History of England 1-6

It is recorded that the two knights, thwarted of their victim and terrified of the wrath of the queen, cut out the heart of the porter and put his corpse into a wooden chest. They then pretended that the organ and the body were those of Edward II. In this account, therefore, the queen was buried with the porter’s heart, and the porter’s body still rests beneath the canopied shrine of Edward II in what is now Gloucester Cathedral.

The hermit goes on to recount a period of concealment in Corfe Castle before he began his wanderings through Ireland and France. He was received by Pope John in Avignon, where he remained for two weeks. In the habit of a hermit he crossed into Germany and then into Lombardy, in which region he wrote down his confession. The letter ends with a sentence from Manuel di Fieschi to the king. ‘In testimony of these things I have appended a seal for your lordship’s consideration.’ This was, perhaps, the privy seal that accompanied the king’s person. It all sounds the merest melodrama, unworthy of serious consideration, but the writer of the letter was a papal official of repute. He would not have written to the king of England on a mere whim. The details of the account, too, are accurate as far as they can be checked in the historical record. So it remains a surmise and a mystery. It is possible, to put it no higher, that Edward II ended his life as a hermit in Italy. It would have been an edifying end to a not very edifying life.

The brief supremacy of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, lasting from the autumn of 1326 to the autumn of 1330, was not itself a glorious one. The lands and treasures of the deposed king, and of the Despensers, were seized by the victors; the queen and her consort took the greater share, of course, and the rest was distributed among their followers. They also had to reward the mercenaries they had brought with them from Hainault. So the financial reserves of the Crown were severely depleted; the sum of £61,921 left by Edward in 1326 had been reduced by 1330 to £41. Taxation, and loans from Florentine bankers, were the only expedients.

The young king was crowned in 1327, but his power was nominal rather than real. He was governed by a council of barons and bishops, while Roger Mortimer was at the head of affairs. Robert Bruce could not let slip this opportunity of a minority and so invaded the northern territories of England; Mortimer and the young king led armies to oppose him, but achieved nothing. It is said that Edward III wept at the failure of the campaign, which was followed by a treaty in which the title of Bruce to the throne of Scotland was recognized. The capitulation did not bode well for his future reign.

Yet the new king was of a quite different stamp from his father. At the age of eighteen, he was becoming restless and resentful. Like his grandfather, Edward I, he longed for martial glory as the prerogative of sovereignty. He may have blamed Mortimer for the fiasco in Scotland, and have held him responsible for the decline of his revenues. Mortimer had become another ‘over-mighty’ subject at odds with the king.

Isabella was also now carrying Mortimer’s child, and Edward feared a forced change in succession. He was told that it was better to eat the dog than allow the dog to eat him. So an assassination was planned. Mortimer and Isabella had travelled to Nottingham Castle, where a party of knights under the command of Edward had concealed themselves in the undergrowth outside the walls. An official of the castle had revealed to them a secret passage that led directly into the private quarters; there they surprised Mortimer, and arrested him. Isabella ran out of the chamber, shrieking, ‘Good son, have pity on noble Mortimer!’ But, in that period, pity was in short supply. He was tried, and summarily executed, in London. Isabella was sent to one of her private houses. Edward III had obtained his kingdom.

22

Birth and death

The infant mortality rates of the medieval period were high, with over a third of boys and a quarter of girls dying at or soon after birth. That is why baptism was of overwhelming importance to the family of the child; if not baptized, the infant would go into the indeterminate eternal world of limbo and be denied the bliss of heaven. In the event of imminent death the midwife was permitted to sprinkle water over the child and pronounce ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ If the mother died in labour, the midwife was obliged to cut the child from the womb in order to save its soul. In extreme cases the infant was baptized even before birth, given a name such as ‘Vitalis’ or ‘Creature’ or ‘Child of God’.