Isabella lived through the plague, which lasted until 1349. We have no record of her whereabouts, but she was probably living quietly in the country, perhaps at Castle Rising, or moving from house to house to escape the pestilence. She was a witness, therefore, to one of the most cataclysmic episodes in English history, for the Black Death decimated the population and changed the social order in England forever. Nor was the royal family spared, for the plague carried off her thirteen-year-old granddaughter Joan, the King’s second daughter, while she was traveling through Gascony to her wedding.
Around 1350, Isabella perhaps suffered bouts of ill health, for in January 1351, a London physician or apothecary, Bartholemew Thomasyn, was rewarded for his services to King Edward, Queen Isabella, and Queen Philippa by being granted the full liberties of the City of London.
That Isabella was still seen to hold considerable influence over the King was clear in January 1354, when Charles, King of Navarre, the grandson of Louis X and Marguerite of Burgundy, was seeking protection from Philip VI’s successor, John II, after having murdered the Constable of France. He appealed in writing to Edward III, the Prince of Wales, and Henry, Duke of Lancaster. The Duke wrote back diplomatically that he was too busy to be of assistance just now but that he had forwarded copies of Charles’s letter to the King, the Prince of Wales, the Queen, and the Queen Mother and was waiting for news from them. Whether Isabella was instrumental in persuading Edward to back Charles is not known, but he did so and thereby violated the terms of a recent peace he had negotiated with King John, which would lead to the reopening of the war.112 Isabella made another of her few ventures into politics in May 1354, when, at the request of the Pope, she pleaded with Edward III to release the Duke of Brittany, whom he was holding hostage.
That year, Edward had the sentence on Mortimer reversed, on the grounds that the latter had been prevented from speaking in his own defense, and restored his grandson, another Roger Mortimer, to the earldom of March. In 1368, this Roger, who had been one of the luminaries of the court since 1350, would marry the King’s granddaughter, Philippa of Clarence. In 1398, their grandson, Roger, the third Earl, would be Richard II’s acknowledged heir. His descendants founded the royal House of York, which would occupy the throne of England itself from 1461 to 1485. The present Queen, Elizabeth II, is a descendant of both Roger Mortimer and Isabella of France.
Isabella spent the Christmas of 1354 being entertained by her grandson, the Prince of Wales, at Berkhamsted Castle.
The following spring, she received the sad news that her daughter Eleanor, Duchess of Gueldres, had died in poverty at the age of thirty-seven. Eleanor had helped to rule the duchy during the minority of her quarrelsome eldest son, but on reaching his majority, he had resented her efforts to make peace between him and his brother and had confiscated all her property, something that Isabella had experienced herself. But for Eleanor, there had been no restitution: she had lived out her remaining years in a Cistercian abbey, too proud to beg for assistance from her brother, Edward III. Now only two of Isabella’s children remained. It is to be hoped she found some comfort in her eight surviving grandchildren; the last of Philippa’s brood, Thomas of Woodstock, had been born the previous January. That year, Isabella again visited her grandson, the Prince of Wales, at Berkhamsted. In many ways, he was like her—good-looking, dynamic, intelligent, and ruthless—and evidently, they were close.
On 19 September 1356, the Prince of Wales again distinguished himself at the Battle of Poitiers, in which the King of France was taken prisoner. King John was to remain in England, treated as an honored guest, for the next four years, while the terms of his release were negotiated. During that time, John often visited his cousin Isabella at Hertford Castle; it is unlikely that he remembered her or had even met her, for he had been only seven years old when she had left France for the last time in 1326. Evidently, they struck up a rapport; he sent her messages by his servant John of Paris, and she, knowing that he loved reading, sent him in return two books about Lancelot and the Holy Grail.113 Isabella’s growing political influence may have encouraged her to intercede with Edward on John’s behalf.
During 1356, Isabella was occupied with renovating her palace at Sheen in Surrey. Carpenters, tilers, and roofers were employed “at the Queen Mother’s wages for her works at Sheen.”114 This suggests that, at sixty-one, she was still as fit and active as ever.
Mortimer’s widow, Joan de Genville, died at the age of sixty in October 1356. She was probably buried with her husband at Coventry, Wigmore, or Shrewsbury.
In 1357, after eleven years of captivity, David II was finally freed and allowed to return to Scotland. A joyful Queen Joan accompanied him, but when she found out that he was making up for lost time with another woman, she returned to England for good in December on the pretext of discussing peace terms with her brother.115 Edward III again permitted her to use Hertford Castle as a residence, and Isabella paid for her clothes and food. As before, she and Queen Philippa were frequent visitors.116 Squabbles over the payment of his ransom money continued well after King David had returned to Scotland, and in 1358, he sent an envoy called William of Leith to Isabella, to request her “to act as mediatrix with King Edward” in the matter.117 It appears that, despite her enforced retirement, kings still had respect for Isabella’s undoubted political skills and that, as old memories faded, she was beginning to be regarded as a kind of elder stateswoman. It was, after all, more than twenty-seven years since Mortimer had faced the hangman’s noose and Isabella had been placed under house arrest.
In 1357, the burghers of Lynn sent their last recorded gift to the Queen Mother, a pipe of wine.118 Her Household Book for the year 1357–58, the last of three to survive, contains evidence that she was continuing to enjoy a pleasant existence with many diversions. She was still taking an interest in both domestic and public affairs and corresponded frequently with the King, Queen Philippa, Queen Joan, King John of France, the Duke of Lancaster, the Chancellor, and the Earl Marshal. At New Year 1358, they all brought her gifts and at other times sent her presents of Bordeaux wine, boars’ heads, barrels of bream, and copper quadrants. These last were instruments for measuring circles and were sometimes used in navigation. They seem strange gifts to send an aging lady, but perhaps Isabella had discovered a latent interest in astronomy or geometry.
She was still following fashion and decking herself out as befitted a queen. During this year, she spent the princely sum of £1,400 on jewelry.
Isabella was clearly popular and well-thought-of, for visitors came to see her at an average rate of two or three a day; among them were the King, Queen Joan, the Prince of Wales, any French lords who were in England to see King John, and William, Earl of Douglas, one of the hostages for King David’s ransom, who was making frequent visits to England at this time to negotiate a peace treaty. The Earl was the grandson of Sir James Douglas, that same Black Douglas who had twice attempted to abduct the young Queen Isabella. Other frequent visitors were Elizabeth de Clare, Edward II’s niece and the foundress of Clare Hall in Cambridge; Isabella’s long-standing cousin and friend Marie de Saint Pol, Dowager Countess of Pembroke, and foundress of Pembroke College in Cambridge, to whom Isabella gave a breviary in 1357; Mortimer’s daughter Agnes, the widow of Lawrence Hastings, Earl of Pembroke; and his grandson and namesake, the Earl of March, now a successful courtier in his early thirties, who was married to Montagu’s daughter Philippa and had one son, Edmund. March was Isabella’s dinner guest three times in the space of one month. Did she, one wonders, tell him and his aunt tales of their notorious forebear?119
Yet there was a more pious dimension to her life, for now that she was in her sixties, her mind was becoming increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of her own mortality and the inevitability of divine judgment. During this last year, she prepared herself for death. She had always been a great patron of the Franciscans, and it was at this time that she took the habit of the Third (or Tertiary) Order of Saint Francis, which she
wore under her outer robes.120 This lay branch of the Franciscans had been founded twenty years earlier chiefly for penitents who wished to remain in the world; its members were not bound by conventual vows but by a requirement to maintain Franciscan observances and principles in their daily lives. In joining this Order, Isabella clearly wished to make reparation for her past transgressions, as her deeds plainly show.
During this last year of her life, she undertook many charitable works. She maintained poor scholars at Oxford, distributed alms to 150 selected paupers on Holy Days and the principal feasts of the Church, and paid for thirteen other needy persons to be fed every day and three more each Monday, Friday, and Saturday.121
It was natural that, as a tertiary of their Order, Isabella should wish to be buried in the Grey Friars’ church at Newgate, of which she had been so generous a benefactress. We should not believe the jealous accusation of the Westminster monk John of Reading that the Queen had been “seduced” by the Grey Friars to change her will and leave her bones among them, after allegedly expressing a wish to be laid to rest at Westminster. The fact that the community of Westminster wanted her at all, and considered her worthy of interment in their royal mausoleum, is proof of how thoroughly she had redeemed her reputation. Whether Isabella herself considered that she was worthy of such a sepulchre is a matter for speculation.
Yet her burial at Grey Friars was to prove controversial in another respect. In the sixteenth century, the antiquarian John Stow listed the ruined royal tombs in that church and perpetrated the myth that Roger Mortimer’s was among them. More recently, several historians, misreading contemporary sources, have asserted that he was buried there before being removed elsewhere. Thus, another myth about Isabella has arisen, that she deliberately chose to be buried near her lover, or at least near the place where his remains had briefly lain. That myth can be disposed of, for it is almost certain that Mortimer was buried at Coventry.
In February 1358, Isabella was slightly unwell. She had evidently recovered enough to accompany Queen Philippa, King John, and his son Philip, the future Duke of Burgundy, to the Saint George’s Day celebrations at Windsor in April, which included a magnificent tournament in which many foreign knights took part. The occasion was to mark the completion of Edward’s new college in the great court at Windsor, which was to be the focus of the Order of the Garter, and doubtless the King took great pleasure in showing Isabella around. This was to prove her last public appearance.
The Queen Mother may have had a hand in the shaping of the peace treaty that was concluded between King Edward and King John the following month, whereby John agreed to pay 4 million gold crowns in ransom and recognize Edward as sovereign ruler of Gascony, Calais, Guisnes, Ponthieu, and Montreuil. These last counties formed part of Isabella’s dower, and she had a vested interest in any settlement, so it is unthinkable that this agreement would have been reached without her being consulted.
In June of that year, Isabella, who was now approaching sixty-three, made a final pilgrimage to the shrine of Becket at Canterbury, taking with her her daughter Joan. She had been here many times before, either alone or with Joan’s father: Saint Thomas had not only been Edward II’s favorite saint but Isabella’s, too, so it was natural that she should seek his intercession in her present need to redeem her sins. Shortly beforehand, she had donated £2 to the the Abbess of the Minoresses’ convent outside Aldgate so that that good lady could buy food for the community on the anniversaries of the deaths of “Edward, late King of England” and John of Eltham.122 The dead were apparently very much in Isabella’s thoughts at this time.
The fact that mother and daughter stayed at Leeds Castle from 13 June to 2 July suggests that it was at this time that Isabella was again taken ill. According to her Household Book, she became unwell immediately after overdosing on a potent medicine, which she presumably had been taking for some preexisting condition, possibly that which had struck her down in February, which was probably the first manifestation of the disease that killed her.123 On 1 August, a London apothecary, Nicholas Thomason, received payment for spices and ointments for the Queen Mother, which were perhaps purchased as the two Queens journeyed east of the capital to Hertford Castle. Doherty points out that these were not necessarily medicines but may have been required for making perfumes or flavoring food.
But on 12 August, messengers were dispatched from Hertford to London for medicines, and on the twentieth, Isabella’s condition was causing sufficient concern for two doctors to be summoned “with the greatest haste”: one was an eminent London physician and the other, Master Lawrence, was the Queen’s surgeon, who had accompanied her to Canterbury and was still there. His presence on this pilgrimage is further evidence that Isabella was already ailing when she embarked upon it.
It is unlikely that Master Lawrence got to Hertford in time, for Isabella died there on 22 August 1358, with her daughter Joan nearby.
The Prince of Wales was at Vale Royal when he received news of his grandmother’s death. On 28 August, the King gave orders for the taking over of the late Queen Mother’s estates, and by 19 September, the Prince was at Cheylesmore and Coventry, having taken possession of them as Isabella had intended.124 She also left him Castle Rising and all her other castles, and most of her personal possessions, as well as a quarter share of the customs dues of Lynn.125 Hertford Castle was granted by Edward III to his fourth son, John of Gaunt, while the rest of Isabella’s lands went mainly to Queen Philippa.126
Some of her books—among them, a Bible, an Apocalypse, and a psalter—she had willed to her daughter Joan, while the rest, including a genealogy, went to the monks at Easton Royal in Wiltshire.127
Planning a magnificent funeral such as Edward III arranged for his mother took time. As she had directed, Isabella’s embalmed body was wrapped in her wedding cloak, which she had preserved for half a century128—another indication that her late husband was very much in the forefront of her mind during her final months—and in her Franciscan habit, “as a protection against the attacks of the Devil.” It lay in the chapel at Hertford Castle for three months, until 23 November, watched over constantly by fourteen poor persons, who were paid 2d. a day by the King. John Gynwell, Bishop of Lincoln, the Abbot of Waltham, and the Prior of Coventry all came to celebrate Requiem Masses in the chapel.129
On 21 November, Edward commanded the sheriffs of London to clean the streets of dirt and all impurities and to strew gravel along Bishopsgate and Aldgate “against the coming of the body of his dearest mother, Queen Isabella,” to the City for her burial and gave them £9 to defray their expenses. Meanwhile, the Queen’s body was being brought south with great solemnity from Hertford.130 Prior to the funeral, it lay at Mile End, in the house of John Galeys, where members of the royal family watched over it. Galeys was later paid £10 as recompense for “the loss he suffered by the relinquishment of his house.”131 He may have been the same John Galeys who had been rewarded by Roger Mortimer in 1330 for his good service to him.132
Edward had arranged “a sumptuous funeral.”133 On 27 November, with great ceremony, Isabella’s body was carried in procession through London, followed by the Prince of Wales, as chief mourner, “all the prelates and barons of England, as well as those French lords who were at that time detained in England as hostages,” and a host of dignitaries.134 There is no record of the King’s being present, but in medieval times, protocol generally precluded English monarchs’ attending funerals. Among the watching crowds was a youth called Geoffrey Chaucer, a page in the household of the King’s third son, Lionel of Antwerp; this same Chaucer would later achieve renown as the first great writer in the English language and the author of The Canterbury Tales.
After a funeral service conducted by Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Queen’s corpse was laid to rest in the center of the choir of the Grey Friars’ church at Newgate; the tomb of her aunt, Marguerite of France, was nearby to the east, before the altar.135 On 12 February 1359, five poor men were given money a
nd a robe each by the King to pray for Isabella’s soul.136 In various places throughout the kingdom, chantries were founded so that intercessions could be made for her safe passage to Heaven.
Since the twelfth century, separate heart burial had been practiced within the royal families of Europe. Those who could afford it wished to profit from being prayed for at more than one sepulchre and so speed their passage through Purgatory. Richard I’s body had been buried at Fontevrault in 1199, but a full-size tomb and effigy had been built to contain his heart at Rouen; while, more recently, three more or less identical tombs had been raised to the memory of Eleanor of Castile: one, for her viscera, in Lincoln Cathedral; another, for her heart, in the conventual church of the Black Friars in London; and the third, for the rest of her body, in Westminster Abbey. In 1299, Pope Boniface VIII had banned the division of royal bodies, but by 1304, this ruling had been relaxed for members of the French royal family, and other dynasties took their cue from that, although the practice died out in England in the fourteenth century. In 1323 and 1345, Isabella had obtained papal permission for her remains to be buried in three separate places,137 but this does not seem to have happened. It is likely that her heart is buried beneath the simple gray stone inscribed ISABELLA REGINA in the Norman parish church dedicated to Saint Lawrence at Castle Rising; but there is no record of, or evidence for, any visceral burial.