The Demon's Brood (19 page)

The leaders of what became an opposition were mediocrities. ‘Five earldoms and close kinship with the two greatest monarchs in the west gave neither dignity, policy, patriotism nor common sense to that most impossible of all medieval politicians, earl Thomas of Lancaster', says Tout, who adds he was ‘sulky, vindictive, self-seeking, brutal and vicious'.
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John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, was a disreputable nonentity, while the bookish Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick was treacherous. On the other hand, Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was impeccably honourable as well as eminently sane. So too was the aged Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who had been among the late king's most trusted ministers.

Gaveston's worst sin was depriving them of their role as the monarch's advisers. Jointly, they took an oath to make him leave the country and surrender his earldom, arriving in London
for the parliament of spring 1308 with armed retainers. Their spokesman was Lincoln, who had tried to make Piers behave sensibly but had been rebuffed. Complaining that the favourite was squandering the Crown's revenues, he insisted on his banishment. Edward dared not refuse. Giving up his earldom, Piers went to Ireland as lieutenant. Archbishop Winchelsey, who had returned to England more pugnacious than ever, announced he would excommunicate him should he dare to come back.

Even so, Edward secured Gaveston's return next year, by promising parliament to satisfy grievances such as failure to hear petitions and to improve the currency, disarming Lincoln, Hereford and Warwick with flattery. Philip IV, who had paid two of the earls to plot against Piers after complaints from Queen Isabella, withdrew his opposition when she was given the county of Ponthieu, while in exchange for more rigorous persecution of the Templars, the pope blocked Winchelsey's threat of excommunication. In July 1309 Gaveston rejoined the king, who met him when he landed at Chester, regranting his earldom and estates.

He made himself more disliked than ever, giving his fellow earls nicknames that circulated widely. Lancaster was the ‘Churl', the ‘Rangy Pig' or the ‘Fiddler', Warwick the ‘Black Dog of Arden' (from foaming at the mouth when in a rage), Pembroke ‘Joseph the Jew' and Lincoln ‘Burst Belly', while Gloucester, the only one who tolerated him, was ‘Whoreson' – an unkind allusion to the dowager countess's hasty second marriage. Nobody saw Edward without Gaveston's approval and he had a stranglehold on patronage. People suspected he was a warlock – there were rumours of his mother having been burned as a witch.

In the autumn he had a Lancaster retainer sacked from the royal household. ‘Watch out, Piers', warns the
Vita
. ‘The earl of Lancaster will pay you back.'
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At Christmas the earls refused to come to court if he was present, telling Edward that while Piers was in the royal chamber they did not feel safe. They attended parliament in March 1310 on condition he stayed
away. When it met, they declared the realm had fallen into a perilous condition since the late king's death and could only be saved by an elected council. The king reluctantly agreed to the election of ‘Ordainers', who included Archbishop Winchelsey and Lancaster with some of Edward I's old ministers. Then, on Gaveston's advice, Edward tried to distract them with a campaign in Scotland.

In September 1311 the Ordainers demanded that the king ‘live of his own' and observe the charters, and that royal gifts and appointments to high office should be controlled by a twice yearly parliament. His household was purged of unpopular officials, while foreign merchants collecting the customs were arrested – a measure aimed at the royal banker, Amerigo de Frescobaldi, who was ruined. What hurt Edward most was the ordinance against Gaveston, accused of estranging the king from his natural advisers, unlawfully accepting estates and protecting criminals. He was exiled as a public enemy.

In November Gaveston left for Flanders, but the Ordainers went too far by insisting that his friends and hangers-on leave court as well. Defiantly, Edward recalled him, and he was back in January with his lands restored. In response, the earls made Lancaster their leader and entrusted Pembroke with catching Piers, while Winchelsey prepared another excommunication. Unaware of this, Edward spent most of April with Gaveston in Newcastle until they learned Lancaster was coming with an army. Leaving Piers, who had fallen ill, at Scarborough Castle, the king went off to find troops.

Pembroke besieged the castle and on 19 May, without a proper garrison or provisions, Piers surrendered on condition he be kept safe until parliament met, after which he could go back into the castle if satisfactory terms had not been agreed. Pembroke took his captive south, leaving him at Deddington
rectory in Oxfordshire while he visited his wife at their manor nearby. Early on the morning of 10 June the Earl of Warwick's men surrounded the house and seized Piers, dragging him off to Warwick Castle, first on foot at the end of a rope and then on a broken-down nag.

Ten days later, he was handed over to Lancaster before whom he grovelled, begging for mercy. ‘Pick him up! Pick him up!', cried the earl. ‘In God's name, take him away!' He was led off to Blacklow Hill 2 miles off, where a Welshman ran him through with a sword and another Welshman hacked his head off, Lancaster watching from a distance. According to the
Vita
, all England rejoiced at the news, with one exception. ‘By God's soul, he behaved like a fool', cried Edward. ‘If he'd taken my advice, the earls would never have got hold of him. I always told him to keep clear of them as I knew something like this would happen. Just what did he think he was doing with the Earl of Warwick, who hated Piers, as everybody knows? I was sure he could never escape if the earl caught him.'
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Civil war seemed unavoidable. The earls wanted the ordinances; the king wanted revenge. But while the earls controlled northern England and had captured all Edward's ready money, at Newcastle, Warwick and Lancaster shrank from a confrontation. Penniless, Edward listened to Pembroke and Gloucester, who advised against armed conflict. Philip of France and Pope Clement sent envoys to mediate. Meanwhile, parliament refused to grant supplies, so the king borrowed money from London merchants.

In November 1312 the queen gave birth to her first child, the future Edward III. ‘To some extent this soothed the king's grief at Piers's death, by providing the realm with an heir', says the
Vita
, warning readers that without one there would be war for the throne when the king died.
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It brought the father unaccustomed self-confidence. He began listening to his wife's advice, and his pardon to the earls in October 1313 stated he did so at the intercession of his dearest companion, Isabella, Queen of England.

Living up to his name of ‘Hob in the Moors', the Bruce was using hit-and-run tactics, avoiding pitched battles and demolishing castles, not only those he captured but his own, which meant there were fewer strongpoints. Small English garrisons could no longer hold down wide areas, and town after town fell to Robert. Since 1311 he had been raiding over the border into Northumberland and Cumberland, whose inhabitants grew so desperate that they paid him protection money. He even attacked Durham. Early in 1314 Edinburgh and Roxburgh fell. Other than Berwick, the only major Scottish fortress retained by the English was Stirling, besieged by Robert's brother. Its constable sent word to Edward that he must surrender if relief did not reach him by midsummer. Near to tears when he heard he had lost Edinburgh, the king was determined to save Berwick. If he did, winning a significant victory, he could afford to ignore the Ordainers.

Early in June, sending Pembroke ahead to reconnoitre, Edward marched out from Berwick with 2,000 men-at-arms and 10,000 foot. Protesting that the campaign had not been approved by a parliament and that they had no wish to infringe the Ordinances, Lancaster, Warwick and Warenne stayed away but sent troops. Edward marched at breakneck speed, with very short halts for sleep and meals. The Scots had wrecked the road by digging pits along it, so the English army was exhausted by the time it came in sight of Stirling on the afternoon of Sunday 23 June.

Robert was waiting, with half as many infantry and only 500 men-at-arms. When two English scouting parties attacked as soon as they arrived, he routed them, personally killing one of their commanders. Even so, despite spending the night on wet marshland, Edward's troops expected to win overwhelmingly next day because of their numbers and weaponry. But the king made a fatal mistake in naming Gloucester as constable
(commander-in-chief) in place of Hereford, the hereditary constable, causing a dispute that deprived the English of coherent leadership. Overwrought, Edward also rejected Gloucester's advice to let his tired troops recuperate, accusing the earl of treachery.

Next morning, instead of staying on the defensive when the English moved up to attack, the Scots' four schiltrons of pike-men crossed the Bannockburn and advanced over the marshy ground towards their surprised enemy. It should have been simple enough to drive off the scanty Scottish cavalry so the archers could shoot the pike-men down, as at Falkland; but Edward lacked a battle plan and had no control over his army. Instead Gloucester led a chaotic charge that became bogged down in the marshy soil, he himself being unhorsed and killed with many men-at-arms and infantry.

Before the English archers on the right flank could do much damage the Scottish horse rode up and cut them down. Bruce's pike-men then routed the remaining English infantry. When Edward had a horse killed under him, his household warned it was no longer safe to stay, so he fled towards Stirling Castle. Seeing the royal standard leave the field, what was left of his army broke and ran. A thousand Englishmen died in the battle, many more being killed or taken prisoner during a pursuit that went on for 50 miles. Casualties included 22 barons and 68 knights – even the privy seal was captured with its keeper. The Scots lost 500 pike-men and two knights.

Anxious to make terms with Bruce and save their lives, the garrison of Stirling Castle refused to let the king enter, so he galloped to Dunbar, finding a ship to Berwick from where he sailed to York. He had suffered the worst defeat seen in Britain since the Norman Conquest. Knowing his father had destroyed a Scottish army of the same sort at Falkirk, all England realized his inadequacy. For over a decade the Scots plundered and slew as far south as Yorkshire. Carlisle nearly fell to King Robert in 1315 and Berwick went two years later. There was trouble in
Wales, where Llewelyn Bren (‘Llewelyn of the Woods') raised Glamorgan and Gwent in 1316, burning English castles.

The immediate result was the triumph of the Ordainers. Three months after Bannockburn the king reluctantly confirmed the Ordinances in a parliament at York, dismissing his chancellor, treasurer and sheriffs, who were replaced by men chosen by the earls.

In February 1315 Edward interred the still unburied corpse of Piers Gaveston at the Dominican friary he had built at King's Langley, with a service led by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Reynolds, who was assisted by many bishops and abbots. Edward had hoped to make the earls attend the burial, which was why it had not taken place before. Piers's biographer stresses that the ceremony shows how much Bannockburn demoralized the king.
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Gaveston had not been followed by ‘an unending stream of catamites', whatever one popular historian suggests.
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Queen Isabella took his place and began to play an important role in political life. Very beautiful, she had the same thick, blonde hair and large, unblinking, pale blue eyes as her father Philip IV, who was the most handsome man in Europe. She also inherited his intelligence and cruelty, and gift for hiding what he thought behind a smiling mask. She was fond of music and books, and her household included minstrels and instrumentalists, while she owned a library of illuminated Arthurian romances. She also enjoyed hunting and hawking. Noticeably more pious than the king, she was genuinely charitable, not only feeding the poor but arranging for the adoption of a small boy who had been orphaned in the Scottish wars. A less attractive quality was avarice.

In 1313 Isabella and Edward visited Paris, where she persuaded her father to confirm Edward as Duke of Guyenne. Next year she paid another visit, securing further concessions. During
her stay Philip was told his daughters-in-law were unfaithful, a charge resulting in their imprisonment and their lovers being broken on the wheel – Isabella was rumoured to have been his informant. Her father died a few months after Bannockburn, supposedly summoned to hell by the Templar Grand Master, whom he had just burned at the stake.

Isabella did her best to make her husband resist the Ordainers. At this time he was devoted to her, rewarding a knight who brought the news of their second son's birth with £100. She attended the royal council meetings and in 1316, when the bishopric of Durham fell vacant, prevailed on Edward to appoint her candidate Louis de Beaumont, in the teeth of Lancaster's opposition.

The Ordainers' leader, Edward's Plantagenet cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, had risen in public esteem for refusing to serve on the Bannockburn campaign. Three years older than the king, a man who was in every way unlike his grandfather Henry III, Thomas of Lancaster comes down the centuries as stupid, arrogant and unscrupulous despite undeserved popularity. His programme was to replace the Crown's power by a council of magnates, and win support by reducing taxes. He had no real objectives beyond his own interests and taking revenge on personal enemies.

Everything conspired against Lancaster. The weather was hostile from 1314 to 1322, rain falling day after day so that the crops failed in what became known as the Great Famine, people being driven to cannibalism. Thousands perished when disease followed hunger, killing men and animals. Farm rents collapsed, wiping out royal and baronial revenues. Law and order broke down, with riots throughout the country.