Chapter 10: The New Favourite - Edward II’s Nieces, The Clare Sisters: Powerful Pawns of the Crown

Edward II stayed with Elizabeth Burgh and Roger Damory at Clare in Suffolk between 23 and 27 March 1318, and presumably took time to visit the tomb in the Augustinian priory there of Elizabeth’s mother Joan of Acre, his much older sister. Shortly before his arrival, the king sold the marriage rights of Elizabeth’s two younger stepdaughters Elizabeth and Margery Verdon to Damory for £200.^[1] Elizabeth Burgh was seven months pregnant at the time of her uncle’s visit, and gave birth to a child on or just before 23 May 1318 when an entry in the king’s wardrobe accounts records a hugely generous payment of £20 to Roger’s messenger John Pyrro for bringing him news of the birth. Sadly, it does not specify the child’s name or sex, though it was perhaps a daughter called Margaret (presumably Elizabeth Burgh named her first Damory child after her sister). Roger Damory was with Edward II at Westminster on 20 and 27 May just before and after his child was born, though as he sent a messenger to the king on 23 May he must have returned to be near Elizabeth when she gave birth.^[2] This implies that Elizabeth bore their child at one of their manors close to London/Westminster, perhaps Kennington or Vauxhall.

The Damorys had a household of at least fifty people, and their extant accounts of 1318/19 provide a fascinating insight into what they ate and drank in a day: 40 gallons of ale and 8 of wine, 150 eggs, 2 ducks, 6 hens, 13 pullets, half a carcass of salt beef, half a pig, a quantity of mutton, 40 herrings, 2 salt stockfish, 2 ling, salmon, whiting and eels.^[3] The year 1318 saw the marriage of the Clare sisters’ stepfather Ralph Monthermer, widowed from their mother Joan of Acre since 1307, and Hugh Despenser the Younger’s sister Isabella Hastings. Isabella, born around 1290 or 1291, was many years Ralph’s junior, and had lost her second husband John, Lord Hastings, father of her three children, in 1313. It is difficult to say much about what kind of relationship Ralph Monthermer had with his three stepdaughters, though in early May 1320 he sent three minstrels to perform for Margaret and Hugh Audley.^[4]

Edward II presided over a meeting of his great council at Northampton in July 1318, and the Vita Edwardi Secundi says that Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, William Montacute, Hugh Despenser father and son and the Earl of Surrey arrived at Northampton ‘in great strength, so that you would have thought they had not come to parliament, but to battle’. The author gives this as the reason for the non-attendance of Edward’s cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, as ‘he counted all the aforenamed as his deadly enemies’.^[5] Also in July 1318, Lancaster accused Roger Damory and William Montacute of trying to murder him, and claimed that he had intercepted letters at Pontefract, written by Edward II and sent to Scotland, inviting the Scots to help kill him.^[6] Since April 1318, a group of barons and prelates had been negotiating with the Earl of Lancaster, and trying to persuade Edward and his unruly cousin to overcome their hostility to each other. On 8 June, they came to a preliminary agreement: Edward would uphold the hated Ordinances (the reforms imposed on him by the Lords Ordainer in 1311), govern by the counsel of his magnates, and conciliate Lancaster, who was threatened with sanctions if he continued to hold armed assemblies. Although Lancaster declared that he did not trust Edward’s safe-conducts, he did eventually consent to meet the king on 7 August 1318, and the two men exchanged the kiss of peace in a field between Loughborough and Leicester. A formal agreement, the Treaty of Leake, was signed in the village of East Leake near Loughborough two days later. Hugh Despenser the Younger was one of the men involved in negotiating and drafting the treaty.^[7]

Part of the agreement was for Roger Damory, Hugh Audley and William Montacute to be sent away from court. Surprisingly, Edward agreed. He would never have consented to Piers Gaveston’s removal from court, and this suggests that he had grown tired of his friends and was not willing to fight for them. On 20 October 1318, Bartholomew Badlesmere replaced William Montacute in the key role of Edward’s household steward, while Montacute himself was appointed steward of Gascony a month later.^[8] This was technically an honour and even a promotion, though Montacute and everyone else realised he was being removed from the king’s side and sent far away. Although Roger Damory’s friendship with Edward was certainly not over, without constant access to the king’s presence, his influence over him would henceforth be severely limited. Damory, Hugh Audley and William Montacute made their peace with the Earl of Lancaster, and agreed to pay him compensation for their hostility to him, 906 marks on Damory’s part, 1,229 marks on Audley’s, and 413 on Montacute’s.^[9] Montacute was to die in Gascony the following year. His heir was his second son William, his eldest John having died in 1317.^[10] As for Roger Damory, he was with Edward at Clipstone on 9 September and at York on 20 and 27 November and 18 December 1318, though on 27 December and 19 January 1319 seems to have been at Farnham in Surrey. By early February 1319, he was reunited with the king in York.^[11] Presumably his wife Elizabeth accompanied him, though she is rarely mentioned.

At the parliament of October 1318, Margaret and Hugh Audley audaciously presented a petition claiming the earldom of Cornwall as Margaret’s dower from her first husband Piers Gaveston, on the basis that the Magna Carta ‘wills that her inheritance and marriage shall be rendered to a widow immediately after his death’. The matter was discussed again at parliament in May 1319, but, not surprisingly, their petition failed on the grounds that all grants made by the king to Piers Gaveston had been revoked. Edward II made a deal with the couple that they would relinquish all claims to Cornwall and all other lands Margaret had held jointly with Gaveston in return for lands worth 2,000 marks (£1,333) a year. If Margaret died before Audley, Audley would continue to hold lands to the value of 1,200 marks a year for the rest of his life.^[12] Hugh Audley kept his wardrobe in some houses in Ismanghere (‘Ironmonger’) Lane, London, which had formerly belonged to Piers Gaveston and where Gaveston also kept his wardrobe.^[13] He and Margaret sent a clerk called John Dufford to Ireland to take care of their affairs there on 6 June 1319.^[14]

In or a little before October 1318, Hugh Despenser the Younger was appointed as Edward II’s chamberlain at the request of the English magnates. This appointment would eventually lead to a baronial rebellion against the king during which Elizabeth Burgh and Hugh and Margaret Audley were imprisoned and Roger Damory was killed, and ultimately to the king’s downfall, Despenser’s grotesque execution and Eleanor Despenser’s imprisonment. From 1318 to 1320, there must have been furious jockeying for position and favour as Hugh Despenser worked his way into Edward’s affections and began to oust Roger Damory and Hugh Audley. (The third powerful royal favourite of the 1310s, Sir William Montacute, was now in Gascony and out of the picture, and died in 1319.) Hugh Audley was with the king on 28 March and from 20 to 26 May 1319 and was politely acknowledged as the ‘king’s nephew’, but witnessed none of Edward’s charters at all after August 1317, so apparently was only rarely at court.^[15] He and his brother-in-law Sir Ralph Greystoke (1299–1323), his younger sister Alice’s husband, were given letters of protection to go to Scotland on 20 July 1319.^[16] Roger Damory witnessed his last-ever royal charters on 4 February, 25 May and 19 July 1319, and the large number of entries in the Chancery rolls made ‘on the information of Roger Damory’ cease entirely after December 1318; his disappearance from court and from Edward’s favour is visible in the records.^[17]

Hugh Despenser the Younger was almost always at court with the king—where his itinerary can be established in 1319 it always coincides with Edward’s, except on one occasion—and unlike his rivals, he had every right to be at the king’s side, as he had been elected by the magnates as royal chamberlain. He witnessed no charters of Edward II’s at all until May 1316, but by the end of the reign in 1325/26 was witnessing almost all of them.^[18] As with Roger Damory’s fall from royal grace, Despenser’s rise in Edward’s favour is visible in the records. Despenser, ambitious almost beyond description, soon began to use his influential position to benefit himself, and demanded bribes from petitioners to allow them to speak to the king and answered their petitions himself, or whispered to the king what he should say. He very soon became grossly unpopular, and his behaviour as chamberlain became the talk of the kingdom. Edward II, however, became infatuated with him. This in itself is fascinating, as the two men must have known each other most of their lives—Despenser was a high-ranking nobleman whose father, grandfather the Earl of Warwick and great-uncle Sir Walter Beauchamp spent most or all of their time at Edward I’s court when Despenser was growing up—but Edward had never shown the slightest interest in or liking for Despenser previously despite his obvious fondness for Despenser’s wife Eleanor.

Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, had captured the vital port of Berwick-on-Tweed in 1318, and in September 1319 Edward II finally made his way there to retake it. The siege of Berwick proved an utter failure, and the port remained in Scottish hands until Edward’s son Edward III took it back in 1333. Hugh Despenser frequently sent letters to his sheriff of Glamorgan, Sir John Inge, micromanaging the affairs in his and Eleanor’s lordship, and the earliest one which survives today was written on 22 September 1319 shortly after the siege of Berwick.^[19] It is clear from this letter that Despenser was already confident of his hold on the favour of the king who had disliked him for so many years. He had already persuaded Edward to find a church for Inge’s clerical brother, but it had proved to be inadequate, and so, Despenser wrote, he personally would ensure that Edward gave ‘the first good church’ which fell vacant to Inge’s brother.

It seems that Edward II fell in love with his nephew-in-law once the two men began spending almost all their time together. The Anonimalle chronicle wrote that ‘the king loved [Hugh Despenser] dearly, with all his heart and mind, above all others’ and Geoffrey le Baker wrote much later that Despenser had enchanted (or bewitched) Edward’s heart. The Lanercost chronicle called Despenser Edward’s ‘right eye’ on two occasions, and the Scalacronica added that ‘the great men had ill will against [Edward] for his cruelty and the debauched life which he led, and on account of the said Hugh, whom at that time he loved and entirely trusted’.^[20] An annalist in 1326 called them ‘the king and his husband’, which strongly implies that their relationship was sexual or at least perceived by outsiders to be.^[21] The Liège chronicler Jean le Bel, who was in England in 1327, wrote that Hugh was ‘a pervert and a sodomite, above all with the king himself, which was why the king, at his urging, had driven the queen away’.^[22] It certainly seems that Edward and Despenser’s relationship was intimate, and that Hugh was thought to be the third person in the royal marriage. Piers Gaveston had enjoyed the wealth which came from being the king’s favourite, though had little if any interest in ruling via Edward. Hugh Despenser was an entirely different matter, and over the next few years came to dominate the English government. His correspondence from the years 1323 to 1325 makes it apparent that he, not the king, was directing English policy when Edward II went to war against his brother-in-law Charles IV of France (r. 1322–28). Endless complaints were raised about Despenser appropriating and using royal power which did not belong to him, not least by Despenser’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Burgh, who in 1326 talked of ‘the royal power which is in the hand of the said Sir Hugh’.^[23]

What Eleanor Despenser made of this is anyone’s guess. Perhaps she was delighted that her husband, now 30 years old and in the political wilderness for the previous dozen years of her uncle’s reign, had reached a prominent and highly influential position at last. Where her itinerary can be established after 1318, it reveals that she was almost always at court or at least just a few miles away and in touch with Edward II and Despenser, so she can hardly have failed to be aware of the presumably intimate relationship between her husband and her uncle. Eleanor was one of the king and Despenser’s closest allies in the 1320s, so if she knew that the two men were lovers, it did not drive her away from them. At least four or five of the Despensers’ many children were born in the late 1310s and 1320s, so she and Hugh certainly continued their intimate marital relationship after he grew extremely close to the king. Eleanor herself would also be said by one chronicler (admittedly, a chronicler outside England) to have had a sexual relationship with her uncle. Whether that is true or not—and some evidence from Edward’s household accounts from 1324 to 1326 seems to support the notion (discussed in Chapters 13, 15 and 18)—she was certainly a supporter of her uncle and her husband during their tyrannical regime of the 1320s.

Hugh Despenser the Younger and his current ally Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere, appointed steward of the royal household when he was elected chamberlain in 1318, were jointly involved in some shady business in 1319 or early 1320 when they unlawfully released one John Lashley from prison in Colchester. Despenser kept Lashley in his own prison until the latter released one of his Essex manors to Despenser, and a few months later Despenser gave Badlesmere the manor.^[24] Despenser rescued Badlesmere’s wife Margaret, his wife Eleanor’s first cousin, while she and her servants were being held captive in a house in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire sometime before 6 December 1319.^[25] This was the only known occasion in 1319 when Despenser was not at court with the king, and perhaps he had come south—Edward II spent that whole year in and near York, 180 miles from Cheshunt—specifically to deal with the Lashley situation and to benefit from it. Later evidence demonstrates that Eleanor Despenser was well aware of what her husband was up to, and she surely also knew about the Lashley situation, one of the earliest examples of Hugh Despenser’s penchant for false imprisonment and for forcing men and women to hand over manors to him.

Eleanor Despenser was ill sometime in 1319/20 when her uncle Edward bought medicines for her, and the two were linked together in a way which, given the later rumours about their relationship, was perhaps significant: ‘for the king and Eleanor Despenser his niece, when ill’.^[26] On 6 March 1320, while she was in Canterbury with her husband and the king and queen, Eleanor sent a letter (in French) to Sir John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan. Courteous and friendly, it could hardly be more different from the impatient, hectoring, threatening tone her husband generally adopted in his own frequent letters to Inge, and demonstrates that Eleanor took an interest in the affairs of the lordship she had inherited, her birthplace:

Eleanor Despenser [Alianore la Despensiere] to our beloved Sir John Inge, sheriff of Glamorgan, greetings and true love. Because we know well that you would gladly hear good news of us always, we make known to you that at the making of these letters we were in good physical health, thanks to God, and we always wish very much to know the same of you. We thank you very much, and are very grateful to you, that you are so diligent concerning our affairs in those parts [Glamorgan]. And we beseech you as much as we can that you may aid and counsel Sir Lessam d’Avesne, bearer of these letters, in the business he has to attend to there, without any prejudice to our very dear lord [Hugh Despenser], and we will be very grateful to you. And send us news of any happenings where you are as soon as you can, for love of us. May our lord keep you.^[27]

The household accounts of Eleanor’s sister Margaret and Hugh Audley survive for 183 days in 1320, and reveal that Margaret spent almost all that time that year at their manor of Tonbridge in Kent. Tonbridge was the castle which Hugh Despenser the Younger temporarily seized in 1315, and where Margaret’s parents Gilbert ‘the Red’ Clare and Joan of Acre had retired shortly after their wedding in 1290, to the displeasure of Joan’s parents Edward I and Queen Leonor. Audley himself was with his wife most of the time at Tonbridge, though made some journeys away with a small group of attendants. The couple also spent quite a bit of time at their Northamptonshire manor of Whiston in the late 1310s and early 1320s.^[28] They had ninety-six people in their household and owned forty-two horses, two of which were destriers called Ferant de Roma and Grisel le Kyng.^[29] The latter name implies that Grisel had been a gift to Hugh Audley from Edward II—and it is interesting to note that the name le Kyng is half-French and half-English—and both ferant and grisel meant a grey horse (ferant is iron-grey). The king and queen and much of his court travelled to France in June 1320, because Edward owed homage, as Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Ponthieu, to his brother-in-law Philip V, who had succeeded his brother Louis X in 1316. Hugh Despenser the Younger and Roger Damory, presumably with their wives Eleanor and Elizabeth, were among those who accompanied the king overseas.^[30] Damory was still just about clinging to royal favour, though was well on the way out and Despenser well on the way in, while Hugh Audley appears to have given up entirely by this stage and did not travel abroad with the king. Roger Damory and his wife Elizabeth Burgh were in Reading on 25 August 1320 when they and Hugh Despenser the Elder, Eleanor’s father-in-law, came to an agreement with Elizabeth’s former father-in-law, the Earl of Ulster, regarding the Buckinghamshire manor of Steeple Claydon. Roger and Elizabeth were at their manor of Kennington on 26 October 1320, when they arranged with the Augustinian priory of Clare in Suffolk that two friars would celebrate Mass daily in Clare Castle during Roger and Elizabeth’s lifetimes in exchange for annual allowances of wheat and malt. Parliament was being held at Westminster on the other side of the River Thames at that time and Damory presumably attended, though, unlike his great rival Hugh Despenser the Younger, did not witness any of the six charters Edward II issued at this time.^[31]

The excessive favouritism of the king towards Despenser pushed Hugh Audley and Roger Damory, and other men, into opposition. Despenser had already forced Audley and Margaret to exchange one of their valuable lordships for some of his manors of lower value. He tried to take over some of Damory’s lands in South Wales as well, presumably the lordships of Usk and Caerleon which came to them on the death of the Dowager Countess of Gloucester in 1320. Damory successfully resisted him, though after his death his widow Elizabeth Burgh was vulnerable to her brother-in-law Despenser’s machinations, and lost Usk and Caerleon to him.^[32] There was a widespread, and probably correct, belief in the late 1310s and early 1320s that Hugh Despenser the Younger was trying to claim the entire earldom of Gloucester. At the parliament in August 1321, it was said that ‘by other false compassings he [Despenser] compassed to have the lands of Sir Roger Damory in order to attain the whole of the earldom of Gloucester’.^[33] If this is true, he perhaps felt entitled to it as the husband of the previous earl’s eldest sister, and Despenser certainly did his utmost to increase his control of South Wales, and yearned to possess the Gower peninsula. Edward II had ordered an inquisition into the lordship of Gower, almost certainly to benefit Despenser, on 28 July 1319, which is one of the earliest signs of the royal chamberlain’s rise in Edward’s favour.^[34] The king ordered Gower to be taken into his own hands on 26 October 1320, as a prelude to granting it to Despenser.^[35] Gower’s lord, William Braose, was still alive, and his son-in-law John Mowbray claimed the lordship and had, according to the king, entered it without a royal licence. This act of confiscation was the final straw for the Marcher lords, and for Roger Damory and Hugh Audley. ‘Deeply moved by such abuse, the barons departed [from court] full of indignation, and meeting in Wales, they unanimously decided that Hugh Despenser must be pursued, laid low and utterly destroyed.’^[36] Edward II tried to mollify Roger Damory and Hugh Audley on 5 November 1320 by confirming his father’s May 1290 regrant of Gilbert ‘the Red’ Clare’s lands to Gilbert, Joan of Acre, and the heirs of their bodies, most probably an attempt to reassure Damory and Audley that Despenser would not try to claim all the lands; but it was too late.^[37] The king’s former favourites and nephews-in-law were now his enemies, and a war was soon to come in which the three Clare sisters would find themselves on opposite sides.