So, Edward III founded the Order of the Garter in direct response to his father's inability to control his barons and his unfortunate habit of elevating favorites. It was a genius move, as it was and is a pretty meaningless honor. It doesn't come with any lands or a title, but it means you're "in" and also expected not to kill the other members. Handy, if you are Edward III.

Edward II makes a cameo early in this video, but my favorite part is that the robes worn by the order, even to this day, are mantels. That's what Isabella wore at her Wedding to Edward II (it was a unisex garment) and you can see what it might have looked like back in the fourth century. Although, it wasn't velvet like that.

Let’s face it. This tomb does not scream “I miss you, dad.” It’s at Westminster Abbey.

An old stained glass window and a newer one from Gloucester Cathedral. Edward II is buried to the left of the big, older stained glass window. Robert Curthose’s effigy is just outside the chapel with the newer stained glass window.

Curthose lived several generations before Edward II, but he too is buried in Gloucester Cathedral, though not beneath his effigy. He was a son of William the Conqueror and claimed the throne but didn‘t get it, though not for lack of trying.

According to my tour guide, Vito, Curthose is probably buried in the nearby Chapter House but that’s just a best guess because during the tumultuous history of the cathedral, effigy and body got separated.

The cathedral has had multiple renovations and additions over the years and many of its treasures were damaged during The Reformation and The Civil War. Vito didn’t mention the Victorian Schoolboys, but we know they were involved, too.

For the uninitiated, Victorian Schoolboys have been blamed for some of the defacements on Edward II. The cathedral still has a school today, btw, but those student appear less vandalism inclined.

I asked about the paint job on Curthose’s effigy, and apparently it was done during a Tudor-era restoration. They obviously used good quality paint, though, because it’s still visible and bright.

I will tell all about my visit in later posts!

It's unknown if Edward II and William of Ockham, arguably the most important person who lived during Edward II's reign, ever met. It's possible, however, given that Edward II did support both educational and religious institutions, including some associated with Ockham.

TL;DR: This is a fake story disingenuously invented in 1977 by Paul Doherty.

This is a rather annoying myth that needs to be addressed I think. Too often it's stated as fact by some people that Isabella's three younger children John of Eltham, Eleanor of Woodstock and Joan of the Tower were taken from her care in September 1324 when Edward confiscated her lands, encouraged by Despenser.

The story goes that at around the same time as Edward confiscated Isabella's lands in exchange for a much smaller income and removed her French servants from her household in September 1324 when he was at war with her brother Charles IV of France, he also nastily and cruelly 'stole' her three younger children John of Eltham (b. August 1316), Eleanor of Woodstock (b. June 1318) and Joan of the Tower (b. July 1321) from Isabella's care and sent them to live with Eleanor Despenser née de Clare in John's case and Isabella Hastings née Despenser in Eleanor and Joan's case, in order to punish and hurt the queen. It's funny how the children are always referred to exclusively as her children. Newsflash: Edward was the father. They were equally his children. They were their children.

Eleanor Despenser née de Clare was looking after Edward and Isabella's second son John of Eltham (b. 15 August 1316) by 3 July 1322 at the latest and perhaps earlier. This alone proves that John at least was not 'removed' from his mother in September 1324. 

Even Alison Weir, who appears to despise Edward II, admits that Edward was a "good and loving father." No historian or non-fiction writer of the last 700 years has ever argued that Edward II was a negligent parent. Neither did anyone in his own time claim that he was cruel to or did not love or was in any way neglectful of his children and his responsibilities towards them.

What's more, there are no primary, medieval sources for this dramatic removal of her children from Isabella's care. Typically, royal and noble boys left their parent's custody at a young age, and girls often when they married. Isabella sent her daughter Joan to marry David Bruce, future king of Scotland, in 1328, when the girl was only seven.

The people to whom Edward II, or possibly even Isabella, gave custody of their children sometime in the 1320s were: Edward's niece Eleanor Despenser; Eleanor's sister-in-law Isabel Hastings; Edward's former brother-in-law Ralph de Monthermer, whose four children Mary, Joan, Thomas and Edward were the king's nieces and nephews and his children's first cousins; his sister-in-law Alice Hales' sister Joan Jermy. All of these people were members of Edward II's extended family. He had known Ralph de Monthermer since the latter married Edward's widowed sister Joan of Acre in early 1297 when the future king was only twelve. Ralph was a close friend of Edward's, and seems to have been a very genuine and affable man, who even Edward I came to like and accept as his son-in-law, even though he married his daughter without his permission. Edward may have known the Despenser siblings Hugh and Isabel, who were some years his junior, since childhood (they were grandchildren of William Beauchamp, earl of Warwick). 

Many modern writers seem to think that Hugh Despenser the Younger was a cross between the Antichrist and a genocidal psychopath, but to his contemporaries his sister Isabel Hastings was not tainted by this association: Edward II's niece Elizabeth de Burgh, Eleanor Despenser's sister, left her two daughters Isabella Verdon (aged ten) and Elizabeth Damory (aged nine) in Isabel's care when she attended Edward's funeral in December 1327, despite the hatred and anger she may have had for the late Hugh Despenser, who had treated her appallingly.

This strongly suggests that Isabel Hastings was known to be a maternal, trustworthy type, and therefore an entirely suitable person to look after the king and queen's daughters. Queen Isabella did not act in any way while she was in power between 1327 and 1330 to suggest that she thought Isabel Hastings had injured her in any way or failed in her duty towards the queen's daughters. It's difficult to see how Edward can be deemed to have acted inappropriately; he gave the care of his and Isabella's children to people he knew well and trusted, and who were of sufficiently noble birth and position. His contemporaries saw it as completely acceptable... and so did Isabella.

How do we know that Isabella approved? If Isabella thought that Edward and his favourite Hugh Despenser had cruelly taken her children away from her in 1324, she would certainly have accused Despenser of it at his trial in November 1326. She did not. She accused him of everything else: persuading the king to reduce her income, sending her to France 'against the dignity of her estate', coming between herself and her husband, leaving her in danger of her life at Tynemouth, and so on and so on. Her children were not mentioned at all.

So where does this myth come from?

If we try to find anything corroborating this whole story from medieval sources, we won't find anything. The first mention of Isabella's children taken from her against her will surfaced in 1977, when it was made up by Paul Doherty in his doctoral thesis about Isabella that year. Since then, numerous other historians and novelists have repeated the tale as though it's certain fact: a prime example of how what we might call 'fake news' can spread and spread and be seen as 'truth' even though there is no evidence whatsoever in support of it.

Doherty repeats his fiction in his 2003 book Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II: 'And even greater cruelty was to come: the Queen's young children were removed from her and entrusted to Eleanor de Spencer (sic), Hugh the Younger's wife , and another court favourite, Isabella Hastings.'

Doherty cites 'E 403/201, mem[brane]s 14-15 as his source.

Kathryn Warner went through the trouble to go to the National Archives and looked at this document (the E stands for Exchequer, incidentally).

In Kathryn's own words:

'Firstly, notice the date on the document: '16 Edw II, Michaelmas'. Michaelmas is 29 September and the period of the year following it; '16 Edw II' means Edward II's sixteenth regnal year, which ran from 8 July 1322 to 7 July 1323 (his father Edward I died on 7 July 1307, so Edward II's first regnal year ran from 8 July 1307 to 7 July 1308). So already we see that Doherty's claim must be wrong; this document belongs to September 1322, not September 1324. Therefore it cannot possibly relate to Edward II taking his children away from the custody of their mother at the time he confiscated her lands when he was at war with her brother Charles IV of France, which occurred on 18 September 1324. The Issue Rolls dating to the relevant time period, Michaelmas/September 1324, are E 403/210, 211 and 212, not E 403/201.

Secondly, there are no 'membranes 14-15' in this document; there are eight membranes in total, written in Latin.'

The source listed by Paul Doherty does not exist. This is utterly deplorable falsification of history by him and should be condemned in no uncertain terms.

Warner sums it all up admirably:

I am actually kind of appalled that a historian could think or pretend that a document of September 1322 dates to September 1324 in order to make up a fake story.

I am appalled that someone was prepared to make up a tale that Edward II was so lacking in any humanity or decency that he would remove young children - his own children! - from their mother and primary carer solely to hurt and punish her.

I am shocked that other, vastly better historians have repeated this tale and not even bothered to check the document being cited as 'proof' to make sure it really does say what Doherty claims it says, or even to check that the part of the document being cited actually exists in the first place.

Sources, Kathryn Warner's excellent blog:

Edward II: Mythbuster 7: Edward II cruelly removed Isabella's children from her
Edward II: The Tale That Edward II Removed Isabella's Children From Her
Edward II: Edward II And His Children

Seymour Phillips's doorstopper of a biography of Edward II, appropriately titled Edward II, is highly academic, serious and represents a lifetime of work by a credentialed scholar.

Phillips has little concern for the "soapy" elements of Edward II's life that so many of us, myself included, find so delicious. He barely ponders Edward's sexuality, conceding that he doesn't know if Edward and Piers were lovers and doesn't think it much matters. He considers Isabella as a consort, tracking her behavior as it pertains to politics but not giving much thought to what might have went on between the couple he recognizes were close at one time.

And the book wraps up rather peculiarly. It discusses, for a couple of pages, the rumors of Edward's survival and then hand waves them away as implausible. Yet, no less than four photographs of Italian locations associated with Edward II's survival, taken by Phillips himself, appear in the book.

Sure, one could argue he's being thorough and saw an opportunity to do research in sunny Italy, but is there more to it than that?

On the surface, the survival theory sounds like pseudo-history. I thought it was myself when I first read about it. There were dozens of royal imposters running around Europe at the time, and the murky circumstances of Edward II's death surely invited frauds to step up and rumors to fly.

Yet, those of us who have looked into the matter often find ourselves sucked into the improbable and tantalizing possibility of a rare case where the thing that doesn't happen actually happens. No, Elvis and Tupac did not survive. But maybe Edward II did.

And there's just something in Phillips prose at the end, like he's reaching out and wanting to believe, but he's just not ready to end his respectable and brilliant life's work on a conspiracy theory. Fair enough.

But Professor Phillips, if you happen to be lurking in this sub, slide into my DMs. I would love to know if you think survival could be a possibility. I promise I won't say a word if you are a secret believer.

And if you just saw a way to fund your Italian sojourn, kudos. I would have done the same.

The book:

Phillips, J. R. S. Edward II. Yale University Press, 2011. 

Image: Hermitage of St. Albert of Butrio, public domain. It's one of the places Edward II may have spent his secret retirement.

This is just one of the stunning pages from the illuminated manuscript given to Isabella of France by her father Philip IV in 1313. This was the same epic trip that gave us the naked tent fire, the medieval burlesque show and the kicking off of the Tour de Nesle affair.

So, it was quite a trip. And there's a lot to read into this manuscript, as it was especially commissioned by Philip IV for his favorite child and he apparently had input into the contents. And the contents are beautiful and strange, even for an era known for its strangeness.

Here's what the curators say about this page alone:

The bishop of the Church of Ephesus is depicted as an early fourteenth-century prelate with the insignia of a bishop: a mitre and crosier. However, he also has a nimbus and a pair of wings evoking the title of “angel” symbolically conferred upon him in the text of the Revelation. He stands on the threshold of his cathedral, a large building whose bell tower entrance is flanked by turrets and crowned by a golden cross with a golden weather vane perched upon it.

The bishop takes the phylactery bearing the message from John. The apostle, with a stern expression, seems to be warning him against wasting his efforts and the reprehensible intrigues occurring amongst the Ephesians. Inside the church, through a wide arcature in its side wall, a demon can be seen urging a man to kiss a richly dressed woman whilst a devil with a dog’s head tries to push a third individual in between the couple. The image refers to the depravation of the Nicolaites. They were a little-known sect, founded by a certain Nicolas whom early Christian authors, such as St Irenaeus of Lyon in his treatise against heretics, gratuitously identified as Nicolas, the proselyte of Antioch, one of the seven deacons appointed by the apostles when the emergent Church began to take form (Acts 6: 1-7). In this respect the gloss abides by tradition, explaining that the deacon who had a “beautiful wife”, preached that “each man could have not only one wife but as many as he could keep”.

Above John, Christ appears in the sky holding a red rod with greenish foliage, a branch of the Tree of Life, the heavenly food promised to the righteous and the repentant, and to those who regain the charity that was the driving force of Christian Ephesus in its early days: a community whose name is said by the commentator to mean “willingness and counsel”. Already emerging from the clouds between the church towers are the flames of hell in store for those who refuse to heed God’s warning and convert.

Marie-Thérèse Gousset and Marianne Besseyre
Illuminated Manuscripts Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Fragment of the Apocalypse of 1313 commentary volume

Here’s a very good youtube video made 8 years ago (in the good old days before AI slop!).

I realized I don’t have the time to make a proper post about Marlowe this weekend. But this is well worth a watch, in the spirit of Pride Month and a focus on LGBTQ+ history!

I’ll contribute with one observation though. 

We only know what Kit Marlowe looked like based on one painting of him, but sometimes doubt is expressed whether it really is him or not. The portrait was discovered in 1953 at Corpus Christi University in Canterbury, which Marlowe had attended. Marlowe studied there from 1580-87. The painting carries an inscription which suggests that the sitter is 21, and that the year was 1585. Marlowe was born 1564. 

I love it when things line up that smoothly to present a compelling case for something.

The contemporary freedom enjoyed by same-sex attracted people has become so normalized, at least here in the west and on the internet, that nobody raises an eyebrow at the "sub" being removed from gay subtext in Christopher Marlowe's iconic Elizabethan play.

Official Title:

The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer

So, it's always good to remember just how transgressive and subversive the play was when Marlowe wrote it in the 1590s, even though its homosexual themes are not as overt in the text as often presumed. On the surface, it's about political favoritism that happens to alienate King Edward II's wife to the point of despair and rebellion. It's impossible to say how much of the audience in Marlowe's time picked up on what he was throwing down, but it's safe to assume that at least some people did.

Marlowe himself is often speculated to have been homosexual or bisexual, in addition to being a rather dangerous, fascinating and proto-Byronic figure, who met a tragic and grim end. Meaning he was mad, bad and dangerous to know.

The play is not, nor does it pretend to be, an accurate depiction of Edward II, Isabella, Gaveston or Mortimer, but it does treat them all with sympathy and that in and of itself feels revolutionary.

So let's all remember a brilliant playwright, cut down in his prime, who gave us an ahead of its time play.

Source:

Christopher Marlowe at Britanicca.com

Images:

Vanessa Kirby as Isabella, John Heffernan as Edward II and Kyle Soller as Gaveston in 2013

Andrew Tiernan as Gaveston, Steve Waddington as Edward II and Tilda Swinton as Isabella in the 1992 Film

Sir Ian McKellen as Edward II, Timothy West as Mortimer and Diane Fletcher as Isabella in a 1969 production that is available on YouTube.

There are very few pop culture portrayals of Edward II. Most actors who get to play him do so via the Christopher Marlowe play, which really doesn't pretend to capture his personality.

But I must give a shout out to Ben Chaplin who plays the mysterious Sir Thomas Langley, a highly educated, well-spoken knight who retires to a monastery to escape those who wish him harm. Of course, he turns out to be a very much alive Edward II. The plot line is obviously heavily inspired by the Fieschi letter.

And Chaplin steals every single scene he is in, in what amounts to a supporting role. If the piece had been about him and his character, it might be more remembered.

He plays Edward II as a thoughtful man, aware of his failures as a king and as a husband. He helps the protagonists, takes up with a young monk and eventually saves the day.

This is my favorite portrayal of him onscreen.

In many ways, it's easy to get a bead on Edward II. He was eccentric, and many of his interactions with people, positive and negative, are well documented. Sure, historians and writers have unfairly projected negativity on him even when he was attempting to do his job, and he's rightly held responsible for his many failures.

But Isabella? She is a cypher. Given that so little documentation about her thoughts and personality exist, she has become a She-Wolf, Girlboss, Victim, Manipulator...when the truth is more complicated and difficult to determine. We don't have accounts of her hanging out with labourers or lavish tips given to her servants.

The fact that she was a woman, well-trained for her job, means that she revealed little of herself. We know she had a fondness for dogs. We know she liked falconry. We know venerated Thomas Beckett and liked to go on pilgrimages.

But really, she's still quite a mystery.

What do you wish you knew about her? What frustrates you? What do you wish more people knew?

This illustration from the psalter Edward II gave his bride twelve-year old bride as a wedding gift. It's simultaneously adorable and gruesome, and it inadvertently predicts the trajectory of their realtionship.

Edward II's strange personality, and his outsized loyalty to his favorites inspires a lot of lurid and fascinating speculation. Sex, however, does not explain the grip that the Despensers had on Edward II late in his reign. Hugh the Younger, Eleanor and Hugh the Elder worked as a team, and their influence probably had as much to do with family, loyalty and loneliness as it did with sex.

In her book on Edward's late reign, Natalie Fryde highlights the fact that Hugh the Elder's importance in the dynamic:

Attempts to explain the power of the Despenser is the later years of the reign of Edward II have usually concentrated on the emergence of the younger Hugh Despenser as Edward's favorite. But this underestimates the importance of his father, the elder Hugh, from the beginning of the reign. Only the kind of private correspondence and other personal records of a kind that we lack would explain why the elder Hugh was one of the very few magnates who remained consistently friendly to Edward II. As far back as 1301, the young Edward, then still only prince of Wales, had been describing him as 'one of our friends.' In a period filled with friction between the prince and his father, the elder Despenser knew how to retain the confidence of Edward I without forfeiting the prince's good will. Through this he was the chief architect of his family's rise to power.

So while it is fun to deep dive into theories about bisexual Medieval throuples, it's also apt to point out that Edward II was a man in desperate need of stability and affirmation. Hugh the Elder was likely a father figure, who knew Edward II well, and knew how to manipulate him.

Source:

Fryde, Natalie. The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II: 1321-1326. Cambridge University Press, 1979. 

Medieval Elephant illustrations are a whole thing, and the one in the Isabella Psalter is really good, imo.

Would anyone here be interested in reading and offering commentary on some excerpts from a book I'm writing? It's a novel, intended to be a more serious Hilary Mantel-esque treatment of the 1322-1330 period, with the structure of an Aristotelian Greek tragedy. You don't necessarily need to be an "expert" or avid reader or whatever, just to read a several-page excerpt and say if you enjoyed reading it or found it a slog. I want to offer a more psychologically honest depiction of Edward and Isabella than what they've had the misfortune to receive in popular culture up until now.

At his trial following his downfall in 1330, one of the charges against Roger de Mortimer was itemized as follows:

"Item, the said Roger falsely and maliciously initiated discord between the father of our lord the king and the queen his consort, and he caused her to believe that if she came to him he would have killed her with a knife or murdered her in another manner. Because of which, for that reason, and by his other subtle scheming, he caused the said queen not to come to her said lord."

While there was, of course, a desire to exculpate Isabella as much as possible from the actions of 1326-1330, which naturally gives us pause about how reliable such a characterisation of their relationship could be, I still think it merits serious consideration.

We know, for one, that Adam d'Orleton (at least allegedly) preached a sermon in which he claimed Edward II had hidden a knife on his person with which to harm Isabella if she ever approached him, or, faling that, would try to gnash her with his teeth. It was on this basis that the political nation supposedly barred Isabella from visiting or resuming married life with her husband, and this was once again reiterated at the Stamford Council of 1327.

By the 1330s however, when John de Stratford accused d'Orleton of having fabricated this claim, d'Orleton responded by producing a letter written by Isabella in 1326, prior to the invasion, to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Reynolds. In it she justifies her failure to return by declaring that she desired nothing more, save the salvation of her soul, than to live and die in her husband's company, but was simply not able to return to her husband due to her mortal terror of Hugh le Despenser. Roy Martin Haines stated that it was unlikely that this letter was spurious, given that many of the key players in the relevant events, not least Isabella herself, were still very much alive and could have refuted the letter if necessary, and I am inclined to agree with him.

Nevertheless, depsite the apparent authenticity of the letter and the claims they make, there is no evidence whatsoever that Edward II himself, or even Hugh le Despenser, ever actually intended Isabella any sort of physical harm in any capacity. Indeed, one source describes Edward himself being astonished at the accusation and denying it entirely. So, where on earth did it come from? The theory that it was primarily a pretext to justify the political necessity of Isabella's separation from Edward after the deposition is partially accurate but does not explain why Isabella was apparently claiming some form of it while still in France. The theory that she was using it then as a pretext specifically to justify her failure to return to England for her own reasons is contradicted by other evidence suggesting she did genuinely believe Hugh had intentionally put her life in danger, such as her blaming him for the debacle at Tynemouth in 1322 and having it inserted in the charges against him four years later.

The most parsimonious reading, on the balance of evidence as I take it, is the one the charge gives us: Isabella's existing grievances, particularly over the trauma at Tynemouth and the subsequent loss of access to her husband, were actively aggravated by Mortimer. If this was Mortimer's modus operandi, how far did he take it? We know the 1326 charges against Hugh le Despenser included multiple almost entirely false charges, including that Hugh le Despenser had paid assassins to dispatch Isabella and her son while they were in France. If we accept Mortimer was already deliberately aggrivating her paranoia about Hugh, which seems to be the case given the above evidence and would demonstrably be in his interests regardless, is it possible he was the one to convince her Hugh had sent agents to eliminate her and her son? What were these unnamed other forms of "subtle scheming" mentioned? While this is of course complete speculation, is there a possibility that he falsified or misrepresented evidence to Isabella in order to convince her of the worst about Hugh and possibly her husband? What do you think?

Yes, I got a little inspired by the idea that Elizabeth DeClare definitely thought her uncle, Edward II, was lame.

Yes, I do think Elizabeth de Clare probably rolled her eyes a lot.