Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

by Charlotte M. Yonge

The chancellor and all the late King’s tried ministers were displaced, and some, among whom was the good Bishop of Litchfield, were imprisoned for two years. Gaveston, without any regular appointment, took the great seal into his own keeping, and set it to charters which he filled up after his fancy. In the meantime, the King set off for France, to celebrate his marriage with Isabel, the daughter of Philippe le Bel, the princess for whose sake the Flemish maiden was pining to death in captivity. The seal of this most wretched of unions was, that Philippe took this opportunity of persuading the gentle, reluctant Edward II, to withdraw his protection from the Templars in his dominions, and give them up to the horrible cruelty and rapacity of their exterminator. Isabel’s dowry was furnished from their spoils. The wedding took place on St. Paul’s Day, 1308, in the presence of four kings and queens, and the festivities lasted a fortnight; after which the young bride and bridegroom set off on their return to Dover, where Edward’s favorite sister, Elizabeth, was already come to greet the little Queen, a beautiful girl of thirteen, proud, high-spirited, and exacting, very unwilling to be treated as a child. Her two uncles came with her, and a splendid train of nobles; and two days after their landing, Gaveston arrived at Dover, when, at first sight of him, Edward rushed into his arms, calling him brother, and disregarding every one else. Almost at the same time the King gave his favorite the whole of the rich jewelry and other gifts which had been bestowed on him by his father-in-law, Philippe le Bel; and this was regarded as a great affront by the young Queen and her uncles. Gaveston had a childish complaint of his own to make—men would not call him by his new title; and presently a proclamation came out, rendering it a crime to speak of him as Piers, Piers Gaveston, or as anything but the Earl of Cornwall.

It was the more resented because he was not respectful with other men’s titles, and amused the King with nicknames for the nobles. Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, the son of Edmund Crouchback, was “the old hog” and the “stage-player;” pale, dark, Provençal Aymar de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, he called “Joseph the Jew;” the fierce Guy, Earl of Warwick, “the black dog of Ardennes.” The stout Earl swore that he should find that the dog could show his teeth; and when Gaveston announced a tournament for the 18th of February at Feversham, no one chose to attend it, whereupon he jeered at them as cowards.

The King issued writs summoning his nobles to meet for his coronation on the 25th of February, but they took the opportunity of insisting that Gaveston should be dismissed from favor. Edward evasively answered that he would attend to their wishes at the meeting of parliament, and they were obliged to be content for the present; but they were exceedingly angry that, at the coronation, Piers appeared more splendidly and richly attired than the King himself, and bearing on a cushion the crown of St. Edward, while the Earl of Lancaster carried curtana, the sword of mercy, and his brother Henry the rod with the dove. The Bishop of Winchester performed the ceremony, Archbishop Winchelsea not having returned from his exile; and the King and Queen made magnificent offerings: the King’s being first, a figure of a king in gold, holding a ring; the second, of a pilgrim given the ring; intended to commemorate the vision in which St. Edward received the coronation-ring from St. John the Evangelist.

Gaveston arranged the whole ceremony; but as his own display was his chief thought, he managed to affront every one, and more especially the young Queen and her uncles, so that Isabel wrote a letter to her father full of complaints of her new lord and his favorite, and Philippe entered into correspondence with the discontented nobility. In the tournaments in honor of the coronation, Piers came off victorious over the Earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke, and Warrenne, and this mortification greatly added to their dislike. At the meeting of parliament, the Barons were so determined against the favorite, that finally Edward was obliged to yield, and to swear to keep him out of the kingdom; though, to soften the sentence, he gave him the manors of High Peak and Cockermouth, and made him governor of Ireland, bestowing on him, as a parting token, all the young Queen’s gifts to himself—rings, chains, and brooches; another great vexation to Isabel. He was obliged, at the same time, to grant forty other articles, giving greater security to the people.

Gaveston made a better governor of Ireland than could have been expected, repressed several incursions of the wild Irish, and repaired the castles on the borders of the English pale; but his haughty deportment greatly affronted the Irish barons of English blood, and they were greatly discontented with his rule.

The King was, in the meantime, doing his utmost to procure the recall of the beloved Earl. He wrote to the Pope to obtain absolution from his oath, and to the King of France to entreat him to relax his hostility; and he strove to gain his nobles over one by one, granting offices to Lancaster, and making concessions to all the rest. Philippe le Bel made no answer; Clement V. sent exhortations to him to live in harmony with his subjects, but at last absolved Gaveston, on condition that he should demean himself properly, and submit his differences with the Barons to the judgment of the Church.

Gaveston hurried home on the instant; his master flew to meet him, and received him at Chester with raptures of affection. Thence Edward sent explanations to the sheriffs of each county, saying, that Gaveston having been unjustly and violently banished, it was his duty to recall him, to have his conduct examined into according to the laws. The Barons, on the other hand, put forth other declarations, persuading the people that the King having violated one of the oaths, he evidently meant to break the other forty, which regarded their personal liberties.

Gaveston did nothing to mitigate the general aversion. He had not learnt wisdom by his first fall, and though the clergy and commons meeting at Stamford granted a twenty-fifth of the year’s produce to the King, and consented to his remaining so long as he should demean himself properly, he soon disgusted them also. He wore the crown-jewels openly, and affected greater contempt than ever for the Barons, till it became popularly said that there were two Kings, the real one a mere subject to the false. The young Queen wrote piteous complaints to her father of her husband’s neglect; and the Countess of Cornwall had still greater wrongs from Gaveston to complain of to her brother, the Earl of Gloucester. Dances, sports, and gayeties were the occupation of the court, heedless of the storm that was preparing. The Barons, jealous, alarmed, and irritated, looked on in displeasure, and on the All-Saints’ Day of 1310, after high mass at St. Paul’s, the bold-spirited Archbishop Winchelsea, in his pontifical robes, standing on the step of the altar, made a discourse to the Earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, Pembroke, Hereford, and eight other persons, after which he bound them by an oath to unite to deliver the kingdom from the exactions of the favorite, and pronounced sentence of excommunication against any who should reveal any part of their confederation before the time.

The Earl of Lincoln, the last of the Lacys, shortly after fell sick, and made what he thought a death-bed exhortation to the Earl of Lancaster, who had married his only daughter, not to abandon England to the King and the Pope, but, like the former barons, to resist all infractions of their privileges.

This Earl of Lancaster was the son of Edmund Crouchback and of Blanche of Artois, mother of the Queen of France. He was a fine-looking man, devout and gracious, and much beloved by the people, who called him the Gentle Count; but Gaveston’s nickname for him of the “stage-player” may not have been unmerited, for he seems to have been over-greedy of popular applause and influence, and to have had much personal ambition; and it does not seem certain, though Gaveston might be vain, and his master weak and foolish, that Lancaster and his friends did not exaggerate their faults, and excite the malevolence of a nation never tolerant either of royal favorites or of an expensive court. Pembroke was Aymar de Valence, son of one of the foreign brothers who had been the bane of Henry III.; but now, becoming a thorough Englishman, he bore the like malice to the unfortunate Gascon who held the same post as his own father had done. Hereford, though husband to the King’s favorite sister Elizabeth, was true to the stout old Bohun, his father, who had sworn to Edward I. that he would neither go nor hang. Two poor butterflies, such as Edward II. and Gaveston, could have done little injury to the realm, but the fierce warriors were resolved to crush them, impatient of the calls upon their purses made needful by their extravagance.