Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (24 page)

What should we make of this letter? First, if we study the chronology carefully, we have one firm date, March 1330, when Kent was executed and the ‘hermit king’ was supposed to have left Corfe and travelled to Ireland where he stayed for eight months. This would bring the chain of events to the December of 1330 when Edward may have returned to England. He would have then travelled to France and would have arrived in Avignon sometime towards the end of 1331 or the beginning of 1332. He would have then travelled back across France, through the Low Countries to Cologne and from there into the area around Milan and Lombardy. A fair reckoning would be about two years for such travel, would bring the chronology to the spring of 1334. If Edward stayed at Melazzo for two and a half years, and Cecime for another two, that takes us to the year 1338. If another year is added for Fieschi to write his letter, and receive whatever reply he
wanted, then his letter was known at the English court by 1339 or early 1340.

Secondly, the letter is a clever compound of factual details, for example, the dead King’s heart being handed to Isabella, intermingled with some highly suspect assertions, such as that Edward II stayed quite safely at Corfe Castle for eighteen months without being detected. It would have been difficult for Edward III to confirm or deny Fieschi’s assertions, except to repeat the accounts Isabella had written to Pope John XXII: that a public funeral had taken place and Edward II was buried under a marble sarcophagus in Gloucester Cathedral.

The real clue to understanding this letter is the writer Fieschi and his motives for despatching it. After all, he was a papal notary, a distant kinsman of the English royal family, a visitor to England, who knew Edward II by sight, and a holder, albeit an absentee one, of benefices in the English Church. As Chaucer remarked: ‘
Cacullus non facit monachum
’ (‘The cowl doesn’t make the monk’). This could certainly be applied to Fieschi. He was a papal tax collector, and such men were not famous for their generosity of spirit or adherence to the law of Christ. He was also an absentee landlord, drawing revenues from Church positions for which he did very little work. Priests like Fieschi were often castigated by critics as shepherds more interested in the fleece rather than the flock.

In 1319 Fieschi had been given a prosperous benefice in Salisbury, in itself a minor holding, but he did better under Isabella. Between 1319 and the fall of Edward II, Fieschi received nothing else. During Mortimer’s and Isabella’s rule, however, he was given the benefices of Ampleforth in June 1329, the archdeaconry of Nottingham six months
later, as well as being made a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral. In addition to this he also managed to pick up the canonry and prebend of Liege in October 1329, and this may well have been at the behest of Isabella and Mortimer. Fieschi was also in England at that time, which would provide him with some insight into the political turmoil. Isabella and Mortimer were bribing this venal priest and they had the true measure of the man: Fieschi would be of use at the papal court and could exercise influence to win papal support, if not its blessing, for Isabella’s rule.

Such generosity to a foreign cleric was quite exceptional, particularly one who, apparently, had little to do with the English government or court. Clergy in England rightly objected to such home-grown plums being given to foreigners. Fieschi, therefore, must be regarded as Isabella’s man, both body and soul, at least during her regime. He was back at the papal curia by August 1330, a significant date for it was at the beginning of September that Pope John XXII wrote to Isabella and her son, expressing his deep surprise at Edmund of Kent’s story about Edward of Caernarvon having escaped from Berkeley and sheltering at Corfe Castle. Isabella’s case was presented to the papal curia by her envoy John Walwayn,
⁵
the same clerk who had been responsible for informing the government about the Dunheved attack in July 1327. Thus Walwayn was a man in the know, closely associated with the deposed King’s imprisonment, and able to brief the papacy in considerable detail. If Fieschi had been resident at the papal court at the same time, Walwayn could count on his support to reinforce the official story and reject Kent’s claims. After all, Isabella and Mortimer had paid the piper and they would certainly expect him to dance to their tune.

Yet even after Isabella and Mortimer’s fell from power the generosity towards Fieschi continued. He was provided with another prebend in Lincolnshire, more prosperous than the archdeaconry of Nottingham. At the same time Fieschi was made Provost of Arnhem and, a year later, appointed to the canonry and prebend of Renaix. In 1333 and 1335 letters of attorney were granted to Fieschi because of his absence from England; after this, all further grants end.
⁶
The reason for this might have been the storm of protest Edward III had to face over the appointment of foreigners to prosperous benefices in the 1330s. The constant absenteeism of these nominees, as well as the need to raise cash, forced Edward to give way to demands that such appointments be limited. Edward III even began to charge ‘aliens’ for the benefices and property they held in England. Fieschi, a foreigner and an absentee cleric, would certainly have felt the effect of this shift in policy. Revenues would have dried up and his income cut. This, then, could well have been the true reason for his letter: a very clever way of stirring memories that Edward III wanted forgotten. Fieschi was using information, not to mention his status at the papal court, to put a shot across Edward III’s bows. He had been rewarded by Isabella and Mortimer for supporting them at the papal court over Kent’s conspiracy; now he was serving notice that he was changing his mind. It was no idle threat. Fieschi had inside knowledge of Edward II’s death and burial as well as of Kent’s conspiracy. The Italian priest might prove to be a serious nuisance at a time when Edward III was not only committed to an all-out war against France but involved in a fierce fight with both the papacy and his own Archbishop of Canterbury, John Stratford. The years 1339–41 were difficult ones for Edward III and not the
time for old scandals to surface.
⁷
Indeed, Fieschi might have written more than one letter; this one, certainly, is a model of deceit. Some of the assertions are surprising, but it contains just enough facts to arouse suspicions.

The personal animosity of Fieschi towards the English court is also noticeable. His letter must have arrived in England sometime around 1339–40. Isabella still had another eighteen years to live and, thanks to Edward III’s propaganda, she was being treated with all the honour and dignity of ‘a dear mother and queen dowager’. Fieschi’s letter does not recognize this. Gurney, Maltravers, Beresford, Baldock, de Spencer and the others are described in bland, objective terms. The Earl of Kent is dismissed in a few phrases. However, when Fieschi comes to talk of Isabella, he describes her as ‘
maliciosae
’, malicious or wicked. This is hardly the way an Italian priest would describe the King of England’s mother, especially when Isabella had been so generous and open-handed with Fieschi. The adjective ‘malicious’ or ‘wicked’ was a subtle dig at Edward III. If Fieschi didn’t get his way, and his father’s possible escape became public knowledge, it would be the King’s ‘dear mother’ who would bear the brunt. Questions would be asked, memories stirred. Isabella’s reputation, so carefully protected by her loving son would, once again, be the staple conversation in the courts of Europe.

Towards the end of the letter Fieschi has another sly dig at the English crown when he describes Edward of Caernarvon’s role as a hermit at Cecime. Fieschi depicts the deposed king as leading a life of reparation and prayer and piously adds: ‘for you and other sinners’. The actual Latin is ‘
vobis et peccatoribus aliis
’. It would have been more diplomatic to have said ‘
pro nobis et aliis peccatoribus
’ (‘for us
and other sinners’). Fieschi is thus drawing a fine distinction between himself and the King of England. By using the plural ‘for you’, ‘
vobis
’ and not the singular ‘
tibi
’, he’s also including Isabella in this. In this parting shot, Fieschi is reminding Edward III that not only does Isabella have to answer for what happened at Berkeley in 1327 but so will her son.

Finally, the way the letter ends reinforces the sly threat: Fieschi guarantees its veracity with his seal, but he also cleverly juxtaposes his title of papal notary with ‘your devoted servant’. Fieschi presents himself to the English king as either the papal lawyer
or
Edward’s ‘devoted servant’. The English king must decide which.

Fieschi’s letter is finely balanced – a clever concoction, mixing fact with fiction. It can be read as a secret message to Edward to be more careful in his dealings with Fieschi. It seems this clever piece of blackmail had the desired effect: on 28 April 1342, Edward III ratified Manuel Fieschi as prebendary of Netheravon in the diocese of Salisbury and as a prebendary of Ampleforth in the diocese of York. Fifteen months later Fieschi was promoted even higher, when he was appointed Bishop of Vercelli in North Italy, the very diocese of which Melazzo and Cecime were a part. Did Edward III, to silence this clever Italian priest, bribe Avignon to win papal approval for such a nomination, or so that Fieschi could control this mysterious ‘king’?
⁸
After 1342–3 Edward III received no further communications from Fieschi or his family.

Fieschi, it appears, deliberately exploited Edward III’s fears. He may also have learnt of a certain incident which took place in 1338 when Edward III, commanding his armies in the Low Countries, met a man claiming to be his father. In 1329 Fieschi had been appointed by the papacy, probably at the behest of Isabella and Mortimer,
to the canonry of Liege in the Low Countries. In 1332, he was made Provost of Arnhem and in 1334 he was endowed with a canonry at Lilles, also in the Low Countries. He was well placed to hear the chatter about how Edward III, when his forces were based outside Antwerp in 1338, had despatched two men-at-arms to bring one ‘William Le Galeys’ or ‘William the Welshman’, ‘
qui asserit se patrem domini regis nunc
’ (‘who claims to be the father of our present King’), from Cologne to Koblenz and then to Antwerp, where he stayed three weeks.

The incident took place at the end of 1338.
⁹
It is perhaps no coincidence that William the Welshman was taken near Cologne, one of the places mentioned in Fieschi’s letter. The Italian priest may have heard about this and spun his story around it. But who was this ‘William the Welshman’ on whom Edward III spent the quite princely sum of almost
£
2 for three weeks in December 1338? Is it possible that Fieschi met this lunatic, or very cunning man, wandering Europe pretending to be Edward II and that he was inspired by him to fabricate his story?

‘William the Welshman’ would have been a good alias for Edward II. He was often called Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales. Even after his deposition, a great deal of sympathy existed for him throughout the principality. We have no record of what happened after Edward III met this person. Was he allowed to go free? My theory is that ‘William the Welshman’ was not Edward II but someone closely involved in his imprisonment, someone who knew enough about Edward II to excite royal interest. Indeed, what better person than Mortimer’s elusive William Ockle?

William Ockle was one of Mortimer’s adherents. Unlike
Gurney, he was not of knightly rank but a commoner, promoted for his good service to the rank of ‘scutifer’ or squire. According to the November Parliament of 1330, Ockle was judged guilty of being involved in Edward II’s death. Unlike Gurney, he was not the object of any search and appears to have been allowed to disappear because he was a commoner, with Gurney being portrayed as the principal regicide. Parliament placed a reward of
£
100 on Gurney alive and one hundred marks if he was brought in dead. A much smaller sum was awarded for William Ockle: one hundred marks alive,
£
40 dead.

Ockle probably escaped, following Maltravers to the Low Countries but then might have decided to earn his living by pretending to be the King in whose death he was allegedly involved. He would certainly have known enough facts to elicit interest and perhaps sympathy. The story spread through Europe and eventually came under the scrutiny of the English Crown. Ockle would have kept his first name, but to protect himself, changed his surname, or had it changed for him, to denote his nationality: ‘Galeys’ or ‘the Welshman’. Another possibility is that Ockle went mad as he wandered through Europe, becoming more worthy of pity than royal justice. What happened to him after December 1338 is a matter for conjecture. He may have been harmless enough and released – Edward III was only too eager to keep such matters as secret as possible.

In conclusion, a close scrutiny of the evidence suggests that Fieschi’s letter was a clever attempt at blackmail which, in the end, succeeded, and it should be dismissed as such. It contains some interesting detail mixed with a tissue of lies. What is fascinating about Fieschi’s letter, as well as the incident of ‘William the Welshman’, is that it provides
deep insight into Edward III’s own attitude to his father’s death. If Edward III truly believed, and had the evidence to hand, that his father had been killed at Berkeley and buried at Gloucester, he would have rejected Fieschi’s letter out of hand and not spent time and energy on the wandering ‘William the Welshman’. Fieschi must have known this. The fact that his letter was written in the first place, rather than what it actually says, provides telling proof that the accepted story of Edward II’s death and burial at Gloucester was highly suspect in his son’s mind. Fieschi was exploiting Edward III’s fears and nightmares, fully confident that his barbed comments would find their mark. Great lies, as Machiavelli has said, are those based on a truth. Fieschi’s letter is a fine example. He decided to exploit a great secret for his own private purposes, peppering it with teasing facts and half truths. Fieschi might not even have met the deposed Edward II, but his letter or, more importantly, the reasons he wrote it, are compelling enough to reassess the events of September 1327 and pose the question: did Edward II die at Berkeley? I think not. He escaped and a look-alike lies buried beneath that marble sarcophagus in Gloucester Cathedral.