The Plantagenets (54 page)

Then, in 1320, Edward visited France to do homage to the new French king Philip V for Ponthieu and Aquitaine. When it was suggested by the French that Edward do personal fealty to his brother-in-law – a move that would have implied a far more subservient relationship between the French and English kings than mere homage – Edward stood defiant and gave a vigorous impromptu speech defending the rights of his Crown. He told Philip and his councillors that homage between the kings was done ‘according to the forms of the peace treaties made between our ancestors, after the manner in which they did it … no one can reasonably ask us to do otherwise; and we certainly do not intend to do so’. The uncharacteristic speech, and Edward’s visible anger, stunned the French delegation into silence.

Moreover, these successes came against a background of seemingly genuine attention to kingship on Edward’s part. Queen Isabella had produced a second son, John of Eltham, in 1316, and another daughter, Eleanor of Woodstock, in 1318. Edward was attending to the succession. He was also said to be rising early, paying heed to parliamentary business and showing clemency in judicial matters. Nevertheless, his rule had slipped eventually into the pattern of
domination by favourites. And this time the favourites were not frivolous and arrogant playmates like Piers Gaveston. They were conniving, grasping enemies of the realm.

The rise of the Despensers had been steady between 1317 and 1321. They had gradually been accruing power in the Marches, through the younger Hugh’s marriage to an heiress to the earldom of Gloucester. Despenser built a power base that comprised important Welsh lands and castles in the lordship of Glamorgan, which included Cardiff, Llantrisant and Caerphilly. It was the most important of the Gloucester lands and it gave him an undue sway over territory that overlapped with other Marcher barons’ spheres of influence, among them other members of what had been Edward’s inner circle, particularly Audley and Damory. The Despensers – and foremost Hugh the younger – used their proximity to the king to ride roughshod over other lords’ landed rights, swooping on territory in the Marches and consolidating his already substantial holdings there. This did not merely rile those who found themselves without recourse to royal justice against the Despensers. It offended the Marcher lords in general, who saw the traditional laws of the March overridden by a king blatantly favouring one man’s private interest over the traditional balance of power in the region.

Moreover, the familiar pattern of personal domination over the king, which had been the hallmark of the Gaveston years, was now repeated. The Despensers began playing gatekeeper to the king, controlling access to him by the rest of the barons. The chronicler Adam Murimuth wrote that no one could talk to Edward without Despenser listening in and replying freely on his behalf. Those who crossed them were liable to be deprived of land or possessions, or else thrown into prison.

In late 1320, the dowager countess of Gloucester died and Edward granted the younger Despenser her lordship of Gower, which was ruled from Swansea. In 1320 Gower was contested between Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, the earl of Hereford and another Marcher lord, John de Mowbray. Edward moved to seize it into royal hands and granted it out to Despenser. This was an award that was viewed with
the utmost hostility by a large band of the Marcher lords including Hereford, Audley, Damory and Roger Clifford. It also upset the two Roger Mortimers – of Chirk and Wigmore – with whom lasting enmity already existed. (Edward I’s ally, an earlier Roger Mortimer, had helped trap and kill an earlier Hugh Despenser at the battle of Evesham.) Yet when they complained to the king, he rejected their complaints outright, and Despenser accused them of treason. In early 1321 the Marcher lords took matters into their own hands and began the invasion of the Despenser estates. War had begun.

Between the violent anger of the Marcher lords and the general simmering hostility of Lancaster, who in 1321 was building a coalition of northern lords against the king, it was clear that once again Edward had succeeded in uniting the greater part of England’s political community against his rule. Even moderate barons like Bartholomew Badlesmere and (briefly) the earl of Pembroke inclined to the opposition’s side. In August 1321 a parliament at Westminster drew up a list of accusations against both Despensers and demanded their exile from England by the end of the month. This was ordered on the authority of the earls and barons of the realm with the assent of parliament – an authority that the opposition barons claimed overrode a king’s resistance. Queen Isabella, who had given birth to the couple’s fourth child (a girl named Joanna) at the beginning of July 1321, begged Edward on her knees to give way for the sake of the realm. He did so, and the Despensers were sent away. But Edward did not capitulate happily. As he agreed to his wife’s plea, he swore vehemently that within six months he ‘would make such an amend that the whole world would hear of it and tremble’.

It was with an ominous reference to an ancient part of Plantagenet family history that Archbishop Reynolds of Canterbury summoned an emergency council to meet at St Paul’s, in London, on 1 December 1321. In the summons he sent to his fellow prelates he stressed the urgency of the cause. The realm, which had once rejoiced in the beauty of peace, he wrote, was now in danger of shipwreck through civil war.

Shipwreck. The same analogy had been used by chroniclers more than 180 years previously when England was torn apart between a pair of cousins in a civil war that lasted for the best part of two decades. Then it had been King Stephen whose authority was challenged by his cousin, the Empress Matilda. Now it was King Edward who risked losing his authority and perhaps his whole kingdom to rebels represented by his cousin Thomas earl of Lancaster.

The younger Despenser’s exile lasted a matter of weeks. At the beginning of October he was recalled to England, meeting the king on the south coast, between Portsmouth and Southampton. Edward simultaneously struck his first blow of the civil war by besieging his former ally Bartholomew Badlesmere’s castle at Leeds in Kent. The king took personal command of the siege, and Edward was therefore directly responsible for executing a number of Badlesmere’s men and sending his wife and children to the Tower of London.

Edward was not without allies. Despite the Despensers’ unpopularity, there were those who feared the consequences of making war on the king more than trying to accommodate him. Among the earls he was supported by his two young half-brothers, Thomas Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, and Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, as well as the earls of Pembroke, Richmond, Arundel and Surrey. Edward also held the command of an elite fighting force of household knights.

The opposition – whose members became known as the contrariants – split along complex lines. They were led by Marchers – Hereford, the two Roger Mortimers, Badlesmere and the former favourites Damory and Audley – and acted with the limited support of the earl of Lancaster, who held off joining the war until January 1322.

Despite their lack of total unity, the war began well for the contrariants, when they captured the border towns of Gloucester, Bridgnorth and Worcester in the autumn and winter of 1321. But in early 1322 they were struck a damaging blow: the two Roger Mortimers, who were suffering defections from their armies and attacks from Welsh lords loyal to Edward, surrendered to the king and were sent to the Tower of London. This defection began a process of collapse among
the Marcher coalition: in February Maurice de Berkeley and Hugh Audley the elder also surrendered. Edward confiscated Berkeley castle from Sir Maurice – a decision that would return to haunt him.

Edward, for all his political stupidity, could be a crafty tactician. As he continued to prise numbers from his opponents, he pushed the Marchers deeper and deeper into a state of panic. Suddenly the opposition to Edward was scrambling. The earl of Hereford, Hugh Audley the younger and Roger Damory joined forces with the earl of Lancaster in late January 1322; but by that stage the military initiative lay with the Crown.

Edward began attacking Lancaster’s castles in February and successfully took a number of them, including the fortress at Kenilworth that had played an important role during the thirteenth-century wars against Simon de Montfort. Throughout the campaign, Lancaster leaked vital and close supporters. At least ten of his retainers changed sides during the civil war, either unwilling to fight against their king, or else fearful of their fate should Lancaster be defeated.

Although the Marches and the north of England inclined against him, Edward drew valuable support throughout 1321 and 1322 from the native lords of Wales, particularly from Rhys ap Gruffudd and Gruffudd Llwyd. The Welsh lords faced more regular threats from the English Marcher barons than they did from the king, and they saw their opportunity in allying with Edward’s cause to win valuable territorial gains from their baronial neighbours.

Along with the military campaign, Edward was also able to launch a brilliant propaganda offensive. In February 1322 treasonable correspondence came to light, proving that Lancaster had been negotiating with the Scots to form an alliance against the English king. The earl’s moral case now collapsed, along with his military defences. Edward had the incriminating letters published all across the country. Orders were sent to the archbishops, bishops and sheriffs, instructing them to read in public the letters that showed Lancaster’s treason as he lobbied the Scots to invade England in order to further a personal quarrel with the king. It was a fatal blow. Ten days after the letters
were published, Edward and the earls loyal to him declared Lancaster a traitor to the realm, and ordered the earls of Kent and Surrey to capture Pontefract castle.

As the contrariants’ war crumbled around them, inside Pontefract castle panic broke out. There was a furious debate among the barons as to whether they should stay and hope to withstand a siege, or attempt to escape north towards Scotland. Lancaster himself agreed to abandon his stronghold only when the Marcher lord Roger Clifford threatened him with a sword.

The end came at Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire. As Lancaster and his allies attempted to make their way to Northumberland, they were intercepted by Sir Andrew Harclay, the warden of Carlisle castle. Harclay had an army of 4,000 men, and they routed the Lancastrian force. The earl of Hereford was run through with a spear during the fighting; the other nobles including Lancaster evaded capture for a matter of days, but were rounded up as each attempted to flee, disguised as beggars.

On 21 March Lancaster was transferred from prison in York back to Pontefract castle, which stood miserably captured by royal forces. He was greeted as he arrived by the king, who sneered at and insulted him. Then, according to rumours that reached the author of
The Life of Edward II
, Lancaster was imprisoned in a tower he had had built in anticipation of one day capturing Edward.

The following morning Lancaster was brought from his cell and charged before a panel of justices that comprised Edward, the two Despensers, the loyal earls and one professional judge. ‘[He was] charged one by one with his crimes, and for each charge a particular penalty was awarded,’ wrote the author. Lancaster was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and beheaded. In recognition of his royal blood, the hanging and drawing were suspended – but so was Lancaster’s right to reply to the charges levelled against him. ‘This is a powerful court, and very great in authority, where no answer is heard nor mitigations admitted,’ spluttered the earl, as his fate was sealed. Without any delay, he was led from his own castle and beheaded. It took the axeman two or three blows to sever the head from the body of the
greatest nobleman to have been executed in England since the Norman invasion.

To some there was a righteous symmetry about the awful fate of Earl Thomas. ‘The earl of Lancaster had cut off Piers Gaveston’s head, and now by the king’s command the earl of Lancaster has lost his head,’ wrote the author of
The Life of Edward II
. ‘Thus perhaps not unjustly, the earl received like for like, for as it is written in Holy Scripture, “for with the measure that you shall mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”’

But this was not symmetry. Rather, it was a grotesque escalation of the murderous politics of a dysfunctional reign. More barons and earls died violent deaths under the kingship of the sixth Plantagenet than in the five reigns that preceded his. Lancaster had defied his cousin on countless occasions. He had murdered the king’s favourite, made war upon him and connived with his enemies. But he was still a royal earl. His condemnation and summary execution did not so much right the wrong of Gaveston’s death as worsen the crisis of violence and political anarchy that had begun with it. The civil war may have been over, but it was still fair to say that England, and Plantagenet kingship, was shipwrecked.

The King’s Tyranny

The parliament summoned to York in May 1322 was advertised as an opportunity for a ‘colloquium’ and ‘tractatum’ – a chance for the king to discuss and treat with his country. Summonses were sent far and wide. The Cinque Ports were granted parliamentary representation for the first time in recognition of the fact that they had harboured the Despensers during their exile, while the Principality of Wales was similarly rewarded for assisting in the fight against the Marcher lords. Yet despite this new inclusiveness and the language of consultation and peacemaking, Edward used the parliament for one clear end: to reward and rehabilitate the Despensers and formalize the destruction of the late Thomas earl of Lancaster’s whole programme of reform.

Parliament met against a background of blood. Edward’s revenge on the contrariants was near-merciless. The gibbet in York, visible to everyone who attended parliament, held the bloated corpses of John de Mowbray, Roger Clifford and Jocelin d’Eyville – all lords of considerable renown and wealth, who had been hanged in chains the day after Lancaster died. On 14 April, Bartholomew Badlesmere, the moderate baron who had been a prominent peacemaker earlier in Edward’s reign, was viciously executed in Canterbury. He was dragged through the streets, hanged and beheaded, and his head placed on the Burgate.