第64章 ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND(3)

As the King's ruin had begun in a favourite,so it seemed likely to end in one.He was too poor a creature to rely at all upon himself;and his new favourite was one HUGH LE DESPENSER,the son of a gentleman of ancient family.Hugh was handsome and brave,but he was the favourite of a weak King,whom no man cared a rush for,and that was a dangerous place to hold.The Nobles leagued against him,because the King liked him;and they lay in wait,both for his ruin and his father's.Now,the King had married him to the daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester,and had given both him and his father great possessions in Wales.In their endeavours to extend these,they gave violent offence to an angry Welsh gentleman,named JOHN DE MOWBRAY,and to divers other angry Welsh gentlemen,who resorted to arms,took their castles,and seized their estates.The Earl of Lancaster had first placed the favourite (who was a poor relation of his own)at Court,and he considered his own dignity offended by the preference he received and the honours he acquired;so he,and the Barons who were his friends,joined the Welshmen,marched on London,and sent a message to the King demanding to have the favourite and his father banished.At first,the King unaccountably took it into his head to be spirited,and to send them a bold reply;but when they quartered themselves around Holborn and Clerkenwell,and went down,armed,to the Parliament at Westminster,he gave way,and complied with their demands.

His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected.It arose out of an accidental circumstance.The beautiful Queen happening to be travelling,came one night to one of the royal castles,and demanded to be lodged and entertained there until morning.The governor of this castle,who was one of the enraged lords,was away,and in his absence,his wife refused admission to the Queen;

A scuffle took place among the common men on either side,and some of the royal attendants were killed.The people,who cared nothing for the King,were very angry that their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely treated in her own dominions;and the King,taking advantage of this feeling,besieged the castle,took it,and then called the two Despensers home.Upon this,the confederate lords and the Welshmen went over to Bruce.The King encountered them at Boroughbridge,gained the victory,and took a number of distinguished prisoners;among them,the Earl of Lancaster,now an old man,upon whose destruction he was resolved.This Earl was taken to his own castle of Pontefract,and there tried and found guilty by an unfair court appointed for the purpose;he was not even allowed to speak in his own defence.He was insulted,pelted,mounted on a starved pony without saddle or bridle,carried out,and beheaded.Eight-and-twenty knights were hanged,drawn,and quartered.When the King had despatched this bloody work,and had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce,he took the Despensers into greater favour than ever,and made the father Earl of Winchester.

One prisoner,and an important one,who was taken at Boroughbridge,made his escape,however,and turned the tide against the King.

This was ROGER MORTIMER,always resolutely opposed to him,who was sentenced to death,and placed for safe custody in the Tower of London.He treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had put a sleeping potion;and,when they were insensible,broke out of his dungeon,got into a kitchen,climbed up the chimney,let himself down from the roof of the building with a rope-ladder,passed the sentries,got down to the river,and made away in a boat to where servants and horses were waiting for him.He finally escaped to France,where CHARLES LE BEL,the brother of the beautiful Queen,was King.Charles sought to quarrel with the King of England,on pretence of his not having come to do him homage at his coronation.It was proposed that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange the dispute;she went,and wrote home to the King,that as he was sick and could not come to France himself,perhaps it would be better to send over the young Prince,their son,who was only twelve years old,who could do homage to her brother in his stead,and in whose company she would immediately return.The King sent him:but,both he and the Queen remained at the French Court,and Roger Mortimer became the Queen's lover.

When the King wrote,again and again,to the Queen to come home,she did not reply that she despised him too much to live with him any more (which was the truth),but said she was afraid of the two Despensers.In short,her design was to overthrow the favourites'power,and the King's power,such as it was,and invade England.