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Edward II
Edward II; Part 4

Edward II; Part 4

Just as Gaveston is interesting as a type, so is Thomas of Lancaster. Mention has been already made of his possessions and expectations: Earl of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, with the inheritance of Lincoln and Salisbury. In days when titles meant lands and lands meant power, this was a menacing collection. Compare this Earl of Lancaster with another, by name Henry, also (Duke) of Lancaster, Earl of Leicester, Derby, and Duke of Hereford. The similarity is startling, and becomes still more startling when it is added that he, too, was a king's first cousin. This Henry of Lancaster, whom we shall meet later, is, of course, John of Gaunt's son, Bolingbroke, who overthrew his royal cousin, Richard II, and became King Henry IV. Had Thomas won the battle of Boroughbridge instead of losing it, it is likely that he also would have ousted his royal cousin, Edward II, and become King Thomas I. The interest of his position lies in his being a forerunner in that long struggle in which the younger royal branch of Lancaster was to prevail over the older line. He tried the first fall and was thrown; his kinsman was destined to prove a better wrestler. The position of the buckets (King Richard to Bolingbroke.

"Give me the crown. - Here, cousin, seize the crown; On this side my hand and on that side yours. Now is this golden crown like a deep well That owns two buckets, filling one another; The emptier ever dancing in the air, The other down, unseen and full of water: That bucket down, and full of tears am I Drinking my griefs, while you mount up on high." - Shakespeare, Richard 77, Act IV, Sc. 1) would change anon.

Further, as Thomas of Lancaster's ambitions foreshadow the systematic treason of the house of Lancaster and the Wars of the Roses, so, too, the methods of Edward II's day foreshadow the methods of the time that knew Margaret of Anjou, Clifford, and Richard III. The headsman's axe and the halter became for the first time familiar political engines in English controversy. Gaveston, Lancaster, the Despensers, Mortimer, and many of their friends and followers came to violent ends; and the merciless policy of silencing political opponents by putting them to death was to become so ordinary as to seem, to men of the time, natural.

Edward II; Part 4

Chronology