They made him watch Despenser’s execution. His mother and Mortimer were determined that the new, though as yet uncrowned, King should witness every grisly moment of the traitor’s death. Show yourself to be stern, they ordered him, so the people will know that you are a different man to your father.
“Go to meet your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade! Go to receive your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal,” Sir William Trussell said as he pronounced sentence on Hugh Despenser at his trial at Hereford. Edward had not been present at the trial, but had heard of the ill treatment Despenser received from his captors.
How he had been humiliated on the way to Hereford, tied onto the meanest horse that could be found, dressed in a rough working man’s tabard painted with the arms of his House, and displayed as a public laughing stock along the road. How the people had gathered to jeer and spit at him, clashing cymbals and blowing trumpets in mockery as he passed by. How he had been captured and guarded by Lancaster’s men-at-arms, a dubious gang of mounted archers in green livery commanded by a notorious felon.
Edward had seen Eustace Folville, a lean, sharp-faced rascal, and considered him and his followers to be gallows bait, raised above their station by his mother’s corrupt and shameless bed-mate.
He was aware of all this, yet did nothing to intervene. His main concern was for his father, who was conducted to Hereford in gentler state but even tighter custody. The boy king was quite intelligent enough to realise that he had conspired, of his own free will, to bring about his father’s humiliation and deposition. He also knew that he must see the grisly process through to the end, and that the guilt would stay with him all the days of his life.
Thus he sat beside his mother and Mortimer, a man whom he loathed with steadily growing intensity, as Despenser was brought out from gaol to endure the agonies of execution. In a last desperate bid to cheat his enemies, the former royal favourite had refused food and water since being captured. The attempt had failed and he still lived, though he was delirious and barely able to stand.
The massed wolf-pack of the lords and commoners in the market place at Hereford sent up a great howling as Despenser appeared, surrounded by a strong body of men-at-arms to prevent him being torn to pieces. That was the job of the executioner.
“Tyrant! Renegade! Traitor!”
Edward glanced at his mother, wondering if she would gloat in public at the downfall of her greatest enemy, but she wore her glacial expression, carefully silent and impassive.
Mortimer was different, red-faced and grinning as he slopped down wine and waved at his supporters in the crowd. Seeing King Edward III studying him, he responded with a conspiratorial wink.
The King looked away, bile rising in his throat, and watched the condemned man being led through the streets. Despenser had been stripped naked but for a loincloth, with a crown of nettles placed on his head and his skin roughly tattooed with verses from Scripture warning of the perils of arrogance. Edward suspected that these theatrical touches were Mortimer’s idea, and despised the man even more.
What followed would give the young man nightmares for many years.
Despenser was strung up and hanged until he was half-strangled, then cut down and strapped to a towering ladder, fifty feet high, so that the eager spectators might witness his real suffering.
“It is ill-done,” said the King, loud enough for Mortimer to hear him, as Despenser’s body was split open by the executioner, exposing his innards. To the marvel of the spectators, he endured his suffering in silence, and some remarked that he may have passed out with the pain.
Mortimer reached over and gripped the back of Edward’s neck. “Watch,” he whispered, his warm, stinking wine-breath hissing in the young man’s ear.
Despenser did not maintain his silence for long. He uttered a ghastly, inhuman wail as his penis and testicles were sliced off and flung into the crowd below, where they were passed and tossed about like playthings.
His agonies were drawn out for some time after that, until at last mercy of sorts was granted and he was beheaded. His mutilated body was hacked into quarters, to be distributed about the realm as a warning to traitors.
By the end Mortimer was so drunk he reeled in his chair, and had to be helped away to the celebration feast by his attendants. As the crowds broke up and bits of Despenser were stuffed into sacks by the executioner and his assistants, Edward risked another look at his mother.
The icy expression had vanished, replaced by a smile of pure delight.