Edward II of England - Death

Death

The government of Isabella and Mortimer was so precarious that they dared not leave the deposed king in the hands of their political enemies. On 3 April, Edward II was removed from Kenilworth and entrusted to the custody of two subordinates of Mortimer, then later imprisoned at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire where, 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.

The closest chronicler to the scene in time and distance, Adam Murimuth, stated that it was 'popularly rumoured' that he had been suffocated. The Lichfield chronicle, equally reflecting local opinion, stated that he had been strangled. Most chronicles did not offer a cause of death other than natural causes.

The popular story that the king was assassinated by having a red-hot poker thrust into his anus has no basis in accounts recorded by Edward's contemporaries. Thomas de la Moore's account of Edward's murder was not written until after 1352 and is uncorroborated by other contemporary sources. Not until the relevant sections of the longer Brut chronicle were composed by an anti-Mortimer Lancastrian polemicist in the mid-1430s was the story widely circulated.

The historian Ian Mortimer has put forward the argument that Edward II was not killed at Berkeley but was still alive at least until 1330. In his biography of Edward III he explores the implications of this, using evidence including the Fieschi Letter, concluding Edward II may have died in Italy around 1341. In her biography of Isabella, Alison Weir also considers the Fieschi Letter narrative – that Edward escaped imprisonment and lived the rest of his life in exile. Other historians, however, including David Carpenter, have criticised Mortimer's methodology and disagree with his conclusions.

Nevertheless a public funeral was held in 1327, attended by Isabella, after which Edward's body was said to be laid in Gloucester Cathedral. An elaborate tomb was set up by his son, which attracted pilgrims from far and wide.

Following the public announcement of the king's death, the rule of Isabella and Mortimer did not last long. They made peace with the Scots in the Treaty of Northampton, but this move was highly unpopular. Consequently, when Edward III came of age in 1330, he executed Roger Mortimer on fourteen charges of treason, most significantly the murder of Edward II (thereby removing any public doubt about his father's survival). Edward III spared his mother and gave her a generous allowance, but ensured that she retired from public life for several years. She died at Hertford on 23 August 1358.

According to the Calender of Fines Edward III (1327–1330) held at Winchester records office, Edward III made every effort to track down his father's killers, William Ockley (not Ogle), Sir Thomas Gurney, and Sir John Maltravers, but they fled the country. Ockley, Gurney and Maltravers were Roger Mortimer's henchmen from the Welsh Marches. William Ogle died before the event; he was a bailiff of Newcastle according to family history (Ogle and Bothal, British library).