Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II Read Online Free PDF

Fieschi’s account. He arrived at Corfe and was able to shelter there unnoticed for eighteen months.
    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 hadmaintained 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 berecognized 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