Yet he still had enemies in exile, particularly in France. One of them, Roger Mortimer, had been part of the rising against the Despensers; he had submitted to the king and had been imprisoned in the Tower of London. From that place, with a little help from his friends, he managed to escape; it is reported that he drugged his captors and then climbed down from his chamber on a rope. It sounds apocryphal, but it may be accurate. There were very few other paths out of the Tower, except of course by way of the gallows. He sailed to France and offered his services to the French king. It was at Charles IV’s court that he began an intrigue, in every sense, with Queen Isabella. Around the queen there now gathered a cluster of exiled or disaffected barons and bishops. When her son arrived to offer fealty to her brother, she had found the perfect weapon. The king ordered her to return to England, but she refused to do so; she declared that she would come back only if the Despensers were banished. In any case she preferred the more benign atmosphere of the French court.
Throughout 1325 rumours and fears of invasion circulated through the kingdom. It was believed that Isabella would sail with the French king, but she was more immediately concerned to increase her support among the interlinked royal families of northwestern Europe. She travelled north to Hainault (a Flemish province now in southwestern Belgium) where the count of that region was amenable to the proposition that his daughter, Philippa, should marry the lord Edward; this young man of fourteen would, in all likelihood, be the next king of England. With Philippa’s dowry Isabella and Mortimer then raised troops for the coming invasion.
Fifteen hundred men took to their ships from the port of Dordrecht in Holland and, having endured storms at sea, landed at the haven of Orwell in Suffolk on 24 September 1326. There had been no attempt to harry or prevent them, and it is likely that Edward still believed that the invading force was to come from Normandy. The commander of the royal fleet along the eastern coast, in any case, allowed her to land without obstruction. He had in the past been an opponent of the king, and once more turned against him. It is also reported that English sailors refused to fight Isabella because of the hatred they felt for the Despensers.
Her progress was swift. Her supporters flocked to her, and the king’s secret enemies now rose in defiance of his rule. The queen moved on to Dunstable, her troops ransacking the lands of the Despensers on their way, where she learned that the king and the Despensers had in their panic fled from London and marched to the west; it is a measure of their confusion that they left most of their treasure behind. The king’s supporters now changed sides; one who remained loyal, the elder Despenser, the earl of Winchester, was executed in Bristol under the distraint of martial law. His son, Hugh, was captured and awaited trial.
Edward fled into Wales, with only a handful of supporters, and the last surviving record of his reign is an account book found at Caerphilly. He had nowhere to turn. He was pursued by Isabella’s men, and taken somewhere near Neath in the middle of November. From there he was escorted under armed guard to the royal castle of Kenilworth.
Hugh Despenser had refused food and drink since his capture, hoping perhaps to die before he was painfully killed. He was taken to Reading, where he was crowned with a ring of nettles; words of execration were cut into his skin. To the sound of drum and trumpets, and to the shrieks of the crowd, he was hanged from a gallows 50 feet (15 metres) high; while still alive he was hacked down and his intestines were burned before his face. Finally, he was beheaded.
Despenser had been executed in Reading rather than in London because the capital was in a feverish state. The citizens, having long been under the financial constraint of the king, exulted in their liberty and turned on any of the officials of the old regime they could find. Bishop Stapledon, once the royal treasurer, was dragged from his horse and butchered. Merchants and bankers, who had financed the king, were murdered.
Yet how were the victors to depose a lawful king? It was illegal and unprecedented. The king was supposed to be protected by the majesty of God. It would be difficult to lay hands on God’s anointed. At the beginning of 1327 a parliament was held – although, without the requisite presence of the king himself, it should more properly be called an assembly, or convention – in the name of the king’s son, the prince of Wales. He had been appointed as keeper of the realm for the duration of the king’s absence ‘abroad’, although of course Edward had got no further than Kenilworth Castle. Various acclamations and proclamations were made in favour of Isabella and Prince Edward, so that the power of London could be shown to be firmly with them. Two bishops were despatched to Kenilworth, but no record of their interview with the king survives; it is reported that he cursed them, and refused to return with them to London.
A second meeting of the assembly was then convened, under the control of Mortimer, at Westminster. In careful words he declared that the magnates of the land had deposed Edward, on the grounds that he had not followed his coronation oath and had fallen under the control of evil advisers; he had been bent on the destruction of the Church and of the magnates of the realm. Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford, then delivered a sermon with the theme that ‘where there is no true ruler, the people will be destroyed’. There seems to have been a general assent.
Another delegation visited the king at Kenilworth, where they gave him an ultimatum. Adam Orleton lectured him once more on the evils of his arrogant and unworthy reign before declaring that ‘his son should be substituted for him if he should give his assent’. The assent was crucial for lending at least a veneer of legality to the proceedings. It is claimed that the king, wearing a black gown, was consumed with tears and sighs; when he saw the delegation, he swooned in fear. On recovering he first refused to surrender his crown but then, after further argument, reluctantly assented. The threat, of course, was that he could be forcibly removed and someone else put in his place. The truth of the proceedings will never be known, but it can be assumed that the whole affair was messy, unpredictable and uncertain. Too many interests were at stake to make it otherwise. Some magnates and bishops, for example, must have doubted the legality of the whole exercise.
Yet it had come to pass. The dethroned king was taken from Kenilworth and consigned to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. He seems to have been treated well at first, but an uncrowned king can never be safe. Two attempts at rescue were made, one of them partially successful, and with the possibility of escape his fate was determined. It has been said that ‘between the prison and the grave of a king there is little space’. His death, in September 1327, has a quality of barbarity that has scarcely been equalled in the annals of England. It was said that he was slain with a poker, red-hot, inserted into his fundament. Or as Ranulf Higden put it in his Polychronicon, ‘he was sleyne with a hoote broche putte thro the secrete place posterialle’. Yet this may simply be a poetical touch, an allusion to his supposed sodomitical tendencies. His heart was taken from his body and placed in a silver vase, which was put later in Isabella’s own coffin. His body was viewed, at a distance, by the knights and magnates of Gloucestershire. At his funeral, in Gloucester Abbey, large oak barricades were built to hold back the crowds. None of his gaolers were ever convicted of his death; two were found innocent, one entered the service of Edward III, and the fourth was murdered in strange circumstances.