The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March (36 page)

Two of the earliest chronicles to mention the death of Edward II were both written by canons of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Both were written within ten years of the death. The earlier of the two, the
Annales Paulini
, is anonymous, and simply states that ‘on the eve of the feast of St Michael the Apostle King Edward died … in Berkeley Castle, where he was held prisoner; and he was buried in Gloucester Abbey’.
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The other, by Adam Murimuth, gives much more information. He was the only contemporary chronicler who was connected with both the court and the south-west region, being at Exeter from June to November 1327, while he administered the diocese after the death of the bishop, James de Berkeley.
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Thus he must be considered the nearest we have to a presence in the area at the time of, and just after, the death. Although he did not begin to write his chronicle for another ten years, he kept a book of memoranda at the time, and this formed the basis of his later work.
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He claimed that Berkeley and Maltravers exchanged custodianship month by month and that Berkeley treated the king well but Maltravers did not; and that for secrecy’s sake Edward was moved from Berkeley to Corfe and back. He notes that Isabella sent her husband delicacies and noncommittal messages in his captivity, but refused to see him. He gives an apparently inaccurate estimate of 100 marks per month (£67) for the expenses of keeping the king, but although this is less than half the actual figure paid, it is what one might expect to be left after his custodians had taken their fees in proportion to their status and their charge.
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As for the death itself, he places this at Berkeley a day later than the official date, on 22 September, and, although he does not give a cause of death under his entry for 1327, he does so under an entry for 1330. Here he states his belief that the king was ‘suffocated’ by Thomas Gurney and John Maltravers with Roger’s connivance. Since this does not reflect the official charge as enrolled in Parliament, and as the official charges did not mention Maltravers in the context of Edward’s death but did mention Ockley, whom Murimuth neglects, the chronicle must reflect his opinion at the time of writing (1337) and was not merely copied from official
documentation. Significantly, he indicates that his opinion was widely shared and he specifically states that ‘it was commonly said’ that Edward ‘was killed as a precaution’ by Maltravers and Gurney. The other very important fact in Murimuth’s chronicle is his unique statement that ‘Many abbots, priors, knights, burgesses of Bristol and Gloucester were summoned to see his corpse intact, and this they saw superficially.’
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Murimuth is the only contemporary to mention this exposure of the corpse, but as he was the only chronicler in the south-west at the time, this is not wholly surprising. As one would expect, a number of historians have wondered what he meant by the corpse being seen ‘superficially’: none seems to have considered the embalming process as an explanation. The whole body being covered in cerecloth would go a long way to explain his use of this word, for only the superficial contours of his body would have been visible, and no wounds.
¹⁵

A number of chronicles, possibly contemporary with the St Paul’s writers, are continuations of an earlier work, called the
Brut
, which was an ongoing history of the kingdom of England from its legendary foundation by Brutus. These continuations fall into two groups, referred to by historians as the ‘long version’ and the ‘short version’. The originals of both were written in French and were separately completed in the early to mid-1330s.
¹⁶
The short version, which was probably compiled in London, survives in a number of manuscripts, including those published as the
Anonimalle Chronicle
and the
French Chronicle of London
. Both of these examples give very little information about Edward’s death. The first states merely that Edward was moved from Kenilworth to Berkeley Castle and that ‘soon afterwards the king became ill there and died on the day of St Matthew the Apostle before Michaelmas …’.
¹⁷
The
French Chronicle of London
, which is a later derivation from the short version, states that Thomas de Berkeley and John Maltravers were appointed guardians of the king in his imprisonment, and that ‘abetted by certain persons and the assent of his false guardians, he was falsely and traitorously murdered …’.
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By comparison with the short versions, the long version of the
Brut
is positively rich in detail. It was probably completed in the north, although it may have been begun in London. Either way it was written by someone sympathetic to the Earl of Lancaster.
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It carries a few obvious mistakes in its entry for 1327: it wrongly claims Maurice de Berkeley, not Thomas, was the king’s keeper at the time of the death, along with Maltravers and their assistant Gurney (whom it calls Thomas ‘Toiourney’ in 1327), and that the king died at Corfe Castle.
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It corrects these mistakes in a later passage relating to events in 1330, which reflects the official proceedings relating to the death: that the king died at Berkeley under the direction of
Thomas Gurney (now correctly spelled with a ‘G’).
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These mistakes ironically increase its value, as they indicate that the entry for 1327 was very probably composed at an earlier date than that of 1330, probably in the period 1328–30, and thus records popular rumour at a slightly earlier date.
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This is important for two reasons: firstly because this entry supports some of the lines in Murimuth which are not found in other contemporary chronicles, for instance that the king lamented that his wife and son did not visit him; that Maltravers was involved in the death; and that the king visited Corfe. The second reason is that the entry for 1327 contains the earliest explicit description of Edward’s death. It states:

Roger Mortimer sent orders as to how and in what manner the king should be killed. And later, when the aforesaid Thomas and John had seen the letter and the order, they were friendly towards King Edward of Carnarvon at supper time, so that the king knew nothing of their treachery. And when that night the king had gone to bed and was asleep, the traitors, against their homage and against their fealty, went quietly into his chamber and laid a large table on his stomach and with other men’s help pressed him down. At this he awoke, and in fear of his life, turned himself upside down. The tyrants, false traitors, then took a horn and put it into his fundament as deep as they could, and took a spit of burning copper, and put it through the horn into his body, and oftentimes rolled therewith his bowels, and so they killed their lord, and nothing was perceived [as to the manner of his death].
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None of this is in Murimuth, although he and the author of the
Brut
had similar background information about Corfe and the king’s lamentations. Indeed, Murimuth seems still not to have heard this story seven years later. Clearly the Lancastrian author of the longer version of the
Brut
was significantly closer to the source of the red-hot spit story than Murimuth.

The explicit details of Edward’s death in the
Brut
seem to have been known to another northern chronicler, an anonymous canon of Bridlington Priory, who wrote some time between 1327 and 1340. He states that on 21 September ‘Edward of Carnarvon died in Berkeley Castle where he was held in custody … Of his death various explanations are commonly suggested, but I do not care for such things as now are written.’
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This is not directly taken from the 1327 entry in the
Brut
, as it mentions Berkeley as the place of death, not Corfe, and thus it may be further evidence that the rumour that Edward died in the circumstances described in the
Brut
was widespread across the north of England at an early date.

The next chronicle to give details of the death was also written in the
north. This is the famous
Polychronicon
, the most popular history of the fourteenth century, written by Ranulph Higden, a monk of Chester. It is an enormous mixture of fables and chronicles, mostly borrowed from other writers. Although Higden was comparatively uninterested in English history, being more concerned to present a comprehensive history of the world, he devotes his last book to his homeland. The passage relating to the death of Edward reads: ‘On 3 April the old king was taken from Kenilworth to Berkeley Castle, where however since many people conspired to free him, about the feast of St Matthew the Evangelist, he was killed disgracefully by a burning rod piercing his private parts.’
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This shows that the story was circulating in Chester by 1340 at the latest. The first version of the
Polychronicon
was completed in 1327, but it is not clear whether this covered the death of Edward. Thus Higden’s account can be dated to some time between 1327 and 1340, with the likelihood of the latter being the date of actual completion.
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Few chronicles of the next decade mention the death. Most do not give details. The
Historia Aurea
, another northern work, finished in about 1346, states tersely that the king ‘was killed in September on St Matthews Day by the introduction of a hot iron through the middle of a horn inserted into his bottom’.
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Another account completed in that year but in the south, at Westminster, states that ‘according to rumour, the manner of his death and the method of his execution was that he was pressed down in his bed with a table, a horn was thrust violently into his anus and through the middle of this horn an iron rod was pushed into his guts, from which he died in torment’.
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The Westminster writer was undoubtedly using a copy of the long version of the
Brut
for his information, as shown by the wording of this and other entries at this point in his chronicle.

By the 1350s no new writers could remember the events and hearsay of 1327, and they tended to follow existing works. One chronicle dramatically stands out as an exception. This was the work of Geoffrey le Baker, previously attributed to his patron Thomas de la More, written about 1356. Le Baker is the only writer of any originality besides the author of the long version of the
Brut
to give a full and detailed account of the killing of Edward, and he is the only writer to have cited an independent witness. He used a copy of Murimuth’s chronicle for a chronological framework, and seems to have supplemented this with readings from the
Brut
, but where he felt he could significantly add information he did so with abandon and in abundance. He states that the king was handed over at Kenilworth to Maltravers and Gurney (not Berkeley, as Murimuth states), led first to Corfe Castle, then to Bristol, where various townsmen conspired to take him overseas, and finally to Berkeley. At Bristol he was tortured and
humiliated, deprived of sleep, his food poisoned, and he was left without heat in an attempt to induce madness. On the way from Bristol to Berkeley he was supposed to have been mocked by his guards: they crowned him with hay, and ordered him to walk. They prepared to shave him with ditchwater and when he protested that he would have hot water whether they liked it or not, he began to weep profusely. These things were related to le Baker after the plague of 1347 by one William Bishop, who claimed to have led Edward from Bristol.

This William Bishop is interesting, for he was one of Roger Mortimer’s men-at-arms in 1321.
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He is often cited as a witness for all that le Baker has to say about the death of Edward II; but in fact he is only a witness for what has so far been related of le Baker’s narrative. While le Baker may well have received other information from him relating to the death, Bishop was not involved in the killing. Firstly he would have been arrested in 1330 if he had been in the castle at the time,
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and, secondly, no other role is claimed for him in the chronicle beside that of transporting Edward: a fact most historians seem to have overlooked. But even this transportation seems fabricated. We know that Edward was taken from Kenilworth on 3 April 1327, and that he was at Llanthony Priory near Gloucester two days later.
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To take a captive man fifty-five miles in less than three days is not a particularly easy task and, although it would not have prevented processions of ridicule and mock crownings with hay, they were likely to have been of short duration. It is also difficult to explain how a three-day journey from Kenilworth to Berkeley by way of Gloucester was supposed to lead first to Corfe, another point certainly to Bishop’s discredit as a witness, which raises questions about le Baker’s judgement. The whole account fits more with the traditional religious literary form of the ‘passion’, or suffering of a martyr, and le Baker definitely goes to some considerable lengths to convince us that Edward was indeed a martyr.

To continue with le Baker’s evidence. Adam of Orleton is supposed at this point to have sent an ambiguous Latin message to the gaolers, which could be read in two ways: either ‘Do not fear; to kill the king is a good thing’, or ‘Do not kill the king; it is good to be afraid’. Unfortunately for le Baker, at this time Orleton was on a mission from Roger and Isabella at Avignon to see the Pope. He was thus at least two weeks away by letter.
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And finally, the story le Baker tells has been lifted from a story told by Matthew Paris of the murder of a Hungarian queen in 1252.
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