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

Lord Stanley – A Man for All Allegiances

One of the most difficult choices that any 15^th century English nobleman had to make was where his loyalties lay.  In theory it should be a simple matter of pledging his loyalty to the King, but in the troubled times of the War of the Roses the political terrain was a great deal more complicated, and there were tangled family ties and loyalties to consider as well as a duty to crown and country.  In this conflict some men would lose their lives for their loyalty, some would be executed for their disloyalty, but there was one nobleman who managed with great dexterity to play on both sides at once and keep his head very firmly on his shoulders.  This politically adroit baron was Thomas Stanley, 1^st Earl of Derby, who throughout his long career would seamlessly slip between support for the Lancastrian cause and the Yorkist cause, and then found that he could just as happily embrace the new Tudor monarchy, just so long as he was well rewarded and retained his titles, estates and fortune.

Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby

He was born in 1435 and was the eldest son and heir of Thomas Stanley, 1^st Baron Stanley and his wife Joan Goushill.  Through his mother he was related to the royal family, as she was a descendant of the great warrior King Edward I.  The Stanley family wielded great influence in the North West of England and during his life Lord Stanley would own great estates, such as Lathom House and Tatton Park, in Cheshire and Lancashire.  He was introduced to public life at the royal court early and in his youth he acted as one of King Henry VI’s squires.  He seemed at this stage of his career to be a loyal and staunch follower of the King, but the political scene in England was just about to get a whole lot more complicated and Stanley was to produce a master class in how to navigate your way successfully through tricky, dangerous situations with your skin in one piece and adding to your power and possessions along the way. In 1457 he married Eleanor Neville who was the daughter of the powerful baron Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury.  Her brother was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and at this time the Neville family were strongly promoting the cause of the Duke of York.

In 1459 Stanley’s father died and he inherited his titles and great estates, including the title of King of Mann.  He was now a very important and influential baron, and one that England’s monarch needed to keep on side if at all possible. King Henry had been in Yorkist hands since the first Battle of St Albans in 1455, but the discontent between the two factions rumbled on and came to a head in 1459, when Richard of Salisbury put his forces into the field of battle against the King’s men at the Battle of Blore Heath.  Henry VI’s French wife, Queen Margaret of Anjou, was the real power behind the throne, as her royal husband was a feeble and ineffectual monarch, and had at one time slipped into a catatonic state that lasted many months. In the male dominated, warrior climate of the late Middle Ages, the barons respected power, leadership and skills in battle, and as far as many of them were concerned a simpleton like Henry, whose only interest seemed to be religion, just did not cut the mustard, and his closest supporter were thought by the Yorkist faction to be corrupt and avaricious.

Margaret of Anjou wanted her husband back as he was an important part of her power base, and gave orders that Stanley was to raise an army to stop Salisbury, who was marching through the Midlands, from linking up with the main Yorkist forces in Ludlow. But although he had 2,000 men-at-arms at his disposal, he chose to sit the battle out.  His brother, Sir William Stanley, threw his hat into the ring and fought on the side of the Yorkists and got attainted for his troubles.  That Lord Stanley was secretly supporting the Duke of York and his faction, is borne out by allegations that he had managed to prevent a number of Cheshire levies from fighting on the Lancastrian side and had also managed to covertly help the Yorkists.  Blore Heath was a savagely fought and bloody battle that was won by Salisbury and cost the life of the Lancastrian battler commander Lord Audley.  However, just to make sure that he was covered on both sides, after the battle Lord Stanley sent his congratulations on the victory to the Earl of Salisbury and wrote to the Queen to offer his apologies and excuses for why he had not seen fit to commit his men to the battle. Margaret of Anjou cannot have been too convinced or impressed by his explanations, but nevertheless when Parliament petitioned for his attainder later that year they were not successful; in the fluctuations of the Wars of the Roses she needed all the friends and support that she could get, even those as unreliable as the slippery Lord Stanley.

Lord Stanley joined the Yorkist Council soon after the Battle of Blore Heath, when Richard, Duke of York dropped his bomb shell that he wanted to claim the crown of England himself, rather than just be the most influential baron guiding Henry VI’s royal career. This naturally did not go down well with Margaret of Anjou, who wanted the English throne for her young son Edward of Lancaster. She managed to eliminate her nemesis the Duke of York and his key supporter the Earl of Salisbury at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460, and had their heads put on public show on the Micklegate Bar in York, along with those of York’s son Edmund, Earl of Rutland and Richard Hanson. The Queen’s forces defeated the Earl of Warwick at the second Battle of St Albans early in 1461 and regained possession of the King, but were then decisively defeated in March of the same year by an army led by Edward Earl of March, the Duke of York’s eldest son.  Edward had himself crowned as King Edward IV and Margaret, having once more lost possession of her husband, fled to France via Wales and Scotland. Lord Stanley had demonstrated his usual survival skills and had not fought at either Wakefield or Towton, though he had aided the Earl of Warwick in besieging some northern castles that held for Lancaster.  The Earl of Warwick was now one of the most powerful men in England, as well as being Stanley’s brother-in-law and it seemed that at this time the two powerful barons enjoyed cordial relations.  However, as history was to show, family loyalty would not be enough to ensure Stanley’s support, as this was a man who always liked to come out on the winning side.

The honeymoon period for the new Yorkist monarch was not destined to last for very long, as fractures in the relationship between Edward IV and Warwick soon began to show.  Warwick was known as the ‘Kingmaker’ and expected to be well rewarded by the new monarch as well as to be the key influence on royal policy. But although he was young, and grateful for Warwick’s aid in putting him on the throne, Edward IV had a mind of his own and liked to make his own choices.  While Warwick was trying to secure a diplomatically useful match for him with a French princess, Edward was dallying with a Lancastrian widow behind his back.  He married this widow, Elizabeth Woodville, in secret and when Warwick found out he was furious.  Further salt was rubbed in his wounds when Edward IV started arranging very favourable matches for her very large family, some of which were detrimental to Warwick’s own family. Lord Stanley was married to Warwick’s sister Eleanor Neville, but when Warwick, aided and abetted by Edward IV’s own brother the Duke of Clarence, rebelled in March 1470, Lord Stanley did not step in to help him. Stanley then did an about turn when Warwick, having fled to France and allied himself with Margaret of Anjou, returned in 1471 to England to place the hapless Henry VI once more on the throne. To all outward appearances it seemed as though Lord Stanley had thrown his lot in with the Lancastrian cause, but as usual looks were deceiving.  His brother William hastened to Edward IV’s side when he landed at Ravenspur to reclaim his throne, but as usual big brother Thomas hung back and took no part in the Battle of Tewkesbury which saw Margaret’s forces decisively defeated and the young Edward of Lancaster killed.

The newly restored King Edward IV decided to give the powerful magnate the benefit of the doubt, and rewarded Stanley’s non-participation in the conflict by appointing him steward of the king’s household and inviting him to sit on the royal council.  Very conveniently for him, his ties to the dead and discredited Earl of Warwick were severed when his Neville wife Eleanor died in 1472.  He promptly married Margaret Beaufort, the dowager Countess of Richmond.  This was not an obvious match for a supposedly fervent supporter of the Yorkist monarchy, as her son Henry Tudor was the last surviving Lancastrian claimant to the throne and was living in exile in Brittany. However, throughout Edward IV’s reign he played the part of a loyal subject, accompanying his King to France on campaign in 1475 and being awarded a pension by the French king Louis XI at the treaty of Picquiny, and he also fought in Scotland with the king’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester in 1482, and helped him capture the key town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

It was the unexpected death of Edward IV in 1483 that once more upset the political apple cart. The King’s heir was his eldest son, who became Edward V.  His uncle, Richard of Gloucester, had been appointed Lord Protector and arranged to meet the delegation, including several of the new king’s Woodville relatives, who were accompanying Edward V to London at Stony Stratford. A fracas broke out, and the Duke of Gloucester secured possession of the new monarch and took him to reside in the Tower of London.  This was not the odd choice that it may seem, as the old Norman fortress was where monarchs traditionally lived in the days before their coronation.  Elizabeth Woodville had fled into sanctuary at Westminster with the rest of her family, and there were repeated rumours of plots and conspiracies.  One of these erupted in June 1483 when Richard stormed a royal council meeting being held at the Tower and arrested several of the noblemen in attendance.  Lord Stanley was injured in the ensuing scuffle and briefly imprisoned, but Lord Hastings was condemned on the spot and summarily beheaded.

Richard seized the throne for himself and was crowned King Richard III. Lord Stanley had obviously been fully forgiven, although maybe not entirely trusted as his eldest son Lord Strange was married to a niece of Elizabeth Woodville, as he was allowed to carry the mace at Richard’s coronation and his wife, Margaret Beaufort, carried Queen Anne’s train.  He was also allowed to carry on in his role as the steward of the king’s household and joined the Order of the Garter, taking over the executed Lord Hasting’s vacant stall.  This was an age which did not allow for sentiment, and Lord Stanley was not a nobleman who would have worried overly much about sitting in a dead friend’s chair.  His survival skills were once more called upon late in 1483, when King Richard’s closest advisor, the Duke of Buckingham rebelled.  Despite the fact that his own wife, Margaret Beaufort, and her crony Morton were deeply implicated in the plot as they were brokering a marriage between Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor, Stanley and his brother William helped the King suppress the rebellion.  The Duke of Buckingham lost his head, Margaret Beaufort was formally placed in her husband’s custody to keep her out of trouble, Morton had to make himself scarce and once more Lord Stanley was lavishly rewarded with estates forfeited by the rebels and Buckingham’s position of High Constable of England.  It was perhaps the biggest mistake that Richard III ever made that he did not execute Margaret Beaufort and put an end to her intrigues and plotting on behalf of her son Henry Tudor, but although retribution for men was often swift and savage during the Wars of the Roses, executing nobly born women would not become the rage until Tudor times.

Richard III endured the death of his only son and heir and then his wife Anne Neville during his short reign, and then in 1485 he had to face an invasion by the forces of Henry Tudor. Lord Stanley asked permission to leave court at this time, but Richard evidently did not trust him as he made him leave his oldest son Lord Strange in custody as a pledge for his continued good behaviour.  Both he and his brother William were, however, in contact with Henry Tudor when he landed in Wales and without Sir William’s lack of intervention his forces would never have been able to progress into England as they did.  Both the Stanley brothers were ordered by King Richard to raise an army to support him, and when the King discovered that Sir William had effectively cleared the path for Henry Tudor, he ordered his older brother to join him immediately.  Lord Stanley suddenly discovered that he was too unwell to answer his King’s summons and when his son, Lord Strange,  was caught trying to escape from Richard’s clutches, he admitted that both he and Sir William had been plotting with Henry Tudor. It has been said that Richard III gave orders that Lord Strange be executed during the Battle of Bosworth, to which Stanley’s response was reputedly ‘Sire, I have other sons’.  Fortunately for Lord Strange, the orders were never carried out.

So there were four armies headed towards Bosworth on that fateful day in August 1485, Richard III’s, Henry Tudor’s, Sir William Stanley’s and Lord Stanley’s. Take a guess as to whose army once again didn’t take an active part in the battle? As had happened several times before, Lord Stanley kept his fighting men out of the proceedings, although it is thought that he may have met with Henry Tudor on the eve of the battle. Sir William was once again a little bolder and intervened in the fighting and helped win the day for Henry Tudor. King Richard III was slain in the fighting, and Lord Stanley, despite his earlier absence, was conveniently on hand to pick up Richard’s fallen crown and place it on the head of the new king, Henry VII.  In a move that perhaps signalled the future ruthless nature of the new Tudor dynasty, Henry VII conveniently dated the start of his new reign to the day before the Battle of Bosworth, declaring all those who had fought against him traitors. So Lord Stanley’s stepson was the new King of England and as usual he reaped the rewards, becoming Earl of Derby in October 1485 and in the following year he was confirmed as the High Constable of England and appointed High Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster.  When Henry VII’s first son was born in 1486, he was chosen as godfather for the infant Prince Arthur, and it looked as though from that point on life would be relatively plain sailing for the all powerful baron.

However, the Yorkists had not quite yet run out of steam and in 1487 a rebellion was raised in support of a pretender called Lambert Simnel, who was supposedly Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower.  Henry Tudor must have been quite relieved when Lord Stanley did actively participate in putting this rebellion down, and did not stand aside hedging his bets as usual.  After the Battle of Stoke, he once again reaped great rewards for his assistance and was given lands forfeited by the rebels, which included the estates of Francis Viscount Lovell, Sir Thomas Broughton and Sir Thomas Pilkington. He once again in 1489 helped the Tudor monarch to suppress a rebellion in Yorkshire, but his brother Sir William Stanley eventually slipped up by backing the wrong side when he fought for the pretender Perkin Warbeck and was executed for his treason.

Lord Stanley died at his estate of Lathom House in Lancashire on 20^th July 1504, and was buried among his ancestors in the family chapel of Burscough Priory.  His eldest son Lord Strange had already died, so he was succeeded by his grandson Thomas, who became the 2^nd Earl of Derby.  For a nobleman who had played such a prominent political role throughout the Wars of the Roses, he was very fortunate to have died naturally at home, instead of on a battlefield or on the scaffold.  It had taken great skill to not only have stayed alive, but to have enriched himself and his family in the process, even though no monarch, however powerful, could ever completely rely on his loyalty or support.  Expediency was his watchword and Lord Stanley’s allegiances would shift in the winds of change, always ready to altered and adjusted if the situation demanded it.

Thomas Stanley 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?


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