But in this hope he was disappointed, and on receiving a summons to surrender next morning he retired into the chapel, and having recommended himself to the mercy of heaven, resigned himself to his captors, who conducted him to York. Here he was summarily arraigued before the king, six earls, and the royal barons, and was condemned to be drawn, hanged, and quartered as a traitor. The king was pleased to commute this ignominious punishment for that of decapitation, but his courtiers took care to signalise their own loyalty by heaping insults on the person of the traitor. On the 22d of March, 1322, being seven days after the battle of Boroughbridge, this once potent earl was led forth to execution from his own castle of Pontefract, on a lean jade without a bridle, to an eminence in the neighbourhood. The spectators pelted him with mud as he moved along, and taunted him with the title of King Arthur, the name which he had assumed in his correspondence with the Scots; but he bore their insults with calmness and dignity. King of heaven," he cried, "grant me mercy, for the king of earth hath forsaken me !" On reaching the spot which had been fixed on for his execution, he knelt down at first with his face towards the east, but the malignity of his enemies was yet unsoftened, and as a last insult they ordered him to turn towards the north, that he might look upon his friends. He obeyed, and while in that posture his head was struck off by an executioner from London. His associates, Badlesmere, Giffard, Barret, Cheyney, Fleming, and several others were afterwards formally tried and executed; and Harcla received for his services the forfeited earldom of Carlisle,-a boon which he was destined soon to forfeit in his turn for treasonable correspondence with the Scots. Lancaster's immense possessions being forfeited to the crown, were extensively employed in gratifying the rapacity of the Despensers; but the fortunes of the house of Lancaster did not long remain under a cloud. Thomas had died childless, but Henry, the second sor of Edward Crouchback, contrived so to ingratiate himself with Edward's son and successor, that in the first parliament of that monarch, he obtained an act for the reversal of his brother's attainder, whereby he became repossessed of the confiscated family estates.

Hugh Spenser.

DIED A. D. 1326.

THE king's chief favourite after the death of Gaveston was Hugh Le Despenser, or Spenser, a young gentleman of English birth, of high rank, and ample fortune. His father, a baron descended from the Conqueror's steward, had been in high trust under Edward I., and he himself held the office of chamberlain of the royal household. His handsome person and agreeable manners won for him the favour of his sovereign; while his marriage with a daughter of the late earl of Gloucester slain at Bannockburn, gave him possession of the greater portion of the county of Glamorgan. But these advantages rendered him so much the more an object of aversion and envy to the less favoured and less

Rym. iii. 939.

potent nobility. Wa.singnam indeed represents him as drawing upon himself the hatred of the other courtiers, and of the Lancasterian party, by his arrogant and oppressive behaviour,' but there is no proof of this, and it seems probable that the head and front of his offending lay in his avowed attachment to the royal person, and the consequent gratitude of his sovereign.

In 1321, John de Mowbray having taken possession, without previously obtaining livery and seizin from the crown, of an estate belonging to his wife's father, the younger Spenser advised his royal master to claim the fief as escheated to the crown, and subsequently to confer it upon himself. This transaction excited the indignation of the lords of the marches, who immediately began to devastate the possessions of the favourite and destroy his castles. In these proceedings they were countenanced by the earls of Lancaster and Hereford, who also supported an act of accusation against the Spensers, consisting of eleven counts; it charged them with usurping the royal power, and alienating the king's affections from his faithful nobility, also generally with advising unconstitutional measures and extorting fines from all who solicited grants from the crown. The act concluded with these words. "Therefore we, the peers of the land, earls and barons, in the presence of our lord the king, do award that Hugh Le Despenser, the son, and Hugh Le Despenser, the father, be disinherited for ever, and banished from the kingdom of England, never to return, unless it be by the assent of the king, and by assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, in parliament duly summoned: and that they quit the realm by the port of Dover before the next feast of St John the Baptist: and that if they be found in England after that day, or ever return, they be dealt with as enemies of the king and kingdom." The king endeavoured to shield his favourite from the punishment demanded; he urged that the elder Spenser was beyond the sea on his service, that the younger was with his fleet guarding the Cinque Ports, and that it was unjust to condemn men before they had had an opportunity of answering the counts laid to their charge; the prelates also protested in writing against the sentence; but the plan of intimidation resorted to by Lancaster prevailed, and the royal assent to the banishment of the two Spensers was wrung from the unwilling monarch.

On the decline of Lancaster's popularity, and the consequent infusion of new hopes and fresh vigour into the royal cause, the two Spensers successively returned to England and obtained the repeal of the award enacted against them. The father was also created earl of Winchester, and was amply compensated for his losses by the gift of several of the forfeited estates on the fall of his arch-enemy the earl of Lancaster. But both failed to profit by their recent lesson of adversity, and by a series of impolitic measures soon drew down upon themselves a heavier vengeance than that which they had so lately experienced. To the queen they became objects of the most decided aversion; and on her return from France, her proclamation was especially levelled against them as the principal source of the calamities which had befallen the nation under her husband's government. Bishop Orleton availing himself of the queen's known resentment towards the Spensers

:

on being commanded to preach before her as she passed through Ox ford in pursuit of her fugitive husband, selected for his text that passage in Genesis :—" I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. She shall bruise thy head." These words he applied to Isabella and the Spensers.

On the surrender of Bristol by the burghers, the elder Spenser, to whom the town had been intrusted by Edward, was accused before Sir William Trussel, of having usurped the royal prerogatives, and done what in him lay to widen the breach between his sovereign and the people. After a mock trial, he was hurried to the place of execution, where he was embowelled alive; his body was afterwards hung on a gibbet for four days, and then cut into pieces and thrown to the dogs. The execution of the old man, now in his ninetieth year, took place within sight of the king and of his own son, who had hastily put to sea with the intention of retiring into the small island of Lundy in the Bristol channel, which had been previously fortified and stored with provisions. But after beating about for several days in the estuary of the Severn, contending with a strong westerly wind, the fugitives were compelled to re-land near Swansea, and endeavoured to elude the vigilance of their enemies by concealing themselves in different places between the monastery of Neath and the castle of Caerfilly. Here their retreat was soon discovered by Henry, earl of Leicester, who, having corrupted the fidelity of the natives, got possession of the younger Spenser, and Robert Baldoch, the king's chancellor, who had secreted themselves in the woods near the castle of Lantressan. Edward, on hearing of their apprehension, instantly surrendered himself to his cousin. Baldoch, being a priest, escaped immediate execution, but sank under the rigours of his imprisonment. A severer fate awaited Spenser. He was arraigned at Hereford before the same judge who had pronounced sentence against his father. The charges preferred against him were his returning to the kingdom after having been banished in parliament; his having caused the earl of Lancaster to be put to death at Pomfret castle; his having favoured the king of Scots, and by his treachery occasioned the defeat of Bannockburn; and finally, his having excited misunderstandings between the king and queen, and by bribes procured her being sent out of France. Most of these accusations were totally unfounded, and some of them even inconsistent with cach other. But they sufficed for the purpose of his enemies, and sentence of death being recorded against him, he was immediately drawn in a black gown, with the arms of his family reversed, and a wreath of nettles on his head, to the place of execution, where he was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high. His head was afterwards sent as an agreeable present to the citizens of London, who decorated one of their bridges with it.

Apolog. Ad. Orlet. 2765.—Leland's Collectanea, i. 673.

Edward ELE.

BORN A. D. 1312.-DIED A. D. 1377.

If any thing could surprise a mind conversant with the way wardness of human nature, the utmost astonishment would be excited by the behaviour of the men who, during the former reign, and the earlier periods of the present, exercised an uncontrolled authority in the government of England. Gaveston fell a victim to the consequences of his own insolence; Spenser, untaught by the fearful lesson, was equally domineering, and perished by a yet severer fate; and, at the time now under consideration, Mortimer was wielding the sovereign power in a yet loftier spirit of despotic arrogance. The murder of the deposed king was followed by the treacherous circumvention, and the assassination under form of law, of his brother the duke of Kent. The popular indignation awakened by these atrocities, was repelled with a high hand, and the entire administration of the kingdom was usurped by the queen and her paramour. Mortimer, now created earl of March, became proud beyond measure,' indulged the magnificence of his taste in tournaments and splendid feasts, held the rein of empire with a tight and galling hand, and provoked his own son to give him the title of 'king of folly.' But all this extravagance was soon to cease: a masterspirit was now to become lord of the ascendant: Edward, intrepid and jealous of his right, was now eighteen, and in mental energy much beyond his years. Ill-disposed to yield a longer submission to an intrusive power, he confided his feelings to Lord Montacute, afterward created earl of Salisbury, and a plan for his emancipation was promptly devised The parliament of 1334 was appointed to be held at Nottingham, and the usurper took up his quarters, with the queen, at the castle, which was strongly guarded. Admission in the usual way was rendered impracticable by the precautions used, but the aid of the governor, and the indication of a subterraneous passage, gave an easy entrance to the conspirators. The queen, rushing from her chamber, called in vain upon her fair son' to ' spare the gentil Mortimer;' he was seized, summarily condemned by his peers,' and ignominiously executed at Tyburn.

The age was warlike, and the genius of Edward well-suited to the character of the age. There were, close at hand, two antagonists who might have stirred the blood of a tamer monarch by their attitude either of resistance or defiance, and he accepted the challenge real or implied. France, however, was for the present put aside, and the feud with Scotland obtained his first attention. That country was again distracted by the weak and criminal dissensions of her nobles; and, though brave and able chiefs were not awanting to her cause, yet the master-minds had disappeared. Bruce was dead, and his son was a minor; Randolph did not long survive his friend, and James Douglas had fallen the victim of his romantic valour on his way to the Holy Land with the heart of Robert Bruce. Perhaps there is not to be found in history an instance of three such men giving themselves up so en

Rot. Parl. ii. 52, &c.

tirely and so unitedly to the maintenance of the same cause; and it could not be but that their country would severely feel their loss, aggravated as it was by the evils of a long minority. Edward's first les son in the practice of war had been given him in 1327, when Randolph and Douglas invaded Northumberland, and were suffered to retreat without fighting, through a strange want of skill or enterprize in the English leaders. But six years afterward he had thrown off his trammels, and was in the uncontrolled command of his own army when he gave battle to the Scots at Halidon-hill, and defeated them with tremendous loss. France had the next turn: Edward quartered with his own the arms of the French king, and addressed himself in earnest to the conquest of that powerful kingdom. He made a league with Artaveldt, the bold brewer of Ghent, at that time the leader of the Flemings, and made his first attempt from the Flemish frontier. "We passed out," is his own language in a letter to his son, "of Valenciennes, and the same day began to burn in Cambresin, and burnt there all the following week; so that this country is very completely destroyed, as well in its corn as in cattle and other property." But in this reckless and unprofitable devastation all his preparations terminated, for Philip declined a battle, and Edward was compelled to retreat and to dismiss the greater part of his army. His next campaign commenced with a great naval victory. Philip, whether intending to interrupt the English fleet, or, as seems more probable, to make a demonstration of invading England during the absence of the king and the army, had prepared a mighty armament at Sluys: and on receiving intelligence of the fact, the English monarch, though with far inferior force, and in opposition to the intreaties of his council, set sail in quest of them, and, notwithstanding their numbers and strong position, led on to the attack. The fight was desperate and the victory complete. Edward's archers cleared the decks; the boarders rushed over every obstacle, and nearly the whole fleet remained in the possession of the assailants. The campaign on land, however, like the former, effected nothing against the defensive system of Philip, and a negotiation was commenced for the cessation of hostilities. In the meantime, circumstances were occurring elsewhere, which offered the means of access to the very heart of France, through one of her most vulnerable points. John duke of Britanny died, and, in the disputes which followed respecting the suc cession, Philip aided his nephew, Charles de Blois, while Edward eagerly took up the quarrel of the count de Montfort, who was himself in captivity, but whose right was resolutely defended by his wife, Jane. Besieged and hard-pressed in the fortress of Hennebon, she was relieved by that pride of chivalry, Sir Walter Manny, and Edward prepared for the invasion of France, on a plan more decidedly strategic than any which had been before attempted. His cousin, the gallant and accomplished earl of Derby, was sent to Guienne, where he obtained brilliant successes with a slender force. The king himself landed in Normandy, apparently with the double object of calling off from Gascony the formidable army which was now menacing the earl of Derby, and of traversing Picardy, joining a Flemish division in Artois, and laying siege to Calais. The first purpose was effected, but the second, through the

2 Heming. 275.