CHAPTER IV
1
MORTIMER must have realized that the murder of Kent had been a grievous mistake and that public sentiment was rising against him. But he did not allow the knowledge to check his aggressions or abate his arrogance. Parliament was to meet at Nottingham that autumn, and he rode to attend it with his usual long train of knights and his Welsh mercenaries to strip the country of food as they passed.
What he did not realize at once was that the young king had at last decided to act. Edward had discovered the man he needed, a courageous and compatible friend in the person of William de Montacute, one of the younger barons. He was making his plans in concert with Montacute and a knight in the service of the latter, Sir John de Molines. They had to be very careful, for the king’s mother was beginning to sense the danger surrounding her and had been taking minute precautions. It was arranged that Edward was to go into residence with them at Nottingham Castle. Guards were kept about the grounds at all hours of the day and night to prevent anyone from having audience with the king. As a further measure, all the locks on the castle gates and posterns had been changed and each night the keys were taken to Isabella, who slept with them under her pillow. Edward was allowed no more than four attendants. The earls of Lancaster and Hereford, the leading figures in the baronage, had been forbidden to find lodgings in the town and were compelled to seek quarters at some distance in the country. It was almost as though the guilty pair, knowing retribution to be close at hand, were throwing caution to the winds in a willingness to provoke it.
There must have been tension in the castle among the trio. Edward, in addition to evasions and omissions because of the course of action he had decided upon, was anxious to be with his wife and that great fine man child she had presented to him, and so was impatient of delays. Woman’s intuition would tell Isabella that there was something on his mind and it would not be hard for her to make an accurate guess. Nothing that is recorded of Mortimer suggests that he had any subtlety about him, but every time his eye rested on Edward he would see the inevitable end to his day of power approaching and he would puff up with resentment and, perhaps, hatred. If the young king could only be trapped and dealt with as he, Mortimer, had disposed of Edmund of Kent! But that was impossible. The rancor in his mind fattened on the inevitability of his fall.
By some means, not disclosed, Edward had succeeded in establishing communication with his two chief aides on the outside. He got word to them of a secret confided to him by the castellan, William Holland. Centuries before, when the danger from Danish invasions was acute, a secret passage had been run underground from the keep to a cave in a woods some distance from the castle, to provide an avenue of escape. It had not been used for several generations, but it was still open. It was arranged, therefore, that on the night of October 19 Montacute would bring a body of armed men through the passage and join the king at the stair leading up to the keep.
The plan worked perfectly. Edward made a pretense of retiring early but did not undress, and at the appointed time he made his way cautiously down the stone stairway, becoming aware in doing so of loud masculine voices from Mortimer’s room. The boudoir-appointed despot was conferring with his immediate assistants and confidants. The young king knew, of course, that his mother occupied the adjoining apartment, and a sense of shame for the imputations to be drawn from this undoubtedly hardened his resolution for what lay ahead.
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 deathwithout 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 record of this. It may have been no more than a reflection of the inevitable rumors which would spread throughout the country.