Authors: Thomas B. Costain
Still the earl did nothing. Perhaps he believed himself above any form of personal punishment, being of royal blood and first cousin to the king. If so, he was sadly mistaken. The king had conceived as great a hate for him as he had for the king, and it would be a sad day for Cousin Lancaster if he fell into Edward’s hands. It may have been that he did not believe the king could take advantage of the situation; this fumbling and stupid king who never before had done anything right. Perhaps, having a firm belief in his own military capacity, he was certain he could beat Edward if it came to a clash at arms.
Whatever the reason, he sat at Pontefract while the king captured Berkeley Castle and began his march to the north. He heard the news of the capture of Kenilworth and Tutbury and of the death of Roger d’Amory. He knew the Mortimers were realizing the extent of their mistake in trusting themselves to the king’s mercy. Finally, he was well aware that Sir Andrew Harclay, who was in command of royal troops to check Scottish raids, had thrown himself across his, Lancaster’s, line of retreat. His main supporter, the Earl of Hereford, joined him at Pontefract, full of alarm and convinced that nothing could save them.
Then Lancaster did the worst thing possible. He made a halfhearted effort to prevent Edward from crossing the Trent, thereby stamping himself as a traitor. Then he turned with such troops as were left him and ran for it.
Harclay took prompt measures at this point. He brought his troops down to intercept the runaway earls and defeated them easily at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire. Hereford was killed while crossing the bridge. A soldier hidden under the bridge thrust a lance into him through a crevice in the boarding. Lancaster was taken prisoner. He was turned over at once to the king.
It was on March 6, 1322, that Lancaster fell into the hands of Harclay. Six days later he was tried at his own castle of Pontefract on charges of treason. It could not properly be called a trial; rather, it was a formal hearing conducted before the king and a group of prominent peers, with the verdict decided upon in advance.
It is unfortunate that little was recorded of the event, for it is one of the most dramatic in English history. Lancaster, as the eldest son of Edmund Crouchback, was cousin to the king and the second man in the kingdom. He had taken full advantage of his rank to oppose Edward at every step during the latter’s fifteen years on the throne, constituting himself the leader of all discontent. Finally he had, with the backing of the baronage, assumed the role of virtual dictator. Legally he still exercised the powers granted him in July 1316 by the Parliament meeting at Lincoln.
And yet here he stood, with head bent and face pale, at one end of the great hall in his own castle while the king, who had always seemed to him an oaf and a weakling, sat at the other end with the crown on his head. It was a warm day, with a bright sun (how often this happens when someone faces the violent death prescribed by law!), but the thoughts in Lancaster’s mind would have been better tuned to dismal clouds and raw winds. He had always believed he should have been the king. He had been compelled to watch the sad performance of Edward II on the throne which might have been his save for the accident of parentage which had brought Edward I into the world ahead of Edmund Crouchback. It is doubtful that he felt regrets for the course he had followed as he heard himself denounced as a traitor. He had never seen himself as others had, as an indecisive man of little capacity who had been actuated by personal spite rather than by patriotic impulses. But he must have been filled with a despairing realization of the folly which had brought him to this sorry pass.
Edward, being of shallow character, was prone to quick and angry reactions rather than to the harboring of deep hatreds; but for this cousin who had balked him at every turn, who had been guilty of the cruel dispatch of Gaveston, who had stood on the battlements above the hall, where they were now convened, to jeer at him as he passed in his moment of most bitter humiliation, for this man there was in him no inclination to mercy.
Seated about the king were many of the greatest peers of England: Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent and the king’s half brother; John de Dreux, Duke of Brittany; the earls of Pembroke, Surrey, Arundel, Atholl,
Angus; Lord Hugh Spencer (meaning the elder Despenser, who had lost no time in rushing home), and Lord Robert de Malmesthorp, chief justice.
A formidable list, and not one face in the group with any hint of friendliness for this overweening man who had been brought, without his armor on his back or his sword by his side, to stand trial before them.
The voice of Lancaster was not raised during the proceedings. He was informed that inasmuch as his traitorous actions were known to all and had already convicted him he would not be asked to plead, nor would he be allowed to speak in his own defense. The hearing must have been brief, consisting of the reading of a long statement in lieu of a legal indictment.
“With banners displayed,” ran the statement, “as in open war, in a hostile manner … resisted and hindered our sovereign lord the king, his soldiers and faithful subjects, for three whole days so that they could not pass over the bridge of Burton-upon-Trent … and there feloniously slew some of the king’s men.”
Later in the statement there was a reference to the train of incidents which weighed heavily on the mind of the king: when he and Brother Perrot had played the hares before the baronial hounds, with Lancaster sounding the horn to harry them out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and to lead finally to the tragedy of Blacklow Hill. “When our said lord the king had got together provisions, horses and armor, jewels and several other goods and moveables of great value and in large quantities; which goods and moveables the said Earl Thomas, with horse and arms, and a great power of armed men, took, despoiled and carried off.”
The most damaging piece of evidence was proof found on the slain Earl of Hereford of an effort made to form a confederacy with Robert the Bruce. Lancaster had been corresponding with the Scottish king earlier, using the nom de plume
King Arthur
, an indication, clearly, of the high vaulting nature of his inner ambitions. It will be recalled also that the country had seethed at one stage with rumors that Lancaster was actually in the pay of the Scottish king. The communication found on Hereford’s body contained a direct invitation to come into England with an army, offering in recompense the good offices of Lancaster in getting for Scotland “a good peace.”
The prisoner listened while the statement was read, if not with penitence or fear, at least with a conviction of the conclusion to be reached. The king, who is not reported to have taken any part in the proceedings, may not have followed it with equal concentration. It is more likely his mind was filled with the memories which had hardened his resolution: the voice of his friend Gaveston raised in defense of his life, the derisive laughter which had reached him from the battlements of the castle, the
letters to the archenemy of the kings of England, signed so vaingloriously
King Arthur
.
Finally the droning voice of the clerk intoned the words of summation:
“Wherefore our sovereign lord the king, having duly weighed the great enormities and offences of the said Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and his notorious ingratitude, has no manner of reason to show any mercy on him, in reference to pardoning those crimes.… Nevertheless, because the said earl Thomas is most highly and most nobly descended, our sovereign lord the king, having due regard to his high birth and quality, of his own mere good pleasure, remits the execution of two of the punishments, as aforesaid, viz. That the said Thomas shall not be drawn and hanged; but only that execution be done upon the said earl, by beheading him.”
The aides who had been captured with Lancaster, not having high birth and quality, were not so well treated. They were condemned to die with all the refinements reserved for traitors. They were hanged, drawn, and quartered.
The sun was still high in the heavens and the air pleasant when Cousin Lancaster was taken to St. Thomas’ Hill, which lies some distance from the town, although it could be seen from the eight tall towers at Pontefract. He made the journey on the back of a small gray pony. As he passed through the town he was pelted with stones and offal by the people in the streets, many of whom were his dependents.
“King Arthur!” they cried in mockery. “Where are your knights to help you now?”
The earl was beginning to lose the fortitude he had shown in the great hall. His hand was unsteady and he swayed in his seat.
“King of heaven!” he cried. “Grant me thy mercy, for the king of earth has forsaken me!”
If it seems strange that he was taken such a distance and to a hillside, when the courtyard of the castle would have been a more suitable place for the execution, it may be considered that this is what had happened to Gaveston. Was it the king’s purpose to recall to the mind of the condemned man the part he had played in that never forgotten nor forgiven episode?
The block was ready when they reached St. Thomas’ Hill. Lancaster knelt beside it in such a position that he faced the east. He was rudely instructed to look instead toward the north, “In the direction of your friends, the Scots!” It was in that direction that his head fell.
With the death of Lancaster the baronial opposition fell to pieces. Edward, behaving more like a true Plantagenet every day, took full advantage of his success. It was given out that the two Mortimers and Audley, the sole surviving brother-in-law of the younger Despenser, would be confined in prison for the balance of their days. Bartholomew Badlesmere, the repentant husband of the harridan of Leeds, was yanked out of Stowe Park and hanged. Other executions took place, about thirty in all. A great silence fell over the ranks of the dissenters.
A Parliament was assembled at York with both Despensers in attendance, the younger having given up piracy with avidity to obey the writ summoning him home. With much high-sounding talk and many promises of good government, the ordinances were abolished and the Council of Ordainers was dissolved. “A skeleton, with pap!” said the man in the tavern, the friar on his barefooted rounds, the villein with sweaty hand on the plow handle; meaning that fair words had been used to disguise an evil measure. The expression was often thus reversed from its usual form, when it meant a good deed performed with a grumbling mien.
Edward made another abortive invasion of Scotland, failing to capture Berwick, was nearly captured himself, and brought the Scottish forces back on his heels over the border, like hornets with a sting in the edge of the claymore. An English mother was sitting one night on the battlements of a castle, singing a lullaby to her child,
Do not fret ye, little pet ye, the Black Douglas shall not get ye
. “Don’t be too sure of that,” said a voice behind her. It was the Black Douglas, who had led his men in a wild climb up the walls. He captured the castle but spared the lives of the garrison.
It seemed useless to go on with this costly war of reprisal, so on May 30, 1323, Edward made a truce for thirteen years with Robert the Bruce.
Queen Isabella’s anger over her lack of welcome at Leeds Castle had cooled before Lancaster was executed. She did not hear of his death until sometime later. Although nothing is on record about her reactions, it may be taken for granted that she was shocked and greatly disturbed by it. But things were happening all the time to shock and disturb her. When she gave birth in the Tower to her last child, the daughter who was named Joanna, the apartment in which she lay was so badly in need of repair that the rains came through the ceiling and kept the bed clothing damp. The royal lady, as might have been expected, was furious that the royal suite could have been so neglected. Edward became angry in turn and had the
constable of the Tower, one John de Cromwell, discharged from his post. He did not, however, lay any of the blame where it rightly belonged, on the shoulders of the Despensers, who were back in harness and making such a sorry mess of public affairs that there was not enough money in the treasury to pay for a new roof.
The Despensers were poor administrators. They were fattening their own purses while the financial condition of the kingdom went from bad to worse. The younger, with the daring of a rope walker crossing a chasm, undertook changes in the queen’s own household with a view to economy. He succeeded to the extent of discharging all her French servants and packing them back to France, and then taking from her the revenue of her dower properties and allowing her in exchange a pension which she complained was unfair and completely inadequate for her needs; which was not surprising, for the amount paid was only twenty shillings a day. She complained to Edward, not once but many times, but he was now riding high and full of satisfaction at having his beloved Despensers back with him. He paid little attention to her.
Isabella realized then that the old days, the evil days, had returned, although it was now the younger Despenser who controlled her husband instead of the impudent Gascon. There was no longer a Cousin Lancaster to lend an ear to her complaints. Public opinion about him was turning rapidly in his favor. It was reported that miracles were happening at his tomb (this story became so persistent that Edward had the entrance sealed up), and the people of the north country, who had not taken him to their hearts while he was alive, were spreading a prophecy that grass would never grow again where the battle of Boroughbridge had been fought. There was even a movement on foot to have him canonized. Still he
was
dead and could no longer support the queen in her grievances against her insensitive and infatuated husband. She turned then to her third brother, Charles the Fair (another physically handsome specimen), who was now King of France, her two older brothers having died without male issue, thus reviving the talk about the curse laid on the family by the dying Grand Master of the Templars. In one of her letters to this brother she declared she had become no better than a servant in the royal household. In another she spoke of Edward as “a gripple miser,” a strange epithet to apply to one who had been a spendthrift all his life. What she meant, of course, was that he behaved like a miser to her and lavished everything on the demanding Despensers.