Top 5 Most Horrible and Gruesome Deaths in Medieval Royal History

By Chris Livemore

There was no way that I was leaving this blog entry to Jack, Charlotte, Fire Pud or Sir Percy. This one is a subject that I've always found fascinating in a gruesome king of way. If you were part of the Royal Family in medieval England you could actually die a pretty gruesome, brutal death. I enjoyed researching this one.

Being a medieval king was a surprisingly dangerous job. You had wars to fight, nobles who might change sides and kill you, relatives who wanted your throne, which meant killing you, and diseases that nobody really understood but would kill you. There were no antibiotics, no intensive care and, if somebody stabbed you when you were on the toilet, nobody was calling an ambulance. You were absolutely buggered.

Quite a few kings died in battle, others were just outright murdered. And a few died in ways that sound so ridiculous gruesome that you might reasonably assume somebody made them up afterwards. It is very likely that they were! That is the slightly awkward thing about medieval history, a lot of it was made up, people were very capable of recording history as they had seen it, but those same people were very capable of lying their pants off, repeating rumours of political propaganda.

That doesn't make them any less interesting. Infact, I would say the opposite. It is one of the reasons why medieval history is one of the most compelling parts of British history. So, with that warning about the made up aspect of medieval history out in the open, here are five of the most gruesomely, horrible royal deaths in medieval English.

Number Five: William the Conqueror (King of England, died 1087)

Cause of death: a riding accident, followed by a very unpleasant funeral. William the Conqueror was not a man who was particularly accustomed to losing. He didn't really lose. He conquered England in 1066, defeated Harold Godwinson, built castles all over the country and spent much of his reign dealing with people who thought they could probably do a better job of running England than he could. They didn't last very long.

In 1087, while campaigning in France, William suffered the injury that would kill him. The town of Mantes had been captured and was being burned. According to legend, William's horse was startled by the flames and threw him forward onto the pommel of his saddle. The impact badly injured his abdomen, when the heavy pommel of his saddle violently struck his stomach.

Medieval accounts describe a serious internal injury, and later versions became increasingly graphic - he ruptured his internal organs, leading to a slow, agonising decline filled with internal bleeding and infection. He died two weeks later in Rouen on 9 September 1087.

Then things got considerably less dignified...quickly. And here is the part that has never made the national curriculum in British schools. His body had to be taken to Caen for burial. According to the chroniclers, the journey did not go particularly well for that body. Due to summer heat, travel delays, and poor embalming, William's corpse began to decompose rapidly before reaching Caen.

Then came the funeral. William was an extremely large man, and the stone sarcophagus prepared for him was apparently too small. The people responsible for the burial tried to make him fit anyway. Use your imagination here, I did say that it was going to become less dignified.

The chroniclers tell us that when William's swollen, bloated body was forced into the stone coffin, the abdomen burst and produced such an appalling smell that made people flee from the church. It is one of those stories where you desperately want to know that the chronicler exaggerated, but this was the medieval times.

It would have been gruesome and not the best way to go out for the last man to have conquered England.

Number Four: Edmund Ironside (King of England, died 1016)

Cause of death: officially uncertain, but appears somebody hid underneath his toilet to murder him! Edmund Ironside had a rather better claim to the nickname than most medieval kings. He was a powerful warrior, fought the Danish invasion of England and gave Cnut a serious amount of trouble during 1016.

He became king in April but was dead by the end of November that same year!

Anglo-Saxon sources simply record his death on 30 November 1016. Other medieval accounts don't agree on the circumstances either. Then, later on, things got weird. One of the most spectacular versions comes from Henry of Huntingdon, writing more than a century after Edmund's death (FYI anyone writing a 100+ years post-death always causes eyebrows to raise!).

But according to dear Henry, Edmund went to the toilet one night to answer a call of nature. Waiting underneath him was an assassin. The man had concealed himself in the pit beneath the toilet and, when Edmund sat down, stabbed upwards with a knife. Twice. In the privates. The assassin then apparently left the weapon inside the king and ran away.

Other writers came up with different versions. Geoffrey Gaimar told a similar story involving a crossbow and a rather ingenious mechanical contraption hidden in the toilet, or should I say privy?

So we have several medieval explanations for Edmund's death, and they don't exactly agree. The privy story is therefore not something we can treat as complete fact, but for the purpose of this blog we will. Edmund may have been murdered, he also may have died from illness. We don't know, but somewhere along the line, the story of England's warrior king being assassinated while sitting on the toilet became part of medieval history.

And, frankly, if any element of this one is true then it will be very difficult to beat.

Number Three: Richard I, the Lionheart (King of England, died 1199)

Cause of death: a crossbow bolt and a wound that turned gangrenous. Richard the Lionheart was one of the most formidable warriors ever to sit on the English throne - arguably the most famous person to emerge from medieval England. A quick recap if you haven't - he became King in 1189, he fought in the Third Crusade, he defeated Saladin's army at Arsuf and he captured Acre. He spent much of his life either fighting somebody or travelling somewhere to fight somebody.

And then, just over 10 years after his coronation, in 1199, he was killed by a crossbow bolt while attacking a rather unimpressive castle in France.The castle was Châlus-Chabrol in the Limousin. Richard was besieging it because its lord, Adémar de Limoges, had possession of treasure which Richard believed belonged to him. The castle was not exactly Constantinople. It was a relatively small fortress with a tiny garrison and should not have resulted in the death of England's most famous kings!

Richard was confident enough to inspect the siege works without wearing his full body armour. Any kings reading this, that is a huge mistake, always wear full body armour when inspecting a siege. Crossbow bolts were being fired from the walls. One of the defenders apparently caught Richard's attention because he was using a frying pan as an improvised shield (only in France).

Richard was reportedly amused by the sight, but then another crossbowman fired. This time the bolt hit Richard in the shoulder, close to the neck. The identity of the shooter is uncertain. Different medieval writers give different names, including Pierre Basile, who was a boy, John Sabroz and Bertrand de Gourdon. The frying pan and the crossbowman have also become mixed together in later retellings, but the vast majority of articles on this subject place the blame on the boy. So, that is what I am going to do.

Yep, Richard the Lionheart was very likley killed by a boy. The most fearsome leader in English history was killed by a boy. I could say that a few more times to really let that hit home, but I wont. Well actually, technically, the infection and gangreen that resulted from the king trying to remove the bolt himself caused his death.

Richard knew he was dying and asked for the crossbowman to be brought before him. According to some accounts, the young man said he had shot Richard because the king had killed his father and two brothers. Richard pardoned him. He even ordered that the man be released. He died on 6 April 1199, eleven days after being wounded. It is believed that Richard's mercenary captain Mercadier ignored the king's pardon and had the crossbowman killed after the king's death. Some versions say he was flayed alive before being hanged - as my three-year old son would say..."ouchie!"

Number Two: Edward II (King of England, died 1327)

Cause of death: disputed but let's explore the famous red-hot poker story is almost certainly more complicated than you've been told. Edward II had a miserable reign. His military reputation was poor. His relationships with powerful favourites caused repeated political crises. His barons rebelled against him, his wife Isabella of France eventually turned against him.

By 1327, Edward had been forced to surrender the throne to his son, Edward III. He was imprisoned at Berkeley Castle. And then he died. Officially, Edward died at Berkeley on 21 September 1327. But what happened next is where the story becomes really interesting and very gruesome, it also involved a red-hot iron, a backside and some internal organs. Cripes.

The famous version is one of the most horrifying stories in English history. According to later chroniclers, Edward's killers entered his room and murdered him using a red-hot iron. But there was a problem. If you murdered a former king, you didn't particularly want everyone to notice that you had murdered him. So, according to the story, the killers devised a method that would leave no obvious wounds on the outside of his body...

A horn was inserted into his backside. A red-hot iron was then pushed through the horn. The intention, supposedly, was to burn Edward's internal organs without leaving obvious marks on the body.

It is an absolutely horrific story. It is also not something we can definitely say happened but we probably should say it happened. The middle ages were horrible. The earliest accounts of Edward's death are much less specific. Some say simply that he died. Others suggest suffocation or strangulation. The red-hot poker story appeared in later chronicles, and the details became increasingly elaborate.

Geoffrey le Baker, writing in the middle of the fourteenth century, gave one particularly gruesome version involving a red-hot iron and the burning of Edward's internal organs. There is another problem. Why would the murderers use such an elaborate and uncertain method when suffocation would have been much simpler?

That question has led many historians to doubt the story. It was the medieval period and to be honest anything went, especially when red hot pokers were involved. However, there is even a separate historical thread of thought that suggests Edward may have survived Berkeley Castle altogether and lived elsewhere under another identity. That theory remains controversial, and most historians do not accept it.

So what actually happened?

We don't know. Edward almost certainly died in 1327. Whether he was murdered is still debated.

And whether somebody really killed him with a red-hot poker remains one of the great, and most gruesome, medieval historical mysteries. One thing is reasonably safe to say. If the red-hot poker story is true, it was an absolutely appalling way to die. If it isn't true, it is still an extraordinary example of how quickly a medieval king's death could become a legend.

Number One: George, Duke of Clarence (Brother of Edward IV, died 1478)

Cause of death: officially an execution. Tradition says he was drowned in a barrel of wine. There is one small problem with putting George, Duke of Clarence at number one. He wasn't a king.

He was the younger brother of King Edward IV and the elder brother of the future Richard III. But who cares?! He was a royal and this death cannot be overlooked in any blog about medieval deaths that are gruesome.

Let's set the scene, George had spent years making life difficult for his brother. He joined rebellions. He switched sides. He allied himself with the Earl of Warwick. He fought against Edward. Then he switched back. He was not the greatest sibling.

Later, relations between the brothers deteriorated again, and in 1478 George was convicted of treason. Parliament passed a bill of attainder against him. He was executed privately in the Tower of London on 18 February 1478. And this is where the official record ends up being much less exciting than the actual story.

Whilst we do not know exactly how George was killed, the famous story is that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. A butt was a large wine cask, and Malmsey was a sweet, fortified wine. According to tradition, George was given the choice of how he would die and selected the wine. There is no good contemporary evidence proving that this happened, but who needs contemporary evidence?!

It is a story that appeared after his death and became attached to his name. But what a story.

Imagine the scene. A royal prince. Convicted of treason. Locked in the Tower. And, according to tradition, offered a choice of how he would meet his end. He chooses a barrel of wine. Not a sword.

Not an axe. Not a rope. But wine.

There is also a pleasingly grim possibility that the story may have been helped along by George's reputation for enjoying the bottle. But again, we don't know. What we do know is that George was privately executed in the Tower but there is nothing official that suggests he died in a barrel of Malmsey. So if you see somebody confidently telling you that the official records prove George of Clarence was drowned in Malmsey, they are getting slightly ahead of their evidence.

Still, the story has survived for more than five centuries. Shakespeare helped make it famous. And if it isn't true, somebody in the late fifteenth century came up with one of the most memorable execution stories in English history. George may not have been a king. But he certainly left the historical record with a very unusual final drink.

Inspired by the history behind The Good Knight? Join the Shield Wall for medieval history, gruesome royal deaths, dad reading tips and the occasional story involving a very unfortunate toilet. Visit: https://www.thegoodknightbook.com