The Perfect King (81 page)

The answer to this is 'definitely not'. Edward
III
heard about his father's supposed death on the night of
23/24
September and began circulating the information with no check on the veracity of the message. This is proved by an original document in the National Archives - DL
10/253
-
which is a letter from Edward to his cousin, the earl of Hereford, written on
24
September, in which he states he heard the news about his father's death during the previous night. It could be objected that Edward III checked the identity
after he
started spreading the news, but it needs to be borne in mind that Lincoln is no miles from Berkeley. If Edward III -who was only fourteen and under the strict supervision of his mother, one of the instigators of the plot - had been able to order anyone to go
directly
to Berkeley to check on the identity of the dead corpse, the man could not have got there within five days of the date of the supposed death. Had he done so, and if Lord Berkeley had let him see the corpse, he would have found it already embalmed. This means he would not have been able to identify it, as fourteenth-century royal embalming completely covered the face and features in wax-impregnated cloth. Further examination of the records reveals that there was no
credible exhibition of the unem
balmed corpse. As a result of this we may be confident that all the official information about the death of Edw
ard II was based on trust. The ‘f
act' of the death depends wholly on the assumption that Lord Berkeley's letter to Edward III about his father's death was written in good faith.

The first important fact arising from this is that we can begin to understand the flow of information underlying the extant evidence for the death. Edward III received Lord Berkeley's letter and believed what it said. As a result the death was officially announced, the news spread around the court and the country, chaplains were endowed to pray for the late king's soul, and a royal funeral was arranged to take place at St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester (now Gloucester Cathedral). This is why there is such an abundance of official evidence relating to the death. Lord Berkeley's letter was accepted in good faith.

We can show relatively easily that in one respect the letter was certainly not written in good faith, for it stated that Edward II died of natural causes. In the fight of later events, this is not sustainable. The question is rather one of how Lord Berkeley lied: did he lie about the cause
of the king's death? Or did he li
e about the fact that the king had actually died? In answering this Berkeley himself stated in parliament three years later, in November
1330,
that he 'had not hear
d about the death [of Edward III
until coming into this present parliament'. This seems to be a confession that he had lied in
1327.
Various objections - for example, that he really meant he had not previously heard about the accusation of murder - can be shown to be implausible. Nevertheless, even if his statement had been unambiguous, it could still have been untrue. To test its truth, and its implication that Lord Berkeley had lied in announcing the death in
1327,
we have to look for any irregularities in the information patterns created as a result of Lord Berkeley's statement that Edward II had died of natural causes.

The first series of irregularities which arise in the wake of the letter state unequivocally that the king was still alive. The plot of the earl of Kent provides the key evidence. Previous commentators have all followed the early twentieth-century scholar Professor Tout in declaring that Kent was 'stupid'. Tout's statement
was based partly on the blatantl
y politicised accusations against Mortimer of November
1330,
partly on the anti-Isabella prejudices of the chonicler Geoffrey le Baker, and partly on his own and his contemporaries' anti-revisionist prejudice. As a result of his condemnation, historians have never bothered to investigate the matter from Kent's point of view. Had they done so they would have realised that there is abundant evidence that he was anything but stupid. Certainly he was not executed for his stupidity. He was condemned to death in the parliament of March
1330
explicitl
y for the crime of trying to rescue the living King

Edward II 'to help him become king again, and to govern his people as he was wont to do beforehand'. There is no good reason to discount this as evidence that the king was alive and that he had been held at Corfe.

The parliamentary view that Edward was still alive in March
1330
has independent support, also previously overlooked. Kent had an informant, Sir John Pecche, who was the keeper of Corfe
Castle
until September
1329.
Pecche cannot be said to have been deluded as to the presence of the king at Corfe prior to this date. His role in Kent's plot was to tell Ingelram Berengar that Edward II was still alive. As Pecche and Kent had the same information, either one must have informed the other or they must have had an independent source. Given his position as constable of the
castle
, we may be sure that Pecche did not have to accept the news that Edward II was alive - supposedly in his custody - without checking the truth for himself. It is unthinkable that he jeopardised his reputation, estates and life without ascertaining whether the supposedly dead king was in his own
castle
, given that it was in his power to do so. Pecche's role in Kent's plot is therefore independent corroborative evidence of the parliamentary view that Edward II was at Corfe in
1330.
Both of these pieces of evidence in turn support Berkeley's statement that
he had not heard about Edward II’
s death in
1330.
And to these we may add two more contemporary documents which state that Edward was alive in
1330:
a private letter from the archbishop of York to the mayor of London stating that he had 'certain news' that Edward II was still alive, and of course the Fieschi letter. We thus have a number of good, independent pieces of evidence that Lord Berkeley's letter announcing the death of Edward II was deliberately misleading

The announcement that Edward II had been murdered was first officially made in the charges against Mortimer and his adherents after his arrest in
1330.
These are riddled with inaccuracies, inconsistencies and anomalies. Not least of these are the conscious acceptance of a lie by Edward
II
I
of Lord Berkeley's statement as to where he was at the time of the supposed murder, and the failure to order the arrest of the two men condemned to death for the murder until a week after the trial (during which time they were permitted to leave England). Doubts about the accusations were shared by contemporaries: the majority of the manuscripts of the shorter continuation of the French
Brut
(completed in or after
1333)
repeat the understanding that Edward II had died of natural causes, revealing a reluctance to follow the new accusations of murder. Similarly, in
1354
all the charges against Mortimer were found to be in error, including that which stated he had procured the murder of Edward II. But perhaps the most interesting aspect connected with the claims that Edw
ard II was murdered is Edward III’
s treatment of the men responsible for keeping his father safely. He never punished Lord Berkeley in any way at all, letting him keep his lands and lordship and allowing him freely to come to court. And Lord Maltravers was also allowed to keep his lands and lordship. Although he remained in exile in Flanders for several years for his part in betraying Kent, Edward was in correspondence with him as early as
1334.
He allowed him to return to England
secretly
for a meeting in
1335,
employed him in Flanders in
1339
and then employed him in Ireland, and rewarded him long before he was officially forgiven for his part in Kent's death. When he finally returned to England in
1351
Edward wrote a letter praising his 'loyalty and goodwill' and specifically stating that he wished 'to do something grandiose for him'. As many people have remarked in the past, Edward's subsequent patronage of the two men responsible for keeping his father safely in
1327
is not consistent with their murdering him.

As a result of these lines of research, it is found that the officially created evidence relating to Edward IFs death is based on information arising from a single announcement which was not verified by the king, but which was in line with the political ambitions of Lord Mortimer, and very probably in line with Isabella's emotional attachment to her husband, which remained strong in his captivity and even up until her death. On their instructions Berkeley fake
d the death, sent Edward II to C
orfe
Castle
to be
secretly
maintained by Sir John Maltravers while Sir John Pecche was overseas, and embalmed another corpse to be buried in place of the king. Unfortunately for the plotters, Sir John Pecche returned unexpectedly in early
1328
and discovered Edward II at Corfe
Castle
. Pecche th
en informed Kent, who subsequentl
y took action to rescue the king. His plot was discovered by Mortimer's agents. Mortimer's threat to the royal authority — which had been great even before
1330
- now became unbearable for Edward
m,
who saw his uncle condemned to death in parliament for trying to rescue his sadly abused father from Corfe. Having no doubt that his entire dynasty was at risk, Edward
III
arranged the seizure of Mortimer and eradicated the widespread doubts about his father's fate by finally creating an official, royal version of the 'death': that Edward II had been murdered by Gurney and Ockley on Mortimer's orders in Berkeley
Castle
. This served both to destroy Mortimer's
support and strengthen Edward III
's own status as a ruling king, even though he was still under age. The story of the death of Edward
II
in Berkeley
Castle
was thus a political fiction invented by Mortimer and twisted by Edward
III
into a murder story for reasons of political legitimacy. The propaganda fall-out from this has misled scholars and deceived laymen ever since.

A
Note
on
th
e
Later
Life
of
Edward
II

Research into the life of Edward II after the collapse of Mortimer's regime in October
1330
is complicated by a number of factors. Unlike the question of his 'death' - which is a finite problem which can be answered logically by examining the information structures underpinning the evidence for the death and scrutinising the evidence for events contingent on his survival - the matters of where he was after
1330
and wh
en he died are potentially limitl
ess. One is caught between the unending possibilities and the shortage of direct evidence. Most important business was conducted orally, through messengers, not in a written format. Therefore there is rarely any written material for us to evaluate. However, despite these problems it is important for readers to have an idea of the nature of the research in progress and some findings, in o
rder to understand how Edward II’s survival affected Edward II
I, as outlined in Chapters Four to Eight of this book.

There is only one piece of written evidence which overdy claims that Edward II was definitely alive after
1330.
This is the famous Fieschi letter, written by Manuel Fieschi in about
1336,
and known since
1877
from the copy in a cartulary of a mid-fourteenth-century bishop of Maguelonne. (Readers wanting to see the text and a reproduction of the original will find both in
The Greatest Traitor: the Life of Sir Roger Mortimer.)
In brief the letter states that, after the execution of Kent, Edward
II
was taken from Corfe to Ireland, where he remained for nine months. Up to this point he had the same custodian as had attended him in
1327
at Berkeley, but, after November
1330,
he was released (probably partly on account of the danger of being found out by Edward III and partly on account of the fact that the mastermind of the plot, Mortimer, was dead). The ex-king made his way to Sandwich dressed as a pilgrim and then travelled to Avignon, where he saw the pope. If he had walked to Avignon at a rate of about ten miles per day with the other pilgrims travelling south, he would have taken about eight weeks to reach the papal palace, arriving about the end of February or early March
1331.
After spending two weeks with the pope, Fieschi's letter states that he went from there to Brabant, and from Brabant to the shrine of the
Three Kings at Cologne, then to
Milan, and then to 'a certain hermitage of the
castle
of
Milasci’
,
where he stayed for two-and-a-half years, moving on account of a war in the area to another hermitage near 'Cecima, in the diocese of Pavia', where he had been for two years by the time of the letter being written.