Not our finest hour

Ever since Edward II’s deposition and grisly murder in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle in 1327, his reign has always been regarded as a particularly embarrassing interlude in English history.

Ever since Edward II’s deposition and grisly murder in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle in 1327, his reign has always been regarded as a particularly embarrassing interlude in English history. In 1908, when there was still some pretence that such subjects had a place in the classroom, teachers were advised that the period should be ‘passed over in discreet silence’. Not only was it one of fruitless civil war; Edward was also thought to have been a homosexual, who doted on favourites and was killed by a red-hot poker thrust into his anus.

Yet here is a biography, written by a distinguished expert for the prestigious Yale English Monarchs series, which argues that the beleaguered sovereign was actually ‘not fundamentally different from most of his predecessors and successors on the English throne’. This is an interesting proposition, but anyone who absorbs the full 613 pages of text, including the extensive footnotes, is likely to conclude that there is still much sense in the old orthodoxy. Edward was, frankly, a complete disaster — and quite a nasty piece of work besides.

Most popular

Rod Liddle

British Steel and the death of dim-witted globalisation

The facts speak for themselves. When Edward came to the throne in 1307, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that England was peaceful, prosperous and stable. Wales had been annexed and Scotland appeared to be going the same way. Justice, meanwhile, was apparently entering a new era of sophistication, with the common law, though still in its infancy, superseding the old principle that every nobleman was king of his own fiefdom.

Twenty years later, England was a poor country, politically dysfunctional and on the verge of the first act of regicide since Anglo-Saxon times.