fleet; that he would never sentence any man unheard; and that it would be contrary to his coronation oath to promise immunity to men in arms against the public peace.
The Barons advanced to London, and, quartering their followers in Holborn and Clerkenwell, spent a fortnight in deliberation. It appears that the token of adherence to their party was the wearing of a white favor, on which account the session of 1321 was called the Parliament of the White Bands. One day, when these white ensigns mustered strongly, the Barons brought forward an accusation on eleven counts against the two Despensers, and on their own authority, in the presence of the King, banished them from the realm, and pardoned themselves for their rising in arms. Edward had no power to resist, and, accordingly, the act was entered on the rolls, and the younger Hugh was driven from Dover, to join his father on the Continent.
This success rendered the Barons' party insolent, and about two months after, when Queen Isabel was on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and had sent her purveyors to prepare a lodging for her at her own royal Castle of Leeds, the Lady Badlesmere, wife to the Castellane, who was also governor of Bristol and had received numerous favors from Edward, refused admittance, fearing damage to her party; and the Queen riding up in the midst of the parley, a volley of arrows was discharged from the castle, and six of the royal escort were killed.
Isabel of course complained loudly of such a reception at her own castle, whereupon Bartholomew Badlesmere himself wrote from Bristol Castle an impudent letter, justifying his wife's conduct. Isabel was much hurt, since she had always been friendly to the Barons' party; and when she found that even her uncle of Lancaster stood by the Badlesmeres, she persuaded the King to raise an army to revenge the affront offered to her. Summonses were therefore sent out, and the Londoners, with whom the Queen was very popular, came in great force, and laid siege to Leeds Castle. Lady Badlesmere expected to be succored by Lancaster; but he would not come forward, and in a few days her castle was taken, her steward, Walter Culpepper, hanged, and herself committed to the Tower.
Such a bold stroke on the King's part emboldened the elder Le Despenser return to England and join his master. Thereupon Lancaster summoned the other nobles to meet him at Doncaster, to consult what measures should be taken against the minions, and led an army to seize Warwick Castle, which, during the minority of Earl Thomas of Warwick, belonged to the King. In the meantime, Hugh followed his father, but, with English respect for order, put himself under custody until his sentence of banishment should be revoked. The matter was tried before the Bishops of the province of Canterbury, when it was argued, on behalf of Hugh, that Magna Charta had been set at naught by his condemnation without a hearing, and that the King's consent had been extorted by force; and the Earl of Kent, Edward's brother, with several others, making oath that they had been overawed by the White Bands, the banishment was declared illegal, and the prisoners set at liberty.
Lancaster proceeded to raise the north of England; Hereford and the two Mortimers went to the marches of Wales to collect their forces; and Edward, for once under the wise counsel of the Chancellor John de Salmon, set forth alertly in December toward the West, that he might deal with the two armies separately. He was very popular on the Welsh border, and met with rapid success, breaking up the forces of the Lords Marchers before they could come to a head, and finally making both the Mortimers prisoners, sending them to the Tower. Hereford, with 8,000 men, made his way to join Lancaster, who was at the head of a considerable force, and had already taken the miserable step of entering into correspondence with Robert Bruce, Douglas, and Randolph. Elated by the succor which they promised, Lancaster advanced and laid siege to Ticknall Castle, but was forced to retreat on the approach of the King. At Burton-upon-Trent, however, they halted for three days, with Edward opposite to them.
'Upon the mount the King his tentage fixt,
And in the town the Barons lay in sight,
When as the Trent was risen so betwixt,
That for a while prolonged the unnatural fight.'
However, a ford was found, and the royal army crossing, Lancaster set fire to Burton, and retreated into Yorkshire, writing again from Puntefract Castle under the signature of King Arthur, to ask aid from the Scots, and secure his retreat.
As Michael Drayton observes, 'Bridges should seem to Barons ominous;' for at Boroughbridge, upon the Ure, Lancaster found Sir Andrew Harclay and Sir Simon Ward, Governors of York and Carlisle, with a band of northern troops, ready to cut off his retreat. The bridge was too narrow for cavalry, and Hereford therefore led a charge on foot; but in this perilous undertaking he was slain by a Welshman who was hidden under the bridge, and who thrust a lance through a crevice of the boarding into his body as he passed. His fall discomfited the rest, and Lancaster, who had been attempting a ford, was driven back by the archery. He tried to bribe Sir Andrew Harclay. and, failing, begged for a truce of one night, still hoping that the Scots might arrive. Harclay granted this, but in early morning summoned the sheriff and the county-force to arrest the Earl. Lancaster retired into a chapel and, looking on the crucifix, said, 'Good Lord, I render myself to Thee, and put myself into Thy mercy.' He was taken to York for one night, and afterward, to his own Castle of Pontefract, where, on the King's last disastrous retreat from Scotland, he had mocked and jeered at his sovereign from the battlements: and Harclay took care to make generally known the treasonable correspondence with Scotland, proofs of which had been found on the person of the dead Hereford.
The King presently arriving at Pontefract, brought Lancaster to trial before six Earls and a number of Barons; and as his treason was manifest, he was told that it would be to no purpose to speak in his own defence, and was sentenced to the death of a traitor. In consideration of his royal blood, Edward remitted the chief horrors of the execution, and made it merely decapitation; but as the Earl was led to a hill outside the town, on a gray pony without a bridle, the mob pelted him and jeered him by his assumed name of King Arthur. 'King of Heaven,' he cried, 'grant me mercy! for the king of earth hath forsaken me.' He knelt by the black with his face to the east, but he was bidden to turn to the north, that he might look toward his friends, the Scots; and in this manner he was beheaded. The inhabitants of the northern counties were not likely to think lightly of the offence of bringing in the Scots, and yet in a short time there was a strong change of feeling. Lancaster was mourned as 'the good Earl,' and miracles were said to be wrought at his tomb. The King was obliged to write orders to the Bishop of London to forbid the people from offering worship to his picture hung up in St. Paul's Church; and Drayton records a tradition that 'grass would never grow where the battle of Boroughbridge had been fought.' It seemed as if Lancaster had succeeded to the reputation of Montfort, as a protector of the liberties of the country: but to our eyes he appears more like a mere factious, turbulent noble, acting rather from spite and party spirit than as a redresser of wrongs; never showing the respect for law and justice manifested by the opponents of Edward I.; and, in fact, constraining the Royalists to appeal to Magna Charta against him. Still there must have been something striking and attractive about him, for, after his death, even his injured cousin Edward lamented him, and reproached his nobles for not having interceded for him. Fourteen bannerets and fourteen other knights were executed, being all who were taken in arms against the King; the others were allowed to make peace; and the Mortimers, who had been condemned to death, had their sentence changed to perpetual imprisonment. Hereford's estates passed on to the eldest of his large family, the King's own nephews. Lancaster left no children, but his brother, Henry Wryneck, Earl of Derby, did not receive his estates till they had been mulcted largely on behalf of the Despensers. The father was created Earl of Winchester, and the son received such bounty from the King, that all the old hatred against Piers Gaveston was revived, though it does not appear that Hugh provoked dislike by any such follies or extravagances.
The elder Roger Mortimer, the uncle, died in the Tower. The younger contrived, after a year's imprisonment, to make interest with one of the servants in the Tower, Gerard de Asplaye, with whose assistance he gave an entertainment to his guards, drugged their liquor, so as to throw them into a heavy sleep, broke through the wall into the royal kitchen, and thence escaped by a rope-ladder. Report afterward averred that it was the fairest hand in England that drugged the wine and held the rope, and that Queen Isabel,
'From the wall's height, as when he down did slide,
Had heard him cry, 'Now, Fortune, be my guide!''
Thus far is certain, that Isabel and Mortimer were inmates of the Tower at the same time, in the year 1321; for she was left there while the King was gone in pursuit of Lancaster, and she there gave birth to her fourth child, Joan. Whether the prisoner then sought an interview with her, is not known, but he was a remarkably handsome man, and Isabel, at twenty-six years of age, was beautiful, proud, and with bitterness in her heart against her husband for his early neglect. She had been on fairly good terms with him ever since the birth of the Prince of Wales, and her grace and beauty, her affable manners, and the idea that she was ill-used, made her a great favorite with the English nation; but she was angered by the execution of her uncle, the Earl of Lancaster, and from the time of the King's return she proceeded to manifest great discontent, and as much dislike and jealousy of the
