appointing them a place of meeting; but the hound was not to be thus
baffled, and followed up his master’s footsteps. Again the royal party
broke up, the King keeping with him only his foster-brother; but again
the hound singled out his traces, and followed him closely. Lorn sent
on five of his fleetest Highlanders to outstrip the dog, believing them
able to cope with the two whose footmarks he saw. Bruce soon saw them
dashing alter him, and asked his foster-brother, “What aid wilt them
make?”
“The best I can,” he said; and the King undertook to deal with three,
leaving the other two to his foster-brother; but he had to turn aside
from his own combat to rescue his companion, and four out of the five
fell by his hand; yet he thanked his foster-brother for his aid in
the encounter. The baying of the hound came near enough to be heard,
revealing why the enemy had so well distinguished his tread: and Bruce,
who had been sitting under a tree, spent with fatigue, sprang up,
exclaiming that he had heard that to wade a bow-shot through a stream
would make any dog lose scent, and he would put it to proof by walking
down the little stream that crossed the wood. This device succeeded, the
running water effaced the scent, the hound was at fault, and Lorn gave
up the attempt.
Still the hunted pair were in evil case; they had lost their way, and
were spent with fatigue, and they could not extricate themselves from
the forest. By and by they met three wild, vagabond-looking men coming
with swords and axes, and one with a sheep thrown over his shoulders.
The King accosted them, and asked whither they were bound. They said
they sought Robert Bruce, since, wherever he was, there would be
fighting.
“Come with me,” he said; “I will take you to him.”
At this they changed countenance, so that he suspected them, and
insisted that they should walk on before him in front, without the two
parties mingling together. At nightfall they came to an empty shed,
where they killed the sheep; but Bruce, still on his guard, chose to
have a separate fire, and to eat and sleep apart beside it, himself and
his foster-brother taking turns to watch. The foster-brother, heavy and
exhausted, dropped off to sleep on his watch, and almost at the same
moment the three robbers fell upon them. Bruce, who slept lightly, was
on the alert in a moment, and slew the whole three, but not in time to
save his foster-brother, who died under a blow from the marauders. The
King then went mournfully on his way to the place of rendezvous, and by
and by came to a farm, where he was welcomed by a loyal goodwife,
who declared that she wished well to all travellers for the sake of
one--King Robert. Here he was joined by one hundred and fifty men, with
his brother Edward, and James Douglas; and the first remedy thought of
for all their fatigues was to fall on their pursuers, who were carousing
in the villages. Attacking them suddenly, they inflicted far more injury
than had been suffered through this day of pursuit.
Bruce was gathering men so fast, that he ventured to give battle to
Aymar de Valence at London Hill, and defeated him chiefly by using the
long spears of the Scottish infantry against the horse of the English.
Aymar went to explain the state of affairs to King Edward at Carlisle.
Such tidings lashed the old monarch to more vehement action; he prepared
to set forth at once against the enemy; but it was not to be. Wars were
over with him forever. The sudden death of his daughter, Joan, strongly
affected him, and at only one day’s march from Carlisle he became so
ill, that he was forced to rest at Burgh on the Sands, where he speedily
declined. His last injunctions to his son were, to be kind to his little
brothers, and to maintain three hundred knights for three years in the
Holy Land. The report went, that he further desired that his flesh might
be boiled off his bones, and these wrapped in a bull’s hide to serve as
a standard to the army; but Edward’s hatred never was so mad as this
would have been, and there is no reason to believe in so absurd a story.
There could perhaps be found no more appropriate monument than that in
Westminster Abbey, contrasting, as it does, its stern simplicity with
the gorgeous grace of his father’s inlaid shrine, and typifying well the
whole story of the fallen though still devout crusader--the dark-gray
slab of Purbeck marble, with the inscription:
Edwardus Primus. Malleus Scotorum, 1308. Pactum Serva.
Edward the First. The Hammer of the Scots. Keep covenants.
CAMEO XXXVII. THE VICTIM OF BLACKLOW HILL.
_King of England_.
1307. Edward II.
_King of Scotland_.
1306. Robert I.
_King of France_.
1385. Philippe IV.
_Emperor of Germany_.
1308. Henry VII.
_Pope_.
1305. Clement V.
“The foolishness of the people” is a title that might be given to many
a son of a wise father. The very energy and prudence of the parent,
especially when employed on ambitious or worldly objects, seems to
cause distaste, and even opposition, in the youth on whom his father’s
pursuits have been prematurely forced. Seeing the evil, and weary of
the good, it often requires a strong sense of duty to prevent him from
flying to the contrary extreme, or from becoming wayward, indifferent,
and dissipated.
This has been the history of many an heir-apparent, and of none more
decidedly than of Edward of Carnarvon. The Plantagenet weakness, instead
of the stern strength of the house of Anjou, had descended to him; and
though he had what Fuller calls “a handsome man-case,” his fair and
beautiful face was devoid of the resolute and fiery expression of his
father, and showed somewhat of the inanity of regular features, without
a spirit to illuminate them. Gentle, fond of music, dancing, and every
kind of sport, he had little turn for state affairs; and like his
grandfather, Henry III., but with more constancy, he clung to any one
who had been able to gain his affections, and had neither will nor
judgment save that of the friend who had won his heart.
His first friend--and it was a friendship till death--was Piers
Gaveston, the son of a knight of Guienne. Piers was a few years older
than the Prince, and so graceful, handsome, ready of tongue, and
complete in every courtly accomplishment, that Edward I. highly
approved of him as his son’s companion in early boyhood; and Piers
shared in the education of the young Prince of Wales and of his favorite
sister, Elizabeth. Edward I. was a fond father, and granted his son’s
friend various distinguished marks of favor, among others the wardship
of Roger, the son and heir of the deceased Edmund Mortimer, warden of
the Marches of Wales. Whatever were the intentions of Gaveston, Roger
Mortimer did little credit to his education. The guardian had a license
to use his ward’s property like his own till his majority, in order that
he might levy the retainers for the King’s service, and he obtained a
handsome gratuity from the relatives of the lady to whom he gave the
youth in marriage, and this, probably, was the extent of the obligations
to which Gaveston considered himself as bound.
Both he and his Prince were strongly sensitive to all that was tasteful
and beautiful; they were profuse in their expenditure in dress, in
ornament, and in all kinds of elegances, and delighted in magnificent
entertainments. They gave one in the Tower of London to the princesses,
on which occasion an immense expenditure was incurred, when the Prince
of Wales was only fifteen; and his presents were always on the grandest
scale to his sisters, who seem to have loved him as sisters love an only
brother.
By and by, however, generosity became profusion, and love of pleasure
ran into dissipation. Grave men grew uneasy at the idle levity of the
Prince, and were seriously offended by the gibes and jests in which the
tongue of Gaveston abounded, and at which he was always ready to laugh.
In 1305, the Prince made application to Walter Langley, Bishop of
Litchfield, the King’s treasurer, to supply him with money, but was
refused, and spoke improperly in his anger. It is even said that he
joined Gaveston in the wild frolic of breaking into Langley’s park, and
stealing his deer. At any rate, at Midhurst, on the 13th of June, the
Bishop seriously reproved him for his idle life and love of low company;
and the Prince replied with such angry words, that the King, in extreme
displeasure, sent him in a sort of captivity to Windsor Castle, with
only two servants.
All his sisters rose up to take their brother’s part, and assure him of
their sympathy. The eager, high-spirited Joan, Countess of Gloucester,
sent him her seal, that he might procure whatever he pleased at her
cost; and Elizabeth, who was married to Humphrey de Bohun, the great
Earl of Hereford, wrote a letter of warm indignation, to which he
replied by begging her not to believe anything, save that his father was
acting quite rightly by him; but a few weeks after, he wrote to beg
her to intercede that his “two valets,” Gilbert de Clare and Perot de
Gaveston, “might be restored to him, as they would alleviate much of
his anguish.” He addressed a letter with the like petition to his
stepmother, Queen Margaret, and continued to evince his submission by
refusing his sister Mary’s invitations to visit her at her convent at
Ambresbury. At the meeting of parliament, Edward met his father again,
and received his forgiveness. All went well for some time, and he
gracefully played his part in the pageantry of his knighthood and the
vow of the Swans.
Gaveston still continued about his person, and accompanied him to the
north of England. At the parliament of Carlisle, in 1307, the Prince
besought his father to grant his friend the earldom of Cornwall, the
richest appanage in the kingdom, just now vacant by the death of his
cousin, Edmund d’Almaine, son of the King of the Romans. Whether this
presumptuous request opened the King’s eyes to the inordinate power that
Gaveston exercised over his son, or whether he was exasperated against
him by the complaints of the nobles, his reply was, to decree that,
after a tournament fixed for the 9th of April, Gaveston must quit the
kingdom forever; and he further required an oath from both the friends,
that they would never meet, again, even after his death. Oaths were
lightly taken in those days, and neither of the gay youths was likely to
resist the will of the stern old monarch; so the pledge was taken, and
the Prince of Wales remained lonely and dispirited, while Piers hovered
on the outskirts of the English dominions, watching for tidings that
could hardly be long in coming.
So much did Edward I. dread his influence, that, on his deathbed, he
obliged his son to renew his abjuration of Gaveston’s company, and laid
him under his paternal malediction should he attempt to recall him.
It does not appear that Gaveston waited for a summons. He hurried to
present himself before his royal friend, who had, in pursuance of his
father’s orders, advanced as far as Cumnock, in Ayrshire.
Both had bitterly to rue their broken faith, and heavily did the
father’s curse weigh upon them; but at first there was nothing but
transport in their meeting. The merry Piers renewed his jests and
gayeties; he set himself to devise frolics and pageantries for his young
master, and speedily persuaded him to cease from the toils of war in
dreary Scotland, and turn his face homeward to the more congenial
delights of his coronation, and his marriage with the fairest maiden
in Europe. To have made peace with Bruce because the war was an unjust
aggression, would have been noble; but it was base neither to fight nor
to treat, and to leave unsupported the brave men who held castles in
his name in the heart of the enemy’s country. But Edward was only
twenty-two, Gaveston little older, and sport was their thought, instead
of honor or principle. Piers even mocked at the last commands of the
great Edward, and not only persuaded the new King to let the funeral
take place without waiting for the conquest of Scotland, but to bestow
on him even the bequest set apart for the maintenance of the knights in
Palestine. At Dumfries, on his first arrival, the coveted earldom of
Cornwall was granted to him; and, on his return, he was married to the
King’s niece, Margaret de Clare, daughter to Joan of Acre. He held his
head higher than ever, and showed great discourtesy to the nobility. He
had announced a tournament at Wallingford in honor of his wedding, and
hearing that a party of knights were coming to the assistance of the
barons who had accepted his encounter, he sallied out privately with
his followers, and attacked and dispersed the allies, so as to have the
advantage in his own hands in the melée. Such a dishonorable trick was
never forgotten, though probably the root was chiefly vanity, which
seems to have been the origin of all his crimes, and of his ruin.
The chancellor and all the late King’s tried ministers were displaced,
and some, among whom was the good Bishop of Litchfield, were imprisoned
for two years. Gaveston, without any regular appointment, took the great
seal into his own keeping, and set it to charters which he filled up
after his fancy. In the meantime, the King set off for France, to
celebrate his marriage with Isabel, the daughter of Philippe le Bel,
the princess for whose sake the Flemish maiden was pining to death in
captivity. The seal of this most wretched of unions was, that Philippe
took this opportunity of persuading the gentle, reluctant Edward II, to
withdraw his protection from the Templars in his dominions, and give
them up to the horrible cruelty and rapacity of their exterminator.
Isabel’s dowry was furnished from their spoils. The wedding took place
on St. Paul’s Day, 1308, in the presence of four kings and queens, and
the festivities lasted a fortnight; after which the young bride and
bridegroom set off on their return to Dover, where Edward’s favorite
sister, Elizabeth, was already come to greet the little Queen, a
beautiful girl of thirteen, proud, high-spirited, and exacting, very
unwilling to be treated as a child. Her two uncles came with her, and
a splendid train of nobles; and two days after their landing, Gaveston
arrived at Dover, when, at first sight of him, Edward rushed into his
arms, calling him brother, and disregarding every one else. Almost at
the same time the King gave his favorite the whole of the rich jewelry
and other gifts which had been bestowed on him by his father-in-law,
Philippe le Bel; and this was regarded as a great affront by the young
Queen and her uncles. Gaveston had a childish complaint of his own
to make--men would not call him by his new title; and presently a
proclamation came out, rendering it a crime to speak of him as Piers,
Piers Gaveston, or as anything but the Earl of Cornwall.
It was the more resented because he was not respectful with other men’s
titles, and amused the King with nicknames for the nobles. Thomas, Earl
of Lancaster, the son of Edmund Crouchback, was “the old hog” and
the “stage-player;” pale, dark, Provençal Aymar de Valence, Earl of
Pembroke, he called “Joseph the Jew;” the fierce Guy, Earl of Warwick,
“the black dog of Ardennes.” The stout Earl swore that he should find
that the dog could show his teeth; and when Gaveston announced a
tournament for the 18th of February at Feversham, no one chose to attend
it, whereupon he jeered at them as cowards.
The King issued writs summoning his nobles to meet for his coronation on
the 25th of February, but they took the opportunity of insisting that
Gaveston should be dismissed from favor. Edward evasively answered that
he would attend to their wishes at the meeting of parliament, and they
were obliged to be content for the present; but they were exceedingly
angry that, at the coronation, Piers appeared more splendidly and richly
attired than the King himself, and bearing on a cushion the crown of St.
Edward, while the Earl of Lancaster carried curtana, the sword of mercy,
and his brother Henry the rod with the dove. The Bishop of Winchester
performed the ceremony, Archbishop Winchelsea not having returned from
his exile; and the King and Queen made magnificent offerings: the
King’s being first, a figure of a king in gold, holding a ring; the
second, of a pilgrim given the ring; intended to commemorate the vision
in which St. Edward received the coronation-ring from St. John the
Evangelist.
Gaveston arranged the whole ceremony; but as his own display was his
chief thought, he managed to affront every one, and more especially the
young Queen and her uncles, so that Isabel wrote a letter to her father
full of complaints of her new lord and his favorite, and Philippe
entered into correspondence with the discontented nobility. In the
tournaments in honor of the coronation, Piers came off victorious over
the Earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke, and Warrenne, and this
mortification greatly added to their dislike. At the meeting of
parliament, the Barons were so determined against the favorite, that
finally Edward was obliged to yield, and to swear to keep him out of the
kingdom; though, to soften the sentence, he gave him the manors of High
Peak and Cockermouth, and made him governor of Ireland, bestowing on
him, as a parting token, all the young Queen’s gifts to himself--rings,
chains, and brooches; another great vexation to Isabel. He was obliged,
at the same time, to grant forty other articles, giving greater security
to the people.
Gaveston made a better governor of Ireland than could have been
expected, repressed several incursions of the wild Irish, and repaired
the castles on the borders of the English pale; but his haughty
deportment greatly affronted the Irish barons of English blood, and they
were greatly discontented with his rule.
The King was, in the meantime, doing his utmost to procure the recall
of the beloved Earl. He wrote to the Pope to obtain absolution from his
oath, and to the King of France to entreat him to relax his hostility;
and he strove to gain his nobles over one by one, granting offices to
Lancaster, and making concessions to all the rest. Philippe le Bel made
no answer; Clement V. sent exhortations to him to live in harmony with
his subjects, but at last absolved Gaveston, on condition that he should
demean himself properly, and submit his differences with the Barons to
the judgment of the Church.
Gaveston hurried home on the instant; his master flew to meet him, and
received him at Chester with raptures of affection. Thence Edward sent
explanations to the sheriffs of each county, saying, that Gaveston
having been unjustly and violently banished, it was his duty to recall
him, to have his conduct examined into according to the laws. The
Barons, on the other hand, put forth other declarations, persuading the
people that the King having violated one of the oaths, he evidently
meant to break the other forty, which regarded their personal liberties.
Gaveston did nothing to mitigate the general aversion. He had not learnt
wisdom by his first fall, and though the clergy and commons meeting at
Stamford granted a twenty-fifth of the year’s produce to the King, and
consented to his remaining so long as he should demean himself properly,
he soon disgusted them also. He wore the crown-jewels openly, and
affected greater contempt than ever for the Barons, till it became
popularly said that there were two Kings, the real one a mere subject to
the false. The young Queen wrote piteous complaints to her father of her
husband’s neglect; and the Countess of Cornwall had still greater wrongs
from Gaveston to complain of to her brother, the Earl of Gloucester.
Dances, sports, and gayeties were the occupation of the court, heedless
of the storm that was preparing. The Barons, jealous, alarmed, and
irritated, looked on in displeasure, and on the All-Saints’ Day of 1310,
after high mass at St. Paul’s, the bold-spirited Archbishop Winchelsea,
in his pontifical robes, standing on the step of the altar, made a
discourse to the Earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, Pembroke, Hereford, and
eight other persons, after which he bound them by an oath to unite to
deliver the kingdom from the exactions of the favorite, and pronounced
sentence of excommunication against any who should reveal any part of
their confederation before the time.
The Earl of Lincoln, the last of the Lacys, shortly after fell sick, and
made what he thought a death-bed exhortation to the Earl of Lancaster,
who had married his only daughter, not to abandon England to the King
and the Pope, but, like the former barons, to resist all infractions of
their privileges.
This Earl of Lancaster was the son of Edmund Crouchback and of Blanche
of Artois, mother of the Queen of France. He was a fine-looking man,
devout and gracious, and much beloved by the people, who called him the
Gentle Count; but Gaveston’s nickname for him of the “stage-player”
may not have been unmerited, for he seems to have been over-greedy of
popular applause and influence, and to have had much personal ambition;
and it does not seem certain, though Gaveston might be vain, and
his master weak and foolish, that Lancaster and his friends did not
exaggerate their faults, and excite the malevolence of a nation never
tolerant either of royal favorites or of an expensive court. Pembroke
was Aymar de Valence, son of one of the foreign brothers who had been
the bane of Henry III.; but now, becoming a thorough Englishman, he bore
the like malice to the unfortunate Gascon who held the same post as his
own father had done. Hereford, though husband to the King’s favorite
sister Elizabeth, was true to the stout old Bohun, his father, who
had sworn to Edward I. that he would neither go nor hang. Two poor
butterflies, such as Edward II. and Gaveston, could have done little
injury to the realm, but the fierce warriors were resolved to crush
them, impatient of the calls upon their purses made needful by their
extravagance.
A tournament had been announced at Kennington, and preparations were
made; but Gaveston’s jousts were not popular. None of the Barons
accepted the invitation, and in the night the lists and scaffolding were
secretly carried away. This mortification was ominous, but Edward’s
funds were so low that he could not avoid summoning a parliament to meet
at Westminster; and at their meeting the nobles again resorted to the
device of Montfort at the Mad Parliament. They brought their armed
followers, and forced the King to consent to the appointment of a
committee of ordainers, who made him declare that this measure proceeded
of his own free will, and was not to prejudice the rights of the
Crown; but that their office would expire of itself on the ensuing
Michaelmas-Day. So strangely and inconsistently did they try to bring
about their own ends without infringing on the constitution.
Gaveston had either previously hidden himself, or was driven away by
the ordainers; but the King, anxious to escape from their surveillance,
proclaimed an expedition to Scotland, and summoned his vassals to meet
him at York. Hardly any noble came except Gaveston, and they made an
ineffectual inroad into Scotland together, after which Gaveston shut
himself up in Bamborough Castle, while the King went to London to
receive the decision of the ordainers. The foremost was, of course, the
banishment of Gaveston; and he went, but only again to appear, before
two months were past, in the company of the King, at York.
Lancaster and his friends now look up arms and marched northward. Edward
and his court had proceeded to Newcastle, but no army was with them; and
on the report of the advance of the enemy the King fled to Tynemouth,
and embarked in a little boat with his friend, leaving behind him his
wife, discourteously perhaps, but hardly cruelly, for Isabel was the
niece of Lancaster, and probably would have been in more danger from
a sea-voyage in a rude vessel, than from the rebel lords. She was,
however, greatly offended, and was far more inclined to her uncle, who
wrote her an affectionate letter, than to her regardless husband.