The Children of Adam and Eve

He was murdered.

Edward II (1284-1327), Plantagenetking of England (1307-27), Prince of
Wales, and Duke of Aquitaine, whose incompetence and distaste for
government finally led to his deposition and murder.

Edward was born on April 25, 1284, at Caernarvon, Wales, the fourth son of
King Edward I and his first wife, Eleanor of Castile. The Deaths of his
older Brothers made the infant prince heir to the throne; in 1301 he was
proclaimed prince of Wales, the first heir apparent in English history to
bear that title. The prince was idle and frivolous, with no liking for
military campaigning or affairs of state. Believing that the prince's
close friend Piers Gaveston (died 1312), a Gascon Knight, was a bad
influence on the prince, Edward I banished Gaveston. On his father's
Death, However, Edward II recalled his favorite. Gavestone incurred the
opposition of the powerful English barony. The nobles were particularly
angered in 1308, when Edward made Gaveston regent for the period of the
king's absence in France, where he went to marry Isabella (1292-1358),
daughter of King Philip IV. In 1311 the barons, led by Thomas, earl of
Lancaster (1277?-1322), forced the king to appoint from among them a
committee of 21 noblemen and prelates, call the Lords ordainers. They
proclaimed a series of ordinances that transferred the ruling power to
themselves and excluded the commons and lower clergy from Parliament.
After they had twice forced the king to banish Gaveston, and the king had
each time recalled him, the barons finally had the king's favorite
kidnapped and executed (1312).

In the meantime Robert Bruce had almost completed his reconquest of
Scotland, which he had begun shortly after 1305. In 1314 Edward II and his
barons raised an army of some 100,000 men, with which to crush Bruce, but
in the attempt to lift the siege of Stirling were decisively defeated (see
Bannockburn, Battle of). For the following eight years the earl of
Lancaster viturally ruled the kingdom. In 1322, However, with the advice
and help of two new royal favorites, the baron Hugh le Despenser the
Elder, and his son Hugh the Younger, Edward defeated Lancaster in Battle
and had him executed. The Despensers thereupon became de facto rulers of
England. They summoned a Parliament in which the commons were included and
which repealed the ordinances of 1311 on the ground they had been passed
by the barons only. The repeal was a great step forWard in English
constitutional development, for it meant that thenceforth no law passed by
Parliament was valid unless the House of Comman approved it.

Edward again futilely invaded Scotland in 1322, and in 1323 signed a
13-year truce with Bruce. In 1325 Queen Isabella accompanied the prince of
Wales to France, where, in accordance with feudal custom, he did homage to
king Charles IV for the fief of Aquitaine. Isabella, who desired to depose
the Despensers, allied herself with some barons who had been exiled by
Edward. In 1326, with their leader Roger de Mortimer (1287?-1330) Isabella
raised an army and invaded England. Edward and his favorites fled, but his
wife's army pursued and executed the Despensers and imprisoned Edward. In
January 1327, Parliament forced Edward to resign and proclaimed the prince
of Wales king as Edward III.On September 21 of that year Edward II was
murdered by his captors at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire.