The Death of Kings
Monday, March 31st, 2008
It’s an irony of royal life that though our kings and queens may have been born in Westminster, Scotland, Germany, France or elsewhere, a good number of them ended their days right here – in Tower Hamlets.
With a room at the Tower, a number of them ended their days a little sooner than they would have planned.
Now a new book digs into the medical history of our monarchs. The Death of Kings takes a detailed, grisly, but fascinating look at the causes, that saw off some of our rulers.
Since William I built the Tower of London, it had become the most select jail in the land, housing not only enemies of the ruler but rulers who had fallen from power themselves.
Queen to be, Elizabeth I was famously incarcerated in the Tower by her sister, Queen Mary. In the 1550s, England was in the midst of a religious schism, as Mary tried to re-institute Catholicism as the established faith of the land.
Wyatt Rebellion
Elizabeth, meanwhile, faithfully followed her father Henry VIII’s lead, as founder of the Church of England. She became closely identified with plots such as the Wyatt Rebellion, which aimed to overthrow Mary and continue with England’s Protestant Reformation.
Mary had Elizabeth locked in the Tower for two months until she relented and put her under house arrest in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
Another of Mary’s possible rivals was less fortunate. Her cousin, Lady Jane Grey was seen as a possible rallying figure for angry Protestants. Following the Wyatt Rebellion, many courtiers called for her death – Mary reluctantly agreed.
First though she tried to save Jane’s soul by begging her to convert to Catholicism. Jane, in her comfortable Tower apartments, reportedly enjoyed theological debates with Dr Feckenham, the Abbot of Westminster, but refused the offer. She was executed on Tower Green on February 12, 1554.
Eighty years before, one of Elizabeth’s predecessors as monarch had not managed to escape the Tower alive.
Melancholy
Henry VI had always had problems as King. He inherited a degree of mental instability from his mother, Catherine de Valois. He had attacks of melancholy and depression that lasted months, in one case from August 10, 1453 to Christmas the following year.
The apathetic king showed no reaction upon the birth of his son and had mixed fortunes in his battles with the House of York, at one stage being captured by the enemy. His powerful wife Queen Margaret, leading the royal army, managed to free her hapless husband with a victory at the Battle of St Albans.
But his freedom was short lived. Edward of York advanced on London and was proclaimed Edward IV - Henry was sent to the Tower in 1461. Edward soon fell out with his lieutenant, Warwick, and fled to Calais. Henry was free, and King, once more.
Edward returned to England in 1471 and, at the battle of Tewkesbury, the redoubtable Margaret was finally defeated. Edward VI returned to the Tower for good.
Stabbed
It is most likely that Henry was stabbed to death by his guards, on Edward’s orders. His body was disinterred in 1910, and medical experts took a new look at his case.
The book holds a grisly fascination – William II dying in battle, Henry V of cancer of the rectum, Henry III of a stroke, and Mary II of smallpox. Our rulers, though grand in life, in death are as human and vulnerable as the rest of us.
The Death of Kings:
a medical history of the Kings and Queens of England
by Clifford Brewer; published Abson Books £7.95.
