Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (27 page)

The third possibility is that Edward II escaped unscathed but that Mortimer’s men pursued him and the Dunheveds, in what the medieval knights called, ‘une lutte à l’outrance’ (‘a fight to the death’). Edward II and his adherents would have been massacred, killed on the spot. However, if this was the case, Mortimer would no doubt have had the corpse, wounded or not, taken back to Berkeley, dressed and embalmed for burial, then exhibited so as to stifle any protests or doubts. Moreover, if the King’s corpse
had
been brought back, a great deal of the speculation stirred up by Kent, Edward III, Berkeley and others, would not have arisen.

There is one other possibility. It’s not a fairy-tale ending but, knowing what we do of Edward II, a possible outcome. Edward II escaped from Berkeley towards the end of July 1327. For a while there would have been disorientation and confusion. However, within two
months of his escape, Mortimer and Isabella were announcing to a full Parliament at Nottingham how Edward II had died at Berkeley, and the remaining months of 1327 taken up with staging a most elaborate funeral.

If Edward II had re-emerged he would have faced immediate imprisonment and execution as an imposter. After the events of Berkeley and the public funeral in St Peter’s, what hope did he have in a country controlled by his former wife and her lover? True, he may have elicited the support of men like Kent and Lancaster, but what then? What guarantee did he have that his reappearance would automatically lead to his restoration? Would Lancaster and Kent keep faith with him, men who only a few months earlier had gleefully participated in his destruction and that of his favourites?

A further clue may lie in Edward II’s own character and attitude. He had been King for almost twenty years. He had lost his wife and his crown. He had faced constant opposition from his nobles and seen his favourites seized and barbarously executed. He had been deserted by his family as well as leading magnates in both church and state. Perhaps he did not wish for a restoration. The constant complaints of chroniclers is that Edward II never really wanted to be king. He had provoked the crisis with Thomas of Lancaster and other barons by trying to abdicate his responsibilities as king and give them to someone else – at the beginning of his reign, Gaveston; at the end, the younger de Spencer. Edward II might have wished to live out the rest of his life in peace, either at home or abroad. A man born to be king, the crown had proved most hazardous to him: he not only realized the danger of a public re-emergence but fundamentally lacked the will to achieve it.

In the end, the true fate of Edward II can only be a matter of speculation. However, there is considerable evidence that the corpse in the lead coffin beneath the beautiful Purbeck marble sarcophagus in St Peter’s at Gloucester is not Edward II’s.

The primary source material for medieval England and Europe is plentiful, and has been brought together by different individuals and organizations. Most of the chronicles of the period were written in different monasteries up and down the kingdom, often borrowing from, and interdependent on, each other. In the main they have been published either by learned societies or the great Victorian historians like William Stubbs in the Rolls Series. Some chronicles have not been published and can be found in manuscripts either at Canterbury or the University of Cambridge.

The volume of surviving administrative materials is considerable. Much has been published by the Public Record Office, e.g. the
Calendar of Patent Rolls
and
Calendar of Close Rolls.
These include hundreds of thousands of individual letters, writs, orders, etc. either issued open (‘patent’) or sealed (‘closed’). The rest can be found in either the manuscript collection of the British Library or the Bodleian in Oxford. Others are under the care of the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

In France there are two principal sources: the National Archives or the Bibliotheque Nationale.

In the bibliography, I have cited a list of sources consulted, both principal and secondary, and the more important secondary sources are cited in the text or the footnotes. ‘F’ stands for folio; ‘M’ or ‘Mem’ is the abbreviation for Membrane.

1.
   A. Strickland,
Lives of the Queens of England,
(London, 1970) Vol. I. p. 541 (1832).

2.
   P. C. Doherty ‘The date of the birth of Isabella’
Bull Inst. Hist. Res.
XLVIII (1975), pp. 246–8. This is an edition of a papal letter from the Archives Nationales, which proves 1296 to be the year of her birth. There are a few references to her in the French royal accounts:
Les Journaux du Tresor de Philippe le Bel,
ed. J. Viard (Paris 1840), p. 700, Arch. Nat. ‘J’ 149. No. 30.

3.
   Pierre Dubois,
Summaria Brevis et Compendiosa,
ed. H. Kampf (New York, 1936) provides a clear and contemporary account of Philip IV’s ambitions. R. Fawtier,
The Capetian Kings of France,
(Glasgow, 1960), pp. 60, 121 and 162.

4.
   
Foedera
I, p. 904 and Brit. Lib., Cottonian Ms. Julius, E.I. fos 54r–56r.

5.
   On Edward I and the Low Countries, See F. Bock
England’s Beziehiengen zim Reich unter Adolf von Nassau
(Innsbruck, 1933), p. 199 and
Inventaires des Manuscrits concernants les Relations de Flandre et L’Angleterre,
ed. J. de St. Genois (1842), p. 162. On Philip IV, see
Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum Scriptores: Receuil des Historiens des
Gaules et de la France,
ed. P. Danou and J. Naudet (Paris, 1738–1904), Vol. XX, pp. 576, 677.

6.
   
Foedera
I, pp. 906–7 Arch. Nat. J. 631. No. 30, Brit. Lib., Cott Mss. Julius, El, fos 63, 64, 66 and 67.

7.
   In the ensuing row, Philip accused Boniface of such treachery: Arch Nat. J. 633, No. 6. Bibl. Nat. Fr. Mss. (Nouvelles Acquisitions), 6999, fo. 235.

8.
   
Foedera
I, p. 951 and E/30/51a.

9.
   
Foedera
I, pp. 952–4. Arch. No. J. 633, 12, 13, 17–19.

10.
   S.C. 6/44/16.

11.
   Doherty, ‘The date of the birth of Isabella’, pp. 246–8.

12.
   
Letters of Edward, Prince of Wales,
ed. H. Johnstone (Roxburghe Club, 1931), pp. 144–5. References to Isabella, see Bibl. Nat., Collection Brienne, 7007, f. 1.

13.
   C. 47/29/5/25.

14.
   E/101/684/11, No. 7 and E/101/370/15, m. 15.

15.
   
Foedera
I, p. 1012. Brit. Lib., Add Ms. 22923, f. 4.

16.
   William Wallace had been captured and executed in London.

17.
   See Chapter 6, p. 223.

18.
   Geoffrey La Tour-Landry,
Book of the Knights of La Tour,
ed. T. Wright (London, 1868), pp. 26–7.

19.
   
Le Menagier de Paris,
ed. Jerome Pichon (Paris, 1846), Vol. I, pp. 168–9.

20.
   
Knighton
II, pp. 57–8.

21.
   Geoffrey Chaucer,
The Canterbury Tales,
ed. Nevill Coghill (Penguin, 1982), pp. 31–2.

22.
   Henry VIII prohibited this by Act of Parliament.

23.
   
The Canterbury Tales,
p. 309.

24.
   T. F. Tout,
Edward I
(London, 1890), p. 225.

25.
   
Foedera
II, 1. p. 650; R. Twysden,
Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem
(London, 1652) co. 1. 2765.

26.
   H. Johnstone,
Letters of Edward,
p. 115. H. Johnstone,
Edward of Caernarvon 1284–1307
(Manchester, 1946), pp. 9, 17.

27.
   
The Register of Thomas Cobham – Bishop of Worcester,
ed. H. Pearce (Worcs. Hist. Soc., 1930), pp. 97–8.

28.
   H. Johnstone,
Letters of Edward,
pp. XIV–XIVI, 114.

29.
   H. Johnstone,
Edward of Caernarvon,
pp. 30, 86.

30.
   
Annales Paulini,
p. 260;
Cal. Papal Registers, Letters 1305–1352,
pp. 430–1.

31.
   
The Antiquarian Repository II
(1779), pp. 58–9.

32.
   H. Johnstone,
Letters of Edward,
p. XXXVIII.

33.
   H. Johnstone,
Edward of Caernarvon,
pp. 42, 43.

34.
   H. Johnstone,
Edward of Caernarvon,
p. 45.

35.
   
Chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds
ed. and translated by Gransden. (London 1964) pp. XXXIII and 157.