The Death of a King

care of Lancaster and transferred to Berkeley Castle under Lord Thomas Berkeley and a Somerset knight, John Maltravers.
    Here, Richard, begins the last stage of Edward II’s captivity, and it is hidden in both mystery and tragedy. Once Edward was at Berkeley, the account of the chronicle of St Paul’s becomes very meagre and I could only trace the details of the king’s imprisonment at Berkeley Castle from the dusty documents now stored in the Tower Muniment Room. I can start with a few known facts. Custody of Edward was vested in Thomas Berkeley and John Maltravers on 3 April, 1327, and within a few days of this, an allowance of five pounds per day was assigned to these two, “for the expense of the household of the Lord Edward, formerly King of England.” At first, this seems a generous amount. Five pounds a day could keep many a man in considerable comfort, but whether the money was actually spent on poor Edward seems dubious. The chronicle of St Paul says he was much ill-used and his captors may have regarded the allowance merely as a bribe to abuse their unfortunate prisoner. One rather surprisingly new fact was that Berkeley and Maltravers were assisted by two others, Thomas Guerney and William Ockle. In fact, this precious pair were the actual gaolers, whilst Maltravers and Thomas Berkeley were merely custodians of the castle. Landed gentry might have a healthy respect for a royal prisoner, but the same cannot be true of anonymous killers who would gleefully crucify their mothers.
    The garrulous chronicle had other gems in store for me. Once Edward was transferred to Berkeley Castle, rumours began to circulate that there was a plot to free him. The ring-leader of this plot was Brother Stephen Dunheved, a Dominican friar, an eloquent preacher and confessor to the deposed king. If the chronicle is to be believed, Edward II had sent this friar to the papal court to secure a divorce from Isabella. On his return from this fruitless quest, Friar Stephen found his former master had been deposed and at once began to plot his release. Fresh urgency was lent to his efforts by the rumours which had begun to circulate concerning Edward’s ill-treatment at Berkeley. According to these whispers, the deposed king was kept in a pit along with decaying animal corpses and only his splendid constitution saved him from a pestilential death. By the beginning of July, 1327, Dunheved was ready. Men from many different regions and professions banded themselves together to free their former king. According to the chronicle of St Paul, Dunheved launched his attack against Berkeley Castle on the night of 16 July. He managed to enter the castle by stealth but his attempt to free the king failed. The chronicle does not say what happened to either Dunheved or his followers.
    It seems that Isabella and Mortimer then decided to murder Edward and despatched the necessary orders to Berkeley Castle. On the night of 21 September, 1327, Guerney and Ockle entered the king’s cell. They forced him down to the floor and thrust a red-hot iron up into his bowels so as to kill him without leaving any trace of violence on the body. The king’s hideous shrieks, however, told the entire castle of his horrible death and drove many to their knees to pray for his soul. After his death, it then appears that from 21 September to 21 October, Edward’s corpse remained at Berkeley under the custody of his former gaolers, for which they were paid five pounds per day. Isabella and Mortimer had decided that the dead king should be buried at the nearby cathedral of Gloucester but even when the body was removed from Berkeley, Guerney and Ockle remained responsible for it. They conveyed the royal corpse to the chapter house of Gloucester Cathedral, where it lay in state for a few days before being solemnly interred in the cathedral itself.
    Once I had finished a detailed reconstruction of the late king’s imprisonment, I immediately became aware of one glaring discrepancy. The chronicle of St Paul, popular opinion and even His Grace the King all categorically maintain that Edward II was murdered on the Feast of St Matthew, 21 September, 1327. Yet, according to these same records, all orders for the feeding and housing of the royal prisoner suddenly end on 21 July, some two months before his death.
    For a while, every effort on my part to fill this gap in the records proved futile. First, I attempted to explain it through an omission in the records themselves,