Edward, roused by the imminent danger, endeavoured to prepare measures of defence. But the danger was far more extensive than appeared on the surface. Conspiracy did not merely menace from abroad, but penetrated every day deeper, and into the very recesses of his own family. His brother, the Earl of Kent, a well-meaning but weak prince, who still remained on the Continent, was persuaded by Isabella and the King of France that it behoved every member of the royal family to join in the attempt to rid the kingdom of the Spensers; and this, they assured him, was the object of the expedition. Won over to what appeared so desirable an attempt, he also won over his elder brother, the Earl of Norfolk. The Earl of Leicester, the brother and heir of the Earl of Lancaster, had abundant motives of interest and vengeance for entering into the design. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many of the prelates approved of the queen's cause, and aided her with money; several of the most powerful barons were ready to embrace it on her appearance on the English coast; and the minds of the populace were embittered against the king by the industrious dissemination of calumnies and injurious truths.
Isabella set sail from the harbour of Dort with her little army, accompanied by the Earl of Kent; and on the 24th of September, 1326, landed at Orwell, in Suffolk. She was soon joined by the Earls of Norfolk and Leicester, thus receiving the high sanction of two princes of the blood; the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Hereford met her with the sanction of the Church and numerous forces. The fleet had been won over and kept out of the way, and the land forces sent against her at once hailed the young prince with acclamations, and joined the Queen's banner. Isabella made a proclamation that she came to free the nation from the tyranny of the Spensers and of Chancellor Baldock, their creature. The barons, who thought themselves secure from forfeiture in coalition with the prince, made a reconciliation with the barons of the Lancastrian faction, and the people poured in on all sides. Never was a miserable monarch so deserted by his people, and by his own blood. His wife, his son, his brothers, his nobles, his prelates, his people, all were against him. The queen and prince stayed three days in the abbey of the Black Monks at Bury St. Edmunds, where their partisans continually increased.
Meantime, the wretched king appealed to the citizens of London to maintain the royal cause, and issued a proclamation offering £1,000 to any one for the head of Mortimer—a pretty sum, equal to £10,000 at the present day. The appeal remained totally unheeded; and Edward fled from his capital, accompanied only by the two Spensers, Baldock, the chancellor, and a few of their retainers. Scarcely were they out of the gates when the populace rose, seized the Bishop of Exeter, whom the king had appointed governor, beheaded him, and threw his body into the river. They met with and killed a friend of the favourites—one John le Marshal. They made themselves masters of the Tower, and liberated all the State prisoners—a numerous body, most of them suffering for the attempts to put down young Spenser—and then entered into an association to put to death without mercy every one who dared to oppose the queen and prince. Such was the fury of the populace against the king and his favourite; and this spirit appeared in every part of the kingdom.
The poor forsaken king fled to the Welsh, amongst whom he was born; but they would none of him, and he was compelled to take to the sea with his favourite. The elder Spenser was left in Bristol as governor of the castle; but the garrison mutinied against him, and on the approach of the queen he was delivered up to her. The poor old man, now nearly ninety, was brought before Sir William Trussel, one of the Lancastrian exiles, who, without allowing him to utter a word in his defence, condemned him to death. He was taken outside the walls of the city and hanged on a gibbet, his bowels were torn out, and his body was cut to pieces, and thrown to the dogs; and, as he had been made Earl of Winchester, his head was sent to that city, and stuck on a pole. Such was the fate of this old man, who had borne a high character through a long life, till strange fortune lifted him aloft, and developed in him the lurking demons of rapacity and lust of his neighbour's goods.
The unhappy king, meantime, with the son of this old man, endeavouring, it was supposed, to escape to Ireland, had been tossed about for many days on a stormy sea, which seemed to enter into the rebellion of his people, and to reject him and cast him up, as it were, on the coast of South Wales. His flight had furnished the barons with a fortunate plea for deposing him. They first issued a proclamation at Bristol, calling on the king to return to his proper post; and, as he did not appear, on the 26th of September, forming themselves into a Parliament, they declared that the king had left the realm without a ruler, and appointed the Prince of Wales guardian of the kingdom. The king, on landing, knowing what he had to expect, hid himself for some weeks in the mountains near Neath Abbey, in Glamorganshire. His place of retreat was very soon known, and young Spenser and Baldock were seized in the woods of Llantressan, and immediately afterwards Edward came forth and surrendered himself to the Earl of Leicester, the brother of Lancaster, whom he had beheaded at Pontefract. Without a single sign of sympathy or commiseration from high or low, the wholly-abandoned king was sent off a prisoner to Kenilworth. Short and bloody work was made with the favourite. Trussel, the same judge who had condemned his father, condemned him to be drawn, hanged, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered; and the sentence was carried into execution with revolting minuteness. He was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high, and his servant, Simon Reding, was hanged on the same gallows, only a few yards lower. The Earl of Arundel, allied to the Spensers by marriage, and one of those active in the death of the Earl of Lancaster, was beheaded with two other noblemen. Baldock, as a priest, was exempt from the gallows; but, being sent to the Bishop of Hereford's palace in London, he was there seized by the enraged populace, as, probably, the senders foresaw, and, though rescued, died soon after in Newgate of his injuries. So terminated the fortunes of Edward's few adherents. His own fate, steeped in still deeper horrors, was fast hastening on.
A Parliament—one of those solemn mockeries which we often see in history—was summoned in the king's name to meet at Westminster on the 7th of January, 1327, to condemn the king himself. There Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, one of the most violent partisans of the queen and a bitter enemy of the king, assumed the office of speaker. The very appearance of such a speaker indicated—had all other circumstances been wanting—the determination of the barons to proceed to extremities with Edward. Orleton, for his attachment to the party of Lancaster, had been deprived of the temporalities of his see by the king, at the instance, as supposed, of Hugh Spenser, and he had on every possible occasion since displayed the most vindictive animus against the king. He had spread with indefatigable activity the filth of the Court scandal respecting Edward, and this might have passed for religious zeal in one of his profession and rank in the Church had he not winked as resolutely at the notorious vice of the queen. But he was one of her most energetic partisans in England; he hastened to meet her on landing; and in the Parliament, and everywhere amongst the barons, when it had been proposed to allow the king to be reconciled to his family, and rule by advice of his nobles, he had effectually quashed such sentiments, and turned the tide of opinion for the king's deposition. He now put the formal question, whether the king should be restored, or his son at once be raised to the throne. For appearance' sake the members were left to deliberate in their own minds on the question till the next day; but there could be only one answer, and that was for the father's dethronement. The public, on hearing that decision, broke forth into loudest acclamations, which were vehemently reiterated when the young king, a boy of fourteen, was presented to them. By a singular informality, Parliament deposed Edward first, and judged him afterwards.
Five days after declaring the accession of Edward III., a charge was drawn up against his father, in which some eminent historians discern the malice of his enemies rather than impartial grounds of complaint. They say that, notwithstanding the violence of his opponents, no particular cause was laid to his charge. True, those which were loudly enough proclaimed by the public voice to be of a scandalous nature were omitted, probably out of respect to his son, who was present during the whole proceedings. But what they did charge him with were incapacity for government, waste of time on idle amusements, neglect of business, cowardice, being perpetually under the influence of evil counsellors, of having by imbecility lost Scotland and part of Guienne, with arbitrary and unconstitutional imprisonment, ruin, and death of different nobles.
Surely these, if not all crimes, had all the effect of crimes on the nation. They were fraught with mischief, public discord, and decay, and must be regarded as affording ample grounds for deposition. In fact, the whole kingdom was weary of the incorrigible king; not a single voice was raised in his behalf, and on the 20th of January a deputation was despatched to announce his deposition to him at Kenilworth. This deputation consisted of certain bishops, earls, and barons, with two knights from each shire, and two representatives from each borough. The most glaring feature of harshness in the selection of the deputies was that the spiteful Adam Orleton, and the savage Sir William Trussel, who had passed such barbarous sentences on Edward's friends the Spensers, were amongst its leading members. At sight of Orleton the king was so shocked that he fell to the ground. The interview took place in the great hall of Kenilworth, and the king appeared wrapped in a common black gown. Sir William Trussel, as speaker, pronounced the judgment of Parliament, and Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the household, then broke his white staff of office, and declared all persons discharged and freed from Edward's service, the ceremony being the same as practised on a king's death. On the 24th King Edward III. was proclaimed, it being declared to be by the full consent of the late king; on the 28th the young monarch received the great seal from the chancellor, and re-delivered it to him; and on the 29th he was crowned at Westminster by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The extreme youth of the king enabled Queen Isabella, his mother, to have the chief power of the crown vested in her. But her unconcealed connection with the Lord Mortimer made her very soon lose the popularity which her pretence of driving away the Spensers had obtained her. Both barons and people looked with ill-suppressed jealousy and disgust at the dangerous position of Mortimer; and however completely the late king had forfeited public favour, it was not long before the people began to feel that it was not the part of a wife to have invaded the kingdom, and deposed and pursued to death her husband and the father of her children. Isabella had indeed pretended to lament over this necessity, and to bewail the afflictions of her husband; but her actions belied her words and tears, for she still pressed on his abdication, and was all the time living in open adultery with her paramour Mortimer. Thus public feeling and indignation grew apace, and there were not wanting monks who boldly denounced from the pulpit the scandalous life of the queen, and awoke a feeling of commiseration for her captive husband. Those who beheld the proud Mortimer actually occupying, in the name of the queen, the seat of royal power, burned with not unnatural wrath at the degradation of the throne; those who saw the unfortunate Edward, gentle and depressed in his fallen fortunes, became touched with compassion for him. The Earl of Leicester, now Earl of Lancaster, though he had a brother's blood in his remembrance, could not help being affected with generous and kindly sentiments towards his prisoner, and was even suspected of entertaining more honourable intentions towards him.
These things were whispered to Isabella, and the king was speedily removed into the care of Sir John Maltravers, a man of a savage disposition, and embittered against the king by injuries received from him and his favourites. Maltravers appeared to study the concealment of his captive, removing him from time to time from one castle to another in the space of a few months. At length Lord Berkeley was added to the commission of custody, and the unhappy captive was lodged in Berkeley Castle, near the river Severn. While Lord Berkeley was there Edward was treated with the courtesy due to his rank and to his misfortunes; but that nobleman being detained at his manor of Bradley by sickness, the opportunity was taken to leave the dethroned king in the hands of two hardened and desperate ruffians, named Gournay and Ogle. These men appeared to take a brutal delight in tormenting him. They practised upon him daily every indignity which they could devise. It is stated that one day, when Edward was to be shaved, they ordered cold and filthy water from the castle ditch for that purpose; and when he desired it to be changed, they refused it with mockery, though the unfortunate prince burst into tears, and declared that he would have clean and warm water.