Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II Read Free Page B

nineteenth-century English editor of medieval manuscripts, published it in the second volume of his edition of
The Chronicles of Edward II
. Commenting on the letter, Stubbs says; ‘It must have been the work of someone sufficiently well acquainted with the circumstances of the King’s imprisonment.’ Nevertheless he dismissed it as improbable because of inconsistencies in matters of detail. Stubbs’ spiritual successor, the great Manchester historian. T. F. Tout, was not so definitive: ‘It is a remarkable document, so specious and detailed, and bearing none of those marks by which the gross medieval forgery can genuinely be detected. Yet who can believe it if it is true? Was it simply a fairy tale? The confession of a madman? Was it a cunning effort of Edward III’s enemies to discredit the conqueror of Crecy?’
    In 1901, an Italian scholar, Constantino Nigra, published the letter with a detailed scholarly analysis. He assigned it to around 1336–7, the earliest possible date. Nigra laid great emphasis on the fact that the Genoese family of Fieschi, especially Manuel and his brother Carlo, were well known in Avignon and England and that the two Italian towns mentioned in his letter – Milasci and Cecime – were also very familiar to Fieschi. Nigra stresses the status and knowledge of Fieschi and maintains that his letter should be taken seriously. Finally, he points out that the letter is signed as ‘Your Manuel Fieschi, notary of the Lord Pope’, not ‘Fieschi Bishop, or Bishop-elect, of Vercelli’, dating its contents before January 1343.
    In 1924, Anna Benedetti, professor of English Languageand Literature at Palermo, published her work,
Eduardo II
. Benedetti, following Nigra and the English writer H. D. Rawnsley, identified the castle of ‘Milasci’ as Melazzo de Acqui. Melazzo is a small castle, which stands on a hill top overlooking a river some forty-five miles north of Genoa. The castle has now been turned into a tourist attraction with renovated buildings and shady courtyards above well laid-out gardens. On the walls of one of the castle corridors are two huge plaques regarding ‘Edward II, Plantaganet King of England’. The first plaque recounts how the English King was deposed from the throne in 1327, escaped from the murderous Thomas Gurney in Berkeley Castle, visited Pope John XXII in Avignon and later travelled to Melazzo. A second plaque commemorates Fieschi’s letter, pointing out how he was a contemporary of both Edward II and Edward III, and where the letter could be found. Of course, both plaques were put up long after Professor Germain published the letter and after the Italian historian Nigra had identified ‘Milasci’ as Melazzo.
    Benedetti also identified the castle of Cecime as Cecime Sopra Voghera. There is no castle at Cecime, only a small fortified mountain village, with walls enclosing an area of no more than nine acres. The village is built on a promontory overlooking the river Staffora, about fifty miles north-east of Genoa. Benedetti argued, quite rightly, that a hermit like Edward II could not live in such an enclosed area without provoking considerable interest. She does point out that near Cecime, high in the Appenines, is the monastery of St Alberto of Butrio, which can only be approached by country trackways and is often referred to as being at Cecime. This then must be the ‘hermitage’ referred to in Fieschi’s letter. St Alberto’s, eventoday, is solitary and isolated. In the fourteenth century it could only have been reached by narrow paths, virtually impassable in winter, a suitable hiding place for a fugitive king. Its flourishing Benedictine monastery was abandoned in the sixteenth century and most of its records have now disappeared. However, it is still used today by a religious confraternity, and the monastery owns three Romanesque churches. In one of these, Benedetti and others argue, lies the tomb of the ‘hermit king’, Edward II.
    On the west side