Editing Edward II of England (section)

===Piers Gaveston and sexuality===
[[File:Gaveston Cornwall charter.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=initial from a charter|[[Initial]] from the [[charter]] granting [[Piers Gaveston]] the [[earldom of Cornwall]]]]

During this time, Edward became close to [[Piers Gaveston]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=96}}.</ref> Gaveston was the son of one of the King's household knights whose lands lay adjacent to Gascony, and had himself joined Prince Edward's household in 1300, possibly on Edward I's instruction.<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|pp=96–97}}.</ref> The two got on well; Gaveston became a [[squire]] and was soon being referred to as a close companion of Edward, before being knighted by the King during the Feast of the Swans in 1306.<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|pp=96–97, 120}}; {{Harvnb|Chaplais|1994|p=4}}.</ref> The King then exiled Gaveston to [[Gascony]] in 1307 for reasons that remain unclear.<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|pp=112, 120–121}}.</ref> According to one chronicler, Edward had asked his father to allow him to give Gaveston the County of [[Ponthieu]], and the King responded furiously, pulling his son's hair out in great handfuls, before exiling Gaveston.<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|pp=120–121}}.</ref> The official court records, however, show Gaveston being only temporarily exiled, supported by a comfortable stipend; no reason is given for the order, suggesting that it may have been an act aimed at punishing the prince.<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|pp=120–123}}; {{Harvnb|Haines|2003|pp=20–21}}.</ref>

The possibility that Edward had a sexual relationship with Gaveston or his later favourites has been extensively discussed by historians, complicated by the scarcity of surviving evidence to determine for certain the details of their relationships.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ormrod|2006|p=22}}; {{Harvnb|Haines|2003|pp=20–21}}.</ref>{{Efn|John Boswell puts forward one of the most prominent arguments in favour of Edward and Gaveston having been lovers. Jeffrey Hamilton supports that the relationship was sexual, but that it was probably not overtly so. The historian [[Michael Prestwich]] is sympathetic to the argument that Edward and Gaveston had entered into a bond of adoptive brotherhood, but with a "sexual element" to both this and Edward's relationship with Despenser; Roy Haines echoes Prestwich's judgements; Miri Rubin argues in favour of their being friends, with a "very intense working relationship"; [[Seymour Phillips]] believes it most likely that Edward regarded Gaveston as his adoptive brother.{{Sfn|Prestwich|2003|p=72}}<ref>{{Harvnb|Haines|2003|p=374}}; {{Harvnb|Rubin|2006|p=31}}; {{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=102}}; {{Harvnb|Ormrod|2006|p=23}}; {{Harvnb|Hamilton|2010|pp=98–99}}.</ref>}} Homosexuality was fiercely condemned by the Church in 14th-century England, which equated it with [[heresy]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Ormrod|2006|pp=23–25}}; {{Harvnb|Prestwich|2006|pp=70, 72}}.</ref> Both men had sexual relationships with their wives, who bore them children; Edward also had an illegitimate son, and may have had an affair with his niece, [[Eleanor de Clare]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Prestwich|2006|p=71}}; {{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=101}}; {{Harvnb|Haines|2003|pp=42–43}}.</ref>

The contemporary evidence supporting their homosexual relationship comes primarily from an anonymous chronicler in the 1320s who described how Edward "felt such love" for Gaveston that "he entered into a covenant of constancy, and bound himself with him before all other mortals with a bond of indissoluble love, firmly drawn up and fastened with a knot."<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=97}}.</ref> The first specific suggestion that Edward engaged in sex with men was recorded in 1334, when [[Adam Orleton]], the [[Bishop of Winchester]], was accused of having stated in 1326 that Edward was a "sodomite", although Orleton defended himself by arguing that he had meant that Edward's adviser, [[Hugh Despenser the Younger]], was a sodomite, rather than the late king.<ref>{{Harvnb|Mortimer|2006|p=50}}.</ref> The [[Meaux Chronicle]] from the 1390s simply notes that Edward gave himself "too much to the vice of sodomy".<ref>{{Harvnb|Mortimer|2006|p=52}}.</ref>

Alternatively, Edward and Gaveston may have simply been friends with a close working relationship.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rubin|2006|pp=31}}.</ref> Contemporary [[chronicler]] comments are vaguely worded; Orleton's allegations were at least in part politically motivated, and are very similar to the highly politicised sodomy allegations made against [[Pope Boniface&nbsp;VIII]] and the [[Knights Templar]] in 1303 and 1308, respectively.<ref>{{Harvnb|Mortimer|2006|pp=51–53}}.</ref> Later accounts by chroniclers of Edward's activities may trace back to Orleton's original allegations, and were certainly adversely coloured by the events at the end of Edward's reign.<ref>{{Harvnb|Mortimer|2006|p=52}}; {{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=102}}.</ref> Such historians as [[Michael Prestwich]] and Seymour Phillips have argued that the public nature of the English royal court would have made it unlikely that any homosexual affairs would have remained discreet; neither the contemporary Church, Edward's father nor his father-in-law appear to have made any adverse comments about Edward's sexual behaviour.<ref>{{Harvnb|Prestwich|2006|pp=70–71}}; {{Harvnb|Chaplais|1994|p=9}}; {{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=99}}.</ref>

A more recent theory, proposed by the historian [[Pierre Chaplais]], suggests that Edward and Gaveston entered into a bond of [[blood brother|adoptive brotherhood]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=100}}; {{Harvnb|Chaplais|1994|pp=11–13}}.</ref> Compacts of adoptive brotherhood, in which the participants pledged to support each other in a form of "brotherhood-in-arms", were not unknown between close male friends in the Middle Ages.<ref>{{Harvnb|Chaplais|1994|pp=14–19}}.</ref> Many chroniclers described Edward and Gaveston's relationship as one of brotherhood, and one explicitly noted that Edward had taken Gaveston as his adopted brother.<ref>{{Harvnb|Phillips|2011|p=102}}.</ref> Chaplais argues that the pair may have made a formal compact in either 1300 or 1301, and that they would have seen any later promises they made to separate or to leave each other as having been made under duress, and therefore invalid.<ref>{{Harvnb|Chaplais|1994|pp=20–22}}.</ref>