Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Be. Michal Marcin
The Image of Edward II: Perverted Weakling or Progressive Ruler? Masters Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD.
2016 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
Author's signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD. for his valuable advice. I would also like to thank my family and my girlfriend, Ivana Kováčikova, for their encouragement. Table of Contents
1 Introduction 6
2 The Inheritance of Edward II 10
2.1 Internal Policy 10
2.2 External Policy and Its Financial Demands and Yields 12
2.3 The Administrative 14
2.4 The Military 15
2.5 The Church 16
3 The Character of Edward II 18
3.1 Idleness and Strength 18
3.2 Bravery 19
3.3 (In)competence 21
3.4 Favouritism 21
3.5 Edward IPs Relationships with the Favourites 24
4 The Reign of Edward II 28
4.1 The Court of Edward of Carnarvon 30
4.2 The Reign 32
4.2.1 Longshank's Unfinished Business in the North 34
4.2.2 The Financial Problems and the Ordinances of 1311 35
4.2.3 Bannockburn and Its Consequences 38
4.2.4 The Rise of Hugh le Despenser the Younger 43
5 The Importance of the Reign 47
5.1 Administrative Reforms 47
5.1.1 The Chamber 48
5.1.2 The Wardrobe 49 5.1.3 The Chancery 50
5.1.4 The Exchequer 50
5.2 Foreign Policy and Its Consequences 52
5.2.1 Scotland 52
5.2.2 Ireland 53
5.2.3 Wales 53
5.2.4 France and Gascony 54
5.3 The Military 56
5.4 The Church 57
5.5 The Changes in the English Society 58
5.6 The Compulsory Staple and Its Establishment 60
6 Edward II in Modern Popular Works 65
7 Conclusion 67
Bibliography 71
English Resume 73
Czech Resume 74 1 Introduction
Throughout the Middle Ages, the English kingdom had a curious tendency for taking turns in having weak and powerful kings. Perhaps the best example of this are the reigns of the first three Edwards and the kings directly before and after them. Henry
Ill's reign is often described as rather rebellion-happy (Morgan 167) coupled with the king's "indolence and incapacity and the general misgovernment of the realm", but he did prepare his son well enough so that it could be said that "[f]ew princes had received so thorough an education in the art of rulership as Edward I" (Churchill 224). The education proved worthwhile, for Edward I was often called "the greatest of
Plantagenets" (Tout 32), his abilities were described as "a mixture of the administrative capacity of Henry II and the personal prowess and magnanimity of Coeur de Lion"
(Churchill 224) and he is credited with laying down the foundations of "Parliamentary
Constitution" (ibid. 243).
On the other hand, his son's reign is often considered as one of the most negative ones within the English history and the son as "an unworthy heir of his father's greatness" (Tout 36). This view is perhaps best worded by Churchill, who sees "Edward
II's reign [. . .] as a melancholy appendix to his father's and the prelude to his son's"
(244). I made the same mistake of saying that "there is very little good to be said about the reign of Edward II" (Marcin 22) and T. F. Tout, one of the leading authorities on the king in the early 20th century, also initially held this traditional, conservative view, but later "[he] became convinced that all the earlier work on the reign has been based upon such imperfect appreciation of the evidence available that it cannot be regarded as in any sense final." (25), and it is his sizeable text pointedly named The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History that a considerable part of the sources dealing with the long-term effects of Edward II's reign is going to be based on, for, surprisingly, there
6 seem to be no other more recent source dealing with the reign in enough depth to be used for this purpose, and both Churchill's history book and the Oxford history book edited by Morgan hold the traditional view, and thus give the credit for England's improvements during the times to Edward I and III. This is particularly interesting with regards to Churchill, for despite his statement aimed chiefly towards the first two
Edwards that "[i]n the long story of a nation we often see that capable rulers by their very virtues sow the seeds of future evil and weak or degenerate princes open the pathway of progress" (247), he does not venture into the research of the said "pathway of progress" and still clings to the traditional view. Furthermore, he calls the reign one
"which by its weakness contributed [. . .] to English strength" (Churchill 244), but he does not elaborate on it. Examining the said pathway and weakness will be two of the chief goals of the thesis.
Morgan's traditional view comes as a bit of a surprise, since Phillips' text on
Edward II in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is, even though not quite neutral, definitely not almost exclusively negative, despite the temporal difference being only slightly over a decade.
As for the other kings, Edward Ill's reign is the most notable for his military achievements, but there are some fairly important improvements as well. The majority of these were started by Edward II, but were only finished after his deposition, and are thus ascribed to the son rather than the father (Tout 203). Edward Ill's successor,
Richard II, was again considered a rather weak king, sometimes paralleled to Edward II by his fondness of unwanted favourites (Morgan 181). However, it is not quite so easy to label a king a weak or powerful monarch as some would think it to be.
Medieval kings were chiefly prized for skills in two fields: the military and diplomacy. That way, a king could generally either fight or talk/bribe his way out of
7 problems. Unfortunately for Edward II and England of his time, he was not very good at either. Whatever his actual personal bravery and fighting or commanding skills may have been, he will probably forever remain infamous in this area for the failure at
Bannockburn, regardless of his actual role in it. As for diplomacy, Morgan states that
"[a] successful king was one who established a harmonious relationship with all or most of [his] influential subjects" (167), but this must have been very difficult with Edward
IPs notorious fondness for elevating his often low-born friends into both rank and power, especially if one also takes into account the unusual stubbornness equalling to that of his father "(though without his ability)" (Morgan 177). The questions for the thesis to answer are, firstly, to what degree does Bannockburn reflect Edward as a military man, and, secondly, how much of the discontent between the court and the magnates was inherited from his father, and how much can be ascribed to the king himself.
Another important factor of a monarch is his stance towards the administrative part of his reign, which can further divided into military and financial matters. As was already implied, both Churchill and Morgan did not research these matters in enough depth, probably because medieval chronicles were all but oblivious to it, which leaves
Tout to consult these matters, for he bases his findings on the various Charters, Rolls - usually Pipe, Charter and Fine ones - and other legal documents which record the actual proceedings of the government, rather than chase rumours spread by, more often than not, biased chroniclers.
The thesis will further examine the king as a human being, that is his interests, his qualities other than those already mentioned, his often discussed sexuality, and their relevance to the role of a king. The traditional view of Edward II is that of a "perverted weakling" (Churchill 244), which is very much the popular image of the king the
8 audience is shown in the popular film Braveheart. Another fiction, World Without End, both book and series, will be used for a comparison of the image some fifteen years later. The thesis will also test my hypothesis that the king's alleged homosexuality is the key factor for the lack of serious scholarly research into his reign as well as to his person within the last century.
9 2 The Inheritance of Edward II
To properly understand the reign of Edward II as well as what the king had to deal with, one must first become familiar with the previous reign and the state of things as they were at the time of succession, for "unless we grasp how Edward I governed
England, we read awry all the history of the fourteenth century" (Tout 42). Therefore, a brief summary of the most important aspects of the reign needs be stated, namely the internal policy, or the relations with the magnates, external policy and affairs with the neighbouring countries, the administrative - chiefly financial department, the military affairs and the relations with the Church.
2.1 Internal Policy
Throughout his text, Tout often questions the approach of his contemporary scholars of evaluating historical occurrences with a modern mindset and of seeing the base of modern laws consciously put there1, as if the historical law-makers had a vision of what might follow some centuries later and actually even cared about that. He sees most of the medieval laws as the beneficial side effect of much more practical and immediate concerns - of the constant power struggle between the king and the leading magnates.
For instance, Edward I is fairly often portrayed, from a rather modern point of view, as a "conscious founder of a free constitutional system" (Tout 38), despite the high improbability of a medieval ruler's plans going past his own personal gains. Tout believes that the fact that Edward I "established constitutional government in England was the result of historical accident much more than deliberate design", mostly due to his attempts to win the struggle against the barons and episcopate, who "demanded that they alone should help the king in the rule of the land, but made it the condition of their
1 For examples, see Tout 208, 211 and 212. 10 help that the king should frame his policy in accordance with their ideals" (Tout 32).
This struggle was, like many others, nowhere near being resolved when Edward I died, and thus this inheritance added to his son's burdens. Tout believes that had Edward I lived longer, he would have probably overcome both the baronage and episcopate as well as subjected the Scots, and then it would be "easy to imagine [. . .] Edward I [. . .] as the English Philip the Fair, as the organiser of despotism, not as the pioneer of constitutionalism" (32). Tout further adds that "such was not the case [. . .] largely due to the reign of Edward II" (32), for "[a] strong successor to Edward I might have made
England a despotism [whereas] his weak and feckless son secured the permanence of
Edwardian constitutionalism" (33).
This struggle for power took its toll, for, perhaps partially due to his stubbornness and unwillingness to part with his power, "[Edward Fs] obstinate and autocratic nature2 seriously strained relations with his influential subjects" (Morgan 175). It appears that for the most part of his reign, the King managed to keep the magnates more or less content, but their submissiveness to his increasing authority finally reached its limit when he wanted some of them to serve in his war in Gascony without him (Churchill
232). At this point, the barons drew up a document and forced Edward to ratify it, to be sure, twice, thus granting them a variety of additional rights, chief among them being that the monarch had "no right to despatch the feudal host wherever he might choose"
(ibid. 233). The second ratification happened in 1301, and it was probably as far as the barons ever got with their protests against Edward I. However, they seemed to have learnt their lesson and thus, hoping to take no chances, altered the coronation oath so as
2 For more on Edward I's autocracy, see Tout 37,38. 11 to gain more power and to "prevent [the next king] from evading his undertakings as
Edward I had done" (Phillips 6)3.
2.2 External Policy and Its Financial Demands and Yields
Edward I's foreign policy centred around his "imperialist plans" (Tout 205) to such a degree that it is difficult to disprove the statements that "from Edward I's reign onwards, there was no decade [in the later Middle Ages] when Englishmen were not at war" and that it was him who "began the perpetual war" (Morgan 167). His "first great step toward the unification of the Island" was by the conquest of Wales "in several years of persistent warfare" (Churchill 234). This was undoubtedly a success, and had his good fortune continued, the Acts of Union may have happened several centuries earlier than they did. History, however, proved otherwise, and Wales itself became "a costly achievement", for in order to secure the English rule, "dozen new, half a dozen reconstructed fortresses", worth some £75,000, were ordered, and the country "only started producing profit in mid-fourteenth century" (Morgan 168).
Never far from Edward's plans was his northern neighbour, perhaps due to the fact that "[s]ince the days of Henry II the English monarchy had intermittently claimed an overlordship of Scotland" (Churchill 237). At first, he tried to get advantage of the royal vacuum in Scotland through his offer of service of a "proper, legal advisor" (ibid.
237), hoping to claim some power for himself as well. While this worked well for a time, the Scots eventually overthrew his chosen candidate and he had to use other means for his plans, and, as a result, "Edward I's efforts to make his claim a reality began a barren period of mutual hostility between the two countries that lasted well into the sixteenth century" (Morgan 168).
3 The text is from an online source without any page numbering. For the reader's convenience. I pasted it into an MS Word document and used the numbering there - total size of the text is 23 pages, using the font size 12. 12 Another part of Edward's foreign interests was Gascony, which, during his time, was very prosperous and "well worth fighting for" (Morgan 171). While it may have seemed to be the most lucrative of the king's ventures, it soon turned into a very expensive one and required "increased taxation on goods and property" which in turn caused "a bitter and sullen discontent spread among all classes" (Churchill 231). This may have become the critical point in his reign, when "[he] had ceased to balance his income and expenditure" (Tout 37) and the situation went from bad to worse, or, as
Churchill puts it, that from 1294 on there was an "endless succession of difficulties", starting with a suppression of a Welsh revolt in the same year (231).
However, of much bigger concern was the alliance of France with Scotland
(Churchill 238), which, from 1296, started a continuous war with Scotland (ibid. 231), and thus opened the war on two fronts. Churchill explains that "[t]his double conflict imposed a strain upon the financial and military resources of the English monarchy which it could by no means meet" and that Edward subsequently had to "tax his subjects beyond endurance" (238). Morgan further states on account of the Scottish war that "[a] score of English invasions [. . .] after 1296 succeeded in establishing an uneasy military and administrative presence in the Lowlands, but [. . .] had to be financed largely from
England" (169). The English apparently became so dependent on the spoils of war that
"series of truces" with France in 1297 - 1303 actually caused "years of severe strain"
(Churchill 231). Thus, in the end, the only neighbouring country that actually made any profit for England was Ireland, but even that was by a "[h]arsh exploitation [turned from] financial resource [to] financial liability" (Morgan 170). The overall result and the consequences for the next reign will be discussed in the next subchapter.
13 2.3 The Administrative
Probably the gravest issue of Edward I's reign was "the collapse of the national finances before the strain which Edward had put upon them. Constant wars and a divided nation involved a financial burden which Edward was quite unable to sustain"
(Tout 37). The extremeness of the situation can be also seen in measures such as demanding taxes "four times as frequently as in the first half of Edward I's reign"
(Morgan 175). Another proof can be seen in the administrative documents, for "[t]he wardrobe accounts [. . .] testify year after year to a large deficit on the income side, and for the last years of the reign were rarely made up and never enrolled" (Tout 37). Tout further states that, in the end, the kingdom could not keep up the pressure on its finances, and the King had to bribe foreign merchants "to grant him new customs", and
Italian bankers to make him "temporary advances by which alone he could stave off bankruptcy", but in turn had to hand over a considerable portion of future revenues to them, thus further indebting the nation (37-38). During this financial crisis came renewed troubles with the Scots under Robert Bruce, and, surprisingly, Edward somehow managed to start forming an answer to that in the form of an invasion. One may only wonder what turn would the history take had he not died just before it was launched, but as things were, it is not much of an overstatement to say that "[p]robably no mediaeval king left his finances in a more hopeless confusion than did the great
Edward", and that "[c]ertainly none of them ever handed to his successor so heavy a task with such inadequate means to discharge it" (Tout 38).
At first, Edward I may have genuinely been trying to improve matters. He "set [. .
.] [t]he framework and policies of the nation" based on the previous three reigns, although few reforms "were original [and] most were conservative" (Churchill 226).
Based on the previous paragraph, what Churchill calls a "ceaseless process of
14 administrative reform" (228) may very well have merely been a ceaseless process of trying to squeeze more finances out of an empty royal treasury, especially towards the later part of the reign. Once again, Tout's theory of a positive side effect emerging from unrelated events comes to mind. Churchill, however, agrees that the king eventually had to turn to non-English people for help, firstly the bankers, then the Jews (228).
Apparently, he found a ready solution to "escape from [some of the] awkward debts" - the expulsion of the Jews (Churchill 228). The rest of the monetary problems, like many other issues, he managed to avoid having to deal with during his life.
2.4 The Military
With regards to the military, the most important long-term occurrence of Edward
I's reign was probably the two-fold setback to the traditional way of organizing armies.
Firstly, it was no longer possible for a king to use the feudal levy outside of England proper4, even if it was probably meant for the defence of the king's holdings in
Gascony, which were technically a part of England. The fact that this legal necessity to do something about the feudal system of organizing armies came so early was, I believe, one of the key points which gave the English the edge over the French in the
Hundred Years' War, for it allowed for almost half a century of gradual evolution of the military structure. Churchill is probably not stretching it too far when he stated that this law was "the death-knell of feudal levy", for it in not so distant future caused the "rise of indentured armies serving for pay" (233).
Secondly, "[t]he Welsh war [. . .] destroyed the physical basis of feudalism"
(Churchill 236). While this may be a bit of an overstatement, it was definitely a start, for the supremacy of the heavy cavalry, who dominated the battlefields of the medieval
Europe for centuries, started to be seriously challenged. The casualties inflicted by the
4 See the last paragraph of section 2.1, p 11-12. 15 Welsh longbowmen are famous enough, and the Scots, driven by unpopular laws into a(nother) rebellion, were by Wallace reorganized from unruly fighting mobs into an army (Churchill 239). Having no mastery of archery and lacking the means to field as large a cavalry force as the English, the Scots had to devise other means of fighting if they were to avoid either being run down by the horsemen or running away from the battle altogether. More surprising than the reinvention of the pike itself is the fact that it took them so long to figure out that a long enough stick of wood would be, when used properly, a sufficient substitute for a heavily armoured horseman. They were to become, perhaps after the Swiss, the best pikemen in Europe, but for the time being they were content with decimating the overconfident English cavalrymen of Edward I.
This practical reason for abandoning the feudal era military concept would be of great value to the English during the Hundred Years' War, but it would, again, take decades for their army to learn and evolve. This would in time, coupled with the aforementioned legal restriction, produce both "paid regular troops" as well as a shift in the proportional setup of the army from chiefly close-combat soldiers to archers, which some consider "the real prize of [the Welsh] conquest" (Churchill 235). Of particular importance to the next reign is the fact that Edward I died at a moment when the Scots learnt effectively not only to resist the English militarily, but also to defeat them, whereas the evolution of the English army had barely even started, and particularly the
English knights were nowhere near the disciplined professionals of the mid-fourteenth century.
2.5 The Church
It was already mentioned that Edward I's power struggle involved the ecclesiastical officials as well5. Aside from that, there seem to have been a "chronic
5 See p 10-11. 16 difficulty with the church" (Tout 37). However, Edward became, by the later part of his reign, so skilled at delegating issues that it was probably not much of a problem to postpone the resolution thereof till after his death (Churchill 230), thus further adding to his son's burdens.
17 3 The Character of Edward II
Before dealing with the reign proper, a brief look at the King as a human is necessary to outline the views of the chroniclers and modern scholars. Tout lists many chronicles dealing with the King and his reign6, but aside from two (7), they all seem to be very negative and one outright "malign[ant]" (11), yet none of them goes as far as to call him a "perverted weakling" (Churchill 244), even though it is a fairly close to describing two of the chief negative attributes popularly ascribed to Edward, physical weakness and cowardice. Churchill's other vivid remark towards Edward is that of a
"futile and unworthy heir" (242), which can be assumed to mean the king's idleness and incompetence, respectively; the other two traits typically ascribed to him, thus finishing the overall traditional image. Furthermore, his alleged homosexuality and his fondness for friends and subsequent favouritism will also be discussed.
3.1 Idleness and Strength
While chroniclers rarely all agree, "their agreement is absolutely wonderful in dealing with [Edward II]" (Tout 9). Tout further states that "[t]hey all present the same general picture of that strong, handsome, weak-willed and frivolous king who cared neither for battles nor tournaments, neither politics nor business, and had no other wish than to amuse himself" and that the "contemporaries found hardest to understand [. . .] that Edward was not content with [. . .] participating [. . .] in such recognised dissipations as public opinion allowed" (9-10). Note that they agree that he was a strong man, which makes one wonder where Churchill got his notion of a weakling, especially since he contradicts it with some items on his own list of the King's "interests in thatching and ditching and other serviceable arts" and "addiction] to rowing, swimming and baths" (244). Tout's list is a lot longer (10), and while most of these activities are
6 See Tout 5,7,8 and 11. 18 indeed not typical of medieval monarchs, most require considerable physical strength.
His seeming lack of interest in tournaments can be ascribed to the likely fact "that it was simply too dangerous to risk the life or health of the heir to the throne [. . .] in such a dangerous sport" (Phillips 1). However, Edward's interests did include "the traditional delight of his race7 in hunting, and in the breeding of horses and hounds" (Tout 10).
Tout states that "[i]t was not so much the king's vices as his idleness and incompetence which his subjects complained of" (11). As was already shown, the king indeed had a lot of pastimes, and, from a modern point of view, it would be hard not to admire him if he found the time for all that beside his full-time job of reigning.
However, the contemporaries probably had no understanding for that, regardless of the actual time spent doing those activities, for a king was expected to govern, not to actually enjoy his life. While chroniclers are notorious with their overstatements, the sheer amount of references to the King's idleness may bear some seeds of truth. The complete situation may be indiscernible, but the analysis of his reign may shed some light on the King's idleness and particularly on his incompetence.
Overall, it seems that Edward was simply born a few centuries too early, and
"[p]erhaps we more frivolous moderns might judge Edward of Carnarvon less severely than his ascetic contemporaries" (Tout 11). Interestingly, the half a century more modern Churchill is far more severe than either Tout or the medieval chroniclers.
3.2 Bravery
As far as the third traditional attribute is concerned, "most writers suggest that
Edward was no better than a coward, notably when he fled in a panic from the defeat of
Bannockburn" (Tout 10), such of condemning him as "being ever chicken-hearted"
(Lanercost 240), although some describe Edward in this part of the battle as "rush[ing]
7 Meaning the royal 'class'. 19 like a lioness bereft of her cubs [. . .] on the victorious Scots and draining] the life blood of his enemies with his glittering sword" (Tout 10). Tout ascribes the overly vivid depiction to the fact that it was written by an order of monks the King liked and had given "rich gifts and offerings" to (10-11). While Churchill's account of the event is not so offensive as it was with regards to the previous attribute, he is nonetheless very negative, for he says that "the king himself, with his numerous personal guards, was not slow to head" the general retreat (247). Morgan gives no detailed information about the situation, and while one may be inclined to believe the truth to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of opinions, the newest biographical entry states that "Edward II fought bravely, and had a horse killed under him, but eventually had to be led away to safety by the earl of Pembroke, lest his capture should turn disastrous defeat into a catastrophe" (Phillips 9). It seems, therefore, that if one is to judge Edward's fighting prowess based on the most important battle of his reign, as the history had done, he was both brave and strong, despite Churchill's persuasive account. Phillips further agrees that "[t]here is certainly no reason to suppose him to have been a physical coward" (20).
The subsequent question to be asked is where the popular image of Edward as a weakling came from. Without meaning any disrespect to Churchill, it is not very likely that his not up-to-date history book is sought after by the general public to learn about medieval kings. No other modern scholarly text bears such vivid descriptions.
Therefore, one must look towards the popular field. Adaptations of Marlowe's play
Edward II may give some hints of the image, but the safest bet is probably the very effeminate portrayal of prince Edward in the 1995 film Braveheart, which actually does evoke the label "perverted weakling". More on the possible origins of this depiction will be said in the relevant chapter, but it appears that there is no scholarly basis for it.
20 3.3 (In)competence
Much like the topic of the King's idleness, competence is a very difficult item to measure, for it is all but impossible to discern to what degree was he involved in the process of managing the various departments of the kingdom. However, since the reign is usually condemned along with Edward II, it behoves one to judge the competence of the two as a whole, and therefore the verdict will have to wait until after the analysis of the reign proper.
3.4 Favouritism
To find the root of this infamous tendency of the King, one has to look to
Edward's childhood to search for answers, for it is there that the personality of a person is formed. It is known that he was "[s]tarved of affection during childhood, ignored by his father in adolescence, and confronted by unsolved problems at his accession", and as a result thereof he "sought advice, friendship, even affection, from ambitious favourites such as Peter Gavaston and Hugh Despenser who were unworthy [. . .] and resented by many magnates" (Morgan 176). Tout's reflections on the administrative documents of the prince's household are of little value in this matter, and Churchill gives no account of his youth either, but Philips confirms Morgan's statement: "By the time he was born
[in 1284] at least seven of Edward Is children were already dead, including his two elder sons, John and Henry, while a third son, Alfonso, was to die" within few months, which "left the new-born Edward of Caernarfon both as the only surviving son and as heir to the throne" (1). Despite that, "his childhood was to modern eyes very unsatisfactory", and he had very little contact with his family, for his parents were absent for three years shortly before his mother died in his sixth year, his grandmother died the next year, and most of his sisters were married off or entered convent by 1293, the last two by 1297 (Phillips 1). Furthermore, "the prince's mother sent her scribe
21 Philip to join Edward at Woodstock", and while this "may imply that Edward was better educated (or at least that a greater effort was made to educate him) than is generally thought", it also implies that he lived far away from the parents' court (Phillips 2). All this lack of contact probably manifested in the precondition which later caused Edward the urge to be surrounded by people who, genuinely or not, cared for him.
A parallel to this can be seen in the childhood of Richard II, which too later led to his strong desire to surround himself with friends and to reward such friendship as he saw appropriate. While it would be laughable to compare modern childcare techniques with medieval ones, it is definitely worth a thought that a slightly less severe approach of Edward I to his heir would have probably altered the latter's life astronomically, for his favouritism would not only mar his whole reign, but would ultimately cause its end.
The most prominent, as well the most hated, favourites were definitely Gaveston and the two Despensers, particularly the younger Hugh. While the chroniclers generally see them as sources of all the troubles of the reign, "Edward's friends were not so black as they have been painted" (Tout 12). The general, simplified pattern of such a person's stay at the royal court can be shown on the example of Gaveston. He would be invited to the court, given all sorts of favours (Phillips 5,6) and items (Lanercost 187), which would embitter the magnates and thus cause a good deal of problems. Tout says, however, that "the worst that can be [. . .] said against [Gaveston] is that he was not a serious politician, that he never aspired to office in the state [and] that he looked too closely after the financial interests of his [relatives]" (12-13) and also that he was a foreigner (14). Xenophobia was back then probably even more widespread that it is now, and the other statements may very well be true as well, for it was already shown that frivolity seemed to the chroniclers to be a mortal sin8. However, one might say that
See p 18. 22 his chief source of problems was arrogance and the continuous "affix[ation of] stinging nicknames" on the English magnates, for while calling the leading figures of the kingdom by names such as "horesone" or "blanke hounde of Arderne" may seem
"curiously various" to the modern reader (Tout 13-14), especially by the Shakespeare• like form of some of them (the latter) or pointedness (the former), the addressees thereof were probably not so overjoyed9. One of the chroniclers seems to agree with this as the key reason for Gaveston's doom, for Tout mentions the chronicler's "conviction that, if
Peter had from the beginning behaved prudently and humbly before the English magnates, he would never have had any of them opposed to him" (15).
Throughout the reign, there was quite a considerable amount of such favourites at the king's court. Most came and went, but except the two already mentioned, none rose to such prominence. Especially Gaveston's importance is often exaggerated, for Tout believes that while he did have the largest share of the king's confidence and that he likely controlled his household, it is very doubtful that "[he held] a[ny] specific post in it", let alone the one of a chamberlain, as is generally believed10 (78).
Hugh Despenser, on the other hand, was much more ambitious, for not only he, much like Gaveston before him, "[controlled] the king and the household", but he also
"strove [. . .] to build up [. . .] a mighty principality which might well make him independent even of his royal master" (Tout 137). However, Tout explains that the eventual "fall of the Despensers was due not so much to their being royal favourites, as to the incompatibility of the interests of the barons with the personal ambitions of the younger Hugh" (144). As can be seen, Despenser was the more dangerous of the two favourites, as well as the more influential one, but more on the topic cannot be said
9 For more information, especially to those more linguistically gifted than myself, I heartily recommend checking note 2 on pages 13 and 14 of Tout's text. 10 For more information on this, see Tout 12, note 2. 23 without delving into too great a depth into the reign itself, and as such will be discussed during the analysis thereof.
Despite the clear danger of Despenser's ambitions to the interests of the magnates, and the obvious arrogance with which Gaveston threw insults all over them and thus very directly asked for trouble, there were suggestions of a different reason for the universal hatred of the favourites and their untimely demises.
3.5 Edward Iľs Relationships with the Favourites11
Much like with any other detailed information about a medieval person, the exact nature of the relationship between Edward II and his favourites is very hard, or perhaps even "impossible" (Phillips 4), to determine, much more so if it was indeed sexual, as the modern trend would have it, for that would hardly become common enough knowledge for the chroniclers to gather and note.
It is believed that comments such as: "upon looking on [Gaveston] the son of the king immediately felt such love for him that he entered into a covenant of constancy, and bound himself with him before all other mortals with a bond of indissoluble love, firmly drawn up and fastened with a knot" (Haskins qtd. in Phillips 4), made by an anonymous chronicler, "have led to the modern assumption that their relationship was definitely sexual" (ibid. 4). However, there is no clear evidence for such comments, and
Phillips further argues that "[w]hile some of the chroniclers' remarks about Edward II can be interpreted as implying homosexuality or bisexuality, too many of them are either much later in date or the product of hostility, or a combination of the two, and thus not acceptable at face value" (4).
As close as Tout gets to talk about the relationship is his statement, which he claims is agreed on by the chroniclers, that '[i]n the suspected society of his personal
11 Originally, this was to be the topic the thesis was to revolve around. However, the lack of scholarly sources on Edward's alleged homosexuality made me reconsider. 24 favourites about the court, Edward gratified his love of such ignoble sports as racing, rowing, driving, play-acting, farming, smith's work, thatching, digging and similar
"mechanic arts," such as no medi[e]val gentleman had ever affected' (10). While this lack of depth as far as sexuality is concerned may be caused by the fact that "[i]n the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries [. . .] serious academic study tended to ignore personalities, preferring to concentrate on the constitutional implications of
Edward II's reign" (Phillips 21), it is more probable that, due to Edward's frivolity and interest in unusual activities, he may have simply required a group of friends of a different mindset than could be found among the conservative and overly prudent magnates and their kin.
Churchill mentions his disgust for Edward's "friendship for his advisors beyond dignity and decency" (244), but he does not elaborate on what exactly he considers dignified and decent friendship and thus leaves the reader to ponder the question him or herself. Morgan says even less, merely that the two chief favourites were "unworthy" and "resented by many magnates" (176). This lack of scholarly interest, both in the period chronicles and in the modern texts, leads to two possible conclusions. Firstly, the whole issue of Edward's alleged homosexuality is so new that it was simply not there even as late as when Morgan started compiling his text in the 1980s. Secondly, since there seem to be no respectable written source testifying to it, the scholars have collectively considered the matter a popular phenomenon and therefore chose to neglect it. This phenomenon can be traced to the aforementioned Marlowe's play, where the reference to the sexual nature of their relationship is quite explicit12.
The popular origin of the alleged homosexuality seems all the more probable when one considers the lawful partners of both men as well as their progeny. Firstly, "it
12 There were are quite a few modern adaptations. Most notable for the said reference are "Bertolt Brecht's adaptation of 1922-3" and "Derek Jarman's even more explicit 1992 film version of the play" (Phillips 21). 25 is highly improbable that Philippe IV of France, who had an extreme aversion to homosexuality, would have allowed the marriage with Isabella [. . .] if her future husband's sexual proclivities had been [known]", and it is similarly unlikely that the earl of Gloucester would marry his sister to Gaveston under such circumstances (Phillips 4).
Both marriages produced children, and the first of Edward's four was born "a few months after Gaveston's death, and must have been conceived while the latter was still alive" (ibid. 4). Furthermore, Phillips states that the queen "was only twelve years old at the time of their marriage and could not have been expected to bear children much earlier than she did" (4). Should someone argue that the two men merely fulfilled their marital duties, there is evidence that "Edward also had an illegitimate son Adam, who died during the Scottish campaign of 1322 and was probably born before his father's marriage in 1308 at a time when his relationship with Gaveston was already established, while Gaveston is known to have had an illegitimate daughter" (Phillips 4).
Moreover, another plausible explanation of the close relationship is, according to
Phillips, that the bond between Edward and Gaveston was merely one of a
"brotherhood-in-arms", commonly practiced "between members of the nobility in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe", or that "the two men entered into a bond of adoptive brotherhood, comparable with the relationship between David and Jonathan in the Old Testament" (4).
Of interesting note is the fact that the alleged homosexuality appears related exclusively to Gaveston, and is, more often than not, considered the chief reason for his repeated exiles and eventual execution. However, much like with Despenser, the actual source of problems between the favourite and the magnates was that "Gaveston was perceived as wielding a degree of influence over the king that excluded others who considered they had a right to be consulted" (Phillips 4). With Gaveston, it was his
26 arrogance which turned the magnates' feeling of hatred into open hostility, whereas with Despenser it was his ambitious and successful accumulation of power and land.
Whatever the case, however, it is probable that "Edward of Carnarvon and his intimates
[. . .] have been, on the whole, rather too severely judged at the bar of history" (Tout
16).
27 4 The Reign of Edward II
It has been said, in a summarization of a survey made by Stubbs, a late nineteenth century scholar, that "the chief actors of the reign of Edward II [were inferior] to the men of preceding generations", and that "eloquent generalisations [were drawn] as to the falling off of the incoming fourteenth century in character and ideals from the thirteenth century, the golden period of medi[e]val civilisation", although Tout believes that "the decadence of the age of Edward II is in no wise so clear as it would seem at first sight" (22). While he admits that "the leaders were markedly inferior", he finds the main difference in the fact that "there were few leaders who really led" (Tout 22), for there was simply no "great personality" or a "strong leader" at the time (ibid. 23). Tout find this quite positive, for he seems to think that it was in considerable part due to this that "except in the north, there were more rumours of war than [actual] wars all through the reign" (24), that "it was on the whole a better, and certainly a more pleasant, time to live in" than the thirteenth century (23), and, moreover, that "[Stubbs] certainly never appreciated the real importance of the reign as the turning point in our later administrative history" (26). This statement is quite revolutionary, for, at best, "the reign of Edward II is generally regarded as a series of rather futile revolutions, each involving a change of the government which was [...] for the better" (Tout 28), and it has rarely been called a turning point in any positive sense, and therefore it will be left to the reader to ponder the validity of the statement after dealing with the details of the reign itself.
This lack of excessive disturbances was crucial for the smooth continuation of the whole process of managing the realm and for slight improvements, or, in Tout's words, for "simple inventions which enable the [state] machine to do its work better and more economically" (24). The economy has indeed improved quite a lot during the reign, as
28 will be shown soon. Tout further states that "[t]he result of [the lack of disturbances] was that there was a striking continuity in the administrative personnel all through the reign. A favourite might be dismissed; a magnate might retire from court in a huff: but the everyday workers who governed the country went on despite all threatenings
[during the reign]", for the government was "a solidly organized institution" (29). The importance of all this is also in the fact that "[the reign] shows us how late medi[e]val administration, and late medi[e]val society, went on when left to themselves" (Tout 24-
25).
Modern texts, aside from Churchill, generally acknowledge at least some of the wide plethora of problems which remained unresolved at the time of Edward I's death, such as that his son inherited "an expensive war in the north that was nowhere near a victorious conclusion, and political unrest [. . .] compounded by a dwindling of trust between monarch and subject" (Morgan 176). It may come as a surprise that there is no explicit mention of the collapse of the national finances, but it is quite a leap forward from Churchill, for the remark that "we do not always sufficiently appreciate how complete was the failure of that king's declining years" (Tout 36) appears to have been entirely lost on him. Even more surprising, however, is the fact that besides Tout's work there seems to be a very limited amount of texts that even try to view Edward II objectively13, let alone to view him in such a positive light as they appear to view his father despite his failures, as Churchill does. Regardless, in order to deal with the points mentioned by Morgan, as well as some other important ones, one has to be first acquainted with the reign itself.
13 Phillips' biographical entry can be considered one of these texts. 29 4.1 The Court of Edward of Carnarvon
Before dealing with the actual reign, it is important to outline the relation of the royal court with the nation, as well as describe Edward's court during his time as prince, for it was to have a significant influence on the reign itself. There is a considerable overlap of the terms court, household and wardrobe or chamber, which can be traced to the overlap of their functions.
Both chamber and wardrobe were initially meant in the literal sense of "the place where the king slept, and the adjacent ante-room where he hung up his clothes", and similarly the staff thereof was originally "trained [. . .] to wait upon the king in the most private aspects of his life", but were "soon called [...] to discharge his general functions in an age when no distinction was made or thought of between the private and the public aspects of sovereignty" (Tout 64), hence some of the overlap with the household and court, for Tout states that it eventually "took definite shape as the financial and administrative department of the king's household" (65), which was pretty much the key part of the whole government, for the most important aspects of the reign took place there, even though it was, technically speaking, merely a part of the king's household, which was in turn a part of the court, the then used term for what we would now generally call the government, because at the time there was "no [. . .] distinction between the ruling of the court and the ruling of the nation" (64) and the whole national administration "was based upon the organisation of the kings' domestic households"
(43).
Tout further explains that the wardrobe was already considered "chief executive instrument [under Edward I]", that it was "constantly at his side" and that wardrobe was
"narrower and closer organisation within the household" and "gave coherence, direction and system to court policy" (69). Moreover, "the king's court was regarded as co-
30 extensive with the nation", and the king's own household troops and his ships were a basis for the national army and navy, and, as a whole, it had its own life as well as influence within the national politics, for "[i]t went on, whether the king was weak or strong, whether the favourites and high officials were competent or incapable" (Tout
68). This influence was probably so substantial that Tout emphasizes that "[t]o appreciate [the royal court] is to get at the secret of the fourteenth century political history" (68).
Much like the king, his son also had a household of his own to look after his needs and probably to prepare him for his own reign as well, and therefore it can be fairly safely assumed that it was organized in much the same way. With the notorious chaos in and the lack of satisfactorily complete documentation of the acts of a ruler in the medieval times, it is to be expected that there usually are next to no surviving notes about their sons and their households. However, "there survive several instructive account books of the wardrobe of Edward of Carnarvon, when prince of Wales, which enable us to study his early life and the organisation and personnel of his household in a detail such as is impossible for any earlier king's son in our history" (Tout 72). From the study of these books, Tout learnt14 that "the prince's wardrobe w[as] organized on exactly the same lines as the king's" and he also states that "[i]n the case of Edward of
Carnarvon we15 feel pretty sure that his wardrobe officers were appointed, and strictly controlled, by the old king" (72). Furthermore, the account shows "nearly all the names of those persons most intimately associated with Edward during his reign" (Tout 73). In addition to this, it was already said that the court is the real governor of the kingdom, regardless of any favourites or high officials, and therefore is it difficult to put most of
14 Generally, all the original documents included in Tout's text in the form of appendices are written in French with Latin commentary, which leaves me no other choice but to rely on Tout's analysis thereof. 15 Presumably he and his fellow scholars who analyzed the original texts. 31 the blame of the failure of the reign on Edward II, as most chronicles and historians seem to have done, since he merely adhered to the advice and practice of his highly praised father. Seen in the general scope of the whole reign, however, there is no youthful pragmatism or wisdom at play here, for Edward had little choice but accept the fact that, due to his father's already having set his imperialistic plans in motion, "he inherited [. . .] the obligation to carry on his father's policy[, . . .] a burden so overwhelming that it nearly had broken the back of his great father", for Edward I hoped to achieve "a task for which his resources were absolutely inadequate" (Tout 36).
4.2 The Reign
Based on the prevailing policy, the reign can be divided into three periods.
According to Tout, the first period witnessed "the system of Edward I, severely strained during the last years of the old king's reign, utterly br[eaking] down", the Battle of
Bannockburn, which "showed the futility of the attempt to [control Scotland]", and the baronial efforts to gain more power - pretty much continuous ones from the reign of
Edward I - only succeeding in "ruining the royal autocracy" rather than "supplying an alternative system of efficient government" (74). Tout further divides the reign into two more periods, when the policies shifted along with the ruling power: second was from
1318, when, after eight years had passed since passing the barons' ordinances, no actual radical reform of the king's household happened (76) and "the new middle party of
Pembroke seized [power]" and followed a "policy of constructive reform"; and third from 1322, after the victory of the coalition of Pembrokians and the courtiers, until the fall of the king (74-75).
Despite these considerable changes in the government, "the reign is, as a whole, remarkable for the continuity of the administrative personnel" (Tout 76). Aside from the replacement of "his father's ministers", which was a standard procedure when a new
32 king succeeded to the throne , Tout states that there were "remarkably few" changes to the administration throughout the whole reign (76), and even the standard procedure itself was not quite so drastic as "some of the chronicles suggest" (77). Furthermore, many of posts were manned by "individuals who had already been acting during the old king's last years" (Tout 78). Interestingly, some contemporary chronicles take quite the opposite view, for they say that Edward II "caused many other leading men, who had been with his father, to be dismissed from their offices, and viler and worse men to be appointed" (Lanercost 185) - this may either very well reflect contemporary opinions of the King and his associates, or it probably just seemed unfathomable that a government consisting mostly of the great Edward's officers would cause such a financial disaster, and therefore the chroniclers looked for someone to put the blame on.
It is worth mentioning that the two former chief officers of the prince's household
- elected to those posts by the old king - became the two main representatives of his royal policy, and so, Tout states, since "Edward I had been singularly indifferent as to the personal character of [the prince's] ministers", "it is only fair that [Edward I] should share in the discredit which history has meted out to his son for his patronage of [such officers]" (79). This also shows that, from the very beginning of his reign, Edward II seems to have been very loyal to those who followed him, for "the[se] two chiefs of the prince's wardrobe attained the two archbishoprics of the English church" (Tout 80).
Dealing with the unfortunate choice of his household officials by his father was to be, however, the least of Edward of Carnarvon's worries as a king.
16 Tout claims that "substantially the whole household staff of the prince of Wales was transferred to the household of the new king" (80), but there were a lot of other government officials besides those serving in the king's household.
33 4.2.1 Longshank's Unfinished Business in the North
Despite the notoriously unruly English magnates, as further shown by their alteration of the coronation oath to better serve their needs17, the most dire issues
Edward II had to deal with upon his accession were the results of his father's unfinished imperialistic plans, most notably the ongoing war with Scotland, a "war which was itself already going badly but which it was politically unthinkable to abandon" (Phillips
20). In this regard, "Edward has often been reproached with giving up voluntarily the conquest of Scotland" (Tout 81), despite the fact that he had a throne to secure, which was the standard procedure of the time, and one that other kings were hardly ever upbraided for. One of the contemporary sources claims that he did pick up his father's planned invasion of Scotland shortly after the succession and well before his trip to
London to secure the throne, but failed to meet the Scots in battle (Lanercost 183-4).
This failure to force a battle with Scots is often ascribed to Edward and his favourites, but Tout argues that his "efforts to come to close quarters with Robert Bruce were failures [. . .] partly, but only partly, [. . .] [because of] his frivolity and want of enterprise" and that while Gaveston may be "condemned for most of his master's errors", one has to rule military matters out, for even "the most hostile chroniclers admit that the favourite comported himself against the Scots like a gallant warrior" (81).
Furthermore, to make a bad situation worse, despite having the same "political objects [. . .] as [his father]", "Edward IPs policy had hopelessly broken down" even before he actually even made the standard administrative changes connected with the change of the monarch (Tout 81), and thus while the blame for the failures in achieving a decisive military victory against the Scots was generally put mostly on the opposing barons or in turn on Edward II, the real source of the inadequate English military was
17 See p 11-12. 34 "the utter disorder of the royal finances, for which the old king must bear nine-tenths of the responsibility" - these "desperate straits the king's revenues had fallen [into]" can be clearly seen in "the issue rolls of the exchequer" and surviving wardrobe accounts (Tout
81-82). The perilous situation is even more clearly depicted by the fact that "[o]ne keeper of the wardrobe after another gave up his task in despair" (ibid. 82).
Despite the clear signs of the financial problems, the magnates saw the root of the problems in Edward's favourites and generally within his household, and they decided to do something about it through legal ways. Lets deal with these two roots in turn.
4.2.2 The Financial Problems and the Ordinances of 1311
While it is known that in the early years of Edward IF s reign the "burdens of war
[. . .] were scarcely less heavy than [. . .] during Edward Fs conquest" (Morgan 177), the financial issues as well as the related conflict with the barons can be traced decades earlier into Edward Fs reign, for Tout explains that the system used was highly corrupted, since money was listed as passing through the exchequer, even though it physically rarely did (52). For example, in the years 1282 to 1284, 200,000 pounds passed through the wardrobe rather than exchequer controlled by the barons, and to appease them, Edward or Langton, his chief official, "invented the ingenious device by which the revenue seemed to flow into the exchequer, while it really continued to pursue the channels preferred by the court" (Tout 70). It is further stated by Tout that this eventually led to the "threshold of a constitutional conflict" which started to show
"during the declining years of the old king" (70) and in the end also led to "the breakdown of the financial system [. . .] devised for Edward I" (82-83). The problem was so grave that "[d]uring the first ten years of the reign" of Edward II "the chaos was yearly becoming more complete" (Tout 83).
35 Much like as with the foreign policy, Tout claims that the king had no choice but to continue the practice of his father of using foreigners, chiefly the Frescobaldi, an
Italian family of moneylenders, whose "advances [. . .] enabled Edward II to keep alive the ministers of his household and state" (83). Due to the immense debt, Edward I had no choice but to give Amerigo dei Frescobaldi increasingly more important posts within the state until he became one of the most important men in England, holding posts such as "chief receiver of customs", "keeper of the king's exchanges at London and
Canterbury" and "constable of Bordeaux", and it is of no surprise that he exploited all these positions to help himself rather than the English (Tout 83).
The Calhau, a lesser family of moneylenders employed by the king, had blood ties to Gaveston, and, due to the already considerable hostilities, it did not take for the barons to put the blame of the financial difficulties on him, so that "Peter was popularly supposed to be engaged in transferring the huge treasure which he had amassed at the expense of Englishmen" to his homeland of Gascony (ibid. 83-84). The Calhau, much like the Frescobaldi, gained important posts within the state for their monetary help; posts, Tout explains, which were generally reserved for the English aristocracy, and thus "the alert baronial opposition, which [Edward I] had silenced with the greatest difficulty, instantly took advantage of the incapacity and distress of the young king" and
"drove Gaveston into his second exile" (84).
Edward, however, cleverly managed to "br[eak] up the unity of the baronial opposition" and called Gaveston back, but since the "Gascon, when he reappeared at court, showed that he had learnt little by his exile", the barons were forced to take matters more seriously and called together a committee to "ordain and establish the estate of the realm and the household according to right and reason" (Tout 84-5). The main idea was for their nominees to wield power instead of the king and to purge the
36 royal household. The barons must have been truly angry, for Tout states that "not even a Scottish war could drag them from the work in hand until it had been completed" (85) and that they refused to come because they felt duty-bound to finish the reform (86).
During these sessions, "the king and Gaveston engag[ed] in the Scottish wars" (Tout
87). One may never know whether it was merely to have an excuse to avoid having to deal with the barons, or there simply was no one else to deal with the Scottish raids at the time.
The chief bother of the barons seems to have been the hated favourite (Churchill
245), and thus the contents of the ordinances are, as given by Tout, the following: "the expulsion of Gaveston, and of his English and foreign associates", "[t]he claim of the barons to nominate the king's ministers" (91) and a whole list of ministers to be replaced18 (93).
The questions as to the extent to which the ordinances were carried out, to what improvements they led and "how far did they remedy the grievances they were drawn up to redress" are aptly commented by Tout's statements that "[t]o answer these questions fully would be to write the history of the rest of [. . .] the reign" and that
"[h]ow little the ordinances were executed could be read in every page of that history"
(Tout 93-4). In practice, Tout lists that Gaveston was exiled, Frescobaldi was removed
(94) and that the keepers of the forests north and south of Trent were replaced, but these were "the only important personal changes that took place between [the proclamation of the Ordinances] in October [1311] and the end of the year", and, interestingly, "no changes whatsoever seem to have been made in the king's household" (95).
Further measures to make the ordinances effective, that "deal almost entirely with the followers and kinsfolk of Gaveston, the alien farmers of the customs, and the
For the complete contents of the ordinances of 1311, see Tout 91-3. 37 members [. . .] of the king's household", were taken, but only some minor changes occurred, definitely not the "purging of the household which was the barons' chief desire"19 (Tout 96-7). Not only were these additional measures barely effective, but they also seemingly enraged the King and were counterproductive, for Tout claims that
"[Edward] complained [about] being treated like a madman" when "[his] household was to be determined [. . .] by others" and, as a result, perhaps "by the advice of [the] hated familiares", "Edward now revoked the ordinances and called back Gaveston" (97).
The magnates now used their swords rather than quills and "[Gaveston] met his fate on Blacklow Hill within five month of his reappearance in England" (Tout 99). The unexpected and very important detail for the remainder of the reign is that the earl of
"Warwick [...] violated [the] conditions" of Gaveston's capitulation and "hewed off his head" without a proper trial (Churchill 245). Regardless of the probable personal anger and sadness, the manner of Gaveston's death was of great advantage to Edward II, for the "felon earls who had broken their word to the Gascon" thus caused "permanent schism among the higher barons" (Tout 99) and they never worked in unison again during the reign.
4.2.3 Bannockburn and Its Consequences
As was mentioned, the Ordinances of 1311 that were created to remedy the problematic situation only aggravated it further. However, it was not unusual in the
Middle Ages that in times of conflict within a kingdom, the opposing sides would agree to a truce under the condition of fighting someone else whom they hated just a bit more than one another, partially perhaps in order to give the issues at home some time to diminish. Such was the case in England, for the years of indecisiveness from 1311 to
1314 eventually led to "the pretended reconciliation which enabled Edward to make a
19 More about these additional measures "can be read in [. . .] the archives of the city of London" (Tout 95).
38 pretence of leading a national army against Robert Bruce" (Tout 100). The campaign to relieve the besieged castle of Stirling was meant to solve the conflict with the Scots, and in a way it did, although not quite the way the English wanted it to, despite having assembled probably the largest army to ever march into Scotland.
As for the account of the battle itself, Tout gives a surprisingly modern one, unlike his contemporaries, with an emphasis on the Scots attacking (224-6), which needs not be repeated here. Even more surprising, however, is the fact that his account does not include any significant inaccuracies, unlike Morgan or Churchill, despite the considerable temporal difference and the fact that Tout does not seem to be a military expert.
While Churchill's statements that "no more grievous slaughter of English chivalry ever took place in a single day" and that "even Towton in the Wars of the Roses was less destructive" are arguable at best, since he himself states that there were merely
3,000 armoured men, i.e. the horsed chivalry, at Bannockburn, and it is very unlikely that they all died, his claim that the English fielded "an army of cavalry and archers"
(247) is simply wrong. He estimated the English numbers at 25,000, which would mean
22,000 archers, which is far more than at any of the famous battles of the Hundred
Years' War (Churchill 247). Furthermore, it is believed that the archers were pushed back by the Scottish cavalry (Hardy 50), which was never known to be of any considerable number, and thus the archers simply could not have been of any significant number either. A far more probable estimation is that a large part of the English army consisted of the relics of the feudal levy20, i.e. the hardly equipped or trained peasants, and that they simply ran when the much smaller main force, the cavalry and archers, were defeated. Tout agrees that the English infantry hardly even got into action (226).
20 For a concise description of the evolution of the English army before the Hundred Years' War, see Marcin 18-28. 39 Morgan's account of the battle is traditionally very brief, he merely states that
"[the English] cavalry forces suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of the more mobile Scotsmen" (169). However, not only it is very hard for a horsed warrior to be less mobile than a foot one, but also mobility was not incredibly important at that point.
It was rather the way the Scots managed to remain organized and disciplined throughout the battle, or, as Tout believes, that the Scotsmen's initiative and boldness was the key factor of their victory (226). Nevertheless, the scholars agree that the battle was probably the greatest disaster of the reign and that it was to have significant consequences.
This time, since "many of the Ordainers had prudently absented themselves from the Bannockburn campaign" (Churchill 248), Edward did not escape taking the blame for the military failure, and was forced to make some concessions to the magnates' demands21. Tout explains that "there was certainly a far greater change among the state officials [after the battle] than [. . .] in [. . .] 1311" (101), although he argues that the changes were partially due to losses at Bannockburn, which "wrought havoc on the knights and clerks of the household" (102). He further affirms that these were in fact the first household changes by the ordainers, although they "were not very drastic" (Tout
103), for after all, the magnates mainly "sought [. . .] the power of choosing, or at least of supervising, the appointments to key offices of the Household" (Churchill 247-8).
Further consequences, aside from losing the last vestiges of overlordship of
Scotland, were that "[t]he years 1314-6 were among the most distressful and disorderly of the reign", for "[s]uch disorders needed strong government and none of the earls proved his right to be called a strong man" (Tout 103). Earl of Lancaster, who "was the forefront of the baronial opposition" (Churchill 249) and became the king's chief
For the full account of the changes after Bannockburn, see Tout 100-4. 40 counsellor after the Bannockburn, was, Tout claims, "already notorious[ly]" incompetent22 (103), and although there was an attempt to remedy that by putting the earl of Warwick into his place, the latter died "a few months later" and thus the powerful Lancaster returned to his post (103-4) and again "became the most important man in the land" (Churchill 249).
The result of Lancaster's idleness was not only that in 1316, "[t]he purgation of the household was still practically unaccomplished" (Tout 106), but also the King again started nominating officials in 1317 and that in the years 1316-8 there were in fact "two weak rival governments" (ibid. 108). Tout further explains that this led to a dangerous situation, for by 1318 England was "breaking up into a group of feudal principalities [. .
.] seeking to secure its own interests amidst the general confusion", including events such as a "fierce private war" between Lancaster and Warenne in 1317 (109).
Surprisingly, during all that, the "machine of state went on by itself" (Tout 109), although the Scottish raids were becoming increasingly alarming. Thus, it was again a foreigner who accidentally pushed the English into a more decisive action, for only
"[t]he danger to the last of the border fortresses in English hands brought the barons to their senses, much in the same way as the danger to Stirling had done in 1314" (ibid.
110).
According to Tout, the indecisive years after Bannockburn, when the King and
Lancaster disputed "for the possession of authority which both alike were incompetent to wield" (111) led the rise of the so-called middle party23, whose eventual triumph was the treaty of Leake of 131824, which, in principle, other than having restored the ordinances of 1311, reconciled the two sides, but at the same time robbed both the King
22 Churchill, who is generally very negative of Edward II and his reign, actually implies that Lancaster's incompetence was greater than that of the King, and caused some ordainers to join the royalists (249). 23 For the list of members and their roles therein, see Tout 116-7. 24 For a fuller account of its contents, see Tout 121-3. 41 (122) and Lancaster (123) of any real power, for that would now lay with a temporary standing council, until a proper parliament could be put together (121).
The parliament met already in the same year, at York. Tout states that among the important points discussed were, firstly, the revision of the King's officers, where, surprisingly, "a large number of existing functionaries were continued in their offices"
(125), including Despenser the younger, who "continued in his office of chamberlain", which might be explained by the possibility that "the victorious coalition was already strongly entrenched, both in the administration and the household"25 (126), secondly, the revision of sheriffs resulting in almost "all [being] removed on one day", and lastly, the establishment of the standing royal council on a more permanent basis (129).
Furthermore, during the York session, work begun on the "great reform of the royal Household" (Churchill 249), resulting in what Tout calls the household ordinance of 1318, which was, however, mainly a "codification of pre-existent custom rather than an attempt to embody a new policy of household organisation, [and] it represented a real effort to set down clearly points that had been hitherto matters of doubt and tradition", but it also included a "thorough revision of the methods of household finance and administration" in order "to minimise the long-standing abuses that had so long made the royal household a by-word for incompetence, greed and venality" (131). The said abuses probably go at least as far as the corruption of the financial system of Edward I that was mentioned earlier26.
While it may be true that "never [. . .] has their importance been properly appreciated" (Tout 132), the parliament session and the ordinance of 1318 seems to have had such a profound effect that one of the contemporary chroniclers "is certain [. .
.] that the troubles of the first eleven years of Edward's reign are at last resolved", and
25 For the full account of the changes in the household, see Tout 126-8. They were, however, "little [. . .] revolutionary in character" (Tout 128). 26 See 35. 42 gives "four signs of improvement", which are the excommunication of Robert Bruce, military victories of the English over the Scots, the famine being over and the "the reconciliation between the king and his barons", partially due to his "household [. . .] withdrawing] from the court" (Tout 132). Even though the last statement is not quite true, as is seen in the previous two paragraphs, the chronicler's foresight appeared correct, at least for a time, for Tout claims that "Edward and England had between 1318 and 1321 such peace and prosperity as at no other time were experienced during the twenty years of this reign" (132), perhaps partially due to the two years' truce with the
Scots (133).
4.2.4 The Rise of Hugh le Despenser the Younger
The aforementioned reconciliation and general amelioration of the state of affairs may have gone on for longer, if not for the younger Hugh Despenser. The beginnings of his ambitious acquisition of land and power can be traced to the year 1320, when his
"growing influence [. . .] with the king" started to show by "the appointment of two of
Hugh's personal clerks to positions of importance in the state", which was done in
"defiance of the ordinances" and during the King's absence (Tout 136).
Despenser then, according to Tout, started "enlarging] his wife's inheritance on every side" by, to say the least, suspicious means, such as executing a captured Welsh rebel as traitor and taking his lands, through parliamentarian - indeed, surprisingly, not the King's - grants, through coercing others into unfair exchanges, through clever legal actions bordering on fraud and through other undisclosed means (138-141). This way, he gained far too much land and power within very short period of time, which unsurprisingly got the other lords so worried as to form a coalition against him, which eventually "radically changed [. . .] the balance of English politics" (Tout 141). During the next Despenser's attempt to seize more land "the Welsh Marcher lords and the
43 Lancastrian party joined hands with intent to procure the exile of the Despensers"
(Churchill 250). Tout states that it resulted in the breakout of a small-scale civil war which "continued until Despenser had lost all his hardly won possessions" (142) and
"Pembroke [. . .] urged the king to consent to the banishment of the Despensers" (145).
These troubles not only led to the reignition of the ordainers' zeal, but also to the breaking up of the government and thus to "the greatest crisis of Edward IPs reign"
(Tout 143).
The reason for Despenser to have gotten so far with his ambitions seems to be partially due to his initial popularity with the other magnates, for Tout claims that he
"had posed as a champion of English law", but he eventually took it to such a level as to have a "doctrine that obedience was due not to the king's person but to the crown, and that it was [therefore] lawful [. . .] to compel Edward to do his bidding", as well as to
"dismiss and appoint" the household staff (144). Despite his noble claims and the fact that the "Despensers belonged to the nobility" (Churchill 250), "violence and fraud [. ..] marked each step of Hugh's later career" (Tout 144).
An unusual, but very important, fact is that despite the fact that Despenser had
"packed the [government] with his dependents", there were "no wholesale changes in the administrative personnel" and thus the administration could, rather more than less, smoothly continue (ibid. 145).
This would have been the end to the internal conflict, if not for several earls who refused to reconcile with the rest. However, Tout states that the two rebellious sides, one led by Badlesmere, the other by Lancaster, did not cooperate (146), and since
"Edward's appeal for help met with an extraordinarily favourable response" (147) and
"the king's party shewed an energy, a unity, and policy27, that contrasted very
Surprisingly, Churchill agrees that the king "for once showed energy and resolution" (250).
44 favourably with the timidity and disunion of the enemies", the civil war was over in a few months, both traitorous leaders were executed, and the Despensers were recalled
(148), which was to have dire consequences. There is little tangible evidence to the deeds of the two chief rebels, but it must have been quite serious, for not only were the other earls swift in response and agreed to recall the favourites, but they also remained loyal to Edward for the rest of the reign (Tout 147). The following year also saw the
"thirteen years' truce of 1323" with Scots, which "recongni[zed] Robert Bruce as [. . .] ruler of Scotland" (ibid. 150), which may have finally brought peace to England itself as well, if not for the English nobility and their constant struggle for power.
Despenser's role in the events of the last four years of the reign is somewhat two- sided, for Tout states that he was responsible for "the care taken that the undoubted improvements brought about by the ordinances should not be jeopardized" despite the repeal of the ordinances themselves, which can be traced to the "series of establishments" dealing with "practical reforms" from just about every department of the government (152).28 This makes his eventual downfall along with the king somewhat mysterious, although Tout argues that, despite the obvious improvements made by them, there was a general dislike of reformers, especially those who "made their radical policy a cloak for their personal ambitions" (153), for Despenser was quite successful in that regard: upon his return he not only obtained back what he held previously, but there were also "enormous additions" (154), chief among those the
"Welsh marcher lands" (156).
The importance of the aggregation of these Welsh lordships lies also in the fact that after "last great crisis of the reign" caused by the queen (Tout 155), who, together with Mortimer, one of the "chief Marcher lord[s]" and the queen's "paramour", "staged
See the page for the full list of the accepted reforms. 45 an invasion of England at the head of a large band of exiles" leading to the king's fall
(Churchill 250), Mortimer took Despenser's lands as well as continued the 'policy' of further acquisition thereof, which "prepared the way for the transference of the march to the direct rule of the crown", wherein "lies another important feature of the reign of
Edward II" (Tout 156).
As for the reasons for the king's deposition, Tout states that "[i]f the ambition of the Despensers was the ultimate cause of the fall of Edward II, fuel was added to the flame of discontent by [. . .] [t]he personal wrongs of the queen" as well as "by the collapse of the foreign policy, the French war and forfeiture of Gascony, the insubordination of the bishopric-hunting royal clerks, the eager scramble for wealth and power, and the grave disorders [...] which accompanied these developments" (155).
46 5 The Importance of the Reign
Having dealt with the reign, the next thing is to look at some of the consequential aspects of the reign, such as the administrative reforms, results of the foreign policy, military matters that had long-term effects on the English army, relations with the church, the changes in society as well as some of the improvements of the financial system, particularly the establishment of the compulsory staple.
5.1 Administrative Reforms
Administrative changes could be easily regarded as one of the chief features of
Edward II's time, for they "were going on, more or less, all through the reign" (Tout
157). The reforms were there even before the ordinances of 1311, even though Tout states that most of those emerged from the "efforts to buttress the court against baronial attacks [rather] than honest attempts to improve the machinery of government for its own sake (157)", and, for several years after 1311, "were either the result of the baronial effort to enforce the ordinances, or they followed from the attempts of the curiales to entrench themselves more securely in the last strongholds of the household" (158).
However, Tout claims that in 1318 started a "formal policy of reform" which, through a series of further ordinances up to 1326, chief of them probably being the "re-casting of two of the three great offices of administration" (157-8), led to the "establish[ment of] the royal household as it existed for the rest of the middle ages, and in most respects as it continued until [. . .] 1782" (157). Noteworthy are also the facts that the King's return to power in 1322 "hardly retarded the reforming movement" and thus the "period of systematic reformation" which begun in 1318 fairly smoothly continued until the end of the reign (Tout 158), and secondly, that "the men who had repealed the ordinances [of
1311] carried out so many of their innovations in the spirit of the ordinances, and often
47 gave effect to the very letter of the legislation which they had so solemnly annulled"
(Tout 159).
Contrary to popular belief, Tout claims that it was not uncommon in English history for "intelligent champions of a strong monarchy [to be] greater reformers than a conservative aristocracy" and that such was the case with some of Edward's favourites, for "the Despensers and their followers were not mere creatures of court favour, but politicians with ideas, which, however unpopular among the magnates, were valuable and attractive in themselves" (158-9). The two other people whom Tout ascribes the credit for the majority of the reforms of the household were not viewed very favourably by the history either, despite being clergymen29, for "[t]he chroniclers look upon
Baldock, Stapeldon and the two Despensers as chiefly responsible for the fall of Edward
II" (160).
The next few subchapters will briefly describe the major changes within the main departments of the royal household, namely the chamber, wardrobe, chancery and exchequer30.
5.1.1 The Chamber
"The revival of the chamber" was "[Edward II's] direct answer to the attempts of the barons since 1300 to secure for the exchequer the absolute control of all the king's finances", for with the chamber empowered, it would remain under the King's control
(Tout 168). As for its organization, Tout states that "[a]stute clerks [. . .] supplemented the unlettered knights and valets, who mainly officered the chamber when it meant little more than the king's bedroom" and due to that it was possible for the King to make it powerful because the barons thought of it still only as the bedroom, and thus did not
29 Most, if not all, chronicles of the Middle Ages were written by their fellow clergymen. 30 Tout gives considerable space to the development of the privy seal as well (162-168), but since its reform was brought short by the fall of the King, I did not find it important enough to include it here.
48 address it in the ordinances (169), resulting in the fact that "[t]he baronial attack on the courtiers [. . .] was a very questionable success" (170). Tout further explains that due to the neglect of the chamber in the ordinances, it became an "elaborated court organisation", "a stronghold [. . .] which enabled the younger Despenser to [. . .] win for himself the highest influence in the state" (170), for as chamberlain he was the head of the department (174).
Tout summarizes that even though the chamber's power was greatly diminished after the fall of Edward II (174), so many of its improvements remained so that "[fjrom these modest beginnings arose the secretaryships of state of the Tudors, and all the modern administrative departments [related to it]" and it also shows that "[t]hus the most characteristic modern offices of state arose, like the medi[e]val departments, from the king's domestic establishment" (175).
5.1.2 The Wardrobe
Early in the reign, the household organization was quite a mess, for "every royal officer was jack of all trades[:] administrator, judge, collector, book-keeper, paymaster, store-keeper, auditor, surveyor, scribe, secretary, as occasion demanded" (Tout 176). As such, it was very difficult to track and control these officers, since it was very hard to tell what their true work actually was, and thus all the more easier for them to follow their ambition and greed, should they want to. Naturally, the blame for this disorganization fell on the King, even though Tout believes that it should rightfully be ascribed to his father, right along the huge debts, which may partially be the result of the aforementioned chaotic management of the household (176). It was also for this reason the reformers of Edward II's reign originally aimed at "definition rather than reformation" of the offices (Tout 176). The result was, Tout believes, that the wardrobe was "relieved [. . .] of a large amount of its national work" and tied down to "the affairs
49 of the royal household" (179). Naturally, the change did not happen overnight, but
Richard II could no longer rule through it as the Edwards before him did, and since the foundations for this change were laid down during Edward II's time, it can be said that
"[his reign] marks [. . .] a turning point in the history of English administration" (Tout
180), particularly in the shift of the central ruling power from the king to the early version of parliament.
5.1.3 The Chancery
While there were some practical changes, Tout claims that overall "[t]he chancery was the office which altered least during the reign of Edward II" (180-1). Tout further states that it was again the case of the "policy of definition and differentiation of function" rather than reformation as such, yet there were some fairly significant results thereof, such as "the composition of the first full and intelligible record of the proceedings of a parliament" (184). Until 1316, the records were "an unsystematic putting together of odds and ends", but the composition "set an example" for others to follow and also led to "increased orderliness, detail and method of the chancery rolls", eventually resulting in "Edward II's twenty regnal years containing] as much matter [. .
.] as do the similar records of the thirty-five years of Edward I" (Tout 185). Moreover, this increase in order was "in no wise limited to the chancery records", but was also found in the wardrobe and the exchequer (ibid. 186). Interestingly, Tout considers the
King and his followers as the main figures behind these innovations (182).
5.1.4 The Exchequer
Despite the huge debts, the exchequer showed "remarkable continuity of the administrative personnel [...] irrespective of politics" and continuation of methods used during the previous reign (Tout 187). While the first point is definitely a positive one,
Tout argues that the second one was a problem, since Edward I's system was very
50 complex, "old-fashioned and unbusinesslike" (193) and his way of trying to hide the most unwanted facts (189) made the situation all the worse. Therefore, the general trend of defining and differentiation of various administrative posts was all the more important in this department. Tout mentions that the exchequer archives started to be
"calendared [. . .] in connection with the relevant archives of the [other departments]"
(190) and also compiled by "type" as well as by the place they referred to, such as
Gascony, to make them more readily available during meetings with foreign powers
(191) . Thanks to this effort, a "vast collection of exchequer records", such as "bulls, writs [and] charters" survived, unlike "separate collections" from some other departments, which "have wholly disappeared" (Tout 192-3). Much like with the chancery, a greater "amount of business" is visible in various departments of the exchequer, from three to ten times as much (ibid. 194-5).
This overworking, Tout argues, was by no means improved by the "continued appearance of ancient and irrecoverable debts to the crown", against which Edward I's
"remedial legislation" proved "ineffective" (195). These debts were continuously rewritten in the annual roll, and it was only in 1323 that they were finally given their own roll, which started to be used as a base for "summonses for the payment of the
[debts]", for the proper function thereof "large additions to the exchequer staff were ordered" (Tout 197). Furthermore, Tout states that the two clerks responsible for compiling the national revenues had their functions properly split and defined so that there would be no more overlap (197-8) and that there was also an "increased severity of audit" (202), the "discipline in the whole office was braced up" by an order prohibiting idleness (198-9), and "imprests [. . .] in lieu of the full wages and salaries due" were prohibited (199). Finally, the royal treasury started to properly refill.
51 However, before the "new system was well in working order", the king was deposed, and many of the reforms had to wait for several years and appear only during
Edward Ill's reign and are thus ascribed to him rather than his father (Tout 203).
5.2 Foreign Policy and Its Consequences
Edward II's internal and external policies are often regarded as one of the worst failures of the reign. In Tout's words, "[t]he former seem a record of disaster; the latter a catalogue of futilities" (205), but one often forgets the serious setbacks that he had to face not only right from the very beginning of the reign, but also from every direction, that is from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France (Morgan 177). Some would say that
"the failures of the reign of Edward II had permanent effects on the unity of the British
Isles" (Churchill 252), or venture even further to say that "the failure of Edward II to carry out his father's imperialist plans produced permanent consequences in all the three kingdoms" (Tout 205-6), but it has to be added that these results were not necessarily as negative as they may seem.
5.2.1 Scotland
While the "collapse of the imperialistic visions of Edward I" is generally ascribed to the "ineptitude of Edward II", one must keep in mind that "the downfall of English ambitions was brought about, almost as much by the slackness of the English baronage, as by the valour of Bruce and his Scots" (Tout 206), resulting in the fact that
"Bannockburn ended the possibility of uniting the English and Scottish Crowns by force" (Churchill 252). The role of the magnates appears to be more prominent than is generally thought, for Tout argues that "[a]s far as claims went, the ordainers maintained their right to control the whole inheritance of Edward I [, which] included [.
. .] the government of Scotland, Ireland and Gascony, as well as the direction of that of
52 England", although they were often too greedy (206) and too self-centred to do it properly (207).
Overall, Tout thinks that "the ultimate unity of Britain was better brought about by the failure of Edward II in Scotland, than it would have been by the establishment of an over-great monarch, based solely on force, yet too weak to control the remoter regions wherein it claimed to exercise power" (206). Surprisingly, Churchill implies to have arrived at pretty much the same conclusion (250), and thus the saying that every cloud has a silver lining reaches a national level.
5.2.2 Ireland
During Edward II's reign, the most important event in Ireland was probably the
"failure of Edward Bruce31 to destroy what remained of the English power" therein, although it is argued that rather than for the English crown, it was "for the advantage of the Norman-Irish barons and the more purely Irish clan chieftains", which, upon their forming of a government, was "by no means incompatible with some real development of Irish civilisation" (Tout 207). This unclear development, Tout states, can be best traced to the papal bull secured under Edward II in 1312 for "the foundation of a university in Dublin" (207-8), and even though "we find evidence that there were in the
Dublin schools of the later years of this reign a few masters and scholars", "the whole thing died out [. . .] [i]n the next generation [for t]he growing weakness of the central power made a university in Dublin impossible" (208).
5.2.3 Wales
While there was, according to Tout, some "revival of local independence" (209) like in Scotland and Ireland, it was restricted to the march of Wales, the principality itself remained loyal and overall the Welsh "never rose in revolt against [Edward II]"
31 Robert Bruce's brother. 53 (137-8), for the Scottish plans of cooperation died with Edward Bruce's failure in
Ireland (209-210), and "Sir Gruffydd Llwyd [. . .], the bardic hero of Welsh resistance to Edward II, is still of unproved historicity" (210). However, "this quietness of Wales is not to be set down so much to the sympathy of the Welsh for a Welsh born King, as some people have imagined, as to the coercive power of the great English families, who in fact governed both principality and marches (Tout 210).
There are a few more noteworthy events, mostly related to the relative peacefulness of the time and region. Firstly, Tout states, the general spirit of reform spread there from England (210), secondly, the amount of Welsh representatives attending the (English) parliament were significantly higher, sometimes even "bulk[ing] larger than the corresponding members for English districts of the same size and importance (211), and lastly, due to increasingly tied administration, the aforementioned
"policy of the aggregation of great groups of marcher lordships [. . .] prepared the way for the transference of the march to the direct rule of the crown" (204), and thus, contrary to some beliefs that Edward II's reign deteriorated the relations with all the neighbouring countries, this part of Wales strengthened its connection to the English crown.
5.2.4 France and Gascony
The state of the relations with France was another part of the inheritance of
Edward II. Due to the "constant and successful aggressions of the French" he was left with Ponthieu and Gascony, which he held "as fief of the French king", a fact that further complicated matters, for "it is hard to disentangle the political relations of
England and France from the problems of vassalage and feudal franchise" (Tout 212). It is further stated by Tout that "despite the near kinship and double marriage relation between the [ . . .] royal houses, and despite the very close social, political and
54 commercial intercourse between the subjects [.. .] of the two realms, there was [. . .] a deep incompatibility of position which rendered a cordial understanding impossible"
(212-3) and which eventually intensified to such as point as to "make the Hundred
Years' War inevitable" (213).
Throughout the reign, the relations "centre[d] round the constant undermining of the English power in Gascony and the vain efforts made by the agents of the English dukes to resist it", but long diplomatic efforts helped avert the outbreak of a general war for the time being (Tout 213). Much like Edward I left his problems to his son, the son in turn left a part of his problems to his own son. However, Edward II also provided his son with adequate means to deal with it, unlike his father did. Nevertheless, Tout states that Gascony remained the chief source of troubles in the Anglo-French relations in the next reign, along with three other significant issues, and thus "the English king's claim to the French throne [. . .] was not at the root of the Hundred Years' War" (214), as is generally accepted.
Despite the ongoing problems, there were, from the start of the reign, "spasmodic, though earnest, efforts towards reform [of Gascony]" (Tout 214). There were two more setbacks to deal with, the financial problems and the fact that the higher officials of the duchy changed too often to be effective (ibid. 215). Much like Ireland (Morgan 170),
Gascony ceased to be a great source of finances, chiefly due to Edward I handing out its revenues and control to the Italian bankers in order to get loans (Tout 215). However,
Tout states that the bankers were exiled early in the reign (216), Edward managed to get some financial help for the duchy from the pope (217-8), and the remaining obligation to pay Gascony's dues to foreigners was terminated by 1317 (220). As for the second problems, it was partially offset by the fact that secondary officials retained their positions for longer, and it was them who did most of the work (Tout 215-6). The
55 greatest example of this, Tout argues, is the controller of the castle of Bordeaux, who held the post from 1305 until "the early years of Edward III" and allowed for "the real continuity of Gascon administration" (215) and lots of improvements, particularly when the efforts for centralisation (223) and the general "reforming spirit [. . .] also extended to Gascony" (224). However, any further improvements were cut short by the French invasion (Tout 224).
5.3 The Military
Edward U's reign is, in the long term, very important for the continuation and the further development, even if on a smaller scale, of the foundations for the evolution of the English army laid down by his father. From the logistic point of view, the most important points were, firstly, that the usually poor peasants who wanted to serve in the army would be, by the counties, equipped with armour, secondly, that Edward continued the practice of pardoning criminals on the condition of joining the army, and since they were usually poachers, they already were very good archers, and, lastly, the army generally requested more soldiers than during his father's days (Hardy 50). Thus, the kingdom as a whole got much closer to fielding the great archer armies of the
Hundred Years' War.
As for the actual wars and battles, Bannockburn "is not quite a precedent for [. . .]
Crecy", Hallidon Hill in 1333 is (Tout 226), for therein the English perfected their tactics based on the massive use of archers (Hardy 51-2). However, it could be argued that Bannockburn was as crucial as Hallidon Hill, for even though in the former the
English failed to learn some strategy that would work against the Scots effectively, they learnt what did not, and that was probably the metaphorical nail to the coffin of the feudal levy system. While, Tout argues, the English proved their stubbornness by two more similar defeats, they finally learnt by the time of Boroughbridge in 1322, where
56 the English army was "arranged in a schiltron after the Scottish fashion" (227) and the battle is thus due to "its defensive tactics and its effective archery [. . .] a step nearer
Crecy than Bannockburn, and deserves a more prominent place than has always been allowed to it military history", and Harclay, the English commander, "merits a permanent fame among our medi[e]val masters of the art of war" (228). Even though
Harclay does not seem to have gained the fame Tout wished him to, when all the military matters of the reign are concerned, it is not much of an overstatement to call it
"a turning point in military history, since it witnessed the critical stages of the transition from the fashion of fighting under Edward I to the English military system of the
Hundred Years' War" (Tout 228).
5.4 The Church
As regards the ecclesiastical matters, Tout states that "Edward II inherited from his father the two rather conflicting points of view, which, at various times, had determined the old king's attitude to problems of church and state" (228). Firstly, "the heroic, but rather fruitless, policy of conflict", and secondly, "the more normal feeling, that it was as well for an orthodox king to keep on friendly terms with the ecclesiastical authorities" and that "it was a waste of energy to carry on the old heroics" (Tout 228).
According to Tout, it was "the policy of mutual accommodation that prevailed in this reign and so secured the general friendship of crown and papacy, of church and state"
(228-9), as can be seen best seen by the financial help received from the pope (217-8), and overall, that there was 'no period of the reign in which there is the least suggestion of the renewal of the chronic medi[e]val conflict of the "two swords'", for "friendly relations were facilitated" under Clement V, the first pope of the reign, and were retained even under the "dominating and dogmatic John XXII" (229).
57 The Church did try to gain money from England through a bull in 1306 claiming a
"regular source of papal revenue from the English church", but the "so called crusading tenths [. . .] produced much more benefit for the English kings than for the crusading cause" (Tout 229), and likewise the termination of the order of the Knights Templar eventually enlarged the royal treasury rather than that of the pope (ibid. 230). Tout further states that the pope John was disgusted with Edward's appointment of bishops, but he himself provided some "notoriously unworthy clerks" (232), which did not improve the situation nor his reputation. However, during the Anglo-Scottish war, he did relieve the north from taxes, and tried to mediate piece between the two nations, which failed because of Bruce (Tout 233). The end of the reign witnessed Edward's
"vigorous measures [. . .] to protect the interests of the state on the outbreak of war against France" by "la[ying] his hands upon all the alien priories" to prevent them from supporting the French, which was repeated in greater extent by Edward III (ibid 233-4).
5.5 The Changes in the English Society
The traditional view of the general state of things regarding the common people is perhaps best summarized by Tout's statement that "[i]t has been a commonplace of both contemporary and modern historians to emphasize in exaggerated terms the miseries from which England suffered under Edward II" (236), which seems to have survived to modern days, for some consider the regime a "mean, oppressive, and unsuccessful [one] that endangered civil strife" (Morgan 177), but in fact, other than the north that was being ravaged by the Scots, the people did quite well, for aside from the 1314-18 years of famine, from 1318 on the revenue improved and "though there were constant threatenings of war, there was very little [actual] fighting" (Tout 236-7). The general exaggeration of scholars often seems to go over the limits. Tout argues in this respect that a king's power was narrower than is generally thought, for "just as good kings
58 could not make earth an Eden, so bad kings had strictly limited opportunities of doing mischief" (237). Moreover, "the Year Books of Edward IFs early years are exceedingly copious and instructive", there were "few signs of abnormal trouble and distress [even] during the concluding years of the reign", and overall, there is "no evidence of more disorder and more difficulty in administering the law than was chronic under medi[e]val conditions" (Tout 238).
Furthermore, Tout states that not only there was a "remarkable number of pious foundations", which can be ascribed to the "superabundance" of benefactors, but also
"the creation of two universities" within the English dominion and the fact that "in no period of twenty years, except perhaps the generation after the Black Death, were so many new colleges established in the two English universities" speaks volumes of the general state of things (239). Even more contrasting to the traditional view of the King is the fact that "[a]t Oxford [he] refounded, and provided a habitation in his own palace for, the monastic college of the Carmelite friars, and at Cambridge Edward set up the
King's Hall for the children of his chapel" (Tout 240)
There was also, according to Tout, a "growth of English towns", an "inter-relation of municipal and political changes during the period" (240), and also "the growth of an
English capitalist class, which was able to compete with the Italian bankers for royal favours and commercial privileges" (240-1), for "most of the names of the monied houses, which later financed Edward III [. . .] began to appear under Edward II" (241).
This possibility of a struggle between the English and alien merchants was to have considerable positive effect on the following reign, for not only the "English merchants
[. . .] help[ed] to finance the king's government" already in Edward IFs time, but they also "prepared the way for the famous merchant princes of the reign of Edward III"
(Tout 241).
59 5.6 The Compulsory Staple and Its Establishment
The chief progressive event of the economy of the reign was, Tout states, the
"consolidation of the staple system", which he considers the "most characteristic feature of its commercial progress" and argues that "the credit of a system often supposed to have been the result of the conscious policy of Edward III, is to be set down to the period of his father" (241).
Staples were a special kind of markets, essentially "great dep[o]ts of merchandise, established at convenient places on the chief trade routes", in England originating in the times of Henry III in a completely voluntary form, with no penalties to those who chose to take their goods elsewhere (Tout 242-3), which they probably often did, in order to avoid paying customs. Tout further explains that "[u]nder Edward I the organisation of the customs revenue on a large scale made it imperative that trade should go in certain definite channels to facilitate the collection of so important a branch of the royal income" and thus he "specified British and Irish ports where collectors of customs were established" who would put a stamp on wool that "paid customs", which resulted in a rather crude "device", but it "gave Edward I some claim to be regarded as the father of the English staple system" (243). There is "some evidence" that some 'ports in Flanders
[. . .] and in Holland-Zealand [. . .] had been recognised by Edward [I] as "foreign staples'", but "there is no proof that any compulsory foreign staple had as yet been devised" (Tout 244). Furthermore, by the end of Edward I's reign, there seems to have been an English "society of merchants" within "a favoured, privileged, and organized market [at Antwerp], but it was not yet a compulsory one" (ibid. 245). Tout explains that it "is revealed with absolute clearness in the English records" that "[t]he reign of
Edward II saw the establishment of a compulsory staple system for English merchants, and therefore marks a decided advance on the reign of Edward I in this relation" (246).
60 The origins of the compulsory staple can be traced to "[t]he ordinance of the staple of 1313 [which] is a landmark in English economic history, and shows the definite establishment of the system towards which things had been drifting since
1296", for "[i]t put an end to the merely preferential staple, and set up a monopolistic staple in its place" (Tout 247). Quite an extraordinary feature was that power given to the "mayor and his council" to "change the staple place" and "exercise jurisdiction over all exporters", and thus, overall, it led to "the virtual conversion of a private society, privileged by foreign monarchs, into a public association, backed up by the authority of the English state" (ibid. 248). Tout further states that even though the staple ordinance was connected with the general one of 1311, apart from the exile of Frescobaldi, the family who "controlled the wool trade, collected the customs, and acted as chief bankers and loan-mongers of the king", there was "no attempt to exclude foreign merchants from the export trade", they were now merely "subordinate to [the English merchants]"
(249), which was still quite a huge step, for "[t]he king's interest in the English merchants was limited to what he could get out of them" (251), for the state of the royal finances was still pretty grim at that point.
The staple gradually grew in importance up to a point where "[t]he whole problem of the staple touched finance so nearly that it was looked upon as exchequer business", and thus a meeting to discuss it in 1319 "was delayed until the exchequer got back to
Westminster from its lengthened absence at York" (Tout 254). The officials were, however, divided as to what policy to uphold. About half of them, Tout states, centred around the Londoners, agreed to limit the staples in England to just two places (255).
"Moreover, foreigners visiting these staples were to be prohibited from going father into the realm", or buy elsewhere or send others to do it for them (Tout 255). The list of reasons and implications goes on for three quarters of a page, and overall forms a
61 "strongly-worded manifesto of the patriotic English merchant who sees his own and his country's gain in the exclusion of the foreigner" (Tout 255-6).
The idea, despite its emphasis on the improvement of the English, was met, according to Tout, with a strong opposition even among English merchants (256-7), for
"[t]he wool-growers, the smaller merchants, who bought up wool locally and took it to the ports, were anxious, like the Bardi, for a more open market than that which suited the London capitalists" (257). Tout further states that "[t]he attitude of the Bardi was the more dangerous, since they were the bankers both of Edward II and of the Despensers", and it was probably for that reason that they were allowed bypass the ordinance of
1313, which caused more problems (257) and thus required a different solution. A remarkable council meeting was held at Westminster in 1320, which "ordered immediate enforcement of heavy penalties against all contraveners of the [ordinance of
1313]" (Tout 257-8). Lots of fining, pardoning and negotiating followed, further complicated by the renewed hostilities of France and eventually also the crisis of the last year of the reign (ibid. 258-260).
It may have remained unfinished, if not for the hated favourite. It is remarkable that the younger Despenser "was a reformer to the last", for the second ordinance of the stable was "issued by the king and council [. . .] on 1 May 1326" (Tout 261), just a few months before the outbreak of the civil war leading to the imprisonment of the King32.
Tout states that it "formally reversed" the ordinance of 1313, abolished the foreign staple, and established staples "in eight fixed places in England, three in Ireland, and three for Wales", where "aliens were compelled, under penalty of forfeiture, to purchase staple articles" (261), and also ordered that "no wool was to be exported [unless] purchased at some English staple" (264). Several details further defined the rules and
32 While he was the chief agent of the ordinance, the favourite was unsurprisingly not altogether altruistic in this. For his rewards see Tout 262. 62 thus made the avoidance of the staple much more difficult than previously, as well as added "provision for encouraging the manufacture of cloth in England" (Tout 261).
Overall, Tout explains that the "English staples were good for the wool-grower, and for the small merchant" (262), but was also "advantageous to [the] commercial interests" of the "London capitalists" (263). Furthermore, it was "the most systematic effort [. . .] to divert the export of raw material [from] foreign workshops, and give
Englishmen a chance of working up their own wool into cloth" and also provided a sort of safety device for the times of war which would make the foreign staples "dead" (Tout
263), which would become incredibly valuable in the times of the Hundred Years' War.
Tout states that this further proves that "[f]ew statesmen, earlier or later, have looked much further forward than did Despenser in this matter" and that it also shows the effectiveness of the government, for it only took "one short summer to execute [the] provisions" of the ordinance (264). It is curious to see that foreigners tried to "stay the growth of cloth-making in England" by buying up the necessities to make cloth that were available in England, but failed to do so (Tout 265-6).
To summarize it, in Tout's words, the last ordinances of the reign were so thorough that "there was scarcely any detail of staple organisation under Edward III that was not already put into practice under Edward II" (226). It was the final, and perhaps the most important, effort in a very long series of reforms and improvements throughout the reign which not only enabled England to survive the near-catastrophic results of
Edward I's imperialist policy, but also to emerge so strong as to allow Edward III to challenge, and, admittedly, with a fair amount of luck, to overcome the greatest medieval power of the time, the French. Thus, "unconsciously, or half-consciously, the men of Edward II's court worked out their destiny, and in doing so contributed their
63 share in winning for these twenty years a little place of their own in English history"
(Tout 266).
64 6 Edward II in Modern Popular Works
As far as the last generation is concerned, the most popular audiovisual works portraying Edward of Carnarvon are the film Braveheart (released in 1995) and the book (2007) and television series (2012) World Without End. Despite its popularity, the film is fairly notorious for its inaccuracies, which would probably amount to another thesis, and thus there is no point in delving into it further. Prince Edward himself is portrayed as an effeminate, almost sickly youth, who seems to be afraid of women.
Furthermore, his overly familiar relationship with some other young man, presumably
Gaveston, appears to be a clear hint of Edward's sexual orientation. Based on the analysis of his character33, this portrayal is clearly wrong, for not only was Edward of athletic, muscular stature and was a capable fighter, he also had, besides children by his queen, several female lovers. While the portrayal may have merely been an introductory device for the development of the romance between Wallace and Isabella, due to the notorious lack of originality in Hollywood blockbuster films, the idea was probably taken from elsewhere. The two chief possibilities are, firstly, Marlowe's play, which is quite explicit about Edward's sexual relationship to his favourite(s) (Phillips 21), and, secondly, Churchill's account of Edward as a "perverted weakling" (244). Whichever the source, Braveheart portrays Edward in the traditional, negative view, perhaps even somewhat exaggerated.
The character of Edward II in World Without End is based on the unproven so- called Fieschi letter (Phillips 19), which claims that the King escaped his imprisonment and lived out the rest of his life in hiding. In the book, Edward became a monk, one of the most ingenious and hard-working ones in the priory despite having lost an arm, and overall his character is very positive. He is portrayed as a homosexual, and even though
See 18-21. 65 it is known to some other character, they do not consider it a problem. Throughout the book, no one learns of his actual identity and he dies of natural causes.
The series shows him in much the same light, although he eventually reveals his identity and the show offers a rather fantastic ending. Edward III, upon learning of his father, marches his army towards the town the latter lives in and attacks it. The climax is unintentionally humorous, for the King fights his sixty-something one-handed father and loses, despite the latter not having wielded a sword since his reign. After saying a few words about the son being a better king, the father lets his son kill him. Of important note is that both book and series shows Edward II as a formidable fighter and an intelligent and hardworking person, and thus significantly deviates from the traditional image of the King.
66 7 Conclusion
The analysis showed that Edward of Carnarvon had to, upon his accession, carry a much heavier burden than is traditionally thought and that he, despite his personal flaws, handled it rather well. As far as the King as a human being is concerned, his greatest flaws seem to be, firstly, to have been born in the wrong time, for his interests and abilities, which would raise no eyebrows a few centuries later, were quite shocking to the contemporaries, and secondly, his complete loyalty to people who were friendly to him, which is likely the result of the solitary and unsatisfactory childhood he experienced. The typical stubbornness of the Plantagenet bloodline probably played a role in his insistence on keeping his friends at the royal court, and consequently led to internal problems and his eventual downfall, even though it needs to be said that the relations between the king and the magnates were already severely strained by the end of Edward I's reign.
While Edward II was indeed not a born military commander like his father or son, he was definitely not weak nor cowardly, for it is proven that he was physically strong, considerably skilled as a fighter, and the sources who claim that he was forcibly led away from the defeat at Bannockburn outweigh those who portray the King's departure as a deliberate flight.
The battle is often used to sum up as well as serve as the typical example of the military affairs of the reign, particularly in contrast with the preceding and following reigns. However, one often forgets not only the English military successes in Ireland, but also the fact that by the end of the previous reign, the Scots learnt to effectively fight the English, and even though Edward I started the reorganization of the English army, it was still nowhere near the archer armies of Edward III. It is precisely the battle of Bannockburn that proved to the English the need for the continuation of the reform of
67 the army, which did continue throughout the reign, and led to a change of tactics which led to English victories and served as examples to follow in the next reign. The success of the reform can be clearly seen in the significant English victories against the Scots in the early 1330s, which perfected the strategy used in the later stages of the previous reign, and led to the incredible victories such as Crecy or Poitiers.
It is very difficult to ascribe the failure of Edward I's imperialist policy to his son, for it was fairly clear it was not going to succeed even by the end of the former reign.
Despite the difficulties coming from all sides, including an internal one, Edward II managed to quieten down the situation by successfully defending Ireland, negotiating peace with the Scots, avoiding rebellions in Wales, and holding off the French for as long as seemed humanly possible, given the circumstances. Furthermore, the failure of the military conquest of Scotland is understood by both Tout and Churchill as a blessing, one that later allowed the two countries to unify in a far more equal and friendly manner.
As regards the finances, the near-bankruptcy Edward II inherited from his father was perhaps the greatest challenge of the reign. It was further complicated by the fact that a significant portion of the national revenues was already promised to foreigners as a payment for their loans. While there was a not insignificant financial help in the form of confiscating the property of the disbanded order of the Knights Templar, which probably helped stave off bankruptcy early in the reign, the chief credit for the restoration of the national treasury goes by far to the considerable series of administrative and legal reforms going on throughout reign. Hardly any office of the state was left untouched: redundant ones were removed, the majority of them had their functions codified so that they would be easier to control and their corruption mitigated, and new offices were made to help deal with the inherited financial problems.
68 Moreover, the mercantile was reformed and innovated so that English rather than foreign merchants would control it, and likewise the revenues from it would end in the royal treasury rather than abroad. The chief innovation in this regard was the system of the compulsory English staple. All in all, the financial situation changed so drastically that the "new revenues allowed Edward to pay off his father's debts, to fight a war with
France in 1323-5 without the need for additional taxation, and to accumulate by the end of his reign a reserve of treasure of about £60,000, equivalent to a year's income"
(Phillips 15), and thus bequeathed to his son a solid foundation on which to deal with the remaining problems, unlike his father did.
The analysis of the 20th century scholarly texts also proved that Edward IPs sexuality played little or no role in their overall image of the King. Tout does not mention it all, while Morgan and Churchill merely imply some sort of improper relations with the favourites. Thus, it may be fairly safely assumed that the issue of
Edward's alleged homosexuality is the result of Marlowe's play Edward II, for there seems to be no solid and reliable scholarly source thereof.
However, the most popular modern film that includes Edward of Carnarvon,
Braveheart, portrays him in the traditional, very negative way, perhaps partially based on Marlowe's character, but definitely bringing to mind Churchill's description of
Edward II as a "perverted weakling" (244). On the other hand, his more recent portrayal in World Without End, both book and television series, is much more positive in all aspects, even though it portrays his life after the deposition, as if he managed to escape his murder, which is of unproven historicity.
To summarize the thesis, Edward II was not a great military leader, although he was hardly the only one among the English kings. His issues in internal relations were a common thing in the Middle Ages, for at least half the English monarchs had been, at
69 some point, at war with one or more of their magnates. Many kings, however, often refuted most of the changes done by the previous king(s), or in other ways produced obstacles for progress, whereas Edward not only continued with the improvements started by his father, but his reign also saw many progressive reforms, be it legal, administrative, financial or military ones, up to a point when they can be considered crucial for the future English generations, and particularly for the successes in Hundred
Year's War, for he managed to turn a debt-ridden kingdom considerably influenced and dependent on foreigners into a prosperous and self-sufficient one. Therefore, it can be seen that Churchill was more objective than he probably aimed to, for the reign by its apparent "weakness" did indeed contribute "to English strength" (244) and opened
"pathway of progress" (247).
Overall, Edward II was arguably a fairly average king, whose negative image seems to be the consequence of generations of historians who did not put enough effort into the research of the reign, and thus his well-known failures almost completely overshadowed his achievements. However, if the recent Oxford biography entry and popular works are of any indication, his image seems to be slowly improving, and, what is more important, is starting to be seen in a much more objective point of view.
70 Bibliography
"The Battle of Bannockburn, 1314". Scotland's History. 2013. BBC.
Braveheart. Dir. Mel Gibson. Screenplay by Randall Wallace. Prod. Mel Gibson. 1995.
DVD.
Brown, Michael. Bannockburn: The Scottish Wars and the British Isles, 1307-1323.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2008.
Churchill, Winston. History of the English Speaking People. Vol. 1. US: McClelland,
1988. Print.
The Chronicle of Lanercost, ed. and trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell. Glasgow: Maclehose,
1913.
oflanerOOmaxwuoftpdf >. Hardy, Robert. Longbow: A social and military history. US: Patrick Stevens Ltd, 2010. Print. Marcin, Michal. "The Longbow and Its Military Use." BA thesis. Masaryk U, 2013. Print. Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Print. Phillips, J. R. S., 'Edward 11(1284-1327)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford UP, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008. Web. Tout, T. F. The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History. Manchester: Sherrat, 1913. Web. 71 Vita Edwardi Secundi. Ed. Wendy R. Childs. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print. World Without End. Dir. Michael Caton-Jones. Screenplay by Ken Follet, John Pielmeier. 2012. World Without End. Ken Follett. London: Pan, 2007. Print. 72 English Resume The diploma thesis deals with the image of King Edward II in contemporary and modern times as well as deals with the place of his reign within the English history. It explains the traditional, very negative image of the King and his reign and the major causes thereof. It analyses the previous reign to properly evaluate the extent of the various issues that the young King had to deal with upon his accession, chiefly the results of his father's imperialist policy, such as financial and administrative problems, but also those related to both internal and external policies, as well as military ones. The thesis then offers a brief analysis of the King's person, particularly of his traditional vices, followed by an account of the reign itself, with a focus on the aforementioned inherited problems. A considerable part of the thesis is devoted to the evaluation of the consequences of the reign, as well as to the explanation of some of the chief reforms accomplished during thereof. Lastly, the King's portrayal in two popular audiovisual pieces will be analysed and compared. The thesis aims to prove that the King inherited a greater burden than is generally thought, and also that that he was far more successful in overcoming it. Furthermore, it tries to prove that the reign was of greater importance to the English history than is commonly accepted, particularly with regards to the following reign and the early stages of the Hundred Years' War. Lastly, it attempts to disprove the generally negative image that has been ascribed to the King's person as well as reign throughout the history. 73 Czech Résumé Magisterská diplomová práce se zabývá postavou Eduarda II. a jeho pojetím v dané i v současnosti, jakožto i významem jeho vlády v anglické historii. Práce vysvětluje tradiční, velmi negativní obraz krále i jeho vlády a některé z příčin pro toto pojetí. Analýzou předchozí vlády se snaží zhodnotit rozsah různých problémů, které musel mladý král řešit ihned po své korunovaci, zvláště pak přímé následky imperiálni politiky jeho otce, jako například finanční a administrativní potíže, ale také problémy vycházející z vnější i vnitřní politiky a vojenských tažení a střetů. Práce dále nabízí stručnou analýzu královy osoby, zvláště pak jeho tradičních nectností, následovanou rozborem samotné vlády se zaměřením na již zmíněné problémy vyplívající z vlády předchozí. Podstatná část teze se věnuje evaluaci následků vlády a také vysvětlením některých nejzásadnějších reforem dosáhnutých během ní. V neposlední řadě práce prozkoumá a porovná zobrazení krále ve dvou moderních audiovizuálních zpracováních. Cílem teze je dokázat, že král zdědil daleko větší břemeno, než se obecně předpokládá, a že se s tím také daleko úspěšněji vypořádal. Dále se pokusí dokázat, že daná vláda byla pro anglickou historii daleko podstatnější než se běžně připouští, zvláště pak pro následují vládu a ranou fázi Stoleté války. Nakonec se také pokusí vyvrátit tradiční, velmi negativní pojetí královy osoby i vlády v rámci historie. 74