Edward II: King of Incompetence

Gone Medieval begins a gripping 4 part series exploring scandal, power, and betrayal in the Plantagenet Court. This one of England’s most dramatic royal sagas; from the ill-fated reign of Edward II to the rise of his son, Edward III, Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega uncover how love and the Crown do not make good bedfellows. Each episode brings to life the key players in this enthralling saga and today Matt and Eleanor explore the disastrous reign of Edward II. With exclusive behind the scenes access to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's rehearsals of their stunning new production of Edward II, Matt and Eleanor dissect the intricate balance of power and personal desire, detailing the king's conflicts with his barons, his disastrous military campaigns, and the role of his infamous favourites. Gone Medieval is written and presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Lines performed by Daniel Evans. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Joseph Knight and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Tickets are available for the RSC's new production of Edward II: https://www.rsc.org.uk/edward-ii/ 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 https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost 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 Yarnagger, 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/subscribe.

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• 2:05Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.

• 2:06Eleanor Janega?

  And I'm Dr Eleanor Yanaga.

• 2:08Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

• 2:10Eleanor Janega?

  The podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history.

• 2:14Matt Lewis?

  We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

• 2:21Eleanor Janega?

  From the Vikings to the Normans.

• 2:23Matt Lewis?

  From kings to popes to the crusades.

• 2:26Eleanor Janega?

  We delve into the rebellions, plots and murders.

• 2:29Matt Lewis?

  To find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here.

• 2:34Eleanor Janega?

  And tell us who we really were.

• 2:39Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis.

• 2:42Eleanor Janega?

  And I'm Dr Eleanor Yanaga. And today, we have been unleashed into the wild again.

• 2:47Matt Lewis?

  The wilds of Stratford-up-on-Avon, that is, because we're heading to the Royal Shakespeare Company for the first part of a special series.

• 2:54Eleanor Janega?

  From the 21st of February to the 5th of April, the Royal Shakespeare Company are staging a brand new production of Christopher Marlowe's violent, yet tender play, Edward II.

• 3:04Matt Lewis?

  Edward II's rule and his deposition represented a moment of crisis in Plantagenet England that would rip up the being King of England rulebook.

• 3:13Eleanor Janega?

  There are huge characters: kings, queens, princes, ambitious noblemen and greedy favourites, all wrapped up in a constitutional crisis.

• 3:23Matt Lewis?

  Sounds delicious. We'll be learning more about all of those central figures across the series.

• 3:27Eleanor Janega?

  But how did this fall from grace actually play out 700 years ago?

• 3:34Eleanor Janega?

  Why did everyone in 14th century England seem to hate Edward II so much? Was he really that bad at being king? Let's travel back in time to find out.

• 3:50Matt Lewis?

  It is the year of our Lord, 1307. The old king is dead. The first Edward since the conquest, named for the Confessor, proved himself a very different man from his namesake. He sought to quench his anger and soothe his temper with blood, fire and conquest. Wales and Scotland have paid the price. His glory was the glory of all England, but war brings with it suffering in equal measure.

• 4:24Matt Lewis?

  The new king shares his father's name. He will be our second Edward. He inherits his father's wars as well as his name. They have been long, and if the father could not find his way to victory, then the son will be quickly and sorely tested. Scotland remains raw, a wound that might heal, or fester, or run once more with blood. This Edward may not have caused the damage, but it is his to end however he might. At twenty-three, he offers youth in place of experience. Who knows in what direction he may lead his people? The promise of a brighter future can be dazzling.

• 5:10Matt Lewis?

  The light of hope will not blind us for long, though. We will see him soon enough. The kingdom seeks to take the measure of the man who now rules us all. He has favourites, so many of them, few think it's a good thing, but none can shake them from Edward's affections. As we wonder whether he can be roused to war, it becomes clear, when his first favourite is murdered by his enemies, that this, at least, can stir King Edward. Hear him lament his loss.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  If I be England's king, in lakes of gore, your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail, that you may drink your fill and quaff in blood, and stain my royal standard with the same, that so my bloody colours may suggest remembrance of revenge, immortally, on your accursed, traitorous progeny, you villains that have slain my Gaveston.

• 6:19Matt Lewis?

  So, who is this new king? He sounds like his father, full of wrath and vengeance. What qualities does he possess? Will he step into a legacy of war, or seek to clear his own path? For good, or for ill? We are about to find out, together.

• 6:50Matt Lewis?

  We're beginning with a chat with the plays director, Daniel Raggett.

• 7:05Matt Lewis?

  Daniel, welcome to Gone Medieval. Thank you very much for joining us.

• 7:08Speaker 06

  Thank you for having me.

• 7:09Matt Lewis?

  So you're the director of this new production of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. And we're here while you're in rehearsals. Is that a pretty intense time for you?

• 7:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is because it's the end of rehearsals. So this is our penultimate day in the rehearsal room. So it's the end of a six-week process so far. And then a new bit of the process starts. So then we go into the technical rehearsals to make sure that it all works. And this is quite an ambitious production. So there's a lot of moving parts, literally and figuratively.

• 7:34Matt Lewis?

  So Marlowe's Edward II is based on real historical events, what really happened to King Edward II. But it also takes some dramatic liberties with the story. As the director, how do you balance historical accuracy with the need for this to be a theatrical storytelling of an intense and dramatic tale? Where do you place that balance?

• 7:55Speaker 06

  It's a really interesting question because I think that it's important to remember that these history plays are fundamentally plays. And so they're meant to be performed and it's about creating drama. And so those dramatic liberties are, I think, really interesting. But at the same time, the historical fact of it can really help with lots of things. From understanding, you know, a lot of my history reading on this has been around how the nobles and barons worked, what exactly the makeup of that was within Edward's court. You know, the idea that, for example, the power of Lancaster historically has really guided the way that we've got Evan, that actor, to play that part, the way we've costumed him. And the way that, because so much of it is about the machinations of these lords and nobles,

• 8:38Speaker 06

  exactly what the dynamics are between them. And then that sort of becomes, I suppose, the circumstances which the scenes then pour out of. And whether that was what Marlowe wrote, it's definitely helped us make those feel sort of, I suppose, thicker, more realistic. So yeah, it's useful, but it's always a balance. And I have been... Irreverent, I suppose. Some people, scholars wouldn't say that, in what I've cut and what I've ignored historically. But yeah, it's trying to find a balance of the two things.

• 9:07Matt Lewis?

  Edward's Second Soundfall is kind of really deeply tied into complex medieval notions of kingship and power and how it works and what kingship means. How do you approach depicting some of those often quite abstract themes to a modern audience so that an audience sitting here can understand the messages that you're trying to portray about Edward's fall?

• 9:28Speaker 06

  Well, I think what's really interesting is, again, historically, you had a sort of a weak king between two strong kings and the way that that sort of happens. And we've just had Elizabeth die and we've still got a monarchy. There's still a line of succession in that sense. I mean, what I'd say about kingship as well is there's a real correlation to leadership, full stop. And working with Daniel Evans, who's just taken over at the RSC, there's a real, as artistic director, there's a real conversation going on about what leadership means and how to be a good leader. And so it's quite, there are simple parallels to be drawn. You also have like, you know, global leadership. And then you have the leadership of people like Musk and Zuckerberg, who have sort of appointed kings in a weird way of like, just because of their sheer power of patronage and control over

• 10:10Speaker 06

  like government, as you see Musk wading into the White House. But the other side of that is a thing I think that we don't think about as much is the idea of the divine right of kings, which I'm really interested in. And we were rehearsing a scene with Daniel the other day and he had, it's all about when he's giving up his crown, the deposition scene. And when he had a physical crown in the space, what continued to happen is it felt like it was about an object. And then when I took it away and when he was talking about the crown being his head, and when the head is removed, that's death. Suddenly it took on a whole new depth, I suppose, because you really understood that they were one and the same, that you cannot choose to be a king. And from that also came this really interesting conversation around you can no more choose to be a king than you

• 10:54Speaker 06

  can choose to be gay. Like, it is just a part of you and who you are.

• 10:58Matt Lewis?

  I think it's interesting, that notion that the object of the crown became too much of a focus. And if you take that away, it makes it much more personal. And that's what Edward would have felt, you know. Seven hundred years ago, it was personal. It wasn't him losing a crown, it was him losing everything he was and everything he had. So it's interesting that removing the physical object of the crown makes such an impact on a modern production. And I also think it's interesting what you say that actually, is it that difficult to make it relatable for a modern audience when we live in a world where we're questioning, what does it mean to have power? Who has it? How do they get it? How do you take it away from them again if you don't want them to have it anymore? Those are questions that are current today.

• 11:39Speaker 06

  And is there any consensus? Because I think that's another interesting thing about the play is that, at least in this version, that the nobles rarely agree on the best course of action. There's a lot of deferring to each other, of trying to sort of escape. There's a lot of flip flopping in the play, basically. We go back, we go forth, we make a decision, let's banish him, let's get him back, Gaveston that is. And I think that that's another sort of, it's those moments where you realise that a lot of what is going on is just people like you and me with an elevated status, but then still having the same desires, needs, wants, flaws, and that unfortunately being acted out on a global scale. And that, I think, is also part of it. At the beginning, what Edward doesn't

• 12:20Speaker 06

  realise is that to be a king is not to just get what you want. And the kind of structure of the whole thing, the sadness of that story is he only finds his true kingship, his true leadership, when he's been stripped of everything. And by that point, it's too late. And that's been kind of, I would say it's been very interesting to explore with somebody who is just stepping into a new role as a leader as well, because there's a lot that he feels, it's sort of like, oh, that's like when I X, Y, Z, and it helps with the making of it, as it were.

• 12:47Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, learn the lessons of it with the second.

• 12:49Speaker 06

  Exactly, yeah.

• 12:50Matt Lewis?

  No, but I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it that really personalises it, because they are, you know, people throughout history are ordinary people like you and I, who make decisions every day. Some of those are mistakes that have consequences. It's just for them, for kings and great noblemen, the consequences are so much. Bigger and reach so much further than they do when probably you or I make a similar mistake.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  I would just say on that just really quickly, that also, we did have another conversation about the fact that like, it is possible that he is just a bad leader and his sexuality has absolutely nothing to do with it, but is, is sort of used and monopolized by bad actors in order to give a reason for them to, you know, pursue their own ends. And I think that's a really interesting thing as well, that a lot of the times we conflate or certainly in the world nowadays, things are weaponized. Again, I don't want to come back to obviously to politics, but things are, identity politics are weaponized in order to achieve specific ends. And I think that's a part of it. That's the place shot through with that as well, that they keep saying, well, it's not because of that. But is it really because of that? Or yeah, the vice versa option, that maybe it is like a kind of latent homophobia that exists that

• 13:59Speaker 06

  mean that the nobles create a situation which he cannot lead well, and that he's never going to be as accepted as his father, who, you know, by all accounts was a stronger king, a warmonger, a kind of, although he bankrupt Britain.

• 14:13Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And again, that comes down to elements of for Edward the second expectation. People have had Edward the first, they're expecting him to be exactly the same. He is, ultimately, all he can do is be who he is. Whether that's anything to do with his sexuality is irrelevant. He's a different kind of man. He's a different kind of leader who does things in a different way. But that doesn't meet the expectations of those around him. And then medieval history is littered with cases of throwing homosexuality at someone as a weapon, of throwing promiscuity at medieval women as a weapon, lots of things that are often difficult to disprove, used to drag down someone who is simply not the right person or not personally you want there at that specific moment. So all of these things become loaded on them.

• 14:56Speaker 06

  That's a really good point. And it's about leverage though, isn't it?

• 14:59Matt Lewis?

  And so all of those things get piled upon them as ways to deal with the fact that we've got a bad leader here that we don't want, so we can throw this mud at him and throw those sticks and those stones. We'll see what eventually it takes to knock him off his perch. And it's almost, it doesn't matter what those things are, it doesn't even matter how true they are. They're just the ammunition used to depose a ruler that people then happen to want there at the time.

• 15:21Speaker 06

  And it being about leverage as well, we had a problem in that when. Edward was giving out the title, Daniel as Edward was giving out the title to Gaveston at the beginning. It wasn't really clicking that those corresponded to huge amounts of land and money and they were being taken away from other people. And so, you know, if suddenly someone new comes into an organisation and you suddenly fear for your job and your salary and the amount of power and control that you have, like that is a, it's a very active concern. And so a lot of it was trying to sort of ground that and activate it in a way that didn't make him seem, it wasn't frivolous. Like he was doing it because Gaveston is Edward's number one in his mind, but to everybody else, that is a genuine threat that corresponds to a real world consequence.

• 16:06Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And the play deals with, with topics around sexuality, with favouritism, with rebellion of the nobility. And these are all topics that will have real world consequences for Edward the second and will ultimately lead to his downfall. How do you make sure each of those gets proper weight and proper context in the play? I guess it must be tempting or easy to focus in on one of those things. How do you balance those things throughout the production?

• 16:34Speaker 06

  It's a really good question because I don't know how, that's where the audience come in and I don't know how successful we've been because when you're in, when you're sort of hermetically sealed in the rehearsal room, you have all these ideas and you throw them out there. And it's only when you sit with an audience and you, and you sort of try and follow the story through their eyes that things will become hopefully clearer. And we've tried to honour a lot of that, but it's another place in which history has been really useful to me in that I've gone, when I've read back the story of what happened to Edward, I sort of have tried to, even though the time is significantly contracted, I've tried to sort of focus on those things as well and pull those forward rather than, I suppose, trying to pack everything in. It's just about whether it's clear at the end of the day, I think.

• 17:19Matt Lewis?

  And the, the production you mentioned is kind of reset in a modern world, so we're not in the 14th century. What do you need to do and think about in terms of the set, the costume, to give it any historical references or do you just abandon that altogether?

• 17:34Speaker 06

  No, we haven't on this. I always think theatre is most successful when it has one foot in metaphor as well, so it's not fully literal. So although it sets modern dress, we've kind of created our own world that is recognizably modern, but also links back through that line of kings to Edward. And so one of the central pieces of the set is a replica of the Cosmarty pavement, which is in Westminster Abbey, which was commissioned, someone in this room is going to correct me, by Henry the First.

• 17:58Matt Lewis?

  Henry the Third.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  Henry the Third. So because we start the play with the funeral of Edward the First, and then through that, we get Edward the Third, and it still exists. We were watching videos the other day of Charles's coronation, that it feels like that pulls it back into the historical context and sort of creates a living history, which I really like, because you do sometimes forget, and it makes it feel so much more alive, that you can draw a single line between all these monarchs to present day. And that feels really exciting. So what you're making is a kind of, nowadays, it would be a political thriller. The Crown, maybe, is a really good example of it. And so what we're trying to do is make, I suppose, our own version of the Crown, but the Crown is simultaneously

• 18:41Speaker 06

  now and the one that sat on Edward's head. But within that, you want a nice bit of theatre. It's all drawn from the Marlow, but bigger.

• 18:51Matt Lewis?

  Bigger, better, more.

• 18:52Speaker 06

  Bigger, better, more, a little bit, yeah.

• 18:54Matt Lewis?

  I wrote a biography of Henry the Third, so as a Henry the Third nerd, I very much appreciate the Cosmarty pavement being there. And it is an interesting way to make a modern production with something that does still exist today, but also was part of Edward the Second's life and his story. And he would have seen it and stood on it as well. So there is that connectivity across the centuries.

• 19:13Speaker 06

  And the idea that it is this beautiful thing that has such a weight of history to it.

• 19:20Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Daniel. It's been great to try and understand your process with this a little bit more, but I guess I ought to let you get back to rehearsals, really.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Yes, very much. Thank you.

• 19:30Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so let's get into this. What exactly happened during Edward the Second's reign that set off this dramatic chain of events leading to his deposition in 1327? Who were Piers Gaveston and Hugh Dispenser to Edward? Professor Chris Given-Wilson specializes in late medieval English political and social history at St Andrews University. Matt caught up with him to hear more about the worst king of England.

• 20:00Matt Lewis?

  Chris, a very warm welcome to Gone Medieval. It's fantastic to have you with us.

• 20:04Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 20:05Matt Lewis?

  So we're going to talk about Edward II, and I thought let's just deal with some of the big, broad stroke questions before we get into the detail of his life. He's quite often listed as one of the worst medieval kings of England. Do you think he deserves that? Does he rank up above the worst?

• 20:22Speaker 07

  Yep, he ranks with the very worst.

• 20:24Matt Lewis?

  Okay, are we going to give him top three billing?

• 20:28Speaker 07

  Oh, I should imagine so. Yeah, his reign was a disaster. His reign, his reign was a disaster for all sorts of reasons we're going to go into, but you know, we can deal with them one by one. But I mean, he was, he was very unsuited to kingship.

• 20:42Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And what are the historical sources that are available to us to give us detail and colour about Edward and his life?

• 20:50Speaker 07

  As usual, there are a host of chronicles. There are some very good chronicles of Edward II's reign. The best one is a chronicle, it's an anonymous chronicle, although there's been quite a few guesses as to who wrote it, called the Vita Edwardii Secundi. Wasn't, that's not the original title, that's the name it was given by its editors. And that was written by a guy who was obviously pretty close to the court. And he has a lot of quite interesting inside information about the way baronial factions were forming and falling apart again, and then coming together and realigning. And that's very interesting stuff, because I mean, really, the big problem with Edward II, the overriding problem is

• 21:33Speaker 07

  his relations with his magnates, but I'm sure we're going to come on to that. There's a very good northern chronicle called the Lanacost Chronicle, and that's got the detail of the Scottish problems, all the Scottish raiding into England, and the English attempts under Edward II to try to Impose English overlordship of Scotland, which was really what Edward the First had been very keen to try to achieve. And of course, Edward the Second failed disastrously when it came to Scotland. And then there are also a number of London chronicles, Chronicle of St Paul's, Chronicle of the London Annals. And then there are some chronicles which are written after Edward the Second's reign. I mean, an interesting one is Geoffrey Le

• 22:14Speaker 07

  Baker's Chronicle, because Geoffrey Le Baker is one of the very, very few chroniclers who is actually quite sympathetic towards Edward the Second. But to be honest, I mean, historians obviously take into account what he's written, but no one really agrees with him, or very few people agree with his judgment on Edward the Second.

• 22:32Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fair enough. And do we get a sense from this collection of chronicles of what kind of a person Edward was? Do we get any sense of his character?

• 22:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, his character. I started by saying he was completely unsuited to kingship. He was vindictive, he was very passionate, he was foolish in many ways. I mean, particularly his associations with his two particular favourites and with favourites more generally. Personally, he was quite witty. There are one or two interesting letters of his which survive, which suggest that, you know, he liked to have a good joke. One of the most unkingly things about him was something which has often been pointed out, is that he indulged in unkingly occupations. And what both chroniclers, and there is documentary

• 23:20Speaker 07

  evidence for this as well, he liked to go thatching and digging and rowing and swimming. And, I mean, these are things which everybody now thinks are absolutely fine. If you want to go and dig something, go and dig it, that's great. If you want to go swimming in the river, go rowing with your friends, the oarsmen, then that's fine. But these are just not the sort of things which were thought of as kingly in the Middle Ages. And one of the problems here was that Edward was seen as so unlike his father. His father was a very kingly character. Indeed, he upheld the dignity of kingship and the power of kingship. And Edward the Second's, well, some people call him

• 24:01Speaker 07

  His vices or his predilections or preoccupations or whatever you want to call them. This made him ridiculous. It made him seem ridiculous to be going swimming and and and so they said, this guy can't really be the son of Edward the first. Now, to be fair, very few people really thought that he wasn't the son of Edward the first. What they meant was he just isn't like his father and he ought to be.

• 24:25Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 24:26Speaker 07

  So that's those are some sides of his character. But of course, the great flaw in Edward's character was his passionate attachment to his favourites, and I'm sure that's something we're going to come on to.

• 24:37Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I guess some of those physical pursuits, we might think of it making him something like a man of the people, but that's simply not what his subjects and his barons expected from their king at the time.

• 24:49Speaker 07

  Absolutely not. I mean, George the third could get away with it, you know, the whole farmer George thing. People sort of just smiled a bit at that farmer George. He liked to go around with his plants and and, you know, his farming proclivities. That was okay, possibly in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but it was not possible, you know, under a constitutional monarchy. But it was not the case under a personal monarchy. Edward the second really couldn't get away with that sort of thing. I mean, you might say it's a bit harsh on him to condemn him for that. All I'm saying is that his contemporaries condemned him for that. And, you know, he should have known better. We can think, yeah, jolly nice, go for a swim, you know, um, go for a row with your pals, but they didn't.

• 25:31Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I mean, it's tempting, I guess, to see him as sandwiched between a really famous and successful father and a really famous and successful son, but it sounds like he kind of deserves the bad reputation that he's got in your mind.

• 25:44Speaker 07

  Well, he was sandwiched between a very successful father, in in many ways, a very successful father, and certainly a very successful son. The problem was for Edward the second, had Edward the first had a pure agenda in his kingship. And towards the end of his reign, he was pursuing that agenda, particularly the desire to control Scotland. I mean, the last 10 years were very much focused on Edward the First trying to bring the Scots to heel. And the legacy that he left to his son in Scotland was pretty crippling. People often talk about Edward the First's legacy to his son and how

• 26:25Speaker 07

  this was a bit of a disabling factor for Edward the Second right from the start. There was this unfinished war in Scotland, which just a year or two before Edward the First's death had turned much more difficult, because this was the time when Robert Bruce, you know, rose up in rebellion and began to claim the throne and began to pick off English castles and so forth. So this was in some ways a new situation in Scotland for Edward. But Edward the First also left enormous debts to his son. The crown was about £200,000 in debt when Edward the Second came to the throne. And that's one of the defining features of Edward the Second's reign, actually. He was always poor.

• 27:08Speaker 07

  He could never get the money he wanted until after 1322. And then, well, we'll come back to that, I'm quite sure. And then, of course, he made damn sure that he had all the money he wanted, but the price was tyranny.

• 27:22Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, we're going to get there. We're definitely going to get there. If we go back a little bit and think about Edward's younger years, he's born in 1284. He's fairly famously, I guess, born at Caenafon Castle and eventually invested with the title Prince of Wales by his father, the kind of first English heir to the throne to be called the Prince of Wales.

• 27:43Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 27:43Matt Lewis?

  And I guess that's a really significant statement by his father that's wrapping the future Edward the Second up in his conquest of Wales.

• 27:50Speaker 07

  Yes, it's doing something more than that. I mean, it is doing that. It's doing something more than that. And I think it's fair to say that this period after Edward the First completed the conquest of Wales, something which had been going on piecemeal for 200 years, since the late 11th century. And the conquest of Snowdonia, in effect, was the completion of the conquest of Wales and the establishment of a new administration in Wales under the English crown and so forth. At the same time, England was doing pretty well in Ireland. We had a pretty substantial hold in Ireland. And Edward the First was trying very hard to bring Scotland under control as well.

• 28:33Speaker 07

  And what you're actually seeing here, what you see under Edward the First is probably about as close as we get at any time before the 17th century to what you might call the idea of the English Isles, rather than the British Isles. If you follow what I mean by that, in other words, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, united under English rule. Whether that was the deliberate policy of Edward the First is something which you can debate, but in practical terms, that was where it seemed to be heading at the end of the 13th century. By the end of Edward the Second's reign, it was absolutely, it was in ruins.

• 29:15Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 07

  That English dream, if it was an English dream.

• 29:19Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 07

  It quite possibly was. So, you know, there was an unfinished war and there was 200,000 pounds' worth of debts. But I, I mean, I think it's important to say that this was not a particularly unusual situation for an heir to the throne. And Edward the Second had many things on his side when he came to the throne. He was 23 years old, the perfect age to come to the throne. You don't want to come to the throne at the age of 10. You don't particularly want to come to the throne at the age of 55 or 60. You know, 23, perfect. Most of the nobles were within 10 years either side of that. So, you know, there was a generation of youngish nobles here.

• 30:02Speaker 07

  He was the undisputed heir to the throne. No one disputed his right to be his father's heir. And that again, is something which is actually quite unusual. There are plenty of examples of, you know, people who have to fight for their inheritance, to fight to establish their kingship. So there were good signs for Edward the Second as well, but he squandered everything, really.

• 30:23Matt Lewis?

  Do you have a sense of how Edward the Second ends up so poorly militarily trained? Given that his father is Edward the First and his father's rule is characterized by wars with Wales, with Scotland and efforts to go to war with France. Does he not teach his son what he needs to know to succeed him? Or does Edward simply not take on those lessons?

• 30:46Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, I think Edward the First asked himself the same question. Why is this son of mine not very good? He took him on, he took him on expeditions to Scotland. He encouraged him, he tried to give him his own commands. But I think above all, there's tactical inflexibility from Edward the Second. I mean, Edward the First, to be fair, he tried to train Edward the Second in military leadership. But I think you're right that Edward the Second just didn't take it on board.

• 31:14Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, didn't absorb any of those messages. And so then Edward will become betrothed and married to Isabella of France.

• 31:22Speaker 07

  Indeed.

• 31:22Matt Lewis?

  What is the reason for selecting that French marriage? What is the strategy? What is the diplomatic benefit of a marriage to a French princess at that time?

• 31:30Speaker 07

  An attempt to sort out the problem in Gascany. Gascany is the area of southwest France, the Bordelais and the surrounding region. A region which the English have held for 150 years or something like that by this time. But the French don't like it. The French don't like having this very powerful neighbour as one of the chief vassals of the French crown. And Philip the Fourth, the King of France, he launches various campaigns against Gascany. And Edward the First has to fight hard to defend Gascany and to hold on to English possession of Gascany.

• 32:11Speaker 07

  And to marry, they in effect make a truce in 1297, Edward the First and Philip the Fourth. And they agree at that time, even though the kids are too young to get married at that time, that they will cement this peace, or truce it is at the time, cement this truce, hopefully to become a peace with a marriage between the two royal families, which, as I'm sure you know, was a very traditional, a very normal way, and remained so for a long time, to try to make peace between warring nations or nations which were liable to go to war. So it was a diplomatic marriage, no doubt about that.

• 32:48Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And so then I'm going to bring in a name that people may well be aware of, Piers Gaveston. He will dominate the early portion of Edward the Second's reign. When does he first come to court and how does he get close to Edward?

• 33:05Speaker 07

  Well, he first comes to court in thirteen oh five. He's the son of a Gasken nobleman. Well, a Gasken Baron. I mean, the the English or most of the English, not Edward the Second. Most of the English, certainly the magnates, regard him as a foreign upstart. I mean, you know, we've just been talking about Gascany and how it's actually, but the the English never colonized Gascany in the sense that they didn't move there to go and live there in the way that they did in parts of Wales or parts of Ireland. The nobility of Gascany was Gasken, not English. So he was he's regarded as a foreign upstart. He arrives in thirteen oh five. He becomes an asquire in Edward the Second's household and he kind of bewitches

• 33:49Speaker 07

  Edward the Second. Gaveston has a lot going for him. Gaveston is said to be witty, charming, handsome. I mean, but he was also foolish and tactless. I mean, he made up nicknames for all the earls after he defeated them at a tournament, you know, in single combat and and so forth. He was foolish and tactless and acquisitive and he was out for what he could get. But, you know, Gaveston could have been a perfectly successful and very probably very well liked courtier or servant of any king. The problem was not Gaveston. The problem was Edward the Second. The problem was Edward the Second, who, as I said earlier,

• 34:30Speaker 07

  was passionate in his relationships and he really, he loved Gaveston so much that he would do practically anything that Gaveston wanted. Edward the Second became infatuated with people. Gaveston and later on, there were other favourites. Of course, the most notorious is the younger dispenser, but we'll come on to him, I'm sure. But Gaveston doesn't really go away. And then, of course, six months later, Edward the First dies and the first thing that happens is Gaveston immediately returns and about two weeks after his after Edward the First died, Edward the Second makes him Earl of Cornwall. And the Earl of the Ealdom of Cornwall was said to be, I mean, it was one of those titles which was usually reserved for a member of the royal family.

• 35:13Speaker 07

  And it was utterly inappropriate and seen as utterly inappropriate by the magnates that Gaveston, this foreign upstart, who was hardly even a knight, should be made Earl of Cornwall. There we are.

• 35:28Matt Lewis?

  I guess it becomes easy to see why the the barons and the magnates begin to despise Gaveston, although, as you said, it's possibly more to do with Edward than Gaveston in particular. I guess the burning question that everyone always has, that you must have been asked a million times already, how confident can we be that their relationship was a physical one, that there was a homosexual relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston?

• 35:51Speaker 07

  It's possible, but we can't be confident of it at all. Edward II, I mean, if it was a homosexual relationship, Edward was clearly bisexual. He had four children, he had a bastard child, Gaveston had children, he had a bastard child as well. So they were certainly not in any way exclusively homosexual. It may have been that there was a physical relationship. The direct accusation of sodomy was not made against Edward II until after the Revolution of 1326. People perhaps insinuated a little bit at the time, they used the sort of language, I mean, I think it's the Vita who says something like, "I never knew a man love another man

• 36:33Speaker 07

  so much." And people can interpret that as they want. There is no definite evidence, but it's a possibility.

• 36:39Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. So there's nothing explicit, but it's it's kind of there in the background as a possibility.

• 36:44Speaker 07

  Well, and the accusation was made in 1326 by Adam Allerton, the bishop of Hereford, who was a supporter of Isabella and Mortimer. But this was after Edward II had actually, and the Spencer had actually been captured. And one possibility is that they were raising this question of Edward II's possible homosexuality in order to deflect attention from Isabella's relationship with Mortimer.

• 37:10Matt Lewis?

  How then do we do we move towards Gaveston's fall? How does he end up dying? And how does Edward react to that?

• 37:18Speaker 07

  Well, Edward made Gaveston Earl of Cornwall, he also made him the Chamberlain, his personal Chamberlain. The Chamberlain is the man who controls access to the King's Chamber. And Gaveston basically let in those he wanted to let in and didn't let in those he didn't want to let in. It's a very powerful position, being the Royal Chamberlain. And the nobles, their counsel was not being considered, they were sidelined by this, this foreign upstart, you know, they exiled him in thirteen oh nine, he went off to Ireland for a year, did well, as I said, but then came back, then they exiled him again, and this time he didn't go abroad, and then they exiled him for a third time.

• 38:01Speaker 07

  And each time Edward the second was just forced to accept this as the price of any kind of cooperation from the magnates. And he couldn't rule the country without agreeing to Gaveston being exiled. Eventually, he came back at the beginning of thirteen twelve, and they just decided to hunt him down. And they hunted him down, they caught him at Scarborough Castle, or at least they made him come out of Scarborough Castle. The Earl of Pembroke apparently promised him, promised him he would be safe, but they took him down to Oxford, and then the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Lancaster came along and said, no, this man can't live anymore. Every time we try to exile him, you know, he just comes back and we'll never, we'll never have peace in this country unless we kill him, so they

• 38:42Speaker 07

  chopped his head off, the barons. And Edward the second never forgave them. This was an execution, a death which poisoned English politics for the remaining fifteen years, well, certainly for the next ten years, and you could say for the remaining fifteen years of Edward the second's reign. He never forgot the fact that they had done this to his great friend.

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• 41:46Speaker 05

  As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal and Society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

• 42:30Speaker 05

  Brought to you by the award-winning network, History Hit.

• 42:47Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And is it fair to say that for all the favourites that will follow, Gaveston remained special to Edward? That he was sort of somehow above the rest of them?

• 42:57Speaker 07

  No, I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so. I think that, I mean, there were various favourites in the 1310s, the decade or so after Gaveston or the six or seven years after Gaveston's death. People like Deymarie and Ordley and Montague and a few others. But, I mean, the favourites become a problem again by 1318. By this time, of course, the man who is, is very much leading the opposition to Edward the Second is Thomas of Lancaster. Well, I'm sure we'll say more about him in a minute. And Thomas of Lancaster eventually meets the king at Nottinghamshire, a place called Leake, so the Treaty of Leake in 1318. And he says, you've got to get rid of all these favourites. All these favourites have got to go. We can't have them around anymore. And so.

• 43:41Speaker 07

  Damerie and Ordley and Montacute, they're all dismissed from court. The man who takes their place and once again becomes the King's Chamberlain is Hugh Dispenser, the younger. And no, he was every bit as powerful as Gaveston had been between thirteen oh seven and thirteen twelve.

• 43:58Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, we're definitely going to come back to Dispenser in a moment.

• 44:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 44:00Matt Lewis?

  But before we get on to him, I wondered if we could just move back to Scotland a little bit and talk a bit more about Bannockburn. How does Edward end up at Bannockburn? How does he end up facing this Scots army still at war with Scotland? And why does it go so horribly wrong?

• 44:18Speaker 07

  Well, for a year after Gaveston's death, the chief opponents of the king, the chief barons opposing the king and Lancaster's now really the leader of the opposition. Chief opponents of the king and Edward just will not really talk to each other. They hardly meet each other at all for a year. And then they make a peace in the autumn. I think it's in September or October thirteen thirteen, they make a peace. And one of the conditions of the peace that they make is that they are going to go and deal with Bruce in Scotland. Because with all the distractions of Gaveston and the threats of civil war in England and the very difficult parliaments and all that. Bruce has been given virtually a free hand in Scotland.

• 45:01Speaker 07

  When Edward the first died, he held, there were about forty, forty English held castles in Scotland. By thirteen, so by this autumn of thirteen thirteen, there were less than twenty. They'd been gradually picked off by Bruce. He was, you know, reasserting his kingship in Scotland. And Edward and Edward never lacked the desire to deal with Scotland. He lacked the ability to do it. And Edward and the barons agreed when they made peace in the autumn of thirteen thirteen, the priority is a Scottish campaign. We must go and deal with Bruce. And so they they raised this big army. They raised this big army. And they marched north and they found, I mean, the probably about fifteen thousand,

• 45:44Speaker 07

  which was a very sizable army at the time. And they marched north and they got very, they got to Falkirk and they realised that they knew that Bruce and his army, which was about half the size of the English army, they realised that Bruce and his army were standing, were encamped between them and Stirling. That's only like fifteen miles or so from what, or even less from Falkirk to Stirling. So they marched up the road towards Stirling Castle and the Scots came out and stood in their way. And this was obviously going to be a battle. But the English found themselves, and maybe this was, the Scots were on a sort of slight slope going down, obviously, you know, they chose the high ground.

• 46:26Speaker 07

  And below them was a very marshy area, the pools and the bogs. This is the first of force. And there were lots of bends and pools and marshes and everything. And Edward the second just couldn't adapt his army to this sort of, he still tried to manoeuvre great big divisions around and they were getting stuck in the mud and they were falling over and, you know, falling into the pools and whatever, and they just couldn't manoeuvre. And Scots, Bruce drew up his forces in what were called shiltrons, which were kind of like Greek style phalanxes, very tightly packed to resist the, the English cavalry charges, because the English were fighting mainly, well, the cavalry were fighting on horse. The Scots were almost entirely on foot.

• 47:09Speaker 07

  They dismantled, they'd learnt from the Flemish at Courtrai ten years earlier that it was best to dismantle. And it was, of course, an absolute disaster for the English. And, I mean, two hundred English knights were killed, two hundred English knights. That was probably about fifteen percent of the knighthood in England, you know, fifteen percent of all the knights in England were killed at Annockburn. Edward the second was forced to flee, chased, hotly chased as far as Dunbar, where he managed to find a fishing boat to take him down to Newcastle. So I mean utter humiliation, utter humiliation for the English. I mean, they were overconfident apart from anything else. They thought they had these big, well armed,

• 47:54Speaker 07

  mounted armies and they, you know, the Scots were never gonna be able to deal with them. And of course, for the Scots, it was a resounding and very well remembered victory.

• 48:06Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. How significant is Banatburn, both for Scotland in terms of fighting to regain and maintain their independence, but also Edward the Second's kind of popularity within the kingdom. You know, you've just lost a significant battle with Scotland. Surely that's not going to go down well at home.

• 48:23Speaker 07

  Oh, it was absolutely ignominious for Edward the Second, ignominious for him. It was not just a military disaster, it was a political disaster for Edward the Second. And basically, when Parliament met at Lincoln the following year in 1315, Thomas of Lancaster, Edward's great enemy, his first cousin, but also his great enemy, was handed, he was made head of the council and became in effect ruler of the kingdom for the next couple of years or so, until he found it absolutely impossible to work at all with the king and retired up to his northern fastnesses and sulked for the next four years.

• 48:59Matt Lewis?

  As we move Edward kind of through all of these moments of crisis and towards the building problem that will ultimately bring about his downfall, the dispensers, particularly Hugh Dispenser the younger, but also his father Hugh Dispenser the elder, kind of step onto the political stage now. When do they begin to emerge and how do they get close to Edward the Second?

• 49:21Speaker 07

  Hugh Dispenser the elder is a man very well regarded in many ways. And he had always been loyal to Edward the Second and Edward the Second really valued him. For example, he was one of the very few magnates who refused ever to agree to Gaveston's exile. He always said, you know, he was always on the side of the king. So he was a constant at court. He was constantly at court and a well trusted advisor. Now, the younger dispenser, well, he gets rich after the Earl of Gloucester is killed at Bannockburn. The Earl of Gloucester is the second richest Earl in England. He has a patrimony worth about six thousand pounds a year. He's second to Thomas of Lancaster,

• 50:04Speaker 07

  who has probably ten or eleven thousand pounds a year, but those two are way above the rest of the Earls. None of the other Earls have more than about two and a half or three thousand pounds a year. Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, is killed at Bannockburn and he leaves three sisters as his heirs, heiresses. And Gaveston marries one of them. He'd married one before, but Dispenser also marries one of them. And so he becomes rich overnight. He, you know, gets an inheritance worth about two thousand pounds a year, which is, it is a very rich man in those days. He really steps into having, he, he, he's very ambitious. He's got a third of the Clare inheritance, but he wants more than that.

• 50:42Speaker 07

  He really steps into the shoes vacated by Ordley, Amory and Montague after the Treaty of Leake in thirteen eighteen. Treaty of Leake is an attempt to make peace between Edward and Thomas of Lancaster. And that breaks down fairly quickly, but Amory, Montague, Ordley and Montague are dismissed from court after the Treaty of Leake, because Lancaster insists on this. And then in their place comes the younger Dispenser. And he is very rapidly made Chamberlain of the King's household. His attempts to augment his inheritance, particularly in South Wales and the South West. Basically, he's trying to put together again the Earl of Gloucester, the Earl of Gloucester, which was held by Gilbert de Clare.

• 51:27Speaker 07

  And he's using all sorts of violent and underhand and bullying tactics to try to force the other magnates around there, the Marcher Lords around there, to give up their lands, to cede their lands to him. And well, eventually that leads to what is called the Marcher War in thirteen twenty one.

• 51:45Matt Lewis?

  I just wondered, at this point, we discussed a little bit earlier how, you know, Gaveston actually had a fair bit going for him, could have been quite a good subject, and that maybe Edward was more the problem than Gaveston. Is there a similar situation here? Because it seems like people take against Hugh Dispenser the younger much more in a personal way than they did against Gaveston.

• 52:04Speaker 07

  People were outraged by Gaveston. People were terrified of the younger Dispenser. He was a violent, vindictive, ruthless, very, very greedy and in every imaginable way deeply unpleasant character.

• 52:24Speaker 07

  Edward the Second didn't think so, sadly. There's an interesting relationship going on there. I mean, with the dispensers, the two dispensers are both exiled in thirteen twenty one. Not that that's effective at all, but we'll come on to that. But one of the charges against them says that if the king didn't do what dispenser asked him to do, he would get angry and shout at the king. And that is a very unusual thing to find in the Middle Ages. The idea that a subject shouts at the king and tells him, no, you've got to do this. You know, you've got to do that. I want this land or whatever. And he's kind of using with the king the same bully boy tactics that he uses with the nobles whose lands he wants.

• 53:08Speaker 07

  And Edward, for some reason, seems to accept this. And again, it's a complete infatuation with the younger dispenser. And again, people say it might have been homosexual, but we really can't prove it one way or the other. And it's a complete infatuation. But the other thing, Spencer was clever. He was manipulative. And the other thing is he was very good at finance, very good at money. And he says to Edward, I'm going to make you rich. And of course he does, he makes him very rich. And, you know, one of the chroniclers says, I mean, with the evidence is all there in the exchequer documents of the time. But he makes Edward the Second, according to one chronicler, the richest king since William the Conqueror. And that's probably true. It's probably true.

• 53:52Speaker 07

  Edward the Second, having been poor all of his reign up until thirteen twenty two, suddenly becomes, yeah, the richest king for two and a half centuries.

• 54:02Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fascinating. And I guess it's it's easy to wonder whether, was it the infatuation that is painted later in terms of a physical relationship? Or is it that dispenser is giving Edward what he really wants, which is the cash to be able to control the kingdom the way he wants to?

• 54:17Speaker 07

  Well, he's giving him the cash and therefore he is a valuable, a valuable ally for the king. But also, I mean, it was interesting, one, one chronicler. Said, and this man had bewitched the king. And he meant that, I think, quite literally, because this was actually quite a common trope in the Middle Ages, that favourites actually employed some kind of sorcery. Now, there's no evidence that Dispenser employed some kind of sorcery, but it was believed so firm was his hold on Edward the Second's affections, that it was believed that he must in some way have bewitched the king. And Edward the Second certainly acted as if he was bewitched.

• 55:01Speaker 07

  He would do more or less anything that the younger Dispenser wanted, just as he had done, or at least anything that Gaverson had wanted. And we come back to the same problem. No one could like the younger Dispenser, he was a revolting character. But we come back to the same problem. It's really Edward the Second. You know, he becomes in fact absolutely infatuated with people, and he can't control his emotions, and everyone else hates them.

• 55:26Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And is the March of War that breaks out then? Is that more Hugh Dispenser's war than Edward the Second's? Is he pulling Edward the Second along with him?

• 55:33Speaker 07

  Oh, definitely. Well, he's pulling Edward the Second along, but the Second seems quite happy to be pulled along, because he also sees this. I mean, it's a war very largely fought in South Wales, in the area of the former Gloucester inheritance, the canteen more esclamorgan nowadays. It's Hugh Dispenser's war against the marchers whose lands he covered, because the marchers had risen up against him. They said, you know, you're bullying us, you're forcing us to, you're attacking our land, you're forcing our peasants to leave us, and so forth. And so they rose up against Dispenser. And then Dispenser called in the king and said, come on, we're going to go and deal with this lot. And Edward the Second said, fine, right? And of course, Edward the Second was totally successful in the March of War.

• 56:17Speaker 07

  And one of the problems for the marchers was they hoped that Thomas of Lancaster, who was still sulking up in Pontefract Castle, they hoped that Thomas of Lancaster would come and join them, but Lancaster didn't come and join them until, basically, the war was over. And then Edward the Second turned north and...

• 56:34Speaker 07

  Dispenser said to him, and other people must have said to him as well, it's time to deal with Lancaster, because you'll never really rule your kingdom until you crush Lancaster. And they did, and Lancaster was executed too.

• 56:45Matt Lewis?

  So at this point, we're kind of around 1322. Edward II must have felt like finally he'd got a grip on his kingdom, he was in control and he'd won, he'd got his vengeance for what they'd done to Gaveston and potentially driving away his other favourites too. He must have felt like he was sitting pretty.

• 57:02Speaker 07

  And he did, and he was. He had an opportunity now, he was in effect a tyrant now. The last few years of Edward II's reign is often referred to as his tyranny, and the tyranny of him and the dispensers. He could rule England as he wanted to, really. It was an opportunity for a king to do lots and lots of good things, and it was an opportunity which Edward squandered. It was not the benign rule, it was basically a reign of terror. And the punishments that were inflicted on anyone who'd been involved with the marchers, lots of people were imprisoned, about 20 barons were executed, hanged, and their bodies left up for years in the places

• 57:45Speaker 07

  where they held their lands and so forth. And their lands were seized. Edward II, as I've said, became very rich. Hugh Dispenser, of course, became very rich, that is the younger Dispenser. Basically, he was trying to reunite the earldom of Gloucester. His father became Earl of Winchester, he became very rich too. And yeah, it was a reign of terror. Hugh Dispenser's, the younger Dispenser's speciality was really widows. He would torture widows of people who had been opposed to Edward II, until they agreed to sign over their lands to him, and not a man you'd ever want to meet, really.

• 58:21Matt Lewis?

  I was gonna say, sounds like such a lovely guy.

• 58:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:24Matt Lewis?

  What could possibly go wrong?

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• 58:56Speaker 05

  As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Brought to you

• 59:40Speaker 05

  by the award-winning network, History Hit.

• 59:55Matt Lewis?

  And then in 1325, war will break out with France. Is Edward, is Edward doing this with his newfound confidence and his newfound wealth and authority? Or is it France that ignites the war?

• 1:00:07Speaker 07

  Well, its relations with France are made difficult by the fact that lots of French kings die very young. Philip the Fourth dies in 1314, and then three of his sons become king because the first two die within another eight years. And then Charles the Fourth becomes king in 1322. And Charles the Fourth, he is a bit keener to bring these English to heel in Gascony than his predecessors had been. And he summons Edward to come and do homage. And this was a thing which English kings were meant to do, to go and pay homage to France. Kings, preferably in person. And Edward the Second goes down to Dover and he says, I'm coming to pay homage. And then he decides not to. And he sends the Charles the Fourth

• 1:00:52Speaker 07

  a message saying, I'm ill. I can't come and do homage. Now, Charles the Fourth doesn't believe this. Anyway, there is this war, this really quite brief war in which the French take something like half of Gascany back. I mean, it's, it's a war of reconquest of Gascany. And when Edward the Second says, I'm not going to come and pay homage, he decides instead to send his 12 year old son, that is Edward the Third. Now, his wife, Isabella, who actually, for most of the time of their marriage, seemed to have got on fairly well together with Edward, seems to have gone on fairly well. But by this time, she was absolutely sick of Hugh Spencer. And she had already gone to France because she was the sister of the French king. Well, as we know, you know, this was this diplomatic

• 1:01:36Speaker 07

  marriage between England and France, the sister of the French king. And she was thought to be the best person to try to patch up relations between England and France. So she's already in France, in Paris, the future Edward the Third is sent across to do homage. And Edward the Third does homage to Charles the Fourth. And then Isabella says, we're not coming back. We're not coming back to England. And she announces that it's, I can't remember the exact wording, but it's something she, it's this public announcement, marriage is supposed to be a union between a man and a woman, but someone has come between me and my husband, and I shall not return to England until that man is removed. Everyone

• 1:02:19Speaker 07

  knew she was referring to Hugh Spencer. Some people, of course, think that is code for the fact that they were having a homosexual relationship, maybe or maybe not. She didn't say that.

• 1:02:31Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it has a sense of the medieval version of the, you know, there were three of us in that marriage.

• 1:02:35Speaker 07

  Absolutely. It's a bit like that. Yes. I didn't, I think she thought actually that that she wasn't really in it anymore.

• 1:02:42Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 07

  But anyway, yeah.

• 1:02:45Matt Lewis?

  Um, so today we are either denying or depriving, depending on how you feel about it, denying or depriving you the chance to talk about Edward's actual downfall and his deposition. But I just wondered if you could leave us with the scene set for how all of this, the time with Gaverson, his experiences in Scotland, the rise of Hugh Spencer, the March Wars, the success that he's felt, and now this sort of war. Ending in a peace with France, how does that set the stage for Edward the Second to meet his ultimate failure?

• 1:03:17Speaker 07

  I think that the lasting impression that that one gets from Edward the Second's reign is that this is an age of absolutely visceral hatreds. There is so much violence, so many nobles. People talk about the execution of Gaveston, he was an Earl. He was the first English Earl to be executed for 250 years. And he's the last English Earl to be executed after Edward the Second's reign. There are no other English Earls executed for over 50 years. So the visceral hatreds of this reign have created a situation, and especially the treatment of the people whom Edward the Second called the contrarians, that is, the people who opposed

• 1:04:00Speaker 07

  him in 1321 to 2, the treatment of them had created enormous fault lines in English politics. And these fault lines are going to go on for a long time because people say, oh, we were deprived under Edward the Second, we need our lands back. They're going to go on saying that for 100 years, you know? So this has created tremendous fault lines in English politics. Edward the Second's regime is clearly absolutely hated. Dispensers in particular are absolutely hated by 1325, 1326. And there are lots of people who have gone outlaws, who are making raids on dispenser lands and so forth. And even he's even turned his queen away from him and his younger son.

• 1:04:43Speaker 07

  Well, Edward the Third was only 12 years old at this time, so what he saw is very difficult to know. But anyway, there they are in France. They know that a regime in England, that his husband's regime in England is absolutely hated, they're going to do something about it.

• 1:04:57Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and so Edward the Second, we're going to leave him about to face his ultimate test. And I think with a sense that whoever else might be included in the blame, particularly Hugh Dispenser the younger, Edward the Second himself needs to shoulder most of the blame for the situation he finds himself in?

• 1:05:12Speaker 07

  I think he certainly does. He was a man completely unsuited to kingship.

• 1:05:17Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:17Speaker 07

  And, you know, in the end, he's going to be the first English king since the conquest to be deposed, isn't he?

• 1:05:23Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Hopefully that's not too much of a spoiler. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris. It's been absolutely fascinating to get to know Edward a little bit better and to work out how he arrived at this kind of monumental crisis that we're building towards. So thank you so much for helping us to get to know him a little bit better.

• 1:05:39Speaker 07

  No problem. Okay, thank you.

• 1:05:41Matt Lewis?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:05:46Eleanor Janega?

  Thanks for that, Matt. Okay, now we are bringing you back to Stratford to dig a bit deeper into Edward II's portrayal in Marlow's play. We've managed to catch Daniel Evans, one of the Royal Shakespeare Company's co-artistic directors and the actor playing Edward II in the play in the middle of rehearsals. We're here to speak to him about what it's like to play one of England's most enigmatic medieval kings and how he goes about capturing Edward's fickle fancies in his performance.

• 1:06:23Eleanor Janega?

  Daniel, thank you so much for letting me pick your brain about this because you're in such an interesting position as the actor who needs to portray Edward II. He's a really, really complex, layered person. You've got to deal with this man who's really torn between his personal desires, but also his responsibilities as king, which are, you know, part of who he is as a person, but almost outside of him as well.

• 1:06:47Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:06:47Eleanor Janega?

  How did you, as a regular person who's living in the modern world, then balance this vulnerability of him as, you know, a queer person, but an authority at the same time in your performance?

• 1:07:00Speaker 07

  Oh, gosh, really good question. I guess the hardest thing is to really imagine what it's like to think and know that your kingship is given to you by God. So that kind of divine right of kings, that you're born into something, so it's your birthright and you have no choice. Like, this is what you're born into. And that's quite a hard thing for, I think, for any regular person. To get your head round, even without the religious aspect, but you add God into the picture and it's even harder in our more secular times. The way that I've kind of found my way through, close to it, is obviously I'm also queer, gay man.

• 1:07:40Speaker 07

  And so I find it very easy to identify with Edward's loneliness. And what is possibly littered throughout the play, which is a degree of shame. That, you know, many, many queer people grow up with because we live in a heteronormative world. And so that that sort of in a way comes easier. And then I have a little bit of insight into leadership, just having been an artistic director for fifteen years. And even though that's not the same as being king.

• 1:08:07Eleanor Janega?

  Meanwhile.

• 1:08:10Speaker 07

  One of the cast members did say, we arrived in Stratford and you're like king of Stratford. Like, well, yes, that's quite the same, but um, and not that I think that I'm king of Stratford, by the way. But there is, for me, working on the play, a really interesting discovery has been how much the intersection of queerness. And leadership is really explored by Marlowe. And that has been a fascinating kind of unpacking. How, you know, even as co-artistic director of Shakespeare Company, this isn't a job about me, it's about the organisation. And for Edward, well, it's meant to be about the crown and eventually it is about the crown. It's just that when we start the play, it's about his love.

• 1:08:48Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, this is such an interesting point because kingship obviously is by its very nature bound up with the masculine and of course heteronormativity.

• 1:08:56Speaker 07

  Yes, primogeniture, you know, the whole thing.

• 1:08:59Eleanor Janega?

  Completely. And so you have to be a man's man.

• 1:09:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Eleanor Janega?

  And that sort of thrust upon you. And I mean, I think even now, to be a royal today, it's such an interesting. And I would say completely difficult position because on the one hand, you have all the privilege in the world, but you don't have any freedom.

• 1:09:16Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:09:16Eleanor Janega?

  There's no choice in this matter. It's simply something that happens to you. And so it's so difficult to really. Grapple with that.

• 1:09:24Speaker 07

  Again, there's a kind of parallel though, isn't it? Because, I mean, I, who knows, you know, when they find the gay gene, I'm presuming they will at some point. But, you know, people think that it's a choice to be gay. Oh, that it were. I mean, you know, frankly, you know, with all the bullying experience, it would not have been something I would have chosen necessarily. Although, you know, so my kind of pride journey has taken a long time. But that is a little insight. And it's interesting that with Edward, he was born king and born gay and had no choice in both matters. And somehow or other, they're both things have become obstacles because of the heteronormative world of the barons and the ills around him. And indeed, the structures, you know, of kingship itself, as you said.

• 1:10:04Eleanor Janega?

  It's such a difficult, I don't know, ball of yarn to unpack. What do you do then as an individual now who kind of has the knowledge of the past? You know, you're sitting here in the year of our Lord, 2025, and we know how this all plays out and we can see what happens. And how do you balance that as an actor trying to portray Edward's priorities? You know, is there something that you really feel about this? Because, you know, on the one hand, obviously, it's very difficult for us to say, oh, well, I don't know. Don't be that nice to your boyfriend, right? Either a ridiculous kind of thing to say. But then on the other, there is his treatment of Isabella as well, where, you know, for me, it's sort of like, okay, well, you just don't need to be that rude to your wife. Maybe play the politics game a little bit more with the nobles.

• 1:10:47Eleanor Janega?

  What's it like to try to bring a character out who has these flaws, who makes these decisions?

• 1:10:52Speaker 07

  Well, I think you have no choice there too. You have to do what's on the page. And on the page, he is terribly misogynistic towards his wife. Calls her a strumpet, you know, his first line to her, fall not on me, foul strumpet. Get thee gone, you know, away, touch me not. He doesn't even want to be touched by her. And yet, when she pleads for Gaveston, when she does.

• 1:11:12Speaker 05

  What he asks, he says, I'll hang a golden tongue about thy neck. So he's also, you know, flip flopping, even in his feelings towards those presumably close to him. But just to come back to your question for a moment, I think this is where the job of an actor is quite complicated. Because I have to be inside him and therefore, in order to play him, I have to try and find a way to understand him and therefore not judge him. If I'm standing back though, and thinking about leadership and what I've learnt about leadership, I have to objectively be able to say, Edward's not the best strategist. Like handing out titles willy nilly as ways of bribes to the earls and the barons is just not going to get him very far.

• 1:11:57Speaker 05

  And sort of imposing his will in a kind of totalitarian way, well, it doesn't work. And so it's one of the things, the tragedies of the of the character and of the play is that I think he learns too late what leadership is about. So when he says to the Archbishop at the end of the play, commend me to my son and bid him rule better than I. He knows, he's reached the point where he knows, oh God, I didn't do this the right way. And and had he only been someone who could encompass, take people with him as all leaders have to do if they're going to be successful. Then he might have been able to find a way through.

• 1:12:36Eleanor Janega?

  It's such a tricky way to balance things out because on the one hand, you're told you have a divine right to be honest. You're the guy who gets all these things. But then it turns out you actually have to be fair minded. You have to know how it, how to really establish yourself as a leader. And in those two things almost don't.

• 1:12:55Speaker 05

  So hard. And and that's why balance comes into question, right? Because it's always a bit of give and take. But I was thinking, I had a conversation with someone yesterday and it really made me think about how Edward, if he were a leader now, you know, because in history, apparently, he didn't like spending much time with the barons and earls. He liked speaking to quote unquote commoners, you know, he liked rowing. He would stop along the river and talk to, you know, your everyday people along the river. He liked digging ditches with labourers, et cetera. And today, in today's world, you might say, oh, well, good on them. You know, they sort of want to be down and dirty with, you know, the real people, but not in that time.

• 1:13:32Eleanor Janega?

  And he's just like me for real. And I'm the sort of person who's so much more interested in ordinary people than royals all the time, specifically because they're so different to us and they have this, these really different circumstances. And you know, to me, that really tugs on my heartstrings.

• 1:13:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, because you sort of feel there's a hint in the play that he's a leader who's just born into the wrong time. And I mean, although having said that, it is interesting that, I guess, I guess I was going to say it's interesting that we don't have a very prominent gay member of the royal family. I know we, the living royal family. I know the Queen's uncle was gay, but it's not much talked about. So it's interesting that that kind of heteronormative world and structure really does impose its rules and codes.

• 1:14:19Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. And I mean, almost to a certain extent, even now, I wonder if we would even know. Because, you know, would it be something that they would wish to suppress? You know, because we're still not, we're not quite there yet, are we?

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  Yes, no, no, no, indeed.

• 1:14:31Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, so relationships, you know, and we keep talking about heteronormativity and queerness because really at the heart of this play, yes, this is a story about power, but it's also about relationships. You've got Gaveston, you've got Isabella, you've got Mortimer.

• 1:14:45Speaker 05

  Spencer.

• 1:14:45Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, oh gosh, absolutely. And they're absolutely central to this play, like these, this back and forth, this give and take. How did you then develop this and these dynamics with your fellow actors when you're attempting to bring a really complex situation to life? How do you make that legible from the stage?

• 1:15:04Speaker 05

  Well, one of the things we do is talk about our histories, not our histories, our characters' histories. And, and we dovetail that with the actual history. So for example, it was really important for me to find out that when Edward was very, very young, a baby, both his father and mother went to France for a few years. And then when they came back, she only lasted nine more months and then she died. So he grew up without his mother, as most royals, I guess, do because they have nannies, et cetera. But I think that was a kind of key thing for me, that, yeah, his parents like left when he was a baby. Isabella, I think, was twelve when she was conjoined, politically conjoined to him. I think they married later, but it was decided when she was twelve. So they were kind of thrown together when they were children. So that's complex in itself.

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  So, so Ruta Gedwintas, who's the actress playing Isabella, and I really have done quite a bit of discussion around what was their marriage like? Did they have happy times? When was the last time they had sex? For example, you know? And I guess the same then, obviously, with Gaveston, because one of the things I read, I don't know, you maybe can tell me if this is true or not, but apparently it was Edward the First who introduced Gaveston as a kind of playmate to Edward the Second. And clearly, you know, we can decide, well, was there something that they were caught doing? But therefore Edward the First said, right, this guy has to leave the court now because he's a bad influence on my son. And so we've made up our own kind of histories there, which can hopefully feed then what

• 1:16:32Speaker 05

  happens when we're acting in scenes in the play. And we did a lot of improvisation, actually, around this. I mean, not sexual improvisation, I should say, but we did a lot, you know, we improvised Dad's funeral, for example. And that was, that's really been helpful for us.

• 1:16:46Eleanor Janega?

  I think that's so useful to really have these dynamics and these relationships and stories that you're, you're building out in this world.

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it is world building. We have to take what we can from the history and then dramatize it. So, yes.

• 1:17:00Eleanor Janega?

  All right, well, speaking of dramatic, if you're the person who is portraying Edward the Second, there's such a huge dramatic transformation for him as a character because, you know, you kind of begin, he's at the height of his power, everything is sort of going well for him, then by the end, he's broken, you know, spiritually, politically, physically. And what's it like to try to embody that as an actor?

• 1:17:21Speaker 05

  Well, we, so we did a run through yesterday in the rehearsal room. You know, it was the first time we had a little audience because staff members, wardrobe technicians and wig technicians came, you know, to see people from the marketing department, et cetera. And it was really, you know, you feel very self-conscious because, you know, they're the first audience that you've had. But it was interesting just getting to do that full journey. And, you know, in the rehearsal room, we did ask the cast if it was okay for me to kind of disrobe because I didn't disrobe. Robe fully, but I will do in the production because obviously the death is the death and. But it was interesting just to start in full regalia and the costume itself has this huge journey. So I start full of medals, full of pomp, the coronation robe, et cetera, the ermine.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  And then end up in my underpants in a muddy, wet dungeon. And that is a kind of amazing, yeah, it is an amazing journey and feeling loneliness throughout with the odd moments of joy with Gaveston.

• 1:18:16Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, it's a real stripping of all of the worldly things that would protect you, especially as as a queer person, you know? Everything, all the armor that you need just to function in the world at all.

• 1:18:29Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:18:29Eleanor Janega?

  And then.

• 1:18:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:18:30Eleanor Janega?

  He's working down asses to nothing.

• 1:18:32Speaker 05

  And then he has this line which is sweet, God of heaven, make me despise this transitory pomp. So as he's given up his crown, he's asking God to help him despise all the jewelry, all the pomp, all the power. So that he can just be content with being nothing, which by the way, is a line that Shakespeare wrote for Edward the second. Cause you know, this play heavily influenced Richard, Richard the second.

• 1:18:58Speaker 05

  But Shakespeare did coin this amazing phrase about feeling like you're nothing.

• 1:19:03Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, how to ever grapple with feeling like you're nothing. While at the same time for the majority of your life, you've been told you're the center of the kingdom, one of the centers of the world.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Even by God.

• 1:19:17Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, and of course there's also religious ramifications for that, you know? Because if God's given you this, what does it mean for you personally? What does it mean for the universe if that can be stripped away?

• 1:19:26Speaker 05

  Yes, and he asked to sit forever enthronized in heaven. It's sort of amazing that the language of the play is really extraordinary.

• 1:19:35Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, this is just, I'm sorry, but as a medieval nerd, it's like, yeah, right. Finally a play for us. But I'm so excited because I think that you know, you've done such a great job to modernize it and make it make sense. In a really modern world that thinks about things a lot differently.

• 1:19:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Matt Lewis?

  This second Edward has ruled for two decades. We have learned about him the hard way. Favorites fighting his own nobles, driving his wife away. His reign is scarred by his own hand. But here's a man you could share an ale with, who would help you fix your leaky roof. How do we reconcile the good man with the terrible ruler? That is a question for the ages, but King Edward now faces a more pressing problem. Where does he go from here? He has all the power in the world, but it's a world that's turned against him.

• 1:20:39Matt Lewis?

  Can he rebalance all that is shifted out of his grasp? Does his England want him anymore? If not, then what's to be done? England hasn't seen a king deposed since before the conquest. Now, every Englishman can feel the earth rumbling beneath his feet as Edward's curses ring in our ears.

• 1:21:06Matt Lewis?

  The wolves are circling. They have the scent of fear in their nostrils. They bear their teeth, snarling and snapping at the lamb that sits on the throne. An end is coming. We will soon discover what it will mean for England and for Edward.

• 1:21:47Matt Lewis?

  Join Eleanor on Tuesday to continue our series about the Plantagenets. Next, we turn to Queen Isabella, the she-wolf. Edward II's long-suffering queen, who took control of her destiny, aligning herself with a powerful, maybe lover, Roger Mortimer? How did Isabella transform from a sidelined wife into one of the most formidable figures in English history? Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free.

• 1:22:32Matt Lewis?

  Sign up now at historyhit.com/subscribe. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.

• 1:23:04Matt Lewis?

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promoting pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 1:24:22Matt Lewis?

  The.