Notices of the Last Bays of Isabella, Queen of Edward the Second, Drawn from an Account of the Expenses of Her Household

453 XXXIII.—Notices of the Last Bays of Isabella, Queen of Edward the Second, drawn from an Account of the Expenses of her Household. By EDW. A. BOND, ESQ. Egerton Librarian m the Bepartment of MSS. British Museum. Read March 16, 1854. THE narrative of the deposition and murder of King Edward the Second, as delivered by both early chroniclers and recent historians, so far fails to realise the full interest of its subject, that it leaves in obscurity the subsequent history of the chief mover of those fearful events. The ambitious Mortimer expiates his crimes on the scaffold. Isabella, the instigator of sedition against her king, the betrayer of her husband, survives her accomplice; but, from the moment that her career of guilt is arrested, she is no more spoken of. The name which had before been so prominent, and had moved in us such deep and changing interest, disappears at once and entirely from the narrative. It is briefly intimated that the fallen Queen passed the remainder of her days in seclusion, and we can only speculate in what spirit she bore her humiliation and met the reproaches of her conscience in her long retirement; how far her withdrawal from public life was compulsory; and whether, or to what extent, she recovered her influence over the son she had so inhumanly set against his father. After mentioning the execution of Mortimer, Eroissart proceeds to tell us that " the King soon after, by the advice of his Council, ordered his mother to be confined in a goodly castle, and gave her plenty of ladies to wait and attend on her, as well as knights and esquires of honour. He made her a handsome allowance to keep and maintain the state she had been used to, but forbade that she should ever go out or shew herself abroad, except at certain times, when any shows were exhibited in the court of the castle. The Queen thus passed her time there meekly, and the King, her son, visited her twice or thrice a year." All that was added to this account by later historians was, that Castle Rising was the place of her confinement; that after the first two years the strictness of her seclusion was relaxed; that she surrendered her dowry into the King's hands, and received from him, in lieu of it, manors and rents of 454 Notices of the Last Days of Isabella, the yearly value of, at first, 3,000?. and, subsequently, 4,000Z.; that she died at Castle Rising, on the 22nd of August, in the year 1358, and was buried in the church of the Grey Priars, within Newgate, in the city of London. Recently, however, some further particulars have been collected relative to Isabella's life at this period. Miss Strickland was made acquainted with docu- ments among the records of the town of Lynn, which shewed that greater liberty was allowed to the Queen's motions than had been supposed, and she informs us on their authority that the Queen made a pilgrimage to Walsingham in the year 1332. In the first part of the fourth volume of the papers published by the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, is a paper communicated by Mr. Henry Harrod, Hon. Secretary of the Society, on the subject of Castle Rising, in the course of which further facts relating to Isabella's confinement are brought to light. "We are first informed, on the authority of Mr. A. H. Swatman, derived from the Lynn Records, that the Queen was never in the condition of a prisoner at Rising, " for that she occasionally travelled to other parts of the kingdom, once even to London; that she had been at Northampton, Walsingham, and Langley; and, although she was at Rising the year before her death, he did not consider it probable she died there, from the absence of all record of the event or of funeral preparations in the Lynn Records." Mr. Harrod then quotes from the Patent Rolls a letter of the King, directing certain gentlemen to form an escort for his " dearest mother," in her journey from Berkhampstead to Windsor, where he desired her presence during the feast of Christmas. This letter is dated on the 21st of December, 1330, only a month after Mortimer's execution. Now although, at first sight, this may seem to contradict the general statement of our chroniclers of the Queen's having been committed to confinement in Castle Rising, yet if we refer to Eroissart's narration we shall find that the fact of her having been invited to the festivities at Windsor one month after Mortimer's death, does not impugn his actual statement, for his words are that " the King soon after, by the advice of his Council, ordered his mother to be confined in a goodly castle." An interval is specially asserted, therefore, to have lapsed between the punishment of Mortimer and his partner in crime, the guilty Queen. The extract from the Patent Rolls tends to confirm the statement, and justifies us, therefore, in believing the subsequent assertion of the chronicler, that Isabella was afterwards " confined in a goodly castle," supported as it is by the testimony of other chroniclers. Knighton's report is, that Isabella was forced by Parliament to surrender all her lands, and only escaped sentence of death from consideration of her relationship as parent to the King; but that she was required to confine Queen of Edward the Second. 455 herself to some one residence to be selected by her son ; and this regulation was, it is probable, for a time enforced. Of her subsequent liberty of motion Mr. Harrod produces several proofs. A patent of the 12th of Edward III. (1338) shows that she was at Pomfret Castle, with her household, in that year. An anonymous chronicle in the Harleian MS. 2188, quoted by him, speaks of her being with the King and Queen Philippa at the Palace of Norwich in the year 1344, on occasion of the celebration of the King's birthday. On the 19th of August, in 1345, a Charter, obtained by her for the City of Norwich, was exe- cuted by the King at her Castle of Hertford. And, finally, Mr. Harrod prints the inquisition taken at Salisbury after the death of Isabella, which states that she expired, not at Rising, according to the chroniclers, but at Hertford, and on the 23rd day of August, in 1358. In respect to the place, this evidence is fully con- firmed by the document I am now about to describe; but not as to the day of her death, which is alleged to have been the 22nd, not the 23rd. It should be added that Mr. Harrod prints notices of successive entries in the Chancery Rolls, showing that the Queen's yearly allowance of at first 3000, and subsequently 4500 pounds, was cancelled, and replaced by grants of lands to the latter amount, accompanied with full concession of liberties attached to them; and that these lands she had the power of selling or exchanging for others. The document to which I now wish to draw attention is the Cottonian Manu- script, Galba E. xiv., injured by the fire of 1731, and since restored. It contains an account of the expenses of the household of Queen Isabella from the beginning of October, in the year 1357, to the 4th of December, in 1358, a few days after her burial, and more than three months after her death, which it fixes at the 22nd of August. The Account is made up in the usual form of royal household books, embracing, in distinct divisions, the general daily expenses; sums given in alms; miscel- laneous necessary expenses; disbursements for dress, headed " Magna Garde- roba;" purchases of plate and jewellery, headed "Jocalia;" gifts; payments to messengers ; and, lastly, " Praestita," or imprests for various services. The first division of the Account states simply the sums expended daily in the different departments of the household ; but in the margin are entered the names of visitors who may have been entertained during the day, together with memo- randa of the movements of the household from place to place. From these notices, bald as they are, and the study of entries in other divisions of the Account, we are able to gain some insight into the degree of personal freedom enjoyed by the Queen; the connections she maintained or had formed at this VOL. xxxv. 3 o 456 Notices of the Last Days of Isabella, period; the consideration she obtained at the Court of the great King, her son ; and even into her personal disposition and occupations. It appears, then* that at the beginning of October, when the Account opens, the Queen was residing at her Castle of Hertford, having not very long before been at Rising. The first visitor we have mention of is the " Comitissa Garennise," who sups with her on the fourth. The lady thus designated was Joan, daughter of Henry Earl of Barr, and Eleanor, daughter of Edward I. of England; niece, therefore, to Queen Isabella. She was married to John Earl of Warren and Surrey, in the year 33 Edward I., but appears to have been divorced from her husband, on the plea of a previous marriage on his part, in the year 1345; and, as Dugdale tells us, she had leave to go beyond sea, in the same year, on some special employment for the King. She was one of the ladies, according to Eroissart, who accompanied Isabella to England when she sailed from Elanders to the English shore on the expedition so fatal to her husband; and the frequent mention of her in the Account shows that she was in the closest intimacy with Isabella at this time.

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