by Ian Mortimer
The explicit details of Edward’s death in the Brut seem to have been known to another northern chronicler, an anonymous canon of Bridlington Priory, who wrote some time between 1327 and 1340. He states that on 21 September ‘Edward of Carnarvon died in Berkeley Castle where he was held in custody … Of his death various explanations are commonly suggested, but I do not care for such things as now are written.’24 This is not directly taken from the 1327 entry in the Brut, as it mentions Berkeley as the place of death, not Corfe, and thus it may be further evidence that the rumour that Edward died in the circumstances described in the Brut was widespread across the north of England at an early date.
The next chronicle to give details of the death was also written in the north. This is the famous Polychronicon, the most popular history of the fourteenth century, written by Ranulph Higden, a monk of Chester. It is an enormous mixture of fables and chronicles, mostly borrowed from other writers. Although Higden was comparatively uninterested in English history, being more concerned to present a comprehensive history of the world, he devotes his last book to his homeland. The passage relating to the death of Edward reads: ‘On 3 April the old king was taken from Kenilworth to Berkeley Castle, where however since many people conspired to free him, about the feast of St Matthew the Evangelist, he was killed disgracefully by a burning rod piercing his private parts.’25 This shows that the story was circulating in Chester by 1340 at the latest. The first version of the Polychronicon was completed in 1327, but it is not clear whether this covered the death of Edward. Thus Higden’s account can be dated to some time between 1327 and 1340, with the likelihood of the latter being the date of actual completion.26
Few chronicles of the next decade mention the death. Most do not give details. The Historia Aurea, another northern work, finished in about 1346, states tersely that the king ‘was killed in September on St Matthews Day by the introduction of a hot iron through the middle of a horn inserted into his bottom’.27 Another account completed in that year but in the south, at Westminster, states that ‘according to rumour, the manner of his death and the method of his execution was that he was pressed down in his bed with a table, a horn was thrust violently into his anus and through the middle of this horn an iron rod was pushed into his guts, from which he died in torment’.28 The Westminster writer was undoubtedly using a copy of the long version of the Brut for his information, as shown by the wording of this and other entries at this point in his chronicle.
By the 1350s no new writers could remember the events and hearsay of 1327, and they tended to follow existing works. One chronicle dramatically stands out as an exception. This was the work of Geoffrey le Baker, previously attributed to his patron Thomas de la More, written about 1356. Le Baker is the only writer of any originality besides the author of the long version of the Brut to give a full and detailed account of the killing of Edward, and he is the only writer to have cited an independent witness. He used a copy of Murimuth’s chronicle for a chronological framework, and seems to have supplemented this with readings from the Brut, but where he felt he could significantly add information he did so with abandon and in abundance. He states that the king was handed over at Kenilworth to Maltravers and Gurney (not Berkeley, as Murimuth states), led first to Corfe Castle, then to Bristol, where various townsmen conspired to take him overseas, and finally to Berkeley. At Bristol he was tortured and humiliated, deprived of sleep, his food poisoned, and he was left without heat in an attempt to induce madness. On the way from Bristol to Berkeley he was supposed to have been mocked by his guards: they crowned him with hay, and ordered him to walk. They prepared to shave him with ditchwater and when he protested that he would have hot water whether they liked it or not, he began to weep profusely. These things were related to le Baker after the plague of 1347 by one William Bishop, who claimed to have led Edward from Bristol.
This William Bishop is interesting, for he was one of Roger Mortimer’s men-at-arms in 1321.29 He is often cited as a witness for all that le Baker has to say about the death of Edward II; but in fact he is only a witness for what has so far been related of le Baker’s narrative. While le Baker may well have received other information from him relating to the death, Bishop was not involved in the killing. Firstly he would have been arrested in 1330 if he had been in the castle at the time,30 and, secondly, no other role is claimed for him in the chronicle beside that of transporting Edward: a fact most historians seem to have overlooked. But even this transportation seems fabricated. We know that Edward was taken from Kenilworth on 3 April 1327, and that he was at Llanthony Priory near Gloucester two days later.31 To take a captive man fifty-five miles in less than three days is not a particularly easy task and, although it would not have prevented processions of ridicule and mock crownings with hay, they were likely to have been of short duration. It is also difficult to explain how a three-day journey from Kenilworth to Berkeley by way of Gloucester was supposed to lead first to Corfe, another point certainly to Bishop’s discredit as a witness, which raises questions about le Baker’s judgement. The whole account fits more with the traditional religious literary form of the ‘passion’, or suffering of a martyr, and le Baker definitely goes to some considerable lengths to convince us that Edward was indeed a martyr.
To continue with le Baker’s evidence. Adam of Orleton is supposed at this point to have sent an ambiguous Latin message to the gaolers, which could be read in two ways: either ‘Do not fear; to kill the king is a good thing’, or ‘Do not kill the king; it is good to be afraid’. Unfortunately for le Baker, at this time Orleton was on a mission from Roger and Isabella at Avignon to see the Pope. He was thus at least two weeks away by letter.32 And finally, the story le Baker tells has been lifted from a story told by Matthew Paris of the murder of a Hungarian queen in 1252.33
Up to this point le Baker has offered only a literary elaboration on what is already known from earlier chronicles, elaborated upon mainly by his bias and William Bishop’s testimony. Now he states Edward was looked after by Thomas de Berkeley until the receipt of the bishop’s letter with its cryptic message. To give le Baker the benefit of the doubt, let us assume the letter was that of William de Shalford to Roger, which Roger forwarded to Berkeley. According to le Baker, Berkeley is supposed henceforth to have been forbidden to see the king, and the persecution of the deposed monarch began in earnest. He was confined for days in a pestilential chamber deep underground among rotting corpses. Then, ‘the tyrants, seeing that a very strong man could not be overcome by the stench of death, by night, on 22 September, while asleep in bed, with great cushions piled in a heap and more than fifteen men pressing down on him, a burning plumber’s iron was applied through a ductile tube in his empty secret parts to his lungs after his intestines were burnt away, showing no wound in the region of the body where wounds were normally sought …’.34 Here we seem to have a garbled version of the longer version of the Brut, for instance that Berkeley was forbidden to intervene to save the king, and the use of the word ‘tyrant’ to describe the murderers at the same points in the text. Le Baker has pillows rather than a table, but otherwise there is nothing which could not have come from Murimuth and the Brut. Certainly there are no references to key facts which we have in official records, such as the sentences on the accused murderers, or the presence of William Beaukaire. Such details would have been much more convincing than a ‘passion’ story about a man weeping profusely in order to have sufficient hot water to shave, especially when the king at this stage of his life habitually wore a beard.35
There is something both farcical and pathetic about le Baker’s evidence. He is so keen to impress upon his readers the strength and suffering of the noble Edward that no fewer than fifteen people had to hold the ex-king down beneath cushions. With such an onslaught as this, one wonders why they bothered with the spit. Why not just smother him, as Murimuth believed, or poison him? Or strangle him? Or starve him? If it was important to have no sign of the death impressed on the king’s features, why torture
him so terribly? If Roger himself had wanted to arrange a well-concealed death, he could have used poison, having used it very effectively in 1323 on the guards at the Tower. So why encourage the screaming that was reputedly heard throughout the castle? One might speculate that the murderers did not know that a king’s body was covered up as part of the embalming process, and they panicked, and murdered Edward with tables, cushions, red-hot spits, dead bodies, cold water, fifteen men or whatever; but such speculation can only hit a wall of suspicion. The method of death described by le Baker and others of the red-hot spit tradition seems to be a reflection of the basic idea that the people who had custody of Edward were both cruel and wicked. This is clearly borne out in le Baker’s narrative, which is a polemic against Isabella, whom he calls ‘Jezebel’. Indeed, his principal motive for writing was justice, born out of his determination that Isabella should have been punished for adultery and the murder of her husband, and not allowed to live in luxury, as she was when le Baker began writing.
Le Baker’s anti-Isabella stance is different from earlier polemicists, who were principally anti-government. This is interesting in the context of the geo-political standpoints of each of the chroniclers in relation to the red-hot poker story. The earliest southern writers – the Annales Paulini, Murimuth and the various chronicles based on the short version of the Brut – do not mention this means of death. Those who do are all northerners: Higden, the Lancastrian author of the long Brut, and John of Tynemouth, author of the Historia Aurea. The one northern writer who does not – the canon of Bridlington – clearly has heard a terrible story and has refused to believe it. The first southern chronicle to tell the story of the red-hot poker – the Westminster chronicler – merely copied the story verbatim from the longer Brut, in about 1346. The idea that Edward died on a red-hot poker was new in London at this time. Ten years after the death it was still widely believed in the south that Edward had been suffocated by Gurney and Maltravers, as shown by Murimuth. While the source of the red-hot poker story cannot be proved, it is clear that the pattern of its dissemination is the reverse of that which one would expect: the writers geographically most distant from Berkeley were closer to the source of the story than the well-connected Murimuth, who was in the south-west at the time. Thus the story may be explained as a piece of propaganda, probably spread by a Lancastrian sympathiser, and probably arising the following year from the conflict between Roger and Henry of Lancaster. Le Baker seems to have swallowed the northern account whole, placed it within the framework of a well-informed and reliable chronology (adapted from Murimuth), reinforced it with the dubious testimony of the aged and unreliable William Bishop, and created an account so vitriolic and vivid that it seemed better informed and more attractive than any other before or since, and ultimately became the main source for the popular legend.
One may go further than this. There is one detail about the Berkeley Castle plot which allows us to say unequivocally that no chronicler knew anything about what happened inside Berkeley Castle in late September 1327. Not even le Baker, with his long description of the barbarity of Edward’s political masters, came close. In this we may learn an important methodological lesson: the most detailed chronicles are not necessarily the best-informed. Indeed, any writer who ventured to comment on the subject was skating on very thin historical ice. While some guessed at murder, and some reported the red-hot poker story, not even the sceptical canon of Bridlington imagined what really happened.
Edward II was still alive.fn1
fn1The detailed argument underpinning this statement will be found below in Chapter Twelve Revisited.
* * *
THIRTEEN
* * *
King in All but Name
THE BERKELEY CASTLE plot is without doubt one of the most remarkable events in European history, made more so for the fact that it has remained secret for nearly seven centuries. No other event compares with it. Kings were occasionally deposed, or murdered, and new monarchs took their thrones; but at no other time did a subject dethrone a king, feign his death and burial, and secretly keep him alive in order to influence his successor.
The origins of the plot lie in Roger recognising the importance of the custody of Edward II. This occurred many months beforehand, as shown by his seizure of the ex-king in early April. Taking possession of the ex-king was not just a means of reducing the chances of Edward’s escape, or lessening the chance that the Earl of Lancaster would use him as a political weapon; it was also a way for Roger to control Edward III. Since Edward II had been forced to abdicate, the ex-king posed a danger to Edward III as well as to Roger and Isabella. If he were to be rescued, he would have claimed that he had been forced to resign the throne illegally. If powerful men had sought his restoration the young king would have had to choose between opposing his father on the battlefield and resigning the throne himself. The latter was not an option, as he would thereby undoubtedly have sentenced his mother to death along with Roger and many other men who had joined them in France.1 Thus, with Edward II in Roger’s custody, the young king was dependent on Roger for the security of his throne and his mother’s life.
There was another strong reason for keeping Edward alive in 1327: Isabella did not want her husband killed. As shown by her sending presents to him in prison, and the tempestuous moment in France when she had suggested that she might return to him, she still felt some affection towards him. It was also an unholy act to murder a man, and doubly so for a wife to murder her husband. Such an act would invite divine retribution. Thus on personal and religious grounds Isabella wanted the same as Roger: to keep the king alive. As an intelligent woman she could also forsee that her husband’s continued survival would help to bind her son to Roger. But if the opposite were to happen – if the ex-king were to be murdered – a gulf would open up between herself and Roger and the king. She and Roger would have blood on their hands, and the murdered man’s son would doubtless wish to be avenged.
This was what Roger had on his mind after leaving court at the beginning of September: if he kept control of Edward II he and Isabella were safe. But it would not be an easy matter to arrange. Four things in particular were necessary for the plot to work. Firstly, all details had to be restricted to as small and as faithful a group of people as possible. Secondly, the mechanisms of state had to be employed to convince Edward II’s supporters and the country at large that the man was dead. Thirdly, a royal funeral had to take place with just as much show as if the man really was dead, and this included exhibiting the corpse. And finally, after the announcement of the supposed death, the ex-king himself had to be kept in the strictest security and secrecy.
By about 18 September, when Roger received de Shalford’s letter from Anglesey, everything was ready. He gave the letter to William de Ockley to go to Berkeley Castle to affect the ‘suitable remedy’. De Ockley was probably accompanied by Thomas Gurney, Berkeley’s retainer,2 William Beaukaire, and Roger’s henchman, Simon Bereford.3 They arrived at Berkeley on 20 or 21 September, by which time Roger was well on his way back to Lincoln. On 21 September Thomas Gurney was sent with letters to inform the king, Isabella and Roger that Edward II had died that day. Roger and Isabella, of course, knew that the letters were false; but for Edward III it was a shock. As far as he knew, his father was dead.4 Writing to his cousin late at night on 23 September, Edward remarked sadly that his father had been ‘commanded to God’.5
Now came the critical part of the plot: to persuade the country that the king was indeed dead. It was crucial that no one should inspect the supposed corpse of the king before it was embalmed. Roger instructed Gurney to return to Berkeley with orders that news of the death should be kept secret locally until 1 November.6 He persuaded the king not to announce the death until the end of the session of Parliament (28 September). On that day the court went into a period of mourning befitting a man who had been a feckless but characterful king, and the process of preparing for the funeral got underway.
There were two di
stinct parts to the funeral: the public and the private. The private aspects had been in progress from before the announcement of the death. A corpse was acquired, eviscerated, embalmed and covered in cerecloth. The heart was removed and placed in a silver vase for presentation to Isabella, probably in line with her own request, in order to reinforce the notion that Edward II really was dead.7
The public part of the funeral was altogether more ostentatious. Although a plea by the monks of Westminster for Edward II to be buried alongside his royal father and grandfather in the abbey was turned down, a display appropriate for a deposed king was organised. The royal clerk in charge of the funeral, Hugh de Glanville, was ordered to oversee the carrying of the corpse to St Peter’s, Gloucester, the nearest suitable large abbey.8 It was dressed in royal robes, covered in expensive Eastern rugs and placed inside a lead coffin, which in turn was placed inside a wooden one. The abbot’s own carriage was draped in black canvas and used to take the body from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester. Lord Berkeley, the mayor, and many of the townsfolk processed in front of the cortege as it approached the town and passed through the gates of the abbey into the church and up to the hearse in front of the altar.
The hearse was the centrepiece of the show. Specially constructed in London, it bore the gilt images of the lions of England on its sides, each lion bearing a painted mantle emblazoned with the royal arms. At its four corners stood figures of the four evangelists, looking over the body. Around the hearse were eight figures of angels covered in gold leaf carrying censers from which incense wafted. At the centre of all this, on the hearse itself, beneath the gold canopy, lay a figure of the king carved in wood, wearing cloth-of-gold and a gilt crown. This made a fine sight; people travelled long distances to view this rare royal spectacle. So many arrived that four large oak barriers had to be erected around it, so that it was not damaged and the figures and the hundreds of candles on and around it were not knocked over.9
