The Perfect King (4 page)

Perhaps because of these problems, and perhaps because of the derision of his achievements in the nineteenth century, few modern biographers have been tempted to write about Edward
III
. Just three books purporting to describe his life were published in the last century, and none of these is a detailed study.' This might suggest that there is a shortage of writing, especially good writing, on Edward
III
. But if we look for books on aspects of his kingship we find an abundance in the form of studies of the Hundred Years War, chivalry, his sons (especially the Black Prince and John of Gaunt), his eminent ecclesiastical contemporaries, coinage, literary characters (especially Froissart, Chaucer and Langland), the development of parliament, the development of the English language, the Black Death, local government, the wool trade, social regulation, and the laws of treason. There is a willingness to write about his reign which is strangely contrasted by a reluctance to write about his character. Some scholarly articles, particularly Mark Ormrod's consideration of Edward's personal religion,
are
biographical, and repay repeated reading in an attempt to understand the man. But the vast bulk is like the flotsam which scatters the sea after the sinking of a great ship: it is obvious that something huge and magnificent was here, and has disappeared from view, but one struggles to see exactly what.

This book is by no means the first work to restore Edward
III
to a more appropriate place in the pantheon of English kings. That distinction probably should go to two very different pieces of mid-twentieth-century scholarship. Edouard Perroy, a Professor of Medieval History at the Sorbonne, wrote his extraordinary book
The Hundred Years War
in
1943-44,
while fighting for the French Resistance, or, as he put it, playing 'an exciting game of hide and seek with the Gestapo'.' He had no access to his research materials at the time but, in his words, 'suddenly flung into outlawry, abruptly parted from my familiar environment of students and books, I seemed, in contact with this present so harshly real, to gain a better understanding of the past'. And he added that as a result of his circumstances, certain actions had 'become more comprehensible; one is better placed to explain a surrender, or to excuse a revolt'. His Edward was a successful diplomat as well as a military leader, able to outmanoeuvre Philip of France at almost every opportunity: 'a political genius fertile in fresh ideas, but at the same time a cold calculator who drew up long-term plans, knew where he was going and what he wanted, and surpassed his adversary in the diplomatic sphere just as he crushed him on the field of battle'.' Perroy also destroyed the idea that the cause of the Hundred Years War was Edward's dynastic ambitions: 'nothing is further from the truth', was his view on the subject.
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Everyone seriously interested in the fourteenth century has been in his debt ever since.

The other pioneering rehabilitation was May McKisack's landmark lecture, 'Edward III and the historians', delivered in May
1959.'
In a straightforward and brilliant piece of historical observation, in which practically every sentence is a revelation or a delight (and many are both),
she at once showed how Edward III
had been the victim - not the subject - of historians since the early nineteenth century. 'Historians whose whole thinking has been conditioned by notions of development, evolution and progress, sometimes find it hard to recognize fully or to remember consistently that these meant nothing to medieval man
...'
Or 'Edward III in the days of his glory is hidden from us by the cloud of contemporary adulation
...'
Wonderful. Perhaps this short lecture should be handed out to all history students in the hope that thereby a little wisdom can be shown to be a powerful tool in assessing a man's achievements. Its fifteen pages end with a final sentence which is the launch
-
pad for most modern writing on the king's character: 'For all his failings, it remains hard to deny an element of greatness in him, a courage and a magnanimity which go far to sustain the verdict of one of the older writers that he was a prince who knew his work and did it.'

Since
1959
various writers have gradually pushed towards a closer and more realistic understanding of Edward
III
. In
1965
he was the subject of Ranald Nicholson's excellent
Edward III and the Scots,
in which his importance in turning England from a feudal kingdom into a nation was underlined. The
1970s
saw little Edward Ill-related activity, although four biographies of his eldest son (the Black Prince) appeared in just three years. Probably the major contribution at this time was Michael Prestwich's spirited evocation of the period in his
The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272-1377,
published in
1980.
By this date Edward's leadership skills had set him back on the list of England's successful kings, and Prestwich's book brought home Edward's courage and patronage of chivalry, and the adulation of his contemporaries. The
1980s
saw the renaissance of serious attention on Edward III, particularly with a series of original and impressive biographical articles by Mark Ormrod. This attention continued in the
1990s
and
2000s
in works such as Ormrod's own
The Reign of Edward III,
Juliet Vale's
Edward III and Chivalry,
Clifford Rogers' original and revealing book on Edward's military strategy,
War Cruel and Sharp,
and a volume of essays edited by James Bothwell,
The Age of Edward III.
By
1992,
after more than a century of prejudice, it was possible for a scholar once again to hold the view that 'The fifty years from
1327
until
1377,
which encompass the reign of King Edward III, can be reckoned one of the longest and most successful periods of late medieval English kingship.'
22
Lastl
y, although it is not a direct study of Edward III, it would be churlish not to mention the first two volumes of Jonathan Sumption's multi-volume work on the Hundred Years War. Outstanding for the very high quality of writing, narrative accessibility, scope and detail (from both the English and the French perspectives), these books reveal Edward as a harrassed, impetuous, frustrated and egotistical man - but a capable, committed and sometimes brilliant war leader — on the bloody stage of fourteenth-century Europe. They certainly provide the best available account of the great conflict which can only briefly be covered in a single-volume biography of one of its many leaders.

Edward's reputation has thus been exalted to the heavens, forced through the mangle of Victorian cultural conceit, and gradually restored to its proper place of exemplary leadership, at least in the pages of military history and chivalry. But from this point on we can lay aside Edward's historical reputation and search for the man himself. What was he really like? Was he really a leader without equal? Was he a cruel, selfish, warmonger? Or was he a loving husband, conscientious ruler and champion of England in the eyes of his people? What should concern us primarily from here on is not how Edward's successors thought of him, nor what the future will think of him, nor even what the most up-to-date academic judgement makes of his successes and failures in relation to his society, but who he was, what he wanted to be, how his contemporaries saw him, and what he thought of himself. To determine these things might be the hardest historical task there is. It is like trying to describe an ancient bonfire on the strength of its wind-blown ashes. But the fact that this man existed, in truth, and lived a life which is so unlike our own, and yet experienced triumph, glory, disaster, suffering, fear, grief and love in ways which we would all recognise, is a good enough reason to make the attempt.

ONE

Childhood

Of all the stages in the life of a resourceful and imaginative individual, childhood is the most important and the most difficult to understand. We need to think about a boy's physical well-being as he developed, as well as his education, so
cial situation and religious outl
ook. We have to consider his associations with relatives, companions and mentors. With regard to medieval characters, prophecies, feuds and spiritual cults dominated families for generations, and cannot be passed over simply because of their lack of relevance in the modern world. We must understand the strict definitions of hierarchy, and the fighting and leadership skills which noble heirs were expected to display. With regard to royalty, we must also think of the huge weight of public expectation on a young prince. With a growing boy of any class, we must pay a thou
ght to what he simply
liked to do, what he found fun. Thus it is fair to say that it is a major failing of all the previous biographies of Edward
III
that his childhood has either been completely ignored, or covered by a chapter describing his father's shortcomings as a monarch.

It is easy to see why this has happened: there is very
little
in
formation available on Edward III
's early life
except
his father's rule. However, there is no doubt that Edward's relationship with his father was much more important and complicated than merely seeing at first hand how his father's antagonism of the most important nobles led to civil war. What about his personal feelings towards his father? What about the bonds of trust, rivalry, humour, friendship, mutual support, love and (eventually) gratitude which a son often feels for his father and a father often feels for his son? And what about his relationships with other people, for instance his mother? Existing studies say almost nothing of personal relevance between his birth and baptism in November
1312,
and his creation as duke of Aquitaine in September
1325.
Practically the only personal facts regularly mentioned about him in this period are his creation as earl of Chester, his first being summoned to parliament at the age of seven, and the supposed appointment of Richard Bury as his tutor. With such a shortage of material, it is not surprising that writers have concentrated on the political turmoil of his father's reign, with the overt or implied understanding that young Edward saw his father make a mess of ruling his realm and vowed to try to do better.

We too can try to do better. For a start we may take a very different view on his relationship with his father, about whom we know much more than Dr Mackinnon, who in
1900
began his biography of Edward II
I with the line 'A more complete ninny than Edward II has seldom occupied a throne.' Edward
II’
s
failings as a king did not arise from stupidity or a desire to be obtuse and overbearing towards his subjects. He was undoubtedly one of the most pious kings of medieval England, deeply conscious of his indebtedness to God for his great status, and a sincere believer in the power of the intervention of the saints. He was a man who loved to be generous, and to be seen to be generous. At the same time he could be cruel, and he did not have much of a capacity for forgiveness, or even toleration. He was capable of huge affection, but preferred genuine closeness to the formal bonds of diplomatic and military friendship. He had a keen sense of humour and a rare ability to express it. In
1305
he wrote to his uncle, Louis d'Evreux, sending him 'a big trotting palfrey which can hardly carry its own weight, and some of our bandy-legged harriers from Wales, who can well catch a hare if they find it asleep, and some of our running dogs, which go at a gende pace: for well we know that you take delight in lazy
dogs'.' As a young man Edward II’
s closest companion - and most would say the true love of his life — was the dashing Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight's son, three years older, who was outrageously witty, unashamedly rude, clever, physically strong, and brilliant enough with a lance to humiliate the proud heirs of England's most important families in the joust, the sport they rated above all others. In the words of a well-informed contemporary, Edward 'adopted Gaveston as a brother' and 'cherished him as a son'. Gaveston in return gave Edward the confidence to be his unconventional self.
3
Above all else, Edward II wished to establish himself as an individual, not a model prince, and in so doing he embarked on a personal rebellion against authority which lasted for much of the rest of his reign.

Gaveston was murdered in June
1312
by the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford, and the country was plunged into turmoil. Many feared the king's wrath: it seemed that the bloodiest of civil wars was about to break out. The king summoned the earls responsible to London to account for themselves, and they responded with armed force. Lancaster came with a thousand horsemen and fifteen hundred foot soldiers; Warwick with troops from the forest of Arden, and Hereford with a crowd of Welsh 'woodland wild men'. Their troops encamped between St Albans and Ware, within marching distance of the city. Edward, at Blackfriars, urged the citizens of London to defend their gates and walls. He summoned parliament to Westminster to discuss the crisis, and the earls of Pembroke and Surrey urged him to make war
on those who had authorised the
killing. A papal envoy, Cardinal Arnaud Nouvel, arrived at the end of August, and negotiated directly with the rebel earls at St Albans. He persuaded them to meet the king But when the earls finally arrived in the city, they came heavily armed. The earl of Gloucester, the king's nephew, then took up the duty of chief negotiator. He achieved
little
, for the king refused to accept that his most cherished friend was a traitor, and the earls refused to acknowledge that their killing amounted to murder. When Edward left London for Windsor, the recriminations and threats of violence still rattled between the upper ranks of the English nobility. Civil war seemed the most probable outcome.