Table Of ContentKING EDWARD II
Edward II's alabaster effigy on a Purbeck marble tomb beneath a freestone canopy:
Gloucester Cathedral, formerly St Peter's Abbey.
From a photograph by Arthur Gardner in The Archaeological Journal 61 (1904),
reproduced in his English Medieval Sculpture, Cambridge, 1937.
King Edward II
Edward of Caernarfon
His Life, 9His Reign, and Its Aftermath,
1284-1330
ROY MARTIN HAINES
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen's University Press 2003
ISBN 0-7735-2432-0
Legal deposit second quarter 2003
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from
the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada,
using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of
the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government
of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Haines, Roy Martin
King Edward II: Edward of Caernarfon, his life, his reign, and
its aftermath, 1284-1330 / Roy Martin Haines.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-2432-0
I. Edward II, King of England, 1284-1327. 2. Great Britain
- Kings and rulers - Biography. 3. Great Britain - History -
Edward II, 1307-1327. I. Title.
DA23O.H34 2003 942.O3'6'o92 C2OO2-9O5O62-6
This book was typeset by True to Type in 101/2/13 Times
MEMORIAE
Erici Segelberg
Universitatis Upsalensis
Theologiae Doctoris incliti,
amid sociique nostri,
in terra viventium nunc ambulantis
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Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgments x
Abbreviations xii
Illustrations xiii
PART ONE EDWARD OF CAERNARFON, HIS KINGSHIP, AND
ITS DENOUEMENT
1 Formative Years, 1284-1307 3
2 Royal Character: Prophesy and Retrospection 25
3 Faltering Steps, 1307-1308 49
4 The Last of the Gaveston Years: The Road to Bannockburn,
1308-1314 65
5 Descent into the Abyss: Civil Strife, 1314-1322 95
6 The Tyrannous Years: Baldock, Stapeldon, and the Despensers,
1322-1326 143
7 The Iron Lady: Isabella Triumphant, 1326-1330 177
8 Life after Death: Edward the Penitent Hermit 219
PART TWO THE COLONIAL EMPIRE
9 Scotland, 1290-1330 241
10 Ireland, 1295-1330 283
11 Gascony and England's Relations with France, 1259-1330 303
viii Contents
12 Summing Up 333
APPENDICES
A Two Accounts of the Deposition of Edward II 343
B A Summary of the Charges against Mortimer 346
MAPS
Scotland in the Fourteenth Century 351
Ireland in the Fourteenth Century 352
The Pursuit and Capture of Sir Thomas Gurney 353
The Supposed Journeyings of Edward of Caernarfon 354
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
England 355
France 356
Notes 357
Bibliography 517
Index 567
Preface
This book has been a considerable time in germination, many years in growth.
The idea of writing a history of Edward of Caernarfon's reign occurred to me
in Canada while I was engaged on a biography of Archbishop Stratford. A vis-
iting fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge (1987-88), coupled with a Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council Research Grant with leave stipend
(1987-90), enabled me to get to grips with much more than the preliminaries,
but for some six years afterwards other commitments ensured that the skele-
ton structure lay unfinished on the stocks. This was due to numerous vicissi-
tudes, not least of them retirement from Dalhousie, and a subsequent migra-
tion from Putney (London) to Somerset, carried out almost unassisted over a
period of time by my wife and myself. We were then faced with settling down
in a new environment, and the temporary loss of convenient access to London,
Oxford, and Cambridge libraries, not to mention the distraction entailed by a
large garden. There were other academic concerns, including a calendar of the
episcopal register of Bishop Montacute, diversions for various articles, as well
as a sheaf of biographies for the medieval section of the Oxford University
Press's New Dictionary of National Biography, and for the Dictionnaire d'his-
toire et de geographic ecclesiastiques, many of them relevant to Edward's
reign. Eventually, however, it became possible, with a great effort, to return to
the task.
Social and economic factors have been subordinated to an overall narrative
structure that is principally concerned with the personal and political struggles
at the centre of Edward's life and reign. Despite the modern preoccupation with
"cultures" I remain committed to the concept that individuals exert a significant
influence on events. Furthermore, this book reflects aspects of Edward's life and
times to which I have been particularly attracted and which in some instances,
for instance the "afterlife" of that king, have prompted lectures or articles. These
elements are of historical significance and are notably revealing in the case of
Edward, as also in the cases of Isabella and Mortimer. Inevitably one has to rely
on a wide range of secondary sources, but wherever possible I have followed my
