by Alison Weir
Isabella sent letters, too, probably announcing her happy news, to Queen Marguerite, the Countess of Pembroke, and Edward’s sister, the nun Mary.230
The latest date for the consummation of the royal marriage would have been the previous Christmas, by which time Isabella would have reached her sixteenth birthday. Of course, the consummation could have taken place before then, for it was usual for married couples to begin cohabiting when the wife was fourteen, or even before that; it could therefore have happened as early as 1308, during Gaveston’s exile, when Edward began paying proper attention to Isabella and was intent on winning the goodwill of her father. If so, intercourse must have been infrequent, as the Queen did not become pregnant for at least three years. The fact that the births of her children were to occur at widely spaced intervals (four, two, and three years), and that there were four-year gaps both before and after these childbearing years, suggests that Edward never visited her bed regularly.
It is possible, however, that the King chose to mollify Isabella by timing the consummation of their marriage to coincide with Piers’s unauthorized return at Christmas 1311, in order to win her support and that of her father and also reassure them that Gaveston was no threat to her position; as we have seen, she readily gave that support. Was she demonstrating her gratitude at being given at last a chance to bear an heir and thus consolidate her position as Queen? Was she also pleased that her handsome husband had at last played the man and paid her the kind of attentions that she regarded as being due to her alone? We can only speculate.
Whenever it took place, the consummation of Isabella’s marriage may well have contributed to the improvement of her relations with Gaveston.
It was not an auspicious time to be expecting an heir to the throne. Gaveston’s recall by the King had been tantamount to a declaration of war, and by March, the barons had taken up arms, ready to force the issue over the favorite. Five earls—Lancaster, Warwick, Pembroke, Arundel, and Hereford—all swore to kill Piers if they laid hands on him. Even the moderate Gloucester offered his support against him. That month, the lords assembled at Saint Paul’s to witness a wrathful Archbishop Winchelsey “seize his sword and strike Piers with anathema” for having contravened the Ordinances.231 Meanwhile, Isabella was busying herself, probably on her husband’s behalf, writing endless letters, including what were perhaps conciliatory ones to Lancaster, Gloucester, Hereford, Surrey, Richmond, and Pembroke; she even wrote to the Countess of Lancaster at nearby Pickering.232 Given that she would soon earn a reputation as a peacemaker, she may well have been trying to mediate with the opposition.
On 6 March, the King ordered the powerful northern baron, Henry Percy, to hand over Scarborough Castle to his own custodian,233 and by the seventeenth, Gaveston had left York234 and was ensconced there, surveying the fortifications. For the King and Queen, there was a brief respite from care at Easter, with much revelry at court on Easter Monday. Knowing that the King was a great lover of horseplay, the Queen’s damsels burst in upon him as he lay late in bed in the morning, dragged him out of it and made him their prisoner, forcing him to pay a ransom before they would release him. Amid much laughter, he paid them a generous sum. This tomfoolery had its origins in an old custom celebrating the resurrection of Christ.235
Gaveston returned to York on 31 March and was granted Scarborough Castle, with orders to hold it against all comers and relinquish it to no one but the King.236 Isabella’s Household Book records that she sent letters from York to the King on 1 and 4 April; at that time, he was in Scarborough with Gaveston, overseeing the repairs to the castle that were then being put in hand and trying to win the support of the burgesses.237
But Lancaster and his private army were now closing in on York, and on 5 April, after issuing a hurried summons to Gascony for troops,238 Edward fled northward with Gaveston to Newcastle, which they reached on the tenth, leaving the Queen to follow at a more leisurely pace; she reached Thirsk on 16 April and stayed four nights, which suggests that she needed to rest on account of her pregnancy; then she lodged at Darlington on 20–21 April, where she dictated a letter to her husband.239 She arrived at Newcastle before the twenty-second, but her Wardrobe had had to be left behind at York, and she was evidently anxious about some of her possessions, because she sent her messenger, John de Nauntel, back to York “to look for certain secret things pertaining to the chamber of the Queen there.”240
In leaving Isabella to make her own slow way north, Edward may have reasoned that she had little to fear from her uncle of Lancaster, although she would of course have made a valuable hostage, a fact of which her husband must have been aware. However, Edward’s first priority was to protect Gaveston. On 23 April, only a day or two after Isabella had arrived in Newcastle, he sent her to Tynemouth Priory for safety, whence she could escape by sea if necessary. She was in residence there by 26 April, when she presented a cloth of gold to the priory church.241 The next day, she wrote to her father and various French lords,242 doubtless to tell them of her plight.
Tynemouth Priory, perched upon a cliff top overlooking the Tyne estuary and the North Sea, dated from the seventh century but had been refounded and rebuilt by the Benedictine Order between 1090 and 1130. A nearby Norman church had since been converted into one of the largest castles in England, and both castle and priory were surrounded by a curtain wall.243 Yet fortified though it was, Tynemouth was highly vulnerable to Scottish raids or attack from the sea—the priory had once been destroyed by Viking invaders—so Isabella was by no means safe there. Nor, in such spartan and antiquated surroundings, could she have been very comfortably housed.
On 4 May, having taken York, Lancaster’s army surprised Edward and Gaveston at Newcastle, whence they managed to escape with barely any time to spare, leaving behind their baggage, clothes, jewels, and horses.244 Meeting no resistance, Lancaster and his men occupied Newcastle and seized not only Gaveston’s wife and baby but also all his goods, among which were many luxurious items, including precious ornaments given to Edward by Isabella,245 which took the Earl four days to catalog. While he was doing so, King and favorite had made their way down the River Tyne to Tynemouth,246 whence, on 10 May, fearing with good reason that Lancaster meant to lay siege to the castle and priory, they fled by boat to Scarborough.247 The King left Gaveston there to hold the castle and made for York, where he was hoping to raise an army.248
Perhaps because she was in the difficult early stages of pregnancy, Isabella did not accompany them on the sea voyage. She had begged her husband in tears not to leave her, but he insisted that she remain behind at Tynemouth. Lancaster sent a secret message to her there, reassuring her that the barons intended her no harm and that “their sole object was to secure the person of the favourite.” He would not rest, he told her, until Gaveston had been driven from the King’s society.249 This is the sole piece of evidence on which the theories of Lancaster’s support for Isabella during Gaveston’s ascendancy have been based. However, it is unlikely that Isabella received his reassurances, since her Household Book shows that she left Tynemouth in a hurry, leaving most of her possessions at South Shields so that she could make speedier progress; they were not retrieved for several weeks.250 There is no evidence that she went to Scarborough, so she probably fled the priory shortly after Edward and Gaveston had sailed away and traveled via Darlington and Ripon to York, where she rejoined the King on 16 May. On this day, Edward reimbursed her controller, John de Fleet, for the expenses of her household.251 Isabella could not have felt very kindly disposed toward her husband, who had twice fled and left her behind, all in order to keep his favorite safe, and with little thought for her own safety, even though she was carrying his child.
The Ordainers’ army, under the command of Pembroke, now laid siege to Scarborough, ignoring the King’s commands to desist.252 Unable to hold out due to lack of provisions, Gaveston surrendered to Pembroke on 19 May, on very generous terms. Gaveston was to be held under house arrest at his own castle of Wallingford until h
e could present his case before Parliament and give an account of his actions. If Parliament had not decided his fate by 1 August, or he disputed its verdict, he should then be free to return to Scarborough with fresh supplies; in the meantime, his own men could hold the castle for him. Pembroke himself swore on the Gospels, on pain of forfeiture of his estates, to keep his prisoner safe until 1 August.253
Piers was then taken by Pembroke in honorable captivity to York, where he had a brief (and final, although neither knew it) meeting with the King,254 and thence, at the beginning of June, southward toward Wallingford.255 On 9 June, he and his escort arrived at the market town of Deddington, ten miles south of Banbury in Oxfordshire, where Pembroke arranged for Piers to lodge in the rectory. Pembroke’s wife was staying just twelve miles away at Bampton, and, wishing to spend the night with her, he rode off, leaving his prisoner—as he thought—safely under guard.256 Warwick, however, had learned of Gaveston’s whereabouts, and early in the morning of 10 June, he had the rectory surrounded with a large force of soldiers, then cried out in ringing tones from the courtyard, “I think you know me; I am the Black Dog of Arden. Get up, traitor, you are taken!” In his bedchamber, Piers began pulling on his clothes, but Warwick’s men burst in and hustled him out half-dressed and without his hat, hose, and shoes.257
Gaveston was taken under guard to Warwick Castle that same day. Barefoot, stripped of his belt of knighthood like a common thief, and deafened by “blaring trumpets and the horrid sound of the populace,” he was compelled to walk through the town, running the gauntlet of the jeering, taunting mob. Only when the grim procession had left Deddington behind was he allowed to mount a mule, a sorry steed for one who had been such a great earl and the King’s beloved.258 But Edward was far away. On reaching Warwick, Gaveston was immediately thrown into a dungeon. “He whom Piers had called Warwick the Dog has now bound Piers with chains.”259
The King was distraught to hear that Piers was taken and dashed off frantic letters to Philip IV and the Pope, beseeching them to intervene with the barons and even offering them joint possession of Gascony if they could save Gaveston’s life.260 Isabella, meanwhile, had left York sometime after 5 June and had moved south to Selby and eastward to Howden by the eighth. Here, she probably lodged in the bishop’s palace. She left Howden by 11 June, and by the fifteenth, she had traveled farther east to Beverley (the roof boss in the cathedral may commemorate her visit) and was in Burstwick on the eighteenth.261 Thus, she was far removed from the events taking place in Deddington and Warwick and was in no way involved in them.
Presently, Lancaster, Hereford, Arundel, and other magnates arrived at Warwick262 and debated with Warwick what to do with Gaveston; all agreed that he should be put to death, but they were concerned to cloak their proceedings with a semblance of legality. Warwick did not want to be implicated at all in the killing of Gaveston, so Lancaster, “being of higher birth and more powerful than the rest, took upon himself the full peril of the business.”263 “While he lives, there will be no safe place in the realm of England, as many proofs have hitherto shown us,” he declared.264 There was a travesty of a trial, in the presence of two hastily summoned royal justices.265 Probably coincidentally, one was William Inge, to whom Isabella had written four letters between 17 January and 4 February.266
Gaveston was not allowed to speak in his own defense. Lancaster presided over the hearing “and ordered Piers, after three terms of exile, as one disobedient to three lawful warnings, to be put to death.”267 Later, the earls were to claim, on questionable grounds, that, having proceeded against Piers for having contravened the twentieth Ordinance, they were unaware at the time that the King had revoked that Ordinance.268
Meanwhile, Pembroke, whose honor was at stake because he had given his oath to keep Gaveston safe, and who stood to lose his estates if that oath was broken, was desperately trying to persuade the other Ordainers to order Gaveston’s release. But no one, not even Piers’s brother-in-law, Gloucester—who coldly advised him “to learn another time to negotiate more cautiously”—nor the University of Oxford, to which Pembroke appealed in desperation, was willing to listen to him.269
In the small hours of 19 June, “Warwick sent a sharp-tongued messenger to Piers, telling him to look to his soul, because this was the last day he would see on Earth.” With sighs and groans, the condemned man pitiably lamented his fate, but he knew that there could be no reprieve and was fatalistic. “Let the will of the earls be done,” he said. At three in the morning, he was bound, dragged from his dungeon, and handed over by Warwick to Lancaster, who told him that he was to be beheaded “as a nobleman and a Roman citizen,” a concession to his status as Gloucester’s brother-in-law; it would have shamed the Earl if Piers were hanged or made to suffer the full horrors of a traitor’s death.270 On hearing of his fate, Piers threw himself on his knees before Lancaster and begged for mercy, but Lancaster merely said, “Lift him up, lift him up. In God’s name, let him be taken away.” Those watching, seeing him brought so low, “could barely restrain their tears.”271
Then Gaveston was “hastened to the place where he was to suffer the last penalty,” to Blacklow Hill, which lies a mile or so north of Warwick and was just beyond the boundary of Warwick’s estates, on Lancaster’s land; Warwick had stayed behind in his castle, again dissociating himself from what was to happen, but Lancaster, Hereford, and Arundel followed the prisoner at a distance. Crowds had gathered to watch the hated favorite pass, and they blew horns and shouted for joy to see him brought so low. At Blacklow Hill, at Lancaster’s command, Piers was handed over to two Welsh soldiers, both Lancaster’s men, and the earls withdrew a short way off. Then Piers was dragged up the hill by the Welshmen. Ignoring his pleas for mercy, one pierced him through the heart with his sword, and the other cut off his head and showed it to Lancaster.272
The earls then rode off, satisfied that the odious reign of the favorite had come to an end. The body lay where it had fallen until four shoemakers found it, and the head, and conveyed both on a ladder to Warwick Castle. But Warwick came to the gate and refused the corpse admittance, ordering that it be carried off his land. So they took it back again and left it on Blacklow Hill, where they had found it. Soon, some Dominican friars of Oxford came upon the remains and conveyed them to their convent. They sewed the head back on with twine and had the body embalmed with balsam and spices and dressed in cloth of gold, but they could not give it Christian burial because Gaveston had died excommunicate. So they kept it in their friary until such time as its fate should be decided.273
In the opinion of one chronicler,274 Gaveston had been “wicked, impious and criminal, and as such deserved to die; but the manner of his death was equally impious and criminal.” As another observed, “They had put to death a great earl, whom the King had adopted as brother and cherished as a son and friend.”275 Whatever Gaveston had been, what happened at Blacklow Hill was little better than murder, and the repercussions from it were to overshadow Isabella’s life for many years to come.
CHAPTER THREE
All That Is Prudent, Amiable, and Feminine
When they brought the news of Gaveston’s murder to the King, although he was “saddened,” his first reaction appeared callous.
“By God’s soul, he acted like a fool!” he cried angrily to those standing by. “If he had taken my advice, he would never have fallen into the hands of the earls. What was he doing with the Earl of Warwick, who was known never to have liked him?”
When this “flippant utterance became public, it moved many to derision.” But of course, Edward was devastated by grief. His biographer wrote, “I am certain the King grieved for Piers as a father grieves for his son. For the greater the love, the greater the sorrow.” And to grief was added deadly rage, as Edward vowed to destroy those who had killed Gaveston and thus avenge his murder.1
Edward’s need for vengeance was to dominate his life in the years to come. He could not bring himself to forgive those who had committed this final a
trocity. “Because of Gaveston’s death, there arose a mortal and perpetual hatred of the King for his earls,” observed a chronicler.2
Nor did he neglect to do all honor to Gaveston’s remains. Both he and Piers’s widow paid for waxed cere cloths and a coffin in which to lay the dead man’s unburied body and funded men to watch over it;3 Edward also made generous financial provision for Margaret de Clare and her daughter, and for Gaveston’s former servants,4 and he gave gifts to the Dominicans at Langley in return for prayers for Piers’s unhallowed soul.5
Gaveston’s murder split the barons’ party and undermined the opposition, removing the threat of civil war. It brought an angry Pembroke, “full of rage” and still smarting at that broken oath, over to the King, and Surrey and Hugh le Despenser the Younger with him.6 It also led to the emergence of the Elder Despenser, whom Lancaster loathed, as leader of the court party that supported Edward.7 There were, of course, many who rejoiced in the fall of the favorite8—“the death of one man had never before been acceptable to so many”9—but others were shocked and of the opinion that the Lords Ordainers had acted unlawfully. Consequently, there was considerable sympathy for the King.10 Edward was now in a stronger position than he had been since his accession.
Isabella was at the royal manor house at Burstwick on the day of Gaveston’s beheading; she moved to Beverley the next day and had returned to York before 29 June, when she gave the chaplain of “the chapel of the Temple, next to York Castle, material for one chasuble”; the next day, she made her oblations before the altar of Saint Mary’s Abbey.11 Isabella must have learned of Gaveston’s death by then, because on 29 June, she wrote to the King, almost certainly to express her sympathy, and perhaps her outrage, at his loss.12 There is no suggestion anywhere that Edward ever entertained any notion that Isabella had been involved in Gaveston’s death.13