A hundred years of war and peace by Mary Hoffman

The 14th Century ends quite neatly with the usurpation of the English throne by Henry Bolingbroke, after forcing his cousin, Richard l to abdicate. It begins quite raggedly, with Edward l hammering the Scots and his son Edward ll inheriting the crown. In between came some of the most noteworthy events and personalities of the Middle Ages.

Tackling this huge sweep of history is Helen Carr’s new book Sceptred Isle. Her first – The Red Prince: John of Gaunt – was an instant bestseller. He was one of those larger-than-life characters, the richest person after the king, the hated trigger for the people’s revolt, the effortlessly fertile magnate who married his mistress and legitimated their four children, from whom many kings of England are descended. 

 

But Gaunt belongs to the second half of the century. The first part is still dominated by the conflict with the Scots. That ongoing war and the relations with the other enemy, France, have to play a part in any book about the fourteenth century, but this is essentially a history of a hundred years in England.

This is the century of The Wife of Bath and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Black Death and the Great Famine; The Fair Maid of Kent and the Black Prince; the Order of the Garter and the People’s Revolt; the creation of dukes; the Wilton Diptych and the first Speaker of the House of Commons; two minority monarchs, two depositions; tournaments and single combat duels; magnates and favourites; retinues and livery - not to mention two rival Popes! Helen Carr had her work cut out. 

Edward l

 

Edward I was born in the middle of the previous century and became king in 1272 in his prime. Nicknamed “Longshanks” for his unusual height (6’ 2” was way above average for a medieval man), he conquered Wales, got to work building defensive castles on the Welsh/English border and aspired to quell the Scots.

In this he was less successful, when finally he came up against Robert Bruce and his own mortality. Carr characterises the transition to his son’s rule: “When Edward l cast himself in the image of the legendary King Arthur, who united the Britons, Edward ll was destined to do the opposite.”

The stage is set for a complete change of culture. The first Edward wanted his son to continue warring with Scotland but the new king was more interested in making friends with male contemporaries, prime among them Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight. The young handsome king had no full brothers, only two much younger half-brothers by his father’s second marriage, no close cousins and a need for men to play sports with. He wasn’t fussy about their social class.

Gaveston, also young and handsome, was clearly a bit of a lout, inventing insulting nicknames for the nobles at court and given free rein by the indulgent king. He was exiled three times, first by Edward I, who disapproved of his influence over his son and again in 1308 and 1311 at the wish of the nobles he had insulted. But Edward ii had him recalled and the relationship resumed.

Helen Carr discusses this relationship in some depth, concluding, in disagreement with most modern historians (apart from Pierre Chaplais whose book on Gaveston, is not acknowledged), it might not have been homosexual but a “ritual brotherhood.” King Edward was married and sired children within and outside of marriage but that is neither here nor there where same-sex relations are concerned. (Gaveston had a wife and daughter too). 

Edward ll

 

This “friendship” certainly enraged the nobles, as much because of Gaveston’s rebarbative nature as his sexual preferences. Edward revoked all of his favourite’s banishments and had previously made him Earl of Cornwall, an equal to the nobles who accused him of treason. The Earls drew up a list of grievances, saying that the king listened to “evil counsel” and did as he liked, which was not in accordance with Magna Carta. (Helen Carr reminds us that it had been re-issued in 1300).

The end was inevitable. Gaveston was captured by the earls and was first in the custody of the Earl of Pembroke. But Pembroke returned home that night to his wife and the much harsher Earl of Warwick took the prisoner over. He was marched to Blacklow Hill and run through and beheaded.

The devastated king regarded this as murder and vowed vengeance on the earls. It was some consolation to him that Queen Isabella presented him with a son and heir – the future Edward lll. This is such a fascinating part of the 14th century that Helen Carr might have written a whole book about it and perhaps will. But, to jump to the catastrophic end of Edward’s reign, she writes about the continued enmity with the Scots, the Battle of Bannockburn, the new “favourite,” High Despenser the younger, the estrangement of the royal couple in spite of three more children and Isabella’s affair with Roger Mortimer.

Edward felt threatened not just by the adultery but by the political implications of their liaison. Isabella and Mortimer had been in France for over a year, with young Edward, when they raised an army to invade England and get rid of Hugh Despenser. They landed in September 1326 and, so hated was Despenser and so popular the queen, that London was soon in the hands of the invaders.

It didn’t take them long to track down the king and his favourite. The latter was given a full traitor’s horrible death and the king was kept a prisoner in Berkeley Castle. But, as Carr puts it, “The former king, though incarcerated, cast an uncomfortable shadow over Westminster and it was whispered that something had to be done to be rid of it.”

Within weeks the fourteen-year-old Prince of Wales was crowned king in his father’s place, with Isabella effectively his Regent. Carr makes it clear that death of Edward ll by means of a red hot poker thrust into his bowels is a myth. It was likely that he was suffocated, thus having no mark of injury on his body as it was widely displayed after his death. For die he did, a year after his estranged wife’s invasion.

Mortimer, who took the title Earl of March, was now free to rule with Isabella as mistress and consort, even though he had no claim to the throne. But it was soon clear that the young king was a mere puppet and England had left the frying-pan only to fall into the fire. 

Edward lll

 

But young Edward lll was a stronger character than his father and soon found his mother’s hold over him irksome. By 1330 he had secretly written to the pope to support his freeing himself from Isabella and Mortimer’s coercion. Edward and a group of his young knights staged a coup while Mortimer and Isabella were together in Nottingham Castle together. The king let the armed conspirators in and Mortimer was taken. He was hanged naked like a common thief. Queen Isabella was held under house arrest, in very comfortable conditions for the rest of her life.

But we have reached only 116 pages of the main text’s 278 and there are seventy eventful years of the century left!

Edward lll ruled for forty years, he married Philippa of Hainault and they had twelve children, with five males living to adulthood, including the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. He was one of England’s most successful monarchs, in spite of the shaky beginning of his reign.

This review is in danger of being as long as Helen Carr’s comprehensive book, so I’ll just concentrate on the events that led to the second deposition of the fourteenth century. Edward iii’s older son is referred to throughout the book as the Black Prince, though this usage isn’t attested till over a hundred years later. He was first Edward of Woodstock, then Prince of Wales and was fully expected to be King Edward lV. And he had two sons, Edward and Richard. 

Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent

 

But things started to unravel when the Prince of Wales sickened with dysentery in Aquitaine. Then his older son died and he was left with the “spare.” He returned to England with his wife Joan (the Fair Maid of Kent) and his younger son but his health never recovered. He died before his father the old king, leaving Richard of Bordeaux as the nine-year-old heir to the throne.

Edward lll, widowed and miserably treated by his mistress Alice Perrers, was a broken man and outlived his son by less than a year. So began the second minority rule of the century, with ten-year-old Richard ll on the throne. Like his grandfather, who had been a few years older, Richard had no official Regent, but John of Gaunt was his senior uncle and expected to advise him. It was the best Gaunt could hope for, as he was hated by the populace for his great wealth and the unwarranted belief that he wanted the throne for himself.

As Helen Carr says, “Richard was a child on his succession, and his boyish appearance, lack of an heir and impulsive behaviour kept him locked in a state of eternal youth.” This did not apply to his first cousin, John of Gaunt’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. Born within months of each other and married only a few years apart, the two men couldn’t have been more different.

Henry was a champion jouster and soldier, Richard an effete lover of luxury; Henry sired four sons in as many years, Richard had no children. Henry had every quality to make a good king, except for one: he was not the heir. Richard had virtually none of such qualities – but he was the legitimate heir. As they grew older the two men kept out of each other’s way. But they had one tragic thing in common: they lost their wives in the same year, 1394.

Mary de Bohun had borne Henry two daughters after their four sons, dying in her last childbed. A week or so later Queen Anne died of the plague, having never even been pregnant. Both widowers were distraught. Though Henry’s loss is not mentioned in Helen Carr’s book; Mary doesn’t even get an entry in the index. Richard had the palace of Sheen, where his wife died, pulled down and Henry became even more restless than before; with the loss of his wife he had no permanent home. 

Henry Bolingbroke, lter Henry lV

 
The reign of Richard ll lasted twenty-two years but is hastily covered by Helen Carr, in comparison with her treatment of his greatgrandfather, Edward ll. It is difficult for the modern reader not to see these kings’ reigns and depositions through the prism of two great plays by Elizabethan playwrights, Marlowe and Shakespeare. Indeed, the book’s title is taken from the speech Shakespeare gives John of Gaunt in The Tragedy of Richard the Second.

Helen Carr suggests that Richard might have been suffering from “borderline personality disorder”: “the last Plantagenet king [sic] was a despot; when he could not command respect, he ruled with fear.”

There are a few strange statements in this ambitious book. For example, the author says that John of Gaunt was so distraught at the duel his son was to fight with Thomas Mowbray at Coventry in 1398, that he “stayed away.” She gives no source for this and Anthony Goodman, Gaunt’s biographer, states that he was in attendance. Helen Castor, thanked by Carr in the acknowledgements for her input, says he was seated next to the king; Carr herself in her earlier book writes “John of Gaunt was also present.”

Of course the new version may be correct but if you are going to contradict earlier accounts, including your own, you should surely cite some evidence?

The book is handsomely produced, with some elegant endpapers and comes with an index, which was lacking in the Gaunt biography. There is also an extensive bibliography, which readers will want to consult, to balance out some of Carr’s assertions.