Page images
PDF
EPUB

1325-1327

DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II.

Despenser haughty, and they both made enemies for themselves and the king. Queen Isabella was alienated from her husband, partly by his exclusive devotion to the Despensers and partly by the contempt which an active woman is apt to feel for a husband without a will of his own. In 1325 she went to France, and was soon followed by her eldest son, named Edward after his father. From that moment she conspired against her husband. 1326 she landed, accompanied by her paramour, Roger Mortimer, declaring war against the favourites. The barons rose in her favour. London joined them, and all resistance was speedily beaten down. The elder Despenser was hanged by the queen at Bristol. The younger was hanged, after a form of trial, at Hereford.

In

26. The Deposition and Murder of Edward II. 1327. Early in 1327 a Parliament met at Westminster. It was filled with the king's enemies, and under pressure from the queen and Mortimer Edward II. was compelled to sign a declaration of his own wrong-doing and incompetency, after which he formally resigned the crown. He was allowed to live for eight months, at the end of which he was brutally murdered in Berkeley Castle. The deposition of Edward II.-for his enforced resignation was practically nothing less than that-was the work of a faithless wife and of unscrupulous partisans, but at least they clothed their vengeance in the forms of Parliamentary action. It was by the action of Parliament in loosing the feudal ties by which vassals were bound to an

Sir

229

[graphic]

John de Creke; from his brass at Westley Waterless, Cambridgeshire: showing armour worn between 1300 and 1335 or 1340. Date, about 1325.

unworthy king, that it rose to the full position of being the representative of the nation, and at the same time virtually proclaimed that

[graphic]

Howden Church, Yorkshire- the west front; built about 1310-1320. The tower was built between 1390 and 1407.

the wants of the nation must be satisfied at the expense of the feudal claims of the king. The national headship of the king would

1327-1330

MORTIMER AND ISABELLA

231

from henceforward be the distinguishing feature of his office, whilst his feudal right to personal service would grow less and less important every year.

[blocks in formation]

1. Mortimer's Government. only fourteen at his accession. hands of his mother's paramour, Mortimer. Robert Bruce, though old and smitten with leprosy, was still anxious to wring from England an acknowledgment of Scottish independence, and, in spite of the existing truce, sent an army to ravage the northern counties of England. Edward led in person against it an English force far superior in numbers and equipment; but the English soldier needed many things, whilst the Scot contented himself with a little oatmeal carried on the back of his hardy pony. If he grew tired of that he had but to seize an English sheep or cow and to boil the flesh in the hide. Such an army was difficult to come up with. Fighting there was none, except once when the Scots broke into the English camp at night and almost succeeded in carrying off the young king. Mortimer was at his wits' end, and in 1328 agreed to a treaty acknowledging the complete independence of Scotland. It was a wise thing to do, but no nation likes to acknowledge failure, and Mortimer became widely unpopular. He succeeded indeed in breaking up a conspiracy against himself, and in 1330 even executed Edmund, Earl of Kent, a brother of Edward II. The discontented barons found another leader in the king, who, young as he was, had been married at fifteen to Philippa of Hainault. Though

1327-1330.-Edward III. was For three years power was in the

he was already a father, he was still treated by Mortimer as a child, and was virtually kept a prisoner. At Nottingham he introduced a body of Mortimer's enemies into the castle through a secret passage in the rock on which it stood. His mother pleaded in vain for her favourite "Fair son, have pity on the gentle Mortimer." Mortimer was hanged, and Queen Isabella was never again allowed to take part in public affairs.

2. The French Succession. 1328-1331.--Isabella's three brothers, Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., had successively reigned in France. Louis X. died in 1316, leaving behind him a daughter and a posthumous son, who died a week after his birth. Then Philip V. seized the crown, his lawyers asserting that, according to the Salic law, no part of the heritage of Salic land can fall to a woman,' and that therefore no woman could rule in France. As a matter of fact this was a mere quibble of the lawyers. The Salic law had been the law of the Salian Franks in the fifth century, and had to do with the inheritance of estates, not with the inheritance of the throne of France, which was not at that time in existence. The quibble, however, was used on the right side. What Frenchmen wanted was that France should remain an independent nation, which it was not likely to do under a queen who might marry the king of another country. The rule thus laid down was permanently adopted in France. When Philip V. died in 1322 the throne passed, not to his daughter, but to his brother, Charles IV., and when Charles died in 1328, to his cousin, Philip of Valois, who reigned as Philip VI. At that time England was still under the control of Mortimer and Isabella, and though Isabella, being the sister of Charles IV., thought of claiming the crown, not for herself, but for her son, Mortimer did not press the claim. In 1329 he sent Edward to do homage to Philip VI. for his French possessions, but Edward only did it with certain reservations, and in 1330 preparations for war were made in England. In 1331, after Mortimer's fall, when Edward was his own master, he again visited France, and a treaty was concluded between the two kings in which he abandoned the reservations on his homage.

3. Troubles in Scotland. 1331-1336.—On his return, Edward looked in another direction. In 1331 Robert Bruce died, leaving his crown to his son, David II., a child five years old. Certain English noblemen had in the late treaty (see p. 231) been promised restoration of the estates of their ancestors in Scotland, and in 1332 some of them, finding the promise unfulfilled, offered English forces to John Balliol's son, Edward, to help him to the Scottish crown.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic]

Effigies of Edward III. and Queen Philippa; from their tombs in Westminster Abbey.

« PreviousContinue »