The Perfect King (83 page)
Authors: Ian Mortimer
Tags: #General, #Great Britain, #History, #Europe, #Royalty, #Biography & Autobiography, #History - General History, #British & Irish history, #Europe - Great Britain - General, #Biography: Historical; Political & Military, #British & Irish history: c 1000 to c 1500, #1500, #Early history: c 500 to c 1450, #Ireland, #Europe - Ireland
One further series of facts involving Luca is worth noticing. On
26
April
1331,
approximately six weeks after Edward
LI
is likely to have arrived in Avignon, a clerk called William Aslakeby was licensed to be absent from his church at Sibthorpe for two years while he served in the household of Luca Fieschi. It seems Luca may have requested the assistance of an English priest in his large household at Avignon. Aslakeby was late setting out, still being in England in December
1331,
but presumably he went shortly after that, as nothing more is heard of him for the next two years. He was back in England in October
1334,
for on the
28th
of that month he received licence to be absent for another two years, this time in the service of Manuel
Fieschi.
What is particularly interesting about this is that Sibthorpe was a collegiate church, founded by Thomas Sibthorpe in the
1320s
to say prayers for the well-being of his friends, his family and Edward II during their lives, and for their souls after death. After Aslakeby returned from Luca Fieschi's household in
1334,
the ordinances of the church were rewritten by Archbishop Melton of York. In this revision it was made very unclear whether Edward II was among the living or the dead: his name seems to have been concatenated with that of Edward
III
.
The matter was only sorted out when the ordinances were rewritten again in February
1343;
this time Edward II was clearly placed among the dead.
This draws our attention to other collegiate churches and chantries which were founded around this t
ime for the benefit of Edward II
's soul. Bablake in Coventry - Queen Isabella's own foundation to pray for the salvation of her husband's soul — was not founded until
1342
and not endowed until May
1344.
These expressions of renewed concern for the soul of Edward
II
in the period
1342-44
tally with the belated creation of Edward of Woodstock as the prince of Wales in parliament on
12
May
1343.
This is significant, as
prince of Wales was the one titl
e which Edward II never gave up in his lifetime. Therefore, together with other facts
directly
connected with Edward
II
I
(mentioned in Chapter Eight), we have a rough answer to the second of our initial questions, regarding the date of Edward II's death: in the period between the parliaments of
1341
and
1343,
probably the autumn of
1341.
In conclusion, there is some evidence which supports the general narrative of the Fieschi letter and suggests that his kinsman and friend Cardinal Luca Fieschi took a central role in protecting Edward II from
1331
to
1336,
after which Luca's executor wrote
the Fieschi letter to Edward II
I explaining his situation. In answer to the second of our questions, it would appear that Edward III heard about his father's death in or about late
1341.
As this date begs the question where he had been since
1330,
and as there is no evidence other than the Fieschi letter and the accounts of William Norwell
(1338)
to suggest where he had been, and since both of these suggest that Edward II had been in Italy prior to
1338,
it seems reasonable to accept the Fieschi l
etter's explanation of Edward II’
s whereabouts, in outline at least. It also seems reasonable to suppose he was still in Fieschi custody in
1338,
on the grounds that Niccolinus Fieschi was present at the time of his arrival and an Italian (Forzetti) was paid for bringing him to Koblenz. Whether he was returned to Italy after that and died there is another matter, about which we have almost no evidence. All we have to go on is a questionable piece of oral testimony gathered at Sant' Alberto di Butrio in the twentieth century,'
7
and the favour shown by Edward
III
to the Fieschi in the early and mid
-1
340s,
suggesting they remained valuable to Edward after
1340.
All this is of the greatest importance for understanding the life of Edward
III
. Laying aside the personal ramifications, the political influence it gave the Fieschi and, more importandy, Cardinal Luca's superior, the pro-French pope, would have been considerable. If Edward II was in the custody of Cardinal Luca Fieschi, then both Pope Jean XXII and Pope Benedict XII would have been able to use this as a bargaining lever with Edward. In international negotiations Edward would have been severely compromised. If he was deemed to be complicit in his father's illegal removal from the English throne, he would have been deeply damaged, especially if the pope had authorised Edward IPs restoration. If he was found to have acceeded to his own uncle's execution for trying to free his father on the pope's orders - as he had — he risked worse trouble. It is therefore very important to know when Edward II died and so when this situation came to an end. That Edward II was probably still alive in
1340
explains why Benedict XII was so strenuous in intervening in the peace process: he knew Edward
III
was compromised. But a date for his death in late
1341
means that Clement VI would not have been able to exercise this same influence over Edward
III
. Edward was no doubt rather relieved about that.
Royal
Charter
Witnesses
in
Regnal
Years
4—5
The
Intended
Destination
of
the
1346
Invasion
The question of Edward III
's decision regarding the landing place of his massive expedition to France in
1346
is a difficult one. It is not so much one of
when
he made the decision — although there is doubt about that too - but whether he changed his mind. Did he always intend to land in Normandy? Or were contemporaries correct to believe that he had originally intended to sail to Gascony?
The case that Edward originally intended to sail to Gascony is based on the chronicles of le Bel and Froissart, together with support from a newsletter written five days after the invasion by Sir Bartholomew Burghersh (copied in Murimuth's chronicle). Froissart mentions that the wind was fine for a trip to Gascony when the king embarked but that on the third day it changed, and drove the fleet on to the shores of Cornwall, where it remained at anchor for six days and nights. It was at this time, according to Froissart and le Bel, that Edward changed his mind, persuaded by Sir Godfrey de Harcourt that Normandy was a better destination. Sir Bartholomew Burghersh's letter to the archbishop of Canterbury written on
17
July supports this, stating that Edward made sure all his ships had victuals for a fortnight (the length of a trip to Gascony) and that,
intending to have passed by the Needles at the end of the Isle of Wight, and so have held his direct course towards the Channel, the wind was so contrary to him that he could not keep to that route by any means, albeit he lay a long while, waiting if God were willing to have given him weather to pass; and since it did not please God that he should go that way, he turned to the land where God should give him grace, and arrived well and in a good state, with all the fleet, in a country which is called Cotentin, in Normandy.'
To
this one should add the background detail that Burghersh was a well-travelled man, having been sent abroad several times on royal duties, and no stranger to sailing across the Channel. He was also close to the king. So we should perhaps trust his word in a news letter to the archbishop. There are several reasons to doubt this interpretation. Richard Barber
in his
The Black Prince
(1978)
stated with confidence that, although the fleet may have been intended for Gascony when originally summoned
, its destination had been settl
ed as Normandy by
3
July, when Edward anchored off the Isle of Wight. It was because the wind changed direction after this, when the fleet was at Yarmouth, that Edward ordered the fleet to return to the safety of Portsmouth. Sumption in his
Trial
by
Battle
(1990)
provides a looser interpretation, simply saying that Edward had originally intended to go to Gascony but then changed his
mind; he does not say when exactl
y, but he suggests it was at the meeting on
20
June.
Clifford Rogers in his
War Cruel and Sharp
(2000)
provides the most developed argument on this question. He points out that it made more military sense going to Normandy than to Gascony. He suggests that to attack in Gascony would have been a poor strategy, especially if it had entailed raising the siege of Aiguillon, where a few hundred English knights and archers were pinning down several thousand French troops. But to spread rumours
that
he intended to attack in Gascony and then to launch a surprise attack in Normandy would have been very sensible, and would have
directly
led to the historical problem with which we are now faced. In support of this interpretation he points out that Edward ordered that no ships at all be allowed to leave England in the eight-day period following his departure, and even concealed his destination to his own chancery officers. If it was widely anticipated in France that Edward would sail to Gascony, he says, 'there would have been
little
point in taking such precautions in order merely to prevent the French from receiving
confirmation
of what they already expected'.
2
He also claims that 'Edward's own testimony is that he spent ten days on the Isle of Wight waiting, not for favourable winds, but for all his ships to gather', a point noted by Barber too.
The problem is a classic case of where the historian may (if he so wishes) regard the question as a relatively trivial detail, but the biographer does not have this luxury. If Edward was forced to change all his plans and quickly adapt to a radically different situation and series of objectives, then that says different things about Edward than if he always intended to go to Normandy. Similarly if he always intended to go to Normandy and managed to delude everyone, including men like Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, about his intentions, then that says much for his ability to control information and yet retain the confidence of an otherwise misinformed army.
In addition to the various arguments already published, there are at least three further reasons to agree with the Normandy destination. First, as all the above-mentioned writers note, an initial decision - probably the final decision - was made before the fleet
set out, as the ships' captains
carried sealed orders telling them where they were to assemble in the event
of
a storm. However, storms were not the only vagaries of the weather which could affect the eventual destination. If the fleet were becalmed for a long period they would not have sufficient supplies to reach Gascony. Thus, if the sealed letters had indicated that ships' captains were to make for a port in Gascony, they would not have been able to do so if lack of wind had delayed them on the way. Similarly, if a storm were to strike in the Channel, the chances of all the waterlogged or damaged ships managing to make the journey with soaked rations and damaged spars all the way to Gascony were small. One could argue that the sealed letters contained a destination which was to be made for
only
in the event of a storm, but if so this would simply reinforce Normandy as the destination, as it was contrary winds, not a storm, which led to the delay.
The second reason is that an eight-day period of secrecy, during which no English vessels left port, would not have been a long enough time to guarantee the secrecy of the journey to Gascony. Travelling that far by ship could take weeks, so an eight-day headstart would not have guaranteed that Edward could have landed in the country around Bordeaux before a spy in England could have informed Philip who could in turn have sent a message to his army in the south-west. A royal messenger with regular changes of horses could transport a message at ninety miles per day in summer. If Edward had been delayed by only a few days, he
w
ould
have run the risk of disembarking after a long journey only to have to fight sooner rather than later. This causes us to wonder why there was only an eight-days' prohibition if he was heading to Gascony.
The third point - and arguably the strongest evidence for the case that Normandy was the destination all along - is Edward's actions on arrival. He came prepared to speak about Normandy as his patrimony - his ancestors' lands - and he came with a well-worked-out speech. He claimed that it had been illegally taken from the kings of England by France 'in the time of King Richard'. Clifford Rogers touches on this, and considers that the reference to Richard, although it was a mistake, was 'close enough'.
However, in appealing to the men of his own generation to right a wrong suffered by Richard the Lionheart, Edward was not making a mistake at all. Any well-informed man (and certainly Edward himself) would have known that it was King John who had lost Normandy, as this formed an important and prominent section of the most popular lay chronicle of the time, the
Brut,
which boldly (albeit incorrectl
y) talked about 'how King John (Edward's great-great-grandfather) lost Normandy in the first year of his reign'. Moreover either Edward himself or his mother had borrowed (and presumably read) a history of Normandy. So he was not making a mistake but purposefully associating the duchy with England's great crusader king Of course, Edward could have dreamed up this propaganda during the crossing, but deliberately to misrepresent his own family history seems a well-planned move, and one which had been worked out in advance. Further support to this idea is given in the many and frequent allusions to the conquest of England which are mentioned in Chapter Ten. Finally, if one were to look for a blueprint of how to invade and conquer a country, one would have to consider the events of
1066.
Duke William's strategy on that occasion had been a diversionary attack using allies on a different part of the coast, a surprise landing on an unprotected beach, and a confrontation, followed by a march on the capital. Edward's strategy of
1346
follows Duke William's of
1066
in all these aspects, except that he hesitated before attacking Paris.