In September of 1327, the anointed King of England, Edward II, son of the great Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots, had been languishing in prison for the better part of a year after his wife, Queen Isabella, and her counselor, Roger Mortimer, seized power, forcing him to abdicate to his son, Edward III. Then, he turned up dead, with no apparent mark of physical harm on his royal person. Strangely, rather than sending for the royal physician, a commoner was secretly engaged to disembowel and embalm the deposed king. News of Edward II’s death reached Queen Isabella and soon was spread, calling it a fatal accident, suggesting a fall had killed him. Strangely, many months later, after the embalmed corpse had been entombed, records show that the Queen had the local wise woman who had embalmed her late husband brought to her for a private discussion. Just what information passed between them is lost to time, but years later, it became clear that Edward II’s end was far more mysterious than was at first believed.

In this edition, we look at the figure of Edward II, remembered by many a historian as a failure, especially as seen beside the imposing figure cut by his father, the warrior monarch Edward I. Edward Longshanks ruled with an eye to a unified kingdom, conquering Wales and keeping it under his thumb through the power of his barons, established in castles across these borderlands. He tried to do the same to Scotland, but was frustrated by the defiance of such famous figures was William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Not only a fighter but a statesman as well, historians credit Edward I with developing a parliament with genuine power, whom he consulted on financial matters and to ensure that his rule was looked on as wise by all. Little did Edward Longshanks realize that these institutions, a politically powerful baronage and parliament as well as the queen whose marriage to his son he himself had arranged, would eventually exert their power to depose his heir. And he could not possibly have anticipated the mystery that would surround Edward II’s fate.

Even if he couldn’t have predicted the fate of his son, Edward I may have harbored some doubts about the boy’s fitness to rule. While he labored in his wars against Scotland, his son grew up without a parental figure, becoming something of a scamp, more interested in music and dancing and gambling than statecraft. For his part, Edward Longshanks treated his son more as a political pawn than as an apprentice. Across the Channel, one of his greatest rivals, Philip IV, King of France, held similar aspirations for his kingdom and dynasty, and the two kings had come into conflict over the Duchy of Gascony, a region of southwestern France over which the French and English had fought since it first came into the hands of a Plantagenet when Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine. You may have heard of the central Gascon town of Bordeaux; that’s because it is a major center for wine production today, and such was the case even back then. The fertile region and its vineyards provided tidy profits for the English crown, and Philip IV had seized it and refused to give it back. Embroiled in a war with the Scots, Edward Longshanks could neither afford to go to war with France over the duchy nor to lose its wealth. So he sought a diplomatic solution. In the 1303 Treaty of Paris, Edward took back Gascony on the agreement that his son and heir would wed Philip’s only surviving daughter, Isabella. Philip saw this as a way to eventually put his own grandson on the English throne, thereby in effect extending his dynasty’s power, while Edward really was just biding his time until he could find a way to extricate his son from the arranged marriage. Within less than a century, the conflict over Gascony would lead to the Hundred Years War, but long before that, it would lead to much strife and double-dealing.

Meanwhile, Edward Longshanks’ son seemed to be developing into more of a kingly figure, attending councils, training to fight in his father’s wars. On the question of his marriage to Isabella of France, he and his father appeared to be in agreement. Edward of Caernarvon, Longshanks’ son, had been 19 years old when he was promised to the eight-year-old daughter of Philip IV and showed no interest in going through with the arrangement. However, Edward of Caernarvon may have had other reasons for resenting the match, reasons that created further discord between himself and his father. Six years earlier, Edward I had introduced a young man from Gascony named Piers Gaveston to his son, and thereafter, the two were inseparable. It is unsurprising that a boy of 13 years old, whose mother was dead, whose father was distant, and whose sisters were married off, would seek some kind of substitute family and develop an intimate relationship with another boy in his household whom he would come to refer to as his “sweet brother,” but as the boys grew into young men, it seemed that the irreverent Gaveston proved to be a corrupting influence on the prince, encouraging him in his pursuit of pleasure and in treating his father’s ministers disrespectfully. The king tried to inhibit his son’s frivolous lifestyle by limiting his spending, which only further rankled the prince, now in his early twenties, and made him even closer with his bosom friend Gaveston. Indeed, the prince’s relationship with Gaveston was deemed inappropriate by many. In the histories that would afterward be written, it is asserted that Prince Edward loved Gaveston above all others, that theirs was a romantic or sexual love, and even that Gaveston had used sorcery to bewitch the future king into doing his bidding. Some have pointed to the prince’s sexual orientation as a reason that he recoiled from his arranged marriage with Isabella. However, there is little evidence of a sexual aspect to his relationship with Gaveston, whereas there is ample evidence that both of them engages in heterosexual acts in that both eventually fathered children with their wives. Of course, this is also no indication that their relationship was not romantic or physical either. Indeed, the surpassing intimacy and astonishing loyalty of their relationship, and the position of esteem and favor that Gaveston enjoyed, does seem to indicate something more than friendship or even brotherhood, but it is enough for our story simply to call him the prince’s favorite. King Edward I recognized this, and when the prince requested that lands be given to Gaveston, Longshanks physically attacked his son, ripping out his hair, throwing him to the ground, calling him a whoreson, and thereafter banishing Gaveston to France.

The painting Edward II. and his Favourite, Piers Gaveston by Marcus Stone, via Wikimedia Commons — The painting *Edward II. and his Favourite, Piers Gaveston* by Marcus Stone, via Wikimedia Commons

This altercation would be one of the last quarrels the prince had with his father, who died suddenly one morning while arming himself to make war on the Scots. Suddenly Edward of Caernarvon found himself proclaimed King Edward II, and he immediately brought Gaveston back from France and raised him up as if he were an equal, giving his favorite his own niece in marriage and thereby making him a member of the royal family. The two of them ruled together, young and physically attractive, showing a lack of respect for the barons that Longshanks had made so powerful, and openly disdaining to fulfill the obligations Edward II had inherited, such as his arranged marriage to Isabella of France. However, his council warned him that to ignore the treaty his father had signed with Philip IV would mean the loss of Gascony and war with France, and eventually he gave in, marrying Isabella in 1308. At just 13 years old, Queen Isabella was said to be a great beauty, but it is clear that King Edward II preferred the company of his favorite and even for some time slighted his young wife. For example, at his coronation, he displayed his own arms and Gaveston’s arms, but not hers, and instead of sitting with his queen, he sat with his favorite. At the same event, he further insulted the highest nobles of the land by allowing Gaveston to perform the solemn duties of bearing his crown and sword, demonstrating that he considered his friend to be of higher status. And so it went. He gave no lands or money to his wife, and instead took castles that belonged to Isabella’s family and gifted them to Gaveston. Thus, he made enemies not only among his powerful baronage, but also abroad, as Philip IV observed his daughter being dishonored and grew resentful. The focus of everyone’s resentment was the king’s favorite, and eventually, Philip IV declared Gaveston an enemy, and Edward had no choice but to exile his favorite for fear of his baronial opposition receiving French support. Thereafter, Edward II mended his relationship with Isabella and her father. He began to treat her with the respect she was due, and as the Queen grew into a young woman, she proved to be a loyal wife, growing closer to her husband and supporting him in all his decisions. When her father relented in his opposition to Gaveston and the king’s favorite returned to court, she seems to have shrewdly secured her position and come to some agreement with her husband, for she lived in peace and mutual respect with her husband and also became an ally of Gaveston and his family, such that some historians have posited some sort of three-way relationship in which she and Gaveston agreed to share the king’s affections. But as I said before, this is only speculation.

Unfortunately, this hard won domestic bliss was not to last. In 1312, Thomas of Lancaster, the king’s own cousin and the earl who most vociferously opposed his rule and his relationship with Gaveston, rallied the barons Edward had made enemies of and gathered an army. Between this rebellion and the ongoing war against Scotland, Edward, Isabella, and Gaveston eventually became fugitives, fleeing from castle to castle with their households in tow, seeking refuge until the king could restore himself to a position of authority. In May, Edward was forced to leave his favorite behind at Scarborough Castle, thinking him safe behind its walls. However, the rebel lords laid siege to Scarborough, and Gaveston, running short on supplies, surrendered. Before long, these earls organized an impromptu trial, convicted him of treason, and executed him. Gaveston asked that they not mar his good looks by cutting off his head, which of course was exactly what they did, sending it to the Earl of Lancaster, their leader, for his approval. Edward II was devastated by the loss of his friend, confidant, ally, and perhaps lover, of some fifteen years. He took solace in his wife, and in November of that year, Isabella bore him an heir. Seeking to avoid civil war, Edward was forced to prostrate himself before the Queen’s father, asking Philip IV for help in quelling the rebellion. After they traveled to France and allowed Philip to see his grandson, the heir to the English throne and the culmination of much of his dynastic scheming, he obliged, sending them back home with French support to negotiate a peace with his nobility. Thereafter, in an uneasy alliance with his barons, Edward invaded Scotland and was roundly defeated by Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn. In the wake of this defeat, his greatest enemy, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, took control of the government for a time, proving that Edward’s troubles with baronial opposition were not over.

The head of Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall, is delivered to Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, via Wikimedia Commons

For years after Gaveston’s death, Edward and Isabella grew closer and more strongly allied. She bore him more children, and she helped him restore his authority and parry the political thrusts of Lancaster and the rest of his enemies. But she was not alone in aiding him. Hugh Despenser, a courtier and constant ally was always looking out for the king, and Despenser’s son, Hugh the Younger, himself a shrewd politician and seasoned knight, slowly grew in the king’s regard, until eventually he had become the new favorite, clearly enjoying every privilege the king might provide him and exerting significant influence on him. This predictably roused Lancaster and his supporters once again, prompting them to arm their men in London and demand that Hugh Despenser the Younger, and all the Despenser family, be exiled. However, this time, the Queen too appears to have opposed her husband’s favorite. There is some indication that she and Despenser were engaged in a dispute over some minor unpaid debts, but likely it was more than this. Since Gaveston’s death, she had enjoyed the favor of the king, served as his confidant in all matters, and seemingly enjoyed his physical affections as well. It would stand to reason that taking her husband’s attention and favor away from her would be enough to make an enemy of her, to say nothing of the rumors that the king had begun to make Despenser the object of his physical affections. Thus when even his queen demanded that Despenser be exiled, Edward II grudgingly agreed in 1321, and Hugh Despenser the Younger took up the life of a pirate, plying the waters of the English Channel. However, Edward remained in contact with the Despensers and plotted with them to do away with the pesky barons who had opposed him for his entire reign. Within a couple months, he struck at certain strategic positions, and before his dissident earls even realized it, Edward was waging a war that became a reign of terror. After the Battle of Boroughbridge in early spring the next year, he finally captured Lancaster and had his revenge for the death of Gaveston, the man he had loved. The executioner did a poor job on the rebel baron, taking numerous whacks before he managed to separate his head from his shoulders.

Isabella of France, the Queen of England, found herself embroiled in this Civil War with no clear side to take. She had long taken her husband’s side against the rebellious earls, but she had taken the earls’ side against her husband’s new favorite, Hugh Despenser, who was now returned from his exile and restored to his position as favorite in the king’s court. Moreover, she was given ample further reason to resent Despenser. At one point in 1322, as Edward and Despenser, emboldened after having emerged victorious against the rebel barons, invaded Scotland and were driven back, Isabella found herself nearly captured by Scotsmen, and she blamed Despenser. Then, after her father Philip IV had died and her brother was crowned King Charles IV, Despenser drove Edward II toward war with France, and as an opening salvo, Edward confiscated all of Isabella’s lands and arrested every Frenchman in the country, including members of her household and retinue. There may, of course, have been further reasons for Isabella’s relationship with her husband to deteriorate. The simple fact that she no longer had Edward’s ear might have been enough to stoke her envy, or the possibility that she was aware of some infidelity between Edward and his favorite might have kindled a righteous anger in her. Paul Doherty, author of my principal source, Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II, even suggests that Isabella may have been the victim of some sexual misconduct from Despenser that Edward II failed to censure, a theory arrived at by reading between the lines of some primary sources. However, the last straw was likely when by royal order her children were taken away from her and given into the care of Despenser’s wife. After that, her brother Charles IV invaded Gascony, demanding that Edward II sail to France and talk things out. Fearing for his safety outside London, Edward instead sent Isabella, and it may have been the biggest mistake he ever made.

Isabella of France welcomed to Paris, via Wikimedia Commons

Here we see Isabella become the “She-Wolf” of legend, the virago ferrea, or Iron Virago, which sobriquet itself encapsulates the different ways she has been viewed, for a virago, in common usage, may have meant an impudent, overbearing, or domineering woman, but the original Latin word denotes a proud, strong, and courageous female warrior. Which definition one thought of in relation to Isabella of France likely depended on one’s opinion of Edward II and his treatment of her. In 1325, she went home to France as her husband’s representative. True to her word, she negotiated a truce, but when it was time to return to England, she claimed that there were further diplomatic matters to resolve, urging him to come there instead and meet with her brother. Still wary of travel, Edward instead agreed to send their son, his heir, a decision that would prove to be Edward’s next great error. As soon as the young prince was in France with her, Isabella made her feelings about her marriage clear. She donned black and declared that she had been made a widow by Despenser, who had come between her and her husband and thereby broken their bond of marriage. With the heir to the throne of England in her power, she held court in France, and by her side, scandalously, appeared a certain advisor whose presence indicated that she had turned entirely against Edward II. His name was Roger Mortimer, formerly one of Edward II’s generals who had risen in rebellion during the Despenser War. Mortimer had been imprisoned in the Tower of London, and fearing an imminent execution, he had made a daring escape, climbing down a rope ladder and swimming across the River Thames. Now this traitor appeared at Isabella’s side, and what was worse, seemed to be involved with her romantically, making a very public cuckold of King Edward II. The Iron Virago’s retaliation could not have been more dramatic than this, and it was only the beginning.

In 1326, Isabella and Mortimer landed a small army in England, and before long, to Edward and Despenser’s shock, their numbers swelled with the forces of the dissident earls that Isabella had long helped her husband fight against. Edward’s half-brother, the Earl of Norfolk, joined her, as did the new Earl of Lancaster, brother of the cousin that Edward had beheaded. More than that, the merchants, the university scholars, and church bishops all welcomed her progress, and after her promise to punish those loyal to Despenser, a mob of common Londoners stormed the Tower and killed Despenser’s men. Edward tried to rally support and fight this coup, but he simply no longer had the support he needed. Hugh Despenser the Elder was captured at Bristol and was hanged, drawn and quartered, his corpse beheaded and fed to dogs, but a worse fate lay in store for the king’s favorite. Taken to Hereford after his capture, Hugh Despenser the Younger was stripped of clothing, and a crown of stinging nettles forced over his head. Verses of scripture detailing his sins were cut into his skin with knives, whereupon he was placed bleeding on a horse and made to ride slowly through the city of Hereford while a mob hurled whatever they could at him. Next, he was hanged from a fifty-foot gallows but was cut down before he died, disemboweled, and forced to watch his intestines burn before his eyes. Legend has it that, because of the accusations of sodomy made against him, his executioners also severed and burned his genitals in front of him. Only then did they decapitate him. And perhaps most disturbing in this pageant of horrors is the fact that Isabella and Mortimer watched it all and enjoyed a feast in celebration of their enemy’s demise.

Hugh Despenser is hanged, drawn and quartered while Isabella and Mortimer look on, via Wikimedia Commons

Edward II surrendered to the new Earl of Lancaster, but unlike the others, the king could not simply be summarily executed. He was the anointed King of England, chosen by God to wear the Crown of St. Edward the Confessor. Indeed, there were some who had supported Isabella’s coup who believed she should set aside her paramour Mortimer and return to her husband’s side, seeing the vanquished Despensers as the only true villains. Even Edward’s captor, Henry of Lancaster, whose family had long opposed his favoritism of upstarts, balked at the idea of execution. After much debate, they reached a resolution to convene Parliament and depose the king. For the rest of his life, they determined, Edward II should be kept in relative comfort as a prisoner in a castle. In January 1327, the parliamentary proceedings began, and Edward supposedly refused to appear, though this may have been a lie from his captors to prevent him from speaking in public and eliciting sympathy. The Articles of Deposition included incompetence, reliance on poor counsel, and breaking the oath he took when he was crowned. This constitutional deposition serves as a striking example of how far the power of Parliament had come within a generation, from a tool used by the king for counsel and public relations to a branch of government empowered to dethrone a monarch. Eventually, in order to ensure the throne would go to his son and not Lancaster, or worse yet, Mortimer, Edward II abdicated, and the 15-year-old Prince of Wales was proclaimed Edward III. Soon Edward was released by Lancaster into the custody of Roger Mortimer’s son-in-law, Lord Thomas Berkeley, to be kept in his castle near the border of Wales. Together with his own brother-in-law, Sir John Maltravers, and a knight by the name of Thomas Gurney, Edward was successfully immured at Berkeley Castle, and six months later, Gurney reported to Parliament that the former king had expired due to a fatalis casus, or a deadly accident.

Just what befell Edward II while at Berkeley Castle must have been a topic of much hushed discussion in those years. The official explanation was some sort of fall, but there was reportedly no mark on the king’s person. Within a few years, as King Edward III came into his majority and the stars of Isabella and Mortimer had begun to fall, investigations into foul play were undertaken. Chroniclers of the time put forth various versions of events. Some suggested that he had been so poorly treated, perhaps on the Queen’s orders, that he eventually died of illness or starvation. The chronicler Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbrook details this abuse, claiming Edward II was fed rotten food and that the carcasses of beasts were left to decompose in a pit by the king’s cell in hopes that Edward would become ill. However, the accuracy of Geoffrey le Baker’s chronicle has been challenged, and he doesn’t himself subscribe to the idea that Edward II died of illness. Rather, he is one of the numerous historians who records a version of events in which orders were given to murder the king in his cell. A few years after Edward’s death, accusations began to fly, and from among them, we find the common threads present in most contemporaneous chronicles. It is said that Roger Mortimer, likely with Queen Isabella’s knowledge, dispatched assassins to Berkeley Castle. Different versions implicate different players as having issued the order, such as Lord Berkeley himself, or his man Maltravers, or even a bishop known to serve Mortimer, but most agree that it came down the chain of command from Mortimer. Others were named as the actual assassins, specifically Thomas Gurney and one William Ockle, both of them Queen Isabella’s men. So the story goes that the former king was smothered, which of course would leave no mark. The more gruesome accounts of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbrook and others have it that the assassins heated a metal poker and thrust it up the king’s anus and into his intestines, a ghastly fate that one supposes also would not leave an easily discernible mark on the body.

Portrait of Edward II with depiction of his gruesome murder inset, via Wikimedia Commons

There are clear reasons to doubt some of the chroniclers, such as Geoffrey le Baker, who includes in his version that the orders to kill, written in Latin, could be interpreted two ways, as saying “Do not fear to kill Edward, it is a good thing,” or as saying “Do not kill Edward, it is good to be afraid.” A very dramatic wrinkle in the tale that suggests perhaps the entire assassination could have been a mistake, the result of a misconstrued sentence. The problem is this detail appears to be plagiarized from another chronicler’s account of a Hungarian queen’s murder. We do have other chroniclers that report the same grisly manner of death, but this may be something of a rumor, a kind of urban legend. Edward being impaled in the anus appears to have been viewed by many at the time as a symbolic punishment for his supposed sexual proclivities, which sounds very much like a tale that might have been fabricated after the fact. If he had been murdered that way, it would seem the only person that might have seen evidence of it would have been the local wise woman who had disemboweled the body to embalm it. It stands to reason that she would have been able to observe any damage done by a red hot poker thrust into the intestines. This might actually explain why she was engaged to perform the task rather than a royal physician. Was it some kind of cover-up? The story goes that Queen Isabella met with the embalmer because she had asked to receive her husband’s heart, but what if the queen wanted a further report on her husband’s body, kind of like an autopsy report. If that were the case, is it possible that the Iron Virago had had no knowledge of her husband’s murder? That she suspected foul play herself as early as the funeral and was looking for evidence? And what did the embalmer tell her? Was Edward II even murdered? Or were these mere rumors lobbed years later as political barbs. Or… was there some other possibility? Might the queen have been questioning the embalmer based on some other suspicion? For example, might she have been concerned that the body this wise woman examined in secret did not even belong to Edward II?

This is the question that we’ll explore further in Part 2 of The End of Edward II, and it will crack this story open in new directions you won’t anticipate.

The End of Edward II, Part One: The Iron Virago

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