She-Wolves by Helen Castor

Author:Helen Castor [Helen Castor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571271726
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

2

Dearest and Most Powerful

‘Our King Edward has now reigned six full years’, the author of the Vita wrote in 1313, ‘and has till now achieved nothing praiseworthy or memorable, except that by a royal marriage he has raised up for himself a handsome son and heir to the throne.’ Amid the wreckage of England’s hopes, then, Isabella and her baby son embodied Edward’s sole accomplishment as king.

The arrival of the new prince – who was named Edward after his English father and grandfather, despite the efforts of a French delegation headed by Isabella’s eldest brother Louis to suggest Philippe as an alternative – was greeted with wild enthusiasm in the capital. Londoners caroused in the streets, inebriated not only by the free wine flowing from barrels set up at the roadsides but by sheer relief that riotous celebration was overtaking their city, rather than the riotous violence that had threatened to erupt during previous weeks. Then, tense negotiations had been taking place in a desperate attempt to avert all-out war between the king and the earls responsible for Gaveston’s death, whose fear for their own safety had taken steel-clad form when they arrived in London at the beginning of September at the head of a formidable army.

Now, at last, God had shown that he was willing to smile again on England and its unhappy monarch. The baby’s birth, in providing for the future of the royal line, served to strengthen Edward’s hand; he was as yet in no position to impose the vengeance he craved, but a ‘treaty of peace’ was finally patched together on 20 December 1312, under the auspices of envoys from the pope and the French court. The earls of Warwick and Lancaster were to submit to the king’s grace, and restore to him the jewels and horses Lancaster had seized when Edward and Gaveston fled from Newcastle. In return, the agreement stipulated, Edward would lay aside all rancour arising from Gaveston’s death.

The depths of hostility and suspicion that lay behind these ostensibly simple provisions were laid bare by the protracted manoeuvring over their enactment that occupied the uneasy months after the treaty was drawn up. It was hardly surprising that Warwick and Lancaster were reluctant to accept the settlement: Edward had proved many times before that his word was not to be trusted where Gaveston was concerned, and there was ample reason to believe that his offer of forgiveness was entirely disingenuous. Moreover, the treaty as it stood neither mentioned the ordinances, on the authority of which the earls claimed to have acted, nor identified Gaveston as a traitor – and, as such, it gave Warwick and Lancaster no protection in law beyond the offer of the king’s grace, fleetingly insubstantial as it was likely to be. Meanwhile, silence on the matter of the ordinances was, for Edward, merely a first step: he sought their revocation, and his own absolution from his oath to maintain them.

By the end of February 1313 Lancaster had finally agreed to

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