Review: the Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family: The Despensers by Kathryn Warner

Synopsis: The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favourite and perhaps lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. 

Rise and Fall tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, when three Despenser lords were beheaded and two fell in battle. We begin with Hugh the Justiciar, who died rebelling against King Henry III and his son in 1265, and end with Thomas Despenser, summarily beheaded in 1400 after attempting to free a deposed Richard II, and Thomas's posthumous daughter Isabella, a countess twice over and the grandmother of Richard III's queen.

From the medieval version of Prime Ministers to the (possible) lovers of monarchs, the aristocratic Despenser family wielded great power in medieval England. Drawing on the popular intrigue and infamy of the Despenser clan, Kathryn Warner's book traces the lives of the most notorious, powerful and influential members of this patrician family over a 200 year span.

This for me is a hard review to write and I have literally left it unwritten for sometime after reading this book.

On the one hand, writing about one of England's most despised medieval families, in a favourable light, but still warts and all, is no simple task. Documenting the families' politically activities over a mere 200 years again is no walk in the park.

What I took away from this book was that the Despencers were always closely connected with the reigning royal family of the day - and they maintained their support of the royal line through thick and thin. They did not shy away from political or military service, and gladly served their monarch. The Despencers were also, I think a rather closely knit familial group - for the most part, barring a few renegade members from lesser branches. They supported each other - they had each others' backs. And they accumulated wealth - great wealth, some of it centralised in the hands of a few, but from my understanding, even the lesser branches were doing much better than some of the more powerful nobles of the day.

This is obviously a very well researched and documented book - Warner is noted for her focus on the reign of Edward II and all that which is associated with it. And she is at ease her with her subject matter. Which brings up my next point.

For me, this felt like a genealogical dump. So much was focused on who married who, who inherited what, who took what from whom, that the narrative of the "rise and fall" was somewhat lost - its thin threads are in there but they are quite fragile. In fact, after looking at some of the reviews, I was worried I was the only one who felt the story was lost amid the overwhelming amount of genealogical data. 

When composing this review, what I did, in essence, was put myself in the shoes of someone who was maybe just starting out their own journey of discovery of the era. I imagine them looking at the spine of the book on the shelf, picking up the book, admiring the cover, reading the blurb, maybe reading the intro. What worries me is if they skip the intro and dive right in to be confronted by page after page of whom begat whom (which I can get chapter and verse from Genesis). Then, the book is quietly returned to the shelf and passed by for something more user-friendly.

Writing a two hundred year history of an important family and binding it all together with the contemporaneous events is no slight feat. It is hard to know what to include but more importantly, what to exclude. Just because you have all of this information to hand, doesn't mean it has to be included. Whilst the book does include family trees and a list of who's who for each chapter, I think the focus should have been more concentrated on those (few) who were responsible for the rise and the ultimate fall of this great family.  Afterall, in the great scheme of things, political power and influence was only held by a few. I just wanted a bit more meat on the bone - a bit more of an analysis of events and the impact of the actions undertaken by certain members.  

Alternately, it could have be written in two parts - maybe the first part concentrating on the political history, and then the second part on the more detailed genealogical discussion (for the purist). Anyone is is avidly interested in this period and has done their due diligence will certainly pick this up for their own collection.