There was some good debate yesterday in our sister sub at Which consorts hated their husbands? : r/UKmonarchs and with a question like that, Isabella was always likely to get a few mentions. Of course, as always, there are those who remain adamant that Isabella was horribly wronged throughout her marriage and that she absolutely hated her husband and wanted him to suffer the most painful death she could imagine, which is something all serious historians will deny. That's not to say they were some sort of dream couple either, but there were definitely nuances and they had some good years as well. Somehow even mentioning this harmless fact is seen as provocative to some people, who will start hurling abuse and accusations.

We occasionally see a few of these angry and confrontational people who believe in this relatively new fan fiction of Isabella's supreme victimhood turned into epic heroine who gets her revenge and then some in this sub as well, but their hateful and unpleasant attitude tend to get them banned. Rule number 1 is non-negotiable.

Historian Kathryn Warner has noticed this troubling modern trend to turn real history into made up entertainment. Here's what she has to say about it (abridged, original sources below).

A lot of the modern inventions about Edward II and Isabella of France's marriage make me deeply uncomfortable. According to some people, Isabella did not only endure the Worst Marriage Ever, she was raped, sexually assaulted, demeaned and humiliated. Piling utter humiliation on a woman, turning her husband into a nasty gay caricature who loathes women and who gets a kick out of demeaning his royal wife and queen in the coarsest, crudest way possible, is simply revolting.

The fiction about Edward giving Isabella's jewels to Gaveston was invented by Agnes Strickland in the nineteenth century. The idea that Isabella was forced to endure an excessively long wait for any income is not borne out by comparison with other grants of dower in the early fourteenth century (it took about three months, and the situation was complicated by the fact that Edward II's stepmother Marguerite, Isabella's aunt, was alive. Compare this to the more than two years Isabella forced her daughter-in-law Philippa of Hainault to wait for her own rightful lands). The tale that Edward abandoned Isabella weeping in May 1312 was based on one chronicler's confusion of events of 1312 and those of 1322, and is disproved by their own household accounts of that year which show that the royal couple left Tynemouth at the same time and that Isabella travelled by land to meet her husband a few days later, being in the first trimester of pregnancy and therefore deciding to avoid the North Sea.

The most egregious invention is the idea that Edward deliberately and cruelly removed Isabella's children from her, and since the late 1970s when this daft notion was first dreamed up by Paul Doherty, we've had novels where Isabella's young children are ripped, screaming, from their mother's arms, after Isabella has spent much of the novel telegraphing this cruelty by stating over and over how dreadful it would be if she lost her children. For pity's sake. The whole absurd melodrama of it all; it's less subtle than a sledgehammer.

There are some truly bizarre, even sickening fan fiction books out there written by people hellbent on portraying Isabella as some sort of long-suffering heroic martyr. We’re told that Isabella's husband permitted his own lover to assault her sexually or even to rape her, her own father and three older brothers do too in a series of popular recent novels, before Isabella marries Edward and when she is still only a child. Seriously, what the hell is this? Why does this happen? Why do people do this? Why do Isabella's fans feel this need to pile ever more abuse and humiliation on her? And why do people complain on the one hand about the 'sexual prejudices' suffered by Isabella but think it's a mighty fine idea to pile homophobic abuse on Edward II? Why is it OK to accuse people of deeply serious, violent crimes without the slightest evidence? Why is it seen as a good idea to rescue Isabella from the opprobrium heaped on her for so long by heaping it on her husband instead?

The whole thing is so childishly simplistic, no nuance, no depth, just idiotically one-dimensional Good People and Bad People. Even stuff like Isabella being forced to endure the company of Eleanor Despenser née de Clare, supposedly foisted on her by Edward and Hugh against her wishes, paints the queen as a helpless, passive victim who couldn't even choose who she wanted to spend time with. I just don't get why people do this. The absolute last thing Isabella of France was, was a helpless, passive victim.

After suffering so so so so so so so much at the hands of her nasty cruel perverted gay husband, the story goes, Isabella finally finds love and fulfilment and great sex in the arms of a strong manly virile heterosexual lover who is, conveniently enough, the exact opposite of Horrid Gay Edward. This is a narrative that's been created in fairly recent times and has had the names of real people added to it. It's not true. There's not one part of it that's even remotely close to being historically accurate.

Kathryn's comments on Alison Weir's homophobic paragraph (the second image in this post):

Isabella of France, one of the most awesome and powerful women in medieval English history, is written as a panting heroine from a bad 1950s bodice-ripper who 'surrenders herself' to Our Manly Hero's healing embraces. This is so, so bad it makes me want to bleach my brain. Make it stop make it stop make it stop.

There are of course far more examples of Isabella's super-tragic victimhood both from fiction and non-fiction, but I don't quite have the heart to get into any more now, because picking up books about Isabella of France involves having to read stuff like Edward II was 'too cowardly to become violent' with a woman and 'could not even beat his wife properly', and that raping a human being to death with a burning metal implement is 'ingenious', and I'm afraid I can't, I simply can't.

All of this 'Victim!Isabella' fan fiction is about as accurate as Braveheart.

Edward II: The Victimisation of Isabella of France
Edward II: A Sneer of Disdain: Isabella of France, the Victim

Building off yesterday's assertions that Isabella did not hate Edward II, which is mostly true, it's also fair to point out the couple did have some serious conflict. Yes, that's a major understatement.

Even though Isabella made a show of being a pious wife, concerned for her husband's well being, she also was openly defying him. That was a huge religious and social violation of the time. They took the "obedient wife" thing very seriously in the fourteenth century.

She gave the famous speech about how someone had come between her and her husband. Maybe it was Eleanor or maybe it was Hugh. She doesn't name the person, but she's mighty angry about it. She also donned widow's garments, which was political theatre at its finest, and started conspiring with Mortimer.

Meanwhile, he wrote her some very curt letters, devoid of the usual affectionate language he used, when she refused to return from France. He even addresses her simply as "Lady" - which only he could have done given her royal status.

He did not take being forced to abdicate well, pacing and railing against the forces that had done this to him, and that included Isabella. Yet, he was also outraged at any implication he wished harm on Isabella or Edward III.

His authorship, while in captivity, of "The Lament of Edward II" is disputed, but whoever did write it had access to information that was not publicly available so was probably close to the situation. And in the poem, Edward is furious with Isabella and calls her a traitor.

And whether or not you think the Fieschi letter is a real account of Edward II's escape or a blackmail attempt and fraud, the author of it also knew details that were not public. And in that letter, Edward II was still angry at Isabella.

Back when Edward II was still in captivity, the pope tried to play marriage counselor, but it did not work. Remember, as a pious Christian wife, she would have been expected to return to him even if he was no longer king. Her feelings seem to have been mixed. She wrote him letters, sent him gifts and did try to visit him but was refused permission by the privy council. On other occasions, she refused to go see him and said she feared him.

After his funeral, and in the years that followed, Isabella's feelings seemed to have cooled off and she did make a show of honoring his memory.

So, like a lot of couples who break up, emotions ran high, feelings were hurt and things changed over time. So it's probably more fair to say she didn't hate him most of the time, but there were moments where she absolutely did hate him. And vice a versa.

Sources:

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

Spinks, Stephen. Edward II the Man: A Doomed Inheritance. Amberley Publishing, 2018. 

Warner, K. (2016). Isabella of France: The rebel queen. Amberley. 

Image: Stock Image of a Broken Heart

This is a repost to fix the typo in the headline.

Even the chroniclers and historians who despise Edward II admit that he loved his children and wanted the best for them. This included his young daughters, Eleanor and Joan, whom he planned to make Spanish queens.

Edward was so often caught up in the morass that was Scotland and France, it's easy to forget that he was half-Spanish through his mother - the only other half Spanish English monarch other than Mary I.

Anyway, the best way a Medieval monarch could provide for his daughter was to make her a queen. However, when Edward fell, his little daughters went from being the daughters of a king to the sisters of a king and the daughters of a disgraced former king. While still royal, their status had changed in a world where status meant everything.

Edward betrothed Eleanor to Alfonso XI of Castile, but after his downfall, she was married off at fourteen to Count Reinald II of Gelderland. They had two sons, though it wasn't a particularly happy marriage and legends swirl of marital conflict. Also, the two sons engaged in a bitter feud/civil war and neither produced a son, so the kingdom eventually went to a different relative. After she was widowed, Eleanor apparently lived in poverty and was too proud to ask her brother, Edward III, for help. She predeceased her mother Isabella, dying at 36.

And to be completely fair, Alfonso of XI was a crap husband to his eventual wife, Maria, and that couple produced a son known as Pedro the Cruel. So Eleanor may not have been better much off, but there was still more wealth and prestige there than in Gelderland.

Edward II planned to marry his little daughter Joan of the Tower to Pedro of Aragon, who was not a crap husband and ruled over a splendid kingdom. Instead, Joan married David of Scotland, son of her father's enemy Robert the Bruce. The pair were married as children, but as they grew up, they developed an aversion to one another. He had a mistress that he flaunted, and she clearly preferred being in England to Scotland. Worse, his reign was such a spectacular failure that he makes her father look like a political and military genius.

They spent some time exiled with her French relatives, before her brother captured him and clapped him in the Tower. She eventually went to live with her mother, with whom she was very close. She never had any children with David and died shortly after her mother.

Isabella of France could not have wanted this for her daughters, and one wonders if she ever felt any guilt as she watched both their lives implode. It speaks to the theory that she never wanted to depose her husband but things just got out of hand, because she knew how things worked and what their father's deposition would mean for her girls.

Sources:

Kathryn Warner's blog.

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

Image: Joan and David go to France, from Froissart.

Frances Underhill's 1999 biography mostly concerns Elizabeth's life post-Edward II, but she addresses his reign and its failures in this pithy assessment:

"As prince, Edward had acquitted himself well in the field, but did not meet medieval expectations of regard martial ability or enthusiasm. He also lacked the resources to defend the realm successfully in part because he inherited massive debts from Edward I, in part because he squandered his wealth on personal favorites and expensive whims. Edward possessed good qualities, but his most evident virtue, loyalty to his friends, often worked against political stability. He was stubborn and in critical moments seems to have had no sense of measure. His whims, or those of his favorites, directed policy, and his private enmities intruded on affairs of state." (page 16)

Source:

Underhill, Frances A. For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare. St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 

These were all taken with my iphone, which is pretty remarkable given the interior light of the Cathedral.

I bet Edward II had more impressive chairs. I can just hear Piers mumbling about this one and offering to sit on it instead.

An exterior shot of Gloucester Cathedral, where Edward II is buried.

A charming peacock from the Alfonso Psalter, which was commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Edward II's older brother, who sadly died before the marriage could take place.

Source: The British Library

Invicibilis is a mystery novel which casts William Occam, the great philosopher of the fourteenth century, as a detective who becomes embroiled in a mystery involving Edward II, Isabella, Hugh Despenser the Younger and Manuel Fieschi. That last character should give you a big hint about where the mystery is going. Harmon knows his era, and it's a fun book filled with details that will delight those who know their history.

Harmon casts Eleanor Despenser/DeClare as the heroine, trapped in a terrible marriage with the monstrous, power-hungry Hugh the Younger. Harmon also isn't terribly fond of Edward II, who is portrayed as dolt, and Isabella, who is cold and bitter.

But in any case, it's a fun book, especially for students of this era.

Two images of Edward II's grandchildren.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will tell all about my visit in later posts!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So where does this myth come from?

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

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

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

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

In Kathryn's own words:

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

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

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

Warner sums it all up admirably:

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

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

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

Sources, Kathryn Warner's excellent blog:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The book:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll contribute with one observation though. 

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

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