Fleeing his estranged queen and her lover, Roger Mortimer, Edward II put to sea at Chepstow on 20 October 1326. In revisiting the denouement of his reign, contemporaries keenly speculate on his destination and purpose. A Franciscan friar writing on the Scottish marches fifteen years later offers this striking interpretation. His is the most developed version of a story with its origins in popular rumours, as expressed by the Anonimalle chronicler, that the king ‘voleit aver passe en Irland’. This, though, countered general opinion. Adam Murimuth believed Edward aimed ‘ad partes remotas’. Most chroniclers assume he intended flight to Wales to raise forces against the invaders. Modern authorities, as Seymour Phillips notes in re-examining literary traditions surrounding Edward's relationship with Ireland, have dismissed any venture across the Irish Sea. His latest biographer believes Waleswashisaim. Edward's failure to navigate the Severn Estuary and his capture near Llantrisant on 16 November make such rumours easy to reject. They may, moreover, reflect his literary denigration as cowardly and duplicitous, or accentuate Scottish perfidy during subsequent crises in Anglo-Scots relations. Similarly, they may mirror a historical tradition in which Ireland acts as a refuge for those fleeing persecution in England.