Edward II: The Unconventional King (28 page)

After the meeting with Lancaster at Pontefract, the Marchers returned to the west of England and Wales with a great armed force.
²⁶
By now, it was clear to everyone that Edward would go after the men who had had the nerve to attack his friends, kill, assault and rob his subjects, hold castles against him, and steal from him personally, ‘because they had taken for their own use and wasted the goods of the exiles, which ought rather to have gone to the treasury’.
²⁷
On 30 November 1321 he began to make preparations for a campaign against the Marchers, despite the season – in the interests of his friends, he was no longer ‘paralysed by sloth’, as the
Flores
describes him.
²⁸
The alacrity with which he set off against the Marchers in the dead of winter stands in stark contrast to his frequent postponement and cancellation of Scottish campaigns. Queen Isabella, supporting her husband, allowed Edward to give custody of her castles at Devizes and Marlborough to Oliver Ingham and Robert Lewer (whom Edward had forgiven).
²⁹
Edward issued a safe-conduct for Hugh Despenser to return to England on 8 December, and the same was issued to Hugh Despenser the Elder on Christmas Day.
³⁰

Edward spent the first few days of December 1321 at Westminster and Isleworth. He sent a letter on the 10th to the treasurer, Walter de Norwich, asking him to ‘provide sixteen pieces of cloth for the apparelling of ourselves and our dear companion [Isabella], also furs, against the next feast of Christmas’, also ordering more cloth and linen for Isabella and her damsels and ‘other things of which we stand in need, against the great feast’. He paid £115 for these items.
³¹
He then travelled to Cirencester, accompanied by the earls of Kent, Norfolk, Pembroke, Richmond, Surrey, Arundel, Atholl and Angus, and additionally, ‘many powerful barons … promised to lend aid to the lord king’.
³²
He spent Christmas 1321 at Cirencester, spending eighty-seven pounds on the festivities, while Queen Isabella probably remained at Langley.
³³

The king wrote on 4 January to ten of the bishops who had not attended Walter Reynolds’ convocation in December, asking their opinion on the judgement that the Despensers’ exile had been unlawful and should be revoked, demanding a response ‘without delay’.
³⁴
Thomas Cobham, bishop of Worcester, endorsed the verdict, but Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter – who would be murdered in 1326 for his alliance with Edward and the Despensers – responded that although the judgement was unjust, only parliament could revoke it. An annoyed Edward rebuked Stapeldon for sending such a churlish reply and ordered the bishop to send a different answer and to come to him in person immediately. Stapeldon, a principled man, courageously risked the king’s wrath and repeated his first answer.
³⁵

Before Edward’s arrival in the west, the Marchers had seized Gloucester and thus controlled the bridge over the Severn. When they heard that the king was approaching Gloucestershire, they fled from him rather than engage him in battle, although their army was nearly four times bigger than his, burning and devastating the countryside as they went.
³⁶
Too afraid to confront the king directly, they once more vented their anger and frustration on innocents.
³⁷
The Marchers were desperately hoping for the earl of Lancaster’s support, but he failed to come to their aid – although he had begun besieging the royal castle of Tickhill near Doncaster by 10 January, presumably because its constable William Aune was Edward’s spy in the north.
³⁸
On 5 January, Edward sent letters to the pope and his brother-in-law Philip V of France, unaware that Philip had died three days earlier, and on the 9th, renewed the safe-conduct for Hugh Despenser.
³⁹

The Marchers retreated up the western side of the Severn, burning the bridges as they went to prevent Edward and his army crossing, but still not daring to confront him directly. Roger Mortimer, his uncle Roger Mortimer of Chirk and the earl of Hereford arrived in Bridgnorth before Edward, and ‘made a serious attack upon the king. They burned a great part of the town and killed very many of the king’s servants’.
⁴⁰
Edward ordered the constable of Bristol Castle to arrest those who had beaten, wounded and killed townspeople, stolen ‘garments, jewels, beasts and other goods,’ and imprisoned people ‘until they made grievous ransoms’.
⁴¹
The
Vita
says bitterly that in 1322 the Marchers ‘killed those who opposed them, [and] plundered those who offered no resistance, sparing no one’.
⁴²
Edward sent men to attack the lands of his former chamberlain John Charlton, whose son and heir was married to one of Roger Mortimer’s daughters, forcing Charlton to leave his allies to go to defend his lands.
⁴³
Edward pardoned Charlton some months later, which in 1326 would prove to have been a bad mistake.
⁴⁴

Edward arrived at Shrewsbury on 14 January and finally gained the west bank of the Severn. He offered safe-conducts to those Marchers who were in the vicinity, the earl of Hereford and both Roger Mortimers, to come to him.
⁴⁵
Edward pointedly excluded Bartholomew Badlesmere by name from the safe-conducts, which demonstrates his fury at Badlesmere’s switching sides; Edward II was not a man to forgive and forget a betrayal. Hereford did not go to the king, but on 22 January the two Roger Mortimers ‘deserted their allies, and threw themselves on the king’s mercy’.
⁴⁶
The
Vita
goes on to say that the other Marchers were astonished and tearful at this desertion, but in fact the Mortimers had little choice but to submit to Edward: Sir Gruffydd Llwyd, a staunch ally of the king, and the violent Robert Lewer had been attacking their lands, the Mortimers’ men were deserting them, and they were running out of money. On 13 February, the two men were taken to be imprisoned in the Tower of London.
⁴⁷
Given the numerous crimes they had committed and encouraged in the previous few months – homicide, assault, theft, plunder, vandalism, false imprisonment, extortion – this fate was hardly undeserved, and a petition to Edward from ‘the community of Wales’ later that year begged the king not to let them return there.
⁴⁸

Edward took to calling the baronial rebels the ‘Contrariants’ around this time.
⁴⁹
Claiming that Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford, was supporting them, Edward publicly upbraided him when he reached Hereford, and went hunting in Orleton’s parks with his brother the earl of Kent, without Orleton’s permission.
⁵⁰
He spent thirty-five pounds to celebrate the feast of the Purification on 2 February at Hereford.
⁵¹
On 6 February, Lord Berkeley and Hugh Audley the Elder, father of Edward’s former favourite, surrendered to Edward, who sent them to prison at Wallingford Castle. The following day he took Berkeley Castle into his own hands, unaware of the tragic role it would play in his life in 1327.
⁵²
The remaining Contrariants fled towards Yorkshire to seek refuge with the earl of Lancaster, their last hope of defeating Edward. Lancaster, using the pseudonym ‘King Arthur’, wrote to Robert Bruce’s adherent James Douglas to inform him that the earl of Hereford, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and even the hated Bartholomew Badlesmere had come to him at Pontefract. The men were, treasonably, prepared to treat with the Scots, as long as the Scots did what had previously been discussed: ‘to come to our aid, and to go with us in England and Wales’ and ‘live and die with us in our quarrel’.
⁵³
Although Bruce remarked of Lancaster, ‘How will a man who cannot keep faith with his own lord keep faith with me?’ the Scots king was willing to take advantage of anything or anyone that might distract Edward from Scotland and sow discord in England.
⁵⁴
Lancaster had been suspected for some years of conspiring with the Scots; it was noticed that when their forces raided the north of England, they left his lands alone, and although Lancaster had a great army at Pontefract, he did not attempt to pursue the Scottish raiders.

Edward pointed out in a letter to Lancaster that joining the Contrariants would render him guilty of treason.
⁵⁵
His cousin responded untruthfully that he had drawn no rebels to himself, nor was he accustomed to nourish rebels, but if he knew where such were to be found, he would kill them or expel them from the country.
⁵⁶
Precisely when Edward decided to attack Lancaster is not clear, but it is possible that he had had it in mind for a long time; the man who had stated at the siege of Berwick in September 1319, ‘I have not forgotten the wrong that was done to my brother Piers’ was hardly likely to miss the opportunity to go after Lancaster and finally take revenge for the death of Gaveston. Still working on the principle of dividing and conquering his enemies, he may well have gambled that Lancaster would not intervene and help the Marchers until it was too late, as indeed happened. Edward knew his cousin well; he knew of his lethargy and his desire to stay at his favourite castle of Pontefract and take little active role in events while he did his best to control them from a distance. He also understood his cousin’s willingness to allow his personal feuds, the most obvious example being Bartholomew Badlesmere, to affect his political decisions; after all, he did exactly the same thing himself. Lancaster’s siege of Tickhill Castle gave him the excuse he needed to mount a campaign against his overbearing cousin, and on 13 February, he announced his intention of going to raise the siege.
⁵⁷
The king also issued another safe-conduct for the Despensers to return to England.
⁵⁸
By 16 February he had heard that Charles IV, Queen Isabella’s only surviving brother, had succeeded Philip V as king of France, and asked him to send men to help him fight Lancaster and the Contrariants. Given that Charles was Lancaster’s nephew, this was a rather impertinent request.
⁵⁹

Edward left Gloucester on 18 February, captured the earl of Lancaster’s great Warwickshire stronghold of Kenilworth on the 26th, and arrived at Coventry the following day. By 1 March, William Melton, archbishop of York, had discovered the treasonable correspondence between Lancaster and Scotland and sent it to Edward, who ordered him, the archbishop of Canterbury and all his sheriffs to make the letters public.
⁶⁰
Edward wrote on the same day to the barons and men of Winchelsea that they should ‘bear in mind how the king began what he has now done in part by their counsel lately given to the king on the water’, and reminded them that they had promised to help him wherever he went.
⁶¹
When Edward met the sailors of Winchelsea at sea is uncertain; presumably it had something to do with Hugh Despenser’s piracy or the attack on Southampton. The Despensers met Edward on 3 March, bringing a large number of armed men with them. Edward must have been overjoyed to be reunited with Hugh Despenser, though no doubt most people were considerably less thrilled that the avaricious favourite and his unpopular father had returned. On the day he met them, Edward asked the Dominicans of Vienna to pray for himself, Isabella and their children.
⁶²
In a splendid piece of theatre, Hugh Despenser prostrated himself in the snow before the king, arms outstretched, and begged Edward not to unfurl his banners against the opposition, which would mean an outright declaration of war.
⁶³

Hearing of Edward’s advance, the earls of Lancaster and Hereford and their allies left Pontefract on 1 March, broke the siege of Tickhill, and took up position at Burton-on-Trent near Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, which belonged to Lancaster. Edward seized Lancaster’s vast lands on 3 March.
⁶⁴
The Contrariants held the bridge at Burton against the king, but after three days of skirmishing their army was outflanked and they fled back to Pontefract. Edward pronounced them traitors, and ordered all the sheriffs of England, the justice of Chester and the bishop of Durham to arrest Lancaster, Hereford, Damory, Audley, Badlesmere, and others. Edward’s letter also mentions that he had been unable to cross the fords because of flooding, and the Sempringham annalist says that the earl of Lancaster lost many supplies ‘through a great flood of water’ when travelling from Pontefract to Tutbury on 1 March.
⁶⁵
The Rochester chronicler says that snow lay on the ground for most of the first three months of 1322, and that the roads were hazardous, impeding Edward’s progress; presumably a temporary thaw and a mass of melted snow caused the flooding.
⁶⁶
Edward reached Tutbury on 11 March, where the rebels had left some of their goods behind at the priory, including a barrel of sturgeon worth three pounds. The prior presented it to Edward, who allowed him to keep it, although he ordered the prior to send the other goods, which included jewels, to John Sturmy and Giles of Spain, squires of his chamber.
⁶⁷
The king also seized a vessel of gold and silver valued at over £140, which belonged to Roger Damory.
⁶⁸

When the Contrariants fled from Burton-on-Trent, they left Damory, who had been badly wounded while trying to prevent the royal army crossing the river, behind. He was condemned to the traitor’s death, but the court informed him that because Edward had loved him well in the past, the king would respite the punishment – although the charge of treason stood, which meant that Damory’s heir, his daughter Elizabeth, and her descendants were perpetually disinherited.
⁶⁹
Damory died of his wounds at Tutbury Priory on 12 March, though
Lanercost
and the
French Chronicle of London
give ‘grief’ as the cause of his death, and his widow Edward’s niece Elizabeth claimed in 1326, rather disingenuously, that he was ‘pursued and oppressed until he died’.
⁷⁰
The less sympathetic
Vita
points out that Damory was an impoverished knight who rose to prominence through the king’s favour, so that when he turned against Edward ‘many marked him down as ungrateful’.
⁷¹
Edward was not present at his deathbed, having moved on to Derby; how he felt about the man he had once loved dying in rebellion against him is a matter for speculation.