Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (20 page)

Gurney fell ill on the overland journey from southern Italy and thirty-nine florins were paid to physicians to treat him. Gurney, a refugee, exhausted in mind and body, and terrified of what would happen to him in England, only grew worse. Two physicians at Bayonne in Gascony were paid to tend him but their ministrations were futile and he died. Tweng, determined to carry out his task of bringing the prisoner back, dead or alive, had the body embalmed and put on board ship, which docked at Sandwich. We have no idea of what happened to the corpse afterwards but Tweng immediately travelled to the King at Berwick with his retinue of thirty men, as well as sailors from the ship, and stayed there thirteen days. Tweng probably took along his escort, as well as the sailors, to prove to the King that he had done his best for Gurney and his death had been due to natural causes rather than ill-treatment.
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Edward III’s pursuit of his father’s murderers is perplexing – none of them were arrested, whilst Berkeley, a principal player in the events of September 1327, appears to have been allowed to act with a cool arrogance. Only Gurney was singled out, not so much for punishment, but rather because the King was determined to interrogate him and discover what had really happened in the autumn of 1327. Perhaps Tweng reported what he’d learnt: after 20 July 1333, there was no further attempt to hunt down any of the regicides.

Edward III’s pursuit of Gurney in particular is mystifying.
The King had Berkeley and Maltravers close at hand, not to mention his own mother, who could tell him exactly what had happened to his father. Instead he spent quite considerable sums pursuing Gurney. Was it because Gurney had to be punished for the ill-treatment and murder of an anointed one? Or was it something only Gurney could tell him?

The Purbeck marble sarcophagus in Gloucester Cathedral, with its alabaster effigy of Edward II, is one of the finest royal tombs from the medieval period. Edward II is depicted crowned, holding in one hand an orb and, in the other, his staff or sceptre. His feet rest on a crouching lion, his head lies on a single cushion supported by angels holding censers. Apparently jewels were once set in the crown and elsewhere, and, after its construction, the whole shrine was a blaze of colour, illuminated by votive candles and flickering lamps. Such light would have given the alabaster face a striking flesh-like hue. Around the tomb were twenty-eight statues of weeping angels standing on pedestals and parts of its stone canopy were painted a dark red. The whole effect would have created an aura of spiritual mystery and sanctity. No wonder that pilgrims came to regard Edward II as a saint and his tomb as a place of pilgrimage where miracles could be wrought.

Richard II (who died in 1399), visited the tomb and had his own emblem of the White Hart placed above it. Richard also tried to persuade the papacy to canonize his great-grandfather. Of course, there is little evidence of Edward II’s life to regard him as a saint or a martyr. Richard II had his own political agenda: it made sense to have a saint in the family, a powerful warning to his own
dissident baronage that the King’s person was sacred in life and in death.

Richard II’s grandfather, Edward III, however, harboured no such aspirations for his own father. Nor was he responsible for the beautiful awe-inspiring tomb. This was due more to the good business acumen of succeeding abbots of the monastery of St Peter’s at Gloucester. In the Middle Ages relics, tombs and shrines were big business. Sacred objects, or alleged sacred objects, exchanged hands for vast amounts of money. Every cathedral and abbey dreamed of following Canterbury with its shrine of St Thomas à Becket as a magnet for pilgrims and visitors. Religion was good for trade. Pilgrims would throng into the town, generating work for shop-owners, taverners, hoteliers, who all profited, and still profit, from the pilgrims who flock to holy places. The Abbey itself would also be assured of a regular source of income. It is not surprising that a great deal of the refurbishment of St Peter’s, Gloucester, took place after Edward II’s death when his tomb became a shrine which had to be visited. Edward III may have tolerated this, even encouraged it, but there is very little evidence to show that he personally favoured or paid for the lavish shrine.

More importantly, there is no evidence of Isabella ever patronizing her husband’s tomb, or promoting it as a place of pilgrimage or reparation. Henry II of England walked barefoot through the cobbled streets of Canterbury as an act of public contrition for his involvement in the murder of Becket. Isabella may have taken Edward’s heart but there is little sign that she felt any compassion either for his remains or his soul.

Isabella herself
was
the recipient of much compassion and
clemency even though many viewed her as being as guilty as Mortimer of regicide and thought she should suffer the full rigour of the law. The northern chronicler of Lanercost Priory reported that Isabella herself feared some drastic punishment.
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She had been taken from Nottingham to the royal manor at Berkhamsted, her last cry being for her son to have mercy on gentle Mortimer. Bearing in mind that Edward had wanted to execute her lover on the spot, the delay in the Welsh Marcher’s eventual execution might have been due to the influence of Isabella. That Mortimer suffered none of the mutilation, the excruciating torments inflicted on de Spencer the Younger, may also have been the work of the Queen, as well as a quid pro quo for Mortimer not mentioning the Queen on the scaffold.

Isabella was a remarkable queen, a woman of outstanding ability, flawed by her infatuation with Mortimer. She certainly commanded the affection of her children and particularly her eldest son. Even at Nottingham, when Montague was urging him ‘To eat the dog lest the dog eat them’, Edward III betrayed a reluctance to move, rooted in fears for his mother. After Mortimer’s fall, Edward III continued to show Isabella every affection and screened her from all attacks and criticism, until her death in 1358.

Just before Christmas 1330 Isabella was moved to Windsor Castle where she stayed for the next two years under comfortable house arrest.
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The documents of the Chancery, Exchequer and Parliament are extensive and, after every
coup
, the administration was choked with petitions against those who’d held power. Yet no petitions were lodged against Isabella, nor were any references made to her scandalous private life. A whole series of crimes, the callous treatment of Edward II, the murder of Kent, whose
death she had sworn by her father’s soul, the appropriation of treasure and lands as well as the many oppressions the country suffered under her rule, were all squarely blamed on the scapegoat Mortimer. Isabella, of course, lost her vast estates but this was a voluntary surrender, made of ‘her own free will’ and no mention was made of her fall from grace.
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As early as November 1330, Edward III openly proclaimed the official attitude to be adopted towards his mother: any crimes committed during those years were the responsibility of Mortimer; no reference was to be made to Isabella’s adulterous relationship with him.

Edward III had very little to gain by concentrating on what had happened while his mother had held the reins of power. After all, in 1327 Edward III had become King, albeit a young man of fifteen, but he had done very little, according to the evidence, to save his father, his uncle, Edmund of Kent, his cousin Henry of Lancaster and many others from Mortimer’s vindictiveness. Edward III must have been highly embarrassed by what had happened between 1326 and 1330: accordingly, he adopted the attitude ‘the least said, soonest mended’. The country caught his mood and this might explain the relatively low numbers of petitions presented against Mortimer after 1330.

In the country at large there was undoubtedly relief, and some considerable glee at Mortimer’s downfall, particularly among those expert propagandists and adherents of Edward II, the preaching friars of the Dominican Order. In his ‘Commentary on the Prophets’, written shortly after December 1330, the Dominican Robert Holcott found it almost impossible to hide his pleasure at Mortimer’s disgrace, drawing a veiled comparison between Mortimer and those false kings of the Old Testament who had eventually
faced the justice and wrath of God.
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There must have been some pressure on the King and his council to survey and analyse events before Mortimer’s fall but this was muted. It was eventually brought to an end by a proclamation in January 1332, in which Edward III declared the official attitude towards the years of his minority. He and his council proclaimed that the validity of any grants was never to be questioned on the grounds that they had been made under the rule of evil councillors.
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It seems that Edward did not want his conscience pricked by what had happened during the reign of Isabella and Mortimer, and this was an attitude which prevailed for the rest of Edward’s reign.

The Queen’s followers lost some of their property but Isabella herself was no beggar queen. In January 1331 she was given the comfortable sum of
£
3000 a year which, by 1337, had risen to
£
4000.
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Isabella stayed at Windsor until March 1332. During this period of house arrest, her son must have questioned her closely about the proceedings at Berkeley Castle. Isabella must have known something: she, or Mortimer, may well have been the source of the King’s ruthless pursuit of Thomas Gurney. But at first, the Queen Mother may have been of little help. According to Agnes Strickland, Isabella was also confined at Windsor because she was afflicted with occasional fits of madness. Strickland mentions a legend that this derangement was brought about by Mortimer’s execution and mentions a groundless rumour, which prevailed for some months, that Isabella actually died at the time Mortimer’s corpse was cut down. Such hysteria is more than probable. Generous payments were made to a doctor to attend upon the Queen, who may have suffered a nervous breakdown following Mortimer’s execution. In the end, whatever the
morality of the relationship, Isabella apparently loved the Welsh Marcher with great passion and his sudden and brutal death could, for a time, have unhinged her mind.
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In March 1332, the Constable of Windsor secured repayment of ‘expenses incurred by him in safe keeping Queen Isabella in that castle for some time by the King’s order’. This very stark entry hints at confinement and detention, though this may have been due to illness rather than punishment. It also served the King well, that for almost sixteen months following Mortimer’s fall, Isabella was kept out of the public eye but close enough to London for her son to visit her.

After 1332 Isabella was allowed to lead her own life. She spent some time at Castle Rising in Norfolk and there resumed a life of luxurious ease, as the local inhabitants found to their cost. The Queen Mother cheerfully returned to her old ways, ordering supplies from local merchants and never being too eager to pay her bills.
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She also attended court and was at Pontefract with the King in June 1338. When Edward III returned from France, she stayed at the royal apartments in the Tower to celebrate the King’s birthday. Four years later, during the peace negotiations with France, the French asked that Isabella be sent to Paris to negotiate on Edward III’s behalf. Whether this was serious or not we don’t know. The French could have seen the ageing Queen as a possible aid to the peace process, but they could also have been poking quiet fun at Edward by trying to provoke memories of Isabella’s last visit to France in 1325. In the end she did not go, and the Earl of Lancaster travelled to Calais to seal the treaty in her stead.
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Isabella’s role was now that of spectator. Her daughter
Joanna, nicknamed ‘Make Peace’, married David Bruce but the marriage never brought a lasting peace between England and Scotland. David did not have the martial qualities of his father: he invaded England only to be roundly defeated and captured at the battle of Neville’s Cross. Joanna, who had won a reputation for saintliness and kindness, followed her imprisoned husband to England. Isabella’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, was married off to a nobleman in the Low Countries as part of Edward III’s attempt to build up a great alliance encircling France. John of Eltham, Isabella’s second son, died in 1336 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Others who had been involved in the great drama of Isabella’s life also died during those reclusive years including, Thomas Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, and the gaggle of bishops who had either supported or opposed her.

Isabella’s war-like grandson, the Black Prince, turned France, Spain and Northern Europe into a battleground, ravaging her home country and destroying the massed might of French chivalry at the battles of Crecy and Poitiers. She, the last Capet, saw her father’s great dream crumble into dust. Isabella must have wondered about the curse of Jacques de Molay, screamed from the flames as he burnt to death on an island in the Seine. After all, Isabella was supposed to have brought a lasting peace between England and France by her marriage to Edward II. Instead, her brothers had all died without male issue, leaving Edward III with a claim to the French throne. Isabella had, in effect, brought about a war that would last one hundred years.

The older she grew, the more pious Isabella became, in the spirit of the times, visiting shrines at Walsingham
or entertaining visitors. She was addressed as ‘Madame the Queen Mother’ or sometimes ‘Our Lady Queen Isabella’. She continued to live in some style: she went hunting, employed minstrels, was partial to a barrel of sturgeon, and generally acted as the lady of the manor. Her last household accounts book amply illustrates her life as a ‘Grande Dame’.
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Isabella wrote, and received letters from, her son the King, the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Lancaster, the Chancellor, her daughter the Queen of Scotland, Queen Philippa and the King of France. They brought her presents at New Year as well as a constant stream of gifts: casks of Bordeaux, boars’ heads, quadrants of copper and barrels of bream. The Queen Mother also loved music. She had her own small orchestra of minstrels and paid thirteen shillings and four pence to Walter Hert, one of her viola players, to go to the school of minstrelsy in London to receive a better education. She had eight ladies of her chamber, thirty-three clerks and squires, Master Lawrence her surgeon, as well as huntsmen and grooms for the stable. She enjoyed falconry, and had caskets full of jewels with which she bedecked herself to attend the great St George’s Day celebrations at Windsor in April 1358: girdles of silk studded with silver, 300 rubies, 1800 pearls and a circlet of gold.