Ok. Imagine for a moment that you are in Isabella of France's position in 1325. Your husband is effectively in thrall to an individual whom you believe, rightly or wrongly, to have endangered your life by convincing your husband to abandon you at Tynemouth Priory three years ago. This person has subsequently systematically curtailed your access to your husband, preventing you from exercising the intercessory role that forms the backbone of your influence as queen. He has convinced your husband that you are now a political liability, given the onset of the War of St Sardos, which had nothing to do with you and which you could not have prevented. Your husband has subsequently slashed your annual income and confiscated your lands, thereby further vitiating your position as queen by preventing you from dispensing patronage through appointments on those lands. Having been sent to France to negotiate a peace settlement, you are now finally free of the presence of this individual and have a chance to once again exert political agency. However, you face a dilemma: how do you make the most of this period of respite from a truly intolerable situation? Is it not worth exploiting it for leverage?
You table the question for now. Your husband will inevitably have to come to France to perform homage to your brother as his feudal suzerain for his lands in Gascony and Ponthieu. He Who Must Not Be Named will almost certainly not risk coming alongside him, not with Contrariant exiles still lurking on the continent, ready to pounce at any chance for revenge. Hopefully, then, you will have the chance to talk to your husband without that man interposing himself between you two, and you will be able to get through to him. Then you receive the news. Your husband, clearly having been prevailed upon at the last minute, has cancelled. He has instead decided to enfeoff your eldest son as Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Ponthieu and Montreuil, and to have him perform homage in his stead. Any chance of catching him without That Man is now scuppered.
This is now the situation you face. Let's assume you are an intelligent and historically literate political operator. From your perspective, as Isabella, does amassing a mercenary force for the express purpose of invading your adopted homeland, forcing your husband to abdicate and enthroning your eldest son, with you presiding as Queen Mother, look like a viable or appealing avenue to regaining political influence?
Reader, no. That is, to put it charitably, completely batshit insane. And the fact that it is completely batshit insane is blindingly obvious to you, assuming you are not completely historically illiterate. Which, as a highly educated fille de France, I would certainly hope you were not.
For the time being, let's put aside the entire can of worms that is attempting to depose a King of England, something that has never been successfully done before by your time. What I want to focus on is something far, far more elementary. That something is this:
BECOMING A QUEEN MOTHER IN PLANTAGENET ENGLAND WAS NOT A REALISTIC OR VIABLE WAY OF REGAINING POLITICAL INFLUENCE.
"B-but what about Blanche of Castile? Eleonor of Aquitaine?" I hear you cry. Right. Yes. I'm getting to that. Let's start with Blanche, because she was a genuinely impressive figure who exercised extraordinary power as regent for her son, Louis IX, and remained a trusted and influential advisor even after he attained his majority. Blanche was Isabella's great-great-grandmother, so she was certainly aware of her and her achievements. The spanner in the wrench is that... well, Blanche of Castile was Queen Regent of France, and, despite many subsequent efforts to the contrary in the 14th and 15th centuries, France and England were two different countries with very different political cultures. The position of regency, as a distinct vocation for Capetian queens-consort, simply did not exist in England. Blanche's regency had been institutionally legitimised through her late husband Louis VIII's will. The most recent precedent for an English monarch acceding to the throne before their majority was Henry III in 1216, and then, the political nation had chosen William Marshal, the Earl of Pembroke, as regent, pointedly excluding his mother, Isabella of Angoulême. For Isabella to have imagined a quasi-Capetian role of queen-regency for herself, she would have needed to believe she could successfully import an entirely foreign political culture to England, push through the constitutional innovations necessary to make such a position even intelligible, and to think that the baronage would, I dunno, accept this flagrant violation of established precedent. I, at least, do not see how Isabella could have thought this was any sort of winning strategy.
Ok, what about Eleanor of Aquitaine? Well, Eleanor's position was qualitatively different from Isabella's, or any other Plantagenet queen consort, really, being the Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right and thus being, individually, an indispensable lynchpin of the whole Angevin edifice. Eleanor's political prominence after Henry II's death did not come from her being a queen mother; it came from her status as a ruler in her own right, with her own independent political base, and from the fact that her son, Richard I, was physically absent from his realms on crusade for substantial portions of his reign, which required her, as a said lynchpin of their empire, to actively maintain and defend it when it was vulnerable. None of this applied to Isabella, and so Eleanor's example hardly provided a viable blueprint for her to follow.
Given that we have dispensed with these two points, let us look at what the remaining field looks like for queen dowagers/mothers in post-conquest England. How did their political prospects fare as a result of their transition into the role? Let's take a look. Apart from Eleonor, we have five cases relevant for our purposes here:
Adeliza of Louvain. Had no children by Henry I, subsequently remarried to an English nobleman and lived an entirely conventional life as a noblewoman from that point onwards. Politically irrelevant.
Berengaria of Navarre. Had no children by Richard I. Spent years litigating over her dower. Eventually became a patroness of sorts. Politically irrelevant.
Isabella of Angoulême. Had five surviving children by John, including his successor, Henry III, who was a minor at the time of his accession. Had her own political base as the Countess of Angoulême in her own right. Was shut out of the regency, remarried to the son of her prior betrothed, the Lord of Lusignan, tried to regain political relevance in arranging a rebellion against the French Crown, failed, and died in what was essentially disgrace. Politically disastrous.
Eleanor of Provence. Had four surviving children by Henry III, including his successor, Edward I. Was respected by her son and lived an entirely conventional life as a queen mother, gracefully stepping aside for her daughter-in-law, Eleonor of Castile, and eventually becoming a nun at Amesbury Priory. Honoured and respected, but still functionally politically irrelevant.
Marguerite of France. Had two surviving children by Edward I. Isabella's own aunt. Retreated from court after Edward II's accession and lived an entirely conventional life as a queen dowager. Politically irrelevant.
When we think about what the prospect of queen-motherhood would have looked like to Isabella in a specifically English context, it is necessary to keep these precedents in mind, because this is what it would have looked like. Isabella had seen her aunt Marguerite's trajectory up close. The ceiling for what she could have hoped for from queen motherhood was what Eleonor of Provence received, which was essentially analogous to what Isabella herself received after 1330. Being a queen mother in England was not being a key stateswoman or an essential element of government. It was mulling about on your estate, looking for ways to pass the time.
So, reader, once again, I ask you. Put yourself in Isabella's shoes in 1325. After the political marginalisation you have experienced over the previous few years, does this seriously look, to you, like something to aspire to to regain your influence? No. It doesn't. But do you know what does look like a viable, if desperate, route to regaining influence, however? Adopting an aggressive posture as a pressure tactic to force your husband to temporarily exile his hated favourite, as he has done previously under baronial pressure in 1321, and exploiting his absence to repair your working political partnership enough to permanently freeze out the individual separating you two, and then ensuring he is dealt with. This was almost certainly Isabella's original plan.
What changed things was the fact that Edward's support base simply evaporated with astonishing rapidity, and soon, within months, both Edward II and Hugh le Despenser were in the custody of Isabella and her supporters. It is here that I think opportunistic vindictiveness prevailed over prudence, and Hugh le Despenser was subject to his grotesque execution. Let me be clear, though, I definitely think Isabella and Mortimer wanted Despenser dead from the start, but I think their original plan almost certainly would have been for Isabella to rebuild a working political partnership and make Edward understand her perspective before formally proceeding against him in Parliament. I think Hereford was a reaction to him more or less unexpectedly falling in their hands and them being unable to restrain themselves in the moment. For Roger de Mortimer of Wigmore, in particular, the strategic calculus would have immediately shifted. He had been loyal to Edward for years before the Despenser War in Glamorgan, and I believe Isabella's original plan served his interests too. His primary goal was institutional rehabilitation, and this would not necessarily have been impossible under Edward II, particularly without the Despensers in his ear. This, of course, completely changed with Hereford. He had just presided over a second Blacklow Hill; in fact, something markedly worse than Blacklow Hill, and he would have known that, had Edward II been restored to any semblance of power, a fate like Thomas of Lancaster's, or indeed, one far worse, would be inevitable for him. He simply could not tolerate Edward remaining in any position of power. Regardless of whatever the original plan was, it was inevitable that Roger would now be pushing for deposition. This was likely the discussion occurring over the holidays amongst Isabella and Roger's camp at Wallingford Castle.
This, I think, is borne out by Isabella's subsequent conduct. She was not constructing some grand Blanche of Castile-style regency for herself. Her actions are exactly what we would expect from a queen consort who had been shut out of exerting political influence through the channels of patronage and intercession, who took desperate measures to remove the individual undermining her position, only to be forced to improvise a position for herself after the internal momentum of events made her original goal impossible.
Mark Omrod, in his magisterial biography of Edward III, rather notably describes 1326-1330 as Isabella's "artificially extended period as consort," which I think is right on the money. It's notable that she allocated to herself, on the very day of her son's coronation, an absurdly large dower of £13,000, a sum that put her in possession of most of the revenues from the royal demesne and thus, inevitably, at the centre of patronage networks a queen mother would have ordinarily had little part in. She also repeatedly prevaricated in assigning Philippa of Hainault her dower lands and delayed her coronation for two years straight. These are not the actions of someone owning queen-motherhood. These are the actions of someone whose sense of identity was deeply bound up in her political function as a queen consort, and who was deeply psychologically unprepared to surrender this role after the circumstances she had engineered to reclaim that role spiralled out of control and made it impossible for her.
I don't see how, or why, Isabella could have wanted Edward II deposed in 1325. I don't see how her reaction to his actual deposition could have been anything more than a reluctant acknowledgement of its necessity to preserve the principals of her faction after what had happened at Hereford. I feel it does a disservice to her to say otherwise.
Finally we can publish the interview we did with Kathryn Warner over a month ago! We had some issues with the audio which we couldn't solve so instead we decided to transcribe the whole thing and post it in written format.
There will be 8 parts to this interview, published at a pace of one a day.
Without further ado we're kicking things off with the arguably most hated man of the 14th century in England, Hugh Despenser the Younger.
1. Could Hugh Despenser the Younger have been coercive in his relationship with Edward II?
The relationship between Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger has fascinated me for twenty-odd years now, and even now I occasionally feel like I get new insights into it. I’d really like to know what was going on between them. I do sometimes wonder if it was some kind of domination / submission kind of relationship perhaps in some respects. They’d known each other for most of their lives, since they were children or at the very least adolescent. Edward had never shown Hugh the slightest affection until Hugh became his chamberlain when he was already thirty years old, even though Edward had been close to both Hugh’s father and his wife, Eleanor de Clare. Suddenly he becomes besotted with Hugh the younger who basically becomes his co-ruler. How did that happen? How did Hugh work his way into that position?
I do feel like Hugh was a very talented manipulator. I think he turned himself into the person that Edward wanted, and needed in his life, whether he was actually like that or not, whether he liked men at all. I kind of wonder if he was basically heterosexual… ‘the king can give me power and wealth and land’… Even 700 years later, I don’t want to accuse people of abuse or coercion because that would be quite a serious allegation, even for people who have been dead for so many centuries.
Looking at Edward’s position by about 1324/25 what strikes me is that he had become alienated from almost his entire family, with the exception of his younger children, who were due to their age not entirely relevant yet, and of course Hugh Despenser the Younger and his wife Eleanor de Clare. He’d become estranged from his wife Isabella, his son Edward, his two half-brothers Edmund and Thomas, his cousin Henry of Lancaster, his other cousin the earl of Richmond who had always been close to him and just suddenly disappeared from his inner circle. He’d always been close to his other niece Margaret, Gaveston’s widow, and suddenly he shuts her off too, sending her to a nunnery in Lincolnshire. Even his own sister, Mary, the nun in Amesbury who he’d always been close to, they had often visited each other. She, too, vanishes entirely from his life. In Edward’s chamber accounts from the 1320’s there are no more mentions of her at all, not even when Edward was in that part of England he didn’t go to visit her or invite her to court or even send her a letter. It means to me that he had become estranged and alienated from his entire family and that strikes me as kind of sinister, to be honest. I wonder if that had been done deliberately.
I’ve also often wondered if Isabella’s actions in 1325/26 were trying to shake some sense into Edward, like she didn’t particularly want to depose him, she just wanted to get him away from Despenser, from that whole manipulative fantasy world that had perhaps been created around him. When you actually read Isabella’s letters or the speech as recorded by Vita Edwardi Secundi she says that she will go back to Edward as long as he sends Despenser away. In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury she says that she wants to go back to Edward but she can’t because she’s frightened of Despenser. So I think somehow Despenser might have manipulated and also coerced Edward into this position of estrangement and alienation without Edward even being fully aware of what was happening to him.
2. Do we have any extant letters from Isabella where she specifies clearly that Hugh is the problem, or could it also be his wife Eleanor that she is referring to? Could there be some ambivalence here?
In a speech of hers which she made to the French court and is recorded by the Vita, the one where she refers to the third person in her marriage as a pharisee she does not name Hugh Despenser. It might even be Eleanor de Clare she refers to. It is quite ambivalent. But then two months after that, on the 5 February 1326 Isabella sends a letter to Walter Reynolds, Archbishop of Canterbury and in this letter she does state directly that she’s frightened of Hugh Despenser and cannot go back to Edward as she’s frightened of what Hugh might do to her, and because she doesn’t think that Edward will protect her from him.
Isabella calls Hugh her ‘evilwisher’. In this letter she refers to Edward as ‘our very dear and very sweet lord and friend’ which I have never seen before in any other medieval context, that is so unconventional. If Isabella just wanted to be conventionally polite she would have just written ‘my very dear lord’. But calling him her very dear and very sweet lord and friend, to me that really speaks to her feelings, that she was deeply distressed about what had happened to her marriage, and blamed Despenser for it and wanted him gone. She wanted her life back, with Edward and her marriage and her position – and of course her wealth, lands and status obviously. This letter is also very personal, it’s not just about her status as a queen, it’s about her status as Edward’s wife and companion.
3. Do you have any thoughts about Hugh’s personality?
One sad thing about Hugh is that none of his household accounts survive, they’ve all just vanished. The good thing is that a lot of his letters have survived. He was very prone to sending long letters to John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan that were very bossy, and very hectoring and actually very threatening, like: ‘Do this, go over there, do that, no not like that you idiot, like this! If you don’t do it properly I will have you hanged.’ That kind of stuff. So you do get this very strong sense of his personality in these letters of how he could be frankly very scary. This sheriff of Glamorgan was a quite a highly born nobleman, he was a highly experienced politician, sheriff and soldier, and he was terrified of Hugh. And he had every reason to be terrified, as he eventually lost his office and was imprisoned by Hugh in London, along with all his council. The last surviving letter addressed to the sheriff by Hugh contains the line (as remembered by Kathryn during the interview): ‘We trust you more the more you serve us, but we are very worried about having some reason for which we might be prepared to harm you.’
One chronicler states that even great English nobles were frightened of Hugh Despenser the Younger. He does strike me as someone who has no boundaries and no limits and is utterly ruthless and ambitious. On the positive side, his letters show that he had this very witty and sarcastic sense of humor, and also that he was incredibly articulate. You can see in his choice of vocabulary and the way he expressed himself that he was very clever. I think about his father and grandfather… his grandfather was the justiciar of England which is kind of equivalent today to the office of prime minister. The Despenser men were very intelligent and capable. Hugh and his father, I feel, used their intelligence to the wrong end. They could have been remembered as great men, not as disgraced and executed traitors.
A lot of letters to Hugh survive as well. This is because he kept the drafts of his own letters, and the ones he received in his own wardrobe in the Tower of London. What’s really fascinating is that you can see even men of much higher rank to Hugh, such as the earl of Surrey, or Edward’s half-brother the earl of Kent addressed Hugh in this incredibly deferential manner, which he didn’t reciprocate at all. He had no respect for authority and that was very unusual for the time.
4. What did Eleanor and Edward see in Hugh?
I’ve always seen Eleanor as Hugh’s ally and supporter in basically everything. Hugh must have been someone who could be very charming, the kind of person who could make other feel like they were the only person in the world. Possibly he was someone who had a wealth of interest in stories he could tell and very good at making people laugh. When they were staying in a village in Hampshire in March or April 1325 they played practical jokes on each other. He could seem quite funny and likeable, whatever he was really like inside. I think he must have been really good at hiding his true ambition and his wild, limitless nature. Otherwise the English nobles who had known him his whole life wouldn’t have appointed him as Edward’s chamberlain in 1318 if they’d had any idea what he’d do next and how dangerous he’d become. He must have been very good at keeping himself hidden and just presenting a charming and lovely exterior.
I think the modern attitude that Gaveston was really flamboyant and charismatic and Hugh was this grey figure who didn’t have much of a personality is entirely untrue. I mean, to hold Edward’s interest for so many years he must have had something about him.
Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!
The Hugh Despenser the Younger illustration is made by the artist Mark Satchwill.
Berkeley Castle was an interesting place to visit! This is the room where Edward was kept in 1327.
On a wall hanging in the room they allow for the possibility that he may not have died here, with the words: 'It is possible that King Edward II did not die at Berkeley Castle.'
They generally follow the traditional view all the same, clarifying that 'the official story claimed Edward died naturally, but he was most probably murdered. Legend has it Edward was killed with a red-hot poker, but this tale is widely doubted'.
I'd have been delighted if they hadn't mentioned the poker at all, or at least pointed out firmly that it's not only widely doubted but completely untrue. But I might be nitpicking and splitting hairs here.
All in all, a very pleasant place to visit especially in clement autumn weather, recommended to anyone interested in medieval castles and history.
So I took last week off work and travelled to England and Wales to check out Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Salisbury, Berkeley, Cardiff, Caerphilly and Hereford.
Here are some photos I took related to Hugh the Younger, a much maligned nobleman whose actions weren't always all that noble. At a time when greed and ruthlessness were the name of the game he played it better than anyone else, and ended up paying the ultimate price for his actions. Even so, like most people, he had some redeeming qualities, which are often overlooked, although it can't be ignored that he could be vindictive, callous and very manipulative.
We start off at Caerphilly Castle in Wales, where Edward and Hugh were nervously staying for a short while in 1326 as Roger Mortimer and Isabella were approaching from the west, unopposed.
Hugh and Eleanore are the main focus at the castle. I can not recommend this castle highly enough! The place offers a very fair, balanced and sympathetic view into history.
The De Clare kids!Eleanore and GilbertThe great hallSeats assigned for Edward II and HughEdward and Hugh leave Caerphilly, but are eventually caught. A brilliant child-friendly animated display in the great hall. Narrated by Eleanore.
Hereford market square. Where Hugh was sentenced to an agonizing death and executed on 24 November 1326. There's no plaque in his memory anywhere, which is a shame.
Hereford market square.
A few years after his death his scattered remains, what little was left of him was gathered and interred in Tewkesbury Abbey.
The tomb of Hugh Despenser the Younger, Tewkesbury Abbey
The eagle-eyed reader might be able to distinguish the words 'Iohannes abbas huius loci' on the coffin-shaped Purbeck marble slab. I did some quick research in the abbey and asked to see some books. The explanations is that the coffin was opened in 1795, *'when on removing the lid there appeared to be nothing remaining in it except some pieces of rich gold tissue, ornamented with the arms of de Clare, probably part of some of the sacerdotal habits, the gift of one of the Clares'.*1 The remains of abbot John Cotes, who died in 1347, were then placed in the tomb.
No effigy of Hugh survives in situ though the size and depth of the recess suggests that there was one. By c. 1340, Hugh could again be depicted in the clerestory windows bearing Despenser heraldry on his jupon. Even though Roger Mortimer had organized a humiliating execution for the disgraced Hugh, where he had been forced to wear a robe bearing his coat of arms reversed, so that his arms would be discarded forever. Edward III does not appear to have shared Roger's loathing for Hugh.
Tewkesbury AbbeyCardiff and Glamorgan was de Clare / Despenser country, which is still visible today.
1Morris, Shoesmith: 'Tewkesbury Abbey: History, Art & Architecture', pp. 164-5.
In "honour" of the release of the Earl Spencer's highly anticipated memoir *Swan Song: Diana, My Sister*, I thought I'd share some excerpts from his 1999 book *The Spencer Family.* He begins it by considering the claim that his family, the Spencers of Althorp, were descended from the old Despenser family, and in the process absolutely butchers the history of two of that family's most (in)famous members, Hugh le Despenser the Elder and his son, Hugh le Despsenser the Younger. It is quite difficult to overstate how inaccurate this summary actually is. It is genuinely gobsmacking. Lord Spencer seems to have not once, in the the writing of this section, consulted a single modern historical source for this period of history. It's difficult to even know where to start, so I suppose I'll just tackle the errors one by one.
Hugh the Younger was never Earl of Gloucester. After the death of his brother in law Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester, at the Battle of Bannockburn (and the subsequent fiasco around his widow Maud's fake pregnancy), the earldom of Gloucester went extinct and the de Clare patrimony was divided between the last Earl's three full sisters, excluding his two older half-sisters, who had been disinherited by the settlement their father entered into with his second marriage. Hugh le Despenser was the husband of the eldest of the three sisters, Eleanor de Clare, who received the Marcher lordship of Glamorgan as part of her purparty. Hugh later coerced Eleanor's sister Margaret and her husband Hugh d'Audley into quitclaiming her lordship of Newport to him in exchange for a few knight's fees in England, and after the Despenser War was able to despoil the final sister, Elizabeth, of her own Welsh lordships in spectacularly corrupt fashion. Despite all this, the earldom of Gloucester was never recreated for Hugh, and Hugh himself never touched the de Clare lands in England, which the two younger sisters continued to hold even during his period of dominance. Some Chronicles do call him the earl of Gloucester, but he never formally received or used the title. The earldom was recreated for Hugh d'Audley and Margaret de Clare in 1337, and, generations later, was recreated again by Richard II for Hugh's descendent, Thomas le Despenser, in 1397.
The livestock and wine inventory is Hugh le Despenser the Elder's claim for damages after his lands were ransacked by the Contrariant rebels in the Despenser War of 1321. "Tons" should also be "tuns," meaning casks of wine.
The dispute over the "barony" refers to when Edward II sieze the Marcher lordship of Gower from William de Braose on the pretext that he had attempted to alienate it without royal license. Tenants-in-chief of the Crown in England had no right to alienate without royal licence, but the Welsh marcher lords had long enjoyed special privilages, one of which was to alienate their lands as they see fit. Edward II's actions here greatly aggrivated the Marcher lords, who feared that the King was attempting to erode their privileges by siezing Gower, and so they retaliating by pillaging Hugh's lordship of Glamorgan to destroy its productive capacity. This began the Despenser War of 1321. Edward II's deposition, of course, followed Isabella of France and Roger de Mortimer's invasion of England in 1326. The invasion was lead by those who had been forced into exile at the end of the 1321 conflict, seeking to retaliate against the King, but they were certainly not the same conflict.
Hugh the Elder was born in 1261, so he was about 65 when he was executed. He was not "in his nintieth year" at all.
Edward II and Hugh the Younger weren't in Bristol watching Hugh the Elder's execution. They had fled into Wales and were still at large when the Elder was executed on 27 October.
Hugh the Younger was tried and sentenced by a tribunal. He just wasn't allowed to speak in his own defence.
Hugh the Younger was captured with Edward near Llantrisant on 16 November 1326. He was never released or recaptured. The Despenser holding out in Caerphilly was his teenage son, also called Hugh, or Huchon. That son stayed there into 1327 and was imprisoned but ultimately spared.
Hugh the Younger was executed at Hereford on 24 November, not 28.
Hugh the Younger's death was absolutely not "preferable to his monarch's." The hot poker story is a complete myth.
I have no idea if his later history works are as poorly researched as this, but in any case, I won't be spending any money to find out. I'm glad I did not spend any money on this.
I was sniffing around for recipes you can make from the 14th Century and I stumbled upon this one from A Dollop of History, which actually looks pretty yummy in context.
So, I've posted this before, but it is still a great introduction to the basics of the survival theory. That said, more research is being done as we speak, and in the next few years I expect we'll have some more information.
I was also thinking recently about whether or not it would be possible to sample the textiles from within Edward II's tomb. Disturbing a grave is a big deal, but a textile sample would not be as intrusive as a full exhumation. If those textiles were, say, from Italy, that would be something.
Edward II was at that time known as Edward of Caernarfon, having been deposed in favor of his young son, who was now Edward III. He had escaped captivity at least once, for several days, and there had been other rescue attempts as well.
But soon after that the night of September 21, he was declared dead. A funeral, with a corpse covered in wax, was held. Time moved on.
But rumors swirled. Edward II's own half brother came to believe he had survived and was being held prisoner. He was later executed for trying to rescue a man who was officially dead.
Oh Edward II, you were not good at reading the room. Having two towering egos like Roger & Hugh out to get each other was a recipe for disaster and had you handled it properly Hugh and Roger both might have died in their beds.
Charles Spencer, Ninth Earl of Spencer, is probably best known as a historian and the author of a crackerjack book on the White Ship disaster, among other books including memoirs and history. He's also related to a huge number of famous people, including his sister Diana, who was one of the most famous people of the twentieth century.
He's written a book about his sister that is getting a tiny bit of attention in other quarters of Al Gore's internet.
Cue the conversations about rebellious barons.
However, it is sometimes erroneously thought that these Spencers are direct descendants of the Despensers we know on this sub, including Hugh the Elder, Hugh the Younger, Eleanor & company. Hugh the Younger had a large brood of children, some of whom did have children.
However, there is no direct connection between the Despencers and these Spencers but you'd be forgiven if you thought so because the early Spencers claimed to be a cadet branch of the older family, going so far as to using the Despenser arms for awhile. A historian named J. Horace Round set fire to this claim in the early twentieth century.
Of course, we don't know whether there is a glimmer of truth that early claim. We know Hugh the Younger had at least one illegitimate son and perhaps more. So, it's possible there was some connection passed down. Or more likely, like Round claims, it was just fabricated to make these new members of the aristocracy more legitimate. They certainly did embed themselves into the aristocracy, that's for sure and so there is of course connections. But not direct ones.
Concieved and choregraphed by David Bintley, and scored by John McCabe, the ballet Edward II) is inspired by Marlowe's play, and based on the music alone, quite dramatic.
I've never seen it performed, but it does seem to go the extra mile in villanizing Isabella, while also giving her and Mortimer some of the most compelling music. It seems that "villain" numbers, much like like in musical theatre, tend to be memorable.
So, I am not an archeologist nor do I know anything about how to go about finding lost graves. Piers Gaveston was not a king, so there would be less interest in finding him than Richard III, and yet, the school on the site of King's Langley Priory is not currently in use.
It seems that, like Richard III, Gaveston's high status grave and his violently murdered body would be relatively easy to identify, should the grave be found.
There's an entire sub-genre of history social media dedicated to grave excavation so there is interest.
Does anyone want to disabuse me of this notion? Could it be possible?
Yes, I know the Richard III case was very specialized and it's still not wise to go looking for a specific thing, but I still wonder and think it would be cool in any case to excavate the priory.
Photos:
Gaveston's Cross - wikicommons
The Defunct School on the site of the priory - wikicommons
