Edward II's illegitimate son Adam
Having commented in my last post that Edward II was emotionally reliant on men, I thought I should emphasise that he must have had relationships with women too - at least one, in addition to Queen Isabella. Edward fathered an illegitimate son called Adam, as well as his four legitimate children by Isabella, who were definitely his, insofar as anyone's paternity can be certain. As there is still a load of crap online that Edward III was fathered by Edward I/Roger Mortimer/the milkman/ any other man in England alive at that time, I'm going to repeat this at the top of my voice:
EDWARD II WAS THE FATHER OF EDWARD III.
Got it? Please, pretty please, can people get this into their heads and stop writing sub-'Braveheart' crap as though it's fact?
Anyway, back to Adam. He's mentioned in a wardrobe account of 1322 and described as "Ade filio domini Regis bastardo": "Adam, bastard son of our lord the king". He was provided with equipment for the Scottish campaign of that year, but was accompanied by his tutor Hugh Chastilloun, which suggests he was somewhere between the ages of 13 and 16. He was probably serving his father as page or squire. After this, he disappears from the records and is assumed to have died during the campaign. His birth must have been between about 1306 and 1310, and it's tempting to speculate that Edward fathered him during one of the periods that Piers Gaveston was exiled from England - either 1307 or 1308-1309 - although there's no way of knowing for sure.
The identity of Adam's mother is unknown. However, in my view, she must have been more to Edward than a one-night-stand. Given that Edward openly acknowledged the boy, he must have been certain that he was the father, which he hardly could have been if he hadn't known the mother reasonably well. However, to my almost certain knowledge, nothing has yet been found in the records pointing to the existence of a mistress. It's rather mysterious. Maybe the mother was someone who lived on Edward's favourite estates of Langley or Clarendon.
Adam and Piers Gaveston's natural daughter Amie (see this post for information on her) both appear as characters in Susan Higginbotham's novel The Traitor's Wife.
Posted by Alianore 05 March, 2006 at 8:51 AM