Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/377

A.D. 1329.] rest of more than 500 years, by the breast-bone having been sawn through to take out the heart, and by fragments of the cloth of gold in which he was known to have boon wrapped.

The peace thus concluded with Scotland did not make Mortimer feel as secure as he had hoped. Indeed it added greatly to the popular resentment against him. His having so readily yielded up the claims of the nation on Scotland wounded the public feeling; whilst his arbitrary and ambitious conduct in domestic affairs drew upon him the hatred of the people and the jealousy of the nobles. He assumed a splendour even outlying royalty. He grasped, like all favourites, at riches and honours insatiably. At the Parliament held in October at Salisbury he caused himself to be created Earl of March, or Lord of the Marches of Wales. He grossly abused the prerogative of purveyance. thus robbing the public extensively. Amongst the barons who beheld this haughty career of Mortimer with disgust, were the Earls of Lancaster, Kent, and Norfolk, all princes of the blood. Lancaster was guardian of the king, yet he was kept carefully in the hands of Mortimer and the queen-mother. Lancaster therefore determined to assert the authority of his office, and put some check on Mortimer: but coming to a contest at Winchester, ho was obliged to retreat, and Mortimer then fell on his estates, and ravaged them as he would an enemy's country. When the three earls were summoned to Parliament at Salisbury, he strictly forbade them to come attended by an armed body; a common, though an illegal, practice in those times. They complied with the command, but found, on approaching the city, that Mortimer himself was attended by his party and their followers, all strongly armed. Alarmed for their personal safety, they made a hasty retreat, and were returning with their forces, when, from some cause unknown, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk suddenly deserted Lancaster, who was compelled to make a humiliating submission, and pay a heavy fine. Through the intercession of the prelates, the peace was apparently restored amongst these powerful men.

Probably Kent and Norfolk had been tampered with to induce them to desert Lancaster; certain it is that soon after, the weak but well-meaning Kent was made the victim of a gross stratagem by Mortimer. He surrounded Kent by his creatures, who asserted that his brother, Edward II., was still alive. The earl's remorse for the share he had had in his brother's ruin made him eagerly listen to a story of this kind. They represented to him that it was a fact well and widely known amongst the people, that the body said to be the king's, which was exhibited at Berkeley Castle, and afterwards buried at Gloucester, was not his, but that he was now actually a prisoner in Corfe Castle. Some monks lent themselves to the base scheme; and exhorted the Earl of Kent to rise to the rescue of his unfortunate brother, assuring him that his fate excited the deepest feeling, and that various nobles and prelates, from whom they professed to come, would at once join in the generous enterprise. No means were spared to lead their victim into the snare. Letters were forged as coming from the Pope, stimulating him to this course, as one required of him as a brother. The earl, completely deceived by this infamous conspiracy, wrote letters to his supposed captive brother, which were handed to Sir John Maltravers, believed by the earl to be cognisant of the poor king's incarceration, but in reality one of his murderers. Those letters were duly conveyed to Mortimer and the queen-mother, and were speedily treated as ample proofs of the earl's treasonable designs. The earl was invited to come to Winchester, where a Parliament, consisting entirely of the faction of the wicked queen and Mortimer, arrested him on the charge of conspiring against the present government, and condemned him to death and loss of his estate. Lest the young king should take compassion on his uncle, the queen and Mortimer hastened his execution. But now was seen a singular sight. Not a man could be found who would take the office of executioner; and there was the son of the great Edward I. seen standing on the scaffold before the castle gate for many hours, for want of a headsman. Such was the detestation of that lascivious woman and of her base and murderous paramour, and such the veneration for that worthy nobleman, that not a man, of any degree whatever, either of the city or neighbourhood, could br induced by rewards or menaces to take up the axe, till a mean wretch from the Marahalsea prison, to save his own life, at length consented to take the life of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent. This was the more remarkable because great complaints were made by the public of the insolence and rapacity of the earl's retainers, who, on the plea of the royal right of purveyance, would take anything as they rode abroad without thinking of paying the parties to whom it belonged. This was, indeed, a great complaint which was frequently brought to Parliament against all the princes of the blood of those times, who used the privilege of purveyance to plunder the defenceless people at will. Personally, however, the Earl of Kent was much beloved; and though the king, his nephew, had signed the sentence, the guilt of it was charged on the queen-mother and Mortimer. The alleged accomplices of the earl were allowed to escape except Robert de Teuton and a poor prior, who had told the earl that he had raised a spirit to inquire whether Edward II. was really still living. This poor man was imprisoned for life.

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 Sponsors 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 ago which would bring his destruction. There wore 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,