Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/365

A.D. 1323.] Andrew Harclay, who occupied the bridge and the opposite banks of the river. In fear of the pursuit of the king's army, the two barons endeavoured to force the bridge, but were stoutly repulsed; Hereford was killed, and Lancaster, who in his terror had lost all power of commanding his troops, was seized and conducted to the king.

No greater contrast could be exhibited by two commanders than was shown on this occasion by Hereford and Lancaster. Hereford, determined to force the bridge, charged on foot; but a Welshman, who had discovered that the bridge was in a very decayed state, and fall of holes, had concealed himself under it, and through one of these holes he thrust a spear into the bowels of the brave earl, who fell dead on the spot. Lancaster attempted to find a ford over the river, but the archers of the enemy poured in showers of arrows upon him. Night put a stop to the battle, and in the morning he was taken. Lancaster had in his day a great reputation for piety. "He was," says Froissart, "a wise man and a holy; and he did afterwards many fine miracles on the spot where he was beheaded." Hume has painted this nobleman as violent, turbulent, and hypocritical; and attributes his reputation for piety to the monks, whom he favoured, and who were his historians. But there is nothing in his public conduct which may not assume the character of patriotism, for he fell, as he had lived, in endeavouring to resist the mischievous practices of the king in regard to his favourites. He was a prince of the blood, and, by his position and the rights of the Charter, bound to support the constitution which the king was continually violating in his unbounded partiality to his minions. In conformity with his character, Lancaster, on being surrounded, retired into a chapel, and looking on the holy cross, said, "Good Lord, I surrender myself to thee, and put me into thy mercy." He had no mercy to expect from Edward, who remembered too well the indignities which his beloved Gaveston had received at the hands of the earl and his associates at his execution, and who now resolved to have ample revenge.

About a month after the battle, he convoked a court martial at the earl's own castle of Pontefract, where he himself presided, and where as a traitor, having made league with Scotland against his rightful sovereign, Lancaster was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He was clothed in mean attire, set upon a sorry jade of a horse, with a hood upon his head, and in this manner he was led to execution on a hill near the castle, the king's officers heaping all kinds of insults upon him, and the populace, whom he had greatly incensed by his calling in the Scots, pelting him with mud, and attending him with outcries and curses. In his life and death Lancaster bore a striking resemblance to the Earl of Leicester, the leader of the barons in the reign of Henry III.

Besides the two leaders of this revolt, five knights and three esquires were killed in the battle, and fourteen bannerets and fourteen knights bachelors were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Amongst those who were executed were Badlesmere—who had insulted the queen—Gifford, Barnot, Cheney, and Fleming. Many were thrown into prison, and others escaped beyond the sea. "Never," says an old writer, "did English earth at one time drink so much blood of her nobles, in so vile a manner shed as this." But not only was this vengeance taken on the persons of the insurgents, their vast estates were forfeited to the crown, and the people soon beheld, with inexpressible indignation, the greater portion of those immense demesnes seized upon by the younger Spenser, whose rapacity was insatiable. In a Parliament held at York, the attainder of the Despensers was reversed, the father was created Earl of Winchester, and both he and his son enriched by the lands of the fallen nobles. Edward was as totally uncured of his folly as ever. Harclay, for his services, received the earldom of Carlisle and a largo estate, which he soon again forfeited, as well as his life, for a treasonable correspondence with the Scots. But the rest of the barons of the royal party receiving little, were the more incensed at the immense spoils heaped on the Sponsors. The king's enemies, on the other hand, vowed vengeance on both monarch and favourite, and the people regarded him with more determined envy and hatred than ever.

Thus Edward, falling the moment that he was successful into his hopeless failing of favouritism, not only lost every advantage he had so completely gained, but hastened by it the day of retribution. The nobles who had escaped to France, there set on foot a dangerous conspiracy. Amongst these was the younger Roger Mortimer, one of the most powerful barons of the Welsh marches, who had been twice condemned for high treason, but receiving a pardon for his life, was detained in the Tower, where his captivity was intended to be perpetual. Making his guards drunk with a drugged liquor, he escaped, and now joined these conspirators, all smarting from their sufferings on account of the favourite, and many of them from his usurpation of their castles and lands.

Everything favoured these conspirators. At home, the young Spenser, as little instructed by past dangers as his master, seemed to grow every day more arrogant; and an expedition against the Scots, like all the expeditions of this king against that people, proving a failure—followed by the usual inroads of the Scots, in one of which they nearly took the king prisoner, and in which they wasted the country to the very walls of York—created deep discontent and national irritation. Sensible of the lowering aspect of things in France, Edward, at length, after a war of three-and-twenty years, fruitful in disaster and ruin, now concluded a truce with Scotland for thirteen years. In this truce he did not recognise the title of Robert Bruce to the crown; but Bruce, who had made good his claim to it, who had repelled all the attacks of England on his country, given it a great overthrow at Bannockburn, and on various occasions carried the way into England, satisfied himself with these substantial advantages.

Fortified on this side, Edward still did not sit secure. Soon after the treaty he was startled by a plot to cut off the elder Spenser, and then by an attempt to release the prisoners taken at Boroughbridge from their dungeons. This failed; but the conspiracy in France grew, and circumstances favoured it. Charles le Bel, the brother of Edward's queen, now on the throne, having, or pretending, causes of complaint against Edward's officers in the province of Guienne, overran that province with his arms, and took many of his castles. Edward apologised, and offered to refer the causes of quarrel to the Pope; but