The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March by Mortimer Ian

Author:Mortimer, Ian [Mortimer, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781407066394
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-07-05T23:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

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The King’s Murderer?

POPULAR LEGEND HAS it that Edward II died in agony in Berkeley Castle with a red-hot spit thrust through a horn inserted into his anus. Various elaborations on this are to be found in a number of chronicles: that he had been kept half-naked in a pool of cold water with corpses floating around him for weeks beforehand; that he was pinioned by cushions (or a door, or a table) while he was skewered, and that his screams as the spit entered his body could be heard over a mile away. The usual explanation for the extraordinary cause of death is that the king’s body would be unmarked when examined. These stories are all characteristic of the vivid popular imagination of the period, and it is tempting to conclude that they are unlikely to be true simply for that reason. But they do have a strong basis in many of the chronicles of the early to mid-fourteenth century, and thus a much closer analysis of these and other sources is necessary in order to determine both what happened and what people believed happened. This narrative of Roger’s life must therefore pause in order to establish the limits of what we can reasonably say about the death of Edward II, with a view to determining the nature and extent of his responsibility.

To begin with the official records, we know that Edward III received news of his father’s death late at night on Wednesday 23 September at Lincoln, the message being carried by Thomas Gurney.1 The death was announced publicly on Monday 28 September, the last day of Parliament. It was stated officially that Edward had died of natural causes at Berkeley Castle on the feast of St Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist (21 September).2 The accounts rendered by Thomas de Berkeley and John Maltravers tally with this date: they claimed £5 a day for their expenses in guarding the living king from the date they received him (3 April) to 21 September, and after that they claimed the same rate for custody of the dead king’s body until 21 October, when the corpse was handed over to the Abbot of St Peter’s, Gloucester.3 From these accounts we know also that Edward II was embalmed at Berkeley in the month following his death, and that a number of people watched with the corpse in the traditional manner until his burial in December. One of these was William Beaukaire, who most importantly started his period of ‘watching’ on the very day of the king’s death, 21 September, and stayed with the corpse the whole time until the burial.4 In addition there was a clerk of the royal household, Hugh de Glanville, who was commissioned to take the body from Berkeley to Gloucester, and who remained with the corpse from 22 October until the burial. He was responsible for paying all the others staying with the corpse, namely, John Eaglescliff, Bishop of Llandaff, for watching from 21 October to the

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