# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 62

CHAPTER LXII.
Such had been the fortune in war of the son of one of the greatest commanders that the English ever saw on the throne; such was the condition to which the weakness and cowardice of Edward II. had reduced the kingdom. The Scots insulted and harassed him on one side, the Welsh on the other; and the haughty barons, taking advantage of his fallen fortunes, sought to raise their own power on the ruins of the throne. They came forward again boldly with their ordinances, and Edward was compelled to submit to them. Lancaster was set at the head of the council, and introduced a totally new set of officers of the crown. The government offices, they declared, should be filled from time to time by the votes of Parliament—that is, of the barons. So far from these new rulers endeavouring to expel or humble the Scots, it was believed that Lancaster was in secret alliance with them; and this afterwards was proved to be true. Acting this traitorous part, Lancaster pretended to keep up a hostile show against the Scots, but ho took care that all attempts against them should fail.
Edward was clearly totally unfit to govern a kingdom. He had neither abilities to conduct the affairs of peace or war; and he was of that unhappy character of mind which never derives any benefit from experience. The misery which he had brought upon himself by his foolish fondness for Gaveston, and the destruction brought upon the favourite himself, had not the least effect in preventing him falling into the same error. Soon after the death of Gaveston he conceived the same singular and indomitable attachment to Hugh le Despenser, or Spenser, a young man of ancient descent, and in the service of the Earl of Lancaster, who, in his changes of office, had placed him about the court. This second fatal attachment involved the remainder of the reign of Edward in perpetual strife and trouble, and precipitated his terrible end.
This young Despenser, the new favourite, had all the graces of person and the accomplishments which had bewitched the king in Gaveston, but he had advantages which never belonged to the Gascon—those of birth,
The Battle of Bannockburn. (See page 347.)
But they had in reality been too successful. The force put upon the authority of the king was so outrageous, and it reduced all respect for it to so low an ebb, that the barons and knights in their own neighbourhoods became totally regardless of public decorum towards the royal family. Even the queen, who had always endeavoured to live on good terms with the barons, and who detested the young Spenser as cordially as they did, could not escape insult. Passing the castle of Leeds in Kent, in reality a crown property, but in the keeping of the Lord of Badlesmero, she desired to spend the night there, but admittance was refused her; and some of her attendants, insisting on their royal mistress being admitted to what might be called her own house, were forcibly repulsed and killed. The queen instantly complained, with all her quick sense of indignity, to the king; and Edward thought that now he had a splendid opportunity of vengeance on his haughty barons. He for once assumed courage, and displayed a spirit which, if it had been permanent and uniform, would have made him and kept him master of his throne and prerogatives. He assembled an army, fell on Badlesmere, took him prisoner, and inflicted severe chastisement on his followers. The insult to the queen had excited the indignation of the people against the barons, and completely justified the proceedings of the king. Thus suddenly finding himself on the high tide of public approbation, he at once declared the acts of the barons void, and contrary to the tenor of the Great Charter. He showed surprising activity in collecting forces and calling out friends in different parts of the kingdom. He recalled the two Spensers. They had only been banished in the mouth of August; in October they were again on English ground. The king marched down upon the quarters of the lords of the marches, who were thus suddenly taken unawares, while isolated in fancied security, and incapable of resistance. He seized and hanged twelve knights of that party. Many of the barons endeavoured to appease him by submission, but their castles were taken possession of, and their persons imprisoned.
Lancaster, alarmed for his safety, hastened northward, and now openly avowed his league with Scotland so long, suspected, and called on the Scots for help. This was promised him under the command of the two great champions of Scotland—Randolph, now Earl of Moray, and the Douglas. But these not arriving, Lancaster set out on his march, and was joined by the Earl of Hereford and all his forces. Their army, however, did not equal that of the king, which numbered 30,000 men.
Lancaster and Hereford posted themselves at Burton-upon-Trent, hoping to keep back the royal forces by obstructing the passage over the bridge; but in this they failed, and hastily retreated northwards, hoping daily for the arrival of the promised aid from Scotland. At Boroughbridge, on the 16th of March, 1322, they were intercepted by a force under Sir Simon Ward and Sir ​Andrew Harclay, who occupied the bridge and the opposite banks of the river. In fear of the pursuit of the king's army, the two barons endeavoured to force the bridge, but were stoutly repulsed; Hereford was killed, and Lancaster, who in his terror had lost all power of commanding his troops, was seized and conducted to the king.
No greater contrast could be exhibited by two commanders than was shown on this occasion by Hereford and Lancaster. Hereford, determined to force the bridge, charged on foot; but a Welshman, who had discovered that the bridge was in a very decayed state, and fall of holes, had concealed himself under it, and through one of these holes he thrust a spear into the bowels of the brave earl, who fell dead on the spot. Lancaster attempted to find a ford over the river, but the archers of the enemy poured in showers of arrows upon him. Night put a stop to the battle, and in the morning he was taken. Lancaster had in his day a great reputation for piety. "He was," says Froissart, "a wise man and a holy; and he did afterwards many fine miracles on the spot where he was beheaded." Hume has painted this nobleman as violent, turbulent, and hypocritical; and attributes his reputation for piety to the monks, whom he favoured, and who were his historians. But there is nothing in his public conduct which may not assume the character of patriotism, for he fell, as he had lived, in endeavouring to resist the mischievous practices of the king in regard to his favourites. He was a prince of the blood, and, by his position and the rights of the Charter, bound to support the constitution which the king was continually violating in his unbounded partiality to his minions. In conformity with his character, Lancaster, on being surrounded, retired into a chapel, and looking on the holy cross, said, "Good Lord, I surrender myself to thee, and put me into thy mercy." He had no mercy to expect from Edward, who remembered too well the indignities which his beloved Gaveston had received at the hands of the earl and his associates at his execution, and who now resolved to have ample revenge.
About a month after the battle, he convoked a court martial at the earl's own castle of Pontefract, where he himself presided, and where as a traitor, having made league with Scotland against his rightful sovereign, Lancaster was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He was clothed in mean attire, set upon a sorry jade of a horse, with a hood upon his head, and in this manner he was led to execution on a hill near the castle, the king's officers heaping all kinds of insults upon him, and the populace, whom he had greatly incensed by his calling in the Scots, pelting him with mud, and attending him with outcries and curses. In his life and death Lancaster bore a striking resemblance to the Earl of Leicester, the leader of the barons in the reign of Henry III.
Besides the two leaders of this revolt, five knights and three esquires were killed in the battle, and fourteen bannerets and fourteen knights bachelors were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Amongst those who were executed were Badlesmere—who had insulted the queen—Gifford, Barnot, Cheney, and Fleming. Many were thrown into prison, and others escaped beyond the sea. "Never," says an old writer, "did English earth at one time drink so much blood of her nobles, in so vile a manner shed as this." But not only was this vengeance taken on the persons of the insurgents, their vast estates were forfeited to the crown, and the people soon beheld, with inexpressible indignation, the greater portion of those immense demesnes seized upon by the younger Spenser, whose rapacity was insatiable. In a Parliament held at York, the attainder of the Despensers was reversed, the father was created Earl of Winchester, and both he and his son enriched by the lands of the fallen nobles. Edward was as totally uncured of his folly as ever. Harclay, for his services, received the earldom of Carlisle and a largo estate, which he soon again forfeited, as well as his life, for a treasonable correspondence with the Scots. But the rest of the barons of the royal party receiving little, were the more incensed at the immense spoils heaped on the Sponsors. The king's enemies, on the other hand, vowed vengeance on both monarch and favourite, and the people regarded him with more determined envy and hatred than ever.
Thus Edward, falling the moment that he was successful into his hopeless failing of favouritism, not only lost every advantage he had so completely gained, but hastened by it the day of retribution. The nobles who had escaped to France, there set on foot a dangerous conspiracy. Amongst these was the younger Roger Mortimer, one of the most powerful barons of the Welsh marches, who had been twice condemned for high treason, but receiving a pardon for his life, was detained in the Tower, where his captivity was intended to be perpetual. Making his guards drunk with a drugged liquor, he escaped, and now joined these conspirators, all smarting from their sufferings on account of the favourite, and many of them from his usurpation of their castles and lands.
Everything favoured these conspirators. At home, the young Spenser, as little instructed by past dangers as his master, seemed to grow every day more arrogant; and an expedition against the Scots, like all the expeditions of this king against that people, proving a failure—followed by the usual inroads of the Scots, in one of which they nearly took the king prisoner, and in which they wasted the country to the very walls of York—created deep discontent and national irritation. Sensible of the lowering aspect of things in France, Edward, at length, after a war of three-and-twenty years, fruitful in disaster and ruin, now concluded a truce with Scotland for thirteen years. In this truce he did not recognise the title of Robert Bruce to the crown; but Bruce, who had made good his claim to it, who had repelled all the attacks of England on his country, given it a great overthrow at Bannockburn, and on various occasions carried the way into England, satisfied himself with these substantial advantages.
Fortified on this side, Edward still did not sit secure. Soon after the treaty he was startled by a plot to cut off the elder Spenser, and then by an attempt to release the prisoners taken at Boroughbridge from their dungeons. This failed; but the conspiracy in France grew, and circumstances favoured it. Charles le Bel, the brother of Edward's queen, now on the throne, having, or pretending, causes of complaint against Edward's officers in the province of Guienne, overran that province with his arms, and took many of his castles. Edward apologised, and offered to refer the causes of quarrel to the Pope; but ​Charles took advantage of his brother-in-law's difficulties, and endeavoured to deprive him of his French territories altogether. Edward sent out his brother, the Earl of Kent, to endeavour to negotiate matters, but without effect; and Isabella, who had long wished to quit the kingdom, now prevailed on the king to let her go over and endeavour to arrange the business with her brother. Edward fell into the snare; the queen found herself in Paris, and the centre of a powerful band of British malcontents. One common principle animated the queen and the refugees of the Lancaster faction, and bound them together—hatred of the Spensers. The queen had come attended by a splendid retinue—for she came not only as Queen of England and Princess of France, but in the character of an ambassador. Publicly, therefore, she was received with every honour; and, publicly, she appeared to be negotiating for a settlement of her royal husband's difficulties; but as the mode of solving them, she conceded that he should come over in person and do homage for his provinces. This proposal, which astonished both the king and the whole court, was strenuously resisted by the younger Spenser. He well knew the feelings entertained by the queen towards himself; and therefore would, on no account, trust himself in Paris with her. But to allow the king to proceed there alone was as full of danger. The king might there fall under the influence of some other person; and at home his own position would be a most dangerous one during the king's absence, surrounded as he was by universal hatred.
The king had advanced as far as Dover, where, no doubt, at the persuasion of the Spensers, he stopped, and, on the plea of illness, declined to proceed any further. Foiled in this scheme, Isabella hit upon another, which was that Edward should make over Guienne and Ponthieu to his son, who then could go instead of his father, and perform the requisite homage. This was more easily fallen into by the king, because it suited young Spenser by keeping the king at home. Edward resigned Guienne and Ponthieu to his son, now thirteen years old; he went over, did his homage, and took up his residence with his mother.
The plot now began to unfold itself palpably. The queen was not only surrounded by a powerful body of English subjects hostile to their king, but she had the heir to the throne in her possession, and she determined never to return to England till she could drive young Spenser thence, and seize the reins of power herself. When, therefore, the homage being completed, Edward urged the return of his wife and son, he received at first evasive answers, which were soon followed by the foulest charges against him by his own queen. She complained that Hugh Spenser had alienated the king's affection from her; that he had sown continual discord between them; had brought the king to such a feeling against her, that he would neither see her nor come where she was. She accused the Spensers of seizing her dower, and keeping her in a state of abject poverty and dependence, and that, beyond all this, they had a design on the lives of both herself and son. The king put forth a defence of himself, but nothing could clear him from the charge of having grossly neglected the queen for his favourites, or of having most thoroughly merited her contempt and aversion.
But while the queen was doing the utmost to disgrace and ruin her husband, her own conduct was notoriously scandalous. During the life of the Earl of Lancaster, she appears to have leaned very much on him for counsel and support; but now the Lord Mortimer was become the head of the Lancastrian party, and therefore necessarily was thrown daily into her society. Mortimer was handsome, brave, of insinuating address, and sufficiently unprincipled. The affairs of the party brought them into almost perpetual contact, and intimacy speedily ripened into intrigue and criminality. Very soon the position of the queen and Mortimer was universally known. They lived in the most avowed intimacy, and when Edward, made aware of it, insisted on Isabella's immediate return, she declared boldly that she would never set foot in England till Spenser was for ever removed from the royal presence and counsels. This public avowal won her instant and great popularity in England, where Spenser was hated, and threw for a while a slight veil over her own designs. An active correspondence was opened with the discontented in England; the vilest calumnies were propagated everywhere against the king, and this disgraceful family quarrel became the common topic of all Europe.
The King of France, from motives of policy, declared himself highly incensed against Edward for his treatment of his sister, and even threatened to redress her wrongs. He still protected her, even after her open connection with Mortimer; though both himself and his two brothers had thrown their wives into prison for irregularity of conduct, where the wife of his brother Louis had been strangled. But though Charles probably never seriously intended to take any active measures on behalf of Isabella, Edward was greatly alarmed, and not only sent, in the name of Spenser, rich presents to the French king and. his ministers, but also wrote to the Pope, earnestly imploring him to command Charles to restore to him his wife and son. This letter to the Pope was strongly backed, according to Froissart, "by much gold and silver to several cardinals and prelates nearest to the Pope." The interference of his holiness afforded a sufficient plea for Charles to withdraw all countenance from Isabella, and even to command her to quit the kingdom. To save appearances, therefore, Isabella quitted Paris, and betook herself to the court of the Count of Holland and Hainault. That this was a step by no means disagreeable to Charles le Bel, is obvious from the fact that the count was his own vassal, and suffered no remonstrance for this reception of the English queen. The partisanship of the count was of the most decided kind. The queen, the more indissolubly to engage him in her enterprise, affianced her son Edward, the heir to the English throne, to Philippa, his second daughter. The brother of the count, John of Hainault, became a perfect enthusiast in the cause of Isabella, who, still young—only eight-and-twenty years of age—and eminently beautiful, seemed to inspire him with all the chivalrous devotion of the most romantic ages. He declared his fall faith in Isabella's innocence of all impropriety, with the spectacle of her intimacy with Mortimer daily before his eyes; and he was deaf to all warnings of danger from the jealousies of the English, who, he was assured, were especially disgusted by the interference of foreigners. By this alliance, and the secret ​assistance of her brother, the King of Franco, Isabella soon saw herself surrounded by an army of nearly 3,000 men.
Edward, roused by the, imminent danger, endeavoured to prepare measures of defence. But the danger was far more extensive than appeared on the surface. Conspiracy did not merely menace from abroad, but penetrated every day deeper, and into the very recesses of his own family. His brother, the Earl of Kent, a well-meaning but weak prince, who still remained on the Continent, was persuaded by Isabella and the King of France that it behoved every member of the royal family to join in the attempt to rid the kingdom of the Spensers; and this, they assured him, was the object of the expedition. Won over to what appeared so desirable an attempt, ho also won over his elder brother, the Earl of Norfolk. The Earl of Leicester, the brother and heir of the Earl of Lancaster, had abundant motives of interest and vengeance for entering into the design. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many of the prelates approved of the queen's cause, and aided her with money; several of the most powerful barons were ready to embrace it on her appearance on the English coast; and the minds of the populace were embittered against the king by the industrious dissemination of calumnies and injurious truths.
Isabella set sail from the harbour of Dort with her little army, accompanied by the Earl of Kent; and on the 24th of September, 1326, landed at Orwell, in Suffolk. She was soon joined by the Earls of Norfolk and Leicester; thus receiving the high sanction of two princes of the blood; the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Hereford met her with the sanction of the church and numerous forces. The fleet had been won over and kept out of the way, and the land forces sent against her at once hailed the young prince with acclamations, and joined her banner. Isabella made proclamation that she came to free the nation from, the tyranny of the Sponsors and of Chancellor Baldoc, their creature. The barons, who thought themselves secure from forfeiture in coalition with the. prince, made a reconciliation with the barons of the Lancastrian faction, and the people poured in on all sides. Never was a miserable monarch so deserted by his people, and by his own blood. His wife, his son, his brothers, his nobles, his prelates, his people, all were against him. The queen and prince stayed three days in the abbey of the Black Monks at Bury St. Edmunds, where their partisans continually increased.
Meantime, the miserable king appealed to the citizens of London to maintain the royal cause, and issued a proclamation offering £1,000 to any one for the head of Mortimer—a pretty sum, equal to £10,000 at the present day. The appeal remained totally unheeded; and Edward fled from his capital, accompanied only by the two Sponsors, Baldoc the chancellor, and a few of their retainers. Scarcely were they out of the gates when the populace rose, seized the Bishop of Exeter, whom the king had appointed governor, beheaded him, and threw his body into the river. They met with and killed a friend of the favourites—one John le Marshal. They made themselves master of the Tower, and liberated all the state prisoners—a numerous body, most of them suffering from the attempts to put down young Spenser—and they entered into an association to put to death without mercy every one who dared to oppose the queen and prince. Such was the fury of the populace against the king and his favourite; and this spirit appeared in every part of the kingdom.
The poor, forsaken king fled to the "Welsh, amongst whom he was born; but they would none of him, and he was compelled to take to the sea with his favourite. The elder Spenser was left in Bristol as governor of the castle; but the garrison mutinied against him, and on the approach of the queen ho was delivered up to her. The poor old man, now nearly ninety, was brought before Sir William Trussol, one of the Lancastrian exiles, who, without allowing him to utter a word in his defence, condemned him to death. He was taken without the walls of the city, hanged on a gibbet, his bowels torn out, his body cut to pieces, and thrown to the dogs; and, as he had been made Earl of Winchester, his head was sent to that city, and stuck on a pole. Such was the fate of this old man, who had borne a high character through a long life, till strange fortune lifted him aloft, and developed in him the lurking demons of rapacity and lust of his neighbour's goods, ending thus direfully.
The unhappy king, meantime, with the son of this old man, endeavouring, it was supposed, to escape to Ireland, had been tossed about for many days on a stormy sea, which seemed to enter into the rebellion of his people, and to reject him, and cast him up, as it were, on the coast of South Wales. His flight had furnished the barons with a fortunate plea for deposing him. They first issued a proclamation at Bristol, calling on the king to return to his proper post; and, as he did not appear, on the 26th of September, forming themselves into a Parliament, they declared that the king had left the realm without a ruler, and appointed the Prince of Wales guardian of the kingdom. The king, on landing, knowing what he had to expect, hid himself for some weeks in the mountains near Neath Abbey, in Glamorganshire. His place of retreat was very soon known, and young Spenser and Baldoc were seized in the woods of Lantressan, and immediately afterwards Edward came forth and surrendered himself to the Earl of Leicester, the brother of Lancaster, whom he had beheaded at Pontefract. Without a single sign of sympathy or commiseration from high or low, the wholly-abandoned king was sent off a prisoner to Kenilworth. Short and bloody work was made with the favourite. Trussel, the same judge who had condemned his father, condemned him to be drawn, hanged, embowelled, beheaded, and quartered; and the sentence was carried into execution with revolting minuteness. He was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high, and his servant, Simon Reding, was hanged on the same gallows, only a few yards lower. The Earl of Arundel, allied to the Sponsors by marriage, and one of those active in the death of the Earl of Lancaster, was beheaded, with two other noblemen. Baldoc, as a priest, was exempt from the gallows; but, being sent to the Bishop of Hereford's palace in London, he was there seized by the enraged populace, as, probably, the senders foresaw, and, though rescued, died soon after in Newgate of his injuries. So terminated the fortunes of Edward's few adherents. His own fate, steeped in still deeper horrors, was fast hastening on.
A Parliament—one of those solemn mockeries which we often see in history—was summoned in the king's ​name to meet at Westminster on the 7th of January, 1327, to condemn the king himself. There Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, one of the most violent partisans of the queen and enemies of the king, assumed the office of speaker. The very appearance of such a speaker indicated plainly—had all other circumstances been-wanting—the determination of the barons to proceed to extremities with Edward. Orleton, for his attachment to the party of Lancaster, had been deprived of the temporalities of his see by the king, as supposed, at the instance of Hugh Spenser, and he had on every possible occasion since displayed the most vindictive animus against the king. He had spread everywhere with indefatigable activity the filth of the court scandal respecting Edward, and this might have passed for religious zeal in one of his profession and rank in the church, had he not winked as resolutely at the notorious vice of the queen.
But he was one of her most energetic partisans in England; hastened to meet her on landing; and in the Parliament, and everywhere amongst the barons, when it had been proposed to allow the king to be reconciled to his family, and rule by advice of his nobles, had effectually quashed such sentiments, and turned the tide of opinion for the king's deposition. He now put the formal question, whether the king should be restored, or his son at once raised to the throne. For appearance sake the members were left to deliberate in their own minds on the question till the next day; but there could only be one answer, and that was for the father's dethronement. The public, on hearing that decision, broke forth into loudest acclamations, which were vehemently reiterated when the young king, a boy of fourteen, was presented to them. By a singular informality. Parliament deposed Edward first, and judged him afterwards.
Berkeley Castle.
Five days after declaring the accession of Edward III. a charge was drawn up against him, in which some eminent historians have appeared to discern the malice of his enemies rather than impartial grounds of complaint. They say that, notwithstanding the violence of his opponents, no particular cause was laid to his charge, true, those which were loudly enough proclaimed by the public of a scandalous nature were omitted, probably out of respect to his son, who was present during the whole proceedings. But what they did charge him with were incapacity for government, waste of time on idle amusements, neglect of business, cowardice, being perpetually under the influence of evil counsellors, of having by imbecility lost Scotland and part of Guienne, with arbitrary and unconstitutional imprisonment, ruin, and death of different nobles.
Deposition of Edward II.- (See page 354.)
The extreme youth of the king enabled Queen Isabella, his mother, to have the chief power of the crown vested in her. But her unconcealed connection with the Lord Mortimer made her very soon lose the popularity which her pretence of driving away the Spensers had obtained her. Both barons and people looked with ill-suppressed jealousy and disgust at the dangerous position of Mortimer; and, however completely the late king had forfeited public favour, it was not long before the people began to feel that it was not the part of a wife to have invaded the kingdom, and deposed and pursued to death her husband and the father of her children. Isabella had indeed pretended to lament over the necessity, and to bewail the afflictions of her husband; but her actions belied her words and tears, for she still pressed on his abdication, and was all the time living in open adultery with her paramour Mortimer. Thus public feeling, the inspiration of nature, grew, and there wore not wanting monks who boldly denounced from the pulpit the scandalous life of the queen, and awoke a feeling of commiseration for her captive husband. Those who beheld the proud Mortimer actually occupying, in the name of the queen, the seat of royal power, burned with natural indignation at the degradation of the throne; those who beheld the unfortunate Edward, gentle and depressed in his fallen fortunes, became touched with compassion for him. The Earl of Leicester, now Earl of Lancaster, though he had a brother's blood in his remembrance, could not help being affected with generous and kindly sentiments towards his prisoner, and was even suspected of entertaining more honourable intentions towards him.
These things were whispered to Isabella, and the king was speedily removed into the care of Sir John Maltravers, a man of a savage disposition, and embittered against the king by injuries received from him and his favourites. Maltravers appeared to study the concealment of his captive, removing him from time to time from one castle to another in the space of a few months. At length Lord Berkeley was added to the commission of custody, and the unhappy captive was lodged in Berkeley Castle, near the river Severn. While Lord Berkeley was there he was treated with the courtesy due to his rank and to his misfortunes; but that nobleman being detained at his manor of Bradley by sickness, the opportunity was taken to leave him in the hands of two of the most hardened and desperate ruffians that the world ever produced, named Gournay and Ogle. These men appeared to take a savage delight in tormenting him. They practised upon him daily every indignity which they could devise. It is stated that one day, when Edward was to be shaved, they ordered cold and filthy water from the castle ditch for that purpose; and when he desired it to be changed, they refused it with mockery, though the unfortunate prince burst into tears, and declared that he would have clean and warm water.
These modes of killing were, however, too slow for those who wanted to be secure from any popular revulsion of feelling in favour of the deposed monarch; and one night, the 21st of September, 1327, frightful shrieks were hoard from the castle, and the next morning the gates were thrown open, and the people were freely admitted to see the body of the late king, who, it was said, had died suddenly in the night. Of the nature of that disease there was no doubt on the minds of any one, for the cries of the sufferer's agony had reached even to the town, waking up, says Holinshed, "numbers, who prayed heartily to God to receive his soul, for they understood by those cries what the matter meant." The murder of Edward of Caernarvon is one of the horrors of history. The fiends who had him in custody, it came out, had thrown him upon a bed and held him down violently with a table, while they had thrust a red-hot iron into his bowels through a tin pipe. By this means there appeared no outward cause of death; but his countenance was distorted and horrible to look upon. Most of the nobles and gentlemen of the neighbourhood went to see the body, which was then privately conveyed to Gloucester, and buried in the abbey, without any inquiry or investigation whatever.
Edward, at the time of his murder, was forty-three years old. He had reigned nineteen years and a half, and spent about nine months in his woful captivity after his deposition.
Maltravers, Gournay, and Ogle were held in universal detestation. Gournay was some years afterwards caught at Marseilles, and shipped for England; but was beheaded at sea, as was supposed, by order of some of the nobles and prelates in England, to prevent any damaging disclosures regarding their accomplices or abettors. Maltravers found means of doing service to Edward III., and eventually obtained a pardon.
This reign presents a melancholy example of the miseries which befell a nation in those days from a weak king. In those rude times, the throne was not fenced about and supported by the maxims and institutions which now-a-days enable very ordinary kings to fill their high post without any public inconvenience, and verify the observation of the celebrated Swedish chancellor, Oxenstjerna, "See, my son, with what very little sense a kingdom may be governed." In the time of Edward II. the convenient maxim was not introduced that a king can do no wrong. The monarch seemed to stand alone amid a race of powerful and ambitious barons, who wore always ready to encroach on the throne, and could only be restrained by a strong hand. The king had not, as now-a-days, his council, his ministers, and various officers, to share his responsibilities, and afford him their united talents and advice. He acted more fully from his own individual views, and therefore the consequences to the nation were the more directly good or evil as the king was wise or not. In this king's reign we find the arms of the nation disgraced, its hold on Scotland .and France weakened, and the existence of internal discord and much civil bloodshed. We do not find those great enactments of laws which distinguished the reign of his father, and the estates of the crown were greatly wasted on unworthy favourites. Yet, oven in this reign the people gained something, as they have always done, from the necessities of kings. The barons, by the ordinances which they ​wrung from the weak hands of this king, extended the privileges of Parliament, and circumscribed the power of the crown. They decreed that all grants made without consent of Parliament should henceforth be invalid; that the king could not make war or leave the kingdom without consent of the baronage in Parliament assembled, who should appoint a regent during the royal absence; that all the great officers of the crown, and all governors of foreign possessions, should at all times be chosen by the baronage, or with their advice and assent, in Parliament. These were all important conquests from the crown, and came by time to be the established privileges of Parliament at large, not exclusively of the peers.
The very usurpations and arbitrary deeds of the favourites produced permanent good out of temporary evil; for the barons compelled Edward to renew the Great Charter, and introduced a new and most valuable provision into it—namely: "Forasmuch as many people be aggrieved by the king's ministers against right, in respect to which grievances no one can recover without common consent of Parliament, we do ordain that the king shall hold a Parliament once a year, or twice, if need be." Thus, out of this king's fatal facility to favouritism came not only his own destruction, but also that grand security of public liberty, the annual assembling of Parliament.
Besides the troubles related, the kingdom during this reign was afflicted by a severe famine, which lasted for several years. The dearth was not produced by drought, but by continued rains and cold weather, which destroyed the harvests, and produced great mortality amongst the cattle, and, of course, raised the price of everything to an enormous pitch; which Parliament, not having at that day the benefit of Adam Smith and political economy, endeavoured to keep down by enacting, in 1315, a tariff of rates for all articles of life, which they very soon discovered was useless, and therefore repealed it.
In this reign also took place one of those great political changes which spring of necessity from the progress of society; this was the abolition of the celebrated order of the Knights Templars. This famous order was one of three religious military orders which arose out of the crusades. The other two were the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, commonly called Knights Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights of St. Mary of Jerusalem, or German Knights of the Cross, all of which arose in the twelfth century. The foundation of the order of Knights Templars, or Brethren of the Temple of Solomon, or Soldiers of the Temple, or Soldiers of Christ, is said to have taken place in 1118 or 1119. Nine knights, all French, took a vow to maintain free passage for pilgrims to the Holy Land. To this vow they added those of poverty, chastity, obedience, and battle against the infidels. For six or seven years they did not add to their numbers, but in 1128 Pope Honoring II. confirmed a rule of the Council of Troyes on their behalf, thus fully recognising them as an orthodox body, the Pauperes Commilitones, or Pauper Soldiers of the Holy City. Honorius appointed them to wear a white mantle, and in 1146 Eugonius III. added a red cross on the left breast, in imitation of the white cross of the Hospitallers, whose business it was to attend the sick and wounded, and entertain pilgrims. This red cross, borne also on their banners, became famous all over the world, from the valour of these knights, who hence acquired the common cognomen of Red Cross Knights.
The order speedily grew into fame and popularity. Young men of the noblest families of every nation in Christendom eagerly sought admittance into it. They became extremely numerous, in time admitting priests, and persons of lower order, or esquires. Their chief seat after the expulsion from Jerusalem by Saladin was in Cyprus, but they had also provinces in Tripolis, Antioch, Portugal, Spain, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Sicily. Their history is the history of all the wars of the Christians against the infidels in the East, and for 170 years they formed the most renowned portion of the Christian ti-oops. But with fame came also immense wealth, with its usual sequence, corruption. Their vows had become a mockery. Instead of poverty and chastity, they became notorious for the splendour of their abodes, and the pomp, luxury, and licentiousness of their lives.
In the time of Edward II. they had incurred the resentment of his brother-in-law, Philip le Bel, of France. They were suspected of exciting the Parisians to a resistance to the debasement of the coin, which Philip was noted for; but there needed no other temptation to their destruction with this needy prince than their immense wealth. In 1306 the grand master of the Temple, Jacques do Molay, was summoned to Europe by Pope Clement V., who had secretly agreed with Philip to suppress the order. De Molay was summoned on pretence of consulting with the Pope on uniting the two orders of the Templars and Hospitallers. Witnesses were soon found to charge the whole order of the Templars with the systematic practice of the most revolting crimes, and on the 12th of September, 1307, secret orders were sent to all the governors of towns in France, by which in one night the whole of the Templars in France, including De Molay, the grand master, were seized and thrown into prison. Their houses and property were everywhere seized, and their great stronghold, the Temple, in Paris, was taken possession of by Philip himself. For the space of six years there now followed the most extraordinary and terrible scenes. The members of the order were put to the most savage tortures to compel them to confess to the most incredible crimes, and on recanting their forced confessions, they were burnt at the stake. In Paris, Rheims, Sens, Vienne, and various other places these dreadful cruelties and butcheries were perpetrated, till on the 22nd of March, 1312, the Pope abolished the order for ever. On the 18th of March, 1314, De Molay, the grand master, and Guy, commander, or grand prior ft Normandy, were burnt on one of the small islands of the Seine.
In England and Ireland they were all in like manner arrested by sealed orders on a particular day, and their property of all kinds, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, was confiscated. In this country, however, they were treated with great lenity: the witnesses brought against them refused to declare that they knew anything to their discredit, or, indeed, anything of their secret principles or practices. The Pope, incensed at this lenity, wrote strongly to Edward, exhorting him to try torture. A threat of treating them as heretics induced all but the grand master, William de la More, to confess their heresy; ​and they were sent to pass the remainder of their lives as prisoners in different monasteries, the revenues of their immense estates being conferred by king and Parliament on the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Their chief seat was the Temple, in Fleet Street, which they erected in 1185; but as early as the reign of Stephen they were established in the old Temple on the south side of Holborn, near the present Southampton Buildings.
So fell this mighty order. Matthew of Paris asserts their manors or estates throughout Christendom to have amounted to £9,000, and their income to be not less than £6,000,000 sterling. With the exception of Spain and Portugal, their property, as in England, was given to the Knights of St. John. Much has been written on the secret principles of this famous order, which is affirmed still to exist in Paris, possessing the original registers, and an unbroken succession of grand masters from De Molay to the present time. A society of this name certainly exists in Paris; and in England, and also in Germany, the Freemasons are said to be the representatives of the ancient Templars.
King Edward II. left four children, two sons and two daughters. Edward succeeded him; John, Earl of Cornwall, died early at Perth; Jane was married to David Bruce, King of Scotland; and Eleanor to Reginald, Count of Gueldres.