446 SEIZURE OF MORTIMER. [1330. and activity in his march to the Tyne. But Mortimer and Isabella were still the ruling powers in the state. Dangers were gathering around them; and they put on a bold front to their enemies. A confederacy against them was formed between the earl of Lancaster, nominally the head of the regency, and the late king's brothers, Kent and Norfolk. These princes were irresolute, and Lancaster was visited by a heavy fine. The earl of Kent, a weak young man, was persuaded by the spies and agents of Mortimer, that Edward II. was still alive; and he was imposed upon to the extent of addressing a letter to the deposed king, under the belief that he was in captivity. The letter was conveyed to Isabella and Mortimer, who summoned a pretended parliament, composed of their partisans, which adjuged the unfortunate victim to die as a traitor; and he was accordingly beheaded on the 19th March, 1330. A little after this, queen Philippa gave birth to a son, Edward, so renowned in coming years as the Black Prince. It was time that the king should assert his own authority against his mother and her favourite. He confided his purpose to the earl of Montacute. A parliament was to assemble at Nottingham; and the ex-queen took up her residence in the castle, with Edward and Mortimer. The castle was filled with guards; and the keys of its gates were taken every night to the private chamber of Isabella. But there was a subterraneous passage, leading from the west side of the sandstone rock on which the castle stands, the entrance to which from the road is still known as Mortimer's hole. This communication was made known to Edward and Montacute by the governor. In the silent midnight hour of the 10th of October, Montacute entered, with sufficient force, and being joined by the young king, they proceeded to the rooms of the principal tower, and having seized the object of their search, by forcing his chamber-door and slaying those knights who defended the entrance, they carried him off in 1330.] EVIL TIMES OF EDWARD II. 447 spite of Isabella's cries of "Spare my gentle Mortimer." The next morning the king issued a proclamation, in which he announced that the affairs of the kingdom had been evil-managed, to the dishonour of the realm, and to the impoverishment of the people; that he had caused the earl of March, and others, to be arrested, as the principal movers of these ills; and that all men should know that for the future he would himself govern his people by right and reason, as became his own dignity, and with the advice of the common council of the realm.* On the 26th of November, Mortimer was condemned as a traitor, by a parliament at Westminster. The charges against him were, that he had fomented the dissensions between the late king and his queen; that he had illegally assumed the power vested in the council of regency; that he had caused Edward II. to be put to death; that he had compelled the earl of Lancaster and others to pay excessive fines; and had instigated the plot against the earl of Kent. He was executed on the 29th of November, with four others, as his accomplices. The pope wrote to Edward not to expose the shame of his mother; and she, therefore, passed the rest of her life, twenty-eight years, in confinement at her manor of Risings. We at length may quit this ghastly region of crime and retribution. In the annals of our country there is no era of twenty years so full of revolution and counter-revolution; of imbecile authority struggling with lawless force; of bitter hatreds and outraged affections; of proscriptions and executions and secret murders. Such a system of misrule, approaching at times to a state of anarchy, must of necessity have been accompanied by wide-spread corruption and general misery. There is a contemporary English poem, “ On the evil Times of Edward II.," which describes briefly, but emphatically, some of the class-iniquities and national calamities of the days of Gaveston and the Despensers. According to this picture of manners, the fiend showed his mastery, and raised such a strife, that every lording was busy his own life to save; each was provoked to murder the other, and would spare none for kindred. While these great lordings were hurled on a heap, the prelates of holy Church were blinded with covetousness. And then came a murrain of the cattle, and a dearth of corn, and poor simple men were a-hungred.§ God was wrath with the world; for pride had driven peace and love and charity out of the land. This quaint old rhymer speaks as a bitter satirist; but with a circumstantial precision which shows that he wrote from his own observation. Truth, he says, is forbidden the court of Rome, and truth dare not be seen amongst the cardinals. Simony and covetise have the world at their will. When a church is vacant, he that gives most to patron and bishop has the preferment.** Abbots and priors ride with horses and hounds as if they were knights, while poor men cower at the abbey-gate all day in hunger and in cold.++ Who is fatter and ruddier than monks, canons, and priors? In each town, says the rhymer, I wot none easier life than is religion. Of sin, deans and chapters take no account, and a man who has silver may serve the fiend long enough.§§ As he satirises the Church, so is he equally severe upon baron and knight. He accuses them even of cowardice; they are lions in hall, and hares in the field. Knightship is *Fœdera, vol. ii. part ii. p. 799. Ibid., v. 445. ** Ibid., v. 454. § Ibid., v. 415. + Poem in "Political Songs," verse 423. Ibid., v. 460. ‡‡ Ibid., v. 153. Ibid., v. 10. §§ Ibid., v. 192. 418 TRANSITION STATE OF FEUDAL RELATIONS. [1330. debased and lame of foot.* There is a new cut of squierie in every town -gentle men that should be, that are swollen with pride, and have cast nurture into the ditch.t Justices, sheriffs, mayors, and bailiffs-they know how to make the dark night out of the fair day. If the king raises a taxation, it is so twitted away, that half is stolen ere it is accounted for-there are so many partners. The rich are spared, and the poor are robbed. Every man is ready to fill his own purse, and the king has the least part, and he hath all the curse. The pleader at the bar takes forty pence to speak a word or two for no good; and the false attorneys make men begin a suit they never would have thought of, and they get their silver for nought.§ The assizers condemn men for money, and the rich justice will do wrong for a bribe.|} Sometime there were chap-men that truly bought and sold; traffic was once maintained with truth, but now is all turned to treachery. So, concludes the satirist, is all the world blinded. We give a specimen of this curious production of the English language of the 14th century: Exaggerated as this picture of society may be, there can be little doubt that, in the transition state from the feudal relations between lord and villan, to a condition in which the commons had attained a certain amount of independence, there had arisen a general desire amongst the governing classes, ecclesiastical, military, and civil, to substitute cunning for force, and extortion for open plunder; that the larger cultivators and the traders, aspiring, as they do in all times, to the luxuries of those in higher stations, ground those beneath them with slight regard to justice. The Church had lost its ancient character of the protector of the poor; and the vices and oppressions of the monks had brought religion into contempt. Amidst all this, there was a great stirring of the national intellect. The wars of the crown were now supported by taxation of the people generally, instead of being conducted under the old tenure of knight-service. When the merchant or the yeoman had to draw his purse-strings, he became critical as to the mode in which he was governed. There was small communication between one district of the country and another; and thus, what we call public opinion could only be imperfectly formed. But in market and fair, in the guild and at the assize, men conferred and disputed; and whatever oppressions they endured were referred to the king's evil advisers. Thus, there was exultation in the land, when Gaveston, Despenser, and Mortimer fell, one after the other; and their deaths were considered a just punishment for the wrongs of the commons. In that class of the commons were not included the great body of the labourers. They made themselves heard at a more distant period. Meanwhile, a new epoch had opened. A young king had ascended the throne, full Poem in "Political Songs," verse 251. Ibid., v. 283. Ibid., v. 470. Ibid., v. 289, 334. Ibid., v. 358. § Ibid., v. 342, 350. ** Paunter is pantry; kauht, caught; unnethe, scarcely; priketh, rideth; nithe, strife; onde, envy; hien, haste; wole, will; for-don, destroy; muwe, may; agaste, afraid. ! 1330.] SIR JOHN FROISSART.-CHIVALRY. 449 of martial ardour, ambitious, graced with all chivalric accomplishments, and gifted with many of the qualities of a sagacious ruler. His wars, however, founded on very doubtful pretensions, which appear to us of the present time manifestly unjust, were so brilliant in their success, that, in the pride of a nation that was now thoroughly English, the evils of administration, and especially the wrongs of the peasantry, were too often forgotten. Now and then a stand was made for liberty, and some just laws were enacted. But the military spirit was the pervading influence of the reign of Edward III.; and the encouragement of that national temper kept his throne secure. During this reign, chivalry put on its most attractive features of courage and courtesy; and those knightly qualities were never set forth more seductively than by the chronicler of chivalry, Sir John Froissart. The savage disregard of life-the massacres and plunderings that lie beneath this surface of romance-will display themselves as we proceed in our narrative. The condition of the general body of the people, such as it is described in the "Poem on the evil Days of Edward II.," is not so apparent in the usual historical relations. Whatever might have been the ferocity and cruelty of the days of chivalry, whose most golden period belongs to the reign of Edward III., we may well believe that the spirit which it engendered had considerable influence in forming the character of what was now the English nation. Froissart delights in setting forth the peaceful graces of the regal and noble life; the minstrelsy and tales of glee; the dances and the carols. He goes forth to the chase with hawks and hounds. He sees the fairest maiden bestow the silken scarf upon the victor in the tournament. He hears without any shudder the cries of the herald, "The love of ladies,"-" Glory won by blood." He sees not the bleeding horse, and the gasping knight. There are death-wounds in the melée; but the wine-flask is in the lighted hall. In the same spirit does he describe the course of warfare-the brilliant charge of the cavalry, the unbroken ranks of the footmen, the fatal aim of the archers-the solemn confession before battle-the elation of heart at the cry of "advance banners" -the knighting in the field. The horrors are passed over in a few brief sentences, containing the emphatic words, "burnt"-" robbed "—"wasted" -“pillaged "—" slain "—" beheaded." And yet, out of all this, was engendered a better state of society, which could never have grown amongst an unchivalrous aristocracy and an unwarlike yeomanry. Out of the Norman oppressors and the Saxon serfs had arisen a great race, whose blood having mingled with that of the first Britons and their Roman masters, had at length produced one nation "inferior to none existing in the world. . . . Every yeoman from Kent to Northumberland valued himself as one of a race born for victory and dominion, and looked down with scorn upon a nation before which his ancestors had trembled."* This was the spirit which made Cressy, the first great popular remembrance, long cherished with a defying pride; but which had a positive effect for instant good upon the Englishmen who fought by the side of Edward and his son, as well as upon all who heard of their countrymen's daring and steadiness. Politically, the French war was unjust. Morally, it elevated the whole people. The same spirit which won *Macaulay, History, vol. i. p. 18. 450 MILITARY SPIRIT OF THE REIGN OF EDWARD III. [1332. the great battles of the Somme and the Loire had to win many a constitutional fight against the attempted encroachments upon liberty of the powerful monarch who led the English lords and yeomen to victory. As the whole nation rose in military prowess-as the archer in his buff jacket became as important as the knight in his steel hauberk-the physical hardihood and the intellectual vigour of the people were more and more developed. The burgher became more resolved to maintain his free charters with his own right arm; and the noble found that his own security was mixed up with the liberty and happiness of the commons, and he joined with them in making redress of grievances go hand in hand with the grant of supplies. Then, too, men began to think. Miracles ceased in the presence of holy relics, and dispensations for sin came to be despised. The preaching of Wycliffe found willing hearers. The tales of Chaucer were read in the baronial hall, and in the student's chamber. The universities were filled with scholars. The laws were administered in the language of the nation. The AngloNorman had given place to that noble tongue upon which our literature has been built. Five centuries ago, the course upon which the English people had to run their race was straight before them; and however they have been assailed by tyranny, or however corrupted by prosperity, they are still marching forward on the same vantage ground. Edward was twenty years of age in 1332. His great talents, his resolved character, and his towering ambition, were rapidly developing themselves. In him, the martial spirit of his grandfather had revived with a loftier and more chivalrous generosity. His public actions were less regulated by his own arbitrary will than those of the first Edward; and he had a more extended range of opinion to propitiate than that of a feudal aristocracy. His wars |