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.
After this act of intimidation, Mortimer's insolence went still farther, and England was fully sensible that the minion now reigning united all the faults of the former ones-the extravagance and rapacity of Gaveston, and the pride and violence of the Despensers; and as if to bring upon himself their very fate, he caused himself to be appointed Warden of the Marches of Wales, and helped himself to manor after manor of the Despenser property. His name and lineage were Welsh, and in memory of King Arthur he held tournaments which he called Round Tables, and made this display so frequent, that his own son Geoffrey became ashamed of them, and called him the King of Folly.
Meantime, the modest and innocent young court at Woodstock was made happy by the birth of the heir to the crown-a babe of such promise and beauty that even grave chroniclers pause to record his noble aspect, and the motherly fondness of the youthful Philippa, then only seventeen. Again Queen Isabel was obliged to trust her son out of the hands of herself and her minions. Her last brother, King Charles IV., was dead, leaving only daughters; and though she fancied the claim of her son Edward to the French crown to be nearer than that of Philippe, Count of Valois, the son of her father's brother, it was not convenient to press the assumption, and it was therefore resolved that young Edward should go to Amiens to perform his homage to Philippe. He was only fifteen days absent from England, and duly swore fealty to Philippe; the one robed in blue velvet and golden lilies, the other in crimson velvet worked with the English lions; but the pageant was a worthless ceremony, and the journey was chiefly important as bringing him to a full sense of the esteem in which his mother was held at home and abroad. Edward was nearly nineteen, and was resolved that he and his country should be held in unworthy bondage no longer. He confided his plans to Sir William Montacute, and they agreed to bring about the downfall of Mortimer at the next parliament, which was summoned to meet at Nottingham.
So suspicious were the Queen and her favorite, that they always travelled with a strong guard, and, on entering Nottingham Castle, the locks on all the gates were changed, and the keys were every night brought to the Queen, who hid them under her pillow. Edward himself was admitted, but with only four attendants; and the Earls of Lancaster and Hereford were not even allowed to lodge their followers in the town, but with insolent words were quartered a mile off, to their own great discontent and that of the country-folk.
Montacute meanwhile held counsel with Sir Robert Eland, the governor of the castle, who told him that far without the walls lay a cave, whence a subterraneous gallery led into the keep of Nottingham Castle. It was believed to have been made for a means of escape in the days of Danish inroads, and it was still practicable to lead a body of men through it. Montacute undertook the enterprise on the 19th of October, 1330. Whether the King crept through the passage, or only joined Montacute after he emerged on the stairs, is not certain; but together, and with a troop of armed men behind them, they broke into the room where Mortimer was consulting with the Earl of Lincoln, and seized upon his person. The Queen, nearly undressed, hurried out of the next room, and Edward stood behind the door, that she might not see him; but she guessed that he was present, and cried out piteously, 'Fair son, have pity on gentle Mortimer!' Her cries were unheeded, and Mortimer was, in the early morning, sent off to the Tower of London, while all Nottingham rang with shouts of joy.
Edward broke up the parliament, and summoned a new one to meet at Westminster, where he called Mortimer to account for a tissue of such horrible crimes that one alone would have secured his condemnation. The Peers were asked what his sentence should be, and they all answered that he ought to die like his victim, Hugh le Despenser, who had not had a moment to speak in his own defence. Perhaps Edward dreaded to hear his mother's crimes disclosed, for he forbade the confession to be made known of two of the accomplices in his father's murder, and caused Mortimer to die a traitor's death at once at Tyburn-the inaugurating execution at that melancholy spot. This hasty sentence stood Mortimer's family in good stead; for, as there was no sentence of attainder, they continued to hold the earldom of March. Edward little thought that the grandson of his father's murderer would become the heir to his own throne.
The Pope wrote to Edward to intercede with him for his mother, but the exhortation was hardly needed, for he showed the most delicate and filial respect throughout for her name, and what truth and necessity compelled him to declare against her, he charged on the evil influence of Mortimer. Her grief and despair threw her into an absolute fit of madness at the time of Mortimer's execution, and she continued subject to fits of distraction for many years after. She was shut up in Risings Castle, and respectfully attended upon by a sufficient train; her son visited her from time to time, but she never saw any others of her family; and when, after twenty-eight years, she died, she chose to be buried in the church of the Gray Friars, at Newgate, where lay the remains of Mortimer.
While these events were taking place in England, one of the great spirits of the time was passing away at Cardross, in Scotland. Robert the Bruce lay on his death-bed, and, calling for his nobles, bade them swear fealty to his infant son, and appointed Randolph, Earl of Moray, as regent for the child; for Sir James Douglas he reserved a yet dearer, closer charge. Long ago, as he lay on his bed at Rachrin, had he vowed to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; but before he had given rest to his country, the deadly sickness had seized on him which was cutting him off in his fifty-fifth year. He therefore entreated that Douglas would carry his heart, to fulfil his vow, instead of himself, and that, making his way to Jerusalem, he would lay it finally in the Holy Sepulchre.
Weeping so that he could hardly speak, Sir James thanked his master for the inestimable honor, and vowed, on his faith as a knight, to do his bidding. Robert likewise gave his nobles a set of counsels for the defence of his kingdom, showing how truly he estimated its resources and method of warfare; for it is said that no reverse ever afterward befell the Scots but by their disregard of what they called 'Good King Robert's Testament'-precepts he had obeyed all his life, and which stood nearly thus in old Scottish:
'On foot should be all Scottish war,
By hill and moss themselves to ware;
Let woods for walls be; bow and spear
And battle-axe their fighting gear:
That enemies do them na dreir,
In strait places gar keep all store,
And burn the plain land them before:
Then shall they pass away in haste,
When that they find nothing but waste;
With wiles and wakening of the night.
And mickle noise made on height;
Then shall they turn with great affray,
As they were chased with sword away.
This is the counsel and intent
