Helen Castor

A much bigger problem.

He is the anointed king.

He's now a prisoner.

If they know one thing about Edward is that you can't trust his word.

They can't put him back on the throne, not even if he's promising to be good.

But what are you going to do?

How do you remove a king?

They do it the best way they know how, which is they depose him.

They list all his many crimes and faults in Parliament and they say he has attacked his own people and therefore he must no longer be king.

They also get him to abdicate.

You need belt and braces if you possibly can.

And they declare that his young son, Edward III, is now king and he is crowned in February 1327.

But the problem now is you have an ex-king in prison, in custody.

And by September of 1327, already three plots to free him have been discovered and have been foiled.

This isn't a tenable situation.

Something has to be done.

Well, there are many theories, including a theory that he didn't die at all and was in fact spirited away to become a hermit in Germany.

I don't buy that.

As far as I can see from all the available evidence, on the night of the 21st of September 1327, Edward dies conveniently, without explanation, in his prison cell.

The red hot poker.