Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (16 page)

It is understandable that historians take Swynbroke’s lurid description of Edward’s death with more than a pinch of salt: Swynbroke describes him as being pressed down, suffocated with great pillows and then killed with a plumber’s iron, burning hot, applied through a horn up into the bowels to burn the organs and intestines. Nevertheless, the same manner of death is described in Higden’s
Polychronicon
and in the Meaux Chronicle.
⁵²
Such a grisly death would leave no visible mark on the royal corpse. Murimouth, writing at a time when Lord Thomas Berkeley was still alive, does admit that the deposed King was ‘craftily killed’.
⁵³
On the published date of the death there seems little doubt. Fifteen days later, on 6 October 1327, the nearby Abbot of Crokesden Abbey agreed to hold an anniversary Mass every year for the late King on the feast of St Matthew, 21 September.
⁵⁴
The deed was done but how was it to be proclaimed and the after-effects managed?

‘Edmund Earl of Kent acknowledges that the Pope charged him, on his benison, that he should use his pains and diligence to deliver Edward, his brother, sometime King of England.’

Edmund, Earl of Kent’s confession, March 1330,
Chronicle of Adam of Murimouth

I
sabella may have sent her husband delicacies during his imprisonment at Kenilworth and Berkeley but, in reality, it was a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. In her eyes Edward became a non-person. There is no evidence that Isabella allowed any members of her family – sisters, brothers, children, or other kinsmen – access to her imprisoned husband. The attempts to free Edward II were a threat to her position: they brought him firmly back onto the political scene. The news of his death, therefore, had to be carefully managed and his funeral staged to excite as little interest as possible.

According to the Berkeley accounts, on 28 September 1327, Thomas Gurney was sent to the Parliament at Nottingham
¹
where Edward’s demise was simply reported,
according to an independent source, as a ‘
fatalis casus
’, a fatal accident.
²
This elliptical quote from the Northern Registers epitomizes Isabella’s and Mortimer’s initial public reaction. There was no reference to disease or illness and the impression given was that the former King had ‘slipped and fell’ and that was the end of the matter. The truth, of course, was very different. A manuscript source proves that Isabella knew about her husband’s death as early as 23 September, at least a week before the news was proclaimed at Nottingham, where the court arrived on 30 September. Gurney had taken two days to travel from Berkeley to Nottingham, the same amount of time it took for the mysterious messenger, who must have left Berkeley immediately the King died, to notify the Queen at Lincoln on 23 September.
³

Isabella was clearly no passive participant in these events: she apparently learnt the news of her husband’s death and planned the announcement a week before Parliament met. Moreover, the alleged assassins were also members of her clique and she would have direct control over them. At her request Thomas Gurney was made Constable of Bristol Castle. Ockle became a ‘scutifer’ or squire in her son’s household. Isabella also favoured him, writing letters demanding that certain debts should not be exacted from him.
⁴

According to the established story, though, Edward II died on 21 September but it was another three months before he was solemnly interred in Gloucester Abbey. At no time did Isabella, or any of her family, go to view the corpse or take up residence in or around Berkeley or the Gloucester area. Indeed, as far as Isabella was concerned, it was business as normal. No evidence exists that she
even went into mourning. She had been publicly acting the ‘widow’ since 1325 and simply continued with the same role which, initially at least, had won her such sympathy. She stayed at Nottingham until 10 November before moving to Coventry where, on 10 December 1327, she summoned another Parliament to meet at York the following February.
⁵
Far from grieving over her husband, Isabella was much more concerned with pressing political problems.

Of course, her husband’s corpse had to be buried somewhere and there was considerable debate about the former King’s last resting place. According to the history of St Peter’s of Gloucester, its abbey was chosen because no other place dared accept the royal corpse for fear of offending Isabella and Mortimer. However, the muniment room of Westminster Abbey holds a list of expenses incurred by a delegation of monks, sent to Isabella to request that Edward II’s body be buried in the royal mausoleum, alongside that of his father, mother and grandfather, Henry III. The request was refused.
⁶
Isabella was fearful of carting the royal corpse across the country: it might have provoked a violent demonstration against her and Mortimer, while the London mob was as fickle as ever.

Moreover, Thoky, Abbot of St Peter’s, was a kinsman of Mortimer. His abbey was near Berkeley and within striking distance of Mortimer’s territories along the Welsh March. The
Lanercost Chronicle
says the choice of Gloucester was at Isabella’s insistence. Edward II may have been a king but he died a deposed prince.
⁷
Further, he was not the first king to be buried away from Westminster Abbey. His great-grandfather John, who also lost his kingdom and died in disgrace, had been interred at Worcester. Isabella was
simply supporting a family tradition: disgraced kings were not buried at Westminster.

By the end of October 1327, Edward’s sudden death at Berkeley would have been common knowledge. It seems to have taken his adherents and supporters completely by surprise. There is no evidence of agitation or protests, the conspiracies and supporters melted away, not a voice was raised in protest. People may well have been shocked: princes died in battle or, like Edward I, in harness, still fighting his enemies. Even the death of John, who fell ill at Newark and died of something he ate, took place publicly and was witnessed by courtiers, clerks and soldiers. Only Rufus, slain by an arrow whilst hunting in the New Forest, died in what were considered fairly mysterious circumstances. In the end, though, Edward II’s death may have been greeted with relief in many quarters. In life he had not been popular and in captivity he had been an embarrassment, not only to his opponents but also to his friends, who felt bound by oaths of fealty.

Isabella and Mortimer deliberately dragged their feet over arranging the obsequies and the state funeral which Edward, whatever his failings, certainly deserved. They wished to avoid any allegations of hurrying the deposed King to his grave as well as trying to cover up what had really happened. The order for Edward’s corpse to be interred at Gloucester wasn’t issued until 10 November 1327. Isabella and Mortimer showed some cunning in arranging the funeral in the depths of winter in the West Country. In the balmy days of autumn 1327, the height of the campaign season, it was easy for messengers to gallop from Berkeley to Lincoln or Nottingham. In December, with the proximity of the Christmas festivities, notables
would find it difficult to travel the muddy, makeshift trackways to Gloucester. In the meantime, the custody of the royal corpse was left to others, although Isabella took very careful precautions. She may not have been in mourning but she worked hard to avoid any suggestions that her husband’s corpse was not honourably treated.

The corpse remained at Berkeley until 21 October.
⁸
Lord Thomas Berkeley’s rather surprising declaration that he was ill at Bradley didn’t stop him submitting his accounts to the Exchequer for looking after the imprisoned King. This showed him in the prime of health, supervising the corpse until 21 October and, according to Murimouth, inviting local citizens and churchmen up to Berkeley Castle so they could view it. Murimouth, however, added that this public viewing was ‘very superficial and from afar off’. Apart from this very controlled lying-in-state, where local visitors were allowed a quick glimpse, only two other people were allowed near the dead King. The first was a sergeant-at-arms, William Beaukaire, who stayed ‘
juxta corpus regis
’, ‘near the body of the King’, from 21 September until 20 December. This solitary sergeant-at-arms was, apparently, the only guard of honour. The other person was a ‘certain woman’ responsible for the corpse’s embalmment.

Glanville, the clerk in charge of the royal funeral arrangements, put in a bill for his own wages, but only from 23 October, when the body was in Gloucester, until the funeral on 20 December 1327. He then made a further claim for extra days, after the burial of the King, when he was obliged to journey from Gloucester to meet the Queen at Worcester. His entry reads: ‘Escorting a certain woman who disembowelled the King to the Queen . . . for two
days staying there one day and then returning to York, for four days.’ Glanville also took the dead King’s heart, placed in a silver casket, to the Queen. His companion to Worcester, however, this mysterious old woman, was the only one who knew the real truth about Edward II’s death. She, not a royal physician, embalmed the corpse: her involvement and Glanville’s attempts to hide it, provide telling evidence that the story of death by a ‘
fatalis casus
’ is highly suspect.

Accordingly, by 21 October 1327, Isabella and Mortimer could relax: Edward II was dead, the news had been published and the corpse embalmed. On that day the royal remains were placed in a cart and escorted by Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers from Berkeley to the Abbey of St Peter’s at Gloucester. It must be emphasized that the royal corpse was now hidden away in a heavy, sealed, lead casket, which was seen when the tomb was briefly opened in 1855. It would also account for the fact that the funeral cart had to stop for the horses or oxen to rest. According to a local tradition, people later planted an oak tree at each of these resting places.

Once they’d arrived in Gloucester, Maltravers and Berkeley had completed their task. They had been in charge of the deposed King, alive and dead, for 201 days. They claimed expenses amounting to over
£
1000, of which they received about
£
700. Berkeley, never at a loss to pursue what was his due, also put in for expenses for taking the body to Gloucester, for himself and his household, and even for the ‘vase’ of silver in which the dead King’s heart was enclosed.

The dead King was taken into the abbey and laid before the high altar. Isabella issued elaborate arrangements for
the custody of her husband’s corpse as long as it remained above ground. John Eaglescliffe, the Dominican Bishop of Llandaff, was instructed to go to Gloucester and remain there, praying over the corpse. He was paid 13s 4d for his fifty-nine days stay. Eaglescliffe was chosen for two reasons: Llandaff’s comparative proximity to Gloucester and because Eaglescliffe was a member of the dead King’s favourite order and not one of the political bishops, like Hereford or Winchester, who served Isabella and Mortimer so closely. A military escort was also arranged. Two knights to watch the corpse were paid 6s 8d and 5s a day respectively. Two royal chaplains and two sergeants-at-arms were also in attendance, as well as the King’s candle-maker, responsible for ensuring the candles which ringed the hearse were constantly replaced. The arrival of the royal corpse in the abbey excited public interest and brought sightseers flocking in; so great was the press that great oaken beams had to be erected to keep back the crowds.
⁹
They were disappointed to discover there was nothing really to see, so 40s was spent for ‘carving a wooden image, in the likeness of the deceased King’; a copper gilt crown was also made for that image, costing 7s 3d, the first time such ‘an image’ was ever used at a royal funeral.

The corpse lay at Gloucester for almost two months. One reason for the delay in burying Edward was the long-drawn-out military expedition in Scotland; another was the deliberate ploy by Isabella and Mortimer not to complete the obsequies with unseemly haste. Mortimer had rejoined Isabella on 4 October at Nottingham, and they stayed there until 10 November before slowly moving across the Midlands. They only reached Gloucester on 19 December,
the day before the funeral took place.
¹⁰
The service itself was lavish and conducted with solemn pomp. Quantities of gold leaf were bought for decorating the harness around the coffin. Four standards and twenty pennants were specially made for the funeral ceremony itself. More gold leaf was used to embroider the funeral robes laid over the casket. Four great lions, edged with the best gilt, carrying mantles displaying the arms of England, were specially fashioned by John Eastwick, the royal painter, and placed on each side of the hearse. On top of it, statues of the four Evangelists with eight angels were placed, carrying golden censers.
¹¹

On 20 December, after the funeral Mass and the ‘Requiem’, Edward’s corpse was solemnly interred, amid gusts of incense, on the left side of the high altar. Isabella was garbed in widow’s weeds, still publicly playing the role of the doleful Queen. Mortimer was also dressed in mourning, a piece of hypocrisy his enemies never forgot. The casket found its last resting place and the paving stones were replaced. Edward II was gone at last, his only memorial a splendid tomb in Gloucester.

The tomb has only been opened once, for a short while, in 1855. The description of it made by the sub-sacristan in 1855, can still be read in the archives of Gloucester Cathedral. It reads as follows:

On the 2nd October 1855, in the presence of Dr. Jeune, the Canon-in-Residence, Mr Waller, the cathedral architect, Allen, the sub-sacrist, and Henry Clifford, the master mason, the tomb of Edward II in the cathedral was opened, by removing the floor on the south side of the tomb: only just below the flooring, immediately under the tomb. We came first
to a wood coffin, quite sound, and after removing a portion of this, we came to a leaden one, containing the remains of the King: the wood, although light as cork, was still very perfect, and the lead one quite entire, and made with a very thick sheet of lead, its shape very peculiar, being square at the bottom, and rising on each side like an arch, and so turned over the body in an oval or arched form, and made to set nearly down upon the body. The tomb was never known to have been opened before this. It remained open but the space of two hours, and was then closed again, without the slightest injury being done to the tomb. The fact of his internment being now five hundred and twenty-eight years since, it was considered to be in a wonderful state of preservation.