16

Four Conspiracies and a Funeral

The early months of 1327 passed uneventfully as far as Sir Edward of Caernarfon, formerly King Edward II of England, was concerned. He was free to wander around the gardens of Kenilworth Castle at will – though not to leave the castle, of course – and his cousin Henry of Lancaster treated him with courtesy and kindness. Once again Edward’s state of mind remains unknown, and little evidence exists to tell us what his life at Kenilworth was like, though we know his son the new king sent him two tuns of wine.¹Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, now ruling the kingdom in Edward III’s name despite not being on the regency council appointed during his minority, did not trust Lancaster; they had needed his support after their invasion, but now they feared his enormous influence. With his vast income and lands and his large number of followers, Lancaster would always be far too powerful to ignore, and Mortimer and Isabella had seen first-hand how his brother Thomas had done more than anyone to ruin Edward II’s reign. Henry’s custody of the former king was a danger to them. The legality of the parliament which deposed Edward was uncertain; there remained the possibility that Edward might be able to overturn it and restore himself to the throne, if he attracted enough support. Lancaster’s custody of Edward gave him leverage over Mortimer and Isabella, as he would always have the chance to hold Edward’s possible return to the throne over their heads if they annoyed him, which they foolishly went out of their way to do. Lancaster, head of the regency council and Edward III’s legal guardian, wielded little if any power in the government, while Isabella made sure that his access to his great-nephew the king was minimal.

Therefore, the former king had to be removed from Lancaster’s custody and given to men whom Isabella and Mortimer could trust. The men they selected as Edward’s new guardians were Thomas, Lord Berkeley, and Berkeley’s brother-in-law, Sir John Maltravers, neither of whom had any reason to love Edward of Caernarfon. Berkeley, now probably in his early thirties and married to Mortimer’s eldest daughter Margaret, had been imprisoned in 1322 and seen his lands given to Hugh Despenser and plundered, while his father died in prison as a Contrariant. Maltravers was about thirty-seven and had spent years in exile on the Continent after Boroughbridge with Mortimer, although his father of the same name stayed in England and remained loyal to Edward.

On 3 April 1327, custody of the former king of England was transferred to Berkeley and Maltravers, who were appointed as Edward’s guardians with joint and equal responsibility for his safety.² The chronicler Henry Knighton suggested a few decades later that Lancaster gave up custody of Edward voluntarily, but it is most unlikely that he would willingly have surrendered such a powerful political weapon.³ Although an indenture was drawn up on 21 March, the fact that Roger Mortimer waited near Kenilworth with an armed force during the transfer from Lancaster to Berkeley and Maltravers is telling, and the following year, Lancaster accused Mortimer of taking Edward from him by force.⁴ It seems probable that Lancaster had been coerced, or tricked, or manipulated. There was another, perhaps even more pressing, reason to remove Edward from Kenilworth. Although the event is shrouded in obscurity, it seems that in March 1327, some supporters of Edward attempted to free him from Kenilworth Castle.⁵ They failed, not surprisingly – Kenilworth was probably the most secure stronghold in the country – but this plot, combined with the doubts Mortimer and Isabella had over Henry of Lancaster, convinced them to move Edward. With a large armed escort, Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers left Kenilworth and took Edward the few dozen miles to Berkeley’s castle, in the Gloucestershire village of Berkeley.⁶

Geoffrey le Baker a few years later wrote a highly colourful and highly improbable account of Edward’s journey to Berkeley, claiming that his captors tormented him by crowning him with hay, forcing him to shave with cold ditchwater and eat poisoned food, clothing him in rags despite the cold, not allowing him to sleep despite his exhaustion, jeering at him and trying to make him believe that he was mad. Baker’s account of Edward’s imprisonment at Berkeley in 1327 is well known and often repeated as certain fact: he claims that Edward was kept in a cell near a deep pit containing rotting animal corpses, his jailers hoping that the stench and the contagion would kill him.⁷ It is impossible to take Baker’s allegations seriously. (Unfortunately, many writers have taken them seriously.) Baker was not writing history, but hagiography; by the middle of the fourteenth century, when he wrote his chronicle, the popular, albeit highly implausible, campaign to have Edward canonised as a saint was well underway, and Baker’s intention was to portray him as a Christlike figure nobly suffering the torments of lesser men, the ‘satraps of Satan’ as he memorably called them: the Passion of Edward of Caernarfon.⁸ Baker was keen to blame Isabella, whom he calls ‘Jezebel’ and ‘the iron virago’, for Edward’s supposed torments, yet there is nothing to suggest that she would have allowed her husband to be subjected to such inhuman treatment. And although Edward III was only fourteen, he would grow up and one day take over the governance of his kingdom, and would not take kindly to allegations that his father’s custodians had tortured and tormented him. In later years, Edward III neither accused Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers of mistreating his father, nor Roger Mortimer of ordering the torment, as he surely would have done had Baker’s stories had any substance in fact. It was stated that Edward would ‘be looked after as was appropriate for such a lord’ and ‘honestly kept for the rest of his life, according to his estate’, which means with all the respect and deference due to a man who was the son, grandson and father of kings, not abused and mistreated as a common criminal.⁹

All the available evidence suggests that Edward was in fact well treated during his incarceration at Berkeley. An entry on the Close Roll refers to the expenses of himself and his household, meaning that he had servants attending him, and castle records show that his custodians bought wine, cheese, capons, beef and eggs for him, and wax for his candles. He also had access to a chapel.¹⁰ That Edward’s guardians bought expensive wax, not the much cheaper tallow, is indirect proof that they were treating him well, and they would hardly have provided candles had they been intending to kill him by incarcerating him near a pit containing animal corpses, as Baker claims. Although we cannot prove conclusively that Edward received the items bought for him, there is no reason at all to think that he didn’t.¹¹ Berkeley and Maltravers were given an enormous five pounds a day for Edward’s upkeep, and on 15 May 1327 were given £500 for his expenses.¹² Adam Murimuth says that although Thomas Berkeley welcomed Edward kindly and treated him well, John Maltravers behaved with ‘much harshness’ towards him. As Murimuth believed, wrongly, that Maltravers was one of Edward’s murderers, his testimony on this point is rather suspect, however. He also states that Berkeley and Maltravers switched custody of Edward, each man taking responsibility for a month, which may be true but is uncorroborated by other sources.¹³ Jean Froissart, who visited Berkeley Castle in 1366 with Hugh Despenser’s grandson Edward Despenser, says that Lord Berkeley ‘was urged to take good care of him, with orders to give him all honourable service and attention and to place court officials round him who were familiar with their duties, but never to allow him to leave the castle precincts’.¹⁴ Although Froissart is an unreliable source for Edward’s reign, this account is borne out by other evidence. An anonymous fourteenth-century chronicle claims that carpenters working on the castle heard Edward moaning and groaning, which may indicate that he was being mistreated – but is far more likely to mean only that Edward, a highly emotional man at the best of times, was feeling the depths of despair at this, the worst of times.¹⁵

Isabella kept in touch with Edward at Berkeley, sending him affectionate letters enquiring after his health and comfort, and gifts of fine clothes, linen, delicacies and little luxuries.¹⁶ This implies that she still had feelings for him; after all, there was no reason for her to write to Edward and send him gifts unless she wanted to. Geoffrey le Baker claims that Edward begged Isabella in tears to allow him to see his children, but she, ‘whose heart was harder than stone … that woman of iron’, refused; however, Baker’s hatred of Isabella and attempts to portray Edward as a long-suffering saint make his testimony unreliable. Even if the story is true, this does not automatically mean that Isabella acted out of cruelty towards her husband, but perhaps out of a desire to spare their children – who, Edward III excepted, were only ten, eight and five – the distress of seeing their once-powerful father cast so low.

At some unknown date in 1327, Thomas Berkeley appointed Thomas Gurney to share custody of Edward of Caernarfon with himself and John Maltravers. Gurney was a knight of Somerset and a distant cousin of the Berkeleys.¹⁷ He had briefly been a household knight of Edward II in 1318, but held on to his connections with the Berkeleys: he took the side of the Marchers during the Despenser War, and was ordered to be arrested – with John Maltravers – in February 1322. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London then pardoned in return for a fine of £100, and his lands were restored.¹⁸ Gurney petitioned Edward for permission to pay off his fine in ten-mark instalments, fought for him in Gascony, and in March 1326, was pardoned again for his adherence to the Contrariants.¹⁹ Presumably, however, Gurney joined the invasion forces of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer in the autumn of 1326. Unlike the families of some other Contrariants, Gurney’s wife and children were not imprisoned, and although he had no particular reason to love Edward of Caernarfon, neither did he have any reason to bear him deadly hatred.

A poem in French called ‘The Lament of Edward II’ dates to 1327 or shortly afterwards. Although once believed to have been written by Edward himself, this is unlikely, and it was most probably composed by one of his supporters soon after his deposition.²⁰In the Lament, Edward shows much repentance for his many transgressions, and the poem also has him declaring, with reference to Isabella, ‘God! How much I loved the fair one; but now the spark of true love is gone out, so that my joy is fled’. This may not, of course, represent Edward’s true feelings, but it does show that, within months of his deposition, a writer saw nothing strange in portraying him as deeply in love with his wife and desperately unhappy at losing her. Geoffrey of Paris, who saw Edward and Isabella during their visit to France in 1313, also found nothing peculiar in stating that Edward loved and desired her. Their marriage of nearly twenty years was far more complex and interesting than it is usually depicted nowadays: as little more than a disaster from start to finish with an indifferent Edward constantly neglecting and punishing his long-suffering queen, who detests him and aims at his downfall and death for years on end.

While Edward languished comfortably at Berkeley Castle, Isabella and her favourite ruled England on behalf of the teenage Edward III. Having invaded England on a platform of liberating the country from greed and tyranny, Isabella granted herself the huge annual income of 20,000 marks, or £13,333, on the day of her son’s coronation, the largest income anyone in England (kings excepted) received during the entire Middle Ages and more than 20 per cent higher than the income her enormously wealthy uncle Thomas of Lancaster had received from five earldoms. It amounted to a third of the entire annual royal revenue.²¹ She also awarded herself cash grants of £31,843 between December 1326 and January 1327, supposedly to pay her debts abroad – which had in fact been paid already – and appropriated much of the inheritance which belonged to her uncle Henry of Lancaster and to which she had no right.²² The cash grants amounted to seven years of her pre-September 1324 income. And the rapidity with which queen and Mortimer spent money is truly astonishing. Edward II left just under £62,000 in his treasury in November 1326, swollen by the forfeitures of the Despensers and the earl of Arundel to nearly £80,000.²³ By 1 December 1330, a few days after Mortimer’s execution, a derisory forty-one pounds was left.²⁴

The French Chronicle of London comments, ‘The queen, Lady Isabel, and Sir Roger Mortimer, assumed to themselves royal power over many of the magnates of England and of Wales, and retained the treasures of the land themselves, and kept the young king wholly in subjection to themselves.’ It further comments that Edward III realised that he had unwise counsel and that his realm was at the point of being lost, and the people too.²⁵ The Brut says, ‘There was much loss and harm to all England; for the king and all the lords that should govern him were governed and ruled after [i.e. by] the king’s mother Dame Isabel and by Sir Roger the Mortimer.’ The chronicler also says that because of Isabella and Mortimer’s counsel ‘many harms, shames and reproofs have fallen unto the king’ and criticises the way they wasted Edward II’s treasure. Within a very short time, Isabella forfeited all her popularity of 1326: ‘began the community of England to hate Isabel the queen, that so much loved her when she came to pursue the false traitors the Despensers from France’, the Brut continues.²⁶ Isabella’s toleration of her favourite’s discourteous behaviour towards her son does not reflect well on her: she allowed Mortimer to remain seated in the king’s presence, to walk ahead of him, and to tell Edward’s friends that they owed loyalty to him rather than to the king. As Edward II had allowed his favourite Despenser to treat Isabella with disrespect, so she allowed her favourite Mortimer to treat her son with disrespect. As Despenser had persuaded Edward to confiscate Isabella’s lands and reduce her income to lessen her political influence, so she kept her son short of money for the same reason. And as she had hidden her hatred of the Despensers, Edward III hid his hatred of Mortimer, while gathering about himself men with whom he could overthrow his mother’s detested favourite. By 1330, most of Isabella and Mortimer’s allies had turned from them in disgust: instead of the king and his ruthless greedy Marcher lord, the kingdom now suffered the queen and her ruthless greedy Marcher lord, hardly a great improvement. Edward III launched a coup against his mother and Mortimer at Nottingham Castle on 19 October 1330, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, and began ruling his kingdom himself, to the great relief of his subjects.

Whether Edward of Caernarfon, at Berkeley Castle, was aware that his wife and her favourite were sowing the seeds of their own destruction and repeating his mistakes is unknown. About Edward’s state of mind during his imprisonment, or even how he passed his days, we have likewise no idea. As he lay in his room at Berkeley, Edward may or may not have known that outside the castle, he still had friends, men who had resolved to free him and restore him to the throne. The plot to remove him from Kenilworth in March had failed, but the men, fierce and fanatical supporters of the former king, were undeterred. Their leader was Thomas Dunheved, the Dominican friar whom the king had sent to the pope in 1324. Thomas was aided by his brother Stephen Dunheved, formerly lord of the manor of Dunchurch in Warwickshire – not another friar, as is often stated – who had been forced to abjure the realm, or voluntarily exile himself from England to avoid execution, after committing an unspecified felony. Stephen returned to England and had become a valet of Edward’s chamber by mid-February 1322.²⁷ Stephen and Thomas Dunheved gathered about them a group of men equally determined to free him from Berkeley: Thomas ‘travelled through England, not only secretly but even openly, stirring up the people of the south and north to rise for the deposed and imprisoned king and restore the kingdom to him’.²⁸ The Brut says that the Dominicans ‘cast and ordained, both night and day, how they might bring him out of prison’, and that Thomas Dunheved ‘gathered a great company’.²⁹

How Stephen and Thomas built their group cannot be known, but some former members of Edward II’s household joined them, including three of his sergeants-at-arms, Roger atte Watre, Thomas de la Haye and John le Botiler.³⁰ The group’s highest-profile member was Edmund Gascelyn, a knight, who witnessed grants of Hugh Despenser and his father on several occasions and is described in a petition of 1327 as a Despenser adherent.³¹ Another member was Peter de la Rokele, under-sheriff of Buckinghamshire, another former adherent of Hugh Despenser and grandfather of William Langland (born c. 1325/30), one of the greatest poets of medieval England.³² The group had a strong clerical element, including Robert Shulton, a Cistercian monk of Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire; Henry de Rihale and John de Stoke, Dominican friars of Warwick; and John, a monk from the Cistercian abbey of Newminster. Edward II had stayed at Newminster, near Morpeth in Northumberland and 300 miles from Berkeley, on several occasions during his reign, the last time in August 1322. He must have made a powerful impression on John for the latter to leave his convent and travel to the other end of the country to fight for his former king, nearly five years after the last time he can have seen Edward. Other members included two parsons both called William Aylmer, and William Russell, parson of Huntley near Gloucester.

Roger Mortimer and Isabella got wind of the Dunheveds’ plans, and as the fact that they were trying to free Edward of Caernarfon was too sensitive to commit to writing, ordered the known members of the group to be arrested on other charges – usually theft, breaking and entering, extortion and assault. The Patent Roll of March to July 1327 is full of entries accusing Dunheved adherents of these crimes, the important thing being to arrest and imprison them at all costs, as the thought of the former king of England wandering around freely in the company of men determined that he be free and perhaps even restored to the throne was too awful to contemplate.³³ At the beginning of May 1327, Stephen Dunheved and John de Stoke were to be arrested and ‘taken to the king’. After early May, the gang disappeared for a month, then turned up in the North West, where Roger Mortimer and Isabella ordered the justice of Chester – Richard Damory, brother of Edward II’s late favourite Roger – to arrest and imprison Thomas and Stephen Dunheved and other ‘malefactors’ gathering there who had ‘perpetrated homicides and other crimes’.³⁴

And the Dunheved group were not alone in plotting to restore Edward: his old friend Donald, earl of Mar ‘returned to Scotland after the capture of the king, hoping to rescue him from captivity and restore him to his kingdom, as formerly, by the help of the Scots and of certain adherents whom the deposed king still had in England’.³⁵ Although Mar was in the north of England in the summer of 1327, leading one of the three columns of his uncle Robert Bruce’s army against the new regime, his adherents gathered in the south-west of England and the Marches ‘to do and procure the doing of what evils they can against the king [Edward III] and his subjects’, that is, stirring up trouble on Edward of Caernarfon’s behalf.³⁶ Mar, a great friend of Edward, was now described as the ‘enemy and rebel’ of his son, and Mortimer and Isabella ordered the arrest of two of his supporters in Staffordshire in August 1327 merely for sending letters to him.³⁷ On 14 July, they ordered the justice of Chester Richard Damory to imprison Richard le Brun, former mayor of the town, for adherence to Mar.³⁸ It is perhaps not a coincidence that the Dunheved brothers were in Chester in June, and the town was a centre of disaffection in 1327, at least partly, perhaps, on Edward of Caernarfon’s account: leading merchants were fined, and eighteen children imprisoned in the castle as hostages to ensure the citizens’ good behaviour, at their own cost, as they had been ‘disobedient and ill-behaved’ towards Edward III.³⁹

In the summer of 1327, Robert Bruce decided that the opportunity to take advantage of the political chaos in England was too good to resist: although Isabella and Mortimer sent envoys to negotiate a ‘final peace’ with him, the Scots launched an attack on England on 15 June, with Donald of Mar and Bruce’s friends Thomas Randolph and James Douglas leading the three columns.⁴⁰ With Roger Mortimer, the most powerful man in England and Edward of Caernarfon’s greatest enemy, safely out of the way hundreds of miles to the north, the Dunheved group could go ahead with their plan to liberate Edward. Probably in mid- to late June, they launched an attack on Berkeley Castle.

The truly astonishing thing is that the Dunheveds achieved their goal. This attack, which should have been a suicide mission with no chance of success, worked. The men managed to seize Edward, and even had time to plunder the castle before they fled into the Gloucestershire countryside, perhaps leaving a few dead bodies of their colleagues behind. Astonishing as this attack certainly was, we would have little knowledge of it were it not for the fortunate survival of a letter written by Thomas Berkeley on 27 July 1327 to John Hothum, chancellor of England, wherein Berkeley talks of ‘some people indicted before me in the county of Gloucestershire, for coming towards the castle of Berkeley with an armed force, for having seized the father of our lord the king out of our keeping, and feloniously robbing the said castle’.⁴¹ An entry on the Patent Roll five days later, granting Berkeley powers of arrest, names the same men as his letter, deeming them guilty of ‘coming with an armed force to Berkeley Castle to plunder it, and refusing to join the king in his expedition against the Scots’.⁴² Obviously the gang members had no intention of joining the Scottish expedition – and the clerics would never have been expected to – but this was a general accusation which would ensure that sheriffs would arrest them.⁴³ The writ judiciously omits any mention of Edward of Caernarfon.

What happened to Edward? It should be noted that Berkeley’s letter does not explicitly state that the Dunheveds ever took him outside the castle, only that they managed to abduct him from Berkeley’s custody. Although no direct evidence exists to confirm that Edward was ever recaptured, we may assume either that he was, or that the Dunheveds were forced to flee without him. Berkeley’s letter betrays no alarm that Edward was wandering about freely, and while one might argue that he would not have dared commit such a sensitive fact to paper but would have ordered his messenger to inform Hothum orally, the tone of the letter is not what we would expect if he had been in a genuine panic that Edward was at liberty. Also, more of Edward’s friends conceived another plot to release him in early September, and they would surely have known if he were free.

Thomas Berkeley’s letter also declares that ‘I have heard from members of my household, who have seen and heard of it, that a great number of people have assembled in Buckinghamshire and other adjoining counties for the same cause’; that is, attempting to free Edward. This is unfortunately the only surviving evidence for this, the third (or part of the second, perhaps) plot to liberate him in 1327. However, Berkeley’s letter states that two men whom he describes as ‘great leaders of the company’ were arrested in Dunstable, Bedfordshire – which borders Buckinghamshire – before the attack on Berkeley Castle, and ‘are held there in prison’. They were John Norton, a clerk of Edward II, and John Redmere, formerly keeper of Edward’s stud-farm, both of them Dominican friars. The Close Roll confirms that Norton and Redmere were in prison at Dunstable by 11 August 1327, and an order was issued on 21 October to send them and two other men held with them to the notorious Newgate prison in London.⁴⁴ Norton and Redmere petitioned Edward III, claiming that they had innocently been hearing Mass at the house of their order when the prior of Dunstable’s bailiffs burst in, accused them of attempting to free Edward from Berkeley and threw them into prison, and that they were ‘at point of death’ as a result.⁴⁵ While Redmere subsequently vanishes from history, Norton’s petition was successful: he was still alive in 1329.⁴⁶

The Annales Paulini say that Thomas Dunheved, Dominican friar, was captured at Budbrooke near Warwick, 18 miles from his family home of Dunchurch, and taken to Isabella. Supposedly Thomas was caught while trying to escape from Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, was thrown into a deep dungeon and died there in misery, though he may still have been alive in 1330.⁴⁷ His brother Stephen Dunheved fled to London, and the mayor and sheriffs were ordered to arrest him on 1 July 1327. He was captured and sent to Newgate, but escaped shortly before 7 June 1329.⁴⁸ Stephen reappears on record in 1330, when another order for his arrest was issued, this time for aiding the earl of Kent in his attempts to free the supposedly dead Edward II from prison. William Aylmer, parson of Deddington, was captured in Oxford shortly before 20 August 1327 and accused of ‘consenting to and abetting the robbery of Berkeley Castle, and the taking of Edward of Carnarvan, the late king’.⁴⁹

Most of the Dunheved gang were either dead, in prison or in hiding by the autumn of 1327 (Peter de la Rokele, for example, vanishes from the records for more than three years and reappears soon after Isabella and Mortimer’s downfall).⁵⁰ And yet Edward still had supporters determined to free him, and in early September, they hatched yet another plot. The leader of this latest attempt was Rhys ap Gruffydd, formerly a squire of Edward’s chamber, whom Edward appointed as an envoy to Isabella in November 1326. Possibly, Donald of Mar also aided this latest attempt in person, and Sir Gruffydd Llwyd of North Wales, who had aided Edward during the Marcher campaign in 1322 and was a long-term ally of the king, also joined. The plot failed when it was betrayed to Roger Mortimer’s deputy justice of Wales, William Shalford, on 7 September.⁵¹ Roger Mortimer was in Wales at the time, and by 26 October had imprisoned thirteen conspirators at Caernarfon Castle, Edward’s birthplace.⁵² This plot is indirect proof that the Dunheveds had not succeeded in releasing Edward from Berkeley, or had done so only temporarily.

Although most of his kingdom had rejected him in 1326, and he had ended his reign wandering around Wales with a handful of supporters, the plots to free Edward of Caernarfon in 1327 show that he still had friends. The success of the Dunheveds’ attack on Berkeley Castle demonstrates that this was no disorganised bunch of ruffians attracted by violence and plunder; the attack was well planned, well equipped and brilliantly executed. The number of arrest warrants issued, the warnings of malefactors gathering across numerous counties, Thomas Berkeley’s statement that a ‘large number of people’ in Buckinghamshire and neighbouring counties were plotting on Edward’s behalf, and the Brut’s comment that the Dunheveds had ‘gathered a great company’, suggest that there was a well-supported scheme to liberate Edward. The Annales Paulini even claim that ‘certain magnates’ supported the Dunheveds’ plot to free Edward, though their identity is unknown.⁵³

The latest plot to free Edward of Caernarfon convinced some men that he was too dangerous to be allowed to live. One of them, if we may believe the 1331 testimony of Hywel ap Gruffydd, one of Rhys ap Gruffydd’s co-conspirators, was the deputy justice of Wales, William Shalford. Supposedly, Shalford sent a letter on 14 September 1327 to Mortimer. Hywel ap Gruffydd accused Shalford of complicity in the death of Edward II, and his testimony against Shalford runs:

Rhys ap Gruffydd and others of his faction had assembled their power in South Wales and in North Wales, with the agreement of certain great lords of England, in order to forcibly deliver the said Lord Edward, father of our lord the king, who was then detained in a castle at Berkeley. And he [Shalford] also made clear in that letter that if the Lord Edward was freed, that Lord Roger Mortimer and all his people would die a terrible death by force and be utterly destroyed. On account of which the said William Shalford, like the traitor he is, counselled the said Roger that he ordain such a remedy in such a way that no one in England or Wales would think of effecting such deliverance.⁵⁴

Again, we learn that ‘certain great lords’ supported Rhys’s plot. In response to Shalford’s letter, Mortimer allegedly sent a messenger, William Ockley, to Berkeley Castle to show Shalford’s letter to Edward’s custodians, and ‘charged him to tell them to take counsel on the points contained in the letter and to quickly remedy the situation in order to avoid great peril’. Ockley, or Ockle or Ogle, was a man-at-arms and a rather obscure figure, convicted of the murder of Edward II in November 1330. He seems to have had connections in Ireland: in March 1326, he acted as attorney in Ireland for Stephen Ocle, probably his brother or cousin, and in 1327, lands in that country were restored to him.⁵⁵ Ockley is presumably the ‘William de Okleye’ who accompanied Roger Mortimer’s wife Joan during her captivity in March 1322.⁵⁶

Edward II is traditionally said to have been murdered at Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327. Edward III heard the news of his father’s death on the night of 23/24 September: the young king, not yet fifteen, sent a letter to his cousin the earl of Hereford informing him that ‘my father has been commanded to God’, and that he had heard the news the night before. The letter is dated at Lincoln on 24 September, and as we see, Edward III assumed the letter brought to him by Sir Thomas Gurney from Lord Berkeley was true and immediately began disseminating news of his father’s demise.⁵⁷ A few days later, it was announced to parliament that Edward had died of natural causes – it is hard to imagine that anyone believed this – while the parliament of November 1330, the first one held after Isabella and Mortimer’s downfall, gave the cause of Edward’s death as murder for the first time. This later parliament convicted Thomas Gurney and William Ockley of the deed, but the parliamentary rolls say only that ‘they falsely and treacherously murdered him’.⁵⁸ The method of the alleged murder was never stated. None of the murderers or anyone else involved with it ever spoke publicly about it, and no official government source ever stated the method, which leaves contemporary and later chronicles, none of whom knew the cause of death for certain. Gurney and Ockley, both sentenced to death in absentia, fled. Ockley was never heard of again; Gurney fled to Spain, where he was pursued by Edward III and where he died in 1333.⁵⁹ Roger Mortimer was also convicted of having had Edward of Caernarfon killed and on thirteen other charges, and Sir Simon Bereford was convicted of aiding Mortimer in all his felonies, including presumably Edward’s murder. These two were executed. Edward II’s custodian Thomas, Lord Berkeley was ultimately acquitted of any complicity in the former king’s death and made a very curious speech to parliament, which we will examine later, and the other custodian Sir John Maltravers was never accused of any role in Edward’s supposed murder either in 1330 or at any other point in his long life (he lived until 1364).

Fourteenth-century chronicles give a wide variety of causes for Edward’s death, far more than one would guess nowadays from the almost inevitable statements by non-specialists that Edward was killed by having a red-hot poker inserted inside him.⁶⁰ This is emphatically not a certain historical fact. The Annales Paulini simply say that Edward died at Berkeley, the Anonimalle (whose author knew about the Dunheveds’ plot to free Edward) says he died of an illness, and several continuations of the French Brut claim that he died de grant dolour, ‘of great sorrow’.⁶¹ Adam Murimuth thought at first that Edward had been murdered ‘by a trick’ and later wrote that he had been suffocated, and the Bridlington chronicler wrote that he did not believe the rumours which were current regarding Edward’s death, presumably a reference to the infamous poker story.⁶² Lanercost in the 1340s says that Edward died ‘either by a natural death or by the violence of others’, while the Scalacronica says, rather movingly, that Edward died ‘by what manner was not known, but God knows it’.⁶³ A few chroniclers only say that Edward died at Berkeley, without further explanation; the French Chronicle of London says he was ‘vilely murdered’ but doesn’t say how; the Wigmore chronicler was sure he died of natural causes; the Lichfield chronicler says he was strangled; and the Peterborough chronicler that he was well in the evening but dead by the morning.⁶⁴

Chroniclers who give the ‘red-hot poker’ story include Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon of c. 1350 and the Brut, though the best-known account is Geoffrey le Baker’s, of the 1350s:

These cruel bullies, seeing that death by foetid odour would not overcome so vigorous a man, during the night of 22 [sic] September, suddenly seized hold of him as he lay on his bed. With the aid of enormous pillows and a weight heavier than that of fifteen substantial men they pressed down upon him until he was suffocated. With a plumber’s red-hot iron, inserted through a horn leading to the inmost parts of the bowel, they burned out the respiratory organs beyond the intestines, taking care that no wound should be discernible on the royal body…⁶⁵

Baker goes on to say that Edward’s screams penetrated the walls of the castle to Berkeley village beyond, where many of the inhabitants fell to their knees and prayed on hearing the dreadful sound. The ludicrousness of this scenario – why bother with a red-hot poker when you have fifteen men and enormous pillows and could simply suffocate the victim? – did not stop writers of later decades repeating the story. Near the end of the fourteenth century, the writer John Trevisa, chaplain of Berkeley, translated thePolychronicon into English, and copied the poker story without comment. It is sometimes argued that Trevisa must have known this story was accurate, as he grew up in the village of Berkeley and was a small boy there at the time of Edward’s death, served Edward’s custodian Thomas, Lord Berkeley as chaplain and must have heard him confess to the murder, and would therefore not have translated the passage without comment had he known it to be untrue. This is all false. Trevisa came from Cornwall, and wasn’t born until around 1342, fifteen years after Edward’s alleged murder.⁶⁶ The Thomas, Lord Berkeley he served as chaplain was not Edward’s custodian of 1327 but his grandson of the same name, who was born in 1353 and died in 1417. Trevisa did not arrive at Berkeley until 1388, long after the death of Edward’s custodian and more than sixty years after Edward’s supposed murder. He had no more knowledge about it than anyone else, and no more than Higden, author of the Polychronicon, who was a monk of Chester, 160 miles from Berkeley.

There are many reasons to reject the lurid, sensationalist story of the red-hot poker, despite its frequent repetition in the centuries since 1327. Firstly, the assumed reason for this grotesque method was to kill Edward without leaving a mark on his body – as stated by Baker and repeated numerous times ever since. Yet Baker also says that the villagers of Berkeley heard Edward’s screams. It makes no sense to avoid leaving marks on Edward’s body, yet ensure that the manner of death was so agonising that he screamed loudly, so that the nearby villagers would have known that he was being murdered. Secondly, it is not at all certain that this method would kill a person quickly; it might take hours or days for the victim to die. Thirdly, there was no reason for Gurney and Ockley to use such a pointlessly sadistic method which they couldn’t have known beforehand would work, when much easier and tried and tested methods were at hand. Something as terrible as killing a king would surely have required them to use the easiest, quickest and most effective method they could devise. Roger Mortimer had escaped from the Tower in 1323 by drugging his guards, and knew how to procure sedatives. Gurney and Ockley could have drugged Edward and smothered him, or given him enough sedation that he would never wake up. It is doubtful that anyone would have recognised any signs of smothering on Edward’s dead body. Strangulation would probably have left marks around the neck, but these could have easily been covered up. Fourthly, the red-hot poker story seems a bit too convenient, as a ‘fitting’ punishment for Edward’s presumed sexual acts with men. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, various manuscripts circulated about the death of Edmund Ironside (died 1016), who was supposed to have been murdered on the privy with a dagger inserted inside his bowels, and Edward’s own brother-in-law the earl of Hereford had been killed at Boroughbridge with a pike thrust inside his anus.⁶⁷ These stories could have been seized on in the common imagination as a likely cause of the former king’s death.

For a month, from 21 September to 20 October, Edward of Caernarfon’s body lay in the chapel of Berkeley Castle guarded and looked after by only one man: a royal sergeant-at-arms named William Beaukaire, who was presumably a Frenchman, as Beaucaire is a town near Avignon. Beaukaire was a decidedly odd choice for the duty. Six months earlier, he had been one of the garrison who held out at Hugh Despenser’s castle of Caerphilly against the queen for four months, for which he was pardoned with the rest in March 1327.⁶⁸ Among his comrades in the castle were former members of Edward II’s household and Roger atte Watre of the Dunheved gang, also a royal sergeant-at-arms, by now probably dead, in prison or in hiding for his role in freeing the former king. Beaukaire seems to have arrived at Berkeley shortly before Edward’s death.⁶⁹ Precisely why, of all people, a man who had been an adherent of Edward and Despenser arrived at Berkeley around the time Edward was supposedly murdered is uncertain, and why he was the only man watching the body for an entire month is also a difficult question to answer. Even if Beaukaire had completely renounced his former allegiance and was demonstrating his fervent loyalty to the new regime by participating in Edward’s murder, it is odd that, of all the men who could have been sent to guard Edward of Caernarfon’s body, a former presumed Despenser adherent should have been chosen.

Royal clerk and chronicler Adam Murimuth says that many knights, abbots, priors and burgesses of Bristol and Gloucester came to see Edward’s body ‘by invitation’.⁷⁰ Unfortunately, he doesn’t give their names, specify what ‘many’ means – ten, fifty, a hundred? – whether they came all at once or individually or in small groups, whether they viewed the body at Berkeley Castle or after it had been moved to Gloucester a month later, or the motives for the invitation: to make sure that Edward was really dead, to identify the body as his, or merely as a ceremonial duty to mark the passing of a former king. We may assume that at least some of these men would have known Edward by sight. None of his own family, however, visited Berkeley to view the body. The Berkeley family historian John Smyth, writing in the early seventeenth century, claimed that Thomas Gurney returned from court with orders to keep Edward’s death a secret locally until 1 November 1327.⁷¹ Whether that is true or not, it is highly unlikely that Thomas Berkeley would have started circulating news of Edward’s death until he knew the young king had been informed. This means that he had to wait for at least a week – Thomas Gurney returned to Berkeley Castle from Lincoln on or shortly before 29 September – before sending out messengers inviting the abbots, knights and others to Berkeley to view Edward’s body. A week for Lord Berkeley to be sure that Edward III knew of the death, several days for messengers to ride to Gloucester and Bristol, several more days for the witnesses to receive the message and travel to Berkeley – assuming that is where the viewing took place – means that at least two weeks passed after Edward’s death before any independent observer could have seen his body. Murimuth claims that the men saw the body whole (integrum), which seems unlikely, as it is reasonable to assume that Edward was embalmed soon after death, if only to prevent bodily decay; Edward III was embalmed immediately after death in 1377. We know for certain that Edward II’s heart was removed during the embalming process, as Thomas Berkeley bought a silver casket in which to place it and send it to the queen, and it was not a royal physician who performed the embalming but a local woman, whose name is lost to history. (Heart removal was an entirely normal practice in royal burials at this time.) Payment for embalming materials appears on Thomas Berkeley’s household rolls for the period ending 28 September.⁷² Therefore, Edward’s body was most probably not ‘whole’. Adam Murimuth’s most controversial statement, however, is that the knights, abbots and others observed (conspexissent) Edward’s body superficially, superficialiter. Precisely what Murimuth was trying to convey with this statement is frustratingly unclear. Royal embalming involved covering the body with cerecloth, or wax-impregnated linen, including the face.⁷³ We cannot say for sure whether the men saw Edward’s face, and ‘superficially’ implies they were only permitted a brief or distant glance at the body.

On 21 October 1327, Edward’s body was taken in state on a black-covered carriage the fifteen miles from Berkeley Castle to Gloucester, where it had been decided that he would be buried. Other men stayed with the body from this time: one was the bishop of Llandaff, John Eaglescliff, a Dominican friar. Given Edward’s great and reciprocated affection for the Dominican order, this was a thoughtful gesture, perhaps by Edward III or Isabella. Others were two royal knights, two chaplains, two royal sergeants and Andrew, a candle-maker, and William Beaukaire also stayed with the body until the day of the funeral.⁷⁴ Edward’s body remained unburied at St Peter’s Abbey (now Gloucester Cathedral) for two months. It originally lay on a hearse brought from London, but from 24 November was moved to a special one newly built, which had four gilded lions and standing figures of the four evangelists, and was decorated by eight incense-burners in the forms of angels and two more lions.⁷⁵ Eight hundred gold leaves were bought to gild a leopard decorating the cover lying over Edward’s body, with more purchased to decorate leopards on to standards, banners and horse coverings.⁷⁶ The body lay in a coffin and was not visible to the public: a wooden image or effigy in Edward’s likeness wearing a copper gilt crown and the robes he had worn to his coronation was used instead. Forty shillings was paid for the carving of the wooden image, and oak barriers were placed around the hearse to keep the crowds away.⁷⁷ The visitors did not and could not have seen Edward’s face or body.

Very little is known about Edward’s funeral of 20 December 1327 itself, as no details survive, except that it cost over £350.⁷⁸ The three-month delay since his death was normal: his father died on 7 July 1307 and was buried on 27 October, and his widow Isabella died on 22 August 1358 and was buried on 27 November. What was highly unusual was the use of the wooden effigy, the first time one is known to have been used in a royal burial in western European history.⁷⁹ Edward III, now fifteen, his mother Isabella and Roger Mortimer certainly attended. Edward II’s younger half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, and niece Elizabeth de Burgh, were there, and so presumably were his other half-brother Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, his cousin Henry of Lancaster, many other magnates and prelates, and perhaps Edward’s younger children John, Eleanor and Joan. Roger Mortimer had himself a new black tunic made for the occasion. Three years later, he would be dragged to his execution wearing it.⁸⁰After Edward of Caernarfon’s funeral, Edward III, Queen Isabella, Roger Mortimer and the court moved on to Worcester. In January 1328, Isabella summoned the woman who had embalmed her husband’s body to her, though to what purpose and what the woman said to her is not known.

Normally, when a man’s body lies in state for two months and his funeral takes place in the presence of dozens or hundreds of people, including his own family, we know that his life has ended and may bring our account of it to a close. But for Edward II, that most unconventional, complex and contradictory of men, nothing could ever be that simple.

Edward was not dead.