A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [199]
The double allegiance was broken. In becoming “a good and true Frenchman,” Coucy had chosen a nationality, even if the word did not yet exist. Only one thing was remarkable about the choice: that he parted with his wife along with his English lands and fealty. It has generally been said that he felt obliged to part with her in order to be free to choose France, but this would have been necessary only if Isabella had refused to be reconciled to the loss of their English estates. On renunciation of allegiance, the properties would be subject to confiscation. Everything known about Isabella suggests that this was the determining factor. Her compulsive extravagance, her neurotic dependence on home and on her father’s indulgence—which she may have hoped to transfer onto her brothers and nephew—her insecurity in France make it likely that the separation was her choice, whether or not it was also her husband’s.
What Coucy felt for his vain, spoiled, selfish, willful wife—love, hate, or indifference—no evidence tells. Judging by what is known of her temperament, she was not a lovable Plantagenet, of whom history records few. In any event, she returned to and remained in England with her younger daughter, Philippa, who had always lived there. All her husband’s English estates, “manors, hamlets, honours, domains, towns, lands, tenements, animals, provender, goods and chattels” were forfeited to the crown and cautiously delivered to a trusteeship for Isabella consisting of the Archbishop of York, two bishops, and four other commissioners. Since women were not precluded from owning property in their own right, the arrangement indicates that her brothers mistrusted her habits. The terms provided that the revenues would be paid to her by the trustees “as long as she remains in England.”
Isabella’s indeterminate status as neither wife nor widow lasted only two years. In April 1379 she died in unknown circumstances at the age of 47. All of Coucy’s lands in England were eventually settled on his daughter Philippa.
The French renewed belligerency the instant the truce expired. In combination with the Spanish fleet, they launched a series of raids on England’s south coast even before they learned of King Edward’s death. In an effort to keep that event secret from them during the transfer of power, the English had “stopped incontinent all the passages of the kingdom, letting no one issue from the realm.” The organization required to close all exits must have been considerable, but proved futile since the French had already started.
Under the command of Admiral Jean de Vienne, the French and Spaniards landed at Rye opposite Boulogne on June 29 and subjected it to 24 hours of savagery—burning, looting, killing men, women, and children and carrying off girls to the ships in deliberate emulation of the English savagery inflicted on the towns of France. In the flames, a church of “wonderful beauty” (according to Walsingham) was destroyed. Despite the insistence of a group of French knights who wanted to hold Rye as a permanent base—a kind of Calais in England—the Admiral refused. Occupation was not the French object but destruction and terror to bring the English to a peace treaty, and to prevent reinforcements for Calais, where the French were planning a major attack.
Meeting little effective resistance, the French continued down the south coast, attacking Folkestone, Portsmouth, Weymouth, Plymouth, Dartmouth, and marching ten miles inland to burn Lewes, where they scattered and slaughtered a body of 200 defenders led by the local prior and two knights. After sailing away, they returned a month later to devastate the Isle of Wight off Southampton. The dread that haunted the English out of a dark atavistic terror of ancient Danish raiders and conquering Normans