[1] For the relations of Edward II. and Philip V. see Lehugeur, Hist. de Philippe le Long, pp. 240-66 (1897).
The obligation of performing homage to a rival prince weighed with increasing severity on the English kings at each rapid change of occupants of the throne of France. The same pretexts were again brought forward, as sufficient reasons for postponing or evading the unpleasant duly. But before the question was settled a new source of trouble arose in the affair of Saint-Sardos, which soon plunged the two countries into open war. The lord of Montpezat, a vassal of the Duke of Gascony, built a bastide at Saint-Sardos upon a site which he declared was held by himself of the duke, but which the French officials claimed as belonging to Charles IV. The dispute was taken before the parliament of Paris, which decided that the new town belonged to the King of France. Thereupon a royal force promptly took possession of it. Irritated at this high-handed action, the lord of Montpezat invoked the aid of Edward's seneschal of Gascony, who attacked and destroyed the bastide and massacred the French garrison.[1] The answer of Charles the Fair to this aggression was decisive. Gascony was pronounced sequestrated and Charles of Valois, the veteran uncle of the king, was ordered to enforce the sentence at the head of an imposing army.
[1] See for this affair Bréquigny, Mémoire sur les différends entre la France et l'Angleterre sous Charles le Bel, in Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, xli. (1780), pp. 641-92. M. Déprez is about to publish a Chancery Roll of Edward II. which includes all the official acts relating to it.
Thus, in the summer of 1324 England and France were once more at war. But while England remonstrated and negotiated, France acted. Norman corsairs swept the Channel and pillaged the English coasts. Ponthieu yielded without resistance. Early in August, Charles of Valois entered the Agenais, and on the 15th Agen opened its gates. The victorious French soon appeared before La Réole, where alone they encountered real resistance. Edmund, Earl of Kent, who had made vain attempts to procure peace at Paris, had been sent in July to act as lieutenant of Aquitaine. He had not sufficient force at his command to venture to meet the Count of Valois in the open field, and threw himself into La Réole. The rocky height, crowned with a triple wall, and looking down on the vineyards and cornfields of the Garonne, defied for weeks the skill of the eminent Lorrainer engineers who directed Charles of Valois' siege train. But when Charles announced to Edmund that he would carry the town by assault, if not surrendered within four days, the timid earl signed a truce from September to Easter, and was allowed to withdraw to Bordeaux. A mere fringe of coast-land still remained faithful to the English duke, when Charles of Valois went back to Paris, having victoriously terminated his long and chequered career. Before the end of 1325 he died.[1]
[1] Petit, Charles de Valois, pp. 207-15 (1900), gives the fullest modern account of these transactions.
The truce involved a renewal of the negotiations. Bishop Stratford and William Ayermine, the astute chancery clerk, were commissioned in November, 1324, to treat with the French, but made little progress in their delicate task. At this stage Isabella, inspired probably by Adam Orleton, came forward with a proposal. She besought her husband to allow her to visit her brother, the French king, and use her influence with him to procure peace and the restitution of Gascony. With the strange infatuation which marked all the acts of Edward and his favourites, Isabella's proposal was adopted, and in March, 1325, the queen crossed the Channel and made her way to her brother's court. The summer was consumed in negotiating a treaty, by which Edward's French fiefs were to be restored to him in their integrity, as soon as he had performed homage to the new king. Meanwhile the English garrison of Gascony was to withdraw to Bayonne, leaving the rest of the duchy in the hands of a French seneschal. Edward agreed to these terms, and put Gascony into Charles's hands. He was still unwilling to compromise his dignity by performing homage, while the Despensers were mortally afraid of his going to France, lest it should remove him from their influence. Isabella then made a second suggestion. She persuaded her brother to excuse the personal homage of her husband, if Edward would invest his young son, Edward, with Gascony and Ponthieu, and send him in his stead to tender his feudal duly. This also was agreed to by the English king, and in September the young prince, then about thirteen years old, was appointed Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Ponthieu, and despatched to join his mother at Paris, where he performed homage to his uncle.
It was expected that Gascony and Ponthieu would then be restored, and that the queen and her son would return to England. But Charles IV. perpetrated a clever piece of trickery which showed how far off a real settlement still was. He "restored" to Edward those parts of Gascony which had been peacefully surrendered to him in the summer, and announced that he should keep the Agenais and La Réole, as belonging to France by right of Charles of Valois' recent conquest. Bitterly mortified at this treachery, Edward took upon himself the title of "governor and administrator of his firstborn, Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, and of his estates". By this technical subtlety, he thought himself entitled to resume the control of the ceded districts and resist the attack which was bound to follow hard upon the new breach. Once more Charles IV. pronounced the sequestration of the duchy, and despite Edward's efforts, his power crumbled away before the peaceful advent of the French troops, charged with the execution of their master's edict.
Long before the last Gascon castles had opened their gates to Charles's officers, new developments at Paris made the question of Aquitaine a subordinate matter. Despite the breach of the negotiations, Isabella and her son still tarried at the French court. In answer to Edward's requests for their return, she sent back excuse after excuse, till his patience was fairly exhausted. At last, on December 1, 1325, Edward peremptorily ordered his wife to return home, and warned her not to consort with certain English traitors in the French court. The Duke of Aquitaine was similarly exhorted to return, with his mother if he could, but if not, without her. The reference to English traitors shows that Edward was aware that Isabella had already formed that close relation with the exiled lord of Wigmore which soon ripened into an adulterous connexion. Inspired by Roger Mortimer, Isabella declared that she was in peril of her life from the malice of the Despensers, and would never go back to her husband as long as the favourites retained power. A band of the exiles of 1322 gathered round her and her paramour, and sought to bring about their restoration as champions of the loudly expressed grievances of the queen, and the rights of her young son. The king's ambassadors at Paris, Stratford and Ayermine, recently made Bishop of Norwich by a papal provision which ignored the election of Robert Baldock the chancellor, united themselves with the queen and the fugitive marcher. With them, too, was associated Edmund of Kent, who was allowed by the treaty to return from Gascony through France. Bishop Stapledon, who had accompanied the queen to France, was so alarmed at the turn events were taking, that he fled in disguise to reveal his suspicions to the king. Thus England, already exposed to a danger of a French war, was threatened with the forcible overthrow of the Despensers and the reinstatement of Isabella by armed invaders.
By the spring of 1326 the scandalous relations of Isabella and Mortimer were notorious all over England and France. Charles IV. grew disgusted at his sister's doings, and gave no countenance to her schemes. Isabella accordingly withdrew from Paris with her son and her paramour, and made her way to the Netherlands. There she found refuge in the county of Hainault, whose lord, William II, of Avesnes, was won over to support her by a contract to marry the Duke of Aquitaine to his daughter Philippa. A large advance from Philippa's marriage portion was employed in hiring a troop of knights and squires of Hainault and Holland. John of Hainault, brother of the count, took joint command of this band with Roger Mortimer. The ports of Holland and Zealand, both of which counties were united with Hainault under William II.'s rule, offered ample facilities for their embarkation.
On September 23, 1326, the queen and her followers took ship at Dordrecht in Holland. Next day the fleet cast anchor in the port of Orwell, and that same day the expedition was landed and marched to Walton, where it spent the first night on English soil. The gentry of Suffolk and Essex flocked to the standard of the queen, who declared that she had come to avenge the wrongs of Earl Thomas of Lancaster and to drive the Despensers from power. Thomas of Brotherton, the earl marshal, made common cause with the invaders, and Henry, Earl of Leicester, hastened to associate himself with the champions of his martyred brother. A great force of native Englishmen swelled the queen's host, and reduced to insignificance the little band of Hainaulters and Hollanders. There was no resistance. Isabella marched to Bury St. Edmunds, "as if on a pilgrimage," and thence to Cambridge, where she tarried several days with the canons of Barnwell. From Cambridge she moved on to Baldock, where she despoiled the chancellor's manors and took his brother captive. At Dunstable, her next halt, she was on a great highway, within thirty-three miles of London.