British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 2: Henry II to Edward II

Henry II, the first Plantagenet monarch, was not only King of England, but lord of much of France as well. He inherited some regions and gained others through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. 

Historians generally rank Henry II highly for his legal and administrative reforms, but his reign was hardly trouble free. He conducted a long battle with the Church over the legal status of the clergy. The dispute led to the murder of his defiant Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in 1172, possibly at Henry's instigation. 

Henry did penance for that and survived the uproar. His biggest long-term problem was his family. His sons and wife mounted several rebellions against him, and he died of a stomach ulcer while still at war with them in 1189. More trouble awaited the two sons who succeeded him. 

First came Richard I, the Lion-Hearted. He is notable as the only king to have a statue erected outside Parliament. [Image: Richard I by Carlo Marichetti, 1856] 

Today, one has to wonder why. Romantic Victorians idolized him as a gallant knight. But he did a poor job as monarch. He spent only six months of his ten-year reign in England and treated it as a cash cow. 

The rest of the time he was crusading in the Holy Land or fighting for his lands in France. And he could be cruel. After the capture of Acre in modern day Israel, he ordered the massacre of 2700 Muslim prisoners. 

Returning from the Crusade, Richard was imprisoned in Germany for about a year, and held for a huge ransom that the English people paid. During a campaign in France a crossbow bolt struck his shoulder. Gangrene set in, and that was his end. He treated his wife badly and had no children. His brother John succeeded him.  

John was the only King John of England, because he was the Evil King John. Before that, he was the Evil Prince John of the Robin Hood stories. That was mostly, if not entirely, myth. But John did plot against his brother Richard to gain power and wealth. [Image: King John out Hunting]

Once John was king, he continued to behave badly. He alienated his barons by taxing them without their consent and seducing their wives. I'm not sure which angered them more. It all ended in 1215 at Runneymede Meadow in Surrey. Rebellious barons cornered John and forced him to sign Magna Carta, The Great Charter. 

The Great Charter demanded that the king respect the liberties of his subjects. That mainly meant the nobles. But the Charter did throw in some clauses designed to protect the Church and the "freemen" of the realm. 

Magna Carta effectively declared the principle that the king is not above the law. It also laid the basis for the later development of Parliament by demanding the king consult "the community of the realm" before levying new taxes. 

John soon repudiated the Charter and resumed war with the barons. He died on campaign in 1216. Rumors circulated that he had been poisoned or had died of a "surfeit of peaches." Dysentery, or the Bloody Flux, is another possibility.

John's successor was his nine-year old son. Henry III had the longest reign of any medieval monarch. He irritated the barons a lot and they mounted several revolts against him. At the Battle of Lewes in 1264, his enemies captured and imprisoned him for some months. His son Edward was captured as well, but he escaped, defeated the baronial army, and released his father. 

[Image: Henry III, funeral effigy, Westminster Abbey]

Edward I, who succeeded Henry III in 1272, was a tall fellow. One of his nicknames was Longshanks. Edward initiated important legal and administrative reforms. English historians of the Victorian era viewed him as a great monarch. The Welsh and Scots had a different opinion. 

Edward completed the English conquest of Wales and built some amazing castles there. He also tried to conquer Scotland. His Scottish campaigns earned Edward another nickname, the Hammer of Scots. It also led to the Scottish Wars of Independence and the meteoric rise of William Wallace, AKA, Braveheart. 

Wallace's army won a stunning victory over an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.* Things went badly for Wallace after that, however. 

Scottish enemies betrayed him to the English. Edward had him executed for "treason" in 1305. Contrary to the film Braveheart, Edward I did not die while Wallace was being disembowelled, but two years later. [Image: The Wallace Memorial at Smithfield in London, scene of his execution, and that of many other people and cattle]

[Image: Believed to be of Edward I, Westminster Abbey] 

Some historians have called his son Edward II the worst king in English history. Perhaps, but there was lots of competition for that title. He may have been gay, and that did not help his reputation. Unlike his vigorous father, he was denounced as lazy and incompetent. He lost a decisive battle to the Scots and Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, which led to Scottish independence. 

[Image: Edward II, from a 20th century ad for Player's Cigarettes. Not likely to be remotely accurate. It could be Jesus.]

His wife Isabella, a French princess, turned against him and took a noble lover. Along with barons disgruntled by Edward's behavior, they mounted a rebellion against him in 1327. They captured him and imprisoned him in Berkeley Castle. Not long after, they announced that he had died. 

Was Edward II murdered? Probably, but we will never know for sure. One highly unlikely tale claims he escaped, fled to the Continent, and became a hermit. A grislier story, more likely but hardly proved, is that his captors killed him by ramming a red-hot poker into his anus. In any case, he was no longer king.

The throne passed to his teenage son Edward III. He is best known for initiating a long series of wars with France, which historians labelled The Hundred Years War. More of that anon in Part 3.

Mel Gibson Fake History Alert: Stirling Bridge was pivotal to the strategy and outcome of the Battle of Stirling Bridge. This seems pretty obvious from the name of the battle. In fact, no bridge, very likely, no Scots victory. In Braveheart, the bridge is missing in action, along with Mel's brain. 

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