The accounts given by the early chroniclers, and followed by modern
historians, with respect to the movements of Edward the Second and his
Queen, from September, 1326, to the December following, are sadly at
variance with fact. The dates of death of the Despensers, as well as
various minor matters, depend on the accurate fixing of these points.
The popular account, generally accepted, states that the Queen landed at
Orwell in September--the exact day being disputed--that the King, on
hearing of it, hastened to the West, and shut himself up in Bristol
Castle, with his daughters and the younger Despenser; that the Queen
hanged the elder Despenser and the Earl of Arundel before their eyes, on
the 8th of October, whereupon the King and the younger Despenser escaped
by night in a boat: some add that they were overtaken and brought back,
others that they landed in Wales, and were taken in a wood near
Llantrissan. Much of this is pure romance. The King's Household Roll,
which names his locality for every day, and is extant up to October
19th, the Wardrobe Accounts supplying the subsequent facts, distinctly
shows that he never came nearer Bristol on that occasion than the road
from Gloucester to Chepstow; that on the 8th of October he was yet at
Cirencester; that he left Gloucester on the 10th, reaching Chepstow on
the 16th, whence he departed on the 20th "_versus aquam de Weye_" and
therefore in the contrary direction from Bristol. On the 27th and 28th
he dates mandates from Cardiff; on the 29th and 30th from Caerphilly.
On November 2nd he left Caerphilly (this we are distinctly told in the
Wardrobe Accounts), on the 3rd and 4th he was at Margan Abbey, and on
the 5th he reached Neath, where he remained up to the 10th. He now
appears to have paid a short visit to Swansea, whence he returned to
Neath, where, on the 16th, his cousin Lancaster and his party found him,
and took him into their custody, with Hugh Le Despenser and Archdeacon
Baldok. They took him first to Monmouth, where he was found by the
Bishop of Hereford (sent to demand the Great Seal), probably about the
23rd. Thence he was conveyed to Ledbury, which he reached on or about
the 30th; and on the 6th of December he was at Kenilworth, where he
remained for the rest of his reign.
The Queen landed at Orwell in September: Speed says, on the 19th; Robert
of Avesbury, the 26th; most authorities incline to the 22nd, which seems
as probable a date as any. The King, at any rate, had heard of her
arrival on the 28th, and issued a proclamation offering to all
volunteers 1 shilling per day for a man-at-arms, and 2 pence for an
archer, to resist the invading force. All past offenders were offered
pardon if they joined his standard, the murderers of Sir Roger de Belers
alone excepted: and Roger Mortimer, with the King's other enemies, was
to be arrested and destroyed. Only three exceptions were made: the
Queen, her son (his father omits the usual formula of "our dearest and
firstborn son," and even the title of Earl of Chester), and the Earl of
Kent, "queux nous volons que soent sauuez si auant come home poet."
According to Froissart, the Queen's company could not make the port they
intended, and landed on the sands, whence after four days they marched
(ignorant of their whereabouts) till they sighted Bury Saint Edmunds,
where they remained three days. Miss Strickland tells a rather striking
tale of the tempestuous night passed by the Queen under a shed of
driftwood run up hastily by her knights, whence she marched the next
morning at daybreak. (This lady rarely gives an authority, and still
more seldom an exact reference.) On the 25th, she adds, the Queen
reached Harwich. Robert de Avesbury, Polydore Vergil, and Speed, say
that she landed at Orwell, which the Chronicle of Flanders calls
Norwell. If Froissart is to be credited, this certainly was not the
place; for he says that the tempest prevented the Queen from landing at
the port where she intended, and that this was a mercy of Providence,
because there her enemies awaited her. The port where her enemies
awaited her (meaning thereby the husband whom she was persecuting) was
certainly Orwell, for on the second of September the King had ordered
all ships of thirty tuns weight to assemble there. Moreover, the Queen
could not possibly march from Orwell at once to Bury and Harwich, since
to face the one she must have turned her back on the other. The
probability seems to be that she came ashore somewhere in Orwell Haven,
but whether she first visited Harwich or Bury it is difficult to judge.
The natural supposition would be that she remained quiet for a time at
Bury until she was satisfied that her allies would be sufficient to
effect her object, and then showed herself openly at Harwich were it not
that Bury is so distant, and Harwich is so near, that the supposition
seems to be negatived by the facts. From Harwich or Bury, whichever it
were, she marched towards London, which according to some writers, she
reached; but the other account seems to be better authenticated, which
states that on hearing that the King had left the capital for the West
she altered her course for Oxford. She certainly was not in London when
the Tower was captured by the citizens, October 16th (_Compotus
Willielmi de Culpho_, Wardrobe Accounts, 20 Edward the Second, 31/8),
since she dates a mandate from Wallingford on the 15th, unless Bishop
Orleton falsified the date in quoting it in his Apology. Thence she
marched to Cirencester and Gloucester, and at last to Bristol, which she
entered on or before the 25th. Since Gloucester was considerably out of
her way--for we are assured that her aim was to make a straight and
rapid course to Bristol--why did she go there at all if the King were at
Bristol? But we know he was not; he had then set sail for Wales. Her
object in going to Bristol was probably twofold: to capture Le Despenser
and Arundel, and to stop the King's supplies, for Bristol was his
commissariat-centre. A cartload of provisions reached that city from
London for him on the 14th [Note 2.] (_Rot. Magne Gard._, 20 Edward the
Second, 26/3), and his butler, John Pyrie, went thither for wine, even
so late as November 1st (_Ibidem_, 26/4). Is it possible that Pyrie,
perhaps unconsciously, betrayed to some adherent of the Queen the fact
that his master was in Wales? The informer, we are told by the
chroniclers, was Sir Thomas le Blount, the King's Seneschal of the
Household. But that suspicious embassage of the Abbot of Neath and
several of the King's co-refugees, noted on November 10th in terms
which, though ostensibly spoken by the King and dated from Neath, are
unmistakably the Queen's diction and not his, cannot be left out of the
account in estimating his betrayers. From October 26, when the
illegally-assembled Parliament, in the hall of Bristol Castle, went
through the farce of electing the young Prince to the regency "because
the King was absent from his kingdom," and October 27th, which is given
(probably with truth) by Harl. Ms. 6124 as the day of the judicial
murder of Hugh Le Despenser the Elder, our information concerning the
Queen's movements is absolutely _nil_ until we find her at Hereford on
the 20th of November. She then sent Bishop Orleton of Hereford to the
King to request the Great Seal, and he, returning, found her at Marcle
on the 26th. It was probably on the 24th that the younger Despenser
suffered. On the 27th the Queen was at Newent, on the 28th at
Gloucester, on the 29th at Coberley, and on the 30th at Cirencester.
She reached Lechlade on December 1st, Witney on the 2nd, Woodstock on
the 3rd. Here she remained till the 22nd, when she went to Osney Abbey,
and forward to Wallingford the next day. (Wardrobe Accounts, 20 Edward
the Second and 1 Edward the Third, 26/11.) She was joined at
Wallingford by her younger son Prince John of Eltham, who had been
awaiting her arrival since the 17th, and losing 3 shillings at play by
way of amusement in the interim (_Ibidem_, 31/18). By Reading, Windsor,
Chertsey, and Allerton she reached Westminster on the 4th of January
(_Ibidem_, 26/11).
I have examined all the Wardrobe Accounts and Rolls likely to cast light
on this period, but I can find no mention of the whereabouts of the two
Princesses during this time. Froissart says that they and Prince John
were delivered into the Queen's care by the citizens of Bristol; which
is certainly a mistake so far as concerns the Prince, whose compotus
just quoted distinctly states that he left the Tower on October 16th
(which fixes the day of its capture), quitted London on December 21st,
and reached Wallingford on the 24th. He, therefore, was no more at
Bristol than his father, and only rejoined his mother as she returned
thence. The position of the royal sisters remains doubtful, as even
Mrs Everett Green--usually a most faithful and accurate writer--has
accepted Froissart's narrative, and apparently did not discover its
complete discrepancy with the Wardrobe Accounts. If the Princesses were
the companions of their royal father in his flight, and were delivered
to their mother when she entered Bristol--which may be the fact--the
probability is that he sent them there when he left Gloucester, on or
about the 10th of October.