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From: "Vickie (Elam) White" <>
Subject: Re: Edward II's Sexuality
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 23:50:26 -0400


John Steele Gordon wrote --

<<I wonder if anyone can cite the earliest reference to the mode of
King Edward's demise. Hollingshed was 200 years later. He could have
been simply smothered and achieved the same effect, although there is
testimony that screams were heard in the night.>>

I don't know if this is the *earliest* reference, and the author,
Geoffrey le Baker, is said to be generally unreliable, but I found
this in a book I have called __The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes__.
I find this book interesting because it is sourced, and these sources
are many and varied, so that I can read further if something catches
my interest. But I would not recommend it as a primary source, by any
means.

Anyway, this passage is from __Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry__,
which in turn quotes __The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker__. Baker
wrote in 1341, only 14 years after Edward's death:

"Then began the most extreme part of Edward's persecution which
was to continue until his death.
Firstly he was shut up in a secure chamber, where he was tortured
for many days until he was almost suffocated by the stench of corpses
buried in a cellar hollowed out beneath. Carpenters, who one day were
working near the window of his chamber, heard him, God's servant, as
he lamented that this was the most extreme suffering that had ever
befallen him.
But when his tyrannous warders perceived that the stench alone
was not sufficient to kill him, they seized him on the night of
22 September as he lay sleeping in his room.
There with cushions heavier than fifteen strong men could carry,
they held him down suffocating him.
Then they thrust a plumber's soldering iron, heated red hot,
guided by a tube inserted into his bowels, and thus they burnt his
innards and vital organs. They feared lest, if he were to receive a
wound in those parts of the body where men generally are wounded, it
might be discovered by some man who honoured justice, and his torturers
might be found guilty of manifest treason.
...As this brave knight was overcome, he shouted aloud so that
many heard his cry both within and without the castle and knew it for
a man who suffered a violent death. Many in both the town and castle
of Berkeley were moved to pity for Edward, and to watch and pray for
his spirit as it departed this world."

Vickie (Elam) White

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