The Perfect King (12 page)

The reign of King Edward III had begun.

*

Edward was crowned on i February
1327.
Mortimer had, in fact, fixed the date even before parliament had decided to agree to the deposition of the old king.
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He wanted a quick coronation to confirm the official status of what was effectively his administration. For the same reason, he made sure that all the coronation arrangements were strictly in accordance with the long-standing instructions for the anointing of an English king. Edward was dressed in the traditional red samite. Striped cloth lined his path from the palace to the abbey. As he walked along it, surrounded by cheering crowds, with at least ten bishops and many earls and other lords and ladies in the procession, he was accompanied by four knights who held a gold canopy festooned with bells over his head. In the abbey itself, the floor was covered in coloured cloth. The stage - erected specially for the occasion before the high altar - was covered in quilted gold silk. In fact practically everything at the eastern end of the abbey was covered in gold. On the stage the king sat on a gilded throne with gold cushions beneath his feet and gold cloth beneath the cushions, a gold sceptre in one hand, a gold orb in the other and the gold crown of the saint-king Edward the Confessor upon his head. The hangings of the canopy above him were gold with purple cords; the archbishop of Canterbury - who presided over the ceremony - also sat on a seat covered with gold. To anyone staring along the nave, as the Latin chants echoed around the arches, the king would have appeared as the sole man in red at the centre of a dazzling, celestial apparition, in which golden figures moved around him across a golden space and performed the ritual anointing and coronation with golden vessels and golden regalia.

It was thus in an environment of gold, in the most sacred space of the abbey, near the relics of St Edward the Confessor, and the gold-covered remains of his venerated grandfather, Edward I, that Edward swore his vows of kingship. These too were wholly orthodox, consisting of the four-part oath which his father had sworn at his coronation in
1308.
Edward III promised to confirm the laws and customs of the people of England, to observe the rights of the Church, to do justice equally to all his people, and 'to hold and keep the rightful laws and customs that the community of the realm shall choose, and to defend and strengthen them'.*
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This last clause had been designed specially to preserve the power of parliament from the encroachments of
Edward II’
s unpredictable self-mindedness. Now, in its repetition at Edward Hi's coronation, Mortimer forced the same safeguard on the son. Parliament had as great a reason to support this reign as it had had to end the previous one. The king's responsibility to respect the views of parliament was thus confirmed as a permanent feature of the developing English constitution.

Coronations were times for promotion and celebration too. One important part of this was the creation of new knights. After Edward himself had been knighted — either by Lancaster or John of Hainault — Edward set about dubbing knights, as custom dictated.
3
" Unfortunately for him, this was yet another aspect of his coronation controlled by others. Mortimer decided that his own sons should take precedence, and to emphasise their importance - and thus his own - he ordered that they should be dressed in clothes suitable for earls. Edward may have felt a need to retaliate with a few suggestions of his own, and among the knights created on the day of the coronation we find several who served him loyally for many years: Ralph Stafford, John Neville, William Percy; John Meules, Ralph Willington, Gerard Lisle, Hugh Courtenay, Ralph Daubigny, and Peter Mauley, nephew of his old steward.
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' All these men were dressed splendidly in scarlet, green and brown cloth, with miniver and squirrel furs. Mortimer's sons were as splendidly dressed as their father, with even larger furs and cloth of gold adorning their scarlet, green and brown tunics and mantles.

In all these events of early
1327,
from the deposition of his father to his own coronation, one senses a certain distance in the young king. It is not so much what is to be read in the records of the events; it is more what one does not read. The king was crowned, but it may as well have been Mortimer's coronation. Mortimer's order to dress his sons as earls was an ominous sign: only kings' sons automatically were accorded the status of earls. On the day of Edward's coronation, Mortimer was setting himself up as a king. Pomp there may have been, knighthood and lavish feasting too; but there are no references to the king doing anything other than going through with the ceremony. True, there were many gifts given, but they were given to Mortimer's friends, not Edward's. On the day of the coronation, Bishop Orleton was given a number of items from the royal treasury.
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Mortimer's cousin, Thomas Vere, was handed two gilt silver basins engraved with the arms of England and France in lieu of his being chamberlain at the coronation. Another of his cousins, Thomas Wake, was given a gilded silver salt cellar in return for playing the part of pander. The earl of Lancaster, an older royal cousin whom Edward did not wholly trust, was handed a number of silver dishes and spoons stamped with images of leopards in lieu of his being steward on the day. Mortimer's friend, Richard Bettoyne, mayor of London, who had helped threaten the members of parliament into supporting the deposition, and who acted as chief butler at the coronation, was allowed to keep an engraved gold cup and an enamelled gold ewer. Even Isabella, Edward's own mother shocked him on the day of the coronation, awarding to herself the annual sum of twenty thousand marks
(£13,333):
probably the largest personal income appropriated by an individual in medieval England. Adam Murimuth, a canon of St Paul's, was stunned: 'to her son she left barely the third part of his kingdom,' he wrote. This was not quite accurate, it amounted to only a third of the royal revenue.
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But the spirit of his exclamation was correct: the remaining two-thirds were controlled by Mortimer and Isabella.

The impression one has is that of a boy - albeit a king — with few close friends, shuttered off from the world, partly through his unique position and partly through the threatening ambitions of his mother and Mortimer. Around him the majesty of the court was swirling and laughing, delighting in its newly found wealth. But at the eye of the whirling storm he sat alone on his throne, not knowing what was going to happen next.

THREE

The
Devil
for
Wrath

Two days after his coronation, Edward presided over his first parliament as king. It was obvious that two of his lords would dominate. One of these was the earl of Lancaster: garrulous, proud, and angry that for so long he had been deprived of his rightful inheritance. He was a roy
al earl, a grandson of Henry III
, and the richest lord in the country, and therefore had a good reason to consider himself pre-eminent. But Isabella did not like him, nor did she trust him. The other lord was Mortimer, who disliked him every bit as much as Isabella, and did not trust him at all.

Lancaster stormed through that first parliament. As Edward watched from his throne the earl put forward a whole gamut of petitions. He proposed that he and the invaders should be pardoned for any wrongdoings, that his dead brother Thomas be pardoned for his part in opposing Edward II, and that accordingly he should receive his brother's full inheritance. Edward listened and assented, refusing only to grant the part of Lancaster's inheritance which Isabella had already taken for herself. Mortimer kept a low profile. Lancaster continued. As the king was under age, there should be a council of regency, composed of twelve or fourteen men, w
hich he (Lancaster) would lead.
And so the whole Lancastrian programme was rolled out. Many grievances dating back to the days of Thomas of Lancaster were aired: curbs on the abuses of gaolers, restrictions on the appointments of justices of the peace, rules against the king making contracts with lords to supply troops, restrictions on taxation. Lancaster was given an open field.

The power game which was developing during that parliament was
subtle
. Lancaster was trying to set the political agenda, as his brother had done before him, and to use parliament to reinforce his influence over a weak monarchy. Edward was in no position to do anything but take advice and play the official role of monarch, acquiescing to the council of regency. Mortimer's strategy was totally different. He would not challenge Lancaster in parliament. He would allow the earl to dominate that forum. He did not mind if royal authority
appeared
weak. But through Queen Isabella, Mortimer had royal influence. He would let Lancaster play the part of a political leader while, behind the scenes, he played the king.

Mortimer's subtlety in wresting control from Lancaster went much further than parliamentary contests. When Edward II had abdicated he had been promised that he would continue to enjoy regal status as he had before. And so he did at Kenilworth, under Lancaster's guard. But certain lords did not see why the ex-king should be kept in prison. In addition, in March the Dunheved brothers, fanatical supporters of Edward II, tried to set him free. Mortimer could see that, whoever had custody of the ex-king wielded an instrument of great power. Since medieval kings were, by their very existence, royal, they could revoke any law which had been forced upon them. If Mortimer and Isabella were to lose favour, and if Edward II were to be freed, they might see the country reinstate the old king. Edward, still under-age, might find his father, as his guardian, commanding him to give up power. Mortimer and Isabella decided that Lancaster could not be trusted with such political leverage. As a result, Mortimer secured a royal writ to remove Edward II from Kenilworth. In March he left court and supervised the removal himself, with an armed retinue, much to Lancaster's fury. The old king was taken to Berkeley
Castle
and placed under the care of two of Mortimer's most trusted supporters: his son-in-law, Lord Berkeley, and his old comrade-in-arms, Sir John Maltravers.

To Edward, these developments were deeply disturbing. Neither Mortimer nor Lancaster was to be trusted. Lancaster was clearly following his own agenda: insisting, for example, that the young king confirm that he was bound by Magna Carta and the laws of the forest. And Mortimer was clearly a law unto himself, working through people, not institutions or ordinances. Isabella too was another force in the land. Her priority, however, was more straightforward. She sought money, in vast quantities. In addition to her twenty thousand marks a year, she now demanded another twenty thousand pounds to clear her debts. Edward could not stop her any more than he could stop Mortimer.

Although only fourteen, and therefore seven years short of being able to rule without a council of regency (in theory), Edward knew that young men who proved themselves in war could dispense with the need for councils and advisers. Richard Bury, full of historical anecdotes, had probably advised him that Mortimer himself had been advanced to his inheritance because of his soldierly prowess at a time when the then king needed knights. So too had some of the young men at court, such as Robert Ufford. Edward was supposed to be the new King Arthur. Had that legendary leader not also won renown as a youth, and come to the throne in his fifteenth year? Edward could see that in order to prove himself a king, he would have to be more than a well-dressed puppet on the throne.

The royal accounts for
1327
are littered with payments for armour for Edward. He commissioned his armourers to produce hauberks, greaves, lances, bascinets with visors (the latest st
yle of protective helmet), gauntl
ets, trousers and breeches, and many other items of personal armorial wear. He ordered decorated aketons (protective stuffed leather jerkins), gilded lances and armour for tournaments. Some of his tournament armour was decorated with images of flowers and animals; some with royal emblems, such as leo
pards and crowns. Most importantl
y, he put this armour to use, as shown by a payment for enlarging his hauberk.
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Edward took part in tournaments, and, aware of what was expected of him, he made himself as obvious and as visible as possible. Although only fourteen, he was trying to live up to his destiny.

Edward's need for a war to assert himself had an unlikely parallel north of the border. The Scots were no less aware than the English that this new king was prophesied to be the all-conquering King Arthur. In order to retaliate with a little propaganda of their own, they chose the day of the coronation to launch an attack on Norham
Castle
. Their plan went disastrously wrong after the governor of the
castle
heard rumours in advance, and the attackers were repulsed with the loss of several men. Nevertheless it was an indication that the Scots were no longer satisfied with the truce which had been signed in
1323.
In particular, they were not happy that a promise made by Mortimer and Isabella before the invasion had not been honoured. To ensure Scots neutrality, Mortimer and Isabella had assured the Scottish representatives that if the invasion was successful, they would recognise Scotland as an independent kingdom. Isabella had entered into further negotiations just after Christmas
1326,
but talks had already broken down. Robert Bruce was growing ill and old: an independent
Scotland
was his last great ambition. By the spring, he wanted action.