GREAT UNSOLVED CRIMES (True Crime) by Rodney Castleden Read Free Book Online Page A

until such time as more solid evidence of Edward’s escape and emigration to Italy emerges. For the moment it seems sensible to work on the hypothesis that he did indeed die at Berkeley Castle, not least because the story of the manner of his death was extremely destructive to the Mortimer cause. It inspired pity for the dead king and sympathy for his cause, anger and disgust at the queen and her paramour. If Mortimer and Isabella had wanted to invent a story, then a ‘natural causes’ death would have been far better. The story about the red-hot poker is too awful to have been made up. Thomas Deloney’s Strange Histories (modernized spellings) give us the fully developed late medieval horror of Edward’s protracted sufferings, beginning with the failed attempt to poison him, then going on to the foul-smelling pit before the final horror of the red-hot poker.
     
Loathing his life at last his keepers came,
Into his chamber in the dead of night:
And without noise they soon entered the same,
With weapons drawn and torches burning bright,
Where the poor prisoner fast asleep in bed
Lay on his belly, nothing under his head.  
 
The which advantage when the murderers saw,
A heavy table on him did they throw:
Wherewith awaked, his breath could scarcely draw,
With weight thereof they kept him under so,
Then turning up his clothes above his hips,
To hold his legs, a couple quickly skips.
 
Then came the murderers, one a horn had got,
Which far into his fundament down he thrust.
Another with a spit all burning hot,
The same quite through the horn he strongly pushed,
Among his entrails in most cruel wise, forcing hereby most lamentable cries.
 
And while within his body they did keep
The burning spit still rolling up and down,
Most mournfully the murdered man did weep,
Whose wailing noise waked many in the town,
Who guessing by his cries his death grew near,
Took great compassion on that noble peer.
 
And at each bitter shriek which he did make,
They prayed to God for to receive his soul:
His ghastly groans enforced their hearts to ache,
Yet none durst go to cause the bell to toll:
Ah me, poor man, alack, he cried, and long it was before he died.
 
Strong was his heart and long it was God knows
Ere it would stop unto the stroke of death.
First was it wounded with a thousand woes,
Before he did resign his vital breath.
     
    Once Edward’s slow murder was completed, Lord Maltravers was the one who rode to court to bring the news that her husband was dead. He evidently expected to be welcomed and well rewarded, but Isabella wept and wrung her hands, calling him a traitor for killing her noble wedded lord. Maltravers was thoroughly shaken when he was turned away from court. He realized he had been tricked, and returned to tell Sir Thomas Gourney and the other murderers that the queen had outlawed them all. Suddenly their lives were in peril, and they had to leave England as soon as possible.
     
Then farewell England, where we were born,
Our friends and kindred which hold us in scorn.
     
    At Lord Berkeley’s trial, Sir Thomas Gourney and William Ogle were specifically named as the ex-king’s murderers, but they had fled the country. There is no record of Ogle ever having been found. Perhaps he successfully changed his identity and vanished. Sir Thomas Gourney was detained in Spain and brought back to England, but there is no record of his having been punished. According to one version of the story, Gourney was taken ill after his arrest and died under guard, in France, while on his way back to England. According to another version, picked up by Thomas Deloney, he was returning to England voluntarily because he missed his wife and children, was recognized on the ship and beheaded