The Plantagenets: The Three Edwards Part 7

The Death of Edward

1.

IT is unfortunate that the war-making years of Edward came in the late period of his reign rather than early. He is remembered, not so much as the fair and thoughtful king who won the love of his subjects by his genuine interest in their welfare, but rather as the conqueror who concealed all traces of the well-doer while he carried fire and sword into the lands he was determined to subdue. And yet the good king manifested himself in even the most sanguinary interludes.

The winter which followed the discomfiture and flight of Robert the Bruce was a period when the face of the furious warrior receded and the able and discriminating Edward appeared instead. He began looking into domestic affairs and decided, among other things, that his people were being charged too much for food. Accordingly he drew up and issued an order: the best soles were to cost no more than threepence a dozen, pickled herrings were to be available at twenty for a penny. Small items, these, but significant of the workings of the royal mind; no detail was too casual for his attention.

Edward had always been intensely fond and proud of his pretty fair-haired daughters, and now only three of them were left: Margaret, Mary, and Elizabeth. It was with the greatest gratification that the old king learned of the birth of a daughter on May 4 in the once royal city of Winchester. He was so delighted with this gift from his young French consort that he gave forty s.h.i.+llings to the low-born messenger who brought him the news. It was at his request that the child was named Eleanor after his first wife and his well-loved oldest daughter, both long since dead. Queen Marguerite lacked all wifely pettiness and was quite content to let him have his way. The child was christened in great state, in a coverlet of cloth of gold, and then displayed in a cradle, covered with ermine and wrapped snugly in a counterpane of cloth of gold. She was, it is believed, a wonderfully pretty child, as fair as any of the dozen or more little blond princesses born into this family.

The royal nursery for the second family of the king was at Northampton. The following month the new daughter had to be conveyed there from Winchester. Edward took the most practical interest in the arrangements for the journey. A special litter of green cloth, lined with crimson silk, was provided for the infant, and a gilded cradle. The litter was slung on silken cords between two horses, and so the royal infant rode in as much comfort as possible. It was a very slow trip, for the king had admonished those in charge to take the utmost care of his daughter; in fact, it consumed sixteen days to cover the ninety-odd miles between the two cities. To be doubly sure, the old king sent many letters to the keeper of the Princess Eleanor, one Adeline de Venise, giving instructions about all the precautions he deemed necessary.

The little Eleanor was only four days old when the king, sick and weary as he was and immersed in state detail, began to negotiate for her marriage. He wrote first to the widowed d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, proposing a match with her son Robert, who was to succeed to that ancient t.i.tle in course of time. Letters went back and forth between the two parents, and it was finally agreed that England would provide a dowry of ten thousand marks and five thousand more for the bride's attire. On these terms the marriage would take place when the two infants had reached a suitable age.

This, perhaps, was the real Edward; the affectionate father, the keen administrator, the careful custodian of the interests of all his people. But the other Edward was due to return and to keep possession of the royal mind and mood until the rapidly approaching end of this tempestuous life. Word reached him that nothing he had done to enforce peace in Scotland had been effective. Undaunted by the heads of their slaughtered leaders turned northward with sightless eyes from the tops of castles and bridges, not in any sense deterred by the thought of the brave and high-spirited Countess of Buchan subsisting in cramped discomfort in her cross-barred cage, save to entertain a smoldering determination to set her free; fearing nothing, the Scots were stirring again.

Robert Bruce had emerged from somewhere in the islands off Scotland's stormy west coast and had made a successful landing. With him was Sir James Douglas, the second member of what was to become a truly historic partners.h.i.+p, Robert the Bruce and the Black Douglas. They had few men with them and so they faced the most frightening odds, for the glens of the north as well as the hills and mosses of the Lowlands swarmed with the English and their sympathizers. The desperate pair performed remarkable exploits which have been told and retold until every proper Scot can recite them word for word. Aymer de Valence was still in charge of affairs in the north country. After being defeated in a defile called the Steps of Trool, he came back to Carlisle, which Edward had reached by painful stages in a horse litter. The acerbic tongue of the sick monarch sent him promptly to the rightabout, but only to meet Bruce and Douglas again and to lose a quite brisk skirmish at Loudoun Hill.

This was too much for Edward. By G.o.d's good grace, was he alone capable of commanding the army he was a.s.sembling for the final thrust into Scotland? It was to be the largest and best-trained force that England had ever seen. It should not be difficult for his fumbling and not too alert fourth cousin to accomplish the complete subjection of the stubborn Scots. But De Valence was doing nothing of any merit, so the tired king reconciled himself to another summer in the field. He presented his horse litter to the cathedral at Carlisle and slowly and painfully climbed into the saddle.

2.

The word that the king was growing weaker had reached all parts of England. It came to the anxious ears of the queen, who was staying with her young family at Northampton, and to the nuns at Ambresbury, where the sixth daughter of the king, the Princess Mary, had taken the veil. The princess had not been forgotten; in fact, she lived a busy life. She paid regular visits to her royal father and received presents from him, of money, special foods, even horses. Although she wore nothing but the black serge robe of the Benedictines, she had luxurious quarters. At night she slept in a wide bed with hangings of satin and tapestry and she had her own pantry and her own staff of servants. She was, moreover, a great traveler and was probably as often on the road as at her post in the convent.

The princess and the new queen had become the closest of friends and they decided to make a pilgrimage together to the shrines of St. Thomas at Canterbury and Dover, hoping they could avert the threat to the king's life by prayerful intercessions. It was a long train which set out for the purpose, and a long journey lay ahead of them, more than a hundred miles. The queen took her two young sons with her but left her infant daughter, about whose safety the king had been so solicitous, in the comfort and warmth of her ermine-draped cradle. They were not alone in their efforts to stay the hand of death. At all the shrines in England the subjects of Edward were praying for his recovery.

In the meantime the still impatient though desperately ill king was making small progress with his army. In the first two days he spent in the saddle he covered no more than four miles. Realizing that this rate of progress would never get his forces into contact with the enemy, he had a second litter improvised and rode in it, in great discomfort, the third day. His pain was so severe, however, that the train had to proceed at a snail's pace, and by the end of the third day they had done no better than reach Burgh-by-Sands. From here they could see the water of the Solway Firth, beyond which lay Scotland.

The king was now so weak that he could go no farther. He allowed himself to be carried from the litter to a bed, and there he prepared himself for death. Although he prayed earnestly for the welfare of his soul and composed messages of farewell for the members of his family, he remained the warrior king to the end. His spirit was as indomitable as ever, as was evident from the orders he gave his son.

One hundred English knights were to go to the Crusades, under oath to remain a full year. They were to take his heart with them.

Piers Gaveston was not to be recalled to England without the consent of Parliament.

His final injunction was, "Wrap my bones in a hammock and have them carried before the army, so I may still lead the way to victory!"

He died on July 7, two days after his devoted wife and daughter had started far in the south on their long pilgrimage of intercession for him.

Ten days after his death an inventory was made of the possessions the old king had carried with him. They consisted for the most part of holy relics: a purse containing a thorn from the crown of Christ, a sliver of wood from the holy cross, one of the nails from the cross, a bone from the arm of St. Osith, one from the head of St. Lawrence, a fragment of the sponge which was lifted to Christ on the cross-more than a hundred relics in all. No monarch could have been more devout, nor more a.s.siduous as a collector.

His sixty-eight years had been years of storm and stress, filled with the rattle of arms, the thunder of cavalry, the dip and toss of transport s.h.i.+ps, the bitter clash of wills; but the good he did would never end, while the hatred aroused by his ambition would subside in the course of time, and so the scales inclined heavily in his favor when his record came to be weighed. It must still be said that he was a great king.

Many years after, when the independence of Scotland had finally been achieved, Robert the Bruce paid a great compliment to the memory of Edward I. "I am more afraid," he declared, "of the bones of the father dead, than of the living son; and, by all the saints, it was more difficult to get half a foot of land from the old king than a whole kingdom from the son!"

BOOK TWO.

Edward the Second.

CHAPTER I.

The New King Makes Many Mistakes.

1.

EDWARD was twenty-three when he looked on the dead face of his father and realized that he was now Edward II and King of England. The thought failed to sober or inspire him. He proceeded, in fact, to disregard all the commands of the dying warrior, his first act being the recall of Piers de Gaveston. He never turned a hand to organize the party of one hundred knights who were to take his father's heart to the Holy Land. The vehement demand made by the dying monarch that his bones should be carried in front of the army was disregarded. Instead the young king escorted the bier to York, from where it was sent on to London for burial later in Westminster Abbey.

Edward then returned to Carlisle, where the army of invasion awaited his orders. He had little stomach for this military heritage that had come into his hands, being in no sense a soldier, but he must at least make a gesture, so he led the army into Ayr; the word "led" being purely rhetorical, for the second Edward, unlike his martial father, who had ridden his steed Bayard over the walls of Berwick and through the moss at Falkirk, preferred to direct his army from the rear. They reached c.u.mnock and camped there for several weeks, receiving the vows of fealty of some of the Scottish n.o.blemen and considering what to do next. The decision was to do nothing. In spite of the commands left by the old king, the army retired to Carlisle on the supposition that any activities among the Scots were local and sporadic.

Immediately a bonnet appeared from behind every bush. As soon as the back of the somewhat less than soldierly new king had been turned, Bruce was at work in the Highlands, leading many successful forays. The Black Douglas, commanding in the south, recaptured his castle in Douglasdale by a ruse which delighted every Scottish heart. Leading his men by a secret footpath, he came to a dark shaw which overlooked the gray-towered castle. Here they waited while a small party went forward in wagons filled with fodder. The garrison, being in need of supplies, threw open the gates. When the wagons came to a stop in the gateway, the drivers drew their pikes and long dirks from under the hay and held the s.p.a.ce open while the Douglas and his men charged through the green bracken and took the castle with little difficulty.

In London the new king piled mistake on mistake. Here his lost friend awaited him, Brother Perrot in a coat of rich material from the East and a plume in his hat, and his mind filled with all the latest quips and anecdotes. The reunion was most affectionate and the king conferred on Gaveston the earldom of Cornwall; a most injudicious act, for this t.i.tle had always been reserved for members of the royal family and it carried with it, moreover, an interest in the tin mines of Cornwall, those great stannaries from which came the close-packed bundles conveyed every day down the tin trail to the markets of Europe. Then he betrothed the gay jackanapes from Gascony to a member of the royal family, his niece, Margaret of Gloucester. Margaret was the daughter of his giddy and willful sister, Joanna of Acre. At first the girl seemed willing enough, for Master Perrot was handsome and high of spirits. Later the marriage would become a source of much trouble.

The new broom, wielded in the reckless hands of the young king, disposed of all the high officers of state. It swept his old critic, Bishop Langton, right out of the treasury and into the Tower of London. As a successor to Langton, Edward offered his baronage another bitter pill to swallow in the person of Walter Reynolds, a man of low station and mean attributes, who will be remembered as one of his wine-bibbing mentors.

2.

Of all the kings of England, Edward II was one of the least fitted for the post and certainly one of the most poorly trained. He never grew up, but at no time did he show the enthusiasms and the touch of ideality which the perennial juvenile will often display. His concern seems to have been with his personal interests and pleasures and he had no conception of what it meant to be a king. If anyone had said to him that a king, after all, was no more than the representative of the ruling cla.s.s, he would have thrown back his handsome head and laughed loudly. Nevertheless, the n.o.bility still held to this conviction. "By G.o.d, Sir King," Roger BiG.o.d had said to Edward I, "I will neither go nor hang!" The first Edward had realized the need to curb the power of the feudal families and had been far-seeing enough to broaden the base of representation in Parliament by the introduction of commoners. The baronage still remained the dominant force in Parliament, of course, and it would take centuries of experiment and growth before the Commons could a.s.sume control. In the meantime only as strong a ruler as Edward I could hold his barons in check. The second Edward lacked the qualities which would have enabled him to follow in his father's footsteps. He seemed to hold the old belief that a king could do no wrong, and it amused him to see Piers de Gaveston strutting about and taunting the n.o.bility. He and his gossip would show the haughty earls and barons who was now the master in England!

The favorite went so far as to give offense to the one man who of all others should have been exempt from his insults. Thomas of Lancaster was a first cousin of the king, being the son of Prince Edmund, a brother of Edward I. He was hereditary high steward of England and the holder of five earldoms, including Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby. He entertained on a lavish scale. In that connection it is interesting to quote some figures from the accounts of his cofferers. In one year they paid out 3,405 pounds for food. In addition it was found necessary to lay down 369 pipes of red wine and two of white. White wine was reserved for invalids and children. Ladies liked the stout red wine as well as did their menfolk, particularly if it was well spiced and mulled. These were enormous expenditures for those days. Lancaster's great castle at Pontefract must have been filled with guests at all seasons, and the accommodations of its eight towers must have been strained to provide sleeping quarters.

Lancaster was a man of overweening ambition but entirely lacking in the qualities which must go with the achievement of high objectives; an insensitive, coa.r.s.e, violent fellow, lethargic in person and dull of wit. Because of his rank, however, he was the most powerful man in the kingdom and certainly should never have been selected by the upstart Gascon as a b.u.t.t for his jests.

Royal families are no different from others in certain human respects. They have their divisions and feuds, they seethe with jealousies, they indulge in gossip and innuendo. The faults of the head of the family are well known to all the collateral branches, the brothers and uncles and cousins. Cousin Lancaster was the leader of the opposition where Edward II was concerned. He knew all about that young man's record and thought poorly of him from every standpoint.

When Edward announced after his coronation that he now desired to begin the business of administration, there was a tendency among the n.o.bility, many of whom had found Gaveston amusing, to regard this as a happy omen. They were even willing to make financial grants, despite the fact that Edward had depleted the treasury to get funds for his favorite. Two of the barons stood out, Cousin Lancaster and Hugh le Despenser.

"Wait and see," grumbled the holder of five earldoms, whose feelings were still raw from the antics of Master Piers.

He was right. The country would soon discover that the reins of government had pa.s.sed into the most careless and incompetent of hands.

CHAPTER II.

The Marriage of Edward

1.

THE short reign of Edward II-130727-was an unfruitful period, a time of military defeat and const.i.tutional inertia. But it reads like a play or a novel because of the conflicts which arose between the leading figures on the stage, Edward himself and his favorites, his beautiful but false queen, Isabella the Fair, and her paramour, and that glum exponent of discontent, Cousin Lancaster. The story of these people is a series of climaxes, all violent and unhappy; but, it must be added, engrossing and exciting.

The story begins with an almost incredible error of judgment on the part of the king. When he had completed arrangements for his marriage to Isabella of France by agreeing to wed her at Boulogne, he faced the need of appointing a regent to act in his absence as custodian of the Great Seal and to exercise power in certain contingencies. It had been the invariable rule to appoint a member of the royal family when a suitable one existed, generally the queen or the heir to the throne. The logical selection, therefore, was Cousin Lancaster. Partly to express his dislike of that consistently hostile prince, and partly to pay a tribute to his favorite, Edward selected Gaveston for that highest of honors!

2.

In the cathedral of Boulogne, the ill.u.s.trious company was literally carried away by the beauty of the contracting parties. Edward was tall, well formed, handsome. Isabella, although only thirteen years of age, was incomparably beautiful; as fair as her father had been but with nothing of the cold perfection of feature which so often accompanies golden hair. There was a piquancy of feature and a sparkle generally about her. Later it would be realized that she was as hard, as flawless, and as sharp-edged as a diamond; but in her first blooming none of this showed. She was magnificently attired in blue and gold. The crown on her head, sparkling with precious stones, was only one of two which her father, generous for once, had given her. The other was packed away with a large a.s.sortment of gold and silver articles. Her ladies-in-waiting had been babbling about the contents of the chests in which her clothes were kept. Ah, what gowns of velvet with gold embroidery, of sunny cloth from the East, of rich materials from the looms of Flanders! Never had a bride been so richly endowed.

The company was a distinguished one. Philip the Fair in rose cloth, a huge figure of a man with his once fair complexion turned florid in a face as round as a wheel of country cheese; the kings of the Romans, of Sicily, of Navarre, and their queens; the Archduke of Austria; Charles of Valois and his tribe of marriageable daughters; Louis of Evreux; the Duke of Brabant; the dowager Queen Marguerite of England, proud of the success she had made of her marriage with the first Edward; and an immense a.s.semblage of princes and princesses and counts and lords.

The bride and groom were seeing each other for the first time, but there was no evidence of an instant attraction between them. To Edward the bride was a very pretty girl, not far removed from the doll stage. To Isabella, her bridegroom wore a question mark as well as a fine satin jacket and a handsomely jeweled cloak. She had been told many strange things about him. But they might have reached a stage of marital happiness if each had striven to please the other. Edward was careless and casual and more interested still in his gossip and playfellow, Brother Perrot, and Isabella was quick to take offense and to show it.

The fault was more on Edward's side. Throughout the period of festivities, both in France and in England, he behaved like a country loon and gave the n.o.bility of France a chance to look down their very superior noses at him. Isabella never lost a chance to complain to her father, to write him letters, to raise her pretty voice in spiteful reproach.

The match, which looked so brilliant as the handsome young couple stood together at the altar, was doomed to failure.

When they landed at Dover on February 7, Gaveston met them in such an imitation of oriental splendor and so much jewelry on his person that he quite eclipsed the king. The English n.o.bility observed the scene with smoldering anger. The feeling against Gaveston was growing as the word circulated that Edward had already depleted the treasury by many thousands of pounds given to his favorite. It was even said that a fund of thirty-two thousand pounds, which had been set aside for the expense of a new crusade, had already vanished into the jeweled pockets of Master Piers.

When the Gascon appeared, the king left the side of his bride, crying, "Brother! Brother!" and clasped him in his arms. The bride watched this effusive welcome with an eye that had ceased to be girlish and had lost all of its dewy quality.

Worse was to follow. King Philip had given many costly presents to his son-in-law in the way of rings and gold chains. The next day Master Piers put in an appearance wearing some of them on his person. It was a good thing that Philip had not crossed the Channel with the rest of the party, for he had already demonstrated one violent way of dealing with such matters. A few years before, Queen Marguerite of England had sent costly presents to the wives of two of Philip's sons. When a pair of young gallants turned up at court later wearing the gifts openly, that far from gentle king had acted with sudden ferocity. Not only were the two courtiers flayed alive on a public square by the royal executioner, but the foolish daughters-in-law were sent to prison, where one of them died. If Brother Perrot had been a subject of the French king, he would have been given short shrift.

The outcome of this absurd folly was that some of the English n.o.bility, with Cousin Lancaster as spokesman no doubt, went to Edward and told him that unless he banished Gaveston from court they would absent themselves from the coronation. Edward, taken seriously aback, a.s.sured them that he would arrange matters to their satisfaction.

3.

Isabella had become instantly popular with the people of England. The first glimpse of her fresh beauty when she landed with the king at Dover had started talk spreading about the country. Her arrival in London for the coronation was a triumph. The citizens, as usual, had prepared a rousing welcome. The streets were covered with flags and bunting, and there were tall temporary structures here and there representing castles and fairy bowers. The conduits ran wine and everyone could fill a cup; and most a.s.suredly everyone did. The mayor and the aldermen rode first in the procession which had been formed to greet the king and his new bride, and after them came the members of all the guilds, more than thirty separate organizations; four solid miles of s.h.i.+ning faces and bright new liveries.

The lord mayor handed over the golden key of the city. "Your humble citizens, O King," he declared, "prostrate themselves at your feet and surrender to you themselves and all that they have." It was the old formula which had been observed with each royal visit since London Town had secured its charters. But it had a ritualistic flavor which pleased everyone, particularly after the brief glance the good burghers and their wives had obtained of the sparklingly lovely queen.

If Isabella felt that London was small and dirty and lacking in the distinction of Paris (and no doubt she did), she did not allow it to show. She bowed and smiled and raised her hand in a continuous greeting. She took an open interest in everything that was shown her and everything told her about the points of historic importance: the streets over which the fair Saxon princess Matilda rode to the hearings at Lambeth to decide whether or not she might wed King Henry I; the exact spot where the spirit of St. Thomas of Canterbury had been seen before the masonry of the wharf at the Tower of London had toppled and fallen into the river at the raising of his s.h.i.+ning cross; the clock at St. Paul's where the arm of an angel pointed to the hours and the still more amazing one at Westminster which showed the tides as well as the time; London Bridge, so ma.s.sive and impressive with its rows of stalls and shops, its homes and its church, the great weight of which had caused the collapse of four of the stone piers not more than a quarter of a century before. Perhaps she shuddered inwardly when her eyes were directed to the Tower of London, standing so high and grim above the rest of the city, and learned that this would be her home.

The popularity which the queen won on that first day did not abate for many years. The foolish conduct of the king won a sympathy for her which was generally felt. Through all the s.h.i.+fts and troubles of the next few years, London was consistently loyal to the beautiful queen. Isabella was discerning enough to realize the value of the city's support. To cast forward into the future, when her first child was born, a fine healthy boy who was destined to become Edward III and to be known as the conqueror king, she sent a letter to the citizens.

Isabella, by the grace of G.o.d, Queen of England, Lady of Ireland, and d.u.c.h.ess of Aquitaine, to our well-beloved the Mayor, and Aldermen, and the Commonality of London, greeting. Forasmuch as we believe that you would willingly hear good tidings of us, we do make known to you that our Lord in His grace has delivered us of a son, on the 13th day of November with safety to ourselves, and to the child. May our Lord preserve you. Given at Wyndesore, on the day above-named.

It could not have been done with a surer touch. Three days were given over to rejoicing in the city, so general was the enthusiasm felt at this happy event. Once again tuns of wine were set up in the streets at which all could drink to the royal child and to the health of the beautiful queen.

4.

In spite of the hostility of the barons, Brother Perrot was at the coronation on February 25. In the procession to the abbey, Lancaster carried Curtana, the sword of mercy, and his brother Henry bore the rod and dove. Immediately behind them, strutting in sheer magnificence like the Grand Cham, was Piers de Gaveston, carrying St. Edward's crown! There was talk of stopping the procession and ejecting the favorite, even of killing him on the spot, but better counsel prevailed.

This was no more than the first unpleasantness, the worst episode of many which marred the day. It developed that the Gascon had been given full charge of the coronation arrangements and had been seriously lax about them. Seats had not been provided for all who were ent.i.tled to them. The abbey was so unnecessarily crowded that one knight, Sir John Bakewell, was trampled underfoot and suffocated. The ceremony, which should have been completed by noon, was not over until three o'clock. The royal party and the guests emerged from the abbey in a state of exhaustion. The banquet, which should have been ready hours before, was still in the making. Early dusk had fallen when the guests were summoned to their places. The food was badly cooked. The service was exasperatingly slow. In his first chance to show what he could do, the king's companion had failed utterly.

The young queen was greatly disturbed by this farcical note. Her remonstrances had no effect on her royal husband, so she took to voicing her dissatisfaction in further letters to her father. Philip, running true to form, saw a chance in this to create dissension in the neighboring kingdom and set about creating an opposition party. Cousin Lancaster was chosen to head the dissentients, and it was largely through his efforts that a meeting of the council was held. Struggling hard to save his favorite, Edward could do no more than get postponements. Finally, however, the barons got together on April 28 in a very dangerous mood.

The meeting was almost unanimous against the king and Gaveston. The only one who stood out, in fact, was the n.o.bleman named Hugh le Despenser, who had served Edward I long and faithfully but who was sufficiently political-minded to see a chance here to win the favor of the new king. His voice was drowned out in the loud chorus of baronial demands; and later, when Parliament met at Northampton, he was dismissed from the council for his stand.

The king was compelled to bow his head to the storm. It was decided that Gaveston was to be stripped of all offices and honors and sent away. For good measure, the bishops declared that he would be excommunicated if he ever attempted to return to England.

The king had given in, but between them this fine pair saw a way out of the difficulty. Gaveston was sent from England, but only as far as Ireland, where he was to serve as the king's lieutenant at a fine salary. Edward rode to Bristol with him and stood sorrowfully at the docks while the vessel containing the Gascon and his company (a large one, needless to state) warped its way out into the Channel.