The Perfect King (77 page)

But nowhere was the death of the prince more keenly felt than in Edward's heart. He too had lost his protector, his son and heir, his last hopes for the future.

Edward was in mourning, grief-stricken and hardly able to communicate with the world. So we can only guess at how he greeted the news that parliament had moved against Alice. Sir Peter de la Mare informed parliament that she had relieved the royal purse of between two and three thousand pounds per year. Her use of maintenance was notorious, and, lest there be any doubt about it, parliament stipulated that she and all women were to be prohibited from protecting those accused in the king's courts. Then it was revealed that she had
secretly
married William Windsor. As a marriage had to be consummated in order to be legal, it was universally assumed - and probably true - that they had slept together.

It was shocking, appalling. Had she not been Edward's mistress, impeachment would surely have followed. But Alice avoided prison and further prosecution on condition that she no longer visited or saw the king. If she did see him, she would lose everything she possessed in Engl
and and suffer perpetual exile.
Hence we may be certain that there came a day when Edward expected Alice to be with him, and asked for her. And he would have been told that his beloved mistress, his Lady of the Sun, could not be brought to him. He could never see her again. She had married another man. Edward had been committing adultery.

This was too much for Edward. The loss, personal and emotional, hurt him deeply, but the sinfulness too, even though he had loved her in good faith. He was lonely and afraid. In a sorrowful scene he swore an oath by the Virgin Mary that he did not know she was married. In his confused and lamentable state he begged for parliament to show her mercy, not to have her executed, both out of love for him and to preserve some vestige of honour. As for William Windsor, Ed
ward summoned him from Ireland.
He wanted him prosecuted. He now knew that he had been used. Anger tore through his grief-stricken soul. On
1
8
July he purchased a chest in which he locked up the accusations against Windsor whom he regarded as the true culprit. If Edward had any power left him, he would make the man sorry for his betrayal.

*

Among the resolutions of the Good Parliament was a declaration that a council of twelve should advise the king on all matters of weight, thereby reducing the risk of a 'coven' appropriating the royal power again. Edward himself sank into a mood of unfocused remorse and grief. He dwelt on the idea that his son's illness and death were somehow a penance inflicted on him for his treatment of his own father. His loss of Alice seems to have given rise to further grief for his wife. On
6
August he gave instructions to the keeper of the wardrobe to deliver cloths of gold and torchbearers' clothes for commemorating the anniversaries of the deaths of his mother and Philippa. Visitors came and went: some Florentines in exile persuaded him to give them somewhere to stay in London, despite a sentence of excommunication hanging over them. The duke of Brittany left the country without informing him. Edward did not care. He was now waiting for just two things: the burial of his son, which was to take place on
5
October, and his own death.

At the end of September, Edward fell ill at Havering, suffering from an 'enpostyme'. All his physicians despaired of his recovery. Letters were sent out to the clergy on
2
October asking for them to pray for the king.
On
5
October, the day of his son's funeral, he appointed trustees to look after his estates. Three days later he gave orders for no fewer than fifty-seven cloths of gold to be offered at churches where his son's obsequies were being celebrated. That same day he made his will. For a man who had achieved so much, it is a very modest list of requests. He asked to be buried in the abbey church at Westminster. He asked that sufficient funds be provided to complete the endowment of the Collegiate Church of St Stephen at Westminster, his Cistercian foundation of St Mary Graces by the Tower of London, and the Dominican priory of King's Langley. He especially gave money to pay for the singing of masses for the souls of himself and Philippa. He confirmed his grandson, Richard of Bordeaux, as his heir and bequeathed him his best bed with all its armorial hangings, as well as four lesser beds and hangings for his hall. To Joan, princess of Wales, he gave a thousand marks, and the free restitution of jewels she had pledged to him. To his Very dear daughter' Isabella, he gave an income of three hundred marks per year until her daughters were married. Everything else he left to his executors to dispose of as they saw fit. His two youngest sons, Edmund and Thomas, were not mentioned, except for a reference in a supplementary document by which Edward settled the inheritance of the throne. After his death, only males were to inherit: first Richard, then John of Gaunt and his sons, and then, failing them, Edmund and his sons, and finally Thomas and his sons. In this way Edward attempted to destroy any claim his granddaughter, Philippa, might have had on the throne, thereby revoking the royal status of the Mortimer earls of March. It was an act of revenge for the proceedings of the Good Parliament, which he believed had been instigated by the Mortimers. But it was also a sign of how bitter and sad the dying king had become, that he should disinherit his own granddaughter.

In the fourteenth century, wills were normally only made when the sufferer genuinely feared death was close. Thus everyone around him now believed that Edward was about to die. Latimer, whom Edward had appointed one of his executors, was recalled and pardoned. Alice too returned to court at his request. With a council of twelve to guard against maladministration, and Latimer and Neville safely out of office, it was felt that this great king should be allowed some last wishes in his final days. On
1
6
October a long gown was ordered for him, to guard him against the cold weather. More warm clothes, lined with lambskins and furs, were ordered for him three days later. And three days after that, despite so shamefully betraying him, Alice returned to him, and received his pardon.

The remaining eight months of Edward's life and reign are a sorry tale of his poor health deteriorating further and the country sliding into acrimony and hatred. Had he died shortly after making his will, as he himself expected, no one would have begrudged him having Alice at his bedside. But that she was so easily restored to him, and remained with him for the next eight months, provoked scandal and widespread anxiety. Parliament's will had been flouted. What had c
hanged? Latimer was with the
king, and John of Gaunt was hunting down the key figures from the Good Parliament. Sir Peter de la Mare was arrested and flung into a dungeon in Nottingham Castle, with no prospect of a trial.
28
William of Wykeham lost all his temporal estates. Even the earl of March was forced to surrender his marshal's staff in view of John of Gaunt's threats against him. In November Alice tried to secure Edward's pardon of Richard Lyons. Edward's chamberlain, Roger Beauchamp, would not let her near the king, but she made such a commotion outside Edward's chamber that he heard her, shuffled to the door, and opened it. He accepted the petition, and there was nothing Beauchamp could do to stop him reading it. In his simple state, he pardoned Lyons. In Walsingham's words,

the whole populace desired Alice's condemnation when they saw that no action was being taken to remedy her wrongdoings, but realised that this evil enchantress, exalted above the cedars of Lebanon, was enjoying extraordinary favour, and all the people of the realm passionately longed for her downfall.

Edward remained at Havering for the rest of the year. On his sixty-fourth and final birthday, he gave presents of lavish robes to his seven serving physicians and surgeons. It was a far cry from his fiftieth, when he had raised his sons to dukedoms and held a great feast. On
25
January
1377
he completed his fiftieth year as king. The jubilee was not widely celebrated. A general pardon was announced. Sermons of the king's new moral purity were preached. But Edward's mortal frame had become
little
more than the vessel of his sickness. On
3
February
1377,
his impostume abated, and eight days after that he was transported by barge to his palace at Sheen, to be nearer to Windsor. Like his mother in her dying, it had become his ambition to attend one last ceremony of the Order of the Garter. As his boat passed Westminster, all the lords who were then attending parliament in the presence of his grandson came out to wave and cheer him. Within the Painted Chamber, clergymen were once again being appointed to the great offices of state, the impeachments of the previous parliament were being overturned, and parliamentary business was beginning to resume the character of bitter in-fighting and political factions it had known under Edward II. The characters were different: it was Edmund Mortimer, not Roger, leading the Marcher
lords, and his enemy was now titl
ed the duke - not earl - of Lancaster; but otherwise it was almost as if Edward
III
had not reigned.

Edward did manage to attend one more St George's Day celebration at Windsor. On
23
April
1377
he lifted a sword to dub the heirs to the great tides of the kingdom. Before him knelt his two ten-year-old grandsons: Richard of Bordeaux, heir of the late prince, and Henry of

Bolingbroke, son and heir of John of Gaunt. Both of these boys were nominated for the Order of the Garter. Edward also knighted his youngest son, the twelve-year-old Thomas of Woodstock, and the young heirs to the earldoms of Oxford, Salisbury and Stafford, and the heirs to the baronies of Mowbray, Beaumont and Percy. Last, he knighted his own illegitimate son John Southeray. Alice's moment of vindication and recognition had arrived.

Edward was taken back to his palace at Sheen to die. Few visited him. An audience with several Londoners who had proved particularly determined to see him revealed him 'placed in his chair like a statue in position, unable to speak'. He seems to have been swaddled like a baby in cloth of gold and muslin and then nailed into his throne for the occasion. The nails might have been gilded but nevertheless it is a striking imag
e. The fate of the victor of Cre
cy - England's great hero - was to be nailed, half-aliv
e into his throne to sit, vacantl
y, enduring his last duties. John of Gaunt and a number of bishops were in attendance that day, and the address to the king was delivered by Robert Ashton. But Edward could not comprehend it. Inside that trussed-up statuesque figure of golden senility, his mind plodded on, slowly, its logic awry. When he had recovered his speech a few days later, he summoned the Londoners to him
secretly
. He urged them to make a great candle bearing the coat of arms of his son John, and to carry it in a solemn procession to St Paul's Cathedral, and to burn it before a figure of the Virgin. What he meant by this we can only guess, but most Londoners clearly thought he had gone mad. In his moments between lucidity and silence, Alice continued to ply her political dealings. One of her undoubtedly positive achievements was to persuade the king to restore the estates of William of Wykeham, which he had lost as a result of John of Gaunt's accusations after the Good Parliament.

The release for which Edward must have yearned finally came at midsummer. On
2
June he made preparations to commemorate the anniversa
r
y of the prince's death. On the
4th
he granted his last charter. With him that day were his two younger sons and Nicholas Carew, Henry Percy, the archbishop of Canterbury and the Treasurer and Chancellor. Then they left him in his chamber to listen to the silence. Alice alone remained with him, together with a few household staff and chamber knights. In his bed he still talked of hunting and hawking, and the joys he had known. But on the
21st
he suddenly lost the power of speech. He had almost certainly suffered a stroke. He lay in his bed, unable to say or do anything. Alice was with him, and a priest also. According to Walsingham, Alice removed the rings from his fingers before she left. Maybe she did.

Maybe Edward had previously urged her to take them when the time came, a final farewell token of his gratitude for her staying by him. To him they no longer mattered. He was drifting into the oblivion which had consumed everything he truly loved. At the last, after Alice had departed, only the priest remained. There were no earls, dukes, princes, or queens: no sons, no wife, not even his mistress. There were no ambassadors, nor dignitaries, nor trumpets. There was just dust floating in the air of the chamber, and one priest praying at his side. The priest urged him to repent of his sins. He alone heard the dying king whisper his final words. 'Jesu, have pity'

SEVENTEEN

Edward
the
Gracious

They say that a dying man, at the moment of death, sees his life flash before his eyes. Whether true or not, on hearing of Edward's death, it seems that his subjects saw the reign flash before their eyes in all its glorious achievement. One moment, Thomas Walsingham was writing bitterly 'how distressing for the whole realm of England was the king's fickleness, his infatuation and his shameful behaviour. Oh king, you deserve to be called not master but a slave of the lowest order.' The next, everything was forgiven. Edward was being described as a man of grace.