The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

EDWARD II

Edward II was King of England from 1307 to 1327. Edward II had few of the qualities that made a successful medieval king. Edward surrounded himself with his favourites, and the barons, feeling excluded from power, rebelled. Throughout his reign, different baronial groups struggled to gain power and control the King. The nobles' ordinances of 1311, which attempted to limit royal control of finance and appointments, were counteracted by Edward. Large debts - many of them inherited - and the Scots' victory at Bannockburn by Robert the Bruce in 1314 made Edward more unpopular. Edward's victory in the civil war of 1321 to 1322 and such measures as the 1326 ordinance which was a protectionist measure which set up compulsory markets or staples in fourteen English, Welsh and Irish towns for the wool trade, did not lead to any compromise between the King and the nobles.

Edward was a homosexual, and neglected his wife, Isabella the sister of the king of France, and finally, in 1326, Isabella led an invasion against her husband which was widely supported by the English aristocracy which had little time for the homosexual Edward. In 1327 Edward was made to renounce the throne in favour of his son Edward III (the first time that an anointed king of England had been dethroned since Ethelred in 1013). Edward II fled to Wales where he was imprisoned in Berkelet castle. While there Edward II was attacked by Isabella's men, and was murdered by having a red hot poker thrust into his anus - a death deemed suitable for a sodomite. Edward's champion, and probable lover, had earlier been arrested in England by the victorious Isabella, his penis and testicles cut off, and then executed for having homosexual relations with the king.
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