Northampton has hosted kings, parliaments, armies and rebels. But in 1318 it witnessed something rather stranger: a man appeared before Edward II and claimed that Edward was not really the King of England at all.
Because, according to him, he was.
His name was John Deydras, sometimes known as John of Powderham, and his extraordinary story made him one of medieval England’s earliest and most unusual royal pretenders.
A Pig’s Ear
Deydras first came to prominence in Oxford in 1318, where he announced that he was the true son of Edward I.
He claimed that when he was a baby, he had been playing in a royal courtyard when a sow attacked him and bit off one of his ears. His nurse, terrified that Edward I would punish her for allowing such an accident to happen, supposedly exchanged the injured royal baby for the son of a commoner.
According to Deydras, the substitute child grew up in the royal household and eventually became the man everybody knew as Edward II.
Deydras, meanwhile, had been raised in obscurity. Now he had returned to claim his crown.
It helped his story that contemporaries apparently thought he bore a striking physical resemblance to Edward II. The missing ear, rather than undermining his story, became part of the evidence he offered to explain why he had disappeared in the first place.
Why People Might Have Listened
It sounds ridiculous today, and probably sounded ridiculous to plenty of people in 1318.
But Edward II was having a difficult reign.
England had suffered military disaster against Robert the Bruce, political conflict between the king and his leading nobles was becoming increasingly serious, and Edward himself had acquired a reputation for behaving in ways contemporaries considered distinctly unkingly.
He was criticised for enjoying activities such as farming, ditch-digging and other practical pursuits associated with ordinary working people.
Deydras turned that criticism into part of his argument.Of course Edward behaved like a commoner, his story implied. He was one.
The Pretender Comes to Northampton
Eventually the story reached Edward II himself.
In the summer of 1318, Deydras was brought to Northampton, where the king was staying. Far from backing down when confronted with the actual monarch, Deydras repeated his accusations.
He maintained that Edward was the son of a commoner and that he himself was Edward I’s rightful heir.
He even offered to settle the matter in the most medieval manner imaginable: single combat with the King of England.
Trial by combat could be understood as an appeal to God’s judgement. The theory was that if two sides swore opposing claims and fought under lawful conditions, God would not allow the false party to prevail. Victory could therefore be treated as divine confirmation of the victor’s case.
Edward himself seems initially to have found the whole business more amusing than threatening. Chronicle accounts suggest that he joked about Deydras being a long lost brother, and may even have considered keeping him around as a court entertainer.
Others were considerably less amused.
Queen Isabella and members of the political establishment recognised that allowing a man to travel around England publicly declaring the king illegitimate was potentially dangerous, however implausible his story might have been.
The Cat Made Me Do It!
Under investigation, Deydras eventually admitted that his royal story was false.
His explanation for why he had invented it did not exactly improve matters. He reportedly claimed that he had been encouraged by his cat.
Not merely an unusually persuasive cat, either. Deydras said the animal was actually the Devil in disguise.
Later accounts say Deydras was condemned and executed, with some traditions adding that the unfortunate cat was executed as well!
Northampton and a King Who Wasn’t
John Deydras never came remotely close to taking the throne.
He had no army, no great aristocratic faction behind him and no convincing royal pedigree. He was very different from later pretenders such as Lambert Simnel or Perkin Warbeck, whose claims became the focus of organised attempts to overthrow a reigning monarch.
For somebody to claim publicly that Edward II was an impostor, and for the claim to circulate widely enough that the king and his advisers felt obliged to deal with it, tells us something about the atmosphere of Edward’s troubled reign.
It also gives Northampton one of the strangest episodes in its long association with English kingship. In 1318, within a few years of hosting major political gatherings and less than half a century after the battles between Henry III and Simon de Montfort, Northampton once again became a place where the authority of an English king was challenged.
Except this time the challenger was a one-eared clerk who said the king was a commoner, offered to fight him for the throne, and eventually blamed the whole thing on his cat.
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Sources
Dark Oxfordshire (2021) The Hanging of a Royal Pretender and his Cat
Jack Preston 