Part 46

Henry, sometimes called Wryneck, Earl of Derby, brother of the rebel Thomas of Lancaster, and Thomas and Edmund, Earls of Norfolk and Kent, the youngest sons of Edward I., had begun bitterly to repent of having been deceived by this wicked woman. Even Adam Orleton had quarrelled with her for attempting to exact a monstrous bribe for making him Bishop of Winchester; but Mortimer was determined to keep up his power by violence. At a parliament at Salisbury, where the young King and Queen were presiding, he broke in with his armed followers, and carried them off in a sort of captivity to Winchester. The three Earls took up arms, but the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, who seem to have had their full share of the family folly, deserted Lancaster, and he was forced to make peace, after paying an immense fine.

Still Isabel and Mortimer felt their insecurity, or else they had such an appetite for treachery and murder, that they were driven on to commit further crimes. A report was set about that Edward of Caernarvon was still living in Corfe Castle, and one of his actual murderers, Maltravers, offered the unfortunate Edmund of Kent to convey letters from him to his brother; nay, it was arranged, for his further deception, that he should peep into a dungeon and behold at a distance a captive, who had sufficient resemblance to the late King to be mistaken for him in the gloom. Letters were written by the Earl and his wife to the imaginary prisoner, and entrusted to Maltravers, who carried them at once to Queen Isabel. A sufficient body of evidence having thus been procured for her purposes, the unfortunate Edmund was arraigned before the parliament at Winchester, when he confessed that the letters had been written by himself; and, further, that a preaching friar had conjured up a spirit on whose authority he believed his brother to be alive. He was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death by persons who expected that his rank would save him; but the She-wolf of France was resolved on having his blood, and decreed that he should die the next day. Such was the horror at the sentence, that the headsman stole secretly away from Winchester to avoid performing his office, and for four long hours of the 13th of March, 1329, did Earl Edmund Plantagenet stand on the scaffold above the castle gate, waiting till some one could be found to put him to death, in the name of his own nephew and by the will of his mother’s niece. He was only twenty-eight, and had four little children; and, in those dreary hours, what must not have been his hopes that the young Edward would awaken to a sense of the wickedness that was being perpetrated, so abhorrent to his warm and generous nature! But hopes were vain. Queen Isabel “kept her son so beset” all day, that no word could be spoken to him respecting his uncle, and at length a felon was sought out, who, as the price of his own pardon, dealt the death-stroke to the son of the great Edward.

After this act of intimidation, Mortimer’s insolence went still farther, and England was fully sensible that the minion now reigning united all the faults of the former ones--the extravagance and rapacity of Gaveston, and the pride and violence of the Despensers; and as if to bring upon himself their very fate, he caused himself to be appointed Warden of the Marches of Wales, and helped himself to manor after manor of the Despenser property. His name and lineage were Welsh, and in memory of King Arthur he held tournaments which he called Round Tables, and made this display so frequent, that his own son Geoffrey became ashamed of them, and called him the King of Folly.

Meantime, the modest and innocent young court at Woodstock was made happy by the birth of the heir to the crown--a babe of such promise and beauty that even grave chroniclers pause to record his noble aspect, and the motherly fondness of the youthful Philippa, then only seventeen. Again Queen Isabel was obliged to trust her son out of the hands of herself and her minions. Her last brother, King Charles IV., was dead, leaving only daughters; and though she fancied the claim of her son Edward to the French crown to be nearer than that of Philippe, Count of Valois, the son of her father’s brother, it was not convenient to press the assumption, and it was therefore resolved that young Edward should go to Amiens to perform his homage to Philippe. He was only fifteen days absent from England, and duly swore fealty to Philippe; the one robed in blue velvet and golden lilies, the other in crimson velvet worked with the English lions; but the pageant was a worthless ceremony, and the journey was chiefly important as bringing him to a full sense of the esteem in which his mother was held at home and abroad. Edward was nearly nineteen, and was resolved that he and his country should be held in unworthy bondage no longer. He confided his plans to Sir William Montacute, and they agreed to bring about the downfall of Mortimer at the next parliament, which was summoned to meet at Nottingham.

So suspicious were the Queen and her favorite, that they always travelled with a strong guard, and, on entering Nottingham Castle, the locks on all the gates were changed, and the keys were every night brought to the Queen, who hid them under her pillow. Edward himself was admitted, but with only four attendants; and the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford were not even allowed to lodge their followers in the town, but with insolent words were quartered a mile off, to their own great discontent and that of the country-folk.

Montacute meanwhile held counsel with Sir Robert Eland, the governor of the castle, who told him that far without the walls lay a cave, whence a subterraneous gallery led into the keep of Nottingham Castle. It was believed to have been made for a means of escape in the days of Danish inroads, and it was still practicable to lead a body of men through it. Montacute undertook the enterprise on the 19th of October, 1330. Whether the King crept through the passage, or only joined Montacute after he emerged on the stairs, is not certain; but together, and with a troop of armed men behind them, they broke into the room where Mortimer was consulting with the Earl of Lincoln, and seized upon his person. The Queen, nearly undressed, hurried out of the next room, and Edward stood behind the door, that she might not see him; but she guessed that he was present, and cried out piteously, “Fair son, have pity on gentle Mortimer!” Her cries were unheeded, and Mortimer was, in the early morning, sent off to the Tower of London, while all Nottingham rang with shouts of joy.

Edward broke up the parliament, and summoned a new one to meet at Westminster, where he called Mortimer to account for a tissue of such horrible crimes that one alone would have secured his condemnation. The Peers were asked what his sentence should be, and they all answered that he ought to die like his victim, Hugh le Despenser, who had not had a moment to speak in his own defence. Perhaps Edward dreaded to hear his mother’s crimes disclosed, for he forbade the confession to be made known of two of the accomplices in his father’s murder, and caused Mortimer to die a traitor’s death at once at Tyburn--the inaugurating execution at that melancholy spot. This hasty sentence stood Mortimer’s family in good stead; for, as there was no sentence of attainder, they continued to hold the earldom of March. Edward little thought that the grandson of his father’s murderer would become the heir to his own throne.

The Pope wrote to Edward to intercede with him for his mother, but the exhortation was hardly needed, for he showed the most delicate and filial respect throughout for her name, and what truth and necessity compelled him to declare against her, he charged on the evil influence of Mortimer. Her grief and despair threw her into an absolute fit of madness at the time of Mortimer’s execution, and she continued subject to fits of distraction for many years after. She was shut up in Risings Castle, and respectfully attended upon by a sufficient train; her son visited her from time to time, but she never saw any others of her family; and when, after twenty-eight years, she died, she chose to be buried in the church of the Gray Friars, at Newgate, where lay the remains of Mortimer.

While these events were taking place in England, one of the great spirits of the time was passing away at Cardross, in Scotland. Robert the Bruce lay on his death-bed, and, calling for his nobles, bade them swear fealty to his infant son, and appointed Randolph, Earl of Moray, as regent for the child; for Sir James Douglas he reserved a yet dearer, closer charge. Long ago, as he lay on his bed at Rachrin, had he vowed to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but before he had given rest to his country, the deadly sickness had seized on him which was cutting him off in his fifty-fifth year. He therefore entreated that Douglas would carry his heart, to fulfil his vow, instead of himself, and that, making his way to Jerusalem, he would lay it finally in the Holy Sepulchre.

Weeping so that he could hardly speak, Sir James thanked his master for the inestimable honor, and vowed, on his faith as a knight, to do his bidding. Robert likewise gave his nobles a set of counsels for the defence of his kingdom, showing how truly he estimated its resources and method of warfare; for it is said that no reverse ever afterward befell the Scots but by their disregard of what they called “Good King Robert’s Testament”--precepts he had obeyed all his life, and which stood nearly thus in old Scottish:

“On foot should be all Scottish war, By hill and moss themselves to ware; Let woods for walls be; bow and spear And battle-axe their fighting gear: That enemies do them na dreir, In strait places gar keep all store, And burn the plain land them before: Then shall they pass away in haste, When that they find nothing but waste; With wiles and wakening of the night. And mickle noise made on height; Then shall they turn with great affray, As they were chased with sword away. This is the counsel and intent Of Good King Robert’s Testament.”

With these fierce, though sagacious counsels, the hero of Scotland died on the 7th of June, 1329. He was buried in Dunfermline Abbey, after his heart had been extracted and embalmed according to his command; but the dissolution of the convents made sad havoc among the royal tombs of Scotland, and two churches had risen and fallen above his marble tomb before it was discovered among the ruins in 1819, and his remains were found in a winding-sheet of cloth of gold, and the breastbone sawn through. Multitudes were admitted to gaze on them, and there were many tears shed, for, in the simple and beautiful words of Scott, “There was the wasted skull which once was the head that thought so wisely and boldly for his country’s deliverance; and there was the dry bone which had once been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun between the two armies at a single blow, the evening before the battle of Bannockburn.”

The Bruce’s heart was enclosed in a silver case, and hung round the neck of Douglas, who sailed at once on his pilgrimage, taking with him a retinue befitting the royal treasure that he bore. But on his way he landed in Spain, and esteeming that any war with any Saracen was agreeable to his vow, he offered his aid to King Alfonso, of Castile. But he was ignorant of the Moorish mode of fighting, and, riding too far in advance with his little band, was inclosed and cut off by the wheeling horsemen of the Moors. Still he might have escaped, had he not turned to rescue Sir William St. Clair, of Roslyn; but in doing this he was so entangled, that he saw no escape, and taking from his neck his precious charge, he threw it before him, shouting aloud, “Pass onward as thou wert wont! I follow, or die!” He followed, and died. His corpse was found on the battle-field lying over the heart of Bruce, and his friends, lifting up the body, bore it back again to his own little church of St. Bride of Douglas, where it lies interred; while the crowned and bleeding heart shines emblazoned on the shield of the great Douglas line, a memorial of the time and hearty love that knit together, through adversity and prosperity, the good King Robert and the good Lord James. The heart itself was given into the charge of Sir Simon Locard, of Lee, already the keeper of the curious talisman called the Lee Penny, brought by Earl David of Huntingdon from the East; but he did not deem it needful to carry his burthen to Jerusalem, and it was buried beneath the altar at Melrose Abbey, Sir Simon changed his name to Lockhart, and bore on his shield a heart with a fetterlock, on his crest a hand with a key, and for his motto, “_Corda serrata pando._”

Here, then, we close the first series of Cameos, during which we have seen the Norman conquerors gradually become English, and the kingdom take somewhat of its present form. In another volume we hope to show the long wars of the Middle Ages.

INDEX.

Acre, the siege of, Prince Edward there, its final conquest by the Saracens, Adela, William the Conqueror’s daughter, married to Stephen of Blois, Adrian IV., Pope, Nicholas Brakespeare, an Englishman, his grant of Ireland to Henry II., Aelred, Abbot of Rivaux, his visit to King David of Scotland, death, Agatha, wife of Edward the Etheling, Alain Fergeant, married to William the Conqueror’s daughter Constance, Alberic, friend of Robert Courtheuse, Albigenses, the war against, led by Simon de Montfort, Aldred, Archbishop of York, consecrates Bishop Wulstan, dies of grief, Alexander III., Pope, his support of Becket, Alexander III., of Scotland, at the coronation of Edward I., his character, his shocking death, troubles in Scotland after this, Alexis Comnenus, Greek Emperor, his conduct to the crusaders, Alfonso I. of Castile, William the Conqueror’s daughter Matilda promised to, Alfred, Archbishop of York, crowns Harold king of England, Alfred Atheling, son of Ethelred the Unready, his expedition against Harold Harefoot, his murder, Alftrude, tradition of Hereward’s love for, Algar, son of Earl Leofric, Alice of France, Richard Coeur de Lion bethrothed to, disputes about this, Alice of Louvain, second wife of Henry I. married secondly to William de Albini, Almayne, Henry of, son of Richard king of the Romans, joins the last crusade, his murder by the De Montforts, punishment of his murderers, Anjou, history of the Counts of, loss of, by the English to Philippe Auguste, Anjou, Charles, Comte d’, joins the crusade of Louis IX, seizes the crown of the Two Sicilies, his conduct in the last crusade, at the death of Louis IX., Prince Edward’s reply to him, Anselm, Archbishop: Bishop Wulstan assists at his consecration, his birth and parentage, enters the Abbey of Bec, the Archbishopric of Canterbury forced upon him, his collision with William Rufus, banished for life, returns on the death of Rufus, disputes with Henry I., again banished, his return, death and character, Ansgard, Alderman, his conference with William the Conqueror, Antioch, siege of, in the first crusade, Apulia, the Normans in, Aquitaine, acquired by Henry II’s marriage with Eleanor, account of the duchy of, Arnulf, Count of Flanders, the foe of William Longsword, makes war against Richard the Fearless, Richard’s generosity to him, Arques, Count d’, his conspiracy against William the Conqueror, Arthur, King: history of his round table at Winchester, Arthur of Brittany, the joy at his birth, Richard I. acknowledges him heir, his residence at the court of Philippe Auguste, at the siege of Mirabeau, taken prisoner by King John, the parley between them, John’s attempted cruelty, his murder by John, avenged by Philippe Auguste, Artois, Robert, Comte d’, joins the crusade of Louis IX., insults Longespée, his impetuous character, killed at Mansourah, Ascalon, the crusaders at, Atheling, _vide_ Etheling. Augustine, his dispute with the Welsh Church, Auvergne, Guy of, his cruel treatment and death, Avignon, the papal court removed to, Ayr, story of the barns of,

Bacon, Roger, account of, Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, William the Conqueror’s overtures to, Baldwin I. king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II. king of Jerusalem, Balliol, John, lays claim to the crown of Scotland, declared king, treated as a vassal by Edward I., humiliation of, and subsequent career, Bangor, slaughter of the monks of, Bannockburn, battle of, its results, Bards, the, account of, Barons, the, assembly of, to adopt the charter, their revolt, their meeting with King John at Runnymede, their war with King John, offer the crown to Louis the Lion, their demands at the Parliament of Westminster, the meeting of, in the Mad Parliament, their dispute with Henry III. referred to Louis IX., refuse Louis IX.’s decision, their war with the king, their discontent with Montfort, their proceedings against Gaveston, against the Despensers, Batalha in Portugal, account of the Abbey of, Battle Abbey, history of, the roll of, unsatisfactory compared with Domesday Book, Bayeux tapestry, description of the, Bec, Lanfranc abbot of, Anselm there, Beck, Anthony, Bishop of Durham, Edward I.’s envoy to Balliol, Edward I.’s message to, Becket, Gilbert à, legend of, Becket, Thomas à, birth of, his character and splendor, appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, his humility, his quarrel with Henry II. on the privileges of the clergy, his reluctant consent to the Constitutions of Clarendon, the King’s sentence against him, his acts at the Council of Northampton, his flight to the Continent, supported by the Pope, &c., retires to Pontigny, conference with King Henry II. at Montmirail, at Montmartre, the King’s submission, his return to Canterbury, events of his martyrdom, fate of his murderers, his canonization, general honor paid to him, pilgrimages to his shrine, its spoliation by Henry VIII, summary of his character, Benefit of clergy, meaning of, Berengaria, Richard I.’s attachment to, their marriage, her death, Bernard, Count of Harcourt, the friend of William Longsword, his support of Richard the Fearless, Bertrade, marries Foulques IV. of Anjou, leaves him for Philippe I., Bertram de Born, the troubadour, laments Queen Eleanor’s imprisonment, affronted by Richard I., his interview with Henry II., his laments for Richard I., his death, Dante’s mention of him in the “Inferno,” Berwick, Edward I.’s cruelty at, Bigod, Roger, Earl of Norfolk, his answers to Henry III., his opposition to the exactions of Edward I., Binning, his capture at Linlithgow, Bishops, dispute between King and Pope respecting the election of, Blanche of Castile, her marriage to Louis the Lion, death of, Blondel, discovers Richard I. in captivity, Blondeville, Ranulf de, his marriage to Constance of Brittany, Boemond, joins the first crusade, his conduct at the siege of Antioch, Bohun, Humphrey, Earl of Hereford, his opposition to Edward I., his success and high character, Bohun, Sir H., his encounter with King Robert Bruce, Boniface VIII., Pope, opposes Edward I.’s exactions on the clergy, death of, Border warfare with the Scots, Bosham, Herbert de, the friend of Archbishop Becket, Brand, Abbot of Peterborough, confers knighthood on Hereward, Braose, William de, King John’s cruelties to, Bretons, their joy at the birth of Prince Arthur, their enmity to Richard I., Brien Boru, King of Ireland, Brihtric Meau, Queen Matilda’s love for, her vengeance on his disdain, Brito, William, murderer of Becket, his armorial bearings, Britons, the, after the departure of the Romans, Bruce, the line of, history of, troubles of Scotland under, Bruce, Edward, besieges Stirling Castle, commands a division at Bannockburn, his invasion of Ireland, death, Bruce, Robert, lays claim to the crown of Scotland, Bruce, Robert, the younger, joins Wallace, lives in allegiance to Edward I., Bruce, Robert III., vacillation of his early conduct, his murder of the Red Comyn; revolts against Edward I.; coronation at Scone; his excommunication; his disaster at Methven; wanderings, and adventures; escape from the Lorns; defeats Aymer de Valence; his progress in the recovery of Scotland; his preparations to meet Edward II.; encounter with Sir Henry Bohun; his victory at Bannockburn; his invasion of Ireland; inroads upon England; recognised by the Pope; his right to the throne acknowledged by England; his dying injunctions and death; fate of his heart. Bruce, William, resigns the charge of Prince Arthur. Bungay, Friar, the associate of Friar Bacon. Burgh, Hubert de, governor of Prince Arthur; taken prisoner by the French; his defence of Dover; defeats the French fleet; his care of the minority of Henry III.; machinations against him; his imprisonment and escape; subsequent history. Burnel, Robert, Bishop, Edward I.’s chancellor. Bury St. Edmund’s, assembly of the Barons at.