The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III

The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation
by Ian Mortimer
Published in 2006
560 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

The high middle ages is one of the historical periods that I am the most interested in reading about. I read the biography of Edward III’s father Edward II and his queen Isabella, and of his grandfather Edward I - so this book naturally came next.

Many biographers tend to have a major problem: they oversympathize with their subjects, and biographies often turn into polemic defenses.Edward III plunged England into the hundred years war, got England into significant amounts of debt, and expanded the state significantly. He was no Henry I. That being said, he is still one of the best kings of England.

Edward II left the kingdom in a complete state of ruin, and was eventually overthrown by his wife Queen Isabella. Isabella staged the coup supposedly in the name of Edward IIIl however her boyfriend Roger Mortimer essentially ran the kingdom.

Edward II was an incompetent idiot and a homosexual. His mother Queen Isabella was unfit to govern, and her boyfriend Roger Mortimer was a corrupt embezzler. As a result, by the time King Edward III came of age, the kingdom was approaching a state of financial ruin. Seeing a serious crisis in the future, Edward III staged a soft and mostly bloodless coup against his mother and Roger Mortimer. Roger Mortimer was executed, as were a very small number of his associates - but overall the affair was mostly peaceful.

Edward III established a chivalric court. When, in pop culture, we imagine the chivalric culture of tournaments, ladies, and chivalry we often imagine tropes that emerged during Edward III’s reign. He had a very competent and loyal corp of administrators who replaced the fools of Edward II and pennypinchers of Queen Isabella. As a result, he stabilized his kingdom’s finances and cracked down on corruption.

Problems emerged when there was an internal succession crisis in France. Because his mother Queen Isabella was the daughter of the former king of France, and the current king had no male heirs, Edward III had one of the strongest legal claims to the throne. He kept his claim dormant, neither endorsing nor challenging the French parliament when they elected a noble from the House of Valois as king. The situation boiled over when the French attempted to assert authority over England’s continental holdings, resulting in a full blown war. During the course of this war Edward III re-asserted his claims to the French throne.

Edward III proved to be a military genius. Unlike his feckless and cowardly father, he personally led troops into battle. He pioneered many new tactics such as the use of gunpowder and longbowmen. These tactics allowed him to win many great battles, occupying a significant percentage of France.

The war had a series of treaties that would hold for several years, only for the conflict to resume for one reason or another. During one of these bouts of warfare, his son the Black Prince captured and ransomed the King of France. This resulted in a durable peace treaty in which France made significant concessions. Edward III likely believed he had permanently won the war, establishing durable peace. If you had told an elderly Edward III that he had actually started what historians now call the Hundred Years War, he would not have believed you.

During the twilight years of his extraordinarily long 50 year reign, he devoted his time to building projects, art, anti corruption crackdowns, tax code streamlining, and legal reform. His later reign was successful and peaceful.

Over time, Edward III became senile. This tragically coincided with illness in his heir apparent Edward the Black Prince, who found himself wheelchair bound. He died roughly at the same time as his competent heir, leaving the kingdom in the hands of his 14 year old grandson Richard II. Richard II’s reign would prove to be chaotic, a tyrannical return to the bad times of Edward II.

Edward III was remembered as one of the greatest kings of England and a military genius. He is undoubtedly an excellent king in comparison to his predecessor Edward II and successor Richard IIl. However, despite what Ian Mortimer says, Edward III was not a perfect king. I would rank him below his grandfather Edward I and ancestor Henry I for several reasons.

First, he failed to establish strong institutions that could protect the kingdom in the event his heir died. He should have learned from history and from his own rise to power, and planned accordingly.

Second, he plunged England into the Hundred Years war.

Most damningly from my perspective, his economic reforms had a mixed legacy. On one hand his simplification of the tax code, and anti corruption crackdowns were effective. On the other, he significantly increased the tax burden of the middle class and plunged England into significant debt. In the world in which we currently live, our political system is completely dominated by a deep state of financial elites. This creep in England began under his father Edward II’s reign when he became heavily indebted to Italian and Jewish bankers. Edward III had the perfect chance to completely nip this corrupting influence in the bud; but due to his foreign policy, sold out his Kingdom to England. In the long term I think that this was by far his worst legacy.

The writing style is great, and really kept me hooked. Ian Mortimer perfectly walks the fine line between being too prosaic and delving into tangents. I thought he gave the perfect amount of context. His footnotes about topics such as the possible survival and exile of Edward II are also interesting. My only real criticism is that he is too forgiving of Edward III’s reign.

I don’t think I would recommend this book to most readers. It is only really interesting if you are studying the high middle ages - and at that if you already know a lot about the Hundred Years war. This book falls into a unique category of being a must read if you already know a lot about the period, but a must skip if this isn’t your niche. It was a great read for me, but probably isn’t a great read for you.

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