any further funds, he had to agree to leave the earls of Derby, Northampton and Warwick behind as sureties for his debts.

  The king returned unannounced, arriving at the Tower on 30 November and unleashing a vitriolic attack on his chief ministers, most especially Archbishop Stratford. The Libellus Famosus decried the misgovernance of the regency council, whom Edward accused of deliberately withholding necessary funds for his war effort. The king ordered an inquest into the performance of royal ministers.

  Mo
reover, he determined to end the practice of placing clerics in positions of authority. Edward is reported to have said that ‘in his time no man of the church would be treasurer or chancellor, or in any other great office pertaining to the king, but only such persons who, if they were convicted of wrongdoing, he could draw, hang, and behead’. 8

  Stratford fought back, however, waging a war of words from the security of Canterbury, while refusing to receive the king’s representatives. On Becket’s feast day, 29 December, he declared his intention to emulate the martyr in opposing an unjust king, and he refused to meet the king unless it was before his peers in parliament. But unlike the conflicts of the previous reign, this one did not result in resort to arms. Rather, it was played out in parliament, and this may be the most significant element of the entire episode. When parliament finally convened at Westminster on 23 April, the king set two of his loyal servants, John Darcy and Ralph Stratford, physically to prevent the archbishop from entering the Painted Chamber. Pressured by the earls of Surrey and Arundel, Edward finally relented after a week of obstruction, during which he was unable to move any business.

  Both magnates and commons made common cause with Stratford and voiced their grievances, and the crisis of 1340–1341 is in many ways reminiscent of the events in the early years of the reign of Edward II that had culminated in the Ordinances of 1311. Edward was forced to make a number of concessions, embodied in a statute, in return for which he finally got a new levy of 30,000 sacks of wool. Among other points, the statute reiterated the right to a trial before one’s peers in parliament, and called for both the appointment and confirmation of royal ministers in parliament. It would be wrong to see the king surrendering any fundamental royal rights to parliament in the crisis of 1340–1341, however, as by 1 October 1341 he had annulled the legislation of the spring, and would hold no further parliament until 1343. Nevertheless, the parliamentary commons had found their voice, and the dialogue that had begun in the April 1341 parliament would continue to shape relations between the king and his subjects for the rest of the reign.

  It is interesting to note that parliament and the merchant community were not alone in their lack of enthusiasm for the French war; to a large extent, the aristocracy was unequally unsupportive. Despite the fact that the relationship with Aquitaine stretched all the way back to the reign of Henry II and his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the truth of the matter was that England had never really colonized Aquitaine, and consequently the English nobility had no vested interest in the duchy. This was very different from the situation that obtained in Scotland, and even, for that matter, in Ireland. Thus, neither a winter campaign in Scotland in 1341–1342 nor a subsequent tournament at Dunstable fully healed the frayed edges of the king’s relations with his magnates or led them to embrace the French war. On each occasion, several of the earls declined participation, and tension continued to be evident. When Edward finally summoned another parliament in April 1343, the commons immediately called for the reenactment of the 1341 statute and a promise that legislation duly approved by the lords and commons not be repealed by the king henceforth. The king stood by his prerogative and replied that the 1341 statute was contrary to the law of the land and damaging to the rights of the crown. The issue remained divisive.

  Before we return to the war in France, something needs to be said about the character and personal life of Edward III. It is fair to say that, like 1330, the year in which he established his personal rule, 1340–1341 proved to be a watershed in the reign. The period from 1340 into the 1360s forms a clearly defined whole, and a coherence of purpose and behaviour can be seen in the king’s personal, as well as his political, affairs. Edward was, in most ways, a thoroughly conventional figure. This is clearly seen in his practice of religion, where he was not merely conventional, but one might even argue conservative. Like his grandfather Edward I, Edward III was deeply devoted to the cult of the Virgin Mary. This was exemplified in his regular visits and gifts to her shrines at Walsingham, St Pauls’s in London, and the Lady Chapel in Christ Church, Canterbury. Beyond these major shrines, the king also visited Marian sites at Scarborough, Darlington and St Mary’s, York, during his Scottish campaigns in the 1330s. On the continent, he visited similar shrines at Halle, Vilvoorde (Brabant), and Ghent. When offering thanksgiving for his salvation during a storm at sea in 1340, he founded the Abbey of St Mary Graces, London, reminiscent of his grandfather’s foundation of Vale Royal under similar circumstances half a century earlier.

  Beyond his devotion to the Virgin, Edward III was also particularly attentive to the cult of several English saints. He typically visited Canterbury at least once each year, not only visiting Becket’s tomb and the relic of the swords, but also visiting the Lady Chapel at Christ Church, and finally proceeding to St Augustine’s Abbey, where he regularly offered alms on behalf not only of St Augustine himself, but also the less well known St Adrian and St Mildred. Edward made regular gifts to St Edmund of Bury and to Edward the Confessor at Westminster: the king had been baptized on the Confessor’s feast day in 1312.

  Of course, when discussing the personal religion of Edward III, one must also mention St George, who was appropriated by the king as a particularly English saint through his connection with the Order of the Garter. It was his standard that English armies henceforth carried into battle in France and elsewhere, his name that became the English war-cry.

  If Edward’s devotion to English saints communicated a clear political message, so too could his similar devotion to the Virgin. In 1343, Edward presented five gold ships, each worth more than £50, to five prominent pilgrimage sites: Canterbury (both Becket’s tomb and the Lady Chapel), Walsingham, St Paul’s and Gloucester. The political message of English mastery of the seas – a theme that was also announced at this time on the king’s newly minted gold nobles – was coupled with devotion to the Virgin, clearly suggesting divine approval of the king and his accomplishments. Not surprisingly, perhaps, foreign pilgrimages or even the Crusades held little attraction for Edward III. He did make offerings to the shrine of St Mathieu in Brittany in 1342–1343, and to the English saint Edmund Rich at Pontigny in 1360, but these clearly seem to be political gestures that are best understood in the context of the conflict with France.

  Edward also promoted the sacral nature of his kingship. From the late 1330s on, the king regularly administered the royal touch to cure scrofula. Interestingly, he was particularly active in demonstrating his thaumaturgical powers between December 1340 and November 1341 during the political crisis at which his prestige and standing in the kingdom reached its lowest point. But he continued to touch for the king’s evil throughout the reign, and he also demonstrated his healing powers by distributing cramp rings to combat epilepsy at Easter each year. These rings were made from pennies placed before the Neith Cross on Good Friday and then melted down and made into rings. The household ordinances of 1323 had specified that 5 s should be allocated to this purpose annually, but in the later years of the reign of Edward III, the king, in fact, devoted 25 s to this purpose. Clearly, there was widespread belief in the rings’ efficacy, a reflection of the king’s standing in God’s favour.

  Along similar lines, although details are lacking, the king must have encouraged liturgical displays of considerable complexity, designed to emphasize the transcendent position of the royal family. During the course of the reign, the size of the household chapel expanded from five to ten chaplains, assisted by an almoner and a confessor. Similarly, the size and composition of Edward’s collegiate foundations at St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster and St George’s Chapel, Windsor, point in this same direction. By 1351, each college had a warden, 12 canons, 13 vicars, 4 clerks and 6 choristers. Given Edward’s love of display at tournaments and banquets, the great Garter Feast must also have become a splendid event, and so must have other festivals. The provision of vicars choral and boy singers at both Windsor and Westminster points to the performance of polyphonic music, perhaps for the first time at
the English royal court.

  Edward III also proved conventional in his dedication to the proper commemoration of the dead. For example, he attended the services for the earl of Salisbury in 1344, the earl of Lancaster in 1345 and Sir Walter Mauny in 1372, but perhaps the best illustration of Edward’s sensibilities comes in the case of his brother John of Eltham, who died at Perth in September 1336. The funeral was delayed for some 6 months so that the king could be present for John’s entombment in Westminster Abbey. The king ordered 900 masses to commemorate his death and commissioned the magnificent tomb still to be found in the Chapel of St Edmund. His anniversary was observed annually with the distribution of alms.

  Similar care was taken to commemorate the death of the king’s own children, William of Hatfield and William of Windsor. The funeral of Queen Philippa in 1370 was a lavish undertaking – including an order from the king to a group of commissioners who were charged with having the streets of Southwark ‘cleansed of all dung and other filth’9 – and the remembrance of both Philippa and Edward’s mother Isabella continued to be generously funded throughout the reign. The anniversary of the death of Edward I was always celebrated both at Westminster and wherever the king happened to be, regardless of whether he was home or abroad. In the end, Edward III declared his intention (in 1359) to be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey alongside ‘that most illustrious and courageous soldier, and the most prudent statesman’, Edward I. 10