Piers Gaveston
Posts about Piers Gaveston written by colindunkerley
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The English King Edward II had inherited from his father expensive wars against Scotland.

If Bannockburn secured the Scots’ ability to fight another day, this was shown Today in 1322 with the Battle of Old Byland aka Byland Moor, Yorks., sending a message to Edward that in this first war of independence Robert I (Bruce) could strike in England too.

The leader of the English was John of Bretagne, 1st earl of Richmond, in a battle which took place on Scawton Moor between Rievaulx and Byland Abbeys. However Bretagne was captured and ransomed, in a disastrous conflict for Edward.

Edward had enough troubles at home which saw some senior English nobles led by Thomas, earl of Lancaster thinking of allying with the Scots, (1)

Thomas the King’s first cousin and in landed terms probably the most powerful baron in England, was leader of the baronial opposition to Edward and one of the Lords Ordainers (the reforms demanded were known as The Ordinance), who back in November 1311 demanded banishment of the King’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, and the establishment of a baronial oligarchy (2).

Gaveston had returned illegally in January 1312 and arrested in Scarborough Castle by a baronial army was taken via Oxfordshire to Warwick where Thomas of Lancaster sentenced him to death.

However killing Gaveston instead of healing government, owing to the law of unforeseen consequnces, did the opposite, and a rift arose between Lancaster’s supporters and the earl of Pembroke who considered an act of quasi-judicial murder had happened in causing the death of another earl.(3)

However the Despensers were more profligate and malevolent than Gaveston and their influence pushed the country into civil war which initially went the King’s way with his victory over Thomas 2nd earl of Lancaster at Boroughbridge (16.3.1322), who was beheaded outside Pontefract Castle.

At Boroughbridge Edward stifled the rebel threat of Lancaster, Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Baron de Clifford: now Edward could devote his time to the Scots.

So he headed north for a second sortie against Bruce who undertook a scorhed earth policy. Edward returned south dispirited with an hungry army whilst the Scots moved south collecting men en-route whilst making sporadic attacks in the north East.

Ever since Bannockburn in 1314 the Scots had taken the initiative in incursions into northern England in attempts towards independence, after which Edward’s reign went from bad to worse including several years of flood and famine from 1315. Also hydra-headed arose new favourites: the Hugh Despensers, the Elder and Younger.

Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer rebelled, and Edward’s rule collapsed, as they invaded from the Continent in 1326 killing the Despensers and forcing the abdication of Edward in January 1327 in favour of the teenage Edward III.

(1) Thomas was the eldest son of Edmund Crouchback,1st earl of Lancaster, having inherited the titles of earls of Lancaster, Leicester, and that of Derby from the attainted de Ferrers.

(2) Humphrey de Bohun 4th earl of Hereford, a member of the Anglo-Norman Marcher Lords, was one of the Ordainers concerned against the excesses of Edward II. Months later Edward II was murdered at Berkeley Castle.

(3) East of Leek Wootton near Warwick on a wood-shrouded hillside (Blacklow Hill) is a cross by J.C. Jackson (1832) raised on piers states: ‘In the Hollow of this Rock/ Was beheaded/ On the 17 Day of July, 1312/ By Barons lawless as himself, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall; The Minion of a hateful King: In Life and Death, A memorable Instance of Misrule’.

References/Pics.

wikipedia.org.

information-britain.co.uk/famousdates.

ladydespenserscribery.com.

Edward II had invited hatred for his infatuation with his friends, his wrangling with the nobles, and his defeat at Bannockburn, by Robert the Bruce in 1314. In 1327 he was the first anointed King to be dethroned since Ethelred in 1013.

Medieval kings had their confidants and favourites, which can work well most of the time, but can be dangerous when those on the outside turn nasty.

Thus it was with Edward II, whose weak military leadership and failure to get the barons onside was to eventually to see not just his downfall, but that of his favourite Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall.

For it was at 9 am Today in 1312, that he was taken from his prison cell in Warwick Castle and handed over to the prison guards who escorted him to nearby Blacklow Hill, where he was met by two Welshmen, one of whom ran a sword through his body; the second cut off his head.(1)

For five years Gaveston had been the most hated man in the Kingdom, treating other nobles and Queen Isabella, with contempt. He was also associated with Edward‘s lamentable record of government.

Gaveston’s death was rough justice, it was also a political disaster, as the distraught King bent his revenge on his cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, which resulted in two decades of turbulence, mutiny, distrust and a civil-war (1321-2).

After the defeat of the rebellious Thomas at Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, in 1322, Edward later fell into the power of his brother Henry, 3rd Earl, who took advantage to petition for the titles and lands at Tutbury, Staffordshire, of his late brother.

Edward’s future looked bleak, more so as he had fallen under the influence of his favourites the Despensers. The end came when a combined force of the Queen and her lover Hugh Mortimer invaded from France; the king was deposed and supposedly brutally murdered at Berkeley Castle in 1327, though stories circulated that the King had escaped abroad.

The only source for Edward’s probably mythical, violent end, came from the Edward worshipper, the chronicler Geoffrey le Baker c 1350 and later Christopher Marlowe, no doubt to exaggerate the dastardly cruelty of the King’s enemies. (2)

(1) After Piers Gaveston, Prince John of Eltham, (c15th August 1316 to 13th September 1336), was created Earl of Cornwall on 6th October 1328.

(2) How the facts of history can be distorted by writers, is seen with the name ‘She-Wolf’, ascribed to Queen Isabella. This was first used much later by Shakespeare for Margaret of Anjou, and first applied to Isabella by Thomas Gray in 1757. See Henry VI, Pt 3, Act 1, scene 4.

ADDENDA:

Over the King’s Gateway at Caernarfon Castle, Wales, is a dilapidated stone statue of Edward II, the first Prince of Wales, and whose present Prince, still nowadays enjoys the income from the Duchy of Cornwall Estates.

This results from the augmentation of the former earldom of Cornwall into a Duchy which occurred on March 17th 1337, by its first Charter.

The first Duke of Cornwall, was Edward III’s eldest son, the ‘Black Prince’(1330-1376).

Ref: edwardthesecond.blogspot.co.uk/edward-of-caernarfon.

Ref: royal.gov.uk/historyofthemonarchy/plantagenets/edward II.

Ref: encyclopaedia.com/edward_II.

Ref: paradoxplace.com/tomb-effigy-shrine/edward II. Image Ref. at Gloucester Cathedral.

‘Like favourites, made proud by Princes’: ‘Much Ado about Nothing’.(1)

Writing of George III’s old tutor John Stuart and later his Prime Minister, Lord Bute, the historian Macaulay in 1844 wrote: ‘He was a favourite; and favourites have always been odious in this country. No mere favourite had been at the head of government since the dagger of Felton had reached the heart of the Duke of Buckingham.'(2)

John Stuart 3rd Earl of Bute, was the first Prime Minister from Scotland, following the Act of Union in 1707, and is said to have been the last ‘favourite’ in British politics.

However many Today in 1763 would have heaved a sigh of relief when Bute handed over his office of First Lord of the Treasury, (now Prime Minister), to Charles Grenville.

For apart from being George III’s ‘favourite’ he was also hated by the Americans in the run up to the Revolutionary War.

Even after retiring to his study of botany, he had a corrupting influence over the British Government.

Bute was fortunate as in the old days he wouldn’t have slipped into retirement, but would often have suffered execution by the monarch, as often they had acquired over-weening power; or by the nobles, for their presumption, by offending their notions of hierarchy, especially if the favourite was low born.

Going back to Biblical Times with David and Saul and Joseph and Pharaoh, history is littered with favourites. Piers Gaveston the favourite of Edward II, was likened to a mushroom, by poet Christopher Marlow: ‘ a night grown mushrump(sic) to his enemies.’

Many favourites have been suggested as lovers of the monarch, though it is difficult to get hard evidence. Robert Dudley was a favourite of Elizabeth I; George Villiers of James and Charles I, and Sarah Churchill the domineering friend of Queen Anne, come to mind.

Some such as Cardinal Wolsey, though gaining high access to Court, were more talented bureaucrats than mere favourites, though their fall was just as hard.

(1a) Shakespeare and to be found in Ch 3.V 1.9.

(1b) Falstaff was disappointed in not becoming a favourite of Prince Hal. Henry IV (I & II).

(2) Buckingham was a favourite of James I and there is extant a letter from James to Buckingham :’To my only sweet and dear child…That we may make this Christmas a new marriage…as I desire only to live in this world for your sake’.

This has been used by historians as suggesting James was homosexual, even taking into consideration that language style and mores were different then.

(3) It was on 16.4.1763 Bute asked Grenville to take over.

Ref: wikipedia.org/favourites.

Ref: bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings.john stuart. Pic Ref.

Ref: Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 72 f.14 Repository of Letters.

Ref Essay on Earl of Chatham quoted JH Elliott and LWB Brockliss Eds. world of Favourites 1999 Yale UP.

Ref:Stuart England JP Kenyon Allen Lane 1978.

Ref:King James and Letters of Homeoerotic Desires, David M Bergeron, To George Villiers Duke of Buckingham. Dec 1623.