Cassell's History of England, Vol. 1 (of 8) / From the Roman Invasion to the Wars of the Roses

by Anonymous

The wickedness and rapacity of the queen and Mortimer did not cease there. Lancaster was thrown into prison. Numbers of the nobility and prelates were implicated, and Mortimer used this fear of treason to crush his enemies and aggrandise himself by their property. The estate of the Earl of Kent he gave to his younger son Geoffrey; the vast demesnes of the Spensers he seized for himself. His power became most ominous, and his deeds of arbitrary injustice were more and more complained of, till all parties forgot their mutual feuds and united against him.

It is the fate of overgrown upstarts never to foresee their ruin. Had not this blind fatality attached to Mortimer in common with his class, he must have been sensible that the young king was of a character and arriving at an age which would bring his destruction. There were not wanting rumours at the time that Mortimer did not overlook this probable issue, and had thoughts of destroying the king and assuming the crown. His own time, however, was come. Edward, long galled by the restraint in which he was held, now approached his eighteenth year, and his queen, Philippa, had already brought him a son, afterwards the famous Black Prince, who was born at Woodstock about three months after the execution of the Earl of Kent. The conduct of the queen and Mortimer was become more openly scandalous, and it was generally said that Isabella was about to become a mother. Edward resolved to act; but he was aware that he was closely surrounded by the spies of Mortimer, and he went to work with all the caution of a man conspiring against his sovereign. He fixed on the Lord Montacute as the nobleman in whose prudence and fidelity he had the most confidence. Lord Montacute entered cordially into his plans, and soon engaged some trusty and influential friends in the enterprise.

The queen dowager and Mortimer were residing in the castle of Nottingham. The king and his coadjutors determined to make that fortress the scene of their undertaking. A Parliament was summoned to meet there in October of the year 1330. In order, however, as is supposed, to prevent suspicion of the king being bent on any high designs, he held a tournament in Cheapside, which continued three days, and in which he and twelve others jousted with all knights that appeared in the lists. The young queen presided, and was regarded with extreme favour by the people; an interest which was much heightened by an accident—the breaking down of the platform on which she sat with many other ladies of the court, but from which they escaped without injury.

The time being arrived for the opening of Parliament, Edward, with his barons, prelates, and retainers, repaired to the ancient town of Nottingham. The young king took up his quarters in the castle with his mother and Mortimer, a convenient arrangement, as gaining him access to, and exact knowledge of, the lodging of the earl, and also as preserving him from any suspicion. The barons, bishops, and knights took up their quarters in the town. Mortimer appeared in high state, accompanied wherever he went by a strong body of his devoted followers. The plans of Edward and his coadjutors were settled; and Lord Montacute was seen riding away into the country with a numerous body of his friends and attendants, as if going on a visit to some neighbouring baron. This, undoubtedly, was intended to divert suspicion; but the plot had not been so closely kept as to escape the quick ears of the emissaries of Mortimer. On the afternoon of that day he entered the council with a face inflamed with rage. He declared to the council that a base attempt was in agitation against the queen and himself, and charged Edward bluntly with being concerned in it. Edward as stoutly denied the charge, but Mortimer pronounced his denial false. The council broke up in confusion. The castle, standing on a lofty precipice overlooking the lovely valley of the Trent, was strongly fortified on the side of the town. A numerous guard was placed around it under these alarming circumstances, and Mortimer and his adherents were all on the alert to watch against surprise, and to devise schemes of defeat and vengeance on their enemies. It did not appear a very easy matter to secure the usurper in that stronghold.

But the town and castle of Nottingham are built on a soft sandstone rock, in which the ancient inhabitants had sunk many caves, deep cells, and passages. One of these descended from the castle court to the foot of the precipice near the small river Leen, where the entrance was at that time concealed by a wild growth of bushes. Probably the existence of this passage was wholly unknown to Mortimer and the queen; and the criminal couple, having the strong military guard placed at the gates at evening, and the keys conveyed to the queen, who laid them by her bedside, deemed themselves perfectly secure. But Lord Montacute had sounded Sir William Eland, the governor, who entered at once most zealously into the design. By him Montacute and his friends were admitted through this passage, still called "Mortimer's Hole," and on arriving in the court they were joined by the king, who led the way in profound silence and in darkness to an apartment adjoining the hall, in which they could hear the voices of Mortimer, the Bishop of Lincoln, and others of his friends, in anxious discussion. Suddenly the concealed party burst open the door, and killed two of Mortimer's friends who attempted to make a defence. Queen Isabella, who lay in an adjoining apartment, rushed in terror from her bed, imploring her "sweet son" to spare her "gentle Mortimer." Her tears and entreaties for "her worthy knight, her dearest friend, her beloved cousin," were in vain; the Lord of the Marches and dictator of the kingdom was led away in safe custody, and on the morrow brought before Parliament, and condemned to death on the charges of having usurped the royal power vested in the council of regency; of having procured the death of the late king; of having beguiled the Earl of Kent into a conspiracy to restore that prince—that is, to restore a dead man; of having compassed exorbitant grants of the Crown lands; of having dissipated the public treasures; of having embezzled 20,000 marks of the money paid by the King of Scots; besides many other high crimes and misdemeanors. A more general parliament, summoned at Westminster on the 26th of November, confirmed this sentence, that he should be hanged and drawn as a traitor. In the informality of the times, Mortimer was not allowed to make any defence; nor were witnesses produced for or against him. He was at once declared guilty from the notoriety of his crimes. On this ground, nearly twenty years afterwards, the sentence was reversed by Parliament in favour of his son; the plea being the illegality of the proceedings.

Mortimer was hanged at the Elms, near London, on the 29th of November, and with him Sir Simon Beresford, as an accomplice. Three others, who were likewise included in the sentence, one of them being the infamous Maltravers, escaped.

Edward now made proclamation that he had taken the government of the realm into his own hands. He shut up his mother in Castle Rising, abolished her extravagant jointure, but allowed her £3,000, and afterwards £4,000, a year. There she passed twenty-seven years, her son paying her a visit once or twice annually, but taking care that she never again regained any public influence or authority.

Having disposed of his shameless mother, Edward found ample employment in restoring rule and order to his kingdom. As in all times when lawless power prevails at court, robbers, murderers, and criminals had increased to an enormous extent; public justice was grossly perverted, and abuses and wrongs everywhere abounded. He issued writs to the judges, commanding them to administer justice firmly, promptly, and without fear or favour, paying no regard whatever to any injunctions from the ministers of the Crown or any other power. He sought out and severely punished the abuses in the administration of the State, and exacted from the peers a solemn pledge that they should break off all connection with malefactors—a circumstance which gives us a curious insight into the times, the great barons keeping the robbers and outlaws in pay against each other, and even against the king. This done, Edward turned his attention to what appeared the grand hereditary object of the English crown of that day, the subjugation of Scotland.

The great Robert Bruce, as we have seen, had left his son David, a mere boy, on the throne. He could not but be anxious for the stability of his position with such a powerful kingdom and martial young king in his immediate neighbourhood, and with the long-pursued claims and attempts of England on Scotland. Bruce had, indeed, taken a strong precaution against the invasion of his son's peace by marrying him to the sister of Edward of England. But the temptation of ambition in princes has almost always proved far stronger than the ties of blood, and so it proved in Edward's case. We might have expected that he would maintain rather than attempt to destroy the happiness and fair establishment of his sister on the throne of Scotland. But the spirit of military domination was as powerful in Edward as in his grandfather. He could not forget that Scotland had nearly been secured by England, and that the English had lost prestige at Bannockburn. He burned, therefore, to restore the reputation of the English arms, and complete the design of uniting the whole of the island of Great Britain into one kingdom—the life-long aim and dying command of Edward I.

When princes are desirous of pleas of aggression it is never difficult to find them, and in this case they were abundant and plausible. In the treaty of peace and alliance concluded between Bruce and Edward at Northampton, when Joan was affianced to the heir of Scotland, just before Bruce's death, it was stipulated that both the Scottish families who had lost their estates in Scotland by taking part with the English in the late wars, and the English nobles who had claims on estates there by marriage or heirship, should all be restored to them. The Scottish estates were restored; but Bruce, perceiving that those of the English were much more valuable than the others, had been unwilling to allow so many dangerous subjects of the English king to establish themselves in the heart of his realm, where they might become formidable enemies. He had therefore put off their urgent demands of fulfilment of this stipulation, on the plea that it required time and caution to dispossess the potent Scottish barons now holding them. The claim of Lord Henry Percy was conceded; those of the Lords Wake and Beaumont, the latter of whom claimed the earldom of Buchan in right of his wife, were disregarded. Beaumont, a man of great power, and of a determined character, resolved by some means to conquer his right. He urged it upon Edward to redress the wrongs of his subjects; but Edward, now freed from the ascendency of Mortimer, though nothing loath, pleaded the impossibility of his armed interference in the face of the late solemn treaty and alliance, and he had used persuasions in vain. Probably, however, he gave the malcontents to understand that he would not prevent them from trying to help themselves. Not only was Bruce dead, but his two great warriors and statesmen, Moray and Douglas, were dead also. Moray had been left regent and guardian of the young King David, still only about nine years of age; but to his vigorous administration had succeeded that of the Earl of Mar, another nephew of Robert Bruce, and a much inferior man.