by Lisa Hilton
Flanders had pursued a policy of neutrality during the first period of Edward’s alliance against the French, but with Count Louis I having died fighting for Philip VI at Crécy, Edward and Philippa now saw an opportunity to make another attempt at a pact by betrothing Isabella to the new Count, Louis II. Louis had no intention of marrying Isabella, as he had already fixed upon Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, as a bride, but he played for time, and in November 1346 Philippa and Isabella crossed to Calais. In March, the families met at Bergues, near Dunkirk, and Louis promised to marry Isabella within a fortnight of Easter Day, accepting 25,000 pounds in rents and the massive sum of 400,000 gold deniers as her dowry, until such time as her father could recover on her behalf her grandmother’s county of Ponthieu. The reluctant bridegroom then made off on horseback during a celebratory hunting party and Isabella found herself jilted.
Isabella and her father were very close, and after this embarrassment, Edward tried to compensate by spoiling her. He allowed her to preside at tournaments and one, at Canterbury, was even given in her honour. She had more attendants than her sisters, and by the time she was nineteen was allowed her own household, whereas Margaret and Mary had to make do with twenty marks’ pocket money. As Edward lavished attention on his eldest daughter, she and Philippa became estranged, to the point where they avoided one another’s company. Eventually, Isabella announced that she did wish to take a husband: Bernard Ezzi, the son of a minor Gascon lord. It was a shoddy match for the daughter of Edward III, but her parents made the best of it and a grand wedding was planned at Windsor. A week before the ceremony, Isabella capriciously changed her mind, though she kept the money her father had settled on her (not to mention the clothes, descriptions of which run to pages in the accounts), and continued at court with all the advantages and none of the responsibilities of a married woman. Poor Bernard renounced his inheritance and died in a monastery Whether Philippa felt guilty that she had not handled the Louis fiasco better, or resented the relationship between her husband and her vain, extravagant daughter, she and Isabella were to remain on poor terms until the mid 1360s.
Philippa’s visit to Calais in August 1347 was the setting for the most famous and symbolically resonant incident of her queenship. Edward had successfully besieged the city and as punishment for its resistance had finally elected to execute six token townsmen, who carried the keys to the city to the King with ropes about their necks. According to Froissart:
The noble queen of England, who was heavily pregnant, humbled herself greatly and wept so tenderly that none could bear it. The valiant and good lady threw herself on her knees before the King and said ‘Ah, my dear Lord, since I came across the sea in great peril as you know, I have asked nothing of you nor required any favour. Now I humbly pray and request of you a favour, that for the Son of the Holy Mary and for the love of me, you shall wish to have mercy on these six men.’ The King waited a little before he spoke and he looked upon the good Lady his wife, who was very pregnant and wept so tenderly on her knees before him. A change of heart came over him as she knelt there before him and when he spoke he said ‘Ah, Lady, I would have much preferred you were anywhere but here. You have prayed so strongly that I dare not refuse the favour you ask of me.’
The first point to be made about this account is that it cannot be factually accurate. Philippa gave birth to her next child, the second William, in May 1348. She could have been just pregnant, could, as an experienced mother, have known herself to be so, but she could not have looked ‘heavily pregnant’. Why does Froissart make her condition the focus of her entreaty? The connection between intercession and fertility was made very explicit for English queens in their coronation ritual, yet this poignant image of the cumbrously child-laden woman weeping on her knees, much beloved of Victorian artists as ‘Queen Philippa Pleading for the Burghers of Calais’, strikes an odd, stagey note. There is no reason to believe that Philippa did not make her successful intercession, but Froissart’s description points to something having changed in the power that intercession represented. Recall Isabella’s intervention for the banishment of the Despensers, a formulaic gesture that allowed Edward II to carry out a necessary policy without appearing to back down. Philippa’s supplication marks another stage in the process by which intercession ceased to be a manifestation of real political strength, albeit one enacted in the context of a symbolic paradigm, and became an allegorical performance, a brief manifestation of the feminine side of the body politic. Philippa’s pleas are transgressive, in that they contradict the King’s stated plan, but permitted because of her status as queen and the resonance of her pregnancy As Paul Strohm puts it, ‘Without any disrespect to the force of [Edward’s] male ire, his wife has contributed a supplementary perspective that will enhance the reputation of his kingship.’ 9Philppa Is all femininity — tear-sodden, begging and fulsomely maternal. In case anyone should miss the point, she invokes the Virgin and draws attention to her condition — ‘I came across the sea in great peril’ — and thus the special position of her unborn child, hovering between the spiritual and earthly realms. Her whole body is a representation of Edward’s power, not just her kneeling, mentioned, like her pregnancy, three times, but her belly, the proof of his virility and of the future security of his kingdom. Edward, by contrast, is cast as the perfect embodiment of male authority: upright, stern, omnipotent. Together, the King and Queen act out a little mystery play of royal might tempered by royal mercy. Philippa’s actual power is reduced while her symbolic usefulness increases. The Queen’s spontaneous gesture has become carefully contrived, absorbed into, rather than a reaction against, the King’s ultimate authority.
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Philippa’s brother-in-law Louis of Bavaria died in October 1347. Philippa’s share in the inheritance of Hainault had been in dispute since the death of her brother William in 1345. William had left no heirs, and Edward was keen that Philippa’s rights be recognised along with those of her living sisters, Margaret, Jeanne and Isabelle. On William’s death, Louis, as Emperor, had conferred Hainault on Margaret and then on their son William, but when his father died, William resisted his mother’s claim to the county and refused to offer her any compensation for its resignation. By 1351, the inheritance dispute had escalated into civil war between the ‘Cods’, William’s supporters, and the ‘Hooks’, who declared for his mother. Edward sent military aid to Margaret, as her victory was obviously in Philippa’s interests, but the Cods defeated the Hooks at the battle of Vlaardingen, and Edward was obliged to pursue a policy of conciliation. He offered an alliance in the person of Maud, the co-heiress to the Duke of Lancaster, in 1352, but this could not prevent William from taking over Hainault after his mother’s death in 1356. William got his just deserts — he went mad and had to be locked up for the next thirty years — but Philippa was no better treated by his successor, her nephew Albert. She has been unfairly characterised as being hopeless with money, but with Edward constantly borrowing from her randomly paid allowance and the Hainault inheritance deadlocked, it is hardly surprising that she found herself perpetually running into debt.
Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile had both been castigated for their harsh management of their lands and their determination to squeeze every penny they could from their tenants, and they had died rich. Philippa was a less effective manager in that she attracted the criticism without the profits. Still, her Hainault blood showed in her enterprising spirit. The Scots wars had stalled coalmining in the valleys near Newcastle, but Philippa asked Edward to permit her bailiff, Alan de Strothere, to work a mine at Aldernstone, with a degree of success. In February 1351 she appointed Thomas de Clogh keeper at her castle of High Peak in Derbyshire and set him to work at a lead mine. John de Moneyasse was also chosen to ‘find lead from time to time as required by the King and Queen for their works in London’ and to arrange for shipment. For the management of her business affairs, Philippa was granted La Reole in the London ward of Vintry as a seat for her wardrobe.
She attempted to exercise her unique queen’s prerogatives — her council can be seen, for example, considering a plan to let the farm of Bristol to its mayor and commune for ten years — but she frequently found herself in trouble for taking excessive advantage of her legal status. In 1352 a special commission was set up under Sir John JVloleyns to investigate ‘too grievous fines and amercements’ on the Queen’s lands.
On Philippa’s return from France in 1347, funds were needed for the preparation of a new marriage for her daughter Joan, this time to the heir to the throne of Castile. Joan was kitted out with two folding chairs and a copper warming pan, as well as more glamorous gifts of scarlet and purple saddles inlaid with pearls, two sets of tapestries patterned with birds and roses and a cloth-of-gold bridal dress. The wedding was arranged for November, and Joan left Westminster in January to sail from Plymouth to Bordeaux, where she would spend the summer before travelling to Bayonne for the ceremony. In September, in the village of Loremo, she contracted the Black Death, and died aged fourteen.
The spread of bubonic plague, which had entered England by June 1348, was described by Thomas Walsingham as ‘the great mortality’, spreading ‘throughout the world from south to north, so catastrophic that hardly half the population remained alive. Towns once full of men were left forsaken until the epidemic had left scarcely enough men alive to bury the dead.’10 Estimates of the death rates in England suggest that as much as one third of the population was wiped out in the first phase of the plague, which broke out periodically until the seventeenth century. The royal family immediately left London. At Windsor in October, Philippa received Edward’s younger sister, Queen Joan of Scotland, on a visit to her imprisoned husband. In the ensuing months she stayed at Clarendon, Woodstock and Langley in an attempt to avoid the plague, but in the wake of the loss of Joan she had to bear that of another child, her youngest boy, William. He was buried at Windsor beside his sister Blanche in St Edmund’s chapel.
As ever in Philippa’s life, personal events took place against the background of her husband’s wars. In 1350 she was an eyewitness to one of the most exciting naval battles of the century, in which Edward and the Black Prince took on a fleet of Castilian pirates. The Spanish were allies of the French, though at sea the difference between military activity and privateering was barely discernible. An English flotilla had been captured off the coast of Flanders by a Castilian commander, Carlos de Cerda, the ships taken and the crews thrown unceremoniously into the sea. Edward resolved to recover his ships as the Spaniards returned home, and as they neared Rotherhithe, he was waiting for them with a fleet of fifty, including his own galleon, the Cog Thomas. Philippa and her ladies watched from Winchelsea convent as the ships broadsided one another, and Edward had a dramatic escape, climbing on to a speared Spanish vessel just before the Cog Thomas went down. His heavy household galley, La Salle du Roi, and the battle, looked lost when a Spanish ship bore down on it, but both were saved by the quick thinking of a Flemish squire, Robert of Namur, who boarded the Castilian vessel and slit her rigging. The battle of ‘Espagnols’ was another greatest hit for the century’s most glamorous warrior, the Black Prince, who achieved immortality with his victory over the French in 1356, as Lieutenant of Aquitaine, at Poitiers, where he captured the French King himself. King Jean was given the palace of the Savoy as a most comfortable prison, and he praised the Queen for the elegance and warmth of his reception.
In 1355, Philippa gave birth to her last child, Thomas, at Woodstock. Margaret and John were married in 1358, Margaret, aged twelve, to the Earl of Pembroke and John to Blanche of Lancaster. John’s bride, also twelve, would eventually bring him the Lancaster estates of her father, the first Duke, upon which wealth he would found his dynasty. (Blanche’s father, Henry, and his elder brother Thomas of Lancaster, were the sons of Edward I’s younger brother Edmund.) Isabella was still single at the advanced age of thirty. She gave Blanche a wedding gift of silver buckles worth thirty pounds but characteristically neglected to pay for them. Soon afterwards, Edward and his four elder sons sailed for France, this time leaving Thomas as Guardian of the Realm. Philippa’s particular concern during this period was a French invasion, as Edward had attempted to muster practically every able-bodied man in England. She had King Jean removed to the Tower, garrisoned the castles at Pevensey, Old Sarum and Marlborough and ordered beacon fires to be prepared along the coast. One party of invaders did land at Wmchelsea, where they managed some burning and pillaging before being driven off
Deaths and weddings continued to mark the following years. Mary married the Duke of Brittany in 1360, but less than a year later was buried at Abingdon Abbey next to her sister Margaret, Countess of Pembroke. Joan of Scotland, Maud of Hainault and Lionel’s wife Elizabeth of Clarence succumbed in 1362. Two further weddings brightened Philippa’s grief, though neither was the splendid royal match she and Edward had hoped for. In 1361, the Black Prince secretly married his cousin, Joan of Kent, daughter of the Earl of Kent, Marguerite’s son Edmund, who had been executed by Isabella and Roger Mortimer. Joan, whom Froissart called ‘the most beautiful woman in all England’, had grown up in Philippa’s care, and apparently the Black Prince had always been attracted to her. However, she had a dubious marital history. Aged twelve she had been married to Thomas Holland without the permission of her guardian, Edward III. When Holland departed on crusade she was married again to William Montacute, heir to the Earl of Salisbury. When Holland returned, he quite reasonably asked for his wife back, and after much scandal the second union was annulled in 1349. Joan and Thomas went on to have four children together, but shortly after Thomas became Earl of Kent, in right of his wife, in 1360, he died, and with somewhat indecent haste his widow married her childhood sweetheart. The ceremony was declared invalid, as the couple were related within the prohibited degrees, but when the Black Prince refused to abandon his bride the King, against his better judgement, had to arrange for a swift dispensation and a public remarriage at Windsor, which he was too furious to attend.
So Joan might have been beautiful, but obviously she was no royal virgin, and her past history, not to mention her negligible diplomatic connections, made her a shabby choice for the next queen of England. Philippa, though, seems to have been content that her son was happy. She did attend the wedding, along with Isabella and Joan of Scotland. The Prince and Princess of Wales removed themselves from Edward’s bad temper by leaving the next year to govern Aquitaine, where Joan gave birth to two sons, Edward, who died young, and Richard of Bordeaux, Edward III’s eventual heir.
To Philippa’s evident satisfaction, her only living daughter Isabella was finally married off three years later, to Enguerrand de Coucy, a grandson of the Duke of Austria. Again, it was not a brilliant match, but Edward, ever-indulgent where Isabella was concerned, made the best of it and created De Coucy Earl of Bedford and Knight of the Garter. Isabella received a dowry of 4,000 pounds and 300 pounds-worth of jewels, and De Coucy an annuity of 300 marks. After Isabella’s first child, a daughter named Mary, was born in France in 1265, she and her mother, who had been on frosty terms for so long, grew closer. Isabella came back to England for her second lying-in, at which Philippa assisted, and the child, born at Eltham in 1367, was named for her grandmother.
Another namesake, Philippa of Clarence, Lionel’s daughter with Elizabeth de Burgh, married the Earl of March, Roger Mortimer’s great-grandson. Edward had revoked the attainder against the family in 1354, and Philippa’s union was to prove of crucial dynastic significance in the fifteenth century. Lionel himself was back on the matrimonial market, and in June 1368 he travelled to Italy as the betrothed of Violante Visconti, the daughter of the immensely rich Duke of Milan. Their wedding, in the city’s pink marble cathedral, was one of the social events of the century. Unfortunately, Lionel enjoyed la dolce vita too much, and died in October at Alba, having ‘addicted himself … to untimely banquetings’,11
Philippa had remained active well into middle age. She dislocated her s
houlder hunting at Cosham two years after Thomas’s birth and during Edward’s absences moved constantly between the royal palaces of the south-east, but Lionel’s death seemed to break her spirit. She had already suffered an attack of dropsy in 1367, and was now increasingly unwell. Yet she continued to support her husband with her Hainault connections, writing to her nephew Albert and sending him a gift of jewellery that had belonged to Maud of Hainault as a sweetener to his support for Edward in yet another assault on the French. She also wrote and sent gifts to the King of Cyprus. John of Gaunt left for Paris in early summer, while Philippa lay ill at Windsor, and on 15 August 1369 she died, with Edward and Thomas beside her.
Froissart’s description of her death is worth quoting at length, as despite his tendency to embroider, it reflects something of the way in which Philippa was perceived:
When the good Lady perceived her end approaching she called to the King and extending her hand from under the bedclothes, put it into the right hand of the King, who was very sorrowful at heart, and thus spoke. ‘We have enjoyed our union in happiness peace and prosperity, I entreat therefore of you on our separation that you will grant me three requests.’ The King with sighs and tears replied ‘My Lady, ask, whatever you request shall be granted.’ ‘My Lord, I beg you will acquit me of whatever engagements I have entered into with merchants for their wares as well on this as on the other side of the sea. I beseech you also to fulfil whatever gifts or legacies I may have left to churches here or on the continent where I have paid my devotions as well as what I may have left to those of both sexes who have been in my service. Thirdly, I entreat that when it shall please God to call you hence you will not choose any other sepulchre than mine and will lie by my side in the sepulchre at Westminster.’ The King in tears replied, ‘Lady, I grant them!’ Soon after the good Lady made the sign of the Cross on her breast and having recommended to God the King and her youngest son Thomas, who was present, gave up her spirit, which I firmly believe was caught by the Holy Angels and carried to glory in Heaven for she had never done anything by thought or deed which could endanger her losing it.