The Perfect King Read online

  Edward, in his joy at hearing this news, granted the man who bore it, John Launge, and his wife, Joan (one of the queen's attendants), the extraordinary sum of eighty pounds yearly for life. This was more than many knights received, and it is perhaps not surprising that the sheriffs of London proved very reluctant to pay it. But such a huge gift to the bearer of the news was money well-spent. Although it was probably motivated by paternal pride, it had propaganda value too. It helped draw attention to the fact that the king now had a son. Even better publicity was the timely presence of the papal legate, Cardinal Nouvel. Edward jumped at the opportunity to have his son and heir baptised by an emissary of the pope. Accordingly, on Thursday 16 November 1312, Cardinal Nouvel christened young Edward of Windsor in St Edward's Chapel in Windsor Castle. For good measure, Edward asked the other peace envoys in the country — Count Louis d'Evreux, the queen's uncle, and the bishop of Poitiers - to be the boy's godfathers. To these he added five more godfathers: John Droxford (bishop of Bath and Wells), Walter Reynolds (bishop of Worcester), John of Brittany (earl of Richmond), Aymer de Valence (earl of Pembroke) and one Hugh Despenser. The last-mentioned was the father of the man of the same name who, nine years later, finally plunged the country into civil war.

  Edward's birth was symbolic for other, secular reasons. England in the early fourteenth century was a country in which the future and the past were interwoven with the present in a series of potent and developing stories. Great families knew their history - none more so than the royal family - and they believed that, to a certain extent, they knew their futures too, through prophecy. This was not personal fortune-telling but public prophecy, which soon was circulated as rumour and eventually captured in literary works. In the widely-circulated 'Prophecy of the Six Kings', probably first written down in its earliest form at about the time of Edward's birth, the six kings following King John were characterised by beasts." Henry III was portrayed as a lamb, Edward I as a dragon, Edward II as a goat and Edward III as a boar 'who will come out of Windsor'. Although a boar might not strike the modern reader as an animal of great significance, it had huge resonance in the fourteenth century. 'The boar who came out of Cornwall' was none other than King Arthur himself.'* Moreover, 'the boar who will come out of Windsor' was prophesied to have the head and heart of a lion. He would wear 'three crowns' - an oblique reference to the three crowns of the Holy Roman Empire, one iron, one silver and one gold - and be buried at Cologne amongst the tombs of the Three Kings, the Magi, who were then understood to be the first Christian kings.' To many contemporaries, the future was clear: Edward U would lose his kingdom. He would die overseas.'4 After his death, his successor, Edward of Windsor, would win fame as a warrior-king, become Holy Roman Emperor, and win battles across Europe, regaining the lands which his ancestors had lost. The people of England could have some faith that their newborn prince would grow up not just to be a king but a lion-hearted and victorious one.

  The large number of copies of this prophecy allow us to be reasonably confident that Edward knew it. A revision updated in about 1327 was incorporated into the most popular chronicle of the day, the Brut, written in the mid-i330s, of which Queen Isabella owned a copy at her death.'5 Later in his life Edward specifically renounced any intention of being buried at the shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne, suggesting he knew this was widely expected of him. When personally visiting the shrine in 1338, he gave a large amount of money to be spent on upkeep of the building, so that part of the prophecy was familiar to him by then. But whether he believed all of it, totally, is another question. While certainty in such matters is not possible, it is probable that he recognised that true prophetic writing could contain kernels of truth. When declaring that he wished to be buried in Westminster rather than Cologne, he did not merely pass an idle remark: he swore a solemn oath, so he seems to have taken the original prophecy seriously. And there is good evidence that royal prophecies were taken seriously by Edward's father, for Edward II had faith in one prophetic story in particular: the oil of St Thomas.

  The story of the oil of St Thomas stated that when Thomas Becket had been in exile, the Virgin Mary had appeared to him in a dream. She had announced to him that the fifth king after his time (Edward II) would be a benevolent man who would fight for God's church, and reconquer the Holy Land. To assist this king and his successors the Virgin entrusted Becket with an ampulla of sacred oil, and directed him to give it to a monk of St Cyprian's monastery. The monk hid it in the church of St George at Poitiers, with a sheet of metal inscribed with the prophecy itself. After an attempt to steal it had failed, it had come into the possession of the duke of Brabant, Edward IPs brother-in-law, who had brought it to the king's coronation in 1308. It was not used, however. Ten years later, Edward II claimed that he believed the reason his reign was so unsuccessful was because he, the fifth king after Becket's time, had failed to be anointed with the oil And in so doing he had failed not only his kingdom, himself and his successors but also St Thomas and the Virgin Mary. So anxious was he for some respite from his failure that he wrote to the recently elected Pope John XXII asking whether he would send a cardinal to anoint him with the oil. The pope refused the services of a cardinal, but said that if the king truly believed the story it would not be sinful for him to be anointed. That Edward II raised such a matter privately with the pope suggests his interest in this prophecy was not merely political, but spiritual too. He believed it.'

  We do not know how deeply Edward III shared his father's view of this or any other prophecy. It may just be coincidence but the three most important divine figures in Edward Ill's life - the Virgin Mary, St Thomas of Canterbury and St George - all appear in this story. But in an age when most people believed in destiny, Edward would have understood that it was widely held that he would become a military conqueror abroad and a champion of the church, a man whose leadership had been awaited for centuries. It was an utterly traditional role for a king, very similar to that of his grandfather, the majestic and fearsome Edward I; but it was also wrapped in romance and religious mysticism, and thus embodied all the virtues of fourteenth-century kingship.

  If there was a fly in the prophetic ointment, it was the day of the birth. 13 November was St Brice's Day, and St Brice was not the sort of saint by whom one would choose to be governed. He was a pupil of the fifth-century saint, St Martin of Tours, and used to tease his master with sarcastic comments, not always stopping short of insult: calling him half-witted, for instance. St Martin responded by praying that Brice would succeed him as bishop of Tours, and prophesying that he would be treated very badly during his episcopacy. So it happened: Bishop Brice was charged at the age of thirty-three with fathering his washerwoman's child. On commanding the baby to speak in the name of Christ to reveal whether he was the father or not, the people accused him of witchcraft and threw him out of the city. Only after spending seven years in exile at the papal palace in Rome did Brice achieve sufficient composure and sanctity to return to Tours and rule as a more saintly bishop for the rest of his life.'7 Thus it may have been with some trepidation that each chronicler recorded the feast day of St Brice in connection with their new prince's birth. After all, Edward II had been born on St Mark's Day, and that was hardly any more propitious, being widely regarded as a day of doom.' The author of the Life of Edward the Second ended his eulogy on the young prince's birth with the hope that he would 'combine in his person the virtues that characterised in turn his forebears. May he follow the industry of King Henry the second, the well-known valour of King Richard, may he reach the age of King Henry [the third], revive the wisdom of King Edward [the first] and remind us of the physical strength and comeliness of his father."9

  The king's instinct was to shower those whom he loved with presents, and so he immediately ordered that the baby be raised to the front rank of the peerage. This was extraordinary. Edward II himself had been sixteen, almost seventeen years old, before he was created earl of Chester; his father had been nearly fifteen. Now his so
n would bear that title. At the age of twelve days, Edward of Windsor was created an earl. No sooner had this been done than the king set about spending money on preparations for his first family Christmas, ordering almost £1,250 to be spent on cloth for his and the queen's retainers and those of the young heir. After Christmas the baby was provided with his own household, to maintain him in his position as earl of Chester. By 26 January 1313 — aged just ten weeks - Edward was nominally in charge of dozens of greater and lesser servants.

  A large household required maintenance. So the king was able to indulge his demonstration of largesse further by granting his son a number of lucrative incomes. The counties of Flintshire and Cheshire were made over to him along with his title. At the age of eight months he was granted the lordship of the Isle of Wight." At the age of four he was granted a substantial income from the Exchequer, amounting to the rent of the manor of Petworth and the lands of the young heir, Henry Percy. At the age of five he was granted an additional one thousand marks per year (£666 13s 8d) out of the tin revenues of Cornwall. Edward was very well-provided for, not the richest earl in the kingdom - that was his father's embittered cousin, Thomas, earl of Lancaster — but by no means the poorest.

  With all these grants came responsibilities. As the earl of Chester, Edward of Windsor was responsible for the administration of justice in all his lands and across many manors held by others. It is, of course, very unlikely that as a baby he heard any of the king's writs addressed to him, but nevertheless he would have had impressed upon him from the earliest age the fact that he had duties towards others. Rents coming in from his manors in the north were collected by his chamberlain and paid out to his officers and into his own 'wardrobe' or treasury. His officers were responsible for raising men from Cheshire for the king's service. When the king needed to raise men from North Wales for the suppression of the rebel Llywelyn Bren in the spring of 1316, it was the three-year-old earl of Chester to whom the writ was directed. Similarly, arrangements to allow foodstuffs to be purchased and conveyed away from Chester, or to arrest outlaws travelling in the region, had to be made with his justiciar. The king's reasons for making his son an earl at such a young age were various, and the propaganda element of the outrageousness of the appointment cannot be ignored; but the end result was an education. In later life Edward III would not have been able to remember a time when he was not responsible for the administration of justice, the accrual of revenue from land, and decisions which changed people's lives.

  *

  The king might have been the most powerful figure in Edward's life with regard to inheritance and status, but he was not the only important person. Edward's mother, Queen Isabella - Isabella the Fair - was every bit as royal as her husband, the only daughter of King Philip of France, who doted on her. She was sixteen years of age at the time of the birth, twelve years younger than the king, and renowned for her beauty and intelligence. She was also connected to most of the royal houses of Europe, due to the geographical position of France and the status of her ancestors. Through her mother, Jeanne, who enjoyed the mouth-watering tide of Countess Palatine of Champagne and Brie (as well as that of Queen of Navarre), she was connected to Iberian royalty. Through her grandmother she was related to the dukes of Brabant. Through her cousin, Jeanne, daughter of Charles, count of Valois, she was related to William, count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, the lord of Friesland. And so on. She was enmeshed in a complex series of dynastic relationships even more extensive than those of her husband. Edward II’s only living close relative in a European royal house was his nephew, the young duke of Brabant. His mother, Eleanor of Castile had died more than twenty years earlier, when he had been only six, and his Spanish cousins were not close. The difference lay in geographical position, and the difficulties of directly exercising royal links. Despite two centuries of taking continental brides, England remained on the periphery of the continental dynastic network. France, respected as the greatest kingdom in Christendom, was at the very centre. Thus for Edward of Windsor, his mother represented rich dynasties and royal links far beyond the shores of Britain. It was perhaps in recognition of this that Isabella's uncle, Louis d'Evreux, requested that Isabella call her first-born son Louis, not Edward. Not surprisingly, the English nobles at the baptism refused.

  Dynastic links are easy to account for, but they are not as important for understanding a child's development as parental character. Although Edward II’s personality has been reappraised many times in the last hundred years, Isabella's has generally been neglected. Most people still remember her as the 'She-wolf of France'. This name was originally the duke of York's insult to Margaret of Anjou in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part Three (Act One, Scene

  Four), but it came to be applied to Isabella in the eighteenth century due to the widespread belief that she had been party to her husband's murder. Even though scholarship has moved on considerably, popular reputations of villainy never die. This is both a pity and a problem. Edward's mother was not a she-wolf but a dutiful and highly religious woman who, in later years, when she had been spurned by her husband and had fallen into the arms of a dominating lover, still felt she ought to return to her rightful spouse. When the king lay in prison, scorned by the nation, and bereft of his throne, she still sent presents to him. Edward II’s respect for her intelligence and negotiating skills may be seen in his approval of the treaty which she negotiated on his behalf in order to try to secure peace with France in 1325. Nor was this the only time that Edward placed great faith in her skills. She also took part in domestic peace negotiations in 1313, 1318 and 1321. She was a woman of conscience: when she found that two of her sisters-in-law were guilty of adultery with two French knights, she had no hesitation in reporting them to her father. It is not difficult to find instances of her clemency: although she detested Hugh Despenser the younger with a passion, she pleaded for the life of Hugh's father, the earl of Winchester, when he was facing execution. She was known to be moved by pity: in October 1312, while pregnant with Edward, she gave food and clothes to a young Scottish orphan she met; later she paid for him to be sent to London to be educated. She equalled even her husband's piety in her pilgrimages, her devotion to English shrines, and her enthusiastic collecting of relics. She also collected books, especially chivalric tales, and had more than thirty volumes in her library when she died. Bookish and pious, it is not surprising that she had little aptitude for war. An attempt to lead an attack on Leeds Castle in 1321 ended in disaster and the deaths of nine members of her household. Similarly, she never played a leading role in political confrontation except when at the side of her lover, Sir Roger Mortimer. But during the invasion of 1326 she acted as a brilliant and powerful figurehead. Her greatest failing was her ability to spend money - vast amounts of money - with apparently no qualms about the acquisitiveness demonstrated in obtaining such sums. From relatively restrained beginnings at the time of Edward's birth (although sixty men were employed to keep and repair her clothes), her spending in the years 1326-30 amounted to about a quarter of the royal purse. However, if her most notable characteristics were duty, piety, loyalty to those she loved, passion, clemency, trustworthiness, intelligence and conscience, and if her greatest sin was profligacy, she was about as far from the all-devouring 'she-wolf' myth of the eighteenth century as a woman could possibly be.

  Of the other people who were important to the infant Edward, one must first mention his nurse, Margaret. She was from Daventry in Northamptonshire, and in 1312 was the wife of Stephen Chandler. To her Edward remained devoted for the rest of her life. So attached to her did he become that she was still in his household, maintained on the payroll along with his clerks, after he became king. Later, in his twenties, he made every effort to look after her when she encountered legal difficulties. This is not surprising as she was the one person who had always been with him, from birth to adolescence. It was in her care that he remained when, at the end of January 1313, his mother made preparations to return to London. Margaret, wh
o would have been breast-feeding the two-month-old Edward in place of his mother, took the baby from Windsor to Bray on 26 January. The next day they arrived at Bisham, in Berkshire, which was to be Edward's home for the next year. The building they lived in was almost certainly the manor house which had belonged to the Knights Templar until the dissolution of the Order in 1312. His father visited him on 13 February, and stayed for dinner, and again visited on 4 August, on which occasion he granted him the Isle of Wight. His mother visited for four days in early May, and the kindly Queen Margaret (his father's stepmother and his mother's aunt) visited in June. His nurse Margaret also took him to see his mother and father at court. The account for his household expenses at this time records that he was taken to spend twenty-seven days with the royal family in the spring and early summer of 1313.

  Edward spent the first years of his life in his nurse's company, receiving gifts and occasional visits from his parents, surrounded by servants and household officials whose roles he would not have fully understood. In April 1314, he was moved from Bisham to Ludgershall in East Wiltshire, an old castle in need of repair, as shown by the order to mend the shingle roofs of the prince's dwellings. It was expected that Edward would stay there for some time, and this still seems to have been the plan at the end of May, when the king's butler was ordered to provide an extra thirty tuns of wine for the prince's household over and above that already delivered, suggesting a very large contingent of men-at-arms protecting the young boy. But in June the king decided to locate his son and heir at Wallingford Castle, previously the chief residence of Piers Gaveston. Perhaps the king, knowing he would be riding north to face the Scots near Stirling - in the battle which came to be known as Bannockburn - wished to make sure his son was secure in case of a disaster. By July the prince and his nurse had taken up residence.43 It was fitting that he should have come to live in Gaveston's castle: the prince had become the king's symbol of independence, just as Gaveston had once been. Edward conferred gifts and tides on his son in the same way he had given them to Gaveston. The difference was that his son was royal, whereas Gaveston had been born a commoner, not even of baronial rank, and gifts to the heir to the throne were beyond criticism.