THERE ARE TWO main reasons why we have commonly come to believe that Edward II died in Berkeley Castle. The first is that this was the official pronouncement both at the time and after Roger’s arrest, repeated by contemporary chroniclers, sometimes with attractive embellishments which made the event notorious. The second is that until about one hundred years ago medievalists depended almost exclusively on the direct evidence of these sources (official pronouncements and chronicles). Historical methodology tended to be restricted to a literal interpretation of a document, or a comparison of alternative texts. Possible biases, hidden agendas and secret agreements were largely ignored by scholars. The work of amateurs, which sometimes strayed into fictionalisation, confirmed to most intelligent readers that the scholars were right to be dismissive of anything not supported by authoritative records and contemporary chronicles. When huge numbers of official medieval documents began to be calendared and published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historians reacted by placing an even greater emphasis on the importance of the written record. This drive towards greater documentary authority was a very positive development, but it had a side effect. It created the illusion that the basic chronology of English political history was fixed, and that the modern historian’s role was one of refinement: adding detail and providing perspective. Scholars became reluctant to pursue fundamental revisionist lines of inquiry for the very good reason that, on the whole, they were unnecessary and counterproductive. The result is that, among scholars, revisionism has come to be associated with amateurism. With regard to the death of Edward II, scholars today tend to regard the story that he was murdered in Berkeley Castle as the safest historical narrative because it is the best documented and thus professionally the most acceptable. However, as the chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker shows, the most detailed and widely accepted narrative does not necessarily indicate the most reliable series of events. This chapter will show that, far from being the safest assumption, the death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle and his subsequent burial in December 1327 were undoubtedly fictions, initially devised by Roger and later reinforced by Edward III.
The logical starting point for demonstrating this claim is the issue which has most frequently been the stumbling block for those considering the narrative put forward in this book: that is to say how Roger managed to have the corpse of another man buried in Gloucester Abbey in December 1327, and more particularly how he managed to convince those who viewed it that it was the body of Edward II. Academics and laymen alike have made many wayward statements on this subject, from stating that the ex-king’s naked corpse was inspected to claiming that the wooden effigy at the funeral was used in place of the king’s body. Amazingly, no previous writer has considered the problem in the light of the burial and embalming practices of fourteenth-century English kings. As mentioned in Chapter 12, by the time Maltravers and Berkeley handed the corpse over to Abbot Thoky, it had been eviscerated, covered entirely in cerecloth, sewn into the ex-king’s garments, and placed inside one coffin of lead and another of wood. Even if both coffins had been opened in the abbey, the corpse would not have been recognisable as a result of its being entirely covered with cerecloth and obscured from view.1 Any doubts as to whether the process of embalming obscured the features may be answered by referring to the archaeological report on the body of Edward I, whose face still bore traces of cerecloth when his tomb was opened in 1774.2 Confirmation that it was necessary to remove the cerecloth in order to recognise an embalmed corpse may be found in the case of Richard II, for whom this was done specifically so he could be recognised when being brought south from Pontefract in 1400.3 There is no evidence that this removal of cloth happened with Edward II. Indeed, there is evidence to the contrary in the testimony of the only chronicler in the West Country at the time, Murimuth, who stated that those summoned to view the corpse only saw it ‘superficially’.4 Thus, while it is possible that one or both of the coffins were opened at some point, we can be confident that the features would not have been visible and that a false corpse would not have been suspected after its removal from Berkeley Castle on 20 October.
Prior to this date it would have been easy for Maltravers and Berkeley to have had a false corpse embalmed. The watchers attending the corpse did not begin their period of watching until 20 October, almost a month after the supposed death. The key question is whether the face was viewed by anyone other than the conspirators before it was covered in cerecloth. Normally the embalming process would have started very soon after the death, probably within three days and certainly within a week.5 Since the public announcement of the death of Edward II was not made until 28 September, at Lincoln, and since it would have taken at least three days for any lord or prelate to cover the 110 miles to Berkeley to view the corpse, we can be confident that no independent person could have seen the body within ten days of the date of the supposed death, by which time the face and body of the corpse would have been covered. The possibility that anyone saw the corpse in an uncovered state is diminished even further if one accepts Smyth’s statement that Gurney returned with orders to keep the death secret locally until 1 November.6 The only exception to this was the dubious figure of the royal sergeant-at-arms, William Beaukaire, who arrived at the castle on the day of the supposed death and who stayed with the corpse until burial. Finally, conclusive evidence that the exhibition of the corpse lacked credibility lies in the actions of the Earl of Kent and his fellow conspirators, who were convinced that Edward II was still alive despite their having been at the funeral.
There is a great deal of difference between demonstrating how something could have happened and proving that it did. Indeed, the burial of a false corpse raises a large number of questions. These are, most notably, why did Edward not mention Roger’s custody of the king in his charges against him? Why was such a magnificent tomb erected in such a prominent position within the abbey if the body beneath was not genuine? Why did Isabella have the heart of ‘Edward II’ buried with her if it was false? Why did John of Trevisa, the rector of Berkeley who translated Higden’sPolychronicon for Lord Berkeley’s grandson in 1381, repeat the story about Edward’s murder if it was not true, to the great discredit of his family? And, most of all, why did the men accused of complicity in Edward II’s murder flee in 1330 if they had not killed the king?
One may counter these objections in a number of ways. For example: Edward III would not have mentioned the secret custody of his father in the 1330 trials because Edward II was still a potential danger to him. If news that the ex-king was alive had leaked out, Edward III might have come under pressure to restore him; he might even have run the risk of being accused of treason himself, having assumed his father’s power despite a poor track record of filial loyalty. One must also remember the danger to the old king; even if Edward III was sure of his throne in November 1330, his father’s life would have been jeopardised if it had been widely given out that the man was not dead. No chronicler reported the ex-king’s survival because even those that recorded the rumour that he was alive – the authors of the Annales Paulini and the longer Brut – were convinced that the rumours were false, and they had no evidence to the contrary. Later fourteenth-century writers merely followed their predecessors in declaring that Edward II died in 1327. As for why such a magnificent tomb was erected in such a prominent position if the body beneath was false, there is no reason to doubt that it was erected in good faith, probably by the abbey itself, to whom the glory of being seen to hold a king’s corpse guaranteed a stream of visitors, pilgrims, noble benefactors and wealth.7 Similarly the hearse was an elaborate work of art because it was undoubtedly ordered in good faith by royal officials. Furthermore, the possibility that the tomb did not contain Edward II’s body in December 1327 does not mean that it never contained it. Indeed, Edward II’s bones – if not his entire body – could have been secretly interred in the grave at a later date.8 This would explain why so many royal visitors later came to Gloucester on pilgrimage, including Edward III himself in March 1343.9 A similar explanation may be extended to the burial of the king’s heart. Isabella did not die until 1358, when Edward II would have been seventy-four, an age to which no medieval king lived. Thus he almost certainly predeceased her. It is therefore possible that the heart buried beneath Isabella in 1358 was not the organ that she had been given as her husband’s by Lord Berkeley in 1327 but one she had received more recently.10 As for why Trevisa stated, in his English Polychronicon, that Edward was killed in Berkeley Castle, one would hardly have expected a scholar of Trevisa’s standing to alter a widespread work so fundamentally, especially as it had been universally accepted that Edward II had been murdered there, and Trevisa himself had probably never heard a different story. Thus it can be seen that none of these objections is incontrovertible. On the other hand, none of these counter-arguments is anything more than conjectural.
Only one objection and counter-argument provide a way to take the analysis forward: the flight of the men involved in the alleged murder, namely Bereford, Berkeley, Maltravers, de Ockley and Gurney. Their individual cases must be examined.
Simon Bereford was the only man apart from Roger executed as a result of the palace revolution of October 1330. He was hanged the following month because he had helped Roger ‘in all his treasons, felonies and plots’, including the Berkeley Castle plot. His precise role is unknown, although it may be noted that a later piece of evidence to be discussed at the end of this chapter offers an explanation.
John Maltravers fled the country on hearing of Roger’s arrest, escaping from Mousehole, in Cornwall, in a fishing boat. A writ for his arrest was issued to the sheriffs of the counties on 3 December 1330, more than six weeks after Roger’s fall. In his absence he was tried in Parliament and sentenced to be drawn, hanged and beheaded.11 A reward was offered for him, 1,000 marks alive or £500 for his head. The crime for which he was sentenced, however, was not connected with the death of the ex-king but that of the Earl of Kent. Thus it can be shown on paper that, although he fled, this was not because of complicity in the murder of Edward II. However, this is a superficial reading of the evidence. Maltravers was an official keeper of the king with Berkeley, charged with protecting the king’s safety, and so implicated in the same charges as brought against Berkeley. This was stated explicitly by both Berkeley and the prosecution in the course of Berkeley’s trial. After the acceptance of Lord Berkeley’s second statement, that he was away from his castle at the time of the murder, Maltravers was even more strongly implicated. But he was not accused. In March 1334 he wrote from Flanders to Edward III saying he had certain information about the ‘honour, estate and well-being of the realm’.12 It was no slight underling but Edward’s closest companion, Sir William de Montagu, who was sent to receive the information. By 1339 Maltravers was being employed by Edward III on official business in Flanders, and in 1345 he made a formal submission there to Edward, having served in Ireland the previous year.13 He received a guarantee of safe passage at that time to return to face trial for the charge of procuring the death of Kent, but he did not immediately take it up. He continued to be employed by Edward, and was restored to all his estates after he returned to England to face the judgement of Parliament in 1352 for Kent’s death, at which time he was acquitted.14 Thus, although he was involved along with Lord Berkeley in the supposed murder of Edward II, he was never charged with involvement in the killing, even when in custody in 1352.
Thomas de Berkeley did not flee. He faced trial in Parliament on the same day as Roger, 26 November. When asked how he wished to acquit himself of responsibility for the death of the king, he answered that he had never consented to it, helped with it, or procured it, and ‘nor had he ever heard of his death until this present parliament. And in this way he wished to acquit himself, just as the king’s court would consider it.’15
Berkeley was claiming that he was not guilty of the murder because, as far as he knew, Edward II was still alive. Unfortunately for Berkeley, he was refused permission to put his case to a jury. Allowing him to plead that Edward II was still alive was the last thing the king or his close advisers wanted, as it was in their interests to maintain that Edward II was dead. Forced to play along with the prosecutor, Berkeley said that at the time of the king’s murder he was away from the castle at his manor of Bradley. This was in fact a lie, as he was not at Bradley until a week after the supposed death.16 He further claimed he could not recall anything from the time as he had been so ill. This again was not true, as he had been well enough to send Thomas Gurney to Nottingham on the day after the supposed murder with letters about the king’s death.17 He was then asked how he excused himself for appointing the men who had killed the king. He could not deny that the appointment of the guards had been his responsibility without shifting the blame on to his father-in-law, Roger, which he was not prepared to do. Thus he was acquitted of the murder himself but charged further with the appointment of William de Ockley and Thomas Gurney to look after Edward II.18 This charge technically hung over him until 1337, when he was absolved of all responsibility for the supposed death.19 In fact Edward III never punished him, allowing him to retain the shrievalty of Gloucestershire after Roger’s arrest and ordering a large debt owed to him by Edward II to be paid a few months later.20
William de Ockley did flee the country, and was in his absence found guilty with Gurney, the other messenger in the plot, of murdering Edward II. Gurney himself did not initially flee but was protected by Lord Berkeley until the trial. After Berkeley’s line of defence had been refused, and Gurney had been sentenced to death in his absence, Gurney was given money by Berkeley in order to escape.21 A reward of £100 was offered for him alive and 100 marks for his head. From England he fled to Spain, where he was captured at Burgos in 1331. Having escaped, he remained at large until William de Tweng caught him in Naples in 1333, but he died at Bayonne in de Tweng’s custody on the return journey, despite the efforts of two physicians to save him.22 De Ockley carried a lower price of 100 marks alive or £40 for his head. After fleeing, he was never heard of again.
This comparison of the later careers of the protagonists shows that there was no band of men who collectively knew and felt their guilt and fled into the night. Of the five men accused in Parliament, two were arrested, one fled, and two remained in England until the trial, the less important man fleeing after his protector’s plea on their joint behalf had been disallowed and he (Gurney) had been sentenced to death. Berkeley did not flee, confident he could refute the allegations against him. There were other people involved in the supposed murder – presumably Berkeley’s household men-at-arms – who did not flee. In 1332, one of Edward’s agents found William de Kingsclere at Rochester and Richard de Well near Northampton, both of whom he stated were connected with the Berkeley Castle plot.23 Apart from Roger and Bereford, Gurney was the only man to suffer in any way for the murder, and his death was not the result of judgement. Some men who were involved, like William Beaukaire and William de Shalford, were never accused or arrested. De Shalford in fact was rewarded for long loyal service in 1337 at the request of Richard of Arundel and William de Montagu.24
Much of the evidence given in the foregoing passages is either circumstantial or tangential to the supposed death of Edward II. Some, however, is not. Careful sifting of the facts reveals three details in particular which together demonstrate that he did not die in Berkeley Castle. Firstly, there is a hitherto unnoticed inconsistency in the official records which undermines the government pronouncement that he was killed. The records of the trials in the Parliamentary Rolls show that Maltravers and Berkeley were acknowledged to have been jointly and equally liable for the safe keeping of the ex-king. As has already been mentioned, Maltravers was not charged with murder or with failing in his responsibility to keep the ex-king safely, whereas Berkeley was, on both accounts. As only one of the two men equally liable was charged, either the charges which ought to have been brought against both of them lacked substance or the king was protecting one man, Maltravers. That Edward III was not protecting him is clear in the full traitor’s death sentence passed on him for the lesser crime of being an accessory in the plot against Kent.25 It follows that the charges of murder and of failing to prevent Edward II’s death, brought successively against Berkeley, were groundless.
The above argument is important in itself but its greater historical significance is that it independently corroborates Berkeley’s initial trial statement that Edward II was still alive, as far as he knew, in November 1330. Furthermore, it supports an implication of that statement which explains the method of deception. Berkeley himself had led the funeral cortege into Gloucester, and so his claim that he had not heard of the death ‘until this present parliament’ implies a confession that his announcement of Edward II’s death to Edward III in September 1327 was a lie. The announcement of the death to Parliament, the arrangements for the funeral, and the subsequent spread of the news throughout the country were all consequences of this flow of misinformation from Berkeley.
To sum up: the chronicles which state that Edward II died in Berkeley Castle were based, either directly or via subsequent rumour, on the official announcement of the death which was made for the first time in Parliament on 28 September. This statement and its successors were based on information supplied by Lord Berkeley during the week following 21 September, first received by the king on the 23rd. This information was, by Berkeley’s own admission in 1330, false. That Edward III knew this in 1330 is made clear by his bringing groundless charges against Berkeley, his acceptance of a demonstrably false alibi which preserved the fiction that Edward II was dead, and his inability in 1330 to charge Maltravers with the ‘murder’ of Edward II, or even to charge him with failing in his legal responsibility to look after the ex-king. The correlation of these perspectives shows that the principal defendant and the prosecution were essentially in agreement in November 1330: Edward II was, as far as was known to both of them, still alive. This undermines all previous government announcements that the ex-king was dead, and demonstrates that all subsequent official statements that he had been killed in Berkeley Castle were unfounded. It does not prove that Edward II was actually alive at this time, merely that he was not believed to be dead, and known not to have died in Berkeley’s custody.26
*
The above passages do not include all the evidence relating to the survival of Edward II, only the key facts relating to the period between 21 September 1327 and the end of November 1330. As some later evidence explains and enlarges upon the findings laid out above, and as the later life of the ex-king was a direct consequence of Roger’s connivance, the rest of this chapter will contain the evidence pertinent to Edward II after Roger’s execution.
In the late nineteenth century, Alexandre Germain, a French archivist working on an official register of the medieval Bishopric of Maguelonne in the Archives départementales d’Hérault at Montpellier, found an official copy of a letter from Manuele de Fieschi, a papal notary and later Bishop of Vercelli who died in 1348, addressed to Edward III of England. This is a full translation:
In the name of the Lord, Amen. Those things that I have heard from the confession of your father I have written with my own hand and afterwards I have taken care to be made known to your highness. First he says that feeling England in subversion against him, afterwards on the admonition of your mother, he withdrew from his family in the castle of the Earl Marshal by the sea, which is called Chepstow. Afterwards, driven by fear, he took a barque with lords Hugh Despenser and the Earl of Arundel and several others and made his way by sea to Glamorgan, and there he was captured, together with the said Lord Hugh and Master Robert Baldock; and they were captured by Lord Henry of Lancaster, and they led him to the castle of Kenilworth, and others were [held] elsewhere at various places; and there he lost the crown at the insistence of many. Afterwards you were subsequently crowned on the feast of Candlemas next following. Finally they sent him to the castle of Berkeley. Afterwards the servant who was keeping him, after some little time, said to your father: Lord, Lord Thomas Gurney and Lord Simon Bereford, knights, have come with the purpose of killing you. If it pleases, I shall give you my clothes, that you may better be able to escape. Then with the said clothes, at twilight, he went out of the prison; and when he had reached the last door without resistance, because he was not recognised, he found the porter sleeping, whom he quickly killed; and having got the keys of the door, he opened the door and went out, with his keeper who was keeping him. The said knights who had come to kill him, seeing that he had thus fled, fearing the indignation of the queen, even the danger to their persons, thought to put that aforesaid porter, his heart having been extracted, in a box, and maliciously presented to the queen the heart and body of the aforesaid porter as the body of your father, and as the body of the said king the said porter was buried in Gloucester. And after he had gone out of the prisons of the aforesaid castle, he was received in the castle of Corfe with his companion who was keeping him in the prisons by Lord Thomas, castellan of the said castle, the lord being ignorant, Lord John Maltravers, lord of the said Thomas, in which castle he was secretly for a year and a half. Afterwards, having heard that the Earl of Kent, because he said he was alive, had been beheaded, he took a ship with his said keeper and with the consent and counsel of the said Thomas, who had received him, crossed into Ireland, where he was for nine months. Afterwards, fearing lest he be recognised there, having taken the habit of a hermit, he came back to England and proceeded to the port of Sandwich, and in the same habit crossed the sea to Sluys. Afterwards he turned his steps in Normandy and from Normandy, as many do, going across through Languedoc, came to Avignon, where, having given a florin to the servant of the pope, sent by the said servant a document to Pope John, which pope had him called to him, and held him secretly and honourably more than fifteen days. Finally, after various discussions, all things having been considered, permission having been received, he went to Paris, and from Paris to Brabant, from Brabant to Cologne so that out of devotion he might see The Three Kings, and leaving Cologne he crossed over Germany, that is to say, he headed for Milan in Lombardy, and from Milan he entered a certain hermitage of the castle of Melazzo, in which hermitage he stayed for two years and a half; and because war overran the said castle, he changed himself to the castle of Cecima in another hermitage of the diocese of Pavia in Lombardy, and he was in this last hermitage for two years or thereabouts, always the recluse, doing penance and praying God for you and other sinners. In testimony of which I have caused my seal to be affixed for the consideration of Your Highness. Your Manuele de Fieschi, notary of the lord pope, your devoted servant.27
Historians have puzzled over this letter ever since it surfaced, privately published by Germain, in Montpellier in 1878. A few years after it appeared, the great constitutional historian, Bishop Stubbs, included it in his edition of the Chronicles illustrative of the reigns of Edward I and Edward II. His opinion was that it ‘must have been the work of some one sufficiently well-acquainted with the circumstances of the king’s imprisonment to draw up the details without giving an opening for ready refutation’. He admitted that the letter tallied with the facts as they were then understood, but could not believe its story to be true, and attempted to dismiss it on grounds of improbability. This was an admission of defeat, as he himself stated. He made a few suggestions as to why it might have been created, then carefully showed how each suggestion was implausible, and gave up, saying ‘There the fact remains, at present inexplicable.’
The next great British historian to consider the document also drew a blank. Thomas Frederick Tout’s lines on the subject in his article on the captivity of Edward II, published in 1919, are full of scholarly despair: ‘It is a remarkable document, so specious and detailed, and bearing none of those marks by which a gross medieval forgery can generally be detected. Yet who can believe it true? Who shall decide how it arose? Was it simply a fairy tale? Was it the real confession of a madman? Was it a cunning effort of some French enemies to discredit the conqueror of Calais?’28
Since then advances have been made, but no one has been able to assess the matter objectively with any illuminating results. Scholars have fallen back on the Stubbs/Tout confusion, unable to comprehend how an escape could have taken place against the backdrop of the chroniclers’ evidence. A couple of writers have taken a contrary view, and have so blithely accepted the letter at face value that they have committed equally great sins of misinterpretation. Most guilty of the latter is Anna Benedetti, an Italian professor of English, who in 1924 identified the Lombardy castles at which Edward was supposed to have stayed as the castles of Melazzo d’Acqui and Cecima sopra Voghera, and the hermitage in which he died as the Abbazia di Sant’Alberto di Butrio, this being situated near the latter of the two castles.29 The fundamental weakness in her working was that she identified a carved capital as relating to Roger, Isabella and Edward, although this capital was made more than a hundred years earlier. To bolster her theory she highlighted a legend at Sant’Alberto that an English king had taken refuge there. A modern plaque in the monastery states that there was ‘The first tomb of Edward II, king of England’ and that ‘his bones were taken by Edward III and transported to England and reburied in the tomb at Gloucester’.30 There is no evidence for this latter statement but it is a plausible suggestion in view of Edward III’s later pilgrimages to Gloucester. G.P. Cuttino has pointed out that it is practically impossible now to determine whether the legend existed before the publication of the Fieschi letter.31 Natalie Fryde, in her book The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, suggested that it would be wrong to dismiss the Fieschi letter, although she did not go further into details about the evidence and left the matter unresolved. Only two scholars in the last thirty years have commented in academic journals on the Fieschi letter: G.P. Cuttino and R.M. Haines.
Cuttino’s article, ‘Where Is Edward II?’, appeared in 1978. He summarised the debate to date, and brought together a number of sources not previously collated. He drew attention to the fact that Manuele de Fieschi held several benefices in the Church in England, that he was a distant relative of Edward II, that he held an ecclesiastical position which carried responsibility for the region in which Melazzo and Cecima are situated, that there are weaknesses in the evidence of the chronicles which mention the death, and that some aspects of the funeral arrangements of the late king are open to doubt. His conclusions were that, while it was not possible to prove anything, the implications of Berkeley and Maltravers being forgiven at around the time of the letter ‘are obvious’: presumably that Edward III forgave them on the strength of the letter. Unfortunately there are huge assumptions and gaps in his arguments, and some of his statements are misleading. He states that the William Bishop who gave evidence to Geoffrey le Baker about the death of Edward II ‘has never been traced’, although there is little argument that Bishop was a member of Roger’s retinue in 1321. On the subject of Bishop and the chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, Cuttino claims that Bishop gave le Baker his evidence about the king’s death but the chronicle clearly states that Bishop was a source only for the king’s transportation to Berkeley. Like historians before him, Cuttino also failed to note the inconsistencies in the chronology of the Fieschi evidence (the letter states Edward was at Corfe for only a year and a half, whereas he was probably there for two and a half years, September 1327–March 1330). Finally he declared that Edward could not have received the letter, had it actually been sent, before 16 March 1337 owing to the forgiveness of Berkeley on that date, a peculiar assumption.
The 1996 article by R.M. Haines, ‘The Afterlife of Edward of Carnarvon’ is a much more valuable addition to the literature on Edward’s supposed death. He corrects a number of Cuttino’s and other writers’ more obvious errors, and points out facts which should have been noticed at the outset, most particularly the inconsistency in the chronology of Edward II’s stay at Corfe Castle. He refines the dating of the register’s compilation to probably the time of Arnaud de Verdale, an earlier Bishop of Maguelonne, and notes that the last dated document in the register is from 1337, although there are other undated documents within it which may be later. He notes the strange style of the Latin, which is particularly Genoese and informal.32 He relates the contents of the letter to verifiable facts, checks the Berkeley Castle accounts for the relevant years (which reveal the purchase of locks among other possible precautions), and relates these and other details to connected evidence. Despite all this, he discounts the possibility that Edward was not buried in December 1327 on two accounts: firstly that a public viewing of Edward’s corpse ‘must have taken place at Berkeley prior to embalming’ – although he provides no evidence that it did – and secondly that Isabella herself did not doubt the body was Edward’s, otherwise she would not have had Edward’s heart buried with her in 1358: again, an unwarranted assumption.33 He suggests the Fieschi letter was a religious forgery, put forward to claim Edward as a martyr, but produces no evidence to support this allegation; nor does he explain how the forgery could have benefited the forger. His discussion on the writing of the document suffers from his assumption that Fieschi would have expected a clerk to have had to translate his Latin for Edward III, whereas the king could read both Latin and French, as shown by his letter to the Pope, and could at least write individual letters.34 The article also suffers from chronological errors of Haines’s own making, most notably that the document could have been written as early as 1333, despite the fact that it clearly describes a four and a half year sojourn in Italy after a journey of more than two thousand miles around Europe, begun no earlier than January 1331.35
Perhaps because of the traditional conviction that Edward II died in Berkeley Castle, no historian has examined what the Fieschi letter actually is. It is not a confession but a report from Fieschi supposedly gleaned from information obtained through the ‘confession’ of the deposed king – that is to say in his own words – not necessarily through a holy confession, although the information may have been gathered in this way. Also none of the historians who have so far discussed the document have attempted to state why it might have been written, with the exception of Bishop Stubbs, who proved all his suggestions implausible. Thus no historian has pointed out that its message is a political one. During the years when this letter might have been written, 1335–43, England was on the verge of starting a European-wide war, and Genoa, the city of the powerful Fieschi family, was attempting to win independence from Milan, which it achieved in 1339 under Simon Boccanegra, the first Doge of Genoa.
A closer examination of the Fieschi letter shows that it can be divided into several parts. Firstly there is information of a kind which Edward III would have already known, details of the capture of Edward II, included in order to demonstrate the authenticity of the letter at the outset. Then there follows a description of events at Berkeley Castle expressed by the supposed Edward II as an attempt to explain what happened: specifically, whose body was in Gloucester, how he ‘escaped’, how Isabella came by ‘his’ heart, and the reactions of the guards. This included information presumed by, or imparted to, the supposed Edward II after his escape, and during his later incarceration at Corfe. It is written from the point of view of one explaining not how he escaped incarceration but how he escaped death, being secretly transferred to Corfe. It is noticeable that Fieschi states Edward’s keeper was with him all this time: in other words, he did not ‘escape’ as claimed but was transferred secretly under the pretence of an escape. The letter then moves on to explain what happened to him after his removal from Corfe. It is written in the past tense entirely, but nowhere does it refer to Edward being dead. Although the translation above has been taken verbatim from that given in Cuttino’s article, it should be pointed out that the last passage of evidence – ‘he was in this last hermitage for two years or thereabouts’ – could also be read as ‘he has been in this last hermitage for two years or thereabouts’. The implication that Edward was in Lombardy, and that his identity could be verified, gives the letter a potent political force, and indicates it was written not just for Edward II’s benefit but primarily to further Genoese interests.
Given the political implications of a letter such as this coming from Genoa in the 1330s or early 1340s, and the motive for forging such a document, a systematic analysis of its reliability is necessary. Here it is significant that the surviving text is in a bishop’s register, and thus is a copy. Moreover it is probably a copy of a copy, if the original manuscript was sent to Edward. There are five possibilities:
i. that there was no original letter, and the copy in the register is a forgery;
ii. that the original was not by Fieschi, and that it was made in bad faith, and his seal applied with or without his knowledge, and thus that the register copy is from a forgery;
iii. that the original was by Fieschi in good faith but upon the evidence of an imposter, and thus that the register copy is not a forgery but contains no information derived from Edward II;
iv. that the original was by Fieschi but was fraudulently compiled for political purposes from received information, and thus that the register copy is not a forgery but contains no information derived from Edward II;
v. that the original was by Fieschi in good faith based on evidence derived from Edward II directly or indirectly (for example, through a confessor).
The first of these possibilities can be dismissed immediately. According to Haines, the letter is in a singularly different style from any of the other entries in the register, and in an altogether more Italian form.36 In addition, the register was compiled no earlier than 1337 (the date of the last document) and no later than 1368, probably before 1352.37 Thus we can be confident that the entry is a contemporary copy of a document that once existed. Access to a bishop’s register was very limited indeed, and thus this was a poor place to forge a text. This is why the text was unknown to the rest of the world for so many centuries.
With regard to the second option, that the original was a forgery: forged medieval documents are plentiful, but there are reasons for doubting this is one of them. Fieschi’s seal, as a papal notary, would have been very carefully guarded. One could imagine that it might have been temporarily stolen to authenticate the document, but this theory requires an individual or group to have stood to benefit from such a fraudulent document being created. If the document was to be used by a state or political force to effect a policy change, it would have been worthless stealing Fieschi’s seal on account of the risk of his denying the document’s veracity to his kinsman, Edward III. Thus, if the document was a forgery, it was the work of a small group, or an individual.
The motive of an English lord or knight wishing to clear his name of the murder of Edward II can be dealt with fairly briefly as there were very few candidates. Gurney was dead by the time the letter was written, as on internal evidence it cannot be dated before 1335. De Ockley had successfully disappeared by this stage, but even if alive it is difficult to see how he could have gained access to Fieschi’s seal to forge the document. Also it is doubtful whether de Ockley had all the detailed information supplied in the letter. Maltravers, of course, almost certainly had custody of the deposed king at Corfe, but he had relayed his information to Edward in 1334 via Montagu, before this letter could have been written. The only individual who had the status, knowledge, contacts and motive to forge this letter was Lord Berkeley. But since he did not leave England, it is doubtful that he ever met Fieschi, who seems rarely, if ever, to have visited England. It is very unlikely indeed that he knew about Genoese castles and hermitages or the sequence of towns and pilgrim routes on the Continent. Finally one can rule Berkeley out on the grounds that, by his own testimony to Parliament, he knew that Edward II was alive, and thus there was a high risk his information would clash with genuine information given secretly to the king, and incur further displeasure.
To answer the question whether Fieschi could have been fooled by an imposter it is necessary to ascertain the reliability of the evidence in the document. For a start it contains at least two factual errors and one important lacuna. The first factual error, as Haines noted, is that the period of time between Edward II’s supposed death and the execution of the Earl of Kent, at which time he supposedly left Corfe, was two and a half years, not one and a half as stated by Fieschi. The second error is that the name of John Deveril does not appear, but instead the name ‘Thomas’ is given as the name of the castellan. The surprising lacuna is the fact that the abduction of Edward in July 1327 is not noted, a detail which would give the letter real strength, as very few people knew this secret information. The chronological error was probably a simple mistake, as this information would have been relatively easy for even a forger to get right, and it has to be noted that the testimony is not directly that of the supposed Edward II but his confession written at one or two stages removed.38 With regard to ‘Thomas’ being the castellan, not John Deveril, one could offer the simple explanation that Deveril did not tell the captive his real name, a fact made more likely by the absence of a surname. The failure to note the abduction in July 1327 is harder to account for, but the most likely explanation is that, if this information was genuinely derived from Edward II, this secret escape might be presumed not to have been known to Edward III, and therefore be valueless or negative evidence of its authenticity. Alternatively the letter might only preserve the bare bones of the king’s more complete testimony or confession, a possibility strengthened by the spelling mistakes of the names.
In this context it is remarkable that the letter contains a lot of accurate information. No single extant chronicle written before 1343 (the date that Fieschi became Bishop of Vercelli and thus the last possible date for the letter to have been written) includes all these details. Significantly, no surviving chronicle states that Edward took ship at Chepstow, a fact which has to be verified by recourse to the chamber account now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries.39 This also confirms that he landed in Glamorgan, at Cardiff. Every subsequent verifiable fact is correct with the exception of the detail that the castellan at Corfe was not ‘Thomas’, as mentioned above.40 There is also the interesting but hitherto unnoticed fact that, if Edward II was moved from Berkeley Castle to Ireland at the time of the arrest of the Earl of Kent, or just before, his period in Ireland (where Roger had very extensive powers and estates) ended just after the November 1330 trials and execution of Roger. It must also be noted that his departure from Ireland at that point is the first time that Fieschi states the deposed king went anywhere without his keeper. The presence of the keeper with the supposed Edward II until December 1330 tallies very well with the probability that he remained in custody, probably underMaltravers’ orders, until Roger’s death. Putting these facts together we can safely say that if Fieschi was dealing with an imposter, the imposter would have had to be not only well informed about Lombardy and continental geography but also better informed than any contemporary chronicler about Edward II’s movements in South Wales, and in particular familiar with his fateful attempt to sail from Chepstow, at a time when Edward II had only a few dozen men with him. Finally the supposed imposter would have had to make his impersonation in the Genoa region, and also to convince Manuele de Fieschi himself who, as Cuttino noted, was a distant relative of the English royal family. It is far more likely that Fieschi spoke to the real Edward II, who had all this information, rather than to an imposter.
This leaves us with just two options: that the letter was fraudulently compiled by Fieschi on behalf of his countrymen for political purposes from received information, and that it contains no information derived from Edward II himself, or that it is a genuine account of the latter days of the later life of Edward II. On account of the details of Edward’s arrest, and in particular the detail about Chepstow, the former can be discounted. Since the continued existence of the king was still such a secret in 1335–43 that no chronicler in England mentioned it, we can discount the theory that Genoa could have used this information against England with any force if it was not predominantly true. If Edward II really was in Italy at the time the letter was written, however, this would make the letter very powerful material for the Genoese.
Working on the theory that the letter is a genuine statement by Fieschi that Edward found his way to Lombardy, we can build a historical model of events. The letter must date from between 1335 and 1343, as noted above. The last dated document in the register is 1337, so it is likely that the document was written at the beginning of this period rather than towards the end. Furthermore, given the systematic accounting for periods of time in the letter (albeit with one mistake noted above), it is probable that only time spent travelling has not been accounted for, and thus the letter was written in the 1335–7 period. Since Fieschi does not express any context for the letter, and in particular does not express any hesitation over the identification of the hermit, it seems the context was to be provided by the bearer of the letter, who thus must have been someone trusted, and of high status.41 Looking through published calendars of records, the date of 4 July 1336 stands out as the prime candidate for the model. On that day Edward III wrote to the community of Genoa granting it 8,000 marks (£5,333) in compensation for an act of piracy by Hugh Despenser in 1321, although he (Edward) denied any responsibility for the deed.42 It is quite extraordinary that, after fifteen years, this money was granted, especially as the Genoese had previously sought compensation and been turned down.43 The possibility that Edward paid up such a large sum in the summer of 1336 partly on the strength of the letter from Manuele de Fieschi is suggested by the fact that the new envoy who made the claim was noted to have brought certain letters with him from Genoa. The new envoy’s name was Nicholinus de Fieschi, a kinsman of Manuele.44
If we take as the basis of our model the late spring/early summer of 1336 for the receipt of the letter, certain other details fall into place. Lord Berkeley was completely acquitted of all charges against him in the next parliament following the Genoese embassy, on 16 March 1337. Two days later, at the same parliament, William de Shalford was rewarded, despite his part in writing the letter to Roger which was later sent to Berkeley Castle. Maltravers was employed in the king’s service in Flanders in 1339, as mentioned above, effectively being exonerated of any crime deserving of outlawry by then. Isabella’s income was considerably increased in 1337; from that date she received half as much again as she had previously.45 One might suggest that the Genoese envoy announced at the English court that his kinsmen had custody of the ex-king in such a way that Edward had no choice but to drop all actions against those he had held responsible for the Berkeley Castle plot. No one else was pardoned for charges against them, with the possible exception of Joan, Roger’s widow;46 but this is what one would have expected as Gurney was dead and de Ockley, if he was still alive, was not sufficiently well-connected to the English court to be let in on the news from Genoa.
A final reason for favouring a date of about 1336 for the receipt of the letter is that Edward III seems to have been aware that his father was under Lombard protection prior to October 1338. Although both Cuttino and Haines noted the source for this, neither scholar realised its significance.47 In September 1338 Edward went to Germany to be made Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire.48 At Koblenz, one William le Galeys – William the Welshman – was brought to him from Cologne by an Italian, Francisco Forcet.49 This William claimed he was Edward II. The records state he had been ‘arrested’ at Cologne. But the ‘arrest’ was patently a fiction, as he was brought to the king not by a local arresting officer or an officer of the English court but by an Italian, a Lombard, and he was brought to Koblenz – a distance of fifty-seven miles – at a cost of 25s 6d, and afterwards accompanied the royal party to Antwerp,50 where he stayed for three weeks in December. This was just after Queen Philippa had given birth to Edward III’s second son, Lionel, on 29 November.
This information has been dismissed as evidence for Edward II’s itinerary by several historians, but on very flimsy grounds, their scepticism normally rooted in a conviction that Edward II died in Berkeley Castle. Pierre Chaplais, who first discovered the entries, suggested William the Welshman’s claim was an early form of ‘demonstration during a royal visit’. This is not supportable, due to the preferred treatment of the supposed criminal. Royal imposters were normally punished severely; Edward II had once hanged a half-witted Exeter man who had claimed to be a son of Edward I. Not only was this William the Welshman not locked up locally in Cologne as a petty criminal and an imposter, he was not locked up at all. He was escorted first to the king at Koblenz and then to Antwerp. In the royal accounts which mention him, there are no pejorative references to his royal claim, such as that he ‘traitorously’ or ‘falsely’ claimed he was father of the King of England. The bottom line is that if Edward III had believed in 1338 his father had died in Berkeley in 1327, or subsequently, he would not have paid for an imposter to be brought fifty-seven miles to him at Koblenz, and then entertained him, and taken him back to Antwerp. He would have ordered him to be hanged in Cologne.51
The point about the Lombard escort, Francisco, or Francekino, Forcet, requires further comment, for it raises the possibility that William the Welshman was escorted to Edward III from Lombardy, the region in which Manuele de Fieschi claimed Edward was living. Indeed, the fact that Edward II was not free but in custody at this period is the key to understanding the Fieschi document. Just as the letter itself was written for political purposes, so Edward II was carefully guarded for political reasons. Once his identity was known in Lombardy, he was protected, but at a cost to his freedom. He did not ‘change himself’ from Melazzo to Cecima because he was frightened off by the war; far from it, the lord of Melazzo (the Bishop of Acqui) knew Edward’s political value, and moved him to the hermitage near Cecima to safeguard Genoan political interests. Thus, for probably the four and a half years prior to Manuele de Fieschi’s writing the letter to Edward III, the Lombard higher clergy had had custody of Edward II. Nicholinus de Fieschi himself was a cardinal, and Francisco Forcet was probably one of his or his kinsmen’s retainers. When William the Welshman appeared with Francisco Forcet before Edward III at Koblenz in September 1338, Nicholinus de Fieschi was also present. Furthermore Nicholinus de Fieschi returned to Antwerp with the king and William the Welshman (still in the custody of Francisco Forcet) afterwards, staying there until January 1339.52
In conclusion: in late 1338 a man who claimed with impunity to be the king’s father was brought to the king at Koblenz by a Lombard, and was there in the company of a member of the same political Genoese family which had previously written a letter to Edward III concerning their custody of the ex-king in a Lombardy monastery. Given that we now know Edward II did not die in Berkeley Castle in 1327, and given that the man in question was not summarily dismissed but entertained at Koblenz and at Antwerp, there can be very little doubt that this William the Welshman was Edward II. Although questions must still remain about the accuracy of Manuele de Fieschi’s letter, which was written with specific political purposes in mind, and which was at best a copy of the ex-king’s verbal testimony recalled several years after his escape, there is no good reason to doubt that Edward II was still alive in 1338, and that the Fieschi letter broadly outlines the facts as Edward II understood them.
*
Finally, after 675 years, we can confront a much more coherent and historically useful narrative of the later life of Edward II. On Roger’s orders, Maltravers or Berkeley directed the ex-king’s gaoler to effect an artificial ‘escape’ from Berkeley Castle. The gaoler brought Edward II to Corfe Castle, where he maintained him under the auspices of one ‘Thomas’, who was probably John Deveril using an assumed name. There, believing he was now on the run, Edward was effectively still a captive. No one tried to free him, as everyone thought him dead. And there Maltravers kept him on Roger’s behalf, until Kent learnt of his whereabouts, possibly receiving this information from Edward III. When Roger realised that Kent was on the point of freeing Edward II, he was able to convince the king to order Kent’s execution. Edward III did it in order to save his throne, his mother’s life, and possibly even his own life.
After the discovery of the Earl of Kent’s plot it was too dangerous to keep the deposed king in England, and so Maltravers ordered the ex-king’s gaoler to take him to Ireland, where Roger had influence and the young king had few close friends. Edward II himself still believed he was on the run. But Roger could not afford to lose control of his secret prisoner. Edward III was constantly growing in age and authority. Edward II stayed in custody in Ireland for nine months. Then Roger was arrested, Maltravers fled from England, and Edward’s gaoler probably decided it was wise to disappear too. Edward II now found himself truly free, but only as long as no one recognised him. If his son knew he was alive, he would be locked up again. Hence he went to the Continent, dressed as a pilgrim, to see the one person who could advise him: the Pope. John XXII convinced him to give up all thoughts of becoming king again, and may have helped him find his spiritual path.
It is just possible that Edward III heard a reliable report about his father, for in the spring of 1331 he and fifteen of his knights dressed as merchants and went ‘as if on pilgrimage’ in France at the same time as Edward II was probably crossing that country dressed as a pilgrim. The usual explanation for this mission is that Edward III wanted to keep his performance of homage to King Philip quiet; and indeed Edward did perform homage at this time. But it is not beyond possibility that he hoped to find his father as well. If so, he failed. The next he would have known about his father’s fate was possibly the information of Gurney; it was for his information, not his head, that Edward wanted him brought back to England alive. After that the next news about his father’s fate was the testimony of John Maltravers, in March 1334. Then came the letter from Manuele de Fieschi, probably brought by Nicholinus de Fieschi in 1336. Edward III paid Nicholinus 8,000 marks, and, later, asked him to bring Edward II to meet him in Cologne. Edward III then summoned his father to Koblenz to see him crowned Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire, and took him to Antwerp, albeit in disguise and under guard, to see his grandson there. After this Edward II disappears from the sources. He may have died in 1341, when Nicholinus de Fieschi was paid the sum of one mark per day, being sent by Edward ‘to divers parts beyond the sea on certain affairs’.53Edward visited his father’s tomb on his pilgrimage to Gloucester Abbey two years later.54
In subsequent years no one did more to perpetuate the myth of Edward II’s death in Berkeley Castle than Ranulph Higden, the monk of Chester who wrote the Polychronicon, in which he explicitly repeated the story of the red-hot spit. This chapter cannot end without noting that, in 1352, when Edward III finally forgave John Maltravers for his part in the death of the Earl of Kent, he summoned Higden to an audience at Westminster ‘to have certain things explained to him’.55 The monk was to bring all his histories and parchments with him. We do not know what was said during that audience, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Edward told Higden that the murder was an untruth, and that the encyclopaedic Polychronicon was wrong. All we know is that, there and then, Higden’s life work came to an abrupt end. He never wrote another word.
As for the tomb in Gloucester, this was opened for a brief moment on 2 October 1855. The wooden coffin was found and a part of it removed. The lead coffin inside was seen but not opened.56 From the evidence of Nicholinus de Fieschi’s continued secret work and Edward III’s pilgrimages to Gloucester in 1343 one can be relatively confident that Edward II’s remains do indeed lie inside, but that they were placed there not in December 1327 but some time after January 1339, probably in 1341. It is one of the wonders of British history that beneath that spectacular tomb lies the body of a man who was both a king and a penniless hermit, who lost his wife, his kingdom and everything he possessed to his childhood companion, Sir Roger Mortimer.
Everything except his life.