The Perfect King (52 page)

If Edward felt he had been unfortunate in September
1348,
losing two children, the truth was that he had barely begun to experience the suffering which some had suffered. Agnolo di Tura, a Sienese chronicler, had no illusions about the extent of the calamity:

I do not know where to begin to tell of the cruelty and the pitiless ways [of the plague]. It seemed that almost everyone became stupefied by seeing the pain. And it is impossible for the human tongue to recount the awful truth. Indeed, one who did not see such horribleness can be called blessed. The victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath the armpits and in their groins, and collapse while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight. And so they died. None could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices. Nor did the death bell sound. And in many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in those ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura, buried my fi
ve children with my own hands.

Although Edward did not know it, plague was already creeping through Dorset. A ship had landed with the dis
ease, probably in early August.
Mindful of the threat across the Channel, on
17
August the bishop of Bath and Wells ordered processions to take place every Friday to pray for protection from the disease which had 'come from the East' into France, 'the neighbouring kingdom'. His prayers probably came a few days too late. By October, Dorset was overwhelmed with suffering Towns which traded with the area ceased to welcome travellers. Those with the wherewithal, aware of the terrible mortality across the Channel, removed themselves to their most isolated estates, and stayed there. All England was plunged into fear.

The first action Edward took to combat the plague was at the end of September, when he ordered prayers and processions throughout England for deliverance from the pestilence.'
7
But the second thing he did was far less predictable. He decided to confront the danger head-on, like a soldier. While the rich and powerful throughout England isolated themselves in terrified huddles in their rural manors, Edward decided to go to Calais, and see for himself what the plague held in store. His journey was superficially to take part in the negotiations for continuing the peace treaty: normally a duty for ambassadors. But there was propaganda value in Edward going in person. France was recognised as the source of England's plague: it was in 'the neighbouring kingdom' as the bishop of Bath and Wells had put it. And it was generally understood in England that France was labouring under the mortality. It was said that at Avignon more than thirteen hundred people had died in a single day, and that religious communities of one hundred and forty monks at both Montpelier and Marseilles had been reduced to only seven at the former place and only one at the latter. If mortality as great as this was being experienced in holy, godly communities, what hope did the layman have? Edward's journey to France was a public statement that he and his companions were not afraid, that they could rely on God's protection. In an unprecedented move, he had the news that he was going to France proclaim
ed in all the towns of England.

Edward departed from Sandwich on
29
October, accompanied by the prince of Wales, the bishop of Winchester and the earl of Warwick. He settled the arrangements for the continuation of the truce near Calais on
13
November, and returned to England on the
17th.
By then the first cases of plague had been found in London.'
9
Nevertheless Edward returned
directly
to the capital. As Londoners shut themselves up in their houses, Edward exchanged the Palace of Westminster for the Tower of London.
His court had so many people coming and going that no attempt to isolate him would have been of any use. So he decided to carry on, as usual, with his games and celebrations. He held an elaborate games at Otford, for Christmas, at which many guests came. They dressed in the masks of lions' heads, elephants' heads, 'wodewoses' (wildmen of the woods), men wearing bats' wings, and girls.
21
Edward took centre stage in a complete set of armour for himself and his horse in which everything was 'spangled with silver' and his tunic and shield worked with the motto: 'Hay, hay the White Swan by God's Soul I am thy Man'. Nor did he stay at Otford but moved on to Merton for Epiphany
(6
January). There his games included the spectacle of thirteen men dressed in masks of dragons' heads parading with thirteen masks of crowned men, or kings. Payments for ten black coats - a very unusual item in Edward's wardrobe accounts at this time - may indicate a mourning tone, but if so one suspects it was so the thirteen kings could be seen to be jousting against those who were in funereal despair.

In the early new year the plague began its huge, deadly sweep through southern England. Modern examinations of the evidence suggest that the mortality in southern England was especially high, around the forty per cent mark, due to the number of ports. In London the numbers of dead crept up, from twenty per day to forty, and then sixty. The chronicler Avesbury noted that from the feast of the Purification
(2
February) to after Easter
(12
April) more than two hundred bodies were interred every single day in the new cemetery adjacent to Smithfield. This was one of two emergency cemeteries purchased in order for the citizens of London to have a place of burial, and by the end of the plague they had received about sixty thousand corpses.
The benefactor who provided this particular cemetery, as well as a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the site, was none other than Sir Walter Manny, now Lord Manny.There was clearly more to this friend of Edward's than extraordinary courage and indomitable fighting skills.

The plague's rel
entl
ess progress meant that parliament had to be cancelled. Edward first gave the order on i January to delay the assembly until a fortnight after Easter, and then on
10
March he cancelled it until further notice. By then the country and the capital were in chaos. The economy was experiencing chronic deflation, the food supply had collapsed, and law and order was in tatters. To quote the famous description of the chronicler Henry Knighton:

In the same year there was a great murrain of sheep everywhere in the realm, so that in one place more than five thousand sheep died in a single pasture; and they rotted so much that neither beast nor bird would approach them. And there was a great cheapness of all things for fear of death, for very few took any account of riches or of possessions of any kind. A man coul
d have a horse which was formerl
y worth forty shillings for half a mark (6s 8d), a big fat ox for four shillings, a cow for twelve pence, a heifer for sixpence, a fat wether for fourpence, a sheep for threepence, a lamb for tuppence, a large pig for fivepence and a stone of wool for ninepence. Sheep and oxen strayed through the fields and among the crops, and there was no one to drive them off or to collect them, but they perished in uncounted numbers throughout all districts for lack of shepherds, because there was such a shortage of servants and labourers. For there was no recollection of such a severe mortality since the time of Vortigern, King of the Romans, in whose day, as Bede testifies, the living did not suffice to bury the dead.

It was at this point that Edward founded - or, to be exact - completed the foundation of the Order of the Garter. On St George's Day
1349,
at the very height of the most horrific disease the kingdom had ever seen, Edward held a great tournament at Windsor during which he formally instituted his Order of twenty-six men who would joust and pray together once a year, and conduct themselves everywhere like proud Arthurian knights. How inappropriate, we might say, how insensitive! And yet, the more we examine this foundation, the more we are forced to accept that the plague was one of Edward's key reasons for founding the Order at this particular time.

To understand this, we must review the events described above. As the crisis grew over the course of
1348,
Edward held parliaments and a number of tournaments, doing what he did best: pushing himself forward not only as the kingdom's leader but also as its champion. Then his daughter died. In August he established the collegiate chapel of St George at Windsor, and may have meant to found an order along the lines of the Garter soon after, but in September the death of a second child cruelly destroyed any such chivalric dream. Then the country was wholly plunged into despondency with the arrival of the plague. In October, Edward publicly proclaimed he was going to France, where most of the country believed (ri
ghtly
) that the disease was already raging. It was an act of defiance: a 'publicity stunt'. He then returned to England, and did not attempt to avoid London, where the plague was spreading, but then, perhaps acting on the advice of his physicians, he withdrew and held his games and celebrations at sli
ghtly
quieter spots, Otford and Merton. And he was probably wise to accept his physicians' advice, for then the true horror of the plague in southern England became apparent. He was forced to cancel parliament. At the same time the most dire rains began to fall, the cattie murrain took hold, and the deflationary cycle started. Against these problems even Edward faltered. But at the very height of the plague, when two hundred men, women and children were being buried in London every single day, and lords and ladies were hiding in their isolated manors up and down the country, when sheep
and cattl
e were dying in their thousands, and the social order seemed to be falling apart, he threw aside the advice of his physicians. His people needed leadership, and he was the king of the English, chosen by God. He could do nothing to halt the plague, but he could demonstrate effective leadership in spite of it. His founding of a chivalric order at this point in time was a second act of defiance against the disease, a second 'publicity stunt'. Edward demonstrated that it was business as usual in England in the only way he knew: a high-profile tournament. It demonstrated to his subjects that their king was not hiding in some out-of-the-way manor, waiting for the all-clear, in contrast to almost every lord and bishop in England.

In this reading of the evidence the key factor influencing the foundation of the Order is the timing of the tournament, at the very height of the plague. This implies that no garters, mottoes or any other objects or phrases associated with the Order were its direct cause. This is not surprising: the idea of founding a chivalric order had probably been in Edward's mind since returning from France in
1347,
if not since giving up the Round Table plans in
1344.
But it is patently obvious that the emblem of the garter itself has nothing to do with the disease. Likewise, it is highly doubtful that the motto
honi soit qui mal
y pense
(evil to him who thinks it evil) was connected with the calamity. So, why this emblem and this motto? What else was going on in Edward's mind at this time?

We could say that, because the garter and motto had been in frequent use at tournaments in the period
1346-48,
they were simply adopted because they happened to be there when the Order was formally constituted. But Edward had been planning the Order for at least a year, so it is unlikely that the regalia of the Order were merely incidental. In addition, there is no doubt that a Companionship of the Garter - of twenty-four knights, one of whom was almost certainly the prince - was in existence by the end of
1348.
Edward seems to have borrowed this idea, and used it as the basis for his more distinguished and formal Order in April
1349.
But this still does not explain where the emblem of the garter comes from. Nor the motto.

A number of modern writers have tried to associate the adoption of the garter and motto with Edward's claim on the throne of France. Although this suggestion is superficially attractive, given the recent conquests in France, it does not stand up to detailed scrutiny. For a start, it is very difficult to see how a garter can be symbolic of Edward's dominance over Philip's kingdom: a man's garter is hardly a fearsome article of clothing. Because of this, it has been suggested that the garter is meant to represent a sword belt. This too is difficult to accept: not least for the common-sense reason that the Order would then have been called the Order of the Sword Belt. We might also object that a sword belt is a far less powerful symbol for an order of chivalry than other kni
ghtly
accoutrements (a sword, for example). As for the motto, the language in which it was written — French - has often been seen as good evidence that it relates to Edward's claims on the French throne, as Edward's other known mottoes were all in English. Indeed, scholars have repeated this particular argument so many times that it is now said to be a widely accepted 'fact'. But it is a huge assumption, without any evidence to support it. The wording has no political or military overtones at all, and the two contemporary English literary references have nothing to do with the political struggle against France. We should also remember that all Edward's other adopted mottoes were personal, not international statements. 'It is as it is', as we have seen, was probably a tacit announcement of the death of his father, aimed at those in
the know. Similarly the apparentl
y love-related motto he used the previous Christmas - 'Hay, Hay the White Swan, by God's Soul I am thy Man' - was anything but international propaganda, requiring either familiarity with the English poem or song from which it came (if literary) or the identity of Edward's 'white swan'.