The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain (13 page)

During the next few years the government of England was contested by various baronial factions, each pursuing its own interests. Hugh Despenser, now joined by his son, Hugh Despenser the Younger, feathered his own nest by supporting the king and obtaining from him grants of land and honours, while Lancaster built up an anti-court alliance in order to bolster his own power against the crown. Late in 1316 Edward turned for help to the new pope, John XXII, who responded by lending him money, ordering a truce to be agreed between England and Scotland and sending ambassadors to negotiate a comprehensive peace between the two countries. The papal agents were also under instructions to heal the kingdom’s political divisions. Intermittent negotiations led, in October 1318, to a reconciliation between Edward and the Earl of Lancaster, which was confirmed in a parliament at York.

While these negotiations were in train, a man called John
Powderham appeared at Oxford and declared himself to be the true king of England. His story of a cradle-switch that had enabled the current ‘impostor’ to claim the throne should have been laughable, and Edward was initially disposed to dismiss Powderham as a deranged fool of no consequence. However, there were plenty of people prepared to give the impostor a hearing on the basis of the fact that Edward seemed to lack all the characteristics of his father. The fact that Powderham was condemned to be hanged may suggest that his tale was a real embarrassment to Edward.

Important developments were also taking place in Scotland. Robert Bruce rejected the mediation of the pope. He had begun a siege of Berwick, the last English stronghold, at the beginning of the year and was too close to complete victory to see any need for concessions and compromises. Indeed, in March Berwick was betrayed into his hands. There was a setback for the Scottish king in October, when his only brother, Edward, who had been despatched to Ireland to challenge the rule of the English colonists, was killed in battle near Dundalk.

This event was pregnant with consequences for the future. Robert Bruce at this stage had no male heirs, but six years later, by his second wife, he had a son, David. Scotland was, therefore, doomed to experience the accession of a minor when Robert eventually died (which he did in 1329). The throne of an independent Scotland was by no means secure. Meanwhile, however, Bruce harried at will the northernmost parts of England, and at one time as much as one-fifth of the country was paying tribute to the Scottish king. Edward
moved his court to York in response to these depredations and, in August 1319, he and Lancaster laid siege to Berwick. Bruce countered with a raid deep into Yorkshire and even came close to capturing the queen at York. Edward was forced to raise the siege, but he failed to bring the marauding Scots to battle and eventually made a two-year truce with Bruce.

Despite the agreement of October 1318, the barons’ factional fighting continued. The Earl of Lancaster and the Despensers both blamed each other for the failure of the Berwick campaign. Edward, always in need of people to rely on, was handing more and more authority to the Despensers, who, by their control of royal favour, were accumulating influence and wealth, which was resented by their peers, and Lancaster distanced himself from the parliament of January 1320. On 19 June Edward and Isabella crossed to France for the king to pay homage to the new ruler, Philip V (Isabella’s brother), but by now factions were evolving into armed camps. Lancaster was powerful in the north, while the Despensers, with the king’s backing, were based on the Welsh border.

1321–2

England now stumbled into civil war. There were two caucuses arrayed against Edward and the Despensers. The Earl of Lancaster headed a league of mostly northern barons while, in the Welsh borders, neighbouring magnates resented the Despensers’ territorial expansion. In the spring of 1321 several Marcher lords laid waste to Despenser lands. In June
Lancaster met with a delegation from the Marchers, prominent among whom were Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and his uncle, Roger Mortimer of Chirk. Lancaster gave his seal of approval to their actions and joined with them in demanding the expulsion of the Despensers. This demand was repeated in a parliament at Westminster in July and was backed up by an army of 5,000 that the western lords had brought with them. Edward gave way and ordered the favourites into exile the following month.

As had been the case with Gaveston, however, the king was playing for time. After a few months (which the younger Despenser spent partly in acts of piracy off the south coast) the king ordered the exiles to return. Believing, with good reason, that his opponents were not sufficiently organized to join forces against him, he provoked military action by besieging Leeds Castle in Kent, where the wife of Bartholomew Baddlesmere, Mortimer of Wigmore’s brother-in-law, was in residence. Lancaster and his supporters issued the Doncaster Petition, which accused the Despensers of turning the king against his barons. Edward’s response was to set off for the Welsh border in December at the head of an army.

The collapse of the rebels was swift and complete for two reasons: Lancaster, always better at words than deeds, failed to come to the aid of the Marcher lords, and the king received support from Welsh leaders who rose against the Mortimers. On 22 January 1322 the Mortimers surrendered and were sent to the Tower of London, and Edward now marched against the northern lords. He seized Lancaster’s castle at Kenilworth and eventually confronted the enemy at Burton
upon Trent. After some desultory fighting, the rebels fled in confusion. Lancaster was tracked down and captured at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire on 16 March, and a few days later (on 21 March) he was brought before the king at Pontefract, speedily tried the next day, hustled outside the walls and despatched by a bungling executioner who took two or three blows to sever the earl’s head from his neck.

On 2 May the triumphant king called a parliament at York where, at last, he was able to get the Ordinances of 1311 revoked. Edward was now determined to follow up his victory by dealing with the Scottish problem. He led his army across the border, but Bruce declined to meet him in battle. The Scots retreated, wasting the land as they went, so that the English were deprived of food. Edward reached Edinburgh at the end of August but was then obliged to withdraw because his men were dying of starvation and sickness. Now Bruce pursued him and on 2 October inflicted a defeat on the English at Blackhow Moor in Yorkshire. Edward was not to be seen on the field of battle leading his forces. He was at nearby Byland when he heard that the Scots were on their way to capture him. He narrowly escaped with the younger Despenser and, after two weeks spent running and hiding, reached York. Queen Isabella’s position was hardly less perilous. She was at Tynemouth Priory, well within the territory now controlled by the Scots, and had to make her escape by sea. A year of royal triumph had ended in yet another humiliation for Edward II.

1323–7

Edward could now feel that he was master in his own house. In May 1323 he agreed a 13-year truce with Robert Bruce. With peace came increased prosperity, and over the next few years he was able to clear the crown’s debts and build up a healthy financial reserve. The Despensers continued to benefit from royal favour – Hugh the Elder was created Earl of Winchester and numerous gifts were showered on him and his son – and although the barons were far from content with this situation they were leaderless and the power of the royal favourites seemed unassailable.

Several prominent barons and churchmen suffered from the reprisals Edward inflicted after the civil war. Many more had to endure the personal animosities and arrogance of the younger Despenser, whose role was far more political than Gaveston’s had ever been – he controlled royal business, assumed semi-regal state and frequently spoke in the king’s name. The disaffection of the people showed itself in many ways. The Earl of Lancaster, for example, for all his weakness and ineffectiveness, was now regarded by some as a saint, and it was claimed that miracles were performed at his tomb. More seriously for Edward, his own queen was among those who developed a deep loathing for Despenser. Isabella resented the favourite’s attitude towards her and the fact that her husband preferred his favourite’s company.

Many of the malcontents who plotted against the regime or who even dreamed about overthrowing it looked to Roger
Mortimer of Wigmore as their potential leader, but he was safely locked up in the Tower of London in quarters described as ‘less elegant than were seemly’. Until August 1323, that is. Although officially sentenced to life imprisonment, Mortimer guessed that the king and Despenser would not fail to dispose of him if ever they felt he was a real threat, and he therefore contrived to do what, according to extant records, only one other prisoner had ever done before – to escape from England’s most secure gaol.

The feast-day of St Peter ad Vincula, the patron saint of the Tower church, which was always celebrated by the garrison with heavy drinking, fell on 1 August. Mortimer’s friends won the sub-lieutenant of the Tower, Gerald de Alspaye, to their cause, and he was able to make sure that the guards’ drinks were spiked. To avoid incriminating himself, Gerald also consumed drugged wine after admitting the prisoner’s friends. They attacked the wall of his cell with picks and crowbars until they had made a hole large enough to crawl through and to allow Mortimer into the king’s kitchen. After that, with the aid of a rope ladder, he negotiated the roofs and walls and so reached the river, making his way, via Hainault, to Paris, where he presented himself to the new king, Charles IV, who had succeeded his brother, Philip.

King Charles was glad to receive him because a dispute had erupted between him and Edward over a skirmish on the border of Gascony, and this led in August 1324 to a French invasion of the English province. Long negotiations to resolve the crisis ended with an agreement for Queen
Isabella to go to France as her husband’s representative to discuss terms, and she left England in March 1325. The terms subsequently agreed were that Edward would personally travel to Paris to do homage for his lands. He agreed, but at the last moment changed his mind. He was in a dilemma. He did not know who, if anyone, he could trust. Charles might renege on his agreement, and Mortimer was at large in France, as were other of the king’s enemies, who might try to waylay him, possibly with the French king’s connivance. Despenser was
persona non grata
in Charles’s domain but, if he were left behind without Edward’s protection, what might happen to him? Finally, Edward could not even be sure of his wife’s intentions, for relations between the royal couple had broken down almost entirely. According to one chronicler, Isabella issued an ultimatum from her brother’s court: ‘Marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life … someone has come between my husband and myself, trying to break this bond. I protest that I will not return until this intruder is removed.’
⁶

Edward finally accepted a compromise. He would confer on his 13-year-old son, Edward, his French lands, and the prince would do homage for them to his Uncle Charles, and in September the boy joined his mother at the French court. By the end of the year Isabella and Mortimer had become lovers, and the couple, together with their small band of compatriots, pledged themselves to the overthrow of the Despensers and, probably, the king. Charles declined to aid and abet them, and they travelled north to the duchy of
Hainault, whose count, William, was a cousin by marriage of Isabella. He was prepared to back Mortimer’s plans with men and
matériel
in return for a marriage treaty between his own daughter, Philippa, and the heir to the English throne. This news panicked Edward and the Despensers, who made urgent but belated plans to see off the threatened invasion.

When Queen Isabella and her small army landed at Orwell, Suffolk, on 24 September 1326, the true extent of the king’s unpopularity soon became clear. As Isabella approached the capital Edward’s followers simply disappeared. Within days he and Despenser were fleeing westwards, hoping to reach Despenser lands and gambling on the support of the Welsh. They may have pinned their hopes on reaching Ireland. No lords came to their support, however. Everyone looked to the queen and her champion, and soon London was in Mortimer’s hands:

A letter was sent to London by the queen and her son and was fixed at daybreak upon the cross in Chepe, and a copy of the letter on the windows elsewhere … to the effect that the commons should be aiding with all their power in destroying the enemies of the land, and Hugh le Despenser in especial, for the common profit of all the realm … Wherefore the Commonalty proceeded to wait upon the Mayor and other great men of the City … so much so that the Mayor crying mercy with clasped hands went to the Guildhall and granted the commons their demand and cry was accordingly
made in Chepe that the enemies to the king, the queen and their son should all quit the City upon such peril as might ensue.
⁷

The loss of London was crucial to the king’s fortunes. With no capital and no army Edward could only try to evade his enemies. The fugitives – which was what the king and his friend had become – were pursued from castle to castle, refuge to refuge, until they reached Llantrisant, where they were captured on 16 November. Meanwhile, on 26 October, Prince Edward was proclaimed guardian of the realm at Bristol. The next day the elder Despenser was beheaded in the same city. His son survived until 24 November, when he met the same fate at Hereford.

On 7 January 1327 parliament met at Westminster to decide what to do with the ex-king. It was a question without precedent, and the solemnity of what they were about cannot have failed to impress itself on the minds of all present. Articles were drawn up listing Edward’s faults: Edward was condemned as incompetent and of being ruled by favourites; he had ignored the sound advice of mature barons and churchmen; he had behaved with brutality towards his own people; and his foreign affairs had been a disaster – he had failed to exert control over Scotland, had antagonized the French and had placed his continental lands in jeopardy. The fact that Edward had a male heir who was not far from reaching his majority made it easier for his subjects to contemplate setting aside their consecrated king.