Passage: Controversy rapidly surrounded Edward's death. With Mortimer's execution in 1330, rumours began to circulate that Edward had been murdered at Berkeley Castle. Accounts that he had been killed by the insertion of a red-hot iron or poker into his anus slowly began to circulate, possibly as a result of deliberate propaganda; chroniclers in the mid-1330s and 1340s spread this account further, supported in later years by Geoffrey le Baker's colourful account of the killing. It became incorporated into most later histories of Edward, typically being linked to his possible homosexuality. Most historians now dismiss this account of Edward's death, querying the logic in Edward's captors murdering him in such an easily detectable fashion.Another set of theories surround the possibility that Edward did not really die in 1327. These theories typically involve the "Fieschi Letter", sent to Edward III by an Italian priest called Manuel Fieschi, who claimed that Edward escaped Berkeley Castle in 1327 with the help of a servant and ultimately retired to become a hermit in the Holy Roman Empire. The body buried at Gloucester Cathedral was said to be that of the porter of Berkeley Castle, killed by the assassins and presented by them to Isabella as Edward's corpse to avoid punishment. The letter is often linked to an account of Edward III meeting with a man called William the Welshman in Antwerp in 1338, who claimed to be Edward II. Some parts of the letter's content are considered broadly accurate by historians, although other aspects of its account have been criticised as implausible. A few historians have supported versions of its narrative. Paul Doherty questions the veracity of the letter and the identity of William the Welshman, but nonetheless has suspicions that Edward may have survived his imprisonment. The popular historian Alison Weir believes the events in the letter to be essentially true, using the letter to argue that Isabella was innocent of murdering Edward. The historian Ian Mortimer suggests that the story...

Question: When was Mortimer killed?
1330