The Good, the Bad and the Unready (44 page)

Edward the
Martyr

Edward, king of England, c.962–78

When the sixteen-year-old Edward visited his half-brother Ethel-red the
UNREADY
at Corfe Castle, an unorthodox welcome party was waiting to greet him. Seeing him approach, the household staff gathered at the main gate and offered him a cup of refreshing mead. As he drank, they proceeded to stab him to death. Few missed the teenager, who is remembered largely for his cockiness and tantrums. Within a few years, however, some people were claiming that miracles were occurring alongside his bones, which had been buried without ceremony in a church in the small town of Wareham. Eager to oblige his people, Ethelred had Edward’s bones moved to Shaftesbury Abbey, and declared him a saint and martyr.

Henry the
Martyr

Henry VI, king of England, 1421–71

Henry was a devout Christian, but when he was stabbed to death while saying his prayers in the Tower of London he was killed not for his faith but for his crown. His was a tragic reign mired in rebellion, in which he mostly played the part of pawn to the ambitions of others. He was born at Windsor Castle, and succeeded to the thrones of both England and France before the age of one, when his father, Henry the
ENGLISH ALEXANDER
(
see
ENGLISH EPITHETS
), and his grandfather Charles the
SILLY
of France died within months of each other. Two of his uncles –
GOOD DUKE HUMPHREY
in England and John with the
LEADEN SWORD
in France – acted as regents until he assumed royal authority in 1442.

The dual monarchy proved too much for Henry, who preferred cultural pursuits to war. He was passionate about education and founded both Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, but when it came to military matters he simply did not have the fortitude or will necessary to rule in such turbulent times. In France, the revival of French patriotism under Joan of Arc, ‘the Fair Maid of Orleans’, led to England yielding nearly all its French territories. In England the success of the House of York in the Wars of the Roses resulted in Henry’s deposition, imprisonment and eventual murder.

Though Henry was assassinated, the epithet ‘the Martyr’ seems somewhat inappropriate. More apt is the soubriquet ‘Ill-Fated Henry’ found in Alexander Pope’s poem ‘Windsor-Forest’, which pleads:

Erik the
Meek

Erik III, king of Denmark, d.1146

Never able to forget the violent death of his uncle Erik the
MEMORABLE
, Erik ‘Lam’ was a docile, peace-loving monarch in an age when lambs like him were routinely slaughtered. Thankfully he collaborated with the hard-headed and strong-willed Archbishop Eskil, who helped him both in Church administration and in repulsing a number of invasions before encouraging him to retire to a monastery.

 
Erik the
Memorable

Erik II, king of Denmark, d.1137

Erik is never to be forgotten for his massacre of Prince Magnus and no fewer than five Danish bishops and sixty priests in the bloody battle of Fotevik of 1134. Erik, moreover, will always be recalled for his ensuing brutal three-year reign in which he murdered a brother and a nephew and quelled uprisings with barbaric efficiency. The exact year of his birth has escaped everyone’s memory, however.

Philaretos the
Merciful

Philaretos, Byzantine nobleman, 702–92

The life of Philaretos was written by his grandson, the monk Niketas of Amneia, as a Byzantine version of the biblical story of Job. Philaretos comes across as a mild-mannered and temperate person who shared food and money with the poor, even when he was down on his luck. His generous distribution of his possessions caused many people, including his wife and three children, to consider him a complete and utter fool.

Mary the
Mermaid

Mary, queen of Scotland, 1542–87

After the death of her first husband, Francis II of France, Mary was dubbed ‘the White Queen’ because, as prescribed by French custom, she wore only white for six weeks. A longer-lasting epithet, however, was that of ‘the Mermaid’ –a nickname that, in the sixteenth century, enjoyed an intriguing double meaning.

With her oval face, pale complexion and hazel eyes, Mary was an attractive teenager – so attractive that the courtier Pierre de Brantome wrote that ‘Her beauty shone like the light at mid-day’ As she grew older, she grew more handsome, and the tall, elegant, auburn-haired queen who could dance with such grace was so admired by all for her looks that she was deemed
as beautiful and seductive as a mermaid. However, it was not long before some were using the name ‘Mermaid’ as a term of contempt rather than approval.

Mary married her second cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darn-ley, pronouncing him the ‘lustiest and best proportionit lang man that sche had seen’. Darnley’s attributes were many – he was tall, slender and an accomplished musician; but so too were his vices – he was arrogant and addicted to sex and the bottle. Mary, looking for solace, met and fell in love with James Hepburn, the fourth earl of Bothwell.

Whether the two were directly involved with the death of Darnley, who was found smothered on the lawn outside his lodgings, has never been proved. There were many, however, who were sure of their guilt and placards soon appeared on Edinburgh’s streets, depicting the hare – Bothwell’s crest – surrounded by daggers, and Mary as a mermaid. Here the image of the mermaid was being used not in reference to beauty but in its other capacity as a common symbolic representation of a prostitute.

Charles the
Merry Monarch

Charles II, king of England, 1630–85

Although decidedly melancholic during his period of exile and susceptible to bouts of pessimism in his later life, Charles was renowned for his vivacious lifestyle and good humour, and his enjoyment of active pursuits borders on the legendary. He went for early morning swims, played tennis well into his fifties, enjoyed croquet and bowls in the park, loved hunting and adored going to the races. But his real passion, the thing that made him almost constantly merry, was women.

Barbara Palmer (later the duchess of Cleveland), Moll Davies, Winifred Wells (who we are told had the ‘carriage of a goddess and the physiognomy of a dreamy sheep’), Elizabeth Farley, Mary Knight, Mrs Jane Roberts (daughter of a clergyman), Hortense Mancini, Louise de Querouaille (whom he found it impossible
to restrain himself from fondling in public) and the irrepressible Eleanor the
WITTY
were just some of those who helped to satisfy the king’s immense sexual appetite. His fourteen acknowledged illegitimate children and at least thirteen mistresses were fodder for the wits of the day, including the dukes of Rochester and Buckingham – the former dubbing him a ‘mutton-eating king’, the latter referring to him as a man who could ‘sail a yacht, trim a barge and loved ducks, tarts and buttered buns’. Charles similarly became known as ‘Old Rowley’ after a stallion of that name in the royal stud noted for its many offspring.