8 British Royals Whose Deaths Don't Add Up

[00:00:00]Apparently, a king dies from a wound that could easily have been healed. A queen has a rival who dies alone in a locked house. And then there is a royal duke who is executed in total secrecy with no logical way that could have taken place. Multiple royal deaths, each with their own official story. But the thing is, none of those stories actually make any sense. So today, we're taking a look at eight British royals whose deaths just don't add up. Number eight, Richard the Lionheart. What did Richard the first actually do for England?

[00:00:32]Honestly, not that much to tell you the truth. He spent most of his time in France. It is within the Limousin region of France that he meets his gnarly end.

[00:00:41]It is March 1199 and Richard is besieging a minor castle, Chalus. He walks around the perimeter to inspect the defenses and, crucially, isn't wearing any chainmail. And it's at this point a crossbow bolt strikes him in his left shoulder near his neck. But importantly, that shot wasn't fatal. It had buried itself towards his chest but hadn't hit any major arteries or organs.

[00:01:08]The person who fired the shot was a young lad who had been named as either Pierre Basil or Bertrand de Gourdon. And here's where things get a little odd.

[00:01:18]First off, Richard was not recorded as being angry with this boy. In fact, he even praised the well-aimed shot. Also, being king, he brought to the battle site some of the finest surgeons and medical experts of his time. And yet, his surgeon totally botched the removal of the arrow, mangling Richard's inside as he did so. As he lay dying, he summoned the young boy and pardoned him publicly. Several days later, Richard died from the infection and gangrene due to the botched medical procedure.

[00:01:49]But this whole account leaves us with three obvious questions. Firstly, why was the king at the siege at all?

[00:01:56][music] It was a trivial engagement over a dispute about some berry treasure that a peasant had found. Richard was the most celebrated warrior king across Europe. Why in the world would he care about walking the perimeter of a nothing castle without armor exposing himself for no apparent reason? Secondly, why would an experienced surgeon, trusted to pull an arrow out of the king, so badly mess up that simple task? Was it just genuinely incompetent or should it raise eyebrows of suspicion? And thirdly, why, even though the king issued a public pardon for the boy that injured him, did his own men ignore that pardon and flay the boy alive and hang him until he died? Who countermanded the royal pardon? And why was there such urgency to kill the single person who could shed insight about what truly happened?

[00:02:47]Number seven, Henry the First.

[00:02:50]So, let's move back now to December 1135 because this is the year Henry the First dies in Normandy. You may have heard the story. He died from eating a surfeit of lampreys against his physician's advice.

[00:03:03]And while this is possible, there's actually no historical reason to believe that it is. A medical historian's assessment suggests that salmonella poisoning is plausible. And while the lampreys may have contained that salmonella bacteria, it could also be caught in a multitude of different ways, even from shaking hands with another person. But actually, the whole lamprey detail is only given to us from a chronicler writing several years after the fact. It's very possible salmonella was not a factor at all and that Henry may have died from a perforated stomach ulcer. But his death isn't the strange thing here. Rather, it's the questions that arise about how his body was treated afterwards because this is where things get quite extraordinary. The embalmers, they worked fast. They removed his innards and packed him with scented balm and wrapping him in ox hides, and still the accounts say that the stench was unbearable, far beyond what would have typically been expected.

[00:04:00]The surgeon tasked with removing his brain reportedly passed out repeatedly, and this was a man who had tons of experience in this field of work. To make matters worse, while they were waiting to move his body across the channel, putrefaction took hold.

[00:04:16]Contemporary chroniclers describe black liquid seeping out of the king's body, pooling onto the floor beneath him. And I'm actually sparing you the more gruesome details of this account. But here's the thing we don't often see discussed. Those same chroniclers are known to have deeply despised Henry and his father William, which raises a genuinely uncomfortable, but important question. Is what we think we know about the death of Henry a meticulous historical record, or is it a dead king being humiliated one final time by the writers who outlived him? Well, Henry founded Reading Abbey specifically to serve as his own mausoleum, and he was buried there with full ceremony. But 400 years later, Henry VIII dissolved it and left it in ruins, which means Henry I's remains are now completely unknown somewhere under modern Reading. Another English king, another lost grave. As far as I can tell, nobody's gone looking.

[00:05:15]But who knows, maybe he'll be our next car park king. Number six, George, the Duke of Clarence. George Plantagenet was brother to both Edward IV and Richard III. But by 1478, he was a man who had betrayed his own family so many times that the king had finally run out of patience. The charges against him were quite extraordinary, actually.

[00:05:38]Slandering the king, claiming that Edward IV had no legitimate right to the throne, also accusing the king of poisoning people with necromancy, and he had even been caught in secret taking oaths of allegiance to himself. He was also preparing an actual rebellion.

[00:05:54]Okay, fair enough then, he may have had it coming. George was sentenced to death, but then, on the 18th of February, something odd happened. His execution was conducted privately in the Tower of London without any fanfare or spectacle. And we need to be clear here, this was absolutely atypical of the process at that time, especially when it came to royal executions. The Crowland Chronicle was written by somebody on Edward the Fourth's own council. And when he came to record George's death, all he could write was that the execution, whatever its nature may have been, took place in the Tower of London.

[00:06:32]So, here we have one of the closest members of the king's own council totally kept in the dark about how the king's brother had actually died. The story that filled that vacuum may be familiar to you. It recounts George being drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine. In fact, this story appeared almost immediately, and it became known to many of us in the modern day because, well, Shakespeare immortalized it. But historians recognize that the story is legend. There's simply no way such an outlandish event could even possibly be true. It's more likely that George was beheaded, which was the standard method for executing traitorous nobility.

[00:07:09]Except, we have what I believe to be George's remains later exhumed, and guess what?

[00:07:15]The skull is intact, and there is no evidence of beheading. So, whatever did happen in that room, it certainly wasn't normal procedure.

[00:07:24]>> [music] >> Maybe something outlandish did take place after all. Executions of traitors, whether of royal blood or not, were intended to be public theater. That was the entire point. There was a deliberate choice here to keep George's execution quiet, and to this day, nobody has ever explained why. Number five, Edward the sixth. Born of Jane Seymour, Edward was Henry the eighth's only legitimate son.

[00:07:49]He was king at nine years old. He was dead at just 15. The official narrative is that Edward died of tuberculosis. The reality of the situation definitely poses more questions than tuberculosis is able to answer. Edward kept his own personal diary, written by his own hand, and in it he records contracting measles during his reign, and then in his own words, smallpox on top of that. Medical historian Suzy Edge gives a blunt assessment here. In his already weakened state, his chance of surviving smallpox was extremely unlikely. So, what actually did kill Henry the sixth?

[00:08:26]Again, the official narrative, tuberculosis, but does this really make sense? His final weeks were documented, and the descriptions are, to be brutally honest, quite disturbing. His hair apparently fell out, his nails fell out, his skin pigment darkened, and his extremities became gangrenous. These are not the symptoms of tuberculosis.

[00:08:47]Indeed, they may point to something more deliberate and ominous, poisoning, which brings us to John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. Dudley was engineering succession to his own daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey. Dudley also had absolute control over Edward's household in his final living weeks, and Edward's death came at a very convenient time for him. Late enough for the succession documents to be finalized, but early enough before the king would change his mind. I should stress, of course, that the poisoning theory has never been proven. Edward the sixth is buried in Westminster Abbey, and no forensic examination has ever been conducted on his remains. This young, 15-year-old boy was writing his own symptoms into a diary, but ultimately had no way of knowing what caused them, and we still don't know what did. So, four entries down, four to go. The last two in particular are some of the strangest things I've covered on my channel. And if you're enjoying this, please consider subscribing, which genuinely helps smaller channels like mine. Number four, Amy Robsart. The date is 8th of September, 1560. The location is Cumnor Place, Oxfordshire. Amy Robsart is 28 years old, and she's the wife of Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth I's closest favorite, and the man much of Europe assumed she intended to marry.

[00:10:09]However, it was on this particular morning that Amy did something quite unusual. She insisted that every single servant in the house leave immediately and attend the fair at Abingdon. It is reported that some of these servants resisted, and she became increasingly angry with them. But if you think that's strange, just wait until what happens next. Because when the servants later returned, they found that Amy was dead at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. She was found with a broken neck and two wounds to her neck, one a quarter of an inch deep, the second 2 inches deep. The coroner's inquest was completed quickly and ruled it as misadventure and accidental death.

[00:10:50]But so much here just doesn't add up.

[00:10:52]For starters, this was a really short flight of stairs, quite literally just a few steps. The coroner's own report couldn't explain how a fall of that distance could produce a broken neck, and the two separate head wounds were also a total mystery. Historian Chris Skidmore has done some interesting research about this. It turns out her husband's household accounts show that he gave the foreman of the inquest several yards of velvet. Mhm, well, that's interesting. It also turns out a member of that inquest jury was employed by her husband, Dudley, directly. He also influenced proceedings by specifically requesting the jury be composed of what he called discrete men.

[00:11:34]But even if Amy Robsart was murdered, that doesn't really explain why she ordered everybody out of the house that morning. Suicide, accident, murder, maybe something in between. What we do know is that Elizabeth never married Dudley. The scandal simply made that impossible, which means Amy's death may have potentially changed the entire course of English history. To this day, we still don't know what happened on those stairs. Number three, James the First. June 1566, Edinburgh Castle, Mary Queen of Scots gives birth to a son, James the Sixth of Scotland, who also became James the First of England.

[00:12:12]>> [music] >> James would unite the crowns, and it is from James that every subsequent British monarch, including the present royal family, is directly descended. He's recognized by many today as the king who authorized an English translation of the Bible, which we often refer to as the King James Bible. With an estimated 2.5 billion copies printed, this is a substantial legacy. In his later life, James became an alcoholic and also suffered increasingly from various health ailments. On 27th of March, at age 58, he suffered an attack of dysentery that was so violent it took his life. His remains were buried in Westminster Abbey, and you might think, well, okay, case closed. But there is a tradition, a tradition that has been persistent, well documented, and never resolved. And that is that Mary's baby was born dead.

[00:13:03]But if that is true, then who was James?

[00:13:06]Well, the tradition says that a lady-in-waiting's living child was substituted immediately because a stillbirth at that precise moment would have triggered a catastrophic dynastic crisis in a Scotland that was already tearing itself apart. It's been a rumor that has persisted for centuries. But then in 1830, workmen renovating Edinburgh Castle broke into a cavity in the wall of a room near the royal apartments and they found something astonishing, a very small coffin. Inside [music] the coffin, the skeleton of an infant wrapped in cloth. Embroidered into that cloth, two initials, J.S. The very initials of James Stewart. This discovery was recorded, but the coffin was resealed and put back into its resting place. As far as I can determine, there has never been any formal investigation conducted. But if this substitution theory is correct, then James the VI had no Stewart blood at all, which would mean quite remarkably that the British monarchy from 1603 right up to the present day descends not from Mary, Queen of Scots, but from an unknown servant's baby who happened to be born at the right time.

[00:14:15]Number two, William.

[00:14:18]William the II was the third-born son of William the Conqueror. He was a successful king who did a great job at protecting his father's territories. He also became known as William Rufus, Rufus meaning red due to his blushed complexion. On the 2nd of August, 1100, William rides into the New Forest for a typical day's hunting. With him is a small group of nobles and amongst them a skilled archer named Walter Tirel.

[00:14:44]Henry, the king's younger brother, was also with them. At some point in the late afternoon, as the light began to fade, William became separated from the rest of the group. Only Tirel remained close by. William looses an arrow towards a stag and manages to wound it.

[00:14:59]The animal runs and as the king raises his hand to shield his eyes from the low sun, a second arrow strikes him directly through the chest, piercing his lung. He had been mortally wounded by Tirel, who we assume was trying to hit the stag but missed. William was unable to speak due to his injury and after a few minutes of struggling for a he died at that spot.

[00:15:22]Now, here's where things don't really add up. First of all, Walter Tyrrell was a renowned marksman, and yet he supposedly misses a stag so badly, he strikes the very king of England. Oh, well, accidents happen, I suppose. But, he didn't stop to help. He didn't report it. He just got on his horse, rode to the coast, and fled to France. He wasn't even pursued or charged, and never had a single acre of land removed from him.

[00:15:47]And then, >> [music] >> there's the matter of the body. The nobles, including Henry, the king's brother, didn't carry their dead monarch home. They just abandoned him and left him in the forest. His corpse was eventually collected by a local peasant and hauled to Winchester on a cart.

[00:16:02]Henry himself didn't even grieve. He just rode straight to Winchester to seize the royal treasury, and within 3 days, he himself was crowned king of England. He didn't even wait for the Archbishop of Canterbury. So, we have a suspiciously bad shot from an expert, a killer who fled the scene and was never chased, a body that was left in the dirt, a younger brother who moved so fast he was wearing the crown before the old king's body was even cold.

[00:16:26]Officially, an unexpected hunting accident. But, Henry got exactly what he wanted that afternoon. Number one, Edward II.

[00:16:36]The story of Edward II's death is perhaps the most well-known of all on our list today. Edward is deposed by his wife Isabella in France, and he's imprisoned at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The official record then tells us that he died here on the 21st of September. According to the famous story, he was murdered with a red-hot poker. But, as commonly told as this story may be, it almost certainly never happened. In fact, the poker story appears to have developed later as a moralizing punishment invented to fit Edward's alleged homosexuality. The description of what that punishment would entail is given in The Mortal Monarchs book by Susie Edge. I won't describe it here as it is thoroughly unpleasant and it simply doesn't appear in contemporary sources.

[00:17:21]If Edward II was murdered, the far more likely method is asphyxiation, clean and silent. But the mechanism of his murder is not even the greatest mystery here.

[00:17:32]You see, Edward's body was embalmed with his face covered, which was standard practice at that time, but immediately afterwards questions started. Was that actually the king? So it's kind of interesting that there was skepticism right from the get-go and it was taken seriously enough that the royal embalming procedure was permanently changed from that point forward. From then on, the faces of deceased English monarchs had to remain uncovered throughout the process. And then later in 1878, a French archivist found the Fieschi letter. It was addressed to Edward's son, Edward III.

[00:18:06]And to confirm this is a genuine document, the letter has been authenticated and it claims to record Edward II's confession that he was warned he was to be killed and that he swapped clothes with a servant and escaped Berkeley Castle, choosing to live the rest of his life out as a wandering hermit in Italy. And in 1330, Edward's own half-brother, the Earl of Kent, was tried and executed for plotting to free Edward. So is the official story of Edward murder one we should just blindly accept or was this a king who truly managed to escape his fate? So folks, eight royal deaths and eight official stories that don't quite hold up, but which one do you think is hiding the most? Please do let me know in the comments below. Tell me which one deserves maybe a full investigation on the channel and I'll see you in the next episode.