The Perfect King (42 page)

Edward decided that Vannes would be his principal objective. The French had taken it not long before, and thus controlled its harbour, which was of strategic interest to the English. But it was not an easy target. Edward decided on a two-pronged assault by land and sea. He despatched Robert d'Artois with the ships which remained in Brittany while he himself led the overland advance. D'Artois was a brave leader but an unlucky man, and the very last vestige of his little luck was now used up. He was attacked on the way by Spanish and Genoese ships. Leading an attack on Vannes itself with the remains of his navy, he was overpowered and mortally injured. With his death a few weeks later Edward lost a trusted and likeable friend, a man who had never betrayed him but who had never lived up to the confidence he had placed in his military abilities.

Despite the personal loss, it was to Edward's benefit that the positions of command in the field now fell to English lords. There were at least half-a-dozen very able commanders with Edward, including the earls of Derby, Warwick, Huntingdon, Northampton and Salisbury and Sir Walter Manny. Allowing these men to exercise their strengths and to fulfil their ambitions marked a new stage in the development of Edward's success as a king. Thirty years earlier, Robert Bruce in
Scotland
had run rings around the English by encouraging a cadre of commanders who would seek personal glory and yet be part of a collective struggle. Through encouraging the likes of Black Douglas and Sir Thomas Randolph, Bruce had wrested
Scotland
from the English. When Edward had begun his French war he had failed to pursue a similar course of action. Instead he had relied on the chivalric ambitions of other heads of state: the indecisive count of Hainault, the wary duke of Brabant, the merchant van Artevelde, and the mercenary Emperor Ludvig. His trust in them was misplaced: they were never going to share his strategic objectives or be part of die confraternity of warriors which would defeat Philip. They would never feel personally bound to Edward's peculiarly English quarrel, and still less to his personal command. But as soon as those responsibilities and expectations passed to his vassals, everything changed. In Brittany Edward began to reassert himself as the King Arthur of a chivalric court of victorious warriors who vied
with
each other for glory. As Edward destroyed the region around Vannes, the earls of Northampton and Warwick destroyed that around Nantes. The earl of Salisbury devastated the area around Dinan. Throughout Brittany, the army and the supporters of Charles de Blois were on the retreat. The endgame in Brittany was approaching.

Edward had a weakness, however. Being so far from home, he had difficulty raising supplies, and living off the land for any length of time in winter was not easy. He had lost many of his ships. His armies were dispersed across Brittany, and there were not enough of them to face a full French onslaught. In December the main French army approached. It joined up with Charles de Blois' companions who had survived Morlaix, and presented Edward with a force several times the size of his own. It stopped eighteen miles short of the English army. Despite this show of force, as at Esplechin, Edward managed to negotiate a compromise which did not reflect the precariousness of his situation. His treaty negotiators were like his commanders, enthused and personally committed to the struggle which he had started. In this respect it has to be said that Edward's judgement of men to do the job was impeccable. On
19
January
1343
the Treaty of Malestroit was agreed. Edward had to lift the siege of Vannes, but otherwise almost every term was in his favour. The allegiances, gains and losses in Brittany were to be respected, and no further war was to take place in Gascony,
Scotland
or elsewhere. John de Montfort was to be released. Flanders would remain outside the orbit of French control. The truce was to last for more than three years.
Edward had effectively added one more frontier to his war on Philip de Valois. He had conquered a corner of France, and managed to call himself king of it without incurring serious loss.

*

When Edward had opted to lead the land army to attack Vannes he may well have been expressing a personal preference. Although he had commanded at the significant naval victory at Sluys, he was not lucky out on the open sea. Or perhaps we should say that he
was
lucky, for he seems to have survived more near-death experiences at sea than in
battle
. In
1326
he had been blown off course by a storm when returning to England with Mortimer and his mother. In
1340
he had almost died in a storm at the mouth of the Thames. He had suffered in the gales on his crossing to Brittany. And now, in February
1343,
on his return trip he got caught in a catastrophic tempest which seriously threatened his life once more. Several ships in his fleet were lost: swept over and smashed to pieces by the waves. There was, of course, no respite from drowning for anyone on board those unfortunate boats. The whole fleet was dispersed, the sailors doing all
they
could simply to bring their vessels to port. Murimuth noted how the surviving ships put into ports wherever they could across southern England. The ship carrying Lady de Montfort ended up drifting into a port in Devon. Wreck stories clearly had a wide popular appeal, as most chroniclers note Edward's escape, even the far northern ones. A Franciscan chronicler on the Scottish border noted that Edward incurred many dangers in returning from Brittany, especially from flashes of lightning and unprecedented storms, whereby nearly all his ships were scattered from him and several were sunk in the sea. It is said that not one of his sailors or soldiers was so cheerful amid these storms and dangers as himself, who ever remained fearless and unperturbed through them all; whence he was delivered by God's grace and the Blessed Virgin's intercession, whom he always invoked and chose as his particular patron in all dangers.

On i March, he was blown to shore at Melcome Regis, in Dorset. He set off immediately for London, and reached the
capital three days later. But th
is was one storm which had deeply affected him. He seems to have sworn at the height of the gales to go on a whole series of pilgrimages if he was saved. He even se
ems to have prayed to his recentl
y deceased father to save him. He performed the promised pilgrimages straightaway. In London he gave thanks at the high altar of St Paul's Cathedral. He then took a handful of men and went to his father's tomb at Gloucester, and gave thanks at the high altar there, and at Walsingham Abbey. He went on foot to Canterbury, and gave thanks at the altars dedicated to St Thomas Becket and the Virgin Mary. A
t each place he promised a costl
y gift, and a golden incense boat in the shape of a ship was
later delivered to each shrine.
If Edward stood alone and unafraid on the deck of his storm-beleaguered ship, it was only because he was praying in the fury of the storm, and believed the Virgin Mary, St Thomas Becket and his late father were all looking out for him.

*

On
28
April
1343
Edward opened the first parliament held since the Crisis of
1341.
There was much to discuss. One interesting preliminary was to ordain that in future no representatives should come to parliament in armour or with long knives or other weaponry as they
had sometimes done in the past.
The first main item on the agenda was the Treaty of Malestroit. In the now-accepted fashion, the two houses of parliament deliberated separately, and delivered their verdicts on
1
May. Both houses approved of the treaty, and of the continued search for peace. But if no adequate peace could be obtained, they approved of Edward continuing his quarrel with the French king, and would support him in this. It was a conciliatory statement, made in the light of the military successes in Brittany but also in the wake of Edward's refusal to summon a parliament for two years. Even more conciliatory was parliament's acceptance of Edward's revocation of the statute forced on him on that occasion.

Parliament and Grown had reached an understanding: although the prelates and representatives of the shires and towns might press for reform, the king would not accept extremist measures, or changes which might undermine his ability
to run the government efficientl
y. As a result, the
1343
parliament was a success for Edward. He not only achieved support for his foreign policy, he renewed his royal authority over parliament, so much so that for the next thirty years representatives never questioned Edward's authority over ministerial appointments, nor his right to give roya
l estates to his chief vassals.

Along with parliamentary acknowledgement of the possibility of renewed hostilities came the agreement to fix wool customs, and a grant of duty to the king on
wool for the next three years.
Gradually Edward was bringing his finances back under control. He dealt with some of his Continental allies by responding to their demands for payment with letters stating that if he had failed to pay them by a certain date, then their obligations to him would lapse. The debt then was strategically neglected. Not all debts could be treated in this way, of course. Those owing to the Bardi and Peruzzi were a particularly difficult problem. If Edward simply backed out of these, there would inevitably be international repercussions. Indeed, shortly after this, both the Bardi and the Peruzzi banking houses collapsed.

The responsibility for the failure of the Bardi and the Peruzzi has traditionally been ascribed solely to Edward's refusal to honour his debts. This is a serious accusation; it amounts to personal responsibility for the biggest banking crash before modern times. But the view that Edward simply backed out of his financial commitments is mainly based on the opinion of a well-respected Florentine writer, Giovanni Villani, whose brother Filippo was a member of the Peruzzi. Villani said that Edward owed the Bardi
900,000
gold florins
(£135,000),*
and the Peruzzi
600,000 (£90,000),
and that his refusal to pay caused an economic collapse across Florence and much further afield. Such an opinion is neither independent nor justified. Edward never refused to pay his debts. Moreover, recent research has shown that the Peruzzi (whose records survive) did not have the capital to lend Edward this much mo
ney, not even a fraction of it.
For Edward to have owed them
600,000
florins, they would have needed to have raised further capital in England. They may have done this, but if so they must have received further income or actual repayments, for which Villani does not account. From the English records we may estimate what these repayments were. The total amount borrowed over the period
1337-41
has been calculated at
687,000
florins

* After
1340
the conversion rate used for the florin is
3s,
rather than
3s 4d.

(£103,000)
from the Bardi, and
474,000
florins
(£71,000)
from the Per
uzzi.
Some of this was repaid in cash, and some was repaid through royal grants, especially grants of wool, which allowed the Italians to recoup much of their original investment and to build up their capital. In other words, the total of more than one million florins represents only the borrowings, not the repayments, and thus not the balance owing It is now thought that the actual amount which Edward defaulted on was nearer the amount he later acknowledged, a mere
£1
3,000.
Edward's failure to repay this amount would have dented the companies' profitability, but it would not by itself have proved disastrous. Historians tend to regard the internal disputes in Florence as the cause of the crash, not Edward's failure to repay his debts. It is a telling fact that the third largest Florentine banking house, the Acciaiuoli, also suffered heavily in the
1340s,
and many other smaller Florentine banking firms collapsed, despite the fact that they ha
d not lent any money to Edward.

The other important financial measure discussed in the parliament of
1343
was the currency. For the last five hundred years practically the only coins minted in England had been silver pennies. Henry III had tried to introduce a 'gold penny', worth
2od,
in
1257,
but it had failed. Edward I had issued a new silver coinage in
1279,
which resulted in the minting of silver groats
(4d),
halfpences and farthings, as well as pennies. But most international trade, and much domestic business, was conducted in florins (around
3s)
and marks
(13s 4d),
so silver pennies were of limited use, as they were needed in their hundreds. Edward knew that a successful gold currency would be exported, and English gold coins would be handled and looked at in Avignon, Genoa and Paris as well as more Anglophile cities such as Ghent and Bruges and English dominions such as Gascony. The principle to which he was aspiring was very similar to the modern idea of trademark advertising. Edward would circulate artistically scuplted pieces of gold all around Europe showing him as a truly international monarch. As a result of these discussions, the first important English gold coins appeared in
1344.
The largest of these was closely modelled on the French gold currency, showing Edward enthroned, with a leopard on the other side (Edward's own emblem and the heraldic beast on the English coat of arms). These first gold coins proved unsuccessful, being undervalued in relation to the value of the gold, so later in the same year
(1344)
he ordered the minting of the mighty 'noble', a gold coin worth half-a-mark
(6s 8d).
This showed the king standing on the deck of a ship. The ship logo drew attention to his victor
y at Sluys, but even more impor
tandy it showed Edward as a king crossing seas, giving him that international status which he craved. This was a medieval power statement of the first order. It took a few reissues to get the balance of gold and nominal value right, but Edward would not allow his moneyers to fail. The figure of Edward standing on his ship, bearing a shield with the arms of France and England quartered, became one of the most widely known and enduring images of fourteenth-century kingship, being copied in the gold coinage of every subsequent medieval English king.