Gone Medieval - Edward III: The Little Lion

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis bring our series on the Plantagenets to its climax with a look at one of England's most influential monarchs.  We pick up the story where we left off in the last episode with Roger Mortimer influencing the boy King Edward III, along with his mother Queen Isabella.  But there's so much more to discover about Edward III, who became a pivotal figure in shaping medieval England.Matt talks to Dr. Christopher Briggs and Dr. Andrew Spencer from Cambridge University, drawing upon their course which offers unique insights into the politics, economy, and society of Edward III's reign. Then Eleanor and Matt round up the series with their reflections on "the original dysfunctional family," known for "bad tempers, spoilt brats, greed, lusty men and the odd bout of genius."Gone Medieval is presented by Dr.Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis. Edited and produced by Rob Weinberg and Joseph Knight.  The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. This month on Gone Medieval, we've been getting down and dirty with the fighting, feuding, original dysfunctional family, the Plantagenets. Its members were characterized by bad tempers, spoiled brats, greed, lusty men, and the odd bout of genius. We've been inspired by the Royal Shakespeare Company's new staging of Christopher Marlowe's play, Edward II. Last time, we looked at the swift and ruthless rise of Roger Mortimer, who wielded power through Edward II's queen, Isabella, over the child king Edward III, about whom there is much to discover, beyond the fact that he was a direct ancestor of the actor Danny Dyer.

The young lion has slipped his chains. will he roar, flex his muscles and cause all of England to cower before him, or will he be tamed and made the pet of the other big beasts that roam this kingdom? How can England be ruled when the king is just a boy? Will his mother hold the reins of government for a time? Or will Roger Mortimer make the ultimate grab for power? If Mortimer rises that high, will he be willing to step down again in a few short years? and will he face the wrath of the new king

if he seeks vengeance for the fate of his father? A great deed has been done. Whether it has been for good or for ill, only time will tell. The old king might have been fearful for the fate of his son if he fell into the hands of Mortimer. Let not that Mortimer protect my son.

More safety there is in a tiger's jaws than his embracements. Commend me to my son and bid him rule better than I. Can anyone escape being devoured by the hungry jaws of this crisis? England waits with bated breath to meet its new king, the young Edward III. In our final episode in this special Gone Medieval miniseries on the Plantagenets,

my co-host Matt Lewis is here to find out more about Edward III with Dr. Christopher Briggs and Dr. Andrew Spencer of Cambridge University. Together, they offer a course called The Little Lion, Edward III's England 1327 to 1347, which integrates the politics, economy and society of Edward the 3rd's reign. I'll be back to chat more with Matt later in the episode as we round up this series. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Andrew and Chris. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Matt. Looking forward to getting to know a little bit about young Edward III, because I think we all have the image of Edward III with that long flowing beard at the end of a successful career in the Hundred Years' War.

and we remember him very much as an old man. So interesting to get to know the younger Edward III a little bit better, I think. Andrew, I wonder if you could start us off, please. Edward III is 15 when he becomes king. Was he in any way active in the deposition of his father and the crisis that had led up to that, or was he very much a pawn who was being used? Thanks, Matt. That's a really interesting question.

I think the first thing to say is that Edward is 14, actually, when he becomes king, because he becomes king in January 1327. The key is that it was essential that Edward's presence was there in order for the coup to take place in 1326. That, as well as the presence of his mother, really legitimated what was ultimately an illegal process of deposing the king. They needed to be sure that Edward III would at least acquiesce in that decision. There's no real record of what Edward's own feelings were about this. What we know is that he honoured his father, he honoured his father's tomb, but there was no move by Edward III to bring Edward II back to Westminster, for instance, as happened a century or so later when Richard II was deposed and executed. Henry V brought Richard back from where he was originally buried to Westminster.

It doesn't happen in Edward II's time. So all we can say for certain is that he acquiesced in what happened in the months between the months. September 1326 and January 1327. And if we can just stay with that sort of moment a little bit longer, how much do we know about Edward III in 1327? Do we have any sense of his personality, his upbringing, how that might have shaped him? As listeners will know, it was a turbulent reign that he was brought up in, one of conflict between the king and the barons, one of immense pain for his father in terms of the loss of his closest friend, the man he described as his brother. There's no indication before the mid-13-20s that there was any difficulty in his parents' marriage. They continue to produce children until the

early 1320s. Edward's youngest sibling is born in, I think, 1321 or 1322. But in the aftermath of the dispenser war in 1322, the contrarian's war, and then particularly with the war with France, the war of Saint-Sarde that starts in 1324, there begins to be tension in his parents' marriage. Isabella had advocated for the dispensers

to be exiled in 1321, and I don't think Edward II, and certainly not the dispensers themselves, ever forgive Isabella, for that, what he regards as a betrayal. However, Isabella was key in supporting Edward

during the contrarian's war, the dispenser war. But when the French War starts, Once Isabella starts to get distant, some of her attendants are sent away, some of her goods are sequestered. And then when she is sent on diplomatic business to her brother's court in France to try to bring the war to an end, eventually Prince Edward is sent out afterwards. Now, we have a very interesting series of letters. Unfortunately, we only have the king's side of those letters where he writes to Prince Edward, basically demanding. that he comes home and threatening all sorts of terrible consequences if he doesn't such to the

extent that people will write about this for centuries afterwards as to the extent of the punishment he will inflict upon his son. Edward does not come home, whether he was able to come home, whether he ever even received these letters, it's not clear. But certainly he does not come home and he remains with his mother. So in the final months before his father's deposition, He never sees his father again. Clearly, he would have been conscious that he was defying his father's orders and that his father would have been unhappy with what he was doing. So I think that sort of gives us a sense of at least the circumstances around the young, Edward III.

Again, as I said earlier, it's very difficult to know how any 13 or 14 year old would respond to such a situation of a catastrophic breakdown of their parents' relationship. that's difficult enough for any teenager to deal with, let alone when your father is the king and your mother is the queen. I was going to say, oh for the diary of Prince Edward, age 13 and a half to tell us quite what he was thinking. And I think it's tempting as well to forget for all of his privilege that he would absolutely have had and all of the wealth that surrounded him. He's nevertheless, his family life, by the time he's old enough to be conscious of what's going on, is not a particularly happy one. And he is sort of pulled and torn between father and mother who are fighting and using. using him as a weapon in the view that they're having.

Yes, and I think one thing we can say that Edward does take out of this is actually a sense of reverence for both of his grandfathers, perhaps more than either of his parents. He has a particular reverence for Edward I. He on Edward Ibbett, the anniversary of Edward I. The first death, he ensures that Edward's tomb in Westminster Abbey is covered in cloth of gold. later on having first of all said that he wanted to be buried in Cologne with the three kings in Cologne, he decides that he doesn't want to do that.

And in fact, he says the reason why I don't want to is I want to be buried close to my grandfather, Edward I. Similarly, when he is talking to his supposed French subjects in the 1340s, once he claimed the French throne, he is very clear about the reverence that he has for his grandfather, Philip V. and Fourth's own grandfather, St. Louis. So he has this sense of being descended from great kings on both sides, even if in the recent generation things have not been so wonderful. Yeah, ignore Mom and Dad and look a little bit further back.

Chris, I wondered if I could bring you in to talk to us a little bit. I'm conscious in this series, we've been very much talking about the big political crisis that happened around Edward II, Isabella, Edward III being involved in that. But what were the kind of wider societal issues that were playing, into this political crisis too. Surely it can't just be the fact that the king and the queen fell out and that led to a disaster. We ought to be a bit careful about going too far on the other direction and it would be difficult to I think present the case in which the crisis in deposition of 1326 to 27 is some kind of popular revolution or uprising. However, I think it is important

to think about the wider economic, social, legal context to try and understand what's going on. and one thing to say is that these events we've been discussing come on the back of one of the greatest and most significant economic agrarian crises of the entire Middle Ages, if not the last thousand years, if you like, the great famine and agrarian crisis of 1315 to 21. In 1315 to 17, the harvests failed three years in a row. in 13, 1819, that was followed by devastating cattle disease, sheep disease as well, accompanied in the same period. There was a further failed harvest in 1321. Things have moved on a little bit from that by the time you get to 1326, 27, and the debate is then about how far the economy is recovered. But of course, the country at large has suffered incredibly from that. If you throw in Scottish raid in the 1310s, you've got this really,

deadly mix of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, if like, or several of them anyway. And that cannot but have an impact on the political scene, even if it's indirect. That's one really big thing that's going on. Another issue that perhaps we could talk some more, but it's worth flagging here, is the questions around disorder and the maintenance of the legal system, which has been linked to some of the things Andrew was talking about, the Civil War of 1321 to 2, the suppression of the contrarians. When we get into the very early reign of Edward III, 1328 to 29,

it's clear that there's a real endemic problem with disorder, with criminal gangs of professional crime. How this links perhaps to economic issues is a difficult thing and how far this is simply a continuation of what was going on underwent with the second is again debatable. But there is a wider picture here that helps us understand really why the deposition was accepted, why other players beyond the very top elites got involved,

for example, the Londoners who played a big role in facilitating the deposition. I think it's worth just adding there's a pretty good case to be made that the 1310s and the early 1320s are the worst time to be alive in English history, with a possible exception of the Black Death in the 1340s. I think that's probably true, and that there's a good case you could make. We should be mindful of the way in which things had recovered a bit. 13, 15 to 17, we're talking 10 years after that. If we look at the kind of stats on grain prices and things like that, they're not too high in 1326-to-7-13-27-8.

And weirdly, the great famine of 13-15 to 17, basically it rained the whole time for three years when the harvest fail. Weirdly, as it's been shown in a great study by a historian called David Stone, by the time you get to the late 13-20s, early 1330s, the problem, ironically, is actually a succession of drought years, hot-dry springs, which cause problems for the spring crops. 1326, particularly, 1331. Chronicles talk about this and talk about, in 1331, how the young Edward III can't do his tournaments outside London because the ground's too hard because there's been a drought. But clearly this is all in the mix.

Yeah, I was quite struck when you talk about four horsemen of the apocalypse and to a medieval mind, what we would identify as a bit of a climate issue going on with repeated floods and then droughts and things like that. they might have seen a more religious causation for that. And I just wonder, is it going too far to suggest that maybe that softened people up for the deposition that you could identify Edward as part of the problem with what had been going on with failed harvest and things like that?

So people were less worried about seeing the back of him. There's a strong case to make there. And there is a discussion without getting into questions around the religious significance of natural events. Certainly, there would have been, and surely was, there's evidence to show this is a skill of thought that would say that Edward, the same thing. Seconds, world government could have done more to alleviate the effects of famine, even though we might not associate that with the role of government at that time. There were some half-baked price

control measures in 1315 to 16 that were introduced and then withdrawn and had very little effect. There was basically a free market, an imperfect free market operating during the famine years that had catastrophic effects. So a market existed, but it essentially malfunctioned. Certainly, the way in which the royal government had handled the great famine and agrarian crisis or not handled it or not really done anything to protect it, including the Scottish exacerbation through raids of the underlying economic conditions. Those would have probably made people weak relatively few tears when it came to the deposition and what happened in the 1326 into early 3027. And justifying deposition is a really difficult thing for any medieval political actor or

thinker. They tend to think that it is not the role of subjects to depose monarchs. That is for God to punish them afterwards. And it's interesting that the articles of accusation in 1327, which are produced for those who are involved in the decision making, is very clear about the reasons why Edward II was deposed and why Edward III should become king. But they're not clear at all about the legitimate authority to make such decisions. It just skates over that. And then the official story that's sent out to the country as a whole is that Edward was not deposed at all,

that actually he, to quote, of his free will, and by the Common Council and assent, he has abdicated the government of the realm. So actually this is Edward himself deciding that he's no longer fit to be king. Yeah. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about what Edward the third's rule looked like initially.

So during that regency period when really it's Isabella and Mortimer who are controlling the government, what function does Edward perform? How much power and authority does he have? And what is he doing during that period? So the first thing to say there again is that it wasn't supposed to be Mortimer and Isabella who were running the show. At the first Parliament of Edward's reign in the immediate aftermath of the deposition in January 1327, Parliament is quite clear about what it wants to happen.

It wants a regency council of the best and wisest men in the realm, essentially to run the realm for the king until he comes of age. And it's quite clear at this point that the king is not of age and is not making decisions because there are a number of responses to the Commons petition at Parliament in January 1327 where the council responds and says, we need to wait for the king to make that decision, essentially when he's grown up, when he's ready to. In January 1327, the man appointed to become head of the Regency Council is not Mortimer, it's not Isabella, it's Henry of Lancaster, the new Earl of Lancaster, the brother of Thomas of Lancaster, who was executed by Edward II in 1322. and in 1326, 1327, Lancaster gets that judicial decision overturned and essentially inherits most of, though not all, crucially, of the Lancasterian lands.

And so he is the most wealthy and the most prestigious member of the nobility. He's the king's cousin. And he is also the man who knights Edward III in 1327. So this is the man that Parliament and the council at the time wants to be responsible. And he's also the man who is holding Edward II in Kenilworth Castle, which is his castle in Warwickshire. Over the course of the next few months, it's clear that Lancaster is sidelined and Mortimer and Isabella come to the four and that Edward is still not making the decisions. and that is a source of frustration for him. We see it particularly in two instances involving Scotland. The first is the Weirdale Campaign of 1327, which turns out to be a disaster.

Edward almost gets captured himself by the Scots when they raid the English camp, and he sheds tears of frustration when they decide to head back south. and the subsequent peace treaty that is negotiated with the Scots, whereby essentially the English surrender all of their claims to Scotland and recognise Robert Bruce as king and marry Edward's sister to Robert Bruce's son and heir. Edward refuses to attend the wedding and also supports the Londoners in refusing to hand over the stone of Schoon back to the Scots. So we can sense his frustration in 1327 and early 1328 at the moment. the way in which government is being handled, but not yet ready to challenge that openly. I'm trying to picture the petulant teenager refusing to go to the wedding, throwing a little bit of a stroppy, hissy fit. What will ultimately then lead to what we remember is the Nottingham coup,

so Edward essentially grasping those reins of government for himself? What drives him to do that, and then how does that play out? There are a number of steps along the way. The first, First is in late 1328, early 1329, where Lancaster, Henry of Lancaster, supported by the new Archbishop of Canterbury and initially by the King's uncles, relatively young uncles, they're from Edward I, First, second marriage, the Earl of Norfolk and the Earl of Kent, support an attempt to overthrow Mortimer and Isabella. And Lancaster essentially puts forward a reform program that blames Mortimer and Isabella for what's gone wrong and says, I was supposed to be in charge and I'm not now. And the king is not taking counsel from the realm more broadly, but only from this very narrow clique around him in court.

Mortimer manages to pick off Norfolk and Kent and to face down Lancaster that happens in the West Country in early 1329, and also unleashes some of those criminal gangs upon the Lancasterian estates, including Lester. Lester gets attacked, which was the sort of chief caput of the Lancasterian inheritance at this time. Lancaster backs down and is essentially placed under recognizance of, I think, 30,000 marks for his future good behaviour. A number of his supporters go overseas, and it looks like Mortimer and Isabella have scotched opposition. Moving into 1330, we then see a rebellion or a conspiracy organised by the Earl of Kent and others, including the Archbishop of York and a number of other noblemen, some of whom had been close to Edward II, some of whom had been involved supporting Lancaster in 1328, 9, to restore Edward II to the throne. Rumours have been circulating that Edward II did not, in fact, die in Berkeley Castle in September 1327,

but is in a position to retake the throne. What matters importantly is that conspiracy is discovered by Mortimer and Kent is arrested and at Parliament in Winchester in March 1330 is executed. And I think that in both of the Lancaster and the Kent conspiracies, Edward had not voiced his opinion. He'd not sided with Lancaster and he'd not sided with Kent. But the execution of the Earl of Kent, I think, gives him significant pause for thought. This is a member of the royal family who has been executed.

And Mortimer has become Earl of March, this grandiloquent title. He has taken on all sorts of lands and estates, particularly in the Welsh marches, but also elsewhere in England, and is walking alongside the king, not behind him, is developing. a persona that essentially accroaches onto royal authority. And Edward is beginning to get worried about this. And he starts to send out feelers, first of all to the Pope, actually,

in that he sends a messenger to the Pope saying that unless you receive certain words in a letter purporting to come from me, you will know that it is not from me. And the first handwriting of a King of Ringin that we have is that of Edward writing Partus Sang-day, Holy Father on a letter to the Pope in 1330. Gradually there is a group around him,

and it seems as if he is also reaching out to Henry of Lancaster in the summer and early autumn of 1330, and that enables him to have sufficient support so that the Nottingham coup, led by his friends, in particular William Montague, occurs in October 1330, and Mortimer, Isabella, and some others are ambushed essentially,

fire entering Nottingham Castle via a secret tunnel. There is some fighting. One of Mortimer's knights is killed and Mortimer is taken in the Queen's Chamber and dragged away to be executed about a month later. It sounds a bit like Mortimer ended up being his own worst enemy in that he began to appear to be a threat to Edward's authority. And perhaps you've got Edward thinking, am I ever going to be allowed to become king while Mortimer is taking more power and authority? Is he ever going to set that aside in favour of me? Or is that going to be a fight? at some point, in which case it might as well be on my terms.

And it sounds a little bit as well like Edward had the advantage that this situation with Isabella and Mortimer was never what the political establishment had envisaged. So he wasn't deconstructing something that the political establishment had built around him. He was actually destroying something that was never meant to be there. Yeah, I think Mortimer is always on borrowed time.

It's never going to end brilliantly for Mortimer. I don't think it has to end this way, but through Mortimer's own actions. I think that, as you say, he creates his own downfall. His own son, one of his sons is reported in the Chronicles to have described his father as the king of folly in the months before the Nottingham Coup. So there is at least some sense, even from within his own family, that probably he'd gone too far.

Chris, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about what the Commons petition in Edward's First Parliament tells us about contemporary concerns beyond the big family view that's happening at the top. So it's a sort of list of all the big issues of the time presented in that parliament. It ranges very widely. There's a lot of language of the importance of the common good and concern for the various estates of the realms. In making demands on the new regime, as it were,

the political community in Parliament is really not simply focusing on narrow sectional interests, but expressing in concern for various estates of the realm. There's a lot of reference to Magna Carta, appeal to Magna Carta, a wide range of issues. So some things that have been going on for ages, rules and customs around the appointment of sheriffs, who they should be, how they should be remunerated. But other issues that speak perhaps more to economic concerns. There's an interesting section there about alien merchants, so that means Italians, essentially, who'd been quite prominent under Edward II and had played a big role in

providing world finance is basically lending money to the king and then to the dispenses as well against the customs revenue if you like so there's this thing in the common petition of january 1327 they're about wanting to restrict the duration of their sojourns in england and essentially limit the remit of alien merchants there we see the voices back to the london as in the london elite merchants i think whose interests are being expressed there and as edward the third's reign gather speed you see those English merchants gathering in prominence and importance in the political and economic scene at the expense of the aliens who've been a big feature under Edward II and in the early Isabella and Mortimer regime. So that's something that's flagged up there in 1327.

Then the issues around law and order that become absolutely central, not just 1327 to 1330, but also in the rest of the early reign of Edinburgh the 3rd, they're there in 1327 already. The central issue about the practice of maintaining someone, getting involved in somebody else's legal business and essentially fermenting quarrels. There's requests for measures against maintenance there in 1327 at all social levels. So that should be the powerful should have their maintenance and their law-breaking activities restricted as should the lesser. And also the Keepers of the Peace are appointed for the first time a significant stage in the development of something called the Keepers of the Peace, who are basically local gentlemen who have a role out in the counties in chasing down criminals

and enforcing the peace. So this is one of the ways that becomes the way in which the crown can essentially maintain order in the provinces. It's there in 1327 as an idea about how to do that, and it develops a lot thereafter, including Underred with the 3rd in the 1330s and 1340s before culminating in the second half of the century in its full-blown forms. So there's a whole bunch of things there that affect everyone really. And it's a kind of shopping list of the political and social concerns of the day, really. And these are all things that I think the young Edward III for all this sort of militaristic interests as well was also interested in solving some of those problems within the constraints that he was

operating under once his rule got going, if you like. Andrew, I wonder if you could tell us whether you think that he has to be careful. Obviously, his father has a bad reputation with favourites. So is he in danger of moving towards favourites or is he always conscious of keeping it slightly broader than that. So it's more than one person he's focusing on. So I think there are a few things to say in relation to that. The first is that it's not just one or two people that Edward is favouring. There are a group of them. And they often come from prominent families already. Second thing to say is that they had proved themselves. I think that was one of the arguments against Gavastirn, one of

the arguments against the dispensers, more particularly younger dispenses. What have these guys done that is worthy of this sort of favour from the king. And clearly these men, both in 1330 and subsequently in the Scottish Wars and later in the French Wars, proves their worth to the King and beyond that to the realm. And the third is that Edward doesn't forget about the established negativity, at least of those who have survived are brought on board as well. So Edward creates a sort of whole political society view, both of the domestic concerns that Chris was talking about, but also actually live the war as well. And I think that is one of the major lessons that Edward learns,

both from his father's reign and from Mortimer and Isabella's reign. Actually, if he is to succeed, he needs to bring the realm as a whole with him. And he is very conscientious about securing consent, counsel very broadly. For instance, before the Scottish war starts in 1330, he asks Parliament what he should do. What is their advice as to how he should respond to? the invasion by the disinherited and what is he looks at this point to be a scottish civil war but might well spread out into England he asked parliament's advice about negotiations with the

French what should we do in terms of negotiating with philip the sixth should we do a war path or a peace pass parliament says a peace path and edwin adopts that similarly in 1337 when he does go to war he's very clear about the reasons and all of the efforts that he has gone to to preserve peace So I think Edward does learn a great deal from what has happened in his father's rent. Coming back to the question you asked at the start, he is quite sensitive still about what happened to his father. So when in 1341, and he gets into a dispute with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Stratford, and Stratford says to Edward, don't forget what happened to your father, Edward's response to that, he's very aggressive. So I think there is still some sensitivities to what happened being 1326, 1327, even over a decade later.

Yeah. And Chris, one of the things that I learned a while ago about Edward the 30s, particularly around the introduction of the treason laws early in his reign, that was kind of viewed as very much as resetting the relationship between him and particularly the senior nobility around what should be considered treason because it kind of got out of hand under Edward I first and Edward the second. I don't know if you think that's a fair appraisal. But I just wondered whether you had any sense of whether Edward uses some of those prevailing challenges and issues that we've discussed to his advantage in his early rule. Is he able by addressing those to take people with him in his rule? Yeah, I think the restriction around definitions of treason comes with the statute of treason of 1352, so quite a lot later than we're talking about. Treason is bandied about, but only really significantly in the crisis of 1340 to 41 that Andrew talked about, generally speaking, relationships with the higher inability are relatively successful, particularly given the opportunities of warfare that Edward was able to provide, first in Scotland and then in France. These relationships are handled pretty successfully on the whole with

this exceptional episode of 1340 to 41, which is essentially the key protagonists in the dispute, or Edward and the Archbishop, as Andrew mentioned a moment ago, and the high inability essentially don't take sides or dig in, particularly significantly as part of that. One thing we do notice in the source is how effective a manager of Parliament Edward was. We see this as some of the episodes that have been discussed already. the beginnings of the war with Scotland, the outbreak of war with France. Edward, not necessarily in a manipulative or a Machiavellian way, but manages to get Parliament on side, take its concerns seriously.

So we can see this in the case of law and order, how Edward allows concerns to be expressed about the departure of the king from the kingdom, for example, which is obviously going to happen if he's going to go on military campaign. What does that mean for the ability to maintain justice? a moment ago that these machinery was routinized. It wasn't to the extent that people weren't concerned about the king not being there. That was thought to be problematic given the king as the founder of justice and all the rest of it. So there are a lot of discussions in Parliament about what shall we do if Edward in 1338 is going to go and set off for the continent and prepare

potentially evasion north of France. What do we do then to provide for the peace and tranquility of the realm in his absence. So those kinds of issues come up. On the trade side and the relationship with merchants, again, Edward is able to, with the taking advice and counsel in the way that Andrews been talking about, handle the concerns of Parliament around the merchants as a group getting too much influence. There are points in the early 1330s and 1340s where Edward is negotiating with a sort of community of merchants outside of Parliament, particularly around the customs and the funding of the wars. Parliament then gets a bit annoyed

and gets the sense that decisions are being made outside of Parliament in a way that they shouldn't be. The King is able to, in most cases, reconcile these interests and these problems in 1343, for example, getting Parliament, it was basically full of a country gentleman to see things from the same perspective as the community of merchants who we'd been dealing with separately, just in advance of the April 1343 Parliament.

So those are some examples where using the structures in place is possible for the royal government to really handle things, get what it wants essentially, and keep most of the people happy most of the time. And it certainly helps when the military victories start flowing as well as part of that whole relationship. Yeah. And particularly early in Edward's reign then, do we see him harnessing any of those issues that were around at the time? So the issues around law and order and the issues around trade and things like that. Is he able to harness any of those, to deal with any of those in a way that is advantageous to him and sort of differentiate himself from his father's reign? We've talked a little bit about wool, perhaps probably not enough, given its centrality as the main commodity that everybody relied on,

the main export commodity by far. The Lord Chancellor used to sit on a wool sack in the House of Lords for a reason, as everybody knows. There were, what, 14 million sheep in England at the start of Edward III? Reign, three times as many as there were people. So wool is absolutely crucial. Customs imposed on the export of wool that Edward I had built his finances in his reign and that continued in the reign of the next two Edwards. So wool is key, but as we've seen, war also becomes the hallmark of Edward the Thirds reign from the 1330s and that's really disruptive to trade. So

the steady flow of wool out of the country, bringing in steady revenue, isn't so easy to achieve. The wool trade is manipulated in various ways, starving the continental manufacturers of their wonderful prize English cotswil wool. For Edward III, though, and his government, there's a kind of spin-off of this that's successful in the sense that he seeks at the same time to promote a domestic cloth industry, a domestic woolen textile industry. It's not the case, of course, that woolen cloth hasn't been produced. in English towns and villages throughout the Middle Ages up to that point,

but many of the finer cloths were produced on the continent and then imported by some of those alien merchants who I mentioned. But now, as the export of wool shrinks down because of embargoes and world interference in the export, Moro-Metiel becomes much cheaper for domestic producers in towns, in London, but also in growing production centres like Bristol and elsewhere. And there's a double whammy to this in the sense that the king, Edward III, also invites in, as part of his plan to bolster and develop the domestic cloth industry,

disaffected Flemish artisans with their skills and human resources, human capital and knowledge, who are fleeing various disputes with the Count of Flanders. As early as 1331, the first sort of invitations to the top Flemish weavers and fullers are issued. They come in, settle in London and elsewhere, provide skills and knowledge, form gains, gills of their own and contribute to this development and expansion of the domestic cloth industry. So there's a domestic market for all that cloth that isn't then being exported. Actually, the estimates show that the output of wool is actually growing despite the problems in accessing foreign markets because of this domestic growth.

It's clever and it shows really what's the hallmark of what Andrew and I have been trying to do in this course that we've taught and our co-teaching and co-thinking about this period as a political historian and economic historian working together, how the politics and the economics interact the whole time. You can't really understand the one without the other. So war, politics, and economics are this kind of perpetual triangle and the fate of the textile industry. This is really the beginning of the late medieval boom in the English textile industry, that everything was built on sheep. And this goes on for another 200 years. And preeminent products are produced as a result of this. Thank you so much for joining us, Andrew and Chris. It's been fascinating to get under the

skin of the boy, the man that became Edward III, but also the period which saw him emerge onto the throne. So thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise on those subjects. Thank you very much. Well, Matt, it's been a big month with what I think is fair to say were some pretty big personalities in our historical personages. It's been really interesting to get under the skin of this one kind of moment in history and really dwell on it and take our time and four episodes and lots of guests to try in. get some clarity around what was going on.

Which I think is really necessary because it's easy, especially when we're historians, to kind of get bogged down in the minutiae and names and dates and these little moving parts. But I think at the heart of it, this is a really interesting and very human story in a lot of ways. It's like a soap opera, isn't it? If you were watching this on EastEnders, you would almost find it unbelievable that this complex web of relationships, this back and forth, this betrayal and plot twists and everything else was. going on. It'd be almost like, this can't be true. And yet this is the history. This is what happened. Yeah, I think there is a tendency to think that medieval people are somehow more

stayed than we are now. They aren't as human in a lot of ways as we are. And I think that what we see from this particular family feud is they are just as over the top as we are and sometimes even more so. It's always good to remember that there's often more than one thing going on because you look at something like this and you think, oh, Edward the second's being a useless king, he got deposed. End of story. But it's been interesting to pick away at that a little bit and find out how many other things were feeding into this. You know, all the crises of the early 14th century that Edward didn't respond to very well. That's layered up all of these problems for him that kind of just reach ahead at one point.

There's so much more to this than I think you usually allow when you just look at the story of Edward being deposed. No, I think that you're bang on here because obviously history is riddled with useless kings. Look at John, for example. And sure, there's rebellions against him, but nothing that ever goes so. far as to completely depose him. And there's going to be kind of useless unpopular kings after Edward as well. But what we have here is this perfect storm of real issues with things like the great famine and almost an unwillingness to respond to the pressures of the time, I would say. Yeah. And I think then talking to Chris Gibbon Wilson about Edward II, I was struck by,

you know, there's no hiding the fact that he's a rubbish king. He's awful. But in many ways, he felt like the kind of guy that you would get on with. He's the kind of guy who, if you were sitting down the pub complaining that your roof was leaking, and he'd be like, well, I'll come and give your hand and fix it then? But why doesn't that likeability translate into being a good king ever? It's almost like you have to be a nice person or a good king. You can never be both. The actual process of being a king to get anything good done is really a ton of work

and just plodding all of the time to say, okay, well, we need to do this. I'm talking to the church about X. funds need to be allocated here. And Edward struggles with that as well. And it's that thing of being predictable. Your nobility want to know what you're going to do in every situation and the fact that Edward, no one was quite sure, you know, if he'd exile someone, then bring them back, someone was his best friend, and they were his worst enemy, you didn't know who's going to turn on you. And it's exactly the same as John had problems with. It's that unpredictability, that sense that we don't know where we stand from one day to the next, we don't know what's going to happen. Therefore, we can't

work with this king. You almost can be nice or you can be horrible, but you've got to be predictable. You can be an idiot as long as you're a predictable idiot. Well, yeah, absolutely, because if you're a predictable idiot, that's something that other people in government can work around. And they could say, we know what he's going to do, which is almost nothing or the stupidest thing possible. So we're going to swing into action and we are going to buttress this to make sure that the kingdom continues to tick over. But being mercurial is antithetical to what everybody wants in a ruler, which is just a course of action that is understandable. And then I guess against that we've got to put Isabella and Roger, Isabella, you know, fascinating character, Roger, fascinating character,

put them together, they're going to depose a king. That's a heck of an achievement. And that says a lot absolutely about where Edward had got the kingdom and what feelings were about him. But it also actually says that people do see at least Isabella as a safe pair of hands in this instance. They understand what she might do. And they understand, well, she's got some pretty great connections at the French court. And that's not a terrible thing. And I mean, oh, who's this Roger guy?

Okay, fair enough. And, you know, he was a pretty powerful, noble in his own right. So people might say they understand how to make relationships with him. And this absolutely does tell us, I think, that there is a sort of dissatisfaction in the kingdom more generally, but you don't just move away from a king if you think that the people who are being posed as an alternative are going to be similarly difficult to deal with. Yeah, and it struck me that Roger was very much the weapon that Isabella used. He'd fallen out with her husband, where she had really had enough and needed a strong arm that she could use. used to leverage Edward. I'm not sure Isabella really meant to depose Edward.

It feels like that was much more Roger's endgame because he had much more to lose from Edward staying where he was and remaining unpredictable. But Roger seems so much like that classic marcher lord who is considering himself slightly beyond the law. He's willing to take that extra step to go a little bit further than anybody else might want to. But he falls into that trap that so many people have, think Simon DeMontfort, a hundred years earlier, he rails against corruption and has this campaign to remove a corrupt

king, and immediately that he has any kind of power, he instantly indulges in gross corruption and falls foul of exactly what he's complained about. And I suppose from Isabella's standpoint as well, yeah, she's kind of seen these things come and go and rise and fall. And as you say, well, this is what we had already seen with the dispenser. So, well, what's the difference between her favorite and one of Edwards' favorites in this instance? And, there does need to be a kind of quid pro quo, I think. You know, you cannot just assume that this man is going to come on, he's going to risk it all, he's going to help raise troops and then get nothing in return. And fundamentally, I think that she's got this idea, well, well, I'm in the right place. I'm definitely the rightful queen. I'm certainly the mother of the next king. So really, who is there to stop me? Because I think you'll find my husband's no longer around, right? So I'm the only game in town, no one can get mad at this. Yeah, and I think it really strikes me that this idea that she's been consigned to history as

the she-wolf of France. I just don't buy that at all. There's so much more to her. And that's clearly just later misogyny projected back at this woman who dared to do something like Deposer King. We're going to pile these derogatory terms on her. But I think if you actually examine what Isabella does and her motivations, I don't see anything like a she-wolf in there.

This is the thing about her is that she-wool- She wasn't that universally disliked at first. You know, people were like, oh, thank God, Isabella's back. Who's that? Roger, okay, fine. All right, whatever. We'll make it work. But then she sort of goes too far.

And then having said that, even then, she hasn't sufficiently humiliated herself that her son really does much about it by the time Edward the third is like, all right, mom, that's enough. You know, it's like, here's your several amazing castles. Have fun hunting. I'll bring the grandkids round. It's not as though she ends up in excellent. or humiliation in any way, shape or form.

Yeah. And I guess the other person that we haven't spoken about so far is poor little teenage Edward, the third, who's watching all of this go on around him, watching, I mean, for a 14, 15 year old kid, watching his family tear itself apart, being pulled between his mother and his father. They're both telling him to do opposing things, forcing him to choose between mom and dad. It's classic stuff for messing up a young boy. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, this is messy, messy. this is the kind of stuff that will really shape your life one way or another. And then when you add on all the responsibilities of a king in waiting and all of the things that he's supposed to be learning about statescraft and ruling, that basically just goes by the wayside because we're watching the world's worst divorce happen. It's really sad. You know, it doesn't set him up particularly well for his own rule. Yeah, I think it's interesting the ways in which he kind of becomes almost everything that his father wasn't. He's successful in war. He almost creates this community of the nobility.

You think of stuff like the Order of the Garter. This is about creating a team, two jousting teams. There is no kind of one person that he's focusing on. He's good at providing rewards for good service. But I also think there's an element in which he does become some of what his father was in that he's personable. He's a nice guy. He's clearly intelligent. He gets on with people, but he does it in a way that people can recognize as kingly.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not just about being personally likable. It's about being likable as a ruler, because fundamentally there are rules that apply to this group of guys that doesn't matter to the rest of us, right? You know, there are ways of being that certainly come into play. play here. And I think he does actually end up learning quite a lot from his mother as well in terms of what you can claim, what are the rules. And I mean, is this going to lead us into the Hundred Years War? Yeah. Okay. It is also one of these things where very clearly he's got that kind of killer instinct that his mom had as well, which I think is kind of fun. And I think it was interesting in the chat that

we had about Edward III as well to think about some of the social context of what's going on. the effects that Edward II's reign had had on trade, things like the great famine that we mentioned earlier, the societal impacts of all of those things that partially feed into this crisis, but are also Edward III's problems to sort out at the beginning of his reigns and the way in which he goes about addressing the genuine concerns of the country that feels it's been neglected by his dad. Oh, absolutely. This is a huge weight on his shoulders. And imagine just the psychic damage you're going to take. Not only have you watched your parents clawing at each other for years, but you know that everyone is looking at you to say, are you going to be different? Is this going

to be a different story? How are we going to see this group of people attempt to rule again when everything has been so difficult up to this point? Yeah, there's an element in which his dad has set a low bar. It's not hard to be better than Edward II. But also you would feel the pressure of everyone looking at you saying, okay, we've had the worst. Can you be the best? And, you know, fundamentally, it's possible to remain on your throne as a king and still see your power drained away by a rapacious nobility. That's something that we see time and again in England and across the continent at this point in time. And that is kind of the flip side that Edward also has to avoid. He's got to come in, he's got to have a strong hand on the tiller say

that plaid tajidates are back. We're in control. I am the boss. Everybody get in line, but also don't worry because I'm a kind of nice guy. This is the train you want to be on, right? And that's a tall order for such a young man. Yeah. And yet, you know, he does it incredibly well. One of our better kings, actually, I would argue. He's kind of likable and deals with a really difficult set of circumstances in a pretty

impressive manner. And the wheels only really come off when his health fails and he's no longer able to be in control of what's going on. Talking about when Edward III gets told, I guess. we ought to think about the lasting legacy of this incident, this ultimate family spat. Yeah, because this is when we get into your bread and butter, Matt. Because I think that what we really see from this ultimately is people say, oh, you can depose the king if you don't like him, which is, do you want the words of the roses because this is how you get the wars of the roses.

I mean, I do want the wars of the roses, but... That's like, yes, please. That sounds great. But it does set that precedent. that breaking of that kind of unwritten law that God has put the king there and it's not for men to remove him. That's absolutely not the place of man. And then someone does it and you've kind of got over it. You know, the first time is always the hardest. Once you've done it once, you can kind of do it again. And you see later in that century, you will see Richard II being threatened by his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester. He'll literally threaten him with the fate

of Edward II. He'll go before Parliament and say, we could do to you, what we did to Edward II. So that precedent has been set and it's there as a threat looming over kind of every king after that. Richard will be deposed and that will definitely set the wheels in motion that will lead us to the Wars of the Roses because it creates that notion that if you've got a bad king, just get rid of him. You don't have to tolerate this.

Previously, you've had to tolerate it and it's been almost impossible to take a king off the throne. Doing it with Edward proves it can be done. Doing it again with Richard kind of solidifies the precedent. to the point where you get to the mid-15th century things are rubbish, Henry the 6th's rubbish, and everyone says, well, why don't we just do what we've done before? Get rid of him. Yeah, and there are kind of reverberations across Europe for this.

Everyone's kind of eyeing England and saying, uh-oh, I don't love that. You know, and there is almost an attempt to kind of keep an eye on it from everywhere because it's a threat for everyone. You know, if it can happen to one king, it can happen to anyone. And I think there is some attempt to keep that as one of those weird English things. They're like, oh, English people. You never know what they're up to up there. But you definitely see the French being like, what's going on?

Yeah, but I also think you have to set against that is the ultimate legacy of this, the fact that we still have a monarchy in this country, that we have a constitutional monarchy, because you're removing some of that mystique in a way that the French kingship never had it stripped away. We don't have the same kind of absolutist monarchy. We're kind of building this constitutional role for parliament in approving and appointing kings by the end of the 14th century to some extent. It's the continued development of that that gives us

maybe the Constitution monarchy that we have today, that we've had that kind of slow stripping away of the mystique of kingship rather than a revolution that's seen them kicked off because it's gradually been chipped away at. Yeah, you know, it is certainly Louis XIV, who's out here with the Le Tzatsemoire nonsense, you know, and English kings cannot pull that off because we see that this is very much a monarchy

that is subject to fairly intensive outside pressure. Yeah, and you, Charles I first will try it, and it ends badly. I guess to finish off, unpopular opinion, I kind of feel a bit sorry for Edward the second. Do you know what's funny? I don't think that I did until we visited the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was like, aw, this poor guy. But, you know, far be it from me to ever sympathize with the king.

But, yeah, it is kind of sad, you know. I think that this is one of those examples of medieval history at its best, because here we have all of the intrigue, all of the personalities, all of the minutiae of questions of statecraft and religion and interconnected kingdoms and royal families, but then also, you know, a scandal. So history will judge each of our players in this great drama. The second Edward condemned as a failed king. Isabella frowned upon as the she-wolf of France. Mortimer's neck stretched for becoming what he had fought against. Only young King Edward III will be remembered fondly in history's great tapestry. Rarely are things quite so simple.

Our subjects are kings, queens, princes, and earls, but they are also fathers, sons, mothers, daughters. Each had hopes and fears. none set out to fail. None sought this end. It can be easy to skip through the wide fields of history's tales, blown by the wind of impatient time. Sometimes it's worth standing still and taking a closer look. See the small details that complete a picture of the moment. Here the wind softly whispering the stories of those who have gone before. This was a seismic drama, but It was also the story of a family torn apart by power. It was a brief moment in the sweep of history, but it was a tragedy for those swept up. Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent series Meet the Normans. And, staying in the world of the Plantagenets, Matt's very special film, a voice for Richard, in which he follows a remarkable project to give Richard III back his voice and to hear him speak again. All of this and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com slash subscription.