Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
In 1326 Edward II reigned in England, son of the famous Longshanks, Edward I, the king who defeated William Wallace and had the legend "Hammer of the Scots" engraved on his tomb . Edward II's reign had gone from disaster to disaster. In France and Scotland military defeats were piling up, the most serious of which was at Bannockburn in 1314, after which Robert the Bruce established himself as king of a Scotland independent of England; a painful defeat for the son of the great Edward I.
In England, Edward II put the government in the hands of his favorites (and according to many, his lovers); first Piers Gaveston and then Hugh Despenser the Younger . Gaveston was exiled twice before being executed by the kingdom's leading nobles, led by Thomas Lancaster, the king's cousin. Despenser had avoided that fate for the time being by executing Lancaster and twenty other leading barons in his turn, and imprisoning many more.
But one of them, Roger Mortimer, escaped from his captivity in the Tower of London and went into exile in France, where all those dissatisfied with the government of Edward II were welcomed with the open arms by King Carlos IV. As part of the peace negotiations, Edward II sent his wife and sister of the French king, Elizabeth, the She-Wolf of France, to France. Elizabeth successfully concluded negotiations, but refused to return to England; she and Roger Mortimer had become lovers. The only thing stopping the couple from invading England and confronting Edward II and Despenser (who had appropriated Mortimer's land in the Welsh Marches) was that their 13-year-old son, Edward, was in England. But the king made the mistake of sending the young prince to France where he joined his mother, who again refused to return to England and prepared the invasion of the country together with her mistress.
On September 24, 1326, a fleet of 96 ships landed in England, bringing a small force of 1,500 men, German and Flemish mercenaries and the cream of English exile, all of them led by the queen and her lover Roger Mortimer (by then the couple had appeared openly in public at various events, so the situation was no secret in England); The Prince of Wales accompanied them.
Years of tyrannical government, executions, expropriations and general discontent ended up making true the saying that whoever sows winds reaps storms and that small invading force soon found itself supported massively within its own England. Edward and Hugh Despenser the Younger tried to flee to Ireland, but rough sea conditions forced them to take refuge in Wales again, until they were inevitably arrested. Hugh Despenser was tried, found guilty of high treason, and executed.
But Edward II was a king crowned in Westminster Abbey and surrounded by the sacred aura attributed to medieval monarchs. In addition, the entire English legal and government system rested on the existence of a monarch as the visible head of the country. But it was also evident that the open wounds during Edward II's reign and his manifest inability to rule made it impossible for this rebellion to end simply with Despenser executed and the monarch restored to the throne. And certainly neither Elizabeth of France nor Roger Mortimer were willing to risk the vengeance of a disgruntled Edward II if he regained power.
England was also not ripe to consider taking the step of deposing a king, as it was not at all clear who could have the authority to do so and the consequences that this precedent could bring. The only viable option left was to convince Edward II to take the step of renouncing the crown himself, abdicating and ceding the throne to his son. The king was a prisoner at Kenilworth. A delegation of 24 nobles and bishops was sent to try to convince him to abdicate in his son. Eduardo refused, but faced with the threat that he would be deposed and that the king chosen to replace him would not carry the blood of the Plantagenets, finally on January 24, 1327, he informed the country that he was officially abdicating in favor of his son. /p>
But if the steps to dethrone a king had been a difficult and unknown path for 14th century England, how to deal with a former king who had been forced to abdicate It was a more complicated and unknown situation. Captive in different castles, he was a very greedy target to become the pennant of hooking those dissatisfied with the look that Mortimer's government was acquiring.
Up to three attempts were made to free Edward of Caernarfon (as Edward II was once again known); one while he was at Kenilworth and two at his last place of imprisonment, Berkeley Castle. It was precisely there where he died on September 23, 1327. According to the news that was sent to his son, his death was due to natural causes. However, rumors soon began to spread that he had been murdered and that the person responsible for giving the order to kill him was Roger Mortimer. Little by little, macabre details were added about the manner of his death that alluded to a symbolic and bloody punishment for his condition as a sodomite (specifically, it was said that a red-hot iron bar had been inserted into his rectum) . Be that as it may, Edward II was buried on December 20, 1327 in Gloucester and the reign of his son Edward III began.
Years later, Edward III received a letter from an important papal official named Manuel di Fieschi. According to him, in Italy he had heard a confession from a hermit living in Lombardy. This hermit claimed to be Edward II and had told his confessor in great detail of his attempted escape to Ireland, his arrest and detention in Wales, his captivity at Kenilworth and Berkeley. There, always according to his account, he had been warned by the doorman of his cell that two of the gentlemen in charge of guarding him (whom he correctly identified by name) were planning to assassinate him. He had managed to escape by killing his guardian and putting on his clothes. He affirmed that the two gentlemen, in order not to recognize his negligence, had made the porter's body pass for that of Eduardo himself.
According to the letter, the supposed Edward II had first taken refuge in Corfe Castle and then fled to Ireland and from there to France. At Avignon, he claimed, he had been received by Pope John and from there had traveled to Germany and Lombardy where he had made his confession. In the letter, found in an abbey in Languedoc, the papal legate ended by saying that he attached to the letter the seal that the hermit had given him to prove his story.
What is narrated in the letter seems like a fantasy that is hard to believe, but it is not very logical either that a prestigious papal legate would lend himself to fueling a story without foundation; In addition, the narrated facts were true, detailed and little known to someone unrelated to what happened with Eduardo II. There is no evidence in this regard, nor about what Edward III's reaction was when he received the letter, but what is certain is that when the king seized effective power in 1330, he arrested Roger Mortimer, accused him of having ordered the murder of his father and put him on trial where he was found guilty and executed.
Font| Peter Ackroyd:The history of England. Volume I:Foundation