King Edward II

 

Writing about the origins of Oriel yesterday put me in mind of the fact that today is the 740th anniversary of his birth in the temporary royal accommodation at Caernarvon in 1284.

The fourth son of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor he was the only one to reach adulthood - his elder brothers John, Henry, and Alphonso all died as children, Alphonso when Edward was only four months old. The forty eight year difference in their ages may have contributed to the not always harmonious relationship he had with his father.

King Edward II

Tomb effigy in Gloucester Cathedral

Image: Flickr

The tomb at Gloucester has parallels with the effigies at St Denis of his in-laws and in the tomb design with that of Pope John XXII at Avignon. He and his family and his Court were part of a complex European cultural and political network. 

The effigy at Gloucester is striking as a portrait despite the damage and disrespect of intervening centuries. The King’s appearance is discussed at Appearance of Edward II

For well over a century his reign has attracted the scholarly attention of academic historians, from Stubbs to Tout and his circle, to Clarke and McKisack, Maddicott and Fryde, and Haines to mention but a few. If one wants to examine the reign it is well chronicled by contemporary writers and clerks, and analysed as are few others by modern historians.

It was a reign that began with tension and uncertainty, and quickly had unstable violent politics, rebellion, catastrophic defeat in Scotland, the famine of 1315-17, further rebellion and vigorous retribution, an oppressive policy towards anyone perceived as an opponent, war in Gascony and finally the collapse of the King’s marriage and position as he was dethroned by his wife. That troubled marriage was, of course, by processes unforeseen at the time it was contracted to lead to the Hundred Years’ War evolving out of border disputes into full blown war over the French throne. The actual contract and its chance survival is discussed at The marriage contract of Edward II, 1303

Yet for all this there was still an artistic flowering in the reign such as Bishop Stapledon’s rebuilding of Exeter cathedral and the central tower of Lincoln cathedral, and not to forget individual resiliance - the canons of Lincoln cathedral putting on plays to cheer themselves up in adverse times.

The King’s responsibility for this chaotic situation is not inconsiderable, yet the questions remain. Was it because he was weak, dependent on favourites, a man who invited the contempt of his nobles? Or was it that he had inherited a system at stretch from his assertive father who had already antagonised many of the leading men and who were waiting for an untried and uncertain ruler?  Or again was the King simply trying to pursue his father’s methods when times had changed, and he failed to accept that, seeking to maintain the rights he had inherited?

Equally was his Queen Isabella wronged by her marriage, a victim who eventually fought back, or was she always the ‘She Wolf of France’ biding her time, brooding on her humiliation as wife, mother, Queen and daughter of France? Indeed was the marriage always unhappy - the surviving evidence is mixed?

Today his reign continues to attract scholarly debate - most recently the argument that he was not murdered in 1327 but escaped, lived under Church protection and met up with his son King Edward III and his young family a decade after his deposition. This argument advanced by Ian Mortimer is impressive but almost seven centuries of belief in a violent death are hard to overcome. It is a question on which I remain something of an agnostic or a ‘don’t know’.

I do however know I owe him a debt of gratitude for founding Oriel - even if it is the one enduring success of his troubled reign and life.

Anticipating Oriel

In January 2026 Oriel - my college - will celebrate its 700th anniversary, the fifth oldest college in Oxford and the oldest continuous royal foundation in either Oxford or Cambridge.

However in order to be founded in 1326 there had to be some preparation and that began just seven centuries ago. In April 1324 - different secondary sources I consulted today give the 20th, 24th, and the 28th, and the text of the Patent Rolls was not available - King Edward II granted a licence to acquire property in mortmain to Adam de Brome, a Suffolk born Chancery clerk and inter alia rector of St Mary’s in the High to found a college in Oxford. Adam was essentially what today would be termed a civil servant, and who had been in royal service since at least 1297. In recent years he appears to have been based in Oxford and intended to found a small college for higher studies. His inspiration may well have been Merton, whose statutes he simply copied for his ultimate creation. 

With his licence he proceeded to bu the quite recently built Tackley’s Inn on the High, and which still houses Oriel students, Perilous Hall on Horsemonger Street, now Broad Street, but then, in part, the town ditch, and as a source of income the advowson of the church at Aberford in the West Riding - which is still an Oriel living.

His college consisted of a Rector ( like Exeter founded in 1314 ) and ten Fellows. With the new house of studies established and under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin, after some twenty or so months, on January 1st 1325-6 Adam transferred his college to King Edward who three weeks later refounded it in his own name, gave the advowson of St Mary’s and its rectory which became St Mary Hall, and appointed Adam de Brome as the new head of house as first Provost. So began the House of Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Not until 1329 did the King’s cousin Master James of Spain, give to the new college the house called the Oriel, by which name the foundation came to be known. That, however, is another story.

So as Oriel begins in earnest its plans to celebrate seven centuries of study and learning, one can recall those first beginnings just as King Edward’s governance began to disintegrate, and say with heart and voice “Floreat Oriel”

Donatello’s St George

Today, being St George’s feast day, I fulfilled a long term wish and bought online a small copy of Donatello’s statue of the saint. It is usually dated to 1416-17 and is now in the Bargello in Florence: a modern copy occupies the original niche on the Orsanmichele.

Above and below: St. George, marble, by Donatello, 1415-1417, 2.14 m height (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence). As one of 14 sculptures commissioned by the guilds of Florence to decorate the external niches of the Orsanmichele church (see also Donatello’s statue of St. Mark, above), the statue of St. George was commissioned by the guild of the armorers and sword makers (the Arte dei Corazzai e Spadai). During the several St. George’s feast days throughout the year, the guild placed intricate metal adornments including a sword, helmet, and belt on the statue creating a spectacular contrast of metal against marble. St. George was the patron saint of the armorer’s guild.

Images and text from https://arsartisticadventureofmankind.wordpress.com/tag/donatellos-st-george/

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MSt George by DonatelMBargello FloreImage: uen.pressbooks.pub

"in the head of this saint the beauty of youth, courage and valour in arms, and a terrible ardour. Life itself seems to be stirring vigorously within the stone." 

                     Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)

There are numerous online articles about the statue, of which the following, whilst telling much the same story, do make individual comments that refine one’s appreciation of the work:

Saint George (Donatello) from Wikipedia, Saint George, Donatello’s St. George, St George by DONATELLO and St George and the Dragon by DONATELLO from WebGallery of Art, Saint George and Donatello, Saint George by Donatello, Donatello, St. George by Donatello and Monumental Art: Donatello’s St George from Oxford’s own Cherwell

Some of these accounts are better than others in placing the creation of the statue in its historical context in Florence, but it is worth reflecting on what was happening in 1416-17. The Italian peninsula was beset, as usual, by factional and regional, and also international rivalries hovering in the background. The Council of Constance was in session and slowly finding its way to resolving the Great Schism of 1378, in western Europe King Henry V was the victor of Agincourt in 1415 and preparing to invade France again in 1417. In Portugal his cousins had captured Ceuta in Africa in 1415 and one of them, Dom Henry the Navigator, was going to become the sponsor of the exploration of the west coast of Africa and the Atlantic. In central Europe the various realms were digesting the meaning of the Hussite revolt and of the Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald/Tannenberg in 1410, and to the south tge Turks were advancing against what little remained of Byzantium, the Balkan principalities and Catholic Hungary.

It was a time of uncertainty, of promise, of ambition, of conflict, a time to be born and a time to die. The vitality and turmoil of the age was captured in the art, the art reflects back all the emotions, the hopes and fears, the strengths and vulnerabilities of contemporaries. 

How little the world has really changed, for all that has changed, be it for good or ill.

St George Pray for us

Sourcing silver for Anglo-Saxon coinage

 

The Mail Online and some other sources reported recently on an interesting and important piece of research published in Antiquity about the sources for silver used to make coins in England in the period 660-820. This divides supplies clearly between two sources and consequently into two periods, with the change happening around 750. Before that date the silver appears to come from Byzantine sources in table and similar ware. After the mid-eighth century the silver was being mind western France. That more or less coincides with the accession of King Offa of Mercia in 757 and his documented trading relationship with the Carolingians in succeeding decades.

The Mail article can be seen at Unravelling the mystery of England's Dark Age coins

There is a similar account from the BBC News website at Anglo-Saxon silver coin source mystery solved

Medievalists.net has a rather more detailed summary of the research and it can be read at Early medieval money mystery solved

This is an interesting piece of research not just in what it reveals but also in its combination of numismatics with archaeology, documentary sources and understanding of economic history both in theory as to money supply and in the reality of trade over long distances, together with modern scientific methods of analysis. As a result we have what appears to be a cogent and coherent argument that elegantly links together all the available evidence.

Still looking for King John’s treasure

When The Queen went on Maundy Thursday to Worcester Cathedral to distribute the Royal Maundy on behalf of The King I assume that the Bishop and Chapter pointed out that the first monarch known to have distributed the Maundy in this country, in the year 1212, was King John, whose tomb lies before the high altar.

King John has had a ‘bad press’ and despite the efforts of serious historians to challenge the prevailing popular narrative, he is usually remembered as, in Seller and Yeatman’s classic system, a “Bad King”. Shakespeare’s distinctly idiosyncratic retelling of the reign - no mention of Magna Carta, but a lot of trouble caused by the Pope for the Elizabethan audience - cannot make King John a hero king nor a martyr king. He is a Lear with bathos, not pathos.

Historically his reign is a series of melodramatic crises and losses - the loss of Normandy and Anjou, the loss of his nephew Arthur, the loss of the clash with Pope Innocent III over the appointment of Stephen Langton, the loss of the confidence of a substantial part of the political nation leading to Magna Carta, and the loss of his treasure in the Wash just before his death in 1216. 

King John – detail from his funerary effigy in Worcester Cathedral. 

Image: copyright the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral.

He does manage nevertheless to still look a little smug and not a little truculent in his effigy, which is often dated to about 1225, a man bowed perhaps, but not broken, as indeed one of his biographers, R.V.Turner, sees him.  

I will admit to having a somewhat more favourable view of King John than the traditional one, if only because we have the same Christian name. Undoubtedly John did do a number of unattractive, cruel and malicious things, but as some of his biographers have seen he did things with flair and panache. He is the entertaining villain who the audience secretly cheers on. He was also unlucky - unlucky in the resolve of his opponents and also just plain unlucky as with the collapse of his grand strategy in 1214 to recover his lost lands in France, or the loss of his treasure in 1216.

 

There is something about the loss of the baggage train from Lincolnshire Live at The lost treasure in Lincolnshire missing for 100s of years 

In respect of the treasure I wrote the other year about a claim that the site of King John’s treasure had been identified. That story goes back to a metal detectorist’s theories as set out in 2017 by the BBC at The lost jewels of Bad King John. 

Nothing seems to have come from that so far but according to Yahoo News a new line of research has been triggered by plans to erect yet another proposed solar farm. The article can be read at Excavation looks to solve mystery of King John's lost treasure after 800 years 

There is more about the prospect in an article from the Eastern Daily Press at Could new Norfolk search solve 800-year-old riddle of King John's lost treasure?

The borderlands of Lincolnshire and Norfolk where the Wellstream once flowed have changed very much over eight centuries and locating where the opening of the Wellstream into the Wash was is one thing, but whither the currents may have carried the contents of the baggage train is another matter. Various villages and towns strung out along the Old Sea Bank road are suggested for the site of the disaster.

The Newark Advertiser - which has an interest in the story because King John died at the castle in the town only days after the loss of his treasure - reports and speculates on the possibilities of finding the lost treasure at ‘One in a million chance’ of finding King John’s treasure with new search to get under way

The Daily Telegraph in 2022 reported on research that explains the scale of the incoming tide which swamped the baggage train, and includes a useful map. This can be seen at How King John really lost the Crown Jewels... according to an astronomer

Returning to Worcester, to whose Anglo-Saxon saints Oswald and Wulfstan the far from noticeably pious King had a strong devotion, the Cathedral Library and Archive blog has an interesting account of the King’s last Christmas spent at the cathedral priory in 1214. Both the cathedral and city were still recovering from a serious fire in 1202. Even as his authority crumbled this was still planned as a major event. It also describes some of the items which may have been swallowed by the Wellstream less than two years later and illustrates a fragment of the King’s shroud at Christmas 1214: King John at Worcester

The blog also writes about the King’s devotion to SS Oswald and Wulfstan in 1218 –Rededicating the Cathedral to Saints Wulfstan and Oswald

More relics from the battlefield at Culloden

Today is the 278th anniversary of the battle of Culloden in 1746. 

The battlefield near Inverness quite often makes the news, and often due to perceived threats to the integrity of the site as not all of it is owned and managed as a heritage asset. Fortunately there are resolute voices to speak out for its protection.

Small finds from the site also occur and The National recently reported on one, which might even be assignable to a known individual. Their  article can be seen at Archaeologists announce 'intriguing' finds at site of Battle of Culloden

Although as the article says it is ultimately unknowable if the shoe buckle really did belong to Cameron of Lochiel it is an intriguing idea. The idea that it might brings a more individual note to something as mundane as a broken buckle and a link to a family whose strong loyalty to the Stuart cause was a century old at Culloden, and whose current head was recently ennobled as a Life Peer and government minister in the Lords - his Jacobite peerage not withstanding.

 

Medieval elite horses in Westminster

Analysis of a substantial number of medieval equine skeletons found in what was clearly a recognised burial place for the animals in Westminster has indicated something of the range of horses that were available and that they came from a variety of breeds. It also suggests that it was very definitely a case of ‘different horses for different courses’ when it came to their use.

The site is on Elverton Street which lies close to the site of the medieval Palace of Westminster and may well therefore indicate the ownership of the animals. It is clear that some at least of the horses were definitely from the equine elite.

Of the more than seventy horses on the site teeth from fifteen were studied and at least seven shown to have come from Scandinavia or the western Alps. Some of the horses were dated to the period 1425-1517, but others could be earlier or later.

New Scientist has a article about the research at Medieval horses buried in London had far-flung origins

There is perhaps more detail from a historian’s point of view in an article about the cemetary from Medieval Histories at What warhorse would you shop for if you were a Medieval knight?

This article suggests a likely source for some of the horses being the Cistercian abbey stud at Esrum in north Zeeland in Denmark. This had a long tradition of breeding quality horses, and which still survives today as the Frederiksborger.

I wrote in 2022 about recent research into the size of English cavalry horses in the period 300 to 1650, and urged interested readers to look at the original report rather than the more journalistic digest. My post and the related links can be found at The size of English medieval warhorses

The taste of Roman wine

 

The Conversation has an article, based on one by the author in Antiquity which argues that, despite the non uncommon contemporary view that Roman wine was, by modern standards, distinctly inferior, the Romans did have a range of very palatable wines.

The secret appears to have lain in their method of fermentation with the wine developing in earthenware jars buried in the ground. This method has survived and still flourishes in

Georgia, producing wines that are still appreciated. Indeed there is apparently a revival of interest in them by modern practitioners in France and Italy.

The article, which reads at times like a wine tasting listing, can be seen at What did Roman wine taste like? Much better than previously thought, according to new research