by Alison Weir
Matters had not turned out anywhere near as well as the King had hoped, and on 14 May, he complained to the Pope that the Queen had not been granted all that she had requested and that this was the fault of the legates, who had suggested her mission and held out false hopes of her success.17
Doherty outlines a convincing theory that the unsatisfactory terms of the treaty were the outcome of a deliberate attempt by Charles IV, Isabella, Stratford, Airmyn, and the legates to discredit the Despenser administration and give Isabella a pretext for staying on in France; however, he also cites Isabella’s letter of 31 March as proof that she had made every effort to reach an acceptable settlement. Furthermore, in this letter, she asked Edward’s permission to remain in France, and we know that he gave it because he sent her funds for her support.18
By 18 May, Stratford and Airmyn were back in France. That evening, Airmyn dined with Isabella in the royal palace at Vincennes.19 Soon afterward, Charles IV appointed commissioners to treat with the English envoys.20
Isabella was present when the peace treaty was drawn up on 30 May at the Palace of the Cité in Paris; it was substantially the same as the draft sent to Edward and contained only an imprecise reference to the King of England’s one day receiving justice concerning the Agenais. The treaty was ratified by Charles IV the next day and by Edward II on 13 June, although Edward can hardly have found its terms congenial and must have wondered whether it had been worth his while to send Isabella to France: she had been “no more successful than any other ambassadors, except that her brother, out of affection for her, prolonged the truce.”21 Indeed, for all his fine words, Charles had been largely impervious to her persuasions, granting only a few financial concessions “for the love of the Queen of England.” There was nothing more for Isabella to do in France, and it was probably around now that Edward began to agitate for her return, writing to her frequently of his desire to have her with him.22 But Isabella had no wish to go back and live under Despenser’s tyranny. She may well have decided to prolong her stay in France for as long as possible.
Isabella’s expenditure in Paris was heavy: up until 29 September alone, it amounted to £2,841 17s. 7d.; after that, the accounts are incomplete.23 Prior to 17 June, these expenses were met by the Exchequer, the money being taken out of the Queen’s confiscated revenues, but on 17 June, these payments abruptly ceased,24 possibly because Edward saw no need for his wife to stay in France any longer.
In July, Charles IV married Jeanne of Evreux. Shortly after the wedding, doubtless embarrassed by her dwindling funds, Isabella left Paris and took up residence in the royal castle at Châteauneuf, some forty miles west of Paris. King Charles came to her rescue and, from 18 July to 1 September, subsidized her living expenses.25 During this period, she lodged at various places near Paris, including Sainte Hilaire, Poissy, Mantes, Saint-Germain, Corbeil, and Fontainebleau, and spent her time visiting churches and entertaining; among her guests were the new Queen of France, the Abbot of Saint-Denis, the Earl of Richmond, Louis de Clermont, the Countess of Foix, and the papal legates.26
John Salmon, the Bishop of Norwich, died on 6 July, and as soon as she heard, Isabella put forward the name of her friend William Airmyn (or Ayermine) to the Pope. Airmyn, a canon of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, had been Keeper of the Privy Seal until January 1325, when he had been elected to the See of Carlisle; however, his election had been quashed a month later. Airmyn knew Isabella well: they had worked closely together in 1321, when sharing custody of the Great Seal. John XXII now proved most accommodating and expeditious, providing Airmyn to the vacant See of Norwich on 19 July. However, in England, four days later, King Edward’s candidate, Robert Baldock, was elected by the Chapter of Norwich as their bishop; he received his temporalities from the King on 25 August.
Edward’s intention of going to France to pay homage had been implicit in his ratification of the new treaty. By 15 August, arrangements had been made for the ceremony at Beauvais,27 and the King began to prepare for his journey. But the Despensers were filled with trepidation at the prospect of his going abroad and leaving them at the mercy of their enemies28 and were also unwilling to afford Isabella any opportunity of regaining her influence with her husband. Thus, when the proposed visit was debated in council, opinion was divided as to the wisdom of the King’s leaving his realm at this time. But Leicester, who was in favor of his going, carried the day.
On 23 August, Edward arrived in Dover with his eldest son, ready—for all intents and purposes—to depart.29 But the Despensers continued to urge him not to leave England.30 The next day, Edward suddenly announced that he was too ill to travel and that he was sending a new embassy, headed by Richmond and Stratford, to France to make different arrangements.31
Knowing that Despenser would be left behind in England, Isabella may have been looking forward to Edward’s visit as an opportunity to lay before him her grievances about Hugh and the treatment she had suffered. She might even have planned to offer him an ultimatum, that either the favorites were dismissed or she stayed in France, and she may have counted on, or been promised, the support of Charles IV in these negotiations. But Edward was not coming now.
It must have been at this point that Isabella conceived a scheme whereby the terms of the treaty could be met, and she herself would, at the very least, be able to wield the upper hand in any confrontation with Edward over the Despensers. It would also remove her eldest son from the orbit and control of the favorites. On 1 September, the Queen returned to Paris to meet with Richmond and Stratford.32 The following evening, she entertained the Bishop to dinner and suggested to him that Prince Edward be given all his father’s continental possessions and be sent to pay homage in his stead. This, as we have seen, was not a new idea but one that had been mooted the previous winter by Charles IV. Presciently, on the same day that Isabella was dining with Stratford, Prince Edward was being invested as Count of Ponthieu and Montreuil, as his mother’s heir, at Langdon Abbey near Dover. In France, Isabella was to protest against this, whereupon Charles IV assured her that “the homage done by the Prince her son” for these counties would not “in any way prejudice her interests therein.”33
Stratford and Isabella put the Queen’s suggestion to Charles IV, who, on 4 September, issued letters patent in which he agreed to accept the homage of the Prince, whereupon Stratford hastened back to England to obtain the King’s approval. Some of Edward’s advisers “were of the opinion that his son would be vulnerable to all manner of misfortunes if he were exposed to the wily and avaricious French without the protection of his father. Those who argued thus were indeed justified.”34 But the Despensers were greatly in favor of the idea,35 for “they dared neither to cross the Channel with King Edward, nor to remain behind in England in his absence.”36 Rashly, therefore, Edward II agreed to send his son to France in his stead, little realizing that, by allowing his heir to go overseas to his mother, he was placing in Isabella’s hands a hostage to fortune.
On 10 September, the twelve-year-old Prince was created Duke of Aquitaine. Two days later, in the company of Bishops Stratford and Stapledon, Henry de Beaumont, and a number of lords and knights, he boarded a vessel for France.37 Before it sailed, his father made him promise that he would not accept any guardian nor enter into any marriage alliance without the King’s permission.38 Negotiations were well advanced for the Prince’s marriage to the Infanta Eleanor of Aragon; at the same time, Edward was planning to marry one of his own daughters to Pedro, the heir of James II, King of Aragon, and applications had already been made to the Pope for the necessary dispensations.39 Naturally, the King did not wish to prejudice this hoped-for alliance. The Prince told his father that it should be his pleasure to obey his commandments, as far as he could, all his days.40
When young Edward’s ship dropped anchor at Boulogne on 14 September, his mother was waiting to greet him and take him with her to Paris. Isabella must have been overjoyed to see her son, but not so pleased to discover that Stratford had brought with him a
safe-conduct for her from the King, who had commanded her to return home “without delay” as soon as the Prince had performed his homage.41
Evading this issue, Isabella turned her attention to the imminent consecration of the new Bishop of Norwich. A few days earlier, much to Edward’s chagrin, Robert Baldock had been obliged by the Pope to resign from the See of Norwich in favor of William Airmyn; twice now, thanks to Isabella’s influence, Baldock, that close associate of the Despensers, had been deprived of high episcopal office, despite being the King’s nominee. Isabella was well aware how furious Edward and the Despensers would be at the success of her candidate, William Airmyn, and to ensure that no further obstacles were placed in his way, she arranged for Airmyn to be consecrated Bishop of Norwich at a ceremony in France on 15 September, “for which the King was angry.”42 By then, however, it was too late for Edward to do anything about it, apart from vengefully refusing to allow Airmyn the temporalities of his see.
On 22 September, the Queen and her son arrived in Paris, and Isabella witnessed the young Duke of Aquitaine’s first audience with his uncle, Charles IV, who “received him kindly.”43 Two days later, the Prince did homage to Charles at the royal hunting lodge at Bois-de-Vincennes, “in the presence of the Queen his mother” and many English lords.44 Immediately afterward, Charles ordered the withdrawal of French troops from Gascony.
Edward was now hoping that the Agenais would soon be returned to him, but shortly afterward, Charles informed him that he intended to retain that territory as indemnity for French losses suffered during the war. Strickland suggests that Isabella had deliberately arranged this in order to give herself a further pretext for staying on in Paris, but it may be that King Charles himself had conceived it as a strategy for keeping the heir to England in France and wresting every advantage out of Edward.
During her stay in France, Isabella had earned the support of several men at her brother’s court, notably her cousin, Robert of Artois.45 She also became a magnet for a group of disaffected Englishmen, among them “exiles who were the enemies of the King of England, but who had gained the Queen’s favour.”46 It is not known exactly when these men switched their allegiance to Isabella, but it is probable that her support expanded over a period of months. Some of her new adherents, such as Sir John Maltravers, had escaped from England after Boroughbridge;47 the rest, such as John, Lord Ros, had other scores to settle with Edward and the Despensers. Both the Queen and these men had one thing in common: their loathing of the favorites.
Isabella’s chief supporter at this time appears to have been the Earl of Richmond, who had served as the principal English envoy in France since the previous year. He had been greatly offended by the Despensers and was now “one who was of the affinity of the Queen”48 and was often in her company, both before and after the homage. The King recalled him many times,49 but he repeatedly ignored these summonses.
Another who had attached himself to the Queen’s party was the King’s own brother, the Earl of Kent. Kent had returned to France on 25 August, in company with Surrey, who had been appointed captain of the English forces in Aquitaine. On 6 October, Kent was to obtain from the Pope a dispensation permitting him to marry Margaret, the daughter of John, Lord Wake, and a cousin of Roger Mortimer: her mother and his were sisters. The marriage took place in December 1325. Margaret’s brother, Thomas, Lord Wake, had once been the Queen’s ward and was now with Isabella in Paris.
Bishop Airmyn, who owed his see to Isabella, became another member of this cabal. “A prudent and circumspect man, efficient and experienced,”50 he was a natural ally of the Queen, not only on account of her earlier intervention with the Pope on his behalf but also because he was seriously out of favor with the King after Baldock’s expulsion from Norwich.
Henry de Beaumont had long been Isabella’s friend and, like her, a victim of the Despensers’ spite. He had his finger on the pulse of political opinion in the north of England and was able to tell her that a majority of Edward’s subjects there had turned against him, many having been irrevocably alienated by Edward’s failure to deal effectively with the Scottish raiders. In time, Beaumont would return to England to sound out the northern lords as to where their loyalty really lay.51
Beaumont’s fellow envoy, Bishop Stratford, was also sympathetic toward the Queen, as was John, Lord Cromwell, who had accompanied her to France in March. Both were men whom Edward had obviously thought he could trust, so it must have come as a shock when Cromwell repeatedly defied his orders to return. Stratford was more subtle, and there was no open breach between him and the King, but the evidence suggests that his true loyalties lay with Isabella.
Someone who joined the Queen later in Paris was the Prince’s former tutor, Richard de Bury, who, in his capacity as young Edward’s official receiver in Gascony, had been illicitly diverting revenues to the Queen, for which he only narrowly escaped arrest by fleeing to the French court.52 Bury had long since discovered in Isabella a kindred spirit with a love of books, and his first loyalty was to her and the Prince, who was always to look on him with great favor.
Judging by how promptly they were to come to Isabella’s support the following year, Leicester and Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England and a young man “of a wild and wicked character,”53 must have been in secret communication with her for some time. Although both were close kin to the King, neither was prepared to endure the tyranny of the Despensers for any longer than necessary, while Lancaster had his own deadly score to settle, for he wanted revenge for the execution of his brother and restitution of the Lancastrian inheritance. In Isabella, both he and Norfolk saw an ally who was well placed to take action against the favorites.
According to Ian Mortimer, earlier intelligence reports sent back to England show that some of the exiles had in the past kept company with Roger Mortimer as he moved around the Continent. It is possible, therefore, that they were still in touch with him. Perhaps, too, they were in contact with Mortimer’s partisan Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, who was to prove himself a staunch supporter of Isabella in 1326. It is not unfeasible that the exiles were also negotiating with Mortimer himself, with a view to securing his support for the Queen.
Isabella now began to hold “secret conferences”54 with her supporters and came to rely on their counsel; in so doing, she gave offense to those officials who had been sent by Edward to give her guidance55 and who now expressed surprise at the Queen’s conduct in consorting with her husband’s known enemies. Charles IV must have known about these secret talks, at which the chief topic was doubtless the dilemma in which Isabella found herself. Should she go home, as her husband was commanding, and risk incurring the fury of Despenser; or could she contrive to stay in France?
For more than a year, Isabella was to insist that her quarrel was with the Despensers alone. Yet there is evidence, as we will see, that the exiles surrounding her were bent on targeting the King as well, and it seems that they did their utmost to persuade the Queen that she would be justified in lending her support to the overthrow of a weak and tyrannical regime. Isabella initially may well have resisted this scheme and apparently spent weeks agonizing over what course she should take, which would explain why she did not deliver Edward any ultimatum regarding the Despensers until November and why she continued to send cordial letters to the favorite.56 Avoiding any criticism of Hugh, or an open breach, would make life easier for her if she was forced to return to England.
Charles’s retention of the Agenais left Edward seething with rage. Too late, he attempted to reassume the rights he had just devolved upon his heir, but Charles was having none of it and declared the whole duchy forfeit, much to the King’s horror; later, the French King was to send a force into Gascony to defend the Prince’s tenure. As far as the peace was concerned, Isabella’s mission had been in vain, but it was to serve another, more sinister purpose.
Edward was also simmering with anger against his envoys in France, Airmyn and Richmond, who he was convinced had betrayed him over
the treaty. He ordered their arrest and brought a case against the absent Airmyn in the Court of King’s Bench.57 The King was now beginning to be perturbed by Isabella’s failure to return home and the fact that she had his heir in her custody, a circumstance of which he seems to have feared—and with good reason—that Charles IV might take advantage. Now that the treaty had been concluded and the homage performed, he saw no reason for Isabella and Prince Edward to stay in France.
Isabella, on the other hand, had every reason to keep her son with her. Having the heir to England in her control gave her every advantage. Not only was he Edward’s heir, but Edward was also very fond of the boy, and Isabella was aware that the threat of his being kept in France would be a powerful bargaining counter in forcing her husband to banish the Despensers. Edward might regard her as dispensable, but he could not do without his son and heir. Moreover, the Prince was a valuable asset in the dynastic marriage market and could be used by his mother as a means of forging an alliance that would assure her of political and military support in her quarrel with Edward. That Isabella came to contemplate going to such lengths to get rid of the Despensers shows how deadly was her hatred of them. But it makes even more sense in the context of her considering another agenda entirely, in the event of Edward’s failing to cooperate: in which case, she would endeavor to bring about the deposition of the King himself, in favor of his son. For if Isabella defied Edward to the extent of allying with his enemies and marrying off his heir against his father’s will, how could she ever hope to be reconciled to him? The Prince was the key to the success of such a daring scheme, and with him in her possession, and the backing of Charles IV, Isabella was in a very strong position.