Introduction

Modern historians and contemporary sources overwhelmingly agree that Edward II died in Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327. (The exception is Ian Mortimer, who maintains that Edward was secretly kept at Corfe after a staged funeral aimed at forestalling further rescued attempts, with the prospect of restoring him to the throne used as ‘a potent threat to the young Edward III’. However, this argument has not been widely considered convincing; I share J.R.S. Phillips's sense that ‘It is hard to see what advantage would be gained by such a tactic.’) There is less historiographical consensus concerning how Edward died. Here contemporary sources differ, and are clearly inflected by the politically sensitive nature of the event. Phillips's meticulous assessment of the evidence leads to the plausible conclusion that ‘It seems more likely that he was murdered, probably by suffocation, and with the intention of leaving no outward mark on his body’. But by the mid-fourteenth century, the story that he was in fact murdered by anal penetration with a red-hot spit was already taking hold.

This chapter will not attempt to draw a firm conclusion regarding the manner of Edward's death. Instead, it will assess the medieval and early modern historiography of the event, analysing the way in which a consensus was reached, and the effects of this consensus on Edward's historiographical reputation.