The Perfect King (51 page)
Authors: Ian Mortimer
Tags: #General, #Great Britain, #History, #Europe, #Royalty, #Biography & Autobiography, #History - General History, #British & Irish history, #Europe - Great Britain - General, #Biography: Historical; Political & Military, #British & Irish history: c 1000 to c 1500, #1500, #Early history: c 500 to c 1450, #Ireland, #Europe - Ireland
In the traditional form of chivalric behaviour, the garrison now sought terms. After eleven months of siege, and cheated of his second
battle
, Edward was in no mind to offer terms at all. When Manny passed this news to Jean de Vienne the governor was at a loss, and pleaded with him to return to Edward to beg for their lives. 'We are just a few knights and squires who have loyally served our master, as you would have done, and have suffered much as a result
...
I therefore once more entreat you, out of compassion, to return to the king of England and
beg of him to have pity on us.
Manny relayed this plea to the king who again refused it, insisting that the Frenchmen should submit unconditionally to his will. At this even the hardbitten Sir Walter Manny seems to have been moved, for he answered the king back. 'My lord, you may be to blame in this, for you set a very bad example. If you order us to go to any of your
castle
s we will not obey you so cheerfully if you put these people to death; for they will treat us likewise if we find ourselves in a similar situation.' These words struck home. Manny was alluding to the many small garrisons Edward had left in Normandy, which had been overpowered and massacred after he decided to besiege Calais. After due thought he announced his decision:
Gentlemen, I am not so obstinate as to hold my opinion alone against you all. Sir Walter, you will inform the governor of Calais that the only grace he must expect from me is that six of the principal citizens of
Calais march out of the town with bare heads and bare feet, with ropes around their necks, and the keys of the town and
castle
in their hands. These six persons shall be at my absolute disposal, and the remainder of the inhabitants pardoned.
Having heard this offer from Manny, Jean de Vienne ordered the town bell to be rung so the citizens would assemble in the marketplace. In the most famous passage in his chronicle, Froissart repeats how one by one six of the wealthiest men of Calais volunteered to die so that their fellow townsmen would be pardoned. The first to volunteer was Eustace de Saint-Pierre. He was followed by Jean d'Aire, the brothers Jacques and Pierre Wissant, Andrieu d'Andres and finally Jean de Vienne himself.
On
4
August
1347,
eleven months to the day since the siege had begun, these six men did as Edward had asked. Carrying the keys of Calais they walked barefoot with ropes around their necks. De Vienne was so weak he could hardly walk, and had to be given a horse. When Manny led them before the king, they prostrated themselves before him, begging for their lives. Edward simply ordered them to be beheaded. Everyone present was shocked, after the courage shown by these men in coming forward. Edward's mind was not inclined to sympathy but to business; his campaign was not yet finished. Even Sir Walter Manny's requests for Edward to show mercy were ignored. According to Froissart, only when Philippa implored him to show mercy did he relent. Aware of the accusations of cruelty which would be brought against him if these men were killed, Edward did what he had always previously done: he relented when begged to do so by someone dear to him.
Forgiveness at the point of death. It was a powerful image, especially for a warrior-king. But it was typical of Edward, right through to h
is core. He had behaved in exactl
y the same way when the tournament stand had collapsed at Cheapside in
1331,
almost killing Philippa. He had similarly given in to Philippa's plea for him to show mercy when a young girl was brought before him on a heinous charge in
1337.
At Caen he had at first ordered a massacre and then relented when begged to do so. In fact, although Edward ordered quite a number of large-scale massacres in France, none was ever carried out. It was as if in each case he was trying to play the dread king 'terrible to his enemies' as well as the compassionate monarch. At Calais, as elsewhere, it was a method which confused and frightened his enemies. But from Edward's point of view, it said everything about him which he wanted to project: magnanimity in victory, mercy, ruthlessness and power.
*
Edward had plans for Calais. Some of the citizens died in the next few days - from eating too much food and drink, when Edward sent abundant food supplies into the town - but most of the remaining townsmen were sent into France. In their place he established a strong English garrison. He destroyed Villeneuve-le-hardi so it could not be reused by Philip in a reprisal attack, and gave rich houses in Calais to each of his leading warriors. His vision for the town was as a landing place for future English armies, and men like Lancaster and Sir Walter Manny would doubdess be on such expeditions. To ensure the financial prosperity of the town he established there a mint and the English tin, lead and cloth staples (the official trading posts). Eventually he would add the valuable wool staple but not until
1363;
for the time being that remained at Ghent, to the benefit of his Flemish allies.
Edward never dropped his guard. On
20
August, after the dispersal of the English army, he learned that Philip had summoned the French army to gather again for a surprise attack. Without hesitation he ordered his own forces to return to Calais. He repeated this instruction at the beginning of September, fully determined to meet Philip in battle as agreed before. Edward sounded out his leading magnates and then announced he was going to proceed into France once more 'to do battle with our adversary
...
in order to recover our rights and to take whatever grace and fortune which God shall give us'. But with both sides exhausted, financially as well as militarily, a truce was the preferred option on both sides. In addition, the English army was suffering badly from dysentery.
The truce was agreed in mid-September. As before it was to include
Scotland
as well as France and Flanders. Everywhere Edward's gains were to be respected, and loyalties were not to be broken. The peace, which was planned to last until
8
July
1348,
was wholly in favour of the English.
Edward remained for a few more weeks in Calais, and then set sail for England. And as soon as he was out at sea, he got caught in another storm. In England, Edward's voyages had almost become a means of predicting the weather. It was commonly joked that if he was going to France, the weather would be fine, but if he was returning, they could expect storms. After invoking the protection of the Virgin yet again, he landed at Sandwich on
12
October and arrived in London two days later.
After two months of seeing to the rewards of those who had fought at Neville's Cross and providing for the administration of Calais, Edward went to Guildford to celebrate Christmas.
Christmas
1347
was a great occasion. He had just completed the longest and most dramatic overseas expedition of any English king since the time of Richard I. Now he could enjoy himself once more. Roll out the tournament banners! For Edward went straight back to enjoying his hunts and his feasts, his celebrations, tournaments and games. Once more we may read in the wardrobe accounts of the extravagant purchases of this proud, happy monarch. For the Christmas games at Guildford Edward ordered:
forty-two masks bearing the likenesses of women, bearded men, and angels' heads in silver. Twenty-eight crests, fourteen with legs reversed with shoes on, and fourteen with hills and rabbits. Fourteen painted cloaks, fourteen dragons' heads, fourteen white buckram tunics, fourteen pheasant heads with fourteen pairs of wings for these heads, fourteen tunics painted with the eyes of a pheasant, fourteen swans' heads with fourteen pairs of wings for the swans, fourteen painted linen tunics, and fourteen tunics painted with stars.
He himself and all his fellow knights wore long green robes embroidered with peacock feathers. We could almost say that it was business as usual at the English court. Edward's daughter, Joan, was betrothed to be married to the son of the king of Castile. And Philippa was pregnant again.
But in reality, life was never going to be quite the same. On n October
1347
Ludvig of Bavaria died while out hunting bears, and the electors chose Edward to be his successor as Holy Roman Emperor. Those prophesies from his youth, of European victories and of receiving the three crowns of the Empire, which once had seemed so daunting, had all come true. But it was not the offer itself that marks the difference, although it was a very rare honour for an Englishman to be offered the triple crown of the Holy Roman Empire. The real difference between Edward before and after Crecy lies in his response. He turned the offer down. He no longer sought to add to his prestige through allusions to prophesies, or the acquisition of great tides. He no longer needed to associate himself with old kings and legends. His own reputation, won through his own efforts, and in new ways, was greatness enough in itself.
At the age of thirty-five he had achieved everything his kingdom had expected of him. The English collectively had a new pride, a new identity, and it was one unparalleled in Europe. Edward's war had begun to galvanise England into a nation, with common interests and, increasingly, a common culture. In the words of the great chronicler Thomas Walsingham 'it seemed that a new sun had arisen for the English because of the abundance of peace, the plenitude of goods and the glory of the victor'.
An
Unassailable
Enemy
Edward was probably still encamped before the walls of Calais when he first heard reports that the deadly disease which had swept across Asia had now come to the borders of Europe. To him Asia would have been a semi-legendary place, known only from merchants and distant travellers. He and his contemporaries may well have regarded the disease as divine punishment on the unbelievers in the East for fighting with crusaders of the true faith. But as he sailed into Sandwich in October, the Genoese ships in the Mediterranean a thousand miles to the south docked with a deadly cargo. Cyprus and Sicily experienced the first full onslaught in November
1347.
By December it was in Genoa, Marseilles and Avignon. Contemporaries simply called it 'the pestilence'. Today we call it the Black Death.
The Black Death was more than just a disease. Its arrival was arguably the single most important event in European history between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Industrial Revolution. Although the population of Europe, including Britain, had been declining since about
1315,
when a spate
of poor harvests had been swiftl
y followed by a cattle murrain, the decline had been small and comparatively slow: no more than a ten per cent reduction over twenty years. A society which was basically confident that God's will protected them was completely unprepared for the shock which followed. As the plague reached a town or village, a number of people very suddenly grew sick and died. What was worse, the plague lingered, so that even if you were not among the twenty per cent to die in the first month or so, there was a good chance you would be caught up in the next month's mortality. And then there were subsequent attacks in subsequent years. Although we tend to think of the Black Death as being the period of the first shock of the disease, between
1347
and
1351
in Western Europe, it came back again and again, with catastrophic consequences every time. Each outbreak disrupted farming, trade and legal systems, so that food production and conveyance collapsed, and violence broke out. The population continued to decline for the next one hundred and fifty years. Society was severely tested, and was forced to develop increasingly flexible systems in order to maintain the political s
tatus quo. It was therefore not
just the disease which mattered. The economic consequences and the profound psychological shock combined to alter the culture, attitudes, faith, geographical horizons and personal identities of people in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe. To quantify the effect simply in numbers of dead is to miss the point. Europe had been plunged into a horrific and ongoing crisis which cracked the cultural plinth on which society was built.
By spring
1348
the plague was in Normandy. Caen and Rouen experienced particularly heavy death rates. By May it was in Paris. No one could ignore it, nor its unstoppable progress. It was not just the stories of the disease and the dying which gnawed at the conscience of the as-yet unaffected, it was the stories of the houses left empty, whole families dying in rural areas, and their animals dying. The fields sown in springtime lay untended in the summer as the sower and his wife rotted in their house, unburied.
The plague had still not yet arrived in England. While it remained overseas, Edward's reaction was to ignore it. It was not so much a strategy of putting his head in the sand as one of not deserting his royal duties. As a king he was expected to be seen, give audiences, attend parliaments, provide leadership and hear certain law cases. He was expected to be lavish in his hospitality and his spending, the money spent being employment for many. To fail in these duties would be to give in to the plague, and to fail as a monarch. It was not in Edward's nature to give in to anything, least of all a disease which still remained on the Continent.
Edward's priorities in
1348
were the celebration of his military successes of the previous two years and his dealings with parliament. It had been more than a year since Edward had held a parliament, and so he could be said to have broken his promise to summon one every year. The last had met in September
1346,
while Edward was at Calais, but this was largely to gather the financial support necessary for the siege. He himself had not actually attended a sitting or heard petitions since the summer of
1344.
And some merchants and minor landholders thought that Edward was implementing highly dubious measures. To mark the knighting of the prince of Wales in
1346
Edward had levied a 'feudal aid' of forty shillings on every single manorial unit in the kingdom. This had not been done since the reign of Edward I, and the commons thought it had been pardoned in
1340.
Even if it had not, it should have been no more than twenty shillings.' A forced loan of twenty thousand sacks of wool in
1347
had not lightened the mood of such men who saw their economic opportunities in a purely personal light. While all England was united in its joy at the string of victories over France, a few of those who spoke for the country had misgivings about how it had been financed.
The first parliament of
1348
was held in January. Its two principal purposes were, as far as Edward was concerned, to discuss the truce recently agreed at Calais, and to address the problem of law and order. Although Edward's earlier efforts to enforce provincial order had mainly been successful, his absence abroad had led to local tax-collectors taking the law into their own hands, and bands of criminals once again being protected by local gentry, throu
gh the bribing of local judges.
Before he had left England in
1346,
he had issued the Ordinance of Justices, to prevent royal judges being bribed, but in his absence this had proved weak.
3
The commons now seized the opportunity to renew their earlier complaint of 'maintenance' by the nobility and gentry. They demanded that the provisions of the Ordinance be extended. They recommended that six persons be appointed in each county - local landowners, not agents of central government - to hear cases of breaking the peace. As for the truce, or rather the need for increased taxation for the resumption of the war, the commons had doubts. They debated the matter for four days and eventually decided that they could not advise the king on this matter, but would support the advice of the magnates. They probably hoped that France would be destroyed cheaply by disease rather than expensively by renewing the war.
Edward was not satisfied with these answers, and a second parliament followed soon afterwards, meeting on
31
March. He was not yet ready to put local justice in the hands of local landowners, probably suspicious
that th
is would simply lead to greater abuse of legal privileges. And he wanted a more constructive answer with regard to the truce. There followed a series of bargains between king and people. Edward accentuated the danger of invasion in order to gain support for the potential renewal of hostilities. Action to control the purveyors for the royal household was taken. Edward agreed not to ransom the Scottish prisoners at the Tower - including Sir William Douglas, the earl of Menteith and King David -so they could not renew hostilities. He made sure of this in the case of Menteith (who had previously sworn homage to him) by having him publicly executed. He agreed to suspend the eyres or tours of his justices in the counties. And he agreed to use his influence to improve the lot of English merchants buying and selling at the wool staple in Ghent. The result was that parliament agreed to a further three years' subsidy: not enough in itself to mount a major campaign, and not too much to bankrupt the kingdom, but enough to satisfy the king for the time being.
As the plague hit Paris and killed thousands, in England the king held a series of splendid tournaments. In
mid-February he was jousting at
Reading, then later that month at Bury St Edmunds, where he appeared dressed in a huge bird costume, possibly playing an eagle.
7
In early May he held a great tournament at Lichfield. Here he fought in the arms of one of Lord Berkeley's knights, Sir Thomas Bradeston, who had been with him at the arrest of Mortimer in
1330
and had since become one of his most trusted captains. At the same tournament he ordered robes in blue and white to be made for himself and eleven knights of his chamber, as well as the earl of Lancaster and twelve of his knights, and many ladies, including hi
s (Edward's) daughter Isabella.
Later that month he held a tournament at Eltham, and a month after that, on
24
June
1348,
he held a great tournament at Windsor to celebrate the churching of Queen Philippa after the birth of their eleventh child, William of Windsor. King David, Charles de Blois and many other prisoners of war attended, all decked out in fine new robes at Edward's expense. The younger royal princes were all present too, decked out ostentatiously in velvet: Lionel in azure blue, John and Edmund in purple. After Windsor the next tournament was at Canterbury, probably in mid-August, and another was held at Westminster. Edward travelled, was seen by his people, and dressed himself, his family, his royal prisoners and his entourage splendidly. He was parading his victorious royalty around the country: the champion of England, his conquests made glorious by the honour done to his prisoners.
There are two ways of looking at this huge parade. On the one hand, this is just what Edward did for fun, and after Crecy and Calais he deserved to flaunt his laurels. On the other hand, it would be foolish to forget that the backdrop to this display and ostentation was that the rest of Europe was dying by the million. At the time of the Windsor tournament, England still had not been
directly
affected. Edward was taking great pride in the ceremonial triumphs he held up and down the country; but he was also displaying a steadying leadership in the face of the dread which now must have permeated the court and country. Many people must have realised that, unless all the ports were closed, England would be the next kingdom afflicted.
The ports did not close. Had they done so, there would have been an outcry in parliament The merchants would have bitterly complained, they would have been ruined, and they would not have been able to pay their taxes. Edward would have cut himself off from his fellow monarchs, including his daughter, Joan, on her way to Castile to be married to Pedro, heir to King Alfonso. He would have cut himself off from Calais, Ponthieu, Gascony and Brittany. So, as Edward charged down the tournament lists at Windsor, and as his courtiers played romantic games with each other behind their masks, the boats came and went out of the ports all around the country. And because all the ports remained open, there were many potential infection points. Edward had no way of knowing it, but by taking no action to limit the potential places of infection, he was worsening the effects of the disease when it arrived.
For Edward, the grief began early. On
5
September his three-month-old son, William of Windsor, was buried at Westminster Abbey. His birth had been greeted by the king with great celebration, Philippa's churching being the cause for the tournament at Windsor at which he paraded his most prestigious prisoners of war. Silver vessels, including several lavish silver bowls befitting a king's son, had been purchased for him in London. A fine cradle had been commissioned (costing five pounds), as well as a daily cr
adle (costing eight shillings).
Edward clearly had expectations of this boy, his only son to be born, like himself, at Windsor. In death, he was treated to a full royal funeral. Gold cloth was purchased, two thousand gold leaves, large quantities of black cloth, and wax candles. The gold cloths were placed over his littie body. Sixty pennons stamped with gold lay over and around the bier on which he lay. Around him burned six lamps and one hundred and seventy square candles. Fifty paupers dressed in black circled the shrine, while a chariot covered in black cloth acted as his hearse.
Compared to the other infant royal burials, this was striking ostentation, and a sign of a genuine disappointment.
'Disappointment' is a strangely distant word to use, however. For this
little
boy was not the only member of the royal family to have died. Even before the welter of tournaments had come to an end, Edward had received the tragic news that his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter, Joan, had died of plague on her way to marry Pedro of Castile. Every bit of care had been expended on the arrangements for her journey. Way back on
1
January
1348
Edward had written to the Castilian royal family announcing he was about to send her, and detailing who would accompany her. A month later, somewhat anxious, he had written to make sure that if she should bear Pedro a son, then that boy would be king of Castile. Eleven days later he sent orders to all his admirals and seneschals to assist the bishop of Carlisle who would accompany Joan. After all the precautions Edward could possibly have taken, she arrived at Bordeaux by ship during the height of the outbreak, and died there on
1
July. In the circumstances there was no choice but to bury her at Bordeaux. Edward had lost a daughter who was 'beautiful in body, and abundant in moral virtues and grace'. One can imagine the dread of the messenger returning to England to break the sad news.
