The Perfect King (60 page)

While the parliament of
1352
was still assembling, Edward received some extraordinary news, which, problematic though it was, must have made him smile. Despite the truce, an English squire called John Dancaster had led an attack on the
castle
of Guines. Guines was six miles to the south of Calais, considered impregnable, and the greatest threat to the security of the English town. On the night of the attack, the castle commander was being honoured as a founder member of the new Order of the Star. As the commander of Guines ate off a gold plate in King John's presence, Dancaster and a few other squires in service at Calais, with their faces blackened, climbed over the walls into Guines, killing the sentries and seizing the
castle
. It was an almost-unbelievable piece of good fortune. But Edward could not ignore that it was a violation of the truce. It had been French emissaries - not an English messenger - who had brought the news to him. Dancaster was refusing to say in whose name he was defending Guines.

It was a serious problem. On the one hand it was so tempting to acknowledge Dancaster's victory as an English success. On the other hand, to resume the war at this juncture was not Edward's highest priority. It threatened to jeopardise his domestic projects. It would also place him very clearly in the wrong, for Edward's justification of the war had arisen in response to Philip's antagonisms, not John's. John was only Edward's enemy because he was his father's son, and thus bound to lead the French in war. On the other hand it could be argued that the French had abused the truce in the same way as Dancaster, when they had attacked and seized Saint-Jean-d'Angely the previous year. As parliament was assembling, Edward took the opportunity to present the question to the representatives. Those who spoke on the matter in his presence were all for war. Edward decided to follow their advice and his own inclination, and to keep Guines. To the dismay of the French, he pardoned Dancaster for any wrongdoing and rewarded him.

The French reaction was immediately to fight. An army assembled at Rennes in Brittany under Guy de Nesle, intended to besiege Ploermel; another assembled at Saint-Jean-d'Ang6ly and Saintes, and a third assembled near Guines. Edward's response was slow, far slower than it should have been. He underestimated the fury that his decision would unleash. In early March he appointed the newly created earl of Stafford to take command in Gascony. But it was not until
20
April that Sir Walter Bendey was ordered to survey the
castle
s of Brittany and put them in a defensive state. Although the Genoese were already fighting for John in Brittany, only on 6 May did Edward ask them not to assist his enemy. Eventually, on
24
May the writs went out to draw spearmen from Wales and archers from the English counties. Even then Edward was cautious about getting too deeply involved. He waited another three weeks before ordering the coast to be readied for war and equipping fifteen ships for the forthcoming crossing. He seems to have been deeply reluctant to take the necessary steps to fight in France in
1352.

When the English defence did get under way, it proved stunningly effective. A contingent from Calais joined the men at Guines in attacking the French and burning their siege engines, so that the French commander Geoffrey de Charny was eventually forced to retreat. In Gascony, Stafford was successful in striking panic into the hearts of the citizens of Agen, and won a battle at Marmande in August in which he captured seven knights of the new Order of the Star. He then proceeded to relieve the siege of Taillebourg. But the most successful of all was Sir Walter Bendey in Brittany. He relieved the siege of Ploermel before Guy de Nesle could stop him and then met de Nesle face-to-face on a hill near Mauron, on
14
August
1352.
Wh
en de Nesle saw how few men Bentl
ey had - the chronicler Avesbury estimated about six hundred - and that they were drawn up in the open, with no protection, no water, no woods, nothing to save them at all, he offered the English the chance to surrender honourably.
But Bentl
ey was the successor in office to the famous and fearless Sir Thomas Dagworth, and his reputation was at stake. There was no such thing as an honourable surrender in Brittany. De Nesle ordered his men to advance on foot, hoping to overwhelm the English through force of numbers. The armies clashed 'between the hour of vespers and sunset' and the result was very bl
oody. Bentl
ey commanded from the front and was himself badly wounded. But the English were victorious. It was yet another extraordinary English success: when his men piled up the surcoats to count the number of dead they reckoned they had killed one hundred and forty knights and five hundred esquires, plus an uncounted number of footsoldiers. A further hundred and sixty men of rank were captured. As the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker noted, the reason why the number of. dead knights was so high was because there had been a large number of knights of the Order of the Star present, and at their inaugural feast they had sworn never to retreat. It might have been a noble promise in the hall, but King John's knights paid dearly on the
battle
field for giving up one of the most practical of all military manoeuvres.

In
1352
Edward held a great ceremony at Windsor to celebrate Christmas. He had just turned forty, which was well into middle-age by medieval standards. For this year's celebrations thirteen devils' costumes were ordered, thirteen Dominican friars' costumes and thirteen merchants' costumes. Edward himself was decked out in a robe embroidered with gold falcons. This would all have no more meaning for us than the most obscure of the games of earlier years if it were not for a single rare manuscript survival. An East Midlands poet seems to have been present at this or a similar games soon afterwards, and was inspired by the occasion to write a poem on the economic state of England.

Poems about economic theory are exceptionally rare, and this one is unique in English medieval history. It is a sophisticated allegory. The poet dreams that he sees two armies come together, and overseeing them is Edward 'wor
thier in wit than anyone else,
to advise, to read and to
rule the anger,
that both armies had in hatred for the other'. Edward is described as 'the comeliest king crowned with gold' and takes his seat on a silk-covered bench in a pavilion, which is decked out in red with gold bezants and blue garters. High in the canopies are woven the words 'Evil to him who thinks evil of it', the motto of the Order of the Garter. Then the tournament begins. One army is led by 'Winner' and is made up of merchants, lawyers and friars. The other is led by 'Waster' and is composed of men-at-arms and esquires. 'Winner' on behalf of the lawyers, merchants and friars declares his hatred for 'Waster', and accuses the men-at-arms and esquires of spending their money frivolously on drink, good food and having a good time.

This allows us to see the probable format of Edward's regular games and entertainments, so well recorded with regard to clothing but so poorly described as to actual proceedings. Edward was regally on show, presiding, as if he were viewing a tournament. But rather than actually fighting with lances and armour, the armies of protagonists were making declarations in their various costumes. Edward's games in this instance seem to be a form of drama. It is of course possible that the costumes were for specific people to assume other identities for the sake of parody. But the overriding impression is that of political commentary. As we have already seen, satire, especially when it involved the power of the pope, was appealing to Edward.

The poem is also interesting in that it gives us an insight as to how a well-informed and well-connected political commentator viewed the social changes of the first half of Edward's reign. The rising professionals are presented as competing on an equal footing with the landed gentry. This is a novelty in itself; previously the gentry had stood socially head and shoulders above the merchants and all but the most eminent lawyers. It is a recognition of Edward's own policies to date, extending parliamentary power into the gentry and merchant classes, knighting merchants, permitting wealthy men and their families to dress like lords. But if we look at what the poem is really saying, we see there are great tensions arising from this. On one level there is a complaint against the uselessness and selfishness of the old feudal aristocracy, somewhat redundant as a fighting force since Crecy. But the poem is even more
subtle
than that, for 'Waster' retorts with a devastating attack on 'Winner' and his practice of storing up money and selling goods in times of dearth. Thus this is not just a capitalist's complaint, it is a juxtaposition of the avarice of capitalism contrasted with old-fashioned lordly privilege. The moral of the story is that the rising class of merchants and lawyers are not necessarily more virtuous than those who inherit their wealth, for they will not sustain the poor or anyone else except themselves.

From our point of view, the poem is most interesting for the role the king assumes in all this disputation. Edward was most certainly a champion 'waster', in the sense that he spent more money, was more privileged, and indulged himself more
frequently
and to a greater extent than anyone else in the kingdom. Yet he is raised above the contest, and placed as a judge. No scandal attaches to his name, nor that of the monarchy; this is not a criticism of his kingship. Rather it is the opposite: it is a vision of society developing and changing under the king's authority. The relatively humble poet selected Edward - and no one else - to preside over this social and moral controversy. Not the pope, not the archbishop of Canterbury, or the prelates
en masse,
nor any duke, prince or combination of earls, nor the Chancellor or justices of the realm, nor the mayors. Not even God, the Devil or the poet himself. In
1352
it was Edward who was seen as the man on whom all the realm depended for its leadership and judgement. At a time of European-wide social unrest, we should not take this for granted. If 'Winner and Waster' had been written in France, we might seriously doubt whether King John would have been presented as the best man to preside over his warring estates of merchants and gentry. And if it had been written in
Scotland
, the less said about David II (imprisoned at the Tower), the better.

On
6
December
1352
Pope Clement VI died. Within days yet another Frenchman had been elected. His successor, Innocent VI, had been one of the cardinals who had
approached Edward during the Cre
cy campaign, and had grossly underestimated the degree of respect which Edward felt he was due as a war leader and heir to the French throne, with the result that the cardinal had been dismissed from Edward's presence. Fortunately for Edward, the change of regime at Avignon also opened up an opportunity for a much younger man, Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, to take a lead in bringing England and France to the negotiating table.

Guy of Boulogne is one of those individuals about whom historians have strong opinions. To some he was quite genuine in his attempts to stop the war, to others he was a 'self-seeking courtier'. There is no doubt that he tried to connect his advantageous birth - he was the son of the count of Boulogne and the uncle of the queen of France - with his peacemaking ambitions. Having the ear of King John and being a cardinal made him a doubly dubious agent as far as Edward was concerned, but it did mean that someone, at last, could lay
out clearly for King John exactl
y what was required to make Edward discuss a permanent peace. The problem was clear to him: Edward was never going to pick up the scraps under the king of France's negotiating table, and he was certainly not going to accept French overlordship of any of his hard-won lands. So land had to be given away in sovereignty first in order for the French to achieve the peace and prosperity necessary to make a new start.

Guy's initiative coincided with Edward's own ambitions for a permanent peace. As Edward ordered work to commence on his new house at Rotherhithe, the archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Lancaster and the bishop of Norwich crossed the Channel to begin negotiations at Guines in March. What they heard - the offer of sovereignty of Gascony being given up in exchange for Edward dropping the tide of king of France -was a breath of fresh air, very much in line with what they imagined Edward himself wanted. Discussions came to an end with a promise to follow them up in May
1353,
along similar lines. It looked as though a permanent peace might at last be achieved.

Edward was at Eltham that Easter, overseeing the building works of his new palace, giving further directions and having the traditional great feast on Easter Day. His vision of the future in France had so far amounted only to giving up Brittany to Charles de Blois (who was still his prisoner, kept at the Tower) in return for an acknowledgement that Brittany would never fight for either side. A permanent peace was something he had not properly considered. Now, sixteen years after the fight had begun, he found himself pondering the question seriously for the first time. What precisely was it he wanted from the French conflict? His claim had begun as a denial of Philip's insistence on his vassal status and French incursions in Gascony. Edward had originally not meant his claim to the throne of France to be more than a bargaining position, but now that he had been so incredibly successful
...
Was it possible that he could go the whole way and actually claim the throne?