The Demon's Brood (20 page)

The earl had no allies after the deaths of his wise old father-in-law Lincoln in 1311 and Warwick four years later. Even if he found supporters among lesser barons and the bishops, his
fellow magnates loathed him. Having dominated the royal council since Bannockburn, he became its official head in the parliament of January 1316, cancelling all grants of Crown land to favourites over the last six years. But either from arrogance or ill health he then stayed away from parliaments, making enemies of men who should have been his friends. When Surrey tried to obtain an annulment so that he could marry his mistress, Lancaster intervened and Surrey was excommunicated. He retaliated by abducting Lancaster's wife.

Meanwhile, new courtiers found favour with Edward. Hugh Audley was given Gaveston's widow and Roger Damory, an obscure Oxfordshire knight, secured the king's niece, the twice widowed Elizabeth de Clare, who was one of the richest women in the country. William Montague obtained the coveted job of steward of Gascony. Hugh Despenser, a former minister of Edward I who had recommended himself by his cynical support for Piers, also gained advancement. Others included Lord Badlesmere, a great Kentish landowner, and John Giffard.

There was also a ‘middle party' led by Pembroke, which opposed both the court and Lancaster. ‘If we are to make a hero in the reign at all, earl Aymer of Pembroke has surely the best claim to that distinction', says Tout.
¹⁹
With Badlesmere, he hoped to isolate Lancaster while keeping the Ordinances, and give back the king most of his powers if he governed wisely. Isabella supported this sensible but not very strong man, whose advice offered the best hope of stability.

By autumn 1316 Lancaster had abandoned his attempt to rule and was sulking on his estates. He prepared for civil war as did King Edward. Each man hated and feared the other. While Thomas had no wish to risk his life in battle, and he felt little affection for his wife – they lived apart – her abduction nearly drove him into rebellion because he suspected Edward of
encouraging it. When his men harried Surrey's northern lands, the king saw a pretext for crushing Lancaster by force. However, Pembroke dissuaded him, while a group of bishops restrained Earl Thomas.

Two strange incidents did not make Edward feel any more secure. At Whitsun 1317 a masked woman rode a horse into the banqueting hall at Westminster and handed a letter to him as he sat at dinner, which he ordered to be read aloud. Embarrassingly, it complained of the shabby way he treated the knights of his household. Arrested, the woman confessed to being paid by one of the knights to deliver the letter.

Then, early in 1318, a young Oxford cleric named John of Powderham, who resembled Edward, presented himself at the nearby Palace of Beaumont and announced he was the true king of England, offering to undergo trial by combat with his supplanter. He claimed he had been exchanged at birth for Edward, who was a carter's son – the reason why he did not govern properly and liked peasant pursuits. Brought before the king, he called him a changeling, repeating his offer to fight for the throne, but when put on trial at Oxford he broke down, telling the court he had acted under instructions from his cat, who was the devil. He and the poor feline were hanged side by side. According to the
Vita
, this ridiculous episode was reported throughout the whole country, infuriating the queen ‘beyond words'.
²⁰

The quarrel between the king and Lancaster simmered on, the earl claiming that, as holder of the earldom of Leicester, he should be high steward – the office held by Simon de Montfort. Finally Pembroke prevailed. In August 1318 peace between Edward and the earl was reached at Leake (in Nottinghamshire) with a treaty harking back to the barons' attempt to control Henry III sixty years before. The Ordinances, Lancaster's talisman, were reaffirmed, while five members of a council of seventeen were to supervise royal business. Badlesmere, who was acceptable to both sides, became steward of the household, and the new chamberlain was the younger Hugh Despenser.

There was general agreement that Berwick must be recovered. After capturing the town, the Scots had begun raiding further south, the people of Ripon only saving their lives by taking shelter in the minster and paying £1,000. Lancaster joined Edward's army in besieging Berwick in the summer of 1319, but was suspected of treachery. Implying he was a traitor, the
Vita
says he disgraced the royal family, but it is more likely that he merely paid the Scots protection money. When King Robert sent a force to attack Pontefract Castle, his main residence, Lancaster rushed home. He may also have heard that Edward was muttering, ‘When this miserable siege is over, we'll get back to other business – I haven't forgotten what was done to my brother Piers.'
²¹
It was the end of the Treaty of Leake.

The king abandoned the siege, and it only needed a spark to set alight his feud with Lancaster – which Hugh Despenser the younger soon provided. Sir Hugh had become one of England's wealthiest men overnight after the death of his childless brother-in-law the Earl of Gloucester at Bannockburn, and inheritance of half the earl's estates by Sir Hugh's wife, yet until he was appointed chamberlain by parliament in 1318 Edward took little notice of him. From then on, however, he supervised every detail of the royal day, becoming all powerful, and by 1320 he witnessed three-quarters of the charters issued by Edward. Very different from Gaveston, he has been convincingly described as ‘a war lord, a politician and an administrator'.
²²

To Queen Isabella, it seemed that Piers had come again. At this time she enjoyed so much prestige that in 1319, when she was staying near York during the siege of Berwick, the Scots diverted 10,000 troops to capture her, but the plot was discovered by a spy. ‘Had the queen been taken prisoner, I think Scotland might have been able to impose peace [on its own terms]', comments the
Vita
,
²³
whose author thought Lancaster
had told them where to find her. Hugh must have known he could not dominate this strong, shrewd woman.

Hugh's greed verged on the manic, as did that of his father, another Sir Hugh. In 1320 they obtained the vacant marcher lordship of the Gower by persuading the king to confiscate it and then grant it to them. The Marchers were outraged, since the precedent made their own fiefs vulnerable to seizure. In any case, they were terrified of young Despenser, a violent man who had recently murdered the captive Llewelyn Bren.

In spring 1321, led by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, they mobilized. In June they attended a meeting in Yorkshire with Lancaster and other northern lords that resulted in an ‘indenture' demanding the Despensers' dismissal. The protesters were joined by Pembroke, John of Brittany and Lord Badlesmere, and by such former royal favourites as Roger Damory and Hugh Audley. On her knees in tears, Queen Isabella begged her husband to get rid of the pair. When parliament met in July it was surrounded by the barons' armed retainers. Denounced as evil counsellors and enemies of the people, the Despensers were banished.

According to the
Vita
, the ‘cruel and greedy father' simply went abroad (to Bordeaux), but the son took up a murderous career as a pirate, turning into a ‘sea monster'. One of his exploits was capturing a great Genoese merchantman, slaughtering the entire crew and stealing its immensely valuable cargo.
²⁴
Meanwhile, Edward plotted their return.

In October, ostensibly on pilgrimage to Canterbury, Queen Isabella arrived at the royal castle of Leeds in Kent, demanding to spend the night there. Suspecting she intended to seize it, the wife of its absent castellan, Lord Badlesmere, greeted her with a flight of arrows, killing six of her escort. Badlesmere made matters worse by writing a truculent letter to Isabella, saying that he
fully approved of his wife's actions. Joined by a contingent from London, where the queen was very popular, the king assembled an army and besieged the castle, using stone-throwers. On learning the Earl of Lancaster refused to send help, Lady Badlesmere surrendered. She was sent to the Tower, while the garrison commander, Sir Walter Culpeper, was hanged from the battlements with a dozen of his men.

Encouraged, Edward summoned the Despensers home in December, dispatching troops to capture other baronial castles. Early in 1322 he took a small army to the Welsh border, where he routed the Marchers, seizing all their strongholds. Then he went up to northern England, to deal with Lancaster. He is often praised for the military ability he showed on the campaign, but it must have been supplied by an experienced commander at his side – the elder Despenser or John of Brittany.

Lancaster found himself outmanoeuvred. Although joined by the Earl of Hereford, he was deserted by his henchmen and Pembroke. Retreating northwards with 700 men-at-arms, he hoped to find refuge in his castle at Dunstanburgh on the Northumbrian coast, but on 16 March was intercepted at Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire by Sir Andrew Harclay from Cumberland, who brought 4,000 pike-men and archers. Trying to cross the River Ure over the bridge, Hereford was killed – stabbed up the backside with a spear by a man standing below – while his comrades' attempt to ford was repulsed by devastating arrow fire. In despair, Lancaster rode back to his lodgings in Boroughbridge, where he was arrested the next day.

Less than a week later, after a trial before King Edward in the hall of his own castle of Pontefract, during which he was forbidden to speak in his defence, the earl was led out on a donkey to a little hill nearby and beheaded as a traitor. It was not only the memory of Piers's murder that made Edward pitiless; he feared his cousin was planning to take his place. In view of the unholy regime that followed, many people venerated Lancaster as a martyr and the tomb of ‘St Thomas' became a place of pilgrimage.

The ‘Contrariants', the earl's leading supporters, were treated mercilessly, Badlesmere and twenty-eight knights suffering the full penalties for treason. Another eighty-six knights were imprisoned and over a hundred more received crippling fines. Two months later, a parliament repealed the Ordinances in the Statute of York, with a proviso that no restraints of this sort must ever again be placed on the king's power. Ironically, the fact that the regime used parliament to do so demonstrated parliament's increasing importance.

Despite the shameful defeat at Old Byland in August that year, the Despensers ruled the kingdom, since Edward confirmed all their decisions. Pembroke's death in 1324 removed the one man who might have restrained them. ‘Weak as he had often been in action, doubtful as were some of his subtle changes of front, with him disappeared the best influence that had ever been exerted on the court and council of Edward II.'
²⁵
The elder Hugh was created Earl of Winchester, securing many estates confiscated in the Midlands and southern England.

The
Vita
comments, ‘the son's wickedness outweighed the father's harshness'.
²⁶
The younger Hugh did as he pleased, knowing the king would back him. Creating a fiefdom for himself in south Wales and on the Marches that stretched from Milford Haven to Chepstow, as well as seizing the lands of his sisters-in-law, he bullied several wealthy widows into handing over their estates. A Glamorgan lady had her limbs broken, sending the poor woman insane, while Lancaster's widow was threatened with burning alive as a husband murderer, on the pretext she must have led him astray.

For a time, such methods worked. ‘No one, however great or wise, dares to go against what the king wants', records the author of the
Vita
.
²⁷
By September 1324 the younger Hugh had deposited almost £6,000 with Florentine bankers and over the
next two years nearly another £6,000 with the Peruzzi – billions in today's money and only part of his wealth, which was mainly in land.

Yet there were dangerous irreconcilables, such as Sir Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, an old enemy of the Despensers from the Welsh Marches who had been imprisoned in the Tower. In 1323, having drugged his guards' wine, including that of the constable, with a potion supplied by his friend Bishop Orleton, he escaped up a chimney, over a roof and down the wall, using a series of ropes, before swimming the Thames. He then fled to France.

Paradoxically, the Despensers' rule saw administrative reforms since it suited them for Edward to be rich. They had started earlier in the reign to save the royal household from control by the Ordainers, and now the Exchequer and the household offices – the Wardrobe and the Chamber – became more efficient. In 1323 the treasurer, Bishop Stapledon of Exeter, introduced proper tax records. All this increased the Crown's revenues. (One of the first Englishmen known to wear spectacles, Walter Stapledon was a complex figure, whom the
Vita
calls ‘immeasurably greedy'.
²⁸
) Sound innovations took place at grass-roots level, sheriffs being recruited from the gentlemen of their county and holding office for only a limited period, while steps were taken to standardize weights and measures.
²⁹

Old Byland made it plain that the attempt to conquer Scotland had failed. Andrew Harclay, created Earl of Carlisle for defeating Lancaster at Boroughbridge, was so shaken that he negotiated a secret treaty, recognizing Bruce as King Robert in return for a guarantee that his estates would be spared by the Scots. Refusing to accept the war had been lost, Edward was so angry when he learned of Harclay's treaty that he had him executed as a traitor.

Even Londoners were alarmed by Old Byland, a delegation asking the constable of the Tower if he expected the city to be attacked by Scots. They were horrified by the perils of the queen, whom Edward had left at Tynemouth Priory on the Northumbrian coast. Taking refuge in the adjoining castle, she found herself besieged on land by Scots and from the sea by a Flemish fleet. Her husband sent letters to her but made no attempt at rescue. (The younger Despenser was later accused of telling him to let Isabella be captured.) Eventually, she escaped in a fast ship, although one of her ladies fell overboard.