Theories in Support
No one doubts the authenticity of Fieschi's letter, only its veracity, and it contains details that few people knew at the time and was written long before the accepted accounts of the flight, imprisonment and murder.
Ian Mortimer has argued that it is 'almost certain' that Edward II did not die in 1327. It is possible that Edward II knew he had no support at home and never tried to regain the throne, especially after his son, Edward III, had removed Roger Mortimer. In the Italian town of Cecima (75 km from Milan), there is a tradition that a king of England was buried there and there is an empty mediaeval tomb said to be the place of his burial before his body was repatriated to England by his son.
The elaborate funeral in Gloucester of the person supposed to be Edward II may have been that of the gate-keeper. Many local dignitaries were invited to view the body from a distance, but it had been embalmed and may have been unrecognisable. For the first time a carved wooden effigy of the dead king was carried through the streets rather than the body on a bier.
Diplomatic documents also show in 1338 that Edward III travelled to Koblenz to be installed as Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire and there he met someone called William le Galeys, or William the Welshman, who claimed to be the king's father. (Edward II was born in Caernarvon and was the first son of an English king to be given the title Prince of Wales.) Claiming to be the king's father would have been dangerous, and it is not known what happened to William. Some historians claim that the person was William Ockle.
Read more about this topic: Fieschi Letter
Famous quotes containing the words theories and/or support:
“Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas. It is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things that seem a long way apart from our daily lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed from error.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”
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