The Perfect King (74 page)

It is dif
f
icult to hold Edward responsible for the lack of achievement in
1370.
Perhaps he could have appointed a more able lieutenant in Gascony to take over from the prince. Perhaps he should have foreseen the distrust in Knolles and appointed an earl to lead the northern attack. But there was a limit to how far he could undermine the prince's position in Aquitaine, and earls with both military experience and physical strength were rare in
1370.
The real reason for the failures was far deeper, and tackling it went beyond Edward's experience. The English were, for the first time, on the defensive. If Gascony was truly a part of Edward's kingdom then he could only fail with regard to the most important strand of his strategy, which was to keep the war on foreign territory. From now on, unless he continued his war of aggression, pushing further and further into France, the fighting would only be on his lands. The likelihood of his losing was all the greater when he himself was unable to inspire or lead his men, and his principal commanders were all aged and decrepit. So it was that, even though the prince had been successful at Limoges, most of Gascony was overrun and reclaimed for France in the space of a few months. It was no coincidence that Edward failed to achieve the widespread support of European kingdoms in
1370-71,
only Juliers and Genoa actively engaging to help him.
2

There were bound to be recriminations when parliament met at Westminster on
24
February
1371.
They had not been summoned for twenty months. Edward might have pretended to those around him that by reckoning the new year from Lady Day
(25
March), he had just lived up to his promise, but such a contrived explanation was not likely to wash with the representatives. Since they had last met they had hardly seen their king. Moreover, in the last parliament they had voted a substantial tax to be granted to the king for the prosecution of the war, and what had happened? The loss of almost all of Gascony, and the dispersal to no profit of the northern army. What stood between the French king and the shores of Britain? Were there not invasion plans afoot? Where was the English navy?

The news got worse.
Shortly
after parliament opened, Edward heard that King David II had died. Edward now had few (if any) allies in
Scotland
. Every representative at that parliament must have considered this a sure sign that a new army would soon be needed in the north. Edward, huddled in his cloak of glorious victories, was not prepared for the angry onslaught which followed. Scapegoats had to be found. Since no one was prepared to accuse the king himself of poor judgement, his ministers bore the brunt. And what did they all have in common? They were all clergymen. The Chancellor, William of Wykeham, was the bishop of Winchester. The Treasurer, Thomas Brantingham, was the newly appointed bishop of Exeter. The keeper of the privy seal, Peter Lacy, was a canon of Lichfield. What did such men know about the prosecution of war? As ecclesiastics, it was not clear whether they could even be held accountable for their maladministration. The dismissal of the clergy became a demand so strong that Edward was forced to give in to the will of parliament. It dumbfounded him. For the first time since the Crisis of
1341,
he wavered, lost confidence and immediately lost the political initiative. On
26
March
1371
he sacked all his trusted ecclesiastical officers and replaced them with younger laymen.

Unknown to all concerned, this decision paved the way for further corruption in the royal household. The men whom Edward selected were the sons of men he had once trusted or the suggestions of his only trusted confidante, Alice. Nicholas Carew took over as keeper of the privy seal. Richard le Scrope took over as Treasurer. Robert Thorp became Chancellor. William Latimer, son of the William Latimer who had assisted Edward in
1330,
became his chamberlain. These men were generally in their thirties, less well-educated and more unscrupulous than those they replaced. They saw a golden opportunity to make themselves rich and influential. Later that year John Neville, lord of Raby, stepped into Latimer's place as steward of the royal household. With that appointment, all was set for the net of the court clique to close in around Edward, and to stifle him from news of the war, his kingdom and his officers' lining of their own pockets.

It would be wrong to say that all those appointed by Edward at this time were place-seekers and self-interested usurers. Richard le Scrope was the son of a Chief Justice under Edward; he had served as a member of parliament, had fought at Najera, and knew more than most about financing a war. But his problems were exacerbated by his fellow officers. Latimer stands out as the most corrupt. Although he was experienced in both war and the organisation of manpower, the lure of money was too much for him. He borrowed sums from the Treasury at no interest, then lent it back to Edward for the war effort at high rates, and having pocketed the proceeds, returned the original sum to the Treasury.
3
He had the absolute say in who had access to the king, and had sufficient authority to prevent the earl of Pembroke, commander of one of Edward's armies, from seeing the king in the autumn of
1371.
Pembroke had to content himself with an interview with Latimer instead. There were echoes of Hugh Despenser and Roger Mortimer in such behaviour. All it took was for the king to be ill and irresolute and the English government collapsed back into the quagmire of corruption which had characterised it in the years
1322-30.

It was in April
1371,
after parliament had broken up, that Edward finally met his son and heir again, after an absence of eight years. It must have been a poignant moment: both knew the other was seriously ill.* They had argued over the time ap
art. Edward had been greatl
y disappointed by his son's administration in Gascony, and had eventually countermanded his hearth tax in November
1369.
The prince likewise had become convinced that his father had lost his diplomatic judgement when Edward sent him yet another treaty with Charles of Navarre, expecting him to
seal it, despite the man's countl
ess broken promises. But father and son loved each other deeply, through royalty, family, mutual respect and long-term devotion. They could now also sympathise with one another in their physical frustration, Edward shuffling around in his echoing halls, the prince carried from place to place,
unable to walk. For Edward it w
as as if his last great friend had come home.

It may well have been the prince's presence that gave Edward's self-confidence a boost in the spring of
1371.
Maybe the prince pointed out to him how he was being manipulated. Reports of William Windsor's maladministration in Ireland certainly slipped through the courtiers' cordon, for Edward took action in the autumn of
1371
to warn Windsor of his dealings, rebuked him for his taxes and extortions, and eventually recalled him. And in June, at a council meeting in Winchester, Edward found the strength to tackle the petitions of the
1371
parliament in a direct, strong-minded manner. To the demand that he ban ecclesiastics from office, Edward responded only that he would take advice from his council. To almost every other petition, he replied only that 'he would be advised' (meaning nothing would be done in the foreseeable future), or that the existing statutes, customs and laws were sufficient, including his own prerogatives. Even quite reasonable requests, such as the repeal of the statutes prohibiting English merchants from buying wine in Gascony, were dismissed. The demand for the reform of the navy was the one petition to which he was inclined to agree. With his son at his side, Edward recovered his sense of authority, and maintaining it became his chief priority. In his view, parliament needed to be taught a lesson, that they should not presume to thrust policy on him.

There were other reasons for Edward's recovery of his authority in early
1371.
The new Chancellor - poorly educated by comparison with his ecclesiastical predecessors - was forced to admit to one of the biggest and most extraordinary mistakes in the history of accounting. The clerical subsidy of
22s
4d per parish would clearly not raise
£50,000
because there were only nine thousand parishes in England, not forty-five thousand. How such a gross error was made beggars belief. The request to reform the navy was made in the wake of rumours of a planned French invasion and a French landing at Portsmouth. As soon as there was a threat of war, it seemed parliament panicked, and sought Edward's advice and leadership. This not only flattered him, it gave him a sense of purpose. All these things, combined with Alice's continued attention, helped revitalise him. After attending the solemn commemoration of the anniversary of Philippa's death, he set about planning the next stage of the war.

In several of the principal English chronicles there are large gaps at this point in time. Walsingham's
English Chronicle
records nothing between the return of the prince in
1371
and the Good Parliament in
1376.
Henry Knighton's chronicle mentions nothing which happened between the death of Lionel in
1368
and Edward's own death. It is as if, with the benefit of hindsight, these writers wanted simply to pass over the last years of the reign. In the comprehensive work of
Joshua Barnes the reason is neatl
y expressed. He describes the year
1372
as 'the first inauspicious year of our great Edward's reign
...'
Inauspicious is the appropriate word. There were only two pieces of good news: John of Gaunt married Constanza, eldest da
ughter and heiress of the recentl
y murdered Pedro of Castile, and Edmund of Langley married her younger sister, Isabella. Everything else was awful. In January the great warrio
r Sir Walter Manny — Lord Manny -
died, and was buried at the Charter
house which he had jointl
y founded in London. Later in the year the earls of Stafford and Hereford died. John of Gaunt - to whom Edward had delegated much routine business - gave rise to hostile gossip about his ambitious nature and his collusion with the self-seekers around the king. John's open and shameless adultery with his children's governess, Katherine Roet, incurred the most vicious criticism, especially when he acknowledged a son by her, John Beaufort. A diplomatic summit near Calais, proposed by the pope, failed to break the deadlock inherent in the combination of French military ascendancy in Aquitaine and Edward's insistence on the recognition of his sovereignty. The English continued to suffer strategic losses: Monmorillon, Chauvigny, Lussac, Montcontour, Poitiers, Saint-Severe, Soubise, Saint-Jean-d'Angely, Angouleme, Taillebourg and Saintes to mention just the most significant. In defending Soubise, the Captal de Buch - a hero of Poitiers and a Knight of the Garter - was captured. Worst of all, on
22
June, the English fleet
-
with all its treasure (the payroll for .the Gascon army), its archers, men-at-arms and horses - was utterly destroyed by a Castilian fleet off La Rochelle, on the coast of Gascony. The ships were torn to pieces by gunshot and fire, and the terrified horses in the holds stampeded in the smoke-filled darkness, breaking the smaller vessels apart. The commanders, including the earl of Pembroke, were all captured. It was the first major military defeat of Edward's reign.

La Rochelle stunned Edward. The myth of English invincibility had been broken. English domination of the seas had come to an end. But just like that other event which had shocked him - the parliamentary disputes of the previous year — he took energy from the opposition. It was widely presumed that the English would now lose Saintonge and Poitou too. According to Froissart, the king was pensive and silent on hearing the news. At length he declared that he would himself lead a powerful army to France, to fight with the French king, and remain there until he had regained all that had been taken from him, or die in the endeavour.

Edward may well have been reflecting on his grandfather's death, sixty-five years earlier. Then Edward I, faced with the treachery of Robert Bruce in
Scotland
, had camped on the Scottish border and remained there for the last years of his reign, and actually died while being carried north in a litter at the head of the army. It did not matter then that his army had failed to overwhelm the Scots; what mattered was his personal legacy: he would always be remembered as the king who had died in arms, fighting for his kingdom until the last breath had left his body. That was how Edward III wanted to be remembered too.

Plans had already been in place for an expedition to France in
1372
even before the La Rochelle defeat. John was to take an army to Castile, Edward himself had the idea of joining the prince in leading an army to Northern France, while Pembroke attacked in the south. With the defeat of Pembroke and the loss of the treasure, everything was concentrated on relieving the town and
castle
of Thouars, where the remaining loyal Poitevin army was concentrated: The French were already besieging the town. All loyal English and Gascon troops were ordered to meet with the king there. He would die before the walls of Thouars, if necessary, away from parliamentary criticism, the household gossips and petty place-seekers.