The task of the narrator would be a pleasant one if it were possible to end the story with the simple statement that the fair Eleanor lived thereafter in peace and happiness. Unfortunately there were still great trials ahead of her. Raynald died in 1343 as the result of a fall from a horse. The older of the sons succeeded him as Raynald III at the age of ten years. It is said that the boy"s mother, suddenly displaying decision and a soundness of judgment equal to any occasion, aided in an orderly administration of the now extensive duchy "in integrity and peace."
The son proved to be of a turbulent disposition and, when old enough to a.s.sume control of office, soon had himself in all kinds of trouble. The younger son, Edward, was cast in an identical mold and they quarreled bitterly. The mother strove to keep the peace between them and was rewarded, according to the records, by the seizure of all her possessions, even of her dower rights.
The Low Countries were divided at this period into two parties, the one composed of the older and more aristocratic families, who owed their wealth to great landholdings and to control of shipping, the other made up of the newer magnates who had reached prosperity through the success of the Dutch and Flemish people in manufacture and commerce. Although the Netherlands were divided into many sections, all quite independent, the feud between the two parties had spread into all of them. At first the parties were called the Cods and the Hooks. The Cods (Kabbeljaw) were the munic.i.p.al factions, and it was supposed they took their name from the light blue and scaly-looking Bavarian coat of arms, while the Hooks were the n.o.bility, capable of catching and controlling the Cods. The two parties had affiliated bodies in all the Dutch and Flemish provinces, although they bore different names in each. In Gueldres they were known as the Bronkhorst and the Hekeren, from great families which supported them.
Well: the two sons of Eleanor began to quarrel violently and perhaps it was inevitable that they should each lead one of the two factions. The younger son, Edward, was the more warlike and aggressive, and he not only succeeded in defeating his brother in open conflict but managed to take him prisoner. Raynald, the elder, had of course become duke on his father"s death, but he was so corpulent that the people had been somewhat scornful of him and had nicknamed him Cra.s.sus (the Fat). Edward, who seemed to have an ingenious turn for cruelty, in which he took after his great-grandfather of that name, put poor Cra.s.sus in a cell in the castle of Nieuwkerk in which the doors and windows were always open; but such was the girth of the older brother that he could not squeeze his way through any of them.
This provided Duke Edward with a ready answer when he was charged with a lack of proper feeling. "My brother is not a prisoner. He may leave when he so wills."
"But, Your Grace, he is too broad to get through the doors!"
"Am I to blame, then, that my brother is a gormandizer?"
In the meantime Edward enjoyed ten years of turbulent rule. He was finally killed in battle with his neighbors, the Brabanons. Raynald had been well fed in his cell which bore out the truth that "stone walls do not a prison make," not, at least, when narrow doors will suffice. On the death of Edward he was released and restored to his dukedom. But alas, poor Cra.s.sus! He was now huge and a far from inspiring sight; and he had lost all capacity to cope with administrative troubles. Perhaps it was just as well, for the good of the realm, that he died within a year.
Through all this trouble the poor mother of these ign.o.ble sons had lived in poverty, finding it necessary to accept aid from the monks of a monastery at Harderwyck which she had established in her days of power and wealth. She seems to have been too proud to ask help of her English kin. Some funds were provided for her after both sons had pa.s.sed into the shades, and she died in comparative comfort in 1335 in a Cistercian convent near Malines.
CHAPTER VII.
The New Favorite
1.
EDWARD"S weakness of character was most clearly manifested in his inability to stay long without someone to lean on, to share his interests, his occupations, his hobbies, his likes and dislikes. When he found such a friend, he lavished affection on him and was happy only when in his company. He went much farther, unfortunately: he lavished wealth and power on his favorites as well. Nothing was too good for them, even if the demands of the favorite went beyond the bounds of reason or infringed illegally the rights of others or even ran counter to the const.i.tution. For Gaveston, he had been ready to sacrifice everything: the good will of the people over whom he ruled, the relationship with his wife, even his hold on the crown of England.
After Gaveston"s violent death, he lived a more normal existence. This was due in some degree to the birth of his son and the improved understanding, or perhaps compromise, with the queen. This state of affairs lasted longer than might have been expected; for several years, in fact.
One of the prominent barons of the day was Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Winchester, who held extensive lands in the Marcher country. He had stood on the king"s side at all stages of the continuous hostilities between the ruler and the dissenting group headed by the Earl of Lancaster. He had even voted for the return of Gaveston from exile and the restoration of his t.i.tles and lands. By so doing he had won the enmity of the baronial party, who considered him a deserter, and had been expelled from the council. After Gaveston"s death he slipped quietly and inevitably into a favored position with the unstable king, and it was generally believed that he was urging the king to seek revenge on those who had played a part in the death of the Gascon. His course, in the opinion of those who knew him well, was dictated by avarice. It was his insatiable desire for land and money which led him to seek the ear of the king and not a liking for power in itself. He seems to have been endowed with some of the obvious characteristics of gentility; he was courteous, urbane, and easy in his dealings with friend and foe. In addition, he was a man of parts, a clever diplomat and a good soldier.
His son, Hugh le Despenser the younger, had married Eleanor, the oldest of the three daughters of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and the wealthiest peer in England. He might well have been content with such prospects, but he shared the traits of his father to such a remarkable degree that he was never satisfied. He was clever and ingratiating and handsome in face and figure. In spite of all these advantages he was ruled by such a pa.s.sion for wealth that he was blind to the risks he took to obtain more and more possessions.
At first the son had taken the opposite course from his father, aligning himself with the party of Lancaster. This might readily have been matter a matter of deliberate policy. Centuries later, when the Stuarts in exile were making warlike efforts to regain the throne, it was not unusual for families to divide their allegiance. A landowner with two sons would send one to serve under the Pretender and the other would remain at home or even enlist in the government forces, thus making sure that, no matter which way things went, one of the two could retain the family property. One can imagine the wily Despenser, with a calculating glint in his cool gray eye, taking the younger aside and whispering in his ear: "Good son, I have committed myself to the king. But suppose that the barons win? Can we take the risk of having all our lands confiscated? Nay, my son, you must see to that by throwing in your lot with this pestilential Lancaster and his crew."
Whether or not it was a matter of pure self-interest, the well-favored son of the family allied himself so strongly with the baronial faction that Lancaster, whose judgment in such matters was always faulty, was convinced the younger Despenser had earned the ill will of Edward. After Gaveston"s death he was made chamberlain of the royal household, a post which the Gascon had held, in the belief that the appointment would be obnoxious to the king. This brought the young man into constant contact with Edward, and the result was far different from the one that the inveterate fumbler, Cousin Lancaster, had expected.
The new chamberlain went about his duties with suavity and confidence, creating an atmosphere of cheerfulness and ease. On the surface, at least, he no longer took an active part in the troubled politics of the realm.
The young Earl of Gloucester, Despenser"s brother-in-law, was killed at Bannockburn, and there was inevitably a furious race among the husbands of the three sisters, to whom the immense Clare holdings would revert. The husbands of the two younger sisters, Hugh of Audley and Roger d"Amory, believed that Despenser had bested them in the division by taking nearly the whole of Glamorgan. Their hostility grew when he claimed, and even began to use, the t.i.tle of Earl of Gloucester. It has been an accepted theory that the ill feeling in the family was the reason for Despenser"s desertion from the baronial cause and his devotion thereafter to the interests of the king. This does not seem a realistic explanation. The barons still had the whip hand, and no one with an eye to the main chance would have changed his coat to attach himself to the waning fortunes of the inc.u.mbent of the throne.
It is more likely that Lancaster had been wrong in a.s.suming a dislike for Despenser on the part of the king or that, at least, he was slow in detecting a change of sentiment on Edward"s part. Propinquity and the easy manner and personal charm of the new chamberlain were certain to have this effect. The king began to show a predilection for his amiable and plausible aide, a fondness for his company. The queen, who was watching her spouse with suspicious care, detected this at once. The enmity, even hatred, which Isabella displayed later for the two Despensers was not a sudden manifestation of feeling. It had been building up, without a doubt, from the time her observant eye had first detected the familiar symptoms in her royal husband.
Gradually there was a swing toward Edward on the part of many of the barons, and the time came when that astute pair, the acquisitive Despensers, might ally themselves together on the royal side with reasonable safety. The incompetence of the Earl of Lancaster had disillusioned the barons, and many of them still shared with Pembroke the antagonism which had grown out of the way the latter"s promise to Gaveston had been disregarded. Technically Cousin Lancaster was still chief of the council and could dictate to Edward on points of state policy, but actually he had withdrawn from active partic.i.p.ation and, like Achilles, was sulking in his tent. The Despensers were shrewd observers of the political scene. They realized that the pendulum was swinging back. If Edward had shrewd guidance, he could at this juncture regain all the power and privilege he had lost. Father and son, in thorough accord, shoulder to shoulder, moved into the breach.
It was soon realized by all that the younger Despenser had taken the place of Gaveston, and the feeling against him ran high. The son seemed to be possessed of the same false confidence which had sent the Gascon to his death. Certainly he paid no heed to the growing enmity of the barons and used his influence over the king to get more and more land. Although he had received the largest share of the Clare estates, he was not satisfied and kept demanding that the earldom be granted him officially. Without warning he seized Newport, which belonged to Audley, his brother-in-law. He whispered in Edward"s ear that the Mortimer family was becoming too powerful in the Marcher country and should be restrained.
Father and son had built a close barricade around the king, excluding almost everyone from intimacy with him, even the queen. They were like a pair of blue-blooded Uriah Heeps, getting their hands on everything, suggesting all manner of legal twists to take power and property from others, begging for this, demanding that. The king was either unable to stand out against this insidious influence or was happy to lavish his favors on them. It was not quite the same as when Gaveston had been the recipient of the king"s bounty, for the Despensers were of n.o.ble blood and had wide connections. It could not be charged, therefore, that they were greedy outsiders, one of the most serious complaints against the Gascon, nor did this new team of sycophants do anything to enrage the barons personally as Gaveston had done. But if they did not rub their hands together in the accepted manner of stage villains (on the contrary, they were invariably courteous and obliging), they inspired a sense of fear and insecurity in the baronage.
Lancaster, acting for once with some ac.u.men, saw his chance to regain the confidence of his fellow barons. He came out strongly for action against the new favorites, and the n.o.bility almost to a man rallied behind him: the aggrieved brothers-in-law of the younger Despenser; the Mortimers, who had always been a tough and hard-bitten lot; the earls of Hereford, Warenne, and Arundel. Without waiting for parliamentary action, the neighbors in the Marcher country invaded the lands of the favorites and burned their houses. They were led by the Mortimers, who had adopted a special uniform, green with a yellow sleeve on the right arm. In a few nights of pillaging they practically destroyed all the properties the younger Despenser held through his wife and did damage amounting to hundreds of thousands. In addition they had ravaged sixty-three manors belonging to the elder Despenser, which he claimed represented a loss to him of forty-six thousand pounds; an indication of the enormous wealth he had been able to acc.u.mulate through the influence of the king. The elder"s detailed statement of losses provides an interesting light on the life of a great baronial establishment of the day. He was robbed by his neighbors of twenty-eight thousand sheep, one thousand oxen, twelve hundred cows with their calves, five hundred and sixty horses, two thousand hogs and, from his larders, "six hundred bacons, eighty carca.s.ses of beef and six hundred muttons." It paid well to stand in the favor of Edward!
The king, in a panic, issued a writ forbidding any attack on the Despensers. But writs were of small avail against a whole ruling cla.s.s in arms, so in May 1321 Edward had to call Parliament to deal with the situation. The barons attended in force, wearing a white favor on the arm as a sign of their unanimity. This led to the session"s being called the Parliament of the White Bands. The one thing on which the magnates were in agreement was the need to be rid of the leeches. Charges were brought against the Despensers and a decree was pa.s.sed condemning them to exile and the forfeiture of much of their property, all the ill-gained part, at least.
The elder Despenser was sensible enough to bow his head to the storm. He accepted the decree of banishment by going abroad. The son, however, was of tougher mettle. He left in a fury of dissent. Where he set himself up is not on record, but it is possible that he had found a refuge in Bristol Channel, perhaps on Lundy Island, the centuries-long home of pirates. At any rate, he suddenly appeared with an armed vessel and seized two merchant ships coming in to port and robbed them of their cargoes.
The king, regarding this act of piracy, perhaps, as an amusing piece of horseplay, had begun to plan and conspire to get them back, almost as soon as he had affixed the royal seal to the decree of banishment. The Gaveston story was to be repeated, apparently, over and over.
2.
During the month of October 1321, Queen Isabella decided to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Leeds Castle, which had been given to her as part of her dower, was selected to break the journey, and the queen sent her marshal ahead to announce her coming.
One of the lesser barons, Bartholomew Badlesmere, had been made castellan of Leeds but was away at the time. Having been put in that post since the rise of Lancaster to his position of dominance, Badlesmere had left instructions to his wife not to admit anyone who did not carry the necessary order. Had he paused to consider the character of his wife, he would have qualified his instructions to cover a situation of this kind. Every word in the English language which applies to women of violent disposition-harridan, virago, beldame-could be used to describe his far from fair lady. She was, as well, a bitter partisan by a.s.sociation and had, it was soon made clear, no regard at all for the royal family.
She met the queen"s official on the lowered drawbridge and with an angry wave of her hand bade him begone.
"The queen," she declared, "must seek some other lodging. I will not admit anyone without an order from my lord."
The marshal, most rudely taken aback by the att.i.tude of the castellan"s wife, demanded if she knew that he was there on behalf of Isabella of England. That the queen, moreover, owned this castle and would not consider seeking lodging elsewhere. None of this had any effect on iron-willed Lady Badlesmere. She reiterated what she had said. How was she to know if this demand for admittance came from the queen? In any event, let the queen go where she listed: she would not spend the night at Leeds.
While this argument was in progress, the royal party put in an appearance at the outer barbican. The madwoman screeched an order to her archers, who had a.s.sembled along the battlements, and the queen was greeted, not by the usual obsequious compliments and the strewing of flowers along the drawbridge, but by a volley of arrows. Six of her party were killed or wounded. Isabella of England, in a state of mind beggaring description, turned her horse and fled.
There had been some trouble earlier between the queen and this furious beldame. This added a still more violent tincture to the report of the extraordinary incident which reached the ears of the king. Badlesmere himself added fuel to the flames of the royal wrath by writing an explanation, couched in impudent terms, in which he excused the action of his wife in closing the castle to the queen. Edward spluttered with a degree of anger he had seldom felt before and decided to take action at once to avenge the affront.
The Ordainers, in whose hands rested all authority, seemed little disturbed over the incident. Lancaster, with his gift for doing the wrong thing, chose to be stiffly hostile. The queen"s indignation mounted with each day and hour, so Edward finally decided to take the punishment of the Badlesmeres on his own shoulders. He made an announcement accordingly that, inasmuch as his beloved consort had been treated with violence and contempt, a general muster of all persons between the ages of sixteen and sixty was called to attend the king in an expedition against Leeds Castle.
It was London which responded with the greatest good will to this summons. The queen was still the darling of the citizens, and the trained bands turned out in force to avenge the injury which had been done her. They kept pace with the mounted knights in their eagerness to have a hand in the punishment of the castellan and his wife. Badlesmere himself, after having defended his wife"s folly, had been very careful not to join her in the castle. He had, in fact, gone in great haste to Stowe Park, which was the seat of the Bishop of Lincoln, his nephew, which seemed a reasonably safe place. The belligerent chatelaine expected that Lancaster would come to her support and she defied the royal forces when they appeared before the castle. She did not fully understand that dilatory gentleman. Lancaster had come to see that he was on the wrong side of things in this instance and he had no intention of involving himself. The virago of Leeds was left to face alone the storm she had raised.
The attack launched against the castle was a spirited one, and in a matter of a few days the garrison surrendered. The punishment was first vented on the garrison, who had been guilty only of obeying orders; the usual procedure in these chivalrous days. The seneschal, one Walter Colepepper, was taken up to the battlements and there hanged with eleven of his men. Lady Badlesmere was taken to the Tower of London. It has been said that she thus became the first woman prisoner to be lodged in the White Tower. This is not correct, for an unfortunate and lovely lady, a daughter of Robert Fitz-Walter and best known as Maud the Fair, was kept in the Tower by King John and was killed there finally by a poisoned egg sent to her by that worthy king.
Lady Badlesmere was promised a hempen ending, which would have pleased the people of London who had followed her through the streets, jeering and storming at her and calling her Jezebel. But after a long imprisonment she was released. Her husband was not to fare so well.
The capture of Leeds Castle was Edward"s first successful military exploit. It seems to have gone to his head. He returned to London with the forces which had rallied to his support, which included no fewer than six earls, in a mood to a.s.sert himself and reclaim the royal prerogatives which had slipped from his hands. Nothing could have been more fortunate for him than this incident provided by the Badlesmere woman. The baronial strength had been so sharply split that Edward could have found parliamentary support for almost any steps he might dictate. The queen, moreover, was showing how much she resembled her implacable father. The hanging of a few minions had not satisfied her, and she was now urging the king to take action against the barons, even Lancaster, who had been responsible in a sense for the humiliation she had suffered. The time was indeed ripe to come to grips, to toss aside the ordinances, to defy the Ordainers, to break the power of Lancaster.
Unfortunately Edward"s first thought seems to have been to take advantage of his new popularity to bring the Despensers back. On December 10 he appeared at a convocation of the clergy and won from the bishops an opinion that the banishing of the precious pair had been illegal. With this backing he summoned the Despensers to return.
The familiar pattern was being repeated. If there had been a grain of sense in the king"s head, he would have seen that the end must also be the same.
CHAPTER VIII.
The King in the Saddle
1.
EDWARD realized that he must cross the Severn if he expected to break up the noisy rebellion the Marcher barons had started along the borders of Wales. When he reached Shrewsbury and rode along the peninsula, it seemed to him that he was unlikely to accomplish his objective. There were armed men in large numbers on the other side, wearing the green and yellow. Mortimer again! That obnoxious fellow, who had blocked the way at Bridgnorth, had kept pace along the other side of the river and was prepared, obviously, to dispute any attempt to pa.s.s over.
It is probable that the king had always disliked Mortimer of Wigmore. As a minor and an orphan, Mortimer had been put under the guardianship of Piers de Gaveston, an arrangement that promised to be most profitable to Brother Perrot. By some legal wriggling the guardianship had been broken, much to Edward"s annoyance. Mortimer was almost the complete ant.i.thesis of the slothful, careless king. He was brisk, fiery, keen, and acquisitive. He had, moreover, a dark kind of good looks, accentuated by a lively black eye, which made him popular with the other s.e.x. He had, as might be expected, married an heiress, one of the most eligible in the kingdom, Joan de Glenville. His wife"s holdings included much land in Shropshire, the town and castle of Ludlow, and a generous share of County Meath in Ireland. In pa.s.sing, one might conjecture that in this period of history some disability may have attended these ama.s.sers of unusual wealth which made it possible to beget handsome daughters but no sons. All the great estates at one time or other fell into the possession of heiresses, some of whom allowed themselves to be trapped into matrimony by handsome but unscrupulous young men such as Mortimer.
Mortimer had not been particularly active against Edward but he had been made one of the Ordainers and had been on the commission to reform the royal household. His active resistance had started with the rise in favor of the Despensers. He hated them both, the mealymouthed father and the pushing son. Their greed, as it happened, had prompted them to separate Mortimer from some lands he regarded as his own, and that was something he could not forgive. And so here was Roger de Mortimer and his uncle of Chirk with a solid little army on the other side of the Severn, prepared seriously to block the king"s progress.
To Edward"s great surprise, however, he found that they were no longer in a fighting mood. Lancaster, as usual, had failed to keep his promises. It had been agreed that he would bring his strength down from the north to support the Marcher barons in their resistance to the king, but instead he was dawdling around his castle of Pontefract and showing no inclination to help. The king was allowed to cross the river, therefore, and on the other side he was met by an angry and disappointed pair with an offer to lay down their arms. All they demanded was a safe-conduct.
Ever since the capture of Leeds, Edward had been riding on the crest of a wave. Everything had been going right for him, but this was, clearly, the best stroke of all. He packed his two prisoners off to London, to be incarcerated in the Tower pending the disposition of their case. He was carrying in his pocket a pet.i.tion from the common people who had endured the harshness and tyranny of the Mortimers and were asking that no grace be shown them. In spite of the letters of safe-conduct, it was not in Edward"s mind to be lenient. He appointed a commission to try them, but when a sentence of death for treason was p.r.o.nounced on the pair, he seemed to relent. The sentence, at any rate, was commuted to life imprisonment in the Tower.
As it turned out, this was an evil mischance for the king. Mortimer in the Tower could be more harmful than Mortimer ruffling it on the borders of Wales.
With the capture and disposal of the Mortimers, the resistance in the west collapsed. The king took the castles of all the other dissenting barons and then spent Christmas at Cirencester in a mood of deep satisfaction. He enjoyed the jests of the Lord of Misrule and the other mumming antics of yuletide. He dipped a gold mug in the wa.s.sail bowl with no thought but to enjoy himself again as in the old days at King"s Langley.
On February 11 he issued a writ for the recall of the Despensers.
2.
All that remained for Edward to do now was to deal with Cousin Lancaster.
The latter found himself in a desperate dilemma because of his inability to make up his mind. Several courses had been open to him, but he had taken none. He could have moved down to support the Marcher barons, as he had promised to do before they took up arms, in which case the king would have found himself between two arms of a pincer. He could have disbanded his troops and announced his intention of supporting the king. He could have run away, either to Scotland or the continent. He could have gone into hiding. The castle of Pontefract stood on a high hill covering eight acres and had many secret subterranean chambers in the rock beneath it Here he could have remained until the storm blew over, as the Jacobite leaders did later in caves in the Highland glens. But he did none of these things. He sat around and waited while everything went wrong. And then suddenly he found himself alone in arms against the king, who was hurrying north with a victorious army to deal with him.
Still the earl did nothing. Perhaps he believed himself above any form of personal punishment, being of royal blood and first cousin to the king. If so, he was sadly mistaken. The king had conceived as great a hate for him as he had for the king, and it would be a sad day for Cousin Lancaster if he fell into Edward"s hands. It may have been that he did not believe the king could take advantage of the situation; this fumbling and stupid king who never before had done anything right. Perhaps, having a firm belief in his own military capacity, he was certain he could beat Edward if it came to a clash at arms.
Whatever the reason, he sat at Pontefract while the king captured Berkeley Castle and began his march to the north. He heard the news of the capture of Kenilworth and Tutbury and of the death of Roger d"Amory. He knew the Mortimers were realizing the extent of their mistake in trusting themselves to the king"s mercy. Finally, he was well aware that Sir Andrew Harclay, who was in command of royal troops to check Scottish raids, had thrown himself across his, Lancaster"s, line of retreat. His main supporter, the Earl of Hereford, joined him at Pontefract, full of alarm and convinced that nothing could save them.
Then Lancaster did the worst thing possible. He made a halfhearted effort to prevent Edward from crossing the Trent, thereby stamping himself as a traitor. Then he turned with such troops as were left him and ran for it.
Harclay took prompt measures at this point. He brought his troops down to intercept the runaway earls and defeated them easily at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire. Hereford was killed while crossing the bridge. A soldier hidden under the bridge thrust a lance into him through a crevice in the boarding. Lancaster was taken prisoner. He was turned over at once to the king.
3.
It was on March 6, 1322, that Lancaster fell into the hands of Harclay. Six days later he was tried at his own castle of Pontefract on charges of treason. It could not properly be called a trial; rather, it was a formal hearing conducted before the king and a group of prominent peers, with the verdict decided upon in advance.
It is unfortunate that little was recorded of the event, for it is one of the most dramatic in English history. Lancaster, as the eldest son of Edmund Crouchback, was cousin to the king and the second man in the kingdom. He had taken full advantage of his rank to oppose Edward at every step during the latter"s fifteen years on the throne, const.i.tuting himself the leader of all discontent. Finally he had, with the backing of the baronage, a.s.sumed the role of virtual dictator. Legally he still exercised the powers granted him in July 1316 by the Parliament meeting at Lincoln.
And yet here he stood, with head bent and face pale, at one end of the great hall in his own castle while the king, who had always seemed to him an oaf and a weakling, sat at the other end with the crown on his head. It was a warm day, with a bright sun (how often this happens when someone faces the violent death prescribed by law!), but the thoughts in Lancaster"s mind would have been better tuned to dismal clouds and raw winds. He had always believed he should have been the king. He had been compelled to watch the sad performance of Edward II on the throne which might have been his save for the accident of parentage which had brought Edward I into the world ahead of Edmund Crouchback. It is doubtful that he felt regrets for the course he had followed as he heard himself denounced as a traitor. He had never seen himself as others had, as an indecisive man of little capacity who had been actuated by personal spite rather than by patriotic impulses. But he must have been filled with a despairing realization of the folly which had brought him to this sorry pa.s.s.
Edward, being of shallow character, was p.r.o.ne to quick and angry reactions rather than to the harboring of deep hatreds; but for this cousin who had balked him at every turn, who had been guilty of the cruel dispatch of Gaveston, who had stood on the battlements above the hall, where they were now convened, to jeer at him as he pa.s.sed in his moment of most bitter humiliation, for this man there was in him no inclination to mercy.
Seated about the king were many of the greatest peers of England: Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent and the king"s half brother; John de Dreux, Duke of Brittany; the earls of Pembroke, Surrey, Arundel, Atholl, Angus; Lord Hugh Spencer (meaning the elder Despenser, who had lost no time in rushing home), and Lord Robert de Malmesthorp, chief justice.
A formidable list, and not one face in the group with any hint of friendliness for this overweening man who had been brought, without his armor on his back or his sword by his side, to stand trial before them.
The voice of Lancaster was not raised during the proceedings. He was informed that inasmuch as his traitorous actions were known to all and had already convicted him he would not be asked to plead, nor would he be allowed to speak in his own defense. The hearing must have been brief, consisting of the reading of a long statement in lieu of a legal indictment.
"With banners displayed," ran the statement, "as in open war, in a hostile manner ... resisted and hindered our sovereign lord the king, his soldiers and faithful subjects, for three whole days so that they could not pa.s.s over the bridge of Burton-upon-Trent ... and there feloniously slew some of the king"s men."
Later in the statement there was a reference to the train of incidents which weighed heavily on the mind of the king: when he and Brother Perrot had played the hares before the baronial hounds, with Lancaster sounding the horn to harry them out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and to lead finally to the tragedy of Blacklow Hill. "When our said lord the king had got together provisions, horses and armor, jewels and several other goods and moveables of great value and in large quant.i.ties; which goods and moveables the said Earl Thomas, with horse and arms, and a great power of armed men, took, despoiled and carried off."
The most damaging piece of evidence was proof found on the slain Earl of Hereford of an effort made to form a confederacy with Robert the Bruce. Lancaster had been corresponding with the Scottish king earlier, using the nom de plume King Arthur, an indication, clearly, of the high vaulting nature of his inner ambitions. It will be recalled also that the country had seethed at one stage with rumors that Lancaster was actually in the pay of the Scottish king. The communication found on Hereford"s body contained a direct invitation to come into England with an army, offering in recompense the good offices of Lancaster in getting for Scotland "a good peace."
The prisoner listened while the statement was read, if not with penitence or fear, at least with a conviction of the conclusion to be reached. The king, who is not reported to have taken any part in the proceedings, may not have followed it with equal concentration. It is more likely his mind was filled with the memories which had hardened his resolution: the voice of his friend Gaveston raised in defense of his life, the derisive laughter which had reached him from the battlements of the castle, the letters to the archenemy of the kings of England, signed so vaingloriously King Arthur.
Finally the droning voice of the clerk intoned the words of summation: "Wherefore our sovereign lord the king, having duly weighed the great enormities and offences of the said Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and his notorious ingrat.i.tude, has no manner of reason to show any mercy on him, in reference to pardoning those crimes.... Nevertheless, because the said earl Thomas is most highly and most n.o.bly descended, our sovereign lord the king, having due regard to his high birth and quality, of his own mere good pleasure, remits the execution of two of the punishments, as aforesaid, viz. That the said Thomas shall not be drawn and hanged; but only that execution be done upon the said earl, by beheading him."
The aides who had been captured with Lancaster, not having high birth and quality, were not so well treated. They were condemned to die with all the refinements reserved for traitors. They were hanged, drawn, and quartered.
The sun was still high in the heavens and the air pleasant when Cousin Lancaster was taken to St. Thomas" Hill, which lies some distance from the town, although it could be seen from the eight tall towers at Pontefract. He made the journey on the back of a small gray pony. As he pa.s.sed through the town he was pelted with stones and offal by the people in the streets, many of whom were his dependents.
"King Arthur!" they cried in mockery. "Where are your knights to help you now?"