The Perfect King (31 page)

Edward, Philippa, their daughters and most of the royal household -their clerks, their musicians, their cooks, their panders and butlers (including John Chaucer, father of the great poet Geoffrey Chaucer) - and several thousand soldiers assembled at Orwell on
12
July
1338,
seven weeks after their original intended date to set sail. Edward gave presents of a pair of decorated silver basins to each of his daughters, Isabella (now aged six) and Joan (now aged four) in the days before travelling. A new seal of absence was struck and delivered to the Treasurer, the previous great seal being delivered to the king on his great ship the
Christopher
on the
14th.
The elaborate arrangements for governing England in his absence (the Walton Ordinances) were drawn up. John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury, was appointed chief officer during the regency of the eight-year-old duke of Cornwall. Finally, on
16
July
1338,
Edward and his fleet finally cast off and sailed from Orwell, picking up the rest of the fleet from Great Yarmouth a couple of days later. The fleet was numerous, and decked out to create the most striking impression, Edward's great ships carried specially made huge streamers, thirty or forty feet in length, showing the royal arms as well as those of St Edward (on Edward's own ship, the
Edward),
St Edmund, and St George. The largest of all was decorated with the life of St Thomas and was seventy-five feet in length; this probably adorned the mainmast of his great ship, the
Thomas.
On the
21st
the royal entourage landed at Antwerp, and was received by Edward's allies, all assembled for the occasion. His first night in Brabant was far from a comfortable one: the entire household had to flee the building they were staying in as it burnt down. The new leader of the great confederation of allies against France found himself and his pregnant queen fleeing from their beds in their nightshir
ts, and being accommodated at th
e abbey of St Bernard nearby.

The fire was not an auspicious start to the campaign. Still less auspicious, after the formal greetings, was the allies' support, or, rather their lack of it, which may be accurately characterised as a hesitancy to go to war. Edward was of the opinion that he had paid them well; he wanted to know when they would be ready for action. In particular he planned to lead a preliminary attack on the Cambresis region - which bordered on the south-west of Hainault - in the next few weeks. His allies dithered. They pointed out that much money had been promised, and
little
had been delivered. They wanted to see his gold before they committed themselves to fight for him. Edward, regarding it as a royal prerogative to distribute largesse without checking his balance of accounts, had to face the fact that they would not be persuaded. They would not fight Philip for prestige alone. The problem was, as Edward knew, that he had very
little
actual gold.

Edward could still raise money but it was soon apparent that it would be years, not months, before he could meet his debts in full. Furthermore he had not just to meet his debts, he had to show his allies that he would go on being able to meet them. The Bardi and the Peruzzi banking houses were called upon and advanced a further eight thousand pounds. Paul de Montefiore (an Italian administrator and trusted confidant of Edward) raised another eight thousand. William de la Pole advanced eight times this amount against promised wool customs. Sir Bartholomew Burghersh (brother of the bishop of Lincoln) set about raising money through loans from continental and English magnates with the king. He and Paul de Montefiore mortgaged quantities of royal treasure, including Edward's great crown of gold. Nor was this the most desperate money-raising measure undertaken: back in England his government licensed the clergy in Devon to start digging for buried treasure. No reports of treasure survive, but somehow enough money was raised to fill the royal coffers, and to sustain obligations and payments of more than four hundred thousand pounds over the next year and a half.

While all this was going on, the Holy Roman Emperor also had begun to have doubts. It was suspected that Edward had promised more than he could afford to the lesser lords of the Low Countries and Germany; it went without saying that he would be even more at a disadvantage when it came to paying for the services of the Holy Roman Emperor. As a result of this information, no doubt passed back to him from his first-class intelligence network, Edward seized the initiative. Rather than wait for his money-gatherers to make careful apologies for him, he had a brief meeting with several of his diffident allies, paid them some small sums, and then took his essential entourage quickly down the Rhine to Cologne, instructing the rest of hi
s household to follow by barge.
Entering Cologne, he ostentatiously gave money away, making small but careful donations at the houses of all the orders of friars in the city, offering oblations at the shrines of the cathedral, including the shrine of the Three Kings, where it had been prophesied that he would be buried. To the cathedral itself he made the very generous donation of
£67
10s.
47
He spent the night in Cologne, and then next day was off again, on his way down to Koblenz. On
30
August he arrived just outside the city, and stayed on the island of Niederwerde, awaiting a response from the emperor. In the meantime he sent gifts to the emperor and the emperor's wife (Philippa's elder sister, Margaret).

Edward's judgement had been good. His instinct to take immediate action to secure support proved decisive. Through lavishing money publicly on people, living as sumptuously and ostentatiously as he could, and through paying the emperor the next instalment of his treasure, he forced Ludvig's hand. With all his subservient princes and petty kings present, Ludvig could not possibly go back on his earlier agreement. Any thought he had of reopening the auction for his army was ruled out, as Edward's presence and very high profile demanded an immediate and public response. The affirmation which Edward sought - an official position to confirm his leadership of the allies in the Low Countries - came on
5
September, when he met Ludvig in a great ceremonial meeting in the marketplace at Koblenz. The two leaders processed into the cathedral and Edward, dressed in a robe of scarlet, sat at the foot of the imperial throne. The emperor himself sat in splendour, wearing his crown and holding a sceptre, with a naked sword held aloft behind him by Otto de Cuyk. Edward could not resist one show of independent pride, refusing to kiss the emperor's feet. But this irregularity was quickly smoothed over, and, with most of the great men of Germany watching, Edward was crowned Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire.

This new tide was worth more than gold to Edward. It was pure and powerful propaganda. That he understood this is evidenced by the fact that he had had fifteen rich robes made in advance to be worn by the emperor, himself, the duke of Brabant and twelve other noble leaders of England and Germany. Two days after his coronation the resplendent king of England rode back across to Antwerp, arriving there on
13
September. Five days later he summoned all his allies, or, rather, his new subjects, to attend him at Herk, in Loos, to hear the Imperial letters. On
12
October they gathered in the town hall. The walls were hung with 'rich and fine cloths, like the king's presence chamber'. The king himself was seated five feet higher than everyone else, and wore his new golden crown. He had the official letters of office read out, appointing him Vicar Imperial for life, lieutenant of die Holy Roman Emperor. His wars were to be treated as wars of the empire. All those subject to the authority of the emperor were to swear fealty to him. The war against the French in the Cambresis would begin the following summer. After all the solemn celebrations, Edward returned to Philippa, now eight months pregnant, at Antwerp at the beginning of November.

On
6
September, the day after his coronation, while still at Koblenz, Edward commended the services of one Nicholas Blank de Fieschi, master of a certain galley lately sent to him in England, and at the same time released the man from his covenants agreed in Marseilles with Niccolinus Fieschi on Edward's behalf. Whatever the task for which Niccolinus had engaged Nicholas Blank (who was probably his nephew), it was now finished. It so happens that this coincides with the arrival at Niederwerde of one Francesco Forcetti or Forzetti, probably a member of the Forzetti family of Florence. The reason this deserves notice in a biography of Edward III is that with Forzetti was a man called William le Galeys -William the Welshman - 'who calls himself the father of the king of England'. It appears likely that on
6
September
1338,
on the island just north of Koblenz, Edward finally came face to face with his father, Edward II.

The meeting had been pl
anned well in advance. Edward II
as 'William the Welshman' (a name reflec
ting his one remaining royal titl
e: Prince of Wales) had originally been taken to Cologne, where Edward had visions of meeting Ludvig, but due to his need to meet the emperor sooner rather than later, he had gone straight on to Koblenz. Hence William the Welshman had to be brought to him by his minder, Forzetti. That Edward had either directly or in
directly
deputed Forzetti to bring his father to him is suggested by his description as a royal sergeant-at-arms on this, his first appearance in the royal accounts. (Sergeants-at-arms were middling status, well-respected men, superior to esquires of the royal household but less important than knights, expressly sent on missions to do the king's personal bidding.) So it seems likely that it was on an island in the middle of the Rhine, near Koblenz, that Edward met his father again. And the meeting went well. Forzetti was paid in advance for the expenses of looking after Edward II for three weeks in December.

Of all meetings between members of the royal family, this and its follow-up in December must have been the strangest that ever took place. Indeed, the whole story of Edward's survival is so amazing that historians have normally refused to believe the evidence, and preferred to present the whole episode as a series of hoaxes and deceptions. It goes against the grain of professional sobriety to present such an extraordinary story as fact, or anything other than the plot of a nineteenth-century Italian opera. But this was neither a hoax nor a deception. Edward had last seen his father in
1325,
thirteen years earlier, when he had still been king, and when Edward himself had been twelve. In the months afterwards his father had written letters to him which, although they did contain shards of fatherly affection, remonstrated with him in the severest terms. Perhaps Edward had forgotten the dire pronouncement that his father would make him an example to sons everywhere to obey their fathers. Perhaps Edward II himself had forgotten that he had said it. What is undoubtedly true is that now the tables were reversed. Edward was king, and his father diminished. Indeed, Edward II had officially been dead for the last eleven years, and Edward himself had advocated that his father should continue to be treated as such. Both men probably experienced some feelings of guilt, and we may especially suspect Edward
III
did, as he had sanctioned the execution of his father's beloved half-brother and refused to acknowledge his father's continued existence. But he could explain now. He had kept his father alive by sacrificing his uncle. He had punished Mortimer. Moreover, he had won at Halidon Hill whereas his father had lost at Bannockburn. That was why he was a king and his father now a penniless hermit.

The reasons for picking December as the time when he would meet his father again was due in part to Edward's great demonstration of imperial authority at Herk in October,
but more importantl
y because it would be a time for the old king finally to meet his grandchildren. Not only were little Isabella and Joan at Antwerp. On
29
November
1338
Philippa gave birth to a son. Edward was overjoyed, and promised the man who brought him the news a reward of one hundred pounds. He gave the child the Arthurian name Lionel, which he had himself adopted as a nickname in his youth. It may have been conceived as a tribute to his dead brother John, or with the idea that Lionel would be a lifelong companion to his elder brother, or maybe it was a reminder of how he himself had come through the test of living under the shadow of Mortimer's authority. We do not know, but, given the stories of brotherhood and suffering with which this name was associated in the Arthurian cycle, and given Edward's own earlier adoption of the name, it was probably not selected just because he liked the sound, especially not in his father's presence.

We have only one vague possibility as to what was actually said at this meeting. Father and son seem to have discussed Edward I. It is noticeable that every year for the rest of his lif
e after this meeting, Edward III
ordered the wax torches to be renewed around the tomb of the old king at Westminster, this being done on or about the anniversary of his death. It is not possible to be certain, but it seems likely that Edward II had reflected over the years on his confrontational relationship with his own father, and hoped that his son would make amends with the old man on his behalf, if only in the way he was treated in death.

We have no further definite location for Edward II after December
1338.
It is likely he stayed for the Christmas feast - always a lavish event in Edward's court, costing that year
£172,
including
£56
on cooking - and probably for the churching of Philippa at the end of December. Niccolinus Fieschi probably left Antwerp the following February. There is no further reference to Francesco Forzetti until October
1340,
when he was back in England, dealing with the Italian wool business. We do not know whether Edward himself took charge of his father from this point, or whether he remained in the custody of the Peruzzi as security for some of the loans they still hoped to reclaim from Edward. All we may say is that, wherever he was taken, he lived out the rest of his days in peace.