On 25 January 1327, following the deposition/abdication of
Edward II by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, Edward of Windsor
as heir to the throne was crowned Edward III, king of England. The removal of
Edward II from his kingly office is often highlighted as a watershed moment for
the institution of monarchy; the deposition of 1326-7 formed a precedent that haunted
kingship and that eased the events of 1399, and ultimately of the Wars of the
Roses. The great literature on the questionable authority for Edward II’s
removal, the place of parliament in this and whether or not the deposition was
unconstitutional need not be rehearsed here as the most basic understanding of its
impact are generally agreed. Essentially, kingship was much less sacred in 1328
than it had been in 1325. The monarchy had been greatly weakened. Accounts of
Edward’s personal reign, starting from 1330 when he forcibly took power from
Mortimer and Isabella, are unanimous in taking as their starting point the
damaged position of the monarchy.[1]
Edward’s reign, particularly the period up to 1341, is portrayed as being
dominated by the overwhelming need to rebuild the prestige of the monarchy
after the damage wrought to it by the removal of Edward II. One of the most
prominent threads in the historiography of the reign is that Edward managed to
rehabilitate the relationship between the monarchy and the higher nobility, who
had been instrumental in the overthrow of Edward II, either by conceding royal
rights and instead fostering bonds of chivalry, or by appeasing the troublesome
barons with a judicious distribution of patronage. Whatever the explanation of
the success between Edward and his nobles, the essential paradigm of Edward’s
need to re-establish the reputation of the crown has remained the same.
It would be extremely difficult - not to mention historically
spurious - to deny the importance of the deposition of Edward II as a precedent
for future action that could be used by parties that found themselves in
opposition to the crown. However, it may be worth considering the events of
1327 and their impact on the crown in a different light, if only to postulate a
different aspect of thought in a generally unanimous debate. The monarchy was,
of course, of unparalleled importance in the polity. It was this importance
that forced the community into deposing inadequate kings, since the office of
the crown was simply too important to be held by the actively bad (Edward II,
Richard II) or, indeed, the simply inactive (Henry VI). The deposition of
Edward II confirmed the fundamental centrality of kingship to the political structure
developing in England. By deposing the king and accelerating the succession of
Edward III the community of the realm confirmed that the strong, centralised
kingship that had developed in the thirteenth century, particularly in the
reign of Edward I, was the best way of guaranteeing the prosperity of the body
politic.[2]
There was no suggestion of, for example, a baronial council controlling a
puppet Edward II, or of the great magnates attempting to disengage from the
monarchy and retreat into a system akin to that of the semi-autonomous fiefs in
the localities that characterised the French polity. Instead, the deposition
and its necessity paradoxically placed the community of realm even more firmly under
the ultimate authority of the king, namely Edward III, by emphasising in the
most dramatic way possible the central importance of the crown to good
governance. Perhaps, then, while acknowledging the importance of the deposition
as a precedent, we may see the situation in 1330 as one where Edward faced a
great responsibility and huge expectations precisely because the importance of
kingship had been demonstrated so startlingly in the previous reign. Rather
than looking for reasons for Edward’s success in securing such ardent service
from a disenchanted baronage, we can see the events of 1327 as proof that the
great magnates needed Edward III as much as he needed them.
[1] For
example, J. Bothwell, Edward III and the
English Peerage: Royal Patronage, Social Mobility and Political Control in
Fourteenth-Century England (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 4; W.M. Ormrod, Edward III (London, 2011), p. 97; C. Valente,
‘The Deposition and Abdication of Edward II’, English Historical Review, 113 (1998), pp. 852; C. Shenton, ‘The
English Court and the Restoration of Royal Prestige, 1327-1345’ (University of
Oxford unpublished DPhil thesis, 1995), pp. 7-9; to a lesser extent C. Carpenter,
The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the
Constitution, c. 1437-1509 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 40.
[2]
John Watts has made a similar point, to which this short piece owes a great
deal, concerning the primacy of royal legislation. See J. Watts, The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300-1500
(Cambridge, 2009), p. 219.
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