As every schoolboy knows, Edward II
was murdered in a particularly unpleasant way in 1327.
On the night of 11
October while lying in on a bed [the King] was suddenly seized and, while a
great mattress... weighed him down and suffocated him, a plumber’s iron, heated
intensely hot, was introduced through a tube into his secret parts so that it
burned the inner portions beyond the intestines.
(The Chronicle of
Geoffrey the Baker c.1360)
This method was perhaps chosen
because it seemed a fitting punishment for the King’s homosexuality but it was
also because the primitive science of autopsy would not be able to reveal the
manner of his death – the tube into which the red hot iron was inserted would
have meant that there were no scorch marks on the buttocks. Sadly, there is
little contemporary evidence that the King died in this manner...
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