Hugh le Despenser the Younger
by
Alianore
Hugh was the notorious favourite of Edward II, king of England 1307-1327. He used the king’s infatuation with him to make himself the de facto ruler of England for much of the 1320s, and the richest man in the country, until his execution at Hereford in November 1326.
Nothing in Hugh’s early life gives a hint of his later notoriety. He was born sometime between 1286 and 1290 (by way of comparison, Edward II was born in 1284), the son of Hugh le Despenser the Elder and Isabel, daughter of William Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Although not of the highest rank, Hugh was a nobleman; his grandfather and uncle were earls of Warwick, his paternal grandmother was countess of Norfolk, and his half-sister Maud was married to Henry of Lancaster, the nephew of Edward I and the brother-in-law of Philip IV of France. Edward I himself arranged Hugh’s marriage to Eleanor de Clare (born 1292) in May 1306 – an excellent match for Hugh, as Eleanor was Edward I’s eldest granddaughter.
Hugh’s father was a loyal royal servant all his life, trusted completely by Edward I and often sent on delicate diplomatic missions abroad, and the only man who remained loyal to Edward II for his entire reign. Although Hugh the Younger grew up in the household of the future Edward II, with nine other young noblemen (including Edward’s first great favourite, Piers Gaveston), for the first few years of Edward’s reign he did not support the king, but aligned himself with the baronial opposition. Edward II’s feelings about this are unknown – he may have been angry that the young man who had grown up with him, who was the son of Edward’s greatest ally and supporter and the husband of his favourite niece Eleanor, did not support him, or he may not have cared too much. Hugh was somewhat impoverished, at least by the standards of those surrounding him, and in a society where power was predicated on land, his lack of material property and wealth meant that, politically, he was totally insignificant. Although his prestigious marriage to Eleanor de Clare brought him into the royal family, Eleanor doesn’t seem to have brought him any land, and the king only gave him one property, in 1309. Hugh’s financial difficulties were such that his father had to hand over some of his manors to him in 1310, as Hugh was apparently unable to support his family properly.
It seemed as though Hugh was destined to be a nonentity with no political power, at least until his father died and Hugh inherited the vast Despenser lands in the Midlands and Southern England. However, a totally unexpected event changed his life forever. Eleanor’s twenty-three-year-old brother Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester – eldest nephew of Edward II and one of his biggest supporters – was killed at the catastrophic English defeat at Bannockburn in June 1314. As Gilbert was childless, his heirs were his three sisters, Eleanor, Margaret (widow of Piers Gaveston) and Elizabeth. After years of legal wrangling and a fake pregnancy by Gilbert’s widow, the Clare lands were finally divided in November 1317. As husband of the eldest sister, Hugh got first choice, and chose Glamorgan, the richest part. He and Eleanor inherited other lands in England, Wales and Ireland, and their holdings were increased in 1320 on the death of Gilbert’s widow, when her dower lands were released.
At a stroke, Hugh became an enormous landowner and thereby a man to be reckoned with. A few months after the Clare lands were partitioned, he became Edward’s Chamberlain – an enormously influential position, which put him in constant proximity to the king and gave him the power to control access to Edward. Hugh used this proximity to turn Edward’s former indifference, or even dislike, of him, into infatuation, and misused his power by preventing anyone from seeing the king unless either Hugh or his father was present. He thus gained enormous power over the king, and by extension, the government of England. Edward seems to have been as infatuated with Hugh as he had been with Piers Gaveston, but there was one vital difference between the two men: Gaveston was not interested in political power, but only in the money and prestige that was part of being the king’s favourite. Hugh le Despenser was, however, extremely interested in political power, as well as being inordinately avaricious and utterly unscrupulous. This, coupled with his total domination over the king, made him very dangerous.
Although Hugh had become hugely rich, he was dissatisfied with what he had and sought to increase his landholdings. He took some of the lands of his brothers-in-law Hugh Audley and Roger Damory – the husbands of Eleanor’s sisters Margaret and Elizabeth – and slowly turned most of the English nobility against him. He over-reached himself, however, in late 1320, when he attempted to gain possession of the Gower peninsula. The Marcher Lords of Wales, fearful of Hugh’s influence and his attempts to encroach on their privileges, formed a confederation against him. The result was the ‘Despenser War’, when all the Welsh and English lands of Hugh and his father were invaded, sacked and partially destroyed. The king was forced to agree to the Despensers’ exile; Hugh the Elder went to Bordeaux, but Hugh the Younger became a very successful pirate in the English Channel.
There is evidence that Hugh met the king in Kent, illegally, during his exile; presumably they were planning the downfall of their enemies. Their plotting came to fruition as Edward and his remaining allies carried out an intelligent and highly successful campaign against the Marcher Lords and their allies, which led to the execution of Edward’s cousin and most hated enemy the earl of Lancaster, the execution and imprisonment of many dozens of others, and the recall from exile of both Despensers.
On his return, Hugh le Despenser the Younger became the real ruler of England, a fact which was widely known throughout the country. He misused his power to extort money and especially lands, often from rich widows. One of his victims was his own sister-in-law Elizabeth de Clare, others the countesses of Lancaster and Pembroke. He had several women ‘imprisoned’ until they signed some of their lands over to him. At his trial he was even said to have had a widow, Lady Baret, tortured by having her limbs broken, presumably to gain control over her lands, although there doesn’t seem to be any other evidence for this. He was an extremely efficient administrator, who made Edward II the richest king of England since the Conquest, but was widely hated throughout England for his extortion, ruthlessness and despotism.
Hugh was clearly an extremely able and intelligent man, but his passion for wealth dominated him, and he misused his talents. After 1322, almost all of the opposition to himself and Edward was either dead, in prison or in exile, but within a couple of years his tyranny and despotism created a new opposition.
Hugh made the fatal error of under-estimating Edward’s wife, Queen Isabella. She was the daughter of Philip IV of France, and had married Edward in 1308 and borne him four children. Hugh used his influence over Edward and as Chamberlain to prevent Isabella from seeing her husband or wielding any political influence. Having failed to recognise the danger of the queen and her hatred of him – or having under-estimated it, at least – Hugh and Edward compounded their error by sending Isabella to France in 1325, to negotiate with her brother Charles IV over an impending war between the two countries. Several months later, Edward II’s eldest son (the future Edward III) was also sent to France, to pay homage to his uncle for the English possession of Gascony. Isabella refused to return or allow her son to return, and became the mistress of Roger Mortimer, Marcher lord and Hugh’s greatest enemy, who had escaped from the Tower of London. With the support of the large group of English exiles in Paris, and the secret support of most of the aristocracy in England, Isabella and Mortimer launched a highly successful invasion of England. Edward and Hugh fled into Wales to gather support, which didn’t materialise. Hugh’s father was executed in October 1326, and not long afterwards Hugh himself was captured in South Wales, with the king. Edward was sent to Kenilworth under guard, and Hugh was taken to Hereford. Here, he was horrifyingly executed on 24 November: hanged on a gallows fifty feet high, cut down before he was dead, castrated, disembowelled, his heart torn out, and finally beheaded. His head was placed on London Bridge, and the four quarters of his body displayed on the town walls of Bristol, York, Carlisle and Dover. There they remained for four years, until Edward III gave permission for his family to bury him. His tomb in Tewkesbury Abbey still exists.
Interestingly, Hugh seems to have had a close and successful relationship with his wife, Eleanor. They had nine or ten children together, born over a period of about sixteen or seventeen years. A few of their children were born in the period 1318-1326, after he had become her uncle’s favourite, and probably lover. It is now, of course, impossible to determine the true nature of Hugh and Edward’s relationship. The balance of probability, however, is that they were lovers. Although Hugh was politically useful to Edward – being clever, capable and totally ruthless – I find it difficult to account for Edward’s behaviour in any other way. Edward was obviously infatuated with Hugh, allowed him to do anything he wanted, and refused to send Hugh away from him even when it could have prevented his wife’s invasion and his own downfall and deposition. It proved impossible to bring down Hugh le Despenser without bringing down the king, too.
In a recent poll, Hugh le Despenser the Younger was voted the most villainous Briton of the fourteenth century, and got 9% of the vote for most villainous Briton of all time. Certainly, he is one of the most notorious men of the English Middle Ages, and it’s high time someone wrote a proper book-length biography of him!
Copyright © 2006 Alianore
Alianore's blog, devoted to correcting misconceptions about the much-maligned Edward, features these additional postings about Hugh the younger:
http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.com/2006/02/edward-iis-other-great-favourite-hugh.html
http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.com/2006/05/hugh-le-despenser-jr-does-me-too-and.html
http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.com/2006/05/congratulations-to-eleanor-de-clare.html