Hugh le Despenser the Younger
by
Susan Higginbotham
Though Hugh le Despenser in Christopher Marlowe's play Edward the Second is decidedly the least important of Edward II's favorites, the reality was much different. It was not Piers Gaveston, but the far more ambitious and ruthless Hugh le Despenser the younger, who led to the king's destruction.
Hugh was the son of Hugh le Despenser the elder (naturally) and Isabel Beauchamp, who married without license before November 1287 and were fined 2,000 marks by Edward I. The sister of the Earl of Warwick and the widow of Payn Chaworth, Isabel was probably quite a catch for Hugh the elder.
The birthdate of the younger Hugh is unknown, but he was old enough to be knighted at the so-called Feast of the Swans on May 22, 1306. The Prince of Wales, the future Edward II, was himself knighted on that occasion by Edward I. Young Edward in turn knighted Hugh and nearly 300 other young men. An even more important occasion took place for Hugh on May 26, 1306, when Hugh was married to thirteen-year-old Eleanor de Clare, the daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and Joan of Acre. The late Earl of Gloucester had been one of the most powerful men in England, and Joan was Edward I's daughter. Eleanor, therefore, was a dazzling match for Hugh, even though she had a brother and therefore was not an heiress at the time. The match was made by Edward I himself, who had purchased Hugh's marriage for 2,000 pounds and who probably intended the marriage not only to repay the elder Hugh for his wartime services, but also as a testament of his esteem for the groom's loyal father. Sadly for Hugh, his mother Isabel died around that time also: a writ of diem clausit extremum, commanding the king's excheators to ascertain what lands she held, was issued on May 30, 1306.
Edward I died on July 7, 1307, leaving Edward II as king. On January 25, 1308, Edward II married Isabella, daughter of the French king. Although the elder Despenser was a close adviser to the new king and Eleanor de Clare served in Isabella's household, little is heard of Hugh the younger during these years. He was a modest landholder, having been granted the manor of Sutton by Edward II in 1309. His father granted him several more manors the next year. By then, Hugh himself was a father: his first son, naturally named Hugh, was born around 1308.
During these years of obscurity, Hugh attended tournaments at Dunstable in 1309 and at Mons in 1310. On January 9, 1310, Edward II ordered that his lands and goods be seized if he was found to have crossed the seas without license. Hugh also got into trouble at home: in 1311, for reasons unknown, he took away his wife's sumpter horses, forcing Eleanor's chamberlain to pay her transportation costs while Eleanor was traveling about with Queen Isabella. In 1312, he was allowed to hunt the king's foxes, hares, cats, and badgers, but was not granted the privilege of taking "any of the king's great deer." Hugh went to France on the king's service in 1313, traveling with his father's retinue. The king granted him a wardship that year.
It was the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314 that transformed Hugh's life. Eleanor's brother Gilbert, the young Earl of Gloucester, was killed there, meaning that the vast Clare estates would be divided among his three sisters of the whole blood: Eleanor, Margaret, and Elizabeth. The division of the inheritance was no speedy process, however. Gilbert's widow claimed to be pregnant—and continued to make this claim for the next three years. For a number of reasons, Edward II was in no hurry to call her bluff; at one point, Hugh was put off with the admonition that he should have obtained a writ to have the countess's belly inspected. Hugh, meanwhile, expressed his displeasure over the delay in May 1315 by seizing Tonbridge Castle, which he was forced to return. The following year, his wilder side again manifested itself when he got into a fight with John de Ros at the Lincoln Parliament.
At last, in November 1317, the inheritance was handed over to the Clare sisters and their husbands. Eleanor's share included the lordship of Glamorgan. Had Hugh been content with this, all might have been well. Unfortunately, the acquisitive side of Hugh soon came to the forefront. Soon he was intriguing to obtain land belonging to the other two Clare heiresses as well.
Through all of this, Hugh the younger's relationship with Edward II had been distant at best. In 1318, this all changed, for Hugh was appointed as the king's chamberlain. Precisely what happened to ingratiate Hugh with his king is unknown, but from that point on, the fates of king and subject were bound inextricably together. Henceforth, Hugh and Edward would be separated only by force.
Hugh's land-grabbing soon alienated the Marcher lords, who showed their displeasure by attacking Hugh's lands. When civil war threatened, a highly reluctant Edward II agreed to send both Hugh and his father into exile. The elder Hugh went to France, but the younger Hugh turned to piracy, for which he proved to have a knack. Soon Edward II, slowly picking off his enemies, succeeded in recalling the Despensers to England, after which the king's most powerful enemy, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, was executed. It was 1322, and Edward and the Despensers appeared to have triumphed over their enemies.
Disaster, however, loomed in an unexpected form: that of Edward II's queen, Isabella. Although she had borne Edward four children and had undertaken her queenly duties with due propriety, her relations with Edward had soured as Despenser gained more influence over the king, and it did not help matters that relations between England and France were tense as well. Edward took Isabella's lands into his hands and dismissed her French servants in 1324.
In 1325, Edward sent Isabella to negotiate with France, her brother being the king of that country. It was a fatal mistake, for Isabella soon formed a romantic liaison with Roger Mortimer, a Marcher lord who had managed the rare feat of escaping from the Tower of London. When Edward II sent his young son, the future Edward III, to France to pay homage to the French king, Isabella and Mortimer had all that they could wish for. With the heir to England's throne in their power, they were able to raise an army and invade England. Their aim was to destroy the Despensers.
It proved to be a popular one. Hugh's greed had not abated since 1322, and his extortions, the victims of which included women like his own sister-in-law, Elizabeth de Burgh, had made him hated. Isabella and Mortimer's invasion met with little resistance.
Hearing of the invasion, Edward II and the Despensers left London, where Walter Stapeldon, the Bishop of Exeter, who had been closely associated with the king, was murdered in the mob violence that broke out after the monarch's departure. The elder Despenser attempted to hold Bristol for the king, but surrendered to Isabella and Mortimer's forces after the garrison refused to fight. He was beheaded on October 26, 1326. Edward II and Despenser, meanwhile, had fled to Wales, where they and a handful of followers were captured on November 16. Their captors included William la Zouche of Mortimer, who would eventually marry Hugh's widow.
Edward II was put into the custody of Henry, Earl of Leicester, and treated for the time being with courtesy, but a very different fate was in store for Hugh. Put on a mean mount, he was paraded through the countryside until he arrived outside of Hereford on November 24, 1326. There he was stripped, crowned with nettles, and redressed, having been forced to wear his coat of arms reversed. Admonitory scriptures were scratched onto his body. He was then taken into Hereford, where after a long list of charges—some based in fact, some absurd—was read out, he was condemned to die as a traitor.
Despenser had refused food or drink since being taken captive, evidently in an attempt to defeat his captors by starving himself to death. One hopes that he was too dazed by lack of sustenance to fully grasp what happened to him next. Having been sentenced, he was dragged by four horses to a fifty-foot gallows, then cut down while he was still alive. His genitals were cut off and burned—perhaps an indication that he was thought to be the king's sexual partner—and he was disemboweled. Hugh was then beheaded. The remainder of his body was cut into quarters, which were sent to York, Bristol, Carlisle, and Dover. His head arrived a few days later in London, where it was paraded through the streets before being spiked on London Bridge.
At the time of his death, Hugh had been in the midst of refashioning Tewkesbury Abbey, his intended resting place. In 1330, following Edward III's arrest and execution of Roger Mortimer, Hugh's family was allowed to collect Hugh's bones. They brought them to Tewkesbury, where Hugh's tomb, stripped probably by Puritans of the figures that once filled its niches, can still be seen today. Hugh's widow and eldest son also immortalized Hugh in stained glass at Tewkesbury, where he continues to gaze coolly at worshippers today.
Copyright © 2009 Susan Higginbotham