Which king was said to have had a red-hot poker thrust into his sphincter?

daBomb619

Edward II of England. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II_of_England Jul 02 10, 3:46 PM

Zbeckabee

This has become the standard narrative of Edward's death, but there are problems with taking it at face value. Baker hated Queen Isabella (the 'iron virago') and was constructing a narrative of 'Edward as martyr'. The chronicles written shortly after Edward's death (Anonimalle Chronicle, a shorter continuation of the Brut, Lichfield Chronicle, Adam Murimith) variously state only that he died (with no explanation given), that he died of a 'grief-induced illness', or that he was strangled or suffocated. The official pronouncement of Edward's death, in September 1327, claimed that he died of 'natural causes'. It wasn't described as murder until November 1330, when Roger Mortimer was accused of 'having [Edward] murdered at Berkeley' during his show trial. The earliest reference to the 'red-hot poker' method is found in a longer continuation of the Brut, written in the 1330s. However, many other fourteenth-century chronicles do not repeat this allegation. None of the men who killed Edward - for the purposes of this post, I'm assuming that he really was murdered in 1327 - ever spoke about it publicly. Therefore, we're dealing with rumour and hearsay, how the chroniclers thought he'd been murdered. http://edwardthesecond.com/edwardsreignaftermath/death.html "A persistent historical rumor." http://www.snopes.com/risque/revenge/curliron.asp Jul 02 10, 4:12 PM

Zbeckabee

Another voice of reason: By the time John Trevisa arrived at Berkeley in the late 1380s, there couldn't have been anyone alive there who knew the truth about Edward II's fate, and he had no more insight into the affair than anyone else. As for Ranulph Higden of the Polychronicon, he was a monk of Chester and knew no more about Edward's death than anyone else did either, and just because both men repeated the red-hot poker story is not proof that it's true. http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.com/2009/07/john-trevisa-and-that-famous-red-hot.html Jul 02 10, 4:24 PM