THE DOUBLE MURDER MYSTERY

In King John the cause of Arthur’s death is a matter of debate among the nobles; the cause of John’s death is a simple report.  How did each actually die?

Historically, Arthur died in Rouen, not England.  The issue of “how” is complicated; as the chronicler Raphael Holinshed explains, “touching the maner in verie deed of the end of this Arthur, writers make sundrie [various] reports.” ¹  Whether Arthur “in attempting to escape from Rouen, fell into the Seine and was drowned” or was killed on John’s orders, no one knew for certain.² In The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England (1589) Arthur leaps to his death; Shakespeare presents the same story.  Holinshed, however, notes that “some affirme, that king Iohn secretlie caused him to be murthered.”

The circumstances of John’s death are equally uncertain. Holinshed records that King John lost a great part of his army and supplies to the tide on the Lincolnshire coast (as the Bastard reports), and the king “tooke such greefe [grief] for the losse sustained…that immediatlie therevpon he fell into an ague [fever].”³ In The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England, King John drinks poison in the presence of a vengeful monk; the monk’s poison is the cause in Shakespeare’s King John (1596-97).  Peter Saccio reports that John was not poisoned by a monk, but instead died of dysentery. Both Holinshed and Peter Saccio mention that John exacerbated this illness by eating raw peaches and drinking new cider* just before his death. If death by peaches and cider seems doubtful, this illustrates that there is no simple solution to these murder mysteries. 

 1. Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicle as Used in Shakespeare's Plays: Everyman's Library. 1943. p. 9

2. Peter Saccio. Shakespeare’s English Kings, Oxford University Press: 1977. p. 194

3. Holinshed, p. 16

4. Saccio, p. 200; Holinshed, p. 16.

*New cider: fresh and acidic cider, not fully fermented.