standards painted with gold leaf and oak barriers to manage the anticipated crowds. Edward III's government probably hoped to put a veneer of normality over the recent political events, increasing the legitimacy of the young king's own reign. A temporary wooden effigy with a copper crown was made for the funeral; this is the first known use of a funeral effigy in England, and was probably necessary because of the condition of the King's body, as he had been dead for three months. Edward's heart was removed, placed in a silver container, and later buried with Isabella at Newgate Church in London. His tomb includes a very early example of an English alabaster effigy, with a tomb chest and a canopy made of oolite and Purbeck stone. Edward was buried in the shirt, coif, and gloves from his coronation, and his effigy depicts him as king, holding a sceptre and orb, and wearing a strawberry-leaf crown. The effigy features a pronounced lower lip, and may be a close likeness of Edward. Edward II's tomb rapidly became a popular site for visitors, probably encouraged by the local monks, who lacked an existing pilgrimage attraction. Visitors donated extensively to the abbey, allowing the monks to rebuild much of the surrounding church in the 1330s. Miracles reportedly took place at the tomb, and modifications had to be made to enable visitors to walk around it in larger numbers. The chronicler Geoffrey le Baker depicted Edward as a saintly, tortured martyr, and Richard II gave royal support for an unsuccessful bid to have Edward canonised in 1395. The tomb was opened by officials in 1855, uncovering a wooden coffin, still in good condition, and a sealed lead coffin inside it. The tomb remains in what is now Gloucester Cathedral, and was extensively restored in 2007 and 2008 at a cost of over £100,000. Controversies 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.