Edward II

The Siege of Leeds Castle, 1321

2009-11-24T11:11:00.001+01:00

In a recent post, I wrote about Edward II's actions in the autumn of 1321, when at the very least he condoned the piracy of his favourite Hugh Despenser and may even have been implicated in an attack on Southampton by the men of the Cinque Ports. This post and the next take up the story from that point, charting Edward's determination that Hugh Despenser and his father would not remain long in the exile imposed on them by the Marcher lords and their allies in August 1321 (from now on, I'll refer to the king and Despenser's enemies of 1321/22 as the 'Contrariants', as Edward took to calling them in early 1322, as it's easier) and Edward's war against some of his barons.

It seems highly likely that Edward met Hugh Despenser at least once during the royal favourite's exile, probably to plan their next moves against the Contrariants and bring Despenser and his father back. It is possible, though of course not certain, that Queen Isabella was a party to their plotting; she was a very loyal ally of her husband in the autumn of 1321, as demonstrated by Edward granting her custody of the great seal between 3 and 24 August, and again between 23 October and 5 November. [1] Although Isabella hated the Despensers and had pleaded with Edward on her knees to agree to their exile - a gesture which allowed Edward to save face, given that he had no choice but to agree or face deposition - she also hated seeing her husband's royal powers and privileges eroded. Some writers of a few decades ago claimed that Isabella's relationship with Roger Mortimer began around this time, but this is nonsense, based on misdating the birth of her youngest child Joan of the Tower from July 1321 to July 1322, when Mortimer was already a prisoner in the Tower. Given that Mortimer was opposing her husband at this time and she herself was loyally supporting him, it is doubtful that the pair even met.

The plan which Edward and Despenser conceived, probably while they were meeting in secret at Harwich or Portchester, centred around Bartholomew Badlesmere. Badlesmere was an important baron of the era who had once served in the retinue of Edward II's nephew the earl of Gloucester, and was accused of abandoning the young earl to his death at the battle of Bannockburn; a contemporary Latin poem condemns him as "the traitorous man, Bartholomew" and "the representative of Judas," and says "Because he refused to come to his master’s support, this traitor has deserved to be put to the rack." [2] His wife Margaret de Clare was Gloucester's first cousin (and was rescued by Hugh Despenser when taken hostage at Cheshunt in 1319). Badlesmere subsequently became an ally of the earl of Pembroke and an important member of the group of men mediating between the king and the earl of Lancaster in the mid to late 1310s, whom an earlier generation of historians called the Middle Party. He became Edward II's household steward in 1318, around the same time that Hugh Despenser became chamberlain. In the summer of 1321, Edward sent Badlesmere north to spy on a meeting between the earl of Lancaster and the Marcher lords; Badlesmere subsequently switched sides and joined them. [3] The reasons for this are unclear, but he had family connections to two of the Contrariants: his daughter Elizabeth was married to Roger Mortimer's eldest son Edmund, and his wife Margaret was the aunt of Roger, Lord Clifford (who would be executed in York in March 1322). Badlesmere was probably also angry and resentful at the dominance at court of his former ally Hugh Despenser, and in addition it appears that he had hoped to become earl of Kent, hopes that were dashed in the summer of 1321 when Edward II bestowed the earldom on the younger of his half-brothers, Edmund of Woodstock.

Badlesmere's switching sides proved to be as astonishingly unwise move on his part and was to have tragic consequences for himself and his family. Edward thereafter detested him for his treachery, and the earl of Lancaster loathed him already; a letter sent to Edward II from Newcastle on 27 February 1321, probably by Hugh Despenser's ally Robert Baldock, warned the king that "great ambushes are set for Bartholomew de Badlesmere in the south and in the north against his coming," and these ambushes were most likely Lancaster's. Why Lancaster loathed Badlesmere is unclear, but then, Lancaster loathed lots of people (see Susan Higginbotham's hilarious name badge post, where Lancaster's slogan is, very appropriately, I Don't Like You). Possibly, it was merely because Badlesmere had become Edward's household steward without Lancaster's consent and Lancaster, as hereditary steward of England, thought he had the right to make the appointment. Whatever the reasons, the Vita Edwardi Secundi says "the earl hated this Bartholomew, and laid many trespasses at his door, for which he adjudged him worthy of perpetual imprisonment or at least exile." [3]

Evidently, what happened in the early autumn of 1321 is that Edward II asked Isabella to set off on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and on her way back to London, to ask for a night's accommodation at Leeds Castle, which belonged to Badlesmere. In fact, the usual route from Canterbury to London went through northern Kent, via Gravesend, Rochester and Dartford, and nowhere near Leeds. Whether Isabella knew that Edward had ulterior motives is uncertain, but she probably did, given the enormous trust Edward placed in her at this time. Badlesmere was with the Contrariants at Oxford, having put his Kent castles in a state of defence, but his wife was in residence at Leeds. It seems likely that Edward hoped she would refuse to allow Isabella entry, given the current political climate, which would be a gross insult to the royal family and would give Edward an excuse to attack the castle.

Badlesmere's position as a landowner in Kent isolated him geographically from his allies in the Welsh Marches and the south-west of England, whereas Edward II's supporters, such as his half-brother the earl of Kent, his cousin the earl of Pembroke, his nephew-in-law the earl of Surrey, and the earl of Arundel, were strong in Kent and the south-east. Thanks to the family connections between the Contrariants and Badlesmere, they would probably feel honour-bound to come to his aid and would thus be in armed rebellion against the king. Edward and Hugh Despenser must have known that the earl of Lancaster detested Badlesmere, and gambled that the powerful magnate would not help him. In addition, although Lancaster and Isabella were not allies, she was his niece and queen of England, and he could hardly be seen to defend a man who had insulted her. In this way, Edward could divide and conquer his enemies, and pick them off piecemeal - a clever tactic, and also a necessary one given Edward's perpetual shortage of money.

The plan went off brilliantly. Sometime between 2 and 13 October 1321, Queen Isabella approached Leeds Castle with a military escort, and Lady Badlesmere fell into the trap by refusing to admit her and announcing that the queen must seek accommodation elsewhere. [4] Isabella ordered her escort to force an entry into the castle, and the garrison opened up a volley of arrows at them, killing six. Edward feigned outrage at the insult to his consort, when in fact he must have been delighted that all had gone according to plan, and began to prepare an attack on Leeds: on 16 and 17 October, to "punish the disobedience and contempt against the queen," he ordered the sheriffs of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Essex to muster knights and footmen "with horses and arms and as much power as possible" at Leeds on 23 October, and sent the earls of Pembroke and Richmond and the Scottish earl of Atholl as an advance guard. (The earl of Atholl was David de Strathbogie, whose father John had been executed by Edward I in November 1306, yet who remained loyal to Edward II.) The city of London sent 500 men to the siege, and Edward ordered his sheriffs to proclaim that "the king is not going to the said castle by reason of any war or disturbance in the realm." [5] This was, shall we say, not entirely the truth.

Edward arrived at Leeds on 26 October, and ordered his hunting dogs sent to him three days later. [6] His half-brothers the earls of Norfolk and Kent, whom the Vita Edwardi Secundi describes as "active soldiers considering their age" – they were now twenty and twenty-one and finally old enough to play a role in Edward's reign – joined the siege, as did the earls of Surrey and Arundel. With Pembroke and Richmond, this represented all the English earls alive in 1321 except the Contrariants Lancaster and Hereford, the obscure Oxford who played no role whatsoever in Edward's reign, and the king's son Chester, the future Edward III, who was not yet nine.

At Oxford, Badlesmere begged the Contrariants to take their armies and relieve the siege of Leeds, which put them in a very awkward position. Badlesmere was their ally, yet the men who had been so willing to destroy the Despensers' lands a few months before were reluctant to take up arms against their king, and probably also reluctant to help a man who had until so recently been an ally of Hugh Despenser. Neither were they willing to be seen to acknowledge Badlesmere’s insult of the queen, and two chroniclers do say that they refused to go to the aid of the Leeds garrison out of respect for Isabella. [7] And the earl of Lancaster also played into Edward’s hands, as Edward and Despenser had no doubt predicted he would: he sent the Contrariants a letter, ordering them to not to aid the detested Badlesmere. [8]

The Contrariants moved to Kingston-on-Thames, where on 27 October Edward's allies the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London and Rochester, and the earl of Pembroke negotiated with them. Edward later accused the Contrariants of "stealing the king’s goods" at Kingston and elsewhere. [9] Badlesmere proposed that the king raise the siege and let the situation be dealt with in the next parliament, but it was too late: Leeds surrendered on 31 October, only five days after Edward had arrived there, and thirteen members of the garrison were drawn and hanged shortly afterwards. The men executed are named on the Fine Roll as Walter Colpeper, Roger de Coumbe, Richard Prat, Thomas and Richard de Chidecroft, Robert de Bromere, Roger de Rokayle, Nicholas de Bradefeld, Adam le Wayte, Robert de Cheigny, Richard Brisynge, Simon de Tyerst and William Colyn. [10]

Men had never been executed within living memory for holding a castle against the king, and Edward's father and grandfather Henry III and Edward I had not executed the men who held Kenilworth against them in the 1260s, for instance. Neither did Edward II execute the men, named as 'Thomas Blaunfrounte and other malefactors', who held Warwick Castle against him in November 1321. [11] Still, the executions were not entirely unprecedented: King Stephen hanged nearly a hundred of the Shrewsbury Castle garrison for holding out against him in 1138. Edward's actions in 1321 shocked many, although the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi, usually no fan of the king, approved of his actions for once, describing the Leeds garrison as "robbers, homicides, and traitors" and stating that "just as no one can build castles in the land without the king’s licence, so it is wrong to defend castles in the kingdom against the king." [12] Edward began preparing for a campaign against the Contrariants in November.

Lady Badlesmere, née Margaret de Clare, with her young children and her husband's adult nephew Bartholomew Burghersh, were imprisoned at Dover Castle and afterwards at the Tower of London. Margaret, presumably with her children, was released a year later; Bartholomew Burghersh remained imprisoned until the arrival of Isabella and Roger Mortimer's invasion in the autumn of 1326. [13] As for Bartholomew Badlesmere himself, Edward II's friend the earl of Mar discovered him hiding at one of the manors of his nephew the bishop of Lincoln, Henry Burghersh, after the battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322, and took him to Canterbury for the grotesque execution ordered for him by the vengeful king. Edward did at least show some leniency towards Badlesmere's other supporters, however: on his return to London after the siege of Leeds Castle, he sent a Daniel de Bengham to Kent to order the justices to abandon their trial. [14]

And so Edward II, on behalf of his beloved favourite Hugh Despenser - it's the 683rd anniversary of his execution today, by the way - provoked a war against a number of his own barons which would end a few months later with the executions of twenty-two men and many dozens more imprisoned or exiled. In the next posts, I'll take a look at the king's campaign of 1321/22.

Sources

1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 477-478.
2) T. Wright, The Political Songs of England, pp. 263-264.
3) J. Goronwy Edwards, ed., Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, pp. 180-181; J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, p. 264; Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 116. 4) Annales Paulini 1307-1340, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, volume 1, p. 299; Alison Weir, Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England, p. 133.
5) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1321-1324, p. 29; Cal Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 504; Calendar of Letter-Books of London 1314-1337, p. 155.
6) The National Archives E 403/196.
7) Scalacronica: The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III as Recorded by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, knight, ed. Herbert Maxwell, p. 67; Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, p. 34.
8) Vita Edwardi Secundi, p. 116; The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307-41, from Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, p. 102.
9) Annales Paulini, p. 299; Anonimalle, p. 102; Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 516.
10) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1319-1327, p. 76; Annales Paulini, p. 299; Anonimalle, p. 102.
11) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 503; Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 59.
12) Vita Edwardi Secundi, p. 116.
13) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 604, 627; Cal Close Rolls 1323-1327, pp. 46, 48, 236; Croniques de London, ed. J. G. Aungier, p. 54.
14) Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II: His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284-1330, p. 133.

Photos and Floods

2009-11-21T14:08:00.000+01:00

Until I finish my next proper post, about Edward II's siege of Leeds Castle in the autumn of 1321, here are some pretty random photos of various places and things, most of which have sod-all to do with Edward II. Unfortunately I've been too busy at work lately to be able to devote much time to the blog, and also, distracted and upset by news of the terrible flooding in Cumbria, where I come from. Apparently the county has seen the heaviest rainfall in Britain since they started recording it in the early 1700s - over a foot in 24 hours - and lots more rain is forecast in the next few days. Fortunately, both my parents live on high ground and are unaffected, though streets only about a quarter of a mile from my mum's house have been evacuated. The main street of Cockermouth, fifty miles to the north, is under eight feet of water. My dad took this pic of the flooding, half a mile from his house:

Ulverston, Cumbria (in the distance), during happier, drier times earlier this year, with some of the Cumbrian mountains in the background. This is the place I call home. Historical fact: Sir Lawrence de Cornwall, who died between 1274 and 1285 and is believed to have been one of the illegitimate sons of Edward II's great-uncle Richard of Cornwall (Henry III's brother) owned lands in Ulverston including a manor house named Neville Hall. Nowadays the police station occupies the site of the hall.

Gloucester Cathedral, where Edward II is buried.

Hugh Despenser the Younger's tomb, Tewkesbury Abbey.

St Mary's Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, founded around the year 800.

The plain building on the left of this pic is Odda's Chapel, also in Deerhurst, completed around 1056. The farmhouse adjoining it dates from Tudor times.

Conwy, town walls and castle.

The Merchant Adventurers' Hall, York, built between 1357 and 1361.

Part of Wigmore Castle, Herefordshire, seat of Roger Mortimer.

Clifford's Tower, York, named after Roger, Lord Clifford, executed there by Edward II in March 1322.

Furness Abbey, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, founded 1127. Which would of course look soooooo much better if I'd actually bothered to get out of the car and take a proper photograph that didn't include the railings.

Messing around with the sepia function on my camera: the castles of Rhuddlan, Beaumaris and Caernarfon.

Red sky over the Karlstadt area of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Two pics of the village of Bardsea, near Ulverston, with Morecambe Bay and the Pennines visible in the pic with the rhododendron bushes.

Flowers at Lower Brockhampton, a moated manor house of the late fourteenth century in Worcestershire.

Medieval keys, from an exhibition at Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire.

Part of Edward II's chamber account of 1325 (in French), now at the Society of Antiquaries in London.

And finally, blog searches from this week:

- Richard II is an idiot blog

- kin edwards who ate the most roaches Those first two are my particular favourites.

- Edward VI's sex life

- photo of leicester castle in 1340

- hot poker sodomy

- hughpenis

- anal hot simony

- what was the ,am's nickname i.e. edward the confessor and why

- why did king edward II and III visited porchester because
- Gaveston as tragic villain

- dear daphne bannockburn news Dear Daphne, I have just humiliatingly lost the battle of Bannockburn to Robert Bruce. What the heck do I do now? Love, Edward II.

- words that explain red hot poker How about 'red', 'hot' and 'poker'?

- richard ii death horn poker

- 1 1313 wild meadow support

For some reason, I've been getting tons of really sexually explicit and, ummmm, fetishistic search terms this week that I'd blush to repeat here. Please, this is not a porn blog, people!

Edward II's Mysterious Movements In September 1321

2009-11-15T15:08:00.003+01:00

A post about Edward II's somewhat mysterious journeys around Kent and Essex in the late summer and autumn of 1321, encompassing piracy and an attack on Southampton in which the king himself may have been implicated.

In the Westminster parliament of August 1321, the Marcher lords and their allies, who had recently devastated the lands of Edward II's favourite Hugh Despenser and his father in Wales and England, forced Edward to consent to the permanent exile and disinheritance of both Despensers. The two men were ordered to leave England by the feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist at the latest, that is, 29 August 1321, and only via the port of Dover. [1] Hugh Despenser the Elder, according to the Anonimalle and Brut chronicles, departed immediately for Bordeaux in Gascony - one of Edward II's cities - leaving his retinue behind in England, and both chronicles say that he "cursed the time that ever he begot Sir Hugh his son, and said that for him he had lost England." [2] Piers Gaveston had also been ordered to leave England via Dover for his third exile almost exactly ten years earlier - events were repeating themselves, thanks to Edward II's complete inability to learn anything from his past mistakes or to show any sense whatsoever.

Hugh Despenser the Younger, on the other hand, didn't leave England as such; Edward II placed him under the protection of the men of the Cinque Ports, and Despenser, never a man to sit around when there was money to be made, became a pirate or 'sea monster' in the English Channel, where he was "master of the seas, their merchandise and chattels, and no ship got through unharmed." Despenser attacked two great ships off Sandwich, killed their crew, and took for himself the riches he found - £40,000 according to various chronicles, or £60,000 according to a charge against him at his trial in 1326. [3] Edward II officially pardoned Despenser for his piracy in June 1325, on the frankly laughable grounds that "while he was exiled by diverse magnates of the realm, contrariants against the king, he through fear of death adhered to diverse malefactors at sea and on land, and stayed with them to save his life, while they perpetrated depredations and other crimes." [4] Oh please. Despenser was also pardoned "for all trespasses as well of the time of Edward I as of the present king," which makes me wonder what he'd been up to in Edward I's reign, given that he was probably only in his late teens when Edward died. (Helping his mum steal deer from Odiham park, maybe?) Edward II ignored a letter sent to him by Pope John XXII in May 1322, which asked him to make restitution to the merchants whose vessels and merchandise had been "despoiled by the king’s subjects in the port of Sandwich" - which may have meant Despenser, though tactfully the pope did not mention his name - and it fell to his son Edward III to finally make reparations in 1336. [5]

Edward II's itinerary shows that he left Westminster on 27 August 1321, five days after parliament ended. The Rochester chronicler states that he accompanied Hugh Despenser to Dover, but although it is almost certain that Despenser went to Kent with Edward, there is no evidence that either man went to Dover at this time. [6] Edward in fact travelled through northern Kent, via Dartford, Rochester and Faversham, to Minster on the isle of Thanet. He arrived at Minster on 4 September, having taken eight days to cover the distance of roughly seventy miles from Westminster - so evidently wasn't exactly rushing to get Hugh Despenser out of the country before the 29 August deadline, then. (Minster-in-Thanet is five miles from Ramsgate, six from Margate and nine from Sandwich.)

Edward's movements in September 1321 are rather mysterious. From various sources, this is what I can piece together of his whereabouts:

- he was at Minster-in-Thanet, or nearby Sandwich (one of the Cinque Ports), from 4 to 8 September. On the 6th, Edward ordered that Hugh Despenser the Younger's parkers and foresters at Hanley and Tewkesbury be paid their wages, which suggests that Despenser was still with him and had reminded him. [7]

- from 9 to 11 September, Edward’s wardrobe department was at 'Northmuth', a port on the coast of Kent between Herne Bay and Margate which has now dried up. As far as I can tell, though, Edward himself was still at Minster on 9 and 10 September.

- on 11 September, Edward was at or near Harwich in Essex.

- on 12 September, he was back at Minster in Kent.

- on 13 September, he was at Harwich again.

- from 14 to 23 September, Edward was at Harwich, Shotley and Hadleigh. Shotley is just across the estuary of the River Stour from Harwich; Hadleigh (the Suffolk one, not the Essex one) is a few miles inland from Harwich and Shotley, and just two miles from Kersey, one of Hugh Despenser the Younger's manors. [8]

Harwich is about 125 miles by land from Minster-in-Thanet, so of course it is impossible for Edward to have ridden from one place to the other from one day to the next - meaning that he must have travelled by sea, a considerably shorter journey. The usually well-informed and reliable royal clerk and chronicler Adam Murimuth, who knew Edward well, says that he travelled with Hugh Despenser around Harwich at this time, plotting revenge on the Marcher lords and others who had sent Despenser into exile. [9] Given that that the king appears to have sent most of his household away from him - which does give the impression that he was up to something - and that he began a campaign against the Marchers in December 1321, this is plausible.

From 12 to 22 September, Edward’s wardrobe department was at Rochester and Gravesend in Kent, while he himself remained in or in the vicinity of Harwich. The wardrobe returned to Westminster on 23 September, and on the 25th, the king arrived back there also. By this point, Hugh Despenser must have left his company and had perhaps begun his piratical career. The king stayed at Westminster and at the Tower of London until 1 October, then set off for Portchester, on the coast of Hampshire near Portsmouth; he arrived there on 4 October (three days to cover the 75 miles) and stayed for eight days before returning to London. It's possible that Edward had arranged to meet Hugh Despenser in secret again at Portchester, to discuss their next moves against their enemies, as Despenser was charged at his 1326 trial with returning to England illegally during his exile - although this may also refer to the fact that he was almost certainly still in Kent with Edward after the deadline for his exile had passed.

It is also possible that Hugh Despenser’s crimes of 1321 encompassed more than piracy, and even that Edward II himself was involved in an unpleasant piece of lawlessness against his own subjects. Robert Batail of Winchelsea, baron of the Cinque Ports and one of Edward's admirals, attacked Southampton on 30 September and and again on 1 October 1321. A petition dating to between 1327 and 1330, presented to Edward III by 'his liege men of Southampton', claims that Batail and his men burnt and stole their ships, chattels, merchandise and goods to a loss of £8000 "in conspiracy with Hugh le Despenser the son," who accused the townspeople of supporting the earl of Lancaster - an ally of the Marcher lords, Edward II's first cousin and greatest enemy - against the king.

The petition also claims that Edward II "sent the community of Southampton to Portchester Castle, and imprisoned them there, and made them swear not to bring any suit against the people of the Cinque Ports, promising to make good their losses; which he did not do." [10] Given that Edward had placed Despenser under the care of the men of the Cinque Ports - he wrote to them on 27 November 1322 to thank them for "keeping him [Despenser] amongst them from the manifold toils prepared for him by reason of his service to the king, and for honouring the said Hugh in many ways" - and that he arrived at Portchester four days after the attack, his and Despenser's involvement does seem possible. [11]

On the other hand, the Annales Paulini, which records the incident, does not mention Despenser's involvement, let alone the king's, and Edward had on 18 August and again on 28 August 1321 forbidden men of the Ports from attacking Southampton, Weymouth and other towns because "great dissension has lately arisen between the barons of the Cinque Ports and the men and mariners of the western parts, and that homicides, depredations, burning of ships and other damages have resulted." [12] And also, in the early years of Edward III's reign and especially before Isabella and Mortimer's fall, it was politic to blame the Despensers for absolutely everything that had gone wrong in the last few years.

On the other hand again, Robert Batail of Winchelsea and his men were staunch allies of Edward II in 1321/22; they attacked two ships which belonged (or which they claimed belonged) to Roger Damory, formerly Edward's great court favourite and now firmly on the side of the king's baronial enemies. [13] And rather oddly, Edward wrote on 1 March 1322, near the end of his successful campaign against the Marchers, to the barons, bailiffs and sailors of Winchelsea to say that they should "bear in mind how the king began what he has now done in part by their counsel lately given to the king on the water, when they promised that they would go by water in the king's assistance whenever he went by land." [14] Evidently the Rochester chronicler picked up on this fact, as he says that the barons of the Cinque Ports advised Edward to lead an army against the Marchers while they themselves attacked ports loyal to the king's enemies - which does tie in with the petition of the late 1320s regarding the attack on Southampton by the barons and sailors of Winchelsea.

I don't know when else Edward would have met the sailors of Winchelsea on the water to take their advice regarding a possible campaign against the Marchers, as he wasn't anywhere near the place between May 1321 and March 1322 that I can make out. Winchelsea, in Sussex, is 90 miles from Portchester in Hampshire, 50 miles from Minster-in-Thanet in Kent and 135 miles from Harwich in Essex. In early May 1322, Edward pardoned Robert Batail and his associates Stephen and Robert Alard "for all offences committed on land, or sea." [15] That Batail, the Alards and other men of Winchelsea and Dover may - may - have been among those who went pirating with Hugh Despenser is indicated by an entry on the patent roll of December 1323, which says that they attacked a merchant ship and "took the ship with the goods in her into the port of Sandwich, and divided the goods and carried them away." This entry states that, ironically, the merchant "ran towards Sandwich to take refuge from pirates." [16]

So was the king of England genuinely implicated in this attack on his own subjects in Southampton? I honestly don't know, but I think it's apparent that Edward didn't give a damn about the men Hugh Despenser attacked at sea and probably killed, only about Despenser himself. I'll end this post with a quotation of Edward II as recorded by the Rochester chronicler William Dene, an associate of the bishop of Rochester, which makes the king's attitude to the events of 1321 perfectly clear: on the day parliament forced him to agree to the Despensers' exile, he retired to his chamber, "anxious and sad." The next morning at breakfast, he invited Hamo Hethe, bishop of Rochester, to his table, and whispered to him that the Despensers had been condemned unjustly. Hethe replied consolingly that Edward could "amend the defeat." Edward responded that he "would within half a year make such an amend that the whole world would hear of it and tremble." [17]

Sources

1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 494; The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson et al, July/August 1321 parliament.
2) The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, vol. 1, p. 214; The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307-41, from Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, p. 100.
3) Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. N. Denholm-Young, pp. 115-116, for the quotations. Despenser’s piracy is described in several other chronicles, Brut, Anonimalle, Croniques de London, Annales Paulini, Trokelowe, Flores Historiarum, Scalacronica, etc.
4) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1324-1327, p. 130.
5) Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, Volume II: 1305-1341, p. 449.
6) Historia Roffensis, cited in Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II: His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284-1330, p. 129.
7) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 400.
8) Elizabeth Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household 1307-1328, p. 216; Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 400-402, 495-497; Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, pp. 14, 23-26; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1319-1327, p. 71; Foedera, II, i, p. 456, etc.
9) Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson, p. 33.
10) The National Archives SC 8/17/833.
11) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 507, for the letter.
12) Annales Paulini 1307-1340, in W. Stubbs, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 1, p. 298; Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, pp. 486, 490.
13) TNA SC 8/7/327, SC 8/40/1970.
14) Cal Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 524.
15) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 107.
16) Cal Pat Rolls 1321-1324, p. 385.
17) Historia Roffensis, cited in Parliament Rolls, introduction to the July/August 1321 parliament.

A Verray Parfit Gentil Knyght: Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster (3)

2009-11-09T15:20:00.000+01:00

The third and final part of my biography of Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster. Part one is here, and part two here. Oh, and you can see a manuscript illustration of Henry here.

In December 1351, Henry requested permission from Edward III to go on crusade to Prussia, saying that he and his men were to go "mainly at their own expense, against the Prussians, enemies of the Christian faith." [Calendar of Patent Rolls] Little is known of Henry's crusade, unfortunately, except that he reached Stettin (Szczecin), on the Baltic Sea in modern Poland. When in Cologne on his way back, Henry challenged Otto, duke of Brunswick to a duel, claiming that the duke had intended to ambush him during the crusade, and received permission from Edward III to travel to Paris "to excuse himself in respect of things wickedly laid to his charge by the duke of Brunswyk." King Jean II of France, however, stopped the duel at the last moment, insisting that the reasons for the quarrel were insufficient to justify fighting between two such great men. Jean offered Henry any such gift as he might desire; Henry, in an act typical of the man he was, selected a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, one of the French king's collection of precious relics. (Edward III, I assume, already had one of these, as Edward II certainly did.)

Henry somehow found the time from his successful military and diplomatic career in 1354 to compose the Livre de Seyntz Medicines or Book of Holy Medicines, a religious treatise in French which takes as its central metaphor the image of Christ the divine physician and his assistant the Douce Dame treating Henry, the wounded penitent; the seven deadly sins have breached seven wounds in his ears, eyes, nose, mouth, feet, hands and heart. Henry compares his heart to a foxes' hole where sins hide and come out by night, and also compares it to a market, with the devil as the lord of the market collecting his dues, prises and customs. His mouth festers where his sins issue forth; confession cleanses it. And so on. Much of Henry's character is revealed in the treatise, as I've written in the previous posts about him, and he had a considerable amount of literary skill, using examples from his own life to demonstrate his points: comparing sins entering his body and soul to a castle's walls being breached, for example.

Henry wrote near the end of his treatise "if the French is not good, I must be excused, because I am English and not much accustomed to French" (si le franceis ne soit pas bon, jeo doie estre escusee, pur ceo qe jeo sui engleis et n’ai pas moelt hauntee le franceis). Obviously this was a literary device to demonstrate Henry's modesty, as his French was completely fluent, even cultured. He also wrote - accurately or not - that he taught himself to write later in life, and described himself at the end of the Livre as "a poor foolish sinner who calls himself Ertsacnal Edcud Irneh," that is, Henri duc de Lancastre written backwards. Here's an article about the Livre, which, I'm delighted to see, Dr Catherine Batt is currently translating into English.

His military and diplomatic career continued throughout the 1350s, and according to the Scalacronica chronicle of Sir Thomas Gray, he was wounded at a great jousting tournament in 1358: "While he was jousting with one knight, another one crossed and wounded him with his lance very dangerously in the side, from which he recovered." In November 1360, Edward III spoke of "his very great affection for the duke." [Cal Pat Rolls]

In June 1359, the pope granted Henry, regarding the indult previously granted that his chaplains should give him and his wife Isabella Beaumont plenary remission at the time of their death, an extension "to another wife, if he takes one after the death of Isabella." [Calendar of Papal Letters 1342-1362]. This sounds as though Isabella was then dying; although it was once believed that she outlived him, this was based on a misreading of Henry's will, where the reference to ma dame dame Isabell, 'my lady, Lady Isabella', almost certainly means Edward III's eldest daughter Isabella of Woodstock, who may have been Henry's goddaughter, not his wife Duchess Isabella. (Men in the fourteenth century referred to their wives as ma compaigne, not ma dame.) Brad Verity, in an article for the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, believes that Duchess Isabella died in 1359 or 1360, a year or two before her husband, a theory considerably strengthened by the facts that she was not appointed one of the executors of his will and that there is no record of her being granted her widow's dower.

The pope's reference to another wife also perhaps indicates that Henry, who in 1359 was close to fifty and whose daughter Blanche had just married Edward III's third son John of Gaunt, still hadn't given up hope of fathering a son and heir by another woman. The statutes of the collegiate church Henry founded in Leicester in the mid-1350s also indicate that he still hoped to have a son: "...after the duke's death to his heir, if he be a male; otherwise, if the heritage of the said duke happens to be divided among females..." ['Mercy Gramercy' thesis]

Henry of Grosmont died at Leicester Castle on 23 March 1361, in his early fifties. Contemporary chroniclers stated that he died of the plague, which returned to England that year, but as Henry wrote his will eight days before his death, this seems unlikely, and he had in fact been ill at least since the New Year and acutely ill since early March. He was buried in the Collegiate Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady in the Newarke at Leicester, which he had founded; his father Henry, earl of Lancaster had previously founded the hospital to which Henry attached his foundation, and was also buried there. (Sadly, the Newarke was demolished in the sixteenth century.) Henry's sisters Blanche, Maud, Eleanor and Mary outlived him, and Henry appointed the eldest, Blanche, Lady Wake, as one of the executors of his will.

Henry of Grosmont enjoyed a stellar career, and perhaps it was only within his family that he was not entirely successful. As I wrote in the first post, his relationship with his wife seems not to have been particularly successful, happy or fulfilling, and his failure to father a son must have distressed him. He left two daughters, who both died in their twenties: Maud, married firstly to little Ralph Stafford and secondly to William von Wittelsbach, count of Hainault and Holland and duke of Bavaria-Straubing, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV and nephew of Edward III's queen, Philippa; and Blanche, who married Edward III's son John of Gaunt in May 1359. The unfortunate Maud died childless in April 1362, having endured a hopelessly awful marriage - her husband went insane in 1357 and had to be confined for the remaining thirty-plus years of his life - with the result that Blanche, who only lived until 1368 herself, carried the entire Lancastrian inheritance to John of Gaunt. Genealogist Douglas Richardson demonstrated recently that Henry also left an illegitimate daughter, Juliane, who married William Dannet of Leicester sometime before 1380, had two sons, and was still alive in 1407. For a man who by his own admission in the Livre made love with numerous women, the wonder is that Henry didn't father more out-of-wedlock children, though perhaps he did and their existence has never been discovered.

Henry was already a grandfather when he died, Blanche and John of Gaunt's eldest child Philippa, future queen of Portugal, having been born in March 1360. Henry was also the grandfather of King Henry IV, who was named after him, and of Elizabeth, duchess of Exeter and countess of Huntingdon, who married Richard II's half-brother. His great-grandchildren included the kings of Portugal and England, the queen of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the duchess of Burgundy, the dukes of Coimbra, Clarence, Bedford and Gloucester, the great explorer Henry the Navigator, duke of Viseu, and the Saint Prince Fernando.

The title of my posts about Henry comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's description of the knight in his Canterbury Tales, and although there's no way to prove that Henry was the role model for Chaucer's knight, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he was and if Chaucer had read and thoroughly appreciated Henry's Livre. I love this man so much I'm thinking of starting a Henry of Grosmont Appreciation Society.

Sources

Kenneth Fowler, The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310-1361 (1969)

W. M. Ormrod, 'Henry of Lancaster [Henry of Grosmont], first duke of Lancaster (c. 1310-1361)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III (2006); The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (2007); The Time-Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (2008)

Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines

Patrick Ball, ''Mercy Gramercy': A Study of Henry of Grosmont' (BA thesis, University of Tasmania, 2007) (available online as PDF file)

Calendar of Patent Rolls 1330-1364

A Collection of all the wills, now known to be extant, of the kings and queens of England, vol. 1

Calendar of Papal Letters 1342-1362

Brad Verity, 'The First English Duchess: Isabel de Beaumont, c. 1318- c. 1359', Foundation for Medieval Genealogy Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225-1360 (2005)

A Verray Parfit Gentil Knyght: Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster (2)

2009-11-02T15:03:00.003+01:00

At long last, here's the second part of my article about the really very excellent and remarkably attractive Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster, Edward II's kinsman. The first part is here. Just a quick recap of who Henry was, as it's been so long since I wrote the first post: he was born in about 1310, only son and heir of Henry, earl of Lancaster - first cousin of Edward II and uncle of Isabella of France - and Maud Chaworth, was the first duke of Lancaster and only the second duke (after Edward III's eldest son) in English history, died in 1361, and was the grandfather of King Henry IV and Philippa, queen of Portugal. Much is known of his personality, thanks to a devotional treatise he wrote in 1354, the Livre de Seyntz Medicines.

It was in the 1340s that Henry of Grosmont's brilliant career really took off, though he may not have guessed it at the beginning of the decade, when he was imprisoned as a hostage in the Low Countries - twice! - for Edward III. Not that Henry's imprisonment was particularly onerous, of course; he received five marks a day for his expenses and was allowed to attend a joust in early December 1340. Henry was back again in England by early October 1341, and a few weeks later celebrated Christmas by leading a joust in Scotland where the participants agreed not to wear protective clothing, which is frankly insane. Hardly surprisingly, two English knights were killed, and Henry himself badly wounded William Douglas, lord of Liddesdale. Unlike his cousin Edward II, but very much like his cousin Edward III, Henry was a highly enthusiastic jouster. He attended, among many others, the tournament of Northampton in 1342 where his brother-in-law John, Lord Beaumont, was killed, the great tournament of Windsor in 1344, and arranged his own later in 1344 to celebrate the wedding of his little daughter Maud to Ralph Stafford, young son of Ralph Stafford and Margaret Audley and grandson of Hugh Audley and Margaret de Clare; young Ralph left Maud a tiny widow in 1348. At the tournament of Eltham in 1348, Edward III gave Henry "a hood of white cloth embroidered with men dancing in blue habits, buttoned in the front with large pearls." [1]

Henry went to Spain in 1343 with William Montacute, earl of Salisbury and another close friend of Edward III, to negotiate a marriage alliance with one of Edward's daughters to the son of Alfonso XI of Castile (he of whom Edward II in 1325 made the excellent description quoted on the sidebar on the left). Needless to say, Henry took the opportunity for a little light crusading, and rode off to Algeciras, then in the hands of the Moors, at such a gallop that only four of his attendants were able to keep up with him. The Castilians greeted him enthusiastically, and evidently he made an excellent impression on them - as he was to do to just about everyone. In 1345, Henry was appointed lieutenant of Gascony, a position he held for eighteen months, with the wide-ranging powers of a vice-regent, and won stunning victories over the French at Bergerac and Auberoche; he received something like 50,000 pounds in ransoms from captured knights and noblemen, a staggeringly enormous sum and five or sx times Henry's own annual income - and he was one of the richest men in England. The fortune enabled him to rebuild the Savoy Palace in London into one of the most luxurious residences in England (it passed to his son-in-law John of Gaunt and was destroyed in the uprising of 1381).

Between Henry's victories of Bergerac and Auberoche, on 22 September 1345, his father Earl Henry of Lancaster died at the age of about sixty-four, and Henry succeeded to the inheritance: the earldoms of Lancaster and Leicester in addition to the earldom of Derby he already held, and much else besides. Edward III also granted Henry the French lordship of Bergerac with the unprecedented right to mint coins in his own name. From his many lands and lordships in England, Wales and France, plus the spoils of his incredibly successful military career, Henry enjoyed almost unlimited wealth. Evidently, though, his wealth and fame didn't go too much to his head; chronicler Jean Froissart comments on Henry's kindness and courtesy, especially towards women, and he had excellent relations with the town of Leicester, which appears to have been the favourite of his countless castles and residences. The townspeople of Leicester brought him, on one of the occasions when he returned from military success in France, salmon and lampreys from Gloucester.

Henry's castle at Leicester contained a daunsyngchambre, and by his own account in his Livre de Seyntz Medicines, he enjoyed dancing and thought he was pretty good at it. He had the fourteenth-century nobleman's conventional love of hunting and the joust, and being English, he liked getting drunk: he drank wine "to put myself and my friends out of our senses, for it is a good feeling to be merry" and over-indulged at feasts so that his legs were "neither so good nor so ready to bring me away as they were to get me there." A sensual man, he admitted how much he enjoyed the rings on his fingers, his shoes and his armour, and liked rich food, well-spiced with strong spices, salmon being his particular favourite. All that good living had its inevitable effect: Henry was suffering from gout by the 1350s. He also wrote in the Livre that he liked the sound of barking hounds and the song of the nightingale, explained why he loved expensive scarlet cloth* - "I have coveted the cloth more for its scent than for other reasons" - and loved the smell of roses, violets, musk and lily of the valley. In a pleasantly erotic passage, he admitted that he took "great delight" in the fragrance of "certain women" - the high-born ones, that is, though he thought the low-born ones were more sexually responsive. He did not mention his wife Isabella Beaumont even once in the text.

* in the fourteenth century, a fine and expensive woollen cloth, not the colour.

Henry was also capable of recognising and admitting to his less admirable qualities, such as recoiling from the smell of poor and sick people; grudging that leftovers from his feasts should be given to the poor; listening to trivial gossip and reading trivial books (livres de nient); bragging about his relationships and being lecherous, though he didn't reproach himself for committing adultery; being vainglorious and just plain vain; and - this is my favourite one - finding it hard to get up in the morning when he should have been enthusiastic to rise and serve God.

In 1348, Henry was appointed as the second Knight of the Garter behind Edward III's eldest son Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales (the Black Prince). Already one of the king's most able and successful military commanders during the Hundred Years War, Henry fought in the naval battle of Winchelsea - also called the battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer, 'The Spanish on the Sea' - against Castile on 29 August 1350, and saved the lives of Edward of Woodstock and his future son-in-law, ten-year-old John of Gaunt, when their ship was rammed. On 6 March 1351, Edward III created Henry the first duke of Lancaster, and "granted to the duke that for his life he shall have within the same county his chancery and writs under a seal to be deputed for the office of chancellor, his justices for pleas of the crown and pleas of common law, and cognisance of the same, and execution of such writs by his ministers and all other liberties and royal rights pertaining to an earl palatine." [2] Until Richard II's reign, the only other English dukes were Edward III's sons, an indication of the extremely high regard in which Edward held his kinsman.

That'll have to do for today - I'll post the third and final part of the article soon!

Sources

1) Kenneth Fowler, The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310-1361, p. 104.
2) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1350-1354, p. 60.

Conwy and Beaumaris

2009-10-29T16:24:00.000+01:00

Some pics of two more of Edward I's great Welsh castles, Conwy and Beaumaris! To my almost certain knowledge, Edward II never visited Beaumaris on the island of Anglesey, but he was at Conwy in April/May 1301, around the time of his seventeenth birthday, taking the homage of his Welsh vassals after being appointed prince of Wales that February.

Conwy

In the pics above, the green area with the path down the middle is the outer ward, which leads through a gateway - originally there was a drawbridge - into the inner ward, where the royal apartments were. The fourth pic down is the well, 91 feet deep.

Construction began on Conwy in 1283; for the history of the castle, take a look at the page here. Interesting Conwy fact: in January 1326, Edward II appointed Aline, Lady Burnell, constable of the castle. It was most unusual for a woman to be put in charge of such an important stronghold, though no doubt the fact that Aline was Hugh Despenser the Younger's sister was a major factor in Edward's choice.

Pics of the king's hall and the king's chamber, in the inner ward.

Beaumaris

The name comes from the Anglo- Norman beau mareys, 'fair marsh'. For the castle's history - it was begun in 1295, and never finished - see here.

The outer gatehouse and modern entrance to the castle.

The outer ward.

(Below) The enormous inner ward.

The chapel ceiling.

The battlements, with views over the Menai Strait to the Welsh mainland.

Our New Website!

2009-10-26T12:02:00.003+01:00

Great news: the website about Edward II, run jointly by Lady D and myself, is now up online! Yay! It's called Everything Edward II, and you can find it here; the address is everythingedward2.com. Lady D did all the technical stuff for the site which I'm useless at, so many, many, thanks to her for all her hard work. (Please go over to her blog and tell her how brilliant she is.)

One of my favourite parts of the site is the Mythbusters page, where we take stories about Edward II which are demonstrably untrue or at the very least grossly exaggerated but are repeated online and in books over and over (and over and over and over and bloody well over, to the point where I start to scream and cry and tear my hair out) as certain fact - and proceed to demolish them. It's great fun. There are only a few on there at the moment, but it's an ongoing project, of course, and I have tons more planned. The red-hot poker thingy really needs a page, too.

The new site is where we finally throw off the veils of our pseudonyms and reveal our true names and identities - so if you're interested in who we really are, check out the About page.

Finally, to fill this post up and to look as though I've actually put some thought into it, here are some searches which have hit the blog over the last few days.

hug le despenser Let's hold a Hug Hugh Le Despenser Day. That would certainly make Lady D happy!

sexy pirate custumes

gay engleterre

William said that Edward .... to make him his heir (i.e. to be the next king)

vereson.sex.com and verray verray.sex.com Weirdly, those two hit my article about Edward II's coronation, which says "Thomas de Vere, son of the earl of Oxford..." and the one about Henry of Grosmont, the verray parfait gentil knyght. Not quite what the searchers were after, I imagine.

historical person that fought against unfair hours

murder king homophobia medieval poker castle

form of address for children when mailing letter

facts about king Edward II death for children

mark smeaton sex

was george boleyn bisexuall

true incent taboo seducing stories

sex wife amatory

free edward greeting cart Card?

strange facts about edwar vi Sadly I don't know any, but being called 'Edwar' is pretty strange, I'd have thought.

funny tumbstones

atrocities committed by edward the second to scotland

what are the common things between eleanor & joan middle ages

who are the Despensers during Edward II

how much would a french feast cost in 1320

why is john norton important Because he was one of the men trying to free Edward II in 1327, of course! Which certainly makes him very important to me.

burghersh family scandalous

if someone killed a deer in the 14th century

did isabella of france have any sufferings Decide for yourself.

why people behave unfair to other people I like to think I can answer pretty well any question about Edward II anyone throws at me, but philosophical questions are beyond me, I'm afraid.

the king who had a red hot poker up his bum

which english royal prince was killed by an iron poker Number of people who have hit my blog by searching for 'red-hot poker' or similar: I've never counted, but it must be reaching infinity.

Roger Mortimer, the one who helped finish off Edward II at Berkeley Castle, the one with the red-hot poker

Which blogger is a klutz who trips over the most bizarre situations in LOVE HAPPENS

queen Isabella as the director of Edward ii

childish behavior of edward ii

Sometimes, blog readers who are not native speakers of English use Google's automatic translator to translate my posts into their own language. I was amused to see that the title of my post 'The Amatory Adventures of John de Warenne' was turned into Italian as La Adventures Amatory di John de Warenne, the title I'd orginally planned for the post, 'Marital Discord in the Reign of Edward II', came out as Marital Discord nel Reign of Edward II, 'Edward II's brother-in-law Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare' as Fratello Edward II's-in-law Gilbert 'il Red' de Clare, and 'serious marital issues' as serious issues marital. Hmmm, somehow I'd always thought Italian was a different language, not English words written in a different order with a few 'la's and 'il's thrown in for good measure.

Enjoy the website! Remember, it's a work in progress, and we'd love your opinions and feedback about anything you'd like to see on the site - so do feel free to get in touch with us any time, here or here.

Blog Awards

2009-10-22T16:55:00.001+02:00

I'd like to thank Carla Nayland for giving me a Kreativ Blog Award recently. Much appreciated, Carla! I was also lucky enough to receive an Outstanding Historical Fiction Blog Peer award from Gemini Sasson recently on Nan Hawthorne's blog. Thank you, ladies!

For the Kreativ award, I have to list: seven of my favourite things, seven of my favourite activities and seven things no-one knows about me. As this is a blog about Edward II, I'll let the lord king himself answer the questions...

Seven of my favourite things:

Can I just say 'Piers Gaveston' seven times? No? 'Piers Gaveston' four times and 'Hugh Despenser' three times, then? No? *Sighs* Well, OK, here goes.

- Seafood, especially oysters.
- Precious jewels on my fingers, my clothes, my hats and my Piers, the more the merrier. (Ostentatious? Moi?)
- Horses and dogs, especially greyhound puppies.
- Carpenters, cowherds, sailors, fishermen and anyone else of much lower birth than me.
- Music of all varieties.
- Naked dancers.
- The great outdoors, even when it's pouring down.

Seven of my favourite activities:

- Watching Piers Gaveston joust.
- Digging ditches and/or watching men dig ditches.
- Giving lands to Hugh Despenser.
- Laughing, joking around and shooting the breeze with said people of lower birth.
- Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and spilling state secrets to all and sundry when I'm in my cups.
- Giving money and other gifts to my niece Eleanor Despenser.
- Imagining what I'm going to do with Roger Mortimer once I get hold of the treacherous git.

List seven things no-one knows about you:

- I bought two salmon, with my own hands, at the postern gate of the Tower of London on 24 September 1326 from a passing fisherman called Richard. You know what was happening that day, don't you? My wife and Mortimer's invasion force was landing in Suffolk. Was I completely oblivious? You bet.

- Every Good Friday I made an offering of five shillings before the Cross, which money was melted down and made into cramp-rings. I also offered three shillings on the same day to the thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which my clerk described as "a thorn from our Lord's crown in a gold box ornamented with diverse precious stones, together with a gold chain." Among many other precious relics, I owned a tooth of Grandad Henry's favourite saint Edward the Confessor, a bone of St George held in a "vessel of silver," and the blood and hair of St Stephen.

- In May 1326, I had a crimson hat decorated with bells made for myself. I also owned a black hat lined with red velvet powdered with butterflies and other animals, and a white one of beaver lined with black velvet and powdered with gold trefoils.

- I spent £130 in 1323 on a ship called La Nostre Dame de Seint Johan, which I immediately renamed La Despensere after you know who. A much better name, don't you think? I also owned a ship named after my niece, La Alianore la Despensere, and a barge called La Petite Mariot. The La Despensere turned out to have been stolen in Brittany before I bought it, and the crew killed! Would you credit it??

- In 1324, I flew into such a violent rage with my friend the archbishop of Canterbury that he pretended he had to make an urgent visitation to the cathedral in order to escape from me.

- I often asked the Dominicans of various cities around Europe - Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Toulouse, Pamplona, Rouen, Marseilles, Citeaux - for their prayers on behalf of myself, my queen, my children, and my realm. To thank the Dominicans of Pamplona for praying for me in the spring of 1316, I gave them twenty pounds to put on entertainments for themselves for three days - one day in my name, one day in Isabella's and one in our son Edward's.

- I carried on the most amazing vendettas against some of my bishops in the 1320s because of their support (real or only in my fevered paranoid brain) of my Marcher enemies, and asked the pope to translate the bishops of Hereford and Lincoln to sees outside England on the grounds that they were "the worst poison" and "descended from the race of traitors."

I'm meant to pass the Kreativ award on to seven other bloggers, but unfortunately I hate choosing and always end up feeling bad for people I don't give the award to, so I'll take a leaf out of Gabriele's book and pass it on to anyone who's reading this and has their own blog. :-)

Caernarfon Castle and the Birth of Edward II

2009-10-18T19:46:00.000+02:00

This is the mighty and magnificent Caernarfon Castle in North Wales, begun by Edward I in 1283. Edward II, aka Edward of Caernarfon, was born here on Tuesday 25 April 1284, sixteen days after Easter Sunday in the twelfth year of his father's reign, as the youngest child of Edward and his first wife Eleanor of Castile. King Edward and Queen Eleanor had spent most of July and August 1283 at Caernarfon, so Edward II wasn't just born here, he must have been conceived here too.

Precisely where Edward II was born remains a matter for debate. Tradition has it that he was born in this small chamber on the first floor (i.e. the second floor for North American readers) of the Eagle Tower, but as work had only begun on the castle a few months before he was born, it seems more likely that only the ground floor of the tower had been completed by the time of his birth. It's also possible that Edward was born in the older timber castle which had previously stood on the site, or in a temporary timber building. Wherever the exact location, it can hardly have been a comfortable or pleasant experience for Queen Eleanor, who was about forty-two and a half at the time and was giving birth for at least the fourteenth, maybe the sixteenth, time - in the middle of what was basically a building site.

(Photo: the upper ward, with the Granary and North-East Towers and Queen's Gate.)

Edward I set off for Rhuddlan before his son's birth, leaving Queen Eleanor behind. Unfortunately, she missed giving birth to Edward II on the feast day of St George - patron saint of England - by two days, and he was born on St Mark's Day, then considered unlucky and a day of ill fortune. (Roger Mortimer was born on the same day, three years later.) The knight Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys, also known as Gruffydd Llwyd, rode the forty miles to Rhuddlan to inform Edward I that he had a new son, and was rewarded with the manor of Dinorwig for his pains. Gruffydd was destined to play a fairly important role in Edward II's life, fighting against the Marcher lords on his behalf in 1321/22 and being imprisoned for eighteen months from the autumn of 1327 for attempting to free the former king from Berkeley Castle, with a few other of Edward's devoted Welsh vassals. Gruffydd's son Ieuan joined the earl of Kent's conspiracy to restore the supposedly dead Edward in 1330.

Edward II's elder brother, ten-year-old Alfonso, was still alive at the time of his birth - he was born at Bayonne in November 1273 and his premature death in August 1284 tragically deprived England of having a king named 'Alfonso of Bayonne' - so Edward wasn't in fact born as heir to the throne. Two other brothers, John and Henry, had died aged five in 1271 and aged six in 1274 respectively; a few kings of England, such as Henry VIII and Charles I, have been second sons, but Edward II was a fourth son.

(Photo: the lower ward, with the Queen's Tower and Eagle Tower on the right, with the flags flying.)

The often-repeated story that Edward I tricked the Welsh lords by promising them a prince who spoke no English and then presenting his infant son to them, is nonsense, by the way, and wasn't invented until centuries later. It makes no sense for a number of reasons, not least because Edward I and II and their courts spoke French rather than English, because Edward II's brother Alfonso was still alive when he was born and Edward would never have been appointed prince of Wales in preference to an elder brother, and because he wasn't even created prince of Wales until 1301 when he was almost seventeen.

(Photo: the Chamberlain Tower, with the Black Tower off to the left and King's Gate in the forefront.)

Edward was christened at Caernarfon on 1 May; if there's a record somewhere of who his godparents were, I've never seen it. His first wetnurse was the Welsh woman Mariota or Mary Maunsel, who only held the position for a few months until illness forced her to retire and she was replaced by the Englishwoman Alice de Leygrave, later a damsel of Isabella of France. As late as 1312, when Edward was twenty-eight, he granted Mariota an annual income of five pounds - a generous amount for a woman of her status - having previously given her 73 acres of land in Caernarfon rent-free for life. He also paid for her to travel from Caernarfon to visit him on occasion.

Edward and his retinue had arrived in England by the late summer of 1284, around the time that his brother Alfonso died on 19 August and he suddenly became far more important as the heir to the throne, and would not return to the country of his birth until he was created prince of Wales in 1301.

This used to be the Great Hall, flanked by the Queen's Tower (right) and Chamberlain Tower.

Looking towards King's Gate from the wall-walk near the Well Tower. The kitchens are below.

(Below) Eagle Tower seen through a window in King's Gate.

The last pics are of corridors, doorways and stairs in the castle. Caernarfon has more steep narrow winding staircases than any other castle I've ever visited, which is something of a problem when you're as scared of steep narrow winding staircases as I am. For Edward II's sake, I climbed up and down every single bloody one of them, and I hope he appreciates the sacrifice. You can just see me at the end of one corridor, in a light pink coat (yes, it's me, not a ghost).

For info on the history and building of Caernarfon Castle, see this page. I have a ton more pics of Caernarfon and I'll probably post more of them here at some point, as well as pics of Conwy and Beaumaris.

The Support Group For People Unfairly Maligned In Historical Fiction

2009-10-12T13:47:00.001+02:00

A joint post by my friend Rachel - who gets all the credit for the brilliant idea - and myself. Here's the first meeting of the Support Group For People Unfairly Maligned In Historical Fiction!

Edward II: Welcome to the group, everyone. I'm your moderator, King Edward II, though do feel free to call me King Edward for short, and I’m glad to see so many of you here. Well actually, I’m not glad at all, as you’re only here because of the nonsense written about you in historical novels. But anyway, I'll get the ball rolling. How haven't I been maligned by writers? I've been accused of physical cowardice...

George Boleyn: Damn right! I've even read that you fled the field after the battle of Bannockburn. As if!

Edward: Well, there's a teeny tiny chance I did actually do that. In a way. You know, just a little bit.

George: Oh.

Edward: But only when I had no other choice once the battle was lost and because the earl of Pembroke forced me to leave the field before Robert Bruce could capture me for, well, a king's ransom. I soooo was not one of the first men to flee the field. That's deeply unfair. Isabella did not despise me for cowardice at Bannockburn as some novelists like to believe. And talking of whom, could someone please, for the love of God, tell the numerous writers who keep mindlessly repeating it that I did NOT abandon her weeping and pregnant to the mercy of our enemies at Tynemouth in 1312? I sent her by land to York and met up with her there a mere nine days later. Do writers honestly think I should have taken a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy on a five-day journey bobbing about in a small boat on the North Sea?

Piers Gaveston: If you had, Ned, no doubt they'd gleefully portray you as callously not caring about the health of your wife and unborn child rather than callously abandoning them. It's a lose-lose situation for you. Talking about myths, here's another one: you did NOT give Isabella's jewels and your wedding gifts to me to keep for myself. You sent them to me to store them safely, but obviously that explanation is too prosaic for some people. Aside from anything else, I might have been ostentatious, but a drag queen? I don’t think so. And by the way? I wasn’t a rent boy either. Where do people get this from? I was a member of the Gascon nobility! Do people seriously imagine that in 1300 - 1300! - the king of England would have selected a boy not of noble birth, who'd been a prostitute for years to boot, to be his son's chief companion? Apparently they do.

Hugh Despenser: On the subject of birth, why do novelists insist on depicting me as a humble knight and basically a nobody? Why can't they do a bit of research and learn that I was in fact a high-ranking nobleman, grandson and nephew of earls of Warwick and step-grandson of the earl of Norfolk? And seriously, I'm going to haunt the next writer who says that Edward II arranged my marriage to his niece Eleanor after I became his lover. Apparently, it's just too much effort to look at the numerous sources which make it clear that I married her in May 1306 and her grandfather Edward I arranged it, and that we'd had half a dozen kids by the time I, erm, you know, kind of accidentally seduced her uncle. *whistles innocently*

Isabella of France: I am somewhat baffled by the way I used to be portrayed as an evil cackling murderous unfeminine she-wolf but am now a) a long-suffering tragic neglected wife dumped on over and over from a great height by her nasty cruel gay husband, who in 1325 is b) miraculously transformed into a strong empowered proto-feminist, but then c) suddenly becomes - ta-da! - a helpless little victim of nasty men again and in no way responsible for anything she does wrong in the late 1320s because it's all Mortimer's fault. Whether I'm a helpless victim of men or a strong empowered feminist icon completely in control of all her actions depends entirely on whether I'm doing something the author approves of or something s/he doesn't like, of course. I'm also portrayed as eventually and oh-so-romantically finding Twu Wuv after years of the worst marital awfulness any woman in history has ever had to endure and discovering that the route to personal fulfilment and contentment lies in shagging a married man who has a dozen children. Isn't that just the sweetest most romantic thing you've ever heard of?

Joan Mortimer: Well, now you come to mention it, no, not really. Funny how my husband's adultery with you is romantic and entirely forgivable while Edward II's is deeply icky, isn't it, and that the same novelists who write scene after indignant scene about Isabella's neglect at the hands of her husband do their utmost to pretend that my husband isn't actually married? One novelist has me being very overweight and deeply unattractive, and the sad thing is that I'm actually grateful that she even bothered to mention me in the first place. They usually don't.

Richard III:Coming back to Isabella's point about people's reputations doing a 180, for half a millennium I was regarded as the epitome of all that is evil and deformed and hideous, but these days some writers seem to think I was some kind of saint who never did the slightest thing wrong ever while others still think that I was an evil nephew-murdering monster who never did the slightest thing right ever. Ummm, shades of grey, people?

Elizabeth I: Hello, everyone, England’s greatest queen here. There’s one idiot, I mean author, who seems to think that I – who never married, and was attended at just about every step of the way even when I was queen - managed to pop out six kids without anyone noticing. And I thought I’d scotched that stupid pregnant-by-Thomas-Seymour rumour at the time, but 460 years later people are still banging on about it.

Anne Boleyn: Where to start with my unfair vilification? I did not commit adultery. I sure as heck did not commit incest. (Sex with my brother?? There is not enough ewwww in my vocabulary.) I was not a serial killer, or a poisoner. Or convicted of witchcraft. I did not miscarry a deformed foetus. Neither was I deformed myself. Because of course Henry VIII would have spent seven years trying to get his marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor’s aunt annulled so he could marry someone hideously disfigured. Makes perfect sense.

Margaret of Anjou: I'm usually portrayed as this evil vengeful bitch without whom England would never have become embroiled in the Wars of the Roses for several decades, but what should I have done, for heaven's sake? Allowed my son to be disinherited in favour of that man York? And for all the writers who think I cackled like a mad cackling harpy at the sight of York’s head after the battle of Wakefield, I wasn’t there, all right? I was in Scotland. Yes, Scotland.

Edward II: Oh, for Piers', I mean Pete's, sake. You mean, there are writers who can’t even figure out what country the queen of England was in at any given time? That’s dreadful.

Margaret of Anjou: It certainly is. And as for that nasty little rumour that my husband Henry VI was not the father of my son? Of course he bloody was. Henry was perfectly well and sane when we conceived Edward and for a few months afterwards, thank you very much. Obviously I was most grateful for the duke of Somerset's loyal support, but seriously, go to bed with him? As if! And regarding the inutterably inane suggestion that the duke of Suffolk was my son's father - dearie me, this is so painfully stupid - he'd been dead for three and a half years by the time Edward was born. I have two words, four syllables, for writers: Basic Research!

Isabella of France: And on that subject, I am sick to death of this nonsense about me shagging Roger Mortimer or some random Scottish man to conceive Edward III. It's crap. My husband was the father of my eldest son, and of all my other children. Got it?

Edward II: No-one ever thought to doubt that until the end of the twentieth century, then it suddenly became wildly popular to claim that some other man, any random man who wasn't me, had fathered my eldest son Ned, regardless of plausibility. In fact, the more implausible the candidate, the better. My favourite theory is - get this - that my father Edward I was the real father of my son. Yes, that's my father who died more than five years before my son was born.

Margaret of Anjou: Your dead father is meant to have fathered your son? Where on earth do people get this crap? I feel your pain, Edward.

Isabella: And for the last time, I never even met William bloody Wallace, okay? I was still a child when he was executed and wasn’t even in England. Neither had I been abandoned in Scotland when my eldest son was conceived, as one novelist thinks, or for that matter, when my other children were conceived either. I can confirm Margaret of Anjou’s story that there are writers who can’t even figure out what country the queen of England was in at any given time. I echo Margaret's comment: do some research, people!

Roger Mortimer: Talking of being in the wrong country, evidently some writers have also failed to notice that I was in Ireland nine months before Edward III was born, and for a good while before and afterwards too. Even I, manly, virile, audacious and unequivocally heterosexual as I undoubtedly am, would struggle to impregnate a woman who’s in another country.

Edward II: Hey, what are you doing here? This is the group for people maligned in historical fiction! The back-slapping self-congratulatory group for men lauded to the heavens in crappy romance novels as perfect wonderful manly heroes just because they like having sex with women is down the corridor. I believe my grandson John of Gaunt is chairing it.

Roger: No, actually this is the group I wanted to join. After all, novelists rarely bother to characterise me beyond 'strong and virile hetero hero who is the antithesis of horrid gay effeminate Edward II' and then later, 'nasty unscrupulous greedy villain' who is nothing more than a useful scapegoat all your wife’s misdeeds and mistakes can be dumped on. And sorry, by the way. You know, for having an affair with Izzy and holding your son hostage and invading your kingdom and all that.

Edward II: No problem. I didn’t like her that much anyway. And I’m much happier doing my own thing in Italy with everyone in England believing that you had me murdered, and besides, my son and me got all our problems resolved when I secretly met him in Germany, so it all worked out in the end.

Roger: Well, how terribly nice for you. Shame I've gone down in history as the man who - ha! - had the former king of England killed with a red-hot poker. I mean, please, a red-hot poker? Can you think of anything less plausible?

Edward: Sheesh, can you believe that old chestnut's still doing the rounds? Incredible. Never mind, Rog, the truth will out, eventually. But seriously, how come you’re always characterised as the manly virile strong manly macho man who is incredibly strong and manly while I, acknowledged by my contemporaries as one of the strongest men in England and with a serious addiction to outdoor exercise, am frequently portrayed in fiction as shrieking, flouncing around, throwing tantrums, stamping my foot, fluttering my hands and generally behaving like a twelve-year-old girl in a strop? For pity’s sake, I’m a man and I love Piers and Hugh as a man. Yes, they’re also men. What of it?

Piers Gaveston: Isn’t it profoundly irritating when novelists write tired outdated old stereotypes rather than characters? Some of them think they have to write you as the screechiest, campest, most incredibly effeminate man who ever lived, Ned, and I'm especially keen to forget that novel which makes some utterly feeble joke about you not being a king but a queen, or some rubbish like that. And as for me, I'm bisexual so therefore writers think I have to be desperate to shag anything that comes within 100 feet of me.

George Boleyn: Same with me, Piers. Modern writers have decided that I'm also bisexual - not quite sure on what grounds, but still - and therefore I’m the obnoxious amoral manslut who will shag anything with a pulse, regardless of sex, age or even species.

Hugh Despenser: And don't forget the double standards. Mortimer's sexual dominance over the queen is romantic, proof of how much they loved each other and a useful excuse for her not to be held responsible for anything she does wrong. My sexual dominance over the king on the other hand is - hold on, let me check - OK, I've got "perverted" in this book and "unnatural" and "sordid" in this one. I know I didn't exactly live in the most enlightened times and men having sex with men was taboo and forbidden, but then, so was the queen committing adultery, so I'm not quite sure why one relationship is usually written as sighingly romantic and the other as disgusting.

Isabella: The difference is that you really are icky, Despenser, and I am queen and therefore I'm right, so shut up. And I’ll tell you what else is irritating. Novelists who think that the best way to make their medieval and Tudor royal or aristocratic female characters sympathetic and even, God forbid, 'relevant' to twenty-first century readers is to have the women acting astonished and horrified when they're told that they’ll have to marry a man of their male guardian's choice in a political alliance, and whining about how unfair and unreasonable it is that they can't marry for love and choose their own husband. Makes as much sense as a woman of the early twenty-first century going "Whaaaat?? You're saying that I can marry a man of my own choice, just because I love him?? That's crazy!"

Katherine Woodville: Good evening, fellow maligned people. I've had novelists accuse me of child abuse on the grounds that my husband Henry Stafford was half my age and a mere child when he was forced by my wicked greedy family to marry me, then supposedly a grown woman. Let me say this for the last time: He. Was. Older. Than. Me. Got it? We were both children when we married. Oh, and I was not automatically a complete bitch just because I happened to be born a Woodville, mmmkay?

William Hastings: I've been accused of abuse, too. I'll never deny being a womaniser, but that's about seventeen million miles from being a child-rapist and murderer. I mean, please. The horror of seeing that vicious calumny in print!

George Boleyn: Ugh, you poor thing. Me, I've been accused of sleeping with my own sister, and it gets worse: not only was I besotted with Francis Weston in that same novel – which, if you knew Weston, well he was nice enough but really, you just wouldn’t – and an avowed homosexual but at the same time I was supposedly sexually attracted to my own sister. I’d be offended if it wasn’t so psychologically preposterous. Actually … scratch that, I’m still offended.

Elizabeth Woodville: That same author has me obsessively fetishising my purported ancestor Melusine. Great-Grandma Water Goddess this and Melusine that. It’s ridiculous and tedious. And don’t get me started on the witchcraft rubbish! My mother Jacquetta was cleared of all those accusations. Cleared. Understand?

Piers Gaveston: Oh don’t talk to me about goddesses and witchcraft. For some reason, I’m always portrayed as some sort of pagan Earth mother-worshipping character. Of course, the actual goddess is never specified, it’s always some strange amorphous hybrid of various pagan legends and twentieth-century Wicca. Please. My religious beliefs were as orthodox as anyone else’s at Court. Secondly, my mother was not burned as a witch, and I’m strongly tempted to haunt the living daylights out of the next person who writes that she was. Say what you like about me, but leave my poor mum out of it.

Mark Smeaton: Is this the group for the People Vilified in Historical Novels?

Edward II: Yes, you’re in the right place. And you are …?

Mark Smeaton: Well, apparently, I was Queen Anne Boleyn’s intellectually below-average socially inept fanpoodle. Or George Boleyn’s equally socially inept boytoy. I keep forgetting which.

George Boleyn: Well in this one here, it seems you’re both.

Mark Smeaton: Seriously? Let me see that. *flips pages* Wow. It even has me coming on to you in public! Because, people totally did that all the time in the 1530s, and everyone else would have been okay with it. Riiiight. That’s totally not anachronistic at all. *rolls eyes* I mean, really – somehow the fact that you gave me a gift of a book is evidence not of a patron/protégé type friendship, but that we were at it like rabbits? Good Lord. That’s definitely putting two and two together to make 567.

Katherine Howard: I’ll see your affair with George Boleyn and raise you … wait for it … Anne of Cleves and me. And no, we’re not going to act out that scene with the honey jar for you lot, so don’t even think about it.

Anne of Cleves : It was a change from the horse-faced social klutz with poor personal hygiene portrayal though. Not necessarily a good one, but still …

Katherine Howard: Well, you know, nothing like a bit of posthumous sexual orientation confusion to make things interesting. Because, obviously, if I was a sex-obsessed teenager, I would totally have jumped anyone with a pulse regardless of age or sex who stood still long enough. It naturally follows.

Richard II: Of course. Naturally. And anyone even remotely attracted to a member of the same sex is by definition so deviant that no one between the ages of six months and 100, let alone animals, is safe from their depredations. Nothing like a bit of realistic characterisation! Speaking seriously, I’m still deeply upset at being portrayed as gang raping some poor woman into insanity with Robert de Vere, who just happens also to be my lover, in some kind of weird homoerotic bonding ritual, for the purpose of … well, I don’t even know. It was extremely revolting and disturbing.

Piers: Thankfully, Edward and I were never subjected to that. That I know of, anyway. How obnoxious. Can you sue for defamation in the afterlife, Dickon? Thinking about it, though, at least three novelists do have me coming on to a teenage Roger Mortimer for absolutely no reason that I can discern except that I fancy men, which apparently means that I have to hit on every single male in sight. I mean, Roger Mortimer?? Seriously, Izzy, I know you like the guy, but as George said about Weston, I just wouldn't. Ever.

Roger Mortimer: Hey, I’m right here!

Piers: Sorry, Rog, no offence. But as, according to various writers, you're the most unequivocally heterosexual man who ever lived, there's no reason why you'd care if I don't fancy you, is there?

Roger: I totally don't care. Let me count the ways in which I do not care.

Hugh Despenser: *under his breath* Bet you do really. But Piers, at least authors actually try to write a bit of minimal characterisation for you, even if it’s not much more than 'man who loves men who can't keep it in his pants' or 'anachronistic Goddess-worshipper with a poignant, albeit completely untrue, backstory of a mum burned at the stake for witchcraft'. I'm usually only this one-dimensional epitome of all evil with character traits taken straight from twentieth-century sadistic genocidists, though one author did have me being a brutal wife-beater but also what I can only describe as all swishy and girly - apparently for no reason except that I was Edward II's lover and The Rules for Crappy Novels state that men who have sex with men are required to be camp. As well as disgusting, perverted and unnatural, of course. Still trying to get my head round that one.

Thomas Boleyn: I for one don’t blame you all for being upset. These writers seem to be obsessed with sex, and the more scandalous and unpleasant, the better. I was an accomplished diplomat and faithful servant of the king, who wished only to arrange great marriages for my children and improve our family’s standing … well, okay, I was ambitious, but really, who wasn't? ... and thanks to recent novels and a certain TV series, it seems I am now to be known in perpetuity - to put it colloquially - as Pimp Daddy Boleyn.

Richard II: Pimp Daddy?

Thomas Boleyn: Yes. It seems fashionable to portray my wife and me as essentially pimping our daughters to the king as high class escorts. Which not only couldn’t be further from the truth, but I’m sure I don’t need to explain how preposterous or offensive that is.

John of Buchan: That is absolutely outrageous, I agree. No self-respecting aristocrat would prostitute his daughters like that.

Piers: Or his sons or nephews, come to that.

Edward II: Indeed, it was all about advantageous marriage alliances. Speaking of marriages, it seems to be an increasingly tiresome habit to portray my and Isabella’s as the most abusive, neglectful and appalling you could imagine. Apparently, I was unnatural for not fancying my pubescent bride, who just happened to be twelve.

Isabella: Ummmm, hello? I was The Most Beautiful And Desirable Woman In All France. Everyone says so.

Edward II: And also, twelve.

George Boleyn: But if you had fancied her, Edward, you would have been just as unnatural, because twenty-first century romance novelists would have been all, "OMG! Paedophile!" You can't win. Fancy a twelve-year-old, you're an unnatural pervert; don't fancy a twelve-year-old, you're an abusive and neglectful husband. And also an unnatural pervert because of Piers, of course.

Edward II: It appears to be more or less compulsory in novels to include a scene where either my wife or other people talk about how unnatural I am and how incomprehensible it is that I don't instantly prostrate myself at her feet the first time we meet and worship her perfect amazing desirable beauty, and evidently the reader is supposed to feel enormous sympathy for her and annoyance with me rather than thinking 'Why the heck would a man of twenty-three fancy a twelve-year-old anyway?' or 'Why isn't Edward laughing himself sick at the kid with no breasts and no hips who thinks she's all that?' or 'Poor Edward, forced to marry that spoilt self-absorbed little brat when he's already in love with someone else'.

Isabella: Hey! Didn't I put up with enough appalling abuse from you throughout our marriage without being insulted as well? I am queen and you can't say things like that about me. And you're one to talk about being spoilt and self-absorbed. Your kingdom went to the dogs while you messed around digging ditches and thatching roofs and stuff, and enriching your lovers!

Edward: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Talk to the hand, Izzy. Oh, and I should have mentioned the bizarre and frankly offensive attitude some writers seem to have that the presence of an attractive female should have been enough to 'cure' me of loving men. 'How could he look at someone else when he had beautiful Izzy?', they shriek. I mean, really, as though it works like that!

Piers: And I'm sure there must be some kind of checklist with points that writers can tick off to ensure that they're correctly writing Isabella as an abused neglected wife, and never mind that most of the stories are invented or at the very least exaggerated. Edward doesn't fall in love with her at their wedding - check. Gives her jewels to me - check. Kisses me with enormous enthusiasm in front of her at Dover - check. Abandons her pregnant and crying in 1312 - check. Abandons her to the Scots in 1322 - check. Cruelly 'removes' her children from her in 1324 - check. Tries to divorce her in 1325 - check. And so on and so forth, tediously and predictably.

Isabella: Pfft, I am the ultimate tragic neglected wife, and I am queen, as one novelist has me saying in pidgin English without a 'the' approximately once every three sentences, while you're just the second son of a minor Gascon noble who got his head cut off, so don't be talking to me. I am queen. Anyway, twelve is old enough to know that my favourite, erm, position is on my knees from behind, according to one particular recent novelist. I am queen, and I even told my new husband on our wedding night how much I liked it kneeling up "like the animals" and he wasn’t shocked in the slightest, because obviously the king of France's pubescent daughter who’d been betrothed to the king of England since she was three wasn’t in any way expected to be a virgin. No sirree. I am queen.

Edward II: Did you have to remind me? That's the novel where I bang on for a couple of paragraphs about how women's bodies appal and revolt me and declare that I will never ever ever ever be able to have sex with a woman because they revolt me so much while also, errrmmm, telling Piers that I've fathered an illegitimate son. Even though this is 1307 and they won't invent sperm donation for a few centuries yet. Then a few chapters after that contradictory little episode I have sex with the non-virgin twelve-year-old Isabella on her knees "like the animals" with no problems or hesitation at all, because evidently I've forgotten that women's bodies are supposed to appal and revolt me. And I’m still recovering from that voyeuristic heavily-breathing dwarf. *shudders*

Anne of Cleves: A what dwarf? Sounds interesting, if disturbing. Share?

Piers: You don’t want to know. Seriously. You really don’t. I'm disturbed just from having to hear about it.

Anne Boleyn: Well, you're French, Isabella. Don’t you know that French courts were always synonymous with high class brothels? I read that in numerous novels, so it must be true! I can’t count the number of times I’m supposed to have kept Henry hanging using sex tricks I learned in France … I’m sure Marguerite of Navarre and Queen Claude would be thrilled to know their households were glorified harems.

Isabella: Very true. What can I say - we French were obviously born obsessed with sex *rolls eyes*. Anyway, Edward, it still doesn’t excuse you preferring Piers to me. I am queen.

Edward II: He was my age, we shared similar interests, and also, well … hot. Anyway, I have two words for you. Roger and Mortimer. Enough said.

Katherine Howard: *to Piers* Why, hello there! Sorry, Izzy, but I think I’ll have to go with King Edward on this one.

Elizabeth I: Indeed, he reminds me of my sweet Robin. Oy! Back of the queue, stepmum dearest.

Edward II: Ahem. Off topic, ladies. And also, don't forget, the yummy Gascon is mine. Strictly look but don't touch for the rest of you.

Katherine Howard: Sorry, got a bit distracted there.

Piers: Don’t worry, I’m used to it.

Edward II: Hellooo? When you're quite finished, we were talking about how grotesque and abusive Isabella’s and my marriage wasn’t.

Isabella: Was so. I am queen.

Anne Boleyn: Come off it, Izzy, we discussed this the other day and your marriage was infinitely better than lots of other women's. King Edward, if it’s any consolation, authors do that to Henry and me too. I’ve had rapist Henry, violent Henry … notwithstanding the whole being executed thing, our marriage wasn’t that bad all the time. I’m not sure which characterisation I hate more; incestuous slutty serial poisoner or pathetic victim.

John of Buchan: Oh, I’ve certainly come in for the abusive husband treatment too, beating up my wife Isabel of Fife when she's pregnant and the like. It seemed to be a cheap way of drumming up sympathy for Isabel, who was turned into a completely fatuous Mary Sue into the bargain. I understand she was most unimpressed.

George Boleyn: Same here. True, Jane and I were incompatible on a number of levels, and I admit I probably wasn’t the best husband in the world, but it is offensive to be portrayed as someone who would rape his wife from the rear on his wedding night because his nose was out of joint about having to marry at all. What was even more bizarre was that particular portrayal had me marrying ten years after I really did.

Mark Smeaton: That’s because they had you and me involved in an affair before your marriage. By the way, did I mention the incredibly overwhelming evidence for this that doesn’t exist? Anyway. If they’d stuck to the proper chronology and still wanted to keep the affair, I’d have been about eight if that at the relevant time, so …

Elizabeth I: Ugh. I’m pleased to see no-one actually went there.

Mark Smeaton: Give them time. Someone will.

Isabella: If someone can write a screenplay where I produce a child by a man who was executed when I was nine, they surely will. I am queen.

Edward II: In a genre where women get pregnant by men who've been dead for years or are in another country at the time, where a dwarf watches a royal couple consummate their marriage, where jaw-droppingly lame accusations of adultery and incest thrown at the queen of England are assumed to be true and where men who don't fall instantly in lust with twelve-year-olds are deemed weird, I fear that anything is possible. Till our next meeting, ladies and gentlemen!

Pics of North Wales (2)

2009-10-08T16:19:00.010+02:00

More pics of North Wales, no doubt with the usual bizarre spacing Blogger likes to put in my photo posts! Click on the pics to see a larger version (I hope, fingers crossed, if it's in the right mood).

3 pics of St Mary's Church in Caernarfon, built into the town walls by Henry Ellerton, master mason of the castle, in 1307. He had received a licence some years before from none other than Edward of Caernarfon.

More of the medieval town walls of Caernarfon (could that sky possibly be any more dismal?):

Medieval town walls of Conwy (4 pics). The sun came out a little bit while we were there, amazingly.

This is the Church of St Mary and St Nicholas in Beaumaris on Anglesey, which contains the tomb of Edward II's great-aunt Joan (or Joanna, or Siwan in Welsh), illegitimate daughter of King John, who married Llywelyn the Great in the early 1200s and died in 1237. Joan - heroine of Sharon Penman's Here Be Dragons - was originally buried at Llanfaes Priory.

The south porch of the church, where the tomb stands.

A luxuriantly mustachioed statue of Llywelyn the Great (died 1240) in the centre of Conwy.

The village of Aberffraw on Anglesey, formerly - not that you'd ever know to look at it - a royal court of the princes of Gwynedd; one of Llywelyn the Great's titles was 'Prince of Aberffraw'.

St Mary and All Saints Church in the centre of Conwy - formerly the abbey church of the Cistercian Aberconwy Abbey, burial place of, among others, Llywelyn the Great and his sons Dafydd and Gruffydd. The abbey was removed to Maenan by Edward I in the 1280s.

Views from Beaumaris on Anglesey across the Menai Strait to the Welsh mainland, towards Llanfairfechan and Abergwyngregyn. These pics would be far more spectacular without the low-lying cloud obscuring the mountains. (Grrr.)

Coming soon: pics of the castles of Conwy, Beaumaris, and - of course! - Caernarfon.

Pics of North Wales (1)

2009-10-06T12:20:00.000+02:00

As promised, some pics of North Wales! Lots more to come soon.

The King's Gate of Caernarfon Castle, with a statue of none other than Edward II, erected in 1320 and now very weathered. I'd like to apologise here to the people of Caernarfon I accidentally bumped into while jumping up and down on the pavement in joy on realising that there exists a statue of Edward II which I didn't know about before - tragic individual that I am.

The mighty Caernarfon Castle (pic with boats in the foreground). The tower on the left, where the flags are flying, is the Eagle Tower, supposedly Edward II's birthplace.

Three pics of Rhuddlan Castle, where Edward II's sister Elizabeth, countess of Holland and Hereford, was born in August 1282.

Two pics of Conwy Castle rising above the town.

The weather was pretty murky the whole time we were in Wales, but one day it came out a little bit brighter, and we finally got some views over Snowdonia from our cottage on Anglesey.

Bilingual Welsh/English signs.

Two pics of Aberconwy House in Conwy, a merchant's house built around 1300.

A pic of the Tudor Rose in Beaumaris, built around 1400.

And finally for today, two pics of St Cwyfan's Church or the Church In The Sea near Aberffraw on Anglesey, only reachable at low tide! Originally founded in the seventh century, the present building mostly dates from the fourteenth century with some older parts, and a nineteenth-century roof.

Misinformation About Edward II, Pokers, Etc

2009-09-23T11:22:00.002+02:00

This will be my last post until the end of the first week of October or thereabouts, as my holiday begins tomorrow. We're off to North Wales, so will be visiting, among lots of other places, Caernarfon Castle - birthplace of Edward II, the onlie begetter of this insuing blog! I'm so looking forward to it. I have been there before, but when I was six, so can barely remember it. Lots of pics of Caernarfon and several of Edward I's other Welsh castles to follow here on my return.

Thank you to Carla Nayland for giving me a blog award! Much appreciated, Carla.

I always find it amusing - though also depressing - to read the crap about Edward II that some people put online, and believe me, there's a lot of stupid inaccurate crap about him out there (not only online, either). The 682nd anniversary a couple of days ago of his alleged death at Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327 has brought up the usual oh-so-tediously-predictable rash of blog posts about the red-hot poker, some rather more misinformed than others: one claimed that Edward was, and I quote, "ignobly killed, some say by his wife and/or his gay lover. Death was adminstered by a red hot poker up the bum while he was on the toilet." Oh, the boundless confusion in that one! Love the idea of Isabella and Edward's gay lover, which presumably means Hugh Despenser, conspiring to have him murdered, and the fact that Hugh had been dead for ten months at the time of Edward's supposed death be damned. (Given that there are novels which have Roger Mortimer fathering Edward III even though he was in a different country to Isabella at the time of Edward's conception, and online articles postulating that Edward I fathered Edward III, that shouldn't pose a problem if anyone feels like writing a crappy novel about it.) Or maybe it was Isabella and her gay lover? Maybe Roger Mortimer was secretly a woman! Hey, I definitely feel a crappy sensationalist novel coming on here. And if readers complain that turning Mortimer into a woman or having Despenser alive ten months after his death is stupid and disrespectful, not to mention completely impossible, I can always shriek "But it's FICTION!!!! If you want historical accuracy, read a biography!" in the shouty and also tediously predictable manner of some commentators on Amazon.

That phrase 'Death was administered...' makes me giggle: "If you could just lie on your stomach, Mr Caernarfon, and please make sure you remain absolutely still while we administer death up your back passage by red-hot poker." The bit about the toilet, by the way, actually comes from stories circulating in the late thirteenth century about the death of Edmund Ironside in 1016, and is not and never has been part of the red-hot poker myth about Edward II.

I love this particular paragraph from a blog post, which is wonderfully chock-full of wrongness: "Queen Isabella, wife of King Edward II, entertained her lover Mortimer at Nottingham Castle. Romantics believe that Isabella, who had been made a virtual prisoner by the King, received Mortimer at the castle after he had gained entry by climbing the inn’s 20 metre long chimney, which was reputed to lead to a secret passageway into the castle. Isabella eventually escaped with her lover to France from where in 1326 she overthrew her husband and subsequently caused his murder at Berkeley Castle." I can only stand back and admire as the writer manages to turn Edward III's arrest of Roger Mortimer at Nottingham Castle in 1330 into a dashingly romantic tale of Mortimer himself secretly entering the castle to see his One Twu Wuv. And as a bonus, there's the inclusion of the tired old myths that Isabella 'escaped' from England to France in 1325, and that Edward III imprisoned her in 1330 for the rest of her life - I assume the 'virtual prisoner' bit is a reference to that, unless the writer erroneously believes that Edward II imprisoned her. Actually, given the wrongness of all the rest, s/he probably did believe that. This whole thing shows that if you're going to get things wrong, you might as well get them magnificently wrong, I suppose.

Blog post regarding Isabella's death in 1358: "When she died, she asked to be entombed with Mortimer's heart placed in her casket." Nope; Isabella was buried with Edward II's heart, not Mortimer's, and with the gown she wore for her and Edward's wedding. She wasn't buried next to Mortimer at the Greyfriars church in London either, a myth still often repeated as fact.

Spotted on two so-called 'history' sites: Edward "turned over to Gaveston all of the wedding gifts Isabella brought to the marriage - including the marriage bed" and "King Philip IV of France had given Edward some fancy jewelry which was found to be hanging on Gaveston's neck the very next day." Giving Piers Gaveston the marriage bed?? Where on earth do people get this stuff, and why do they post it as 'fact'? Piers wearing Isabella's jewellery the day after her wedding - what, did Edward send it to him back in England via UPS? For pity's sake, isn't Edward II's story fascinating enough without inventing such lurid fiction? Apparently not; it seems that history has to be sexed up, dumbed down and made as scandalous as possible these days. Even the Telegraph, yes, the Telegraph of all newspapers, feels the need to write sensational articles about Edward II's GAY LOVER!!!

Extract from another recent blog post: Edward "was later deposed by Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, disappearing behind the walls of Pontefract Castle." A confusion between Edward and his great-grandson Richard II, imprisoned at Pontefract in 1399 after his deposition. Berkeley, Pontefract, what's the difference? Well, OK, about 180 miles for a start. And it was hardly Isabella and Mortimer themselves who deposed Edward.

Another Spreading Misinformation About Edward II Award for stating something as fact that patently isn't: "One member of the British royalty caught having homosexual relations suffered an even more grisly fate: Edward II’s penalty was being held down while a red hot poker was jammed through his rectum and intestines." I wonder who it was who was meant to have 'caught' Edward having sexual relations with men? Number of blog posts and articles online which repeat as certain fact that Edward was gay and murdered in this fashion because of his sexual preferences: far, far too many to count.

An interesting and astonishingly farfetched notion of the consequences of Isabella and Mortimer's invasion of 1326: "In fact, with out Isabella doing what she did, most of the democratic freedoms that the world enjoys today may never have come about." And there was me thinking her sole or at least her overwhelming priority was to get herself into a position where she could grant herself staggeringly enormous amounts of money - if not, she certainly did a very realistic impression from 1327 to 1330 of a person who cared about little else but granting herself staggeringly enormous amounts of money - but nooooo, she was Isabella Of France, Bringing Democratic Freedom To The Whole World. Who knew?

I sometimes see my blog posts reposted online having been run through an automated translator and then put back into English, with hilariously awful results. Here's a typically bad translation of this post, which translates "life went on as normal for Edward to a great extent" as "life-force went on as unextravagant in guy of Edward to a Brobdingnagian expanse," "he still found time to have a bit of fun and take some outdoor exercise" as "he soothe base spell to essential a measure out of making whoopee and consume some out of doors anguish," and "bright blue English cloth" as "bright smutty English constitution." So there you go; in 1326, Edward II was making whoopee and consuming anguish with bright smutty cloth. You read it here first.

And finally, some recent blog searches. On the topic of searches and red-hot pokers, a recent episode of the TV show The Tudors had someone being tortured by having a red-hot poker inserted inside him, which increased my blog hits noticeably as people went online to search for it. Cheers for that, writers! If I had a pound for every time someone hit this blog searching for 'red-hot poker' in the last few years, I'd be a very rich woman.

Hot pocker deaths in the Tower of London

queen isabell sexual escapeds Don't know what they are, but they sound like fun.

if edward II were alive today he'd be presenting a TV show about keeping fit? A builder? A plumber? Answers on a postcard.

Edward II Spanish Warrior Now that's how Edward should have branded himself at the start of his reign, before everyone realised that he had no ability as a general whatsoever.

edward I bought cabbages off peasants Edward I would have died a thousand deaths before doing something like that. Edward II did, though.

what happened 700 years ago

who lived 700 years ago I do love vague searches.

murder caese involving the name Gurney

queens of england admitting adultery -diana -tudors

hot templars

EDWARD THE ii TORTURED

john di warenne The earl of Surrey turns Italian.

who was john warenne The earl of Surrey who couldn't keep it in his pants.

most gruesome and terrible execution methods and deaths in history Remember, we're looking for gruesome and terrible deaths. Merely gruesome just won't cut it.

edward 11 good or bad Duh, good, obviously. Oh, you mean objectively? Well...

extreme lashes neartest to rochester ny I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that my blog didn't prove terribly helpful in answering that question.

was isabella of castille cursed for the reconquista Ditto.

what problems did edward the confessor's death cause? And ditto.

ow did eleanor of aquitaine endure imprisonment for such a long time

nigel brotherton fair maid norway Ah yes, Edward II's well-known half-brother Nigel of Brotherton.

would a red hot poker up the bottom kill you Let's hope none of us ever have to find out.

perverted girl isabel translations

edward II wicked men blogspot

names for early people

Edward V1- bizarre fact

photos of 1306 era

1312 husband poisoned wife for not have male baby

king of england with the nickname nan an gang Ummm, huh?

See you in a couple of weeks! Posts to come include pics of North Wales, the next part (finally!) of my biography of the wonderful Henry of Grosmont, and another joint piece by my friend Rachel and myself on the Support Group For Historical People Unfairly Maligned In Crap Novels. And of course lots more posts about Edward II, who might have been a disastrous king, completely out of step with contemporary expectations of a ruler and lacking in regal dignity, but at least he was a person you can imagine having a right good laugh with, the life and soul of the party. Or, as an online translator insists on putting it, "Edward muscle essential been a catastrophic regent, unambiguously gone away from of not in harmony with newfangled expectations of a ruler and lacking in paramount repute, but at least he was a herself you can devise having a fair and square movables money on the floor with, the life-force and chain of the ball."

The Illegitimate Children of John de Warenne

2009-09-17T12:43:00.003+02:00

Because for some reason they've been taking up lots of space rent-free in my head ever since Lady D mentioned him to me in an email recently here's a post about the affairs and the many illegitimate children of John de Warenne, earl of Surrey and Sussex. John, born 1286 and died 1347, had an utterly disastrous marriage to Edward II's niece Jeanne de Bar, and it occurs to me now that we should have included the unfortunate countess in Queen Isabella's tragic wives' support group:

Jeanne: My husband had left me for his mistress by the time I was fourteen, and he lived openly with her and ignored me even after he was threatened with excommunication for abandoning his lawful wife, and left my Uncle Edward to take care of me and pay all my living costs. Yes, Izzy, that's the same man as the husband you keep whinging about. John fathered nine children that I know of, some by his long-term mistress Maud Nerford and some by other women but none by me, and spent literally decades trying to get our marriage annulled. The git tried to bribe me with an income of 200 poxy quid a year if I agreed to the annulment. In the end, he was so desperate to get rid of me so he could marry his new mistress, who to add insult to injury was years younger than some of his own children, that he pretended to the pope that he'd had an incestuous affair with my Aunt Mary. Mary wasn't only seven years older than him, she was a nun!

Isabella: Pffft, Jeanie, the Rules For Writing About The Fourteenth Century, section 15, clause 8 ("How to decide if a wife is tragically neglected") clearly state that if your husband cheats on you with women, no matter how blatantly, or how much he humiliates and belittles and ignores you, or how many children he fathers on his numerous mistresses, he's a romantic Hetero Hero and you just have to suck it up. Whereas I, with a husband who prefers men, am entitled to, ooooh, simply tons of sympathy. Don't be glaring at me like that; I didn't make the rules.

John and Jeanne married at Westminster on 25 May 1306, when he was almost twenty and Jeanne probably only ten, and certainly no more than eleven. Evidently sick of waiting for his little wife to grow up, John looked elsewhere, and his biographer F. R. Fairbank commented in 1907 "his wife when they married was a child, and half his own age; it is not wonderful [i.e. not to be wondered at] that the marriage was not a success. He was probably not one whit worse than the great majority in his own station." [1] Hmmm, a man marrying a girl half his age and having outside interests; does that remind you of anyone?

On 16 August 1309, Edward II gave John licence "to make whom he please heir of the lands which he holds," as long as he "will not disinherit any heir he may have by the king's niece," which suggests that even then, despite her extreme youth, John wasn't sure if he would ever have children with Jeanne and that their marriage was not a success. [2] John had an illegitimate son called William born sometime before 24 August 1310 (see below), and it may have been his birth or imminent birth which prompted John to ask this favour of the king. In the spring of 1313, John and Jeanne's marriage collapsed completely: Edward sent William Aune to bring Jeanne to him and subsequently paid all her expenses at the Tower of London, and specifically invited her to come with him on his trip to France that year. John meanwhile was openly living with his mistress Maud Nerford and was threatened with excommunication on this account in 1313, a sentence finally carried out three years later. He had at least three sons with Maud, and in 1316 made strenuous though ultimately unsuccessful efforts to annul his marriage to Jeanne, marry Maud and make these boys his heirs. By the autumn of 1320, though, his relationship with Maud had ended: he petitioned parliament to ask for her brother John to be removed from a commission of oyer et terminer in Norfolk on the grounds that John Nerford and his fellow commissioners were doing all the harm they could to John, because he had "banished Maud de Nerford from his heart and ousted her from his company." [3]

By the end of John's life, he was living with another highborn mistress, Isabel Holland, and was once more attempting to annul his marriage to Jeanne in order to marry Isabel instead. In June 1346, he made an arrangement with Edward III regarding the settlement of his lands which makes it clear that despite his age - he turned sixty that month - he hadn't given up hope of marrying and fathering a legitimate heir by Isabel, who was over thirty years his junior (even her mother was three or four years younger than he was). [4] In his will of 24 June 1347, John referred to Isabel as ma compaigne, the same way men of the era referred to their wives - but however John might have wished that she was, Isabel wasn't his wife as he never managed to annul his marriage to the childless Jeanne de Bar, and although he fathered lots of children by other women, his heir was his sister Alice's son Richard 'Copped Hat', earl of Arundel. (His Yorkshire lands passed to Edward III's son Edmund of Langley, John's godson.) John completely ignored his wife of forty-one years in his will but left numerous possessions to his mistress Isabel, including all his beds, half his livestock, various gold rings, chapel vestments, a gold cup and a large amount of other valuable plate, and "all the residue of all my goods and chattels" after his bequests and debts had been paid.

John left bequests to three daughters in his will. I don't know the identity of their mother(s):

- Joan de Basing ('Johanne de Basyngg' in the original spelling) who received a cup of plain silver from her father. Judging by her last name, she was already married. Joan was the name of John's mother, which implies Joan de Basing was his eldest daughter, as does the fact that she was named first in the list of his daughters.

- Katherine, who according to several genealogy sites - I don't know what primary source is the basis for this statement, and I can't confirm it - married Sir Robert Heveningham after her father's death. She certainly received a bequest of ten marks (six pounds, sixty-six pence) in John's will. ('Katerine' in the original, no surname given)

- Isabel, a nun at Sempringham, who received twenty pounds (vynt l) from John. ('Isabell') [5]

John had six illegitimate sons that I've been able to find. Here's a list of them.

- Ravlyn

John's most obscure son and only mentioned, that I've found, in a petition presented to parliament in 1334 by one Ralph le Botiller. This petition calls him Ravlyn fitz al Counte de Garrein, "Ravlyn, son of the earl of Warenne," and records le Botiller's complaint that John had sent Ravlyn and some members of his household to attack two of his (le Botiller's) manors in Cheshire and steal or destroy his possessions. Ravlyn is not mentioned either in his father's will of June 1347 or in a letter John sent to Edward III in April 1346 naming his other two secular sons, perhaps because he was dead by then. [6]

- John and Thomas

By 1316, John de Warenne had two sons by Maud Nerford, and in August that year persuaded Edward II to accept them as his heirs: he surrendered his lands to Edward and received them back "with remainder to John de Warenna son of Matilda de Neirford and the heirs male of his body, and failing such issue to Thomas de Warenna, son of the said Matilda..." [7] John evidently was the elder of the two and presumably named after their father; Thomas may have been named after Thomas Nerford, one of Maud's brothers.

Confusingly, there are a few references at the beginning of the 1300s to John and William, sons of John, earl of Warenne, both of whom had been, according to letters of the pope, ordained priest while still under age. [8] As our Earl John was only born in 1286, these two must have been the illegitimate sons of his grandfather John de Warenne (1231-1304), the previous earl of Surrey and Warenne, and thus John's uncles. His sons John and Thomas had both joined the order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem by November 1345, and their mother Maud Nerford was dead by then. [9] Neither of them appeared in their father's will.

- Edward

Almost certainly another son of Maud Nerford, as he inherited her lands in Norfolk. John called him "Edward de Warenne, my son" - plain 'Edward', not 'Sir Edward' - in his 1347 will, and left him twenty pounds. Edward was also mentioned in a letter John wrote to Edward III in April 1346, saying that his sons Edward and William were ready to serve the king abroad. [10] He was presumably born after August 1316 as he was not mentioned in John's land settlements at that time, and before his father "ousted" Maud Nerford from his heart and company in or shortly before 1320. He may have been named in honour of Edward II, or possibly after his father's first cousin Edward Balliol, son of John Balliol, king of Scotland (himself probably named after Edward I). He is named as "Edward de Warenn, knight" in an entry on the Close Roll of 23 February 1349. [11]

Edward de Warenne married Cecily, daughter of Nicholas de Eton, and founded the Warren family of Poynton, Cheshire. His eldest son, named John after his father, was born in 1343 or 1344; he had other sons named Edward and William. Edward de Warenne had died by 1369, and his son John died in 1392. See this thread for more information.

- Sir William and Prior William

John de Warenne had two sons called William, one a prior and the other a knight, by an unknown mother or mothers. William was the name of John's father, Sir William de Warenne, son of the earl of Surrey who died in 1304 and killed in a jousting tournament in 1286 when John was a baby, so it's not at all surprising that John would use the name for his sons. One of them, probably the knight, had been born by 24 August 1310, when John (then aged twenty-four) granted "his son William de Warenna and the heirs of his body" the manor of Beeston in Norfolk. Although John gave the manor of Beeston to Earl Thomas of Lancaster in 1318, Sir William de Warenne was holding it in January 1333. [12] It is strange, therefore, that William was not mentioned in John's land settlements of 1316, when John named his sons John and Thomas as his heirs. Perhaps this means that William was not Maud Nerford's son and she persuaded Earl John to make her own sons his heirs? Or perhaps John had envisaged a career in the Church for William, then changed his mind? I can only speculate. On the other hand, Sir William witnessed a grant of land from his father to his (Earl John's) lardener Henry de Kelsterne in January 1332 with Thomas Nerford, Maud Nerford's brother - which may imply a relationship between William and Nerford, or may only mean that John de Warenne held onto his connections to the Nerfords even after his relationship with Maud ended. [13]

John's other son William was prior of Horton in Kent and of Castle Acre in Norfolk, and was named in numerous papal letters, warrants, writs etc as the illegitimate son of John de Warenne. I don't know the identity of his mother, but according to a declaration of 1338 that he was a true-born Englishman and not a foreigner, he was born at his father's Yorkshire castle of Conisbrough. [14] In his will, John left "Master [daunz] William de Warenne, my son, a Bible which I had made in French." In October 1348 and again in February 1351, Edward III appointed several sergeants-at-arms to arrest William and a fellow monk of Castle Acre on the grounds that they "have spurned the habit of their order and are vagabonds in England in secular habit" who were "to be chastised according to the rule of their order." William was, according to a papal letter, still alive in early 1364. [15]

John's son William the knight seems to have been a great favourite of his father, judging by the number of things John bequeathed to "Sir William de Warenne, my son" in his will, which included 100 marks (sixty-six pounds), a silver-gilt helmet and coronet and all his armour for jousting. John also left a gold brooch to William's wife, and although his will didn't give her name, it appears in a papal grant of April 1344: Margaret. [16] Sir William was one of the three leaders of a company of archers and men-at-arms raised by his father in November 1339, and accompanied his (half-?) brother Edward de Warenne on campaign abroad in April 1346. [17] Like his (half-?) brothers Edward and William the prior, he was openly and frequently acknowledged as the earl of Surrey's illegitimate offspring and sometimes witnessed John's charters as "the grantor's son," and also received grants of his own from John on occasion. In June 1364, Edward III granted him an annuity of forty marks a year "for long service," and William was still active in November 1368, when he and other men were accused of hunting without permission in the lands of Hugh Hastings in Yorkshire. [18]

Sources

1) F. Royston Fairbank, 'The Last Earl of Warenne and Surrey and the Distribution of his Possessions', Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, xix (1907), p. 264.
2) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 296.
3) The National Archives SC 8/87/4348.
4) Fairbank, 'Last Earl', pp. 249-250.
5) John's will can be read online in English and the original French.
6) Rotuli Parliamentorum, vol. II, p. 88; TNA SC 8/156/7772.
7) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, pp. 528-529; Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, pp. 576-578; TNA SC 8/280/13971.
8) For example, Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-1341, p. 11.
9) Cal Pat Rolls 1345-1348, p. 16.
10) Fairbank, 'Last Earl', p. 248.
11) Calendar of Close Rolls 1349-1354, p. 11.
12) Cal Pat Rolls 1307-1313, p. 330; Cal Pat Rolls 1330-1334, p. 404; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1337-1347, p. 52; TNA C 143/85/11.
13) Cal Pat Rolls 1340-1343, pp. 511-512.
14) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, p. 397, and Cal Close Rolls 1339-1341, pp. 18, 82, say that William was born at Conisbrough Castle. See also Cal Papal Letters 1342-1362, pp. 12, 124, 139, TNA SC 8/247/12337.
15) Cal Pat Rolls 1348-1350, p. 244; Cal Pat Rolls 1350-1354, p. 78; Cal Papal Letters 1362-1404, p. 6.
16) Cal Papal Letters 1342-1362, p. 145.
17) Cal Close Rolls 1339-1341, p. 302.
18) Cal Pat Rolls 1338-1340, p. 411; Cal Pat Rolls 1343-1345, p. 570; Cal Pat Rolls 1361-1364, p. 511; Cal Pat Rolls 1367-1370, p. 200.

And Your Weather Forecast For The Early Fourteenth Century Is...

2009-09-10T10:31:00.000+02:00

...demons yelling, an immense eye darting fierce lightning all over the north of England, lightning which turns clerics into pitch, the sky becoming the colour of blood, oppressive heat which kills livestock and destroys crops, oppressive cold which kills livestock and destroys crops and nonstop rain for two years which kills livestock and destroys crops, so we advise remaining indoors for, ooooh, the next few decades. But don't worry! It's just God demonstrating his displeasure with the English for being wicked. Or possibly it's because Saturn is in the ascendant. The finest minds in England are still debating that one.

I've been toying for a while with the notion of writing a post on the weather of Edward II's era, and when I found this vivid and utterly brilliant description of a violent (and by the sounds of it, terrifying) thunderstorm recently in the Chronicle of Lanercost, I just had to post it here. The storm took place in the north of England during the night of 11/12 July 1293, when the future Edward II was nine:

"Early in the morning...we beheld in the east a huge cloud blacker than coal, in the midst whereof we saw the lashes of an immense eye darting fierce lightning into the west; whence I understood that Satan's darts would come from over the sea. Sure enough on the Sunday following, there began and continued throughout the night over the whole of the west part of the diocese of York, thunder and lightning so prodigious that the dazzling flashes followed each other without intermission, making, as it were, one continuous sunlight. Not only men were terrified and cried aloud, but even some domestic animals - horses, for certain. In some places houses were burnt or thrown down, and demons were heard yelling in the air."

Isn't the description of the yelling demons and the immense eye completely fantastic? And here's the same chronicle describing another thunderstorm, which damaged a church at Staveley near Chesterfield in Derbyshire on 29 September 1291: "suddenly, about the first hour of the day, the air became thick and dark, and by a single stroke of lightning much damage was caused all at once...it blackened all the right side of the image of the glorious Virgin over the altar, and did to death a certain cleric who was kneeling in prayer at the right end [of the altar], having there performed his mass, so suddenly that it turned that part of his body which was nearest the wall from head to foot, together with his garments, into something like pitch, the rest of him remaining entire...Such mysteries as these deserve to be shrewdly investigated at leisure and to be gravely considered." [1] (I have shrewdly investigated these mysteries, and gravely concluded that yelling demons were to blame.)

Anyway, here's a post about some weather conditions in England between 1305 and 1326 I've collected from various contemporary chronicles. It's notable that the English weather in the early fourteenth century was much more extreme then than it is these days, with lots of very cold winters and very hot summers, and the freakishly wet weather of the mid-1310s which caused the Great Famine.

The Flores Historiarum says that in the summer of 1305 - when the future Edward II was twenty-one and his father had two more years to live - England experienced "such a burning heat, and such a blight and drought throughout the summer, that the hay failed in most parts of the country, and the beasts of the field died for want, and a double heat (both while the sun was in Libra as well as he was in Leo) oppressed mankind. The consequence was, that small-pox and disease prostrated both children and young men, and rich and poor, and they were also afflicted with freckles and spots, and a great many young men and maidens died of the small-pox."

1305 was a year of extreme weather: this unusually hot summer was followed by "a winter of extreme cold, oppressing mankind much," with snow and ice on the ground from 15 December 1305 to 27 January 1306 and again from 13 February to 13 April 1306. "And the fish died in the ponds, and the birds in the woods, and the cattle in the fields. And many of the birds of heaven were so wasted away that they were caught without any net or snare by the hand of man." [2]

Bitterly cold winters were something of a feature of the early fourteenth century. The Croniques de London says that one year, presumably meaning the winter of 1307/1308 - the description of the weather follows the writer's statement that Piers Gaveston returned from exile and became earl of Cornwall, which happened in August 1307 - "there was such great ice on the Thames that many people went by foot on the ice to Southwark, and back to London." The winter of 1309/1310 saw the Great Frost, which the London annalist describes as follows: "There was such cold and such masses and piles of ice on the Thames and everywhere else that the poor were overcome by excessive cold," and adds that the river froze so solidly, bonfires could be lit on it. All the winters between 1312 and 1317 were also bitterly cold with much snow and frost, though on the other hand, some winters of the era were considerably less harsh: those of 1322/1323 and 1323/1324 were dry and mild, for example. [3]

The Sempringham continuator of the Livere de Reis de Brittanie, an enthusiastic recorder of the weather, says that there was a total eclipse of the sun on 1 February 1309 and "he had only half his light," though the writer claims, implausibly, that the eclipse lasted from midday until five in the afternoon. He also says that there was a total eclipse of the sun on 5 September 1290, and that the weather around the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist that year - 24 June - was "rainy and cold," which will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever spent a June in England. [4] Off-topic but interesting here: a couple of weeks after the eclipse of 1309, a whale supposedly eighty feet long was caught in the Thames, to the great excitement of both the London and Pauline annalists. [5] In June 1315, Edward II gave a pound each to sailors named Thomas Springet, William Kempe and Edmund of Greenwich "for their labour in taking a whale, lately caught near London Bridge," which possibly was the same whale ('lately' in the fourteenth century could mean anything up to a few years). Also off-topic but interesting: the bishop of Nazareth was visiting England around the time of the total eclipse in 1309. [6]

According to the Livere de Reis, "thunders were heard, and there were sulphurous lightnings" on 24 October 1310. (But no immense eyes or yelling demons, sadly.) The first few months of 1312, when Piers Gaveston returned from his third exile, were dry and mild, and Lanercost says that on 5 July that year there was "an eclipse of the sun about the first hour of the day, and the sun appeared like a horned moon, which was small at first and then larger, until about the third hour it recovered its proper and usual size; though sometimes it seemed green, but sometimes of the colour which it usually has." There was a great storm in October 1313, and the following winter was another harsh one; spring came very late in 1314 after a bitterly cold April, and the beginning of that summer was also very cold. In fact, summer barely came at all in 1314, as by August, and maybe earlier, the endless rain which would destroy crops and lead to the Great Famine had started. It rained constantly for the rest of 1314, the misery only, one hopes, alleviated somewhat by a cold and frosty winter. [7]

1315 was also remarkably wet, even by English standards, and it rained more or less nonstop all year with the added bonus of gales in October. Edward II spent a month between mid-September and mid-October 1315 swimming and rowing in the Fens with "a great concourse of common people," intending to "refresh his soul with many waters," in the disapproving and sarcastic words of the Flores. Evidently the endless pouring rain and gales didn't put the hardy king off enjoying the great outdoors. The rain continued at least until the spring of 1316 and maybe later, at least in some parts of the country: some southern chroniclers report that the summer of 1316 was dry, though the chronicle Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvan, written at Bridlington in Yorkshire, says that it continued to be very wet. This probably represents a north-south divide in the weather, and at any rate, the endless rain had already wreaked its horrendous damage and at least five percent of the population of England died of starvation or associated disease.

Here's how the Vita Edwardi Secundi reported the awful weather:

"Alas, poor England! You who once helped other lands from your abundance, now poor and needy are forced to beg. Fruitful land is turned into a salt-marsh; the inclemency of the weather destroys the fatness of the land; corn is sown and tares are brought forth. All this comes from the wickedness of the inhabitants. Spare, O Lord, spare thy people! For we are a scorn and a derision to them who are round about us. Yet those who are wise in astrology say that these storms in the heavens have happened naturally; for Saturn, cold and heedless, brings rough weather that is useless to the seed; in the ascendant now for three years he has completed his course, and mild Jupiter duly succeeds him. Under Jupiter these floods of rain will cease, the valleys will grow rich with corn, and the fields filled with abundance." [8]

The winter of 1316/1317 was another very cold one, but thanks to Jupiter (!?) the summer of 1317 was - finally and no doubt to the huge relief of the long-suffering inhabitants of England - hot and dry. The Sempringham continuator of the Livere de Reis says, oddly, that in 1317 "there issued from the earth water-mice with long tails, larger than rats, with which the fields and meadows were filled in the summer and in August, also the towns and homesteads in the following winter." According to Lanercost, "before noon on the sixth day of September there was an eclipse of the sun." The Sempringham continuator went through a particularly enthusiastic phase in late 1319 and early 1320 of describing the weather conditions, so we know that:

- on 1 December 1319, "there was a general earthquake in England, with great sound and much noise."
- on the morning of 26 January 1320, there was a "wonderful eclipse of the moon of many various colours."
- and on 17 April 1320, "about midnight, there were frightful thunders heard, with lightning, and immoderately high wind." [9]

The winter of 1320/1321 was very wet and mild, with floods in the first few months of 1321; either these had receded by early May, when the Marcher lords and their allies began attacking the Welsh and English lands of the two Hugh Despensers, or the Marchers got very soggy. Winter 1321/1322 was yet another very harsh one: the Rochester chronicler says that snow lay on the ground for most of the first three months of 1322 and that the roads were hazardous, impeding Edward II’s progress through his kingdom on his campaign against the Marchers. A letter of Edward to all his sheriffs of 11 March 1322 says that he had been "unable to pass by the fords for several days by reason of the great flood in those parts," meaning the area around Tutbury and Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire, and the Sempringham continuator, with his usual interest in the weather, says that the earl of Lancaster lost many supplies "through a great flood of water" when travelling from Pontefract to Tutbury on 1 March. Presumably a temporary thaw and a mass of melted snow caused the flooding. Presumably also, it subsequently froze again: when the earl of Lancaster was executed at Pontefract on 22 March, the Brut says that a crowd of onlookers "caste on hem meny balles of snowe." [10]

On 31 October 1322, both the Livere de Reis and the Brut observed an interesting phenomenon: the Livere says that the sky was "of a colour like blood" from Terce to Vespers, or nine a.m. to sunset, and the Brut says that the sun "turnede into blode, as the peple it saw. And that durede [lasted] fro the morne, til hit was xj of the Clokke of the day." Edward II then was in York, following his humiliating flight from the Scots at Rievaulx Abbey two weeks before, and I assume he must have seen it. For two chroniclers to record this, both naming the same day, implies that it was a widely-observed phenomenon. [11]

I can't find the reference now, but I seem to remember a statement in one chronicle - the Flores? - that sometime in 1322 or 1323 there was such torrential rain it was as though it was pouring out of a spout. It might have been the autumn of 1322 when Edward II was failing yet again on his latest Scottish campaign (see Lady D's recent posts for more info) and the weather seems to have been pretty abysmal. October and November 1323 saw fine dry conditions, though, and generally speaking, mild and friendly weather prevailed during the last few years of Edward II's reign, although the spring of 1325 was very wet. During the summer of 1326, according to the Pauline annalist, England experienced another drought, and the Thames and other rivers receded alarmingly. This perhaps explains the entry in Edward II's chamber journal of 24 July 1326: the king gave sixpence to a Jack le Frenche of Walton, who "brought to the king by his command water from a well." [12] Edward was perhaps very thirsty in the heat!

I think what's especially fascinating isn't just the discovery that England 700 years ago had more extreme weather than it does these days, but the attitudes revealed by the chroniclers - the beliefs that a thunderstorm is the work of Satan and that years of awful weather and famine are either a) God punishing the English for being wicked or b) to be blamed on the movements of the planets. At any rate, I'll certainly be listening out for those yelling demons next time there's a thunderstorm.

Sources

1) The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell, pp. 82-83, 103.
2) The Flowers of History, ed. C. D. Yonge, vol. 2, p. 582.
3) Croniques de London depuis l'an 44 Hen III jusqu'à l'an 17 Edw III, ed. G. J. Aungier, p. 35; Annales Londonienses, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs, vol. 1, p. 158; Annales Paulini in Ibid., p. 268; Derek Vincent Stern and Christopher Thornton, A Hertfordshire demesne of Westminster Abbey: profits, productivity and weather, pp. 98-99.
4) Le livere de reis de Brittanie e Le livere de reis de Engleterre, ed. J. Glover, pp. 325-327.
5) Annales Londonienses, p. 157; Annales Paulini, p. 267.
6) Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, p. 126; Annales Paulini, p. 266.
7) Livere de Reis, p. 329; Lanercost, p. 198; Stern and Thornton, Hertfordshire demesne, pp. 98-99.
8) Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young, p. 70.
9) Livere de Reis, pp. 333, 337; Lanercost, p. 218.
10) Historia Roffensis, folio 38v; Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-1323, p. 522; Livere de Reis, p. 341; The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, part 1, p. 223.
11) Brut, p. 228; Livere de Reis, p. 347.
12) Annales Paulini, pp. 312-313; Society of Antiquaries Library MS 122, p. 78.

Isabella of France and the Support Group for Tragic Queens

2009-09-04T12:53:00.006+02:00

This is a post written partly by me and partly by my friend Rachel, who recently found online a statement that Isabella of France's marriage was a "grotesque travesty" and called Edward II her "husband" in inverted commas, which led to much disbelieving snark on our part; the disastrous ending of Edward and Isabella's marriage tends to obscure the fact that their relationship was for many years far more successful than is commonly supposed, and seriously, of all the horrendously dysfunctional and abusive marriages in history, theirs is the one described as a "grotesque travesty"? Edward and Isabella's marriage was no worse than a lot of other arranged marriages and a damn sight better than some, not that you'd know it from the many online articles and published books which portray Isabella as the most cruelly suffering wife and Edward II as the most abusive and neglectful husband who ever lived. That whole 'She-Wolf' thing went out of the window a long time ago; these days, we're far more likely to get Isabella of France: Tragic Neglected And Nobly Suffering Victim Of That Nasty Cruel Gay Edward II And His Horrid Male Favourites.

So Rachel had a brilliant idea: what would happen if Isabella joined a support group for Medieval and Renaissance Queens and Noblewomen with Crap Husbands? Here's what we came up with.

***
Isabella: I had the most grotesque travesty of a marriage EVER!

Blanche de Bourbon: Oh, you poor thing. Well you're among kindred spirits here. Did he beat and torture you?

Isabella: Well ... not as such ...

Anne Boleyn: My husband not only cheated on me with at least two women that I know of, but had me arrested, accused me of cheating on him with five men, one of whom was half my age, and one was my own brother, which is so beyond offensive it defies description. He then had me convicted of plotting his death, had our marriage annulled (how I could have committed adultery in those circumstances is beyond me), bastardised my daughter, and then had me and five innocent men beheaded so he could marry one of my ladies-in-waiting.

Blanche de Bourbon: I hear you ... My husband King Pedro of Castile imprisoned me three days after our wedding and went off with his long-term mistress Maria de Padilla, kept me in solitary confinement for eight years and then had me murdered. I was only twenty-two when I died, the queen of Castile who was never crowned, whom no-one ever saw, who lived in a dungeon. They don't call my husband 'the Cruel' for nothing, you know.

Isabella: I SO understand! That's exactly what happened to me!

Anne Boleyn: Really? What a bastard.

Isabella: Errr ... noooo ... Not so much the imprisoning and murdering thing. We ended up imprisoning him actually. But I didn't murder him! I mean. He wasn't murdered. But even if he was, I didn't do it and anyway, he would have deserved it. But it was still a horrible marriage!

Joan Mortimer: "We"? Just enlighten the other ladies here ... who's "we"?

Isabella: That's ... Never you mind. The point is, my husband liked his lovers better than me! He flaunted them mercilessly.

Catherine de Medici: I feel your pain, Izzy, because I know ALL about flaunting mistresses. My husband Henri II was so infatuated with that cow Diane de Poitiers that he had his letters signed HenriDiane, and everyone treated her as though she was the real queen of France and I was nobody.

Maria of Portugal: Ohhhh, don't talk to me about powerful mistresses. My husband Alfonso XI of Castile kept me a virtual prisoner while his mistress Leonor de Guzman wielded enormous influence at court and had ten children with my husband, seven more than he had with me. My father the king of Portugal even invaded Castile to avenge the insult to me.

Constanza of Castile: Is this the meeting for tragic neglected queens and noblewomen? I was a teenager and beautiful, so everyone said, when I married John of Gaunt, but within months of our wedding he began committing enthusiastic adultery with that horrid Katherine Swynford and had all those kids with her. But rather than being offended on my behalf - me, rightful queen of Castile in my own right! - people hundreds of years later keep going "awwww, John and Katherine are, like, soooo sweet and romantic!" and behave as though I was nothing more than an object in the way of Twu Wuv 4ever who finally did the decent thing by dying because it allowed them to fulfil their romantic destiny and get married.

Joan Mortimer: I know the feeling too ... MY husband moved his mistress into MY castle. Oh wait, Izzy, you already know that. Don't you?

Isabella: Joan, honey, if you'd been able to satisfy Roger properly, you wouldn't have lost him to me, would you? Because obviously Roger only had a relationship with me because he truly loved me and not at all because he needed me and my son as figureheads so that he could invade England and avenge himself on my husband, or because he got the chance to rule England through me and my son for nearly four years and make himself earl of March and the richest man in the country. All of that was just a total coincidence. And Constanza, honey, my grandson John is straight, and hetero adultery is romantic, OK? Like me and Roger. Get with the programme. In fact, Katherine Swynford, Mary Boleyn and I are holding a workshop later called "Female Empowerment Through Shagging Married Men" so maybe you'd like to sign up for that and learn something rather than whinging about being a wronged wife, hmmmm? And ladies, you're all missing the main point: your husbands may well have flaunted their lovers in front of you, but at least the lovers were female! My husband's favourites were men!

Catherine de Medici: Oh, well that makes all the difference. I suppose he had rampant orgies with hundreds of young men in front of you?

Isabella: Errr ... no.

Anne Boleyn: Oh. Well, he must have been an incorrigible paedophile, then - couldn't keep his hands off prepubescent boys?

Isabella: Umm ... no. His male favourites were adults. But there were *two* of them.

Anne of Denmark: Oh PLEASE! You should have seen the way MY husband carried on. You'll have to do better than that.

Elisabeth Charlotte, duchess of Orleans: Mine too! My husband Philippe paraded an endless succession of male lovers in front of me, and allowed them to humiliate and belittle me in public. He did exactly the same thing to his first wife, Minette.

Isabella: Well, Edward ... um ... took my children? Set them up in separate households?

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Isn't that normal procedure? My kids grew up all over the place. And are you saying that you were the only queen in the entire Middle Ages and for long afterwards who was the full-time primary carer of her children?

Isabella: Well ... yes, it's normal procedure and I didn't see the kids that much anyway, but ... but ... aha, here's one way the bastard made me suffer! He wasn't interested in me at all at our wedding or for ages afterwards, even though I was officially The Most Beautiful And Desirable Woman In All France!

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Ummm, you were twelve when you married, weren't you, and Edward was in his twenties? Why would he be interested in a pubescent? Did he refuse to have sex with you later when you'd matured?

Isabella: Yes! Oh, OK, no, not exactly. We conceived our first child four years after we got married.

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Honey, I was older than you when I got married, and my first child was born eight years after the wedding. But then, I married Louis VII, who should have been a monk. Later I married Henry II who gave me lots of children, though there was that whole imprisoning me for sixteen years thing as well, of course, and I was only released because Henry died and my son Richard let me out. Henry would gladly have seen me die in prison.

Berengaria of Navarre: That would be my husband Richard, whom in eight years of marriage I almost never saw and who may or may not have had sex with men and who had prostitutes brought to him on his death-bed?

Alais of France: The same Richard who was betrothed to me for more than twenty years but who publicly refused to marry me and claimed that I had been his father's mistress? Can you even begin to imagine the humiliation?

Eleanor of Aquitaine: *Sticks fingers in ears* Lalalalalala my son Richard is perfect lalalalalalala I can't hear you. By the way, Izzy, how long did Edward imprison you for, did you say?

Isabella: Ummmm. He didn't, as such. But he gave our wedding gifts to his first favourite Piers Gaveston!

All: Oh, that is soooo unacceptable.

Isabella: Well, in fact he only sent them from Boulogne to Gaveston, his regent back in England, to store in a safe place for us, and Gaveston didn't actually keep them. But one chronicler thought he kept them, so that totally counts. And Edward let his other great favourite Hugh Despenser rule the country although he had no right to, and take whatever lands he wanted, and Edward just plain ignored me. Me, his faithful and supportive wife!

Joan Mortimer: You mean like you let your great favourite Roger Mortimer otherwise known as my husband rule the country although he had no right to, and take whatever lands he wanted, and Roger just plain ignored me? Me, his faithful and supportive wife!

Isabella: Well, obviously that's entirely different. Did you not hear the parts about hetero adultery being romantic and women who sleep with married men being empowered, dearie? Honestly, do keep up. And here's more of my shockingly awful suffering: Edward confiscated my lands in September 1324 when he was at war with my brother the king of France because he claimed there was a danger of a French invasion, and lowered my income from £4500 to £2613 a year! Have you ever heard of such appalling abuse??

Philippa of Hainault: Remind me again, mother-in-law dearest, how you treated your son and me financially during your regency? You know, your son who was the king of England? How much money did you allow him to have, while you granted yourself the largest income anyone in England received during the entire Middle Ages and gorged yourself on lands and took for yourself all those piles of money Robert Bruce gave England in exchange for your desperately unpopular peace treaty? Did you give him lots of money, or really in fact not lots at all and a pitifully, humiliatingly small amount? Remember how you inherited £78,156 from Edward II's treasury and left your son a rather less than enormous £41 only four years later? What happened to the other £78,115 and the £20,000 from Bruce?

Isabella: Those questions are beneath my contempt, Pippa, sweetie. Run along and push out a few more kids, and just you remember who the real queen of England is round here. I still say that my marriage was utterly appalling. OK, maybe Edward didn't kill me or torture me or beat me or imprison me, but I am The Tragic Suffering Wife Par Excellence!

Eleanor of Woodstock and Joan of the Tower: Oh really? Don't you remember us, Mum? Eleanor's husband tried to repudiate her on the grounds that she had leprosy but really because he was just fed up with her, and Joan's husband gave his mistress Katherine Mortimer so much power at court that a group of his Scottish nobles had her murdered in disgust!

Alice of Norfolk: And what about me? My husband Edward Montacute beat me up so badly I died of my injuries, and my first cousin Edward III, your son, didn't lift a finger against him. And I'm the granddaughter and niece of kings! But you're right, Izzy, your husband reducing your income, even though you were still one of the richest people in the country, is an indication of true suffering that puts mine and all the other women's here into perspective. *Rolls eyes*

Isabella: Pfffft, Ally, you don't know the meaning of true marital suffering. Your husband may have beaten you to death, but at least he didn't lower your income. He didn't try to annul your marriage either, but That Awful Edward sent the friar Thomas Dunheved to the pope to do just that to me!

Katherine of Aragon: You poor thing, how I feel for you. My husband spent years trying to get me to admit that our marriage had never been valid and that I'd basically been nothing more than his mistress for twenty-odd years, and that our beloved daughter was a bastard. Me, a Spanish infanta and child of two great sovereigns! And all so he could marry one of my ladies-in-waiting. *Glares at Anne Boleyn* He packed me off to live in a cold damp castle in the middle of nowhere with a minimal staff, and wouldn't let me see my daughter even when I was dying. Did Edward do something similar to you?

Isabella: Well, in fact the annulment thing was just a rumour flying around England in 1325 like lots of other silly untrue rumours and Edward actually sent Thomas Dunheved to the pope to complain about the archbishop of Dublin, and two chroniclers got the wrong end of the stick. Come to think of it, they weren't even in the right wood. But it still counts because Edward might have tried to annul our marriage if he'd been even remotely willing to risk the pope declaring our children illegitimate, which obviously he wasn't because he was arranging marriage alliances for them in Spain at the time. But anyway, I beat you all in the battle of Most Tragic Neglected Wife In All Recorded History, and you know why?

All: Why??

Isabella: Because numerous books, and articles on something called the internet, will be written in the early twenty-first century declaring that I had the most appallingly abusive and horrible husband ever and that my marriage was "unendurable" and a "grotesque travesty" and also that every tiny little thing I ever did wrong wasn't at all my fault because I was such a tragically abused victim of nasty unscrupulous men. So HA!

A Manor House, And Some Presents

2009-08-26T14:46:00.000+02:00

I'm afraid this is kind of a random post today - I meant to post the second part of my biography of Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster, but just as I was putting the finishing touches to that one, I pressed some random key and the whole wretched thing disappeared. And Blogger, cackling in evil fashion and rubbing its hands together, chose that precise second to auto-save and thus saved an acre of nothingness rather than my meanderings about Henry. Agh. So until I can summon up the will to write it again, here are some bits about a) a fourteenth-century royal manor and b) some presents Edward II gave to his friend Sir Roger Damory.

As I'm being pretty random today, here's a fun fact that doesn't fit anywhere else: although normally the vagueness of medieval records frustrates me (when, for instance, Robert Lewer was arrested in 1320 for unstated "trespasses, contempts and disobediences," what the heck had he done?), sometimes it's amusing. Such as the entry on the 'Household Roll of Lord Edward the King's Son' from 1293, where we learn that on Wednesday 2 September that year, the nine-year-old Edward of Caernarfon dined at Salisbury with "a monk and some other monks." The next day, he dined at Winchester with "some monks and a whole convent of monks."

I was browsing through the Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348 the other day, as you do, when I saw an interesting piece about the manor of Burgh in Suffolk. Edward II stayed at Burgh, a village north-east of Ipswich, from 26 to 31 January 1326, dining there on the 30th with his sister-in-law Alice, countess of Norfolk. He gave a very generous gift of a pound each to the two minstrels - Henry Newsom, harper, and Richardyn, citoler - who performed for them.

Anyway, an inquisition taken by Walter de Norwich and the sheriff of Norfolk in August 1313 found that the manor of Burgh needed £200 of repairs, which is fortunate as it gives the extent of the buildings at Burgh and thereby a fascinating insight into a royal manor and the kind of living space the king could expect. (Though bear in mind that 1326, when he stayed at Burgh, was the year that Edward II spent a considerable amount of time living in a hut at Westminster and watching a group of men clean the ditches. Voluntarily.)

In 1313, the manor-house of Burgh contained:

- a great hall, covered with shingles
- a chamber for the king, adjoining the hall
- a chamber for the queen, with its own chapel
- a chamber for the royal knights
- a kitchen adjoining the hall
- a larder
- a watchtower outside the moat
- a watchtower inside the moat
- a granary
- a great chapel
- a "little stable"
- a bakehouse with a brewhouse
- a "great chamber without the moat with two garderobes"
- a dairy
- a stable with a beasthouse adjoining, in length 61 feet and in breadth 20 feet
- a grange
- a watermill
- a "little stable for the servants." (??)

There was a bridge from the queen's chamber leading to a park - doesn't that sound lovely? - and another bridge to the park, which "is enclosed with a paling," near the bakehouse. The inquisition found that "the doors without are fairly good" but that "the walls made of earth round the manor are in bad condition." Finally, a great table worth six shillings and eight pence stood in the hall.

An entry on the Patent Roll of 21 August 1329 details an "acquittance to Edmund de Remmesbury, king's chaplain, for the following things, which by the late king's [Edward II] command he delivered to Roger Dammori, knight..." Damory was Edward's great court favourite from about 1315 to 1319, lost his position to Hugh Despenser, and died in rebellion against the king in March 1322. While he was in the king's favour, though, Edward gave him some rather splendid gifts for his chapel:

- "A chasuble of red cloth of Tarsus sprinkled with diverse flowers of Indian colour, together with alb and amesse, stole and maniple, and two frontals of the same sort, the gift of the queen." Interesting that Isabella was giving presents to Damory. According to this page, cloth of Tarsus was a "type of felt cloth from the wool of shaggy black goats," and the Turkish city where it comes from is the birthplace of St Paul.

- "one chalice silver-gilt, with the cross engraved in the foot and six enamelled knots in the centre, and in the paten, one cross engraved with extended hand."

- "a superaltar of black stone ornamented in the circumference with silver and gilded."

- "one cross of ivory painted with four images standing on each side, the base whereof was of ivory and cedar, and round the base six images of ivory, painted, standing in tabernacles."

- "one solemn cope with embroidered images of Christ and his mother in the shoulders of the crucifix, of John and Mary, and the flagellations of Jesus Christ, and the image of the Virgin Mary sitting in a chair with tiers, with diverse embroidered images of the apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins."

- "one image of the Virgin Mary of ivory, standing and holding the Child in her arms."

Sources

Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, p. 34.
Calendar of Patent Rolls 1327-1330, pp. 439-40.

A Verray Parfit Gentil Knyght: Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster (1)

2009-08-21T13:38:00.000+02:00

This is the first of several posts about one of the most fascinating and likeable people of the entire fourteenth century: the wonderful and marvellous Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster, who was a renowned warrior, famous jouster, brilliant diplomat, writer, lover, the epitome of chivalry; who was brave, devout, intelligent, courteous, sensual, kind, generous, cultured, wise, gracious, flamboyant, humble and charismatic; who went on fifteen military campaigns and eighteen diplomatic missions and was a wildly successful commander during the Hundred Years War, yet found the time to write a remarkable devotional treatise, to challenge the duke of Brunswick to a duel in Paris, to go on crusade to Algeciras and Prussia, to be a founder member of the Knights of the Garter, to joust without bothering to wear protective clothing, to get drunk, to kiss lots of lowborn women, and to appreciate flowers, good food, dancing and birdsong, among much else. And was just completely and utterly fascinating and wonderful. Yes, I'm gushing, but I fell a bit in love with Henry, or more than a bit if I'm honest, while writing these posts. His contemporaries also gushed about him: the Scalacronica described him as "sage, illustrious and valiant...enterprising in honour and arms," Jean Froissart called him "a great and famous soldier," and Edward III praised his "many magnificent services." The pope thought highly of him, too; Benedict XII wrote in February 1345, before Henry's career had reached the dizzying heights of later years, that Henry's "coming speedily to the pope will console him not a little." [1]

Henry was born around 1310, probably at Grosmont Castle, as the only son of Henry, future earl of Lancaster (c. 1281-1345), himself the younger son of Edward I's brother Edmund and the brother of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, executed by their cousin Edward II in March 1322. Henry of Grosmont had six sisters: Blanche, Lady Wake; Isabel, prioress of Amesbury; Maud, countess of Ulster; Joan, Lady Mowbray; Eleanor, Lady Beaumont and countess of Arundel; and Mary, Lady Percy. Blanche and Isabel were certainly older than Henry, Eleanor and Mary certainly younger, though the birth order of the three middle children Henry, Maud and Joan is unclear. Henry was the first cousin once removed of Edward II and the first cousin of Isabella of France, his father being the younger half-brother of Isabella's mother Queen Jeanne of Navarre, and was also the nephew of Hugh Despenser the Younger through his mother Maud Chaworth (1282-c. 1321), Hugh's half-sister - not a connection Henry boasted about after 1326, I'm sure. Maud was heir to her father Patrick Chaworth (died 1283) and passed on to her son lands in South Wales, Wiltshire and Hampshire, but far more importantly, as Thomas of Lancaster had no legitimate children, his brother Henry and nephew Henry of Grosmont were heirs to his vast inheritance, which included the earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby. The two Henrys also inherited from Edmund of Lancaster other lands in South Wales, the Marches and Gloucestershire, and held the French lordships of Nogent-sur-Marne near Paris and Beaufort in Champagne (Beaufort passed to Henry's son-in-law John of Gaunt, who used the name for his illegitimate children).

Almost nothing is known of Henry's early life. His mother Maud died in about 1321 when he was young, probably ten or eleven, and he must have been horrified and dismayed when his uncle Thomas of Lancaster was beheaded for treason in March 1322. He spent his adolescence during the tyranny and chaos inflicted on England by his other uncle Hugh Despenser and cousin Edward II, and was about sixteen when Hugh was executed and Edward incarcerated in his (Henry's) father's castle at Kenilworth, no longer the king. Henry is not known to have played any role in the equally chaotic events of his cousin Isabella and Roger Mortimer's regency, nor in their downfall in October 1330, though he was knighted and married that year and began to represent his father Earl Henry, who had gone blind, at parliament and in public life. The Lancasters seem to have been a close-knit family: Henry and several of his sisters spent most of their time living with their father even after marriage and received large amounts of money from him for their expenses, and Henry often travelled around England and abroad with his brothers-in-law, especially the earls of Ulster and (after 1345) Arundel.

Henry married Isabella Beaumont, second daughter of Henry, Lord Beaumont, shortly before 24 June 1330, and his younger sister Eleanor married Beaumont's son and heir John later that year. Henry Beaumont was in voluntary exile on the continent in 1330, plotting an invasion of England against the regime of Isabella and Roger Mortimer, and Henry of Lancaster was in disgrace following the failure of his rebellion against the pair eighteen months earlier. The double marriage alliance between Beaumont and Lancaster's children was therefore a powerful political statement by two of Isabella and Mortimer's most influential, active and vocal opponents, and Beaumont had already married his eldest daughter Katherine to the earl of Atholl, another prominent rebel. Henry of Grosmont, heir to the enormous Lancastrian inheritance and the most eligible bachelor in England at the time, might perhaps have been expected to make a better match than the second daughter of a baron, who was not an heiress. Isabella Beaumont's date of birth is not known, but she was certainly a few years younger than Henry and probably born sometime between 1316 and 1320, so may have been as young as ten when she married.

Henry and Isabella had only two children in thirty years of marriage: Maud, born between 1339 and 1341 and named after Henry's mother, and Blanche, born between 1342 and 1345 (there is much debate over the women's dates of birth, which I won't get into here) and probably named after Henry's paternal grandmother Blanche of Artois, queen of Navarre and countess of Lancaster. Their daughters were born a very long time after Henry and Isabella's wedding and perhaps also with a long gap between them, which may indicate that Isabella was too young to consummate her marriage until a few years after it took place, that one or either of the couple was not particularly fertile, that they didn't spend much time together, or that they had other children who died young.

There is little to suggest that Henry found much contentment or fulfilment in his marriage. Although Isabella was the first English duchess (except for the queens of England, who were also duchesses of Aquitaine) and the grandmother of a king of England and a queen of Portugal (Henry IV and Philippa of Lancaster), and Henry was one of the most famous and talked-about men of his day, she is remarkably obscure, and even the year of her death is uncertain. Nothing indicates that Henry was particularly close to or had strong feelings for his wife, and Isabella played little if any role in his public life. No chronicler of the age even mentioned her, and Henry's own 244-page devotional treatise of 1354, Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines (see my next post), which includes many personal insights into his life, loves and passions, doesn't mention her either. Although there is nothing to suggest conflict between them, here is an example of an arranged marriage where the couple proved rather less than compatible.

Henry, however, had other consolations. In his Livre, he admitted that he had made love with many women and sung love songs to them, and although he thought that noblewomen smelled nicer, he preferred common women as they were more responsive when he kissed them (or had sex with them; he used the word beiser, which can mean both). He wrote that he stretched out his legs in his stirrups when competing in jousting tournaments so that women would admire his calves, admitted that when he was young he took "very great delight in lust," and had a "great desire to be praised, then loved, then lost" by women (grant desir d'estree preisez, puis amez, et puis perduz). It's hard to imagine that Henry had any difficulties finding willing partners; not only was he enormously wealthy, powerful and royal, he described himself in the Livre as tall, fair, slim, strong and good-looking - and yes, he also admitted that he was guilty of vanity by taking pleasure in his own beauty! Henry's self-description was probably accurate, though: a chronicler described his uncle Thomas of Lancaster as greles et de bel entaile, "slim and of fair size," i.e. tall, both Geoffrey Chaucer and Jean Froissart wrote that Henry's daughter Blanche was tall, blonde and lovely, and the Lancasters were close kin to Edward II, whose uncommon height and good looks were remarked on by many chroniclers.

Although Henry's father Earl Henry lived until September 1345, dying in his mid-sixties, his blindness meant that he was unable to take an especially active role in politics or warfare after the late 1320s, and to all extents and purposes, Henry became the head of the family. He accompanied Edward III to France in April 1331 and took part in the famous jousting tournament at Cheapside in September that year, and in March 1332 Edward III granted him 500 marks a year "for the special affection which the king bears him, and because his father Henry earl of Lancaster has not yet made such provision for him as becomes his estate." [2] 'Affection' is usually a pretty formulaic phrase, yet it is apparent that Edward III genuinely had a great fondness for Henry, who was near his own age and a close relative, a second cousin through Edward II and a first cousin once removed through Isabella of France. Henry took part in Edward III's Scottish campaigns of the 1330s, and was appointed king's lieutenant in that country in 1336. In March 1337, aged about twenty-seven, he was created earl of Derby, one of his father's lesser titles, with an income of 1000 marks (666 pounds) a year. Henry's magnificent style of living, even before he succeeded to all his father's lands and titles, is demonstrated in 1339: when he pawned some of his jewels and plate to raise money for Edward III, included among them were no fewer than seven coronets and eleven gold circlets. He admitted in his Livre that he loved the rings on his fingers, his fine clothes and his armour, and as will be seen in my next posts about him, he was a sensual, tactile man.

That's all for this post, but coming soon: Henry of Grosmont wins crushing victories against the French, dances elegantly, eats salmon with rich sauces, loves the smell of scarlet cloth, violets and women, challenges a German duke to a duel, builds a great palace, goes on crusade, and piously refuses all rich gifts offered to him except for a thorn from the Crown of Thorns.

Sources

1) Scalacronica: the reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, ed. Herbert Maxwell (1907), p. 168; Geoffrey Brereton, Jean Froissart: Chronicles (1978), p. 41; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1350-1354, p. 191; Calendar of Papal Letters 1342-1362, p. 15.

2) Patent Rolls 1330-1334, p. 265.

- Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines
- Kenneth Fowler, The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310-1361 (1969)
- Patrick Ball, ''Mercy Gramercy': A Study of Henry of Grosmont' (BA thesis, University of Tasmania, 2007) (available online as PDF file)
- Brad Verity, 'The First English Duchess: Isabel de Beaumont, c. 1318- c. 1359', Foundation for Medieval Genealogy

Maurice Berkeley and Elizabeth Despenser

2009-08-16T14:24:00.000+02:00

Here's a post about a couple who fascinate me: Maurice, Lord Berkeley (pronounced 'Barkley'), son of the man who was Edward II's custodian in 1327 and grandson of Roger Mortimer; and Elizabeth Despenser, daughter of Hugh Despenser the Younger and great-niece of Edward II. I started writing this post a few days ago, and was amazed to see that Susan Higginbotham had had the same idea and also wrote a post about the couple - great minds and all that! Oh well, on the grounds that you can't have enough information about people who lived in the fourteenth century, here's more about them.

Maurice and Elizabeth married when they were still children in August 1338, their marriage intended at least in part to heal the wounds of their families' pasts, and it's not hard to see why. In 1322/24, Elizabeth's father and great-uncle imprisoned (either in castles or convents, depending on gender) Maurice's parents and all three of his grandparents who were still alive; Maurice's grandfather had Elizabeth's father and grandfather grotesquely executed in 1326; and, if you believe the traditional story, which I don't, plotted with Maurice's father to have Elizabeth's great-uncle the former king murdered, at the very castle where she later lived with Maurice.

According to John Smyth, historian of the Berkeley family (he wrote Lives of the Berkeleys in the early seventeenth century), Maurice was born near the end of the fourth year of Edward III's reign, or late 1330 - that is, around the time that his grandfather Roger Mortimer was executed and his father Thomas, Lord Berkeley was mysteriously telling parliament that he hadn't heard of Edward II's death in his own castle three years earlier. Thomas was somewhere in his thirties in 1330, born between 1292 and 1296 as the eldest son of Maurice, Lord Berkeley - the family alternated the names Thomas and Maurice for their eldest sons - and Eve la Zouche. Maurice (the younger)'s mother Margaret was the eldest of the eight daughters of Roger Mortimer, earl of March, and Joan de Geneville, born either on 2 May 1304 according to the Wigmore Chronicle, or sometime after 5 May 1307 - according to another source, she was under thirty when she died on 5 May 1337.

Elizabeth Despenser was one of the many children of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare, probably their youngest, and was a great-grandchild of Edward I, great-niece of Edward II, and granddaughter of two earls - Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester, and Hugh Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester. She may have been the child born to Hugh and Eleanor shortly before 14 December 1325 when Edward II made an offering to the Virgin to give thanks for Eleanor's safe delivery, or she may have been Hugh's posthumous child, born after November 1326; at any rate, it is almost certain that she was too young to have any memories of her father. Her extreme youth at the time of Hugh's downfall proved a blessing, however, as it enabled her to escape Isabella of France's spiteful forced veiling of three of her older sisters on 1 January 1327 (see Susan Higginbotham's article for more details). Elizabeth's mother Eleanor died on 30 June 1337, when Elizabeth was probably ten or eleven, and she lived for a while at the priory of Wix in Essex and for about eighteen months in the household of her aunt and namesake, Elizabeth de Clare. She was at least three and possibly five years older than her husband.

Maurice Berkeley lost his mother when he was probably only six: Margaret Mortimer, Lady Berkeley, died on 5 March 1337, about eighteen months before her son's marriage (unfortunately - it would be great to think of Roger Mortimer's daughter and Hugh Despenser's daughter getting to know each other). Eleven days after Margaret's death, parliament finally acquitted her husband Thomas of any complicity in the death of Edward II, for which he had never been punished anyway. Maurice seems to have accompanied his father on the Scottish campaign that year and was knighted at a very young age, and supposedly spent two years as an adolescent in Granada, Spain, between 1342 and 1344 - according to the historian John Smyth, this was to prevent cohabitation with his wife Elizabeth, who was some years his senior and therefore, one supposes, much more physically and emotionally mature (and tempting?) It's also possible that Maurice accompanied the earls of Salisbury and Derby, sent to Castile to negotiate a marriage between one of Edward III's daughters and Alfonso XI's son in 1343, who took the opportunity to head off to Algeciras to fight the Moors while there. Maurice was back in England by 11 April 1344, when he and his father witnessed the grant of a messuage from his uncle, also called Maurice Berkeley, to William de Syde, Maurice's tutor.

Perhaps it isn't surprising that Maurice went on campaign to Scotland at such a young age, as Berkeley men tended to start their military careers early and finish them late - Maurice's great-grandfather Thomas, Lord Berkeley fought at Bannockburn in 1314 when he was close to seventy - and Maurice himself evidently was born to the military life: chronicler Geoffrey le Baker calls him "that hero worthy of his illustrious line" and says that he was always in the forefront of any battle. Maurice served with Edward III's eldest son Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales, who once gave him a gift of a destrier, and took part in the prince's Gascon campaign of 1355. He had the misfortune to be taken prisoner at the battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356, when, according to the chronicler Jean Froissart, he galloped off in pursuit of a Picard squire named John de Helennes, who skewered him through both thighs with his sword. Geoffrey le Baker, however, has a very different story: Maurice "did deeds worthy of eternal praise against the French. He plunged into the Dauphin’s battalion and laid about him with his sword, not thinking of flight so long as a Frenchman remained standing in his sight…Having broken his lance, sword and other weapons on them by the strength of his blows, he was over-powered by force of numbers, and taken for ransom, horribly wounded and unconscious." Baker is probably more reliable here; Froissart names Maurice as Thomas, Lord Berkeley, confusing him with his father, and Maurice's captor was in fact named John de Bouch, not John de Helennes.

Whichever is the true story, Maurice had to pay £2000 as his ransom, and spent four years as a hostage in France, finally returning to England in the autumn of 1360 with £1080 still owing to his captor, de Bouch. He signed a notification to this effect in the Calais house of Henry of Grosmont, duke of Lancaster (formerly earl of Derby), on 28 October 1360: "Notification by John count of Sairebruche [Saarbrücken], on behalf of John de Bouch, knight, of the release of Sir Morizes de Berquelee, John de Bouch's prisoner, for a ransom of £1,080, for which Henry duke of Lancastre and Sir Francis de Hale are pledges."

Maurice's long-lived father Thomas finally died in October 1361 and Maurice succeeded as Lord Berkeley, though had evidently been left an invalid by his wounds at Poitiers and played a minimal role in politics, both local and national. His tenure as Lord Berkeley was thus brief, less than seven years, and he died at Berkeley Castle on 8 June 1368 at the age of only thirty-seven or thirty-eight, apparently of his old wounds. He had been too ill or infirm to attend the wedding of his fourteen-year-old son and heir Thomas to Margaret Lisle in Buckinghamshire the previous November, though he did buy himself a suit of cloth-of-gold to celebrate the day, and sent Thomas off in great splendour wearing "scarlet and satin and a silver girdle" and accompanied by numerous household knights and squires splendidly dressed in "fine cloth of ray furred with miniver." Maurice, Lord Berkeley was buried at St Augustine's Abbey in Bristol - now Bristol Cathedral - next to his mother Margaret Mortimer, and their tomb and effigies still exist and can be seen in this pic (scroll down to 'Elder Lady Chapel'). His widow Elizabeth Despenser was one of the four co-executors of his will, which, if it still exists, I've never seen.

Elizabeth Despenser Berkeley married her second husband Sir Maurice Wyth, knight of Somerset, sometime before May 1372. Wyth left no children, and died shortly after writing his will on 11 July 1383; he left Elizabeth "all my husbandry from the present date until the feast of St Michael to come...with all necessaries pertaining to my chamber, wardrobe, hall and also to buttery and kitchen," and "all my silver vessels of the better sort to the value of £40." Wyth's will ended "it is my last wish that my said wife hold herself contented with all bequeathed to her," as though he was anticipating that she wouldn't be. (Well, she was the daughter of Hugh Despenser the Younger, motto 'what's yours is mine', after all.) Elizabeth lived into the thirteenth year of her second cousin Richard II's reign and died on 13 July 1389, probably aged sixty-two or sixty-three, and was buried with Maurice Wyth at the church of St Botolph without Aldersgate in London. Although this church still exists, the present building dates only from the late eighteenth century.

John Smyth called Maurice Berkeley 'Maurice the Valiant', though judging by his actions at Poitiers 'the Reckless' might be more appropriate, and called his heir Thomas 'the Magnificent'. Maurice Berkeley and Elizabeth Despenser had seven children: Katherine, Elizabeth, Agnes, Thomas, James, Maurice and John, and through their sons Thomas and James are the ancestors of, ooooh, just about everyone. The eldest son Thomas, future Lord Berkeley and patron of John Trevisa, was born on 5 January 1353, married Margaret, Lady Lisle in November 1367 - she was the great-granddaughter and heir of Warin Lisle, executed by Edward II in 1322 - and died at the age of sixty-four on 13 July 1417, the same day as his mother had died twenty-eight years earlier.

Edward II's Tomb

2009-08-09T11:57:00.000+02:00

Some pics of Edward II's tomb and effigy at Gloucester Cathedral! His funeral took place here on 20 December 1327.

Completely random Edward II fact: it's well-known that he was born in Caernarfon, North Wales, on 25 April 1284, but I only realised the other day that Edward I and Queen Eleanor spent the entire period from June to August 1283 in North Wales. So Edward wasn't just born there, he was conceived there too.

Some info about the tomb can be found here. The pic on the right was taken from the other side of the tomb, and the one below shows the lion Edward's feet (or rather, foot - the left one is missing) are resting on.

Just ten miles down the road from Gloucester, the tomb of Hugh Despenser the Younger (with the fire extinguisher next to it!) still exists at Tewkesbury Abbey. Edward and his last great favourite still lie close together in death after nearly 700 years.

Below: Hugh's eldest son Hugh, Lord Despenser (c. 1308-1349), and grandson Edward, Lord Despenser (1336-1375), the famous Kneeling Knight of Tewkesbury. Hugh the Even Younger lies next to his wife Elizabeth Montacute, daughter of the earl of Salisbury.

What Happened After The Barons Killed Piers Gaveston

2009-08-03T13:22:00.000+02:00

A post about what happened in the days after Piers Gaveston's death, which I'd originally intended to coincide with the anniversary of said death, i.e. 19 June. Oh well, only six weeks late.

Piers was killed at Blacklow Hill in Warwickshire on Monday 19 June 1312 - see this post, and Anerje's great blog about Piers, for more details. On that day, Edward II was staying 150 miles away at Burstwick-in-Holderness near Hull, with Queen Isabella, who was about four months pregnant with Edward III. Let me emphasise the fact that Isabella was already pregnant when Piers died; too many websites give the impression that Edward only began a proper relationship with his wife after the death of his favourite, as though the killing of Piers Gaveston was a necessary step to ensure the continuation of the royal English line.

Over the next few days, the royal couple travelled via Beverley and Pocklington to York, where they arrived on 24 June. We can probably assume that Edward was concerned about his friend's well-being - the earl of Pembroke had been taking Piers south to attend parliament following his surrender at Scarborough Castle, when he was abducted by the earl of Warwick at Deddington - but it never seemed to occur to him that Piers' life might be in danger from their enemies, and royal business went on much as usual: Edward borrowed forty pounds from the Genoese merchant Antonio di Pessagno to buy pearls for Isabella (yes, that's jewels for Isabella, a payment recorded in plain view on the Close Roll but conveniently ignored by the kind of writers who like to drone on about how Edward ignored and, of course, frequently 'abandoned' his queen), sent his servant John de la Marche to retirement at the priory of Bridlington, and pardoned two men for outlawry. Etc, etc.

It was on 26 June, a week after the event, that Edward learned of Piers' death - or, at least, responded to it. There was a sudden flurry of activity on that day: Edward gave custody of Piers' castles at Wallingford, Knaresborough and Tickhill to three men, one of whom (William de Vallibus) had previously acted as Piers' attorney, and another (Edmund Bacun) who had been granted custody of some of Piers' lands after his third exile in late 1311. In February 1312, the Ordainer William Martin had captured and imprisoned two of Piers' retainers, Bertrand Assailit and Berduk or Bernard de Marsan - the latter presumably a relative of Piers, as Marsan was his mother's name - with 1000 marks Piers had asked them to bring to him from Cornwall. Edward ordered Martin to send this money to the earl of Pembroke, also on 26 June - evidence that he knew Piers was dead, and evidence also that he didn't blame Pembroke, who had sworn to protect Piers, for his friend's death.

Four more things happened on 26 June: Edward wrote to the mayor of London, ordering him "to take the city of London into the king's hands without delay, and to guard it for the king's use," and wrote also to the treasurer and the constable of the Tower of London, ordering them to fortify the castle with men, armour and victuals. Rather mysteriously, the king told the keeper of the manor of Burstwick to deliver from the stud-farm there one bay horse each for his cousin Henry Beaumont, his steward Edmund Mauley, and his squire Oliver de Bordeaux. And he gave custody of the castle of Scarborough, where Piers had been captured a few weeks before, to the excellently-named Tallifer de Tilliolo. (I don't know who Tallifer was, but rest assured I will do my utmost to find out.)

The Vita Edwardi Secundi records Edward's reaction to Piers Gaveston's death as follows:

"By God’s soul, he acted as a fool. If he had taken my advice he would never have fallen into the hands of the earls. This is what I always told him not to do. For I guessed that what has now happened would occur. What was he doing with the earl of Warwick, who was known never to have liked him? I knew for certain that if the earl caught him, Piers would never escape from his hands."

Paul Doherty, in the author's note to his recent novel The Darkening Glass, suggests that Edward's reaction to Piers' death was "strangely muted," and a theme of the novel is that Edward had grown tired of his friend. Well, not really. Edward's words do sound rather odd, but as I've pointed out before, this is probably nothing more than evidence that profound shock, grief and rage do not lend themselves to eloquence. The Vita and several other chronicles, such as Lanercost, Scalacronica and Anonimalle, point out that Edward swore revenge for Piers' death, and if we look at Edward's subsequent actions rather than his speech, we get a far more reliable indicator of his feelings about Piers and his death. As late as June 1326, fourteen years later, Edward was still paying numerous religious houses to pray for Piers' soul, hardly the actions of a man who had tired of him. The king spent large sums of money on taking care of Piers' mortal remains - spending, for example, £144 between 8 July 1312 and 7 July 1313 on wax for candles to burn around Piers' body, eighty pence a day to the Dominicans of Oxford to pray over the body, £300 on cloth of gold to dress Piers for the funeral, and fifteen pounds to two men to watch over the body - for only twenty-eight days in December 1314! These are huge, huge amounts of money - the kind of money you spend on a person you adore, not a person you'd grown tired of or no longer cared about.

Edward left York on 28 June 1312, two days after he heard about or at least responded to Piers' death (I have no idea who told him, by the way; I assume the earl of Pembroke sent a messenger) and headed south to London. He left the pregnant queen behind, presumably to keep her out of the way of any danger, given that there was a strong risk that the country would slide into civil war - though I'm sure proponents of the currently oh-so-trendy Isabella Was A Tragic Neglected Victim Of Her Callous Husband theory can find some way of twisting this into more evidence that he was 'abandoning' her. Apparently, however, Isabella herself didn't think so: she sent a letter to Edward on 29 June, the day after his departure. This cannot have been her reaction to hearing about Piers' death as postulated by various writers, who miss the fact that she was with Edward when he heard about it.

Edward II's extant accounts provide a fascinating insight into his journey from York to London through Lincolnshire. On 30 June, he paid Graciosus the Taborer (drummer) for playing for him at Howden. He stayed at Swineshead Priory on 6 and 7 July, and paid another pound to Janin the Conjuror for his performance in the king's private chamber. (Isn't that a wonderful image - the twenty-eight-year-old king of England watching conjuring tricks in his room at a priory on a summer evening?) On 8 July, Edward had reached Surfleet, and gave three shillings to William the Acrobat and his fellows for "making their vaults" before him.

The king arrived in Westminster on 14 July and stayed there for the rest of the month, and made an impassioned public speech at the house of the Dominicans asking the Londoners to defend the city against Piers Gaveston's killers; evidence that Edward could be eloquent when the mood took him and when he cared deeply about something. For once, London supported him and closed the gates of the city against the earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Hereford, who brought their armies to Hertfordshire. On the other hand, the king summoned the three earls to appear before him at Westminster or London, playing a double game, as he often did; Edward had an aptitude for political intrigue, if little else. Rumours swirled: that Edward intended to seize Lancaster as soon as he entered London; that Lancaster would, with the help of a group of Londoners, capture Edward in the city. The killing of the king's favourite ensured that England teetered on the brink of civil war...

Stuff

2009-07-30T16:40:00.000+02:00

A somewhat random post today till I get round to writing the next proper one, featuring blog searches and, umm, pink palaces...! Apologies in advance for the weird formatting which seems almost inevitable when I include photos in my posts.

Recent searches which have hit the blog:

- amatory sex film

- caernarvon castle german head injury

- edwards 2 other name

- edvard homo Suggested alternative Google search for that one (it came from Lithuania): edvardas homo. First result on Lithuanian Google for edvard homo: my review of Maurice Druon's novel The She-Wolf of France. Weird.

- baron killed in battlein 1265 name please

- how would our lives be different if king edward was not married to eleanor of castile

- posters, eleanore of castile submitting to edward i

- woman suckyng small sex

- red hot maltese anus

- man died 700 years ago

- the year 1308 a. d. and what happened that year

- edward stuff Well, if you're interested in Edward stuff, you're certainly in the right place.

- poker king hot edward Given that Edward II was tall, strong and handsome, he probably was pretty hot, actually. I'm sure Piers Gaveston thought so.

- queen eleanor greedy land grabbing

- men falling off horses dressed in armour Let's point at them and laugh.

- photos of king edwards 2 in his cannons

- how much are juliana clocks worth

- scottish people cheering after edward ii lost the war

- castilian male photos

- Queen Isabella took over the reigns

And for no reason except that I visited it the other day, here are some pics of the castle of Kaiserswerth in Düsseldorf (on the Rhine in western Germany). You should be able to click on the pics to get a large version, if Blogger feels like it.

Edward II connection: his great-uncle Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, spent Christmas 1257 here shortly after being elected king of Germany.

There are two pink palaces in Düsseldorf, believe it or not, in the suburbs of Kalkum and Benrath. (There should be lots more pink palaces in the world, in my opinion.) Here they are.

Benrath, the Rococo one, was built between 1755 and 1770 for Karl-Theodor von Pfalz-Sulzbach, elector of Bavaria, count palatine of the Rhine and duke of Jülich. He was Edward II's twelve greats grandson, via John of Gaunt and his daughter Catherine, queen of Castile.

Attacking Cardinals And A Bishop

2009-07-26T19:02:00.000+02:00

On 1 September 1317, a shocking event took place on the road between Darlington and Durham*: the new bishop of Durham, Louis Beaumont, his brother Henry, and two cardinals were attacked and robbed of "a very great sum of money" while on their way to attend Louis's consecration as bishop. The four men were imprisoned, and although the cardinals were soon freed, the Beaumont brothers remained in captivity until mid-October, at Mitford Castle.

* the attack took place, according to various reports, either at Rushyford, Ferryhill or somewhere called 'Ache' (Aycliffe?).

The perpetrator of this spectacularly appalling piece of lawlessness - attacking cardinals, for pity's sake! - was one Gilbert Middleton, a household knight of Edward II's, who suffered dire punishment for his act: the furious cardinals excommunicated him, or, as the Vita Edwardi Secundi puts it, "solemnly and in public separated Gilbert de Middletone and his accomplices from the communion of the faithful." Edward II himself, furious and embarrassed that two high-ranking churchmen should be attacked in his kingdom, delared that he would "punish the sons of iniquity" who had perpetrated the outrage. He was as good as his word: Middleton was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered on 24 January 1318.

The two cardinals were Luca Fieschi, an Italian nobleman by birth and a distant relative of Edward II, and Gaucelin D'Eauze or Duese, a relative of the then pope, John XXII (born Jacques Duese). They had arrived in England in June 1317 to negotiate between Edward and Robert Bruce, king of Scots, who had supposedly declared that he would not meet them unless they acknowledged him as king, a forlorn hope; far from being neutral, the sympathies of the pope and his cardinals were entirely in Edward II's favour. No doubt it had also occurred to many people that Cardinals Luca and Gaucelin could also usefully negotiate between Edward and his over-mighty cousin, the earl of Lancaster, relations between the two men having deteriorated to the extent that England was teetering on the brink of civil war in 1317. (Not an uncommon situation in Edward II's turbulent reign, it has to be said.)

So that's why the bishops were in England, and here's a quick summary of the background to Louis Beaumont's election as bishop of Durham, which is probably relevant to the attack. The death of Bishop Richard Kellaw in October 1316 saw intense politicking on the part of Edward II, Queen Isabella, the earls of Lancaster and Hereford, and the monks of Durham themselves. Isabella favoured the election of Louis Beaumont; Edward himself promoted the controller of his wardrobe, Thomas Charlton; Lancaster put forward his clerk John Kinnersley; the earl of Hereford a clerk named John Walwayn, and the Durham monks, Henry Stamford. Edward abandoned his support of Charlton and wrote to the pope on behalf of Isabella’s candidate Louis Beaumont – his second cousin – after Louis’s brother Henry promised him that Louis would be "a defence like a stone wall" against the Scots, though the Rochester chronicler claims that the king changed his mind after Isabella implored him on her knees to support her candidate. The pope duly provided Beaumont to the bishopric on 9 February 1317.

It is likely, though not certain, that the earl of Lancaster was involved in the September 1317 attack. Furious at the failure of his candidate to attain the bishopric of Durham and already an enemy of the Beaumonts – he had demanded Henry Beaumont’s removal from court in 1311 and 1314, and their sister Lady Vescy’s in 1311 – Lancaster probably asked Gilbert Middleton to attack them on his behalf. This cannot, however, be proved. Pope John XXII, rightly or wrongly, thought that Robert Bruce was at least partly to blame for the attack, and told Edward II that Bruce had perpetrated outrages on the cardinals and seized and carried off the bishop of Durham. He also informed the cardinals that Bruce had torn up letters the pope had sent him and "laid violent hands" on the bishop of Carlisle.

Who supported Gilbert Middleton, the earl of Lancaster or Robert Bruce or neither of them or someone else entirely, remains uncertain. If Lancaster was involved - and some of the men co-accused with Middleton, among them Sir John Eure, were certainly Lancaster's retainers - he escaped punishment over the episode. Middleton himself had been on apparently amicable terms with Edward II until at least January 1317, when the two men exchanged letters via a messenger called Adam Shirlok. So what persuaded him to commit such an appalling act of violence against the king's friends? Perhaps Middleton was one of the knights of Edward’s household annoyed at his promotion of favourites - Roger Damory and Hugh Audley were extremely prominent and influential at court in 1317, and some of Edward's knights had staged a theatrical protest against his favouritism at Westminster that June - and equally annoyed that Edward failed to protect his subjects in the north from Scottish invasions. Scalacronica claims that Middleton was angry with Edward for arresting his cousin Adam Swinburn, who had "spoken too frankly" to the king about the state of the north. We can probably also see the attack in light of the general rise in lawlessness which followed the Great Famine of 1315-17. Presumably, Middleton (and Lancaster?) had no idea that the Beaumont brothers were accompanied by the two cardinals; he is hardly likely to have dared attack the party otherwise.

Lancaster met the cardinals and escorted them to Boroughbridge, where the earls of Pembroke and Hereford met them and took them to Edward II in York. Edward had heard of the attack by 12 September, on which day he ordered Hamo de Felton, parson of 'Luchham' church (I'm not sure where 'Luchham' is), to keep Gilbert Middleton's son, who was already in Felton's custody, safely, "under pain of forfeiture." On 20 September Edward told all his sheriffs to proclaim the news that he would punish the "sons of iniquity" who had "lately committed robberies and outrages." The king's squires William Felton, Thomas Heton and Robert Horncliffe captured Middleton and his brother John at Mitford Castle in January 1318 - "through treachery of his own people," says Scalacronica - and sent them to Edward, who ordered Simon Driby and thirteen other squires to deliver them to the Tower of London. Edward rewarded Middleton's captors with a generous income, up to fifty marks a year each, from the issues of Middleton's lands.

On 24 January 1318, royal justices sentenced Gilbert Middleton to execution, and he suffered a terrible death by hanging, drawing and quartering. Although some chronicles say that Middleton's brother John shared this awful fate, an inquisition taken in November 1319 proves that John was still alive then. For their part, Cardinals Luca and Gaucelin remained in England until late August 1318, and Edward II informed them in November 1320, not entirely helpfully, that he was unable to restore their stolen goods as he did not know where they were to be found.
Middleton was the only man who suffered the ultimate penalty for the attack, though dozens of others took themselves off to the pope to get his absolution for their role in it: Edward granted a safe-conduct on 12 September 1318 to sixty-two men "who are going to the Court of Rome on account of acts perpetrated in the Marches of Scotland, whereby they feel their consciences wounded." He renewed the safe-conduct in August and October 1319 for one Marmaduke Basset - known by the nickname Duket - who "returned without bringing with him sufficient evidence of his absolution," and thus had to travel to Avignon a second time. The attack on the cardinals combined with the fact that Gilbert Middleton was a household knight of Edward II's is sometimes seen as 'evidence' that Edward 'favoured lawless personalities', a discussion I'll save for another post.

Sources
- Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-17, 1317-21; Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-18, 1318-23; Calendar of Papal Letters 1305-42; Foedera, vol. II, i; Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-48.

- Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. N. Denholm-Young; Scalacronica: The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III as Recorded by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, knight, ed. Herbert Maxwell; The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272-1346, ed. Herbert Maxwell.

- Thomas Stapleton, ‘A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth years of King Edward the Second’, Archaeologia, 26 (1836); Michael Prestwich, ‘Gilbert de Middleton and the Attack on the Cardinals, 1317’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Karl Leyser, ed. T. Reuter (1992)

In Which I Fail To Discover Any New Information About Edward II's Illegitimate Son

2009-07-21T13:41:00.002+02:00

The existence of Edward II's illegitimate son Adam has been known to historians since 1964, when Professor F. D. Blackley discovered references to the boy in Edward's wardrobe account of 1322: Adam accompanied his father on Edward's disastrous Scottish campaign that year. The lad was openly acknowledged as 'Adam, bastard son of the lord king' (Ade filio domini Regis bastardo) or simply as 'Adam, son of the king' (Ade filio Regis). The account records five payments to Adam, presumably in his mid-teens or thereabouts, old enough to go on military campaign but young enough to have his tutor with him. The payments totalled thirteen pounds and twenty-two pence, and were intended for Adam to purchase 'equipment and other necessaries' (armatura et alia necessaria). The money was paid out to him in five instalments between 6 June and 18 September 1322 by John Sturmy, steward of Edward's chamber, either to Adam himself or to his tutor (magister), Hugh Chastilloun. Adam is usually assumed to have died on the Scottish campaign, perhaps of the dysentery which ravaged the English army, as he never appears again in any known source.

[All this information comes from F. D. Blackley's article ‘Adam, the Bastard Son of Edward II’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 37 (1964), pp. 76-77.]

The identity of Adam's mother is unknown, though presumably Edward had a reasonably serious relationship with her, as I can't imagine that he would have acknowledged her child as his own unless he was certain that he was the father - which of course implies that he knew her well enough and for long enough to be sure that she wasn't having sex with anyone else. Given that 'Adam' is not a name from Edward's family, presumably the unknown mistress was the daughter or sister of a man called Adam, or a man called Adam was the boy's godfather. I haven't a clue as to who this man might be - Edward had several servants with this name, including Adam of Lichfield, his lion-tamer. (?!) As Adam was about in his mid-teens in 1322 and thus born around 1305 to 1308, he must have been conceived when Edward was in his early to mid-twenties.

As Adam The Mysterious Illegitimate Son Of Edward II annoyingly seems destined to remain completely obscure - I can't find any references to him anywhere else at all - I've been trying to trace his magister Hugh Chastilloun, in the hope that his whereabouts before 1322 might give me a clue as to where Adam was, or that I might indirectly learn something about Adam. Equally annoyingly, though, Chastilloun proved a hard man to trace. Such as they are, here are the results of my investigation.

Firstly I found a Hugh Chastillon who was lord of the manor of Leckhampstead in Buckinghamshire, who died sometime between 1316 and 1323 - though obviously he can't have been Adam's tutor if he died before 1322. Hugh was the son of Richard Chastillon, who died in 1279 when Hugh was already of full age, which means he can't have been born any later than 1258. The family is mentioned a couple of times on the Fine Roll of Edward I's reign, with the name spelt Castilun and Chastillun. (There are approximately 342 different ways of spelling the name Chastilloun, which didn't make my quest any easier.) The Hugh Chastillon in question was summoned to a meeting of the king's council in September 1297, served against the Scots in 1298, and was summoned to parliament as a knight of the shire for Buckinghamshire in 1300 and 1301. He had at least two sons: William, rector of Leckhampstead, and Richard, who succeeded his father as lord of the manor. Richard, name spelt Chasteloun and Chastiloun, went overseas with Hugh Despenser the Elder in March 1319, and accompanied Despenser on the Scottish campaign in 1322. Richard and his brother William the rector were accused in May 1327 of stealing the goods of Sir Richard Talbot in Oxfordshire - the man who married Elizabeth Comyn in secret in 1326. If this man was the correct Hugh Chastilloun, I can't find him in any context which might provide a link to Adam, and possibly he was too old anyway - and he's very hard to trace after the beginning of the 1300s.

Secondly, a man called Hugh Castellon was appointed keeper of the manor of Kirkby Malzeard near Ripon in Yorkshire in the autumn of 1323, which had been forfeited to Edward II by John Mowbray (executed March 1322). Edward stayed at Kirkby Malzeard from 18 to 20 September 1323, and appointed Castellon keeper on his last day there. Castellon was still alive in the early 1330s, when he was accused by Mowbray's son and heir of stealing his goods in Kirkby and elsewhere. He may be the same man who was one of the mainpernors of the Contrariant John Mauduit in 1322 as recorded on the Fine Roll, where the name is spelt 'Hugh Castellion'. If he was the man who was Adam's tutor, I can't find any references to him before the early 1320s, and I have no idea who he was or what happened to him after the early 1330s.

And here are a few other possibilities that might provide a clue to Hugh Chastilloun's real identity:

- there' s a French town near Bordeaux, nowadays called Castillon-la-Bataille (Castillon-sur-Dordogne until recently), which in the fourteenth century was within the territory controlled by the kings of England. Maybe the mysterious Hugh Chastilloun came from there; the lord of Castillon was high in Edward II's favour, and accompanied him on his return to England in February 1308 after marrying Isabella: Edward came ashore from his ship in a barge, "Hugh le Despenser [the Elder] and the lord of Castellione of Gascony being in his company."

- the family name of the counts of St Pol in this era was Chatillon, also spelt Castellion or Chastilloun. The count of St Pol who died in 1307 was called Hugh de Chatillon, and his brother and successor Guy, who died in 1317, was married to Edward II's first cousin Marie of Brittany (daughter of Edward I's sister Beatrice).

- there are other French towns called Chatillon - Chatillon-sur-Indre, Chatillon-sur-Marne, Chatillon-sur-Loire, etc.

- and finally, Holt Castle in Denbighshire, Wales was sometimes called Castel Lleon in the fourteenth century, with Chastellyon or Chastellion as alternative spellings. Hugh Chastilloun might have come from one of these places, or none of them, might be one of the men I've named here, or someone else entirely.

So to sum up: have I certainly identified Hugh Chastilloun? Nope, not even close. Have I discovered any new information about Edward II's out-of-wedlock son? Nope, absolutely sod-all. Research is really frustrating sometimes.

A Spanish Warrior-Saint

2009-07-16T12:35:00.002+02:00

A post about Edward II's grandfather King Fernando III of Castile and Leon, who recaptured most of Andalusia from the Moors during the Reconquista and was canonised as San Fernando or Saint Ferdinand in 1671. Yep, Edward II's grandad was a Spanish saint who has a valley and city in California, a cathedral in Texas and a city in Trinidad and Tobago named after him. Edward's uncle King Alfonso X, incidentally, has a crater on the moon named after him. (Edward himself has a folk band called Edward the Second and the Red-Hot Polkas named after him. Not quite the same, is it?)

Fernando III was born in August 1201 in the forest between Salamanca and Zamora as the third child and eldest son of King Alfonso IX of Leon - the north-west corner of the Iberian peninsula - and his second wife Berenguela of Castile. Berenguela was born in 1180 as the eldest child of Alfonso VIII of Castile and his queen Eleanor of England, the second daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, while Alfonso IX, known as el Baboso or the Slobberer because he foamed at the mouth during his frequent rages, was born in 1171 and succeeded his father as king of Leon in 1188. Fernando had two older half-sisters and a half-brother from his father's first marriage, four full siblings and at least a dozen, maybe as many as fifteen, half-siblings, his father's illegitimate children - one of whom, Maria, supposedly had an affair with her half-nephew, Fernando's son Alfonso X. Fernando himself had fifteen children, eleven sons and four daughters, all of them legitimate; most unusually for a Spanish king of the era, he is not known to have had any out-of-wedlock children. (Well, he was a saint, after all.)

Berenguela of Castile and Alfonso IX of Leon were first cousins once removed but didn't bother to apply for a dispensation on the grounds of consanguinity, and Pope Innocent III annulled their marriage in 1204 - although he did allow their children to remain legitimate. Alfonso, somewhat bizarrely, returned to his first wife Teresa of Portugal, who was his first cousin; the pope had previously annulled this marriage for consanguinity, too. Fernando III's elder half-brother, confusingly also called Fernando and the son of Alfonso IX and Teresa, died in August 1214 in his early twenties, leaving Fernando as the heir to his father's kingdom of Leon. A few weeks later, Fernando's maternal grandfather Alfonso VIII of Castile died, to be succeeded by his youngest child but only surviving son, ten-year-old Enrique I. (Fernando was three years older than his uncle.) Enrique reigned as king of Castile for less than three years, and was killed at Palencia by a tile falling off a roof in June 1217. To make this complicated family tree even more complicated, Enrique was married to Mafalda, sister of Teresa of Portugal.

Fernando's mother Berenguela, eldest child of Alfonso VIII and regent for her young brother from 1214 to 1217, succeeded as queen of Castile in her own right, but immediately abdicated in favour of her son. At not quite sixteen, Fernando was now king of Castile, and also succeeded his father as king of Leon on the latter's death in 1230. Alfonso IX tried to leave his kingdom to his daughters by Teresa of Portugal, Fernando's half-sisters Sancha and Dulce, but the two women were no match for Fernando and his determined, capable mother and chief adviser Berenguela (sister of the famous and equally capable queen-regent of France, Blanche of Castile).

Fernando married his first wife Elisabeth or Beatriz of Swabia in 1219, when he was eighteen and she fourteen. Remarkably, Beatriz was the granddaughter of two emperors: Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, and Isaac Angelos, Byzantine Emperor. She bore Fernando three daughters and seven sons, including: his successor Alfonso X; Fadrique, executed for rebellion against Alfonso; Sancho, archbishop of Toledo at eighteen; and Felipe, archbishop of Seville also at eighteen, who gave up his ecclestiastical career to marry the Norwegian woman betrothed to one of his brothers. Fernando's most colourful child, however, was Enrique (1230-1304) who was at various times a mercenary in North Africa, a senator of Rome and the regent of Castile, spent thirty years in a Naples prison and four years in England cheerfully sponging off Henry III after his expulsion from Castile following an unsuccessful rebellion against his brother Alfonso X, and who was said - probably apocryphally - to be the lover of his stepmother, Edward II's grandmother Jeanne de Dammartin. Queen Beatriz died in 1235, aged only thirty - probably worn out from all that childbearing - and in 1237 Fernando married Jeanne de Dammartin, countess of Ponthieu, Montreuil and Aumale in her own right, in a match arranged by his aunt Blanche, queen of France. Fernando and Jeanne had four sons and a daughter, Edward II's mother Leonor or Eleanor, the only one of Queen Jeanne's children to outlive her.

Fernando is chiefly remembered for his great military successes, and he recaptured Cordoba, Jaen and Murcia from the Moors between 1236 and 1246. The emir of Granada paid tribute to Fernando as his vassal from 1246, though the king's greatest triumph was his conquest of the great city of Seville, which had been in the hands of the Moors for 536 years: after a sixteen-month siege, the king entered the city on 22 December 1248. I don't know for sure if she was, but I'd like to think that Edward II's mother Leonor, then probably aged seven, was present to witness the greatest moment in her father's life. Fernando more or less completed the Reconquista, with only Granada remaining in Muslim hands - and so the situation remained until 1492, when Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile defeated the emirate and annexed it to Castile.

According to one report, Fernando mocked the Muslim inhabitants of Seville in 1248 by riding his horse up the Giralda tower, the minuet of Seville’s Great Mosque (which he later converted into a cathedral), perhaps one of the factors which prompted a Muslim writer to describe him as "the tyrant, the cursed one." In fairness, however, Fernando is remembered for his role in the Convivencia, the peaceful co-existence of Christians, Jews and Muslims in Spain, and he asked the pope to end the practice of Jewish people being forced to wear distinguishing marks on their clothes. Fernando founded the cathedral of Burgos as a very young man in 1221 and turned the mosque (mezquita) of Cordoba into another cathedral, founded bishoprics, hospitals and monasteries, and became famous for his great piety - he often fasted, spent entire nights praying, and always wore a hairshirt. Ever the soldier, however, he had a famous sword named Lobera.

Fernando III of Castile and Leon died in Seville on 30 May 1252, at the beginning of his fifties, to be succeeded by his thirty-year-old son Alfonso X; his much younger widow Queen Jeanne returned to her native Ponthieu and outlived him by twenty-seven years. His daughter Eleanor/Leonor, then aged ten and the twelfth of his fifteen children, was present at his death-bed. He was canonised 419 years after his death with his feast day as 30 May, and is the patron saint of engineers, soldiers, prisoners, paupers, people in authority in general, and large families. His first cousin Louis IX of France - their mothers were sisters - was also canonised as St Louis, and his elder half-sister and her mother Teresa of Portugal were beatified: a very saintly family, evidently. Here's a picture of the statue of Fernando on Plaza Nueva in Seville, and here's an account of a tourist celebrating the feast of San Fernando in 2006, with a photo of Fernando's body - his tomb in Seville Cathedral is opened every year, and his body is said to be incorruptible. Fernando III was a superb military leader, a tolerant man of great integrity and a renowned upholder of justice; qualities which, sadly, were not inherited by his English grandson Edward II.