The Perfect King (30 page)

Edward did not cancel, he postponed. At which point Philip agreed to peace negotiations. Edward, too good a diplomat to refuse to deal with Philip, but eager not to lose momentum, upped the stakes by agreeing to negotiate but at the same time threatening to claim the throne of France. On
6
October
1337,
three days after he had despatched a high-level diplomatic mission to France, he issued writs to the count of Hainault, the count of Juliers, the duke of Brabant and the earl of Northampton, appointing them his lieutenants in France, using the title 'King of France and England' in one set of documents and 'King of England and France' in another. Such a declaration was not just a fist in the face of the French king, it was an insult to the pope, who regarded Edward's potential claim to the throne of France as possibly the most destabilising aspect of the whole controversy. Benedict XII had just written to the two cardinals he had deputed to deal with Edward and Philip, ordering them to proceed to England straightaway, without waiting for Edward to cross to France. As Be
nedict put it: 'for once there [i
n France] he cannot easily return, and the Teutons who want to get his pay would incite him to war. That the spark may not become a flame, the nuncios should dissuade the king from crossing the sea.' Now this new claim to the throne was guaranteed to undermine any possible peace negotiations. It threatened to undermine the basis of French sovereign power, and thus Philip's right to act in Aquitaine. Although Edward did not follow up this claim with further writs issued in his name as king of France, that he had done so once, and on an international stage, was enough.

In early November the pressure on Philip increased further. On the 6th the pope wrote to him outlining in full the implications of Edward's alliance with the rulers of the territories of Germany and the Low Countries. Benedict informed Philip that Edward was planning to bribe Ludvig of Bavaria to resign his position as Holy Roman Emperor. If this were to happen, Edward would be elected in his place, with command over the German princes. Even if Ludvig were not to resign, Edward was going to be appointed Vicar of Lower Germany (the Low Countries) for life 'so as to be nearer to France, and so better able to attack it'. The pope further informed Philip that his enemies had gathered men, money and supplies, so that he (Philip) was almost entirely isolated. This confederation, the pope claimed, was to last for the lifetime of Edward and Ludvig and their sons. Further marriage alliances would bind the allies closer together. In short, the pope was outlining how Philip had been totally outmanoeuvred by Edward, who now had most of Europe behind him. The only chance Philip had was to make peace with England.

As it happened, Edward still faced many problems gathering men and money before he could set out. Without him - the undisputed leader -the rest of the confederation was worse than useless, a drain on English resources. It looked as if William Montagu and the doubters would soon be proved right: the heavy expenses of the coalition would hamper Edward's ability to raise an army, not help it. Frustrated by the slowness of gathering troops, Edward ordered the one fleet he had in readiness, under Sir Walter Manny, to set out and harass the French ships and ports. At the same time he urged the army in Aquitaine to seize back all the castles and fortified houses which the French had taken in July. On both fronts Edward's men did his bidding. In Flanders, the tables were almost entirely turned. Eager for battle, Manny's fleet failed to capture Sluys but lured the garrison into combat at Cadsand, where he won a bloody victory, directing his archers to massacre the Flemings assembled on the shore.

Manny's victory did not make anything easier for Edward. He was still short of
men. His lack of money was greatl
y exacerbated shortly afterwards when Bishop Burghersh, in a rash attempt to shore up the alliance, promised unrealistic amounts of cash to die duke of Brabant and other waverers. They had begun to question Edward's resolve, especially when the cardinals sent by the pope urged him to agree to a truce, and threatened him with everything from excommunication to an alliance between the apostolic see and Philip. The duke of Brabant - whose support for Edward had been kept secret - was just one of those tempted to open an alternative secret diplomatic channel with France. Burghersh panicked, and seized the wool which Conduit and de la Pole were about to sell. Needless to say, having no mercantile skill or experience of his own, and no appreciation of theirs, his efforts to obtain more money than die merchants proved an utter failure.

Edward was faced with financial disaster. He had already borrowed more than a hundred thousand pounds. But when a king like Edward finds himself in such a predicament, his lifestyle does not alter, nor does his largesse. Edward now rose above his financial problems in style. He paid Sir Walter Manny eight thousand pounds for one single prisoner captured at Cadsand: the half-brother of the count of Flanders. For his games at Christmas
1337
he ordered an artificial forest foliated with gold and silver leaves, as well as more than a hundred masks, some with long beards and others in the forms of baboons' heads, to entertain the court.

For his games on
13
April
1338
at Havering he built mock siege engines and lavished new clothes on all the participants as usual. But the clothes he ordered for himself raised die art of dressing like a king to such heights that previous superlatives are hardly adequate. His hood, for example, was made of black cloth and

decorated on one edge with images of tigers holding court made from pearls and embossed with silver and gold, and decorated on another edge with the image of a
castle
made of pearls with a mounted man riding towards the
castle
on a horse made of pearls, with trees of pearls and gold between each tiger, and a field and a trefoil of large pearls embroidered well in from the edge
.

No fewer than
389
large pearls, three enormous pearls and five ounces of small pearls were used in making it. The other clothes he and the earls of Salisbury and Derby wore were equally stunning. His only concession to impending financial ruin and his inability to raise enough men to invade France was to answer the cardinals who had so threatened him with an offer not to invade France for two months. Faced
with
no prospect of obtaining better terms, they accepted.

*

In dealing with the cardinals, Edward told them an extraordinary thing He claimed that any truce he made with France would have to be ratified by parliament, because in England parliament ratified all matters regarding war and peace. The cardinals did not believe him, and presumed this was merely a diplomatic ploy. But, as we have seen, although Edward was grossly exaggerating the legal basis for parliamentary ratification, it was not entirely untrue. Moreover, it was a development of Edward's reign, and very much his own initiative. Mortimer had used parliament to sanction the forced abdication of Edward II in
1327,
but war remained outside its remit until Edward had put the question in
1331.
From then on, discussions about whether to go to war or not had never excluded parliament's voice. Although any real decision-making still lay with the king, parliament was consulted, if only to determine the strength of support for the king's policy.

The other point to note about parliament in
1338
is that it was no longer just the lords temporal and spiritual. Commoners played an increasingly important part. When Mortimer had summoned representatives of the shires and towns to the
1327
parliament, they had been drawn together merely to add weight to the voices of the leaders and to depose the king with the assent of all the people. Edward jumped on this idea of popular assent, and encouraged popular representation. By
1338,
commoners were summoned to parliament as a matter of course. They met separately to the lords, and they were not consulted on every matter, but they had a presence and a voice. They presented their own petitions, and could expect some answer from the king. In effect, a great bargaining was going on between king and people. The commoners or representatives of the shires and towns - forerunners of modern Members of the House of Commons - wanted grievances addressed, but more importantly they wanted to know that they had a forum for raising complaints. The king wanted popular support for his main policies, and to ensure that taxation would be forthcoming when those policies entailed keeping an army in the field, or bribing continental princes. Edward was offering parliamentary power in return for money and support, and enlarging the representation of parliament to include the wealthy and important provincial townsmen and landowners, as well as the lords and bishops.

In February
1338
parliament was put to the test. Edward wanted to know whether the representatives of the shires would continue to support his policies in war as well as peacetime. In particular, did parliament support his continental alliances, and his plans to go overseas, and could he rely on parliament to promise further financial support?
32
With regard to
Scotland
he wanted to know whether he had continued support for his new attack on Dunbar
Castle
, through which the French were supplying the Scots nationalists. This was held by the fearsome Black Agnes, daughter of Sir Thomas Randolph and widow of Patrick of Dunbar. As the name implies, she was no wan Scots lass. As Montagu and four thousand men hammered at the gate with a battering ram and blasted away at the walls, this woman yelled defiance from the
battle
ments at the English and berated her garrison, probably terrifying them more than the enemy. A good handful of women in the mid-fourteenth century were truly militaristic, able to inspire and lead their men in battle as well as most men. Black Agnes was certainly one of them. When a boulder from a siege engine smashed into the
battle
ments near where she was standing, she took a cloth and ostentatiously began to dust the walls.

Parliament in February
1338
supported Edward wholeheartedly. The Scots were more dangerous than ever. The French were making plans to invade England, and in March the first incursions of their long-awaited onslaught took place. Portsmouth suffered yet again, as did Jersey. Parliament urged Edward to go to the Low Countries to take command of the allied army and once and for all to bring King Philip of France to his knees. On
24
February the truce was extended until midsummer. The cardinals, the pope and King Philip were informed. But on the very same day orders were given for the northern and southern fleets to assemble at Orwell and Great Yarmouth a fortnight after Easter
(12
April), ready to set out the following month. And when Bishop Burghersh was given his instructions to take new proposals for peace to the French king in May, the letters he carried were not of a conciliatory nature. In them Edward addressed Philip as 'Philip de Valois, he who calls himself king of France', and stated that he, Edward, had a stronger right to the French throne than Philip. He added his intention to conquer his inheritance by force of arms. In confiscating and trying to seize control of Gascony,
Philip had thrown down the gauntl
et. Now Edward picked it up.

There were many delays before he could set out. The fleet proved very difficult to gather, with much corruption on the part of the royal officials who were charged with gathering men, money and materials. Edward's haste may have added to the problem, as men stole what they had been ordered to requisition from others for the king's use, and then took advantage of the need for materials and foodstuffs to sell on what they had already obtained. The problem of 'purveyance' - the requisitioning of food and other necessities for the royal household - became far more widespread as supplies for the forthcoming war were also seized. Edward himself was probably aware of the tension this caused; William Pagula had written in
The
Mirror
of
Edward
III
about the injustice of royal purveyors who would seize a hen from an old woman from which she got four or five eggs a week, or take a sheep from a man who had only taken it to market to pay his rent.
35
But Edward was unable or unwilling at present to curb such injustices. He was preoccupied with his political agenda, not the process of carrying it out. In April
1338
he wrote to his friend, Sir Walter Manny, expressing surprise that he had failed to assemble sufficient ships to cross the sea. The Exchequer was still based in York, to which city it had been moved in
1333
during the Scottish wars. And Edward personally contributed to the inefficiencies by removing himself from business. In late March he made another very fast journey to
Scotland
, travelling from London to Newcastle in less than seven days, and completing the whole journey from London to Berwick and back (more than seven hundred miles) in less than nineteen. If we are right in assuming that this is the 'secret' journey described in the record of his daily alms-giving as taking place in May or June, during which he took the time to go to Darlington to give two cloths of gold spinet to the image of the Virgin in the church there, then we have an explanation for his sudden journey, for it records that the king went '
secretly
to
Scotland
to visit and comfort the garrisons and commanders of certain
castle
s there'.
It seems that this was the point at which Edward decided he could spare his Scottish troops no longer, and instructed Montagu to call off the siege if the
castle
had not capitulated by a certain date. In the hope of speeding up the siege, Montagu told Black Agnes that her brother (who was then a prisoner in England) would be executed beneath the walls of her
castle
if she did not submit. She laughed and replied that, if they did that, she would not be disappointed, for she would inherit his earldom of Moray. There was no persuading this woman. Montagu realised that if Edward wanted to campaign in France, he would have to give up Dunbar
Castle
. Black Agnes on her own constituted a whole second front.