“Nay,” said Sir James, “let us treat them as the fox did the fisherman, who, finding him eating a salmon before the fire in his hut, drew his sword, and stood in the doorway, meaning to slay him without escape. But the fox seized a mantle, and drew it over the fire; the fisherman flew to save his mantle, and Master Fox made off safely with the salmon by the door unguarded!”
On this model the wary Scot arranged his retreat, making a multitude of hurdles of wattled boughs to be laid across the softer places in the bog behind them, and giving secret orders that all should be ready to move at night. This could not be done so secretly that some tidings did not reach the English; but they expected another night-attack, and, though they continued under arms, made no attempt to ascertain the proceedings of the enemy till daybreak, when, crossing the river, they found nothing alive but five poor English prisoners bound naked to trees, with their legs broken. Around them lay five hundred large cattle, killed because they went too slowly to be driven along, three hundred skins filled with meat and water hung over the fires, one hundred spits with meat on them, and ten thousand of the hairy shoes of the Scots—the enemy were entirely gone; and Edward, baffled, grieved, and ashamed, fairly burst into tears at his disappointment.
His army was unable to continue the pursuit, and in two days arrived at Durham, where the honest burghers had stored under outhouses all the wagons that had been left behind in the advance thirty-two days before, each with a little flag to show whose property it was. Tidings being brought that the Scots had gone to their own country, Edward turned his face southward, and, by the time he reached York, had had the mortification of losing all his horses, from the privations the poor creatures had undergone; while the discontent of his subjects found vent in ascribing all the misfortunes to Roger Mortimer’s treachery—an additional crime of which he may fairly be acquitted. Edward continued at York all that autumn, apparently keeping aloof from his mother’s court; or else it was her object to prevent him from perceiving the guilty counsels that there prevailed, and which resulted in the murder of his father. To York Sir John of Hainault fetched the young bride, his niece Philippa, and the marriage took place in the cathedral on St. Paul’s Day, 1328, the two young people being then sixteen and fifteen years of age. Meantime, Robert Bruce, partially recovering, laid siege to Norham, and in the exhausted state of England it was decided to offer him peace, fully acknowledging his right to the throne, yielding up the regalia and the royal stone of Scotland, and uniting his son David with the little Princess Joan.
The nation were exceedingly angry at the peace, necessary as it was, and charged the disgrace upon Mortimer. They rose in tumult, and prevented the coronation-stone from being taken away, and they called the marriage a base alliance. Even Edward himself refused to be present with his young wife at the marriage of his little sister, which was to take place at Berwick. His mother tried to induce him to come, by arranging a joust; she had six spears painted splendidly for his use, others for his companions, and three hundred and sixty more for other English gentlemen; but he was resolved to keep his Philippa aloof from the company of Mortimer and his mother, and remained with her at Woodstock, notwithstanding all temptations to display.
Bruce was too ill to go to Berwick, but gave his son, then five years old, into the charge of Douglas and Randolph. The little bride, called by the Scots Joan Makepeace, was conducted by her mother and Mortimer with the most brilliant pomp.
Mortimer’s display and presumption outdid even poor Piers Gaveston: he had one hundred and eighty knights in his own train alone, and their dress was so fantastically gay that the Scots jested on them, and made rhymes long current in the North:
“Longbeards, heartless,
Gay coats, graceless,
Painted hoods, witless,
Maketh England thriftless.”
Queen Isabel herself was wont to wear such a tower on her head, that doorways had to be altered to enable her to pass under them; and her expenses were so great, that no revenue was left to maintain her young daughter-in-law Philippa.
Henry, sometimes called Wryneck, Earl of Derby, brother of the rebel Thomas of Lancaster, and Thomas and Edmund, Earls of Norfolk and Kent, the youngest sons of Edward I., had begun bitterly to repent of having been deceived by this wicked woman. Even Adam Orleton had quarrelled with her for attempting to exact a monstrous bribe for making him Bishop of Winchester; but Mortimer was determined to keep up his power by violence. At a parliament at Salisbury, where the young King and Queen were presiding, he broke in with his armed followers, and carried them off in a sort of captivity to Winchester. The three Earls took up arms, but the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, who seem to have had their full share of the family folly, deserted Lancaster, and he was forced to make peace, after paying an immense fine.
Still Isabel and Mortimer felt their insecurity, or else they had such an appetite for treachery and murder, that they were driven on to commit further crimes. A report was set about that Edward of Caernarvon was still living in Corfe Castle, and one of his actual murderers, Maltravers, offered the unfortunate Edmund of Kent to convey letters from him to his brother; nay, it was arranged, for his further deception, that he should peep into a dungeon and behold at a distance a captive, who had sufficient resemblance to the late King to be mistaken for him in the gloom. Letters were written by the Earl and his wife to the imaginary prisoner, and entrusted to Maltravers, who carried them at once to Queen Isabel. A sufficient body of evidence having thus been procured for her purposes, the unfortunate Edmund was arraigned before the parliament at Winchester, when he confessed that the letters had been written by himself; and, further, that a preaching friar had conjured up a spirit on whose authority he believed his brother to be alive. He was found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death by persons who expected that his rank would save him; but the She-wolf of France was resolved on having his blood, and decreed that he should die the next day. Such was the horror at the sentence, that the headsman stole secretly away from Winchester to avoid performing his office, and for four long hours of the 13th of March, 1329, did Earl Edmund Plantagenet stand on the scaffold above the castle gate, waiting till some one could be found to put him to death, in the name of his own nephew and by the will of his mother’s niece. He was only twenty-eight, and had four little children; and, in those dreary hours, what must not have been his hopes that the young Edward would awaken to a sense of the wickedness that was being perpetrated, so abhorrent to his warm and generous nature! But hopes were vain. Queen Isabel “kept her son so beset” all day, that no word could be spoken to him respecting his uncle, and at length a felon was sought out, who, as the price of his own pardon, dealt the death-stroke to the son of the great Edward.