Can good come of evil? Visit Gloucester Cathedral
PAUL JOHNSON
Ishould be very surprised if Prince Charles turns out to be bisexual or even to have had a homosexual experience, though the fact that he neglected one of the most beautiful and delightful women of the age — 'an angel in human form' as I often called her — certainly tells against him. But queer? No, otherwise he would be much more interested in uniforms. His chief weakness is not sexual deviation but a quite extraordinary propensity for getting himself into messes. It is a deformation professionelle of heirs-apparent, springing from arrogance and vanity. Heirs-apparent, as opposed to heirs-presumptive, are flattered out of their senses from the cradle onwards, and hardly any make successful monarchs. I once drew up for Princess Diana a list of all such English sovereigns to illustrate this point, showing her the real baddies or failures like Henry III, Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, George IV etc. The exceptions, I said, were heirs-apparent who, for a variety of historical reasons — exile, civil war, disputed claims and so on — had experienced a difficult childhood and youth, sometimes in fear of their lives. Such were Richard!, Edward III, Henry V and dear old Charles II, who at least 'never went on his travels again'. The Princess was fascinated by this history lesson. 'Not the sort of thing you get at school,' she said.
She was particularly interested in the case of Edward II, the details of whose life appeared to come as a complete surprise to her. Edward I, his father, was one of the greatest warrior knights of Christendom, with a distinguished career as a Crusader and as the conqueror of Wales. He was the greatest castle-builder in English history, not excluding the Conqueror, and was 'The Hammer of the Scots'. He stood for all the virtues held in most respect among the ruling class of Christendom, was tall and handsome and notably philoprogenitive.
Edward II, by contrast, was a funny-looking fellow, to judge from the one portrait of him which might have been done from life. He may or may not have been a sodomite, but he had close emotional friendships with men, chiefly French, and it was widely believed among the stiffer element in the nobility that he was a `pathic'. Moreover, he consorted with what is now known as 'rough trade', men below his class: craftsmen, artists, actors and musicians, `celebs' and similar riff-raff. None of this would have mattered — tough guys like William Rufus and Richard the Lionheart got away with worse—but Edward lost the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the worst disaster England ever suffered at the hands of the Scots. More follies followed, and in 1327 Edward II was deposed and his son Edward III was the first king of England to rule by parliamentary title, an important precedent.
A deposed monarch was virtually a dead man (as Richard II was later to discover). Edward was moved to Berkeley Castle, whose beautiful but grim silhouette still rises like a ghostly phantasmagoria from the misty Severn water meadows. Its owner, Thomas, Lord Berkeley, had been a victim of the ex-king's injustice and had bitter scores to settle. His official keepers were Sir Thomas Gurney and Sir John Maltravers. Despite their close custody of the prisoner, an attempt to rescue him came near to succeeding, and in consequence Edward was thrown into the castle pit, where the decomposing carcasses of cattle dead of the murrain were hurled, the hope being he would die of asphyxiation or `natural causes'. But he was strong and survived, his body covered in filth, his hair matted. In September 1327 one William Ogle, emissary of the ruling faction, was sent to Berkeley with verbal orders. Two weeks later it was announced: Edward had died 'in the course of nature'. There were no marks of violence on the body.
The most plausible explanation of the exking's death was provided later by John de Trevisa, who was born in the little town of Berkeley at the foot of the castle and was a child at the time. He went into holy orders and served Thomas, Lord Berkeley, as his chaplain. If anyone was in a position to learn the truth and to tell it without risk of prosecution for murder, he was. He translated into English Higden's famous historical work, the P4cluonicon, and he interpolated into the text the sentence that the deposed sovereign was killed 'with a hoote broche putte thro the secret place posterialle'.
The atrocious murder of Edward II had a strange, important and noble consequence. None of the monasteries hard by Berkeley, for fear of his enemies then ruling the country, was willing to take in the dead man and give him a Christian burial. But Abbot John Thokby of Gloucester Abbey was a tough old bird who feared no man. The Chronicle of Gloucester Abbey related: 'Abbot Thokby fetched him from Berkeley Castle in his own chariot, sumptuously adorned and painted with the arms of our monastery, and brought him to Gloucester, where the Abbot and all the convent received him honourably in their
solemn robes, with a procession of the whole city, and buried him in our church in the North Aisle, hard by the same altar.'
Nor was that all. A few years later his heir Edward had the tomb, which is still there, embellished with a striking effigy in alabaster and covered with a gossamer-fine canopy. It is a superb piece of work — vaut le voyage. This episode had an important bearing on the history of English art In those days an anointed king killed in mysterious circumstances tended to receive the popular accolade of martyrdom. Within a few years, the tomb became a shrine, 'so that', says the Abbey chronicle, 'so great was the concourse of people to our city that it could scarcely contain the multitudes of people who flocked there'.
These pilgrims, and the silver and gold they brought with them as votive offerings, and the miraculous cures soon reported, made Gloucester Abbey within two decades one of the richest shrines in England, almost on a level with St Thomas Becket's at Canterbury and St Cuthbert's at Durham. As a result, under Thokby's successor, John Wigmore, a notable student of architecture and fine craftsmanship, the Abbey launched one of the most ambitious building programmes in English ecclesiastical history. This was the beginning of what we now call Perpendicular architecture, the first true English native style. The work at Gloucester coincided with the Hundred Years' War, a repudiation of all things French and an exaltation of Englishness. The Statute of Pleadings forbade the use of French in English courts of law, laying down that all cases were to be presented, defended and judged 'solely in the English tongue' and 'recorded as such'. The new French flamboyant style, just emerging in the Ile de France, was ignored, and we developed our glorious Perpendicular instead. Indeed, Gloucester, with the offerings to Edward's tomb, built the largest, airiest and most magnificent window in Europe to celebrate the great English victory at Crecy, adorned with the heraldic shields of many of the paladins who distinguished themselves in that famous action. Gloucester Abbey, later made a cathedral by Henry VIII, was transformed and glorified, becoming one of the ten greatest buildings of mediaeval England. The style it fostered was England's first and, many would say, most magnificent contribution to the art and science of architecture. So, in the wisdom and providence of Almighty God, vice produced virtue, and wickedness art of superlative quality.
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