The Demon's Brood

by Desmond Seward

  PART 3

  Plantagenet France?

  8

  The Paladin – Edward III

  And in all battles and assemblies, with a passing glory and worship he had ever the victory

  The Brut or The Chronicles of England1

  The Battle of Les Espagnols-sur-Mer, 1350

  ‘The king stood at his ship’s prow, clad in a jacket of black velvet with a black beaver hat on his head that suited him very well, and (so I heard from men who were with him that day) in excellent spirits’, Froissart tells us, describing Edward III at the battle fought off Winchelsea on 29 August. He made his trumpeters play a German dance Sir John Chandos had brought back from Germany, ordering Chandos to sing with the minstrels and laughing heartily. Occasionally he glanced up at the look-out in the crow’s nest.

  When the enemy was sighted, Edward said, ‘I see a boat coming and I think it is a Spanish ship of war!’ Then he added, ‘I see two, three, four!’ When the entire Castilian fleet came in view, he cried cheerfully, ‘I can see so many, God help me, I can’t count them!’ Sending for wine, the king and his knights drank before putting on their helmets. Although heavily outnumbered, they proceeded to win a crushing victory. The weather was fine and clear, the battle being watched from the shore by a large crowd which included the queen.2

  That is how Edward III saw himself, and how his subjects saw him – brave and chivalrous, undismayed by danger, always in good spirits. In the national myth, he is the victor of Crécy and founder of the Order of the Garter.

  But Stubbs attributed any admiration for him to Froissart’s hero worship. ‘The glory and the growth of the nation were dearly bought, by blood, treasure, and agony of many sorts’ he complains, referring to Edward’s ‘foolish policy and selfish designs’.3 However, his latest (2011) biographer Mark Ormrod calls him ‘Edward the Great’, praising his revolutionary battle tactics, the growth of parliamentary power during his reign, and a new partnership between Crown and ruling class.4

  The puppet king

  Edward was fourteen when Archbishop Reynolds crowned him at Westminster on 1 February 1326, the crown padded to fit his small head. It was a lavish coronation, to demonstrate support for the boy who was replacing his father on the throne. Henry, Earl of Lancaster played a prominent role in the ceremony as the coup owed much to outrage at his brother’s murder. For the same reason he was made the king’s guardian. In reality, if nominally ruled by a council of twelve magnates, the country was governed by Roger Mortimer and Isabella, who pretended that everything had Lancaster’s approval.

  When Edward came of age the queen was reluctant to relinquish power. Nor would Mortimer let her, good fortune having turned his head. Isabella shared his greed, not only regaining her dowry lands, but acquiring estates seized by the Despensers, so that her annual income amounted to over £13,000. Roger took the Despensers’ vast lordship in south Wales, retaining the lands they had stolen, while securing even more in the Principality where he was justiciar. In 1328 he was created Earl of March (the Marches of Wales) and, whether at his castles of Wigmore or Ludlow or at the royal palaces, lived regally, staging lavish tournaments and escorted by a retinue of Welshmen.

  The English did not see why they should be ruled by ‘an adulterous Frenchwoman and her paramour’ whom they blamed for the murder at Berkeley. A disastrous campaign against the Scots led by Mortimer, ending in another flight by English troops, made their regime still more unpopular. So too did the ‘Shameful Peace’ of Northampton in March 1329 that recognized Robert the Bruce as King of Scots. Edward had to be bullied into signing it, while the Westminster monks would not return the Stone of Scone.

  Lancaster refused to attend parliament, announcing that he wanted to give the council proper powers by removing Edward from Mortimer’s control. He was feebly supported by the late king’s lacklustre brothers, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, and one or two bishops. Roger responded with brutal attacks on his manors in the Midlands, even burning their churches, accompanied by Isabella (who put on armour). Lancaster submitted, to save his life.

  Eager to eliminate anyone else who might lead a rebellion, Mortimer employed two agents provocateurs, a pair of rogue Dominican friars, to destroy Edmund of Kent. They did so by tricking the earl into thinking Edward II was still alive, conjuring up a ‘demon’ who put the royal brothers in touch. After concocting a plot to restore Edward, Kent was arrested at Winchester in March 1330 and sentenced to death, waiting five hours on the scaffold until a condemned criminal agreed to behead him – no one else would do it.

  The fall of Mortimer and Isabella, 1330

  ‘The king began to grow in body and mind, which undermined the authority of the queen, his mother, and vexed the earl of March, whose guidance the queen always followed.’5 His court was packed with Mortimer’s spies, but Edward built up a circle of trusted friends, notably a household knight, Sir William Montague (or Montacute), who commanded a small guard of twenty men-at-arms, and the Keeper of the Privy Seal, Richard Bury, who was his secretary. Secretly, he sent Montague to Pope John XXII at Avignon, explaining that he wanted to break free.

  A great council was to meet in autumn 1330 at Nottingham, Isabella and her lover installing themselves in the castle. Montague planned to arrest the pair, despite Edward’s reluctance to act against his mother. Sensing danger, Mortimer questioned Montague before the council and then, impertinently, the king. He could get nothing out of them, but ordered every gate and door to be locked and barred at night, placing guards everywhere, while the queen took charge of the keys, forbidding Edward to enter the castle with more than three servants.

  ‘Better eat the dog than let the dog eat you!’ commented Montague.6 He advised Edward, who had been infuriated by Mortimer’s grilling, to frighten the constable of the castle into leaving a postern door unlocked. On the night of 19 October Montague and the king led twenty-four men through the postern (a tunnel) and reached Isabella’s apartments undetected. After killing three courtiers in a scuffle – during which the chancellor Burghersh tried to escape down the garderobe (privy) but got stuck – and ignoring the queen’s cries to ‘Spare gentle Mortimer!’, they seized her lover as he was putting on his armour behind a curtain.7

  Six weeks later, wearing a black cloak on which was painted ‘Quid gloriaris?’, ‘Where’s your glory now?’, Roger Mortimer was tried at Westminster, accused of murdering Edward II, attacking Lancaster in 1328, procuring the Earl of Kent’s death, and estranging the late king and Isabella by telling her that if she went near him ‘she would be killed with a knife’.8 The king spared Mortimer disembowelment and quartering, but his body was left hanging for two days.

  Edward treated Isabella leniently. Her estates were confiscated and for two years she was confined at Windsor, where she seems to have suffered a breakdown, but in 1332 £3,000 a year (later increased to £4,000) was settled on her, together with Castle Rising in Norfolk, near Lynn. Her son regularly visited her and she went to court when it was in London, where she had apartments at the Tower. Her life was a quiet but stately one: she enjoyed hawking, reading her library of romances, listening to her minstrels and giving alms. When she died in 1358 she was buried in her wedding gown with her husband’s heart.

  Edward may have consulted her on how to deal with France. Only the affection felt for Isabella by successive French kings, her father and her brothers, had saved Gascony for the Plantagenets, a link she exploited in negotiations over a long period.

  The personal reign of Edward III

  While welcoming Edward, the magnates wanted to bring back the Ordinances so they could control him, and, seeing themselves as his natural counsellors, were offended when he chose advisers from among the Nottingham conspirators. Four of these were given earldoms, including Montague, who became the most influential man in England. Clearly uneasy, Edward replaced sheriffs and royal castellans with people whose loyalty towards him was beyond doubt.

  He had not forgotten his humiliation by the Scots a
nd in 1332 found a means of revenge. During that summer, without English help, Edward Balliol, the son of ‘Toom Tabard’, led a group of dispossessed Anglo-Scottish magnates (known as the ‘Disinherited’) on a seemingly hopeless expedition to overthrow the Bruce monarchy. Landing in Fife, with 500 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers, on 11 August at Dupplin Moor near Scone they annihilated the eight-year-old David II’s much bigger army with arrow fire, losing only thirty-three men. Balliol then had himself crowned king at Scone but, finding little support, was soon driven out.

  Edward at once recognized Balliol as King of Scots and in May 1333 besieged Berwick. The Scots tried to relieve it with their usual mix of spearmen and cavalry (15,000 troops, of whom barely 1,200 were mounted) under Sir Archibald Douglas, Guardian of the Realm of Scotland. The English king was waiting for them at Halidon Hill, 3 miles north-west of the city. Having learned the lesson of Dupplin, he placed six wedges of archers on each flank of a central formation of men-at-arms, who dismounted to fight on foot. After struggling through volley upon volley of arrows, ‘yelling their hideous war-cry’, the remnant of the Scottish schiltrons was cut down with ease when it reached the top of the hill. The English men-at-arms remounted to pursue the survivors, killing over 4,000, including the guardian and five earls. The English lost a knight, a squire and twelve foot soldiers. The Scots had been like sheep against wolves, observed a contemporary.9 Edward had revenged Bannockburn. He had also realized the longbow’s potential.

  Over the next six years Edward led four more expeditions into Scotland. In summer 1336 he took 400 men-at-arms and 400 mounted archers on a ‘chevauchée’, a lengthy raid whose aim was to weaken the enemy, a tactic that became standard practice during the wars in France. He went out of his way to rescue the Countess of Atholl, besieged at Lochindorb Castle in Badenoch, then rode on to destroy Aberdeen. Wherever they passed, his troops burned crops and farms, and killed livestock – and men and women, when they could catch them.

  Balliol invaded again, holding a parliament at Perth and ceding five Lowland counties to Edward, to whom he paid homage at Newcastle. Inevitably, by confiscating the lands of so many great Scottish nobles and granting them to the Disinherited, Balliol ensured bitter resistance, and within six months he was again driven out. The Scots could rely on Philip VI, who, if he did not send troops, supplied money. But Halidon Hill had ended their brief superiority on the battlefield.

  The man

  Tall and handsome, Edward III looked not unlike his grandfather when young, except for his yellow hair, beard and moustaches. Although in many ways Edward I was his model (he had himself buried next to him in Westminster Abbey), he lacked his grimness. A man who loved life and adventure until his health cracked in old age, he nonetheless paid meticulous attention to business, weighing each political move. ‘It is as it is’ was among his mottoes. He used display to restore the monarchy’s prestige, avoiding ‘peasant amusements’ and low company, with an unending round of feasts, pageants and tournaments.

  He certainly resembled his grandfather in a happy family life. If his wife looked anything like the brown-skinned, curvaceous elder sister of whom a description survives, she must have been lovely, although her funeral effigy shows a fat, homely face. She was famous for her good nature. After the birth of an heir, Edward the ‘Black Prince’, she gave him four more sons together with two daughters who lived to maturity, besides several children who died young. Whether she was pretty or not, her husband adored her.

  Like Henry II, Edward treated his five sons as partners in a family business, especially the three eldest. The Prince of Wales received Gascony and then Aquitaine; Lionel was made Duke of Clarence and married to the richest heiress in Ireland; and John of Gaunt succeeded his father-in-law as Duke of Lancaster, inheriting over thirty estates and castles. Unlike Henry’s children, all showed impeccable loyalty.

  Edward was sufficiently indulgent not to object when his daughter Isabella refused to wed the young Count of Albret, and allowed his eldest son to marry a beautiful, slightly disreputable, Plantagenet cousin, Joan of Kent, who was the daughter of Edward II’s unlucky brother. In 1340, when only twelve, she had made a secret marriage to Sir Thomas Holland, but while he was away fighting in France her mother forced her to marry Lord Salisbury’s son. On his return, Thomas appealed to the pope and the couple obtained an annulment, living together until his death in 1360. Despite her past – she was known ironically as the ‘Virgin of Kent’ – the prince married Joan the same year.

  According to the poet Thomas Hoccleve, the king went in disguise among his subjects to find out what they thought of him. Possessing the common touch, speaking English as well as he spoke French – in an unusually pleasant voice – he was familiar and polite to everybody. After his victories he became immensely popular.

  He loved building, transforming Windsor from fortress into palace, adding a great chapel for the Order of the Garter. He rebuilt much of Westminster, including the chapel of St Stephen, which was given a cycle of frescoes (destroyed in the fire of 1834) with one of himself and his family, besides refurbishing Clarendon and other royal hunting boxes – such as a long forgotten castle at Hampstead Marshall in Berkshire. Like his grandfather, Edward saw himself as the heir of King Arthur, collecting tales of his deeds and founding a ‘Round Table’ at Windsor in 1344. Venerating Glastonbury for its Arthurian associations, in 1345 he had a search made for the body of the shrine’s founder, Joseph of Arimathea.

  On progress he prayed at all England’s holy places, not only Walsingham or Canterbury, but less familiar shrines – St John’s at Beverley, St Cuthbert’s at Durham and many others. He also founded two religious houses, a Dominican nunnery in Dartford and a Cistercian abbey near the Tower of London, St Mary Graces. But if deeply religious and a regular almsgiver, he was scarcely a spiritual man.

  No intellectual, Edward revelled in hawking and hunting, and was fond of fishing with a rod and line. His mews were staffed by twenty falconers while his menagerie held lions and leopards. Jousting, in which he took part, was a regular feature of court life. Indoors, both he and the queen played chess and dice. Pageantry in any form was his greatest pleasure, and he enjoyed wearing dazzling jewels and a costly wardrobe.

  Froissart

  Edward was lucky to find a chronicler, Jean Froissart (c.1337– 1410), who immortalized him. Born in Hainault, a French-speaking cleric, Froissart recorded with unflagging enthusiasm the battles of the Hundred Years War. Sometimes called the first war correspondent, no other fourteenth-century writer possessed such gifts for describing combat, analysing personality and using dialogue. Stubbs may argue that any admiration for the king derives from Froissart, but Froissart knew what he was writing about – he first visited Edward’s court in 1361, when the king was still vigorous, and for earlier events used Jean le Bel’s chronicle.

  France

  When Charles IV, Isabella’s youngest brother, died in 1328, he left no sons and was succeeded by his cousin Philip of Valois, who descended in the male line from a brother of St Louis. Although Edward had been more closely related to Charles through his mother, he recognized Philip as King of France, paying ‘simple’ homage to him for Gascony. He was ready to pay full homage on the right terms, which meant regaining the Agenais. Disguised as a merchant, he visited Philip VI secretly and they agreed to go on Crusade together if they did not solve the dispute. But his attitude changed when Philip showed that he intended to conquer the duchy.

  In spring 1336 a fleet assembled at Marseilles for the Crusade was moved to Normandy, the Archbishop of Rouen announcing that Philip would send troops to help the Scots. In response, a great council at Nottingham granted war taxes of a ‘tenth’ and a ‘fifteenth’. Although by now ‘Gascony’ was merely the coast between the Charente and the Pyrenees, the Gascons still regarded Edward III as their natural ruler, heir to the old Dukes of Aquitaine. They were subjects whom he had a duty to protect.

  In 1337, angered by Edward sheltering his brother-in-law, Rob
ert of Artois, Philip declared that Gascony was forfeit. (After poisoning his mother-in-law, Robert had tried to kill Philip and his queen with sorcery.) Edward reacted by claiming the French crown. Next year, at Robert’s suggestion his court swore to make him King of France in the ‘Vow of the Heron’, during a banquet at Windsor at which herons were served as a dish. Meanwhile, England feared invasion after the French fleet arrived on the Norman coast, raiders burning Portsmouth and Southampton. Tension grew as privateers seized English ships, parading their captured crew at Calais minus ears and noses. The English retaliated in kind, burning Boulogne in 1339.

  Halidon Hill had shown Edward he possessed a weapon that won battles, while he acquired allies on France’s northern border – the Duke of Brabant, the Counts of Guelders, Hainault, Holland, Julich and Limbourg, even Emperor Louis IV. The Count of Flanders refused to join, so Edward banned the export of English wool to Flanders until the starving Flemish replaced the count with a leader who was an anti-French merchant. Money to subsidize these new friends came from heavy taxes and levies on wool that caused considerable resentment. In addition, the king borrowed from Lombard and Florentine bankers, from merchants in the Low Countries, from English woolmen and vintners. He even pawned his crown.

  Edward finally invaded France in 1339, leading a chevauchée into Picardy of the sort he used in Scotland, burning and slaying. Philip intercepted him with 35,000 men, but refused to give battle. Edward withdrew to Flanders after only a month, returning to England in February 1340. All he had achieved was to run up debts amounting to £300,000. He told parliament he ‘needed the help of a great aid (new tax) or he would be dishonoured for ever and his lands on both sides of the sea would be in peril – he would lose his allies and have to go back in person to Brussels and stay there as a prisoner until the sums he owed had been paid in full’.10 Fearful of French invasion, parliament agreed to a ninth on agricultural produce and a ninth on townsmen’s goods, while insisting he observe the provisions of Magna Carta and the Forest Charter, end the exorbitant ‘maletote’ on wool and stop sheriffs from holding office for more than a year. This enabled him to equip an invasion fleet.