Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (18 page)

The letter was a masterpiece of diplomatic evasion. Almost a year earlier, the Earl of Kent and the clerk Taunton had been in Avignon. However, the Pope was at pains not to deny that such a story was told to him, only that he didn’t believe it, hence his silence for almost a year. He lays great emphasis on the public funeral. He protests his innocence but his doubts are tangible. His references to the obsequies at Gloucester are highly ironic. Had he seen through Isabella’s strategies? Pope John XXII already had the measure of Isabella and Mortimer. He didn’t tell them everything he knew, including the fact that the young King himself was now engaged in secret correspondence with the papacy, in direct opposition to his mother and Mortimer.

The story about the demon-raising friar in Kensington may have been a deliberate distortion by Mortimer and Isabella. The ‘Dominican’ in question was probably Thomas Dunheved’s brother, Stephen, who, despite the best efforts of government agents, was still busy around the country on behalf of his former royal master. Kent may have been gullible but he would hardly commit high treason simply because a Dominican claimed he had been visited by the devil. In her letter to the Pope of 24 March 1330, Isabella repeats this story, knowing full well that it would put the focus on Kent as well as the source of his conspiracy.
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Nor would Kent have been able to convince others that his brother was still alive on the strength of a lurid story told to him by some devil-raising friar. The list of notable accomplices is quite extensive: the astute and saintly Melton, Archbishop of York, joined the conspiracy,
pledging
£
5000. Melton, indeed, appears to have played a prominent part in actively encouraging Kent. The rest of his supporters were either fervent opponents of Mortimer or the heirs and adherents of de Spencer, who had managed to survive the crash of October 1326. The conspiracy, then, was widespread, even though the Earl of Kent was highly unpopular.

On 18 and 22 March the arrest of the principal plotters was ordered. On the 31st a list of more minor figures implicated was publicly distributed to the sheriffs. On the 21 March and 13 April 1330, commissioners, with wide, sweeping powers, were despatched into Norfolk, Suffolk and Northampton to search out and arrest possible adherents of the Earl of Kent. All were imprisoned and the more important, including the Archbishop of York, indicted for high treason before King’s Bench. Proclamations were also issued on 13 April 1330, condemning people who persisted in spreading rumours that Edward II was still alive.
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On the one hand, Kent’s conspiracy may appear lightweight and eccentric. A more critical examination demonstrates that it was well supported and far reaching, which explains how Isabella and Mortimer learnt about Kent’s activities long before the Winchester Parliament of March 1330. Kent arrived back from France on 10 December 1329, when he rejoined the court at Kenilworth. According to his confession, two friar preachers, one called Edmund Savage, the other simply ‘John’, were ‘the chief dealers in this matter’. The
Brut Chronicle
claims these friars approached Kent once he was back in England. They confirmed the rumour that Edward was still alive and claimed they had discovered that he was being kept at Corfe Castle. Isabella and Mortimer were responsible
for infiltrating the Earl of Kent’s clique with ‘agents provocateurs’. The two Dominicans, Edmund Savage and ‘Brother John’ were never included in the lists of those to be arrested, nor has any documentary evidence of their existence ever been found. Possibly they were Isabella’s own agents, luring Kent towards treason. Three months earlier, on 24 September 1329, John Maltravers, who had been associated with Berkeley in the custody of the deposed King, had been made custodian of Corfe Castle. Maltravers was later accused, together with Mortimer, of luring Kent to his death: it seems possible his appointment was part of the counter-plot and may prove that, as early as the autumn of 1329, Isabella and Mortimer’s agents had informed them of Kent’s conspiracy.
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Isabella and Mortimer had the Earl of Kent watched but, as Kent made clear in his own confession, the conspiracy was generally spread by word of mouth. Consequently, tangible proof of Kent’s treason had to be found. Two further agents now emerged, Bogo Bayouse and John Deverel. They were later rewarded for their part in ‘discovering the plot’. Bogo Bayouse was one of Mortimer’s men; Deverel was described as a King’s yeoman and a member of the garrison at Corfe Castle.
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They encouraged Kent in his treason by showing him potential proof that Edward of Caernarvon was still alive, and persuaded the Earl of Kent and his wife to write letters to the deposed King. The Kents did this and Mortimer struck. The Earl was not immediately arrested; instead, a Parliament was called at Winchester, where Mortimer, who held the incriminating letters, challenged Kent before the King’s coroner.

Kent might have expected a pardon: ‘He wholly submitted himself to the King’s will, to come in his shirt to
London or in this city barefoot, or where so ever the King shall appoint, with a rope round his neck, to do with him what it shall please.’ Isabella and Mortimer, however, were in a hurry to get rid of him. The opening lines of Kent’s confession give the impression that he was tried before the coroner and then repeated his confession before his peers in Parliament on 16 March. In fact, in early April rumours were circulating that Kent had been deprived of a fair trial and that once he had confessed he was hustled out to execution; his confession was later read out before Parliament. On 12 March, Kent’s goods and chattels were taken into the King’s hands. He was still alive on the 14th, detained under house arrest, when his wife and children were ordered to be confined in Salisbury Castle. By the 15th he must have been dead, as a reference in a proclamation is made ‘To the late Earl of Kent’.
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According to the chronicles, Kent was condemned to death on 14 March and his pleas for mercy were totally ignored. Isabella herself played a decisive hand in his death. She swore ‘By her father’s soul that she would have justice’. Frightened that her son might exercise clemency, Isabella issued the order for the bailiffs of Winchester to have Kent summarily executed. The bailiffs, terrified at the responsibility thrust on them and aware that Kent’s trial and condemnation had been irregular, led him out to the execution ground near the city gates, but they could find no one to carry out the sentence. The hapless Earl, dressed only in his shirt, waited there all day until shortly around Vespers. A dung-collector from the city prison was bribed with a pardon and carried out the sentence of decapitation.
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‘
Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est:
Do not fear to kill Edward, it is a good thing.’

‘
Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est:
Do not kill Edward, it is good to be afraid.’

Message sent by Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford,
to Edward II’s gaolers, September 1327,
Chronicle of Geoffrey Baker of Swynbroke

T
he old adage ‘those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad’, sums up the fall of Isabella and Mortimer in the autumn of 1330. Astute observers like Pope John XXII, who tried his best to advise them, realized their collapse was inevitable. Isabella had destroyed one tyranny and replaced it with another. Wales was seething with discontent: exiles abroad were plotting invasion. There was unrest in both London and the shires around the capital. Although there appeared to be no opposition from the barons – Kent was dead, Lancaster anxious not to suffer a similar fate – the real focus of discontent was in the royal household. The young King Edward III, married
and now expecting an heir, watched the events of 1330 with growing anxiety. In less than three years Mortimer had achieved the destruction of two princes of royal blood: a King and his half-brother.

Later in the fifteenth century, during the Wars of the Roses, such violence became the norm but even then it was a case of generals and captains of defeated forces facing a military tribunal and summary execution on the edge of a battlefield or in the market square of some provincial town. Edmund of Kent’s destruction had been illegal, violent and without precedent. A prince and half-brother to a King, uncle to another, was hustled from court, his pleas for mercy ignored, and made to stand before a city gate before a drunken dung-collector was bribed to kill him.

The Earl of March’s arrogance was now notorious, with his tournaments, Round Tables and the constant emphasis on his mythical ancestry. Did Mortimer harbour secret notions of becoming King and wiping out the House of Plantaganet? Did he intend to marry Isabella and beget a new dynasty? There is some proof that Isabella was pregnant by him though we have no firm evidence. Mortimer certainly saw himself as Master of the Kingdom, as did the Queen. According to Swynbroke, by 1330 Mortimer even refused to give way to the young King, relating to him as if he was his equal.
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Edward III looked around him for support. He may have received passive assistance from Lancaster but, when he struck, the young King showed a shrewdness beyond his years. He gave a glimpse of his diplomatic skills after 1330, which would enable him to unite the baronage around him and bring to an end the bitter court-faction politics and the threat of civil war which had plagued the kingdom since
his father’s accession in 1307. Edward III put his trust in no one except the clerks and knights from his own household, in particular, the young William Montague and Edward’s personal secretary, the scholar Richard Bury, Keeper of his Privy Seal.

Edward III also needed the Church, the blessing of the papacy and, at least, the tacit support of the bishops. In September 1329, William Montague visited the Pope at Avignon. Montague explained to John XXII the restrictions under which the young King was having to work. The Pope replied that Edward III should use some secret sign in his letters so he could distinguish between letters sent by the King from those merely sent in his name. It is remarkable how the Pope was so eager to offer Edward his counsel and support. One wonders if the Pope had offered the same support to the Earl of Kent. It also demonstrates the Pope’s growing dislike of Mortimer and Isabella: their open adultery and acquisitiveness had lost them support amongst the episcopacy, except for one perennial time-server, Henry Burghesh, Bishop of Lincoln. Prelates like Adam Orleton, now Bishop of Worcester, must have briefed the Pope on the precious pair ruling England. The papacy realized that it was only a matter of time before Mortimer and Isabella made a mistake and followed the de Spencers into the dark.

On his return to England, William Montague reported back to the King and Richard Bury. Edward III immediately wrote to Pope John XXII informing him that, only letters beginning with the words ‘
Pater Sancte
’ (Oh Holy Father) would come direct from him, anything else was the work of Isabella and Mortimer. Edward’s letter also stipulated that he would use the secret sign to promote people
of his own household, particularly to bishoprics.
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The Queen Mother was intent on controlling the Church and recommended men such as her secretary Robert Wyville to the powerful bishopric of Salisbury, a cleric whom the chronicler Murimouth dismisses ‘As of little learning and even less personality’.
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Slowly Edward built up his own party. Montague and Bury were joined by court knights such as William Clinton and Robert Ufford. Montague was made Commander of the King’s guard. He signed a contract to stay by the King with twenty men-at-arms for life.
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Such a force was essential. Mortimer was no fool and wherever he went a huge retinue of ‘Wild Welshmen’ went with him. The young King had to be careful. His own household was riddled with spies whilst a guard of 200 armed men under Mortimer’s henchman, Simon de Beresford, watched his every move.
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Nevertheless, this loyal party of adherents grew, drawing in John Neville of Hornby and the Bohun brothers, William and Humphrey. Such preparations did not go unnoticed and Mortimer and Isabella were warned of the young King’s growing opposition to them. Both parties kept up a pretence of civility and court protocol. Even as late as June 1330, Isabella was calling Richard Bury her ‘dear clerk’,
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though she must have known what mischief Bury was plotting. Her son was not helpless: if Mortimer could spy on him and buy information, then Edward could do likewise. A considerable number of Mortimer’s adherents, Oliver Ingham and Thomas Berkeley, as well as the high-ranking clerk John Wisham, were all rather suspiciously well treated by Edward after Mortimer’s fall.
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The real problem was how ‘to bell the cat’, or ‘eat the dog’. Mortimer and Isabella were always
accompanied by a well-armed retinue and it would be difficult to seize them.

In the autumn of 1330 a Parliament was called at Nottingham. It opened with Council meetings on Monday, 15 October, where the deep animosities of the court surfaced. Mortimer and Isabella were informed by spies that the young King was looking for an opportunity to overthrow them. Isabella and Mortimer panicked. They moved into Nottingham Castle, put guards on every exit, ordered the castle to be barred at night, while Isabella herself kept the keys to the gates.
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Mortimer, highly nervous, lashed out. He accused Henry, Earl of Lancaster, of being involved in fresh plots against him. Lancaster, now going blind, protested his innocence. Mortimer insisted, and Lancaster had no choice but to move his entire household from the city to what Mortimer considered a safe distance of three miles from Nottingham.

Mortimer then went on the attack: regular Council sessions constantly reaffirmed his own authority. This proved too much for young Montague, an outspoken, hot-headed young man. He shouted abuse at Mortimer: for the first time ever the Marcher Lord was openly and formally accused of being directly responsible for Edward II’s death.
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This proved to be the last straw for Mortimer and Isabella. A court of inquiry was set up, with Mortimer acting as prosecutor and judge. Early on Friday, 19 October, the inquiry, headed by Mortimer and Isabella, and supported by the Bishops of Salisbury and London, summoned Montague and his companions, individually, for close interrogation.