The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #197 ｜ Edward III

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to another episode of Epochs where I have finished my series all about the

00:00:04.640 late Roman Republic and I shall be changing the topic entirely now. I'll be going back to my

00:00:09.440 series all about the British monarchy, English monarchy. If you remember back in episode 147

00:00:17.560 I'd got up to the age of Edward II so I shall be carrying on from there talking about all about

00:00:23.980 Edward III. It's easy to remember if you ever try and commit all the monarchs to memory you've got

00:00:28.920 three Edwards in a row. Longshanks, Edward II and then Edward III so three Edwards in a row.

00:00:35.500 The grandfather is great, Edward I, Edward II not so great, pretty ignominious actually and then

00:00:41.980 Edward III is great again, great in inverted commas. He's got a shout for being perhaps one of the

00:00:48.500 greatest English monarchs of all time but some people do pick him as the best English king of

00:00:55.400 all time. There's a few up there, depends how you measure it, doesn't it? But he ruled for a very

00:01:00.420 long time, 50 odd years. He came to the crown quite young and although he didn't live to be

00:01:08.740 spectacularly old, he did have a good innings, fairly good innings for the early middle ages

00:01:14.780 and there's lots of martial achievements. He was a great warrior king but there are also some stains

00:01:22.520 on his memory as well but he's certainly up there with one of the best, you know, with Edward I or

00:01:28.640 Richard or Henry V, one of those guys. He's one of my favourites. I probably won't put him first but

00:01:36.540 he's definitely a great story because there's so many events that go on. One thing I would say if

00:01:42.020 you've been watching my previous series all about the late Republic and Caesar and Pompey, I went

00:01:48.620 into that story in lots and lots and lots of detail. This one I'm going to zoom out a bit and try and do

00:01:56.500 the whole of Edward III's life in one episode here. So be zoomed out a bit, so a bit more of a whistle

00:02:03.400 stop tour of things. There's a lot going on, many many battles in France and the Black Death and any 0.97

00:02:10.340 number of things. So let's just kick off the story. I should be mainly reading from a professor, Sir

00:02:16.420 Charles Oman, who was a very eminent historian, a late 19th century, early 20th century professor of

00:02:23.900 history at All Souls College, Oxford. So sort of a gold standard type historian, long before the age

00:02:31.000 of wokeism, so we're free from any of that in his narrative. And I happen to think that the Edward III

00:02:36.820 chapter in his book is a particularly good one, covers all the main events. So I'll be reading from

00:02:43.020 that. So a bit of a recap then before we just dive in. If you've watched the last one or you know

00:02:48.020 anything about Edward II, I'll have to do a small recap on that because the transition between Edward

00:02:53.740 II and Edward III was a very, very messy one. Just to recap then very quickly, Edward II had got himself

00:03:01.720 deposed by his own wife. He was a very, very unpopular king. He'd had lots of favourites like

00:03:08.220 Piers Gaveston and later the Dispensers, father and son, and he had alienated himself from his own

00:03:14.500 ruling class, his own baronage, and even his own wife, Isabella of France. In the end, they'd been

00:03:21.300 estranged and she'd gone off to France to live in France in the court of her brother, the King of France.

00:03:26.580 And Edward II had owed fealty for his holdings in Normandy and Gascony to the King of France.

00:03:33.160 And he didn't want to pay that homage in person for political reasons, maybe out of pride as well,

00:03:38.520 but more likely actually for political reasons. So he sent his son, his young son, who was only about,

00:03:43.820 I think, 13 or 14 at the time, soon to be, in a few years' time, to be King Edward III. He sent his son

00:03:50.440 over to France instead to pay fealty to the King of France for the Duchy of Normandy and the Duchy

00:03:57.460 of Aquitaine in his stead. But that was a bad move because it then meant that the heir to the throne

00:04:03.160 was now in the hands of the French and his mother, Isabella of France, and they weren't going to

00:04:09.480 relinquish him. So politically, that was sort of a poor move by Edward II. But Edward II made many,

00:04:16.680 many poor moves. Anyway, to cut ahead on this, because we want to talk about Edward III, not

00:04:20.640 Edward II. Eventually, Isabella of France, backed up by a legitimate claimant to the throne, i.e. her

00:04:27.420 son, Edward III, invades England with her new lover, Mortimer, who was an exiled English knight,

00:04:35.240 baron, living in exile in France, because, as I said, Edward II had alienated so many of his own

00:04:41.500 ruling class with a lot of other... They had a whole party of anti-Edward II people that they

00:04:49.120 invaded England with and took Edward quite easily, in the end, prisoner, forced him to abdicate formally,

00:04:56.820 legally, made the 14, 15-year-old Edward III, made him king, coronated him, again, legally, and then

00:05:03.720 put Edward II in prison. And then what happened after that, whether he was starved to death or,

00:05:09.960 you know, very brutally murdered, some say with a red-hot poker thrust inside of him, or not. That

00:05:17.320 story's probably apocryphal, but we don't know. I think serious historians think that he was probably

00:05:21.820 actually just starved to death. Anyway, he dies in captivity. Edward II dies in captivity. So now we're

00:05:28.700 in a new world where we've got this young king, Edward III, on the throne, but actually he's so young

00:05:35.300 that his mother and her lover, her new partner, Mortimer, they're the real power. The cockpit of

00:05:41.340 power sits with them. They control all policy. So the boy king is kind of a puppet or a front man

00:05:48.440 for their regime. But soon enough, Edward becomes old enough, by the time he's sort of 18 or 19 years

00:05:54.540 old, he becomes old enough to sort of take the reins for himself. But as is often the way,

00:06:00.240 people don't like giving up power if they don't have to. So he had to sort of wrestle the reins

00:06:05.740 of power from his own mother and her lover. So I'll pick up the story there or let Sir Charles

00:06:11.680 Oman pick up the story there. So Oman tells us this, quote,

00:06:16.120 shameful as the state of the realm had been under the rule of Edward of Carmarthen, that's Edward II, 0.95

00:06:21.320 and his favourites, a yet more disgraceful depth was reached in the years of minority of his son.

00:06:27.920 The young king was only 14 and the government fell into the hands of those who had set him on the

00:06:33.100 throne, his mother and her parable, Roger Mortimer. A council headed by Henry, Earl of Lancaster,

00:06:39.980 was supposed to guide the king's steps. But as a matter of fact, he was in Queen Isabella's power,

00:06:46.120 while she was entirely ruled by Mortimer. They were surrounded by a guard of 180 knights and

00:06:52.480 acted as they pleased in all things. It was only gradually that the nation realised the state of

00:06:57.660 affairs, for the murder of Edward II was long kept concealed. In fact, there was a persistent

00:07:03.200 rumour that he wasn't dead. We'll get to that in a moment. And the relations of the queen and

00:07:07.700 Mortimer were not at first generally known, because that also was a bit scandalous. A queen,

00:07:13.300 a queen consul, even a widowed queen, shouldn't really marry someone as lowly as Mortimer. Not

00:07:19.440 that he was a peasant, far from it. But still, it would have been a bit of a scandal if everyone

00:07:24.840 knew about it. The first blow to the new government was the renewal of the Scottish War. So if you

00:07:30.100 remember, Edward Longshanks had hammered the Scots here and there, lost a battle here and there,

00:07:35.160 but basically sort of hammered them. And as soon as he died, literally as soon as he died,

00:07:39.400 he was on campaign when he died against the Scots, Edward II takes over and loses and kind of keeps

00:07:45.900 losing to the Scottish. So now all the Scottish question comes up again. So the renewal of the

00:07:51.860 Scottish War. In 1328, Robert Bruce broke the truce that he had made six years before. He was now

00:07:58.800 growing, advanced in age and was stricken by leprosy. But he sent out under James the Black 0.90

00:08:05.000 Douglas, a great host, 4,000 knights and squires and 20,000 moss troopers, all horsed on shaggy

00:08:11.960 Galloway ponies. They hurried England as far as the T's and successfully eluded Mortimer, who went

00:08:18.580 out against them, taking the young king with him. In fact, this was quite a disastrous military

00:08:24.280 campaign, really quite badly. Edward III is known as a great military king, again, among the greatest

00:08:30.320 ones, like Richard or Henry V. But this early one, he wasn't really in command. I mean, nominally,

00:08:37.340 he would have been, but he wasn't sort of the battlefield general. And it's one of the few times

00:08:43.280 where he got into a really sticky situation. Omar doesn't tell us about it in fantastic detail. But

00:08:48.080 at one point, the Scottish armies sort of got into his camp and even cut down some of the guide ropes to

00:08:55.060 the king's tent. So about as close as you can get to being captured or possibly killed without being

00:09:00.920 captured or killed. So really quite bad. Humiliating, really. But I'll let Omar continue here saying,

00:09:06.500 Outmarching the English day by day, Douglas, that is the Black Douglas, the leader of the Scots,

00:09:11.980 Douglas retired before them across the Northumbrian fells, occasionally harassing his pursuers by night

00:09:18.420 attacks. He returned home with much plunder, leaving not a cow unlifted, nor a house unburnt

00:09:24.680 in all of Tyndale. The English host came back foiled and half starved, and Mortimer, not daring

00:09:31.560 to face another campaign, advised the queen to make terms with the Scots. Accordingly, the shameful

00:09:37.640 peace was signed at Northampton, by which England resigned all claims of suzerainty over the Scotch

00:09:44.080 realm, sent back the crown and royal jewels, which Edward I had carried off to London, and gave the

00:09:50.200 king's sister, Joanna, to be wed to Bruce's eldest son. And all of that was in 1328. So pretty bad,

00:09:57.500 really. You know, one of the lowest ebbs in this period of the Middle Ages in relations between

00:10:03.180 England and Scotland, as far as England is concerned. This is a very low ebb, basically beaten in the field,

00:10:09.080 soundly by the Scottish, and forced to sign a pretty humiliating treaty, giving up more or less

00:10:15.760 everything that Edward I, the hammer of the Scots, had won. You know, just giving up any claim of

00:10:19.860 suzerainty over the, i.e. lordship, over the Scottish crown. I mean, there you go, right there.

00:10:25.280 That's the whole, that's the whole ballgame, the whole kit and caboodle, as far as the English 0.96

00:10:29.400 monarchy was concerned. But it shan't last for too much longer. Oman continues, Mortimer's failure led to

00:10:35.940 insurrections against him. So in the early medieval period, if you lose on the battlefield, your whole

00:10:41.860 political position is undermined. It's like God has abandoned you. God doesn't want you to be

00:10:48.200 successful. So Mortimer's failure was pretty bad. But they were mere baronial risings, not efforts of

00:10:55.100 the whole people. Henry of Lancaster, who headed the first, was put down, the first of these risings,

00:11:01.240 was put down and heavily fined for his pains. Edmund, Earl of Kent, then took up the same plan,

00:11:07.600 announcing that he would free his half-brother, Edward II, who, as he was persuaded, had still

00:11:14.160 survived. See, there was that rumour that Edward II hadn't been murdered, that he was just being

00:11:19.640 kept prisoner very quietly somewhere, which wasn't true. But he, this Earl of Kent, Edmund,

00:11:25.340 Earl of Kent, but he fell into Mortimer's hands and was beheaded. It was the young king himself who was

00:11:31.440 destined to put an end to the misrule of his mother and her minion. When he reached the age of 18,

00:11:36.840 and realised the shameful tutelage in which he had been held, he resolved to free himself from it by

00:11:42.920 force. While the court lay at Nottingham Castle in October 1330, he gathered a small band of

00:11:49.240 trustworthy adherents and, at midnight, entered the Queen's lodgings by a secret stare and seized

00:11:55.080 Mortimer in spite of his mother's tears and curses. The favourite was sent before his peers,

00:12:00.820 tried and executed. Isabella was relegated to honourable confinement at Castle Rising,

00:12:07.760 where she lived for many years later." So that's a big thing there. I told you I'm going to sort of

00:12:13.440 whiz through a bit of an overview of all the events, but that's a massive thing there. That's a real game

00:12:18.320 changer. So the reins of power have shifted then from Isabella and Roger Mortimer over to Edward III now.

00:12:24.820 And so that's a big thing, isn't it? Some people, someone like Henry VI, for example, will talk about,

00:12:29.820 or Hamlet, obviously a fictional character, Hamlet, but lots of kings, Henry III, it's a real, real struggle

00:12:36.180 for them to sort of take power away from the people or various peoples that held it for them while they

00:12:43.540 were young. Well, Edward III is decisive. He does it in one swift movement, rather than the whole process

00:12:49.540 being drawn out for years. And they're having to be all sorts of recriminations and factions,

00:12:55.540 maybe even a civil war. No, Edward III, just boom, done. He's just taken it for himself. Very decisive

00:13:01.540 and clean, right? It's quite a clean cut, clean break. Isabella of France just stowed away in a castle 0.77

00:13:07.540 somewhere. Just keep quiet for the rest of your life now. And Mortimer himself killed. So, and it sets the tone

00:13:13.540 of how Edward III goes on to reign, at least until he's an old man, decisively. An 18, 19-year-old,

00:13:19.940 you know, like Alexander, say, who's prepared and capable to rule a kingdom and rule it competently.

00:13:27.220 So much more in the mould of his grandfather, Longshanks, than in his father. So let's continue.

00:13:33.700 Oman talks about the character of Edward III now. And although I've said a lot of people think he's

00:13:38.180 the greatest king, and he's certainly got a shout to be the greatest, he did have some character faults.

00:13:42.820 And Oman pulls no punches. So he says this, quote,

00:13:46.260 King Edward now himself assumed the reins of government. He was still very young,

00:13:50.740 but in the Middle Ages, men ripened quick, even if they did often die early. And Edward,

00:13:56.100 at 19, was thought both by others and himself, old enough to take charge of the policy of the realm.

00:14:02.500 He was in his youth a very well-served and well-loved sovereign, for he had all the qualities

00:14:08.100 that attract popularity. A handsome person, pleasant and affable manners, a fluent tongue,

00:14:14.500 and an energy that contrasted most happily with the listless indolence of his miserable father.

00:14:20.580 It was many years before the world discovered that he was selfish, thriftless,

00:14:25.620 reckless of his country's needs, and set on gratifying his personal ambition and love of warlike feats to

00:14:32.100 the sacrifice of every other consideration. He was a knight-errant of the type of Richard

00:14:37.300 Cur de Leon, not a statesman and warrior like his grandfather, Edward I. So he's saying he was a great

00:14:44.180 knight, he was a great fighter, but he wasn't as much of a statesman. So, you know, fairly big criticism,

00:14:50.660 actually, Omar makes that. In his later years, his faculties showed a premature decay. He may have

00:14:56.740 suffered from strokes or maybe dementia, we don't know, but we'll get to it. But in his last years,

00:15:02.500 there was something wrong for a fair few years of his life, but we'll get to that in due course.

00:15:08.100 And he fell into the hands of favourites. This is in the last few years of his life. And he fell into the

00:15:12.420 hands of favourites, male and female, who were almost as offensive as the gavistons and dispensers of the

00:15:19.220 previous generation. Edward's reign fell into three well-marked periods. The first, 1330-39,

00:15:25.860 is that of his Scottish wars. The second, 1339-60, i.e. the vast majority of his reign really,

00:15:32.980 is that in which he began the famous and unhappy Hundred Years' War with France, and himself conducted

00:15:39.060 it up to the brilliant but unwise piece of Bretigny. The third, 1360-77, was of his declining years,

00:15:47.620 in a time of trouble and misgovernment gradually increasing till Edward sank,

00:15:52.580 unregretted, into his grave." So there's this idea of the old king, the problem of the old king.

00:16:00.180 If a king rules for too long, or rather just lives too long, his own children, they grow up and become

00:16:08.100 middle-aged themselves. And if you've got lots and lots of sons, they're totally old enough to start

00:16:13.380 squabbling and warring amongst themselves. You may even have a mass of grandchildren who are old

00:16:19.540 enough to get involved in politics and fighting and war. And it just brings problems in Middle Ages 0.93

00:16:25.860 or ancient times, where there's hereditary monarchies. If you've got a very, very old king

00:16:30.500 with a bunch of children, which Edward has loads of children, quite a few boys who themselves have

00:16:36.180 loads of children, it can cause dynastic problems. But once again, we'll get to that in due course.

00:16:41.540 So continuing the narrative about the wars, the interminable wars with the Scots, we're told,

00:16:47.460 quote, Robert Bruce, the terror of the English, had died in 1329, leaving his throne to his son,

00:16:53.700 David II, a child of five years, five years old. The government fell into the hands of regents,

00:17:00.020 who ill supplied the place of the dead king, and their weakness tempted the survivors of the English

00:17:05.380 party in Scotland to strike a blow. Edward Balliol, the son of the long-dead John Balliol,

00:17:11.300 accordingly made secret offers to Edward III that he would do homage to him for the Scottish crown

00:17:17.220 and reign as his vassal. So the idea of Scotland becoming a vassal of the English crown again is back

00:17:23.940 on the table. And the old rivalry between the Bruce's and the Balliol's going back to the age of

00:17:31.780 Edward Longshanks again, it's sort of all happening again, a whole new tranche, a whole new generation of

00:17:36.660 them, but it's the same thing over again. With Edward's connivance, the young Balliol gathered

00:17:42.820 together the earls of Buchan and Athol and many other Scottish refugees in England and took ship

00:17:48.740 to Scotland. He landed in Fife, was joined by his secret friends, beat the regent, the Earl of Mar,

00:17:55.620 and seized the greater part of Scotland. He was crowned at Scone and forced the young David Bruce to flee

00:18:01.620 overseas to France to save his life. Of course, the French, the old alliance, the French always would 0.99

00:18:08.100 help out the Scottish. They've got, of course, they've got a common enemy, the English. So annoying

00:18:12.980 from the English point of view that the Scots and the French will team up and help each other out

00:18:17.220 wherever possible. Well, in the age of Edward III, that is put to bed for a while. I'll let Oman continue 1.00

00:18:23.700 here saying, but soon the National Party of Scotland, he's talking about, rose against Balliol, expelled

00:18:29.540 him and chased him back to England. Edward then took the field in his favour and met the Scots at

00:18:36.100 Hallidon Hill near Berwick. This battle of Hallidon Hill is massive. It's bigger than, more important

00:18:41.940 than Bannockburn. It's the most important battle between the Scots and the English, I would say,

00:18:46.820 for a good generation. So this is a big one. It's not often known, it's not often talked about,

00:18:51.860 rather, but it's a very decisive battle. I mean, it's kind of up there with Cressy or Aginc or,

00:18:57.940 you know, very, very important one and not often talked about. Here at Hallidon Hill,

00:19:03.620 he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, which the English celebrated as a fair revenge for the blow 0.98

00:19:09.700 of Bannockburn. For the regent, Archibald Douglas, four earls and many thousand men were left on the

00:19:16.100 field, left dead, that is. They fell mainly by the arrows of the English archery,

00:19:21.140 for, having drawn themselves out on a hillside behind a marsh, they stood as a broad target for

00:19:27.060 the bowmen, whom they were unable to reach. The intervening marshy ground prevented their heavy

00:19:32.340 columns of pikemen from advancing, and they were routed without even the chance of coming to hand 1.00

00:19:37.780 strokes. That was in July 1333. So there you can see this idea that the English bowmen, a lot of them

00:19:45.140 Welsh, were able to just rain down arrows on their enemy, usually from a bit of higher ground, 0.82

00:19:51.220 a hill or a crest, and that that was devastating. Well, this Hallidon Hill is one of the first

00:19:56.580 examples of it, and it shan't be the last. For quite a few generations now, the English used exactly

00:20:03.540 that tactic to beat armies way bigger than them again and again and again in France and all over

00:20:10.180 the place. And it seems that their enemies, the enemies of the English, don't really learn the lesson.

00:20:14.500 It takes them a long time to learn the lesson that the English longbow is sort of the most fearsome

00:20:20.340 ranged weapon of the age by far. It's so much more powerful than any sort of crossbow or any other

00:20:26.020 designs of bow. So yeah, it's first really shown at Hallidon Hill, or it'd been done before Hallidon

00:20:30.740 Hill, but this is the first really, really famous example of it. And Edward III is completely in

00:20:36.420 control. He's the, you know, he's the undisputed king now, and he gets a reputation after this for

00:20:42.260 being, starts to get the reputation for being a great military commander, because it was so decisive.

00:20:48.820 And he only keeps burnishing and polishing that reputation as the years go on. We're told, quote,

00:20:54.580 this victory made Edward Balliol king of Scotland for a second time. He did homage to his champion,

00:21:00.340 Edward III, and ceded to him Tweeddale and Harthlovian. But the crown won by English help

00:21:07.220 sat uneasy on Balliol's brow. After several years of spasmodic fighting, he was finally driven out of

00:21:13.460 his realm and took refuge again in England. This time he found less help, for Edward III was now plunged

00:21:20.340 deep into schemes of another kind, because basically Hallidon Hill was so decisive that

00:21:25.860 the Scottish question had been answered for a while from the English point of view. So now Edward can

00:21:32.500 turn his attention to affairs on the continent, or in France, basically, which he does. And, you know,

00:21:39.380 it isn't really settled finally, one way or another, during his life, even though he's got many decades

00:21:45.140 left to rule. We're told this. Nine years of comparative quiet had done much to recover

00:21:50.420 England from the misery it had known in the last reign. The baronage and people were serving the

00:21:55.780 young king loyally, taxation had not yet been heavy, and the success of Hallidon Hill had restored the

00:22:02.100 nation's self-respect. Edward himself was flushed by victory and burning for fresh adventures. Hence it

00:22:08.900 came that, neglecting the nearer but less showy task of restoring the English suzerainty over Scotland,

00:22:15.060 he turned to wars over sea. One of the usual frontier quarrels between French and Gasconnes

00:22:20.980 had broken out in 1337 on the borders of Aquitaine. In consequence, Philip VI of France had, like so many

00:22:29.060 of his predecessors, taken measures to support Edward's Scottish enemies, the Old Alliance, and given shelter

00:22:35.860 to the exiled boy king, David Bruce. War between England and France was probably inevitable, but

00:22:41.940 Edward chose to make it a life and death struggle by laying claim to the throne of France and branding

00:22:48.340 Charles VI as a usurper. So, as again, Charles Oman doesn't go into a fantastic amount of details, but

00:22:54.420 that area of Gascony and Aquitaine in central southern France, modern-day France, they'd been fighting on and

00:23:01.540 off between those people, the native Gasconnes and the king, the king of France, on and off, sort of

00:23:07.940 kind of always, it would always been a bit of an issue. Now, it's a power struggle, a real power

00:23:12.500 struggle, but Edward III uses, uses that situation to, as a case of Bella, to go to war. It's not like

00:23:20.260 suddenly a Philip VI was suddenly much, much more aggressive and bellicose and Edward III is just

00:23:26.260 reacting to it. No, not really. You could choose to take offence at something, you know. You can choose

00:23:31.300 to turn a blind eye, or not, for political reasons. And anyway, Edward, the young Edward III decides

00:23:37.620 that enough is enough, and he's going to go the whole hog. Like Omar says, make it a matter of

00:23:45.140 life and death. Edward III basically says, I've had enough of this. I just don't recognise

00:23:51.300 your claim to the throne of France, because there had been quite a lot of succession problems with

00:23:58.500 France, the Kingdom of France. You could make the argument, if you wanted to, that the current king

00:24:04.020 was not necessarily the legitimate king. I mean, it's a bit of a dodgy, shaky argument to be made,

00:24:09.140 but there is one there. And Edward III says, going back generations, that if anything, somebody else

00:24:16.660 should take the throne, this Philip is a usurper. Why not me, i.e. Edward III? Because he was descended

00:24:23.220 in a slightly less direct way to the French throne himself. Like his mother was Isabella of France,

00:24:29.540 for example. So, a princess of France. So, technically, Edward doesn't have the greatest

00:24:34.980 claim, but there is a claim. And anyway, it's more about realpolitik than strict family trees.

00:24:41.380 So, okay, this is what kicks off the Hundred Years' War. Oman tells us about it, saying, quote,

00:24:45.860 The question of the French succession dates from some years back. In 1328, died Edward's uncle,

00:24:52.580 King Charles IV, the last of the direct male descendants of Philip IV. The problem that cropped

00:24:58.660 up for the first time, whether the French crown should descend to females, or whether the next male

00:25:04.020 heir should be chosen, although he was but the cousin of the late king. So, there you go,

00:25:08.420 Edward III was cousin of the old king, but through a woman, i.e. his mother. Which is a pretty damn 0.72

00:25:16.020 good claim, but there's a better claim out there, right? But there you go. Professor Sir Charles Oman

00:25:21.380 goes on to say exactly that. The peers of France are judged that by the Salic Law, an old custom

00:25:27.540 ascribed to the ancient Franks, only male descent counted in tracing claims to the throne. Accordingly,

00:25:34.180 they are judged the kingdom to Philip of Valois, who was crowned as Philip VI. Edward, as own nephew

00:25:41.380 through his mother to Charles IV, had protested at the time, but he had practically withdrawn his protest

00:25:48.020 by doing homage to Philip for the Duchy of Aquitaine, and thereby acknowledging the justice of the award.

00:25:54.260 There you can see it's about power dynamics and realpolitik there, rather than true right. Edward

00:26:00.820 had already accepted this Philip as king of France, but now the political and military situation was

00:26:05.860 sort of in his favour, so he's going to go back on that, basically. Now, in 1337, Edward began to

00:26:12.100 think of reviving his dormant pretensions to the French crown, though they had two fatal defects.

00:26:18.340 The first, that there had never been any precedent in France for a claim through the female line.

00:26:24.180 The second was that, even if such dissents could be counted, one of his mother's brothers had left

00:26:30.180 a daughter, the Queen of Nevers, and the son of that princess had a better female claim than Edward

00:26:35.780 himself. The only way in which this defect could be ignored was by pleading, like Bruce in 1292,

00:26:42.900 that England was a generation nearer to the old royal stock than his cousin, Charles, King of Nevers.

00:26:48.660 On this rather futile plea, Edward laid solemn claim to the French crown, and declared Philip of Valois

00:26:55.060 a usurper. Perhaps there may be truth in the story which tells that he did not do so from any strong

00:27:00.900 belief in his own theory, but because the Flemings, vassals to the French crown, had declared that they

00:27:07.300 could not aid him, though willing to do so, on account of oaths of fealty swung to the King of

00:27:13.380 France. So the Flemings, the people from the Low Countries, modern-day Belgium and Southern Holland

00:27:18.660 and stuff, getting involved, they actually play a fairly big part politically in all of this, though

00:27:23.780 Oman doesn't talk about them at great length, but they are a key element in it all. Bear that in mind.

00:27:29.620 If Edward claimed to be King himself, they said, their allegiance and help would be due to him. So

00:27:35.540 hey, without their help, he might not have done this, but they said they would help him, and therefore

00:27:40.180 the whole adventure looks much more likely to succeed, and therefore gets green-lit. Therefore,

00:27:46.340 Edward does actually pull the trigger on it. It may well have been the Flemings' help which decided that

00:27:52.260 decision. Whether the tale be true or not, he at any rate made the claim. In reliance on the assistance of

00:27:58.260 the Flemings and of their neighbours, the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Holland, and with the

00:28:03.700 countenance of the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, that's the Holy Roman Emperor, King Edward determined

00:28:09.780 to land in the Low Countries and attack France from the north. He called out great bodies of soldiery

00:28:15.540 and took advantage of the devotion that the nation felt for him to raise illegal taxes for their pay.

00:28:22.420 Violating his grandfather's engagements, he took a tallage – a tax – from the towns and levied a

00:28:29.300 maltot, an extra custom duty, on the export of wool. In the excitement of the moment,

00:28:34.900 little opposition was made to these high-handed measures. One thing to note is that Parliament

00:28:40.340 is still very much in its early days at this point, still in the first half of the 14th century.

00:28:47.940 Parliament hasn't got the power that it will have in a couple of hundred years' time, where it can

00:28:52.260 sort of force the King to make concessions. I mean, it can to some extent, but not massively.

00:28:58.180 And in this period, as Oman just told us, public opinion was just with him, which counts for a 0.93

00:29:04.260 great deal, or it counts for everything really, in this period. Oman goes on,

00:29:08.180 But Edward's campaign against France proved utterly unsuccessful. His Netherland allies were of 0.77

00:29:14.180 little use to him. King Philip refused to risk a battle in the field, and an attack on Cambrai was

00:29:20.180 defeated. One of the main things there is that the King of France, Philip, refused battle. So that's a

00:29:26.340 big thing when you really need a set-piece battle in order for any sort of decisive victory. If the

00:29:31.700 enemy just refused to do that, then you're in a bit of a sticky situation. I mean, you can maybe claim

00:29:37.540 the moral high ground, or claim that your enemy is a coward or something, but if you haven't defeated

00:29:42.660 his armies, because he refuses to let you do so, then you haven't defeated his armies, right? Kind of

00:29:48.820 as simple as that. Edward had to return to England to raise more money, while at home he heard that a

00:29:54.580 great French fleet had been collected for the conquest of Flanders, and a subsequent attack on

00:29:59.940 England. The Royal Navy, there was a very, very minimal Royal Navy at this point. Of course, in

00:30:05.780 centuries to come, the Royal Navy is famous for being gigantic and all-powerful, so not that long

00:30:11.700 ago in the scheme of things, that any sort of navy was put together. So we have got a Royal Navy,

00:30:17.220 but it's far from completely dominant or ruling the waves in any real sense. It's not until Henry VIII,

00:30:23.220 or, well, Elizabeth really, that all that starts to get dialed up in earnest, which is a long way

00:30:30.100 off still. Hastily raising all the ships he could gather from London and the kink ports, the king set 1.00

00:30:35.780 sail to seek the enemy. He found them in harbour at the Flemish port of Sloys. I may be pronouncing

00:30:42.420 that wrong. It's spelled S-L-U-Y-S, and I've seen many, many people pronounce that word in many,

00:30:48.740 many, many different ways. If there's anyone from Belgium or Holland who wants to correct me on

00:30:53.700 exactly how that's pronounced, but I think it's Sloys, okay? It's the battle of Sloys. And there

00:30:59.940 brought them to action, i.e. a big naval engagement. If you would like to see the full version of this

00:31:04.340 premium video, please head over to lotuseaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of our

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - February 07, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #197 ｜ Edward III

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