The Perfect King (7 page)

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Edward's household arrangements never remained static for long. In late
1318
his two-year-old brother, John, and baby sister, Eleanor, came to live with him. The children remained together for nearly two years. But on
5
June
1320
Sir Richard Damory, Robert Mauley and Nicholas Hugate were ordered to return High Peak to Queen
Isabella for the sustenance of
John and Eleanor. The implication is that they went to live with her. Edward, however, did not return to his mother but to his father. Extraordinarily, on
5
August
1320,
although not yet eight years of age, the king summoned him, 'our dearest son', to attend parliament. His political life had begun.

On the face of it, we might wonder what his father expected of him at such a tender age. The boy could hardly be expected to swing opinions in his father's favour through eloquent debate at the age of eight. Edward II himself had not been summoned until he was eighteen. But the king did not expect his son to employ eloquent arguments, or to say anything at all. He merely wanted him there, to be a symbol. Edward of Windsor was not only his father's heir but a statement of his father's royalty and the family's right to rule. The king's message to parliament was clear. If parliament recognised this boy's right to attend and be heard, despite being very young and — through no fault of his own — unwise, then it must also recognise the king's right to attend and rule, however unwise the peers thought him. Edward of Windsor's presence in parliament that October was his father's very powerful demonstration of royal legitimacy. To challenge either of them was to challenge the very institution of monarchy.

There were probably several reasons for the timing of the summons. The least important was that Edward was now of an age at which - had he been the son of a nobleman - he would have been sent to serve in another lord's household. As the king's son, the royal household was the only one suitable, for only there could he learn the basic procedures of kingship. Living at his father's court, it may have been considered fitting that, as an earl, he should attend parliament. A more important reason for the timing was that the king was heading for another confrontation with the barons, and he anticipated very serious trouble indeed.

Edward could have had no idea of the cataclysm which was about to erupt within his small but rapidly expanding world. At the beginning of
1320
he had been living in the care of Sir Richard Damory, no doubt meeting Damory's brother Roger, who was now married to one of his (Edward's) cousins. He would have regularly met his justiciar's son, Sir Hugh Audley the younger, who had married another of his cousins. He would have been familiar with Lord Mauley, his steward's brother. He would have met and heard a great deal about the earl of Hereford, who was married to his aunt Hereford had been reconciled to Edward II after the Gaveston debacle, and had remained loyal ever since. The prince would have been aware of his more distant kinsmen too, like Sir Roger Mortimer, Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, who had re-established English rule in Ireland after the Scots' invasion. Edward's treasurer, Hugh of Leominster - coming from a Mortimer region - might well have been one of the several clerks promoted into royal service through connections with that family. Edward's justiciar - Sir Hugh Audley the elder - was Mortimer's brother-in-law. What the eight-year-old Edward would have had difficulty grasping was that now, in the autumn of
1320,
these men were all gathering to make war on his father, the king. Edward may or may not have been aware of earlier crises, but he could not have failed to hear about this one. This rebellion was being spearheaded by his father's relations and men who had, until now, been his father's loyal supporters.

The cause of the problem was Hugh Despenser, a man to whom the king had entrusted much of his government: too much, perhaps. Despenser's ability to tempt the king to give him whatever he wanted was infuriating for men like the earl of Hereford, Roger Mortimer and Roger Damory. Damory was Despenser's brother-in-law, but Despenser was not touched by family loyalty. Their wives might be sisters but Despenser saw them only as nieces of the king, and thus ways to land and authority, and in particular a way to achieve the earldom of Gloucester. The same problems arose with the other brother-in-law and coheir of the Gloucester inheritance, Hugh Audley the younger. To Despenser, the lords Damory and Audley were not brothers-in-law but rivals.

The rivalry did not stop at Despenser's kin. In
1265
the grandfather of Roger Mortimer had killed Despenser's grandfather in battle, at Evesham, and it was no secret that Despenser wanted revenge. It was said that he had sworn to destroy Roger Mortimer and his uncle, Lord Mortimer of Chirk.
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When Roger Mortimer and his uncle sought to buy the lordship of Gower, Despenser took action to secure it for himself. Another Marcher lord, John Mowbray, attempted to buy it and consequently fell out with him. Despenser persuaded the king to confiscate it on the basis that it had been obtained illegally, which it had not, merely being transferred in the way that Marcher lands were usually passed on. This united the Marcher lords behind Mowbray and against Despenser. Lord Clifford was another rival, as his mother held several valuable estates which Despenser coveted. Most of all, Despenser had an implacable enemy in Ea
rl Thomas of Lancaster, Edward II
's cousin, and when Lancaster spoke nearly all of the north of England listened. This was no local squabble brewing: this was a full-scale civil war between the northern and the Marcher lords, supported by many south-western knights, against the loyalists in the south and east.

This is the reason why it is important to know who was close to the prince in
1320-21.
As the baronial revolt - the 'Despenser War' - developed, he would not have been shielded from the news. Nor would he have seen things only through his father's eyes. His guardian, Richard Damory, was torn between supporting the king on the one side, and his brother

Roger and his former lord, the earl of Hereford, on the other. Lord Mauley initially sided with the rebels too. When war finally broke out, the king imprisoned Sir Richard Damory in Banbury
Castle
.
3G
This explains why the eight-year-old Edward was summoned to parliament in the autumn of
1320,
and why he probably remained at court thereafter. There was a real danger he would get caught up in the Despenser War, or at least become subject to the influence of the king's enemies.

If young Edward was confused by the rapid development of the situation in the autumn of
1320,
he would have been appalled by the eventual outcome. In
1321,
after persuading the king to order
the
banishment of both of the Despensers, the rebel lords were all pardoned for any action they had taken against the favourites. But no sooner was this done than the king raised an army to seek a bloody revenge on those who had forced his hand. In January
1322
Roger Mortimer and his uncle pragmatically surrendered to t
he king at Shrewsbury; and shorrt
y afterwards the two lords Audley did likewise. But the rest refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, and retreated to the north, to stand alongside the earl of Lancaster. On
11
March the king declared that everyone who opposed him was a traitor. Five days later, at Boroughbridge, the long-expected
battle
took place, and Sir Andrew Harclay, acting for the king, was victorious. But young Edward would not have heard the news with any joy. Roger Damory was dea
d, mortally injured in the battl
e. The earl of Hereford was dead, killed with a spear thrust up from underneath the bridge into his anus. Most shocking of all was his father's action against the earl of Lancaster. It was utterly inglorious, horrifying even. Edward II ordered his own cousin - a member of the royal family - to be beheaded. He ordered Lord Clifford and Lord Mowbray to be hanged at York. He ordered Sir Henry Willington and Sir Henry Montfort to be hanged at Bristol, Lord Giffard and Sir Roger Elmbridge to be hanged at Gloucester. And so on. All around the country, at the king's order, lords and knights were hanged singly or in pairs in the towns nearest to their lands. Sir Henry le Tyeys, who had been sheriff of Oxfordshire after Richard Damory, and who had then been Edward's constable in the Isle of Wight was hanged in London.
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And the king ordered their bodies to remain hanging, never to be cut down, but to remain decaying in chains. It was two years before their dessicated and bird-picked remains were finally removed for Christian burial.

We do not know whether Edward was present to see his cousin the earl of Lancaster beheaded, or whether he saw any of those whom he knew on the gallows, but we may be certain that he knew what had happened, and that his father was responsible. His own vassals had been ordered to assemble to take part in the conflict, and, two days before the
battle
, he himself was summoned to attend the parliament which took place in the wake of the executions. There his father asserted his new authority. He ordered all legal proceedings against the Despensers to be quashed. He ordered his niece, the wife of Hugh Audley the younger, to remain a prisoner at Sempringham.Wives of rebels were to be arrested, as well as their husbands, all their lands forfeit. The sons of Roger Mortimer and the late earl of Hereford were locked up in Windsor
Castle
. The king's opponents were all dead or imprisoned. One pro-Lancastrian author now described the king fearfully as 'like a lion'. His new-found confidence suggested that he himself believed a new era had dawned. With Despenser to advise him he felt confident enough to order a new campaign in
Scotland
to reclaim the kingdom he had lost through years of neglect. Perhaps he had in mind his part of the Prophecy of the Six Ki
ngs - that the 'goat' (Edward II
) would fight with his relation, the 'bear', and would lose much of his land but then he would 'regain what he had lost, and more'. He might have interpreted Lancaster as being the bear, and Scotland as the lands he had lost. If so, he was deluding himself. Perhaps he also deluded his son, but even if he did it is unlikely that the young prince ever forgot that his father began - and ruthlessly terminated - a controversy over a favourite which resulted in the deaths or imprisonment of many of the men whom he had met and looked up to in his childhood.

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The
battle
of Boroughbridge totally changed the political scene in England. The king and his favourite were dramatically in the ascendant. Edward himself would have noted the political change reflected in the personnel around him. His officers were replaced with pro-Despenser clerks. Nicholas Hugate was replaced by a one-time Despenser servant, William Cusance, a Burgundian. It is likely that Edward's new steward, John Claroun, another Burgundian, attained his post through his connections with Cusance and Despenser
.
Despenser's men officiated on behalf of the prince, and probably oversaw his education. Edward did not dislike these new men -
Cusance, for instance, rem
ained in royal service for many
years and was later directly appointed to important positions by Edward himself - but nonetheless, Despenser's influence and the widespread resentment it caused cannot have escaped Edward's attention. And this would have been accentuated by one person more than any other: Edward's mother.

Queen Isabella loathed Hugh Despenser. After the Scottish campaign of September
1322,
which was an utter disaster and almost cost Isabella her life, she blamed Hugh Despenser personally. When four years later, she got the chance to speak her mind publicly, she accused him of abandoning her, and putting her life in peril. She also accused him of 'often dishonouring her and damaging her noble state, of cruelty towards her' and of 'ousting her from her lands' and hindering her relationship with her husband. Eleanor Despenser - Despenser's wife - had more influence over the king than Isabella herself, even to the point where the queen needed Eleanor's help to get the king's approval for her requests. This suggests that something a little more unusual than mere estrangement was going on, possibly involving an incestuous relationship between Edward II and his niece and an attempt by Despenser to have sex with Isabella
.
But whatever the nature of Isabella's hatred for Despenser, it was sharp and never lessened in intensity.

Edward, though young, was having to grow up fast. He was certainly at the Tower on
17
February
1323,
when he dined with his mother. That day Isabella was probably in communication with the king's prisoner in the Tower, Roger Mortimer. Isabella spent much of
1323
and
1324
in London, and almost certainly saw a great deal of Edward and her other children, including the youngest, Joan (born in
1321).
But these were not happy times for her. As Despenser's authority grew, hers waned. After the escape of Roger Mortimer from the Tower and his reception 'with great honour' in France in August
1323,
the king barely acknowledged her. In September
1324
he removed her children John and Eleanor from her, and put them in die care of Eleanor Despenser. He confiscated Isabella's income. In November he left her just eight marks per day
(£5 6s 8d)
for food and drink for herself and all her staff. The French people in her household were arrested - a particularly vindictive move in view of Isabella being French - and she was forbidden to do anything to help them. Even the Launge family, who had been so ostentatiously rewarded by the king for telling him of the birth of his heir, were thrown into prison, their endowment still almost entirely unpaid. If Isabella had any solace in the dark days of late
1324,
it was the occasional company of her eldest son, Edward, now twelve years of age.