HOW TO KILL A KING

On the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, five medieval attempts to murder a reigning monarch

It’s Election Day in the US, and it’s Bonfire Night in the UK. One is a day for choosing a new leader. The other is a night to remember the occasion in 1605 when a group of plotters led by Guy Fawkes tried to blow an anointed ruler and his lords to kingdom come.

I have no special comment to make (here, at least) about the election. But I have been thinking about that day in 1605 when James VI & I nearly came to his reward.

Because although the Gunpowder Plot is probably the most famous time that anyone took a pop at a reigning English monarch, it was by no means the only time. Indeed, in my own backyard of the Middle Ages, people tried to kill the king surprisingly often.

Below are my five favourite English medieval regicide attempts.

Happy November 5th. American friends: may the best of the bad bunch win.

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The bedchamber break-in

In September 1238, King Henry III was in Woodstock, his mind occupied with various tricky matters of state. One day, a man named approached the king in the street and tried to wrestle with him, demanding that he be given the Crown. Since the man appeared to be insane, Henry demurred, but stopped his bodyguards from roughing him up.

This proved to be an error. Later that night, the same man broke into the royal palace at Woodstock armed with a knife, and found his way into the royal chamber. Fortunately for Henry, he was spending the night with Queen Eleanor, and not available to be stabbed in his own bed. One of the queen’s servants was still awake, saying her prayers by candlelight; she raised the alarm and the intruder was arrested.

The intruder was not, apparently, a lone wolf. Under torture he admitted to having been sent by an Irish roughneck/thug/gangster called William Marsh, who was wanted for the murder of a clerk, committed three years previously in Westminster.

Marsh was at that point in hiding, making a living as a pirate in the Bristol Channel. But he was picked up in 1242 and put to death by hanging and quartering. The assassin had already been executed: torn apart by horses at Coventry. In the aftermath of the murder attempt, Henry also decided to have bars installed on his bedroom windows.

Poisoning with dead men’s arms

In May 1439 one of the weirdest cases ever brought before a medieval court was heard by royal justices in Kent. It concerned a mole-catcher* named Robert Goodgroom, who said he had learned of a plot to poison King Henry VI, Humphrey duke of Gloucester and William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in order to bring to an end the Hundred Years War. The plan involved making a potion out of herbs and a dead man’s arm stored in a cheesehouse. The story, tangled as it was, amounts to this: