Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (10 page)

Isabella was incensed by this harrowing experience at Tynemouth. According to the chroniclers, she held de Spencer personally responsible and four years later, when de Spencer was arraigned for trial, the deliberate desertion of the Queen at Tynemouth was one of the principal allegations levelled against him. It would be easy to dismiss such accusations as groundless, that Isabella’s experiences at Tynemouth were merely the fortunes of war. Moreover, Edward’s letters showed that Isabella, even when in considerable physical danger, refused to have Hugh de Spencer the Younger anywhere near her. She hated him, found his presence offensive and certainly would not have entrusted her safety and security to his hands. Subsequently, the rancour between them grew. This animosity was not just due to de Spencer’s rapacity, his cruelty to high-born ladies or even the execution of knights who had once served in her household. More than anything Isabella feared de Spencer’s influence and control over her husband: she suspected that he would be only too pleased to see the back of her, whether in some lonely Scottish castle or a Flemish port. In Isabella’s eyes, the débâcle at Tynemouth was a deliberate attempt to get rid of her.

Relations between Isabella and her husband now became very strained. Edward protested that he had done his best in the north and turned on Isabella’s friends, the Beaumonts. In February 1323 Edward took Louis de Beaumont, Bishop of Durham, to task. He reminded Louis that he had been appointed to that powerful bishopric at the request of his friends, including the Queen, because they said he’d be ‘a stone wall against the Scots’. Three months later Louis’s
brother Henry also quarrelled bitterly with the King at a council meeting on 30 May 1323 at Bishopsthorpe. Angry words were exchanged and Henry was asked to leave the meeting. He replied he could think of nothing better, for which contumacy he was placed under arrest.
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Isabella was not present at the meeting at Bishopsthorpe. She and her husband were now living separate lives. On 23 December 1322 Edward had informed his sheriffs that his Queen was about to embark on several long pilgrimages to various places in the kingdom. Isabella’s absence from the court was to last almost a year until 13 October 1323. She did rejoin her husband for a short while but their deteriorating relationship became only too apparent. Isabella no longer exercised patronage, received gifts or any of the plunder taken by the de Spencers from their defeated opponents. De Spencer, meanwhile, was strengthening his control over the King. Nobles like Henry de Beaumont were being forced to take great oaths on the gospels, ‘To live and die with the de Spencers’. Isabella was offered such an oath but refused to take it.
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The King’s new favourite was determined to reduce Isabella to a mere cipher.

In 1324 de Spencer seized on a new opportunity to denigrate the Queen. The new French King, Isabella’s brother, Charles IV, resurrected the Gascon question. Once again England and France edged towards war. De Spencer had no love for France. Charles IV was sheltering exiles from Boroughbridge and further, in 1321, the French had refused de Spencer sanctuary or permission to dock in French ports.
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Edward reminded Charles IV that peace between England and France was the reason he had married Isabella in the first place. Charles ignored this. Edward and
de Spencer retaliated. On 18 September 1324, under the pretext of a possible French attack, all of Isabella’s lands were taken back by the King, and on 18 November, Edward instructed the Exchequer to take over the running of Isabella’s household.
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In addition he ordered the arrest and imprisonment of all Frenchmen in England as well as the confiscation of their property. This was clearly intended to hurt Isabella directly. Twenty-seven French members of her retinue, including her chaplains, her doctor Theobald and the Launge family, were imprisoned under reduced circumstances in monasteries and convents throughout the kingdom.
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And even greater cruelty was to come: the Queen’s young children were removed from her and entrusted to Eleanor de Spencer, Hugh the Younger’s wife, and another court favourite, Isabella Hastings.
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Both England and France now drifted into war over the duchy of Gascony. Edmund, Earl of Kent, the King’s half-brother and Commander-in-Chief of English forces there, made a complete mess of the military defence of the duchy. Charles IV pressed his assault while demanding that his sister be treated more fairly. At length the French grew more insolent, insisting that Edward come to France and negotiate over their mutual difficulties. De Spencer was terrified of the King leaving the kingdom. All of his opponents were sheltering at the French court and the favourite had good reason to believe that Edward might be seized, even assassinated, while abroad.

In fact, by 1324, de Spencer was living in a nightmare. Secret agents were stealing into England, despatched by exiled Lancastrians to kill the King and his favourites, although the plot was discovered and the agents caught.
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At the same time a magician, John of Nottingham, appeared
before King’s Bench, accused of making wax effigies of the King and his favourites in an attempt to slay them by necromancy.
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De Spencer, fearful of being killed by black magic, wrote to the Pope asking for his special protection. John XXII replied: ‘In answer to his complaint that he is threatened by magical and secret dealings, the Holy Father recommends him [i.e. de Spencer] to turn to God with his whole heart and make a good confession and such satisfaction as shall be enjoined. No other remedies are necessary beyond this general indulgence which the Pope grants him.’ The Pope also wrote to de Spencer complaining at the harsh treatment of Edward’s Queen and sharply upbraided him for his lack of good government.
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More practical reasons existed for Edward and de Spencer’s reluctance to leave England. Despite their great victory at Boroughbridge, the country was seething with unrest. Criminal gangs, such as the Folvills of Leicestershire, were terrorizing their neighbours and waging a private war. Prisoners at Wallingford Castle, led by Maurice Berkeley, nearly broke out but were recaptured.
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Edward II, faced with crises, both at home and abroad, reluctantly agreed in February 1325 that Isabella was the best person to represent his interests in France. He failed to realize that the Queen’s departure to France was the result of a carefully laid plot.

By 9 March 1325 Isabella was in France with strict instructions to be back by midsummer. The Queen arrived in Paris where she successfully arranged a new truce over Gascony and despatched a loving letter to her husband, explaining how she could not return immediately because of outstanding problems over the duchy.
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She kept Edward informed of proceedings and spent her leisure time visiting churches and entertaining dignitaries.
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Edward was supposed
to join her in Paris but was still reluctant to leave England: the de Spencers were fearful of accompanying him yet did not wish to be left in England by themselves. Eventually it was decided that, instead of the King going to France, his thirteen-year-old son and heir would do homage for him. On 12 September 1325, the Prince of Wales left for Dover and performed homage for Gascony.
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Edward II believed a satisfactory conclusion had been reached, only to discover that the real crisis of his reign was about to emerge.

On 18 October 1325 Edward sent a letter to the Pope, complaining about the French but, more importantly, expressing deep concern at his wife’s failure to return home.
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Two weeks later, Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter and the King’s Treasurer, one of Edward II’s most faithful ministers, abruptly arrived back in England. He informed the King and the de Spencers that he had become concerned about his own personal safety in Paris. English exiles, refugees from the de Spencer regime, were now making public appearances at the French court. A plot had been hatched to kill him, forcing Stapleton to flee Paris by dead of night.
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A month later, John Stratford, the wily Bishop of Winchester, also returned to England, bringing letters from the Queen.
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She had now taken the young Prince of Wales into her custody. More dramatically, Isabella was now publicly dressing as a widow, claiming that she had lost her husband and openly announcing: ‘I feel that marriage is a joining together of man and woman, maintaining the undivided habit of life. Someone has come between my husband and myself, trying to break this bond. I protest that I will not return until this intruder has been removed but, discarding my marriage garment, I shall assume the
robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged of this Pharisee.’ Edward immediately cut off all financial payments to his wife and the crisis had begun.
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No doubt de Spencer, the intruder to whom Isabella refers, played a major role in this marital crisis. He was undoubtedly a thug, a gangster, a man with few redeeming qualities apart from courage, yet he was no worse than many of his contemporaries. Isabella may have been repelled by his treatment of widows and orphans but, during her four years of glory 1326–30, she proved herself to be no faint heart when it came to taking life or other people’s property. At this time what is striking is Isabella’s clever deception of her husband and his favourite. They apparently regarded her as a political nonenity. Isabella, however, brilliantly deceived both her husband and de Spencer, becoming so submissive and obedient they thought she posed no danger. They undoubtedly placed spies in her household whilst she travelled France and kept strict control of the purse strings. For seven months, between March and October 1325, Isabella sustained the pretence. Edward and de Spencer became so confident they then compounded their fatal mistake by allowing her eldest son, the thirteen-year-old Prince of Wales, to join her. Once she had custody of her son, the heir to the English throne, Isabella set up an alternative government in Paris, attracting all the refugees from Boroughbridge as well as two royal earls, who found it impossible to return to England because of the débâcle in Gascony – Edmund of Kent, half-brother to Edward, and the Earl of Richmond.

In one of his letters to Isabella and to her brother Charles IV, Edward expressed deep concern at the appearance of
English rebels who lay in wait for Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter. He also alluded to someone advising the Queen, the shadowy and sinister Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, who had made his first public appearance beside Isabella. In a further letter to Isabella’s uncle, Charles of Valois, dated 18 March 1326, Edward showed he now realized the full implications of Isabella’s deceit: she has forsaken him and the kingdom; she had refused to return home or acknowledge his writ, and she had set up an alternative government and was personally involved with an escaped traitor, who appeared to be both her lover and her adviser.

‘Now at last,’ Edward wrote,

When the King sent to seek her, she then showed the feigned matter for the first time, which was never heard or suspected by anyone, unless by her: wherefore, the matters being considered, one ought not to give faith to such feigned invention against the truth. But, indeed, the King fully perceives, as the King of France and everybody may, that she does not love the King as she ought to love her lord, and that the matter that she speaks of the King’s said nephew [i.e. de Spencer] for which she withdraws herself from the King, is feigned and is not certain, but the King thinks it must be of inordinate will when she, so openly and notoriously, knowingly, against her duty and the estate of the King’s crown, which she is bound to love, has drawn to her and retains in her company of her council the King’s traitor and mortal enemy the Mortimer, and others of his conspiracy, and keeps his company in and out of house, which evil-doer the King of France banished from his power
at another time as the King’s enemy, by virtue of the alliance between his and the King’s ancestors.
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This letter publicly names the person Edward holds responsible for advising the Queen – Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. The King not only accuses his Queen of treason but of sexual misconduct. The phrase ‘in and out of house’ is a diplomatic way of saying ‘in bed and out of bed’ with Mortimer. The appearance of this English rebel and his involvement with Isabella must have sent shock waves through Edward’s council. At no time, before the Queen’s departure to France, had there been even a whisper of scandal about her conduct. Now she was openly consorting with a rebel and a traitor.

Roger Mortimer of Wigmore was a contemporary of Edward and de Spencer. Born in the mid-1280s he had been knighted with the Prince and de Spencer at the great ceremony of 1306. He had then proved himself to be an ambitious Welsh magnate, intent on building up his estates both in Wales and in Ireland. Mortimer of Wigmore was also one of Edward II’s more successful generals. When Robert the Bruce had sent his brother Edward to invade Ireland in May 1315 and raise rebellion against the English Crown, Mortimer had made a successful landing on the Irish coast and brought the Gaelic tribes back under English rule. Mortimer kept to himself, on the fringes of baronial intrigue, more intent on pursuing his own ambitions along the Welsh March. Only when he and de Spencer clashed over territorial claims in South Wales did Mortimer and his uncle, Roger Mortimer of Chirk, rise in rebellion.

Both Mortimers had been defeated in the winter campaign of 1321–2. They were sent to the Tower and
kept under tight security. Incarcerated for life, Mortimer of Chirk, probably injured in the skirmishes around Shrewsbury, fell seriously ill and eventually died, either of his injuries or his treatment in the Tower. His nephew was made of sterner stuff. Late in 1322 the Mortimers were challenged about further disruption in Wales and sentenced to death. The younger Mortimer decided that if he stayed any longer in the Tower, he would either starve to death, suffer an ‘accident’ or be taken out and formally executed. A plot was hatched to free him, supported by Mortimer’s close friend and adherent, Adam Orleton, the ruffianly Bishop of Hereford. Orleton was to figure prominently in Isabella’s circle for a while. He regarded Mortimer as his patron and his stance exemplifies how de Spencer had alienated the Lords Spiritual. Very few bishops would, in the last resort, support Edward and de Spencer: they were either, like Orleton, opponents of the favourite, or, as in many cases, simple spectators. The only exception was the able and scholarly Stapleton of Exeter, founder of Exeter College in Oxford.