the Earl of Hereford for his many misdeeds. The Mortimers were forced to yield, and ere Lancaster, who was now alarmed, could gather his troops the king had won all the strongholds of the Midlands. Still Thomas would not take the king's offer of pardon, but with the Earl of Hereford turned to bay at Borough Bridge, March 16, 1322, where Sir Andrew Harclay, the royal general, won the day, slaying Hereford and taking Thomas_himself. The earl was brought to Pomfret, tried by the Peers for treason, and led out by the Gascon soldiers to be beheaded in an old striped coat and broken hat, seated on a white nag, bridleless and saddleless, the people pelting him with mud and mocking him as "King Arthur." At a little hill outside the town he was made to dismount and kneel down with his face to the north, "toward his friends the Scots." "King of Heaven, have mercy on me!" he said, "for the king on earth hath forsaken me !" and a headsman from London struck off his head. Eight barons and thirty knights and squires met the same end. In a Parliament at York the Acts against the Despensers were annulled, all the old articles of the Ordinances confirmed, but the new ones set aside as not having been rightly made in full Parliament. It was at the same time laid down solemnly that "all matters to be established for the estate of our lord the king and his heirs, the realm and people, shall be treated, granted, and established in Parliaments by our lord the king, and by the consent of the clergy, earls, and barons, and the commonalty of the realm." The king now had a good chance of governing well, but he left all to his new favourites the Despensers, made a truce with the Scots, angered the Londoners by his stern justice, and let his prisoners escape. The taxes were not paid, the law was not kept, the people in their despair held Earl Thomas for a martyr and a saint, and grew bitter against the careless king and the greedy ministers.

We have many notices of the sufferings of the poor. One song says

"To seek the silver for the king I all my seed have sold,

Whereby my land must fallow lie and learn to idly sleep. And then they fetched my cattle fair away from out the fold. When I think on the wealth I've lost I wellnigh fall to weep. In this way they have made a breed of many a beggar bold, And all our rye is rotten too and rusty ere we reap.

Yea, all our rye is rusty and rotten in the straw,

By reason of the cruel storms on hillside and on plain.

There wakeneth in this sorry world both Woe and wondering Awe.
It were as good to starve at once as thus to toil in vain.

But just the same the beadle comes with his big talk and boast,

Come, pay me up the silver that is due to the Green Wax [sheriff's
tax-paper];

For thou art down upon my writ, as very well thou know'st.'
Yea, more than ten times over I have had to pay the tax !'

Another poet bears witness to the evils of the time, blaming the knights for dressing like minstrels, chiding like scolds, neglecting their duties, "lions in hall are they now and hares in the field." The squires he rebukes for their great hoods and new-fashioned coats, rich living and idleness, saying that they pass all their time at feasts and plays. Of the clergy and nobles he says:

--

"Great need it were to pray to God that Peace were hither brought To save the nobles of the land, that so much woe have wrought; The foul fiend egged them on so hard to murder one another, That not for very kindred's sake would cousins spare each other at all.

So that it seemed that England was just about to fall.
And while these mighty barons in heaps have thus been slain,
The prelates of our Holy Church too long asleep have lain ;
They woke at last but all too late, great pity 'twas indeed
They could not see the Truth, they were so blinded by their Greed
in mist;

They cared far more their lands to save than win the love of Christ!

For had the clergy of our land but kept themselves together,
And not gone wavering like the wind now hither and now thither,
But sought on which side stood the Truth and held to that alone,
Those barons all would be alive that now lie dead and gone
to clay.
Through Falsehood and through Pride it is that England's cast away.
Pride hath in his pit-fall caught the high and eke the low,
So that 'tis hard for any man Almighty God to know.
With Envy and with Wickedness Pride pricketh all about,
And Peace and Love and Charity from this poor land hie out,
full fast.

Lest God should shortly end the world we well may be aghast!"

5. In 1323 the new King of France, Charles the Fair, sent to bid Edward come and do homage for his duchy; but the Despensers, fearing the barons would rise against them if he were to leave England, would not let him go. Edward accordingly sent his wife to treat with her brother, and handing over his earldom of Ponthieu and duchy of Aquitaine to his little son, bade him do homage in his stead, 1325. But when Isabel was in France she met Lord Mortimer, and forgetful of her duty to her husband, under pretence that the elder Despenser was plotting against her life, joined

66

Edward un

1327.

in a plan for invading England, putting down the ministers, and governing in their stead. The queen's open fondness for Mortimer at length forced her brother Charles to send her out of France, but she went to Hainault, and betrothing her son to the earl's daughter Philippa, got 2000 soldiers from him with which to carry out her plans. Money she had already borrowed from her brother and the Italian bankers in France. In vain Edward wrote kindly to her, urging her return to her duty. kinged and In vain he bade his little son make no promise murdered, of marriage without his father's consent, but come back to England at once, as you wish to escape our wrath and heavy anger, and love your own welfare and honour." In vain too he called out troops and got Reynolds to excommunicate the invaders. The queen landed at Orwell, 24th September 1326, with Lord Mortimer and the king's brother Edmund, Earl of Kent, declaring that she came to avenge the blood of Earl Thomas and punish the Despensers. She was joined by the fleet sent to stop her, by most of the English barons and bishops, and by the Londoners, bands of whom, called "Riflers," rose, plundered the houses of the king's friends, and murdered the Bishop of Exeter, keeping the city in such disorder that no courts could be held for months. The little Duke of Aquitaine was made Warden of the Realm, and not a hand was raised on his father's behalf. The Despensers, who had fled to the west, were caught, tried, and hanged as traitors. The king, after hiding for a while in Wales, where the yeomen and monks favoured his flight and helped to conceal him, gave himself up, and was sent a prisoner to Kenilworth. At a Parliament at Westminster, Ādam of Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, a deadly enemy of the king's and a man without pity or fear, asked those present whether they would have the father or son as their king. Save four bishops all voted for the son. Edward was charged with having been foolishly led by evil counsellors; with neglecting the business of his state, and trifling his time away unbecomingly; with having lost Ireland, Gascony, and Scotland; with harming the Church, and slaying, exiling, and outlawing many great men ; with breaking the oath he made at his crowning to do justice to all, and with having ruined the realm, being incapable of ruling better or of mending his ways. Twenty-four commissioners-earls, barons, abbots, priors, judges, friars, monks, knights, and citizens-were sent to Kenilworth to renounce the homage and fealty they had sworn to the king, who agreed to give up his crown to his son and to become a

private person again without any manner of royal dignity, 20th January 1327. Eight months afterward the wretched man, who had been moved about as a prisoner from one dungeon to another, was cruelly murdered by Mortimer's orders at Berkeley Castle, 21st September 1327.

Edward was justly put from the throne, for he had shown himself unfit to rule, and had brought great misery on his people by his neglect of his duty; but those that had withstood him were selfish and greedy men, who cared only for their own advancement, and they were only successful in the end because the people in their sore distress (for a drought was now killing off the cattle the plague had spared) believed that the bad seasons were sent as a punishment for their rulers' sins, and therefore thinking that any change must be for the better, were willing to have a young king who would learn to govern well.

In this reign the power of the Parliament grew greater, and the Estates set about getting the whole control of the taxes into their hands; but it was not yet found possible for the king to rule save by ministers whom he himself chose, though it was settled that he must choose men who would not be hateful to the nation.

CHAPTER III.

Edward III. of Windsor, 1327-1377.

1. On the 29th January the young king was crowned, and on the 3rd February Parliament met. A Standing Council of fourteen was appointed, Henry, Earl of Lancaster (the late earl's brother and heir), being Warden of the realm, was its chairman; with him were the king's uncles Kent and Norfolk, and his kinsman Warenne, the Bishop of Hereford (who was treasurer), the two archbishops, and the Bishop of Winchester, with six barons. The Parliament then blotted out the sentence against Earl Thomas, and the king confirmed the Charters, gave a full and new charter to London, made decrees for the better maintaining of justice, and set keepers of the peace in every county. In spite, however, of the Warden and the Council all real power lay in the hands of the queen-mother and of Mortimer, who kept a guard of 180 knights and lived in such state that his own son warned him he was behaving like a May-day king. In 1328 the Scots war broke out again, and Edward, with his mother and

Mortimer, at the head of 8000 knights and squires, 30,000 men-at-arms, horse and foot, and 24,000 archers, Mortimer's rule. marched north to drive back the Scots, who The Shameful had already got into England. The Scottish Peace, 1327-1328. army and its ways of warfare are thus described by one who saw them: "The Scots are bold, hardy, and well inured to war. When they make their inroads into England they march from twenty to twenty-four miles without halting night or day, for they are all horsed save the camp followers. Knights and squires on large bay horses, and the common folk on Galloway ponies, which are never tied up or groomed, but turned out straightway after the day's march to graze on the moor or the meadows. They bring no carts with them because of the hills they have to pass, nor do they carry any bread or wine with them, for they are used to such plain living that in time of war they will live many days on halfsodden flesh without bread, drinking spring water instead of wine. They have therefore no need for pots or pans, for they boil the flesh of the cattle in their skins when they have flayed them. Nor do they drive cattle with them, for they are sure to find plenty in the land they are invading. Every man carries under the flaps of his saddle a broad plate of iron, and behind him a little bag of oatmeal. When they have eaten too much of the boiled flesh and feel weak and empty, they set their plate over the fire, mix a little oatmeal with water, and when the plate is heated put some of this paste upon it and make a thin cake like a biscuit, which they eat to comfort their stomachs." In this way the Scots entered England, destroying and burning everything on their way. They were in number 4000 knights and squires and 20,000 soldiers. The king being now old and stricken with leprosy had set as captains over them his renowned nephew Randolf, Earl of Moray, and Sir James Douglas, who was held the bravest and most enterprising knight in the two kingdoms. And the Scots pillaged within five miles of the English host, yet the English could not bring them to battle nor discomfit them. For some time the two armies lay face to face, and one night "Lord William Douglas took with him 200 men-at-arms and suddenly brake into the English host about midnight, crying, 'Douglas! Douglas! ye shall all die, thieves of England!" And they slew ere they ceased 300 men, some in their beds, some half ready; and Douglas struck his horse with the spurs and came to the young king's own tent, always crying 'Douglas!' and cut asunder two or three cords thereof with his sword." The English guard