Abstract
Until quite recently, the historical image of Edward III’s minority has been overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps part of this view lies in the perennial shock felt when examining the overthrow of a king in a country that has always seen monarchy as integral to its national fabric, part also in the idea of Isabella as an overly active queen, a mixture of misogyny and labeling that has yet to completely disappear. Another ingredient may be the sight of an overmighty noble helping to tear a royal marriage asunder, and part, of course, the more sensational stories of “screams in the night” heard from Berkeley Castle in the autumn of 1327—which, if nothing else, helps to stir the interest of even the most reticent of students in a late afternoon seminar. Most chroniclers at or near the time do look to one degree or another on the Minority as a problematic, if not downright disturbing, period. The French Chronicle of London mentions Edward II being “traitorously murdered” in Berkeley Castle and seems to question the propriety of executing the earl of Kent in 1330,1 while the Anonimalle Chronicle has his son Edward III hearing on the eve of the Nottingham Coup the “many ways in which he had had foolish counsel and that he and his realm were on the point of being lost by treachery and his people destroyed.”2
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Notes
The French Chronicle of London, ed. H. T. Riley (London, 1863), 268.
The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307 to 1334, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor (York, 1991), 143.
Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Sywnebroke (Oxford, 1889), 28–34; R. M. Haines, King Edward II: Edward of Caernarfon, His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284–1330 (Montreal, 2003), 188.
W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III (New Haven and London, 1990), 3; Mortimer’s overarching role has reached the mainstream in the new OUP history. M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2005), 220. An idea championed in the burst of popular history for the period by Ian Mortimer, The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer (London, 2003), chapter 13.
K. Allocco, Intercessor, Rebel, Regent: The Political Life of Isabella of France (1292/6–1358) (University of Texas at Austin PhD, 2004), chapter 6; S. Menache, “Isabella of France, Queen of England—a Reconsideration,” JMH 10 (1984): 107–24. The popular champion for this side is Alison Weir, Queen Isabella (London, 2005), 265ff—though not quite as fervent.
N. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall of Edward II (Cambridge, 1979), 207.
On the role of the Despensers in the government of the realm, see M. C. Buck, “The Reform of the Exchequer, 1316–1326,” EHR 98 (1983): 241–60; N. Saul, “The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II,” EHR 99 (1984): 1–33. Fryde, Tyranny, esp. chapters 7 and 8 sees the Despenser changes more encouraged by avarice than desire to innovate, let alone reform.
See below.
Notably, due to consanguinity to the third degree, the couple had to get dispensation from the Pope. The National Archives (afterward TNA) (SC7/24/5).
Calendar of Close Roll (afterward CCR) 1318–1323, 525, 526.
The Chronicle of Lanercost, H. M. Maxwell (Glasgow, 1913), 245; H. Summerson, “Harclay, Andrew, Earl of Carlisle (c. 1270–1323),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (afterward DNB) (Oxford, 2004).
I. M. Davis, “The Weardale Campaign, 1327,” History Today 21 (1971): 856.
For the treaty, see T. Rymer, Foedera (London, 1816–69), ii, 740–42.
For Edward III’s relations with the Scots in the first years of this reign, see R. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots: The Formative Years of a Military Career 1327–1335 (Oxford, 1965); for chronicle excerpts connected with the campaigning, see C. Rogers, ed., The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), 4–41.
Most recently on Anglo-French relations in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, see M.G.A. Vale, “The Anglo-French Wars, 1294–1340: Allies and Alliances,” in Guerre et Société en France, enAngleterre et en Bourgogne, XIVe-XVe Siècle, ed. P. Contamine, C. GiryDeloison, and M. H. Keen (Lille, 1991), 15–35.
The War of Saint-Sardos (1323–1325), ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1954), 241–45.
M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959), 111; also see C47/30/1/2–3.
Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 221.
Haines, Edward II, 330–31.
Thomas Gray, Scalacronica, ed. and trans. A. King (Woodbridge, 2005), 101.
See K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), updated by C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1987); also see D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy 1000–1300 (London, 1992).
J. E. Powell and K. Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (London, 1968), 303–15.
N. Pronay and J. Taylor, eds., Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1980), 13ff; C. J. Nederman, ed. and trans. Political Thought in Early Fourteenth Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham (Temple, Arizona, 2002), 32–34.
For the most recent detailed discussion of the events of Edward II’s fall, see C. Valente, “The Deposition and Abdication of Edward II,” EHR 113 (1998): 852–81.
Magna Carta, clause 39; Pronay and Taylor, eds., Parliamentary Texts, 87–88.
For calls for trial by peers during the Minority, see SC8/196/9788 (with aid of PROCAT); SC8/50/2500; more generally on the issue of trial by peers, see L. W. Vernon Harcourt, His Grace the Steward and Trial of Peers (London, 1907).
Ormrod, Edward III, 3.
Rotuli Parliamentorum (afterward RP), ii, 10.
E.g., the Brut says four barons were to be called, while Knighton says six. R. M. Haines, “The Episcopate during the Reign of Edward II and the Regency of Mortimer and Isabella,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (2005): 692 n. 163; also Haines, Edward II, 195–96.
From the “Chronicle of England” cited in J. F. Baldwin, “The King’s Council,” in The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, ed. J. F. Willard and W. A. Morris (Cambridge, 1940), 1:132.
Haines, Edward II, 195.
T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England (6 vols.) (Manchester, 1928), iii, 10–11.
Calendar of Charter Rolls (afterward CCharR), 1327–1341, 2–5.
Tout, Chapters, iii, 10–11.
RPii, 7; on Lancaster’s Cult, see J. Edwards, “The Cult of ‘St’ Thomas of Lancaster and its Iconography,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 64 (1992): 103–22; J. Edwards “The Cult of ‘St’ Thomas of Lancaster and its Iconography: A Supplementary Note,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 67 (1995): 187–91.
Baldwin, “King’s Council,” in English Government, ed. Willard and Morris, 1:133.
Calendar of Memoranda Rolls (afterward CMemR), 1326–1327, 124, 230–31.
C. Given-Wilson, “Royal Charter Witness Lists 1327–1399,” Medieval Prosopography 12 (1991): 61–62.
Tout, Chapters, iii, 10–11; vi, 42. Ros is also noted by Tout as “Steward of the Household of Queen Isabella” in roughly the same period (Tout, Chapters, iii, 18n).
SC8/120/5982; French Chronicle, 268.
Calendar ofPlea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London 1323–1364, trans. and ed. A. H. Thomas (Cambridge, 1926), 11–12.
RPii, 7, 11.
M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1377 (London, 1980), 111.
For Bury’s time as keeper of the king’s wardrobe in the late 1320s, see E361/2/30, 31; E361/9/25; E101/383/12, 17; E101/384/8,12; Bury as a filter through which the king heard petitions, see SC8/114/5658; SC8/157/7824. For Bury’s seemingly close relationship with the Minority Regime, see W. M. Ormrod, “The King’s Secrets: Richard de Bury and the Monarchy of Edward III,” in War, Government, and Aristocracy in the British Isles, c. 1150–1500, C. Given-Wilson, A. Kettle, and L. Scales, ed. (Woodbridge, forthcoming 2008).
CCharR 1327–1341, 198.
Other important grants in this period include the manor of Milham (E40/5570), later granted to Eltham’s retainer, Thomas de Weston, for life. SC8/156/7788 (with aid of PROCAT); also see CCharR 1327–1341, 53; for Eltham see S. L. Waugh, “John, Earl of Cornwall (1316–1336),” DNB (Oxford, 2004).
Given-Wilson, “Royal Charter Witness Lists,” 61.
French Chronicle, 269; also see Anonimalle Chronicle, 141.
H. M. Maxwell, The Chronicle of Lanercost (Glasgow, 1913), 260.
Lanercost Chronicle, 265.
SC1/41/48; the actual document says 10000 marks, but, as Crawford notes, this is most probably a scribal error, A. Crawford, ed., Letters of the Queens of England 1100–1547 (Stroud, 1994), 89–90.
Calendar of Patent Rolls (afterward CPR), 1327–1330, 66–9; G. L. Harriss, King Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), 149; also confirmed in her control of the county of Cornwall, originally granted her by Edward II. E40/222.
CCR 1327–1330, 267; B. P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English History: The Crown Estate in the Governance of the Realm from the Conquest to 1509 (Athens, Ohio, 1971), 55.
F. W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or the Chronicles of England (Oxford, 1906), i:257, also 254–55. For a list of Isabella’s acquisitions, see Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 232–35.
For Isabella’s material wealth, see H. Johnstone, “Isabella, The SheWolf of France,” History n.s. 21 (1936–7): 214–18.
Brie, Brut, 1:248.
CCharR 1327–1341, 55. However, as Holmes points out, in total these lands must have been worth nearly twice this. G. A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 13.
CPviii, 438–39.
Haines, Edward II, 200.
See J. S. Bothwell, Falling From Grace: Reversal of Fortune and the English Nobility (Forthcoming, Manchester, 2008), chapter 3.
Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, 301–2; there is no definite date for this creation, but the Complete Peerage narrows it down to the period between October 25 and October 31, 1328. CPviii, 439 note h.
For a list of lands of the Earl of March at the time of his forfeiture, see E142 Exchequer: Ancient Extents.
And one of the first after Harcla’s earldom of Carlisle to be deliberately endowed with lands. For Harcla, see Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, 296.
J. R. Lumby, ed., Chronicon Henrici Knighton (London, 1889), i, 449; Fryde, Tyranny, 207.
Prestwich, Three Edwards, 112; also see Brut, 1:261–62.
For the rebellion, see G. A. Holmes, “The Rebellion of the Earl of Lancaster, 1328–1329,” BIHR 28 (1955): 84–89.
Gray, Scalacronica, 93.
Mortimer, Greatest Traitor, 229–31; CPviii, 440.
S. L. Waugh, “Edmund, First Earl of Kent (1301–1330),” DNB (Oxford, 2004).
Holmes, Estates, 13–14.
CCharR 1327–1341, 3–4; for grants to Kent, see E42/487; CCharR 1327–1341, 2–5.
E.g., grants to Maltravers CPR 1327–1330, 59, 101, 346, 517; CFR 1327–1337, 53, 65, 73, 96, 107, 113, 128, 144, 149; grants to Ingham, CPR 1327–1330, 364, 512; CFR 1327–1337, 174, 190.
Including the Londoners who had previously been favored by the Minority Regime, but by now were clearly on Lancaster’s side. See above and Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 222.
See E. A. Bond, ed., Chronica Monastario de Melsa 3 vols. (London, 1866–88), ii, 358–61.
Frdye, Tyranny, 208–9, 270.
R. W. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 50–51; for evidence of loans and repayment arrangements, see E43/694(i); E43/144; E43/701(ii); and El01/127/26.
Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, 50. For details of some of the expenses of John of Hainault in this period, also see E101/17/14 and E101/18/4.
A. Tuck, Crown and Nobility: England 1272–1461 (Oxford, 1998), 80.
Ormrod, Edward III, 5.
Crawford, ed., Letters of the Queens, 90–91.
Fryde, Tyranny, 217. And, for whatever reason, in early July 1327, the Earl Marshal hesitated to come to the king when bidden, supposedly because the Scots were at nearby Appleby (see Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, iii, 920); in the same year, there was also a case of problems between the Earl Marshal and the king’s officers at Bordeaux, which might again indicate tensions. See SC8/281/14000.
Given-Wilson, “Royal Charter Witness Lists,” 62.
P. Heath, Church and Realm 1272–1461 (London, 1988), 103; for more details on the Church’s somewhat divided stance in this period, see Haines, “Episcopate,” 688 ff.
Baker, Chronicle, Thompson ed., 27; N. Fryde, “John Stratford, Bishop of Winchester and the Crown, 1323–1330,” BIHR 44 (1971): 158. According to Fryde (p. 159), the minority government later extracted bonds from Stratford for good behavior.
Tuck, Crown and Nobility, 81.
Fryde, Tyranny, 217.
Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1323–1364, 68–69; R. M. Haines, “An Innocent Abroad: The Career of Simon Mepham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1328–33,” EHR 112 (1997): 562; many inhabitants of London had taken, or were to take, part in this rebellion. E163/4/27–8.
Haines, “Episcopate,” 694; Mepham had only been consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury a few months before. SC7/56/19; Calendar of Papal Letters ii, 272.
W. Stubbs, ed., Annales Paulini (London, 1882), i, 343.
See Fryde, Tyranny, 219ff for a discussion of the various versions. For a detailed overview of the events of the rising, see Haines, Edward II, 201–10.
Anonimalle Chronicle, 141–43.
Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1323–1364, 77.
R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster 1265–1603 (London, 1953), 1:34–35; P. Vinogradoff and F. Morgan, eds. Survey of the Honour ofDenbigh 1334 (Munchen, 1981), x-xiii.
See above.
Fryde, Tyranny, 218, more generally 217–19; Lancaster also was having a hard time getting back, mainly through petition to the royal government, the manor of Chelveston from the Earl of Kent, which had been given by Thomas of Lancaster to Holand in the previous reign. SC8/342/16127 (with aid of PROCAT).
Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1323–1364, 77–83.
Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1323–1364, 81–82.
CPR 1330–1334, 35; CCR 1327–1330, 528–32; Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 222.
Lanercost Chronicle, 265–67.
F. W. Wiswall, “Politics, Procedure and the ‘Non-Minority’ of Edward III: Some Comparisons,” in The Age of Richard II, ed. J. L. Gillespie (Stroud, 1997), 10–11.
And, though petitions were addressed to the King, among others, from the beginning of his reign, it was fairly clear that the decision-making lay elsewhere. See SC8 passim; also see W. M. Ormrod, “Coming to Kingship: Boy Kings and the Passage to Power in Fourteenth-Century England,” in Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. N. F. McDonald and W. M. Ormrod (York, 2004), 41.
Lanercost Chronicle, 258.
C47/28/1/19.
For Kent’s trial, see Brut, 1:263–67; for Edward’s lack of enthusiasm toward harsh treatment of Kent more generally, see Mortimer, Greatest Traitor, 298; churchmen also seem to have been involved with Kent: after the Coup of 1330, there were pardons and restitutions to the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Abbot of Langedon, and William de la Zouche, for their parts in the earl’s activities. See SC8/173/8613; RP, ii 32b.
PRO 22/3. Translation from W. A. Paintin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Toronto, 1980), 77–78. This letter probably also had the more immediate goal of furthering Bury’s career. Ormrod, “King’s Secrets,” forthcoming.
Tout, Chapters, iii, 27; C. G. Crump, “The Arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabel,” EHR 26 (1911): 331.
Heath, Church and Realm, 104.
Lanercost Chronicle, 266; According to the Anonimalle “the said sir Geoffrey (Mortimer) through madness even called himself king.” Anonimalle Chronicle, 145.
Gray, Scalacronica, 105.
Ormrod, Edward III, 6.
Saul suspects the others were of similar backgrounds. Saul, “Downfall of Edward II,” 21–22.
Tout, Chapters, iii, 11–12.
See above.
Fryde, Tyranny, 224.
For borrowing in this period, see Fryde, Tyranny, 214–15; E. B. Fryde, “Loans to the English Crown 1328–31,” EHR 70 (1955): 198–211.
Tout, Chapters, iii, 5.
E. B. Fryde et al., eds., Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn. (Cambridge, 1996), 85–86, 104–5. Even some of Edward II’s personal royal servants were kept on and patronized-such as Richard Potesgrave, the royal chaplain-while a number of Despenser loyalists were also pardoned. Fryde, Tyranny, 208–9.
RP passim.
Statutes of the Realm (afterward SR), 1:168.
R. S. Hoyt, “The Coronation Oath of 1308,” EHR 71 (1956): 353–83.
Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, esp. 303–15.
SR 1:258.
Bothwell, Falling from Grace, chapter 3.
See above.
Handbook of British Chronology, 76, 86, 105.
Handbook of British Chronology, 80.
Tout, Chapters, vi, 29.
Tout, Chapters, vi, 31.
Handbook of British Chronology, 94.
Tout, Chapters, vi, 35.
Tout, Chapters, vi, 46.
Though at a more practical level, as has been recently noted, there were some important changes in royal mint personnel in both 1327 and 1330. F. Wiswall, “Royal Mints and Royal Minors in England, 1216–1389,” E-Sylum 9:1 (2006).
Tout, Chapters, iii, 35–6. Many sheriffs seemed to have been deliberately changed in early December 1330 (RP ii, 60); but it should be noted, both by regulation and practice, the turnover of sheriffs and other officials was quite rapid in this period anyway, even without political events intervening. Indeed, looking back, change of regime and change of sheriff seem to be clearly connected, no matter how long they had previously held office: most sheriffs seem to have been changed both soon after Edward I returned from the Holy Land in 1274, and between the death of Edward I and the coronation of Edward II. See Lists and Indexes IX: List of Sheriffs for England and Wales (New York, 1963).
Willard and Morris, eds., English Government, 1:v.
J. S. Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage (Woodbridge, 2004), 145–53 & Appendices 3–6.
RP Edward III, passim.
The most famous example being the six earldom creations later in the 1330s. J. S. Bothwell, “Edward III, the English Peerage, and the 1337 Earls: Estate Redistribution in the Later Middle Ages,” in The Age of Edward III, ed. J. S. Bothwell (York, 2001), 35–52; also see H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (London, 1981), XXI 2.
See J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), chapter 4.
Bothwell, Falling from Grace, Forthcoming, chapter 3.
A. Ayton, “Edward III and the English Aristocracy at the Beginning of the Hundred Years War,” in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. M. Strickland (Stamford, 1998), 173–206; Bothwell, “Edward III, the English Peerage, and the 1337 Earls,” 35–52.
E.g., Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1323–1364, 15 and ff.
Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order, 127; see also Haines, Edward II, 217.
SR 1:257–61.
H. Cam, “The General Eyres of 1329–30,” EHR 39 (1924): 243ff. Though after 1331, the eyre “was of symbolic rather than real significance, and was used simply—and cynically—to the crown’s advantage.” A. Musson and W. M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1998), 45.
A. Verduyn, “The Politics of Law and Order during the Early Years of Edward III,” EHR 108 (1993): 842–67; A. Verduyn, “The Commons and Early Justices of the Peace under Edward III,” in Regionalism and Revision: The Crown and Its Provinces in England 1200–1650, ed. P. Fleming, A. Gross, and J. R. Lander (London and Rio Grande, 1998), 87–106; also see SR 1:261–65.
Musson and Ormrod, Evolution of English Justice, 105–6. There was also a fair degree of continuity in higher level legal personnel (and also Barons of the Exchequer and Master of the Rolls) between two, and sometimes all three periods. See J. Sainty, The Judges of England 1272–1990 (London, 1993), 6–7, 23, 45, 62, 91, 110–11; J. Sainty, A List of English Law Officers (London, 1987), 5; PRO 22/30.
Indeed, as Ormrod notes for the period as a whole, “there was no formal prescription in medieval England either as to what arrangements ought to be made for the governance of the realm when the king was obviously too young to rule or, indeed, as to when such a king might be thought to be ready to assume the reins of power.” Ormrod, “Coming to Kingship,” 32.
A. Tuck, “Richard II, 1367–1400,” DNB (Oxford, 2004).
According to Powell and Wallis, “the list for the parliament of January 1327 was used, with relatively minor changes, for every parliament summoned in the next five years.” Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, 312.
Of course, also all connected with Mortimer and Isabella’s continued acceptance of both harsher bodily and property penalties for treason and similar crimes. See above.
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Bothwell, J.S. (2008). The More Things Change: Isabella and Mortimer, Edward III, and the Painful Delay of a Royal Majority (1327–1330). In: Beem, C. (eds) The Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616189_3
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