This Sceptred Isle: Trollheart's History of England

[Trollheart]

Invasion! III - Like Father, Like Son

By 1314 Robert the Bruce had achieved what no previous Scottish king in recent memory had, by uniting - or forcing to bend the knee - all of Scotland under his rule. In a triumphant echo of the victory - only victory really - of William Wallace some years earlier, he besieged Stirling Castle. This fortress was important not only for tradition, having been the site of the first and really only major defeat of the English army, but strategically too, as it controlled access to Scotland from over the border. Outnumbered, the garrison there were told that if they were not relieved by midsummer they must surrender. This was of course a direct provocation to the new king, son of Edward I, and accordingly Edward II began mustering troops for yet another invasion, the largest Scotland had ever seen.

On the face of it, Bruce was facing disaster. Although a weaker king than his father, Edward had learned the hard lesson that the Scottish leaders, from Moray and Wallace to Bruce himself, had, which was that the land determined the fighting strategy. As King Henry V had shown the French at Agincourt, not much point having heavily armoured mounted men trying to charge across boggy, marshy ground. So Edward knew that the Scots would make use of the bogs in the north around Stirling, and briefed his men accordingly. The army heading north, although smaller than the king would have liked (many promised infantry had not turned up, no reason given) was still about twice as large as the combined forces of Robert the Bruce.

Sins of the Father: The Battle of Bannockburn (1314)

The two armies clashed at a point which has been named Bannockburn, but may be somewhere else (the trouble with these medieval battles, apparently, is separating the truth from the propaganda and determining the facts, which is not always possible) and Robert the Bruce faced off in single combat with Henry de Bruhan, nephew of one of the two commanders of the force, the Earl of Hereford. As they rushed at each other on horseback, Bruce swung out his axe and split the head of his enemy. Shocked at this unexpected and high-value loss, the English scattered when the Scots attacked.

The second English force was led by Henry de Beaumont (remember him?) and the 1st Baron of Clifford, and was attacked by the Earl of Moray, Thomas Randolph. No doubt wishing to avenge himself on Bruce for his having lost his ancestral lands in Buchan, de Beaumont tried to lure Moray in, but a hot-headed youngster in his ranks, spurred to action, did a Leroy Jenkins and charged into the thick of the Scots, killing his horse on their pikes and getting himself captured, while the rest of the army was routed by Moray.

And so ended day one of the battle.

During the night the English had crossed over the Bannockburn, but were betrayed by a Scottish knight who had been fighting on the English side. He encouraged Bruce to attack, that English morale was low. "If it's tha' low," Bruce reportedly did not say, "it will wait till the mornin'. Ah'm fer bed." But as true as his word, the next morning the king led his forces against the English, who were already, indeed, very depressed, so much so that they were fighting among each other, the Earl of Hereford accusing the Earl of Gloucester of cowardice for his suggestion the battle might be postponed. "I'll show you who's a coward!" snorted the Earl (of Gloucester) and so he did, riding right into the thick of the Scots. Unfortunately, his men seemed to agree with Shakespeare about the better part of valour and stayed behind, and the Earl was surrounded and killed.

Morale wasn't going to improve much after that.

Bruce's men advanced with their schilltrons, Edward's archers were asked if they would mind awfully if they could stop shooting, as their arrows were killing their own men. They soon had worse things to worry about, as five hundred Scottish cavalry descended upon them, and as the English were pushed back to the Bannockburn, Aymer de Valence (yes him again) and another knight called D'Argentan (sounds suspiciously like D'Artagnan doesn't he?) led the king to safety. Our man D'Argentan however decided death was better than dishonour and once the king was safe he headed back to the battle, where he quickly found out he was wrong. De Valence, by contrast, lived to a ripe old age, finally dropping dead in France ten years later.

Once the army saw their king running, the retreat became a rout and as they went on their way they were even attacked by ordinary folk, who no doubt sensed victory in the air for their king. Estimates of Edward's losses vary, but it's agreed very few of his troops made it home, and Bruce's army sustained extremely low losses. It was, without question, the greatest victory Scotland had ever managed over the hated English, and it established Robert the Bruce forever as a legend and a hero in Scotland. Nobody, not even the English king, could now doubt or bring into question or challenge his right to rule Scotland.

But for this tough Scottish king, one kingdom would not be enough.

Invasion! IV - You'll Never Beat the Irish

So much for solidarity among Celts, then. So much for that scene in Braveheart where the Irish soldiers brought to Scotland with Edward I refuse to fight for the English king and instead join up with William Wallace! Hollywood hokum, eh?

Well, let's not be too hasty.

As I said way back at the beginning of this section, when we diverged from the history of England into that of Scotland, the two have been strongly linked for centuries, and each feels a kinship to the other. I'm sure there was the usual enmity between Scots and Irish that you get with all red-blooded warrior races, but other than those who might have fought on the side of other countries - even England - against Ireland, I don't see evidence for any dislike between the two, or any real reason to make war upon, or try to conquer one another. The Irish didn't covet Scotland (or anywhere; happy to stay at home, we were, once we were left alone) nor did the Scottish yearn to possess Ireland.

So why did Robert the Bruce decide to invade our island?

For the answer, or one or two possible ones, it's necessary to remember that we're talking about an Ireland occupied by the English here, basically an outpost of the kingdom of England. Robert would have considered invading Ireland a way of making himself a further thorn in the side of Edward II and maybe drawing him out. He would also have seen it as a way of cutting off part of the king's powerbase, by denying him Ireland as a staging point, training ground or supply point for his troops. Cutting off the revenue stream from Ireland for King Edward too, through taxation of the Irish, would help to weaken the English cause. Forcing Edward to fight him on two fronts would not be something the English king would want, and would strengthen Robert's hand.

Added to this was the vision of a grand Gaelic alliance, possibly to even include the Welsh, fellow Celts who had no love for the English, with the King of Tyrone, Domnall mac Brian Ó Néill  asking Robert for aid against the Normans plaguing his kingdom, and Robert agreeing on the condition that Ó Néill recognise him as King of Ireland.

Though ordered by Robert, it was in fact his brother Edward (oh god damn these unoriginal parents and their naming their sons after themselves!) who led the invasion on his behalf. He landed in Larne (Northern Ireland/Ulster) in May 1315 and gave battle with the Earl of Ulster, but under Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, they were victorious and took the town of Carrickfergus. In June  Ó Néill and ten other Irish lords met Edward and pronounced him King of Ireland, swearing their loyalty to him. Though two of them quickly reneged, trying to ambush him at the Moiry Pass, the gateway to the south, but they were both defeated and Edward marched on to take Dundalk.

Sadly County Louth bore witness to a massacre, as it would again in three centuries when Cromwell would annihilate the town of Drogheda. Here, Edward's men indiscriminately killed everyone in Dundalk, whether they were Irish or English. Although made aware of the seriousness of the situation as Bruce marched further south, taking all in his path and defeating English lord after English lord, Edward II dithered and really did nothing, probably not too bothered about Ireland when he had other things to occupy his attention. Burning, pillaging and killing as they went, Bruce's army tore through Ireland, but when they looked to Rome for support the Pope was not interested - he was staying well out of it!

[Trollheart]

Fail of the Century - The Great Famine (1315 - 1317)

It really must have sucked living in the first half of the fourteenth century in Europe. Not just because of the conditions, the poverty and the really poor wifi signal, but from halfway through the second decade up to more than halfway through the century famine and plague ravaged the land. As we will see later, the horror of the Black Death swept through Europe like, well, a plague from about 1347 to nearly 1352, wiping out over 200 million people, and this on the back of an already weakened Europe which had succumbed to a series of famines that raged from 1315 onwards. It's amazing anyone survived.

Not that famines were new or unknown. France suffered from three separate ones before "the big one", and a staggering six after it, some of them occurring during, and after, the time of the Black Death, while in England - yes, famine in England! - there were three. Life expectancy in Europe had dropped by 1345 to a mere seventeen years (though admittedly that was at the height of the Plague) from a relative high in 1276 of thirty-five. A spate of unseasonably cold and wet weather, coupled with poor harvests and climbing food prices, to say nothing of an explosion in population and the poor being confined to working on land that was hardly arable, all the best land kept for the nobility, pushed Europe along a steadily-descending spiral into almost constant and perpetual hunger. Nobody had enough to eat, and those who did did not care about those who had nothing. No social welfare, no land reclamation projects, no mechanical assistance to farming, and no mercy from the vagaries of fate.

It all led, in 1315, to what became known as The Great Famine, which was to last for two years and cover all of Europe. Heavy rain in the spring and summer of that year led to bad or in some cases no harvests, no fodder for livestock, and, market forces doing what market forces do, the scarcity of food pushed the price of any that was available beyond the reach of the ordinary worker. In fact, in France, the price of a simple loaf rose so steeply (increasing by, wait for it, three hundred and twenty percent!) that bread could not be purchased, in a stark future echo of events that would lead to revolution there four hundred and fifty years later. England didn't fare any better, with reports from Bristol in 1315 speaking with horror of people being so hungry they ate their children, and new arrivals in the local gaol being fallen upon and devoured by the starving prisoners already there. Don't believe me? Don't blame you. But here.

(From the Bristol Annal: Bristol Archives)
there was: 'a great Famine of Dearth with such mortality that the living coud scarce suffice to Bury the dead, horse flesh and Dogs flesh was accounted good meat, and some eat their own Children. The Thieves that were in Prison did pluck and tear in pieces, such as were newly put into Prison and devoured them half alive.

See? Even Edward II found it hard to find bread, and you know there's a problem when the royal bakery is empty! The year dragged wearily by, but its successor brought no relief, as the rain continued to fall, harvests continued to fail, and some families, unable to sustain their own children, turned them loose to fend for themselves. The horrid word was whispered throughout the continent, though who can say if cannibalism was actually practiced? Then again, who can say it wasn't? If you're hungry and desperate enough...

And on it persisted, with 1317 as wet as the two previous years, though finally in the summer the rain stopped, but by then most of the damage had been done. It would take another eight years before things would begin to stabilise, and another ten after that the rats would arrive. Ironically, in some ways the famine could be seen as a necessary tool that reduced the overpopulation of Europe and allowed the meagre food supply eventually to stretch further, having to feed fewer people. An anonymous poem penned in 1321 probably said it best:

When God saw that the world was so over proud,
He sent a dearth on earth, and made it full hard.
A bushel of wheat was at four shillings or more,
Of which men might have had a quarter before...
And then they turned pale who had laughed so loud,
And they became all docile who before were so proud.
A man's heart might bleed for to hear the cry
Of poor men who called out, "Alas! For hunger I die ...!"

Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II, Anon.

The arrival of the Great Famine began to turn the tide against Edward, as his troops began to succumb to the disease and food ran out, and his own general impatience for battle would lead to his and his brother's defeat and death in the Battle of Faughart. Sadly there is no real account of what should have been one of the most important battles of Bruce's career and of the Scottish Wars of Independence, but it seems that Edward took on a much larger force than he could cope with - reckoned around 20,000 - without waiting for reinforcements to arrive from Scotland, and perhaps like the Grand Old Duke of York in the song, he marched them up to the top of the hill at Faughart but did not get a chance to march them down again, as he was slain with most of his men by the English. In possibly an ironic twist, the battle took place close to the town which had been the site of one of the greatest massacres by the Scots, Dundalk.

Despite the defeat of his armies and the death of his brother, Robert the Bruce did manage one victory - two if you include outliving not only Edward I but his son too - in having the Pope formally recognise the independence of Scotland (even if England did no such thing) in 1324 and affirming Robert as King of Scots. Edward II died in 1327 and was replaced by his son Edward III. Robert continued invading and harrying England, and in 1328 the two kings met for the battle which would decide the first War of Scottish Independence.

The Battle of Stanhope Park

The power behind the throne: waiting in the shadows

Edward II's marriage was not good. His wife, Isabella, known as the She-Wolf of France, had had enough of the king and taken a lover, the exiled Roger Mortimer, who had risen against him. While on a diplomatic mission to her native France it is believed Isabella hooked up with Mortimer and the two began to plot the downfall of her husband. Returning to England with a small army, and threatening to disinherit his son Edward III, then only thirteen, Isabella and Mortimer forced Edward II to abdicate, later, according to some accounts, having him murdered, and then taking the crown for themselves, nominally naming the young prince as the new king.

In June 1327 a large Scottish force led by Thomas Earl of Moray, Black Douglas and the Earl of Mar raided across the border into England, and Mortimer along with the young prince raised a large army to meet them. Typical disagreements arose within the English ranks, especially with some mercenaries from the country of Hainault (modern France/Belgium border) which depleted the English ranks as they fought among each other. Having sorted out their differences, Mortimer moved to intercept the Scots.

Except, he didn't.

The Scottish army would not be pinned down; like ravaging ghosts they plundered and burned and pillaged the countryside, their passage marked by towering plumes of smoke that rose into the summer sky, but they never engaged the English force and wherever Mortimer went, there the Scots were not. As a result of this somewhat retreading of William Wallace's original guerilla war supplies began to run low in the English camp and the mood soured. Finally an English scout was captured by the Scots, and sent back with a message to Mortimer that they were ready to do battle. After all the uncrowned king of England had done to try to take his enemy by surprise and catch them at a disadvantage, it was now the Scots who were dictating the terms of the battle, and they met him as directed on the banks of the Wear river, near Stanhope Park.

Apparently all of what follows is true!

The Scots had occupied the high ground, and therefore had the advantage over their enemy. The English sent longbowmen up the river to try to ford it and attack Bruce's men but they were scattered by cavalry. The English next asked the Scots if they didn't agree that it really wasn't cricket, you know, their having the advantage of the higher ground, and wouldn't they be terrific chaps and just come on down onto the plains where everyone would be equal, and the armies could battle it out, man to man? Unsurprisingly, the Scots yelled back "Nae thanks son, we're braw here lad!" And stayed where they were.

Unbelievable.

I can imagine the Tommie at the Somme shouting over to the Germans in their machine-gun nests: "Now look chaps, this really isn't fair is it? Why not climb out of those trenches and we'll duke it out here in No-Man's Land to see who deserves to be the masters of Europe?" Or Osama being told he was being a really bad sport, hiding up there in the mountains where the Americans couldn't catch him, and would he not just do the decent thing and come out and take what was coming to him like a man? Oh, the hilarity of these chivalrous English!

Anyway, unprepared to maintain the traditional stiff upper lip and charge into a hopeless cause in a blaze of very brief glory, the English remained where they were, the Scots remained where they were, and nobody attacked anyone for three days. Bor-ing! I thought they told me when I joined up that it would be non-stop fighting, burning, attacking, cheering, with maybe the odd spot of raping thrown in! Anyone want a game of cards? What do you mean, you didn't bring cards? Now I'm really depressed! When are we going to see some action?

Well, kind of never, lad. The king did get something of a surprise - nearly died of terror really (well he was only a teenager, and barely that) when the Scots slipped down in the night and - wait for it! - cut the guy ropes of his tent, collapsing it, then sodded off back up the mountain! While the English then slept in full body armour, expecting an attack, the Scots buggered off back across the border, negotiating bogs the English had thought impassable, and when they woke up in the morning the English army was alone. D'oh! The discomfort of tossing and turning in armour all night, for nothing! I need to scratch so bad!

The strangest battle I ever read of, I must say. You can't say not a shot was fired or that nobody died (consider the luckless archers of Edward III) but in general there was a three-day do-nothing, where the Scots grinned down at the English and the English glared up at the Scots, and then the Scots went home. And yet, this battle - or, to be fair, the combined effect of the Bruce rampaging throughout northern England - was the final nail in the coffin of Edward's resistance to the idea of Scottish independence. All but bankrupted by the war and the constant invasions, hardly able to pay even the mercenaries mentioned above, and humiliated and smarting from his treatment, he, or rather, Mortimer and Isabella, had no option but to accept King Robert's terms and the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton was ratified in 1328, making Scotland an independent and sovereign kingdom and Robert its rightful king. This drew to a close 32 years of fighting, invasion, counter-invasion and pillage which constituted the First Scottish War of Independence, and a year later King Robert died, leaving Scotland in the hands of his young son, David.

But Edward had never agreed with the terms of the treaty (he had been excluded from the negotiations and from the signing by Mortimer and Isabella) and by the time he had grown to his majority and properly established his royal power he had Mortimer arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London and later executed without trial, being hanged at Tyburn.

Two years later, the Second War of Scottish Independence began. This would last another quarter of a century.

[Trollheart]

The Second War of Scottish Independence (1332 - 1357)

Old Grievances: Bailol II

Originally chosen by Edward I as King of the Scots, John Bailiol had been forced to abdicate and now his son wanted revenge. He pressed Edward III, newly established as the actual power in England following the arrest of Mortimer, to restore to him his ancestral lands. Edward duly sent a request to the new king of Scotland, David II, the late Robert the Bruce's son, but no reply came, so Edward said to Edward (yeah they were both Edwards - bloody English. And Scots!) "get in there and fill yer boots, son," and Bailiol was not slow to accept the offer, marching into Scotland in 1332 where he met the forces of Donald, Earl of Mar. Well, when I say met...

See, our man Edward Balioil had gone to Scotland with a pretty piddling small army - about 1,500 - in the mistaken belief that he would be hailed as a saviour by the Scots and they would all flock to his banner. This failed to happen, and he even miscalculated by somehow offering Mar the chance to join him. The Earl, with about ten times as many men as the would-be usurper (or perhaps that should be re-usurper, since his dad was king originally?) descended on them as they tried to get off their boats, fighting them, as a famous statesman would note six hundred years later, on the beaches. Nevertheless, despite the negligent size of their force, Bailiol fought Mar off, and the Scots legged it to Perth. Perth in Scotland that is, not Perth in Australia.

Also with Bailiol was the heir of the deposed Earl of Buchan, Henry Beaumont. Having helped themselves to weapons from a burgled Scottish armoury, they too proceeded to Perth where they faced off against the much larger Scottish force. Bad enough that it was - by some estimates - more than thirty times their size (though more likely ten, still a huge disparity), but that was only Mar's lot. The lads commanded by the Earl of March (note that "ch" - not the same guy!) were already on their way, no doubt had they mobile phones they would have been texting Mar to "save sum 4 us!" So Bailiol and Beaumont knew they were in a pretty hopeless cause. The hoped-for Scottish support had not materialised, and here they were, standing against an army far larger than they had expected.

The Scots were so confident that they began to dance and get drunk, even before battle had been joined, but the English snuck into their camp that night and did for them. Sadly for Bailiol and his men, it was just a minor camp they had attacked, and when they saw in the morning that the main force of Mar's army was still ready to engage them, they were, not to put too fine a point on it, more than a little upset. However it was, as it seems to have been down through history more often than not, disagreements among their commanders which undone the Scots.

Robert Bruce - another one; this one a bastard son of the dead king - saw the English crossing the river and immediately accused Mar of being in league with them. He had no doubt been aware of the overtures Bailiol had made to the earl with a view to joining him, and although Mar had declined the English commander's kind invitation, Bruce was up in arms about it. Mar, for his part, told Bruce that far from being a traitor, he would prove how loyal he was by being the first to strike a blow against the enemy. Two can play at that game, thought Bruce, and, not to be outdone, charged his own schilltron at the English.

It was something of a mistake.

You see, what somebody should have told the young bastard is that if you ride too fast for everyone else to keep up with you, well, everyone can't keep up with you. Consequently, his rather rash charge led to him leaving a  lot of his men behind in the Scottish dust, which levelled the playing field a little between him and the English. However the Scots seem to have scorned wearing helmets, or at least visors, which was not a good idea when you're facing a bunch of archers! Exposing their flank to the English as they charged, Bruce's men, blinded by the arrows, began to veer closer together. Mar, of course, was not so hasty.

Um.

Well actually he did the same thing, coming up behind Bruce's men and actually crashing into them in his haste. The English must have been rolling on the floor laughing, seven hundred years before the internet. The Scots, who had vastly outnumbered them at the outset, were doing their work for them! This extract from Wiki explains it all: The struggle continued from a little past dawn until after noon. In the centre of the Scottish mass the result was literally suffocating; men were pressed too tightly together to be able to breathe and any who lost their footing were trampled to death. Contemporary accounts speak of more than a thousand Scots being smothered without coming into contact with the English. One claimed that "more were slain by the Scots themselves than by the English. For ... every one fallen there fell a second, and then a third fell, and those who were behind pressing forward and hastening to the fight, the whole army became a heap of the slain."

But an Englishman does not stand idly by and watch the enemy destroy himself, so in they waded, adding to the confusion, and it's said they had to climb over heaps of dead Scots to get at the living ones. By evening it was all over. Bruce and Mar had both fallen, and the hugely superior army had been routed and had fled, leaving Bailiol and Beaumont to take Perth and fortify it as their base. Never in the field of human conflict had so few triumphed over so many with such hilarious results, maybe.

Despite having far fewer men, the English are reported to have lost less than a hundred while the number of deaths on the Scottish side vary in different accounts from two or three thousand to fifteen, though it can probably be accepted that that last one is an exaggeration. Nonetheless, the only surviving high-ranking Scot was the Earl of Fife, who was captured and changed his tune (sorry), going over to the English side. Guess he realised which side his haggis was buttered on. Sorry again.

Late for battle, the Earl of March turned up a week later, but by then the city of Perth was under Bailiol's control and impregnable. Edward Bailiol was crowned King of Scotland on September 24 1332, but he would not have time to get comfortable on the throne, deposed by David II six months later. For the next four years he could arguably be called the yo-yo king, as he was on and off the throne more times than a man with chronic diarrhea. Edward III would finally take a personal hand in trying to subdue Scotland, and the second war for the country's freedom would go on for another twenty-five years.

To some degree, what Bailiol had hoped for did come to pass, though kind of in retrospect, as with the defeat and death of Bruce and the Earl of Mar, many Scottish nobles did in fact swear their loyalty to him, as the new crowned king. Among these were Archibold Douglas, half-brother to the famous Black Douglas who had kept the high ground at Stanhope Park against Mortimer, and who was now Guardian of Scotland. Feeling he could let his guard down, now that this powerful former enemy was on his side, and perhaps rather foolishly, the new king dismissed most of his men, sent letters to Edward III proclaiming his subservience to him and Scotland's to England (makes you wonder why they wanted an independent country in the first place if all they were going to do was stick their tongues down the back of Edward's breeches, but however), promising to support him in his future wars.

Soon after, Douglas attacked. In concert with the Earl of Moray, Simon Fraser and, um, Robert II - who was King David's nephew and next in line to the throne they took him so completely by surprise that the greater part of his men were wiped out and, in another slice of what I'm going to be calling hilarious history, Edward had to escape through a hole in the wall and ride to Carlisle buck naked! His brother Henry was killed, and so ended the Bailiol line of succession in Scotland, not that that would stop Edward making frequent visits to try on the crown a few times more.

Invasion! V - The Return of the return of the kings: Edward, Edward and the Siege of Berwick

Long seen as the gateway to and from Scotland, Berwick had undergone major fortifications since it had been sacked in 1296, and was now in good shape to withstand a long siege, which was just as well, as that's exactly what happened. Crossing over the border with Bailiol and other disgruntled Scottish nobles, Edward marched to cut Berwick off by land, as his navy had already done by sea. With him he brought people to build siege engines, and operated a scorched-earth policy to ensure that even if the siege were broken temporarily, no food would be available to the defenders. In his army was a man who had defended Berwick against the English, been captured and agreed to work for them; his knowledge of the castle and the town proved invaluable.

Catapults and trebuchets were used to great effect, and historians believe that Berwick had the dubious honour of being the first British town to be shelled by cannon fire. Hilarious history rears its humorous head again, as we learn that the defenders, hoping to burn the ships in the harbour blockading them, set alight driftwood soaked in tar, but instead managed to burn down most of the town! Oops!

The siege began at the start of May, by June the defenders had requested a temporary truce which, under perhaps the odd rules of chivalry, was granted, on the condition that Berwick had one month in which to be relieved, and if not they agreed to surrender. I suppose everyone needed a well-earned break. Meanwhile Douglas tried diversionary tactics, striking into England and taking the town of Tweedmouth, declaring to Edward III that if he did not withdraw his forces from Berwick he, Douglas, would devastate England. "Oh yeah?" the king probably didn't reply, though he literally could have, "You and what army?" To which of course Douglas would have said "This one!"

But enough humour; war is a serious thing, and this siege was about to get even more serious.

In order to ensure the compliance of the Scots in the truce Edward had taken twelve hostages, including Thomas Seton, son of Sir Alexander, Governor of Berwick. When the Scots claimed they did not have to surrender, even though the named date had now passed, as Douglas was relieving them (though not exactly charging at Edward's forces, it must be said) the king snapped back that no, that wasn't how it was at all. Relief had to come from Scotland, from that side of the border, and Douglas had marched from England, so no deal. To reinforce his point, he had a gallows set up outside the gates of the town and hanged Thomas, promising that he would hang two more hostages every day until Berwick surrendered.

New and more specific terms for a potential surrender - with attendant promises of safe conduct for the defenders - were hammered out between the two parties, the defence of the town and the governorship having now passed to Sir William Keith. This time, however, only a four-day window was allowed.

I find it odd, I must say, when I read that the Scottish army under Douglas outnumbered the English by two-to-one that he didn't attack them directly. Instead, he marched to Bamburgh, where the queen was staying, and laid siege to it, hoping to goad Edward into abandoning his position to save his damsel in distress. Not going to happen though. "She's a big girl, and can take care of herself," thought the king, and stayed where he was. Unable to take the town by force, Douglas realised he could no longer avoid battle (why was he trying to?) and headed off to meet Edward's forces.

[Trollheart]

The Battle of Halidon Hill

One thing Scots did not apparently like was not being able to choose the battleground; it seems in most of the battles in which they were defeated the enemy had either forced or tricked them there, or had the advantage when they arrived. There was also the time issue. Whereas before, if conditions were not favourable the Scottish could often postpone or delay battle (witness the shouting and drinking at Stanhope Park) but here there was the town of Berwick to consider. Keith's new treaty with the king specified that the town would be surrendered if relief did not arrive by July 19, and this was... July 19. So basically D-Day. No delaying, no talking or negotiating, no trickery or retreating or regrouping. It was put up or shut up.

Coming down one slope, across marshy ground and then climbing up Halidon Hill, Douglas's forces were again beset by those pesky arrows, and blindness and panic was the order of the day. Apparently they had still to learn about helmets or visors. All that awaited those who did not fall down or off the mountain was a cohort of spear wielders, and the Scots were broken and defeated quickly, Douglas falling on the field. All survivors were executed on the orders of Edward III, including those taken prisoner. The king was no longer a boy, and he wasn't fucking around with these rebels!

Believing his work done here, Edward headed back to London while Bailiol was crowned for the second time, though that wouldn't last long. Granting back all the lands Bruce had taken from the disinherited lords, he opened new wounds and ensured that conflict against his rule would rage across Scotland for years.

With friends like these... Wolves in the throne room: Edward Bailiol is deposed for the second time

It would seem that, in common with much of humanity, when there was no common enemy to fight the Scots fell to bickering and quarrelling among themselves, and it wasn't long before the new/restored King Edward was facing opposing factions within his own power structure. Much of this centred on three nobles, former allies of his - Richard Talbot, husband to one of the deposed Comyns, Henry de Beaumont, heir to the territory of Buchan,  and the unfortunately-named David III Strathbogie, another of the Comyn line. Sounds like a supersonic jet fighter with a bad cold. Anyhow, these three took exception to a decision their king made vis a vis some land that rightfully belonged to the nieces of Alexander de Mowbray, and they decided to do something about it.

That something was rarely try to talk to the king or send a strongly-worded letter, of course, and so these three went over to the side of David II. It didn't do them much good, as Bailiol defeated them, but aware that his fragile and tenuous grip on the throne of Scotland was slipping he called for help from his patron, and Edward III duly answered the call, though neither could have been prepared for what happened next.

Just what we need: more Frenchmen! Philip steps in

King of France, Philip VI had given shelter to the deposed King David II, and was prepared to honour the terms laid down by Philip IV when the Scots signed a treaty with him against Edward I. He sent his ambassador, the Bishop of Avalanches, sorry Avranche, to demand an explanation from Edward as to why he was harassing the poor Scots. Edward invited the bishop to go talk to them, and see what a surly lot they were, impossible to negotiate with, and perhaps sample some of that foul-tasting haggis they were all so fond of, and see if he personally did not want to invade and conquer them. The bishop demurred on that point, but did go to talk to Edward Bailiol, encountering the usual factions and jockeying for position and intrigue and backstabbing and disloyalty that must have made him feel right at home, pining for the court of France, or even for the Holy City.

Meanwhile, Edward massed his armies, waiting for the truce the bishop finally worked out to run out, and for him to bugger off back to France, which he did, in July 1335. The Scots, knowing King Edward (the English one) well, had been expecting his attack and mustered their own forces, ready to meet him.

Invasion! VI - The return, this time, of just the one king: Edward strikes back

With his largest army yet assembled - about 13,000 men - and with the help of King Edward Bailiol, the English king had little trouble defeating the Scots and took Perth, where he settled for a time. Back in France, King Philip VI was unimpressed with the news brought back to him by his bishop (it seemed failure was an option) and gathered his own fleet to sail to bonny Scotland and help out the braw wee lads his pre-pre-pre-something-decessor had sworn to in the Treaty of Paris. Before sending the men on their way (about 6,000) he gave Edward III one last chance: if he would allow France and the Pope to arbitrate the independence of Scotland, he would keep his men at home. Edward told him to stick it, do his worst, come at me bro, and Philip came at him.

The Bogie man cometh - the Battle of Culblean

Back in Scotland, with the departure of King Edward, Bailiol's men set about settling some scores, with David Strathbogie attempting to wipe out all the freeholders who had been awarded land in the time of William Wallace, and who formed the nucleus of the supporters of David II, Robert the Bruce's son and Bailiol's rival claimant for the throne. He went a little far though when he attacked the castle of the wife of the Guardian of Scotland, Andrew Murray, who rushed to its defence.

Although Murray had about a third as many men as Strathbogie, he also had superior knowledge of the terrain and, one would assume, the safety of his lady in question (although accounts seem to note he was more interested in preserving the castle for its strategic importance: charming!), he prevailed and Strathbogie was defeated, killed in battle, as was one of the few remaining Comyns.

Edward, meanwhile, receiving intelligence of the progress of King Philip VI, and fearing that his old enemy would attempt to make Scotland a base from which he could launch an attack on England, set off to secure the town of Aberdeen, the most likely place where the French might land. In terms of invasion forces, this one was much smaller than those Edward had previously mounted, a mere 800 men, but with most of the resistance to his rule eliminated and Edward Bailiol still on the throne, if barely hanging on there, there wasn't too much in the way of organised opposition for the English king to worry about, and he burned Aberdeen to the ground. It was a wasted effort. Philip's privateers had already attacked the town of Orford, on the Suffolk Coast, in the south of England, and when he received news of the attack Edward quickly made his way there, abandoning Scotland for now.

Too late to do anything though by the time he got the word, Edward headed back over the border and wintered at Clyde, carrying on his campaign against the Scots there, determined that Philip should have no base in Scotland. He was, in fact, laying plans to invade France in the spring. Back to England he went to lay his plans, while the Scots wreaked more mischief in his absence, putting Edward Bailiol on an even shakier footing than he had occupied before; with no English king to come to his rescue, and his allies rapidly deserting his cause in their droves, to say nothing of the French taking an interest (surely with a view to restoring David to the throne) it couldn't be long before he was on his way out again.

As is almost always the case in such wars, the ordinary citizen suffered the most, and indeed, at the hands of his own people, as Andrew Murray, in an attempt to smash Bailiol's power forever, laid waste to all around him, seemingly without a care as to what people were to do to feed themselves, find shelter or live. However in 1338 the people were granted some respite when Murray died, though William Douglas continued the fight.

[Trollheart]

Goliath vs David: The return of yet another king

Aided by the French king, David II returned to Scotland in 1341, having reached the majority age of eighteen, and everything was roses as all the Scots accepted him. Well, not quite. Not even close actually. Almost on his arrival he ran into opposition, and even those who were ready to support him turned out to be just as ready to oppose him if they didn't get what they wanted. Eager to impose his authority, the young king made a few decisions that didn't go down too well, and would help Edward III by causing trouble for David without his having to take a hand in things. He had in fact been busy fighting Philip's forces, and had won a major victory, so major in fact that the French king feared an English invasion, and asked David to instead invade England, to draw Edward's attention and forces away from him. David duly obliged.

Invasion! VII - Done up like a kipper

Despite all the infighting and doubt within his people, the Scottish king was able to gather together a pretty massive force of 12,000 men and headed south. Delays in preparation though allowed the English time to muster and they were ready for him when he attacked. They met in what would be David's first battle with the English king, and also turned out to be his first defeat.

The Battle of Neville's Cross

With the bulk of Edward's forces fighting in Normandy, Philip VI advised David that he would have an easy time of it, catching the English both unawares and under-manned, calling England at the time a "defencess void". This would, however, not turn out to be the case. The main problem here was that the English were expecting this; the Scots themselves had said they would break the truce (which none of the three nations honoured in any way and was more or less just words on a page if anything) as soon as France told them to, so it was a matter of when rather than if. Relying on the (faulty) intelligence from the French court, David marched south and was more than surprised when William Douglas almost literally stumbled over the army assembled by the Archbishop of York, in the process losing more than half his men. Reporting to David at the monastery they were in the process of sacking, Douglas gave him the news and David rode to meet the English.

The Archbishop's force had been swelled by a further 3,000 men from Yorkshire, now numbering about 7,000 in all, and Lord Ralph Neville took command of the whole army. David took the higher ground, as the kings and leaders before him had always done, and relied on his schilltrons, with axemen and even cavalry officers in front of them. His cause was not helped by the sudden and cowardly desertion of two of his commanders, Robert Stewart, the illegitimate son of the Bruce, and the Earl of March, Patrick Dunbar, leaving David's flank very much exposed and no doubt plunging Scottish morale into the depths of despair.

Perhaps because of terrain not being in their favour, perhaps because the battle had been thrust upon them rather than their being able to prepare for it, or perhaps even due to David's being, after all, a young man, untested in battle-hardened conditions - and certainly no thanks to the desertion of the two commanders - despite their (originally) superior numbers the Scots were routed, and David himself badly wounded and captured by the English.

Most of the Scottish military hierarchy and nobles were either killed or captured, and the Battle of Neville's Cross was a serious blot on the new king's copybook; his first chance to show his people what he could do, and it resulted in what can only be termed a massacre, decimating the Scottish nobility and leading to the imprisonment of their king.

Fail.

Epic fail.

Some noteworthy points before we go on. How true some of this is I don't know, but accounts say that King David hid after the battle, taking refuge under a bridge, and was only discovered when his reflection was seen in the water flowing under the bridge. He subsequently did at least have enough fight in him to knock the teeth out of one of his captors. During the battle he took arrows in the face, and though removed, parts of them remained and gave him headaches for the rest of his life, as well as, presumably, being a constant reminder of his abject failure as a leader.

Although nobles were traditionally ransomed, Edward wanted to break the Scottish monarchy and so refused to allow many of the more high-profile prisoners be ransomed, keeping them captive instead. Much of this did not go down well with his own people, for if there is one thing that trumps loyalty to the king it is loyalty to the pocket, and take money out of that pocket and you may very well be storing up trouble for yourself. Many lower-value prisoners were executed out of hand, but Edward had a special hatred for the Earl of Menteith, John Graham, who had previously sworn fealty to the English king. Seeing this as treason, Edward had Menteith tried and condemned as a traitor, then drawn, hanged, beheaded and quartered.

The Holy Rood of St. Margaret, originally taken by Edward I and brought to England, later restored to Scotland, was again taken from David and given to Durham Cathedral.

War is over, if you want it - The end of the Second War of Scottish Independence

With the imprisonment of David went the last real hope of Scotland's achieving independence from England. Edward Bailiol popped up again like a bad penny, but Edward III didn't really have much time for him, trying instead to convince the captive David to nominate one of his own sons as his heir, which would have solidified England's hold over Scotland. David himself, at a mere eighteen years old, had no children, but refused constantly to allow this. He must have wished he had stayed in France! Mind you, the French were not doing so well either, as Edward beat them back on their native soil. That's not really relevant though to the history here, so we won't be going into that (don't want to stray too far off the beaten track, and we've wandered a long way already).

Perhaps oddly, considering they ran from battle (though probably few survived to tell the tale, and those who did, with their king defeated and a prisoner of the English, probably knew to keep their mouths shut) the Scottish then rallied behind Robert Stewart and Patrick Dunbar, while Edward tried unsuccessfully to get David to see sense and give him Scotland. Not sure why he thought the king would do this, given how hard he and his predecessors had fought to keep their country free of English influence, but he seems to have made a good fist of it, even adding a ransom demand into the bargain, all of which were turned down. David was even allowed leave England to supposedly ratify a treaty whereby Scotland would become a fief, or dependent kingdom, of England, but the parliament decided against it, literally ruling that the freedom of their king was less important than the freedom of the nation, and sent him back with a thanks but no thanks message.

Invasion! VIII - The Final Countdown

While Edward was again away dealing with those pesky French, Stewart and Dunbar, with French support and encouragement, launched another invasion of England, which was again poorly-defended, most of its army having joined their king in the battle against France. They took the town of Berwick, and when Edward heard what had happened he returned to England as soon as he could, invaded Scotland again, retook the castle and kicked the Scots out. He then went on something of a rampage, destroying Edinburgh and burning most of Lothian. But in the end he realised he wasn't really going to subdue Scotland, and would have to settle for a treaty instead.

The end of the second war of Scottish independence reads to me not so much of triumph but of exhausted acceptance, on both sides. For over seventy years, the two nations had fought, made war, invaded each other, and now, finally, at the end, with victory against the French seeming more in his grasp than ever and Scotland divided with the capture of their king, Edward realised it was time to draw a line under this long conflict. In a treaty which probably satisfied nobody, but did the job, and bringing it all back to where it both started and eventually ended, the Treaty of Berwick was signed in 1357. David was released to go home to Scotland, Edward had now only to fight a war on one front, and Edward Bailiol, the eternal fly in the ointment of the Scottish monarchy, was old and ill, and would die ten years later, childless and mostly forgotten.

[Trollheart]

When he wasn't hammering the Scots, Edward I was turning on his other natural enemy at home. He went further than his father, or any king prior, in his persecution of the Jews. In 1275 he issued another Statute of (the) Jewry, which not only reinforced and built on his father's laws regarding Jews, but added more. Jews were now not allowed to live in certain towns and cities, usury (the practice of charging interest on loans) was completely outlawed, thereby eliminating the Jews' raison d'etre, in terms of how much use they were to the king, those indebted to Jews would now have their debts cancelled, and Jews were hereafter only allowed to work as merchants, farmers, craftsmen or soldiers.  This was, of course, merely the beginning, and in 1279 he had about 300 Jews executed, using a charge of counterfeiting as a pretext, and finally, in 1290, he implemented his own "Final Solution", by expelling all Jews from England under the Edict of  Expulsion. Basically, from what I can see, reading slightly between the lines, when the Pope demanded an end to usury, that meant the Jews were not worth keeping around any more, and kicking them all out of England would have made His Holiness very happy. Plus, of course, all their lands and properties could be seized by the Crown.

It would take almost another 400 years before the Edict would be reversed and Jews could once again settle in England, then Britain, though the deep-seated resentment against them would never really go away, and throughout history, as we have seen, the Jews have been the whipping-boys of every country in Europe and further afield. They would, therefore, have shed few if any tears when King Edward contracted dysentery in 1307 and died soon after. Probably more than one glass raised to his death up north too. The Hammer of the Scots had fallen at last. He was, of course, succeeded by his son, also an Edward.

The above article on the Wars of Scottish independence covers much of the reign of Edward II and some indeed of his son, Edward III, but there are a few points we should perhaps address before moving on from the time of Edwards. One was a relationship that, though it would later become all but commonplace, especially among the later kings of England, would have been shocking and a scandal at the time. Possibly. It concerned the son of one of Edward's knights, with whom the young king became perhaps a little too friendly.



When a man loves, um, a man? Dangerous liaisons in the throne room

 Piers Gaveston (1284 - 1312)

(Hardly the most flattering picture of him. No, that's him - the sketchy outline lying on the ground. The guy lording it over him is Guy de Beauchamp, fresh after killing him. Charming.)

Poor old King Edward I must have thought he had invited a serpent into his household, as he introduced Gaveston to his son, the two of them becoming so close that the king decided Gaveston was a bad influence on the young prince, and booted him out of England. One of his instructions while lying - rather stinkily, if accounts are to be believed - on his deathbed was that Gaveston was not to be allowed back into England, but of course once he had buried daddy, Edward, now king in his own right, did just that, and the relationship between the two was rekindled. He was made Earl of Cornwall and given Edward's niece Margaret as his wife. The appointment of what was seen as a man of lowly birth, added to the influence Gaveston wielded over Edward irked the council, and there were rumours (never proven) that the two might be closer than just friends. What the king did was, of course, up to the king, but if he was sleeping with Gaveston, and that was the source of his power over the king, then that was bad. To make matters worse, in 1308 Edward hopped over the Channel to meet the woman he was to marry, Isabella of France, and to everyone's surprise, shock and dismay, appointed Gaveston as regent while he was away. Since a regency is generally only bestowed on a member of the royal family, this was seen as, in English parlance, highly irregular, and served to further fan the flames of resentment against the young upstart.

Those flames were stoked even higher when, returning from France with his new bride in tow, King Edward largely ignored her at the marriage feast, lavishing all his attention on his favourite. King Philip of France, now his father-in-law, sided with the nobles when they demanded Gaveston be exiled again, and so in April, barely a year after returning to England, Piers was sent on his merry way again, this time to Ireland. Edward may have been devoted, or even in love with Gaveston, but he wasn't about to risk his throne for him.

Nevertheless, through bribery and alliances Edward managed to engineer his return in 1309, and Gaveston, having learned his lesson, mended his ways. Like hell he did. He actually became more arrogant and prideful, leading to an outright demand for a third, and this time permanent expulsion in 1311. The king told him - or was told by the council to tell him - "This time they mean it, dude. I've done all I can, but darken my shoreline again and you'll be an outlaw, and then I can't help you." So that would surely have meant Gaveston would have stayed away, right? Well, whether he just was arrogant to a fault, didn't understand, or believed he had the king so wrapped around his little finger that Edward would defend him, the exile did return, a mere two months later. The king did in fact support him, restoring to him all his lands and declaring his exile unlawful, but the nobles had had it up to the back teeth with Edward and his favouritism towards Gaveston, and prepared for war.

They in fact went after both, the king only escaping being taken at Newcastle, whereafter the two split up, Gaveston going to Scarborough while the king headed for York. Scarborough was besieged and Gaveston forced to surrender and taken captive, brought back to York, where the nobles would negotiate with the king with the life of his favourite used as leverage. In the end though, either their patience gave out or honour had to be satisfied, or else they just hated the little bastard, and the above-shown Guy de Beauchamp took the opportunity to hunt him down and kill him, to teach him a lesson. Edward was not happy, but hardly in a position to retaliate.

If Edward and Piers were lovers, then it's the first time I can find so far that a king of England was either believed to be, or actually was homosexual, or at least bisexual (Edward did have plenty of children), but it would not be the last. It was, however, also the first time that such a relationship between the king and a man had resulted in such favouritism towards the alleged lover. James I would later take men to bed, but none of them had any power or influence over him.

[Trollheart]

That's it! It's War! Again.

I find it bizarrely interesting how many civil wars seem to have taken place in England. When you consider that the time of Cromwell, when the Puritan went head-to-head (literally) with King Charles I and ended up being the only non-royal to rule England in its history, is referred to as the English Civil War, that's at this point more than 300 years in the future, and by this time there had been at least three or four conflicts which history characterises as civil wars. So really, Roundheads v Cavaliers could be regarded simply as another civil war, not the civil war. Be that as it may, the tensions between the Earl of Lancaster and King Edward II, which had been brewing since the Second Barons' War and had all but come to a head with the murder (as he saw it; Lancaster and Warwick saw it as the legal execution) of his favourite, Piers Gaveston, finally boiled over due to the king's new beau, whose name would be taken for the war that followed.



Hugh Despenser the Younger (1287/ 1289 - 1326)

Sounds like something used to hand out candy, doesn't he? But Hugh Despenser, called the Younger to distinguish him from his father, the Earl of Winchester, was to follow much of the same path as the ill-fated (and extremely stupid/terminally arrogant) Gaveston, in that he became the king's favourite and quickly set about capitalising on the friendship, getting up the noses of the nobles, who must have rolled their eyes and said "Forsooth! Not again!" You'd really think King Edward would have learned his lesson by now, but it seems that His Majesty was just as arrogant and pig-headed as both his favourites, and refused or failed to see where this was leading.

Hold on there just a mo! Hugh's mother was Isabella Beauchamp, surely not... yes! Amazing! She was the sister of the guy (Guy) who ended up lopping off Piers Gaveston's head! So let me get this straight (no pun intended): Edward got pally with the son of the woman whose brother had killed his previous favourite/possible lover? That surely makes little sense. Wouldn't he have hated all that family for killing poor Piers? And he must have known about the connection. Dinner parties with Despenser's in-laws must have been tricky affairs: "Guy you say? 'Ere, didn't you kill my lover?" Awkward silence, shifting of feet. "Um, yes, Your Majesty, but he was a filthy traitor." More silence. "Fair enough, can't deny he had enough chances to stay out of England. Only doing your job, sound man. Pass the potatoes. What do you mean, they haven't been discovered yet? Walter who? Well, some of that green stuff - what is it you say it's called? Vegetable? Fascinating."

Proving once more that he was not the world's best politician it seems, Edward went back on a promise he had made to his wife, Queen Isabella, to retain ownership of Wallingford Castle in Berkshire for life, and instead gave it to Hugh the Younger. This would not have made her father, his father-in-law, Philip IV of France, un homme jolie! And he had already previously insulted the French king by paying more attention to Piers than to his new bride. Again, never learns does he, this king? Additionally, due to the death of his brother-in-law in 1314 Hugh suddenly found himself a very rich man thanks to his wife's inheritance, a real upstart made good through really nothing more than family connections. This never went down well in a society that prided itself on the rigidity of its class structure: commoners making it big were decidedly not welcomed into the ranks of the big boys. Strange to read though that Hugh actually joined the barons in their revolt against Piers, which should have made him an enemy of the king? Let's see how this plays out then.

In 1321 Roger Mortimer and the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford decided to attack Wales and take the lands that had been granted to Hugh, which they believed to be theirs, particularly the lordship of Glamorgan. Edward met their army, declaring that any enemy of Hugh's was an enemy of the Crown, but the alliance between the earls was strong and they made good progress in Wales, forcing Edward to repeat history and exile his favourite, with every intention of arranging his return at the earliest possible opportunity. The exile did not mollify the rebels though, and when Queen Isabella was captured at Leeds Castle Edward rode to her defence, though it is more or less accepted that the whole thing was a false flag operation by the queen, to give her husband an excuse to take the castle. This also - somewhat to her chagrin, one would assume - allowed him to recall the Despensers from exile, and this time his forces were stronger as he went after the earls. Roger Mortimer had to surrender, while Lancaster and Hereford were defeated at the Battle of Boroughbridge, where Edward's forces used tactics recently learned to their cost in the Scottish Wars of Independence, including using schiltrons against cavalry and also extensive deployment of archers.

A rather amusing (though not for him) incident is related to the death of the Earl of Hereford, who, having been told to surrender and responded with "Stick it up your arse" possibly, ended up having this put into practice. A spearman hid under the bridge as the earl tried to cross it and literally rammed his spear up his arse! And that was the end of the second of the rebel leaders. The cause was quickly lost, Lancaster was captured and made six inches shorter, and Hugh the Younger probably all but split his breeches laughing.

Actually, considering it was most certainly treason to have risen against his king, you'd have to say Lancaster was fortunate to have escaped the traditional punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering, and in effect he had a pretty clean death really. Ironically, Sir Andrew Harclay, who had led the town's resistance to the rebels (and had refused to join them previously when asked) suffered this horrible fate when he made a peace treaty with the Scottish in 1323. How's that for consistency, ref?

As we've seen above, the growing power of the Despensers after the war led to an alliance between the king's wife and Roger Mortimer, which in itself would lead to Edward II's ignoble downfall and death. A woman scorned, and all that. With the two having forced his abdication and now not quite regents but not quite rulers (but the latter in all but name), Hugh and his father's days were very much numbered. Daddy went first, and in a relative show of mercy was hanged and then beheaded just before Halloween 1326. For his son, though, the guy who had caused all the hassle and who was, again, believed (rightly or wrongly) to have slept with the king - he was said to have been a "known sodomite" - the end would be as excruciatingly painful and would last as long as the vengeful queen could make it. Hugh was taken to Hereford almost a month later and, though he tried to kill himself through starvation, he was unsuccessful and so stood trial (surely a mockery of the word: he was already guilty before he even entered the courtroom) and was sentenced to the traditional horrible death reserved for traitors.

It seems that in addition to being agonising, Mortimer and Isabella ensured that the younger Despenser's last moments were as humiliating and degrading as possible, allowing the spectators who came eagerly to see his hanging, drawing and quartering to have their way with him beforehand. They ripped off his clothes, scrawled Biblical symbols on his flesh for some reason, crowned his head and that of his co-accused, his vassal Simon de Reading (who had unwisely insulted the queen) with nettles and turned their coats inside-out to show they were traitors. Yes, that's where the word turncoat comes from, didn't you know that? According to one chronicler, the people were prepared to "tear Despenser apart with their bare hands if need be", and would probably have liked to have been given the chance. But royal justice (even if this was no such thing) must take its course, and he and de Reading were dragged through the streets behind four horses until they reached Despenser's own castle, where a special fifty-foot gallows had been built, the equivalent, I guess, of a big screen to that everyone in the town could watch the spectacle.

Another of the co-conspirators, Robert Baldock, an archdeacon and former Lord Chancellor, who had aided the king and Hugh the Younger, was unable to be executed due to "clerical privilege", which meant only the Church could try him, and so he was handed over and held in a house, to await trial. However, the people's blood was up, and lynching mobs are not known for their patience nor their tolerance for the rule of law. Consequently, the house Baldock was being held in was attacked, breached and they almost literally kicked the shit out of the archdeacon. For good measure they then threw him into Newgate Prison, where he did not last long among the inmates. Presumably all of this was done either with a nod of tacit assent or the turning of a blind eye by Mortimer and the queen. But back to Hugh, who had at least the best seat in the house, if not for long.

[Trollheart]

Everyone literally wanted a piece of Despenser, so of course he was quartered, his head was placed above the gates into London, while his quartered body was sent to Dover, Bristol, York and Newcastle. Quite what the new King Edward III thought of all this I don't know, but then, he was only a kid of thirteen at the time and probably was told to sit on the throne and shut it by mummy. And considering what he had just seen mummy do, or authorise being done, he most likely did just that.

Foreign wars: my viewpoint

I've been thinking about this, and as we approach what was one of the most massive - and longest - wars England was ever involved in, I've been debating whether or not I should cover it. But it seems to me, that from what I read, most of the war(s) took place abroad, in France mostly, and as I already noted, I don't intend to cover that as part of the history of England. This does, however, leave me with a slight problem.

What about the two most infamous wars of all time? How do I ignore battles such as Ypres and The Somme, or El Alamein? I certainly have to cover both wars. My thinking, then, in these cases is that when it comes time to write about World War I and World War II, I will extensively cover events that took place in England/Britain - the Blitz, the Battle of Britain - but will only refer obliquely to battles or campaigns that took place outside of English shores. I have no intention of diving into the sweating jungles of Burma or trekking across the sweltering deserts of North Africa chasing after the British Army, nor do I intend to give coverage to Commando raids, the escape from Colditz or other German POW camps, or to dwell on the retreat to Dunkirk. All of these events will of course be covered in eye-watering depth later in Flames Across the World, but here I'll just note when these things occur. Obviously, victories - and defeats - in the wars affected England. The fall of France left her standing alone against the might of Nazi Germany, the loss of Singapore was a huge blow to morale and so on. But these only impinge peripherally, in my view, on the history of England, and so will be mentioned but not gone into in any sort of depth.

There will be exceptions, of course. A battle as iconic as Agincourt will have to be covered, but in general, unless the action took place on English soil I'll tend not to cover it. Apart from that, the war of which I speak covered the reigns of no less than five English kings, so it's bound to pop up and be referred to along the line, but I won't be writing any major articles about it here.


King Edward III (1327 - 1377)

With that in mind, Edward III becomes the first English king to be involved in, and indeed kicks off what would be known as the Hundred Years' War, which actually lasted longer than that, but the Hundred and Sixteen Years', Four Months', Three Weeks' and Four Days' War just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Besides, it wasn't as if England and France fought for a century nonstop! Got to have the odd breather, and some of these lasted decades, so one hundred years is a nice round number everyone agrees on. The war officially began in 1337 and finally ground to a halt in 1453, just in time for a short break before The Wars of the Roses kicked off.

Briefly, then, and since it was basically him who started the whole thing, so to speak, let's look at the reasons the long war - or, really, series of wars - began. We know surely by now that the most important thing any monarch can do during his or her time is produce an heir, someone to take over running the kingdom when they die, someone to secure the line of royal succession. The failure of one English king in particular, Edward the Confessor, led to a scramble for power which pretty much directly led to the Norman invasion of 1066 and the establishment of a Norman ruling dynasty under William the Conqueror. England wasn't too gone on queens, and at this point no female arse had sat on the throne, other than Matilda, who has never officially been recognised as Queen of England, and various women in power who manipulated sons or husbands behind the scenes. But in a general sense, and until the rise of Elizabeth in the sixteenth century, the ruler had always been, and always had to be, male.

It was the same across the water in France, where they had actually gone so far as to pass a law which forbade women from inheriting the French throne. They called it Salic Law, but from what I can read it wasn't even really the reason women couldn't rule in France. I do before I go into that though want to take a moment to marvel at these French kings and their virility, or perhaps just their randiness. Both Philip V and Louis X died without a son, as did Charles IV, but they all left their wives pregnant. This either means they were fine and dandy, having it away when they croaked, or at the very least had been intimate with the queen consort before they popped their clogs. I want to check the ages of these guys. Let's see: okay, Louis X died at age 26, so that's fine. What did he die of? Of a Tuesday ho ho. No seriously: pneumonia or pleurisy, it says, not discounting that most popular of ways for a French king to meet his end, poisoning. Philip died just having reached his thirties, and, hmm, "fell unwell from multiple illnesses." I wonder if one of them was poison? Anyway that leaves Charles IV, who also lasted into his thirties and died, though it doesn't say of what. His death was the one that sparked the whole idea of the French succession. Here's how it went.

Without any male heir, Louis's brother Philip became regent while the country waited to see what would pop out of his brother's widow. Should the child be a boy, then Philip would remain as regent until he was at least able to walk unaided (the kid, not Philip, though given how much wine those Frenchies consume, maybe both) whereas if it was a girl, the throne would pass to one of Louis's daughters, who were both still too young to rule also. In the event, the child was male, but only lived for a few days, leaving Philip with the chance to claim the throne for himself, which he did. But not without opposition, most strongly from the grandmother of Louis's daughters, Agnes of France.

At the assembly called in 1317 to decide whether Philip's claim was legitimate or not, with pretty much everyone who mattered being male, the issue was easily settled, and a ruling was made that wherever else it may be, a  woman's place was not  on the throne of France, nor would it ever be. Philip's right to rule was thus ratified, and he became, or rather remained, King Philip V, for five years anyway, as he died in 1322. Also failing to have a son, Philip was succeeded by his brother, Charles IV, who lasted slightly longer - six years - and was the third of the line not to be obliged by his wife with the requisite male heir.

Which was where Edward III came in. Or rather, where his mother came in. Queen Isabella (no, not his wife; another consequence of naming conventions without much imagination back then) claimed that as Louis's sister, she had the right to name her son as heir to the throne, but the French nobles scoffed that "women cannot transmit a right which they do not possess," and told her to go and do some needlework or cooking, and leave running the country to the men. Another Philip took over.

It wasn't as if Edward then went to war over the insult paid his mother. He was pretty happy to stay where he was, as long as he could hold on to Gascony, the last remaining part of the once-mighty Angevin Empire. But when Philip shrugged and said, "You know what, mon ami? There is a gap in my collection here, and Gascony will fill it quite nicely. I do think I shall take it back too," Edward weren't having that. Thanks to both his father and King John, the Angevin lands had been lost, and he would be triple damned into Hell if he was going to go down in history as the English king who let the last part of it slip away. This meant something, and something were declared.

Oh yeah. War. War were declared.

But as I say, there is no way I'm going into the ins and outs of French battles, victories, losses, attacks and counter-attacks, and the endless intrigues of the French court, so that's where we will leave this for now. I just thought it was important to at least outline the reason for what became the Hundred Years' War, though in truth, like all wars, there was no single reason and the enmity between France and England had always been enough to have fuelled wars that lasted two or even three hundred years. But that's the short version.

I think, though, that this particular period in European history must have been one of the very hardest and most brutal of all. Not only had you a hundred years (yes, yes! A hundred and sixteen!) of war between France and England, you also had the Black Death writhing its way across the continent like a diseased black serpent, and a further twenty years of civil war in England as the House of Lancaster fought the House of York in the Wars of the Roses, to say nothing of the rise of Protestantism and the various Catholic inquisitions that flourished to meet the threat of the heretic. All in all, not a great time to be alive, one would think!

Guess we had better have a nosy at the Plague then. Hope you have your face mask on, cos we're goin' in!

[Trollheart]

Chapter IX: Hunger, death and something in the air: The Black Death arrives in Europe

Historically speaking, Europe was still reeling from the effects of the Famine when the Black Death showed up. With people literally dying from hunger, and those remaining weak from lack of food, Europe was hardly in any sort of shape to withstand such an onslaught, even had there been anything they could have done to resist it, which there was not, as they didn't even understand what it was.

We know now of course that, despite my title, it was in fact nothing in the air, but fleas on the backs of rats coming on ships from outside Europe that provided a literal carrier for the plague that would wipe out almost half of Europe's population over a five-year period, but back then it was mostly blamed on "miasma", or bad air. This led to the completely erroneous advice from what passed for doctors that people should lock their doors and windows and stay inside, something which only helped the disease incubate faster and spread more easily. We can laugh at such advice now, but back then it was the best they could do, and it was certainly better than the story the Church was pushing, that it was a judgement from God because reasons.

Nevertheless, not only was it wrong, it was the worst kind of wrong, and it surely helped add to the number of deaths, lives which could have been saved had more been understood about medicine and how a virus propagates. Of course, back then there wasn't even such a word as virus, so they had no chance of fighting it at all. Even now, 900 years later almost, the actual origin of the Black Death is disputed. It is generally accepted that its emergence in Europe occurred at Kaffa, a port in Crimea and that it travelled on Genoese trading ships to the rest of Europe, around 1347. The virus itself is said to have been around slightly longer, popping up over 7,000 years ago, but only becoming transmittable by rat fleas as recently as 3,800 years ago. If viruses were sentient, you'd have to say that one of the great strengths of what we now call Bubonic Plague (or, to give it its proper, scientific name, Yersinia pestis, which sounds rather like someone observing roaches or fleas - appropriately: "You're seein' pests?") would be patience. Of course its other trait would be tenacity; once it had a hold of you it did not let go till you were dead, and then moved on to the next person, rather like an invisible vampire moving from victim to victim. Hmm: invisible vampire? Note for a short story...

In general, a whistle-stop tour of the Plague runs like this: after infecting Kaffa it made its way to Constantinople, then one of the capitals of the world, and seat of the mighty Byzantine Empire. Italy was next (not surprising, as it was being mostly carried unwittingly on ships from Genoa) and then France. After that, it was just a ratty hop, skip and jump across the channel to dear old England, where it arrived at the worst possible time, the height of summer 1348. Conditions in England were ripe (sorry) for the disease; sanitation was all but unknown, as was personal hygiene (the Church apparently preached that bathing was a sin, so don't do it), streets in cities were narrow and rather less than clean, houses were poorly ventilated and badly built and spaced, and the heat would have caused the rats to seek shelter, driving them indoors. Perhaps ironically, the first known case in England originated in Gascony, the territory at the heart of the Hundred Years' War. A sailor arrived in Dorset from Gascony, and the Black Death was on English shores, as related in this extract from the Grey Friars' Chronicle:

In this year, in Melcombe, in the county of Dorset, a little before the Feast of St. John the Baptist, two ships, one of them from Bristol, came alongside. One of the sailors had brought with him from Gascony the seeds of the terrible pestilence and through him the men of the town of Melcombe were the first in England to be infected.. One effect of the Plague arriving was that the aforementioned war had to be curtailed, put on hold as people found they didn't even have to  leave their homes to suffer a terrible death.

As the disease travelled unchecked across the country, you might wonder why Edward did nothing to stop it. The answer is simple: nobody knew what it was, much less how to stop it. Consider the spread of Covid recently, and now imagine that instead of news bulletins and government warnings telling us what to do (whether we did it or not is another matter) we got nothing. We got scientists and doctors shrugging, we got the Pope telling us God was angry, and deaths kept increasing because nobody knew what to do to stop the spread of the disease. Imagine we had not been told to keep two meters between us, or to wash our hands, or to cough into our elbows. Imagine, further, that there was and never would be a vaccine, and we all just continued on like the inhabitants of Florida or Texas, doing what we normally did. No masks, no PPE, no ventilators. How terrifying would that have been? So that's how it was in the fourteenth century. There was no medical advice because such things as quarantines were unknown, and nobody had any advice to offer. Probably the best anyone could do was put their trust in God, and we know how that worked out!

That's not to say the medical men of the time sat on their hands and did nothing. What they tried had no chance of working, but at least they were trying, with their limited knowledge of medicine, to treat the disease. Quite honestly, the accounts of what they tried to do are a little too graphic for me to transcribe, so I'm just lifting a chunk of text directly from Wiki and plonking it here. Be warned: you'll need a strong stomach if you want to read it! You know what? I'm gonna spoiler it, for those who don't want to read it.

Spoiler

Various methods of treatment were used, including sweating, bloodletting, and forced vomiting and urinating.[41] Symptoms of the illness included blotches, hardening of the glands under the groin and underarms, and dementia.[42] During the initial phase of the disease, bloodletting was performed on the same side where the physical manifestations of the buboes or risings appeared. For instance, if a rising appeared on the right side of the groin the physician would bleed a vein in the ankle on the same side.[43] To provoke sweating, medicines such as Mithridate, Venice-Treacle, Matthiolus, Bezoar-Water, Serpentary Roots and Electuarium de Ovo were used.[44] Sweating was used when measures were desperate; if a patient had tokens, a severe version of risings, the physician would wrap the naked patient in a blanket drenched in cold water. This was only done while the patient still had natural heat in his system. The desired effect was to make the patient sweat violently and thus purge all corruption from the blood which was caused by the disease.[45]

Another practice was the use of pigeons when treating swellings. Swellings which were white in appearance and deep were unlikely to break, and were anointed with Oil of Lillies or Camomil.[46] Once the swelling rose to a head and was red in appearance and not deep in the flesh, it was broken with the use of a feather from a young pigeon's tail. The feather's fundament[clarification needed] was held to the swelling to try to draw out the venom. However, if the swelling dropped and became black in appearance, the physician had to be cautious when drawing the cold from the swelling. If it was too late to prevent, the physician would take the young pigeon, cut it open from breast to back, break it open and apply the pigeon (while still alive) over the cold swelling. The cupping therapy was an alternative method which was heated and then placed over the swellings. Once the sore was broken, the physician would apply Mellilot Plaister with Linimentum Arcei and heal the sore with digence.

[close]

Hey, don't say you weren't warned if you clicked the link! Urgh!

To be entirely fair to them, and notwithstanding that they propagated the theory of a miasma, the clergy were not to be found wanting when it was a case of bringing comfort to the souls, if not the bodies of the dying. As with Covid, priests did go into infected houses, risking their own lives (and, by extension, those of any they would later encounter) and putting themselves almost literally in the firing line. They may have believed, deep down, that God would protect them, but to quote Tom Waits, it would appear that at that time God was away on business and could not be reached, so most of them died. At least the dying had the comfort of having been read the Last Rites and having their confession heard, a must if you wanted to get into Heaven.

Unfortunately, their most sacred symbol, the cross, became a marker of death, as a red X was painted on the door of any home where the plague had been found, to warn others not to approach. The earliest and most basic form, I guess, of a sort of quarantine, and also harking back, in a way, to that story about the Passover in the Bible.

Though the Black Death was no respecter of status or wealth, Edward and all his court seem to have escaped its ravages, but his daughter Joan died. She was in France, on her way to meet her husband-to-be, who quickly turned out to be her widower as she succumbed to the plague. Edward wrote heartbroken to the man's father, King Alfonso of Castille, to explain:...destructive Death (who seizes young and old alike, sparing no one and reducing rich and poor to the same level) has lamentably snatched from both of us our dearest daughter, (whom we loved best of all, as her virtues demanded). Given that Pedro of Castille, the prospective husband, earned the epithet "The Cruel", perhaps she was better off dead. But yes, the nobility seemed to survive the Black Death generally, which I have to admit surprises me.

[Trollheart]

The public view of the clergy was severely polarised after the Plague had passed. The upper classes suddenly found God, perhaps thankful that they had been passed over, mostly, and fearful of angering a possibly vengeful God into the bargain. The common man, on the other hand, started asking the hard questions, like, if priests are so great and God loves them so much, how come he didn't protect them? And if the Plague was, as they said, a judgement on the wickedness of men, and these clergymen died just like ordinary folk, then didn't that mean they were wicked, too? Hadn't they trapped themselves in a logic loop of their own devising? As a result of this, the reputation of the clergy plummeted among the lower classes, while some took an alternative view, wondering if they needed priests at all, and if it might not make more sense to try to get closer to God personally, without the need for these middlemen, who were all corrupt anyway?

This disaffection with the Church brought to the fore a man who dared challenge the teachings of the Catholic Church and call it out on its corruption, and while without question the progenitor of Protestantism was Martin Luther, this man has been touted as being the starting point for those sort of disgruntled feelings being expressed, at least in England.



John Wycliffe (1328 - 1384)

It was probably inevitable, though to them, unthinkable, that someone in the Church would eventually start wondering about how it was being run, and question the often secular nature of those who ran it. We've seen that bishops, archbishops, archdeacons and other senior clergy in England were from noble families, held earldoms and other posts, fought in wars, married, had children, and took part in palace intrigue. John Wycliffe believed all of this was wrong. His principal tenets were that men of God should be without sin (so that excluded almost all of the current batch!) and if not, they had no right to preach to others, which goes right back to Jesus and that speech about casting the first stone, surely? He held that no member of the clergy should hold property, and that they should all be poor, as Jesus had intended. After all, hadn't the Saviour himself given up everything to go preach to the masses, and told his disciples that they must do likewise if they were to follow him?

A Yorkshireman, we can probably assume Wycliffe was a hard, plain-speaking man who didn't shy from tough truths and said what he thought. He agreed with those who believed the Black Death was a pronouncement on men, and that the high mortality rate (as opposed to the low morality rate ho ho) of the clergy proved that they were no more fit to administer to the people than farmers or grocers were. This did not go down well of course back in Rome, where Pope Gregory XI issued a bull against him, though stopped short of excommunicating him, perhaps aware of the support he had and how precarious the situation was in England, and Europe, in the wake of the Black Death. He needn't have worried, as the following year he was preparing for a personal meeting with God himself, and his successor, Urban VI, though he summoned him to Rome, had to let him off as Wycliffe had a stroke and could not travel.

The hierarchy of the English clergy, however, weren't standing still as their lovely palaces and mansions and riches looked in danger from this radical, and when he, in their opinion, went too far and denied transubstantiation (the belief among Christians that the bread and wine at a mass actually turn into the body and blood of Christ) they pronounced him a heretic, though he seems to have had the tacit support of the king, whom he declared should hold more local power over the clergy than the pope. Emulating Jesus, he sent out his own army of "poor priests", men without ordination or standing, and certainly not approved of or sanctioned by the Church, to preach the gospel. His actions did lead indirectly to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, of which more shortly.

Some of his teachings can only be described as radical, and you can see, with a clerical hat on, why many if not all of them would have been considered heretical for the time. He believed the Bible should be taken literally, said there was no need either for the papacy nor for priests, and held that souls trapped in Purgatory could not be released, in effect condemning and calling useless the idea of indulgences, money paid to the Church by a person in order to free the soul of their loved one from Purgatory and allow it entry into Heaven. He was no fan of monks either, advocating the dissolution of the monasteries, something King Henry VIII would accomplish two hundred years later, but most of his scathing rebuke was reserved for the man at the top, the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome, virtually comparing him to the Antichrist. He believed the sanctuary of the church (with a lowercase "c", as in, the building) was not open to those who had committed crimes, and that it was right and proper to enter the church and drag from it the criminal to face justice.

In what his enemies would no doubt have seen as the hand of God dealing out poetic justice, Wycliffe had a stroke while saying mass three days after Christmas Day 1384 and died three days later. That was, of course, not enough for them, and in 1415 at the Council of Constance he was pronounced a heretic, and his works to be burned, his body to be removed from consecrated ground. Things however move slowly in the Church, and it wasn't until 13 years later that Pope Martin V gave the go-ahead and Wycliffe's body was exhumed and burned, and the ashes thrown into the River Swift. The damage was done though, and Martin Luther would carry on where John Wycliffe had left off.

Now, about that revolt...

[Trollheart]

Wat about ye? The Peasants' Revolt (1381)

Certainly not to be confused with the Pleasant Revolt, which ended with each side getting what they wanted and no lives lost at all, nor indeed the little-known Pheasant Revolt, which ended rather more decisively with a very tasty roast dinner, this was the first major challenge to the rule of an English king by people he had, to be fair, probably even forgotten existed, or cared about. Kings were used to putting down revolts by barons and nobles, sure, even members of their own family. It was only to be expected, and as a king you might be a little disappointed and feel under-appreciated if at least one brother didn't rise to challenge your claim to the throne, or sprinkle glass in your wine.

But before a certain revolution popular across the Channel in the eighteenth century, the idea of peasants revolting was unthinkable, and probably part of an old joke. But it was no joke when ... ah. No. I see, like much of what I say, and fail to research before writing, what I have just written is, to use a technical term we authors employ, bollocks. Of course it is. Peasants have been revolting since, well, since there were peasants. Wasn't there that famous revolt of slaves led by that chap Spartacus in Rome? Okay, they weren't seen as peasants - if anything, they were honoured and respected, but they were still slaves, and treated as such. And the Chinese lads were doing it all the time, to say nothing of Estonia, Flanders and even the Normans. So no, it wasn't unique, not by a long pikestaff.

But I think it's true to say that it was the first time peasants had risen in England, Robin Hood and his men of often indeterminate mood notwithstanding. I suppose, in many ways, it depends on your definition of peasants, doesn't it? To the occupying Normans, originally, all Saxons were peasants, or serfs, despite their previous standing. After a short time though, they no longer thought of themselves as French or Norman, but English, so the distinction, as it were, disappeared. But this was definitely the first time there was a real, concerted, organised resistance to the monarch by people who, to quote Baldrick in Blackadder The Third, quite possibly had dung for dinner. It would not be the last, but it was the first, and it's the one we remember.

There are really two, perhaps three things that lead to an insurrection, rising, rebellion, revolt, call it what you will: a sense of injustice, a desire for better [insert term here] and a dissatisfaction with the way things are being run. To put it simply, grievances, especially those not listened to by those in power, often lead to resentment and then revolt, as of course happened in France, if you look at it from a relatively simplistic point of view. But in England, there was the additional factor of the Plague to consider, and indirectly, this kind of sparked everything off. It was, though, as usual, a case of the big guy kicking the little guy, but this time the little guy kicked back.

For a while.

In the wake of the Black Death, with the population so devastated and so many of these being (as noted above) poor labourers, the demand for workers went screaming up, and as in most cases when demand exceeds supply, there's money to be made. Peasant workers were able to charge significantly higher for a day's toil than they could previously, and could to an extent pick and choose who they worked for, essentially, you might say, starting a bidding war among employers. For the first time, the power was in the worker's hands. But His Majesty was not going to stand for that, oh no.

The cheek of these people, thought the king! Trying to drive up the price of their labour! Trying to make us poor richos pay more for their services! I'll show them, I will! And he did, passing legislation called The Ordinances of Labourers, wherein the king set out his reasons for passing the thing: Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants late died of the pestilence, many seeing the necessity of masters, and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness, than by labour to get their living; we, considering the grievous incommodities, which of the lack especially of ploughmen and such labourers may hereafter come, have upon deliberation and treaty with the prelates and the nobles, and learned men assisting us, of their counsel ordained.

The terms of the Ordinances were, among others, principally that
Everyone under 60 must work.
Employers must not hire excess workers.
Employers may not pay and workers may not receive wages higher than pre-plague levels.
Food must be priced reasonably with no excess profit.
No one, under the pain of imprisonment, was to give any thing to able-bodied beggars 'under the colour of pity or alms'.

The language reads as slapping down uppity workers who don't know their place. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of sympathy for men who had lost family and friends, and were doing their best to recover from the worst humanitarian disaster of their time, but then, you wouldn't expect that, would you? The Ordinances were followed two years later  by the Statute of Labourers, which raised the age people were to be seen to be eligible for work to 68 (surely at a time people hardly lived to such an age, so essentially everyone in the kingdom?) and also threatened imprisonment for those who refused. Then of course there was the always-popular Hundred Years' War to be fought, which would suck at the coffers of four more English kings, and for which the poor were always happy to be taxed. A new tax levied in 1379 would push the people almost too far though, and would in fact have its echoes reverberating down to our own time. It was the brainchild of this guy.



John of Gaunt (1340 - 1399)

As you can see from the dates above, he would just miss ringing in the new century, and few in England who would have bemoaned that fact. He was not a popular man, and about to get a lot less popular. Third surviving son of King Edward III, it fell to him to basically run the kingdom when his father became too ill and his brother, Edward the Black Prince, was shitting his brains out on the pot every other day, preparing to meet his own maker even before his dad had died, and quite possibly spraying the royal privy and advising everyone to give it ten minutes. Yeah, he was another who succumbed to that old favourite of the Middle Ages, second it seems only to the hunting accident, and a much slower and less pleasant death, dysentery. So John, Duke of Lancaster, was left with the task of trying to get England through both the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War. For the former he probably needed little more than his position, since, as I noted above, in general terms the rich and powerful seem to have avoided falling prey to the grim reaper as the Plague ravaged across England. For the latter, he needed cash. And where does a king in all but name get cash? Why, from taxes of course.

Before we get to that, though, it's important to note just how, well, important this lad was. His own son, Henry, would rule as King Henry IV and John established the House of Lancaster, which would struggle against the House of York for ultimate and historic control of England during the Wars of the Roses. He is, in fact, the progenitor of all English kings since Henry IV, and was the richest noble in England at the time. It's interesting to note that his first command during the Hundred Years' War consisted of his forces staring out the French ones across some marsh for several weeks, until reinforcements arrived for the English, at which point the frogs said "Non, merci, m'sieu" and beat le retreat, so that the battle - if it could be called such - came to absolutely nothing, not even so much a no-score draw as a match cancelled. Nil points.

This was in 1369, and you would certainly have to question the logic of making war when the Black Death was in town - John lost more men to it and to its old mate dysentery (or, as the French called it, le runs) that he ended up giving it up as a bad job and legging it back to Blighty. On the way, the man who had led the long-awaited reinforcements, the Earl of Warick, Thomas de Beauchamp, died, probably wishing with his last breath that he had stayed in England. Though he had some limited successes in France, fighting against the Plague was like fighting a second enemy who was also a ghost, and John was one of the first of the English hierarchy to understand they had no chance of winning a war against France, at least in the current circumstances. He began to sue for peace, with the help of the pope, and in 1377, with the death of King Edward (his son gone the year before him), John's own son Richard became king, but at only ten years old was unable to rule yet in his own right, so John remained as regent/de facto king.

And then he had this bright idea. Those of you who lived through the Thatcher years will remember with simmering resentment the words "poll tax", and will also be aware, because I remember it being noted at the time, that while it seemed a typical Tory invention, its origins went all the way back to here, the late fourteenth century. It was received then by the people about as well as it was in the twentieth.

For those of you younger, or who are not English and don't know about it, what was the poll tax? Well in my time it was levied on households, and did not take into account the differences between those households, so that a family of five living in a tenement would have to pay the same as some rich bastard living in a mansion. Was it the same in 1377? Meh, let's hear from Wiki on it, cos I ain't sure.

The new poll tax of 1379 was graduated according to each taxpayer's rank or social position, thereby avoiding dissatisfaction based on inequality and unfairness. The schedule of charge for this tax therefore contained a classification of taxpayers.[5][6] It is divided into four groups: the first is based on rank, the second on occupation (men of law), the third on civic hierarchy, and the fourth other men.[7] Two commissions were appointed, one to assess, and the other to collect. Later in 1379 reassessment commissions were appointed.[3] This poll tax was expected to net over £50,000, but the revenue never reached half that sum.[8] In 1379 the Convocations of Canterbury and York met and granted an almost identical poll tax for the clergy.[9]

So that seems, on the face of it, marginally fairer than the ones dropped on the people of Britain by the Tories at the tail-end of the 1980s, but coming as it did on the heels of other taxes to pay for what was, for the people of the time, an eternal war (as I said, with breaks it would continue through the reigns of six separate kings, so would be seen as very much a generational war) it really was the straw that broke the camel's back. There were other reasons why the people revolted though. John's support for John Wycliffe (see further), seen as a heretic, did not help endear him to Londoners, who feared their mayor was about to be replaced by one of his yes-men, and generally, the way they were treated by his officials didn't go down well. Considering, too, that nobody had crowned John, he was not a king but acted like one, well, you can see how he would have been viewed through the lens of all these bloody taxes that were killing the common man.

One thing England, and later Britain has always been terrified of is a French Revolution-style rising of the poor people; hasn't occurred to them, in over 700 years or more, that the way you help defuse such a situation is to, I don't know, treat the poor people with a bit of dignity. Asking too much? Then you reap what you sow, though unfortunately, as in every rising from this one to Peterloo in the 18th century, and on into the miners' strikes of the 20th, the power of the state crushes those who dare oppose it, and the machinery of the state is always ready and often willing to do that crushing, and maybe some more on the side. No such thing as fair play under an English, or British government.

The ever-present spectre of French invasion loomed over English policy, some fearing that, mistreated as they were, peasants might side with any invading force if they stood to gain, and to address this they began to reform laws and make life easier for... what? They did no such thing? You do surprise me. Yeah, the way they tackled it was to extend the definition of treason to cover wives or servants who betrayed their husbands or masters (um, what?), broaden criminal conspiracy laws and introduce legislation to deal with migrants, because we all know it's those untrustworthy foreigners who are to blame, coming over here, stealing our jobs etc. Jesus on horseback! So as the king prepared to deliver up his soul, workers began to organise what might be seen as the first ever general strike, known as The Great Rumour, where labourers in the southeast and southwest downed tools and refused to work for their lords. In 1380 this spread north, especially to Shrewsbury and York, and in 1381 a massive storm shook England. Metaphorically, it would be followed by a much larger one.



Wat Tyler (1341 (or possibly c. 1320) - 1381)

What can I tell you about the leader of the revolt, whose name is also appended to it as an alternative, making it variously Wat Tyler's Revolt or Wat Tyler's Rebellion? Not much really, and you probably won't be surprised, as he was after all just a local worker, and nobody was keeping detailed records on them in the fourteenth century. Find out everything you need to know about the Count of Middlesex or whatever, right down to the colour of the eyes of his six children possibly, but of Wat Tyler, not a sausage. It's not even known if they're the same person (though thought not) but if so then as John Tyler, he kicked the revolt off when a poll tax collector indecently assaulted his daughter, and if that's true, then fair play to him. After that, of course, it all went somewhat to Hell.

Fed up with being taxed out of existence and generally treated like property, Tyler led the peasants across London Bridge on June 13 and they began sacking records offices, freeing prisoners, burning houses and killing anyone who looked like he worked for John of Gaunt. In an attempt to mediate with them, the young King Richard II (14 years old, so why John of Gaunt didn't go with him or in his place I don't know) met the rebels the next day and listened to their grievances, and promised to do all he could. Some were mollified and went home, Tyler and others were not, and so the king met them again the following day. This time, it does seem, from the reports, that Tyler fucked himself over by being arrogant and disrespectful to the king.

Possibly thinking he had him over a barrel, he was discourteous and rude, prompting his arrest by the Lord Mayor. When he attempted to attack said Lord Mayor, he ended up getting stabbed himself, and though he got away he did not get far. He was brought back and beheaded, and that was the end of the Peasants' Revolt. Tyer's head was popped on a spike over London Bridge, and without their leader the rebels all shrugged and went home, only to their great surprise to find their own heads alongside Tyler's. The king might be a kid, but he was not having these poor fuckers diss him, and he quickly revoked all the promises he had made on June 14.

Whether they had been genuine promises, or just made to mollify the rebels till the king and his men could fuck them up, I don't know. I tend to believe Richard was sincere in his words, but after being treated almost like not even an equal, but an inferior by the rebel leader, he quickly lost patience and any sympathy he may have had evaporated. You can't blame him really. But then again, he might just have been stringing them along, as I say. What's clear is that Tyler fucked everything up by being an arrogant bastard. Had he taken the deal, even if it had not been sincere, it might have been harder for Richard to backtrack, having made promises in public. But he seems to have been more interested in being a big man, and because of that he was suddenly about six inches smaller and seeing London from a viewpoint few attain, nor wish to.