Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II Part 48

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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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 appet.i.te 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sumption, 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sing away at Cardross, in Scotland. Robert the Bruce lay on his death-bed, and, calling for his n.o.bles, 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 n.o.bles 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 pa.s.s 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. Mult.i.tudes 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 st.u.r.dy 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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, "Pa.s.s 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.

THE END