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, as feisty a queen as ever lived. 

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. Today, one has to wonder why. Romantic Victorians idolized him as a gallant knight. But he was a wretched monarch. He spent only six months of his ten-year reign in England and treated the country as a cash cow. The rest of the time he was crusading in the Holy Land or fighting to defend his lands in France. And he was 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, mythical, although it rested in part on John's bad reputation. John did plot against his brother Richard to gain power and wealth. 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," which is better than a surfeit of lampreys. 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, 58 years. He spent huge sums on building projects and other schemes. He irritated the barons a lot and they mounted several revolts against him. At the Battle of Lewes in 1264, a baronial army led by he Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, captured and imprisoned him for some months. His son Edward was captured as well, but he escaped, defeated the baronial army, killed de Montfort, and released his father. Edward was a man of action. 

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 idolized him as a great monarch, perhaps the greatest, of the medieval period. The Welsh and Scots had and have a different opinion. 

Edward completed the English conquest of Wales and built some amazing castles there, which did have the virtue of being a modern tourist attraction. 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, "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. 

Some historians have called his son and heir Edward II the worst king in English history. Perhaps, but there was lots of competition for that title. The fact that he was likely gay did not help his reputation, especially with the Victorian historians. Unlike his hyperactive father, he was considered lazy and incompetent. He lost a decisive battle to the Scots and Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, which led to Scottish independence. 

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 obsessed with neatness labelled The Hundred Years War. 

*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. 

Cutting up at London's Smithfield Market

Smithfield, the site of London’s ancient meat market, lies just north of the old city walls. It was an open air market for centuries. The image above shows the old open air market just before it closed down to make way for the massive Victorian structure that occupies the site today. That building, part of which is pictured below, opened in the 1860s. Smithfield is the largest meat market in the UK and one of the largest in Europe.

For centuries, cattle, sheep, poultry, swine, and horses have been brought from all across Britain to feed and transport London. The name of a nearby street, Cowcross, proclaims the final path that many a beast took to its place of execution. (Image: Cowcross)

After slaughter, their carcasses were tossed into the nearby Fleet River, or Fleet Ditch as it became known, as the river congealed into a gooey, foul-smelling mass of animal remains and human wastes, an open sewer of ill fame.

The River Fleet was covered over in the 18th and 19th centuries and now runs below ground under Farringdon Rd. and Farringdon St., exiting into the Thames at Blackfiars Bridge.

Smithfield was not only a place for animal slaughter. People were chopped up and otherwise disposed of there as well.  The most famous, thanks to Mel Gibson, was William Wallace, AKA “Braveheart” who was hung, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield for having had the balls to defend his country from the rapacious Edward I. In one of its many errors, the film shows Edward dying at the same as Wallace was being executed. In fact, Edward died two years later. (Below: Memorial to Wallace across from Smithfield, on the outer wall of St, Bartholomew's [Bart's] Hospital) 

In the 1550's, “Bloody Mary” Tudor had several hundred Protestants burned here for their refusal to abandon their "heresy."

In 1381, the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, Wat Tyler, was treacherously killed here by the mayor of London while parleying over the peasant’s demands. The peasants were aroused by a new tax, a poll (head) tax, to pay for an imperialistic war against France, the so-called Hundred Years War. Although Tyler was killed and the revolt subsided, the government abolished the tax. 

Six hundred years later, Margaret Thatcher, defied history and tried to introduce a poll tax in the UK. As in 1381, the people revolted again, a revolt that helped lead to her ultimate downfall.

This Church is a Film Star: London's St. Bartholomew's

The Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London is probably familiar to you.  Even if you have never been there in person, you almost surely have seen it on the big or little screen. It has been used in many popular films and TV shows, including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, Amazing Grace, The Other Boleyn Girl, Richard II, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. 

The church's stardom helps explain why it was the first parish church in England to charge tourists an entrance fee.  For a parish church it is quite large, which may explain its attraction to film-makers. Being in the heart of London doesn't hurt either.

The church, which stands just to the south of the famous meat market of Smithfield, dates from 1123, when a man of some wealth named Rahere, founded the Priory of St. Bartholomew, with an attached hospital. Rahere had recovered miraculously from a fever while on a pilgrimage to Rome, and in a dream the saint instructed him to set up a monastic foundation, or so said Rahere. 

The hospital, the oldest in London, is next door inside a high wall. The wall contains a memorial to William Wallace, Braveheart, who was executed for treason nearby, one of many people who met that fate here, including the heretics/martyrs burned under Bloody Mary. 

A statue of Henry VIII, father of Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I, stands over the entrance gate to the hospital, legs splayed, looking very kingly indeed. The statue was his reward for dissolving the monastic foundations and giving the hospital to the City. 

Since Henry’s time the hospital has been a secular establishment, known affectionately as “Bart’s.”  Another interesting and just as old church sits inside the hospital walls known as St. Bartholomew the Less. The “Less” is not a put-down, but was coined to distinguish it from its larger namesake nearby. Both are part of the same parish of the Church of England today.

How convenient. In one little place, you might be cured of illness (not likely), executed (more likely), and given the necessary rites to speed your way to heaven (unlikely).

Just to the south of Bart's Hospital lies the former site of London’s notorious Newgate Prison, now replaced by the Central Criminal Court. But that is another story.