by Alison Weir
Here also, apparently without flinching, she received the head of Stapledon, which was presented to her “as if it were a sacrifice to propitiate Diana.”76 According to a sixteenth-century source, she suppressed her distaste and dismay, for she could not approve of this sacrilegious murder,77 and expressed her thanks to the Mayor for “his late bloody act,” which she termed “an excellent piece of justice.”78 She then marched on to Berkeley Castle, which had been held by Despenser since 1322 and which she now restored to its rightful owner, Sir Thomas de Berkeley.79
In the absence of firm, centralized government, the kingdom was descending rapidly into chaos. “Thieves, murderers and all manner of criminals did great damage, knowing that no one would stand in their way or bring them to justice. Rapacity raged unchecked, so that any friend of the King, if found, would at once be stripped of his possessions or his life, and those responsible would suffer no punishment. It was enough for the conspirators that the victim had been of the King’s party.”80
By 18 October, Isabella had arrived before Bristol,81 with an army that now numbered two thousand. Bristol was then “a good town, large and rich and well enclosed, with a good seaport. And there is a very strong and powerful castle there, with the sea beating all round it.”82 The Queen’s army, under the command of Mortimer, immediately laid siege to the town and castle, which were held by the Elder Despenser.83
Meanwhile, the King’s efforts at Chepstow to secure military aid had proved futile.84 On 21 October, he and Despenser, “seeing the terrible situation they were in, and not knowing of any relief that might come to them from any quarter,” set sail from Chepstow “in a small boat.”85 They were perhaps making for Despenser’s island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, which could afford them a safe refuge, being well fortified by the “very steep and rugged cliffs” that rose above its coastline and “rendered attack impossible”;86 they might alternatively have been hoping to reach Ireland, whence they could bribe the Scots for reinforcements, which was what Isabella greatly feared.87 But in the event, they were tossed for four days by storms in the Bristol Channel before being driven back to Cardiff on 25 October.88
On her way to Bristol, Isabella had received alarming reports of the situation in London. Knowing that Prince John was there, and fearing for his safety, she had first written to the citizens, asking them to send her son to her, but they had effectively refused, for they wanted him in London, as their nominal leader.89 Isabella next wrote to Archbishop Reynolds, asking him to go to the capital and look to the Prince’s well-being. But, as Reynolds reported to Prior Eastry on 21 October, he was too terrified to enter London.90 For the time being, the Queen had therefore to trust the Londoners to keep her son safe, for she had too many pressing matters on her hands to go to London for the present, nor was she certain that it was safe for her to do so. The mood of its ever-mercurial citizens was bullish, and when the Queen had attempted to intercede for a German merchant who had fallen foul of them, she was bluntly told that no enemy of London could be a friend to her and that she should not meddle in the City’s business.91
On 25 October, Isabella ordered Roger Martival, Bishop of Salisbury, to hand over some treasures that Despenser had left with him to keep safely.92 Despenser, she was determined, should never profit from his illegal gains.
Edward was still at Cardiff on 26 October. On that day, Bristol fell to Isabella. Froissart says that “when the people of the town saw how powerful the Queen had become, and that almost all England was on her side, and clearly understood the danger they were in, they took counsel to give themselves up, and the town as well, in order to save their lives and their possessions.” In fact, public opinion in Bristol was so overwhelmingly in Isabella’s favor that Despenser, “overcome with despair,” was obliged to surrender to her without offering any resistance or negotiating any favorable terms for himself.93 Then the citizens joyfully “opened their gates, so that the Queen, Sir John and all the barons, knights and squires entered and lodged in the city.94 Those who could not get in stayed outside. Sir Hugh the Elder was taken and brought before the Queen, for her to do what she liked with him.”95 Isabella, observed Baker, who scathingly calls her “that harridan” or “that virago,” “had now attained a position of great power.”
Waiting for the Queen in Bristol were her “two little daughters,” eight-year-old Eleanor and five-year-old Joan, who had been living there under the guardianship of the Elder Despenser. When the Princesses were brought to her, “the Queen was overjoyed, since she had not seen them for a long time.”96
Isabella had now learned of the King’s departure from Chepstow, which she and her advisers deemed to be tantamount to abandoning his kingdom. This was an ideal opportunity to establish an alternative government, and later that day, 26 October, the Queen presided over a council that was attended by Mortimer, Kent, Norfolk, Lancaster, Wake, Beaumont, William, Lord Zouche, Robert de Montalt, Robert Wateville, Archbishop Bicknor, Stratford, Hotham, Burghersh, and Orleton. This council acted, it was claimed, by the consent of the community of the realm, and it proclaimed Prince Edward “custos” or Keeper of the Realm in the King’s absence, on the grounds that Edward had deserted his people.97 Isabella’s clerk, Robert Wyville, was appointed Keeper of the Prince’s Privy Seal, which gave the Queen control over her son’s acts. The council also acknowledged Leicester’s right to succeed to his brother’s inheritance, and that very day, he began styling himself Earl of Lancaster.98
Mortimer was noticeably absent from this council, which was a foretaste of things to come. He evidently preferred to exert his formidable power behind the scenes, through Isabella. In future months and years, Mortimer was to shun a formal role, which meant that he could easily dissociate himself from unpopular decisions and avoid being challenged. But his power was very real, nonetheless.
Bishop Stratford caught up with the Queen at Bristol,99 and on 26 October, Archbishop Reynolds finally switched his allegiance and wrote to her, begging for her protection.100
On 27 October, the Elder Despenser was tried at Bristol. “The Queen had him brought before her son and the barons that were there,” prominent among whom were Mortimer, Lancaster, Wake, Kent, and Norfolk, “and told him that she and her son would see that law and justice were done to them, according to their deeds.”
“Madam,” said Despenser, clearly expecting the worst, “may God give me a good judge and a good judgement. And if I may not have that in this world, may I have it in the next.”101
The proceedings against him mirrored exactly what had taken place at Thomas of Lancaster’s trial in 1322. The articles against Despenser were read out by Lord Wake, who asked the lords “to say on oath what judgement should be passed on those who were guilty of such crimes.” They conferred together “and reported it as their definite opinion that the defendant deserved death for the many horrible crimes with which he had been charged, and which were believed to be clearly proved.”102 Murimuth states he was found guilty “by clamour of the people,” or rather, by the ancient doctrine of “manifest ill-fame,” which disposed of the requirement to offer any evidence.
Sentence was passed by Sir William Trussell, who had been with Isabella in France. “Sir Hugh,” he said, “this court denies you any right of answer because you yourself made a law that a man could be condemned without right of answer, and this law shall now apply to you and your adherents.” The silencing of Despenser had probably been insisted on by Lancaster, whose brother had been condemned unheard in 1322, a victim of this alleged law.
Trussell went on, “You are an attainted traitor, for you were formerly banished as such, by the assent of the King and the whole baronage, and have never been reconciled. By force, and against the law of the land, and accroaching to yourself royal power, you counselled the King to disinherit and undo his lieges, and notably Thomas of Lancaster, whom you had put to death for no cause. You are a robber, and by your cruelty you have robbed this land, wherefore all the people cry vengeance upon you. Wherefore the court award
s that you be drawn for treason, hanged for robbery, beheaded for misdeeds against the Church, and that your head be sent to Winchester, of which place, against law and reason, you were made earl. And because your deeds have dishonoured the order of chivalry, the court awards that you be hanged in a surcoat quartered with your arms, and that your arms be destroyed forever.”103
It was a degrading and shameful punishment, and Isabella did her best to spare the old man,104 but she was overruled by Lancaster and his faction, who reminded her that she had undertaken to destroy the favorites, and Despenser suffered that same day, on the common gallows at Bristol. Afterward, his decapitated corpse was displayed like that of “any common thief,” tied by the arms to a forked gibbet, before a mob that screamed, “Traitor!” After four days, it was taken down, chopped up, and fed to the dogs.105
In happy ignorance of these events, the King and Despenser had been traveling through Glamorgan, trying to raise support among Despenser’s tenants,106 but most were hostile to him and refused to fight. On the day the Elder Despenser perished, the King and Despenser sought refuge in the latter’s massive stronghold at Caerphilly.107 They were well aware now that “the greater part of the country was won over to the side of the Queen and her elder son, and drawn up in opposition to the King,” and naturally, they “were worried and frightened and distraught.”108 But the King was still issuing useless commissions of array and writs of summons.109
On 28 October, writs were issued in the name of Prince Edward, summoning Parliament to meet at Westminster on 14 December and stating that, as the King would be absent from the kingdom, “Isabella, Queen Consort, and Edward, son of the King, the Guardian of the Realm, and the lords might treat together.”110
The King was still at Caerphilly Castle on 29 October, but two days later, his household accounts come to an abrupt end, doubtless as a result of his servants and clerks deserting him.111 Effectively, his reign was over and he was a fugitive.
At the end of October, aware that she held the country in her grip and no longer needed his services, Isabella sent John of Hainault and eight of his mercenaries to London to take possession of the Tower in her name and to act as a bodyguard for Prince John.112 Sir John was in receipt of an English pension from 9 November 1326 to 10 March 1327.
On 1 November, the Queen went to Hereford, where she was received “most respectfully and joyfully” by the people. Here, she kept the feast of All Saints “with great solemnity and ceremony, out of love for her son and respect for the foreign nobles who were with him.”113 The Queen took up residence as Orleton’s guest in his episcopal palace, which boasted an aisled Norman hall and stood on the south side of the cathedral.114 For the time being, she was sharing a household with her son, and on 1 November, a new household roll, listing the joint expenses of Isabella and Prince Edward, was drawn up.115 Writs were issued at Hereford in their joint names on 5 November,116 and on the sixth, the Prince nominated Stratford as Treasurer in place of Melton.117 His appointment would smooth the transfer of the Exchequer and Treasury to Isabella’s control.
The King had moved to Morgan on 3 November, and thence to Gower, where he was still desperately trying to raise troops on the fifth.118 He then moved to Neath, where he remained until 10 November; his last writs were issued there on the sixth and seventh.119 On the tenth, realizing that any further attempts at resistance were futile, Edward sent the Abbot of Neath and Rhys ap Gruffydd to open negotiations with Isabella.120 Her response was to send Lancaster, William, Lord Zouche, and Rhys ap Hywel (a Welsh clerk who had been released from the Tower by the Londoners and was to act as Lancaster’s guide) with an armed force to take the King.121
Meanwhile, in the hope of restoring law and order in the City of London, Isabella had sent Bishop Stratford to the citizens with a letter authorizing them to elect a new Mayor in place of the unpopular Hamo de Chigwell. Stratford’s arrival on 15 November heralded an end to the violence and anarchy of the past weeks. The Londoners chose as their Mayor Richard de Béthune, the merchant who had helped Mortimer escape from the Tower in 1323; his election would cement London’s loyalty to the Queen and Mortimer. John de Gisors, who had also assisted in Mortimer’s escape, was made Constable of the Tower.122
The circumstances surrounding the King’s capture are cloaked in obscurity. Apparently, his whereabouts were revealed to Lancaster either by the Welsh, in return for a bribe,123 or by the steward of the royal household, Sir Thomas Blount, and on 16 November, in torrential rain, the Earl apprehended Edward, Despenser, Baldock, and six other men, who were all that remained of the King’s supporters, in open country near Llantrissant, and escorted them under guard to the castle there.124 Many years later, however, Orleton, on being accused of having incited the people to seize the King, testified that it was well known that, by the time of their apprehension, Despenser was holding his master captive and that Edward “came of his own will to the Earl of Lancaster, his kinsman.”125 This is not an unlikely scenario: Edward had approached Isabella about a settlement, and Despenser would not have needed to be a genius to realize that she would demand nothing less than his death as the price of her agreement. He may well have used force to remove Edward to a place where the Queen’s messengers could not find him, and Edward could have sent Blount to seek them out. Blount could have told him that they were approaching, and he perhaps mistakenly assumed that they were coming to negotiate with him. Instead, Lancaster placed him under arrest and immediately escorted him to Monmouth Castle.
Five of those arrested by Lancaster were immediately released, but Despenser, Baldock, and Despenser’s marshal, Simon of Reading, who had appropriated the lands of one of Mortimer’s clients126 and even now had the effrontery to speak insultingly of the Queen, were entrusted to the vigilance of Lord Wake and sent in chains to Isabella at Hereford.127
That same day, Arundel was arrested in Shropshire by John de Charlton, who had been Edward’s chamberlain before being ousted by Despenser and was now high in favor with Isabella and Mortimer; his son was married to Mortimer’s daughter Matilda. Charlton brought his prisoner to the Queen at Hereford, where, on Mortimer’s express orders, Arundel was summarily beheaded128 without trial on 17 November, in company with his henchmen, Thomas de Micheldever and John Daniel. These executions without trial were acts of tyranny on the part of Mortimer, who had many reasons to regard Arundel “with a perfect hatred,” not the least because he had appropriated Chirk’s estates and some of Mortimer’s, too;129 and Isabella was a party to them.
On the journey to Hereford, Despenser’s jailer went out of his way to humiliate him. “Wake had Sir Hugh tied onto the meanest and poorest horse he could find, and he had him dressed in a tabard over his clothes, embroidered with the coat-of-arms that he bore, and so conducted him along the road as a public laughing stock. And in all the towns they passed through, he was announced by trumpets and cymbals, by way of greater mockery, till they reached the good city of Hereford.” Despenser, notes Froissart, “was not popular in that district,”130 and when they reached Hereford on 20 November, the crowds were waiting to greet him with savage mockery and screams of hatred, while Sir John of Hainault, that mirror of chivalry, with two other men, joined Wake in roughly dragging him through the streets.131
At the Bishop’s palace, Despenser and Baldock were delivered to the Queen as her prisoners, and she duly paid the £2,000 reward to their captors. Baldock, who was in holy orders, had claimed benefit of clergy and was given into the custody of Bishop Orleton, who kept him under house arrest in his London residence, Saint Mary Mountshaw in Old Fish Street Hill, near where the monument now stands.
That same day, Orleton was sent to Monmouth to demand that Edward II surrender the Great Seal of England. Now that the King had been found, he could in theory be restored to power, but of course, that was the last thing that Isabella and the majority of his subjects wanted. The Queen was also sensible of the fact that, with the King now indubitably resident in his realm, there was no longer any need f
or the Prince to act as its Keeper. So Orleton’s task, which he carried out successfully, was to persuade Edward to surrender the Great Seal to the Queen132 so that she could claim that she was acting in his name and her rule would have some semblance of legality. From the first, Isabella had been careful to win and retain the goodwill and approval of the people, and her anxiety to be seen to be acting within the law was to be repeatedly made manifest.
Isabella wanted to have Despenser tried and executed in London,133 not only to show that she had accomplished what she had come to do but also as an example to the riotous citizens and to achieve maximum publicity for the event. But Despenser was no fool, and realizing what fate surely awaited him, he had been refusing food and drink since his arrest, in an attempt to starve himself to death.134 After a week of this, he was so weak that it was feared that the journey to London would kill him and that he would thereby escape the punishment he deserved. So it was decided to try him in Hereford.
On 24 November, so faint with hunger that he was almost insensible, Despenser was brought before a “tribunal” consisting of the Queen and the same magnates who had condemned his father.135 A list of his misdeeds was read out to him by Sir William Trussell, “to which he made no reply.”136 Like his father, he was forbidden to say anything in his defense.
Despenser was accused of a whole catalog of crimes, including several committed against Isabella: unspecified cruelty shown toward the Queen; dishonoring and disparaging her and damaging her noble estate; maliciously interfering between her and her husband, to the detriment of their marriage (this is the closest the indictment came to a charge of sodomy with the King); advising the King to abandon the Queen at Tynemouth, to her life’s peril, in 1322; depriving the Queen of her dower and “ousting her from her lands”; attempting by bribery to turn members of the French court against her and even to procure her murder and that of the Prince; making it impossible for her to return from France with her son; procuring the murder of the late Earl of Lancaster; illegally confiscating the property of Bishops Orleton, Hotham, Burghersh, and Airmyn; incarcerating the Mortimers “in a harsh prison to murder them without cause, except for his coveting of their lands”; ill-treating the widows and children of the contrariants; and dishonoring the King by inducing him, after the Queen’s invasion, to abandon both his kingdom and his wife.137 The bitter grievances of both Isabella and Mortimer rang out loud and clear.