servants were plundering his treasures, his corpse was consumed by fire
caught from the wax-lights around his bier. His tyrant, Philippe le Bel,
was but forty-six years of age, still young-looking and handsome; but
the decree had gone forth against him, and he fell into a bad state of
health. He was thrown from his horse while pursuing a wild boar, and the
accident brought on a low fever, which, on the 29th of November, 1314,
brought him likewise to the grave. He left three sons, all perishing,
after unhappy marriages, in the flower of their age, and one daughter,
the disgrace and misery of France and England alike.
So perished the Templars; so their persecutors! It is one of the darkest
tragedies of that age of tragedies; and in many a subsequent page shall
we trace the visitation for their blood upon guilty France and on the
line of Valois. They were not perfect men. They have left an evil name,
for they were hard, proud, often, licentious men, and the “Red Monk”
figures in many a tradition of horror; but there can be no doubt that
the brotherhood had its due proportion of gallant, devoted warriors, who
fought well for the cross they bore. Their fate has been well sung by
Lord Houghton:
“The warriors of the sacred grave,
Who looked to Christ for laws,
And perished for the faith they gave
Their comrades and the cause;
They perished, in one fate alike,
The veteran and the boy,
Where’er the regal arm could strike,
To torture and destroy:
While darkly down the stream of time,
Devised by evil fame,
Float murmurs of mysterious crime,
And tales of secret shame.
How oft, when avarice, hate, or pride,
Assault some noble hand,
The outer world, that scorns the side
It does not understand,
Echoes each foul derisive word,
Gilds o’er each hideous sight,
And consecrates the wicked sword
With names of holy right.
Yet by these lessons men awake
To know they cannot bind
Discordant will’s in one, and make
An aggregate of mind.
For ever in our best essays
At close fraternal ties
An evil narrowness waylays
Our present sympathies;
And love, however bright it burns
For what it holds roost fond,
Is tainted by its unconcern
For all that lies beyond.
And still the earth has many a knight
By high vocation bound
To conquer in enduring tight
The Spirit’s holy ground.
And manhood’s pride and hopes of youth
Still meet the Templar’s doom,
Crusaders of the ascended truth,
Not of the empty tomb.”
CAMEO XL. THE BARONS’ WARS. (1310-1327.)
_King of England_.
1307. Edward II.
1314. Louis X.
1316. Philippe V.
1322. Charles IV.
_King of Scotland_.
1306. Robert I.
1314. Louis V.
_Kings of France_.
1285. Philippe IV
_Emperors of Germany_.
1308. Henry VII.
_Popes_.
1305. Clement V.
1316. John XXII.
It was the misfortune of Edward of Caernarvon that he could not attach
himself in moderation. Among the fierce Earls, and jealous, distrustful
Barons, he gladly distinguished a man of gentle mould, who could return
his affection; but he could not bestow his favor discreetly, and always
ended by turning the head of his favorite and offending his subjects.
There was at his court a noble old knight, Sir Hugh le Despenser, whose
ancestors had come over with William the Conqueror, and whose father had
been created a Baron in 1264, as a reward for his services against Simon
de Montfort. To this gentleman, and to his son Hugh, Edward became
warmly attached; and apparently not undeservedly, for they were both
gallant and knightly, and the son was highly accomplished, and of fine
person. Edward made him his chamberlain, and gave him in marriage
Eleanor de Clare, the sister of the Earl of Gloucester who was killed at
Bannockburn, and one of the heiresses of the great earldom, with all its
rights on the Welsh marches.
Still, the love and sympathy of the nation were with the King’s cousin,
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who probably obtained favor by liberality, or
by the arts for which poor Gaveston had named him the “stage-player,”
since his life seems to have been dissolute under much appearance
of devotion. The last great Earl of Lincoln had chosen him as his
son-in-law, while the intended bride, Alice, was yet a young child. In
1310, just after Gaveston’s fall, Lincoln died, and the little Countess
Alice, then only twelve years old, became the wife of Lancaster; but in
1317 mutual accusations were made on the part of the Earl and Countess,
and Alice claimed to be set free, on account of a previous promise of
marriage; while Lancaster complained of Earl Warrenne for having allowed
a humpbacked knight, named Richard St. Martin, to carry Alice off to one
of his castles, called Caneford, and there to obtain from her the troth
now pleaded against him. Edward II. told Lancaster that he might proceed
against Warrenne in the ordinary course of law: but this he would not
do, as he did not wish to prove his wife’s former contract, lest he
should lose her great estates with herself; and instead of going
honorably to work, he added this reply to his list of discontents
against the King.
His friends even set it about that Edward II. was not the true son of
Edward I.; and a foolish man, named John Deydras, even came forward
professing to be the real Edward of Caernarvon, who had been changed at
nurse; but no one believed him, and he was hanged for treason. A like
story was invented, and even a ballad was current, making Queen Eleanor
of Provence confess that Edmund Crouchback, not Edward I., was the
rightful heir, but that he was set aside on account of his deformity;
and Lancaster, as Edmund’s son, was on the watch to profit by the King’s
unpopularity. Discontents were on the increase, and were augmented by a
severe famine, and by the constant incursions of the Scots. Such was the
want of corn, that, to prevent the consumption of grain, an edict was
enacted that no beer should be brewed; and meat of any kind was so
scarce, that, though the King decreed that, on pain of forfeiture, an ox
should be sold for sixteen shillings, a sheep for three and sixpence,
and a fowl for a penny, none of these creatures were forthcoming on any
terms. Loathsome animals were eaten; and it was even said that parents
were forced to keep a strict watch over their children, lest they should
be stolen and devoured.
While the King and Queen were banquetting at Westminster, at
Whitsuntide, 1317, a masked lady rode into the hall on horseback, and
delivered a letter to the King. Imagining it to be some sportive
challenge or gay compliment, he ordered that it should be read aloud;
but it proved to be a direful lamentation over the state of England, and
an appeal to him to rouse himself from his pleasures and attend to the
good of his people. The bearer was at once pursued and seized, when she
confessed that she had been sent by a knight; and he, on being summoned,
asked pardon, saying he had not expected that the letter would be read
in public, but that he deemed it the only means of drawing the King’s
attention to the miseries of his people. It may be feared that the
letter met with the fate of Jeremiah’s roll.
A cloud was already rising in the West, which seemed small and
trifling, but which was fraught with bitter hatred and envy, ere long to
burst in a storm upon the heads of the King and his friends. The first
seeds of strife were sown by the dishonesty of a knight on the borders
of Wales, one William de Breos. He began his career by trying to cheat
his stepmother of her dower of eight hundred marks; and when the law
decided against him, he broke out into such unseemly language against
the judge, that he was sentenced to walk bareheaded from the King’s
Bench to the Exchequer to ask pardon, and then committed to the Tower.
In after years he returned to his lordship of Gower, and there committed
an act of fraud which led to the most fatal consequences. Having two
daughters, Aliva and Jane, the eldest of whom was married to John de
Mowbray and the second to James de Bohun, he executed a deed, settling
his whole estate upon Aliva, and, in case of her death without children,
upon Jane. But concealing this arrangement, he next proceeded to sell
Gower three times over--to young Le Despenser, to Roger Mortimer, and to
the Earl of Hereford; and having received all their purchase-money, he
absconded therewith.
Mowbray took possession of Gower in right of his wife, and was thus
first in the field; but Hugh le Despenser, whose purchase had been
sanctioned by the King, came down upon him with a strong hand, and drove
him out of the property. Thereupon Mowbray made common cause with all
the other cheated claimants, De Bohun joining the head of his house, the
great Earl of Hereford, who, with Roger Mortimer and his uncle, another
Mortimer of the same name, revenged their wrongs by a foray upon Lady
Eleanor le Despenser’s estates in Glamorganshire, killing her servants,
burning her castles, and driving off her cattle, so that in a few nights
they had done several thousand pounds’ worth of damage. The King, much
incensed, summoned the Earl of Hereford to appeal before the council;
but the Earl demanded that Hugh le Despenser should be previously placed
in the custody of the Earl of Lancaster until the next parliament; and,
on the King’s refusal, made another inroad on the lands of the
Despensers, and betook himself to Yorkshire, where the Earl of Lancaster
was collecting all the malcontents.
The two Earls, the Lords of the Marches or borders of Wales, and
thirty-four Barons and Knights, bound themselves by a deed, agreeing to
prosecute the two Despensers until they should be driven into exile, and
to maintain the quarrel to the honor of Heaven and Holy Church, and the
profit of the King and his family. Lancaster proceeded to march upon
London, allowing his men to live upon the plunder of the estates of the
two favorites. From St. Alban’s he sent a message to the King, requiring
the banishment of the father and son, and immunity for his own party.
Edward made a spirited answer, that the father was beyond sea in his
service; the son with the 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 Despensers as she had previously
shown toward Gaveston.
Mortimer escaped to France, and subsequent events made it seem as if
she had been acting in concert with him. He had married a French lady,
Jeanne de Joinville, and was taken at once into the service of King
Charles IV.
Charles IV., le Bel, was the youngest of Isabel’s brothers, who had
succeeded each other so quickly that it seemed as though the
sacrilegious murder of the Templars was to be visited by the extinction
of the male line of Philippe IV. To Charles, Isabel sent great
complaints, declaring that she was “married to a gripple miser, and was
no better than a waiting-woman, living on a pension from the
Despensers.” There had, in fact, been a fierce struggle with them for
power, and they had prevailed to have all her French attendants
dismissed, very probably on the discovery of the transactions with
Mortimer in the Tower, and a yearly income had been assigned to her in
lieu of her royal estates. This was very irregularly paid, for affairs
were in a most confused and disorderly state, managed in a most childish
manner. It appears that, when hunting at Windsor, the Chancellor Baldock
gave the great seal to the King to keep, and that the King made it over
to William de Ayremyne.
There were no doubt grounds for complaint on both sides; but Charles le
Bel saw only his sister’s view of the question, and resolved to quarrel
with his brother-in-law. Homage for the Duchy of Aquitaine had not been
rendered to him, and on this pretext he began to exercise all possible
modes of annoyance on the borders, and to give judgment against any
Guiennois or Poitevins who sued against Edward as their liege lord,
Edward remonstrated in vain, and sent his brother Edmund, Earl of Kent,
a fine-looking but weak young man of twenty-two, to endeavor to make
peace, but in vain: on the first pretext, a war on the borders broke
out.
Thereupon Edward took into his custody all the castles belonging to his
wife, declaring that he could not leave them in her hands while she was
in correspondence with the enemies of the country; and yet, with his
usual inconsistent folly, he listened to a proposal from her that she
should go to Paris to bring about a peace with her brother.
With four knights, Isabel crossed the sea, and presently made her
appearance at Paris in the character of an injured Princess, kneeling
before her brother, and asking his protection against the cruelty of her
husband; to which Charles replied, “Sister, be comforted; for, by my
faith to Monseigneur St. Denis, I will find a remedy.”
Isabel was lodged at the court of France, and treated with distinction.
Mortimer and all the banished English repaired to her abode, and all the
chivalry of France regarded her as an exiled heroine. She wrote to her
husband that peace might be scoured by the performance of the neglected
homage, and he was actually setting out for the purpose, when, in a
second letter, she told him that his own presence was not needed, but
that his ceremony might be gone through by his son Edward, Prince of
Wales, provided the duchy were placed in his hands as an appanage.
This proposal met with approval, and young Edward, then twelve years
old, under the charge of the Bishops of Exeter and Oxford, was sent to
Paris, after having promised his father to hasten his return, and not to
marry without his consent.
No sooner had the boy arrived, than the homage was performed, and Edward
expected the return of both mother and son; but they still delayed, and
on receiving urgent letters from him, the Queen made public declaration
that she did not believe her life in safety from the Despensers.