Royal Murder Read online

  ROYAL MURDER

  by

  Marc Alexander

  Published by Willow Books 2012

  For Paul Abrahams

  A dear friend and colleague

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s and publisher’s prior consent in any form. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  © Marc Alexander

  Print version ISBN 978-1-909473-04-1

  Text prepared by www.willowebooks.org.uk

  Contents

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE - The Murder of William Rufus

  CHAPTER TWO - The Murder of Thomas Becket

  CHAPTER THREE - The Murder of Prince Arthur

  CHAPTER FOUR - The Murder of Edward II

  CHAPTER FIVE - The Murder of Richard II

  CHAPTER SIX - The Murder of Henry VI

  CHAPTER SEVEN - The Murder of the Duke of Clarence

  CHAPTER EIGHT - The Murder of Edward V

  CHAPTER NINE - The Murder of Count Philip Koningsmark

  Introduction

  And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

  How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,

  Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d,

  Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d;

  All murder’d: for within the hollow crown

  That rounds the mortal temples of a King

  Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits,

  Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp . . .

  Thus wrote Shakespeare appropriately in Richard II, and it is the sad stories of murdered kings — and the equally sad victims of royal murderers — on which this book concentrates. Until the Twentieth Century all royal deaths, ranging from the ludicrous to the noble, are a fascinating study. They not only signalled the passing of a mortal to whom blind destiny gave extraordinary advantages and burdens, but they usually triggered a convulsion through the everyday life of the land, sometimes marking the end of an era for good or ill. How much more significant, therefore, was royal murder. Those familiar with English history will be aware of the shock-wave of horror which swept Europe at the judicial murder of Charles I. Even today it is possible to appreciate something of what was felt in the past; there are many like the author who will remember the announcement of President Kennedy’s murder as the most stunning newscast ever heard in their lives.

  This introduction covers some early – and mysterious – murders prior to chapters devoted to individual members of the monarchy.

  The first King of England to be chronicled as a murderer was Athelstan, a grandson of Alfred the Great, who ascended the throne in 925. He was the son of Edward the Elder and his mistress Egwina about whom a curious story survives. The daughter of a humble shepherd, she one day fell asleep while guarding her father’s flock and dreamed that a great globe of light ‘resembling the moon’ shone out of her body, miraculously sending its rays throughout the country. Later she recounted her dream to the woman who had nursed the baby who was to become Edward the Elder. Seeing a divine omen in the girl’s vision, the royal nurse had her taken from her lowly surroundings, groomed and educated, and introduced into court life where she was purposely put in the company of Edward, with the result that he fell in love with her and she bore him three children, the eldest being Athelstan.

  When he became king, Athelstan faced hostility from the clergy and men of influence who objected to his illegitimacy and preferred his younger half-brother, Prince Edwin, who had been born in wedlock. The new king’s first task was to secure his kingdom against the Scots and the Danes, who had settled in Northumbria. Following this, he turned his attention to a more domestic threat to his crown. An ambitious member of his household, hoping to profit from his tale bearing, warned Athelstan that Prince Edwin was plotting against him and the king, only too conscious of the weakness of his position, was ready to believe the charge. Edwin was brought before his older brother, but denied any conspiracy against him to the end.

  Fearing the effect of the public execution of the young prince, and not wishing to technically stain his hands with family blood, Athelstan ordered that Edwin should be placed in a small boat without provisions, oars, sail or rudder; towed out to sea and cast adrift so that the prince would perish by natural causes. Faced with a death by thirst, Edwin preferred to jump over the side and drown himself.

  When this news reached the king the full impact of his action struck him, and as a sop to his conscience he founded the Abbey of Middleton in Dorset where masses were said daily for his brother’s soul. And in looking for someone to share his guilt Athelstan’s kingly wrath fell on the courtier who had sown the seeds of suspicion. It happened one day when the man, who was the king’s cupbearer, lost his balance when one foot slipped while standing by the high table. Nimbly he used his other foot to save himself, joking, “See how one brother helps another.”This remark cost him his life; the king read much more into it than the cupbearer had intended, and had him summarily executed.

  The first English monarch to be murdered was Athelstan’s younger brother, Edmund, who succeeded him in 940. He was eighteen at the time, and his enthronement was the signal for rebellion by the Danes of Northumbria and Mercia, and much of his short reign was spent in restoring order to his kingdom. In these troubled times he observed that the accepted system of fines for robbery was having no effect as crime was generally committed by those who had nothing to lose, except their lives. He therefore instigated a law which stated that the oldest member of a robber gang should be hanged, and this was the first English law which made death a penalty for theft.

  Too many centuries have passed, too many shifts in the nature of the English character have taken place, for us to hazard whether Edmund’s murder was as straightforward as the chroniclers record, or whether it was the result of a conspiracy. Today one cannot see who would have gained by his death, yet it seems strange that the outlaw Leolf should enter the king’s hall so blatantly. Most probably we shall never know more than Holinshed’s brief account of what happened on May 26, 946.

  The chronicler wrote: “On the day of Saint Augustine the English aspostle as he (the king) was set at the table, he espied where a common robber was placed neere unto him, whome sometime he had banished the land, and now returned without licence, he presumed to come into the kings presence, wherewith the king was so moved with high disdaine, that he suddenlie arose from the table, and flew upon the theefe, and catching him by the heare of the head threw him under his feet, wherewith the theefe, having fast hold on the king, brought him downe upon him also, and with his knife stroke him into the bellie, in such wise, that the kings bowels fell out of his chest, and there presentlie died. The theefe was hewn in peeces by the kings servants, but yet he slue and hurt divers before they could dispatch him. This chance was lamentable, namelie to the English people, which by the overtimelie death of their king, in whome appeared manie evident tokens of great excelencie, lost the hope which they had conceived of great wealth to increase by his prudent and most princlie government. His bodie was buried at Glastenburie where Dunstane was then abbot.”

  So many hundreds of years later it is hard to sense the tragedy of these early murders; the victims are now ciphers in a chronicle, their lives and passions dried to ink, yet the pathos of the next royal murder to my mind survives the passage of the centuries, perhaps because it was the result of a love affair, and all great l
ove stories have unhappy endings.

  * * *

  Ten years after King Edmund was disembowelled by Leolf, his son Edwy was crowned upon the King’s Stone* at Kingston-upon-Thames following the death of his uncle Edred. Surnamed “the Fair” because of his pleasing appearance, he was only fourteen years old when Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, anointed him. And immediately he had the misfortune to fall foul of Dunstan who had been the power behind the late king’s throne.

  This remarkable prelate, the son of a West Saxon nobleman, was educated at Glastonbury Abbey before spending some time at the court of King Athelstan — until he was banished for practising “unlawful arts”. One of the reasons for his being denounced as a magician was the construction of a harp which could play itself; today it is thought that it was some form of Aeolian harp. If the future saint was not a magician, he was certainly a clever conjurer for his career was packed with convenient miracles.

  When Edmund became king he recalled Dunstan and made him Abbot of Glastonbury in 945, and from this position he began his life-long work of making the Church the supreme power in the kingdom. To this end he was aided by Edmund’s successor Edred who made him his High Treasurer, and who was so much under his influence that he allowed himself to be scourged by the abbot as penance for his sins. The death of this complaisant monarch must have been a bitter blow to Dunstan’s plans, and he determined to get the upper hand of his successor. Naturally monkish chroniclers were biased when writing about their patron, and they made much of an incident at the coronation of Edwy who, despite his youth, appeared to be of a far more independent mind that his predecessor.

  “On the verie day of his coronation,” wrote Holinshed “as the lords were set in councell about weightie matters touching the government of the relme, he rose from the place, got him into a chamber with one of his neere kinswomen, and there had to doo with hir, without anie respect or regard had to his roiall estate and princelie dignitie. Dunstane latelie before named abbot of Glastenburie, did not onlie without feare of displeasure reproove the King. for such shamefull abusing of his bodie, but also causing the archbishop of Canterburie to con streine him to forsake that woman whom unlawfullie he kept.”

  The new king’s “neere kinswoman” was his beautiful cousin Elgiva with whom he was deeply in love, and he never forgave Dunstan for the abuse he poured upon her and her mother (who was present at their meeting), and for the way the abbot dragged him back to the hall by force.

  Despite the opposition of Odo and Dunstan, Edwy planned to marry Elgiva. The clergy professed themselves shocked because it would be a marriage of cousins. The king, angry at the clerical party’s opposition and still resentful over the humiliating scene at the coronation, refused to be cowed by the clerics and struck back by calling Dunstan to account for the vast sums of money which the previous king had entrusted to him. The abbot refused to give any accounts, merely saying that it had been given to him for religious purposes and he was answerable only to God.

  In the end Edwy summoned up all his royal authority and banished him. Dunstan fled to a monastery in Flanders from where he incited the monks in England to oppose royal authority at every turn and mount a whispering campaign against the young king, whose morals were loudly deplored by the clerics when he defiantly married his cousin Elgiva. Their happiness was to be as short-lived as that of any classical star-crossed lovers.

  A revolt, inspired by the clerical party, flared up in Northumbria and Mercia in favour of the king’s brother Edgar. The distant hand of Dunstan can be detected when the nobles of Mercia were considering their choice of leader; a mighty voice from heaven commanded them to choose Edgar as their sovereign, on another occasion a statue of Christ miraculously spoke on behalf of Dunstan’s policies. Not content to see Edwy’s kingdom whittled down to Wessex, Archbishop Odo and Dunstan conspired for the young king to be parted from his queen.

  Elgiva was kidnapped from a royal residence, branded on the forehead and sent to Ireland to be a slave, but when she was recognised as the Queen of England she was released and, when she was cured of her wound, returned with honour to England. She was travelling with a small party to rejoin Edwy when she was set upon by armed men in the vicinity of Gloucester. She was badly mutilated with sword thrusts, then, having been hamstrung, she was left to die of her wounds.

  The priestly persecutors of the royal couple must have been delighted at the effect of the murder, for when King Edwy heard the news of his wife’s ghastly end he fell into a state of melancholia and died, it was said, of a broken heart in 959. He was by no means the last king of England to suffer through falling out with powerful princes of the Church, and even out of Edwy’s death Dunstan was able to make holy capital. On returning to England, where his protege Edgar was now in full control, he revealed that he had had a vision in which he saw Edwy’s soul being borne away by devils, but as a result of his prayers they had to release it and thus the late king was saved from Hell.

  * * *

  Chronicles written by monks have portrayed the next king, Edgar, in the best possible light because under his reign the Church became more powerful than ever before. As soon as he was established, he recalled the exiled Dunstan and made him Bishop of Worcester and then of London, and on the death of Odo he became Archbishop of Canterbury. In effect he was the real ruler of England and was responsible for the restoration of many monasteries and the banishment of married clergy.

  The reign was a quiet one as the Vikings left England alone and in consequence Edgar was known as “The Peaceful”, but as a person he was said to be cruel and selfish, and his treatment of his friend and favourite courtier Athelwold bears this out. The king, wishing to marry for a second time, heard of the beauty of a certain lady named Elfrida. To assure himself that she was as beautiful as rumoured, and that she would make a suitable consort, he dispatched Athelwold to her father’s hall in Devonshire to make a report.

  Athelwold found that the glowing accounts of Earl Ordgar’s daughter had been in no way exaggerated, and within a short while he was in love with her himself. Luckily he had not told Ordgar or Elfrida the real reason for his visit, and it was easy to claim that he sought her for himself. As far as his master was concerned, he dispatched a letter to the royal court at Winchester informing the king that the girl had not lived up to her description and that she would be unsuitable as a queen because she was simple-minded.

  The earl agreed to the marriage, and after the wedding Athelwold took his bride to his estate at Wherwell in Hampshire, where he was so in love with her that he could not tear himself away from her to visit the king. Elfrida wondered why he did not take her to the court — and so did Edgar the Peaceful. Soon a courier arrived at Wherwell to announce that the king was hunting nearby and planned to spend the night at the hall of his old friend.

  Holinshed’s account of the drama which he culled from earlier chronicles reads: “Some say, that the woman kindled the brand of purpose: for when it was knowne, that the king would see hir, Ethelwold willed hir in no wise to trim up hir selfe, but rather to disfigure hir in fowle garments, and some evil favoured attire, that her natiue beautie should not appeare: but she perceiving how the matter went, of spite set out hir selfe to the uttermost, so that the king upon the first sight of hir, became so farre inamored of hir beautie, that taking hir husband foorth with him on hunting into a forrest or wood then called Warlewood, and after Horewood, not shewing that he meant anie hurt, till at length he had got him within the thicke of the wood, where he suddenlie stroke him through with his dart. Now as his bastard son came to the place, the king asked him how he liked the manor of hunting, wherto he answered; ‘Very well if it like your grace, for that that liketh you, ought not to displease me.’ With which answer the king was so pacified, that he indevored by pretending his favor towards the sonne, to extonaut the tyrannicall murther of the father. Then did the king marry the countesse Alfred (sic), and of her begat two sonnes, Edmund which died young, and Ethelred.”

 
When Edgar the Peaceful died in 975 Queen Elfrida desired her son Ethelred to be proclaimed king. Dunstan, however, favoured his elder brother, Edward, and it was Edward who was duly enthroned at the age of fifteen. Elfrida, just as ambitious as when she had betrayed her husband and bewitched the old king, remained determined that nothing should stop her son from ruling England.

  One evening in the fourth year of his reign, Edward was hunting in Dorset. As he was riding near Corfe Castle, where his stepmother resided with young Ethelred, he decided to pay a visit being very fond of his half-brother.

  As he rode up to Corfe’s Gate in the twilight, thanes from Elfrida’s household came out to greet the young king and his small party of huntsmen. As Edward reined his horse these servants milled round him with cries of joy while Elfrida appeared with a smile of greeting on her face. Her cup-bearer held up the traditional wine horn of welcome and, as he did so, a man seized the king’s hand and pulled it down as though to kiss it as -a sign of loyalty. At the same time a man on the king’s left held his other hand.

  “What are you doing?” laughed the unsuspecting Edward. “Breaking my right hand?”

  At these words the conspirator on the left buried a knife in him. The king wheeled his horse and used his spurs, but as it galloped away from the castle he fainted from loss of blood and reeled from the saddle. In falling his foot remained caught in the stirrup and the dying sovereign was dragged over the rough ground. His huntsmen finally came upon his mutilated body by following the trail of blood. They buried him privately at Wareham on March 18, 978.

  The country was shocked by the assassination. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said: “No worse deed that this for the English people was committed since first they came to Britain. . . men murdered him but God honoured him. In life he was an earthly king, he is now after death a heavenly saint.”