Living in Medieval England, page 17
The archbishop of Canterbury and various English bishops arranged to meet in London on 13 October to discuss the volatile situation. They originally intended to convene at St Paul’s Cathedral, but this venue was deemed too dangerous, and they met in Lambeth Palace across the river instead. Even this, however, proved too risky, and as London descended ever more into chaos and violence, Archbishop Walter Reynolds commandeered the horses belonging to Hamo Hethe, bishop of Rochester, and fled from the city, leaving the bishop himself to escape on foot.14 Geoffrey Scrope, chief justice of the court of King’s Bench and an ally of Edward II, believed himself to be in danger (probably not inaccurately) from a mob who sacked his London house, but managed to escape over the Thames into Southwark, borrowing one of Archbishop Reynolds’ horses to do so. A born survivor, Geoffrey transferred his allegiance to Queen Isabella and was a member of the delegation sent to Edward II at Kenilworth in January 1327 to demand the king’s abdication. Geoffrey Scrope, born c. early or mid-1280s, died in late 1340. His eldest son Henry became first Lord Scrope of Masham (Yorkshire) and lived until the early 1390s; his grandson Richard Scrope was elected archbishop of York in 1398 and was executed by Henry IV in 1405; and his great-grandson Henry, third Lord Scrope of Masham, was executed by Henry V (b. 1386, r. 1413–22) in 1415.
Donald of Mar, a nephew of Robert Bruce, king of Scotland but a close ally of the English king, remained loyal to Edward II after the queen’s invasion. On 14 October, Edward ordered Donald to defend the March, i.e. the English-Welsh borderlands, and a week later to pursue and arrest all the invaders he could find.15 After the king’s downfall, Donald returned to the homeland he had not seen for twenty years. His involvement in Edward’s affairs was, however, far from over: in the summer of 1327 he led a column of his uncle’s army during Robert Bruce’s invasion of England against the new regime, and sent men to try to free the deposed and imprisoned Edward from Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. In 1330 Donald was involved in another plot to free Edward, by then supposedly long dead, from captivity. Donald was briefly regent of Scotland for his young cousin David II (r. 1329–71), and was killed at the Battle of Dupplin Moor in August 1332.
Elizabeth de Burgh sent a servant (unnamed) to her adherent Sir Robert Chedworth ‘to report rumours from the king’s court’ to him on 15 October. Robert was on his way to meet Queen Isabella, so any rumours about the king the servant reported to him probably found their way to the queen’s ears. Elizabeth evidently expected her servant to have to run a considerable distance to find Robert Chedworth, as in addition to the 9d in wages he received for the journey, he was given an extra 5d for shoe repair. Simon the courier, whom Elizabeth had sent to Gloucestershire with letters for her uncle Edward II, returned on 15 October and received 11s for eleven days’ travel. Simon had had to hire a hackney horse because his first horse ‘failed on the road’, and Elizabeth paid him back the 1s 3d the hire had cost. She sent Robert Chedworth, another man called William Beche and unnamed others to Isabella with two horses, almost certainly intended as a gift for the queen, and the provisions the men took with them included forty cod, a capon, five pullets, eight chickens, three young doves, cheese and fifty eggs.16
Walter Stapeldon, bishop of Exeter since 1307 and founder of Exeter College at Oxford in 1314, had almost certainly not intended to offend and insult Queen Isabella when he hastily departed from her and the French court in November 1325. He did offend her, however, and this, combined with the bishop’s perceived support for Hugh Despenser, had tragic consequences on 15 October. Bishop Walter was spotted by a mob after he rode into the city through Newgate, and he made hastily for St Paul’s Cathedral, hoping to escape from them and to seek sanctuary. He and his squires John of Paddington and William atte Walle almost reached safety, but were cornered outside the cathedral and pulled from their horses, and the squires were murdered. The bishop himself was hit over the head and dragged half-conscious through the churchyard of St Paul’s into Cheapside, and there a butcher called Robert of Hatfield beheaded him with a bread-knife. Bishop Walter’s head was sent to Queen Isabella, and his and his attendants’ naked bodies lay in the street for several days. John Marshal, believed to be an adherent of Hugh Despenser, was seized in his house around midday on 15 October, and was also taken to Cheapside and beheaded there.17
Isabella and her son Edward of Windsor reached Wallingford on 15 October and issued a proclamation in the name of themselves and Edmund, earl of Kent, the king’s half-brother. It consisted entirely of accusations against Hugh Despenser, including that he had usurped royal power and acted as a tyrant. Edward II himself was not, yet, accused of anything.18 Also on 15 October, the day the bishop of Exeter was killed in the city, a crowd gathered at the Guildhall in London and proclaimed their loyalty to the queen and her son. They forced the mayor Hamo of Chigwell to declare for them too.19 A mob stormed the Tower of London on 16 October, and forced the constable, Sir John Weston, to release all the prisoners there and to hand over the keys. No-one, however, was harmed, and the king and queen’s 10-year-old younger son John of Eltham, found within the Tower with his much older cousin Eleanor Despenser, was placed in official charge of the city and the Tower. Another letter from the queen and her elder son Edward of Windsor, undated, thanked the citizens of London for holding the city and the Tower, and instructed them not to harm the bishop of London, Stephen Gravesend (c. 1260– 1338), who was a supporter of Edward II and whom she took under her protection. Isabella asked the citizens to send ‘Lord John [of Eltham], the king’s son’ (and her own) to her.20
On 18 October, Edward II and Hugh Despenser reached Chepstow, on the border of England and South Wales and then called ‘Strigoil’. John Giston of Chepstow was paid 3s 5d for a piece of ox-hide to make baldrics, i.e. belts worn over one shoulder for carrying weapons, ‘for the war’. John of Toucester (in Northamptonshire) had retired from the royal household in November 1325 and was sent to live at Reading Abbey, but he and five friends went to the Forest of Dean to spy on the arrival of the queen and her allies and received 10s from Edward on this day. John Beauchamp of Shepperton, Middlesex complained to the queen and her son some weeks later that John of Toucester and his ally Richard Broun took his (Beauchamp’s) men and tenants from his manor against their will, and led them to Bristol to fight against the queen’s forces. Some of the men of Shepperton were named as Wauter Yunge, gardener, Henry of Arundel, carter, Robert Spenser and Robert Stob, shepherds, and William bi Southe, occupation not given.21
Richard ‘Hick’ Mereworth, whose wife Johane had borne their child earlier in the year and whose house in Henley-on-Thames was burgled in June, was another man sent ‘secretly’ to spy on the queen: Hick travelled to Gloucester to watch the queen’s arrival there and received a large payment of 20s on his return to the king. Edward kept himself informed of his wife’s movements, though it did him no good at all. Isabella and her large force arrived at Bristol on 18 October, and Hugh Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester, had time to send the king and his son one last letter via a messenger called Jack Barber before the city was surrounded, to tell them that the queen had arrived.
Sir Thomas Wyther of Staffordshire, part of the long and violent feud over the church of Church Eaton, was still with the king and Hugh Despenser. On 18 October at Chepstow, Thomas swore an oath on the Host (i.e. a container for the sacramental bread believed to contain the body of Christ) in Edward’s chamber. In front of the king and Hugh, Wyther promised never to leave Despenser as long as he lived, and Edward paid him 20 marks. Hugh Despenser had dominated English politics and foreign policy for the previous few years and held the kingdom in his hand, but now he was reduced to bribing men to stay with him.
Also on 18 October, the king’s fletcher Henry’s brother Jack Fletcher joined Edward II. Almost inevitably, Jack practised the same profession as his brother, and they both worked day and night feathering arrows for the king; Edward would never have the chance to use them. Around the same date, curious to know what was going on, the mayor of Leicester, John Norton, sent two men to Bristol ‘to find out what the magnates were doing’. The two men’s journey from Leicester to Bristol and back lasted nine days and cost 3s, and in early November the mayor sent another man to Gloucester and Hereford, where the queen’s party then was, for the same purpose.22
Edward II’s younger son John of Eltham remained in the Tower of London. Hamo of Chigwell, the mayor of London, visited him there on 19 October, and brought him a gift of wine looted from the cellar of the chief justice Sir Geoffrey Scrope. Hamo also brought a black horse as a gift to the king’s son from the gatekeepers of Aldgate.23 Probably on Monday, 20 October, Edward, Hugh Despenser and a handful of others sailed from Chepstow in a boat. Their aims are uncertain; it may be that they intended to sail all the way to Ireland (Edward was lord of Ireland and had allies there) and launch a counter-invasion of England. They seem to have tried to head first for Lundy, an island in the Bristol Channel owned by Hugh Despenser. Hugh’s confessor, the Carmelite friar Richard Bliton, prayed to Saint Anne that she would send them a good wind, but Anne failed to oblige and after five days the small party had gone nowhere in particular and had to put in at Cardiff. From mid-October to mid-November 1326, the king’s movements become rather confused and difficult to follow; the chancery rolls show that Edward issued several orders at Chepstow on 21 October, though the evidence of his chamber account indicates that he and a few others were already on the sea at that time.24 The king arrived at Cardiff (‘Kerdyf ’ as it appears in his accounts) on 25 October, and he, Hugh Despenser and several others including Hugh’s eldest son Huchon made their way to Hugh’s great castle of Caerphilly a few miles away.
Roger Wodeham was the constable of Hadleigh Castle in Essex, and in 1322 was a valet of Edward II’s chamber and said to be in charge of carrying the king’s bow.25 Sometime after the queen’s invasion, supposedly with more than fifty armed men (almost certainly an exaggeration), Roger attacked the village of Bowers Gifford 6 miles from Hadleigh, then in the hands of one John Giffard. Roger and his men stole horses from Giffard and made off in the general direction of the king and Hugh Despenser, and remained with them until Despenser went ‘overseas’, almost certainly a reference to the king and Despenser’s attempt to reach Lundy Island by sea on or just after 20 October. Roger Wodeham and his followers then returned to his native Essex and went back to John Giffard’s manor, supposedly with the intention of killing Giffard and his men. No-one was there, but Roger stole rabbits and hares from Giffard’s warren. An indignant John Giffard asked the queen and her son Edward of Windsor for a commission to arrest Wodeham and bring him before them as a rebel.26
On 23 October, an inquisition was held into the lands of the late Alan Buxhull in Sussex. Alan had died in July 1326, leaving his son, also called Alan and born on 3 February 1321, as his heir. His widow Maud was given a licence on 20 July, in exchange for promising to pay 20 marks, to marry whomever she wished of the king’s allegiance. It was extremely common for land to be held by some purely nominal service, such as presenting the landowner with a rose, or a pair of gilt spurs, or a pair of gloves, or similar, once a year. Alan Buxhull’s manor of Bugzell near Salehurst in Sussex was held by the detailed service of ‘finding a footman, with head unarmed, with a bow without cord, and an unfeathered shaft, in the king’s army for forty days in Wales’.27 Sir William Bereford, chief justice of the court of common pleas, who died shortly before 28 August 1326, held 24 acres of land in Bedfordshire from Andrew Botiller ‘by service of a clove gillyflower’, and another half an acre from the prior of Wallingford ‘by service of finding a wax taper burning daily in the church of the priory of Wallingford’. William Ashby, who died on 10 March 1325, held his Northamptonshire manor of Mears Ashby (then called Assheby Mares) ‘by service of lifting his right hand yearly on Christmas Day towards the king, wherever he may be in England’; John Curzon, who died on 24 March 1326, held his Norfolk manor of East Carlton by service of ‘carry[ing] to the king wherever he should be in England 100 fresh herrings in twenty-four pasties’; and Nichol Pershute, who died in early February 1327, held his Wiltshire manor of East Winterslow ‘by making a drink of claret for the king at the king’s expense when he shall come to [the palace of] Clarendon’.28 Fourteenth-century bureaucracy could be as absurd as any found in later centuries. John Musket held 20 shillings of rent in Somerset in the 1320s by service of providing two cloths of ten and five ells in length annually (an ell was 45 inches). After he sent the two cloths of the required length to the exchequer in or around 1326, they were returned to his attorney because ‘it is nowhere found what ought to be the width’ of the cloths.29
John Warblynton was said in 1326/7 to hold his manor in Hampshire by service of ‘being marshal of the harlots in the king’s household’.30 Edward II’s Household Ordinance of December 1318, written by the chamberlain Hugh Despenser and other senior members of the royal household, had in fact banned prostitutes from court, and there is no evidence in 1326 that officially there were any. If prostitutes were found at court they would be removed, the Ordinance states, and on the third occasion would be imprisoned for forty days. The Ordinance, written in medieval French, referred to prostitutes as femmes de fole vie, literally ‘women of wanton life’.31 Clearly their presence was an ongoing problem in the royal household, dominated as it was by men not allowed to have their wives living with them.
On 26 October, Edward of Windsor was proclaimed ‘keeper of the realm’ under the fiction that his father had left the kingdom (Edward II had landed at Cardiff on the 25th after four or five days on the water).32 A list of the most important allies with the boy and his mother outside the walls of Bristol witnessed his appointment. One of them was Sir Robert Wateville, who had married Hugh Despenser’s niece Margaret six months before and who had been ill in London in July. The city of Bristol fell to the queen on 27 October, and 65-year-old Hugh Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester, was captured, given a show trial at which he was not allowed to speak, and immediately hanged in his armour. His head was taken on a spear to Winchester and displayed there in public, and his grandson-in-law Robert Wateville and his godson Edward of Windsor probably watched his execution. When the earl of Winchester was just 4 years old in 1265, his father had been killed fighting against Edward II’s grandfather Henry III and Edward’s father, the future King Edward I. Now the earl’s decades of loyalty to Edward I and Edward II ended on the public gallows in Bristol.
Edward’s chamber account was kept for the last time on 31 October, just before he left Caerphilly Castle. Most of his large household had already left him, and the rest stayed behind at Caerphilly when he departed, presumably on his own order. With him were still twenty-nine of his chamber valets, including Grete Hobbe or ‘Big Rob’, Wille Shene, Roger ‘Hogge’ May and his wife Anneis or ‘Annote’, Robyn Traghs and his wife Johane or ‘Jony’, Henry Lawe, Watte Couhirde, Syme Hod, and Henry Hustret and his son Hick. Robyn and John Cole the blacksmiths were also there, and so were six wheelwrights including the brothers Jack and Rauf ‘Dawe’ Hunte, Wille Gentilcorps and Watte Buffard of the Forest of Dean, who had not taken the opportunity to sneak off to his home when the king passed through Gloucestershire. Also at Caerphilly were Edward’s Spanish sergeant-at-arms Rodrigo de Medyne, Ferrand the Spanish trumpeter, the squire Giles of Spain, Hugh Despenser’s hobelars Roger atte Watre, John Grey and the three Palington brothers, and the archers Adam Bullock, John Horwode, Roger Wight, Wille Draycot and Robert Pakyngton. Wille Wallere, hired as a chamber valet just eighteen days before, also chose to stay with the king until the end of October, and so did Gibon Aspe and Sandre Rede, two of the four valets refused their wages a couple of weeks earlier, and Jack Kene, the Kenilworth boy hired in April to clean Edward’s brass. The Spanish sailor Sancho Garcia, who had sold the king his wrecked ship earlier in the year, was also inside Caerphilly Castle.33 Almost all the men who served in Edward II’s chamber simply left royal service after his downfall, and a few of them were involved in plots to free the former king after his deposition in January 1327 and even years after his reported and rather mysterious death in September 1327.34 Hugh Despenser’s eldest son and heir Hugh (‘Huchon’), also remained behind at Caerphilly when his father and great-uncle the king departed.
William Hurley, a master carpenter well-known in the twenty-first century for his work on Ely Cathedral, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Westminster, had been sent to Caerphilly by Hugh Despenser with other carpenters on 4 March 1326 when Despenser started to have the castle’s great hall rebuilt, and was still there at the end of October. Hugh had paid William £2 in advance.35 Edward II’s nephew John de Bohun, aged not quite 21, must also have been at Caerphilly with the king, as on 31 October Edward took John’s homage for his late father’s earldoms of Hereford and Essex and allowed him to have the lands.36 John was born on 23 November 1305, and was one of the ten children of the king’s late sister Elizabeth. He married the earl of Arundel’s daughter Alice in or soon after February 1324.37 John’s father Humphrey, the king’s brother-in-law, was a Contrariant who was killed fighting against the royal army at the Battle of Boroughbridge in Yorkshire on 16 March 1322. Hugh Despenser provided insight into Humphrey’s character in a letter of March 1321, when he told the sheriff of Glamorgan that Humphrey was ‘even more downcast and thoughtful than usual’.38
