The would-be King of Scots

Another snippet from my work in progress, this time on the death of Floris V of Holland, would-be King of Scots and unwise recipient of French gold. 

"At the same time Edward took drastic steps to bring Holland back into his coalition. His first response to the defection of Count Floris had been to impose a trade embargo on Holland. In the spring he entered into a conspiracy with certain Dutch noblemen. Floris was unpopular with many of his own nobles, principally Gijsbrecht van Amstel, Hermann van Woerden and Gerard van Velzen. The Duke of Brabant, Floris’s rival for the profits of the English wool trade, was also involved. Van Velzen had some personal grudge against Floris, and within a few years rumours circulated that Floris had raped his wife. It is not possible, on the basis of currently available source evidence, to establish the truth of this accusation. However, the story was mentioned as rumour in Lodewijk van Velthelm’s continuation of Maerlants Spiegel historiael (circa 1315), and manuscript A of a Dutch rhyming chronicle, van de Rijmkroniek (circa 1330-1340).

The conspiracy against Floris was organised by Jan de Cuyck, an important envoy and diplomat in English service. Their plan was to kidnap Floris and smuggle him over to England, where he would be forced to break the alliance with Philip or resign his title to his anglophile son, John. In June 1296 Floris was captured by the conspirators while out hunting and imprisoned at Muiden castle, near Amsterdam. News quickly spread of the incident. On 27 June, when they tried to move their captive to a safer place, the conspirators were confronted by an angry mob. They panicked, stabbed Floris multiple times and left him to die in a ditch.

Edward’s involvement in the kidnapping is scarcely beyond doubt. The organiser, Jan de Cuyck, was in receipt of a payment of 200 l.t. per year from the king, and Edward stood to profit from Floris’s removal. The murder appears to have been a mistake, done on the spur of the moment, but it served Edward’s purpose just as well. He had the dead man’s son, John, in his custody, and within a few months would use him to renew the Dutch alliance."

Diplomatic bunfights

The truce with the Scots, which began on 31 October 1300, was set to expire on 21 May 1301. On 1 March 1301 Earl Warenne and other English envoys were appointed to meet with envoys of the King of France, to discuss “the rectification of the disobediences, rebellions, contempts, trespasses, injuries, excesses and losses inflicted by the Scots”.

On 26 March the Scottish envoys, led by Master Nicholas Balmyle, were granted safe-conducts to travel south and discuss terms with the English and French representatives at Canterbury. Balmyle and his comrades may well have been outraged at the charges levied against the Scots by King Edward - given what the English got up to in Scotland - but they had to tread carefully. They were a long way from home, entirely under the power of a king who regarded them as traitors.

Why did Edward invite his enemies to talk turkey at Canterbury, in the heart of his realm? It was one way to keep them busy while he prepared for another campaign in Scotland. As early as 3 February, weeks before the talks at Canterbury, he ordered Earl Warenne to muster an army at Berwick, ready to set out “with horses and arms” against the Scots when the truce ended. He always knew what the outcome of the talks would be, though pretended not to. On 8 April his officers in Northumberland were warned to prepare for Scottish attacks, since the king “knew not what may result” from the conference between Scots and French ambassadors at Canterbury.

Edward did know what the result would be. He offered a further truce to the French on condition the Scots were excluded. Philip le Bel was fully engaged with trouble in Flanders, where the Flemish communes were on the point of driving out the French occupiers; just as Wallace and Moray drove the English from Scotland in 1297. The English king was fully aware of the situation, and that the French wanted no distractions in Scotland. Thus, when he offered the truce, Philip’s envoys bit his hand off. Balmyle and his fellow negotiators rejected the treaty, so the war was back on.

Expanding states

In the mid to late thirteenth century the big beasts of Western Europe decided to devour their less powerful neighbours, and then each other. Edward I’s efforts in Wales and Scotland are perhaps the best-known - certainly in modern times, thanks to the influence of films and novels and politics - but he was scarcely unique. Philip III of France mounted a disastrous invasion of Aragon, and his even more aggressive successor Philip III made determined efforts to conquer Flanders and Gascony. He also contemplated a full-scale invasion of England. Meanwhile the King of the Germans, Adolf of Nassau, waged war against his own people in an effort to turn the Holy Roman Empire into one vast centralized state.

Naturally, all this aggressive expansionism met with resistance. Edward failed in Scotland but succeeded in Wales; Philip failed in Gascony and imposed a sort of half-conquest on Flanders; Adolf failed in all respects and was chopped up on a German battlefield. His dismal fate was shared by the likes of Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, whose efforts to establish a united Wales ended in disaster, and the Count of Holland, flung into a ditch and stabbed to death by his own nobles.

Other than crude power-grabbing, what was the ideology beyond the expansion of medieval states? One might say it was the logical effort to bind together a single people with their own laws, language and culture. That’s a little too pat, and doesn’t explain why Llywelyn, Adolf and Count Floris (among others) were abandoned at crucial times by their own people.

Philip le Bel

One aspect was the ‘religion of monarchy’. Philip le Bel was the greatest exponent of this: he was the most powerful monarch in Europe, the Vicar of God, the chief pillar of the Church, the inheritor of the holy insignia and unifying mission of Charlemagne. To oppose him was not only evil, it was sacrilegious. In his mind, and that of his fanatical chancellor Pierre Flote, there was no conflict. As Guillaume de Nogaret, another of Philip’s ministers, succinctly expressed it:

‘No true believer can fail to see that the interests of the French monarchy and the interests of the Church are identical. The Flemings are heretics, and Pope Boniface is a heretic, because they oppose the King of France, who is the pillar of the Church’.

The third pic is of the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire, a terrific bit of bling.

A drifting wreck

Translation of a poem on the state of Flanders, composed in the late 1290s by Master Gilbert van Outere: 

"Flanders, once guided by an auspicous star,
Now unrigged by storms, a drifting wreck,
Flanders, that once glittered with opulence,
Now sunk and mourns in mire and ash,
Flanders, that was always able to rule,
Now resembles a slave in rags!
How deep have you fallen! And still!
We hope that you will stand up once again and will find solace.
Say with us: let it be so!
France rejoices!
But times change,
Fate is but an unsettled thing."