Category: Edward II

Joan of the Tower

5/7/2018

Born in the Tower of London on the 5th July in 1321 was Joan, the youngest of the four children of Edward II and Isabella of France.

Joan was born into a country fraught with tension. What started out as a feud eventually escalated into civil war - this feud was the result of Joan's father's reliance on the Despensers, a father and son act. History differentiates between the two by calling the son 'the Younger' - he was a royal favourite. This war came to an end following the Battle of Boroughbridge in March the following year with the execution of Thomas of Lancaster and the exile of both Despencers. However, the Despencers were to return as favourites until the end of Edward's reign.

When Joan was just seven she was contracted to marry David of Scotland, the four-year-old son of Robert the Bruce. This marriage formed part of the Treaty of Northampton. Under the terms of the treaty, England recognised Scotland's independence and Robert the Bruce as king. For their part, the Scots would pay an agreed sum of money to end the war.

Poor Joan entered into this unhappy marriage on the 17th July 1328 and was crowned as a Scottish queen the next year. David as king was an English sympathiser and disliked in Scotland and history sees him as a disastrous leader. On a personal level, he was a womaniser but left on illegitimate offspring. It's is hard to say what Joan had to put up with during her thirty-four-year marriage to the Scottish king however the answer may lay in the fact that following his release from his eleven-year captivity in England Joan chose not to accompany him back to Scotland.

Where Joan lived during the last five years of her life is unknown, she may have lived at Castle Rising, one of her mother's properties however by 1358 she was living with her mother at Hertford Castle. I wonder what these two women talked of during their time together? Did they discuss the subject of living with men they cared little for or Joan's time as Queen of the Scots or maybe Isabella's affair with Roger Mortimer?

Oh to be a fly on the wall!

By the summer of 1358, Joan was caring for her dying mother who succumbed to death that year. Joan continued to live at Hertford Castle until her own death of the black plague in 1362.

She was buried in Christ Church Greyfriars, London. Her tomb no longer exists.

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Marriage of Edmund Crouchback

3/2/2018

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The 3rd February in 1276 is the reported date of the marriage of Edmund Crouchback to his second wife Blanche of Artois.

In the July of 1274, Blanche had been widowed when her husband Henry I of Navarre died following the death of the couples baby son the year before. That same year Edmund too had suffered the loss of his wife the fifteen-year-old wife Aveline de Forz, had died in November.

On Edmund and Blanche's marriage, Edmund became step-father to Blanche's one-year-old daughter Joan, whose daughter Isabella would become the wife of Edward II and lover of Roger Mortimer. Their marriage, it is said, was arranged but was thought to have been a happy one and resulted in three children, Thomas of Lancaster - executed on the order of the aforementioned Edward II. Henry, nicknamed Wryneck due to a condition we know now of as Torticollis, where the muscles of the neck cause the head to twist to one side, and John, who died in France in 1317.

The couples twenty-year marriage ended with Edmund's death in 1296 during the siege of Bordeaux and Blanche died in Paris in 1302.

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Death of Roger Mortimer the First Earl of March

29/11/2017

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On the 29th November in 1330 Roger Mortimer, first earl of March, was executed at Tyburn after being captured following a coup at Nottingham Castle at the beginning of October.

Roger Mortimer and Edward II's queen Isabella had successfully rebelled against Edward who they eventually deposed, you can see them depicted in the image below. History states that Edward II died at Berkeley Castle towards the end of the summer of 1327 supposedly on the order of Roger Mortimer, however it has been suggested that he lived a number of years abroad. With Edward gone Mortimer and Isabella were criticised for the way they conducted themselves, their attempted overthrow of Edward III was a step too far.

After his arrest, Mortimer was taken to the Tower of London and afterwards, he stood trial at Westminster where it is said he was bound and gagged and unable to speak in his own defence. He was found guilty and was sentenced to the death of a traitor - by hanging, drawing and quartering, however, the king was lenient, Mortimer's body was not disembowelled or quartered, his naked body was left to swing from the gallows for two days and two nights, eventually he was cut down.

Mortimer would be spared this most gruesome fate.

Queen Isabella buried her lover's body at Greyfriars in Coventry but his widow petitioned the king for the return of her husband's body. At first, he refused but later relented. Joan Mortimer had the Earl's body reinterred at his castle a Wigmore.

Isabella was returned to Berkhamsted Castle in Hertfordshire and then to Windsor Castle. In 1332 she was sent to her own property of Castle Rising in Norfolk where she is thought to have suffered a nervous breakdown.

Castle Rising in Norfolk

Queen Isabella survived Roger Mortimer by twenty-eight years.

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Robert the Bruce

11/7/2016

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"Let Scotland's warcraft be this: footsoldiers, mountains and marshy ground; and let her woods, her bow and spear serve for barricades. Let menace lurk in all her narrow places among her warrior bands, and let her plains so burn with fire that her enemies flee away. Crying out in the night, let her men be on their guard, and her enemies in confusion will flee from hunger's sword. Surely it will be so, as we're guided by Robert, our lord."

Scotland's Strategy of Guerrilla Warfare c.1308

Photograph: Face Lab/Liverpool John Moores University

Robert the Bruce is thought to have been born at Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire Scotland on the 11th July 1274, into an aristocratic family. His mother was Marjorie of Carrick, his father Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, was distantly related to Scotland's royal family.

According to legend, Bruce was driven into exile and hiding in a cave, he sat and watched a small spider trying to make a web, the spider would fall and then climb slowly back up to try again.

This was Bruce's inspiration for his continued efforts to establish an independent Scotland, and along with William Wallace he is Scotland's national hero.

Robert Bruce had been elected guardian of Scotland in 1298, replacing William Wallace as the leader of the long campaign against the English attempt to conquer Scotland. After the devastating defeat of Wallace at Falkirk in 1298 and then Bruce’s own defeat at Methven in 1306, much of Bruce’s campaign took the form of guerrilla warfare. In this way he completely changed the balance of power in Scotland.

In February of that year, at the altar of Greyfriars Church in Dumfries Robert the Bruce killed John Comyn, a staunch supporter of the Balliol dynasty and head of the most powerful baronial families in Scotland.

Six weeks later, on the 25th March, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland at Scone in Perthshire, however many saw him as a violent usurper.

By 1314, just two major strategic fortresses remained in English hands on the border at Berwick and controlling the crossing
of the Forth at Stirling. But the Stirling garrison finally agreed to surrender if the English king did not arrive with a relieving
force by 24th June 1314. In response Edward II assembled an army of about 13,000 at Berwick, marching north in May and reaching Falkirk on the 22nd June.

Bruce deployed his forces in woodland south west of Stirling, through which the major road approached the town. He carefully prepared this chosen spot, beside the Bannock Burn and, as the English advanced against him, over two days of fighting achieved a dramatic victory.

Alan Beattie Herriot's robust, eighteen foot sculpture of the Scottish hero is testament to that fact, it stands in its
magnificence outside Marischal College Aberdeen. It is there to recognise the debt owed to Robert the Bruce as a
benefactor of the city's Common Good Fund which was developed as a direct result of a charter issued by him in 1319.

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Thomas of Lancaster

22/3/2016

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Executed this day in 1322.

"And now I shall tell you of the noble Earl Thomas of Lancaster. When he was taken and brought to York, many of the city were full glad, and upon him cried with high voice "Ah, Sir Traitor! Now shall you have the reward that long time you have deserved!"

It was in 1322 at Pontefract Castle, King Edward I's ‘key to the north’ that Thomas of Lancaster finally received his 'reward.'

Lancaster had been a supporter of Edward II, but like many within the realm he was angered by the kings reliance on his favourites, namely Piers Gaveston. Lancaster was among a number of men who were intent of seeing off Gaveston, they succeeded in 1312, when he was executed near Kenilworth in Warwickshire, on land belonging to Lancaster. Gaveston's death is thought to be at the top of the list of reasons as to why Lancaster was executed.

Thomas of Lancaster would not be the last to meet his death because he was prepared to stand up to a monarch who was influenced by others, Richard Fitz Alan, one of the founding members of the Lords Appellant was executed in 1397 for standing up to Richard II and Richard Duke of York's revenge death in 1460 is another example.

Lancaster has been called a

"coarse, selfish and violent man, without any of the attributes of a statesman."

However, history it is said, is written by the victors, we can only wonder what would have been written of them if they had succeeded.

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The Great Hall at Winchester

27/8/2015

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The Great Hall at Winchester Castle was built between 1222 and 1235 by Henry III and later extended by Edward II, it is built of flint and has, inside and out, a limestone dressings to windows and doorways. The buttresses and ancient dormers are covered with finely cut masonry and the modern open timber truss roof over the nave is covered with tiles, it is certainly an impressive medieval building.

Sadly, it is all that remains of the castle that was founded within a one year of the conquest of England.

The town itself was an important royal and administrative centre and was the seat of government before London took its place. The Treasury and the Exchequer were both based here, Empress Matilda’s army was besieged by King Stephen in 1141, Henry III was born here in 1207 and Edward I and his wife, Margaret of France were nearly killed by fire in 1302.

Today's hall houses one of the greatest items of medieval legend, King Arthur's Round Table, for it bears the names of some of the knights of Arthur's court. It was probably created for a Round Table Tournament, an event that imitated what medieval kings, such as Edward I, thought went on in the court of Arthur.

The artwork we see today was commissioned by Henry VIII to celebrate the visit, in 1522, by Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor and depicts Henry sitting in Arthur's seat above a Tudor Rose.

Removed from is position high on the wall of the Great Hall in the mid 1970's, the table was carbon dated, what they found was not a sixth century piece of workmanship, but thirteenth or fourteenth century. It is now considered to have been created during the reign of Edward I for his Round Table Tournament in 1290. A study of the kings finances for that period show a tournament was held by Edward near Winchester on April 20 of that year, the table may have been made to mark the betrothal of one of his daughters.

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Joan of the Tower

Marriage of Edmund Crouchback

Death of Roger Mortimer the First Earl of March

Robert the Bruce

Thomas of Lancaster

The Great Hall at Winchester

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