Richard II Part 2

The governor, instead of accepting these offers on the part of Lewin, immediately went out to one of the turrets on the wall, and, calling to the English soldiers whom he saw below, he directed them to tell the King of England that one of his servants had turned traitor, and had come into the castle with a box of dispatches.

"And tell him," said the governor, "that if he will send some persons here to receive him, I will let the man down to them over the wall, and also restore the box of dispatches, which I have not opened at all."

Immediately Lord Spencer, one of the king's chief officers, came to the wall, and the governor of the castle let Lewin down to him by a rope, and also pa.s.sed the box of letters down. The King of England was so much pleased with this generosity on the part of the governor that he immediately ceased his operations against the castle, though he caused Lewin to be hanged on a gallows of the highest kind.

But to return to Wales. After the death of Leolin and his brother the kingdom of Wales was annexed to England, and has ever since remained a possession of the British crown. The King of England partly induced the people of Wales to consent to this annexation by promising that he would still give them a native of Wales for prince. They thought he meant by this that they should continue to be governed by one of their own royal family; but what he really meant was that he would make his own son Prince of Wales. This son of his was then an infant. He was born in Wales. This happened from the fact that the king, in the course of his conquests in that country, had seized upon a place called Caernarvon, and had built a castle there, in a beautiful situation on the Straits of Menai, which separate the main land from the isle of Anglesea.

When his castle was finished the king brought the queen to Caernarvon to see it, and while she was there, her child, Prince Edward, who afterward became Edward the Second, was born.

This was the origin of the t.i.tle of Prince of Wales, which has been held ever since by the oldest sons of the English sovereigns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAERNARVON CASTLE.]

This first English Prince of Wales led a most unhappy life, and his history ill.u.s.trates in a most striking manner one of the cla.s.ses of quarrels enumerated at the head of this chapter, namely, the disputes and contentions that often prevailed between the sovereign of the country and his princ.i.p.al n.o.bles. While he was a young man he formed a very intimate friendship with another young man named Piers Gaveston.

This Gaveston was a remarkably handsome youth, and very prepossessing and agreeable in his manners, and he soon gained a complete ascendency over the mind of young Edward. He was, however, very wild and dissolute in his habits, and the influence which he exerted upon Edward was extremely bad. As long as the common people only were injured by the lawless behavior of these young men, the king seems to have borne with them; but at last, in a riot in which they were concerned, they broke into the park of a bishop, and committed damage there which the king could not overlook. He caused his son, the young prince, to be seized and put into prison, and he banished Gaveston from the country, and forbade his son to have any thing more to do with him. This was in 1305, when the prince was twenty-one years of age.

In 1307, two years later, the king died, and the prince succeeded him, under the t.i.tle of King Edward the Second. He immediately sent for Gaveston to return to England, where he received him with the greatest joy. He made him a duke, under the t.i.tle of Duke of Cornwall; and as for the bishop whose park he and Gaveston had broken into, and on whose complaint Gaveston had been banished, in order to punish him for these offenses, the young king seized him and delivered him into Gaveston's hands as a prisoner, and at the same time confiscated his estates and gave them to Gaveston. Gaveston sent the bishop about from castle to castle as a prisoner, according as his caprice or fancy dictated.

These things made the barons and n.o.bles of England extremely indignant, for Gaveston, besides being a corrupt and dissipated character, was, in fact, a foreigner by birth, being a native of Gascony, in France. His character seemed to grow worse with his exaltation, and he and Edward spent all their time in rioting and excess, and in perpetrating every species of iniquity.

Edward had been for some time engaged to be married to the Princess Isabel, the daughter of the King of France. About six months after his accession to the throne he set off for France to be married. It was his duty, according to the ancient usages of the realm, to appoint some member of the royal family, or some prominent person from the ancient n.o.bility of the country, to govern the kingdom as regent during his absence; but instead of this he put Gaveston in this place, and clothed him with all the powers of a viceroy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF EDWARD THE SECOND.]

Edward was married to Isabel in Paris with great pomp and parade. Isabel was very beautiful, and was a general favorite. It is said that there were four kings and three queens present at the marriage ceremony.

Edward, however, seemed to feel very little interest either in his bride or in the occasion of his marriage, but manifested a great impatience to get through with the ceremonies, so as to return to England and to Gaveston. As soon as it was possible, he set out on his return. The bridal party were met at their landing by Gaveston, accompanied by all the princ.i.p.al n.o.bility, who came to receive and welcome them at the frontier. The king was overjoyed to see Gaveston again. He fell into his arms, hugged and kissed him, and called him his dear brother, while, on the other hand, he took very little notice of the n.o.bles and high officers of state. Every body was surprised and displeased at this behavior, but as Edward was king there was nothing to be said or done.

Soon afterward the coronation took place, and on this occasion all the honors were allotted to Gaveston, to the utter neglect of the ancient and hereditary dignitaries of the realm. Gaveston carried the crown, and walked before the king and queen, and acted in all respects as if he were the princ.i.p.al personage in the country. The old n.o.bles were, of course, extremely indignant at this. Hitherto they had expressed their displeasure at the king's favoritism by private murmurings and complaints, but now, they thought, it was time to take some concerted public action to remedy the evil; so they met together, and framed a pet.i.tion to be sent to the king, in which, though under the form of a request, they, in fact, demanded that Gaveston should be dismissed from his offices, and required to leave the country.

The king was alarmed. He, however, could not think of giving his favorite up. So he said that he would return them an answer to the pet.i.tion by-and-by, and he immediately began to pursue a more conciliatory course toward the n.o.bles. But the effect of his attempts at conciliation was spoiled by Gaveston's behavior. He became more and more proud and ostentatious every day. He appeared in all public places, and every where he took precedence of the highest n.o.bles of the land, and prided himself on outshining them in the pomp and parade which he displayed. He attended all the jousts and tournaments, and, as he was really a very handsome and well-formed man, and well skilled in the warlike sports in fashion in those days, he bore away most of the great prizes. He thus successfully rivaled the other n.o.bles in gaining the admiration of the ladies of the court and the applause of the mult.i.tude, and made the n.o.bles hate him more than ever.

Things went on in this way worse and worse, until at last the general sentiment became so strong against Gaveston that the Parliament, when it met, took a decided stand in opposition to him, and insisted that he should be expelled from the country. A struggle followed, but the king was obliged to yield. Gaveston was required to leave the country, and to take an oath never to return. It was only on these conditions that the Parliament would uphold the government, and thus the king saw that he must lose either his friend or his crown.

Gaveston went away. The king accompanied him to the sea-sh.o.r.e, and took leave of him there in the most affectionate manner, promising to bring him back again as soon as he could possibly do it. He immediately began to manoeuvre for the accomplishment of this purpose. In the mean time, as Gaveston had only sworn to leave _England_, the king sent him to Ireland, and made him governor general of that country, and there Gaveston lived in greater power and splendor than ever.

At length, in little more than a year, Gaveston came back. His oath not to return was disposed of by means of a dispensation which King Edward obtained for him from the Pope, absolving him from the obligation of it. When he was reinstated in the king's court he behaved more scandalously than ever. He revenged himself upon the n.o.bles who had been the means of sending him away by ridiculing them and giving them nicknames. One of them he called Joseph the Jew, because his face was pale and thin, and bore, in some respects, a Jewish expression. Another, the Earl of Warwick, he called the Black Dog of Ardenne. When the earl heard of this, he said, clenching his fist, "Very well; I'll make him feel the Black Dog's teeth yet."

In a word, the n.o.bles were excited to the greatest pitch of rage and indignation against the favorite, and, after various struggles and contentions between them and the king, they at length broke out into an open revolt. The king at this time, with Gaveston and his wife, were at Newcastle, which is in the north of England. The barons fell upon him here with the intention of seizing Gaveston. Both the king and Gaveston, however, succeeded in making their escape. Gaveston fled to a castle, and shut himself up there. The king escaped by sea, leaving his wife behind, at the mercy of the conspirators. The barons treated the queen with respect, but they pressed on at once in pursuit of Gaveston. They laid siege to the castle where he sought refuge.

Finding that the castle could not hold out long, Gaveston thought it best to surrender while it yet remained in his power to make terms with his enemies; so he agreed to give himself up, they stipulating that they would do him no bodily harm, but only confine him, and that the place of his confinement should be one of his own castles.

When he came down into the court-yard of the castle, after signing this stipulation, he found there ready to receive him the Earl of Warwick, the man to whom he had given the nickname of the Black Dog of Ardenne. The earl was at the head of a large force. He immediately took Gaveston into custody, and galloped off with him at the head of his troop to his own castle. The engraving represents a view of this fortress as it appeared in those days.

When they had got Gaveston safe into this castle, the chiefs held a sort of council of war to determine what should be done with their prisoner. While they were consulting on the subject, intending apparently to spare his life as they had agreed, some one called out,

"It has cost you a great deal of trouble to catch the fox, and now, if you let him go, you will have a great deal more trouble in hunting him again."

This consideration decided them; so they took the terrified prisoner, and, in spite of his piteous cries for mercy, they hurried him away to a solitary place a mile or two from the castle, and there, on a little knoll by the side of the road, they cut off his head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WARWICK CASTLE.]

One would have supposed that by this time the king would have been cured of the folly of devoting himself to favorites, but he was not. He mourned over the death of Gaveston at first with bitter grief, and when this first paroxysm of his sorrow was pa.s.sed, it was succeeded with a still more bitter spirit of revenge. He immediately took the field against his rebellious barons, and a furious civil war ensued. He soon, too, found a new favorite, or, rather, two favorites. They were brothers, and their names were Spencer. They are called in history the Spencers, or the Despensers. The quarrels and wars which took place between the king and these favorites on one hand, and the barons and n.o.bles on the other, were continued for many years. The queen took sides with the n.o.bles against her husband and the Spencers. She fled to France, and there formed an intimacy with a young n.o.bleman named Mortimer, who joined himself to her, and thenceforth accompanied her and made common cause with her against her husband. With this Mortimer she raised an army, and, sailing from Flanders, she landed in England. On landing, she summoned the barons to join her, and took the field against her husband. The king was beaten in this war, and fled again on board a vessel, intending to make his escape by sea. The two Spencers, one after the other, were taken prisoners, and both were hung on gibbets fifty feet high. They were hung in their armor, and after they were dead their bodies were taken down and treated as it was customary to treat the bodies of traitors.[A]

[Footnote A: In cases of treason the condemned man was first disemboweled; then his head was taken off; then the body was cut into quarters. The head and the four quarters of the body were then sent to various parts of the kingdom, and set up in conspicuous places in large cities and towns.]

In the midst of these proceedings the barons held a sort of Parliament, and made a solemn declaration that the king, by his flight, had abdicated the throne, and they proclaimed his son, the young Prince of Wales, then about fourteen years old, king, under the t.i.tle of Edward the Third. In the mean time, the king himself, who had attempted to make his escape by sea, was tossed about in a storm for some days, until at last he was driven on the coast in South Wales. He concealed himself for some days in the mountains. Here he was hunted about for a time, until he was reduced to despair by his dest.i.tution and his sufferings, when at length he came forth and delivered himself up to his enemies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KENILWORTH CASTLE.]

He was made prisoner and immediately sent to Kenilworth Castle, and there secured. Afterward he was brought to trial. He was accused of shameful indolence and incapacity, and also of cowardice, cruelty, and oppression, and of having brought the country, by his vices and maladministration, to the verge of ruin. He was convicted on these charges, and the queen, his wife, confirmed the verdict.

Not being quite sure, after all, that by these means the dethronement of the king was legally complete, the Parliament sent a solemn deputation to Kenilworth Castle to depose the monarch in form. The king was brought out to meet this deputation in a great hall of the castle. He came just as he was, dressed in a simple black gown. The deputation told him that he was no longer king, that all allegiance had been withdrawn from him on the part of the people, and that henceforth he must consider himself as a private man. As they said this, the steward of the household came forward and broke his white wand, the badge of his office, in token that the household was dissolved, and he declared that by that act all the king's servants were discharged and freed. This was a ceremony that was usually performed at the death of a king, and it was considered in this case as completely and finally terminating the reign of Edward.

The delegation also exacted from him something which they considered as a resignation of the crown. His son, the young prince, it was said, was unwilling to ascend the throne unless the barons could induce his father voluntarily to abdicate his own rights to it. They were the more desirous in this case of completely and forever extinguishing all of King Edward's claims, because they were afraid that there might be a secret party in his favor, and that that party might gain strength, and finally come out openly against them in civil war, in which case, if they were worsted, they knew that they would all be hung as traitors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MONK OF THOSE DAYS.]

Indeed, soon after this time it began to appear that there were, in fact, some persons who were disposed to sympathize with the king. His queen, Isabel, who had been acting against him during the war, was now joined with Mortimer, her favorite, and they two held pretty much the whole control of the government, for the new king was yet too young to reign. Many of the monks and other ecclesiastics of the time openly declared that Isabel was guilty of great sin in thus abandoning her husband for the sake of another man. They said that she ought to leave Mortimer, and go and join her husband in his prison. And it was not long before it began to be rumored that secret plots were forming to attempt the king's deliverance from his enemies. This alarmed the n.o.bles more than ever. The queen and some others wrote sharp letters to the keepers of the castle for dealing so gently with their prisoner, and gave them hints that they ought to kill him. In the end, the fallen monarch was transported from one fortress to another, until at length he came to Berkeley Castle. The inducement which led Mortimer and the queen to send the king to these different places was the hope that some one or other of the keepers of the castles would divine their wishes in regard to him, and put him to death. But no one did so. The keeper of Berkeley Castle, indeed, instead of putting his prisoner to death, seemed inclined to take compa.s.sion on him, and to treat him more kindly even than the others had done. Accordingly, after waiting some time, Mortimer seized an opportunity when Lord Berkeley, having gone away from home, was detained away some days by sickness, to send two fierce and abandoned men, named Gourney and Ogle, to the castle, with instructions to kill the king in some way or other, but, if possible, in such a manner as to make it appear that he died a natural death. These men tried various plans without success. They administered poisons, and resorted to various other diabolical contrivances. At last, one night, dreadful outcries and groans were heard coming from the king's apartment. They were accompanied from time to time with shrieks of terrible agony. These sounds were continued for some time, and they were heard in all parts of the castle, and in many of the houses of the town.

The truth was, the executioners whom Mortimer had sent were murdering the king in a manner almost too horrible to be described.[B] The people in the castle and in the town knew very well what these dreadful outcries meant. They were filled with consternation and horror at the deed, and they spent the time in praying to G.o.d that he would receive the soul of the unhappy victim.

[Footnote B: They came to him while he was asleep, and pressed him down with heavy feather beds, which they cast upon him to stifle his cries, and then thrust a red-hot spit up into his bowels through a horn, as some said, or a part of the tube of a trumpet, according to others, so as to kill him by the internal burning without making any outward mark of the fire on his person. Notwithstanding their efforts to stifle his cries, he struggled so desperately in his agony as partly to break loose from them, and thus made his shrieks and outcries heard.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BERKELEY CASTLE.]

After this, Mortimer and the queen for two or three years held pretty nearly supreme power in the realm, though, of course, they governed in the name of the young king, who was yet only fourteen or fifteen years of age. There was, however, a great secret hatred of Mortimer among all the old n.o.bility of the realm. This ill-will ripened at last into open hostility. A conspiracy was formed to destroy Mortimer, and to depose the queen-mother from her power, and to place young Edward in possession of the kingdom. Mortimer discovered what was going on, and he went for safety, with Edward and the queen, to the castle of Nottingham, where he shut himself up, and placed a strong guard at the gates and on the walls.

This castle of Nottingham was situated upon a hill, on the side of which was a range of excavations which had been made in a chalky stone by some sort of quarrying. There was a subterranean pa.s.sage from the interior of one of these caves which led to the castle. The castle itself was strongly guarded, and every night Isabel required the warden, on locking the gates, to bring the keys to her, and she kept them by her bedside. The governor of the castle, however, made an agreement with Lord Montacute, who was the leader in the conspiracy against Mortimer, to admit him to the castle at night through the subterranean pa.s.sage. It seems that Mortimer and the queen did not know of the existence of this communication. They did not even know about the caves, for the mouths of them were at that time concealed by rubbish and brambles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAVES IN THE HILL-SIDE AT NOTTINGHAM CASTLE.]

It was near midnight when Montacute and the party who went with him entered the pa.s.sage. They crowded their way through the bushes and brambles till they found the entrance of the cave, and then went in.

They were all completely armed, and they carried torches to light their way. They crept along the gloomy pa.s.sage-way until at last they reached the door which led up into the interior of the castle. Here the governor was ready to let them in. As soon as they entered, they were joined by young Edward at the foot of the main tower. They left their torches here, and Edward led them up a secret staircase to a dark chamber. They crept softly into this room and listened. They could hear in an adjoining hall the voices of Mortimer and several of his adherents, who were holding a consultation. They waited a few minutes, and then, making a rush into the pa.s.sage-way which led to the hall, they killed two knights who were on sentry there to guard the door, and, immediately bursting into the apartment, made Mortimer and all his friends prisoners.

The queen, who was in her bed in an adjoining room at this time, rushed frantically out when she heard the noise of the affray, and, with piteous entreaties and many tears, she begged and prayed Edward, her "sweet son," as she called him, to spare the gentle Mortimer, "her dearest friend, her well-beloved cousin." The conspirators did spare him at that time; they took him prisoner, and bore him away to a place of safety. He was soon afterward brought to trial on a charge of treason, and hanged. Isabel was deprived of all her property, and shut up in a castle as a prisoner of state. In this castle she afterward lived nearly thirty years, in lonely misery, and then died.

The adjoining engraving represents a near view of the subterranean pa.s.sage by which Lord Montacute and his party gained admission to the castle of Nottingham. It is known in modern times as MORTIMER'S HOLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MORTIMER'S HOLE.]

CHAPTER III.

THE BLACK PRINCE.

A.D. 1336-1346