366

THE GLORY OF CHRISTENDOM

POPESAWAYFROMROME
367
three of the sons of Philip the Fair would die young without male heirs-though just that happened 32
The following year Charles IV summoned Edward II to do homage for the province of Gascony. 33 This
curious arrangement had a long history. When William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, took over England
in 1066, he
became king in that country while still duke in France. As Duke of Normandy he owed feudal homage to the
King of France; as King of England he owed no homage to anyone. A hundred and fifty years later England's
King John of ill fame lost Normandy, but maintained a claim in southwestern France (Gascony, part of the
ancient Roman province of Aquitaine) derived from his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The later peace treaty
between France and England arranged by St. Louis IX provided for the surrender of English claims to
Normandy but the retention of their rule in Gascony. However, for that rule-like William and his immediate
successors in Normandy-they were still expected to swear fealty to the King of France. Only the King of
England among all European kings did homage to another king for part of his royal domain. Neither he nor
the Kings of France were comfortable with this strange situation. The King of France wanted to bring
Gascony under his direct rule, while the King of England wished to avoid the humiliating ceremony of
homage.
In February 1324 Charles IV formally condemned and outlawed the English seneschal in Gascony, Sir
Ralph Basset, and an aggressive Gascon nobleman, Raymond-Berard of Montpezat, for seizing a village near
Montpezat
which the French claimed as theirs. When the English would give Charles IV no satisfaction in this matter he
declared Gascony confiscated in July and sent an army there which razed the castle of Montpezat to the
ground. Edward II sent his wife Isabelle, Charles IV's sister, to remonstrate with him, and Pope John XXII
intervened urging peace. Charles accepted a six months' truce and declared himself willing to restore most of
Gascony to England if Edward II did proper homage for it. At first Edward agreed, but then he balked,
apparently at the urging of the Despensers who did not wish to accompany him to France but also did not
wish him to go out of their direct contact. Charles was persuaded to accept Edward II's son, Crown Prince
Edward, to make the homage in his father's place, which the young Prince did in September. 34
Queen Isabelle of England had long been deeply resentful of her fickle and incompetent royal
husband, who had snubbed her for his favorite Piers Gaveston (with whom he appears to have had a
homosexual relationship)
immediately after their marriage, and allowed the Despensers to confiscate her estates because of alleged
doubts about her loyalty in the event of a French
~ Pe y, Hundred Years War, p. 73. 33McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 108.
34
Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War; Trial by Battle (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 91-92, 95-96, 98, 100;
Fryde, Fall of Edward II, pp. 146-149.
invasion.-35 Once in France with her son and out of the clutches of the Despensers, she showed no desire to
return to England, telling her brother the King of France "that her marriage had been broken and that she must
live as a widow until the Despensers had been removed from power."' Though scandalizing her brother and
many others by openly cohabiting with the dashing Roger Mortimer, a lord of the Welsh marches and associate
of the rebel Duke of Lancaster who had become only the second man to escape successfully from the Tower of
London, she quickly became the repository of the hopes of many in England who hated the Despensers and
despised Edward 11.31
Turned out of France by her embarrassed brother, Isabelle went to Hainault in the Low Countries whose
Count William II gave her 700 troops in return for the betrothal of Prince Edward to his daughter Philippa.
With this small force and some English adventurers led by Mortimer and Edward II's brother the Duke of Kent,
she landed on the coast of Essex in September 1326. Edward II ignominiously fled and the people of London
rose in Isabelle's favor, brutally murdering Bishop Stapledon of Essex, the Royal Treasurer and former
guardian of Prince Edward. The Archbishop of Canterbury barely escaped. Edward and Hugh Despenser Jr.
were tracked down and captured at Neath Abbey on the Welsh border. Tried, condemned and executed in a
single day, Despenser was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high, then drawn and quartered. Under enormous
pressure from a delegation sent by Parliament and led by the very political Bishop Adam Orleton of Hereford,
pitiful King Edward II "with tears and sighs" agreed in January 1327 to abdicate in favor of his fourteenyear-
old son, who thus became King Edward 111. 38
The ex-king was shut away in prison and in September was said to have died, probably by murder." An
extraordinary document found centuries later hidden in the binding of a cartulary of the diocese of Maguelonne
in France and preserved in the departmental archives of Herault suggests that he may have escaped or been let
go, to wander disconsolately to Avignon and finally to a hermitage in Italy where he died several years later.
Be that as it may, Edward II was probably the most complete failure of any king in English history-which still
does not justify his deposition, done without any legal or constitutional warrant 4°

McKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 2-10; Sumption, Hundred Years War, pp. 97-98. 36McKisack, Fourteenth
Century, p. 82.
37
Michael Packe, King Edward III, ed. L. C. B. Seaman (London, 1983), pp. 18-19, 25; McKisack, Fourteenth
Century, pp. 82-83; Fryde, Fall of Edward II, pp. 160-161, 173; Sum~tion, Hundred Years War, p. 101.
Fryde, Fall of Edward II, pp. 185-189, 191-194, 196-199; McKisack, Fourtenth Century, pp. 83-91; Roy Martin
Haines, The Church and Politics in Fourteenth-Century En~land; the Career of Adam Orleton (Cambridge, 1978), pp.
161-177.
`~IvIcKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 94-95; Fryde, Fall of Edward II, pp. 202-206. 4°Fryde, Fall of Edward II,
pp. 200-206.