These modes of killing were, however, too slow for those who wanted to be secure from any popular revulsion of feeling in favour of the deposed monarch; and one night, the 21st of September, 1327, frightful shrieks were heard from the castle, and the next morning the gates were thrown open, and the people were freely admitted to see the body of the late king, who, it was said, had died suddenly in the night. Of the nature of that disease there was no doubt on the minds of any one, for the cries of the sufferer's agony had reached even to the town, waking up, says Holinshed, "numbers, who prayed heartily to God to receive his soul, for they understood by those cries what the matter meant." The murder of Edward of Carnarvon is one of the horrors of history. The fiends who had him in custody, it came out, had thrown him upon a bed, and held him down violently with a table, while they had thrust a red-hot iron into his bowels through a tin pipe. By this means there appeared no outward cause of death; but his countenance was distorted and horrible to look upon. Most of the nobles and gentlemen of the neighbourhood went to see the body, which was then privately conveyed to Gloucester, and buried in the abbey, without any inquiry or investigation whatever.

Edward, at the time of his murder, was forty-three years old. He had reigned nineteen years and a half, and spent about nine months in woful captivity after his deposition.

Maltravers, Gournay, and Ogle were held in universal detestation. Gournay was some years afterwards caught at Marseilles, and shipped for England; but was beheaded at sea, as was supposed, by order of some of the nobles and prelates in England, to prevent any damaging disclosures regarding their accomplices or abettors. Maltravers found means of doing service to Edward III., and eventually obtained a pardon.

BERKELEY CASTLE.

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This reign presents a melancholy example of the miseries which befell a nation in those days from a weak king. In those rude times the throne was not fenced about and supported by the maxims and institutions which now-a-days enable very ordinary kings to fill their high post without any public inconvenience, and verify the observation of the celebrated Swedish chancellor, Oxenstierna, "See, my son, with how little sense a kingdom may be governed." In the time of Edward II. the convenient maxim had not been introduced that "the king can do no wrong." The monarch stood alone amid a race of powerful and ambitious barons, who were always ready to encroach on the throne, and could be restrained only by a strong hand. The king had not, as he has now, his council and his ministers to share his responsibilities, and to afford him the help of their united talents and advice. He acted more fully from his own individual views and, therefore, the consequences to the nation were the more directly good or evil as the king was wise or the reverse. In Edward II.'s reign the arms of the nation were disgraced, its hold on Scotland and France was weakened, and there was a vast amount of internal discord and civil bloodshed. We do not find those great enactments of laws which distinguished the reign of his father, and the estates of the crown were wasted on unworthy favourites. Yet, even in this reign the people gained something, as they have always done, from the necessities of kings. The barons, by the ordinances which they wrung from the weak hands of Edward, extended the privileges of Parliament, and circumscribed the power of the Crown. They decreed that all grants made without consent of Parliament should henceforth be invalid; that the king could not make war or leave the kingdom without consent of the baronage in Parliament assembled, who should appoint a regent during the royal absence; that the great officers of the crown and the governors of foreign possessions, should at all times be chosen by the baronage, or with their advice and assent in Parliament. These were important conquests from the Crown, and came in time to be the established privileges, not exclusively of the peers, but of Parliament at large.

The very usurpations and arbitrary deeds of the favourites produced permanent good out of temporary evil; for the barons compelled Edward to renew the Great Charter, and introduced a new and most valuable provision into it—namely: "Forasmuch as many people be aggrieved by the king's ministers against right, in respect to which grievances no one can recover without common consent of Parliament, we do ordain that the king shall hold a Parliament once a year, or twice, if need be." Thus, out of this king's fatal facility to favouritism came not only his own destruction, but also that grand security of public liberty—the annual assembling of Parliament.