Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II

by Paul Doherty

  Of course, Edward II might have changed his appearance, and people saw what they expected to. But someone’s memory would have been jogged. The keepers at Berkeley would have instituted some form of search, circulated the description of both the escaped King and his mysterious attendant. Fieschi might have replied that if the story was being put about that Edward II had died at Berkeley, there would be no search for him. Gurney and Beresford arranged the funeral of the supposedly dead King, so why should anyone suspect that a lonely hermit and his companion were the deposed King of England and his liberator? This is a tenuous argument. Corfe Castle was under the direct command of Edward of Caernarvon’s gaoler, John Maltravers. The castle also contained Mortimer’s agents, Bayouse and Deveril, who were later to play such a key role in the destruction of Edmund, Earl of Kent. Nor do we have any idea who Fieschi is referring to when he talks of the castellan of Corfe ‘Lord Thomas’: no record exists. Fieschi probably got his facts mixed up and is alluding to Lord Thomas Berkeley.

  Fieschi does not explain why Edward stayed from September 1327 to February/March 1330 in the one place, and in fact, cleverly links the story of Corfe to the conspiracy of the Earl of Kent, which he refers to in the next section of his letter.

  Later on, hearing that the Earl of Kent, who had maintained that he was alive, had been beheaded, he embarked on a ship with his aforesaid custodian and by the will and counsel of the said Thomas, who had received him, had crossed to Ireland where he remained eight months.

  Fieschi is implying that the liberated Edward probably stayed at Corfe, hoping that his half-brother Edmund of Kent would come to his assistance. When Kent was executed outside the gates of Winchester, Edward and his attendant, with the aid of the even more mysterious ‘Lord Thomas’, took ship to Ireland, where he stayed until late autumn 1330, around the same time that Mortimer and Isabella fell from power. Fieschi suggests that Kent’s conspiracy was based on the truth, but he ignores all the contradictions. Corfe Castle was not a large place, and at the time it was crawling with Mortimer’s agents, intent on drawing the Earl of Kent to his death. Moreover, all of them failed to notice the hermit and his mysterious friend. A castle community was self-enclosed, with everybody knowing everybody else’s business. Yet this mysterious hermit was allowed to come and go as he wished at a time when Corfe was at the centre of a bizarre conspiracy. Nor does Fieschi explain why Edward should sail to Ireland, where he would receive little support. The only part of that country directly under the English Crown was the city of Dublin, and the area around it called the Pale: this was dominated by James Butler, Mortimer’s close ally and henchman. Isabella elevated Butler to the status of Earl Ormonde in return for his help and support of her lover.

  Afterwards, because he was afraid that he might be recognized there, donning the habit of a hermit, he returned to England and came to the port of Sandvic [Sandwich] and in the same disguise he crossed the sea to Sclusa [Sluys], travelled to Normandy and, from Normandy, as many do crossing Languedoc, he came to Avignon, where he gave a florin to a papal servant and sent, by the same servant, a note to Pope John [John XXII].

  Further inconsistencies in Fieschi’s letter now become apparent. Edward supposedly escaped from Berkeley, walked through the English countryside, stayed in a royal castle controlled by Mortimer’s men for eighteen months and then coolly took ship to Ireland. He only stayed there for eight months and returned because he was frightened of being recognized. Why Edward II, who had no fear of such recognition in England, should panic about being noticed in the streets of Dublin or in the wild remote countryside beyond, is never explained. True, Mortimer’s henchmen were in Dublin. English traders called there, but it was safer than Corfe. Moreover, Edward II had never been to Ireland or surrounded himself with Irish princes, noblemen or merchants. So who would recognize the deposed King, who was supposed to be dead and buried in Gloucester?

  Edward II’s supposed flight back to the very busy English port of Sandwich, a place frequented by diplomatic envoys from the English court, merchants, burgesses, was even more improbable. The route he was then reported to have followed is also highly suspicious. Edward landed at the French port of Sluys and travelled through Normandy, the only other part of France, as well as Gascony, where Edward might have been recognized. English influence was particularly strong in Normandy because of its possession of the neighbouring counties of Ponthieu and Montreuil. Edward II had been married at Boulogne sur Mer in Normandy and there were certainly other less dangerous routes he could have taken: he had visited northern France and journeyed to Paris on at least two other occasions, in 1313 and 1320.

  According to Fieschi, Edward reached the papal court of Avignon during the late autumn of 1331, but this time he was alone. His mysterious liberator, the man to whom he owed his life has abruptly disappeared, without any reference to his fate. The last mention of this hero of the hour was when he accompanied Edward to Ireland. The deposed King chose a place where rumours about his supposed escape were rife, thanks to Kent’s conspiracy and the exchange of sharply worded letters between Isabella and Pope John XXII. This cunning old pope had died in 1334 so he, too, like all the others mentioned in this letter, had gone to the grave supposedly carrying the secret with them. Edward III would therefore be unable to verify Fieschi’s story. Moreover, the Italian priest cunningly depicts Pope John XXII as acting in great secrecy, meeting the deposed King ‘in camera’ and acting as host for a mere fifteen days. If Edward III had made inquiries at Avignon about the veracity of Fieschi’s story, the papal court would have been unable to answer, whilst Fieschi could point to the secrecy Pope John XXII had thrown over this matter.

  Finally, after various deliberations covering a wide range of subjects, after receiving permission to depart [licencia] he went to Paris, from Paris to Brabant and from Brabant to Cologne to see the Three Kings and offer his devotions.

  Fieschi describes Edward leaving Avignon and, once again, placing himself in great danger. He journeyed to Paris, then on to Brabant and across into Germany to visit the famous shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne. Why the deposed King should do this is not explained. If Edward was frightened of being recognized in Ireland then Paris and Brabant were very dangerous places. He could have been recognized in the French capital by his wife’s kinsmen, and in Brabant English influence was dominant through the marriage alliances of his kinswomen as well as trade links. In those dangerous years of 1331 to 1336, England and France teetered on the verge of outright war: an Englishman, disguised as a hermit, would have certainly excited suspicion and attracted the attention of the authorities. Nor, in Edward II’s life, is there any indication of any special devotion on his part to the shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne. His visit there is not explained nor why the supposedly royal hermit was travelling across northern Europe at the very time his own son and English troops were there.

  After leaving Cologne, he crossed Germany and reached Milan in Lombardy and in Milan he entered a certain hermitage of the castle Milasci [Melazzo] where he remained for two and a half years.

  If Edward II had left Ireland in December 1330 and travelled through France and Germany, his peregrinations through northern Europe, before he reached Melazzo, took about four years. This would place him in the hermitage at Melazzo sometime in 1334 so he might have left it in the summer of 1336. Fieschi is now on home territory. The area of Italy he pinpoints is the desolate region of north-east Lombardy: a very difficult place to carry out an investigation, if Edward III had been so inclined. Mountainous, served only by narrow trackways, cut off during late autumn, winter and early spring by snow and rain, English bounty hunters such as Giles of Spain could have spent months, if not years, trying to track down this elusive English hermit.

  Because this castle became involved in a war he moved to the castle of Cecime in another hermitage in the diocese of Pavia in Lombardy.

  Again Edward III could not dispute the accuracy of this statement. Italy, particularly the north, was riven by
internecine petty wars, where local lords waged blood feuds and constant disputes over boundaries with neighbours or nearby towns. Fieschi, being very astute, names ‘Milasci’ and ‘Cecime’ but there are a number of places in northern Italy which bear both these names. He calls Cecime a castle but no trace of a castle has been found there, only a fortified village with the Abbey of St Alberto of Butrio nearby. Did he quote these names to justify his story? Fieschi had acted as a papal tax collector in that area and could set himself up as an expert on the local geography.

  And he remained in this last hermitage for two years or thereabouts, remaining confined and carrying out prayers and penitence for you and other sinners.

  Fieschi is now being deliberately ingenuous. Is he claiming that the deposed English King stayed at Cecime for the rest of his life? Or that he moved elsewhere? If the latter, he could be alluding to Edward II’s move to the nearby monastery of St Alberto of Butrio. Fieschi gives no further details about the deposed King, except that he appeared to have undergone some form of religious conversion, spending his time in prayer and reparation. He provides no details of where and when the confession was taken or really why he was writing this letter in the first place. Instead he says that he will append his seal to the letter to establish its veracity and ends by terming himself Edward III’s ‘devoted servant’ as well as notary, legal advisor to the papal curia.

  What should we make of this letter? First, if we study the chronology carefully, we have one firm date, March 1330, when Kent was executed and the ‘hermit king’ was supposed to have left Corfe and travelled to Ireland where he stayed for eight months. This would bring the chain of events to the December of 1330 when Edward may have returned to England. He would have then travelled to France and would have arrived in Avignon sometime towards the end of 1331 or the beginning of 1332. He would have then travelled back across France, through the Low Countries to Cologne and from there into the area around Milan and Lombardy. A fair reckoning would be about two years for such travel, would bring the chronology to the spring of 1334. If Edward stayed at Melazzo for two and a half years, and Cecime for another two, that takes us to the year 1338. If another year is added for Fieschi to write his letter, and receive whatever reply he wanted, then his letter was known at the English court by 1339 or early 1340.

  Secondly, the letter is a clever compound of factual details, for example, the dead King’s heart being handed to Isabella, intermingled with some highly suspect assertions, such as that Edward II stayed quite safely at Corfe Castle for eighteen months without being detected. It would have been difficult for Edward III to confirm or deny Fieschi’s assertions, except to repeat the accounts Isabella had written to Pope John XXII: that a public funeral had taken place and Edward II was buried under a marble sarcophagus in Gloucester Cathedral.

  The real clue to understanding this letter is the writer Fieschi and his motives for despatching it. After all, he was a papal notary, a distant kinsman of the English royal family, a visitor to England, who knew Edward II by sight, and a holder, albeit an absentee one, of benefices in the English Church. As Chaucer remarked: ‘Cacullus non facit monachum’ (‘The cowl doesn’t make the monk’). This could certainly be applied to Fieschi. He was a papal tax collector, and such men were not famous for their generosity of spirit or adherence to the law of Christ. He was also an absentee landlord, drawing revenues from Church positions for which he did very little work. Priests like Fieschi were often castigated by critics as shepherds more interested in the fleece rather than the flock.

  In 1319 Fieschi had been given a prosperous benefice in Salisbury, in itself a minor holding, but he did better under Isabella. Between 1319 and the fall of Edward II, Fieschi received nothing else. During Mortimer’s and Isabella’s rule, however, he was given the benefices of Ampleforth in June 1329, the archdeaconry of Nottingham six months later, as well as being made a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral. In addition to this he also managed to pick up the canonry and prebend of Liege in October 1329, and this may well have been at the behest of Isabella and Mortimer. Fieschi was also in England at that time, which would provide him with some insight into the political turmoil. Isabella and Mortimer were bribing this venal priest and they had the true measure of the man: Fieschi would be of use at the papal court and could exercise influence to win papal support, if not its blessing, for Isabella’s rule.

  Such generosity to a foreign cleric was quite exceptional, particularly one who, apparently, had little to do with the English government or court. Clergy in England rightly objected to such home-grown plums being given to foreigners. Fieschi, therefore, must be regarded as Isabella’s man, both body and soul, at least during her regime. He was back at the papal curia by August 1330, a significant date for it was at the beginning of September that Pope John XXII wrote to Isabella and her son, expressing his deep surprise at Edmund of Kent’s story about Edward of Caernarvon having escaped from Berkeley and sheltering at Corfe Castle. Isabella’s case was presented to the papal curia by her envoy John Walwayn,5 the same clerk who had been responsible for informing the government about the Dunheved attack in July 1327. Thus Walwayn was a man in the know, closely associated with the deposed King’s imprisonment, and able to brief the papacy in considerable detail. If Fieschi had been resident at the papal court at the same time, Walwayn could count on his support to reinforce the official story and reject Kent’s claims. After all, Isabella and Mortimer had paid the piper and they would certainly expect him to dance to their tune.

  Yet even after Isabella and Mortimer’s fell from power the generosity towards Fieschi continued. He was provided with another prebend in Lincolnshire, more prosperous than the archdeaconry of Nottingham. At the same time Fieschi was made Provost of Arnhem and, a year later, appointed to the canonry and prebend of Renaix. In 1333 and 1335 letters of attorney were granted to Fieschi because of his absence from England; after this, all further grants end.6 The reason for this might have been the storm of protest Edward III had to face over the appointment of foreigners to prosperous benefices in the 1330s. The constant absenteeism of these nominees, as well as the need to raise cash, forced Edward to give way to demands that such appointments be limited. Edward III even began to charge ‘aliens’ for the benefices and property they held in England. Fieschi, a foreigner and an absentee cleric, would certainly have felt the effect of this shift in policy. Revenues would have dried up and his income cut. This, then, could well have been the true reason for his letter: a very clever way of stirring memories that Edward III wanted forgotten. Fieschi was using information, not to mention his status at the papal court, to put a shot across Edward III’s bows. He had been rewarded by Isabella and Mortimer for supporting them at the papal court over Kent’s conspiracy; now he was serving notice that he was changing his mind. It was no idle threat. Fieschi had inside knowledge of Edward II’s death and burial as well as of Kent’s conspiracy. The Italian priest might prove to be a serious nuisance at a time when Edward III was not only committed to an all-out war against France but involved in a fierce fight with both the papacy and his own Archbishop of Canterbury, John Stratford. The years 1339–41 were difficult ones for Edward III and not the time for old scandals to surface.7 Indeed, Fieschi might have written more than one letter; this one, certainly, is a model of deceit. Some of the assertions are surprising, but it contains just enough facts to arouse suspicions.

  The personal animosity of Fieschi towards the English court is also noticeable. His letter must have arrived in England sometime around 1339–40. Isabella still had another eighteen years to live and, thanks to Edward III’s propaganda, she was being treated with all the honour and dignity of ‘a dear mother and queen dowager’. Fieschi’s letter does not recognize this. Gurney, Maltravers, Beresford, Baldock, de Spencer and the others are described in bland, objective terms. The Earl of Kent is dismissed in a few phrases. However, when Fieschi comes to talk of Isabella, he describes her as ‘maliciosae’, malicious or wicked. This is hardly the wa
y an Italian priest would describe the King of England’s mother, especially when Isabella had been so generous and open-handed with Fieschi. The adjective ‘malicious’ or ‘wicked’ was a subtle dig at Edward III. If Fieschi didn’t get his way, and his father’s possible escape became public knowledge, it would be the King’s ‘dear mother’ who would bear the brunt. Questions would be asked, memories stirred. Isabella’s reputation, so carefully protected by her loving son would, once again, be the staple conversation in the courts of Europe.

  Towards the end of the letter Fieschi has another sly dig at the English crown when he describes Edward of Caernarvon’s role as a hermit at Cecime. Fieschi depicts the deposed king as leading a life of reparation and prayer and piously adds: ‘for you and other sinners’. The actual Latin is ‘vobis et peccatoribus aliis’. It would have been more diplomatic to have said ‘pro nobis et aliis peccatoribus’ (‘for us and other sinners’). Fieschi is thus drawing a fine distinction between himself and the King of England. By using the plural ‘for you’, ‘vobis’ and not the singular ‘tibi’, he’s also including Isabella in this. In this parting shot, Fieschi is reminding Edward III that not only does Isabella have to answer for what happened at Berkeley in 1327 but so will her son.

  Finally, the way the letter ends reinforces the sly threat: Fieschi guarantees its veracity with his seal, but he also cleverly juxtaposes his title of papal notary with ‘your devoted servant’. Fieschi presents himself to the English king as either the papal lawyer or Edward’s ‘devoted servant’. The English king must decide which.