Edward II spent almost all of April 1326 at Kenilworth Castle, one of the greatest strongholds in the country and which by right should have belonged to his cousin Henry of Lancaster as part of his inheritance from his executed brother Thomas. On 1 April, the king set his chamber valets to work enclosing a ditch in the castle park, and a local resident called Malle Maur – perhaps this was a pet name for a woman called Margaret – sent the men two barrels of ale as they worked and received 5s from the king as a thank you.
The royal chamber valets made beds, held and carried torches, and performed other tasks as directed by their boss, the chamberlain Hugh Despenser.1 Making beds in this era meant not only in the modern sense, but that they took apart the king’s great bed and reassembled it every time he changed location, usually several times a week. In December 1325, for example, Edward’s bed was brought on a boat along the River Thames from Westminster to the Tower of London and unloaded in Edward’s presence, and it was the valets’ responsibility to carry it to his private rooms and assemble it, canopy, curtains and all. The chamber valets were also expected to turn their hand to other duties as and when required, such as enclosing a ditch at Kenilworth in April 1326 or making hedges at the manor of Burgh that January. Edward sometimes sent them out of court to catch fish or to purchase provisions, and on several occasions in 1325/6 they helped the carpenters, plasterers and other labourers renovate two houses called La Rosere and La Cage which the king had bought next to the River Thames opposite the Tower of London, more or less on the site now occupied by City Hall. The chamber valets’ wages of 3d a day were paid once or twice a month in arrears, and, as was the case for all other staff of the royal household, their food, drink, clothes and shoes were provided on top. Food was comparatively far more expensive in 1326 than it is nowadays; a labourer on an average wage of about 1½d a day could expect to spend at least two-thirds of his income on food and drink.2 Three pence a day, given that all the valets’ basic needs were provided, was a very generous income by the standards of the era, especially as their duties were hardly onerous.
A group of professional ditchers were also hired to make and enclose the ditch at Kenilworth. Two master ditchers, Jordan Bolefinch and Roger Sakhale, were paid 2½d a day each, and their team of nineteen ditchers received 2d each. Later in April 1326, another fourteen ditchers were hired as well, who included Wille Webbe, Adam Gille, Adam Deyeman, Robert Wode and Wauter Thetchere, i.e. Walter Thatcher. Finally, three men called palisours or ‘fence-makers’ were hired at 2½d a day each at Kenilworth; one of them bore the unusual first name of Ayshol, clearly a nickname, though for what is not clear.
On 12 April, Jack Coppehouse, one of the thirty-two or so royal chamber valets, hired Jack Kene as a ‘boy of the king’s chamber’, replacing Elis Mot, who had left the royal household. Jack Kene was tasked with cleaning and looking after the brass vessels for which Coppehouse was ultimately responsible, on wages of 2d a day. He was a resident of Kenilworth and encountered the king and his retinue when Edward II travelled in a boat newly made by the Palmere brothers from the lodge of Kenilworth park back to the castle (Kenilworth Castle was surrounded by artificial lakes). Another local resident was Gilbert Aspe, known by the nickname Gibon, and he was hired at the same time as another valet of Edward’s chamber. Thomas ‘Thomme’ Martel was one of Queen Isabella’s servants who returned to England in and after late 1325; he had worked as one of the queen’s huntsmen and was re-assigned as yet another valet of the king’s chamber on 19 March. On 12 April he received his first pay packet of 6s 3d. Henry Ditton had formerly worked as an usher in the chamber of the king’s son Edward of Windsor, and also returned to England; he joined the king’s household and on 19 April was given 100s when he went home on leave.
Edward II always took a deep interest in the purchase of carthorses, and in the park of Kenilworth Castle on 14 April 1326 he, his chamber valet Syme Lawe, and the castle constable Eudo de Stoke met three horse dealers called Hick Bere, Jack Longe and Jack Laurence. They bought six carthorses, two black, two chestnut, one bay and one grey, from them. The horses cost between 8s and 12s each, two small carts which were also purchased cost 10s each, and collars for the horses cost 12d each. Six pence was spent on wire to make gaffs – sticks with a hook or barbed spear – to catch eels at Kenilworth, and Hugh Cole, Edward’s master blacksmith, received 40s for making the king a basinet. Hugh’s brothers Robyn and John Cole also worked for Edward as blacksmiths, and the king sometimes popped into the forge to have a chat with them. The Cole brothers came from the Sherwood area near Nottingham, and John Cole’s wife went on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury in April 1325 then visited court afterwards to see her husband. Another royal blacksmith was William ‘Willecok’ Brakenhale. Edward II gave Willecok the large sum of 10 marks (1,600d) on 19 April 1326 because the blacksmith received news that his father was dying, and he went home to Bracknell in Berkshire. Willecok earned 3d daily, so this was the equivalent of 533 days’ pay.
The king sent letters on 13 April to three men: the archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Reynolds, and the abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey and the prior of Christ Church, both also in Canterbury. ‘An invasion of the realm by aliens is threatened’, Edward announced, sounding rather like he was appearing in a sequel to Independence Day.3 Two days later, Edward wrote to King Afonso IV of Portugal (r. 1325–57) and Afonso’s queen Beatriz of Castile, both of whom were his cousins. He declared that he had received their letters with pleasure and was most keen to establish a ‘treaty of perpetual friendship’ between England and Portugal. Afonso and Beatriz had proposed one of their daughters, probably Maria (b. c. 1313), as a bride for Edward’s son Edward of Windsor, heir to the English throne.4 Edward II had to decline politely, pointing out that his son was already betrothed to the infanta Leonor, sister of the teenage King Alfonso XI (r. 1312–50) of Castile (and a niece of Queen Beatriz of Portugal), and furthermore that the boy was currently in France. The king sent his letters to the royal Portuguese couple via their admiral Manuele Pessagno, who came from Genoa in Italy and whose brother Antonio, a wealthy merchant, had once been Edward’s friend, supporter and money-lender.5 The English king, half-Castilian himself, had announced his ‘joy’ and ‘rejoicing’ at the betrothal of his son Edward of Windsor and his elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock (b. 1318) into the Castilian royal family in 1325.6
Edward II wrote to Pope John XXII in Avignon also on 15 April, indignantly refuting rumours that he meant harm to his wife Isabella and Edward of Windsor in France. He ordered all his sheriffs to arrest ‘all narrators or inventors of false rumours whereby discord or scandal may be created between the king and his people’.7 It is apparent that rumours to the effect that Edward wished harm to his wife and son were indeed spreading around the kingdom, but Edward’s surviving proclamations make it clear that he ordered Isabella and Edward of Windsor, and his half-brother the earl of Kent, in France with them, to be treated with respect and honour if they returned to England. Some months later Edward was informed that some people believed that he wished to strangle his wife and son to death. He reacted emotionally, and one Middle English chronicle records his words as: ‘Now God it wote [knows], I thought it never, and now I would that I were dead! So would God that I were! For then were all my sorrows passed.’8 His anger, however, is apparent in his references to Queen Isabella throughout 1326 as ‘the king’s wife’ rather than acknowledging her proper title of queen.
Two tailors, William of Lancaster and John of Enfield, had a bad quarrel in London on 14 April which resulted in William’s death. At the hour of curfew opposite the lane of Cordewanerstrete (Cordwainer Street) in Cheap ward, the men’s row took a deadly turn when John of Enfield ‘secretly drew a long knife’ and stabbed William in the heart. William lingered for several hours and died around midnight; the hue and cry was raised, but John of Enfield had fled and could not be found.9 The ‘hue and cry’ meant that anyone who discovered that a felony had been committed, or was being committed, had to make a loud noise to alert anyone in the vicinity what had happened, so that the felon could be pursued, caught and handed over to the sheriff or his deputies. There were fines and the possibility of imprisonment for not raising the hue and cry, and able-bodied adults who failed to respond to it were also fined.
Adam Cogg or Cogger from Sandwich in Kent was the master of a barge which had once belonged to the king’s cousin Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke (d. June 1324) and now belonged to Edward himself, and was also the captain of a ship called La Godyer, i.e. ‘Goodyear’. Adam dined with Edward II on four separate days in June 1325, and in March that year Edward gave Adam and seven of his crew-mates a set of clothes each at his Westminster cottage of Burgundy. On 17 April 1326 the king received a letter from Adam, sent via an associate of Adam’s called John Baudet, informing him that another colleague of theirs had been murdered in Plymouth. The dead sailor was not named in the king’s accounts, but this is almost certainly a reference to William Crud, who on 17 May is mentioned in the chancery rolls as a sailor killed by Geoffrey son of Henry Ditton. Who wrote Adam Cogg’s letter to the king is unclear; it seems unlikely that a sailor in 1326 was literate, but the king’s account book clearly states that Adam sent a letter rather than sending John Baudet to Edward to inform him orally. Peres Barde of Sandwich and Wille Ponche, respectively the captain and a crew member of a ship called the Cog Johan, both wrote to the king in early January 1326, and Edward’s squire John ‘Jankyn’ Harsik also sent the king letters via his servant Dawe whenever he was away from court. Presumably the men found professional scribes to write their dictated letters, and it seems likely that the scribes translated the English dictated to them into French, French in the 1320s being considered the appropriate language for letters and petitions.
Also on 17 April, Edward II appointed three knights ‘to enquire in the counties of Somerset and Dorset touching adherents of the king’s enemies and rebels beyond seas, who send to the latter the secrets of the realm and the people’. The three knights were to arrest any adherents they found and send their names to the king. Anyone who ‘circulates false reports’ around the kingdom was also to be arrested.10 Edward paid 7s for three ells of blue cloth to make ‘tunics in the style of Gascony’ for two of his five pages, Litel Wille (‘Little Will’) Fisher and Hick Aysshele, on 20 April. When the king left Kenilworth a few days later, he gave Litel Wille a gift of 5s ‘for what he did when the king mounted his horse’, and for his expenses: Wille was forced to remain behind at Kenilworth as he was ill. Litel Wille Fisher’s father Esmon or Edmund was a valet of the king’s chamber and one of Edward’s fishermen, and Hick Aysshele was the son of the chamber valet Jack Aysshele. The five royal pages had other jobs on top of their tasks in the chamber: Litel Wille was a huntsman, and Phelip ‘Phelipot’ Lytchet was a cook.
Litel Wille’s mother Isabelle, Esmon Fisher’s wife, and his sister Johane were fisherwomen on the River Thames near the king’s manor- house of Sheen a few miles west of London. Sometimes when Edward was in the area, he chatted to the two women and personally bought fish from them. Isabelle Fisher was known by the nickname ‘Ibote’ and her husband Esmon as ‘Monde’. Esmon Fisher truly was a fisherman, and his name reflected his profession. His son Litel Wille was one of the king’s huntsmen as well as a page and was not a fisherman, but was not called ‘Wille Hunter’ or ‘Wille Hunt’ but ‘Wille Fisher’. This may be an early example of surnames in England becoming fixed rather than changing from generation to generation and depending on a person’s profession or hometown. As well as the Fishers, other families worked together in the royal household. Two of the chamber valets were Henry Hustret and his son Richard or ‘Hick’, the chamber valets Simon ‘Syme’ Lawe and Henry Lawe were brothers, the three Cole brothers worked as blacksmiths for Edward and the three Palington brothers were hobelars, the page Hick Aysshele was the son of the chamber valet Jack, and the king’s wheelwright Wille Gentilcorps was the brother of Thomme Gentilcorps, ‘keeper of the king’s carts’. A father-son pair called John and Simon ‘Syme’ Baker sometimes worked as carpenters for the king, and the chamber valet Robyn Baker may have been another relative of theirs. John Baker’s father almost certainly was a baker by profession and John kept the name rather than being called ‘John Carpenter’, seemingly another example of a surname becoming fixed. Another of the king’s chamber valets was Watte Couhirde or ‘Cowherd’, most probably his father’s occupation.
Walter Welles, who owned the Essex manor of Rayne (then called ‘Little Reynes’) near Braintree, died shortly before 18 April 1326. His heir was his daughter Johane, said in his inquisition post mortem on 30 April to be ‘aged half a year and three weeks’, and his widow Alis was pregnant, though this child did not survive as Johane was later her father’s sole heir. Alis’s dower in the village of Rayne, the customary one-third of her late husband’s estate which widows received, included ‘a third of the cow-house on the east’, a ‘chamber near the hall on the east’, a house called La Breuerne with a chamber and kitchen, a third of the barn on the south, and an enclosed garden called Le Banton. Alis also received a few dozen acres of arable land in the fields belonging to the manor, and the fields were named as Brodefeld (‘broad field’), Fortye, Chirchefeld (‘church field’), Moltelonde, Reyefeld, Bromlond, Farnhul and Hamstalshote. Alis also held a third of a wood called Shortegrove and two parcels of pasture called Melnereslond (‘miller’s land’) and Chicheliesmade, and the free tenants of the manor whose rents and services were assigned to her were named as Constance atte Gowere, Roger Oxenheye and John Prat. Walter and Alis’s daughter Johane Welles married a knight called Sir William Resshebrok, and in August 1337 they were given all of Walter’s lands in Rayne as William claimed that Johane was then of full age (though she was not).11
Joan de Bohun was the custodian of a royal forest in Herefordshire then called Haye, now called Haywood. On 20 April Edward II ordered her to send ‘five oaks fit for timber’ from the forest to the citizens of Hereford for them to use to repair the city gates, as his personal gift to them.12 Joan was the sister and heir of Sir Alan Plukenet (b. c. 1276), who died shortly before 6 September 1325, and from him inherited the manor of Haselbury Plucknett in Somerset and Kilpeck Castle in Herefordshire, as well as other lands in Herefordshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and the hereditary keeping of the forest of Haywood. Alan Plukenet, a man of uncertain temper, once flew into such a fury about a message he had been sent by Edward II that he made the unfortunate messenger eat the letter and the wax with which it was sealed. His sister Joan’s second husband Sir Henry de Bohun, a cousin of the earl of Hereford – her first husband Thomas Corbet died in 1295 – was killed by Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, on 23 June 1314. This was the first day of the two-day Battle of Bannockburn near Stirling Castle, and King Robert staved Henry de Bohun’s head in with his battle-axe. Henry’s widow Joan died shortly before 18 December 1327, and as she had no children, her heir was her cousin’s son Richard Bere, then aged 30 or 32. She left, however, some of her lands including Kilpeck Castle to her late husband’s relative Eleanor de Bohun (born c. 1310), daughter and sister of earls of Hereford, Edward II’s niece, and a future countess of Ormond in Ireland.13 Joan de Bohun’s tomb and effigy can be seen to this day in the Lady Chapel of Hereford Cathedral, though she is wrongly identified as countess of Hereford. When her tomb was opened in 1846, her hair was found to have been ‘profuse in its quantity’ and ‘of a yellowish red colour’.14
The Palmere brothers Aleyn and Martyn, master ship-builders, with their journeymen Jack Mithe, Peres Talworth, William Stacy and Jack Stokfeld, and their apprentices Willecok Gerard and Jack Salamon, finished making the two fishing-boats, small barge and flat-bottomed boat the king had hired them to make at Kenilworth, on 22 April. They received a total of 86s 8d in wages since 31 March, when they arrived at the castle, and an additional 40s for their expenses travelling back to London. Edward also gave Aleyn Palmere 5s for his son Phelip, who had once worked as a page in the royal household and became a shipwright like his father and uncle, to buy himself linen cloth in London. In October 1324 the king had sent a gift of 10s to Phelip’s mother Cecile Palmere, who died not long afterwards: on 27 November 1324, Edward spent 2s 6d on ‘offerings for her soul’, and gave her widower Aleyn 20s for the expenses of her funeral and interment. Aleyn married a second wife called Emme and died in 1335, and his son Phelip died in 1339, leaving his widow Anneis and several children. Aleyn’s brother Martyn (d. 1344) named one of his daughters after his sister-in-law Cecile.
The 25th of April 1326, the feast day of Saint Mark the Evangelist, was Edward II’s forty-second birthday. His master carpenter Jack Cressing and Jack’s team of eight journeymen, who included two sets of two brothers, were with the king throughout April and repaired beams and joists which had crumbled in one of the towers of Kenilworth Castle. All the men except Robert Albon and John Hardyng had recently taken a week’s holiday, and the group worked at Kenilworth until 27 September 1326; evidently it was a massive job.15 As well as the nine carpenters and their colleagues, the sawyers Thomme Crabbe and Willecok Bovyndon and the woodcutter Wille Stonaysshe, eight whelwryghtes or wheelwrights worked for Edward. Their job involved repairing the king’s carts and cartwheels, though in April 1326 they were assigned to chop logs as well. The wheelwrights were Elis ‘Eliot’ Peck, Wille Gentilcorps, Wille Whiteman, Jack Gryndere or Grinder, brothers called Jack and Rauf ‘Dawe’ Hunte, and William Lodecrok and Watte Buffard, who in February 1325 were both described as a wodefallere (i.e. a person who felled trees) from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire when they joined the king’s household.16 Edward II bought five of the men boots at a cost of 5s a pair in April 1326 as they chopped logs in the park of Kenilworth.
King Afonso and Queen Beatriz of Portugal responded remarkably promptly to Edward’s letter of 15 April, or perhaps had not yet received it and had written to him again on another matter: on 25 April the king gave the royal Portuguese couple’s messengers a safe-conduct to travel through England and to bring him their letters. Three days later Edward ordered the ‘arrest of certain armed persons wandering around the realm’, and on the 29th sent letters to his second cousin Louis Beaumont, bishop of Durham, his first cousin Henry of Lancaster, earl of Leicester, and Henry, Lord Percy and Sir John Clavering. All these men held castles in Cumberland or Northumberland, and the king stated that ‘certain of the Scots rebels have, without the consent of the magnates of Scotland … lately entered the realm in those parts by night, and have endeavoured to surprise certain castles and fortlets in those parts, and propose to invade those parts and others in the marches of Scotland in greater multitude’.17
Johane Mereworth of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, who was pregnant, received news that her husband Hick, valet of the king’s chamber, was ill in Kenilworth. Despite her pregnancy, a worried Johane travelled the 70 miles to Kenilworth to see how he was, and arrived on or a little before 29 April, the day the king departed from the castle. Edward II gave Hick permission to leave court and go home to Henley with Johane until after their child was born, and gave them 60s for their expenses and for Hick’s lost pay while he was away. As this was the equivalent of about eight months’ income for Hick, it was a generous gift. Hick had not long returned to court on 29 June 1326 when he received word that his and Johane’s house in Henley had been broken into and many of their goods stolen, and once again the king gave him permission to travel home. How Johane Mereworth heard the news that her husband was ill in Kenilworth is unclear, though Hick Mereworth himself informed Edward II on one occasion in the summer of 1325 that Johane Traghs, wife of another royal chamber valet called Robyn, had borne a daughter in London.
Hick’s fellow chamber valet Wille Shene, as his name indicates, came from the king’s manor of Sheen 28 miles from Henley-on-Thames. He travelled home with Hick and Johane Mereworth at the end of April 1326 to spend time with his new wife Isode, whom he had married in Henley on Sunday, 20 October 1325. The king gave them 25s in cash as a wedding gift, over three months’ wages for Wille. Edward gave Wille another 30s in late April 1326, for his expenses in travelling from Warwickshire, as holiday pay while he was away and as a gift. Wille Shene took fifteen days off on this occasion, and in October/November 1324 had been allowed to take a holiday of over a month. Hick and Wille’s colleague Grete Hobbe might have met them, travelling in the opposite direction. He had been away from court visiting his family and was now on his way back to the king. Evidently Hobbe was a well-built man, as Grete Hobbe, or ‘Great Hob’ in modernised spelling, translates as ‘Big Rob’. He was never called anything but ‘Grete Hobbe’ in the royal household, whereas one of his colleagues was never called anything but Litel Colle and the page Wille Fisher was always called Litel Wille.
The staff of the royal household were not allowed to have their families permanently living at court, but the women and children visited often, and generous expenses were paid. In May 1325, for example, the chamber valet John Gos’s wife Beatrice received 80d for her expenses travelling to court and another 12d or one shilling to pay for four nights’ accommodation in London. Syme Lawe from Byfleet in Surrey was also a valet of Edward II’s chamber and was married to a woman called Anneis; she visited court in early July 1326 and was given 20s because she ‘came from her home to talk to her baron [husband], for her expenses in returning to her home’. Syme’s colleague Litel Colle was visited by his mother Anneis in June 1325 and she received 10s from the king, and the wheelwright Jack Grinder was visited by his mother Johane at Cippenham, Berkshire in October 1325. Mariote, mother of the royal clerk Peres Pulford, also came to court to visit her son in 1325, and Edward II’s accounts state that she talked to the king as well. Edward gave her the large sum of 100s or £5, the equivalent of over a year’s wages for her son. Johane Traghs, Anneis Smale and Sibille Gobet, wives of the chamber valets Robyn Traghs, Huchon Smale and Richard Gobet, visited court at the end of January 1325 at Edward’s favourite residence of Kings Langley in Hertfordshire (then called Childerlangley or just Langley). Edward paid the three women 5s each for planting beech trees in the area there called ‘Little London’. Johane Traghs and Anneis Smale were still with their husbands on 17 March 1325 when they planted beech trees outside Edward’s house called La Cage opposite the Tower of London and he gave them another 2s each, so their stay at court on this occasion was a long one.18 As the king bought cloth for the wives of five chamber valets in early March 1326, the women must have been visiting again.
The royal staff themselves were allowed to go home on occasion and were given their travel expenses, the wages they would miss while away, and a generous cash gift from the king added on as well. Gibbe Bower went home to Windsor on 15 January 1326 with 20s; Aymer Zouche went home to Cambridge on 5 March with 100s; Peres Panour went home to Nottingham to visit his wife on 7 March and was given 10s; John Harsik went home to Mundford in Norfolk and on pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in the same county on 25 March with 100s; John Dymock went home to Salisbury on 22 February with 20s and again on 5 August with 40s; and Watte Buffard went home to the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire at the end of August with 20s and was away from court for a week. Huchon Smale was allowed to go to Odiham in Hampshire on 19 March 1326, as he and his wife Anneis had bought a landholding there. Litel Robyn, page of the king’s chamber, had been given 12d to go home to see his mother a year previously.
Staff needed the permission of the king himself, or his chamberlain or steward, to leave court. In October 1326, four of Edward’s chamber valets were refused their wages for going home without his permission some months before. This almost certainly represents Edward’s anxiety and bad temper after the arrival of the queen’s invasion force rather than any real wrongdoing by the four men, however, as the king was usually indulgent towards his servants: Roger May went home to visit his wife Anneis in Lincolnshire for twenty days without Edward’s permission in April 1325, but received his usual wages when he returned and was not punished. All 500 or more members of the royal household were entitled to a gallon (4.5 litres) of ale every day, and the ushers, squires, sergeants and those ranked above them were also entitled to a pitcher or half a pitcher of wine daily. Oats and bread were provided for all, and those of the rank of squire and above were allowed a serving of roast meat as well; those of lower rank only ate boiled meat, and not every day. Higher ranking staff received candles or torches for their chamber, and the lower ranks shared a palliasse (a straw-filled mattress) with one other person, and probably bedded down wherever they could find space on a floor. All clothes and shoes were provided twice a year at Christmas and Pentecost. Royal household staff were, of course, free to leave their employment and take up other occupations whenever they wished. Edward’s chamber valets Jordan of Maidenhead, Jack of Chertsey and Stephen of Isleworth left the household in 1325/6, and all three men became parkers; Jordan at Banstead in Surrey and later at Hanningfield in Essex, Jack at Maresfield in Sussex, and Stephen at the royal manor of Havering-atte-Bower in Essex. Another chamber valet called Syme Hod also left the household in December 1325, but was hired back on 25 April 1326.
Demonstrating that there were no hard feelings, Edward II gave all three men who had left his employment gifts of cash when he encountered them again: he gave Jordan of Maidenhead 10s to help support his young daughter, Jack of Chertsey 10s to buy a cow, and Stephen of Isleworth 5s. Given that rates of pay in the royal household were very generous by the standards of the day and that duties were often merely ceremonial rather than laborious, that all food, drink and clothes were provided, and that there was sick pay, holiday pay, and the possibility of bonuses from the king on special occasions or simply because Edward felt like it, turnover was remarkably low. Royal servants normally worked in the household until they retired, whereupon they were sent to live out their remaining years at a monastery or abbey free of charge.