Michael Jecks gave up a career in the computer industry to concentrate on writing and the study of medieval history. A regular speaker at library and literary events, he is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association. He lives with his wife, children and dogs on northern Dartmoor.
Also by Michael Jecks
The Last Templar
The Merchant’s Partner
A Moorland Hanging
The Crediton Killings
The Abbot’s Gibbet
The Leper’s Return
Squire Throwleigh’s Heir
Belladonna at Belstone
The Traitor of St Giles
The Boy Bishop’s Glovemaker
The Tournament of Blood
The Sticklepath Strangler
The Devil’s Acolyte
The Mad Monk of Gidleigh
The Templar’s Penance
The Outlaws of Ennor
The Tolls of Death
The Chapel of Bones
The Butcher of St Peter’s
A Friar’s Bloodfeud
The Death Ship of Dartmouth
The Malice of Unnatural Death
Dispensation of Death
The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover
The Prophecy of Death
The King of Thieves
The Bishop Must Die
The Oath
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011
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Copyright © Michael Jecks, 2011
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Hardback ISBN 978-1-84737-902-3
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either
a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Glossary
Cast of Characters
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
GLOSSARY
Abjure
felons who claimed sanctuary in a church were sometimes offered the chance to abjure the realm i.e. accepting voluntary exile in preference to being executed. They must confess to their crime, after which their property was all forfeit, even if subsequently they were pardoned or shown to be innocent.
Alaunt
a ferocious hunting dog, built like a greyhound but much larger.
Black bread
the bread of poorer folk, used especially for making trenchers, was made from flour which was not so carefully sieved and prepared as white flour.
Braies
underclothes consisting of linen or loose woollen material that was full in the bottom and reached sometimes to the calves. The waist was often curled over and over to form a sort of belt, sometimes with strings to tie it up.
Fuller
a channel running along the length of a sword blade, sometimes called a ‘blood gutter’, it was intended to reduce the weight of the blade without weakening it.
Half-staff
a staff held with hands apart over the middle so that roughly half the staff was between the hands. As a weapon, it could be used to jab with either end, or to block another fighter’s weapon with the mass of the centre.
Host
in medieval England the King could call on men of a certain age to serve in his levy. The word army came from armée, a French term that would not come into common use in English until the Hundred Years War.
Kennel
central gulley or gutter in a medieval street.
Lampreys
a primitive, eel-like fish that was prized as a delicacy in medieval times. Henry I was said to have died from ‘a surfeit of lampreys’.
Maslin
mixture of rye and wheat, used for breadmaking.
Niddicock
fool, idiot.
Pandemaigne
special, creamy white bread made with the highest grade of flour, from which much of the bran (but not wheatgerm) had been removed by sieving through cloth.
Peine Forte et Dure
torture in England was illegal before the 1300s, but if an accused man refused to plead, he could be forced to lie on the floor, shackled to rings, and to have weights set upon his chest until he complied. Many died, unable to breathe (another ‘natural’ death for a prisoner).
Perry
drink made from fermenting pears – similar to cider, but sweeter.
Quarter-staff
(see Half-staff) the manner of holding a staff with one quarter of the stave between the hands, both hands nearer one tip, leaving three-quarters of the weapon pointing at the enemy like a lance.
Rache
a running dog, like a greyhound but smaller than an Alaunt.
Rifflers
bands of men who looted and robbed at will when King Edward II left London.
Rounsey
general purpose horse of a good size, used by men-at-arms for a warhorse, or a packhorse.
Scavengers
workers who cleansed a town’s streets of faeces and rubbish.
Sumpter
a baggage horse.
Verderer
the official responsible for the law in the King’s forest.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Sir Baldwin de Furnshill
Keeper of the King’s Peace, known for his astute investigation of crimes.
Jeanne de Furnshill
wife to Sir Baldwin.
Edgar
Baldwin’s servant and chief man-at-arms.
Simon Puttock
Once a bailiff on Dartmoor, now a local farmer and freeman, Simon has been associated with the new government because of his hatred of the Despenser regime.
Margaret Puttock
‘Meg’ is Simon’s wife.
Edith
Simon and Meg’s daughter.
Hugh
Simon’s servant.
Sir Richard de Welles
friend to Simon and Baldwin, Coroner to the Hundred of Lifton.
Sir Ralph of Evesham
a knight loyal to the old King.
Willersey
Father Luke
vicar of St Peter’s, Willersey.
Ham
a farmer in Willersey.
Agatha
wife of Ham.
Jen
daughter to Ham and Agatha.
London
Bardi
family of Florentine bankers who helped fund the King of England, based in Florence, but with a house in London.
Manuele di Bardi
the oldest of the brothers and head of the Bardi family in London.
Benedetto di Bardi
second-in-command of the bank.
youngest brother of the family.
Sebastian & Francisco
two merchants from the House of Bardi.
Dolwyn of Guildford
bodyguard; supporter of Edward II.
Alured the Cooper
a law officer.
Camp of Sir Edward of Caernarfon
Sir Edward of Caernarfon
once King Edward II of England, he has been forced to abdicate the realm and pass it on to his son.
John of Shulton
a man-at-arms from the Despenser estates.
Paul of Bircheston
John’s best friend; also a Despenser vassal.
Harry le Cur
one of the men-at-arms who had been besieged at Caerphilly.
Senchet Garcie
another member of the Caerphilly garrison.
Stephen Dunheved
an instigator of the plots to rescue the former King.
Frere Thomas Dunheved
brother of Stephen, and a Dominican Friar, Thomas had been a confidential agent for King Edward II and remained intensely loyal to him.
Brother Michael
a monk at the Augustinian Priory of Llantony-next-Gloucester.
William atte Hull
nephew to Brother Michael.
Sir Edmund Gascelin
ally to the Dunheveds and involved in their plots.
Donald, Earl of Mar
a Scottish earl who was intensely loyal to Sir Edward of Caernarfon and involved in many plots to release him.
Camp of King Edward III
King Edward III
the young son of Edward of Caernarfon, he rules only with the approval and consent of Sir Roger Mortimer, his Regent. Also known as the Duke of Aquitaine.
Sir Roger Mortimer
for many years Sir Roger was King Edward II’s favourite general, but now he is Edward of Caernarfon’s most hated enemy.
Earl Henry of Lancaster
one of the most powerful noblemen in England, who inherited his title when his brother Thomas was executed by Edward II for rebellion.
Sir Jevan de Bromfield
a knight in the service of Henry, Earl of Lancaster at Kenilworth.
Lord Thomas de Berkeley
son-in-law to Sir Roger Mortimer.
Sir John Maltravers
a close friend to Lord Thomas.
Gilbert
chief guard of Edward of Caernarfon.
Squire Bernard
porter at the gate of Kenilworth Castle.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In trying to write a book about the gaoling of Sir Edward of Caernarfon, lately King Edward II of England, I have been forced to study a large number of documents to make sense of the crazy politics of that era.
Scholars have argued about the poor King’s end. The general story, that he was captured, his friend and adviser Sir Hugh le Despenser executed, and the King himself forced to go under guard to Kenilworth, is not disputed. The wretched fellow must have passed a miserable Christmas in 1326, held captive by a man who sought to take the kingdom for himself – Earl Henry of Lancaster – but Edward’s problems went deeper than one aristocratic enemy.
Earl Henry was not alone in desiring power. Sir Roger Mortimer was shrewd, ruthless, and well-connected. It was he who had raised the army that captured King Edward II. Earl Henry schemed and achieved some political success, but Mortimer had the ear of the Queen. Soon he took control and forced the King to abdicate. King Edward II became Sir Edward of Caenarfon.
However, many were determined to see him released . . . which begs the question: why?
After all, this man had presided over a catastrophic period. There had been famine, war and disease, and through it all, King Edward II had sought to maintain and reward only those for whom he had the strongest affection. Others were treated as convenient sources of funding. Many were robbed, seeing their lands, wealth and authority stripped away by a King who sought to pass them to his favourites: first to Sir Piers Gaveston, then to Sir Hugh le Despenser. And these two were not averse to grabbing what they desired – with or without the King’s help.
Yet many did try to rescue the King and return him to his throne. There were three attempts to free him in 1327. Prominent in these plots were the Dunheved brothers and their gang.
I am sure that some who risked their lives to free Sir Edward of Caernarfon were motivated by fealty, by love, and by simple loyalty. Others were acting from a desire for reward: power or money. What is certain is that most of them lost their lives.
This was a particularly brutal time. At the turn of the fourteenth century, King Edward I had been forced to throw aside the usual system of courts, and replace them with a process designed specifically to curb the depredations of a new breed of felon, the ‘trailbastons’ or ‘club–men’. These bands of outlaws would set upon travellers or farmers, killing, raping, looting, and then moving on. The courts of trailbaston were designed to enforce the King’s Peace, as were the Keepers of the King’s Peace – men like Sir Baldwin de Furnshill.
These knights were given warrants to hunt down murderers and other felons, actually chasing them from hundred to hundred, shire to shire. Their job was to to capture criminals, unlike the coroners, who existed mostly as tax-gatherers: coroners went from body to body, noting all salient facts about each corpse on their great scrolls, so that when the Justices arrived up to ten years later, they would be able to see all the facts and impose whatever fines were relevant.
From the look of the writs I have seen, the Dunheved gang had been keeping Keepers busy in recent years. Stephen Dunheved himself had been forced to leave the country in 1321, having abjured the realm (see Glossary). It is interesting to speculate on his crime. Presumably it was murder – but the fact of it did not prevent his brother from acting as confessor to King Edward II. That may seem odd to us now, but the taint of a crime did not adhere to a family name in the 1300s. If it had, there would have been few men qualified to remain in the King’s household.
Noted criminals of the time were routinely found amongst the King’s companions. Sir Gilbert de Middlet
on is one example.
Irritated by the manner in which the King treated his relation, Adam de Swinburne, who was thrown into gaol when he criticised certain of Edward’s policies, Sir Gilbert took Adam’s case into his own hands. But not for him the usual method of presenting his case in court. In preference, he attacked a delegation heading to Scotland to negotiate a peace with those troublesome Scots. The fact that among the men he kidnapped were two papal envoys did not endear him to his King, and he was captured in fairly short order and taken to London in chains before being executed.
Middleton was by no means alone. There was Sir Peter de Lymesey who stole a woman’s lands, and when she tried to take the matter to court, he prevented her by threatening all her witnesses with maiming, burning or death. In 1311 it was said of Sir John de Somery that no one could win justice in Staffordshire due to his control of the area. He was a man of ‘considerable notoriety’1. And not only knights were keen to use their positions in the King’s household for their own advantage. Robert Lewer, ‘an out-and-out thug in household employment’2, was only an archer when he threatened to ‘dismember some sergeants sent to arrest him, either in the presence or the absence of the King’. His violent life came to an end two years later, when he suffered the peine forte et dure (see Glossary) because he refused to plead in court.
This was a time of powerful young men who were certain of their status and their authority. And many had cause to be grateful to the King.
Knights were made Coroners, Sherrifs, Keepers, Justices of Gaol Delivery; they were asked to go to Parliament; some few served in the King’s household among other duties. All these positions gave opportunities for the unscrupulous, and all too often the knights proved themselves perfectly content to make profit. As shown above, they could resort to extreme violence when it suited them.