HIS3406 Lecture Notes on Edward II

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HIS3406 Lecture Notes on Edward II

• by Fred Cheung

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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.

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• 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.
  

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• Such merits as the king possessed easily went
  unnoticed. Edwards 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.

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• Opinion as to whether the kings 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 Edwards death that the charge was openly
  brought against the king by the chroniclers.

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• 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 Is 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
  kings leading opponent, in 1322. (Prestwich,
  The Three Edwards War and State in England,
  1272-1377, (London, 1980), pp. 79 82)

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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
  kings brother. ..

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 Edwards chief banker, , be
  exiled from England.

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• 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 kings 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 kings government until
  1317. By 1318, Lancasters 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 IIs reign, and with much the
  same results.

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• 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.

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• 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
  Lancasters 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
  

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• 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 kings military triumph
  at Boroughbridge, 1322-1326, were marked by peace
  abroad and terror at home.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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 IIs
  enemies forced him to abdicate, imprisoned him in
  Berkeley Castle, and apparently had him murdered.

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• 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 communitys
  will the representatives of the English
  community, acting in Parliament, could cast him
  from the throne.

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• 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
  Englands divisions by restoring vigorous royal
  leadership to his troubled kingdom. (Hollister,
  The Making of England, pp. 301-320).

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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

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• 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.)