Fatal Folly: 7 absurd deaths from the Middle Ages

Could you imagine a world without indoor plumbing? For some, the privy - a shed in the garden consisting of a hole in the ground and a stack of newspapers - reigns steadfast within living memory. But I’m going to take you back even further than that, to a time when being a gong farmer (otherwise known as a cesspit cleaner) was an aspiration for some.

And while many peasants took to doing their business in a pot before lobbing it out of the window and onto unwitting passersby, castles were a tad more sophisticated. They contained a garderobe - a small chamber in which a wooden bench adorned with a rather vulgar hole led to a cesspit below.

However, this genius feat in engineering could be a death sentence. Take the court of Henry VI of Germany, for instance. While holding an assembly at the Petersburg Citadel in 1184, the wooden floor - its rotting beams straining beneath the weight of all those nobles - collapsed, alongside the floor below, following the impact. Sixty people died, either from being crushed by debris or by drowning in liquid excrement.

I’m very partial to dinner and a show - but not when it’s at risk of encouraging me to plop my clogs.

In 1410, Martin of Aragon was said to have stuffed an entire goose down his gullet before retiring to his bedchamber - resulting in, predictably, a nasty bout of indigestion. It was at this point that his most favoured court jester, Borra, made an ill-timed entrance and, upon the king asking where he’d been, Borra riposted: ‘Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs.’

Martin died laughing (no… literally).

Few Medieval deaths have generated quite as much heat - and contention - as that of Edward II.

Edward II of England’s reign was tumultuous, to say the least - riddled with war, famine, and rumours of his fondness for male favourites. And so, after he was forced to abdicate to his son, Edward III, Edward was imprisoned at Berkeley Castle, where he died in suspicious circumstances in 1327.

While academics continue to argue the toss about what really happened to this controversial Medieval king, it is widely accepted that he was murdered by his wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. According to legend, a horn was forced into his backside, followed by a red-hot poker, which incinerated his internal organs without leaving any incriminating marks on his body.

And speaking of being stabbed up the backside…

Edmund Ironside spent much of his reign battling against the Danish hordes led by Knut. So much so, that the nickname ‘Ironside’ stemmed from his extraordinary bravery, stamina, and relentless resistance in the battlefield.

But, alas, even he could not see what was coming. According to a handful of 12th-century historians, in 1016, Edmund entered the privy and sat down, only to be met with the sharp end of a spear brandished by an assassin secreted away in the cesspit below. Some sources even suggest a booby-trapped crossbow was responsible for his rather undignified end.

The Vikings were not always the ones doing the killing, however. Sometimes it was the people they killed.

Take Sigurd Eysteinsson, for example. As the Jarl (Earl) of Orkney and a Viking who regularly conducted coastal raids against northern Scotland and the Scottish mainland, he was bound to run into rivalry somewhere along the line.

And so, when he challenged Pictish nobleman Máel Brigte the Buck-Toothed to a 40-man-a-side battle, Sigurd made sure he’d win by bringing twice as many men as agreed upon. Naturally, he was victorious, and the fierce Máel Brigte was defeated and decapitated.

Sigurd secured Máel’s head to his saddle, intending to bring it home as a trophy, but he didn’t bet on Máel’s prominent teeth lacerating his leg as he rode. His leg grew red-hot and swollen with the infection that followed, and Sigurd’s death from sepsis served as a posthumous victory for the defeated Máel.

While technically edging into the Early Modern period as opposed to the Middle Ages, the death of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, is certainly a corker (...get it?).

As the brother of Edward IV and Richard III, the latter of whom was considered England’s last Medieval king, George was pivotal in the clash between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. However, he was quite partial to switching alliances every now and then. This landed him in some hot water with Yorkist king, Edward IV, who wasn’t exactly enthused about George’s support of the Earl of Warwick’s rebellion in 1470, in which they planned to depose Edward, or George’s plot to seize the throne for himself.

After George’s wife, Isabella, died in 1476, George began behaving erratically and illegally executed one of Isabella’s ladies-in-waiting, Ankarette Twynho, believing her to have poisoned Isabella. He continued to spiral, and after stirring up more trouble for Edward by sending ex-Lancastrian John Goddard to Parliament to proclaim the innocence of two men who had been executed for plotting the death of the king, Edward had enough. He summoned George to Windsor, where he was accused of treason and arrested.

George was subsequently privately executed at the Tower of London for his crimes, and rumours began circling around the method. According to some, he had been drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine - a strong, sweet fortified wine that hailed from Madeira, Portugal.

It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, I suppose.

‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’ is a phrase that reigns true to this very day - but in this case, no amount of seeded fruit could have saved Charles II of Navarre from his physician.

Nicknamed ‘Charles the Bad’ because of his cunning, manipulative ways and for ruthlessly switching alliances between England and France during the Hundred Years’ War, the fact that he made it to the age of 54 without somebody losing their patience and assassinating him is something of a miracle in itself.

Charles’ health was not what it once was in his old age, and so his physician advised that he should be wrapped in a linen sheet that had been drenched in brandy to cure him of his many maladies. What happened next is hotly debated: Charles was either positioned too close to the pan of hot coals beside his bed, or the maidservant who sewed him into the sheet elected to burn off any excess thread with a candle rather than cutting it. Either way, Charles’ grisly end became the talk of Europe - and probably inspired several conversations about fire safety.