*Stupid and unpopular.*

*Gullible, inconsistent and foolish.*

*Strangely credulous.*

*An unstable young man.*

*Demonstrating a predisposition for gullibility and inconsistency.*

*His stupidity and credulity make him a poor witness.*

*A famously stupid man.*

*No-one could have been more gullible than Kent.*

*A weak character, easily duped and politically ineffectual.*

In the past historians really haven't held back when describing how utterly useless they thought the Earl of Kent was. None of them have however based these aggressive assertions on any primary source, which is not surprising, as there is none.

Edmund's contemporaries certainly didn't think he was stupid in any way. Both Edward II and Edward III trusted him and often selected him for important military expeditions or sensitive diplomatic missions. He had been a trusted diplomat negotiating marriage agreements on behalf of Edward II, selected as the leader of an English force in the Saint-Sardos campaign, appointed by Mortimer as a member of the tribunal that judged the Despensers, and he alone was chosen by Isabella to add his name to hers and Prince Edward's in her open letter or proclaimation against Edward II of 15 October 1326. His name was clearly an asset rather than a liability in this latter instance. No fourteenth century chronicler ever even vaguely implied that the Earl of Kent was or was believed to be stupid, gullible or erratic. Adam Murimuth says that he was not widely mourned after his death because of his household's rapacity, probably a reference to him allowing his followers to plunder far and wide after the 1326 invasion, but that's not at all the same thing as calling him stupid, gullible and unstable.

**Why have 20th century historians been so adamant in portraying him as a bumbling fool?**

*Because his actions can't be reconciled with the old narrative that Edward II died in captivity in 1327.* What Kent did made no sense at all to people who took that narrative as gospel and refused to question anything about it.

**So what did he do then?** The Earl of Kent had fallen out with his brother, king Edward II because of his favouritism of the ruthless Despenser. Kent was an émigré in France as the same time as Roger Mortimer and Isabella. They were natural allies as they all desired the fall of the Despensers. Mortimers invasion was successful and the king was forced to abdicate. The Despensers were executed. In September 1327 the Mortimer regime with the 14 year old puppet king Edward III announced that Edward II had died. Edward III received word of this late at night and spread the news in Parliament the next day as Mortimer told him to do, *without verifying anything.*

Strangely however no-one was allowed to identify the body. According to the chronicler Murimuth people in attendance were only allowed to view the body *superficially* (superficialiter in the original latin). The body was wrapped in cerecloth, implying that you could only see the rough contours of the body but nothing to determine the identity of the body. The Earl of Kent was present. He would definitely have known if the body was or wasn't that of his brother had he been allowed to see it. What's more, he was in Mortimer's and Isabella's good books at the time. If the Earl of Kent as a close ally to Mortimer wasn't allowed to identify the supposed body of his own brother, it's safe to assume something was a bit off, and that Mortimer would not have allowed the young Edward III to identify it either.

*Here's the kicker: A couple of years later the Earl of Kent conspired to free Edward II and was executed for it in 1330. There's no way he'd have done that if he had seen and identified the body in 1327.*

If Edward II was really dead, and we agree with the old-school historians that people were allowed to identify the body after all in spite of Murimuths claim to the contrary, Kent's actions could only be explained by declaring him to be remarkably stupid (stupidity alone would not even be sufficient, he'd have to have been downright mentally challenged).

**The notion of Kent's stupidity was first invented by professor T.F. Tout in his article "The Captivity and Death of Edward of Carnarvon", published in 1934.**

*It's a glaring example of confirmation bias and blind circular logic. Kent only believed his brother was alive because he was stupid, and we know he was stupid because he believed his brother was alive.*

He's been accused of being extremely gullible as it's been argued that he was fooled by Mortimer and Isabella to believe his brother was still alive and that he should have known better. But this is a rather weak and conflicted argument. It's not clear why Isabella and Mortimer would think that an unstable and foolish man could lead a political movement against them, or that other influential men would follow him as they did. Neither is it clear why they would think that the best way to neutralise Kent's supposed threat was to spread rumours across the country that Edward II had not died.

Furthermore, on 7 December 1329 (three months before Kent's arrest) Mortimer and Isabella ordered a widespread inquiry into the then-current rumours threatening the government, and the imprisonment of anyone found to be spreading them.

Pretending that Edward II was still alive was the last thing Mortimer and Isabella would have wanted to do. The idea that they did so contradicts the popular notion that they had Edward killed to put a stop to all the plots to free him from Berkeley Castle. The announcement of Edward's death in September 1327 did indeed put an abrupt stop to all the conspiracies to free Edward. For more than two years Mortimer and Isabella had lived without this threat, and *it makes no sense that they would wish it all to start up again*, *especially for no better reason than to have an excuse to execute a man who was allegedly stupid, weak, inefficient and unstable.* As historian Andy King says, in late 1328 after the rebellion of Henry, Earl of Lancaster against Roger Mortimer and Isabella's regime, 'the last thing that he \[Mortimer\] needed was the emergence of rumours of Edward of Caernarfon's survival'.

There is no real explanation as to why anyone pretending that Edward II was alive in the late 1320's, if he was dead, would have been a serious threat to Mortimer's regime, or to the stability of it. The judicial murder of the king's own uncle the Earl of Kent, a man of whom Edward III was very fond, constituted a far greater threat to the stability and very existence of Roger Mortimer's regime than false rumours of Edward II's survival. Indeed Mortimer would pay the ultimate price for his actions only 7 months later.

The old and rather bizarre theory goes that executing the Earl of Kent was intended to take the sting out of the contemporary rumours that Edward II was still alive, yet at the same time these rumours were amplified by the regime itself. At any rate, rumours really would not matter if Edward truly was dead. Rumours alone would not bring down the regime of Isabella and Mortimer.

As Kent was declared to be an idiot, by extension his adherents were too. Professor R. M. Haines (1924-2017) in an article in the 2009 English Historical Review marvels at how easily convinced The Archbishop of York was. The archbishop offered £5,000 (a huge amount at the time) to effect the release of Edward II, the Pope also backed the endeavor fully, as did numerous Lords and knights. All of them fools, the Archbishop was deceived and misled, of course, as Haines just knows that Edward II died in 1327. End of story. Haines does not even attempt to speculate who deceived him and why, or how they could have so easily deceived a highly intelligent, experienced and shrewd archbishop in his 50s. We should just take his word for it and ask no questions.

**To sum up:**   
  
**Using derogatory attributes to describe a historical character held in high esteem by his contemporaries simply to fit in his actions with ones own preconceived ideas reveals a very unbecoming supercilious arrogance among some modern historians.**   
  
**Based on all the available evidence, the Earl of Kent was evidently NOT the** ***'*****unstable fool*****'*** **that 20th century historians portray him as.**

*'History, like any other academic discipline, thrives on debate, honest inquiry, engaging with the evidence and reaching new conclusions when the evidence requires it. It is not solely the preserve of scholars in ivory towers wishing to maintain a certain narrative upon which they have based much of their careers, and it’s not anyone’s business to try to close down debate and speculation.' - Katheryn Warner*

A rehabilitation of Edmund of Woodstock (1301-1330), 1st Earl of Kent