The crossing from the Low Countries to England was rough. Storms blew up around the fleet of ninety-five ships, and they were tossed by powerful winds and violent waves as they made the journey towards the Essex coastline. For two days the fleet was scattered, but around midday on 24 September 1326 it was in sight of shore. The fleet dropped anchor in the mouth of the Orwell, on the Suffolk coast, and unloaded its cargo in haste. As each vessel emptied of its men, horses and supplies it put swiftly back to sea and returned to the Continent.
The army that landed in the small East Anglian port was small. At its centre were 700 Dutch and German mercenaries. With them came a party of English exiles who included noble veterans of the battle of Boroughbridge, refugees from the harsh royal revenge that followed, and a number of prominent magnates who had left England during the tyranny of the Despensers and never returned. They included the King’s half-brother Edmund earl of Kent, and John of Brittany, earl of Richmond – two men who had been almost unwaveringly loyal throughout Edward’s reign but who now, at last, had joined the opposition.
The leaders of the invasion were Queen Isabella of England, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, and the heir to the English throne: Edward, earl of Chester and duke of Aquitaine. The exiles had finally returned to England. But they did not come in sorrow and humble apology. They came to rid the country of the king and his favourites for ever.
Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer made an odd and scandalous couple. They met around Christmas 1325, and within weeks Isabella had taken Mortimer as her lover. Shortly afterwards the couple began to live together quite openly, and by May 1326 they had appeared in public as a couple, when Mortimer carried Prince Edward’s robes at the coronation of Charles IV’s third wife, Jeanne d’Evreux. Edward II had heard about his wife’s betrayal by February 1326, when he stated angrily: ‘the queen will not come to the King, nor permit his son to return, and the king understands that she is adopting the counsel of the Mortimer, the king’s notorious enemy and rebel.’ Edward put pressure on Pope John XXII to censure the French king for harbouring an adulterous couple, and Charles, under threat of excommunication, was obliged to order Isabella and Mortimer to leave France. Mortimer, however, had spent his time on the Continent establishing a network of allies, and the couple found a safe haven in the county of Hainault, where the count was sweetened by the betrothal of the young Edward to his daughter Philippa.
The support of the Hainaults enabled Isabella and Mortimer to raise their invasion force. The paranoia of Edward II and the Despensers had allowed them to land in safety. England was on a defensive footing, but it was marshalled against the wrong invasion. Edward was convinced that Charles IV was going to invade the south coast from Normandy. He was wrong: Charles had no such intention.
When news reached London that Isabella and Mortimer had landed on the east coast, Edward was dining in the Tower of London with the younger Despenser. He was dismayed. The size of the force reported in Suffolk – probably no more than 1,500 men in total – was tiny. But the king rightly concluded that this meant the bulk of his enemies were already inside England. ‘Alas, alas!’ the Brut chronicle has him exclaim. ‘We be all betrayed, for certain with so little power she had never come to land but folk of this country have consented.’ Like King John before him, Edward’s violent paranoia had bred real treachery.
As news of Isabella and Mortimer’s arrival spread throughout England, supporters flocked to her side. The Anonimalle chronicler preserved an open letter written in French to the citizens of London, which proclaimed that the queen came ‘with good intent for the honour and profit of the Holy Church and of our very dear lord the King and to uphold and safeguard all the realm’. She offered a reward to any citizen who could help her ‘destroy sir Hugh Despenser, our enemy and all the realm’s, as well you know’. Copies of the letter were fixed to windows and the sealed original was pinned on the Eleanor Cross at Cheapside – a highly symbolic location for a queen’s propaganda. Isabella was claiming the inheritance of the old king and his beloved queen, and she found a willing audience.
The Londoners rose in revolt on 15 October. They dragged John Marshal, a close ally of the younger Despenser, from his house and beheaded him on Cheapside, the great thoroughfare through London. The bishop of Exeter, a former royal treasurer, was discovered seeking sanctuary in the porch of St Paul’s. Although he rode in full armour, he was dragged from his horse as he neared the north gate of the cathedral, and taken to Cheapside, where the mutilated and bloody body of Marshal lay prone on the ground. The bishop’s armour was wrenched from his body and his head was cut off with a bread-knife. Two of his attendants were also murdered.
Anarchy reigned. Every supporter of the realm – whether bishop, earl, judge or lowly servant – began to flee for his life. Members of Edward’s favourite monastic order, the Dominicans, disappeared into hiding. Offices connected with the Despenser regime and those who served it were plundered, burned and smashed. The plaque erected by Thomas earl of Lancaster to commemorate the 1311 Ordinances was erected again in St Paul’s for the first time since the earl’s death.
Meanwhile, Isabella was moving west. Edward and the Despensers had fled the Tower of London almost as soon as they learned of her arrival, and headed for their power base in Wales, which had stood firm for them during the civil war of 1321–2. They sent word ahead to their old allies Rhys ap Gruffudd and Gruffudd Llwyd to raise troops for the cause. With almost £30,000 to his name, the king was certainly rich enough to pay a large army to defend him.
By late October, Edward and the younger Despenser were in Chepstow, while the earl of Winchester was barricaded in Bristol castle. The queen and Mortimer gave steady pursuit and were at Gloucester by the time the bishop of Exeter’s head arrived for Isabella’s inspection. As they moved through England, magnates gathered to their sides. The king’s other half-brother, Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, joined their company, as did Henry of Lancaster, earl of Leicester, the younger brother of the late Earl Thomas.
On 18 October Bristol castle was besieged by Lancastrian forces. The earl of Winchester tried frantically to bargain for his life, but neither Mortimer nor Henry of Lancaster was in any mood to spare a Despenser. After eight days of siege their army stormed Bristol castle and Winchester was brought out in chains.
While Bristol castle lay under siege, Edward and the younger Despenser decided that their best chance of survival lay in flight to Ireland. With a small party of men-at-arms, they boarded a ship at Chepstow. But the wind was against them. Desperate prayers from a friar brought no succour, and after five days spent battling the angry sea, the royal party was forced to put ashore at Cardiff and flee for the grandly rebuilt and supposedly impregnable Despenser castle at Caerphilly.
As they were doing so, Isabella and Mortimer developed another piece in the diplomatic war. They issued a statement at Bristol arguing that, since the king had left the realm, his son Edward, duke of Aquitaine, should take control of government. The statement, preserved on the Close Rolls, cited the assent of prelates and barons including the archbishop of Dublin, the bishops of Winchester, Ely, Lincoln, Hereford and Norwich, the king’s two half-brothers Thomas earl of Norfolk and Edmund earl of Kent, Henry of Lancaster, ‘and other barons and knights then at Bristol’.
According to the statement, Duke Edward was chosen to lead the country ‘with the assent of the whole community of the realm there present … that the said duke and keeper should rule and govern the realm in the name and right of the king his father’. The king was stripped of his authority and it was given – albeit temporarily – to a fourteen-year-old boy entirely under the sway of the queen and her lover. He assumed his responsibilities on 26 October.
The following day the elder Despenser was brought before a court headed by Sir William Trussel and deliberately styled on that which had convicted Thomas earl of Lancaster. He was charged with robbery, treason and crimes against the Church, and told that since in convicting Lancaster he had constituted a court that did not recognize a defendant’s right to reply, he would be treated in the same way. The cycle of quasi-judicial violence continued: Despenser was hanged, drawn, quartered and beheaded on the public scaffold at Bristol. His head was sent to Winchester to be displayed in public.
To all around Edward it was clear that the game was up. Despenser’s tenants in his Welsh lands bore him no love and refused to turn out to defend him. On 31 October Edward’s household deserted, leaving Edward and Despenser with a bare few retainers to protect them.
The king’s actions grew increasingly panicked and desperate. He might have remained in Caerphilly a long time, for the castle was stoutly defended and well stocked; he also had vast reserves of cash and jewels, as well as the great seal, privy seal and other appurtenances of government. But in early November, Edward and Despenser left for the Cistercian abbeys at Margam and Neath. At Neath they discovered that a manhunt was under way, led by Henry of Lancaster, and a group of barons seeking personal revenge for wrongs they or their families had suffered during or since the civil war. The king, Despenser and the royal chancellor Robert Baldock attempted to flee, probably along a high mountain path, towards the Despenser castle at Llantrisant. On the road they encountered the search party, who eventually captured the king and his remaining adherents as they cowered in a wood.