Queens Consort (37 page)

Gaveston’s exile was however, short-lived. Edward made him Lieutenant of Ireland, where he stayed for just a year, appropriating the Crown revenues for his own enrichment, until the King’s wheedling lobbying of the Pope, the barons and even his father-in-law produced a bull quashing the sentence of excommunication. Gaveston returned triumphantly in June 1309, and Edward received him joyfully at Chester. They kept Christmas together that year at Edward’s favourite manor of Langley in Hertfordshire, with Queen Isabella an awkward third. For his own protection, Gaveston went north when Parliament met in February 1310, while Isabella accompanied Edward to Westminster. By the end of March, Edward had been forced to accept the election of twenty-one ‘Lords Ordainers’, Pembroke among them, whose job would be to reform the government. It was particularly galling for Edward that a prominent member of this group was his cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, the most powerful magnate in the country and, until the Gaveston debacle, a firm supporter. The barons declared that if the King refused to accept their new rules, they would consider themselves free of the oath of loyalty they had sworn at his coronation. Edward announced his intention of resuming the Scottish campaign, in order to both reunite the barons and give him an opportunity to create a base of support in the north, but soon after he and Isabella arrived to join Gaveston at Berwick on 18 September, it became clear that hatred of Gaveston had superseded even the magnates’ pleasure in Scot-hunting and, humiliatingly, only three earls turned out to fight for Edward. Bruce commanded far more impressively than the English King, and his guerrilla tactics left the Scottish lowlands stripped of resources, forcing the invaders back over the border.

Edward and Isabella remained in the north until the following July, but all the Scottish campaign yielded was an opportunity for the Ordainers to consolidate their position. When Edward eventually appeared at
Westminster on 13 August 1311, he was presented with a list of forty-one injunctions. As with the Provisions of Oxford in Henry III’s reign, it was announced at the public proclamation of the injunctions on 27 September that disloyalty would be punished with excommunication. Isabella, unlike Eleanor of Provence, was not obliged to swear to the ordinances, confirming that her contemporaries at this juncture saw her political influence as minimal. The Queen was in communication with Marguerite, who was on a tour of her properties in Devizes, and a letter of 4 September suggests that she was keeping her aunt informed of events in London. Not surprisingly, one of the principal demands of the Ordainers was the removal, again, of Gaveston, whom they declared ‘a public enemy of the king and the kingdom’.
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Gaveston duly left the country in early November, but Edward clearly had no intention of keeping his promise. It is notable that at this point Edward restored Berkhamsted Castle to Marguerite, who kept Christmas there that year. Perhaps he hoped to enlist her support for Gaveston’s return, as he had done in the past.

By Christmas, Gaveston was back at Westminster. Interestingly, Queen Isabella now took a conciliatory attitude to him. Her New Year gifts diplomatically included presents of game to leading Ordainers, but she also sent a Brie cheese to Isabella de Vescy, whose husband Henry de Beaumont had been dismissed from court as a Gaveston supporter, and other delicacies to Margaret de Clare, Gaveston’s wife, who was expecting a child. If Isabella was naively hoping for some sort of reconciliation, even Edward appreciated that Gaveston’s presence in the capital was impolitic, and in January, followed by Isabella, he removed himself, with Gaveston in tow, to York. It was here that Margaret de Clare gave birth to her child — her churching was celebrated by ‘King Robert’s’ minstrels, who received forty marks — and despite the fact that Isabella’s husband was behaving with insane carelessness, this York court was a happy time for the Queen, too. She was able to write to Marguerite with the news that after four years she had become pregnant.

But the Ordainers were arming themselves in the south. Edward’s blatant defiance in recalling Gaveston was essentially a declaration of war, and by April the King was forced to move on to Newcastle, with an army commanded by the Earl of Lancaster in pursuit, so hurriedly that many of Isabella’s possessions were left behind. Edward’s lack of consideration for his wife’s condition was shown when, just two days after her arrival in Newcastle, she was obliged to move again, to Tynemouth Priory on the coast, ostensibly for her own safety. Lancaster’s men were in Newcastle on 4 May, and the King and the favourite made a scrabbling, undignified
retreat to Tynemouth, but a few days later, despite Isabella’s tearful pleas, they departed for Scarborough, leaving the Queen alone again (poor Margaret de Clare and her new baby having been left to fend for themselves in Newcastle). Entrusting the castle at Scarborough to Gaveston, Edward returned to York, where he summoned Isabella. But the favourite who had incurred such loathing with his boasts of military prowess surrendered to Pembroke on 19 May.

Gaveston’s good time was over. Pembroke accompanied him to Deddington in Oxfordshire. He swore that Gaveston would be treated honourably, on the pain of forfeiting his own estates, but the Earl of Warwick was less moderate. While Pembroke was absent on a visit to his wife, he abducted Gaveston and took him to Warwick, where the prisoner was forced to walk barefoot to the castle. ‘Blaring trumpets followed Piers, and the horrid cry of the populace. They had taken off his belt of knighthood, and as a thief and a traitor he was taken to Warwick.’
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On 19 June, Gaveston was beheaded on Blacklow Hill, saved from the full horror of a traitor’s death by his family connection to the Earl of Gloucester. The body was left in the dirt until a group of Dominican friars found it, sewed the head back and embalmed it. They carried the corpse to Oxford, but were chary of giving it burial because Gaveston was excommunicated as a consequence of defying the ordinances. The writer of the
Vita Edwardi Secundi
declared: ‘I may assert with confidence that the death of one man … had never before been so acceptable to so many’

Both Isabella and Marguerite had a part to play in the aftermath of Gaveston’s execution. Despite the satisfaction felt by many at the news of the favourite’s death, the magnates were divided over the legality of the killing and Pembroke, in particular, was furious that Warwick had caused him to break his word. He now returned to Edward’s party and pressured the King to take up arms against Warwick and Lancaster. After corresponding with Marguerite and meeting Pembroke in France, King Philip, mindful that Isabella was carrying an heir of his blood, tried to settle the dispute. The Queen entertained Philip’s envoy, her uncle the Comte d’Evreux, on 15 September, before he met the bishops and the Earl of Gloucester, who was also acting as a mediator. By December, a fragile, face-saving settlement had been reached, with the assassins formally requesting a royal pardon and Gaveston’s treasury, which had been captured at Newcastle, to be handed over to the King. Edward and Lancaster dined together in public, but Edward was still aching for revenge and Lancaster had no intention of abandoning the ordinances.

For the royal women, the birth of an heir to the throne on 13 November
1312 could not have been better timed. Edward experienced a surge in popularity, Isabella was finally confirmed in her role as Queen and the treaty of Montreuil had achieved its purpose. Isabella had moved to Windsor soon after her meeting with Evreux, and she remained there for the rest of her pregnancy, along with her aunt. Marguerite assisted at the birth of Prince Edward, and attended the christening in the chapel of St Edward on 17 November. After Isabella’s churching at Isleworth on Christmas Eve, the royal family kept Christmas at Windsor, removing to Westminster in late January. Londoners had already enjoyed a week of celebrations when the prince was born, but for the return of their Queen they organised a number of ceremonies, including a pageant by the Guild of Fishmongers, who contrived a fully fitted-out ship, which ‘sailed’, presumably on wheels, from Cheapside to Westminster, attended by the guild members in their finery.

Queen Isabella was unique among her predecessors in having a close family member near to her who had also been queen. There is simply not enough evidence to justify claiming that Marguerite’s queenship had a formative influence on the early years of Isabella’s, but both women’s households and practices were shaped by those of previous queens and their experiences of daily life were similar in many respects. Some details from Isabella’s surviving ‘household book’ give a sense of their routines as they moved between the twenty-five royal residences, many of which had been improved under Henry III and Edward I. Life was not necessarily entirely comfortable, but the innovations provided for the southern queens Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile had certainly made it more pleasant than once it had been. Two fires had destroyed many of the renovations at Westminster, and on her marriage Marguerite had been obliged to stay at York Place instead of in the queen’s apartments, afterwards occupying Eleanor of Provence’s apartments at the Tower when she was in London.

Edward II began restoring the Westminster rooms in 1307 in anticipation of Isabella’s arrival, rebuilding Eleanor of Castile’s garden, pool and aviary and adding two white chambers for himself and his wife. The lavatory system at Westminster had been updated with plumbing, while at Woodstock double doors were fitted to the privies, though private conveniences would have to wait until the reign of Richard II at the end of the century. One of the few attractive aspects of King John’s character was his fondness for baths (he took the remarkable number of eight in the first six months of 1209 and travelled with his own bathrobe), while Eleanor of Castile had been a staunch adherent of the dubious foreign
habit of bathing regularly. Isabella’s book records the transport of tubs and linen for the Queen’s bath, and other legacies from Eleanor were carpets and fruit trees in the Queen’s gardens. Marguerite and Isabella both slept in beds draped with dimity, and Isabella’s tailor, John de Falaise, made scarlet hangings for her bed as well as cushions for her chambers and cloths for her chapel. Isabella kept John extremely busy and, like Marguerite, had a fondness for prized Lucca silks. In 1311 and 1312, John produced one Lucca tunic, fifteen gowns, thirty pairs of stockings, four cloaks, six bodices and thirty-six pairs of shoes for Isabella. Many of Eleanor of Castile’s personal possessions had been sold on her death, though some of her jewellery remained and gifts of this were made to both Marguerite and Isabella. Both women also ordered new jewels in extravagant quantities — a girdle worn by Isabella for the wedding of one of her ladies in 1311 featured 300 rubies and 1,800 pearls. The French queens took their duty to display their magnificence seriously. When they rode through the countryside in chariots draped with gold tissue, wrapped in furs and jewel-coloured Lucca silks, they must have seemed to the grubbing labourers in the fields like creatures from another world.

Dress was a state matter, but Marguerite and Isabella also shared spiritual interests. Their mutual ancestor Blanche of Artois, the second wife of Eleanor of Provence’s son Edmund, had introduced the order of the Poor Clares, the sisters of the Franciscan friars, to England, and both women were patrons of the Franciscans, as Eleanor of Provence had been. Marguerite sponsored the altar of the Greyfriars church founded by Edmund at Newgate and Isabella presented three advowsons and two pounds for food supplies to the Poor Clares at Aldgate in 1358. They both chose to be buried in the Franciscan church, in the habits of the third order, to which they were admitted before they died. For lay members, the third order stressed penitence as well as a certain ascetism, and though Isabella was to have considerably more to repent of than her aunt, both of these women who had lived so luxuriously seem to have been attracted at the end of their lives to the Franciscan’s dynamic new message of simplicity and poverty.

Marguerite died in retirement at Marlborough on 14 February 1318. She did not achieve a great deal as Queen, and her reputation has been obscured by the notoriety of her niece, yet she was not irrelevant. Her interventions had been important in maintaining some degree of civility between her husband and his heir in the years before Edward I’s death. In 1301, he had relied on her judgement to advise the treasurer, Walter Langdon, of any amendments required in the letters of authority for truce
with the Scots. Her co-operation with Pembroke shows that she was capable of drawing on her natal connections to try to guide her stepson away from controversy. And her own sons, Thomas and Edmund, had significant and tragic roles to play in the career of their mother’s successor. Edward I’s famed uxoriousness was immortalised by his opulent memorialisation of his first queen, Eleanor of Castile, but although Marguerite had to accept a secondary role in his life and reputation, that role appears to have been both happy and productive.

PART FOUR

DEPOSITIONS, RESTORATIONS