The Perfect King (6 page)

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The king might have been the most powerful figure in Edward's life with regard to inheritance and status, but he was not the only important person. Edward's mother, Queen Isabella - Isabella the Fair - was every bit as royal as her husband, the only daughter of King Philip of France, who doted on her. She was sixteen years of age at the time of the birth, twelve years younger than the king, and renowned for her beauty and intelligence. She was also connected to most of the royal houses of Europe, due to the geographical position of France and the status of her ancestors. Through her mother, Jeanne, who enjoyed the mouth-watering tide of Countess Palatine of Champagne and Brie (as well as that of Queen of Navarre), she was connected to Iberian royalty. Through her grandmother she was related to the dukes of Brabant. Through her cousin, Jeanne, daughter of Charles, count of Valois, she was related to William, count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, the lord of Friesland. And so on. She was enmeshed in a complex series of dynastic relationships even more extensive than those of her husban
d. Edward II’
s only living close relative in a European royal house was his nephew, the young duke of Brabant. His mother, Eleanor of Castile had died more than twenty years earlier, when he had been only six, and his Spanish cousins were not close. The difference lay in geographical position, and the difficulties of directly exercising royal links. Despite two centuries of taking continental brides, England remained on the periphery of the continental dynastic network. France, respected as the greatest kingdom in Christendom, was at the very centre. Thus for Edward of Windsor, his mother represented rich dynasties and royal links far beyond the shores of Britain. It was perhaps in recognition of this that Isabella's uncle, Louis d'Evreux, requested that Isabella call her first-born son Louis, not Edward. Not surprisingly, the English
nobles at the baptism refused.

Dynastic links are easy to account for, but they are not as important for understanding a child's development as parental character. Although
Edward II’
s personality has been reappraised many times in the last hundred years, Isabella's has generally been neglected. Most people still remember her as the 'She-wolf of France'. This name was originally the duke of York's insult to Margaret of Anjou in Shakespeare's
Henry VI Part Three
(Act One, Scene

Four), but it came to be applied to Isabella in the eighteenth century due to the widespread belief that she had been party to her husband's murder. Even though scholarship has moved on considerably, popular reputations of villainy never die. This is both a pity and a problem. Edward's mother was not a she-wolf but a dutiful and highly religious woman who, in later years, when she had been spurned by her husband and had fallen into the arms of a dominating lover, still felt she ought to return to her rightful spouse.
When the king lay in prison, scorned by the nation, and bereft of his throne, she still sent presents to him.
Edward II’
s respect for her intelligence and negotiating skills may be seen in his approval of the treaty which she negotiated on his behalf in order to try to secure peace with France in
1325.
Nor was this the only time that Edward placed great faith in her skills. She also took part in domestic peace negotiations in
1313, 1318
and
1321.
She was a woman of conscience: when she found that two of her sisters-in-law were guilty of adultery with two French knights, she had no hesitation in reporting them to her father. It is not difficult to find instances of her clemency: although she detested Hugh Despenser the younger with a passion, she pleaded for the life of Hugh's father, the earl of Winchester, when he was facing execution. She was known to be moved by pity: in October
1312,
while pregnant with Edward, she gave food and clothes to a young Scottish orphan she met; later she paid for him to be sent to London to be educated.
She equalled even her husband's piety in her pilgrimages, her devotion to English shrines, and her enthusiastic collecting of relics. She also collected books, especially chivalric tales, and had more than thirty volumes in her library when she died. Bookish and pious, it is not surprising that she had little aptitude for war. An attempt to lead an attack on Leeds
Castle
in
1321
ended in disaster and the deaths of nine members of her household. Similarly, she never played a leading role in political confrontation except when at the side of her lover, Sir Roger Mortimer. But during the invasion of
1326
she acted as a brilliant and powerful figurehead. Her greatest failing was her ability to spend money - vast
amounts of money - with apparentl
y no qualms about the acquisitiveness demonstrated in obtaining such sums. From relatively restrained beginnings at the time of Edward's birth (although sixty men were employed to keep and repair her clothes), her spending in the years
1326-30
amounted to about a quarter of the royal purse. However, if her most notable characteristics were duty, piety, loyalty to those she loved, passion, clemency, trustworthiness, intelligence and conscience, and if her greatest sin was profligacy, she was about as far from the all-devouring 'she-wolf' myth of the eighteenth century as a woman could possibly be.

Of the other people who were important to the infant Edward, one must first mention his nurse, Mar
garet. She was from Daventry in
Northamptonshire, and in
1312
was the wife of Stephen Chandler. To her Edward remained devoted for the rest of her life. So attached to her did he become that she was still in his household, maintained on the payroll along with his clerks, after he became king. Later, in his twenties, he made every effort to look after her when she encountered legal difficulties. This is not surprising as she was the one person who had always been with him, from birth to adolescence. It was in her care that he remained when, at the end of January
1313,
his mother made preparations to return to London. Margaret, who would have been breast-feeding the two-month-old Edward in place of his mother, took the baby from Windsor to Bray on
26
January. The next day they arrived at Bisham, in Berkshire, which was to be Edward's home for the next year. The building they lived in was almost certainly the manor house which had belonged to the Knights Templar until the dissolution of the Order in
1312.
His father visited him on
13
February, and stayed for dinner, and again visited on
4
August, on which occasion he granted him the Isle of Wight. His mother visited for four days in early May, and the kindly Queen Margaret (his father's stepmother and his mother's aunt) visited in June. His nurse Margaret also took him to see his mother and father at court. The account for his household expenses at this time records that he was taken to spend twenty-seven days with the royal family in the spring and early summer of
1313.

Edward spent the first years of his life in his nurse's company, receiving gifts and occasional visits from his parents, surrounded by servants and household officials whose roles he would not have fully understood. In April
1314,
he was moved from Bisham to Ludgershall in East Wiltshire, an old castle in need of repair, as shown by the order to mend the shingle roofs of the prince's dwellings. It was expected that Edward would stay there for some time, and this still seems to have been the plan at the
end of May, when the king's butl
er was ordered to provide an extra thirty tuns of wine for the prince's household over and above that already delivered, suggesting a very large contingent of men-at-arms protecting the young boy. But in June the king decided to locate his son and heir at Wallingford
Castle
, previously the chief residence of Piers Gaveston. Perhaps the king, knowing he would be riding north to face the Scots near Stirling - in the battle which came to be known as Bannockburn - wished to make sure his son was secure in case of a disaster. By July the prince and his nurse had taken up residence.
43
It was fitting that he should have come to live in Gaveston's
castle
: the prince had become the king's symbol of independence, just as Gaveston had once been. Edward conferred gifts and tides on his son in the same way he had given them to Gaveston. The difference was that his son was royal, whereas Gaveston had been born a commoner, not even of baronial rank, and gifts to the heir to the throne were beyond criticism.

The next group of people who might have influenced Edward in these early years — at least the next group whom we can identify - are the officers who administered his household. The most important of these would have been his steward, Sir Robert Mauley, who served him from before July
1314
until at least June
1320.
In his official capacity, Mauley would have controlled the men of the household in all their duties, overseeing his own staff and those in the specialist departments of the buttery, scullery, pantry, saucery, the hall, marshalcy and the prince's private chamber. He would moreover have been particularly conspicuous, standing with his staff of office in the hall at mealtimes while the servants took their places at the tables below the dais where the young Edward sat. Next in importance to the steward was the treasurer, or keeper of the wardrobe, who was responsible for Edward's income and expenses. From the beginning until
1316
at least, and possibly until early
1318,
this office was held by Hugh of Leominster, a royal clerk who had served as receiver and chamberlain in North Wales in the time of Edward's grandfather, Edward I, and had been in royal service ever since. He would have been able to tell the young prince about his grandfather's conquest of Wales. Perhaps there were other men in the household who could regale the boy with stories of his ancestors' achievements. We can only wonder what Edward might have heard from men such as Grimbald de la Batude, a foreigner who had served both Edward I and Edward II before entering Edward's household.

On
15
August
1316
Prince John, Edward's brother, was born at Eltham. Once again the St Albans chronicler recorded how happy the king was, but this time it is noticeable that there was nowhere near as much effusion of joy. There was no expensive income awarded to the man who brought him the news. There were no comparisons with Gaveston. There was no need. Although far from peaceful, with a serious rebellion in Wales due to the harsh climate of the previous two summers, a rebellion in Bristol, and the Scots' invasion of Ireland, the king was not personally under pressure. His principal enemy, his cousin the earl of Lancaster, had withdrawn to sulk in his vast estates in the north of the country, and for once King Edward had a relatively free hand. He wrote to the prior of his favourite order of friars, the Dominicans, on
24
August requesting that they pray for the king, the queen, Edward of Windsor and John of Eltham, 'especially on account of John'. No doubt four-year-old Edward was summoned to Eltham to see his baby brother. His justiciar in Chester, Sir Hugh Audley the elder, was ordered to pay the queen the rents from the manor of Macclesfield, to cover John's expen
ses. When their younger sister,
Eleanor of Woodstock, was born on
8
June
1318
it was proposed that all three royal children should live together.

By then, significant changes had taken place in Edward's household. Shortly before April
1318,
the king appointed Sir Richard Damory to be Edward's guardian, or, to be precise, 'keeper of the body of my lord Sir Edward, earl of Chester, and surveyor of his household and his lands and all his business'. Damory requested that, since one of his roles was to enquire into the negligence of Edward's bailiffs at Chester, he needed legal assistance. He requested probably the most notable lawyer of the time, Geoffrey le Scrope, or, if Geoffrey could not attend, then John Stonor, another famous royal legal adviser. Damory was given the services of both men. Damory also asked for - and got - the services of Nicholas Hugate to be Edward's treasurer and keeper of his wardrobe. Suddenly, a man had come along who had reorganised Edward's household and set about identifying and correcting the abuses which, it turned out, were being perpetrated across Edward's estates.

Damory was more than just a bureaucratic reformer. He was the elder brother of Roger Damory, whom the king liked so much that in
1317
he gave him the hand in marriage of his own niece, Elizabeth, one of the three sisters and coheiresses of the late earl of Gloucester. This brought Roger Damory into the royal family, and at the same time enhanced Sir Richard's standing with the king. Sir Richard had begun his career in the household of the earl of Hereford, the king's brother-in-law, in whose service he had worked assiduously. After leaving Hereford's service, he had entered royal employment, acting as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire from
1308
to
1310,
and as constable of Oxford
Castle
from
1311.
He also seems to have been associated with the Despenser family. He may be characterised as a man of wide experience, an 'old soldier', probably in his forties, with a dependable track record of responsible command, and with very good connections with the Marcher lords - such as the earl of Hereford - and the royal family. Under Damory's watchful eye, Edward would have had a wooden sword pressed into his hand with the intention that he should learn how to use it, and take his first steps along the long road to becoming a military leader.