war-horse over the Belgian undulating plains, that Nature would seem
to have designed for fair battle-fields, was no match for the light
horsemen of the Scots, trained to wild, desultory warfare. He and his
young King thought the respectable way of fighting was for one side to
wait civilly for the other, interchange polite defiances on either side,
take no advantage of ground, but ride fairly at each other with pennons
flying and trumpets sounding, like a tournament; and they did not at all
approve of enemies of whom they saw no trace but a little distant smoke
in the horizon, and black embers of villages wherever they marched.
There was no coming up with them. The barons set forth in the morning,
fierce, and wound up for a battle, pennons displayed, and armor
burnished; but by and by the steeds floundered in the peat-bogs, the
steep mountain-sides were hard to climb for men and horses cased in
proof armor, and when shouts or cries broke out at a distance, and with
sore labor the knights struggled to the spot in hopes of an engagement,
it proved to have been merely the hallooing of some other part of the
army at the wild deer that bounded away from the martial array. When, at
night, they reached the banks of the Tyne, and had made their way across
the ford, they found themselves in evil case, for all their baggage
and provisions were far behind, stuck in the bogs, or stumbling up the
mountain-sides, and they had nothing to eat but a single loaf, which
each man had carried strapped behind him, and which had a taste of all
the various peat-bogs into which he had sunk. The horses had nothing to
eat, and there was nothing to fasten them to, so that their masters were
forced to spend the whole night holding them by the bridles. They hoped
for better things at dawn, but with it came rain, which swelled the
river so much that none of the foot or baggage could hope to cross, nor,
indeed, could any messenger return to find out where they were. The
gentlemen were forced to set to work with their swords to cut down green
boughs to weave into huts, and to seek for grass and leaves for their
horses. By and by came some peasants, who told them they were fourteen
miles from Newcastle and eleven from Carlisle, and no provisions could
be obtained any nearer. Messengers were instantly sent off, promising
safety and large prices to any one who would bring victuals to the
famishing camp, and the burghers of Newcastle and Carlisle seem to have
reaped a rich harvest, by sending a moderate supply of bread and wine
at exorbitant prices. For a whole week of rain did the army continue in
this disconsolate position, without tents, fire, or candle, and with
perpetual rain, till the saddles and girths were rotted, the horses
wasted to skeletons, and the army, with rusted mail and draggled banners
and plumes, a dismal contrast to the gay troops who had lately set
forth.
After waiting a week, fancying the Scots must pass the ford, they gave
up this hope, and resolved to re-cross higher up. Edward set forth a
proclamation, that the man who should lead him where he could cope on
dry ground with the Scots, should be knighted by his own hand, and
receive a hundred pounds a year in land. Fifteen gentlemen, thus
incited, galloped off in quest of the enemy, and one of them, an esquire
named Thomas Rokeby, who made toward Weardale, not only beheld the Scots
encamped on the steep hill-side sloping toward the Wear, but was seized
by their outposts, and led before Douglas. Sir James was in a
position where he had no objection to see King Edward, with a natural
fortification of rocks on his flanks, a mountain behind, and the river
foaming in a swollen torrent over the rocks in the ravine in front of
him. So, when Rokeby had told his tale, Douglas gave him his ransom
and liberty, on the sole condition that he should not rest till he had
brought the tidings to the King--terms which he was not slow to fulfil.
He found the English army on the Derwent, at the ruined Augustinian
monastery of Blanchland; and, highly delighted, Edward gave the promised
reward, and the army prepared for a battle by confession and hearing
mass. Then all set forth in high spirits, and came to the spot, where
they were so close to the enemy that they could see the arms on the
shields of the nobles, and the red, hairy buskins of the ruder sort,
shaped from the hides of the cattle they had killed.
Edward made his men dismount, thinking to cross the river; but, on
examination, he found this impossible. He then sent an invitation to the
Scottish leaders to come out and have a fair fight; but at this they
laughed, saying that they had burnt and spoiled in his land, and it was
his part to punish them as he could; they should stay there as long as
they pleased. As it was known that there was neither bread nor wine in
their camp, it was hoped that this would not be very long; but from the
merriment nightly heard round the watchfires, it seemed that oatmeal
and beef satisfied them just as well, and the English were far more
miserable in their position.
On the third night, though the fires blazed and the horns resounded at
midnight, by dawn nothing was to be seen but the bare, gray hill-side.
The Scots had made off during the night, and were presently discovered
perched in a similar spot on the river side, only with a wood behind
them, called Stanhope Park.
Again Edward encamped on the other side of the river, and watched the
foe in vain. One night, however, Douglas, with a small body of men,
crept across the river at a ford higher up, and stealing to the
precincts of the camp, rode past the sentry, crying out in an English
tone, “Ha, St. George! no watch here!” and made his way into the midst
of the tents, smiling to himself at the murmur of an English soldier,
that the Black Douglas might yet play them some trick. Presently, with
loud shouts of “Douglas! Douglas! English thieves, ye shall die!” his
men fell on the sleeping army, and had slain three hundred in a very
short time, while he made his way to the royal tent, cut the ropes,
and as the boy, “a soldier then for holidays,” awoke, “by his couch,
a grisly chamberlain,” stood the Black Lord James! His chaplain threw
himself between, and fell in the struggle, while Edward crept out under
the canvas, and others of the household came to his rescue. The whole
army was now awakened, and Douglas fought his way out on the other
side of the camp, blowing his horn to collect his men. On his return,
Randolph asked him what he had done. “Only drawn a little blood,” said
Douglas.
“Ah!” said Randolph, “we should have gone down with the whole army.”
“The risk would have been over-great,” said Douglas.
“Then must we fight them, by open day, for our provisions are failing,
and we shall soon be famished.”
“Nay,” said Sir James, “let us treat them as the fox did the fisherman,
who, finding him eating a salmon before the fire in his hut, drew his
sword, and stood in the doorway, meaning to slay him without escape. But
the fox seized a mantle, and drew it over the fire; the fisherman flew
to save his mantle, and Master Fox made off safely with the salmon by
the door unguarded!”
On this model the wary Scot arranged his retreat, making a multitude of
hurdles of wattled boughs to be laid across the softer places in the bog
behind them, and giving secret orders that all should be ready to move
at night. This could not be done so secretly that some tidings did not
reach the English; but they expected another night-attack, and, though
they continued under arms, made no attempt to ascertain the proceedings
of the enemy till daybreak, when, crossing the river, they found nothing
alive but five poor English prisoners bound naked to trees, with their
legs broken. Around them lay five hundred large cattle, killed because
they went too slowly to be driven along, three hundred skins filled with
meat and water hung over the fires, one hundred spits with meat on
them, and ten thousand of the hairy shoes of the Scots--the enemy were
entirely gone; and Edward, baffled, grieved, and ashamed, fairly burst
into tears at his disappointment.
His army was unable to continue the pursuit, and in two days arrived at
Durham, where the honest burghers had stored under outhouses all the
wagons that had been left behind in the advance thirty-two days before,
each with a little flag to show whose property it was. Tidings being
brought that the Scots had gone to their own country, Edward turned
his face southward, and, by the time he reached York, had had the
mortification of losing all his horses, from the privations the poor
creatures had undergone; while the discontent of his subjects found
vent in ascribing all the misfortunes to Roger Mortimer’s treachery--an
additional crime of which he may fairly be acquitted. Edward continued
at York all that autumn, apparently keeping aloof from his mother’s
court; or else it was her object to prevent him from perceiving the
guilty counsels that there prevailed, and which resulted in the murder
of his father. To York Sir John of Hainault fetched the young bride,
his niece Philippa, and the marriage took place in the cathedral on St.
Paul’s Day, 1328, the two young people being then sixteen and fifteen
years of age. Meantime, Robert Bruce, partially recovering, laid siege
to Norham, and in the exhausted state of England it was decided to offer
him peace, fully acknowledging his right to the throne, yielding up the
regalia and the royal stone of Scotland, and uniting his son David with
the little Princess Joan.
The nation were exceedingly angry at the peace, necessary as it was, and
charged the disgrace upon Mortimer. They rose in tumult, and prevented
the coronation-stone from being taken away, and they called the marriage
a base alliance. Even Edward himself refused to be present with his
young wife at the marriage of his little sister, which was to take place
at Berwick. His mother tried to induce him to come, by arranging a
joust; she had six spears painted splendidly for his use, others for
his companions, and three hundred and sixty more for other English
gentlemen; but he was resolved to keep his Philippa aloof from the
company of Mortimer and his mother, and remained with her at Woodstock,
notwithstanding all temptations to display.
Bruce was too ill to go to Berwick, but gave his son, then five years
old, into the charge of Douglas and Randolph. The little bride, called
by the Scots Joan Makepeace, was conducted by her mother and Mortimer
with the most brilliant pomp.
Mortimer’s display and presumption outdid even poor Piers Gaveston: he
had one hundred and eighty knights in his own train alone, and their
dress was so fantastically gay that the Scots jested on them, and made
rhymes long current in the North:
“Longbeards, heartless,
Gay coats, graceless,
Painted hoods, witless,
Maketh England thriftless.”
Queen Isabel herself was wont to wear such a tower on her head, that
doorways had to be altered to enable her to pass under them; and her
expenses were so great, that no revenue was left to maintain her young
daughter-in-law Philippa.
Henry, sometimes called Wryneck, Earl of Derby, brother of the rebel
Thomas of Lancaster, and Thomas and Edmund, Earls of Norfolk and Kent,
the youngest sons of Edward I., had begun bitterly to repent of having
been deceived by this wicked woman. Even Adam Orleton had quarrelled
with her for attempting to exact a monstrous bribe for making him Bishop
of Winchester; but Mortimer was determined to keep up his power by
violence. At a parliament at Salisbury, where the young King and Queen
were presiding, he broke in with his armed followers, and carried them
off in a sort of captivity to Winchester. The three Earls took up arms,
but the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, 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
Of Good King Robert’s Testament.”
With these fierce, though sagacious counsels, the hero of Scotland died
on the 7th of June, 1329. He was buried in Dunfermline Abbey, after his
heart had been extracted and embalmed according to his command; but the
dissolution of the convents made sad havoc among the royal tombs of
Scotland, and two churches had risen and fallen above his marble tomb
before it was discovered among the ruins in 1819, and his remains were
found in a winding-sheet of cloth of gold, and the breastbone sawn
through. Multitudes were admitted to gaze on them, and there were many
tears shed, for, in the simple and beautiful words of Scott, “There was
the wasted skull which once was the head that thought so wisely and
boldly for his country’s deliverance; and there was the dry bone which
had once been the sturdy arm that killed Sir Henry de Bohun between
the two armies at a single blow, the evening before the battle of
Bannockburn.”
The Bruce’s heart was enclosed in a silver case, and hung round the neck
of Douglas, who sailed at once on his pilgrimage, taking with him a
retinue befitting the royal treasure that he bore. But on his way
he landed in Spain, and esteeming that any war with any Saracen was
agreeable to his vow, he offered his aid to King Alfonso, of Castile.
But he was ignorant of the Moorish mode of fighting, and, riding too
far in advance with his little band, was inclosed and cut off by the
wheeling horsemen of the Moors. Still he might have escaped, had he not
turned to rescue Sir William St. Clair, of Roslyn; but in doing this he
was so entangled, that he saw no escape, and taking from his neck his
precious charge, he threw it before him, shouting aloud, “Pass onward as
thou wert wont! I follow, or die!” He followed, and died. His corpse
was found on the battle-field lying over the heart of Bruce, and his
friends, lifting up the body, bore it back again to his own little
church of St. Bride of Douglas, where it lies interred; while the
crowned and bleeding heart shines emblazoned on the shield of the great
Douglas line, a memorial of the time and hearty love that knit together,
through adversity and prosperity, the good King Robert and the good Lord
James. The heart itself was given into the charge of Sir Simon Locard,
of Lee, already the keeper of the curious talisman called the Lee Penny,
brought by Earl David of Huntingdon from the East; but he did not deem
it needful to carry his burthen to Jerusalem, and it was buried beneath
the altar at Melrose Abbey, Sir Simon changed his name to Lockhart, and
bore on his shield a heart with a fetterlock, on his crest a hand with a
key, and for his motto, “_Corda serrata pando._”
Here, then, we close the first series of Cameos, during which we have
seen the Norman conquerors gradually become English, and the kingdom
take somewhat of its present form. In another volume we hope to show the
long wars of the Middle Ages.
INDEX.