Noble Blood - Piers Gaveston, the King's Favorite

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

The great love of King Edward II's life was a man named Piers Gaveston. As one contemporary wrote, “I do not remember to have heard that one man so loved another... and our king was incapable of moderate favor." But favoritism has its price. And love would cost both men their lives. Unrelated: Noble Blood merch is here!!!! https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One quick note before we start, we now have Noble Blood merch. I am so excited about all of it. Personally, I cannot wait for my pins and mugs to come in the mail. The link for the store is in the episode description and pinned on the Noble Blood Twitter account. And as always, just a quick reminder, you can also support the show on Patreon, if you want access to bibliographies, episode scripts, and other fun bonus content. But of course, the best support you can give to this show is just listening,

and I am so grateful for you. Let's get started. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. The Baron of Lancaster and the Baron of Warwick walked a man with ropes around his wrists to the time. To the top of a hill on a warm June morning. The two barons were quiet as they walked, listening to the monotonous, deadening pace of their footsteps in the grass. The prisoner was also silent, no tears, no begging, same as it had been during his trial, just a few days prior at Warwick's castle, where a handful of other nobles had condemned the prisoner to death. The word trial is loosely applied here. There was no judge, no representation for the defendant. They said that the charge was

disobeying the terms of inordinates they had agreed upon with the king, but everyone involved knew what the real charge was, being the king's favorite. Occupying all of his attention, receiving an endless stream of his money and his favor. King Edward II was devoted to this man in a way that he never was to anyone else in his life, not even his wife. Everyone knew who the real love of the king's life was. And so Pierce Gaviston, first Earl of Cornwall, was sentenced to death. There were two men on the hill to do the actual execution. One took a sword and first ran it through Gaveston's stomach and then pulled it back out with a sickening squish. They all waited until Gaviston fell to the grass, and then his head was sliced off. The men who were still alive

looked away from the mangled body and began walking back down the hill towards home. Gaviston's body was left outside for the elements, without a burial, to decompose in the grass and be picked at by the birds and rodents happening by. He was 28 years old at the time of his death. King Edward I second would be furious, demented with rage and grief when he heard that his love, Pierce Gaviston, had been murdered by the barons. But his options when it came to retaliation were limited. The barons had been filling in the vacuum of power left by the weak and ineffectual king, building their own private armies. The king's own wife, Queen Isabella, had been watching it all unfold for years, and she had our own ideas for how the country should be run.

and she was about to meet a man who would help her with her coup. Her heart had been broken by a king who never cared about her at all. She could at least take a country out from under him. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. According to the chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II, the first time the future King Edward II saw Pierce Gaviston, he tied himself to him against all mortals with an indissoluble bond of love.

It was 1297. Pierce Galveston was a teenager, the son of a knight from Gasson, who had joined the army of King Edward I, to fight in Flanders. The king saw the young boy, particularly handsome, but also particularly graceful,

athletic and well-mannered. He embodied the values for a young man at the time when it came to bearing and male conduct. And so, the king appointed the young man to join his son's household, to join the staff of the Prince of Wales,

and hopefully to serve as a good example. The king was a little worried about his son. Edward II seemed to gravitate towards activities associated with the lower class, like rowing and the menial hypnotic work of farmhands, like hedging and ditching around fields. But when Edward II wasn't playing farmhand, he seemed spoiled.

a wealthy dilettante. He played the organ and a Welsh string instrument known as a cruth, which is spelled, I kid you not, C-R-W-T-H. The Welsh language does not mess around. The prince bred horses and greyhounds. He kept a pet camel and a pet lion that he insisted on bringing with him on a campaign he went on in Scotland with his father. All of that's to say, he needed good upper-class boys in his household to model good courtly behavior for him. When Gaviston arrived to the princess' household, they were about the same age. Gaviston may have been one or two years older, but from that point on, the two young men were inseparable. It was love in every sense of the word. They rode together, walked together,

talked together, played together. It was no secret with whom the prince was spending all of his time, and the prince was already working hard to elevate Gaviston's position. In the household, he was designated as socius, or a companion, rather than what one might have expected, which was for him to be a scutifer or an esquire. The two men were so close that when the king wanted to punish his son or loudly voicing his disparaging opinion about the Bishop of Chester,

he did so by exiling Pierre's Gaveston to France. Gaveston was still granted a salary while he was away, quote, for as long as he shall remain in parts beyond the sea, during the king's pleasure, and waiting for recall. Edward II was bereft. He wrote a letter to his sister Elizabeth, hoping that she could talk to their stepmother and get her to intercede with the king to bring Gaviston back.

We would be greatly relieved of the anguish which we have endured, Edward II wrote, and from which we continue to suffer from one day to the next. Eventually, the king forgave his son's trespasses. When the prince was knighted, Gaviston was returned to his household, like a graduation gift, and in 1306, the two boys both accompanied the king on an army expedition to Scotland to follow up on a victory over Robert the Bruce. If you've seen Braveheart,

first please know that it is only history in the loosest possible sense. But this is also around the time period where it is supposed to have happened. Edward II's father is Edward I. of course, also known as Longshanks. Edward II in the movie Braveheart is portrayed as effeminently gay.

So now might be a good time to take a brief break from the story to discuss the ways we talk about homosexuality when it comes to history, especially history as far back as the 14th century. A lot of preeminent queer theorists and scholars actually disagree as to whether it's useful or helpful to call someone like Edward II gay when that isn't how he would have identified himself or really how anyone at the time would have characterized him. But to me, it also feels like a useless exercise to tie ourselves into knots, as some writers do,

trying to paint Edward II and Pierce Gaviston as best bros. The fact of the matter is that textual evidence is that Edward and Gaviston had a relationship that went beyond the normal courtly affection between two men at the time, something that was noted and observed contemporaneously, albeit obliquely. As Peter Ackroyd writes in his book Queer History, their relationship emphasizes that fine, perhaps, non-existent line between camaraderie and same-sex love as we've come to see in the sort of florid portrayals of courtly love between men in the 14th century and beyond. Edward II and Gaviston would go on to have a formal relationship as wedded brethren, a union that would have been solemnized before an altar in a state. church. I suppose the apt comparison there is something like them being blood brothers. But again, how disingenuous to pretend that this is a story about two bros who were such close

bros that they decided to kneel in a church side by side to show what bros they are? An anonymous writer of a contemporary biography wrote, quote, I do not remember to have heard that one man so loved another, our king was incapable of moderate favor, and on account of Pierce was said to forget himself. And so Pierce was accounted a sorcerer. At the time, sorcerer was coded language for someone who engaged in homosexual acts. An allegation put more explicitly by a Cistercian monk who wrote of Edward II, and please forgive my Latin or lack thereof, invito sadimitico numium delectabot, or He wallowed in sodomy.

Edward II would go on to father five children, one illegitimate, more than fulfilling his duty with his wife of providing the country with a male heir. But a king doing his duty to provide an heir can sort of be considered an endeavor completely disparate from ideas of love or companionship. So I think we should resist the temptation to, as I saw one less than reputable internet analysis to celebrate Edward II as the first bisexual king of England. That terminology simply doesn't hold the same meaning it does today when applied to 700 years ago, and so personally, I agree with the historians who don't quite see that sort of formal

denomination as particularly useful in this case. I do find it helpful just to remember that even though he lived in the 1300s, Edward II was a human being. He was a human being who fell deeply and madly in love with a man, and that relationship would be the central one for almost his entire life, and that love would eventually lead to both of their downfalls. Though the king had restored Gaviston to his son's household, the reunion wouldn't last long.

After the campaign in Scotland, the army set up camp for the winter in Lannercoast, near the English border. That winter, 22 prominent nights, including Gaveston, left camp without permission to sail to France for a series of tournaments. When the men returned, they found that the king had confiscated all of their lands in anger at their disobedience. Eventually, the king calmed down, and he realized it was just a youthful indiscretion,

and all of the knights were forgiven and pardoned. all of the knights except Gaviston. Out of the 22 men, only Gaveston was banished, once again, forced to leave the country. The exact reason for Gaveston's uniquely harsh punishment isn't known, but it's possible that the king wanted his son to move on from his teenage crush so that he could be ready for his new bride, incoming from France. King Edward I had arranged for his son. his son to marry Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fourth or Philip the Fair, when she was just

two years old. Now that she was 12, it was finally time to make good on that betrothal. In case you were wondering, Edward II was 23. But before the wedding actually took place, Edward I died suddenly. And so the prince ascended to the throne as King Edward II. The first, the first The first thing Edward did as king was bring back Gaviston and grant him the impressive title of Earl of Cornwall. It wasn't unheard of for a king to give a lower-born gentleman such a grand title, but given the nature of the king's relationship with Gaviston, it narrowed some eyes, especially because before the late king died, he had been planning on giving that earldom to one of his sons by

his second wife. The earldom was supposed to go to a prince, and here comes this new king, giving it to an upstart son of a knight. The new king also set Gaviston up with a well-placed wife of his own. Margaret Declare, sister of the Earl of Gloucester, and Edward's niece. Gaviston was also appointed regent temporarily while Edward went to France to marry his own bride, the 13-year-old Isabella. The wedding in France went right as planned, and so young Isabella accompanied her new husband back to England, where they would have another wedding ceremony and their official coronations as queen and king of England. They arrived back on the shores of Dover on a cold February

afternoon, and that very moment would doom their entire marriage. Who was waiting on the shore for the new king and his new bride, then the real love of the king's life, Pierce Gaviston. As soon as he set foot to grass, the king ran towards his lover, laughing and crying. They embraced for a long time. They kissed. All the while, 13-year-old Isabella of France was just standing there, chilled by the February air and the wind whipping up from the sea, watching her new husband so deeply and so clearly in love with a person that wasn't her. At their coronation, Gaviston took most of the attention. To the shock of nearly everyone there, he arrived wearing purple, a color meant to be worn by only the king. An onlooker noted that he

looked more like the god Mars than a mere mortal. At the banquet afterward, the king spent the entire night perched on Gaviston's small couch, gazing up into his eyes, laughing and flirting with him. the king barely so much as acknowledged his new bride. The scene was so outrageous that two of Isabella's uncles left the party in disgust. Life as the new queen of England was miserable for Isabella. She was young, all alone, and her husband constantly humiliated her with his lack of affection and overt love for Gaviston. She wrote to her father, King Philip the Fair,

that she was being treated poorly. The money that was supposed to be given to her by her new husband seemed to be slow coming, while there was never any shortage for whatever extravagance Pierce Gaviston wanted. The jewels that Isabella's father had presented to the king as part of her dowry were being freely shared between the king and Gaveston.

Isabella also told her father that the barons of England were getting fed up as well, that they hated Gaveston. and the king's outright favoritism, that there were rumors that Gaviston had cruel little nicknames for all of them that he used behind their backs. The beloved Earl of Lincoln, Gaveston called burst belly, and the Earl of Warwick was, quote, the black dog of Arden.

King Edward II's untamed affections for this man were making him and England vulnerable. In 1308, the great, barons of England demanded that the king's send peers into exile. Faced directly by the displeasure of his nobles, the king agreed. Exile also meant that he was forced to strip Gaviston's earldom, but the king compensated for it by immediately appointing Gaviston as the king's lieutenant in Ireland. And Edward II was king. He did have some power, and he assumed that the barons would settle down. And so a year later, when he assumed things would have calmed a bit, he brought Gaviston back to England.

He was wrong. Things had not calmed down. By March 1310, the barons were all but threatening civil war if the king refused to sit down with them and negotiate what to do about the Gaviston problem. With his hands tied, Edward II agreed to create an organization called the Lord's Ordiners. a group of 21 earls, barons, and bishops who would agree on the rules when it came to managing the king's household. The ordainers came up with a number of new rules, including, once again, exile for the king's favorite. When faced with a group of angry nobles, some of whom had spent the better part of the past few years assembling private armies, the king found he had very little actual power. He bargained, saying he would agree to all of the rules except the banishment of Gaveston.

The nobles refused him. And so, for the third and final time, Gaviston was formally banished from England. It would only be a few months before the king decreed that the ordainers were actually operating illegally, that the proclamations didn't mean anything, so that he could bring Gaveston back. But the nobles would refuse. to back down, which meant that as soon as Gaviston was back in England, he and the king were now on the run from the king's own nobleman. While fleeing the Earl of Lancaster in May of 1312, the king was forced to leave most of his retinue and baggage behind so that he could

travel light and avoid capture. So at Newcastle, he abandoned his jewels and plates. He abandoned several valuable warhorses and various assorted trappings, and he also abandoned his wife, who was five months pregnant. Edward II's only concern was Gaviston. Gaviston fortified himself at Scarborough Castle, where he was besieged by the earls of Pembroke and Warwick. It was around this time that Gaviston was also excommunicated by the Archbishop Wingestly at St. Paul's.

The nobles meant war. The siege ended with Galveston surrendering to the Earl of Pembroke on the condition that they would negotiate with the king for an acceptable course of action and have until August 1st to do it. Pembroke agreed, and he took Gaveston into his custody to Deddington in Banbury, where he'd be kept until they finalized their deal with the king.

Pembroke guaranteed his safety, and word was sent down to the king, who, of course, immediately, began riding north. But then Pembroke spent a weekend away with a cousin, and whether it was purposeful or just an unfortunate coincidence, Gaviston was left unguarded. When the Earl of Warwick heard that the hated Gaviston was so close,

he sprung into action and captured him himself. He brought the king's favorite back to Warwick in chains, parading him through the streets like a common thief, while the crowd jeered at him and made obscene gestures. Before the king could even finish his travels, the earls completed a quick sham trial and brought Pierce Gavison to Blacklow Hill, where two Welsh executioners were ready to kill him,

by running him through first with a sword, and then by cutting off his head. His body was left to rot on the hill. Gaviston being excommunicated at the time meant that he couldn't have a proper Christian burial, although the king did immediately begin fighting to recover the body and give his love the resting place he thought he deserved.

Gaviston's body was eventually rescued and embalmed and buried in the Dominican friary at Kings Langley in Herteshire, but it wouldn't be until 1823 that a local squire would erect a monument for Pierce Gaveston. which would read under his name, quote, the minion of a hateful king beheaded by barons as lawless as himself. According to that squire, there were no heroes in this story. The king mourned deeply, and though during the following period he would sire airs with his wife,

his heart never recovered from the loss of his greatest love, the man he had spent 13 years with. He would eventually, nearly a decade later, find a new favorite a man named Hugh Dispenser the younger. Unlike Pierce Gaviston, who had been relatively moderate in his spending and not too keen on making enemies, what good it did him, Hugh Dispenser was shameless. He spent wildly, and it wasn't long before the nobles were calling him another Gaviston. The queen, for her part, despised Dispenser. Here was another young upstart, not only taking her husband's attention again, but flaunting it.

It goes without saying that the king's treatment of his wife hadn't improved since the first time they set foot on English soil together. Once her household had been fleeing a Scottish army, and her husband had so dawdled on sending support that it led to her just barely escaping with her life. Queen Isabella eventually persuaded her husband to let her go to France, to negotiate with her brother, who was by then the king. It was while she was at French court that she met a man named Roger Mortimer, a formerly powerful English lord who had been forced to flee the country after a failed rebellion against Edward II. The friendship between the Queen and Mortimer deepened when it was revealed that they had a common goal, removing Edward from the three. realm. The two became lovers, and eventually Mortimer led an expedition that would see the pair of them successfully seize control of the English throne. Hugh Dispenser was captured and found guilty on more charges than he could answer for. He knew that execution was coming to him, and that that

execution would be grim. And so before his verdict, he had been trying to starve himself to death, but it didn't work. And he was really, and he was really. right about the execution being grim. So if you're a little squeamish about gore, you might want to fast forward about 30 seconds. The king's new favorite was dragged through the streets, naked and publicly humiliated, with men writing Bible verses on his skin, Bible verses about the many sins of which he had been formally accused. Dispenser was to be hanged as a commoner, but the noose was released before he was fully asphyxiated, and so, still breathing but only barely,

dispenser was tied to a ladder, and a red-hot blade was used to slice off his genitals. From there, he was beheaded and drawn and quartered. His head was mounted on the gates of London. King Edward II was captured soon afterward and forced to abdicate in favor of things. his young son, Edward III, who would be king in name only as Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, ruled as regents in his stead. While captured and imprisoned, Edward died, either of a mysterious

illness or, more likely, at the behest of the new regime. The rumor, with not much factual evidence behind it, but the rumor that's plenty colorful, is that he was killed by guards in a way that wouldn't show much damage to the outside of his body. Another warning here, I'm going to say this as delicately as I can, by shoving a flaming hot poker up his rear end. But that detail, lurid as it is, may be an example of historical embellishment meant to emphasize the gossip around the king's relationships and sexual proclivities.

But that rumor in itself is evidence that the king's relationships were explicitly sexual. No one ever shoves a red-hot poker up someone's butt because they're upset that he's such close platonic bros with another man. That's the tragic story of Pierce Gaviston and King Edward II, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear more about what happened with Queen Isabella. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom.

My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo. Woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day. And I was like,

and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. and he's like just give it a shot he goes but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore it's okay to quit if you saw it written down it would not be an inspiration it would not be on a calendar of you know the cat just hang in there yeah it would not be right it wouldn't be that there's a lot of luck yeah listen to thanks dad on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program.

I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Edward III eventually came of age and overthrew the Regency of Roger.

Mortimer and Queen Isabella. Roger Mortimer was killed, but graciously, Edward III spared the life of his mother. The queen was briefly imprisoned, but then allowed to live in a palace, just away from court. Edward III did one more thing to honor the memory of his father, the man whom he could scarcely remember, but who had been so deeply betrayed by his wife and fellow countrymen. When Queen Isabella died, her son Edward III had something wrapped in linen and buried alongside her. It was King Edward II's embalmed heart, the thing that had caused so much trouble and strife and pain. At last, for the first time, and only in death,

would Queen Isabella finally have it. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio,

visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall

and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.