Then Sir William Trussel, as speaker of the and some plots which were at last formed, not whole parliament, addressed him in the name of so much in favour of Edward as against Mortithe parliament, and on behalf of the whole people mer, seem to have hurried on a fearful tragedy. of England, and told him that he was no longer The Earl of Lancaster, though he had the death a king; that all fealty and allegiance were with- of a brother to avenge, was less cruel than his drawn from him, and that he must henceforth colleagues; the spectacle of his cousin's miseries be considered as a private man. As Trussel touched his heart, and he treated the king with ceased speaking, Sir Thomas Blount, the steward mildness and generosity. The deposed king was of the household, stepped forward and broke his therefore taken out of Lancaster's hands and white wand or staff of office, and declared that given to the keeping of Sir John Maltravers, a all persons engaged in Edward's service were dis- man of a fiercer disposition, who had suffered charged and freed by that act. This ceremony, cruel wrongs from Edward and his favourites. which was one usually performed at a king's Maltravers removed the captive from Kenilworth death, was held as an entire completion of the Castle, and his object seems to have been to conprocess of dethronement. The deputation re- ceal the place of his residence, for he made him turned to London, leaving the captive king in travel by night, and carried him to three or four Kenilworth Castle; and three or four days after, different castles in the space of a few months. being Saturday, the 24th of January, Edward At last he was lodged in Berkeley Castle, near the III's peace was proclaimed, the proclamation river Severn; and the Lord Berkeley, the owner bearing, that Edward II. was, by the common of the castle, was joined with Maltravers in the assent of the peers and commons, "ousted" from the throne; that he had agreed that his eldest son and heir should be crowned king, &c. The young Edward, who was only in his fourteenth year, was crowned on the 29th of January at Westminster.' BERKELEY CASTLE.2-From a drawing by Burden. As the new king was too young to take the government upon himself, nearly the entire authority of the crown was vested in the queenmother, who herself was wholly ruled by the Lord Mortimer, a man whose questionable position made him unpopular from the first, and whose power and ambition could not fail of exciting jealousy, and rendering him odious to many. The indiscreet zeal of certain preachers, 1 More: Walsing.; Knyghton; Rymer; Sir H. Nicholas, Chron. of Hist. 2 Berkeley Castle is situated on the south-east side of the town so named. The date of this stronghold is not ascertained, but its antiquity is evident by a grant of the building, by Henry II., to Robert Fitz-Hardinge, with power to strengthen and enlarge it. The castle was first inhabited by Maurice, the son of Robert, and he assumed the name of the place. This edifice is in complete repair, and is a most perfect example of castellated building. It is an irregular pile, consisting of a keep and various embattled appurtenances, which surround a court of about 140 yards in circumference, the chief feature being the baronial hall-a noble apartment in fine preservation-adjoin ing to which is the chapel. Access to an outer court is obtained by a machicolated gatehouse. The keep is nearly circular, having one square tower and three semicircular towers; that on VOL. L commission of guarding him. The Lord Berkeley 57 Gourney and William Ogle. One dark night, by a host of witnesses, whose depositions were towards the end of September, horrible screams and shrieks of anguish rang and echoed through the walls of Berkeley Castle, and were heard even in the town. On the following morning the gates of the castle were thrown open, and people were freely admitted to behold the body of Edward of Caernarvon, who was said to have expired during the night of a sudden disorder. Most of the knights living in the neighbourhood, and many of the citizens of Bristol and Gloucester went to see the body, which bore no outward marks of violence, though the countenance was distorted and horrible to look upon. The corpse was then carried to Gloucester, and privately buried in the abbey church. It was soon rumoured that he had been most cruelly murdered by Gourney and Ogle, who had thrust a red-hot iron into his bowels through a tin pipe; and there were many who had heard with their own ears his "wailful noise" at the dead of night; but still the nation continued in its unrelenting indifference to all that concerned this most wretched king. Edward was fortythree years old; counting from the date of his recognition to that of his deposition, he had reigned nineteen years and six months, wanting some days. 3 It was during this unhappy reign that the great order of the Knights Templars was abolished. These knights, from a very humble beginning in 1118, when nine poor crusaders took upon themselves the obligation of protecting the faithful at Jerusalem, had attained immense wealth and power. Their association included men of the noblest birth, natives of every Christian country. Their valour in battle-their wisdom in council-had long been the admiration of the world; but, after the loss of the Holy Land, they forfeited much of this consideration, for they did not, like the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John, secure an establishment in the East 3—a real or fanciful bulwark to Christendom against the Mahometans. It was in France that the first blow was struck at their existence. Philip le Bel was involved in great pecuniary difficulties by his wars with the English and his other neighbours; and when he and Enguerrand de Marigni, a minister as unscrupulous as himself, had exhausted all other sources of revenue, they cast their eyes on the houses, and lands, and tempting wealth of the Red-cross Knights. Forthwith they proceeded to form a conspiracy-for such it really was—and in a short time the knights were accused of monstrous and contradictory crimes, 1 Holinshed. 2 More: Knyghton; Rymer; Holinshed. 3 The Knights of St. John, it will be remembered, got posses either bought or forced from them by threats or imprisonment, or the actual application of the rack. On the 13th of October, 1307, Philip took possession of the palace of the Temple in his capital, and threw the grand-master and all the knights that were with him into prison. At the same time at the very same hour-so nicely was the plot regulated, the Templars were seized in all parts of France. An atrocious inquisition forged letters of the grand-master to criminate the order, and applied the most horrible tortures to the knights: in Paris alone thirty-six knights died on the rack, maintaining their innocence to the last. Two years of a dreadful captivity, with infernal interludes of torture, and the conviction forced on their minds that Philip le Bel was resolved to annihilate their order and seize their property, and that there was no hope of succour from the pope or from any other power upon earth, broke the brave spirit of the Red-cross Knights. Even Jacques de Molai, the grand-master, an heroic old man, was made to confess to crimes of which he never could have been guilty. He afterwards, however, retracted his confession, and, in the end, perished heroically at the stake. The grand execution took place on the 12th of May, 1310, when fifty-four of the knights, who had confessed on the rack, and then retracted all they had said in their dungeons, were burned alive as "relapsed heretics" in a field behind the abbey of St. Antoine at Paris. Penal fires were lighted in other parts of France, and all the surviving knights who did not retract their plea of not guilty were condemned to perpetual imprisonment. After a show of dissatisfaction at Philip le Bel's precipitancy, the pope had joined in the death-cry; and in the course of the years 1308 and 1309, he addressed bulls to all the sovereigns of Christendom, commanding them to inquire into the conduct of the knights. He afterwards threatened to excommunicate every person that should harbour or give counsel and show favour to any Templar. Without waiting for these Papal bulls, Philip, as soon as he had matured his plans, had endeavoured to stimulate his son-in-law, Edward of England, to similar measures; but the English court and council, while they engaged to investigate the charges, expressed the greatest astonishment at them; and two months later Edward wrote to the Kings of Portugal, Castile, and Arragon, imploring them not to credit the accusations which had most maliciously been heaped upon the Red-cross Knights. He als addressed the pope in their favour. Our weak king, however, was never firm to any purpose sion of the island of Rhodes, and when they lost Rhodes, in the except where his favourite was concerned, and fifteenth century, of Malta and Gozo. the ruin of the order was resolved upon; but, thank God! their suppression in England was unaccompanied by atrocious cruelties. In 1308, in the second year of Edward's reign, one of the royal clerks was sent round with writs to all the sheriffs of counties, ordering each and all of them to summon a certain number of freeholders in the several counties-"good and lawful men"-to meet on an appointed day, to treat of matters touching the king's peace. The sheriffs and freeholders met on the day fixed, and then they were all made to swear that they would execute certain sealed orders which were delivered to the sheriffs by king's messengers. These orders, when opened, were to be executed suddenly. The same conspiracy-like measures were adopted in Ireland, and in both countries on the same day-nearly at the same hour-all their lands, tenements, goods, and all kinds of property, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, were attached, and the knights themselves arrested. In the month of October, 1309, courts were constituted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at London, York, and Lincoln. Forty-seven of the knights, the noblest of the order in England, who were brought from the Tower before the Bishop of London and the envoys of the pope, boldly pleaded their innocence; the evidence produced against them amounted to less than nothing; but the courts were appointed to convict, not to absolve, and, in spite of all law, they sent them back to their prisons to wait for timid minds and fresh evidence. The pope then censured the king for not making use of torture. "Thus," he wrote, "The general current of writers in the eighteenth century was in favour of the innocence of the Templars; in England it would have been almost paradoxical to doubt it. The rapacious and unprincipled character of Philip, the submission of Clement V. to his will, the apparent incredibility of the charges from their monstrousness, the just prejudices against confessions obtained by torture and retracted afterwards-the other prejudice, not always so just, but in the case of those not convicted on fair evidence deserving a better name, in favour of assertions of innocence made on the scaffold and at the stake-created, as they still preserve, a strong willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so suspiciously before us. It was also often alleged that contemporary writers had not given credit to these accusations, and that in countries where the inquiry had been less iniquitously conducted, no proof of them was brought to light. Of these two grounds for acquittal, the former is of little value in a question of legal evidence, and the latter is not quite so fully established as we could desire."-Hallam's Supplemental Notes, page 48. The learned author, after referring to M. Michelet's being overcome by the force and number of adverse testimonies, notwithstanding his desire to acquit the Templars, and by every ingenious device to elude or explain away the evidence, proceeds to say that "the great change that has been made in this process, as carried before the tribunal of public opinion "the knights have refused to declare the truth. O! my dear son, consider whether this be consistent with your honour and the safety of your kingdom." The Archbishop of York inquired of his clergy whether torture, which had hitherto been unheard of in England, might be employed on the Templars: he added that there was no machine for torture in the land, and asked whether he should send abroad for one, in order that the prelates might not be chargeable with negligence. From the putting of such questions we may suppose that this archbishop was one who would not hesitate at cruelty, but it appears pretty evident that torture was not used on this occasion in England. The Templars were worn down by poverty and long imprisonment, and then the threat of punishing as heretics all those who did not plead guilty to the charges, produced its effect. The timid yielded first: son e of the corrupt were bought over by the court, and finally (more than three years after their arrest), the English Templars, with the exception of William de la More, their grand-prior, and two or three others who shared his heroic firmness, made a vague confession; upon which they were sent into confinement in various monasteries, the king allowing them a pittance for their support out of their immense revenues. In the seventeenth year of Edward's reign it was ordained by the king and parliament that the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem should have all the lands of the late Templars, and hold them on the same tenure as their predecessors. from age to age, is owing to the production of fresh evidence." This evidence is of a most unlooked-for and extraordinary kind, and is alleged to exist in sculptures of certain extremely obscene images and symbols found in the churches built by the Templars, and presenting, it is said, an absolute identity with the Gnostic superstitions in their worst form; as well as in the identification of certain Gnostic idols, or, as some suppose, amulets, though it comes much to the same, with the description of what are called Baphometic, in the proceedings against the Templars, published by Diepuy, and since in the Documens Inedits, edited by Michelet. Attention was first drawn to the sculptures by M. von Hammer, in the sixth volume of a work published by him at Vienna in 1818, and the design of which is to establish the identity of the idolatry ascribed to the Templars with that of the ancient Gnostic sects, and especially with those denominated Ophites, or worshippers of the serpent; and to prove also that the extreme impurity, which forms one of the revolting and hardly credible charges adduced by Philip IV., is similar in all its details to the practice of the Gnostics. French writers have attempted to refute M. von Hammer, Mr. Hallam thinks not quite successfully, but he professes himself incapable of forming a decisive opinion. The architectural evidence, it appears, is the most positive, and whether bearing against the Templars or their ma.ons, looks as if the evil one had sought to set his private mark on buildings professedly Christian, but to be desecrated by so much superstition and idolatry. 4 Raynouard, Hist. de la Condamnation des Templiers; Wilkins, Concilia; Rymer; Stow; Hemingford. CHAPTER V.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.-A.D. 1327-1341. EDWARD III.-ACCESSION, A.D. 1327-DEATH, A.D. 1377. Earl of Lancaster appointed guardian and protector to Edward III.-Edward makes war upon the Scots-Inva sion of England by the Scots under Douglas and Randolph-Their singular campaign-A treaty honourable to Scotland concluded-Edward's marriage to Philippa of Hainault-The Earl of Kent executed-Edward conspires against Mortimer-Mortimer apprehended, tried, and executed-War renewed with ScotlandDefeat of the Scots at Dupplin-Edward Baliol wins and loses the crown of Scotland-Scots defeated a Halidon Hill-Edward's ambition diverted from Scotland to France-His claims to the French crown-Hi preparations to maintain them-He invades France-His naval victory at Sluis-Indecisive results of th campaign-John de Montfort claims the dukedom of Brittany-He does homage to Edward III. as King of France for the dukedom-Brave defence of Hennebon by his countess-An English arınament raises the sieg -Wars between the French and English in Brittany--Edward III. repairs thither in person-A truce. HEN Edward was proclaimed king, parliament decreed that a regency should be appointed "to have the rule and government;" and to this end twelve of the greatest lords of the realm, lay them resist the temptation of what they consi dered a favourable opportunity-the true Kin of England, as they deemed, being shut up i prison, and a boy intruded on the throne. I whatever way they might reason, the Scots acte with great vigour; and all nations in their circun and ecclesiastic, were named. The Earl of Lan-stances would have been equally regardless of tl caster was appointed guardian and protector of the young king's person. The same parliament reversed the attainders which had been passed in 1322 against the great Earl of Lancaster and his adherents; confiscated the immense estates of the Despensers; granted a large sum of money to Isabella, the queen-mother, to pay her debts; and voted her a jointure of £20,000 a-year-a most liberal allowance for those times, and which materially contributed to secure her ascendancy. Nearly the whole power of government was, indeed, monopolized by her and Mortimer. Although Edward was excluded from political duties, he was not considered too young for those of war. It is said that his martial spirit had already declared itself; but it is probable that Mortimer at least would be glad to see him thus occupied at a distance from the court The Scots had suffered too cruelly not to be anxious for revenge; and the existing truce was not sufficient to make truce. About February the began to make inroads into En land, and these Border fora were soon succeeded by the mar of regular armies. Age and d clining health had no effect the valour and activity of Robe Bruce, who seems to have hop that he should be able, under c cumstances, to convert the tru into an honourable peace, if n to recover the northern provine of England, which the Scottikings had possessed at no ve remote date. He summoned 1 vassals from all parts-from t Lowlands, the Highlands, and t Isles; and 25,000 men assembl on the banks of the Tweed, ‹ animated with the remembran of recent wrongs and cruel s ferings. Of this host abo 4000 were well armed and w mounted; the rest rode up mountain ponies and Gallowa which could subsist upon a thing and support every fatigue. Bruce trusted the command of this army of invasion Randolph, Earl of Moray, and the Lord Ja EDWARD III.-From the Painted Chan- In this picture we have, in all probability, a tolerably accurate portrait of the king, taken soon after the year 1355, the date of the birth of his fifth son. The figure, if erect, would be in the original about 18 inches high. Edward is represented in full armour. His crown is embossed and gilt, the helmet silvered, with its rim gilt. The mail, also, was embossed : gilt. To indicate his claims of sovereignty over the Fr kingdom, the surcoat is quartered with the arms of England France, the lions being embossed and gilt on a red field.--Sh Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages. |