The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (27 page)

The truce gave Edward a chance to relieve the army in Gascony, and also a good excuse not to leave England, thus threatening Roger’s hopes of separating the king from Despenser. But fortunately for Roger, Edward adopted Despenser’s inappropriate bullying tactics. A contemporary account of his attempt to lift the siege of La Réole is to be found in the pages of the
Vita Edwardi Secundi
:

Then the king ordered all the infantry to board their ships and stand out at sea, until the time should come for crossing to Gascony; and he put in command the Earl Warenne, John de St John, and other great men of the land, who likewise went on board not daring to resist. The king also sent letters to every county commanding and ordering that all who had returned from the army to their homes without leave should be arrested and hanged forthwith without trials. The harshness of the king has today increased so much that no one however great and wise dares to cross his will. Thus parliaments, colloquies, and councils decide nothing these days. For the nobles of the realm, terrified by threats and the penalties inflicted on others, let the king’s will have free play.
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With this sort of motivation and poor organisation there was no chance of La Réole being relieved. Hugh Despenser’s policy of gathering as much money as he could in his treasury and spending as little as possible meant that the fleet did not carry enough cash to pay the footsoldiers. There was insufficient food even to feed the men who did go. The army rioted. Part of the fleet did not set out at all, as Hugh Despenser was panicked into commandeering the eastern fleet to defend the coast against Roger. At the beginning of October 1324 Despenser wrote to John de Sturmy, the admiral of the eastern ships, that a great fleet was being amassed in Holland which was expected to arrive shortly in East Anglia with a great number of armed men under the command of Roger Mortimer and other banished men.
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It seemed Roger only had to remain outside England in order to strike terror into the hearts of Edward and Despenser.

Charles now gave Edward four options. All except one involved the loss of Agen and other lands in Gascony. The one exception was that Edward would receive all his lands back as long as Isabella and her son, the prince and heir to the throne, were both sent to France to negotiate. This, clearly, was a trap.
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The twelve-year-old prince was a suitable alternative figurehead to Edward II, and, in his mother’s company, was an eligible candidate for a diplomatic marriage. To remove him from Despenser’s control was equally desirable, as Isabella would not be able wholly to take action against her husband while her son was a potential hostage. No doubt Charles also wanted to see Isabella rescued from her English ordeal, if only out of fraternal compassion. But what was so clever about this trap was that, despite the obvious dangers, this option was the most attractive to Edward. At a stroke he could end the war and regain all he had lost at little or no cost. Cautious of the dangers, he reworked Charles’s offer, suggesting he would send the queen first, with the promise that his son would follow, as further concessions were made. He also proposed that Isabella should be returned to England if she did not gain a peace settlement satisfactory to Edward by a certain date. An interesting stipulation was that ‘the Mortimer’ and the other English rebels with him had to leave France in advance of
the queen’s visit, ‘on account of the perils and dishonours’ which might befall her.
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The Pope too was in favour of Isabella acting as a negotiator, and his envoys told Edward that Isabella’s presence in France would guarantee the return of Gascony in its entirety. This ‘guarantee’ convinced Edward: he decided to send Isabella to France in the spring.

Edward was not sufficiently imaginative to see the more subtle and dangerous aspects of the trap. Reassured that Isabella would not disobey his orders in France and relying heavily on Despenser’s control of the barons at home, he saw only the diplomatic aspects of the issues confronting him, not their strategic implications. In not sending his son to France he had avoided the most dangerous move he could have made, but he could not see how international diplomacy was so different from domestic political control. At home it was possible for him, or rather Despenser, to terrorise the lords and people into submission, and to keep them there through threats and fines, through the hierarchy of the law. No such control was possible on an international scale; the resources and independence of France, Spain and the Low Countries ensured that a measure of compromise was necessary for an English king trying to keep his foreign possessions. Thus his policy in Gascony should have been one of collaboration with France, not the bellicose stance forced on him by Hugh Despenser.

Unfortunately the one man who would have been able to guide Edward through the process of international compromise, the Earl of Pembroke, had died six months earlier. At the end of June 1324, on his way to Paris, he collapsed after dinner at one of his houses near Boulogne. He died almost instantly, probably suffering from an apoplectic fit, but possibly poisoned. His passing was much lamented by all factions in England. He had personally taken a part in defusing every major crisis of Edward’s reign. From now on there were no more arbiters of peace to settle Edward’s disputes with his barons.

In March 1325 Isabella set out for her homeland with a company of retainers selected for her by her husband and Despenser. Everyone who went with her was, in effect, a spy or a chaperone. Her ladies were women whose husbands were loyal to Edward, and her male retainers, none of whom was French, were all ardent royalists. Nevertheless she was delighted to leave England. ‘The queen departed very joyfully’, wrote the author of
Vita Edwardi Secundi
at the time of her leaving, adding that she was ‘happy with a two-fold joy; pleased to visit her native land and her relatives, and delighted to leave the company of some whom she did not like’.
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Had he known of the intrigue which was to unfold, the chronicler could have called it a three-fold pleasure, adding the prospect of plotting revenge.

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For Isabella, returning to France was an immense relief. She toured the country in no particular hurry, happy just to be away from England. While Edward was worried that she would form a political intrigue with Roger – and indeed a number of French and English chroniclers who wrote about the events in retrospect presumed that her sole purpose in leaving England was to see Roger – this was not overtly the case. Roger was in Hainault, supposedly ‘banished’ by the French king, in accordance with Edward’s instructions. The queen also behaved in total compliance with her husband’s directions. After landing she proceeded to Paris via Boulogne and Beauvois with her entourage, dining with the Queen of France at Pontoise before meeting her brother at Poissy. She did not meet Roger, nor did they directly contact one another. For the moment, whatever their secret desires, their relationship was merely a political understanding channelled through Charles IV.

Isabella was under no illusions about what would happen if she thoughtlessly squandered the freedom she had gained from Edward. In the spring of 1314, at the age of eighteen, she had visited Paris and met her father, Philip the Fair. She had unburdened herself of the terrible knowledge that all three of her brothers’ wives were having adulterous affairs with two knights in the Tour de Nesles. Philip had the two men watched, and apprehended them. They died cruel deaths: broken on the wheel at Montfaucon. More importantly for Isabella, the women too were severely punished: divorced from their husbands and imprisoned for life.
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Gascony also served to keep Isabella on the straight and narrow. The negotiations with her brother were not easy. Although she had had some experience of diplomacy in 1313, when she had been sent to France as an English ambassadress, the principal French negotiator had been her doting father, to whom she had simply presented a petition and waited as he granted almost all her wishes.
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Now she was negotiating with her clever and careful brother, Charles IV. His principal aim was to extract as much as he could from the situation in Gascony without actually provoking a larger war. He argued forcefully, and, in view of the events leading to the war, he held the upper hand throughout the negotiations. After the initial stages had gone badly for Isabella, she wrote to Edward saying that she had considered returning to England. This was probably a rhetorical device, to encourage his confidence in her, for she also offered to remain in France to see the negotiations through, if he agreed. Edward clearly accepted her letter at face value, as he sent her some money shortly afterwards.
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Isabella returned to Paris. By evening she dined with her family and advisers, and entertained distinguished visitors. By day she spent her time
visiting churches. She was a devout Catholic, and a keen observer of holy relics, but she now spent more time than usual in contemplation. Her mind was preoccupied, possibly with thoughts of Roger.
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She must also have been concerned that, as soon as the treaty was signed, Edward would order her to return. He would come to France to perform homage, and Despenser might be arrested; but how would Edward treat her after that? She realised she would have to betray her husband, whom she had sworn holy oaths to obey, and to whom she had sworn to remain faithful. And what if the plot eventually failed? What if Despenser escaped arrest until the king returned? There was no doubt that, in her husband’s kingdom, royal status was no guarantee of immunity from prosecution for treason, especially in the case of an undesired woman.

Roger was still in Hainault, at the court of Count William of Hainault, living off the money his son had acquired by mortgaging his recently inherited lordships in France to Charles IV.
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From there he was able easily to send messages both to France and to magnates in England, who were now collectively turning against Despenser. Hainault also kept him at a safe enough distance from Isabella for Edward not to suspect them of collusion. But even more importantly, Hainault offered an enormous diplomatic opportunity. Some years earlier a proposal had been made to marry one of the five daughters of William of Hainault to Edward’s son, Prince Edward. Nothing had come of it; but Roger knew that, if the count was still willing, and if the boy could be procured and married to one of the daughters, the financial and military weight of Hainault would be at Isabella’s disposal. Such a plan depended on King Edward sending his son to France. That was not impossible, especially while the question of homage for Gascony remained unsettled. If Edward did not come in person to do homage, then the only alternative Charles would accept was the homage of the prince.

On 31 May 1325 Isabella ratified the terms of the peace treaty between England and France. The terms were heavily in France’s favour. Far from the whole of Gascony being granted to Edward, it was first to be surrendered wholly to Charles and then partially regranted. A French official was to ratify Edward’s appointments there, and he was not able to raise an army from the land. He kept control of the castles and the military infrastructure, but the area around Agen was to be submitted to a judicial review; if it was judged that Edward had a claim to the title, he was to be liable for the costs incurred by the French army which had invaded it. It was a treaty humiliating and economically depressing, arising not out of Isabella’s poor handling but out of an impossible situation.

Edward ratified the treaty on 13 June. He had no choice: he was not
in a position to hold out for a better settlement. But there remained the question of who was going to perform homage. Edward insisted that he should go in person, to prevent his son falling into Isabella’s hands. Hugh Despenser desperately sought members of the council to prevent the king from leaving England, but failed. The deciding voice was that of Henry of Lancaster. He strongly urged the king to go. Despenser, knowing his own life would be in danger, tried equally hard to dissuade him. It seemed the anti-Despenser faction was about to get its first opportunity to overthrow the favourite. Only later, when Despenser was able to speak to the king privately, was he able to impress upon Edward how vulnerable he would be in the king’s absence. Remembering Gaveston’s fate, Edward changed his mind and, feigning illness, at the last moment refused to leave England. Henry of Lancaster and the Earl of Norfolk, two men who might have been waiting to act against Despenser, had to bide their time.
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Instead of going to France himself the king sent the Bishop of Winchester to negotiate an alternative arrangement.

As Charles, Isabella and Roger all knew, there was only one acceptable alternative to the king’s attendance, and that was the visit of Prince Edward. Isabella dined with the Bishop of Winchester on 2 September, and suggested then that her son be sent to perform homage for Gascony. The bishop agreed to present this proposal formally to Edward. But just when Isabella might have thought that Edward was playing into her hands, the bishop sprung a surprise upon her. He carried Edward’s order for her to return to England forthwith.
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And to ensure that she complied, her funding was cut off with immediate effect.

This presented Isabella with a dire problem. If she had to return to England, she could not possibly hope to get control of her son. She managed to delay while the bishop returned to Edward with Charles’s formal permission that Prince Edward could be invested with Gascony and perform homage. Now it was Edward who was under pressure. He decided that he would invest Prince Edward with the title of Duke of Aquitaine, and send him with a strong party to demand Isabella’s immediate return. Prince Edward accordingly set out for Paris in the company of Henry de Beaumont and the Bishops of Winchester and Exeter, arriving there on 22 September. Isabella and her son were reunited, and overjoyed to see one another. Isabella was less pleased to see the Bishop of Exeter, Walter de Stapeldon. It had been on his advice that she had had her estates confiscated the previous year.
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She refused to dine with him, and attempted to ignore him. But de Stapeldon was not easily ignored. At some point shortly after the prince had performed homage to Charles, the bishop laid before her Edward’s demand that she return home immediately, and he did so in public, in front of the
king and the court. Edward would not tolerate any excuse, he declared in the hearing of all assembled. He went on to say that he had money to pay her expenses in France, but he would not do so unless she returned to England with him, as she was legally and morally obliged to do. This was the final word, he declared; she had no choice in the matter.
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