Edward II cruelly removed Isabella's children from her in 1324
A theory which fits nicely into the currently oh-so-trendy 'Isabella of France was the tragic abused victim of her cruel nasty gay husband and his cruel nasty male favourites' theme by playing into modern notions of motherhood rather than medieval royal ones: a frequent charge against Edward II which appears in numerous works of modern fiction and non-fiction is that he nastily and cruelly 'stole' their three younger children John of Eltham, Eleanor of Woodstock and Joan of the Tower from Isabella in September 1324. John of Eltham, born in August 1316 and thus eight in the autumn of 1324, passed into the care of Edward II's niece Eleanor (nee de Clare) Despenser - John's first cousin - while Edward and Isabella's daughters Eleanor of Woodstock (aged six) and Joan of the Tower (aged three) went to live with Isabel, Lady Hastings and her third husband Ralph de Monthermer.
An obvious question to ask is: do we actually know that the three younger royal children were even living with Isabella in 1324? The sole evidence that they were is Edward II's grant of the Derbyshire manor of High Peak to Isabella on 1 May 1320: "Grant, during pleasure, to queen Isabella of the castle and honour of High Peak...to hold in aid of the expenses of John, the king's son, and Eleanor his sister, the king's daughter." [Calendar of Patent Rolls 1317-1321, p. 453]
From this one entry more than four years prior to Edward's establishment of separate households for the three children - which was made before the July 1321 birth of Joan of the Tower, for whom there is no evidence that she was living with her mother - some modern writers have constructed a theory that Edward deliberately 'stole' their children from his wife and never allowed her to see them again. But if Isabella thought that Edward and his favourite Hugh Despenser had cruelly taken her children away from her in 1324, why didn't she accuse Despenser of it at his trial in November 1326? She accused him of everything else as you can read in this post: persuading the king to reduce her income, sending her to France 'against the dignity of her estate', coming between herself and her husband. Her children were not mentioned. Neither did Isabella claim at any other time that her husband and his favourite had deprived her of her children.
If her children were taken from her and she suffered as much as modern writers claim she did, why did she never mention it? Why did the pope never mention it? Why did her brother King Charles IV of France never mention it? Why did no single fourteenth-century chronicler, several of whom wrote indignantly about the reduction of her income, mention that Edward 'stole' or 'cruelly removed' her children from her? Why is there absolutely no source to suggest that anyone believed that Edward, in setting up separate households for his younger children, had done anything out of the ordinary at all? The story doesn't appear even in sources hostile to Edward II, such as the Flores Historiarum, or continental writers such as Jean Froissart who thought that Isabella fled from England because Edward persecuted her. Funny that, isn't it?
Are we supposed to believe that Queen Isabella was the full-time primary carer of the three children, as the 'Oh woe, Edward stole them from her!' theory assumes? The grant to the queen of one manor for the expenses of John and Eleanor in 1320 seems a remarkably thin basis for this conclusion, and the three children were in fact in the care of nurses prior to 1324: Matilda de Perie in the case of John of Eltham and Joan of the Tower, Joan du Bois in the case of Eleanor of Woodstock. [Calendar of Patent Rolls 1327-1330, p. 163.] Edward II had previously granted the manor of High Peak to John of Eltham and Eleanor of Woodstock themselves, not their mother. [Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, p. 336.]
We may assume that Isabella of France loved her children, and that Edward II did too, but given that almost no records of their childhood survive, we have no way of knowing what kind of relationship either parent had with John, Eleanor and Joan in their early years or how often they saw them. Although younger royal children – not the king’s heir – may formally have been in the queen’s custody and travelled around in her household, they were frequently placed in the care of another person at a royal residence, for example Windsor, and their domestic needs were often financed by the king or their brother, the future king. In 1319, Edward of Windsor, the future King Edward III, was responsible for the expenses of his siblings John and Eleanor, and they lived in his household that year, in the care of their nurses.
As for the people Edward selected as the guardians of his and Isabella's children, Eleanor Despenser was the wife of Edward's favourite Hugh, but she was also the king's eldest niece, John of Eltham's first cousin and one of the highest-ranking noblewomen in the country. Isabel Hastings was Hugh Despenser’s sister, but evidently a trustworthy, maternal type: when Edward II’s niece Elizabeth (Eleanor Despenser's sister) attended his funeral in December 1327, she left her two young daughters in Isabel’s care, despite her loathing of Isabel’s brother Despenser, who had treated her appallingly. [Frances Underhill, For Her Good Estate, pp.40-41.] Isabel's husband Ralph de Monthermer was the widower of Edward II’s sister Joan of Acre, whom he had married in early 1297 when the king was twelve, and thus had a claim to being the girls’ uncle.
The Lanercost and Flores chronicles say that Edward and Hugh Despenser appointed Despenser’s wife Eleanor as a kind of guardian over Isabella in 1324, charged with spying on her, carrying her seal and monitoring her correspondence. Yet Eleanor was in charge of John of Eltham’s household. How she managed to guard Isabella so that she had no privacy, yet look after John of Eltham away from the queen so that she never saw her son – given the usual assumption that Edward nastily stole her children from her and never allowed her to see them – has never been explained.
The establishment of separate households does not mean that Isabella never saw her children again, and granting custody of young royals to noblewomen was entirely normal: in the summer of 1340, Edward III set up a household for his children Isabella, Joan, Lionel and John, aged eight, six, twenty months and four months, under the care of Lady de la Mote. Joan had previously been in the care of the dowager countess of Pembroke. Edward II and Queen Isabella’s elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock was in the custody of her sister-in-law Queen Philippa in 1331. Queen Isabella at that time was under temporary house arrest after the execution of her favourite Roger Mortimer, and Edward III’s accounts record that he paid a physician to attend her, yet no-one reproaches the young king for 'cruelly removing' Isabella’s daughter from her at a time when she was ill and grieving. Edward III did not allow his mother to accompany his sister Eleanor to the Low Countries when Eleanor married the count of Gelderland in 1332; does anyone ever accuse him of cruelty towards Isabella for this reason? Do they heck.
Edward II's establishment of separate households for his younger children is too often used nowadays, in a world with very different cultural norms, as a stick to bash him for his ‘cruelty’ towards his wife. However, Edward, not Isabella, was the legal guardian of their children, and harsh though it may seem from a modern perspective, women had little official say in where their children lived, how they were educated or who they married. It was Edward II, not Isabella, who began to arrange marriage alliances for their children in the late 1310s and early 1320s. After Piers Gaveston’s death, Edward became the guardian of Piers' daughter Joan, not her mother Margaret, and to give one more example of hundreds, when the grandfather of the great heiress Juliana Leyburne died in 1310, she became the ward of the earl of Pembroke, who subsequently arranged her marriage to his nephew John Hastings. Juliana’s mother Alice de Toeni, Margaret de Clare Gaveston and Isabella understood all this perfectly well; these were the norms of the world they lived in.
Whatever modern writers may like to think, Isabella of France wasn't parachuted into the Middle Ages from the twentieth or twenty-first century with modern attitudes towards motherhood. Is it too much hope that writers might remember that the fourteenth century had very different cultural and familial norms to our own era? When it comes to bashing Edward II for alleged cruel and unusual behaviour and writing as though Isabella of France was the Great Earth Mother, yes, unfortunately, it probably is.
A theory which fits nicely into the currently oh-so-trendy 'Isabella of France was the tragic abused victim of her cruel nasty gay husband and his cruel nasty male favourites' theme by playing into modern notions of motherhood rather than medieval royal ones: a frequent charge against Edward II which appears in numerous works of modern fiction and non-fiction is that he nastily and cruelly 'stole' their three younger children John of Eltham, Eleanor of Woodstock and Joan of the Tower from Isabella in September 1324. John of Eltham, born in August 1316 and thus eight in the autumn of 1324, passed into the care of Edward II's niece Eleanor (nee de Clare) Despenser - John's first cousin - while Edward and Isabella's daughters Eleanor of Woodstock (aged six) and Joan of the Tower (aged three) went to live with Isabel, Lady Hastings and her third husband Ralph de Monthermer.
An obvious question to ask is: do we actually know that the three younger royal children were even living with Isabella in 1324? The sole evidence that they were is Edward II's grant of the Derbyshire manor of High Peak to Isabella on 1 May 1320: "Grant, during pleasure, to queen Isabella of the castle and honour of High Peak...to hold in aid of the expenses of John, the king's son, and Eleanor his sister, the king's daughter." [Calendar of Patent Rolls 1317-1321, p. 453]
From this one entry more than four years prior to Edward's establishment of separate households for the three children - which was made before the July 1321 birth of Joan of the Tower, for whom there is no evidence that she was living with her mother - some modern writers have constructed a theory that Edward deliberately 'stole' their children from his wife and never allowed her to see them again. But if Isabella thought that Edward and his favourite Hugh Despenser had cruelly taken her children away from her in 1324, why didn't she accuse Despenser of it at his trial in November 1326? She accused him of everything else as you can read in this post: persuading the king to reduce her income, sending her to France 'against the dignity of her estate', coming between herself and her husband. Her children were not mentioned. Neither did Isabella claim at any other time that her husband and his favourite had deprived her of her children.
If her children were taken from her and she suffered as much as modern writers claim she did, why did she never mention it? Why did the pope never mention it? Why did her brother King Charles IV of France never mention it? Why did no single fourteenth-century chronicler, several of whom wrote indignantly about the reduction of her income, mention that Edward 'stole' or 'cruelly removed' her children from her? Why is there absolutely no source to suggest that anyone believed that Edward, in setting up separate households for his younger children, had done anything out of the ordinary at all? The story doesn't appear even in sources hostile to Edward II, such as the Flores Historiarum, or continental writers such as Jean Froissart who thought that Isabella fled from England because Edward persecuted her. Funny that, isn't it?
Are we supposed to believe that Queen Isabella was the full-time primary carer of the three children, as the 'Oh woe, Edward stole them from her!' theory assumes? The grant to the queen of one manor for the expenses of John and Eleanor in 1320 seems a remarkably thin basis for this conclusion, and the three children were in fact in the care of nurses prior to 1324: Matilda de Perie in the case of John of Eltham and Joan of the Tower, Joan du Bois in the case of Eleanor of Woodstock. [Calendar of Patent Rolls 1327-1330, p. 163.] Edward II had previously granted the manor of High Peak to John of Eltham and Eleanor of Woodstock themselves, not their mother. [Cal Pat Rolls 1317-1321, p. 336.]
We may assume that Isabella of France loved her children, and that Edward II did too, but given that almost no records of their childhood survive, we have no way of knowing what kind of relationship either parent had with John, Eleanor and Joan in their early years or how often they saw them. Although younger royal children – not the king’s heir – may formally have been in the queen’s custody and travelled around in her household, they were frequently placed in the care of another person at a royal residence, for example Windsor, and their domestic needs were often financed by the king or their brother, the future king. In 1319, Edward of Windsor, the future King Edward III, was responsible for the expenses of his siblings John and Eleanor, and they lived in his household that year, in the care of their nurses.
As for the people Edward selected as the guardians of his and Isabella's children, Eleanor Despenser was the wife of Edward's favourite Hugh, but she was also the king's eldest niece, John of Eltham's first cousin and one of the highest-ranking noblewomen in the country. Isabel Hastings was Hugh Despenser’s sister, but evidently a trustworthy, maternal type: when Edward II’s niece Elizabeth (Eleanor Despenser's sister) attended his funeral in December 1327, she left her two young daughters in Isabel’s care, despite her loathing of Isabel’s brother Despenser, who had treated her appallingly. [Frances Underhill, For Her Good Estate, pp.40-41.] Isabel's husband Ralph de Monthermer was the widower of Edward II’s sister Joan of Acre, whom he had married in early 1297 when the king was twelve, and thus had a claim to being the girls’ uncle.
The Lanercost and Flores chronicles say that Edward and Hugh Despenser appointed Despenser’s wife Eleanor as a kind of guardian over Isabella in 1324, charged with spying on her, carrying her seal and monitoring her correspondence. Yet Eleanor was in charge of John of Eltham’s household. How she managed to guard Isabella so that she had no privacy, yet look after John of Eltham away from the queen so that she never saw her son – given the usual assumption that Edward nastily stole her children from her and never allowed her to see them – has never been explained.
The establishment of separate households does not mean that Isabella never saw her children again, and granting custody of young royals to noblewomen was entirely normal: in the summer of 1340, Edward III set up a household for his children Isabella, Joan, Lionel and John, aged eight, six, twenty months and four months, under the care of Lady de la Mote. Joan had previously been in the care of the dowager countess of Pembroke. Edward II and Queen Isabella’s elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock was in the custody of her sister-in-law Queen Philippa in 1331. Queen Isabella at that time was under temporary house arrest after the execution of her favourite Roger Mortimer, and Edward III’s accounts record that he paid a physician to attend her, yet no-one reproaches the young king for 'cruelly removing' Isabella’s daughter from her at a time when she was ill and grieving. Edward III did not allow his mother to accompany his sister Eleanor to the Low Countries when Eleanor married the count of Gelderland in 1332; does anyone ever accuse him of cruelty towards Isabella for this reason? Do they heck.
Edward II's establishment of separate households for his younger children is too often used nowadays, in a world with very different cultural norms, as a stick to bash him for his ‘cruelty’ towards his wife. However, Edward, not Isabella, was the legal guardian of their children, and harsh though it may seem from a modern perspective, women had little official say in where their children lived, how they were educated or who they married. It was Edward II, not Isabella, who began to arrange marriage alliances for their children in the late 1310s and early 1320s. After Piers Gaveston’s death, Edward became the guardian of Piers' daughter Joan, not her mother Margaret, and to give one more example of hundreds, when the grandfather of the great heiress Juliana Leyburne died in 1310, she became the ward of the earl of Pembroke, who subsequently arranged her marriage to his nephew John Hastings. Juliana’s mother Alice de Toeni, Margaret de Clare Gaveston and Isabella understood all this perfectly well; these were the norms of the world they lived in.
Whatever modern writers may like to think, Isabella of France wasn't parachuted into the Middle Ages from the twentieth or twenty-first century with modern attitudes towards motherhood. Is it too much hope that writers might remember that the fourteenth century had very different cultural and familial norms to our own era? When it comes to bashing Edward II for alleged cruel and unusual behaviour and writing as though Isabella of France was the Great Earth Mother, yes, unfortunately, it probably is.
Kathryn Warner Oct 2009