Queen Isabella: She-Wolf of France

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." When that woman is Queen Isabella; She-Wolf, the results are catastrophic. As our series on the Plantagenets continues, Dr. Eleanor Janega and historian Kathryn Warner dive into the fascinating life of Queen Isabella of France. From her royal status in France to her tumultuous marriage to Edward II of England, to her strategic alliance - and romance with Roger Mortimer and their joint rebellion to wrestle the Crown from Edward. They discover how a queen's rage and ambition can change the course of history. Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Lines performed by Enzo Cilenti. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producers are Rob Weinberg and Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. 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 Yanega, 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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• 1:50Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanega, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here.

• 2:26Eleanor Janega?

  This month on Gone Medieval, we're delving into the medieval equivalent of Family Feud. But directed by Quentin Tarantino. Not least because the Royal Shakespeare Company are staging a brand-new production of Christopher Marlowe's violent, yet tender play, Edward II. In the last episode, we heard how Edward II's rule and his deposition represented a moment of crisis in England that would rip up the being-king-of-England rulebook. Edward's reign was defined by his controversial relationships, first with Piers Gaveston and later Hugh Dispenser. Today, we turn our attention to Edward II's queen, Isabella.

• 3:11Eleanor Janega?

  Now, she had to put up with a lot from her husband, but she was no walkover. Oh, no. England in 1327 is a realm holding its breath. The she-wolf of France, that is what you will call her. Queen Isabella is born of an illustrious lineage. Her forefathers are the kings of France, and now is her brother. The queen has been a steady supporter of her husband. What she's turned a blind eye to is between her and her confessor. But now, he seems to have gone too far, even for her.

• 3:54Eleanor Janega?

  She sits in France with their son and sets out her demands for their return. Can a king decide between losing his queen and losing face? He can only keep one, at most. Isabella has been at Edward's side since the year after he became king. He has lavished gifts on her, then taken them away. He has carried her from a fire-consuming their tent, so concerned for her that he emerged naked with her in his arms. And he has pushed her away so many times, each time harder and further, to make space for his fawning favorites.

• 4:35Eleanor Janega?

  Good queens are the merciful balance to the wrath and vengeance of their husband. How has Isabella become as much rage and force as any king? How have the calm waters of their marriage become poisoned and bubbling as they boil over? In France, the queen is joined by a rebel. Roger Mortimer shares her hatred of Dispenser. Some say he shares her bed, too. Others say they will come with an army. Many claim both are true. Mortimer's plan seems clear.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  Fair Isabella, now have we our desire. The proud corruptors of the light-brained king have done their homage to the lofty gallows, and he himself lies in captivity. In any case, take heed of childish fear. For now we hold an old wolf by the ears that if he slip will seize upon us both. Think, therefore, madam, that imports as much, to erect your son with all the speed we may, and that I be protector over him. For our behoof will bear the greater sway when his a king's name shall be underwrit.

• 5:58Eleanor Janega?

  In all corners of England, people talk in hushed tones of what might happen next. Joining me to discuss one of my favorite medieval queens is historian Catherine Warner, author of Isabella of France: The Rebel Queen. Catherine, welcome to Gone Medieval.

• 6:16Speaker 05

  Hi, Melinda. Thanks so much for inviting me. So happy to be here.

• 6:20Eleanor Janega?

  I am so glad to have you here because I'm going to have you gossip about two of my favorite people. Some of the best to ever do it are Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, which is, it's one of the biggest and sexiest topics there is, I think, really.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  Well, it's just, I mean, to me, like, the story has always been just so endlessly fascinating. I think, like, you know, the characters, the personalities involved, the whole drama, you know, the whole turbulence of this era, there's just so much going on, you know, so many fascinating things. It's just, yeah, it's a wonderful period of history. Absolutely.

• 6:58Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. And I think that for me, Queen Isabella, I like to call her the she-wolf. I know that that is supposed to, I know that's supposed to be derogatory, but I actually think it's brilliant, right? She's, she's one of these characters who is so interesting because she's a really complex woman. She's a really difficult woman. And she's a woman who just sort of does what she wants, which is almost unheard of in the medieval period.

• 7:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. So of course, you know, Isabella is one of the most powerful women, I guess, of the English Middle Ages. And, you know, she was kind of, she was born to power recently. So she was the only surviving daughter of the King of France, Philip the Fourth, who's often known to posterity as the Iron King. Isabella's mother was also a sovereign in her own right. She was the Queen Regnant of Navarre, which then was a small kingdom in the Pyrenees, mostly in Spain, but also partly in France. So Isabella was one of the most highly born queens of England that we've ever had in our history, the daughter of two sovereigns. She had three older brothers who all reigned in their turn as kings of France and Navarre. So she was born to power. She was born to influence.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  She had a very strong sense of her own royalty. I mean, in my opinion, an almost sacred sense of who she was, who she was born to be. And she was betrothed to the future Edward the Second of England when she was only about three years old. And so their betrothal was arranged at the end of the 1290s, basically to end a war between England and France. You know, their fathers, Philip the Fourth of France and Edward the First of England, had been at war for a large part of the 1290s. I know this being the Middle Ages, they were Royal, obviously they had no real say in who they married. So they were basically, they would be trying to end a war between two kingdoms. That's how it came about. So Isabella had known basically since she was a toddler that it was her destiny to marry Edward the second

• 8:50Speaker 05

  and to be the Queen of England and hopefully, and indeed as it did turn out, to be the mother of the King of England after that.

• 8:56Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, she's really raised to do just that, right? Not just be a queen. I mean, again, this is one of the most highly born queens there ever is. You know, France is massively powerful at the time, but she's really

• 9:10Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 9:10Eleanor Janega?

  Educated to be not just, you know, an ornament, but a ruler.

• 9:15Speaker 05

  Yes, unfortunately, we don't know a great deal about Isabella's upbringing. Oh, before she married Edward when she was 12. I mean, hardly anything in fact. So, so we just have to interpret her later behaviour. As you say, Eleanor, that she wasn't content just to be, you know, the ornament, you know, just the queen who was, you know, was in the background, you know, raising the children, but, you know, not wielding any power. As she wanted to wield as much influence as she possibly could, and she did do that. And I think like, see, one key point is that Edward the second actually did allow her to do that. So we tend to hear a lot about like, you know, their marriage, you know, was awful and they disliked each other. But actually they got on an awful lot better than I think most people assume, you know, for many years. I mean, it all went hideously wrong in the end. I mean, you know, let's not skate over that fact.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  But, you know, just because a relationship goes wrong, doesn't mean that it had always been awful. Even though Isabella was only 12 years old when she first arrived in England in 1308, there's evidence that she was already wielding like a certain measure of influence over Edward. So we find in our records in the chancery roles of like, you know, Edward's saying, let's say pardoning a criminal. Or, you know, let's say yes to a land deal of some description, you know, like because Isabella had asked him to. So she, she was mediating with Edward, you know, right from the start of her life in, in England and her marriage dream. And then this happened, you know, like with great regularity throughout the first, what, 14, 13, 14 years of their marriage. And then it all went wrong in the early 1320s.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  But yes, we, we do see Isabella, you know, practising her role as a mediator, you know, with her husband. Husband, which was a kind of expected of a queen at the time, and she did it very well. And obviously, you know, with with a certain degree of of pleasure. And then also because Edward the Second's reign was was so turbulent and, you know, thanks to, you know, his own errors, he basically stumbled from one crisis to the next. So then we also see another aspect of Isabella's power and influence, that she was mediating, negotiating between her husband and the barons. You know, basically becoming a kind of peacemaker as well.

• 11:12Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, and and this is the sort of thing that we expect from a queen, right? Part of your role, one way or another, is this very specific mediation. You're the one who steps in when your husband's gone too far. You know, or when there is a situation where the king needs to climb back from a mistake that he's made, but this is very crucial. He cannot admit he's wrong.

• 11:35Eleanor Janega?

  Well, then you're the queen, then it's your job to go in and beg humbly for the right thing to be done. And then the king can say, oh, yes, darling, for you, I would do such a thing, right?

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Yes, and we we see that as well, you know, with Isabella's daughter in law, Queen Philippa, who kind of persuaded Edward the Third publicly, you know, to save someone's lives on on one particular occasion. And he probably already decided to save their lives and not execute them. But, you know, yeah, Philippa gave him the ability to go back on that in in public.

• 12:04Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. I mean, and also I think about Isabelle, you know, I say I go right into, oh, isn't she great? And isn't she strong and isn't she clever? Which, you know, obviously I'm leaning on those things because I think she is. But she is also going to do a kind of traditional thing when she initially gets there, which is much is made of the fact that she is rather a fashion plate, right? So she doesn't just show up to be the Queen of England. She shows up to be the Queen of England with eighty five headdresses, right?

• 12:36Speaker 05

  Yes, we're lucky to have an inventory of the list of things that she took with her to England on her marriage in thirteen oh eight. And we can see that her father, Philip the Fourth of France, was very keen for his daughter to look as magnificent as possible. So, yeah, she had eighty five headdresses and numerous wonderful gowns and and very expensive jewels. And she must have looked absolutely amazing. Of course, there was this mentality at the time that royalty did have to look the part. So Isabella fulfilled that role perfectly. And, you know, we're also told by several chroniclers that, you know, physically she was beautiful. Um, you know, like one Parisian chronicler calls her, you know, la belle des plus belles, uh, the fairest of the fair, like, and the fairest woman you could find in France and England and the Holy Roman Empire. And, and we're also told by several chroniclers that Edward the Second

• 13:20Speaker 05

  was quite a magnificent looking man. And, you know, he was very tall and physically powerful and handsome. So I think that, you know, whatever went wrong between them, and especially what went wrong with Edward the Second's behaviour as a king, they did at least look the part.

• 13:33Eleanor Janega?

  But here's the thing, right, is I bring up the looks and I bring up the fashion and I bring up all these things. You know, obviously, because this is a part of what makes a queen a queen, right? It's a great form of propaganda when she shows up to say, look how regal I already am. I'm an ornamentation to your court. Let's not forget where I've come from, which is France. But also, there's a story that things begin to go a little bit wrong, pretty much immediately at the wedding, and it is down to jewellery. Can you elucidate over this?

• 14:10Speaker 05

  Yes, I do know what you're talking about, Eleanor. And this is a story about Isabella that was actually invented at the end of the 19th century and has no basis in any reality whatsoever. So Edward the Second had this male favourite, let's call him, who was presumably his lover. His name was Piers Gaveston. Edward had known him since they were teenagers. And as soon as he became, literally as soon as he became king, he gave Gaveston the earldom of Cornwall. And when Edward left England in early 1308 to go to France to marry Isabella, he left Piers Gaveston as Regent of England, which was unheard of, um, because Gaveston wasn't royal. So this created a massive scandal anyway. So Edward married Isabella in Boulogne.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  And then a little while later, they arrived in England, they sailed back to Dover. And Piers Gaveston, as Regent of England, was one of the people who was waiting for them there, along with several of Edward's sisters, so his cousins and other members of the English nobility. And we don't actually really know particularly from the excellent records that we have from the era that anything actually went wrong at that time. So one London chronicler does say that Edward sent his wedding gifts given to him by his father-in-law Philip the Fourth to Gabiston in England. But it does say specifically Edward's wedding gifts. It doesn't say Edward's and Isabella's wedding gifts. And some of the wedding gifts Edward received from his father-in-law were war horses, destriers.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  So of course, there's no reason that Philip the Fourth would have given war horses to his daughter of all people. And the chronicler does just say that Edward sent the gifts to Gabiston. He doesn't actually say that Gabiston was meant to keep them, or that was what Edward intended. I mean, that might be what Edward intended. I mean, he showed a massive amount of favoritism and affection to Gabiston. But then, on the other hand, they were his wedding gifts. I mean, if he wanted to give them to his best friend Oliver, you know, he could do what he wanted with them. And then for some, for some reason in the 19th century, I don't know whether, you know, some writer like misread this chronicle, because they somehow got this idea that Edward had given Isabella's own jewels and wedding gifts to Gabiston. And this has just been repeated endlessly in virtually every non-fiction book written about the pair.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  And it appears in numerous novels, to the point that everybody who knows anything about Edward the Second and Isabella thinks that it's a fact and, you know, and it just isn't. We often read scenes in novels, you know, where Piers Gaberton is like strutting in front of the desolate young queen wearing her own jewels. And it's absolute nonsense, really. And of course, Isabella was only 12 when she arrived in England. She was too young to be, you know, Edward's wife in more than name only until she got several years older. And she didn't get pregnant for another four years. And there's really nothing to show particularly that she actually disliked Gabiston. I mean, the statements that she did were actually written decades later. And, you know, maybe she did dislike Gabiston. He just seemed to have had the kind of personality that did easily alienated people.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  And in my view, I think a lot of later chroniclers kind of got mixed up between Piers Gaberton and Edward the Second's much later and much more powerful favourite, Hugh Despenser the Younger, who Isabella most certainly did hate and loathe and detest and fear. And I think then people kind of either mix them up or they kind of. Just kind of like put Isabella's feelings for Dispenser, which are absolutely, I think, unarguable, and then put them back on Piers Gaveston and assumed that whatever she felt about Dispenser, she must have felt for Gaveston. But I don't really think that's actually true.

• 17:36Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I would agree with you as well, because I think when Isabella gets to the throne, you know, it's not like she walks into a bed of roses, obviously. But she seems to have managed to kind of balance things off with Gaveston and certainly with Edward himself as well. And it's quite well she did it, because Edward is in hot water almost immediately when they get home to England, you know. He is at odds with the barons, you know, he is not exactly a favorite in his own kingdom. How does Isabella help to mediate this position?

• 18:15Speaker 05

  I think what's important about Isabella is that, you know, her upbringing at the French court and, you know, so from the earliest beginnings of her childhood, she would have known exactly how to behave. She would have understood courtesy, courtly manners, exactly how to get on with people. So she would have been able to bring that to bear, you know, in Edward's very turbulent and difficult relations with his barons, and what she would easily have been able to smooth things over. And she seems like she did have that kind of personality, you know, when she wanted to. And of course, we have to bear in mind that although Isabella was of royal birth, her status in England was kind of was based on her relationship with Edward. If Edward's reputation went downhill, and then so did Isabella, so it was in her own interest really to build Edward up and to make him as successful

• 18:59Speaker 05

  as, you know, she could possibly do. You know, obviously within the limitations of Edward's own personality and behavior, because he worked against himself all the time. So poor Isabella, stuck in this very difficult situation. At only 12 years old, I mean, we've got to feel for the poor girl, don't we? I mean, she was a child and she's brought into this turbulent, difficult conflict. I mean, you know, within months of her arrival in England, Edward had almost managed to bring his kingdom to the brink of civil war. I mean, what do you do with that when you're 12 years old?

• 19:30Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of incredible. And, you know, I think she does a pretty good job of it, because interestingly, she does seem to kind of say, all right, well, here's a, here's a difficult playing field. I am casting in with the favorite. It's going to be me and Gaveston, and we are going to make this work. You know, we've got a mutual... Interest, which is kind of keeping Edward happy. So here we go. We're going to go forward. I mean, to the point that her uncle, Thomas of Lancaster, is like, yeah, she's on the wrong team here. She's Gaveston, right?

• 20:06Speaker 05

  Yes, it does seem like that Thomas of Lancaster, who, you know, interestingly, was both Edward the Second's cousin and Isabella's uncle, because he was the younger half brother of her mother. Yes, he does seem to have thought that the Isabella was much more on Edward's side than the baron's side. And Isabella's own behavior does also seem to indicate that. So we're lucky that actually, most of Isabella's household accounts during her very long life in England, half a century, don't survive anymore, unfortunately. But they do for a few months in 1311 and 1312, which is exactly the period, you know, when Gaveston was exiled from England for the third time. His wife was pregnant, who was Edward the Second's niece. Edward brought him back. Then the barons ended up killing Gaveston because they were so sick of the whole situations.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  So fortunately, we don't have Isabella's letters that we sent, but we do have records that she sent letters. We have payments to messengers for taking her letters to her uncle Lancaster and to other barons, you know, to the Earl of Warwick, for example, you know, who were both enemies and friends of Edward the Second. So she was obviously trying to deal with the situation and to help Edward out.

• 21:12Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, and, you know, she's in this terrible position because essentially by 1311, you know, surprise, this is when we get some more records of Isabella. By this point, we are essentially in open rebellion against the crown. And Isabella doesn't just sit around. Isabella doesn't just say, oh, yes, well, this is kingly business. You know, she starts writing letters, you know, she's sending letters to her uncle, she's sending letters back to France, being like, hey, guys, remember your daughter, niece, sister? You know, I could use some help here, right? Like, she is a very involved stateswoman.

• 21:48Speaker 05

  I think that's an important point, Helena, that of course, Isabella always knew all her life that she was the Queen of England, but she was of France. And, you know, her father was the King of France. She had her brothers, you know, at this point, until her father died in 1314, her eldest brother was the King of Navarre. And she was always willing to use that connection to help Edward if she possibly could. And then to remind the English barons that, you know, her husband had France on his side as well. Because, you know, there's a lot of evidence, or at least I think there's a lot of evidence, that Edward the Second and Philip the Fourth did not like each other personally. But also that Isabella, in the period between her marriage to Edward and her father's death in late thirteen fourteen, she actually visited the French court three times and she

• 22:30Speaker 05

  negotiated and mediated with her father to help Edward as much as she possibly could. So I think this this kind of speaks to Isabella's astuteness and her political intelligence, her emotional intelligence, that she was very keen and very willing to use the powerful royal connection she had to France, you know, the most powerful country in Europe at the time, to help her husband. Absolutely.

• 22:52Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, you know, these trips back and forth, that's really saying something, considering that in the middle of all of the civil war and the going back and forth to Paris, she also gives birth to Edward the Third.

• 23:03Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 23:04Eleanor Janega?

  It's a lot.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  There's an awful lot going on. And when you think that Isabella was still only sixteen when she got pregnant with Edward the Third, you know, she was still like, you know, essentially almost a child, you know, like, and legally still a child. And then, yeah, and then when her son was only a few months old, she and Edward, she went to France for a two month visit, which again, really helped to smooth things over with Philip the Fourth. And we're lucky to have the testimony of a Parisian chronicler who wrote a rhyming chronicle talking about their visit. And we get this lovely snippet. Edward the Second, one morning, was late for a meeting with Philip the Fourth because he and Isabella had overslept because they'd been having fun during the night.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  And I just love this because I think, you know, they were the young parents of the future King of England. They were in France. It was summer. Isabella was surrounded by her family and all the courtiers she growing up with. And it just seems like at this point in their life, they were really happy. And Gaverson had been dead by then for a year. There was no other male favorite on the horizon. Isabella was the mother of the future King of England. Everything was great. And, you know, she was still only a teenager and yet, you know, she'd achieved so much.

• 24:16Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, but one of the things that she achieves in this period is one that I love to talk about because my girl is a drama monger. My girl manages to kick off a little something called the Tour de Naisel affair. And I'm wondering if we could just, just a light gossip very, very quickly about this.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  Okay, so as I mentioned, Isabella had three older brothers, Louis, Philip and Charles, who all in their turn would reign as kings of France and Navarre. So in March, April thirteen fourteen, Isabella treks off on one of her visits to the French court to help Ed with the second, you know, she's negotiating on his behalf with her father. And while there, it seems that she finds out that the wives of two of her brothers, the eldest Louis and the youngest Charles, were having affairs with other men, who were the Gautier brothers. And of course, you know, this being the Middle Ages, royal men could, you know, go and, you know, have affairs with whoever they wanted, that was fine. But, you know, they were women, they were going to bear the future kings of France. So for them, of course, it was strictly forbidden to have lovers

• 25:24Speaker 05

  in case they might foist a non-royal child on the throne of France. This was a big thing. Some French chroniclers and some English chroniclers say that it was Isabella who uncovered this relationship that two of her three sisters-in-law were having with these much lower-born knights who were brothers, and that she told her father. And this ended very badly for everyone in question. So the two knights were horribly executed very soon afterwards. And the two women, there was Marguerite of Burgundy and her cousin Blanche of Burgundy, they were imprisoned in quite harsh conditions. Marguerite died, what, about fifteen months later, I think? And Blanche stayed in prison for another ten, eleven years,

• 26:04Speaker 05

  and then was finally released, again, after years of quite harsh incarceration. And this, of course, was a very big thing. I mean, the annulment of the marriage of Isabella's eldest brother Louis, you know, the future king of France.

• 26:17Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah, I mean, it has knock-on effects later in terms of who we believe can take over the French throne, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, of course, nobody knows that at the time. At the time, it's just, you know, le scandale, which is...

• 26:30Speaker 05

  Yes, because Louis and his wife Marguerite of Burgundy actually had a daughter who was just two years old at this time. So then, of course, there were questions over her legitimacy and whether she could succeed her father in the future as king of France. And Louis actually died when he was only in his twenties. So when he died in... Thirteen sixteen, his his second wife was was pregnant. She gave birth to a son five months later, who immediately became King of France. But the unfortunately, the baby boy died when he was only a few days old. And then there was this big debate, you know, who is the next ruler of France? You know, is it young young Jean, you know, um Louis's daughter by by Marguerite? Or is it Louis and Isabella's next brother, Philip?

• 27:12Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, this is a really precarious point in time for everyone, you know? We are in the years now of the Great Famine, which is a granted. It's not something that necessarily affects royals so much because they can just take food from poor people. But it is certainly something that kind of gets pointed out as you are a bad ruler when you do this. And also, it's one of those signs that medieval people kind of read into, you know, like, oh, things are going very certainly badly. When suddenly we're all starving, right? And perhaps this is some kind of vengeance from God. And meanwhile, things are not going great militarily for old Edward up in England.

• 27:53Eleanor Janega?

  And this places Isabella in kind of a really awkward position. You know, she's had a second son now, so you know, she's doing her job, which is ensuring royal succession is going to happen. But she is not particularly happy with what is going on with Edward. I think that would be fair to say, no.

• 28:15Speaker 05

  Well, absolutely. I mean, Edward lost the Battle of Banetburn in in thirteen fourteen years to Robert Bruce, the the King of Scotland. You know, arguably England's most famous and most humiliating military defeat in in history, you might say. So so of course, that's really humiliating for for poor Isabella that her husband loses this battle. That absolutely nobody thought that he was going to lose. And in fact, Edward lost his seal, you know, like his his great seal with which he he, you know, signed and sealed documents on the battlefield of Banetburn. And so for a few days, Isabella, as she lent him her own seal, so that English government business could continue. And then also, we're told that she tended Edward's wounds, you know, um after he came back, you know, shattered by this defeat to the port of Bury.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  Come tweet and whatever Isabella was feeling at that point and she must have been thinking like, oh my God, how did this happen? And then she did look after her husband and then lent him her seal.

• 29:08Eleanor Janega?

  I just think that that's such an important little bit of courtly life, right? You know, the fact that she is close enough by and she understands the workings enough to insert herself and say, okay, well, this is what needs to happen. Yes, we're in a bad position, but here's how we keep things ticking over. You don't get to just sit here and lick your wounds. We need to keep moving.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  We need to get on with things. Yes. And then, as you say, then the great famine starts. So essentially what happened was that it basically hardly ever stopped raining towards the end of thirteen fourteen and then through the whole of thirteen fifteen, you know, throughout Northern Europe. So crops rotted away in the fields. What food there actually was, it was very little and it became massively expensive because of the demand. And something like 10% of the entire population of Northern Europe died of starvation and malnutrition, all the diseases associated with them. So this is a natural disaster that was not caused by Edward the second. But yes, of course, it was, it was something that it didn't help, you know, like the general turbulence and problems of his reign.

• 30:09Speaker 05

  And as you say, it's like, you know, almost like whatever he did was almost seen as the wrong thing, you know, so he tried to fix prices of food so that people could afford to actually eat. And oh, no, that's wrong. Oh, no, you shouldn't do that. You should do. And so, you know, it just seemed like, you know, even, even the weather and everything was turning against Edward.

• 30:26Eleanor Janega?

  And certainly we're still having major problems with Scotland, right? And

• 30:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:31Eleanor Janega?

  This becomes a personal problem for Isabella, right? Not just and one that is something at court that she is needing to deal with politically, but she becomes an actual target for the Scottish, right?

• 30:46Speaker 05

  Yes. And so that happened a few years later in thirteen twenty two. So, you know, Edward's military reign record against Robert Bruce is just disastrous beyond the telling of it. And in thirteen twenty two, he launched his last invasion of Scotland. It was an utter disaster. He came back to England with his army. He was in Yorkshire with his army as Isabella was there as well. Robert Bruce. Launched a counter invasion of England, defeated a royal force at the Battle of Byland near Sursky in Yorkshire. Edward had to gallop hard to Scarborough on the coast to avoid being captured. And then poor Isabella gets kind of caught up in all of this as well. And according to a couple of French chroniclers, actually kind of like came quite close to it to being captured by a Scottish force.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  And actually, now I think of it, this was the second time it happened. It happened in thirteen nineteen as well. I'd forgotten about that. So this was when Robert Bruce invaded England on another occasion, defeated in English force at the Battle of Maiton. And then Isabella was also nearby. And then we're actually told that the male inhabitants of the city of York actually marched out to where Isabella was, staying at her manor, you know, just to kind of look after and to take her back into a walled city where she would be safer. This is just an absolute sign of just like the utter disaster of Edward the Second. Right. Like he couldn't defeat Robert Bruce. Edward came from a much more, a much larger, a much richer and a more powerful kingdom, could not defeat Robert Bruce in any way whatsoever.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  But worse than that, he couldn't protect the north of England from Scottish raids. He couldn't protect his own subjects. And then worst of all, perhaps he couldn't even protect his own wife, his own royal queen, you know, his the sacred vessel who had borne his children.

• 32:27Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think this is an incredibly valuable target, right? If you, if you were the Scottish, because A, you know, getting a queen, that's like free rein in terms of asking for whatever you want in order to get the queen back. But I think it also kind of shows that people are aware that Isabella is one of the real powers behind the throne. That's why she's there in the first place. You know, she hasn't been left back in London where it's safe. She's near the battle because she's involved, right?

• 32:54Speaker 05

  This is so important, I think, yes, and so revealing of the kind of person that Isabella was that, yeah, she could easily have stayed at one of the numerous royal castles and manors, you know, hundreds of miles away in or near London. But she wasn't that type of person. You know, so she went to the north with her husband. She accompanied him. She wanted to be there, you know, at the forefront of matters. And this did put her in danger, you know, on at least a couple of occasions, you know, thanks actually to Edward's own incompetence. But we can see that, you know, cowardice was emphatically not in Isabella's makeup. She wasn't someone who wanted to cower away safely, even though no one would have bothered about that, that would have been absolutely fine. You know, she was the second most important person in the kingdom, absolutely fine. And she was a woman, of course, she wasn't going to fight.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  So it's absolutely fine if you just stay in the Tower of London or whatever, of course. But she didn't.

• 33:58Matt Lewis?

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• 35:24Matt Lewis?

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• 35:31Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 36:35Speaker 06

  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.

• 37:19Speaker 06

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

• 37:36Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, and I just think that that says so much about her. But you know, also, this is the point in time when I would say there's a real turning point in the marriage of Isabella and Edward. Because you know, up to this point, here she is, she's out of the battlefield, you know, we get people saying they're getting on quite well. And then things become decidedly more rocky. What's going on in the kind of 1320s that really changes things?

• 38:06Speaker 05

  I suppose, firstly, it would be like these two occasions in 1319 and 1322, when Edward's incompetence almost led to Isabella being captured by Scottish forces. But the main thing was actually that Edward began a relationship with a new male favorite called Hugh Dispenser, the younger Lord of Glamorgan. Now, he had been married to Edward's eldest niece since all the way back in 1306, but Edward had never liked or trusted Dispenser before. Dispenser was always on the baron's side. So the barons, assuming that he was one of them and was loyal to them, appointed him as Edward II's chamberlain in 1318. So the chamberlain was the man who controlled access to the king, so it was a powerful position.

• 38:48Speaker 05

  And once Edward and Hugh Dispenser began spending time together, we have no way of knowing exactly what happened, but over the next few months, Edward became absolutely besotted with Dispenser. And to the point where he started doing absolutely everything that Hugh wanted him to do, piling him with money, for example, you know, doing loads of favors for him. Basically, anything that Hugh wanted, he got. Until by 1321, he was virtually Edward's co-ruler, even though he had never been appointed to that position. And as has happened with Piers Gaveston in 1311, almost exactly a decade earlier, the English barons got really sick of this, and they exiled Dispenser, who became a pirate in the English Channel, as you do.

• 39:29Speaker 05

  And again, like Isabella kind of like played a role in in this. We're told by several chroniclers that she actually went on her knees in in front of Edward and begged him to exile Hugh Dispenser, basically because if he didn't, England was just going to collapse into civil war. So, you know, and again, I think at this point, you know, Isabella actually kind of saved the day because, you know, Edward was never going to exile Dispenser unless, you know, she she kind of, you know, asked him to. And with the Queen, you know, on her knees in front of him, Edward actually did exile Dispenser. And then so for a while, everything seemed to be okay, until it all went horribly wrong. Edward brought Dispenser back again. And there's also evidence during this period in thirteen twenty one that again,

• 40:13Speaker 05

  Isabella is doing what what she can for Edward. So she had recently borne their fourth child, Joan of the Tower, a future Queen of Scotland. And then Isabella claimed that she was going on pilgrimage to Canterbury from London. But she, when she went back from Canterbury to London, she passed via Leeds Castle. And it seems like she was doing this deliberately because the road from the normal way from Canterbury to Bachelon would not have gone past Leeds Castle. But Leeds Castle was was owned by a lord called Badlesmere, who was one of Edward's chief baronial enemies. And Lord Badlesmere wasn't present, but his his wife was, and he refused Isabella entry. So then Isabella then contacted her husband to say, look, you know, Lady Badlesmere has insulted me. I'm the Queen. I can stay wherever

• 40:57Speaker 05

  I want in the kingdom. Please do something about it. So Edward then besieged Leeds Castle, successfully killed some of the garrison. And then this gave him a way in to then like go after the rest of the barons and to defeat them. So at this point, it seems to me that Isabella was very much acting on her husband's behalf. Like, she must have known what was going on when she actually went to Leeds Castle, you know, to demand entry.

• 41:21Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. To me, I think it's difficult to read this as anything other than a mutual understanding. But unfortunately, Edward.

• 41:31Eleanor Janega?

  Does it really do what Isabella wants when he then has a pretty successful campaign against the barons? You know, here is Edward and Hugh Dispenser, you know, kind of ruling then in England. And Isabelle's not particularly happy with their crackdown against the barons, right? This is where it gets really, really rocky.

• 41:54Speaker 05

  Well, things really start to go wrong, both for, you know, both in for Edward as a king and also in Edward and Isabella's relationship, because Edward was very brutal towards the defeated barons, the contrarians he took to calling them. He executed about 20 or 22 of them, you know, which was, you know, they were English noblemen. So this was quite shocking at the time. And then the other thing that he did, which I think really began to ruin Edward and Isabella's relationship was that Edward recalled Hugh Dispenser back to England from his piracy in the English Channel and brought him back to court and made him his chamberlain again and made him his main sidekick, essentially. And the problem was that Dispenser was an English nobleman. He was a real insider. He

• 42:36Speaker 05

  was related to most of the English nobility. And he was a very ruthless individual who wanted political power. He wanted to be rich. I mean, he writes this, I've read his own letters, you know, I've translated them, you know, he actually, he actually says at one point, you know, to one of his followers, do such and such so that I will be rich. I was like, okay. So, I mean, you know, he was quite honest about his ambitions. But one of his ambitions was to be, yes, Edward's main co-ruler. And then Isabella was his main rival for this position. So, starting in, say, roughly March 1322, when Dispenser came back to England from his exile and his piracy, he started to do everything he could to sideline Isabella. And he succeeded, possibly beyond, you know, his wildest dreams, because

• 43:21Speaker 05

  beginning in 1322, like Isabella, who had always been like so influential with Edward and appears so often in all the documents they have, she suddenly disappears from all of them. It's like she died. It's like she's just suddenly not there anymore. She died or retired to a convent. And somehow Dispenser had been very successful in persuading Edward that Isabella was, was not his loyal queen, his supportive and loving wife, as she had always been. She was his enemy. She was French. She was an outsider. And so in thirteen twenty four, Edward actually went to war against his brother in law, so Isabella's third and last brother, Charles the Fourth. It's a little known conflict between the two kingdoms. And at the height of this war in September thirteen twenty four,

• 44:06Speaker 05

  Edward actually confiscated all of Isabella's lands in England, which was absolutely appalling, and treated her, his own loving wife, the mother of his children, as though she was nothing but an enemy alien. As though she's, oh no, like you have nothing to do with me anymore. You're just French, you're, you know, you're your brother's sister. You're not my wife, you're French, that's it, I'm not interested. And she was absolutely devastated and extremely angry, certainly with Edward. Also with Hugh the Spencer, who had somehow persuaded Edward into treating his wife as his enemy, essentially. After all the years of love and support and affection and care, Isabella had given her husband, she was suddenly treated as though she didn't even exist anymore in Edward's life.

• 44:51Eleanor Janega?

  I think this is such an important point because people tend to focus on what comes after this. But they don't engage with what an incredible insult this is. You know, here is a woman who was absolutely integral to keeping the kingdom together. She was intimately involved in all these parts of court life. She's trying her hardest to do the right thing by this guy the whole time. And then to suddenly have your lands confiscated and just be told, well, no, I'm afraid you're French riffraff and you need to get out of here. It's, it's also runs contrary to the entire point of royal marriage at the time.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 45:30Eleanor Janega?

  Which is that, yes, I mean, you do come from these places and the idea is that there's going to be some connection. But you then are supposed to be mediating exchange, not that you're always going to side with your family. You're going to intervene with your family to get good things for your own kingdom, right?

• 45:47Speaker 05

  I think it's impossible to overstate just how much of an insult Edward offered to Isabella by doing this, to her as a queen and to his royal wife, and also to their personal life. He was basically, you know, just going, it's like, you know, just, he froze her out of his life completely. So, I mean, it just seems from the records that I've seen of Edward's and Edward's accounts that, you know, they did exchange letters and presents sometimes, but, you know, what kind of presents, I don't really know, or what kind of letters I don't really know. And Isabella, obviously, kind of just, at one point, she just, she was so upset, distraught, angry, she actually declared that she was going on pilgrimage. Or that's possibly just an excuse that actually Edward came up with because she'd just left

• 46:31Speaker 05

  court, she'd actually literally walked out on him, which again is unheard of. I mean, you know, you don't walk out on the king. So Edward had to come up with an excuse, but there's no evidence at all that Isabella actually ever did go on pilgrimage. He just said she just angrily just like took herself off somewhere where Edward wasn't and stayed away from him for a long time. And it does seem, at least superficially, that they kind of reconciled slightly a little bit, at least kind of in public by exchanging the occasional letter and gift. But something had gone horribly, horribly wrong in their marriage, and Isabella was distraught. And a lot of people have always thought that this is when she started hating Edward. And I think, you know, maybe she did, you know, and I can't

• 47:15Speaker 05

  get into her head, I don't know. I think she was terribly angry with him, but I think she was also devastated that, you know, her marriage had essentially collapsed. Her role as Edward's consort and his queen and his royal wife had collapsed, and she was just being treated as though she was nothing. And I'm sure she was terribly angry with Edward, but she, most of all, she was angry with Hugh Dispenser, who she absolutely hated. And I think eventually she realized that if Hugh Dispenser harmed her in some way, that actually Edward had reached the point in his obsession with Dispenser that he wouldn't actually prevent Dispenser from harming his own royal wife.

• 47:53Eleanor Janega?

  And I mean, I think this is a huge misstep, both on Edward's part and Dispenser's part, because this is not the type of girlie who takes this lying down. You know, you can't just completely sideline her, take her kids away, and say, yeah, guess what, you're an enemy of the state. Oh, by the by, you don't have any lands, any money, or any way of supporting yourself. This is the sister of the king of France, right? It's not like she has nowhere to go in this situation.

• 48:19Speaker 05

  I think, yeah, both Edward and Dispenser really underestimated Isabella and her anger with both of them. And I think they were both politically quite foolish. And I can kind of understand Edward doing that, but Dispenser normally was more intelligent than that. So it seems a real misdeck on his part. So I think perhaps Gabistin years earlier, okay, who admittedly was dealing with a much younger Isabella. But I think perhaps he tried to take her more on side and say, look, you have your role. You know, you're the queen, you're royal, I'm just his friend lover, whatever. You know, we both have our roles in Edward's life, but I will never try to take over your role. But Dispenser did all of that. It was like, you know, he wanted to be Edward's own consort. And there is evidence that this is how he thought of himself and how chroniclers actually thought of him.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  So you start seeing like records of like, you know, Edward and Hugh's household, like they had a joint household, like they were a married couple. So Hugh had kind of taken everything from Isabella. And she wasn't the kind of person who was going to just put up with this insult, obviously. And so, yes, Edward was at war with Isabella's brother, Charles, the fall of France. It was going badly. And so Edward came up, or possibly it was the Pope, actually, who came up with the bride idea. And Edward accepted it, that Isabella could be sent to Paris to negotiate a peace settlement, you know, being the wife of one and the sister of the other. So in March thirteen twenty five, Isabella went back to her homeland. And that is absolutely the key moment.

• 49:42Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, right. Because here we have, you know, Charles has been like, well, oh, we're at war. Guess what? You don't have any of your French possessions anymore, which seems smart. That's probably what I would do. And Isabella is now down at court with her brother, you know, like, oh, hey, and oh, I'm so French. Look, yeah, here I am at the French court. And people who don't love what Edward is doing in England start showing up, right? So suddenly we have a big flocking of the nobility from England who are also arriving at court in France.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  Yes, so back in thirteen twenty-two, Edward had defeated the baronial faction who rebelled against him, who we call the Contrarians. Twenty or so were executed, many of them were imprisoned, some of them fled abroad. And one of the Contrarians was Roger Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. So he had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for eighteen months, but he escaped, made his way over to the continent. And he was the highest ranking of the English rebels or Contrarians on the continent. So therefore, he became their leader. So he and the other Contrarians then actually went to the French court and offered their services to Charles IV and then to Isabella.

• 50:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, well, and, you know, speaking of services that are offered to Isabella, it seems like around this time, Isabella and Mortimer start seeing each other romantically. I mean, this is her kind of guy. Can break out of the Tower of London, can, you know, get together a bunch of forces. He is kind of diplomatically minded and he is here and she, for all intents and purposes, is a free agent. She's been told that she's replaced, you know, like she's no longer the consort of the king. So what's a girl to do?

• 51:28Speaker 05

  Well, I think actually that the evidence that where Isabella and Mortimer were sexually and romantically involved is a lot less than most people actually think it is.

• 51:37Eleanor Janega?

  Boo, Catherine, boo!

• 51:39Speaker 05

  I mean, they might have been, I'm not saying that they definitely weren't, but I just think the evidence is a heck of a lot less than, I mean, than most people think. I mean, it's certainly not the case that we know that they fell into bed together at the French court in thirteen twenty-five, or that they fell passionately in love. I mean, you know, yes, maybe they did, but I think at this stage, you know, Roger Mortimer was a very useful political and military ally to Isabella, as indeed were the other barons, you know, including one of Edward II's own half-brothers, who had a French mother and was Isabella's cousin. So it wasn't just Roger, he was just the leader of the baronial, the English baronial faction at the French court. Though, of course, there is evidence that he and Isabella did become very close over the next few years, and he

• 52:24Speaker 05

  was essentially her co-ruler in the early years of the reign of her son Edward III.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 54:00Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, and so here we hatch a plan, right? Here we are in the French court. We've got rather a lot of disaffected lords. We've got the King of France, very mad at his sister's treatment. And, you know, there is an heir apparent. So here is what happens with a woman scorned, right? A very clever, well-connected woman with an army can apparently just take the fight back to England.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Well, Edward II's biggest mistake was actually to send his son to the French court, his son, the future Edward III. So Edward II was the Duke of Aquitaine. You know, he inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine in the southwest of France from his father and his great-great-grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine. So he owed homage and fealty to his overlord, the King of France, for this territory. But of course Edward didn't want to leave England. England was in absolute chaos and mayhem. Everything was going horribly wrong for Edward at this point. So he didn't really know what to do. Like, he had to pay homage to Charles IV to the Duchy of Aquitaine, or he would lose it, which he couldn't allow to happen. So the only other alternative was to make his and Isabella's son, Edward of Windsor, who was not quite 13 years old at this point,

• 55:16Speaker 05

  he made him Duke of Aquitaine instead and sent him to the French court to pay homage to Charles IV. So this was in September 1325, and this really was a key moment. Because Isabella by herself, and even the baronial rebels she had with her, the French court, could pretty much be ignored. I mean, I think it was embarrassing for Edward that his wife is just, you know, like openly defying him in Paris. But it's not really that bad. There's not all that much that she can do by herself. But having the future King of England in her custody, this was actually a really key point. And this is actually what enabled Isabella and her allies to actually to raise an army. So they went to the county of Haynote in modern-day Belgium,

• 55:59Speaker 05

  arranged Edward of Windsor's marriage to one of the Count of Haynote's daughters in exchange for ships and mercenaries.

• 56:06Eleanor Janega?

  You know, that's a pretty good, pretty good wedding gift, you know. And also fundamentally, Haynote, they're very rich. You know, this is a great, it's a very nice little match, too, for a future King of England. So, hey, that's great.

• 56:18Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 56:19Eleanor Janega?

  And here they go. They've got a fleet, they've got an army, and they go back to an England which is not unhappy to see the Queen back. I think that that would be fair to say.

• 56:32Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So Isabella's and Roger Mortimer's invasion force arrived in England in September thirteen twenty six. And at this stage, Edward the Second's support just collapses. And I don't think he realized just how massively unpopular he was at this stage. So like Edward's two half brothers joined Isabella. So did Thomas of Lancaster's brother and heir, Henry of Lancaster, who was Isabella's uncle. He was like the one of the most powerful barons in the country. You know, everyone just kind of flocked to Isabella. Edward ended up having to, and Dispenser ended up having to flee to Wales, pursued by Isabella and her army. And and soon the King of England was little more than a fugitive in his own kingdom. And Isabella had brought this about within a matter of weeks.

• 57:16Speaker 05

  All it took really was, was just, I suppose, the Queen and her son providing a focus of opposition to Edward. And his support just collapsed at that point.

• 57:23Eleanor Janega?

  You know, that is one way to tell that you are not a popular king, right? You know, when your wife is in pursuit of you across the country and everyone's like, yeah, fair play.

• 57:33Eleanor Janega?

  Seems legit to me.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  You just, I just wonder what the heck was going on in the interest of editing this.

• 57:39Eleanor Janega?

  You know, not anything smart, right? Because they they catch up with him, they capture him, they capture Dispenser. And this is where their story comes to an end.

• 57:52Speaker 05

  Yes, so Dispenser was executed two months to the day after Isabella arrived in England. That's how, what a little period of time it took to capture and execute her biggest enemy. And then just two months after that, in January thirteen twenty seven, Edward the Second was forced to abdicate his throne to his and Isabella's fourteen year old son, Edward the Third. And so because he was underage, Isabella essentially ruled England for the next few years.

• 58:18Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, and she does a pretty okay job of this. I mean, you know, considering.

• 58:26Speaker 05

  I think we could cripple that one, but I.

• 58:28Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I I'm just, I'm a partisan, I suppose. But you know, it's, and this is the thing. I think that she kind of then misplayed her own hand, right? Because I think people were quite happy to see somebody who was slightly sensible come back. Along with the future king, right? You know, this gives you a very easy way to hand off power. But I'm not sure that people were really ready for A, a queen who was really like, no, I'm 100%. Here's my great seal. I'm ready to rule. This is what's going down. Also, hey, there's Roger Mortimer. Don't worry about it. You know, don't do not worry about how this guy may be my boyfriend? Question mark is also ruling, right?

• 59:12Eleanor Janega?

  I don't, I think that's a pretty big ask.

• 59:15Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, I don't think it would be possible to overstate just how popular Isabella was when she returned in late 1326 and got rid of Hugh Spencer and forced her husband to abdicate. I mean, that just like the, the wave of joy that overtook the whole country at this point is was just massive. But the problem was that there was a regency council was officially appointed to rule for Edward III, and Isabella wasn't on it. And I would think, well, she probably should have been. But unfortunately, in England, unlike some other European countries in the Middle Ages, you know, like queens generally didn't rule for their underage sons, not officially, which is wrong and bad and awful. Unfortunately, that's what happened. So Isabella and, and, you know, with Mortimer at her side, we can probably fairly assume, uh, kind of just basically just, yeah,

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  ignored the regency council and just kind of, you know, just ruled anyway. And I think a lot of people struggled with that. And there were, I think, a good four rebellions against her in the period of her rule for her son from January 1327 to October 1330. So.

• 1:00:18Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, and that's, that's rather a lot. That's kind of a few rebellions. And I, and I do think that one of the things that kind of she didn't necessarily grapple with is that whilst people were happy to see Edward go, they were also used to rebelling at this point in time, you know, the, yeah, they wanted to get rid of the king, but it's not like they weren't used to it at this point in time.

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. Completely used to rebelling against their rulers.

• 1:00:48Eleanor Janega?

  So here she is. She's the regent. And I mean, I think the other thing is that she is using the opportunity as regent to definitely enrich herself.

• 1:01:00Speaker 05

  And I think this is actually one point which fascinates me, that, you know, she'd been, she'd seen up close what Edward the Second was like with his male favourites and enriching them, enriching himself, forcing people into rebellion. And then it just seems to me that she and Roger Mortimer did pretty much the same thing themselves. So Roger Mortimer made himself Earl of Mart, which is essentially making himself Earl of all the English-Welsh borderlands. I mean, that's a pretty massive title. That's an unprecedented title. And he made himself massively wealthy. And I just think, what was they thinking? I mean, this actually almost makes the story more interesting to me than if they'd been successful, because it just seems to me that they were just repeating the same mistakes of Edward

• 1:01:42Speaker 05

  and despenser, perhaps even without, not without entirely realising it. So then the barons and then everyone else, and you thought, oh, gosh, you know, we used to have the king and his ruthless, greedy, abhorrent favourites. And now we've got the queen and her ruthless, greedy, abhorrent favourite. What's the benefit here?

• 1:02:01Eleanor Janega?

  But I think also she's a little unfairly maligned by the kingdom, because one of the big things that she does that I think is actually quite smart, is she affiances her daughter off to the Scottish. You know, there are these huge problems with the Scottish wars. And Isabella says, okay, yeah, I know how to solve this. It's how I solved, you know, the problems for England and France in theory, you know. Or here is Joan of the Tower, she will marry David Bruce, and this is going to be fine. And people really don't like this move.

• 1:02:34Speaker 05

  I mean, from our perspective, I think, you know, hundreds of years ago, you think, yes, what a clever idea. Of course, England and Scotland shouldn't be at war. What is the point of this? It's just killing lots of people. It's destroying lands on both sides of the border. England is never going to conquer Scotland. What is the point of it? So it just seems like, yes, the marriage of Joan of the Tower and the future David the Second. Second David Bruce of Scotland. It just seems like it was a really sensible idea, but people at the time hated it. Because, you know, I think they liked being a

• 1:03:07Eleanor Janega?

  Such a strange thing. It's like, oh, yeah, no, I love it. Actually, please, please, let's let's mess the borderlands up.

• 1:03:13Speaker 05

  It's like, get a clue, discover pacifism. It's great. But unfortunately, yeah, it's so. Unfortunately, I would have to say that one of the actions that Isabella took that from our perspective was great. It's sensible and, you know, the obvious thing actually lost her an awful lot of popularity.

• 1:03:29Eleanor Janega?

  And that's when things kind of start to go downhill, right? You know, we are almost at a state of civil war. By that time, we're kind of like closing out thirteen twenty eight, no?

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  Yes, it's thirteen twenty. Yeah, closing out thirteen twenty eight, there's there's a big rebellion, which is kind of led by the English barons, who had been promised land in Scotland or thought they had a right to land in Scotland when England conquered Scotland. And then Isabella's own uncle, Henry of Lancaster, also joined this rebellion against us. So, you know, it it got pretty bad by this point.

• 1:04:02Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. And, you know, here we have, you know, Lancaster rising up, you know, not necessarily successfully. We can we can say that, you know, and and Isabella does some cool things like, you know, show up wearing armor to battles. Huge fan of that. I'm a huge fan of girlies in armor. Fantastic. But these things never go away. There's just this kind of bubbling resentment towards Isabella, and certainly Mortimer at this point in time, I would say.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. I mean, the we're told by one chronicler that even one of Mortimer's own sons started calling him the the King of Folly. By early thirteen thirty, that they they basically lost almost all of their support from, you know, everyone who had been so enthusiastic about them previously. So, you know, they'd lost Isabella's uncle, they'd lost Isabella's cousins, Edward the Second's half brothers, you know, they'd lost most of the important people of the country. And then Mortimer kind of set a seal on this unpopularity by kind of like judicially murdering essentially the Earl of Kent, who was one of Edward the Second's. Half brothers. And I think that was also a key point and certainly in Edward the Third's own attitude towards them. So, you know, because Edward the Third turned seventeen in late thirteen twenty nine, he's rapidly reaching manhood.

• 1:05:17Speaker 05

  He and his wife, Queen Philippa, had a son who was born in June thirteen thirty, you know, made Isabella a grandmother in her thirties, lovely. And I think as soon as Edward the Third saw that his mother judicially murdered his own uncle, he had a son, he'd secured his throne. He saw, okay, now it's time to do something about it. So in October thirteen thirty, yeah. He took his moment, yeah. So the court was staying in Nottingham Castle in October thirteen thirty. And Edward the Third, who was still only seventeen, he wasn't even quite eighteen yet. And he launched a coup against Isabella and Mortimer. He used a secret tunnel cutter through the rocks into Nottingham Castle. And marched into the room where Isabella and Mortimer were having a meeting with their last remaining allies, including the Bishop of Lincoln.

• 1:06:01Speaker 05

  And yes, arrested Roger Mortimer and several of his few remaining supporters. Supposedly the Bishop of Lincoln tried to escape down a latrine at this point.

• 1:06:11Eleanor Janega?

  I love that. Yeah, that's basically the end for the Isabella and Mortimer alliance. And indeed, Isabella's reign as regent.

• 1:06:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Roger Mortimer was imprisoned and then he was executed at Tyburn, near London, a few weeks later. Isabella was forcibly retired to house arrest for a while, no longer wielded power of. And but she lived for another twenty eight years. So, you know, she had quite a long life. And, you know, there's kind of quite a lot of evidence that, you know, as the years passed, Edward the Third perhaps grew more forgiving of her. He and his wife would visit her, their children, especially when their children got older. So she kind of takes on this role of like the much more conventional dowager queen who's travelling all around her massive estate, you know, shelling out loads of money on clothes and minstrels and jewels, you know, like she'd always done, as she had the right to do, you know, by the standards of the time.

• 1:07:07Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, you know, I'm afraid that I don't feel too badly for her. I've been to Castle Rising, you know, it doesn't seem so. Bad to me, hanging out in a series of castles and spending rather a lot of money on musicians. By all accounts, she's living a very fashionable lifestyle. She's going hunting a lot. She's hanging out and yeah, she does kind of have this quite nice relationship with her son and his family eventually. He's kind of like, ah, yeah, well, who, who hasn't?

• 1:07:39Eleanor Janega?

  Attempted to enrich themselves and you know, I think it's just a really interesting story, you know, because it does a lot to put our assumptions about how women behave in the Middle Ages on their head. Right? And at the same time, though, we also can use this as a test case to see exactly how far a woman can get. You know, what is it that you can do within this power structure if you're willing to surprise people? But then this is also where the brakes come on, right?

• 1:08:11Speaker 05

  Hmm. Yes, unfortunately, you know, I, there's an awful lot that, you know, we could say about, about women wielding power in the, in the Middle Ages and how much they were allowed to wield and, you know, and all the criticism that they perhaps received that probably men wouldn't have in, in exactly that, that same position. So I think it's about the story is fascinating for what it reveals about what, what women in power were, were able to do. But then, yeah, the eventually they, you know, the, the brakes come off and it just, yes, unfortunately, it all went downhill.

• 1:08:41Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think one really interesting thing too, that we see even at her death, you know, she has this long, pretty nice retirement. And then she does the ordinary queen retirement, retirement, which is she's like, I'm a nun now. Which is a really great way to kind of make sure that you get into heaven, right? You know, after, you know, doing, you know, wild things and executing people, right? So she becomes a, a poor claire, which is the sort of a women's equivalent of the Franciscans. And she, she dies and is buried at a Franciscan church. And she's buried with her husband's heart.

• 1:09:16Speaker 05

  Yes, and we think so. So she was definitely buried with the clothes she was wearing during her wedding to wear, but not necessarily in the clothes, I hasten to add. I mean, this is 50 years later, but they were her wedding clothes were definitely buried in the coffin with her. And there's a rather later tradition that she was also buried with Edward the Second's heart, but that's not totally certain. But I like to think that that's true. And I should point out at this stage that separate heart burial was entirely normal in royal burials of the 13th and 14th centuries. So this isn't macabre, or, you know, Isabella like having, oh, I murdered my husband. And, you know, this is the trophy, his heart, or anything like that. It was, you know, entirely unexceptional to do. But I think,

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  you know, it kind of, yeah, maybe speaks volumes about how Isabella felt about, you know, her marriage and her husband at the end of her life. And, you know, we don't really know. But it just, you know, their story is a complex and a rather fascinating one.

• 1:10:14Eleanor Janega?

  You know, frankly, I could talk about Isabella for years, but we have to leave it somewhere. So I think that this is not a bad place to leave it because it is messy. It is difficult to decipher exactly what was going on here and why people made the decisions that they did. But it's still a very human story as well. And I think that's what I love about Isabella is that she's an incredibly clever person in a weird situation who really does her best, but she's got foibles. You know, she seems like a really, she's a kind of fully fleshed character, even though we don't get to know that much from her from her own mouth.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  I think the word messy is just about right. You know, yeah, she was a human being. She had some wonderful traits. She was a wonderful, amazing person in many ways. But of course, yes, she had, she had negative qualities as well. Yeah, like all of us. She was just a complex, real person who did some great things, some very intelligent things. And frankly, you know, some less praiseworthy things as well. But, you know, I mean, that's the same for so many others.

• 1:11:20Eleanor Janega?

  Look, let women be complex too. But we stan a messy queen. We absolutely love all of this. But Catherine, thank you so much for coming on to talk to me about Isabella. It's been such a treat.

• 1:11:32Speaker 05

  Thank you so much, Alan. I've really enjoyed it.

• 1:11:37Eleanor Janega?

  The fate of all races up to meet them. The king has chosen between his wife and his favorite. All of England recoils. Hugh Dispenser is emboldened by Edward's choice. His boot presses down all the harder. In France, the queen plots her vengeance. Edward has raised the sword of Damocles above his own head, and now awaits the fall. Mortimer is the steel gauntlet about the clenched fist of the queen. If they land a blow, it could leave Edward with a bloodied nose. And what of the rest of us?

• 1:12:20Eleanor Janega?

  England stands on the edge of a precipice. Stepping in might mean war, bloodshed, and upheaval. Resisting the fall might lead to them too. Who is right and who is wrong is becoming less important. The real question is, who will survive? Next time, Matt Lewis will consider the swift and ruthless rise of Roger Mortimer. As the de facto ruler of England, he wielded power through Isabella. But how did his ambition ultimately lead to his downfall? Thank you once again to Catherine for joining me, and thank you for listening to Gone Medieval

• 1:13:05Eleanor Janega?

  from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent series, Meet the Normans, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

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