I'm delighted to welcome a guest post by author Kathryn Warner. I've known Kathryn for a number of years and I sent her some questions about the relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston. Enjoy!
We hear that Edward 1st gathered together household for his son, including cousins of the young prince. Why was Piers Gaveston included - was he of the same prestige of others or was he chosen as a suitable role model? And what made him stand out amongst the other young men of the household?
Piers
Gaveston's presence in Edward II's household up until 1307, when Edward was
heir to the throne, has often been misunderstood. In Piers' own lifetime and
ever since, there has been a frequent but erroneous assumption that he was
lowborn, and one novel of the twenty-first century, for example, depicts him as
a child prostitute who was the nephew and ward of an inn-keeper. There is not a
single solitary chance that Edward I would ever have dreamed of placing such a
person close to his son and heir; the very idea is laughably absurd. Piers'
presence as one of the future king of England's companions is proof that he was
of high noble birth, and indeed, Piers' father and grandfathers were among the
leading barons of Piers' native Béarn in the far southwest of France (this
part of France was ruled by the kings of England at the time, and it would be
inaccurate to call Piers a Frenchman). Edward II's other companions in
childhood and adolescence included the earl of Ulster's daughter Eleanor de
Burgh, whose sisters became the queen of Scotland and the countesses of
Gloucester, Desmond, Kildare and Louth; the earl of Gloucester's nephew Gilbert
de Clare, lord of Thomond; Maud Chaworth, granddaughter of the earl of Warwick
and daughter and heir of a baron, who married Edward's royal cousin Henry of
Lancaster in 1297; and probably Maud's younger half-brother Hugh Despenser the
Younger, who married Edward's eldest niece in 1306. By 1305, Piers Gaveston and
Gilbert de Clare of Thomond (who died in his twenties shortly after Edward II
succeeded to the throne in 1307) had become the future king's closest
companions. Although his year of birth is unknown, Piers was slightly older
than Edward II, and took part in military campaigns from his early or mid-teens
onwards. It is possible, therefore, that Edward I placed Piers, as a somewhat
older nobleman and an accomplished soldier, in his son's household to act as a
role model and mentor to the future king of England.
We’re told that Edward and Piers swore some sort of oath, which has been
open to interpretation- one being it was a chivalric oath. This seems
unlikely to me. What do you think?
Various
chroniclers of the fourteenth century state that Edward II referred to Piers
Gaveston as 'my brother Piers', and the idea that the two men took an oath of
brotherhood was discussed at length by Pierre Chaplais in a 1994 book
titled Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother. We will never
know for certain exactly what happened between Edward and Piers in private or
what kind of relationship they had, but I agree with you that 'adoptive
brotherhood' is perhaps unlikely. It seems almost certain that Edward did refer
to Piers in public as his brother, but we should bear in mind that he lived in
a world where it would have been impossible for him to acknowledge Piers as his
partner or lover. Perhaps publicly calling Piers his 'brother' was Edward's way
of presenting their close attachment in a way that would be acceptable by the
standards of the era in which they lived.
I
do think there's something of an issue with the way a few modern writers have
depicted Edward's relationships with Piers Gaveston and with other men after
Piers' death, compared to the way they write about the relationship that
Edward's queen Isabella of France had with Roger Mortimer in the second half of
the 1320s. Isabella and Roger's association has been over-romanticised to a
ludicrous extent, and it's almost always taken for granted that the two had a
passionately sexual, mutually adoring partnership. Yet there's really no more
evidence that they were physical lovers than there is for the possibility, or
likelihood, that Edward II and Piers, or Edward and Hugh Despenser the Younger
a few years later, were lovers. You would never know this, however, from the
way Roger Mortimer is inevitably described as Isabella's lover, as though we
have webcam footage of the two in bed together. The same writers tend to claim
that Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser were Edward's favouritse, friends,
allies, associates or minions, but almost never do they state that they were
his lovers. To me, it often comes across as the erasure of same-sex
relationships, whether intentional or not, and the burden of proof demanded to
state that Edward and Piers might have been lovers reaches an almost impossibly
high standard. By contrast, it is usually taken for granted, without any real
evidence required, that Isabella and Roger, an opposite-sex pair, simply must
have been passionately in love and there cannot be any other explanation for
their association.
You’ve written about the relationship between Edward, Piers and Isabella of
France, (most notably about the youth of Isabella making her of little interest
to her husband sexually and intellectually) - so why do you think Piers was
made the villain of the coronation? The stories circulating about his and
Edward’s banners being prominently on show, Edward spending too much time at
the coronation banquet with Piers, thus humiliating Isabella, and most
notoriously, Piers being given all the wedding gifts?
Piers
was loathed in his own lifetime for reasons that are hard to explain. Yes, he
was the beloved of the king of England, and envy surely goes some way to
explaining why he was so deeply unpopular, but the things we know that he did
don't really seem to merit the utter opprobrium he attracted. It does appear,
however, that Piers had a real talent for rubbing people up the wrong way. A
contemporary chronicle called the Vita Edwardi Secundi states
on several occasions that Piers was supercilious, conceited and arrogant, and
bore himself in ways that would have been unbearable enough even if he had been
a king's son.
It's
true that Edward II behaved rather badly at his and Isabella's coronation
banquet, which took place on 25 February 1308 exactly a month after the royal
couple's wedding, but the whole thing has often been hugely exaggerated.
Isabella was only 12 when she married Edward and was crowned queen of England
and was eleven years her husband's junior, and she and Edward hardly knew each
other in February 1308. They might both have been shy and not known how to talk
to one another or how and where to find common ground, and perhaps it was very
awkward at the banquet with all eyes on them. Perhaps Isabella preferred to
talk to her French relatives who were present, not knowing when (or even if)
she might see them again. Perhaps Edward and Piers became engrossed in a
conversation and lost track of time. Yet it's usually assumed that he acted
maliciously and deliberately insulted Isabella by obviously preferring to talk
to his close friend, or lover, than to her.
I
can imagine, though, that the French people present at the coronation banquet,
including Isabella, were taken aback to see Piers Gaveston's coat of arms
adorning the walls, as though Piers and not Isabella was Edward's consort. To
do that was supremely tactless and rude on Edward's part, and was something he
should not have done. I doubt he meant it as a deliberate insult to his new
wife, however. He'd ordered the banners a few months earlier, long before he'd
ever met Isabella and when she was perhaps not quite real to him yet, not so
much a person and an individual as the faceless girl he'd been betrothed to
years earlier as a means of ending a war between their fathers. What's more
interesting to me isn't so much the way that Edward behaved during the
coronation banquet, but the over-the-top way that so many modern writers have
depicted it, as though it's the worst thing that anyone's ever done to
anyone.
The
idea that Edward gave Isabella's wedding gifts or jewels to Piers is endlessly
repeated in modern books, articles and online, but is absolute nonsense, an
invention of many centuries later. One chronicle states that Edward sent
- sent, not gave - the wedding presents given to him by his
father-in-law Philip IV of France to Piers Gaveston in England. Isabella isn't
even mentioned; the gifts were given to Edward alone, not to Isabella, and not
to Edward and Isabella jointly; and it's likely that Edward sent them to Piers,
his regent of England during his absence overseas, to look after and keep
safely for him. Even if Edward did intend Piers to keep the gifts, which
included war-horses, they belonged to Edward and Edward alone, and he could do
what he liked with them. It's ludicrous that so many modern writers keep
mindlessly repeating a myth invented in the late nineteenth century, gasping in
horror at the thought of poor victimised Isabella seeing her husband's lover
strutting around in her own jewels, but it's pure fabrication.
It's
as though because Edward and Isabella's marriage ended badly in the 1320s -
many years after Piers Gaveston was dead - people think that their relationship
must have been a tragic disaster from start to finish. Isabella must have been
unhappy for every minute of her marriage. Edward must always have neglected and
hurt and insulted his wife for every minute of their marriage. This has a
narrative that has been created, that's all. A one-dimensional, simplistic
narrative, where complex people in a complex relationship are incapable of
feeling more than one emotion for the person who was their spouse for the best
part of two decades. In the interests of perpetuating this narrative, however,
every single tiny thing in Edward and Isabella's lives that wasn't perfect in
every way has been magnified and distorted.
We’ll never know, of course, but I’d like to ask your opinion, had Piers not
been kidnapped and put to death by Guy of Warwick and Thomas of Lancaster,
would his influence have been maintained over Edward or would it waned?
And how far would he have continued to climb?
I
can't imagine that Piers' influence over Edward and Edward's obviously strong
feelings for him would have waned and lessened, but equally I can't imagine an
alternative reality that wouldn't have ended in Piers' death at some point.
Let's imagine that Guy Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, hadn't kidnapped Piers in
June 1312, an act that ended in Piers' death shortly afterwards. Parliament
would most probably have ended up exiling Piers from England and
Edward's other dominions for the fourth time, Edward would have sulked and
stormed for a while and eventually brought Piers back to England, and the whole
cycle would have gone on again until Piers was dead, killed by the exasperated
English barons. Given the attitude towards Piers in 1312, I cannot see a way in
which his life could have continued for much longer, unless he'd willingly gone
overseas and ignored Edward's summons to him to come back, and had never
returned to England.
