The Favourite Whose Hanging at Hereford in 1326 Lasted Four Hours and Was Watched by the Queen

Hugh Despenser the Younger (c. 1287–1326) was the principal favourite of Edward II of England from about 1318 to 1326. He had inherited the substantial Despenser estates in the Welsh Marches from his father (Hugh Despenser the Elder) and had married Eleanor de Clare (a granddaughter of Edward I) in 1306; the marriage made him substantially the richest landowner in southern England by the early 1320s. He functioned as Edward II’s chamberlain, principal political adviser, and substantively co-ruler of the kingdom through the last eight years of the reign.

He was probably also the king’s lover. The contemporary chronicles imply the relationship without stating it explicitly; the modern historical consensus is divided but tilts toward acknowledging the sexual element.

How he ruled

The Despenser regime was extractive on a scale that even by medieval English standards was unusual. The Despensers acquired Welsh and southern English estates through a combination of royal grant, judicial forfeiture, and outright extortion — the latter most famously in the case of Elizabeth de Clare, sister of his wife, whom the Despensers imprisoned in Barking Abbey until she signed over her Glamorgan inheritance. The regime alienated every faction of the English baronage simultaneously: the Marcher lords (whose Welsh territories were progressively absorbed), the northern earls (excluded from royal patronage), and even Queen Isabella (whose dower estates were sequestered and whose French household was disbanded in 1324).

The disbanding of Isabella’s household was the political mistake that brought the regime down. Isabella was sent to France in 1325 to negotiate with her brother Charles IV over the Gascon homage question and refused to return. She allied herself with the exiled English Marcher baron Roger Mortimer, assembled an invasion force in Hainault, and landed in Suffolk on 24 September 1326. The English political establishment abandoned Edward II within three weeks.

The capture and trial

Despenser and the king were captured together at Llantrisant in south Wales on 16 November 1326 after a brief and undignified flight westward. They were separated immediately. Edward was placed in custody at Kenilworth Castle (and eventually moved to Berkeley Castle, where he probably died on 21 September 1327). Despenser was taken to Hereford, where Isabella and Mortimer had established their temporary headquarters.

The trial was held on 24 November 1326. The charges included high treason, sodomy with the king (substantively the only formal charge of homosexual offence in the English medieval royal record), heresy, embezzlement of royal revenue, and the unlawful imprisonment of Queen Isabella and her household. Despenser was tried by a special commission of the Marcher lords and condemned to death by approximately four hours of formal public execution.

What they did to him

The Hereford execution of 24 November 1326 is one of the most elaborately documented brutal executions of the English medieval period. The condemned was dragged behind four horses through Hereford streets to the gallows site. He was stripped naked and his skin was inscribed with biblical verses condemning arrogance and false pride. He was hanged from a 50-foot gallows but cut down while still conscious. His genitals were cut off and burned in front of him (the substantive sodomy element of the charges). His abdomen was opened and his entrails removed and burned. His heart was removed and burned. His body was then quartered; the four quarters were sent to London, York, Bristol, and Dover for public display.

Isabella and Mortimer attended the execution from a substantively prepared viewing platform. The eyewitness account from the chronicler Jean le Bel (a Hainaulter knight in Isabella’s invasion force) records that Isabella ate her dinner during the proceedings.

What it left

The Despenser execution substantively set the pattern that the broader English political class would apply for the following three centuries: spectacular public execution of fallen favourites as the standard mechanism for transferring royal power. The same pattern would be applied to Roger Mortimer himself four years later (drawn through London streets behind four horses to the gallows at Tyburn, hanged, drawn, and quartered on 29 November 1330) — and to substantively every subsequent generation of English royal favourites who fell too far from grace.

Despenser’s body was eventually reassembled at Tewkesbury Abbey in 1330 (after his widow Eleanor obtained royal permission) and reburied in the family chantry chapel. The chapel survives. The Tewkesbury tomb still shows the substantively partial reassembly: the trunk and head were never recovered.