The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation by Mortimer Ian

Author:Mortimer, Ian [Mortimer, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-03-29T23:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

At the Court of the Sun King

IN 1350 EDWARD’S confidence could not have been higher. He had been victorious in every battle he had fought. He had survived the plague, had restored the prestige of the royal family, had solved his financial problems, was respected and applauded by his people and held in awe by his knightly contemporaries. He had constantly tried new ideas and techniques, and personally he had inspired and demanded innovations which had resulted in new ways of fighting, governing, raising money and trading. The loyalty and courage of his men had been repeatedly tested to the limit and never found lacking. With such support he had done what no English king – not even his renowned grandfather, Edward I – had done before. He had utterly humiliated the French king, captured the Scottish king, and swept aside the political machinations of the pope, plunging the schemes of all those who opposed him into disarray.

But despite these successes and such high confidence, Edward himself was changing. Even though he had survived the plague, the experience had deeply affected him. It had shown him the limits of his power, and was a horrific reminder to all kings of their weakness against natural disasters. It had affected him as a man too, through the tragic loss of his daughter and the deaths of friends brave enough to join him at Windsor in April 1349, at the height of the epidemic. Above all else it had shown him how transitory his achievements might prove. Had he died in the plague, that would have been the enduring image of him, covered in black pustules and reeking of decay. He had risked his life at the battle of Winchelsea and almost lost his boat and drowned; and all for what? Seventeen galleys? In his own high opinion of himself, it would have been a tragedy if he had died for so little gain. It may have been the plague, or it may have been his age – he was now thirty-seven – or perhaps both, but it is at this point that Edward began to draw back from martial activities and to create more lasting structures. Winchelsea was to be the last time he drew his sword and personally risked his life in the front line of a battle.

Edward had probably begun to think in terms of permanent creations even before Winchelsea. In the Order of the Garter he had created a means to perpetuate a knightly reputation long after an individual was no longer capable of fighting at the highest level. As soon as it was founded, the fame of the Order spread across Europe. In France the newly crowned King John was thinking about founding his own order, the Order of the Star, and other princes and kings were doing likewise. A whole host of orders was in the planning, all based on knightly accoutrements: swords, buckles, collars, even a knot.1 But there was no doubt which order every knight in Europe aspired to join.

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