Today’s Ignoble Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
There can be few more ignoble deaths than to be tortured by one’s enemies, especially if they are in the employ of one’s spouse. Such was the fate of King Edward II (1284-1327), the first English Prince of Wales. Living forever in the shadow of his illustrious father, Edward was roundly loathed by his French wife Isabella. She and Mortimer, her lover, eventually had the hapless Edward imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There are many vivid and generally specious accounts of the king’s death, but many think the most vivid and specious to be that by Geoffrey le Baker, written nearly a quarter of a century later. Baker cites a cryptic message sent by the Bishop of Hereford to Edward’s jailers: “Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est.” There are two meanings, depending on where the comma is placed – either, “Do not fear to kill Edward, it is a good thing” or, “Do not kill Edward, it is good to be afraid”. To be murdered is indignity enough, but to be murdered as a result of bad grammar represents Fate at its most capricious.
Baker’s explicit account adds further details of the indignities suffered by the king:
The brutes… at night on 22 September, having suddenly seized him lying in bed and having pressed him down and suffocated him with great pillows and a weight heavier than fifteen robust men, with a plumber’s iron heated red hot, through a horn applied leading to the privy parts of the bowels, they burned out the respiratory organs past the intestines, fearing lest, a wound having been found on the royal body… his tormentors would be bound to answer for an obvious offence and pay the penalty for it… The cry of the dying wakened many of Berkeley and certain ones of the castle, as they asserted, to compassion and prayers for the holy fleeting soul.
Another description has Edward dying “with a hoote broche putte thro the secret place posterialle”. Although scholars now doubt the accuracy of Baker’s chronicle, it is intriguing to note that the funeral of Edward II was the first to use a wooden effigy of the deceased instead of displaying the corpse itself.
Culled from: Death: A History Of Man’s Obsessions and Fears
So much for not leaving any marks on him, if they used a wooden effigy of him.
Edward II was widely believed to have a love relationship with a favorite, Piers Gascon, to whom he gave many of his wedding presents after he was married to Isabella of France. He was later killed by angry nobles.
During his time as king, Edward developed many other favorites, and many of these men “captured and executed in various horrible ways”. Some of them in public, like diembowling over a burning fire.
The English monarchy can be an endless source of morbidity.