She Wolves (21 page)

Isabella and Mortimer quickly became unpopular rulers. Their most unwelcome action which later led to their downfall was their instigation of peace with Scotland. The Scots hoped to take advantage of the confusion in England following Edward II’s deposition and invaded, ravaging the north. Isabella, Mortimer and Edward III headed north and the unwilling king was forced to agree to a peace agreement in Scotland, sealed by the marriage of his sister Joan to David of Scotland.
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The marriage was celebrated at Berwick and attended by Isabella and Mortimer. Edward III, however, refused to attend. Isabella may have been perturbed by this evidence of her son’s disapproval of her policy but she failed to heed the warning. She probably considered him to still be a child and she and Mortimer certainly treated him like one.

Isabella remained devoted to Mortimer throughout their period of rule and he became increasingly domineering. In 1329, Isabella and Mortimer felt strong enough to move against the Earl of Kent, the king’s uncle. Kent had been one of their most important supporters in the invasion of England but he quickly became disillusioned with Isabella and Mortimer’s rule. In 1329, Kent was told that his brother, Edward II, was still alive and imprisoned at Corfe Castle.
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He sent a friar to Corfe to see whether the rumour was true and swore to release his brother if it proved to be so. It seems likely that this rumour had been created by Mortimer to incriminate Kent. Certainly, Isabella and Mortimer made use of Kent’s conduct and, at a parliament soon after, Kent was arrested for conspiracy to restore Edward II. Kent was sentenced to death and executed, against the wishes of his nephew, Edward III.
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The execution of the son of a king sent shock waves throughout the nobility and any remaining support for Isabella and Mortimer evaporated with his death. Isabella and Mortimer appear to have remained indifferent to their unpopularity, perhaps believing that they still maintained the support of the king.

Isabella and Mortimer’s rule was certainly not condoned by the king, however, and Edward III had grown increasingly resentful of his treatment by his mother and her lover. Events came to a head when Mortimer called a parliament at Nottingham in 1330. Edward III believed that Mortimer was shown too much honour there and heard a rumour that Mortimer wished to depose him and become king himself.
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Edward decided that the time was finally right for him to assume royal authority and, one night, he and some friends entered Nottingham Castle secretly through a hidden tunnel:

This must have been the most traumatic event of Isabella’s life and she never saw Mortimer again. She must have realised, in an instant, that her reign was over and that both she, and Mortimer, were in danger.

Edward III wasted no time in establishing his authority after his coup against his mother and Mortimer. Mortimer was sentenced to death, despite Isabella’s pleas, and was hanged, drawn and quartered.
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Some accounts suggest that the shock of Mortimer’s death drove Isabella mad although, given the evidence of her later lucidity, this seems unlikely. It must certainly have deeply affected her, however. Edward never countenanced putting his mother to death but immediately after the coup she was placed under house arrest and stripped of her lands and goods. Isabella spent two years under guard in isolation at Castle Rising in Norfolk.
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She was granted greater freedom later but she never regained Edward’s trust.

After the harshness of her imprisonment was lessened, Isabella was given permission to travel and to play a role as a member of the royal family. In 1338 she spent time at Pomfret Castle and in 1344 she attended Edward’s birthday celebration in Norwich.
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Isabella all but disappears from the sources after 1330 and her time as a political figure of note had ended. She spent the remainder of her life living quietly, mainly at Castle Rising. Isabella fell ill on 22 August 1358 and died later that same day at the age of sixty-two, venerable for the time.
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She was given a royal funeral and, according to legend, she was buried, at her own request, wearing her wedding dress and clutching Edward II’s heart in a silver casket.
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This demonstrates that, with the passing of time, Isabella had learnt to feel remorse for all that had occurred in her marriage and the terrible way in which it ended. It is perhaps more significant, however, that when Isabella chose her burial place she selected Greyfriars in London, the burial place of her beloved Mortimer.

Isabella of France is the most vilified of all the queens of England and, although she was known as ‘Isabella the Fair’ in her own lifetime, she is now better remembered as the ‘She-Wolf of France’. The poem,
The Bard
, by Thomas Grey perhaps best sums up the reputation that Isabella has left to history:

Isabella was among the most powerful of all medieval queens. No other English queen invaded and won a country, openly took a lover or murdered her husband. Isabella of France was unique and between 1325 and 1330 pursued a role very far from the ideal expected of a medieval queen. Her reputation was black and the story of her life would have cast a dark shadow over many of the later medieval English queens as they strove not to emulate her. However, it must be remembered that the period 1325 to 1330 was only a small part of her long life and her actions were certainly driven by years of mistreatment and unhappiness. It was not, after all, Isabella’s fault that she found herself married to Edward II and most other kings would have adored her. Isabella had been cosseted throughout her childhood and she tried to make the most of her difficult and loveless marriage. It is perhaps understandable that in the end Isabella snapped and took drastic action to secure her own happiness. Some of her actions are likely to have been driven by revenge but these are understandable. Isabella of France had been the most desirable princess in Europe and to find herself an unloved and disparaged wife must have affected her. She tried to endure and, when that failed, she took action, at terrible cost to her own reputation.

In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne from his cousin Richard II, ushering in a century of intermittent conflict as different branches of the royal family vied for the throne. This conflict is known as the Wars of the Roses and it impacted directly not just on the lives of the kings concerned but also on the lives of the queens and the nature of their office. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century queens were, in general, markedly less powerful than their earlier post-conquest predecessors as queenship to some extent reverted to its pre-conquest antecedents. With a few notable exceptions, the fifteenth-century kings were almost entirely focussed on England and, by the mid-fifteenth century, all but Calais of the once vast continental empire had been lost. This meant that kings had no option but to focus on England, which led to a diminished scope for queenly political power. At a time when kings could be made and deposed by noblemen, queens, whose power was dependent on these kings, were in as vulnerable a position as they had been before the Norman conquest. This vulnerability continued into the sixteenth century and the Tudor period.

In spite of the great changes to society, queenship in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries remained superficially similar to what had gone before. As in earlier periods, queens were, first and foremost, expected to be fertile and produce an heir. This was always the primary function of a queen in medieval England and it was no exception for late medieval queens. Margaret of Anjou, who was the queen of Henry VI, was in a very difficult position until she finally bore a son after seven years of marriage and she must have been relieved to prove to her critics that she was not sterile. Anne Neville, the wife of Richard III, also found herself in danger following the death of her only child in 1484 when her husband’s attitude abruptly changed towards her. Rumours quickly emerged that Richard meant to divorce his sickly wife to marry a more fertile woman and, by Christmas 1484, it was whispered around that Richard was even trying to hasten his wife’s death.
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Richard may have spread the rumour that his wife was already dead in the hope that the shock would kill her.
Hall’s Chronicle
describes its version of the event:

Anne lost her husband’s love and respect with the death of her only child and, in early 1485, she died unlamented by Richard. A good queen was one who produced healthy sons in the late medieval period, just as had always been the case in England. The most extreme example of this was the six wives of Henry VIII and his willingness to dispose of wives who could not bear sons. As a number of later medieval queens found to their cost, to be a good queen was to be a fertile one.

The expectation of conspicuious piety in good queens also continued into the later medieval period. This position did, however, become more complex in the Tudor period. With the Reformation, it became possible to be pious in the wrong religion. Catherine of Aragon and her successor, Anne Boleyn, for example, are good examples of this. Anne Boleyn is known to have had Protestant sympathies and, as a heretic, she was chastised by Catholics. However, to the Protestants of her daughter’s reign she was seen almost as a saint, challenging the superstitions of Catholicism. Catherine of Aragon is also today remembered for her piety but, to Protestants in the sixteenth century, she was seen as both superstitious, ignorant and certainly not someone to admire. Catherine’s daughter, Mary I, was also very pious and to some she was a great queen. However, to the majority of her Protestant subjects, she was seen as a dangerous fanatic in her attempts to restore Catholicism, just as her predecessor, Lady Jane Grey, might have been seen by her Catholic subjects had she lived longer. To be a good queen in the late medieval period was still to be a pious one. However, the Reformation added another layer to this and it was also necessary to be religious in the accepted way. Henry VIII’s last queen, Catherine Parr, is a particularly good example of this and, in 1546, was nearly arrested for heresy due to her radical Protestantism.
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Only Catherine’s intelligence saved her and she claimed to the king that she had only been outspoken in her religion in order to engage him in conversation so that she could learn from him.
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Clearly, therefore, it was possible for a queen to be too religious in the Tudor period and Mary I’s notoriety, for example, is linked to her religious faith.

Changes to religion were not the only changes to occur in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and, on the whole, the country was a much more insular nation than it had previously been. Although Henry VI very nearly conquered France in the early fifteenth century, by the middle of his son’s reign all that remained of England’s continental possessions was Calais. The loss of the continental territories meant that, unlike their earlier post-conquest predecessors, fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury kings had less reason to leave England and so there was also less scope for their wives to be called upon to become regents. Henry IV and Henry VI, for example, remained in England throughout their reigns and Edward IV, Henry VI’s successor, only left England once voluntarily, for a brief campaign in France. On this campaign he did indeed leave his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, as regent, but this proved to be only a brief period of authority bearing little resemblance to the long regencies of her predecessors such as Matilda of Scotland and Eleanor of Provence. Richard III and Henry VII did not leave England during their reigns although Edward IV’s grandson, Henry VIII, also left England on two brief campaigns in France, leaving his wives, Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Parr, as regents in turn.
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A queen was still considered to be a suitable regent in late medieval England but the lack of opportunities for regencies meant that, in reality, any political power that they might have would be limited. Moreover a regency was by no means certain and, when Henry VI came to the throne when he was less than a year old, it was never even suggested that his mother, Catherine of Valois should rule for him – instead she was kept firmly in the background.

The lack of opportunities for regencies also meant that queens were no longer expected to have a political role. Consequently a development can be seen in the ideas of what made a good queen and what made a bad queen. Elizabeth of York, for example, is remembered very favourably and this is largely due to her apparent lack of personal ambition, modestly accepting the crown matrimonial rather than asserting her own right to the crown as heiress of England.
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Elizabeth of York is always compared favourably to Margaret of Anjou, for example, and Margaret’s bad reputation is based largely on her political activity. However, even the mild Elizabeth of York was viewed as a potential political threat by her husband and, according to Francis Bacon, ‘it lay plain before his eyes, that if he relied upon that title [claiming the throne through Elizabeth], he could be but a king at courtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power; the right remaining in his queen, upon whose decease, either with issue, or without issue, he was to give place and be removed’.
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Mary I was also extremely popular until she was forced to become a fully political figure. Immediately she appeared unwomanly to her people and is remembered as a corrupt queen, just as her predecessor as queen regnant, the Empress Matilda, had been. In late medieval England, therefore, good queens were expected to be domestic and pious, something that most of the notorious queens of the period were decidedly not.