How to Murder Your Medieval Royal Relatives

You would think that being a member of the royal family would set you up for a life of luxury and security wouldn't you?  Well you would be wrong as being a royal in history has sometimes been a very hazardous occupation, especially if you were a royal child.  If we travel back to medieval times and take a look at the history of the English royal family, you will soon discover that family feuds were common and that several members of the Plantagenet family were murdered or disappeared in mysterious circumstances.  So let us have a look at some of these unfortunate royals and find out a bit more about their tragic fates.

King John's Tomb in Worcester Cathedral

Shortly after the Norman Conquest, King William II, better known as William Rufus because of the ruddy appearance of his face, was one of the first to meet with an untimely end.  This unfortunate monarch was out hunting on a summer’s day in 1100 in the New Forest when an arrow pierced his chest and killed him.  Things being what they were back then, as soon as they realised that their monarch was dead, the rest of the hunting party, which included his brother Henry, promptly departed, rushing off back to secure their own estates leaving William Rufus’s corpse lying on the forest floor.  Even the young Prince Henry high tailed it to Winchester to make sure that he would get his hands on the royal treasury before anybody else could claim it and then went on to London where he had himself crowned King of England within a few days. The contemporary chroniclers claimed that it had not been murder, but had just been an unfortunate hunting accident, but as William Rufus had not been a popular king, either with his barons or the Church, it was perhaps inevitable that rumours would abound that William Rufus had been murdered. It was recorded that it fell to a man called Purkis, who was a local charcoal burner, to rescue the royal corpse and take it on his cart to Winchester.

King John enjoys a generally bad reputation even for a Plantagenet king, as he has been widely vilified through the tales of Robin Hood, the outlaw who robbed the rich to give to the poor, as the wicked prince who was trying to steal the crown of his hero brother, King Richard the Lionheart.  King John probably deserves a lot of this evil legacy, as he spent a lot of time waging war and generally trying to get one up on his elder brothers and fairly regularly fell out with the Pope to the extent that he would be excommunicated and the whole country of England placed under interdict. However, it was the mysterious disappearance of his young nephew Arthur of Brittany that could have been the most nefarious deed of his unsavoury career.  Arthur of Brittany was the posthumous son of John’s elder brother Geoffrey Duke of Brittany, who had been killed in a tournament.  A fatherless royal child in possession of vast estates, fortune and titles would always have the wolves circling, and young Arthur became a pawn in the power games between John, Richard the Lionheart and King Philip II of France.  After Richard the Lionheart’s death, John managed to seize the throne of England, but as Arthur of Brittany had declared himself a vassal of the King of France, the French nobility were keen to place the English crown on Arthur’s head instead.  The new King John was forced to invade France in 1202 to combat this threat and, under the terms of the treaty of Le Goulet, Arthur of Brittany was forced to change his allegiance and acknowledge King John of England as his overlord.

King John fairly swiftly fell out with the French King again, and the Philip II gave his territories of Normandy and Anjou to young Arthur.  Even though he was still only a young teenager, Arthur of Brittany decided to assert his authority in his lands by besieging his own grandmother, the indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine, in the castle at Mirebeau.  Eleanor of Aquitaine managed to alert King John to her peril and he raced to rescue her and imprisoned his young nephew at the same time.  The youthful prince was first imprisoned at Falaise in Normandy under the stewardship of William de Braose and the following year he was sent to captivity in the castle at Rouen.  Sometime in April of 1203, Arthur of Brittany mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again.  Although nothing was ever proved or officially recorded, the finger of blame was pointed squarely at King John, with rumours saying that the English monarch had killed his young nephew in a drunken rage and then thrown his body in the Seine, or that Arthur had been blinded and the gelded by the King’s agents and had died of shock and blood loss.   Again we shall probably never know the truth of the matter, but if King John did not murder his nephew, what did happen to poor Arthur of Brittany?

So moving up through the centuries, King Edward II was an ineffectual King of England, who was prone to having unpopular favourites and could not keep control of his barons.  He was married to Isabella of France who, when on an official trip to France, met an exiled English baron called Roger Mortimer, and became his mistress.  The new power couple decided that they had had enough of the dithering King Edward II and his latest favourites the Despensers, and invaded England in 1326. Their army met with little resistance, and they easily took over the country, capturing the Despensers and King Edward in the process.  The Despensers were summarily executed and Edward was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle.  Edward II was deposed in favour of his young son, who became King Edward III.

Tomb of King Edward II in Gloucester Cathedral

Although he was in captivity, Edward II still posed a threat to the new administration and he was found murdered on 11^th October 1327, supposedly by agents of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.  Contemporary chroniclers stated that the unfortunate Plantagenet monarch had either been strangled or suffocated, but in later years a rather more lurid legend grew up that Edward II had been killed by having a red-hot poker thrust into his nether parts.  This gruesome story has never been substantiated and there are historians that argue that, in fact, Edward II was not killed in Berkeley Castle at all but survived in exile on the Continent until around 1341.  But what goes around comes around as they say, and in time the young monarch Edward III grew tired of being dominated by his powerful mother and her lover, so in 1330 he seized Roger Mortimer and had sent him to the Tower of London. Roger Mortimer was accused without even getting a trial and was taken to Tyburn where he was hung, drawn and quartered as a common traitor.

Of course the biggest, baddest, wickedest uncle of them all, at least according to William Shakespeare, is King Richard III, who stands accused by history of murdering his two young nephews, known as the Princes in the Tower.  Before the death of his big brother, King Edward IV, in 1483 he had enjoyed an entirely untarnished reputation.  Unlike his brother George of Clarence, he had always remained loyal to his brother and worked hard in the North at keeping England’s border with Scotland secure.  However, he was not a fan of King Edward’s wife Elizabeth Woodville, and was highly suspicious of the lands and titles that she induced her husband to shower onto her large and rapacious family.  Edward IV’s death in 1483 was both premature and unexpected, and as Richard III had been named Lord Protector, he hastily assembled an army and marched south to meet up with his young nephew, who was now the new King Edward V and was being escorted to London by his maternal uncle Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers.  

Richard had Anthony Woodville arrested and then executed and took his nephew to the Tower of London, the traditional lodging place of English kings before their coronation. The widowed queen, Elizabeth Woodville, had fled into sanctuary with her younger son and daughters, but Richard persuaded her to allow Richard of York to join his older brother at the Tower.  Both the young lads were reported being seen around the Tower of London and playing in the gardens and preparations for Edward’s coronation proceeded.  However, just before the coronation, Richard seized the crown for himself and was crowned as King Richard III.  Sightings of the two young princes began to dwindle and rumours started to fly that they had been murdered to make the throne safer for their uncle.  However, although their supposed murder has been carefully investigated by many historians, there has never been any concrete evidence come to light that Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower.  In fact, there is no real evidence that they were killed at all, and many stories circulated about their continued existence and several pretenders, such as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, came forward to declare that they were one or other of the boys.

So as you see, being a medieval royal in England could prove fatal and it was your own royal relatives that you had the most to fear from.  It wasn’t only uncles and wives that could be murderous; Henry IV locked his first cousin Richard II up in Pontefract Castle after he seized the throne and reportedly starved him to death.  So next time that you bemoan how ordinary your life is, remember that there is nothing romantic or exciting about being murdered, however exciting we think that these historic tales are.

King John Tomb image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
King Edward II image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Mystery People of History – Arthur Duke of Brittany

Poor old Arthur of Brittany! They say that you can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family, and for this royal prince, born into a brood of constantly fighting and cantankerous Plantagenets, this was a very apt saying.  There have been many mystery people of history and in medieval times even a royal prince could disappear without trace. Probably the most famous princes to mysteriously vanish off the face of the Earth were the Princes in the Tower, supposedly murdered by their much vilified uncle, King Richard III. But Richard III was not the only Plantagenet monarch who was thought to have murdered a nephew.  King John enjoys a very bad reputation in English history; he tried to steal his brother’s crown while he was away fighting in the Third Crusade, when he became king riled up his barons so that they rebelled against him leading to the signing of Magna Carta and at the end of his long and not very illustrious career he has thought to have lost the crown jewels while he was crossing the Wash in bad weather. But what is not so well known, is that he is also thought to have been responsible for the death of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany.

Arthur of Brittany & Philip II of France

King Henry II, his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their sons were famous for their quarrelling and for fighting among themselves for territory and prestige.  This was a time when primogeniture was not yet firmly established and the King could name his heir, which tended to set brother against brother and cause long-festering family feuds.  Arthur was the only son of Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany and his wife Constance.  The couple already had an elder daughter Eleanor, known as the Fair Maid of Brittany, but Arthur was a posthumous child, born in Nantes in 1187 after his father was killed during a tournament in 1186. Although a claimant to the throne of England, Arthur was French through and through, and never once visited the British Isles during his short life and could not speak English.  The Plantagenets wanted this royal infant to be named Henry after his grandfather, King Henry II of England, but his mother Constance chose the name Arthur, in honour of the mythical king who was so revered by her Breton subjects. Arthur was to be much influenced by his mother and it was probably from her that he gained his leanings towards France and the French crown

When the old King Henry II died in 1189, he was succeeded by his son Richard I, known as the ‘Lionheart’. Richard I decided that it was a good idea to patch up his ongoing feud with his younger brother John, in order to try and maintain peace in his realms.  In those days the Angevin Empire encompassed huge swathes of France as well as the kingdom of England, and Richard I was really not much interested in his English fiefdom, preferring to spend his time rampaging around France.  However, early on in his reign he decided to take up the Cross and join the Third Crusade. At this time Richard the Lionheart was unmarried and childless, so named the infant Arthur as his heir, just in case he came a cropper at the hands of the Saracens.  As part of the deal, he also arranged the betrothal of Arthur to a daughter of Tancred of Sicily, although this alliance was broken when the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI conquered Sicily in 1194. He also made his brother Prince John swear an oath that he would not set foot in England while he was away.  Was this a red rag to a bull or what?  With his nose well and truly put out by Richard’s naming of Arthur as his heir, John duly proceeded to land in England and tried to get the English crown onto his own head.   Over in Brittany, Constance was also taking advantage of Richard I’s absence, and to try and wrest more autonomy for Brittany had Arthur hailed Duke of Brittany in 1194 at the tender age of 7. Unfortunately for Prince John, after a series of adventures, his brother Richard returned in 1194 and very firmly reclaimed his crown.

Once again in 1196, Richard I named Arthur as his heir, and to cement this relationship he summoned both Arthur and his mother to where he was currently residing in Normandy.  However, unfortunately Constance was abducted on the road by her estranged husband, one Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester.  This English aristocrat had been married off to Constance at the age of 17, as King Richard did not trust where her loyalties lay and wanted to ensure her continued obedience by wedding her to one of his more trusted barons. However, the marriage had not been a success and the couple were living separate lives. The abduction infuriated Richard I, who then led his army to Brittany to secure possession of Arthur, but the young Duke was whisked away in secret by his tutor to the French court where he was brought up alongside Prince Louis of France. In 1199 Constance managed to escape from her unwanted spouse and their marriage was dissolved on the grounds of desertion.

Richard the Lionheart died on April 6, 1199 during the siege of the castle of Chaluz-Chabrol.  He had been walking around the castle perimeter without his chainmail when he took a hit in his left shoulder from a crossbow.  He first tried to pull the missile out himself, and then had it removed by a bungling surgeon.  Richard developed gangrene in his wound, which proved fatal, and before he died he named his younger brother John as his heir.  Richard feared that as Arthur of Brittany was only 12 years old at this time that he was too young to be a decisive leader and, moreover, was far too much under the influence of the French Court. John was actually staying with Constance and Arthur in Brittany, when the news of his brother’s death and his elevation to the throne of England was brought to him.  He immediately made haste to secure the royal treasury that was housed in the castle at Chinon, while the intrepid Constance raised an army and took the town of Angers.

John’s claim to the English throne was supported by his indomitable mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine and William Marshall, a powerful English Baron.   However, the French nobility were resentful of the new King John, and favoured Arthur’s claim to the throne, especially as Arthur had declared himself as a vassal of the King of France, Philip II. The French King recognised Arthur of Brittany’s rights to the territories of Anjou, Maine and Poitou and headed up an army, which he took to Anjou and Maine to reinforce Arthur’s claim.  From April 18 of that year, Arthur styled himself Duke of Brittany, Count of Anjou and Earl of Richmond. Unfortunately, the young Prince’s staunchest supporter, his mother Constance, died in 1201, leaving him bereft of support.  Constance had remarried after her early union had been dissolved, to one Guy de Thouars, bearing him twin daughters, and she may well have died while giving birth again.

Philip II of France’s championing of Arthur of Brittany was due to the fact that he was always keen to exploit any family rifts among the Plantagenets for his own ends in order to extend the territory and influence of the French crown.  However, this stirring led to King John invading France in 1202, which forced Philip to recognise John as his late brother’s legitimate heir to the English throne at the Treaty of Le Goulet. The French King abandoned his support of the young Prince Arthur and forced him to acknowledge his uncle as his new overlord.  Arthur was mortified by this turn of events and fled to the sanctuary of his uncle’s Court where he was warmly welcomed, but soon became wary of King John’s real objectives, and swiftly returned to Angers.  King John’s marriage to Isabella d’Angoulême once again stirred up the resentment of the French nobility against him, as this lady had previously been betrothed to a French baron called Hugh de Lusignan.  Hugh de Lusignan rounded up his supporters and rebelled against King John, appealing to the French King for aid.  Philip II firmly requested that King John appear at his Court to explain his actions, and when John was a no show, Philip declared all of the English monarch’s land in France forfeit, and awarded Normandy and Anjou to young Arthur of Brittany.

Despite his youth, Arthur was shaping up to be just as warlike and belligerent as the rest of his Plantagenet forbears, and besieged his own grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, where she was holed up in Mirebeau Castle. Queen Eleanor managed to get a message to John, who managed, in a huge feat of endurance and determination, to march his army the eighty miles between Le Mans and Mirebeau in just two days.  Arthur was captured by john’s forces and imprisoned in the fortress at Falaise in Normandy, under the watchful eye of Hugh de Burgh.  His sister Eleanor was also captured and sent to England to be imprisoned in Corfe Castle.  The following year Arthur was transferred to Rouen and put in the charge of William de Braose, and in April 1203 he mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

Now to our modern minds it may seem utterly incomprehensible that a royal prince, the ruler of large territories in northern France, could just vanish without trace, but you have to remember that we are talking about a time where there was no mass media, no CCTV cameras and no photographs.  Very few of the ordinary people in Rouen would ever have seen Arthur of Brittany in the flesh, so would not recognise him without his royal regalia and retinue.  This was also a period where there was little portraiture, so many would not have even seen a likeness of the prince. Inevitably stories about Arthur’s disappearance soon started to circulate, and unfortunately to King John, most of them put him firmly in the frame.  Hugh de Burgh supposedly made a claim that he knew the details of Arthur’s demise, and that the young prince had been blinded and castrated by John’s henchmen, and had died of shock.

Another account offered in the Margam Annals, penned by an unknown Welsh monk, stated that one night King John got very drunk.  Arthur, being at the time a stroppy adolescent, rubbed his uncle up the wrong way by being rude and defiant, which caused John to kill him.  To get rid of his body, John weighted it down with stones and dumped it in the River Seine. The body then became caught in the hooks of local fisherman, who hauled it onto the shore.  They recognised the corpse as being that of Arthur of Brittany, and fearing reprisals from King John if he got to know about their discovery, took the body for secret burial at the priory of Notre Dame de Pres at Bec. Arthur’s jailer at the time of his disappearance, William de Braose, suddenly rose very high in John’s favour, being showered with lands and titles in the Welsh Marches, which led people to think that he had been complicit in Arthur’s demise.

It was unfortunate for William de Braose that many years later, after arguing and being in conflict with King John, William’s wife Maude de Braose openly accused John of being responsible for the murder of his nephew. As at the time of these accusations William de Braose also owed King John a large sum of money, the English monarch demanded that they hand over their son William as a hostage to enforce their continued loyalty and ensure that they kept their mouths shut.  Maude had apparently made audible comments in the presence of the King’s officers that ‘she would not deliver her children to a king who had murdered his own nephew’. This naturally outraged the hot-tempered King John, so he seized their lands in the Welsh Marches, which caused them to flee to Ireland, where Maude and her eldest son were eventually captured trying to escape to Scotland. They were sent back to England and imprisoned in Windsor Castle, and then sent on to Corfe Castle, where they are believed to have been starved to death.  William de Braose managed to escape to France, where he is thought to have written an account of the true fate of young Arthur of Brittany, but no traces of it remains.

William Shakespeare incorporates the tragedy of Arthur of Brittany into his play King John, where the young prince is portrayed as an inexperienced youth, who has no responsibility for the fate that befalls him.  Shakespeare kills off Arthur by having him jump from the walls of the castle where he was imprisoned, while fleeing from the tyranny of his wicked uncle.  But then, wicked uncles slaying their blameless nephews was a favourite historical theme used by Shakespeare in his plays. I feel that it is unlikely that King John himself would have dirtied his hands by personally killing his nephew, but it is more than likely that it was he who ordered the boy’s death.  If Arthur had remained alive, he would have been a continual thorn in John’s side, and as the boy got older he could have made a strong alliance through marriage and built up a dynasty that would have been a constant threat to John’s power and prestige in northern France.  Arthur’s sister Eleanor of Brittany fared no better in life, as King John and then his successor and son Henry III kept her captive in England until her death at the age of 57.  The French barons were inclined to believe in John’s guilt, and used it as another reason to unite against him, eventually taking Richard the Lionheart’s mighty Chateau Gaillard and pushing John and his army back across the Channel to England. The dukedom of Brittany, which should have gone to Eleanor, was passed on to Arthur’s half-sister Alix de Thouars, who was married Peter de Dreux, creating a new Breton dynasty of rulers.

So will we ever really know what happened to poor Arthur of Brittany? Probably not, unless some amazing new discovery is made.  But written evidence from that period is scanty, and it is unlikely that new documents regarding Arthur’s fate will be uncovered now. It is possible that Arthur died of natural causes or was whisked away into hiding somewhere, but then why was his body not given the funeral due to a prince of the blood, and surely if he had gotten away at least some rumours of his whereabouts would have circulated?  So do you think that it was a case of a wicked uncle slaying his innocent nephew, or do you think that Arthur’s fate was due to other causes?


Image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain