The deposed king remained at Kenilworth for the balance of the winter, lapped in luxury and kindly treated by Henry of Lancaster. He complained bitterly in letters to the queen of his separation from his family and received from her in return many gifts, mostly of fine articles of clothing. In one letter she said that she would like to visit him but had been forbidden by Parliament. He is said to have written some verses in Latin which when translated began: On my devoted head Her bitterest showers, All from a wintry cloud, Stern fortune pours.
The poor captive had no knowledge of Latin, and the sentiments seem quite foreign to what is known of his character. It seems certain that this was an invention of some later romancer.
While he pa.s.sed the days as well as he could in Caesar"s Tower, a conspiracy for his release was reaching formidable proportions. A family named Dunhead possessed considerable property around Kenilworth. There were two brothers, one a Dominican friar, who was noted for his eloquence and was held in wide regard for his sanct.i.ty. He had stood so high in the regard of Edward that he had once been sent on a mission to the Pope at Avignon; having to do, it was whispered, with the possibility of getting a divorce from Isabella. The friar was still intensely loyal to the deposed king and had enlisted the aid of his brother and many of the neighboring gentry. Henry of Lancaster learned what was afoot and asked to be relieved of the responsibility for so difficult a guest.
The decision to send Edward to Berkeley Castle was due, therefore, to the fear of a successful coup and not, as has been stated, because the queen felt he was being pampered. Thomas of Berkeley had been confined to prison by Edward for some political offense and had been released by Isabella on her return to England. He was married to a daughter of Roger Mortimer, and his selection as Edward"s keeper can be ascribed undoubtedly to that connection. John de Maltravers, a member of a rich Dorsetshire family, was chosen as co-keeper, probably because he was married to Berkeley"s sister. A third knight named Edward de Gurney was then added for good measure. An allowance of five pounds a day was set for the care of the prisoner, which disposes of the charge often made that he was removed because of the queen"s resentment of the easy living provided for her ex-spouse. It was certain, of course, that a goodly part of the daily allowance would find its way into the pockets of Messires Berkeley, Maltravers, and Gurney.
Edward was removed from Kenilworth at night, before the plans of the Dunhead brothers had matured, and taken to Berkeley Castle with a numerous escort. The zealous brothers soon discovered where he had been taken and devoted themselves to a plan to crack open his new prison. At the same time an active conspiracy in favor of the captive developed in South Wales under the leadership of a knight named Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd. This was Mortimer"s responsibility, and the deputy he had appointed to keep peace there, William of Shalford, wrote to him about the scheme, suggesting what he called "a suitable remedy." It is clear that the same thought had been in Mortimer"s mind, and many other minds, for some time. Edward alive would always be a menace. The Dunheads might be balked and the activities of Rhys ap Gruffydd might be suppressed, but others would arise to carry on the agitation.
It is of little avail to speculate on the part the queen played in the events which followed. It is reasonable to suppose that she was taken into Mortimer"s confidence and that she gave her consent, but no proofs of this exist. It is conceivable, of course, that her paramour thought it unwise to draw her into it in any way. The only piece of direct evidence with any bearing on the point is that after her husband"s death she summoned a woman who had embalmed the body and questioned her minutely as to what she had found. The queen"s desire to get at this much of the truth does not clear her of complicity by any means, but it does make it certain that she had not been in the full confidence of the instigators of the murder. That much of doubt she must be allowed.
As to Mortimer"s share in the plot, there can be no doubt at all. The finger points at him as the one who found "the suitable remedy." He picked out a dependent of his named William Ogle and sent him to Berkeley to act with the others.
Before the remedy could be applied, the council had taken matters into its hands by sending a doctor of law named John Walwayn to Berkeley. He was supposed to direct everything that was done for the safekeeping and the comfort of the king. The activities of the Dunheads came to a peak at this point, and it is now believed that the release of Edward was accomplished. A letter from Walwayn has been resurrected from the records of the day which can be construed as an acknowledgment that he had escaped. If it were so, he was recaptured almost immediately. This may provide proof of another story in the records, that he was removed to Corfe Castle for safer keeping. The sentiment around Corfe was too friendly to the captive, however, and again he was taken back to Berkeley. The time for the "remedy" had come.
In many histories it is a.s.serted that the order for the murder was contained in a line of Latin sent to the circle of keepers by Adam of Orleton. The line ran: Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est which, translated, reads, "Edward to kill be unwilling to fear, it is good." The meaning of this ambiguous sentence could be altered by the changing of the comma to appear after the word "unwilling." The keepers of the king took from the first version that they were expected to act and so proceeded with the plan.
This story is not worthy of any credence. In the first place, the bishop was in Avignon at the time on a mission to the Pope, and it is absurd to believe he would put such a d.a.m.ning piece of evidence in writing. It is equally absurd to believe that the rascals to whom it was supposed to be sent would be able to read Latin or to understand the significance of a misplaced comma. It may be taken for granted that any order would have been conveyed by word of mouth so that no incriminating evidence would be left.
4.
One day in mid-September, Thomas of Berkeley came to the cell in which the royal prisoner was confined. He had been seeing little of Edward. The trio of keepers appointed by Mortimer-Maltravers, Gurney, and Ogle-had taken things into their own hands. It seems certain that Berkeley had a genuine feeling of sympathy for his unfortunate guest. He said with regret that he must be absent for some time on affairs of his own but would return as soon as possible. Edward"s hand clung to that of the owner of the castle as though he realized that his last friend was deserting him.
Life had already become a burden to the prisoner. His clothing was shoddy and always damp. The food served him was sometimes so nauseous that he could not eat it. On at least one occasion he had been brought cold and muddy water from the moat to shave with and his protests had been disregarded.
With Berkeley away, there was no one to temper the grim routine of Edward"s days or to stand between him and the other three, particularly the man Ogle, who had made his mysterious appearance a short time before. No one seemed to know exactly why he had come, but Edward had more than a suspicion of the truth and undoubtedly shuddered whenever the man came near him.
As soon as Berkeley departed, the atmosphere of the castle changed. No longer was the lonely prisoner treated with even an outward semblance of respect. Orders were barked at him and rough hands were always ready to enforce them. As a final evidence of hostility, he was removed to a small and dark cell in a wing of the castle devoted to domestic arrangements. It was over the charnelhouse, and the odors which came up from below made it difficult for the new occupant to breathe. The one window looked out on an empty corner of the courtyard, a bleak prospect of damp wall and slimy paving stones. It must have been apparent now that his three grim custodians had one purpose only in mind.
On the night of September 21 the other inmates of the castle were aroused from their slumbers by shrieks coming from the malodorous cell in which the deposed king was confined. Horror and agony were in the sounds. It is said that the outcries of the dying man were so loud that they reached to ears in the village nearby and that people hid their heads under their bedclothing, knowing full well what this meant. Edward of Caernarvon, once Edward of England, was dying a violent death.
In the morning it was given out that he had expired during the night of natural causes. The guards and domestics were allowed to view the body, laid out on a disordered bed in the cell. None failed to notice that the features of the dead man were still contorted with violence and pain.
Many stories were circulated throughout the country as to the manner in which the murder had been committed. One circ.u.mstantial account, contained in a chronicle prepared some thirty years after the event, seemed to fit the known facts and was generally believed. It is given for what it is worth, in the absence of any official explanation.
The three a.s.sa.s.sins waited until their victim was sound asleep and then flung a table over him, which was held down by two of them to prevent him from moving. The third man then proceeded to burn out his inside organs with a red-hot bar of iron. As it was inserted through a horn, no marks of violence were made on the surface of the body.
John Thody, Abbot of Gloucester, claimed the body and took it away in his own chariot. Later there was a burial of much stateliness and pomp in the Abbey of St. Peter"s. There was gold leaf on the coffin and lions of pure gold on the hea.r.s.e; but nothing could be done to remove the imprint of horror on the once handsome features of this weak and unfortunate king, nor to allay the wave of grief and anger which swept over the country.
BOOK THREE.
Edward the Third.
CHAPTER I.
Hamlet on the Steps of the Throne.
1.
THE foul deed which brought to a close the days of that poor shadow of a king, Edward II, inaugurated a reign which would touch the peaks. Edward III was the most spectacular of the Plantagenets; fair, of goodly proportions, with a face, so it was said, of a demi-G.o.d; a conqueror, brave, vainglorious, extravagant, ostentatious; somewhat shallow of character, lacking, at any rate, the deep sense of kingly responsibility which has kept the memory of his grandfather so green. It must have been a great sight to watch the third Edward riding in a tournament, his lance expert and deadly, his delight in the sport so keen. Or to observe him in his brilliant and gay court, strutting like a peac.o.c.k in the velvets he loved, the double-piled new varieties from Lucca and Genoa; his voice richly modulated, his laughter spontaneous, an intimate look in his eye for every pretty lady.
These were the days when chivalry reached its greatest height in England. The armies with which Edward defeated the French and came so close to establishing his claim to the French throne were filled with knights of spirit and repute, knights-errant in the fullest sense of the word, about whom much will be told later. One of the stories of the period which is repeated with the most gusto concerns a beautiful lady of the court who had dressed herself for a ball with such splendor that a line from Piers Plowman seems to fit her: "Her array ravished me, such richness saw I never." But the lady"s dress had beauties which did not show on the surface, and when she lost a most necessary part of her attire, a delicate thing of rich silk with jewels nestling in its rosebuds, and the king found it, he was inspired (or so runs the story) to form the Order of the Garter, which has been the only rival for the legendary Round Table of Arthurian days. It may be recorded also that only the most perfunctory efforts were made to capture a Frenchwoman of high rank who set herself up as a pirate in and around the Channel. Was she not a lady and beautiful, forsooth?
But the rise of chivalry was no more than the flare-up before its final extinction. The brave knights were certain, no doubt, that they had won Crecy and Poictiers, but a realistic vision would have taught them a different story. Those great battles were won by stout-limbed, brawny-backed, sun-bronzed fellows of low degree who wore lincoln-green jerkins and had a deadly skill with a new weapon called the longbow. The chivalry of France died under the lethal hail of English arrows, without realizing that the fine bloom of chivalry withered with their pa.s.sing. An insignificant item is found (without foundation) in Froissart. The English, he reports, had something very strange called cannon; long-snouted barrels of bronze which spewed forth sh.e.l.ls under the compulsive force of a substance that a very great Englishman named Roger Bacon had discovered a century before, gunpowder. But the longbow and the death-dealing powder would soon revolutionize warfare and change it from the sport of knights to a much deadlier business: the clash of great armies and the use of artillery which would cover battlefields with smoke and cut wide swaths of death in the serried ranks. A form of conflict in which the exquisite rules of chivalry would have no part at all.
The fifty long years of Edward"s reign make robust telling after the shambles of his father"s rule, although the third Edward took no interest in const.i.tutional matters, granting rights to his subjects with a careless flourish of his pen and then trampling on them with equally careless steel-shod feet. But progress was made under these conditions toward democratic understandings. It was a period also of commercial expansion, a prosaic phase of life in which the king, strangely enough, seemed to take a great deal of interest. Perhaps his consort, Philippa, who came from the Low Countries, where business had become the most important part of life, had influenced him in that direction. His chief interests remained, however, diplomacy and war; and because he was skillful in the one and bold and lucky in the other, he scaled the heights.
Alexandre Dumas, the elder, has a.s.serted that a man reaches the full prime of life between his forty-sixth and forty-eighth years. When Edward III was forty-six he held on St. George"s Day at Windsor the most magnificent tournament of the age and competed mightily himself. That Christmas he had among his guests the kings of France and Scotland, both of whom had been taken prisoners in their wars with England and were being held in captivity; and he was entertaining at the moment proposals of peace by which he would have been awarded all of the southeast of France in full sovereignty. This would have restored to him the Angevin empire which had been lost by John and Henry III. The novelist seems to have been right as far as Edward was concerned. When the yule log was dragged into the hall and the three monarchs watched the merrymaking over their goblets of hippocras (a cordial highly spiced and strained through a hippocratian bag of cloth or linen), the English king was at his zenith.
2.
For four years the young king was supposed to be under the guidance of the council which had been set up by Parliament, but in reality there was a regency in operation. Queen Isabella had expected to be made regent, and when that honor was denied her she had proceeded coolly to a.s.sume all the powers and responsibilities of the post, with Mortimer always at her right hand. The boy seems to have acquiesced. In any event, he did nothing immediately to express disapproval or to interfere with his mother"s highhandedness. He even allowed her to appropriate for herself nearly all of the royal funds, two thirds of everything, in fact.
What was the young king thinking as he watched his still beautiful and still popular mother (although the first rumblings of discontent were being heard in the land) a.s.sume all the powers of the throne? What were his feelings toward the strutting, arrogant Mortimer, who was proving himself more dangerous and grasping than Gaveston or the Despensers had ever been? Above all else, what did he think of the relationship between them? If he did not know they were living in almost open sin, his were the only eyes in the kingdom which had failed to detect the truth.
Edward, it may be taken for granted, was watching everything and biding his time. A Hamlet in his early teens, he was not in a position to act at once. He knew the fierce temper and the savage methods of Mortimer and he had seen how dilatory and feeble were the men who made up the council. He might be as roughly thrust aside as his father had been. Did he want to share the fate of Arthur of Brittany, who had stood in the way of John of infamous memory? All the qualities he would later display were developing in the young king and would manifest themselves when he felt it safe to make his move. In the meantime he did not mope as Hamlet had done. There was no mooning about the battlements of the White Tower, no soliloquizing at midnight in the ghostly lunar light through the arches of the great hall at Westminster. He was bestirring himself in many ways. And he was watching the men about him, weighing their merits and the courage they had in them, considering, discarding, and finally selecting the few he could take into his confidence.
There were two things he could do while he waited. He could lead an army against the Scots, who had come down in full force and with fire and sword into the northern counties. And he could take the necessary steps to marry his Philippa.
Queen Isabella, who had reason to know the Plantagenet ways, was apprehensive of her son. She wanted to keep him in the background as long as possible, but she saw the need to have him occupied. Accordingly she took his proposed marriage in hand and persuaded the members of the council that a daughter of the house of Hainaut would be the most suitable wife for him. Care was taken not to let the members know that the young king"s mind was already made up. It was their business, not his, to find him a wife. The doc.u.ment finally drawn up gave their consent to a match with "a daughter of that n.o.bleman, William, Count of Hainaut, Holland and Zealand and Lord of Friesland." No mention was made of Philippa. Any one of the four daughters apparently would suit the council. The next step was to send a deputation to Count William to lay the proposal before him, and Adam of Orleton was selected to head it.
It will be remembered that when King John sent a deputation to Rome to aid in selecting an Archbishop of Canterbury he told them they could vote for anyone they desired, provided it was the king"s candidate. Adam of Orleton was given secret instructions of a similar nature. Use your own judgment, Sir Bishop, in selecting one of the four, provided it is Philippa.
The deputation traveled to Valenciennes, where Count William resided with his bevy of pretty daughters, and there was much solemn discussion as to which one was to be selected. It is likely that Philippa did not worry, remembering the long talks she had had with the handsome young prince, their rambles together in the gardens, the vows of fidelity he had sworn. Adam of Orleton finally gave his head an owl-like shake and announced the selection of the fairest, the most apple-cheeked, the somewhat plumper one of the four.
Then the matter of the Pope"s sanction came up, for the two mothers were cousins-german and so within the bounds of consanguinity. It was decided to send messengers at once to Avignon to win the papal nod, for an urgency was recognized in getting the matter settled without delay. Edward, after all, was a boy in years and not allowed to make his own decisions. His mother was no longer a suppliant for military aid and she might change her mind in favor of a more important match. And finally there was Mortimer, with daughters of his own and a willingness, possibly, to solidify his position by marrying the prince to one of them. Two Flemish knights and a parcel of clerks were sent off on horseback with instructions to ride fast and long and get the papal consent before London could change its mind.
British poets have been partial to recording the stories of urgent rides. There is the midnight race from Ghent to Aix, the horseback perambulations of John Gilpin, and the mad ride of Tarn o" Shanter. Some bard should have selected the journey of the two knights of Hainaut. They had to cover the whole face of France, starting at Valenciennes, traversing the full depth of Burgundy, then through Auvergne, striking sparks from the rocky roads and pausing only long enough to bawl for relays, pa.s.sing Rheims, Troyes, Dijon, and Lyons, and coming finally to the city of Avignon perched high on the banks of the mighty Rhone; Avignon, once called the windy city because it lay directly in the path of the hot mistral which blew across the Mediterranean, but was now the new home of the popes.
Rome had become almost a ghost city. Her great palaces and cathedrals were empty and silent, for the personnel and machinery of the papacy had been moved to Avignon. Lacking all facilities for accommodating the thousands of priests and clerks and functionaries of all cla.s.ses, not to mention the acolytes and guards and servants who had come pouring out of Italy at the beck of lordly France, Avignon had become a place of chaos. Pope John XXII was madly busy raising the buildings which would become known as the Palace of the Popes on the rocky Rocher des Doms. He had two thoughts only in mind-speed and solidity-and was not attempting to match the grandeur and solemnity of Rome. The result would be a depressing cl.u.s.ter of gray stone structures where the affairs of the papacy would be conducted for seventy long years. About them miles of square stone ramparts were rising, and in course of time no fewer than thirty-nine ma.s.sive towers would be added.
When the weary knights from Hainaut came galloping into Avignon, the streets were crowded with priests afoot and on muleback, there were three albs in every attic, and the church bells were competing with the whine of saws and the screech of winches. Architects and master masons and carpenters were trailing dust through the anterooms of the Pope while clerical deputations sat unnoticed and bit their fingernails in impatience.
Pope John was a tiny man, with hunched shoulders which made him look deformed. He had been born in Cahors, the son of a poor cobbler, and he was still so partial to his old home that seven out of the fifteen cardinals he appointed came from that somewhat insignificant city; an extraordinary thing, surely, for a pope to do. He proceeded now to do something which also seems extraordinary. Instead of letting the Flemish knights wait their turn outside, a matter perhaps of months, he had them in at once. He listened to what they had to tell him, nodded his head, and said "Yes."
3.
The Scots had been feeling their oats since Bannockburn. Rome had at last recognized Robert the Bruce as king of the country and there was peace with England, a nominal kind of peace, since the people on both sides of the border paid little attention to it. The succession to the throne had been well established by the arrival of a son who was given the name of David. This Scottish prince was a fine, handsome lad with strong limbs and a will and a fierce temper of his own; all the qualities, in fact, which are looked for in candidates for thrones.
Immediately after the deposition of Edward II, old Robert the Bruce decided it would be a good thing to teach the new king a lesson. He sent his two eager warriors, the Black Douglas and Randolph, Earl of Moray, down into Northumberland to stir up the Sa.s.senach. Things had indeed changed for the Scots. The whole troop was mounted, even the poorest clansman having some sorry sort of Galloway nag of his own. This was the kind of warfare in which they excelled. They had no kitchens, no food supplies, no lumbering wagons to hamper their movements. Each horseman had his bag of oatmeal and, at the worst, he could sustain himself for a long time on that, cooking it on a metal plate. When luck favored them and they picked up English cattle, they would roast or boil the animals in their skins and each man would then carry a haunch over his shoulder. They came and went like the wind and they left behind them the scent of burning homesteads and the wailing of new-made widows and the weeping of children.
The English decided to put a stop to this kind of raiding. A large army was raised, nearly sixty thousand men, and Sir John of Hainaut was brought back with a body of trained Flemish cavalry to help. The young king, eager to win his spurs, rode to Durham and a.s.sumed command; a nominal command, since Sir John was there to advise him and all the best English generals, none of whom was very good. It might have seemed to a shrewd observer that the powers behind the throne, the ambitious queen and her constant attendant Mortimer, were content to keep the prince busy at something, even to place him at a disadvantage. They did not want him to emerge victorious from the war like his grandfather and that prince of glowing memory, Richard Coeur-de-Lion. It was farthest from their thoughts to supply the people with a young hero, to the end that they, Isabella and her gentle Mortimer, would be shoved into the background.
He had no chance to win against the Scots. Twenty thousand strong, the hors.e.m.e.n of Douglas and Randolph were never where the English expected to find them. Finally the prince got sound information and caught up with them. He located them in such a strong position back of the Wear River that he dared not attempt a crossing in front of them. After a long wait, hoping the Scots would draw back like chivalrous knights and invite them to come over and fight, the English army waded off through the peat bogs and the marshes to cross at a ford higher up the river. The Scots sidestepped nimbly and were found in a still stronger position at Stanhope Park. By this time the English troops were in a bad way. They had no food and there was no decent forage for their mounts. The great Flanders horses became hopelessly mired whenever they attempted to move. Through it all a persistent and dismal rain continued to fall.
To cap the English misfortunes, the Black Douglas played one of his most daring tricks on the young king. In the middle of night he rode into the English camp with a small body of hors.e.m.e.n, calling "St. George! St. George!" to deceive the sentries. Three hundred Englishmen were killed before the camp stirred to action. The Black Douglas, whose rashness knew no bounds, found the royal tent and cut his way in through the canvas. Edward wakened to see a tall, grim figure beside his couch. There was an exultant gleam in the dark Douglas eye, and his drawn claymore might have put an early end to the reign of the third Edward if the chaplain had not thrown himself between them, dying to save his royal master. Edward escaped under the canvas of the tent and, as the camp was now fully aroused, the daring Scots took to horse and dashed off into the night, changing their cries to a triumphant "A Douglas! A Douglas!"
"A little bloodletting," said the Black Douglas carelessly when he reached his own camp and was questioned by Randolph, his partner in command.
This was the only bloodletting of the campaign, for the Scots withdrew immediately after and retired to their side of the border.
Edward, humiliated to the point of tears, took his army back to Durham and then to York. His first campaign had been a failure. He had learned some lessons, however, which would stand him in good stead when later he would face the French on the battlefield of Crecy. Successful war was not a matter of set procedure like a tournament. Two well-equipped armies did not march out as though by appointment to a fair and level field and there fight it out in bloodthirsty comfort. Instead it was a dirty, tricky business, a series of feints and stratagems and efforts to totally mislead the other army. He had seen the Flemish cavalry of John of Hainaut struggling in the mud. He had seen the Scots come and go like will-o"-the-wisps, and he had been misled and tricked and made a mockery of; and he realized, as his grandfather Edward I had after the royal defeat at Lewes, that his whole conception of war must be changed. It was a good thing for England that his ideas had altered completely when the time came to fight at Crecy.
In the meantime it was decided to make peace with the Scots and have an end to all this bootless border marauding. A Parliament was called at Lincoln to open negotiations. The Florentine bankers, the Bardi, who were now well established in London and had taken over the financial activities once carried on by the unfortunate Templars, agreed to loan the money needed. Sir John and his mercenaries were paid off with a lump sum of fourteen thousand pounds and sent home to Flanders. Edward"s first little war was over.
4.
The future Queen of England, all a-flutter as a prospective bride should be, was married at her Flemish home to Edward by procuration. The name of the man who served as proxy for the young king has not been recorded, but of course it was all a matter of legal form. The foolish practice of putting the bride into bed and then admitting the proxy under the covers (with a roomful of witnesses, of course) just long enough for him to touch his bare foot to hers would come into use much later in history. The ceremony, such as it was, served as a legal tie and the bride set out forthwith for England. Her clothes were as wonderful as might have been expected, considering that she came from the land where all the finest textiles were made. Her train was an imposing one. She was escorted by her uncle, Sir John, and among her followers was a youth named Sir Wantelet de Mauny, who was her official carver. It will be well to keep this young man in mind. Under the anglicized name of Sir Walter de Manny, he was to prove himself one of the greatest English fighting men in the Hundred Years" War.
She had been prepared for a rather barren welcome because her young husband was still in the north over the Scottish troubles and both the queen and her devoted Mortimer had also ridden to York to have a hand in the negotiations. On December 23, 1327, she reached London, where a rousing reception was accorded her. The citizens of London seemed to be incurably sentimental where beautiful foreign queens were concerned, and the flaxen-haired Philippa was as wildly acclaimed as Isabella had been. The lord mayor presented her with a service of plate worth three hundred pounds. Leaving at once, escorted by the constable of England, John Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the bridal party made slow progress over s...o...b..und roads. It was not until January 24 that Philippa faced her bridegroom before the altar at York Minster with William de Melton, Archbishop of York, performing the ceremony. Few royal brides were as lovely as Philippa. Edward had grown taller in the interval of their separation and seemed more handsome than ever in her eyes, and so she was also a happy bride. He had pa.s.sed his fifteenth year and she was a year younger, but no one saw anything amiss in this, for it was an age of early marriages and, unfortunately, of early deaths. Such, however, was not to be the fate of this triply blessed pair. Philippa would live in wedlock with Edward forty-one years and would present her ill.u.s.trious Plantagenet mate with twelve children, eight of whom would survive her.
She was the most poorly endowed queen ever wed to English king, for Isabella had swept the royal cupboard bare. The queen mother had, of course, been in possession of the dower lands which were reserved for each queen during the lifetime of the king, but she was refusing to relinquish them. The young king, on that account, was put to the necessity of making a promissory arrangement, that lands to yield an income of fifteen thousand pounds a year would be put in Philippa"s hands, including Queenborough on the Thames. Here, on the Isle of Sheppey, Edward would proceed to build his bride a very special palace, one so handsome and elaborate, in fact, that it took nearly forty years to finish.
The ceremony might have seemed lacking in splendor had it not been for the presence of one hundred n.o.blemen from Scotland who had come to take part in the negotiations for a permanent peace between the two countries. Ordinarily the purses of the gentry of Caledonia were as flat and bare as the moors of that fierce and wild land, but for this occasion they had managed to create a magnificent impression. Their horses were elaborately accoutered and the knights themselves, tawny of hair, gray of eye, and rugged of feature, looked handsome in their homespun doublets looped with the semi-precious stones mined from their granite hills. Certainly, with their heavy claymores at their belts, they seemed a formidable lot, as indeed they were.
Edward would have liked nothing better than to take his radiant young wife over his saddle and disappear with her like the lost bride of Netherby. But this was impossible. The terms of the peace had to be worked out, and this was to prove a far from easy task. There was a determined glint in the eyes of the Scots and a reminder of Bannockburn in the proud set of their backs. It was clear they were going to have peace on their own terms. The treaty finally evolved was nothing short of a surrender of all the claims and pretensions of the English kings. They gave up for all time the claim to a feudal overlordship of Scotland and agreed to restore at once the thirty-five skins of parchment known as the Ragman Rolls, which carried the signatures of the n.o.blemen who had acknowledged the demands of Edward I. All Scottish heirlooms were to be restored, including the Stone of Scone, the royal regalia, and the piece of the cross of Christ called the Black Rood.
For their part, the Scots agreed to a marriage between Prince David, the heir to the throne, and Princess Joan, the second daughter of Edward II. Joan was seven years old and David was five, but it was arranged that the princess would be turned over at once to a board of Scottish commissioners so that she could be raised in the royal household. It was conceded also that the estates in Scotland belonging to Englishmen, which had been confiscated during the wars, were to be restored and that King Robert would pay an indemnity to England of twenty thousand pounds in three annual installments.
Viewed in the light of time, it seems to have been reasonable enough. But the people of England, who had come to regard Scotland as a tributary country, were bitterly resentful. They blamed it on Isabella and Mortimer, believing them to have forced the treaty through Parliament, which had met at York to pa.s.s on the terms. It was whispered throughout the country, and universally believed, that the queen put the first installment of the indemnity in her own pocket and that not so much as a Scottish groat (worth no more than threepence at the time) ever reached the treasury at Westminster.
The terms were fulfilled save the one covering the return of the Stone of Scone. When an effort was made to remove it from the abbey, all London rose in wrath to prevent the surrender. The scales had fallen at last from aldermanic eyes, and for the first time the once beloved Isabella was called on the streets "the Frenchwoman." When the apprentices, with cudgels on shoulder, surrounded the abbey, they shouted, "Death to Mortimer!" and even "Down with the queen!" The Stone was left under the coronation chair in spite of the treaty.
The marriage of the young princess, who became known in Scotland as Joan Makepeace, was proceeded with at once. The English court moved north to Berwick in great splendor for the event. Isabella was accompanied by her son, Prince John, her other daughter, Eleanor, and a great train of the n.o.bility. Mortimer stole the show with a train which included one hundred and eighty knights in glittering armor and with gold spurs on their heels. People asked if any of the indemnity money had gone into the rich apparel of the knights, and a rhyme was repeated by the Scottish spectators which ran as follows: Longbeards, heartless, Gay coats, graceless, Painted hoods, witless, Maketh England thriftless.
This confirmed the people of England in their newly aroused contempt for the queen and her paramour. Isabella was said to be a heartless mother for sending her little daughter into exile in the barbarous and uncouth land of the Scots.
There was another flaw. The King of England and his bride were not present when the marriage took place between the two infants. Edward had taken Philippa to the royal castle of Woodstock and refused to return for the ceremony. Under the bright gold of his hair the young king had a long head. He was keeping himself clear of any blame for the unpopular peace treaty. The country seems to have been willing to absolve him, believing that the fault lay with Isabella and Mortimer.
CHAPTER II.
Mother and Son
1.
AT this stage in English history a complete lack of evidence is encountered on a point of the first importance, the relationship between the boy king and his mother. Isabella was running things with an imperious hand and Edward was standing to one side and neither doing nor saying anything to indicate his state of mind. He appeared on the surface to have acquiesced in everything she did until the very last moment, when he stepped in and put an abrupt end to it. It is even suggested in some histories that he did not learn of his mother"s adulterous conduct with Mortimer until he went to France after his marriage to swear fealty to the French king. This is nothing short of absurd. Only a cretin could have been unaware of it in Edward"s place. And this young king, who was to become the most ambitious and one of the ablest of English kings, was a boy of strong character and rare gifts.
It is not hard to understand the course taken by Isabella which was to result in her ultimate downfall. She was unable to submerge Isabella the woman in Isabella the queen, and the faults of the woman undid the queen. In the telling of the story there seems to be a tendency to underestimate the position she won for herself in England after the fall of Edward II, or at least no desire to measure the full extent of her rise. A country thoroughly weary of the rule of an oafish king and bitterly antagonistic to his greedy favorites suddenly saw his estranged queen, the beautiful, captivating, and diverting consort he had treated so badly, emerge with a small army of volunteers and make a successful landing on the eastern coast. The n.o.bility flocked to her, the common people rallied to her banner, the cities were a unit in lending her support. Whether acting on her own judgment or accepting sound advice from those about her, she handled her campaign so well that Edward was captured without striking a blow and the Despensers were taken and executed. A tendency to believe that the country was shocked by her summary treatment of the two favorites is another absurdity. This was a cruel age and the Despensers were so universally hated that anything short of the elder swinging on the gallows in his armor and the younger dying slowly under the knives of the executioners would not have satisfied. That the queen seized the power of a regent from the council of indecisive and unready men selected by Parliament did not seem to disturb the public; no one had much faith in any of the members of that inept and spineless board. The abdication of Edward was the next step, and to the people it was completely logical and acceptable.
At this point Isabella was in a position to turn the whole tide of history in her favor. Blanche of Castile had never enjoyed the personal popularity that Isabella had won. She, Blanche, was made regent in her husband"s will and her skillful administration during her son"s minority was not of the showy variety. But now the fair Isabella who had done everything spectacularly well began to do everything spectacularly wrong.
If she had been completely her father"s daughter she would have succeeded in submerging the woman in the queen. Philip the Fair, that silent and incredible despot, never allowed personal feelings (it is sometimes doubted that he had any) to sway him one inch from his course. Isabella seems to have been willing enough to do anything the Horn-owl of France would have done under the same circ.u.mstances, but she lacked the will and the desire to subordinate the woman in her.
The point where she allowed herself to go completely astray was, of course, in the murder of her husband. She undoubtedly was consulted in the decision and did nothing to protect the unfortunate Edward from his fate. It may have been, as history has unhesitatingly believed, that she and Mortimer hatched the plot against him. Aside from the fact that Mortimer did not hesitate to a.s.sume the direction of the foul deed, there is nothing to prove how the decision was reached. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that a rule of statecraft had persisted down the ages which taught that deposed kings were always a menace to the peace of the realm. It would continue to be recognized in later ages; and on several occasions, in the cases of Richard II, Henry VI, and the two princes in the Tower, the hand of a.s.sa.s.sins would be employed to rid the state of the threat they posed. The point is raised to indicate that Isabella and Mortimer were undoubtedly not the only ones in posts of authority who favored the elimination of Edward.
The queen acted throughout with an indifference which is hard to believe. If she had governed herself according to an obvious machiavellian rule she would have been careful to disa.s.sociate herself completely from the murder of her husband and then she would have cried aloud for the punishment of the perpetrators. From what is known of her character, she would have done this if her hands had not been tied. Mortimer, that blind and willful upstart, had plotted the death with a carelessness which seems to indicate that he considered himself beyond reach of reprisal or even criticism. He openly planted his confederates about the unhappy ex-king-Maltravers, Gurney, and the man Ogle, the latter an unknown but obviously a killer, perhaps from the dregs of London. There was never any doubt in the minds of the people of England that he had conceived and executed the crime. How did this affect the queen?
If she had been completely her father"s daughter in this crisis, she would not have hesitated about throwing Mortimer to the wolves, to use a modern phrase. There could be no doubt whatever of his guilt. The countercharges and recriminations he might have indulged in would not have penetrated beyond the walls of his cell. If his ultimate visit to the Elms of Tyburn had been antic.i.p.ated by three years, Isabella could have succeeded in washing her hands of any stain. The public, suspicious at first, could have been led in time to condone the favors she had showered on the greedy Marcher baron and to accept him as the sole villain of the piece.