The Perfect King (55 page)

The battle continued until dark. For a while the prince's ship was in danger of s
inking, which would have instantl
y meant the loss of two of Edward's sons, but the earl of Lancaster saw the danger and sailed to his aid, helping him overcome the galley he had grappled. Even after dark one ship carried on fighting against the Castilians. This was the
Salle
du Roi,
commanded for Edward by Robert of Namur. The Castilians had grappled the ship, and decided to drag it away from the
battle
to ransack it, with their sails fully unfurled. In the darkness many men on both sides were killed as they fought across the decks, unable to see, and lost their footing, or were shot by unseen bowmen. Eventually one of Namur's men cut the sails of the ship, deadening their flight, and Namur's men fought off the Castilians.

Contemporaries suggest that, over the course of the
battle
, between fourteen and twenty-four Castilian ships were captured, and the remainder of the Castilian fleet fled. No English vessels were seized. Some were sunk on both sides, but it was a great victory for the English, hailed in some quarters as a success as bold and as great as Crecy.
On landing, a littl
e after dark, Edward went to Philippa and returned to her both Edward and John. It had been a day of courage, destruction and near-disaster, but ultimately it was one more victory for Edward.

When news of the battle of Winchelsea reached France, few would have taken much interest. It was not that the French did not care that their Castilian allies had been defeated in their first engagement with the English, it was because, seven days earlier, King Philip had died. In his career he had chosen to make an enemy of his cousin, Edward, and for that he had been repeatedly outwitted, out-negotiated, betrayed, defeated and humiliated. His insecurity and impatience, leading to his bitter reproaches towards his own people, had only made matters worse. After Crecy he was a broken man. After Calais, his was a broken reign. When his queen had died of plague, he had waited only a month before marrying his seventeen-year-old cousin, Blanche d'Evreux. Philip himself was fifty-six, which raised eyebrows, but what was shocking was that she had been betrothed to his son, John, causing many recriminations from members of the French nobility and the alienation of the heir to the throne. When the truce was announced in June
1350,
France was doubly joyful, for it saved them from their own king's ineptitude as well as Edward's ruthless destruction. Philip's death brought an end to a twenty-two-year-long reign which had been as disastrous for France as that of Edward II had been for England. Together they stand as a reminder that, in the middle ages, kings did not have to be good men but they did have to be good kings.

TWELVE

At
the
Court
of
the
Sun
King

In
1350
Edward's confidence could not have been higher. He had been victorious in every
battle
he had fought. He had survived the plague, had restored the prestige of the royal family, had solved his financial problems, was respected and applauded by his people and held in awe by his kni
ghtly
contemporaries. He had
constantly
tried new ideas and techniques, and personally he had inspired and demanded innovations which had resulted in new ways of fighting, governing, raising money and trading. The loyalty and courage of his men had been repeatedly tested to the limit and never found lacking. With such support he had done what no English king - not even his renowned grandfather, Edward I - had done before. He had utterly humiliated the French king, captured the Scottish king, and swept aside the political machinations of the pope, plunging the schemes of all those who opposed him into disarray.

But despite these successes and such high confidence, Edward himself was changing. Even though he had survived the plague, the experience had deeply affected him. It had shown him the limits of his power, and was a horrific reminder to all kings of their weakness against natural disasters. It had affected him as a man too, through the tragic loss of his daughter and the deaths of friends brave enough to join him at Windsor in April
1349,
at the height of the epidemic. Above all else it had shown him how transitory his achievements might prove. Had he died in the plague, that would have been the enduring image of him, covered in black pustules and reeking of decay. He had risked his life at the
battle
of Winchelsea and almost lost his boat and drowned; and all for what? Seventeen galleys? In his own high opinion of himself, it would have been a tragedy if he had died for so
little
gain. It may have been the plague, or it may have been his age - he was now thirty-seven - or perhaps both, but it is at this point that Edward began to draw back from martial activities and to create more lasting structures. Winchelsea was to be the last time he drew his sword and personally risked his life in the front line of a
battle
.

Edward had probably begun to think in terms of permanent creations even before Winchelsea. In the Order of the Garter he had created a means to perpetuate a kni
ghtly
reputation long after an individual was no longer capable of fighting at the highest level. As soon as it was founded, the fame of the Order spread across Europe. In France the newly crowned King John was thinking about founding his own order, the Order of the Star, and other princes and kings were doing likewise. A whole host of orders was in the planning, all based on knightly accoutrements: swords, buckles, collars, even a knot. But there was no doubt which order every knight in Europe aspired to join. When historians write that these orders of chivalry were distinguished by lavish ceremonial and ornate dress regulations they are missing an important point. The distinguishing mark of the Order of the Garter was that it was a select band of just twenty-six knights chosen by the man who was widely recognised to be the greatest warrior-king in Christendom and the epitome of chivalric honour. So great was its reputation that when in
1350
Thomas de la Marche, bastard son of the French king had agreed to fight a duel with a Cypriot knight, John Visconti, they chose to do so not before King Philip but in front of Edward, even though the English king was de la Marche's enemy.

It was with the Order of the Garter in mind that Edward set about his largest and most impressive architectural creation, at Windsor
Castle
. This was where he had been born; this was where the Garter tournament had taken place, and this, he decided, would be where the heart of the Order would remain. Already he had established the collegiate chapel of St George in the lower bailey. From now on, all Knights of the Garter were to attend the service at Windsor on St George's Day every year. Even if they could not - if, for example, they were overseas - they should celebrate as if they
were
at Windsor, being a travelling advertisement for the glory and dignity of Edward's chivalric order. For his part, Edward would enhance the Order's reputation, building the largest, grandest and most opulent palace in Northern Europe.

Today Windsor
Castle
has the appearance of a modernised medieval castle, a great symbol easily recognisable from the motorway or on the television as the monarch's home. But in the fourteenth century it was nothing short of a Versailles Palace: the court of the Sun King. Edward's work there amounted to the most expensive building in Britain by a single monarch throughout the whole of the middle ages. To put it in proportion, we often think of Edward I's eight Welsh
castle
s, built between
1277
and
1304,
as one of the most significant building programmes undertaken by a medieval king. The entire cost of all eight was
£95
,ooo.
3
Edward
III
spent more than
£50,000
on Windsor
Castle
alone.

And yet few people today connect Windsor
Castle
with Edward
III
. People immediately associate the Tower of London with William the Conqueror, and Hampton Court with Henry VIII, just as they do
Versailles
with Louis XTV of France. But Edward has, once again, slipped through the net of national self-awareness. One reason is the dampening effect of his reputation throughout the nineteenth century, so that his achievements were obscured by writers eager to focus on his failings. But there are two other, simpler reasons as well. One is that Edward's principal works at Windsor are not open to the public; they are very private, as the royal family still lives in them.
The other is that they are mostl
y internal buildings: living and ceremonial quarters, which have been repeatedly adapted to suit the tastes of each monarch since Edward, unlike the stern curtain walls, which retain their militaristic solidity. What the public sees today from outside the
castle
is largely restored twelfth- and thirteenth-century stonework. It was inside this impressive chivalric shell - the largest residential
castle
in the world - that Edward created the stone epitome of his vision of kingship and knighthood.

The internal reconstruction of Windsor Castle as the greatest medieval palace in England took about eighteen years. Practically every major artist and craftsman in the country was at some time or other employed on the fabric. A striking mark of the importance which Edward gave to his projected works at Windsor from the outset was his donation of the Neith Cross (a portion of the True Cross and his most precious relic) to the chapel of St George. Actual structural work may be said to have begun with the appointment of the first of a series of clerks of works in April
1350,
the first anniversary of the Garter tournament. The earliest works were the buildings for the College of St George in the lower bailey. He removed the huge, unfinished Round Table building he had begun six years earlier and replaced it with a series of half-timbered houses for die canons, clerks and choristers around a series of cloisters. At the same time the chapel was re-roofed and equipped with new choir stalls and windows. A new chapter house was built with a warden's lodge above it. A new treasury was added, a new vestry, and a belfry. The construction and decoration of the collegiate buildings took until
1357
to complete, and cost about
£6,000.

It was the king's palatial accommodation in the upper bailey which captured the attention of contemporaries. These works were intended from the outset to be truly impressive. Beginning in
1358
under the direction of a promising royal clerk, William of Wykeham, Edward ordered the rebuilding of the entire upper bailey, beginning at the north-west and proceeding in a clockwise direction. By the early
1360s
his expenditure on the
castle
was running in excess of
£5,000
per year. There was a new hall and kitchen, the old hall being converted into a chamber for the personal use of the king. This room alone had twenty windows. He also had a painted chamber, and five other cha
mbers, including one - the Rose
Chamber - coloured with blue, green and vermilion paint and large quantities of gold leaf. Philippa had four chambers, including one hung entirely with mirrors, and another decorated as a dancing chamber. Stone was brought from all over the country', including Somerset, Surrey, Berkshire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, to give variety and character to the walls.
Although Edward had lost his master mason, William Ramsey, in the plague, he was followed by a whole host of successors, including Henry Yevele, arguably the most important of all medieval English architects. In
1360
alone no fewer than five hundred and sixty-eight masons were employed from thirteen counties. The following year - which saw expenditure on the
castle
top the
£6,000
mark — more than twice this number were employed, drawn from seventeen counties. One chronicler remarked that 'almost all the masons and carpenters throughout England were brought to that building, so that hardly anyone could have any good mason or carpenter'. The chronicler perhaps exaggerated a
little
, but in one respect he was absolutely correct: all the very
best
craftsmen worked at Windsor. One of the master carpenters at work on the collegiate buildings was William Hurley, the man responsible for Hugh Despenser's great roof in the hall of Caerphilly
Castle
, built before
1326
(still extant) and many other great buildings of Edward's reign. Edward used all the country had to offer in terms of numbers, skill and experience. At the end of the process he had constructed a palace which was worthy not only of him as the victor of Halidon Hill, Sluys, Crecy, Calais and Winchelsea, but of the English people, who had fought for him at those
battle
s, and won.

*