17 June 1239: Birth of King Edward I

Today, or rather the night of 17-18 June, marks the 774th anniversary of the birth of Edward II's father King Edward I at the palace of Westminster in 1239.  His father Henry III was then thirty-two and had been king of England since 1216, while his mother Eleanor of Provence was probably about sixteen.  Edward was followed by three siblings who lived into adulthood, as well as at least one other sister who died young: Margaret, born only fifteen months later in September 1240, who married King Alexander III of Scotland; Beatrice, born in June 1242, who married the future Duke John II of Brittany (she was never duchess, as her father-in-law outlived her); Edmund, born in January 1245, who was earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby and married Blanche of Artois, niece of Louis IX of France and dowager queen of Navarre; and Katherine, who was born much later than her siblings in November 1253, was deaf and mute, and sadly died at the age of three and a half, to the terrible grief of the king and queen (whatever the many faults of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, there is no doubt that they were loving, devoted parents).

Matthew Paris, the great chronicler of thirteenth-century England, reports that Queen Eleanor had been feared to be barren, which from my perspective is utterly ridiculous; she married Henry in January 1236 and became pregnant in September 1238 two years and nine months later, which hardly seems like an unusually long delay.  Also, Eleanor was extremely young when she married Henry, probably only twelve or thirteen.  As with their grandson Edward II, whose queen Isabella of France was only twelve at marriage and conceived their first child four years later, the delay in conceiving hardly seems a reason to criticise Eleanor for 'failing' to become pregnant sooner, or Henry for failing to do his royal duty or of being incapable (which, given that Eleanor became pregnant at least five times, he obviously wasn't).  As I've pointed out before, recent claims that Henry III was not Edward I's real father can be dismissed as fatuous nonsense.

Edward I was born as heir to the throne of England, and the citizens of London celebrated wildly, dancing in the streets in torchlight with drums and tambourines (as also happened in the city 73 years later when the future Edward III was born in November 1312 as heir to the throne, though not to the same extent when Edward II was born in April 1284, as his ten-year-old brother Alfonso was still alive).  According to Matthew Paris, when Henry III received gifts from his subjects congratulating him on his son's birth, he felt that some were not extravagant enough and sent them back demanding better ones, prompting the acerbic observation "God gave us this child, but the king is selling him to us!".  Henry named his first-born child after his favourite saint, Edward the Confessor, the king of England who died in January 1066.  The name Edward had, like most other Old English names, fallen almost entirely out of use since the Norman Conquest and must have sounded hopelessly old-fashioned by 1239.  Henry's choice, however, and the fact that the three kings of England between 1272 and 1377 were all called Edward, ensured the name's popularity for ever more both in England and in other European countries.  As the son of a thirteenth-century king, Edward of Westminster was not a 'prince', but was called Lord Edward, Dominus Edwardus in Latin or Monsire Edward in French, from birth.  He was christened at Westminster Abbey a few days after birth by the papal legate Otto, in the presence of, among others, his uncles Richard, earl of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester.

Edward I, 'Longshanks', stood six feet two inches tall, and had fair hair in childhood which darkened as he grew older and turned white when he was old.  From his father Henry III he inherited a drooping eyelid.  The author of the Song of Lewes (a battle Edward and his father and uncle Richard of Cornwall lost to his other uncle Simon de Montfort in 1264) famously likened him to a leopard, brave, proud and fierce, but inconstant and unreliable, making promises but forgetting them.  When he was fifteen, on 1 November 1254, Lord Edward married Infanta Doña Leonor de Castilla, a marriage which lasted for thirty-six years and produced at least fourteen children.  Edward I also had three children with his second queen, Marguerite of France, his first cousin once removed.  He succeeded his father as king of England in November 1272 and died at the age of sixty-eight on 7 July 1307, "fearless and war-like, in all things strenuous and illustrious" (Chronicle of Lanercost).

Other important anniversaries this week:
18 June 1318: Birth of Edward II and Isabella of France's elder daughter Eleanor of Woodstock, duchess of Gueldres.
19 June 1312: Execution, or murder, of Edward II's beloved Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall.
21 June 1377: Death at the age of sixty-four of Edward II and Isabella of France's son Edward III.
23 June 1324: Death probably in his mid-fifties of Edward II's kinsman Aymer de Valence, whose father William was Henry III's half-brother.

Edward of Caernarfon's Family in 1284

Edward II was born in Caernarfon on Tuesday 25 April 1284, St Mark's Day, and sixteen days after Easter Sunday.  His father Edward I was then almost forty-five (born 17 June 1239) and had been king of England for just under eleven and a half years, since the death of his father Henry III on 16 November 1272.  Of Edward I's three siblings who had survived childhood, only one was still alive in 1284: Edmund, earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, who was married to Blanche of Artois, niece of Louis IX of France and dowager queen of Navarre.  The couple had two sons, Edward of Caernarfon's first cousins Thomas and Henry, born in about 1278 and 1281 respectively.  Edmund lived until 5 June 1296, and Blanche until 2 May 1302.

Edward of Caernarfon's mother Queen Eleanor (d. 28 November 1290), born Infanta Doña Leonor de Castilla and known as Alianore in England, was probably forty-two at the time of her youngest child's birth (and it is virtually certain that Edward was indeed her youngest child; his alleged younger sisters Beatrice and Blanche, who appear in two of Alison Weir's books, are inventions of much later centuries).  Eleanor's brother Alfonso X of Castile died exactly three weeks before Eleanor gave birth to Edward, so presumably she spent the end of her pregnancy in mourning for him.  He was succeeded as king by his second son Sancho IV, who ignored the claims of his young nephews, the two sons of his dead older brother Fernando de la Cerda.  Of Queen Eleanor's fourteen siblings - who included the archbishops of Seville and Toledo - only two were still alive on 25 April 1284: her sister Berenguela, a nun at the abbey of Las Huelgas near Burgos, northern Spain, and the colourful Don Enrique, lord of Écija, Medellín, Dueñas and many others, senator of Rome, mercenary in North Africa and (later) regent of Castile for his great-nephew Fernando IV, who in 1284 was sixteen years into a thirty-year imprisonment in Naples.

Edward of Caernarfon was not born as heir to the English throne, as his ten-year-old brother Alfonso of Bayonne, named after their uncle and his godfather Alfonso X, was then still alive.  Alfonso died suddenly on 19 August 1284, thus sadly depriving England of its King Alfonso, and the four-month-old Edward then did become their father's heir, the sole survivor of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's four sons (John and Henry having already died in 1271 and 1274).  Three days before young Alfonso's sudden death, Edward of Caernarfon's second cousin and future father-in-law got married, probably in Paris.  Sixteen-year-old Philip, eldest surviving son of Philip III of France whom he succeeded as king the following year, married Joan (or Jeanne or Juana), probably then eleven years old and queen of Navarre and countess of Champagne and Brie in her own right.  Joan was the only surviving child of Edward of Caernarfon's aunt by marriage Blanche of Artois, above, and her first husband King Enrique I of Navarre.  Philip and Joan's marriage produced four children who lived into adulthood: Louis X, Philip V, Charles IV and Edward II's queen Isabella of France.

Five of Edward of Caernarfon's numerous (at least ten) older sisters were still alive at the time of his birth, and also survived into adulthood: Eleanor (born 1269), Joan (born 1272), Margaret (born 1275), Mary (born 1279) and Elizabeth (born 1282).  The only one of his grandparents alive in 1284 was his paternal grandmother Eleanor of Provence, dowager queen of England and widow of Henry III, who was probably in her early sixties at the time and lived until June 1291.  Edward's paternal aunts Margaret and Beatrice had been dead for nine years, but their husbands were still alive.  Alexander III, king of Scotland, widower of Margaret, was in his early forties, and died in an accident on 19 March 1286 when he rode his horse off a cliff during a fierce storm, leaving as his sole heir his little granddaughter Margaret of Norway, to whom Edward of Caernarfon was betrothed in 1289.  And finally, Duke John II of Brittany, widower of Edward I's sister Beatrice, lived to the ripe old age of sixty-six and died in a bizarre accident in November 1305: a wall fell on him and crushed him to death as he led the horse of the newly elected pope, Clement V, around Avignon.

Knaresborough Castle

I visited the lovely little Yorkshire town of Knaresborough again this week, and unlike the last time I was there in September 2008, managed not to delete all my photos of the place from my camera before I'd uploaded them to my laptop.  ;-)  Knaresborough was one of the many castles and lands given by Edward II to Piers Gaveston when the king made Piers earl of Cornwall on 6 August 1307.  The two men were there from 9 to 12 September 1307, and met there on 13 January 1312 after Piers' return from his third exile (and see also here for the aftermath of his return).

The ruins of the castle stand in a public park.  Both times I've been there, plenty of local inhabitants have been using the space, walking their dogs, sitting on the benches, paying their respects at the war memorial which is also there, kids playing football, and so on.  I really like the way it feels as though the castle is part of the community.

Beneath the castle: the River Nidd, railway bridge and Marigold Café and Boating.

A latrine shaft :-)

The railway bridge; the castle ruins are on a hill on the other side of it.

Two pics of the parish church of St John the Baptist in Knaresborough, which was first mentioned in 1114, so was already at least 200 years old in Edward II's time.

Seville

Apologies for the lack of posts lately; I've been on holiday in Spain and am flying home for a few days tomorrow, so barely have any time to update the blog!  I will be back as soon as possible, though, with lots more posts about Edward II, his life and his reign.  :-)

Here are some pictures from my recent Spanish trip, where I was following in the footsteps of Edward II's maternal family.  Edward's grandfather Fernando III of Castile and Leon captured Cordoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248 - as well as numerous other towns across Al-Andalus - after more than half a millennium of rule by the Umayyad and Almohad caliphates.  The great warrior king and (centuries later) saint of the Catholic Church captured Seville after a sixteen-month siege on 23 November 1248 and entered the city in triumph on 22 December, perhaps, though I'm only speculating, with Edward II's mother Doña Leonor, then aged seven, present to witness her father's great success.  The Muslim defenders and inhabitants of the city were given safe conduct to leave if they wished, though some chose to remain.  A Muslim writer, however, according to Joseph F. O'Callaghan's A History of Medieval Spain, referred to Fernando as "the tyrant, the cursed one."

Fernando III and his eldest son, Edward's uncle Alfonso X, are buried in Seville Cathedral; sadly the Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) is not open to visitors, but I had a great time looking round anyway.  Edward's uncle Infante Felipe was archbishop of Seville, with another uncle, Sancho, archbishop of Toledo, incidentally.  Ah, I love Edward's Spanish connections.  The present, unbelievably massive cathedral dates to the 1400s and was, until 1248, the city's Great Mosque.

Capilla Real/Royal Chapel of Seville Cathedral.

I also visited (of course!) the city's Real Alcázar, Royal Palace, which was originally built by the Almohad rulers of Al-Andalus; here's a picture of the facade of the part of the palace built by King Pedro I 'the Cruel' of Castile (born 1334, reigned 1350-1369), whose daughters Constanza and Isabel married Edward II's grandsons John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster and Edmund of Langley, duke of York.  I hope to write a blog post about Pedro and his daughter Constanza sometime.  Pedro's fascination with Islamic culture is apparent in the architecture and design of this building.

Front of Pedro's palace.

Inside Seville Cathedral.

Inside Seville Cathedral.

Inside Seville Cathedral.

Inside Seville Cathedral.

Seville Cathedral.

The Giralda Tower of Seville Cathedral, once the minaret of the Great Mosque and later a bell-tower, a symbol of the city.

Seville Cathedral, intended by its architects to be so massive that 'later generations will think us mad'. It's one of the biggest, or perhaps the biggest, cathedrals in the world.

Piers Gaveston's Daughter And The Earl Of Ulster's Grandson

On 25 May 1317, Edward II arranged the future marriage of his great-niece Joan Gaveston, Piers' daughter, to  John Multon, grandson of the earl of Ulster and nephew of the queen of Scotland.  Also on this day: Happy wedding anniversary to John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, and Edward II's niece Joan of Bar, who married on 25 May 1306 when John was nineteen going on twenty and Joan ten or eleven.  Not that they'd like me to wish them a happy wedding anniversary, probably, as their marriage was a disaster and Surrey fathered at least nine children with other women.

When Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, was executed on 19 June 1312, he left as his only legitimate child and heir his daughter Joan ('Johane' or 'Johanne' in contemporary spelling), then just five months old, whose mother was Edward II's niece Margaret de Clare.  On her father's death, little Joan became a ward of her great-uncle the king, and he sent her to be raised at Amesbury Priory with his niece Eleanor de Bohun, future countess of Ormond, allowing the two girls a hundred marks a year for their maintenance. [1]  Joan Gaveston and Eleanor de Bohun had plenty of relatives at Amesbury: Edward II's sister Mary, his niece Joan de Monthermer and cousin Isabella of Lancaster (daughter of Henry) were all nuns there, and it is likely that other royal women stayed there occasionally; Edward's niece Elizabeth de Clare spent a few months at Amesbury before the birth of her daughter Isabella Verdon in 1317, for instance.  Some people in recent years have interpreted Edward's placing of Piers Gaveston's daughter in a convent as 'dumping' her there, shoving the embarrassing daughter of the embarrassing late favourite out of the way.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and growing up at Amesbury, which had been fashionable among the royal family since Henry III's widow Eleanor of Provence spent the last years of her life there, was a privilege and honour, not a disgrace.

Edward II first attempted to arrange Joan Gaveston's marriage in or before 1316 when she was four, and offered her to his ward Thomas Wake, who was then eighteen or nineteen and whose family held lands in Cumberland and Lincolnshire (Wake's sister Margaret later married Edward's half-brother Edmund, earl of Kent, and was the grandmother of Richard II).  As the then sole heir of her mother Margaret and her share of the enormous de Clare inheritance, Joan was a very attractive proposition, far more so than she had been before her uncle the earl of Gloucester's death at Bannockburn in June 1314.  Edward II discovered, however, that Thomas Wake had married the earl of Lancaster's niece Blanche, eldest daughter of Henry and sister of the nun Isabella of Lancaster, above, and of the wonderful Henry of Grosmont, without his permission, and fined him a large sum, probably £1000, which he granted to "our very dear relative," Joan.  An entry on the Patent Roll and Foedera of 9 October 1316 records a "grant to the king's kinswoman, Joan, the daughter of Peter de Gavaston earl of Cornwall, of the forfeiture pertaining to the king for the marriage without licence of Thomas Wake, son and heir of John Wake, deceased tenant in chief, whose marriage the king granted to the said earl [of Cornwall] and to whom, after the death of the latter, he offered Joan in marriage."  [2]  Perhaps Wake gambled that Joan's mother Margaret de Clare would marry again, as indeed she did in April 1317, and have a son (she didn't), in which case Joan would inherit nothing.  Perhaps he also felt in the political climate of 1316 that allying himself with the wealthy and powerful Lancasters was a better proposition than with the erratic, wayward king, despite the fact that Blanche of Lancaster had a brother and thus was not an heiress.  As Wake had no means of raising such a large sum of money to pay the fine for marrying without Edward II's permission – as he was still under twenty-one, he hadn't yet come into his lands – he probably had to borrow the money from his father-in-law Henry, the brother of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, or Lancaster himself; a nice way for Edward to get money out of his enemy and give it to Piers Gaveston's daughter.

On 25 May 1317, Edward II arranged Joan Gaveston's future marriage [3] to John, son of Thomas Multon, lord of Egremont in Cumberland, and Eleanor de Burgh, one of the many daughters of Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster and one of Edward's childhood companions.  John Multon, born in October 1308 and thus a little over three years Joan Gaveston's senior, was the earl of Ulster's eldest grandson; his aunts and uncles included Robert Bruce's wife Elizabeth, queen of Scotland, the countesses of Gloucester, Louth, Kildare and Desmond, and Elizabeth de Clare's first husband John de Burgh, who died before his father and whose son with Elizabeth, William Donn de Burgh, succeeded his grandfather as earl of Ulster.  The marriage of Joan Gaveston and John Multon would take place "as soon as the said children have reached a suitable age when they can be married" (si tost come les ditz enfauntz serrount venuz a age convenable qil peussent estre marietz).  The agreement calls them Johan einez filz et heir le dit monsieur Thomas et Johane la feile monsieur Piers de Gavaston iadis counte de Cornwayll, "John eldest son and heir of the said Sir Thomas and Joan daughter of Piers Gaveston, late earl of Cornwall".

Thomas Multon promised the king that "he will not eloign from himself any lands that he now holds or that he shall inherit by reversion or otherwise, to the damage or disinheritance of his son," though presumably it wasn't John Multon's disinheritance that Edward cared about, but Joan Gaveston's.  The agreement between the king and Multon specified that Multon would "assign to the said Joan 400 marks yearly of land in suitable places to hold for the term of life in name of dower after John's death, if it should happen, which God forbid, that he die in his father's lifetime; and also the said Sir Thomas ought to find his son and Joan and their children honourable maintenance at such time as it shall please the king or the other friends of the said Joan [les autres amis la dite Johanne] that she shall stay with the said Sir Thomas."  Edward agreed to give Thomas Multon £1000 for Joan's dowry, in three instalments: 500 marks immediately, 500 at Midsummer and another 500 at Michaelmas.  Multon had to promise to pay the king the staggeringly, impossibly enormous sum of £10,000 if he defaulted on his son's marriage – proof of Edward's determination that the match he had arranged for Piers Gaveston's daughter should succeed where the first hadn't.  On 3 November 1317, Thomas Wake paid 1000 marks (666 pounds) in "part satisfaction" of the fine imposed on him the year before directly to Thomas Multon on Edward's behalf, as the sum Edward still owed to Multon for the marriage of John and Joan. [4]

Sadly, Joan Gaveston died "of illness" at Amesbury Priory on "the feast day of St Hilary 18 Edward II", i.e. 13 January 1325 [5], which may have been the day after her thirteenth birthday, before her marriage to John Multon took place and evidently before she had gone to live with the Multon family.  Any record of Edward II's reaction to the loss of his great-niece and his beloved Piers' only legitimate child, and whether he paid for a funeral and masses for Joan's soul (I assume he did), unfortunately do not survive.  Piers Gaveston also left an illegitimate daughter called Amie, of whose existence Edward II was presumably aware, though there is no record of any contact between the two of them.  Joan Gaveston's death left her younger half-sister Margaret Audley, daughter of Margaret de Clare and Hugh Audley, as sole heir to their mother's share of the vast de Clare inheritance, while her other half-sister Amie Gaveston became a damsel in the household of Philippa of Hainault, Edward III's queen, and was rewarded in 1332 for her good service to the queen with lands in Essex and the Berkshire manor of 'Woghfeld' which had once belonged to Roger Mortimer. [6]  For his part, John Multon, whose father Thomas died in 1322, died childless in 1334,  leaving his three sisters as his co-heirs.

The agreement between Edward II and Thomas Multon of 25 May 1317, from Foedera, in Latin, French then Latin again.

Sources

1) J.S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall 1307-1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II (Detroit, 1988), p. 101, citing The National Archives E 101/325/13, membrane 5.
2) Calendar of Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 468; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1313-1317, p. 553; Foedera 1307-1327, p. 299.
3) Foedera 1307-1327, p. 331; Close Rolls 1313-1318, p. 468.
4) Patent Rolls 1317-21, p. 43.
5) Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1308-1348, no. 1329, pp. 325-326.
6) Patent Rolls 1330-1334, pp. 244, 306, 414.

Friday Facts

A post with some random and interesting facts about Edward II, his life and his family.  :-)

- Edward's mother Eleanor of Castile was half-Spanish and half-French, the daughter of Fernando III, king of Castile and Leon and Joan, countess of Ponthieu.  Eleanor was one of fifteen siblings, ten of them from her father's first marriage to Beatriz of Swabia: eleven boys and four girls.  As two of her sisters died in infancy and the third became a nun, Eleanor was the only daughter of Fernando III to marry and have children.

- Edward's father Edward I had fair hair in his youth which darkened as he grew older.  Manuscript illustrations of Edward II also depict him with fair hair.  He doesn't seem to have inherited the drooping eyelid of his father and grandfather Henry III, however, or at least no source mentions that he did.

- Edward II's parents must have been much on his mind in late 1315: 28 November was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Eleanor of Castile's death and he paid seventy Dominican friars thirty-five shillings to "perform divine service" to mark the date, and also gave five pounds to one Nicholas Percy around the same time to make a book about the life and times of his father Edward I for him.

- Edward spent much time near the end of his reign, with a few favoured companions and servants, at a cottage within the precincts of Westminster Abbey called Borgoyne (Burgundy), which had a garden, ditches around it, and its own keeper.  Presumably the king felt more comfortable there than at his many castles and palaces in and around London.

- Two of Edward's noble companions in childhood were Eleanor de Burgh, one of the many daughters of his and his father's ally Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster, and Maud Chaworth, elder half-sister of Hugh Despenser the Younger.

- Edward had at least sixteen siblings and half-siblings, of whom only seven in addition to himself survived childhood: Eleanor, countess of Bar; Joan, countess of Gloucester; Margaret, duchess of Brabant; Mary, a nun; Elizabeth, countess of Holland and Hereford; Thomas, earl of Norfolk; Edmund, earl of Kent.

- On 29 January 1312, shortly after Piers Gaveston's return from his third exile, Edward gave a pound each to his minstrels Peter Duzedeys, Roger the Trumpeter and Janin the Nakerer for performing for him.  A few days later, he gave a massive two pounds to William, a minstrel sent to him by his brother-in-law Louis, king of Navarre, the future Louis X of France.

- On her way to meet Edward in the north at this time, Queen Isabella sent him a basket of lampreys via her messenger John Moigne.

- Edward's Household Ordinance of 6 December 1318 is the second oldest in existence in England, after one of his father's dating to 1279.

- The Polychronicon of the monk Ranulph Higden, written around 1350, describes Edward II as "bountiful and splendid in living."  Higden also wrote that Edward "forsook the company of lords, and fraternised with harlots, singers, actors, carters, ditchers, oarsmen, sailors, and others who practise the mechanical arts."  Much evidence from Edward's household accounts bears this allegation out.
 
- In 1305, Edward sent a letter to his kinswoman Agnes de Valence, rather poignantly calling her "our good mother" and promising that he would do whatever he could for her, "as a son who would gladly do and procure whatever could turn to your profit and honour."

- Edward's chief huntsman was called William Twyt or Twici, who wrote a French treatise called Le Art de Venerie around 1320; the earliest text on hunting written in England, it opens "Here begins the art of hunting, which Master William Twici, huntsman of the king of England, made in his time to instruct others."

- On his way to York in November 1322, Edward stayed at Thorne near Doncaster, where he gave two shillings each to ten fishermen "who fished in the king's presence and took great pike, great eels and a large quantity of other fish." A John Waltham gave him two salmon.

- During the Great Famine in 1315, according to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, a brave cleric told Edward's confessor that "our king as he passes through the country takes men's goods and pays little or nothing or badly…the inhabitants used to rejoice to see the face of the king when he came, but now, because the king's approach injures the people, his departure gives them much pleasure and as he goes off they pray that he may never return."  Perhaps with this in mind, the 1318 Household Ordinance ordered the household purchasers to "make their purchases in proper manner, to the great profit of the king and at minimal grievance to the people."

May Anniversaries

Important stuff that happened to Edward II and his family in May. :-)

1 May 1284: Edward, six days old, was baptised in Caernarfon.  Sadly, any record of who his godparents were has not survived.

1 May 1285: Birth of Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, who was beheaded on 17 November 1326 on the orders of his close kinsman Roger Mortimer, without a trial, for his loyalty to Edward II and Hugh Despenser.  Edmund's mother was the Italian noblewoman Alesia di Saluzzo, and one of his uncles was governor of Sardinia.

2 May 1302: Death of Edward's aunt by marriage Blanche of Artois, queen of Navarre and countess of Champagne and Lancaster, widow of Edward I's brother Edmund of Lancaster (d. 1296).  In a typically confusing royal genealogical tangle, Blanche was also Edward's queen Isabella of France's maternal grandmother.  Blanche's sons were Thomas and Henry; her daughter Jeanne by her first marriage was queen of Navarre in her own right and queen of France by marriage, mother of a queen of England and of three kings of France.

3 May 1276: Birth of Louis, count of Evreux, son of Philip III of France and Marie of Brabant, half-brother of Philip IV, uncle of Edward's queen Isabella.  Edward was on good terms with Louis before his accession, and sent a famous, jokey letter to him in 1305 about 'lazy dogs' and 'a big trotting palfrey'.

3 May 1294: Death of Duke John I of Brabant, father-in-law of Edward's sister Margaret, while jousting.

3 May 1309: Death of Edward II's first cousin once removed Charles 'the Lame', king of Naples and Albania, titular king of Jerusalem, prince of Achaea, Taranto and Salerno, son and heir of Louis IX of France's brother Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, and Beatrice of Provence.

4 May 1306: Birth of Edward's half-sister Eleanor, youngest child of Edward I (then aged almost sixty-seven) and Marguerite of France.  Eleanor was twenty-two years Edward II's junior and more than forty years younger than Edward I's eldest child.  When the little girl was only four days old, her father arranged her future marriage to the six-year-old Robert of Burgundy, heir to his father Othon IV, count palatine of Burgundy, and to his mother Mahaut, countess of Artois.  Sadly little Eleanor died at the age of five in October or November 1311, and Edward II paid 113 pounds for her funeral at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire.  Robert of Burgundy died unmarried and childless in 1315, aged fifteen; his heir was his elder sister Jeanne, queen of Edward II's brother-in-law Philip V of France.

4 May 1321: The 'Contrariants', as Edward II later took to calling them, began a massive assault on the lands of Hugh Despenser the Younger in South Wales, an attack soon extended to his and his father's lands in England as well.  On the very same day, an oblivious Edward II wrote to his ally William Aune, constable of Tickhill Castle, that "we have nothing but good news before us."  Oops.

5 May 1282: Birth of Edward's first cousin Don Juan Manuel, prince of Villena and duke of Peñafiel, one of the greatest Spanish writers of the Middle Ages.

5 May 1312: Edward, Isabella and Piers Gaveston fled from Tynemouth and the rapidly approaching Thomas, earl of Lancaster.  Contrary to popular modern myth, Edward certainly did not 'abandon' his pregnant wife to her fate in the interests of saving Piers.

5 May 1316: Death of Edward's sister Elizabeth, countess of Holland, Hereford and Essex, shortly after giving birth to her youngest child Isabel, who also died.  Elizabeth was thirty-three.

8 May 1319: Death of Haakon V, king of Norway, to whose niece Margaret 'the Maid of Norway', the young queen of Scotland, Edward had been betrothed at the age of five in 1289.  Edward, unaware of Haakon's death, sent him a letter on behalf of a group of Norfolk merchants on 12 June.

10 May 1290: Birth of Edward's eldest nephew, Edward I's first grandchild, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, child of Joan of Acre and Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford and born just over a year after their wedding.

12 May 1321: Edward II wrote to a dozen or so of his officials in Gascony, authorising the sale of a house there called the Earl's Hall (aula comitis), which, Edward said, had become a "brothel of worthless women."

13 May 1254: Birth of Marie of Brabant, second queen of Philip III of France, mother of Louis, count of Evreux (above), of Edward II's stepmother Queen Marguerite, and of Blanche, to whom Edward was betrothed between 1291 and 1294.  Queen Marie lived until 1321 and survived all her children.

14 May 1308: Edward granted the revenues of Ponthieu and Montreuil, his inheritance from his mother Queen Eleanor, to his twelve-year-old queen Isabella.

16 May 1363: Death of Aline, Lady Burnell, sister of Hugh Despenser the Younger, appointed as constable of Conwy Castle by Edward II in January 1326.  Aline had been a widow since 1315, forty-eight years, and must have been in her mid-seventies at the time of her death (I believe she was the eldest child of Hugh Despenser the Elder and Isabel Beauchamp and born about 1287).

17 May 1317: Fifty marks were paid to Rose de Bureford - half of what was owed to her - for making an embroidered cope as a present from the queen to the new pope, John XXII.  (Note that Edward, not Isabella, paid for it.)

18 May 1279: Death of Afonso III, king of Portugal, who was married to Edward's first cousin Beatriz of Castile.

18 May 1308: Forced to give in after many weeks of refusing to do so, Edward II agreed to banish Piers Gaveston from England (he hit on the idea of making him lord lieutenant of Ireland a few days later): "Edward, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland and duke of Aquitaine, to all those who see or hear these letters, greetings. We make known to you that between this day and the day that Sir Piers Gaveston [monsire Pieres de Gavaston] must leave our realm, that is, the morrow of the Nativity of St John the Baptist next [25 June], we will not do anything, nor suffer anything to be done, as far as within us lies, by which the departure of this same Piers [meisme celui Peres] might be impeded or delayed in any way, according to the counsel given to us by the prelates, earls and barons of our realm, with which we have agreed...".

19 May 1312: After nine days of siege, with few provisions and thus little other choice, Piers Gaveston came out of Scarborough Castle and surrendered to the earls of Pembroke and Surrey and Henry, Lord Percy.  He had exactly a month left to live.

19 May 1326: Edward attended the wedding at Marlborough of his household knight Sir Robert Wateville and Margaret Hastings, niece of Hugh Despenser the Younger.  The king gave a pound to Will Muleward, one of the valets of the bride's mother Isabel, Lady Hastings, who "was with the king for some time and made him laugh very greatly."

20 May 1315: Edward II ordered Hugh Despenser the Younger, not yet his favourite, to surrender Tonbridge Castle in Kent, which he had seized.

21 May 1317: Edward paid twenty marks for his sister, the nun Mary, and their niece Elizabeth de Clare to go on pilgrimage to Canterbury.

21 May 1321: Edward (then aged thirty-seven) gave ten pounds to the messenger who brought him news of the birth of his latest great-nephew, the future Count Henri IV of Bar, son of Edward's nephew Count Edouard I of Bar (only son of his eldest sister Eleanor) and Marie of Burgundy. Three days later, the king paid Robert le Fermor, bootmaker of Fleet Street, thirty shillings for six pairs of boots "with tassels of silk and drops of silver-gilt."

22 May 1306: Knighting of Edward of Caernarfon and almost 300 other young men at Westminster; one of the great events of the age.

23 May 1313: On his way to Paris with Isabella, Edward ordered the constable of Dover Castle to pay "six Saracens" six pence a day each for their expenses "until the king's return from parts beyond sea." Who these people were and what subsequently happened to them, I don't know.

(On or shortly before) 23 May 1318: Birth of Edward's great-niece Elizabeth Damory, only child of Edward's niece Elizabeth de Clare and her third husband Sir Roger Damory, Edward's great favourite at the time.  The king gave a massive twenty pounds to the messenger who brought him news of little Elizabeth's birth.

25 May 1317: Edward II arranged the future marriage of Piers Gaveston's five-year-old daughter and heir, the king's great-niece Joan, to John, son and heir of Thomas Multon, lord of Egremont in Cumberland.  John, born in 1308, was the eldest grandson of Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster.

26 May 1306: Wedding of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare, eldest granddaughter of Edward I, who arranged and attended the wedding.  Eleanor was thirteen and a half, Hugh somewhere between sixteen and nineteen.

28 May 1309: Great jousting tournament at Stepney, at which Sir Giles Argentein held the field against all comers and was crowned 'King of the Greenwood'.

29 May 1332: Death of Edward II's sister Mary, the reluctant nun, at the age of fifty-three.

30 May 1252: Death of Edward II's maternal grandfather King Fernando III of Castile and Leon in his early fifties, conqueror of most of Andalusia, father of fifteen children, canonised as San Fernando in 1671 and the patron saint of Seville.

30 May 1323: Arrest of Edward's kinsman Henry, Lord Beaumont during a meeting of the royal council at Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire.

28 April 1317: Wedding of Margaret de Clare and Hugh Audley

696 years ago today, Edward II's niece Margaret de Clare married her second husband Sir Hugh Audley, as his first (and only) wife.  Margaret, then aged twenty-three or almost - she was probably born in the spring or summer of 1294 - and a widow since the death of Piers Gaveston, earl of Cornwall, on 19 June 1312, was the third child and second daughter of Edward II's sister Joan of Acre (spring 1272 - 23 April 1307) and her first husband Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford (2 September 1243 - 7 December 1295).  Margaret's older siblings were Gilbert, earl of Gloucester (c. 10 May 1291 - 24 June 1314), killed at the battle of Bannockburn at the age of twenty-three, and Eleanor, Lady Despenser, born October/November 1292.  Their younger sister was Elizabeth, born on 16 September 1295, who in 1317 was the widow of firstly the earl of Ulster's eldest son and heir John de Burgh, and secondly of Theobald, Lord Verdon.  Hugh Audley was the son and heir of Sir Hugh Audley Senior and Isolde Mortimer, and in 1317 was probably in his mid-twenties.

Margaret de Clare Gaveston and Hugh Audley married in Edward II's presence at Windsor; the king's wardrobe accounts show that he provided three pounds in coins to be thrown over the heads of the bride and groom, and that he also gave thirteen shillings and four pence in oblations, which were distributed in his presence in the chapel in Windsor park.  Presumably Margaret's younger sister Elizabeth married Edward's other great favourite Sir Roger Damory at about the same time, though oddly there is no record of the latter wedding in the king's extant accounts.  Marriage to the de Clare sisters made Audley and Damory extremely wealthy, when the lands and goods of the late earl of Gloucester were divided among his three sisters and their husbands later in 1317.

Just as Elizabeth de Clare's marriage to Roger Damory produced one child, a daughter named Elizabeth Damory (May 1318 - 1361/62), Margaret de Clare and Hugh Audley's marriage also produced a single daughter, Margaret Audley, born sometime between early 1318 and late 1322.  Elizabeth Damory was heiress only to her father Roger, not to her extremely wealthy mother, as Elizabeth de Clare had a son by her first marriage, William Donn de Burgh, earl of Ulster, who by the laws of primogeniture was the sole heir to his mother (in fact, he died young in 1333 and his only child, also Elizabeth, who married Edward III's second son Lionel of Antwerp, inherited her grandmother's vast wealth).  At the time of her birth and for a few years afterwards, Margaret Audley was co-heiress to her mother with her older half-sister Joan Gaveston, Piers' and Margaret de Clare's daughter, born in early 1312.  Joan Gaveston sadly died at Amesbury Priory on 13 January 1325, around the time of her thirteenth birthday and before she could make the marriage to John, future Lord Multon arranged for her in 1317 by her great-uncle and guardian Edward II.  This left her half-sister Margaret Audley as sole heiress to their mother's share of the enormous de Clare inheritance in England, Wales and Ireland.

The huge wealth of the de Clare sisters was an enticing prospect for any man lucky enough to marry one of them, as he would control the lands by right of his wife as long as she lived and, as long as they had a living child together, after her death as well.  Elizabeth, ordered back from Ireland by her uncle Edward II after the death of her brother Gloucester, was abducted from Bristol Castle by Theobald de Verdon in early 1316 and forcibly (I presume) married to him, to the fury of Edward II.  Verdon in fact was dead within six months of the marriage, leaving Elizabeth pregnant; she gave birth to their daughter Isabella in March 1317, a few weeks before she married her third husband Roger Damory.  Eleanor, the eldest de Clare sister, had been married to Hugh Despenser the Younger since May 1306 and thus was safe from abduction while he lived (her heir, incidentally, was her eldest son, also Hugh, born in 1308 or 1309), but Hugh's execution in November 1326 left her vulnerable, and in early 1329 she too was abducted and forcibly married, by William la Zouche, widower of the earl of Warwick's widow Alice de Toeni.  Margaret de Clare lived in the household of and thus under the watchful eye of her uncle Edward II while a rich widow from 1314 to 1317, and thus remained unmarried until the king arranged her wedding to Hugh Audley, but her daughter and sole heiress Margaret Audley suffered the same fate as her aunts Eleanor and Elizabeth.  (As, indeed, did two other rich heiresses of the era, Alice de Lacy and Maud Clifford, a de Clare cousin.)

On 28 February 1336, an entry appears on the Patent Roll (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1334-1338, p. 283): "Commission to Robert de Bousser and Adam de Everyngham to find by inquisition in the county of Essex what persons broke the close of Hugh de Audele [Audley] at Thaxstede [Thaxted, Essex], carried away his goods and abducted Margaret his daughter; and to certify the king fully of the whole matter."

On 6 July 1336, the following entry appears (Ibid., p. 298):

"The like [commission of oyer et terminer] to Richard de Wylughby, Thomas de Loveyne, Thomas Gobyon and Robert de Jedeworth, in the counties of Cambridge and Essex, on complaint by Hugh Daudele that Ralph de Stafford, Ralph son of Ralph Basset, [nineteen other men are also named] and others, broke his close at Thaxtede, carried away his goods, abducted Margaret his daughter and heir, then in his custody, and married her against his will."

So by then, Hugh Audley had discovered who had abducted his daughter, and had also learned that she had been forcibly married: Sir Ralph Stafford, a widower born in 1301 and thus around twenty years older than Margaret Audley (I'm only speculating, but I would assume that Margaret was born nearer the end of the early 1318 to late 1322 possible window for her birth than the beginning, given that she was still unmarried in 1336).  Unable to annul the marriage, and with Ralph Stafford high in Edward III's favour, Hugh Audley and Margaret de Clare had perforce to accept it, and the king's awarding the earldom of Gloucester to Hugh in 1337 may have helped the process.  I'd love to know how Margaret Audley felt about her marriage and her husband, who had removed her from her home with the aid of at least twenty men, but sadly history does not record her feelings or opinion.  She and Ralph Stafford had half a dozen children, two sons and four daughters, and via their daughter Katherine and her husband Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, are the ancestors of, among many other illustrious descendants, all the kings of France from Louis XIII onwards, kings of Spain and Poland, archdukes of Austria, Marie Antoinette, queen of France, and Anna Jagiellonka, queen of Hungary.  Hugh Audley was a 'favourite' of Edward II, the only one in fact to survive the reign, and married a woman who in most other circumstances would have been out of his league.  This marriage arranged by Edward II, and the forced marriage of their daughter nineteen years later, ultimately resulted in the births of a fair few eminent people.  I just wish I knew more about Margaret Audley's feelings on the matter, and I can't help being extremely glad that I'm not a rich heiress of 700 years ago.  Being perhaps only fifteen years old, snatched from your home by a large group of men to be married off to a man two decades your senior, forced to have sex with him and bear his children, with absolutely no punishment whatsoever meted out to him for these actions - well, words fail me.

25 April 1284: Birth of Edward II

Happy Birthday to my lord king, born in Caernarfon, North Wales 729 years ago today on 25 April 1284.

Statue of Edward II which dates to his own lifetime, c. 1320, on the King's Gate of Caernarfon Castle.

Edward II, as well as being one of only two English monarchs with a Spanish parent (the other is Mary I, born in 1516 as the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon), is one of only three English monarchs I can think of who were born in Wales, the others being Henry V, born in Monmouth in 1386, and Henry VII, born in Pembroke in 1457, neither of whom was particularly close to the succession to the throne at the time of their births.  Although Edward II was born as the son of the reigning king of England, he was not in fact born as heir to the throne: his ten-year-old brother Alfonso, born in Bayonne in November 1273 and named after their uncle and his godfather Alfonso X of Castile, was still alive at the time of his birth.  Alfonso, however, died what seems to have been very suddenly on 19 August 1284, four months after the birth of his little brother, and thus tragically deprived England of having a king called Alfonso of Bayonne.  (Bayonne, incidentally, is about 25 miles from the French-Spanish border and 75 miles from Gabaston, the little village that was the ancestral home of Edward II's beloved Piers Gaveston.)  Edward of Caernarfon and Alfonso's two elder brothers John (1266-71) and Henry (1268-74) having also died young, the infant born in North Wales in the spring of 1284 thus became heir to his father's throne, and presumably to the king's great relief was a robust and healthy child who grew up to be an enormously strong, physically powerful, tall and fit adult.

Caernarfon Castle, with the King's Tower on the right with the flags flying from it, traditionally (though probably wrongly) said to be Edward II's birthplace.

As well as his then still-alive brother Alfonso and his two dead brothers John and Henry, Edward of Caernarfon had five older sisters alive in 1284 in addition to at least another five who had died in infancy: his surviving sisters were Eleanor, later countess of Bar (born June 1269); Joan of Acre, later countess of Gloucester and Hertford (born spring 1272); Margaret, later duchess of Brabant (born March 1275); Mary, veiled as a nun at Amesbury Priory (born March 1279); and Elizabeth, later countess of Holland, Hereford and Essex, only twenty months Edward's senior, born in Rhuddlan in August 1282.  Edward I and Eleanor of Castile's daughters who died young were Katherine, another Joan, Berengaria and two whose names are unknown.  There may have been yet another sister who died in infancy, and perhaps even another brother.  Edward II was at least the fourteenth and perhaps the fifteenth or sixteenth child of Eleanor of Castile, of whom only six outlived her; he was also almost certainly her youngest child, his alleged younger sisters Beatrice and Blanche being inventions of the nineteenth century.  Edward I also had three children with his second queen Marguerite of France, Thomas, earl of Norfolk (1300-38), Edmund, earl of Kent (1301-30) and Eleanor (1306-11), and thus fathered at least seventeen children altogether.

At the time of Edward of Caernarfon's birth, Edward I was almost forty-five, born on 17 June 1239, and had been king of England for eleven and a half years.  Edward's mother Queen Eleanor, born Infanta Doña Leonor de Castilla, was forty-two, born most probably in late 1241 in the north of Spain.  According to the itinerary of Edward I, the king was in Caernarfon from 1 April to 6 May 1284, then went to Harlech via 'Lammanath'.  Presumably Queen Eleanor stayed in Caernarfon after her son's birth and was churched there; the king returned to the town on 25 May and stayed till 8 June.  To celebrate the birth of 'Lord Edward, the king's son', Edward I paid twelve shillings to feed 100 poor people and gave out nine pounds in alms in the town of Caernarfon.  The precise location of Edward of Caernarfon's birth is unknown, as the enormous castle which still stands in the town and is usually said to be his birthplace was in the extremely early stages of construction in April 1284.  Most likely he was born somewhere in the town, or perhaps in one of the timber buildings which already existed at the site where the stone castle was built.  If the latter, I can't imagine it was very comfortable for the queen, giving birth for at least for the fourteenth time, in her forties, in the middle of what would basically have been a large muddy building site.

Edward of Caernarfon was baptised on 1 May, though unfortunately the identities of his godparents have not survived.  His first wet-nurse was Mary, Marrola or Mariota Maunsel, presumably a Welsh woman, who fell ill and was forced to leave his service in the summer of 1284, replaced by Alice Leygrave, later called "the king's mother, who suckled him in his youth." (Calendar of Close Rolls 1307-13, p. 581.)  Mary Maunsel must have remained in contact with the future king, however, as Edward II never forgot her; on 14 November 1307 when he was twenty-three, four months after he became king, he gave her seventy-three acres of land rent-free in Caernarfon for life, and in March 1312 granted her an annual income of five pounds, a very generous amount for a woman of her rank and status.  (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-13, pp. 21, 448.)  The future Edward II lived in Caernarfon for the first few months of his life, until sent with his elder sisters to Bristol in the autumn of 1284; he did not return to the land of his birth until he was almost seventeen in April 1301, shortly after his father created him prince of Wales.

Caernarfon Castle, with part of the town visible in the background.

Further Reading
Seymour Phillips, Edward II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010)
Hilda Johnstone, Edward of Carnarvon, 1284-1307 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1946)

Edward II's Death And Afterlife Revisited (2)

Somewhat belatedly, here's the second part of my posts about Edward II's possible death and his possible survival after September 1327.  As I pointed out in part one of this series, no cause of Edward's supposed death on 21 September 1327 was ever stated in any official government source, and none of the men said to have been involved in it ever said a word in public about what happened.  Incidentally, there is little doubt that Edward's death happened or was assumed by many contemporaries to have happened on 21 September 1327, certainly not 11 October as several websites including Wikipedia state, citing much later sources; Edward's son Edward III kept the anniversary and attended mass in memory of his father on 21 September, or occasionally on the 22nd, and this anniversary was also kept by numerous churches, abbeys and so on.  [1]  Given the silence in official records, our only sources as to what (may have) happened at Berkeley Castle on that day are chronicles.  All fourteenth-century chronicles which talk about the subject say that Edward II died at Berkeley in September 1327, with none claiming that he survived (the ample evidence for this comes from elsewhere).  Some give the red-hot poker story as the cause of death, though the majority don't; some say instead that Edward was suffocated or strangled; some say that he died of natural causes or a grief-induced illness; some say that he was murdered without specifying how; some merely say that he died with no further details at all.  It is emphatically not the case that there was universal agreement on the red-hot poker story, which is the overwhelming impression you get these days online and in books written by anyone who isn't a specialist in the fourteenth century, that the story is certain fact and accepted by everyone at the time and ever since as being so.  Needless to say, it isn't.  And also needless to say, it certainly isn't the case that the red-hot poker story was given out at parliament in November 1330 as the official cause of Edward II's death, which is something I've seen stated online more than once.

Ian Mortimer has compiled an extremely useful table setting out which fourteenth-century chronicler said what about Edward II's death, and when, in chronological order.  For what follows, I have consulted this table and the 2010 biography of Edward by Seymour Phillips; for much more detail and if you're interested in this issue, I strongly recommend reading the books in question (see below for details).  [2]  The only chronicler in the south-west of England in September 1327 - he was 90 miles away from Berkeley, in Exeter - was the royal clerk Adam Murimuth, who wrote up his chronicle a few years later.  He gives the cause of Edward II's death as suffocation, gives the date as 22 September, apparently a day too late, and claims that the murderers were Sir Thomas Gurney and Sir John Maltravers, when in fact the parliament of November 1330 named the killers as Gurney and William Ockley.  Maltravers was never, at any point in his long life (he lived till 1364) accused of any involvement in Edward II's death by Edward's son Edward III.  Murimuth and other chroniclers who name Maltravers as one of the men responsible presumably were confused on this point because Maltravers was sentenced to death in November 1330 for his role in the entrapment and judicial murder of Edward II's half-brother the earl of Kent eight months previously.  Why Murimuth gives the cause of death as suffocation, what his source was if indeed he had one, or whether he was guessing and thought this was the most plausible method, I don't know, and although he's demonstrably mistaken on a couple of other points, he's usually a pretty reliable source.  Elsewhere, Murimuth also says that Edward was "murdered by a trick", per cautelam occisus, whatever he means by that; Professor Seymour Phillips suggests it is metaphorical, meaning that Edward was killed treacherously.

Other chroniclers reasonably close in time to September 1327 give the cause of death as a grief-induced illness (a continuation of the Brut in the early 1330s: enmaladist...grevousement de grant dolour et morust) or possibly strangulation (Lichfield Chronicle, early 1330s), or merely state that Edward died either without further details, say that it was a natural death, or say that he was murdered without stating how (Annales Paulini, Anonimalle, Wigmore chronicle, Newenham annals, Canterbury chronicle, Peterborough chronicle, French chronicle of London, Lanercost, which states that Edward "either died naturally or through the violence of others").  As late as the early 1360s, Sir Thomas Gray of the Scalacronica could still write that Edward "died, in what manner was not known."  The Bridlington chronicler of the 1330s wrote that he did not believe "what is now being written" about Edward's death, almost certainly an indication that he had heard the rumours of the red-hot poker (which Thomas Gray decades later either hadn't or thought was too implausible even to mention) but gave them no credence.  Note the essential point again that there are plenty of fourteenth-century chroniclers who do not give the red-hot poker as the cause of Edward II's death.

The first mention of the infamous poker appears in the longer continuation of the Brut in about the mid-1330s, which names Thomas Gurney (whose last name is spelt 'Toiourneye') and (wrongly) John Maltravers as the murderers, and includes the detail that a large table was placed on Edward's stomach as he slept and a "spit of copper burning" inserted through a horn inside him and "oftentimes rolled therewith his bowels" (that bit makes me want to vomit).  The story is also given in the Polychronicon of Ranulph Higden, a monk of Chester, and in the chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Oxfordshire, both written around 1350.  It's le Baker, in fact, who gives most of the details of Edward of Caernarfon's supposed mistreatment at Berkeley Castle prior to death; he was constructing a narrative of a saintly, Christ-like Edward nobly suffering the torments of lesser men, with a view to promoting the former king's canonisation.  As for Higden, he was summoned before Edward III's council in August 1352 and ordered "to come with all your chronicles and those in your charge to speak and treat with the council concerning matters to be explained to you on our [Edward III's] behalf."  [3]  As Ian Mortimer points out, Higden "was more responsible for the spread of the story about the death of Edward II being due to a red-hot poker than anyone else", given that the Polychronicon exists in more than 160 manuscripts and was, like the Brut, frequently used as a source by most later chroniclers.  [4]

After a few decades, chroniclers had no new information to add and of course no real knowledge of what had happened at Berkeley Castle in September 1327, and just copied from earlier chroniclers, whether their accounts were reliable or not.  I've already written a post demolishing the often-repeated myth that John Trevisa, chaplain of Thomas, Lord Berkeley, had inside knowledge of Edward's fate in 1327 and that his translation without comment of Higden's Polychronicon with its red-hot poker murder is indirect evidence that the story must be true.  (Sigh, if only some modern writers would just do a modicum of research before mindlessly repeating nonsense from others about Trevisa being a child in Berkeley village in 1327 and later being the confessor of Edward of Caernarfon's guardian.)  The Geoffrey le Baker story of the red-hot poker murder with all its lurid details is by far the most detailed and probably the one best known today, while Christopher Marlowe's c. 1592 play about Edward II has done more than anything else to popularise this story of Edward's supposed death.  As I and others in the comments noted in this post, and as far better historians than me have also pointed out, the red-hot poker story is extremely, highly, overwhelmingly unlikely to be true, and if you see anyone anywhere stating it as certain 'fact', they're only demonstrating their lack of familiarity with the whole issue.  As has often been stated in modern times, the red-hot poker story may "have been part of a popular tradition that fitted the punishment to the crime and imagined the ex-king as having been effectively sodomized to death."  [5]  My own belief is that if Edward II really did die at Berkeley Castle in September 1327, he is far more likely to have been sedated and then suffocated, which would also leave no marks and was a method of murder the perpetrators knew would work, as opposed to pointlessly sadistic and far-fetched notions of 'let's punish the sodomite by raping him with a hot poker'.  Roger Mortimer escaped from the Tower of London in August 1323 by feeding his guards drugs in their wine that knocked them out, so we know he was able to procure sedatives (which, given Edward II's enormous strength, are likely to have been necessary to overpower and kill him).

In the next post (posts?), I'll take a look at the evidence for Edward II's possible survival past 1327: the Fieschi Letter, William Melton's letter, the earl of Kent's plot, William le Galeys and so on.

Sources

1) Ian Mortimer, 'The Death of Edward II in Berkeley Castle', English Historical Review, cxx (2005), p. 1209 (reprinted in his Medieval Intrigue: Decoding Royal Conspiracies (2010), pp. 92-93, 107).  Wikipedia's current page on Edward II states "it was generally believed, he was murdered by an agent of Isabella and Mortimer on 11 October 1327, although Edward's death is commemorated annually at Berkeley Castle on 21 September."
2) Ian Mortimer, 'Sermons of Sodomy: A Reconsideration of Edward II's Sodomitical Reputation' in The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (2006), pp. 58-60, reprinted in in Mortimer's Medieval Intrigue, pp. 55-58; Seymour Phillips, Edward II (2010), pp. 560-565.
3) Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (1982), p. 43.

4) Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (2006), p. 484 note 16.
5) W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (2011), p. 67.  See also Ian Mortimer's 'Sermons of Sodomy' article cited in note 2 above and Ormrod's 'The Sexualities of Edward II', also in Dodd and Musson.