HIS3406 Lecture Notes on Edward II

1. HIS3406 Lecture Notes on Edward II by Fred Cheung

2. The Angevin (Plantagenet) Kings: Henry II (Father of the English Common Law), r. 1154-1189 Richard I (the Lion-Hearted), r. 1189-1199 John (the Lackland), r. 1199-1216 Henry III, r. 1216-1272 Edward I, r. 1272-1307 Edward II, r. 1307-1327 Edward III, r. 1327-1377 Richard II, r. 1377-1399

3. Main References: Hollister, The Making of England, pp. 303-322. Michael Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377, (London, 1980), pp. 79-114. John R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II, (Oxford, 1970) Natalie Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321-1326, (Cambridge, 1979)

4. King Edward II, r. 1307-1327, was one of the most incompetent kings ever to rule England. The domestic history of the reign is one of political failures with violence. Thomas of Lancaster, the Kings chief enemy, owed his position to his wealth rather than to his ability. Personal hatred and jealousy were dominant, as was demonstrated in the final overthrow of the incompetent king by Isabella, his queen.

5. According to Michael Prestwich, “Although Edward II came to be regarded as wholly unsuitable to hold the throne, he had some regal qualities. He was tall, muscular and good-looking; …… he was a good horseman in an age when this was important. ……

6. Such merits as the king possessed easily went unnoticed. Edward’s greatest failing, perhaps, lay in his relations with his favorites. Even before he came to the throne his friendship with the young Gascon Piers Gaveston, son of a royal household knight, caused problems. …… It was possible for one man to dominate Edward II to such an extent that he would not accept advice from any other quarter, …… Gaveston was less dangerous than the favorite of the last years of the reign, Hugh Despenser the younger, for while the Gascon had no great political ambitions, Despenser was a determined and grasping man of considerable ability.

7. Opinion as to whether the king’s relationships with his favorites were homosexual has changed considerably in recent years, reflecting a change in modern attitudes rather than the discovery of fresh evidence. …… It was rumored in 1308 that the king loved Gaveston more than his queen, …… Homosexuality was regarded with horror at this time, it was tantamount to heresy, as the trials of the Templars showed, but it was not until after Edward’s death that the charge was openly brought against the king by the chroniclers. ……

8. The reign of Edward II divides into separate phases. From his accession until 1311 there was argument over the position of Piers Gaveston, and demands of reforms on similar lines to those requested in Edward I’s last years. These culminated in the production of the Ordinances in 1311, which in turn imposed a pattern on politics up to 1322. The last years of the reign were dominated by the ambitions of the elder and younger Despenser, in a dominant position following the fall of Thomas of Lancaster, the king’s leading opponent, in 1322.” (Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377, (London, 1980), pp. 79 – 82)

9. According to Prof. Hollister, “Edward II was the most despised and least successful of them. His inadequacies stand out in particularly sharp relief against the iron strength of his father, Edward I, and the success and popularity of his son, Edward III. …… Edward II inherited from his father an ambitious foreign policy, an empty treasury, and a restive nobility. But Edward I failed to pass on to him the intelligence and resolution necessary to cope with these problems. ……

10. In short, Edward II was an eccentric. He was ‘a weakling and a fool,’ who was deficient ‘not only in military capacity, but also in imagination, energy, and common sense.’ [Mary McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399 (Oxford, 1959), p. 95] Because he lacked the chivalric and military virtues of the knight, he could not win the respect of his barons, who preferred that their kings be warriors, not cart drivers. ……

11. Throughout his career, Edward II demonstrated a dangerous and self-defeating tendency to engage in emotionally charged relationships with ambitious young men and to fall hopelessly under their influence. The first such man, Gaveston, a Gascon knight of modest birth whose courage and ability were tainted by arrogance. Gaveston had been exiled by Edward I as a bad influence on his impressionable son, but when Edward II inherited the throne, he immediately brought Gaveston back to England and made him earl of Cornwall, a title that had traditionally been assigned to the king’s brother. …..

12. As a result, Gaveston began to become politically influential …… Meanwhile, the Scots were raiding northern England, and neither Edward nor Gaveston seemed inclined to mount any sort of effective military campaign against them. Predictably, the disgruntled magnates began to inspire against the king, led by one of the wealthiest and most powerful magnates that England had ever known: Thomas, earl of Lancaster, grandson of King Henry III and first cousin (and until 1313, heir) of Edward II. …… His impact on English history would have been greater still had not his policies been short-sighted, capricious, and limited by and large to the satisfaction of his personal ambitions. ……

13. Edward exploited every possible source of tax revenue and borrowed heavily from Italian bankers, …… Ultimately, however, the king was obliged to seek extraordinary financial support from his barons in Parliament.

14. This provided the magnates with an opportunity to establish a degree of control over the unwilling king. In 1310, they forced him to accept a committee of notables empowered to draw up a series of ordinances to reform the governance of the realm. The fruits of their work, the Ordinances of 1311, echoed the Provisions of Oxford of half a century earlier but were even more thoroughgoing. They provided that both Gaveston and Edward’s chief banker, …… , be exiled from England.

15. Parliaments were to be summoned at least twice a year and were empowered to endorse or reject the appointment of high administrative officers such as the chancellor and treasurer. More than that, parliaments could veto the appointments of important officials in the king’s household itself …… Finally, and perhaps most humiliating of all, the king could declare war only with parliamentary approval; while between parliaments, he was obliged to follow the advice of a continuing royal council appointed by Parliament and dominated by Thomas of Lancaster.

16. In 1311, as in 1158, the magnates forced the monarchy to accept a comprehensive series of limitations on royal power. And as before, the king soon disavowed his concessions, sparking a baronial uprising. Within a year, Edward II brought Gaveston back from his Irish exile, declaring that he would never hereafter be parted from him. The exasperated magnates responded by taking up arms, seizing the royal favorite, and murdering him. ……

17. …… [winning over the Scots in 1314 at Bannockburn (but Thomas of Lancaster was not involved).] …… Meanwhile, the king continued to quarrel with his magnates and his parliaments. Thomas of Lancaster returned to power …… [and] remained a dominant figure in the king’s government until 1317. …… By 1318, Lancaster’s influence was waning, as a new and more conciliatory group of earls rose to power at court. These men were suspicious of Lancaster and less interested than he in forcing royal government into the rigid framework of the ordinances. This group included a youthful nobleman of intelligent and ruthless ambition, Hugh Despenser the Younger, who soared to power much as Gaveston had done at the beginning of Edward II’s reign, and with much the same results.

18. …… Younger Despenser …… was even more ambitious, and ultimately more dangerous to the rest of the English nobility. …… By 1321, he had ascended to a position of overwhelming authority at the royal court. It was now the Younger Despenser, rather than Edward II or his other magnates, who ran the government.

19. Once again, the magnates formed a coalition against the king and his favorite, led by notables such as Thomas of Lancaster and the Mortimers. ….. but at the crucial battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322, Thomas of Lancaster’s forces were routed by a royal army. The earl surrendered and was summarily tried and condemned for treason. ….. [and Thomas of Lancaster was humiliated, and executed/beheaded] ……

20. In the aftermath of Boroughbridge, Edward and Despenser, disregarding law and custom, executed their major opponents right and left, confiscated their lands, and imprisoned their kinfolk, …… The years following the king’s military triumph at Boroughbridge, 1322-1326, were marked by peace abroad and terror at home.

21. With Thomas of Lancaster dead, the Younger Despenser ruled imperiously over king and kingdom, …… But his power and success made him overconfident –- as so often happens with successful people --- and he carelessly allowed a new coalition to develop that would ultimately prove fatal to his ambitions. The Welsh marcher lord Roger Mortimer, imprisoned during the crackdown after Boroughbridge, escaped from the Tower of London in 1323 and took refuge in France.

22. Two years later, the long-neglected Queen Isabella was sent across the Channel to negotiate with her brother, King Charles IV, on the long-standing Anglo-French dispute over Gascony. Once in France, Isabella broke with her husband and became the mistress of Roger Mortimer. In 1326, Mortimer and Isabella returned to England with an army. With them came the young Prince Edward, son of Edward II and Isabella, and heir to the throne.

23. Mortimer and Isabella at once became the center of a general uprising of English magnates against the hated Despenser and the tyrannical Edward [II]. Late in 1326, the rebels captured and imprisoned the king and executed Despenser after first chopping off his genitals and burning them before his eyes. In January 1327, a parliament formally deposed King Edward [II] in favor of his fourteen-year-old heir, Edward III. To avoid any possibility of a royal comeback, Edward II’s enemies forced him to abdicate, imprisoned him in Berkeley Castle, and apparently had him murdered.

24. The deposition of a king, unprecedented in English history, was an awesome event. …… Nevertheless, the fact that the formalities of the royal deposition were carried out in a parliament is itself significant. …… The English had at last found a constitutional means of justifying the removal of a king who refused to abide by customary laws and the community’s will: the representatives of the English community, acting in Parliament, could cast him from the throne. ……

25. …… Although Edward III inherited the kingdom, he was still too young to rule. Actual power passed to Mortimer and Isabella, who dominated the regency government. …… the sexual relationship between Mortimer and Queen Isabella was a national scandal. …… in 1330, they were suddenly brought to ruin by a court conspiracy led by the young king himself. Mortimer was seized ……, tried by a parliament, and hanged. Isabella was permitted a generous allowance but was deprived of power. Seventeen-year-old King Edward III, having thus emphatically proclaimed his coming of age, now turned to the essential work of healing England’s divisions by restoring vigorous royal leadership to his troubled kingdom.” (Hollister, The Making of England, pp. 301-320).

26. Chronology of Historical Events in the reign of Edward II, r. 1307-1327 1307 Accession of Edward II 1308 Marriage to Isabelle of France; coronation; first exile of Piers Gaveston 1309 Statute of Stamford; return of Gaveston 1310 Appointment of the Ordainers; campaign in Scotland 1311 Publication of the Ordinances 1312 Death of Piers Gaveston 1314 Battle of Bannockburn 1315 Famine

27. 1316 Parliament 1318 Treaty of Leake 1319 Siege of Berwick 1321 Exile of the Despensers 1322 Defeat of Thomas of Lancaster at Boroughbridge 1322 Ascendancy of the Despensers 1326 Invasion of Isabella and Mortimer 1327 Deposition of Edward II (Source: Michael Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377.)