From below him he heard first a sound of shuffling and a faint murmur of voices. Then he was conscious of lights flashing on and off through the murk of the lower depths. Finally it was apparent that his helpers, torch in hand, were emerging from their crawl through the secret passage. He made out first the intelligent and confident face of Montacute and then the eager dark countenance of John de Molines. He raised a hand to them and then started to lead the way up to the higher stories of the keep.
The king, for reasons of delicacy, did not accompany his friends when they broke into the room where the voice of Mortimer was still to be heard in loud discussion with his officers. There were four men with him, Sir Hugh Turpington, Sir John Neville, Sir Simon de Beresford, and Sir John Deveril. Swords were drawn, but not in time to present any adequate defense. The first-named pair were killed in the brief and bitter scuffle and Mortimer succeeded in mortally wounding one of the king’s men. It was a brief encounter and Mortimer was quickly disarmed and his arms bound behind his back.
At this point the queen mother broke into the room from the apartment she occupied. It was clear she had been asleep, for she wore little clothing and her hair was disheveled; and she was in a state of desperate dismay and fear. The young king had remained in the corridor, not through any disinclination to share in the struggle but because he preferred not to witness the plight of his mother. Isabella could not see him but she sensed his presence.
“Bel filz, bel filz!” she cried in tones of appeal. “Ayez pitié de gentil Mortimer!” (Fair son, fair son, have pity on gentle Mortimer!)
When she saw that no attention was being paid to her appeal, she said to Montacute, “Do no harm to the person of Mortimer, because he is a worthy knight, my dear friend and well-beloved cousin!”
But the days when men would run to do her bidding were over. They stared at her pale face and unruly locks with the curiosity inevitable when a queen, famous for her beauty, is seen in her shift. But they paid no attention to her appeals. Gentle Mortimer was rudely shoved into the corridor, where eager and far from kindly hands fastened upon him. The castle was filled with his adherents, but they seemed to have little sense of loyalty. No effort was made to rescue him. The knights who had ridden so obsequiously in his train outdid each other in their eagerness to forswear his allegiance. The control of the castle passed instantly into the hands of the king and his few followers. The keys were removed from under the pillow of the queen, and Mortimer was ensconced in a deep cell with armed guards outside the door.
Every step had been planned with the care Edward would later display in some aspects of his campaigns in France and had been carried out with boldness and decision. The English Hamlet had now made it clear that he had been biding his time for the right moment. That moment had come and gone, and England was free of the beautiful queen who had gone astray and the lover she had raised to power with her.
Nottingham, called at that time the cave city because of the softness of its sandstone, went mad with joy when Mortimer was led out a prisoner the next morning. It is recorded that a great shout went up in which the nobles joined with the mobs on the street.
The Earl of Lancaster was still the titular head of the baronage. Although a weakness in his eyes had finally resulted in total blindness, he is said to have been consulted by Edward when he arrived at Nottingham, or certainly by the closest adherents of the young king. The approval of the blind peer had been given to the contemplated coup, although he could not offer his personal participation. It may have been that he provided some of the men who followed Montacute on his long crawl through the underground passage.
When the earl heard the shouts of the mob in the streets, he had his servants lead him out, and when he learned the reason for the jubilation he joined in by shouting as madly as any tinker’s apprentice. He is even said to have gesticulated with his arms to show how deeply he was moved.
History does not tell how Isabella traveled to London. She must have been taken there at once under adequate escort, but it seems highly improbable that she went with the king’s party. Edward would spare himself as long as possible the frantic appeals she would address to him on behalf of her partner in usurpation. It may have been that he did not see his mother until the case of Mortimer had been disposed of at Westminster and the penalty exacted.
The prisoner was removed at once by way of Loughborough and Leicester and was lodged in the Tower of London on October 27. Edward must have been with the party, for he issued that same day a statement to the people of England that he had taken the government of the country into his own hands, a proclamation which was received with universal approval. If doubts about him had existed in the minds of people because of his seeming hesitation to assert himself, they were forgotten completely in the acclaim with which his act was received.
Parliament did not meet until November 26, and the first business before it was the disposal of the charges against Mortimer. It is not certain that the prisoner was brought before the house at any time, but this much is known: he was not allowed to make any plea or enter any defense. The peers were asked one by one what they thought should be done with him, and the response seems to have been an unanimous one. Mortimer must be treated the way he had dealt with Hugh le Despenser. He must die the same death without delay or mercy.
The charges laid at his door were many and lengthy, the most important being, perhaps, the allegation that he had “falsely and maliciously sowed discord between the father of our lord the king and the queen, his companion.… Wherefore, by this cause, and by other subtleties, the said queen remained absent from her lord.”
This was the closest approach made to including Isabella in the legal proceedings. Pope John had written to Edward, urging him not “to expose his mother’s shame,” but this admonition was unnecessary. Edward was in every way striving to respect Isabella’s position. This may have been due to filial affection or he may have been influenced by the need to protect her name in France. In any event, Mortimer was to bear the full brunt of the blame; which did not matter very much for there was evidence enough, as was said at the time, to hang a dozen men.
The second charge was the most damaging of all. He had procured the murder of Edward II. This was regarded as definitely proven by the carelessness with which Mortimer placed his creatures around the doomed king. The efforts of two of his companions, who died on the gallows with him, Beresford and Deveril, to disclose the whole story of the assassination were disregarded. It was believed, naturally, that the refusal to hear them was due to fear that Isabella would be involved. It is most unfortunate from every other standpoint that the stories were not taken down.
Other charges were as follows: He had usurped the powers of the council and regency. He had taught the young king to regard Henry of Lancaster as his enemy. He had procured the execution of Edmund of Kent, although that unfortunate member of the royal family had been innocent of any crime. (Mortimer is said to have confessed privately that he knew Kent was innocent.) He had appropriated to his own use the twenty thousand pounds paid by the Scots as one of the peace terms arranged at Northampton. He had assumed the airs and powers of monarchy. He had been guilty of great cruelties in Ireland.
The following day, clad all in black, Mortimer was taken through London to the Elms at Tyburn and was there hanged, drawn, and quartered. It is said that this was the first instance of an execution at Tyburn. That section of London Town would be used so often through later centuries that the name would become synonymous with the exaction of the supreme penalty of the law.
The body of this once haughty and unscrupulous man was allowed to hang on the gallows for two days and nights, for the public to see, although there could not have been much left of the frame after the carrying out of that ferocious and bestial sentence of disemboweling and quartering.
It is recorded that the despair of Isabella, when she realized the fate of her lover, was so intense that she suffered a spell of madness, but there is no official recor
d of this. It may have been no more than a reflection of the inevitable rumors which would spread throughout the country.
CHAPTER V
The Chatelaine of Castle Rising
1
IN the loneliest part of East Anglia stood Castle Rising, where a view could be had of the stolid waters on the south stretch of the Wash. About it were stunted trees and drifting sandhills, with no more than a touch of gorse on the high grounds behind, and over all the stillness of desolation. King William, called Rufus, had given eighteen acres there in fief to his cup-bearer, William de Albini. The son of the latter, who was known as William-of-the-Strong-Arm and whose name is generally spelled in history as D’Aubigny, proceeded to make the manor into a castle of considerable strength. He built a massive square keep surrounded by walls three feet thick, with three high towers and the whole enclosed by earthen ramparts. Not content with thus achieving security, he put much fine ornamental work into the gatehouse and the great hall. It had a hint of importance about it which belied the dullness of the marshes and the continuously hostile gray of the skies.
Then William-of-the-Strong-Arm fell in love with the widow of Henry I, Adelicia of Louvain, who had been called the Fair Maid of Brabant, a very great beauty indeed with snow-white complexion and abundant fair hair. Adelicia had been selected as the second wife of Henry in the hope that she would supply an heir to replace the unfortunate Prince Henry who went down in the wreck of La Blanche Nef. This she failed to do, but after Henry’s death she rewarded the devotton of William d’Aubigny by marrying him. He was an upstanding, honorable, and handsome knight and it is pleasant to record that the stork was kept very busy from that time onward. Adelicia brought seven children into the world in rather rapid succession, four of them sons. The upbringing of this happy brood kept the fair Adelicia so occupied that she seldom stirred from Arundel Castle, the family seat in the south part of Sussex. It was a rare thing for her to find any time for the northern home on which her husband had expended so much effort.
But now Castle Rising was to have a resident chatelaine. The advisers of the young king had convinced him it would be inadvisable to keep his mother at court and that, in fact, she should live thereafter in seclusion. Accordingly it was arranged, with Isabella meekly assenting, that all her dower lands and holdings were to be returned to the crown in return for a steady income, variously estimated at one to three thousand pounds a year. Two years later Edward wrote “that as his dearest mother had simply and spontaneously surrendered her dower into his hands, he had assigned her divers other castles and lands to the amount of two thousand pounds.” The dower lands she gave up were mostly in Wales, including the castle of Haverford.
Isabella was thirty-six when she took up her abode at Castle Rising. She still retained some of her beauty, although the turmoil and the stresses of the last years had exacted their toll. It is persistently asserted in the chronicles of the day that she had fits of depression, verging on madness, which began with the events surrounding the execution of Mortimer. There is nothing to prove or disprove this, save that there are no recorded instances of doctors being in attendance or any outlay for drugs or cures. She settled down at once, in fact, to a rather peaceful and certainly a monotonous life. This vital woman who had been active and gay all her days under the admiring gaze of courtiers must have felt a sinking of the heart when she first saw Castle Rising, with no signs of life about it save a gull winging slowly across the Wash with a piteous mew to express the smallness of its hopes. But she accepted her lot with outward equanimity.
It has been stated that she was confined so strictly to the castle that it amounted to a lifelong imprisonment, but this is wrong. As will be shown later, she paid many visits to various parts of the kingdom during the years which followed.
The dowager queen was provided with a household in accordance with her royal rank. She had ladies-in-waiting and a train of knights and squires as well as droves of servants. She had in addition a treasurer, a steward, a seneschal, and grooms, a falcon-bearer, and minstrels to sing during meals and to ease with music the tedious hours. A record in the Peerage of England indicates that she had one fault only to find with her household, the appointment as steward of Sir John de Molines, who had been the first to lay hands on Mortimer on the night of the coup and who, moreover, had slain one of the attendants. His presence is said to have kept her in constant recollection of that grim occasion and to have contributed to her unsettled state of mind. It seems highly improbable, however, that Molines was there. Edward’s gratitude to Montacute and in a lesser degree to Molines was so lively that he found many rewards and honors for both of them. The knight’s advancement was so rapid that the post of steward to the queen would have been regarded as far beneath his just deserts. If he did hold the post, it could have been for a very brief space only.
Edward paid regular visits to his mother, some say once a year, others two or three times. From the small fragments of evidence which exist, it is a reasonable assumption that he continued to feel some affection for her. Sons are always proud of beautiful mothers. Edward had been with her continuously in France during his most impressionable years, particularly that exciting period when she went to Flanders to recruit an army and they visited the home of the Count of Hainaut and his four beautiful daughters. He had ridden with her up and down the Low Countries, observing how she won admiration and support and how contagious was her gift of charm. He had been with her on the adventurous landing and the rapid campaign by which the control of the kingdom had been won. None of this could ever be forgotten or forcibly erased from his mind, even during the soul-searing days when he realized his mother and Mortimer had plotted the death of his father, that she and her favorite were not only living together but were making costly mistakes in the administration of the kingdom which would soon be his. It would be impossible for him to forget the days of mortification when the bumptious, black-a-vised Mortimer had expected him to rise when he, Mortimer, came into the room; when he had to permit his mother’s favorite to walk beside him evenly, step by step, instead of following behind as a subject was supposed to do; when, most galling of all, he had to submit to the hectoring, the criticism, of Mortimer and the demands made on him by that shortsighted upstart. But in time, as he observed how quietly his mother was accepting her new and humiliating role, it was inevitable that the black entries in the books would cease to affect him as much as the earlier and brighter memories.
Perhaps when he observed the monotony of her life at Castle Rising he regretted the necessity of keeping her there. One thing is certain: he demanded always that she was to be treated with the utmost respect. No mention of her was permitted in his presence unless it was phrased with decorum. She was referred to in official documents as “Madame, the king’s mother,” or “Our lady, queen Isabella.” He was solicitous of her well-being and saw to it that supplies of the best game and fish were sent to her, as well as the delicacies to which she had been accustomed. She had a special liking for sturgeon, and although it was a costly luxury, the records are full of expenditures for barrels to be sent to Castle Rising. A barrel of sturgeon cost something in excess of two pounds.
It is on record that the dowager queen spent some time at Berkhampstead, while Castle Rising was being refitted for her use, that she went to reside at the royal castle of Eltham when she needed a change of air, which happened regularly. She went to Pontefract, and on at least one occasion she spent Christmas at Windsor with her son and his family. In 1344 she celebrated Edward’s birthday with him at Norwich. She made numerous pilgrimages to holy shrines, particularly Our Lady of Walsingham.
She was never permitted to take any part in state matters, even when the chancellery or Parliament had knotty points to unravel rising from things she had done while acting as regent. In 1348 the King of France made the suggestion that Isabella and the dowager queen of France be entrusted with the mediation of a peace between the two countries. The suggestion found no favor with Edward. He had
conceived a low opinion of his mother’s judgment in matters of statecraft. Had he been inclined to the proposal, his advisers would have combated the idea warmly and unanimously.
The slipping of power through hands which have become accustomed to it is one of the hardest things to bear, which is why rulers were so prompt to stamp out anything that bore the faintest scent of treason and to punish with extremes of cruelty anyone who strove to reduce by one iota the royal power. It hardly needs saying, therefore, that Isabella could not have been happy in the seclusion forced upon her. But she does not seem to have complained. If she had loaded her son with reproaches on the occasions of his visits to her, he would soon have fallen into the habit of finding excuses for not going.
She had gambled for high stakes and had lost. That she was willing to pay the price of failure without recriminations is one item, though not a weighty one, to enter on the credit side of the ledger. One other item: she gave no cause for scandal during those last and lonely years of her life.
2
In the last phase of her life the dowager queen’s mind turned to religious observance and to doing penance for the wicked deeds of which she had been guilty. She took the vows of the order of Santa Clara and during the final years she wore the traditional garb. The Poor Clares, as the members were called, lived lives of toil and self-sacrifice and poverty, nursing the indigent and tending the lepers and subsisting on charity. They never allowed time to ease their code, as had been done in the Franciscan order from which they sprang. It is certain, therefore, that the queen had been taken into the third order of St. Francis, which was open to lay penitents and did not involve any participation in the arduous duties of those noble ladies, the Poor Clares.
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