 CHAPTER XVI A CHILD HISTORY OF INGLAND CHAPTER XVI It was now the year of our Lord, 1272, and Prince Edward, the heir to the throne, being away in the Holy Land, knew nothing of his father's death. The barons, however, proclaimed him king immediately after the royal funeral, and the people very willingly consented, since most men knew too well by this time what the horrors of a contest for the crown were. So King Edward I called, in a not very complementary manner, long shanks, because of the slenderness of his legs, was peacefully accepted by the English nation. His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin they were, for they had to support him through many difficulties on the fiery sands of Asia, where his small force of soldiers fainted, died, deserted, and seemed to melt away. But his prowess made light of it, and he said, I will go on, if I go on with no other follower than my groom. A prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. He stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all places on earth, I am sorry to relate, he made a frightful slaughter of innocent people, and then he went to Acre, where he got a truce of ten years from the Sultan. He had very nearly lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a Saracen noble called the Emir of Jaffa, who, making the pretense that he had some idea of turning Christian and wanted to know all about that religion, sent a trusty messenger to Edward very often, with a dagger in his sleeve. At last one Friday in Whitsun week, when it was very hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath the blazing sun, burnt up like a great overdone biscuit, and Edward was lying on a couch, dressed for coolness in only a loose robe. The messenger, with his chocolate-colored face, and his bright dark eyes and white teeth, came creeping in with a letter, and kneeled down like a tame tiger. But the moment Edward stretched out his hand to take the letter, the tiger made a spring at his heart. He was quick, but Edward was quick too. He seized the trader by his chocolate throat, threw him to the ground, and slew him with the very dagger he had drawn. The weapon had struck Edward in the arm, and although the wound itself was slight, it threatened to be mortal, for the blade of the dagger had been smeared with poison. Thanks, however, to a better surgeon than was often to be found in those times, and to some wholesome herbs, and above all to his faithful wife Eleanor, who devotedly nursed him, and is said by some to have sucked the poison from the wound with her own red lips, which I am very willing to believe, Edward soon recovered, and was sound again. As the king his father had sent in treaties to him to return home, he now began the journey. He had got as far as Italy when he met messengers who brought him intelligence of the king's death. Seeing that all was quiet at home, he made no haste to return to his own dominions, but paid a visit to the pope, and went in state through various Italian towns, where he was welcomed with acclamations as a mighty champion of the cross from the Holy Land, and where he received presence of purple mantles and prancing horses, and went along in great triumph. The shouting people little knew that he was the last English monarch who would ever embark in a crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest which the Christians had made in the Holy Land, at the cost of so much blood, would be won back by the Turks. But all this came to pass. There was, and there is, an old town standing in a plain in France, called Chalon. When the king was coming towards this place on his way to England, a wily French lord, called the Count of Chalon, sent him a polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a fair tournament with the Count and his knights, and make a day of it with sword and lance. It was represented to the king that the Count of Chalon was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show, and in good humour, he secretly meant a real battle, in which the English should be defeated by superior force. The king, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on the appointed day with a thousand followers. When the Count came with two thousand and attacked the English in earnest, the English rushed at them with such valor that the Count's men and the Count's horses soon began to be tumbled down all over the field. The Count himself seized the king round the neck, but the king tumbled him out of his saddle in return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own horse and standing over him, beat away at his iron armour like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when the Count owned himself defeated and offered his sword, the king would not do him the honour to take it, but made him yield it up to a common soldier. There had been such fury shown in this fight that it was afterwards called the Little Battle of Chalon. The English were very well disposed to be proud of their king after these adventures, though when he landed at Dover in the year 1274, being then thirty-six years old, and went on to Westminster, where he and his good queen were crowned with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took place. For the coronation feast there were provided, among other eatables, four hundred oxen, four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, eighteen wild boars, three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty thousand fowls. The fountains and conduits in the street flowed with red and white wine, instead of water. The rich citizens hung silks and cloths of the brightest colours out of their windows to increase the beauty of the show, and threw out gold and silver by whole handfuls to make scrambles for the crowd. In short, there was such eating and drinking, such music and capering, such a ringing of bells and tossing of caps, such as shouting and singing and reveling, as the narrow overhanging streets of old London city had not witnessed for many a long day. All the people were merry, except the poor Jews, who, trembling within their houses, and scarcely daring to peep out, began to foresee that they would have to find the money for this joviality sooner or later. To dismiss the sad subject of the Jews for the present, I am sorry to add that in this rain they were most unmercifully pillaged. They were hanged in great numbers on accusations of having clipped the king's coin, which all kinds of people had done. They were heavily taxed, they were disgracefully badged, they were, on one day, thirteen years after the coronation, taken up with their wives and children, and thrown into beastly prisons, until they purchased their release by paying to the king twelve thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of property belonging to them was seized by the king, except so little as would defray the charge of their taking themselves away into foreign countries. Many years elapsed before the hope of gain induced any of their race to return to England, where they had been treated so heartlessly, and had suffered so much. If King Edward I had been as bad a king to Christians as he was to Jews, he would have been bad indeed. But he was, in general, a wise and great monarch, under whom the country much improved. He had no love for the great charter, few kings had, through many, many years, but he had high qualities. The first bold object which he conceived when he came home was to unite under one sovereign England, Scotland, and Wales, the two last of which countries had each a little king of its own, about whom the people were always quarreling and fighting, and making a prodigious disturbance, a great deal more than he was worth. In the course of King Edward's reign he was engaged, besides, in a war with France. To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate their histories, and take them thus. Wales First, France Second, Scotland Third Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had been on the side of the barons in the reign of the stupid old king, but had afterwards sworn allegiance to him. When King Edward came to the throne, Llewellyn was required to swear allegiance to him also, which he refused to do. The king being crowned, and in his own dominions, three times more required Llewellyn to come and do homage, and three times more Llewellyn said he would rather not. He was going to be married to Eleanor de Montfort, a young lady of the family mentioned in the last reign, and it chanced that this young lady, coming from France with her youngest brother Emerick, was taken by an English ship, and was ordered by the English king to be detained. Upon this the quarrel came to a head. The king went, with his fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing Llewellyn, that he could only take refuge in the bleak mountain of Snowden, in which no provisions could reach him. He was soon starved into an apology, and into a treaty of peace, and into paying the expenses of the war. The king, however, forgave him some of the hardest conditions of the treaty, and consented to his marriage, and he now thought he had reduced Wales to obedience. But the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, quiet, pleasant people, who liked to receive strangers in their cottages among the mountains, and to set before them with free hospitality whatever they had to eat and drink, and to play to them on their harps, and sing their native ballads to them, were a people of great spirit when their blood was up. Englishmen after this affair began to be insolent in Wales, and to assume the air of masters, and the Welsh pride could not bear it. Moreover they believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of whose unlucky old prophecies somebody always seemed doomed to remember, when there was a chance of its doing harm. And just at this time, some blind old gentleman with a harp and a long white beard, who was an excellent person, but had become of an unknown age and tedious, burst out with a declaration that Merlin had predicted that when English money had become round, a prince of Wales would be crowned in London. Now King Edward had recently forbidden the English penny to be cut into halves and quarters for half-pence and farthings, and had actually introduced a round coin. Therefore the Welsh people said this was the time Merlin meant, and rose accordingly. King Edward had brought over Prince David, Lou Allen's brother, by heaping favours upon him. But he was the first to revolt, being perhaps troubled in his conscience. One stormy night he surprised the castle of Howardan, in possession of which an English nobleman had been left, killed the whole garrison, and carried off the nobleman a prisoner to Snowden. Upon this the Welsh people rose like one man. King Edward, with his army, marching from Worcester to the Minnae Strait, crossed it. Near to where the wonderful tubular iron bridge now, in days so different, makes a passage for railway trains, by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men to march abreast, he subdued the island of Anglesey, and sent his men forward to observe the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh created a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge. The tide had, in the meantime, risen, and separated the boats. The Welsh pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, and there they sunk, in their heavy iron armour, by thousands. After this victory Llewellyn, helped by the severe winter weather of Wales, gained another battle. But the king, ordering a portion of his English army to advance through south Wales, and catch him between two foes, and Llewellyn bravely turning to meet this new enemy, he was surprised, and killed, very meanly, for he was unarmed and defenceless. His head was struck off and sent to London, where it was fixed upon the tower, encircled with a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of willow, some say of silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in ridicule of the prediction. David, however, still held out for six months, though eagerly sought after by the king, and hunted by his own countrymen. One of them finally betrayed him with his wife and children. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and from that time this became the established punishment of traitors in England, a punishment wholly without excuse as being revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object is dead, and which has no sense in it, as its only real degradation, and that nothing can blot out, is to the country that permits on any consideration such abominable barbarity. Wales was now subdued, the queen giving birth to a young prince in the castle of Carnarvon. The king showed him to the Walsh people as their countrymen, and called him Prince of Wales, a title that has ever since been borne by the heir apparent to the English throne, which that little prince soon became by the death of his elder brother. The king did better things for the Walsh than that, by improving their laws and encouraging their trade. Houses still took place, chiefly occasioned by the avarice and pride of the English lords, on whom Walsh lands and castles had been bestowed. But they were subdued, and the country never rose again. There was a legend that to prevent the people from being incited to rebellion by the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them all put to death. Some of them may have fallen among other men who held out against the king, but this general slaughter is, I think, a fancy of the harpers themselves, who, I dare say, made a song about it many years afterwards, and sang it by the Walsh firesides, until it came to be believed. The foreign war of the reign of Edward I arose in this way. The crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship, and the other, an English ship, happened to go to the same place in their boats to fill their casks with fresh water. Being rough, angry fellows, they began to quarrel, and then to fight, the English with their fists, the Normans with their knives, and in the fight a Norman was killed. The Norman crew, instead of revenging themselves upon those English sailors with whom they had quarreled, who were too strong for them, I suspect, took to their ship again in a great rage, attacked the first English ship they met, laid hold of an unoffending merchant who happened to be on board, and brutally hanged him in the rigging of their own vessel, with a dog at his feet. This so enraged the English sailors, that there was no restraining them, and whenever, and wherever, English sailors met Norman sailors, they fell upon each other tooth and nail. The Irish and Dutch sailors took part with the English, the French, and G&E sailors helped the Normans, and thus the greater part of the mariners sailing over the sea became in their way, as violent and raging as the sea itself, when it is disturbed. King Edward's fame had been so high abroad that he had been chosen to decide a difference between France and another foreign power, and had lived upon the continent three years. At first neither he nor the French King Philip, the good Louis had been dead some time, interfered in these quarrels, but when a fleet of eighty English ships engaged and utterly defeated a Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched battle fought round a ship at anchor, in which no quarter was given, the matter became too serious to be passed over. King Edward, as Duke of Guyenne, was summoned to present himself before the King of France, at Paris, and answer for the damage done by his sailor subjects. At first he sent the Bishop of London as his representative, and then his brother Edmund, who was married to the French Queen's mother. I am afraid Edmund was an easy man, and allowed himself to be talked over by his charming relations, the French court-ladies. At all events he was induced to give up his brother's dukedom for forty days. As a mere form the French King said to satisfy his honour, and he was so very much astonished, when the time was out, to find that the French King had no idea of giving it up again, that I should not wonder if it hastened his death, which soon took place. King Edward was a king to win his foreign dukedom back, if it could be won by energy and valor. He raised a large army, renounced his allegiance as Duke of Guyenne, and crossed the sea to carry war into France. Before any important battle was fought, however, a truce was agreed upon for two years, and in the course of that time the pope affected a reconciliation. King Edward, who was now a widower, having lost his affectionate and good wife Eleanor, married the French King's sister, Margaret, and the Prince of Wales was contracted to the French King's daughter, Isabella. Out of bad things, good things sometimes arise. Out of this hanging of the innocent merchant, and the bloodshed and strife it caused, there came to be established one of the greatest powers that the English people now possess. The preparations for the war being very expensive, and King Edward greatly wanting money, and being very arbitrary in his ways of raising it, some of the barons began firmly to oppose him. Two of them, in particular, Humphrey Bohan, Earl of Herford, and Roger Bigwood, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout against him that they maintained he had no right to command them to head his forces in Guyenne, and flatly refused to go there. By heaven, Sir Earl, said the King to the Earl of Herford, in a great passion, you shall either go or be hanged. By heaven, Sir King, replied the Earl, I will neither go nor yet will I be hanged, and both he and the other Earl sturdily left the court, attended by many lords. The King tried every means of raising money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all the Pope said to the contrary, and when they refused to pay, reduced them to submission, by saying very well, then they had no claim upon the government for protection, and any man might plunder them who would, which a good many men were very ready to do, and very readily did, and which the clergy found too losing a game to be played at long. He seized all the wool and leather in the hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it some fine day, and he set attacks upon the exploitation of wool, which was so unpopular among the traders, that it was called the Evil Toll, but all would not do. The barons, led by those two great earls, declared any taxes imposed without the consent of Parliament unlawful, and the Parliament refused to impose taxes, until the King should confirm afresh the two great charters, and should solemnly declare in writing that there was no power in the country to raise money from the people ever more, but the power of Parliament representing all ranks of the people. The King was very unwilling to diminish his own power by allowing this great privilege in the Parliament, but there was no help for it, and he at last complied. We shall come to another King by and by, who might have saved his head from rolling off if he had profited by this example. The people gained other benefits in Parliament from the good sense and wisdom of this King. Many of the laws were much improved, provision was made for the greater safety of travellers, and the apprehension of thieves and murderers, the priests were prevented from holding too much land, and so becoming too powerful, and justices of the peace were first appointed, though not at first under that name, in various parts of the country. And now we come to Scotland, which was the great and lasting trouble of the reign of King Edward I. About thirteen years after King Edward's coronation, Alexander III, the King of Scotland, died of a fall from his horse. He had been married to Margaret, King Edward's sister. All their children being dead, the Scottish crown became the right of a young princess, only eight years old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, who had married a daughter of the deceased sovereign. King Edward proposed that the maiden of Norway, as this princess was called, should be engaged to be married to his eldest son. But unfortunately, as she was coming over to England, she fell sick, and landing on one of the Orkney Islands, died there. A great commotion immediately began in Scotland, whereas many is thirteen noisy claimants to the vacant throne started up and made a general confusion. King Edward, being much renowned for his sagacity and justice, it seems to have been agreed to refer the dispute to him. He accepted the trust, and went with an army to the borderland, where England and Scotland joined. There he called upon the Scottish gentleman to meet him at the castle of Norham, on the English side of the River Tweed, and to that castle they came. But before he would take any step in the business, he required those Scottish gentlemen, one and all, to do homage to him as their superior Lord, and when they hesitated he said, by holy Edward, whose crown I wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in maintaining them. The Scottish gentleman, who had not expected this, were disconcerted, and asked for three weeks to think about it. At the end of three weeks another meeting took place on a green plain on the Scottish side of the River. Of all the competitors for the Scottish throne there were only two who had any real claim in right of their near kindred to the royal family. These were John Baliel and Robert Bruce, and the right was, I have no doubt, on the side of John Baliel. At this particular meeting John Baliel was not present, but Robert Bruce was, and on Robert Bruce being formally asked whether he acknowledged the King of England for his superior Lord, he answered, plainly and distinctly, yes, he did. Next day John Baliel appeared, and said the same. This point settled some arrangements were made for inquiring into their titles. The inquiry occupied a pretty long time, more than a year. While it was going on King Edward took the opportunity of making a journey through Scotland, and calling upon the Scottish people of all degrees to acknowledge themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned until they did. And meanwhile commissioners were appointed to conduct the inquiry. A parliament was held at Berwick about it. The two claimants were heard at full length, and there was a vast amount of talking. At last in the great hall of the castle of Berwick the King gave judgment in favour of John Baliel, who, consenting to receive his crown by the King of England's favour and permission, was crowned at Scone, in an old stone chair which had been used for ages in the Abbey there, at the coronations of Scottish kings. Then King Edward caused the great seal of Scotland, used since the late king's death, to be broken in four pieces, and placed in the English treasury, and considered that he now had Scotland, according to the common saying, under his thumb. Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. King Edward determined that the Scottish king should not forget he was his vassal, summoned him repeatedly to come and defend himself and his judges, before the English parliament, when appeals from the decisions of Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At length John Baliel, who had no great heart of his own, had so much heart put into him by the brave spirit of the Scottish people, who took this as a national insult, that he refused to come any more. Thereupon the king further required him to help him in his war abroad, which was then in progress, and to give up a security for his good behaviour in future, the three strong Scottish castles of Jedburg, Roxburgh, and Berwick. Nothing of this being done. On the contrary the Scottish people concealing their king among their mountains in the highlands, and showing indetermination to resist. Edward marched to Berwick, with an army of thirty thousand foot, and four thousand horse, took the castle, and slew its whole garrison and the inhabitants of the town as well, men, women, and children. Lord Warren, Earl of Surrey, then went on to the castle of Dunbar, before which a battle was fought, and the whole Scottish army defeated with great slaughter. The victory being complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guardian of Scotland. The principal offices in that kingdom were given to Englishmen. The more powerful Scottish nobles were obliged to come and live in England. The Scottish crown and scepter were brought away, and even the old stone chair was carried off, and placed in Westminster Abbey, where you may see it now. Baliel had the Tower of London lent him for a residence, with permission to range about it within a circle of twenty miles. Three years afterwards he was allowed to go to Normandy, where he had a state, and where he passed the remaining six years of his life. Four more happily, I dare say, than he had lived for a long while in angry Scotland. Now there was in the west of Scotland a gentleman of small fortune named William Wallace, the second son of a Scottish knight. He was a man of great size and great strength. He was very brave and daring. When he spoke to a body of his countrymen, he could rouse them in a wonderful manner by the power of his burning words. He loved Scotland dearly, and he hated England with his utmost might. The domineering conduct of the English, who now held the places of trust in Scotland, made them as intolerable to the proud Scottish people as they had been under similar circumstances to the Welsh. And no man in all Scotland regarded them with so much smothered rage as William Wallace. One day an Englishman in office, little knowing what he was, affronted him. Wallace instantly struck him dead, and taking refuge among the rocks and hills, and there joining with his countrymen Sir William Douglas, who was also in arms against King Edward, became the most resolute and undaunted champion of the people struggling for their independence that ever lived upon the earth. The English guardian of the kingdom fled before him, and thus encouraged the Scottish people revolted everywhere, and fell upon the English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, by the king's commands, raised all the power of the border counties, and two English armies poured into Scotland. Only one chief, in the face of those armies, stood by Wallace, who, with a force of forty thousand men, awaited the invaders at a place on the River Forth, within two miles of Stirling. Across the river there was only one poor wooden bridge, called the Bridge of Kildeen, so narrow that but two men could cross it abreast. With his eyes upon this bridge, Wallace posted the greater part of his men among some rising grounds, and waited calmly. When the English army came up on the opposite bank of the river, messengers were sent forward to offer terms. Wallace sent them back with a defiance in the name of the freedom of Scotland. Some of the officers of the Earl of Surrey, in command of the English, with their eyes also on the bridge, advised him to be discreet and not hasty. He, however, urged to immediate battle by some other officers, and particularly by crossing him, King Edward's treasurer, and a rash man, gave the word of command to advance. One thousand English crossed the bridge, two abreast, the Scottish troops were as motionless as stone images. Two thousand English crossed, three thousand, four thousand, five. Not a feather all this time had been seen to stir among the Scottish bonnets. Now they all fluttered. Forward one party to the foot of the bridge, cried Wallace, and let no more English cross, the rest down with me on the five thousand who have come over, and cut them all to pieces. It was done in the sight of the whole remainder of the English army, who could give no help. Crescing him himself was killed, and the Scotch made whips for their horses of his skin. King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the successes on the Scottish side which followed, and which enabled bold Wallace to win the whole country back again, and even to ravage the English borders. But after a few winter months, the king returned, and took the field with more than his usual energy. One night when a kick from his horse, as they both lay on the ground together, broke two of his ribs, and a cry arose that he was killed, he leaped into a saddle, regardless of the pain he suffered, and rode through the camp. Day then appearing, he gave the word, still of course, in that bruised and aching state, forward, and led his army on to near Falkirk, where the Scottish forces were seen drawn up on some stony ground behind a morass. Here he defeated Wallace, and killed fifteen thousand of his men. With the shattered remainder, Wallace drew back to Stirling. But being pursued, set fire to the town, and it might give no help to the English, and escaped. The inhabitants of Perth afterwards set fire to their houses for the same reason, and the king, unable to find provisions, was forced to withdraw his army. Another Robert Bruce, the grandson of him who had disputed the Scottish crown with Baliel, was now in arms against the king, that elder Bruce being dead, and also John Coman, Baliel's nephew. These two young men might agree in opposing Edward, but could agree in nothing else, as they were rivals for the throne of Scotland. Only it was because they knew this, and knew what troubles must arise, even if they could hope to get the better of the great English king, that the principal Scottish people applied to the pope for his interference. The pope, on the principle of losing nothing for want of trying to get it, very coolly claimed that Scotland belonged to him, but this was a little too much, and the parliament in a friendly manner told him so. In the springtime of the year 1303 the king sent Sir John Seagrave, whom he made Governor of Scotland, with twenty thousand men, to reduce the rebels. Sir John was not as careful as he should have been, but encamped at Roslyn, near Edinburgh, with his army divided into three parts. The Scottish forces saw their advantage, fell in each part separately, defeated each, and killed all the prisoners. When came the king himself once more, as soon as a great army could be raised, he passed through the whole north of Scotland, laying waste whatsoever came in his way, and he took up his winter quarters at Dunfermline. The Scottish cause now looked so hopeless that Coman and the other nobles made submission and received their pardons, while us alone stood out. He was invited to surrender, though on no distinct pledge that his life should be spared, but he still defied the ireful king, and lived among the steep crags of the Highland Glens, where the eagles made their nests, and where the mountain torrents roared, and the white snow was deep, and the bitter winds blew round his unsheltered head, as he lay through many a pitch-dark night wrapped up in his plaid. Nothing could break his spirit, nothing could lower his courage, nothing could induce him to forget or to forgive his country's wrongs. Even when the castle of Stirling, which had long held out, was besieged by the king with every kind of military engine than in use, even when the lead upon cathedral roofs was taken down to help to make them, even when the king, though an old man, commanded in the siege as if he were a youth, being so resolved to conquer, even when the brave garrison, then found with amazement to be not two hundred people, including several ladies, were starved and beaten out, and were made to submit on their knees, and with every form of disgrace that could aggravate their sufferings, even then, when there was not a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace was as proud and firm as if he had beheld the powerful and relentless Edward lying dead at his feet. Who betrayed William Wallace in the end is not quite certain, that he was betrayed, probably by an attendant, is too true. He was taken to the castle of Dumbarton, under Sir John Menteeth, and thence to London, where the great fame of his bravery and resolution attracted immense concourses of people to behold him. He was tried in Westminster Hall, with a crown of laurel on his head. It is supposed because he was reported to have said that he ought to wear, or that he would wear, a crown there, and was found guilty as a robber, a murderer, and a traitor. What they called a robber, he said to those who tried him, he was, because he had taken spoil from the king's men. What they called a murderer, he was, because he had slain an insolent Englishman. What they called a traitor, he was not, for he had never sworn allegiance to the king, and had ever scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails of horses to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gallows, torn open before he was dead, beheaded, and quartered. His head was set upon a pole on London Bridge. His right arm was sent to Newcastle, his left arm to Burwick, his legs to Perth, and Aberdeen. But if King Edward had had his body cut into inches, and had sent every separate inch to a separate town, he could not have dispersed it half so far and wide as his fame. Wallace will be remembered in songs and stories, while there are songs and stories in the English tongue, and Scotland will hold him dear, while her lakes and mountains last. Just from this dreaded enemy, the king made a fairer plan of government for Scotland, divided the offices of honour among Scottish gentlemen and English gentlemen, forgave past offenses, and thought in his old age that his work was done. But he deceived himself. Coleman and Bruce conspired, and made an appointment to meet at Dumfries in the Church of the Minerites. There is a story that Coleman was false to Bruce, and had informed against him to the king, that Bruce was warned of his danger and the necessity of flight by receiving one night as he sat its upper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester, twelve pennies and a pair of spurs, that is, he was riding angrily to keep his appointment through a snowstorm with his horse's shoes reversed that he might not be tracked. He met an evil-looking serving man, a messenger of Coleman, whom he killed, and concealed in whose dress he found letters that proved Coleman's treachery. Whatever this may be, they were likely enough to quarrel in any case, being hot-headed rivals, and whatever they quarreled about they certainly did quarrel in the Church where they met, and Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed Coleman, who fell upon the pavement. When Bruce came out pale and disturbed, the friends who were waiting for him asked, What was the matter? I think I have killed Coleman, said he. You only think so? returned one of them. I will make sure, and going into the Church and finding him alive, stabbed him again and again. Knowing that the King would never forgive this new deed of violence, the party then declared Bruce, King of Scotland, got him crowned at Scone, without the chair, and set up the rebellious standard once again. When the King heard of it he kindled with fiercer anger than he had ever shown yet. He caused the Prince of Wales and two hundred and seventy of the young nobility to be knighted. The trees and the temple gardens were cut down to make room for their tents, and they watched their armour all night, according to the old usage. Some in the temple church, some in Westminster Abbey, and at the public feast which then took place, he swore by heaven and by two swans covered with gold network, which his minstrels placed upon the table, that he would avenge the death of Coleman, and would punish the false Bruce. And before all the company he charged the Prince his son, in case that he should die before accomplishing his vow not to bury him until it was fulfilled. Next morning the Prince and the rest of the young knights rode away to the border country to join the English army, and the King, now weak and sick, followed in a horse-litter. Bruce, after losing a battle, and undergoing many dangers and much misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay concealed through the winter. That winter Edward passed in hunting down and executing Bruce's relations and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age, and showing no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the following spring Bruce reappeared and gained some victories. In these frays both sides were grievously cruel. For instance, Bruce's two brothers, being taken captive, desperately wounded, were ordered by the King to instant execution. Bruce's friend, Sir John Douglas, taking his own Castle of Douglas out of the hands of an English lord, roasted the dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison in a great fire made of every movable within it, which dreadful cookery his men called the Douglas Larder. Bruce, still successful, however, drove the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Gloucester into the Castle of Air and laid siege to it. The King, who had been laid up all winter, but had directed the army from his sick bed, now advanced to Carlisle, and there, causing the litter in which he had travelled, to be placed in the Cathedral as an offering to heaven, mounted his horse once more, and for the last time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had reigned thirty-five years. He was so ill that in four days he could go no more than six miles. Still, even at that pace, he went on and resolutely kept his face towards the border. At length he lay down at the village of Burrow upon Sands, and there, telling those around him to impress upon the Prince, that he was to remember his father's vow, and was never to rest until he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, he yielded up his last breath. End of CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. OF A CHILD'S HISTORY OF INGLAND. CHAPTER XVII. King Edward II, the first Prince of Wales, was twenty-three years old when his father died. There was a certain favourite of his, a young man from Gaskony, named Piers Gaviston, of whom his father had so much disapproved that he had ordered him out of England, and had made his son swear by the side of his sick-bed never to bring him back. But the Prince no sooner found himself king than he broke his oath, as so many other princes and kings did. They were far too ready to take oaths, and sent for his dear friend immediately. Now this same Gaviston was handsome enough, but was a reckless, insolent, audacious fellow. He was detested by the proud English lords, not only because he had such power over the king, and made the court such a dissipated place, but also because he could ride better than they at tournaments, and was used in his impudence to cut very bad jokes on them, calling one the old hog, another the stage-player, another the Jew, another the black dog of Ardenne. This was as poor wit as need be, but it made those lords very roff, and the surly earl of Warwick, who was the black dog, swore that the time should come when Piers Gaviston should feel the black dog's teeth. It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be coming. The king made him earl of Cornwall, and gave him vast riches, and when the king went over to France to marry the French princess Isabella, daughter of Philip Lebel, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in the world, he made Gaviston regent of the kingdom. His splendid marriage ceremony in the Church of Our Lady at Bologna, where there were four kings and three queens present, quite a pack of court-cards, for I dare say the naves were not wanting. Being over, he seemed to care little or nothing for his beautiful wife, but was wild with impatience to meet Gaviston again. When he landed at home he paid no attention to anybody else, but ran into the favourites arms before a great concourse of people, and hugged him, and kissed him, and called him his brother. At the coronation which soon followed, Gaviston was the richest and brightest of all the glittering company there, and had the honour of carrying the crown. This made the proud lords fiercer than ever. The people, too, despised the favourite, and would never call him earl of Cornwall, however much he complained to the king, and asked him to punish them for not doing so, but persisted in styling him plain, pierced, Gaviston. The barons were so unceremonious with the king, in giving him to understand that they would not bear this favourite, that the king was obliged to send him out of the country. The favourite himself was made to take an oath, more oaths, that he would never come back, and the barons supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough for the besotted king, who brought him home again in a year's time, and not only disgusted the court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his beautiful wife, too, who never liked him afterwards. He had now the old royal want of money, and the barons had the new power of positively refusing to let him raise any. He summoned a parliament at York, the barons refused to make one, while the favourite was near him. He summoned another parliament at Westminster, and sent Gaviston away. Then the barons came, completely armed, and appointed a committee of themselves to correct abuses in the State and in the king's household. He got some money on these conditions, and directly set off with Gaviston to the border country, where they spent it, in idling away the time, and feasting, while Bruce made ready to drive the English out of Scotland. Four, though the old king had even made this poor weak son of his swear, as some say, that he would not bury his bones, but would have them boiled clean in a cauldron, and carried before the English army, until Scotland was entirely subdued. The second Edward was so unlike the first, that Bruce gained strength and power every day. The committee of nobles, after some months of deliberation, ordained that the king should henceforth call a parliament together, once every year, and even twice if necessary, instead of summoning it only when he chose. Further, that Gaviston should once more be banished, and this time, on pain of death, if he ever came back. The king's tears were of no avail. He was obliged to send his favourite to Flanders. As soon as he had done so, however, he dissolved the parliament, with the low cunning of a mere fool, and set off to the north of England, thinking to get an army about him, to oppose the nobles. And once again he brought Gaviston home, and heaped upon him all the riches and titles of which the barons had deprived him. The lords saw now that there was nothing for it but to put the favourite to death. They could have done so legally, according to the terms of his banishment, but they did so, I am sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by the Earl of Lancaster, the king's cousin, they first of all attacked the king and Gaviston at Newcastle. They had time to escape by sea, and the mean king, having his precious Gaviston with him, was quite content to leave his lovely wife behind. When they were comparatively safe, they separated. The king went to York to collect a force of soldiers, and the favourite shut himself up, in the meantime, in Scarborough Castle, overlooking the sea. This was what the barons wanted. They knew that the castle could not hold out. They attacked it, and made Gaviston surrender. He delivered himself up to the Earl of Pembroke, that Lord whom he had called the Jew, on the earls pledging his faith and nightly word, that no harm should happen to him, and no violence be done him. Now it was agreed with Gaviston that he should be taken to the castle of Wallingford, and they are kept in honourable custody. They travelled as far as Deadington, near Banbury, where in the castle of that place they stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of Pembroke left his prisoner there, knowing what would happen, or really left him thinking no harm, and only going, as he pretended, to visit his wife, the Countess, who was in the neighbourhood, is no great matter now. In any case, he was bound as an honourable gentleman to protect his prisoner, and he did not do it. In the morning, while the favourite was yet in bed, he was required to dress himself, and come down into the courtyard. He did so without any mistrust, but started, and turned pale when he found it full of strange, armed men. I think you know me, so their leader, also armed from head to foot. I am the black dog of Ardenne. The time was come when Pierce Gaviston was to feel the black dog's teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, and carried him, in mock state, and with military music, to the black dog's kennel. Warric Castle, where a hasty council, composed of some great nobleman, considered what should be done with him. Some were for sparing him, but one loud voice, it was the black dog's bark, I daresay, sounded through the castle hall, uttering these words. You have the fox in your power. Let him go now, and you must hunt him again. They sentenced him to death. He threw himself at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster, the old hog, but the old hog was as savage as the dog. He was taken out upon the pleasant road, leading from Warwick to Coventry, where the beautiful river Avon, by which, long afterwards, William Shakespeare was born, and now lies buried, sparkled in the bright landscape of the beautiful May Day. And there they struck off his wretched head, and stained the dust with his blood. When the king heard of this black deed, in his grief and rage he denounced relentless war against his barons, and both sides were in arms for half a year, but it then became necessary for them to join their forces against Bruce, who had used the time well while they were divided, and had now a great power in Scotland. Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieging Sterling Castle, and that the Governor had been obliged to pledge himself to surrender it, unless he should be relieved before a certain day. Hereupon the king ordered the nobles and their fighting men to meet him at Burwick, but the nobles cared so little for the king, and so neglected the summons, and lost time that only on the day before that appointed for the surrender did the king find himself at Sterling, and even then with a smaller force than he had expected. However he had, altogether, a hundred thousand men, and Bruce had not more than forty thousand, but Bruce's army was strongly posted in three square columns, on the ground lying between the burn or brook of Bannock, and the walls of Sterling Castle. On the very evening when the king came up, Bruce did a brave act that encouraged his men. He was seen by a certain Henry de Bohun, an English knight riding about before his army in a little horse, with a light battleaxe in his hand, and a crown of gold on his head. This English knight, who was mounted on a strong warhorse, cased in steel, strongly armed, and able, as he thought, to overthrow Bruce by crushing him with his mere weight, set spurs to his great charger, rode on him, and made a thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce parried the thrust, and with one blow of his battleaxe, split his skull. The Scottish men did not forget this next day when the battle raged. Randolph, Bruce's valiant nephew, rode with the small body of men he commanded, into such a host of the English, all shining in polished armor in the sunlight, that they seemed to be swallowed up and lost, as if they had plunged into the sea. But they fought so well, and did such dreadful execution, that the English staggered. Then came Bruce himself upon them, with all the rest of his army. While they were thus hard-pressed and amazed, they were peered upon the hills, what they supposed to be a new Scottish army. But what were really only the camp-followers, in number fifteen thousand, whom Bruce had taught to show themselves at that place and time. The Earl of Gloucester, commanding the English horse, made a last rush to change the fortune of the day, but Bruce, like Jack the giant-killer in the story, had had pits dug in the ground and covered over with turfs and stakes, into these as they gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders and horses rolled by hundreds. The English were completely routed, all their treasure, doors and engines, were taken by the Scottish men. So many wagons and other wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related that they would have reached, if they had been drawn out in a line, one hundred and eighty miles. The fortunes of Scotland were, for the time completely changed, and never was a battle won more famous upon Scottish ground than this great battle of Bannockburn. Plague and famine succeeded in England, and still the powerless King and his disdainful lords were always in contention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made proposals to Bruce to accept the rule of that country. He sent his brother Edward to them, who was crowned King of Ireland. He afterwards went himself to help his brother in his Irish wars, but his brother was defeated in the end, and killed. Robert Bruce, returning to Scotland, still increased his strength there. As the King's ruin had begun in a favourite, so it seemed likely to end in one. He was too poor a creature to relied all upon himself, and his new favourite was one Hugh the dispenser, the son of a gentleman of ancient family. Hugh was handsome and brave, but he was the favourite of a weak King, whom no man cared rush for, and that was a dangerous place to hold. The nobles leaned against him, because the King liked him, and they lay in wait both for his ruin and his father's. Now the King had married him to the daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester, and had given both him and his father great possessions in Wales. In their endeavours to extend these, they gave violent offence to an angry Welsh gentleman named John de Möbre, and to diverse other angry Welsh gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized their states. The Earl of Lancaster had first placed the favourite, who was a poor relation of his own at court, and he considered his own dignity offended by the preference he received, and the honours he acquired, so he and the barons who were his friends joined the Welshman, marched on London, and sent a message to the King, demanding to have the favourite and his father banished. At first the King unaccountably took it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a bold reply, but when they quartered themselves around Holburn and Clirkenwell, and went down armed to the Parliament at Westminster, he gave way, and complied with their demands. His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. It arose out of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful Queen, happening to be travelling, came one night to one of the royal castles, and demanded to be lodged and entertained there until morning. The Governor of this castle, who was one of the enraged lords, was away, and in his absence his wife refused admission to the Queen. A scuffle took place among the common men on either side, and some of the royal attendants were killed. The people, who cared nothing for the King, were very angry that their beautiful Queen should be thus rudely treated in her own dominions, and the King, taking advantage of this feeling, besieged the castle, took it, and then called the two despensers home. Upon this the Confederate lords and the Welshmen went over to Bruce. The King encountered them at Borough Bridge, gained the victory, and took a number of distinguished prisoners. Among them the Earl of Lancaster, now an old man, upon whose destruction he was resolved. This Earl was taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and there tried and found guilty by an unfair court appointed for the purpose. He was not even allowed to speak in his own defence. He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved pony without saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight and twenty knights were hanged, drawn, and quartered. When the King had dispatched this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce, he took the despensers into greater favour than ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester. One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken at Borough Bridge, made his escape, however, and turned the tide against the King. This was Roger Mortimer, always resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced to death, and placed for safe custody in the Tower of London. He treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had put a sleeping potion, and when they were insensible, broke out of his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the chimney, let himself down from the roof of the building with a rope ladder, passed the sentries, got down to the river, and made away in a boat to where servants and horses were waiting for him. He finally escaped to France, where Charles Lebel, the brother of the beautiful Queen, was King. Charles sought to quarrel with the King of England, on pretence of his not having come to do him homage at his coronation. It was proposed that the beautiful Queen should go over to arrange the dispute. She went, and wrote home to the King, that as he was sick and could not come to France himself, perhaps it would be better to send over the young Prince, their son, who was only twelve years old, who could do homage to her brother in his stead, and in whose company she would immediately return. The King sent him, but both he and the Queen remained at the French court, and Roger Mortimer became the Queen's lover. When the King wrote, again and again, to the Queen to come home, she did not reply that she despised him too much to live with him any more, which was the truth, but said she was afraid of the two dispensers. In short, her design was to overthrow the favourites power, and the King's power, such as it was, and invade England. Having obtained a French force of two thousand men, and being joined by all the English exiles then in France, she landed within a year at Orwell, in Suffolk, where she was immediately joined by the earls of Kent and Norfolk, the King's two brothers, by other powerful noblemen, and lastly by the first English general, who was dispatched to check her, who went over to her with all his men. The people of London receiving these tidings would do nothing for the King, but broke open the tower, let out all his prisoners, and threw up their caps and her rod for the beautiful Queen. The King with his two favourites fled to Bristol, where he left old dispenser in charge of the town and castle while he went on with the son to Wales. The Bristol men being opposed to the King, and it being impossible to hold the town with enemies everywhere within the walls, dispenser yielded it up on the third day, and was instantly brought to trial, for having traitorously influenced what was called the King's mind, though I doubt if the King ever had any. He was a venerable old man, upwards of ninety years of age, but his age gained no respect or mercy. He was hanged, torn open while he was yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to the dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at Hurford, before the same judge, on a long series of foolish charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gallows fifty feet high, with a chaplet of nettles round his head. His poor old father and he were innocent enough of any worse crimes than the crime of having been friends of a King, on whom, as a mere man, they would never have damed to cast a favourable look. It is a bad crime, I know, and leads to worse, but many lords and gentlemen, I even think some ladies, too, if I recollect right, have committed it in England, who have neither been given to the dogs, nor hanged up, fifty feet high. The wretched King was running here and there all this time, and never getting anywhere in particular, until he gave himself up, and was taken off to Kennellworth Castle. When he was safely lodged there, the Queen went to London, and met the Parliament, and the Bishop of Hurford, who was the most skillful of her friends, said, What was to be done now? Here was an imbecile, indolent, miserable King upon the throne. Wouldn't it be better to take him off, and put his son there instead? I don't know whether the Queen really pitied him at this pass, but she began to cry. Though the Bishop said, Well, my lords and gentlemen, what do you think upon the whole of sending down to Kennellworth, and seeing if his Majesty, God bless him, and forbid we should depose him, won't resign? My lords and gentlemen thought it a good notion, so a deputation of them went down to Kennellworth, and there the King came into the great hall of the castle, commonly dressed in a poor black gown. And when he saw a certain Bishop among them, fell down, poor feeble-headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of himself. Somebody lifted him up, and then Sir William Trussell, the Speaker of the House of Commons, almost frightened him to death, by making him a tremendous speech to the effect that he was no longer a King, and that everybody renounced allegiance to him, after which Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the household, nearly finished him, by coming forward and breaking his white wand, which was a ceremony only performed at a King's death. Being asked in this pressing manner what he thought of resigning, the King said he thought it was the best thing he could do, so he did it, and they proclaimed his son next day. I wish I could close this history by saying that he lived a harmless life in the castle, and the castle gardens at Kennellworth many years, that he had a favourite and plenty to eat and drink, and having that wanted nothing, but he was shamefully humiliated. He was outraged and slighted, and had dirty water from ditches given him to shave with, and wept, and said he would have clean, warm water, and was altogether very miserable. He was moved from this castle to that castle, and from that castle to the other castle, because this Lord or that Lord, or the other Lord, was too kind to him. Until at last he came to Berkeley Castle, near the River Severn, where, the Lord Berkeley being then ill and absent, he fell into the hands of two Black Ruffians, called Thomas Gourney and William Ogle. One night, it was the night of September the 21st, 1327, dreadful screams were heard by the startled people in the neighbouring town, ringing through the thick walls of the castle, and the dark, deep night, and they said, as they were thus horribly awakened from their sleep, may heaven be merciful to the king, for those cries forebode that no good is being done to him in this dismal prison. Last morning he was dead, not bruised, or stabbed, or marked upon the body, but much distorted in the face, and it was whispered afterwards that those two villains, Gourney and Ogle, had burnt up his inside with a red, hot iron. If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the centre tower of its beautiful cathedral, with its four rich pinnacles rising lightly in the air, you may remember that the wretched Edward II was buried in the old abbey of that ancient city, at forty-three years old, after being for nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapable king. CHAPTER XVIII of A CHILD'S HISTORY OF INGLAND This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Robyn Cotter, September 2007. A CHILD'S HISTORY OF INGLAND by Charles Dickens. CHAPTER XVIII England under Edward III. Roger Mortimer, the queen's lover, who escaped to France in the last chapter, was far from profiting by the examples he had had of the fate of favourites. Having, through the queen's influence, come into possession of the estates of the two despensers, he became extremely proud and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler of England. The young king, who was crowned at fourteen years of age, with all the usual solemnities, resolved not to bear this, and soon pursued Mortimer to his ruin. The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer, first because he was a royal favourite, secondly because he was supposed to have helped to make a peace with Scotland, which now took place, and in virtue of which the young king's sister Joan, only seven years old, was promised in marriage to David, the son and heir of Robert Bruce, who was only five years old. The nobles hated Mortimer because of his pride, riches, and power. They went so far as to take up arms against him, but were obliged to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those who did so, but who afterwards went over to Mortimer and the queen, was made an example of, in the following cruel manner. He seems to have been anything but a wise old Earl, and he was persuaded by the agents of the favourite and the queen, that poor King Edward II was not really dead, and thus was betrayed into writing letters, favouring his rightful claim to the throne. This was made out to be high treason, and he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be executed. They took the poor old Lord outside the town of Winchester, and there kept him waiting some three or four hours, until they could find somebody to cut off his head. At last a convict said he would do it, if the government would pardon him in return, and they gave him the pardon, and at one blow he put the Earl of Kent out of his last suspense. While the queen was in France she had found a lovely and good young lady named Philippa, who she thought would make an excellent wife for her son. The young king married this lady soon after he came to the throne, and her first child, Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards became celebrated, as we shall presently see, under the famous title of Edward the Black Prince. The young king, thinking the time ripe for the downfall of Mortimer, took counsel with the Lord Montecute how he should proceed. A parliament was going to be held at Nottingham, and that Lord recommended that the favourites should be seized by night in Nottingham Castle, where he was sure to be. Now this, like many other things, was more easily said than done. Because to guard against treachery the great gates of the castle were locked every night, and the great keys were carried upstairs to the queen, who laid them under her own pillow. But the castle had a governor, and the governor, being Lord Montecute's friend, confided to him how he knew of a secret passage underground hidden from observation by the weeds and brambles with which it was overgrown. And how, through that passage, the conspirators might enter in the dead of the night, and go straight to Mortimer's room. Accordingly upon a certain dark night, at midnight, they made their way through this dismal place, startling the rats and frightening the owls and bats, and came safely to the bottom of the main tower of the castle, where the king met them, and took them up a profoundly dark staircase in a deep silence. They soon heard the voice of Mortimer in council with some friends, and bursting into the room with a sudden noise, took him prisoner. The queen cried out from her bed-chamber, Oh, my sweet son, my dear son, spare my gentle Mortimer! They carried him off, however, and before the next Parliament accused him of having made differences between the young king and his mother, and of having brought about the death of the Earl of Kent, and even of the late king, for, as you know by this time, when they wanted to get rid of a man in those old days, they were not very particular of what they accused him. Mortimer was found guilty of all this, and was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. The king shut his mother up in genteel confinement, where she passed the rest of her life, and now he became king in earnest. The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. The English lords who had lands in Scotland, finding that their rights were not respected under the late peace, made war on their own account, choosing for their general, Edward, the son of John Baliel, who made such a vigorous fight that in less than two months he won the whole Scottish kingdom. He was joined when thus triumphant by the king and Parliament, and he and the king in person besieged the Scottish forces in Burwick. The whole Scottish army, coming to the assistance of their countrymen, such a furious battle ensued that thirty thousand men are said to have been killed in it. Baliel was then crowned king of Scotland, doing homage to the king of England. But little came of his successes, after all, for the Scottish men rose against him within no very long time, and David Bruce came back within ten years and took his kingdom. France was a far richer country than Scotland, and the king had a much greater mind to conquer it, so he let Scotland alone, and pretended that he had a claim to the French throne in right of his mother. He had, in reality, no claim at all, but that mattered little in those times. He brought over to his cause many little princes and sovereigns, and even quartered the alliance of the people of Flanders, a busy working community who had very small respect for kings, and whose head man was a brewer. With such forces as he raised by these means, Edward invaded France, but he did little by that, except run into debt in carrying on the war to the extent of three hundred thousand pounds. The next year he did better, gaining a great sea fight in the harbour of Slews. This success, however, was very short-lived, for the Flemmings took fright at the siege of St. Omir, and ran away, leaving their weapons and baggage behind them. Philip the French king, coming up with his army, and Edward being very anxious to decide the war, proposed to settle the difference by single combat with him, or by a fight of one hundred nights on each side. The French king said he thanked him, but being very well as he was, he would rather not. So after some skirmishing and talking, a short piece was made. It was soon broken by King Edward's favouring the cause of John, Earl of Montford, a French nobleman, who asserted a claim of his own against the French king, and offered to do homage to England, for the crown of France, if he could obtain it through England's help. This French lord himself was soon defeated by the French king's son, and shut up in a tower in Paris. But his wife, a courageous and beautiful woman, who was said to have had the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion, assembled the people of Brittany, where she then was, and, showing them her infant son, made many pathetic entreaties to them, not to desert her and their young lord. They took fire at this appeal, and rallied round her in the strong castle of Hennobon. Here she was not only besieged without, by the French, under Charles de Bloy, but was endangered within by a dreary old bishop, who was always representing to the people what horrors they must undergo if they were faithful, first from famine, and afterwards from fire and sword. But this noble lady, whose heart never failed her, encouraged her soldiers by her own example, went from post to post like a great general. Then mounted on horseback, fully armed, and issuing from the castle by a bypass, fell upon the French camp, set fire to the tents, and threw the whole force into disorder. This done she got safely back to Hennobon again, and was received with loud shouts of joy by the defenders of the castle, who had given her up for lost. As they were now very short of provisions, however, and as they could not dine off enthusiasm, and as the old bishop was always saying, I told you what it would come to, they began to lose heart, and to talk of yielding the castle up. The brave Countess, retiring to an upper room, and looking with great grief out to sea, where she expected relief from England, saw at this very time the English ships in the distance, and was relieved and rescued. Sir Walter Manning, the English commander, so admired her courage, yet being come into the castle with the English knights, and having made a feast there, he assaulted the French by way of dessert, and to beat them off triumphantly. Then he and the knights came back to the castle with great joy, and the Countess who had watched them from a high tower, thanked them with all her heart, and kissed them every one. This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a sea-fight with the French off Guernsey, when she was on her way to England to ask for more troops. Her great spirit roused another lady, the wife of another French lord, whom the French king very barbarously murdered, to distinguish herself scarcely less. The time was fast coming, however, when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to be the great star of this French and English war. It was in the month of July, in the year 1346, when the king embarked at Southampton, for France, with an army of about thirty thousand men in all, attended by the Prince of Wales, and by several of the chief nobles. He landed at La Hogue in Normandy, and, burning and destroying as he went, according to custom, advanced up the left bank of the River Seine, and fired the small towns even close to Paris. But being watched from the right bank of the river by the French king and all his army, it came to this, at last, that Edward found himself on Saturday the 26th of August, 1346, on a rising ground behind the little French village of Curricy, face to face with the French king's force, and although the French king had an enormous army, in number more than eight times his, he there resolved to beat him, or be beaten. The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of Warwick, led the first division of the English army. Two other great earls led the second, and the king the third. When the morning dawned, the king received the sacrament, and heard prayers, and then, mounted on horseback, with a white wand in his hand, rode from company to company, and rank to rank, cheering and encouraging both officers and men. Then the whole army breakfasted, each man sitting on the ground where he had stood, and then they remained quietly on the ground, with their weapons ready. Up came the French king with all his great force. It was dark and angry weather. There was an eclipse of the sun. There was a thunderstorm, accompanied with tremendous rain. The frightened birds flew screaming above the soldier's heads. A certain captain in the French army advised the French king, who was by no means cheerful, not to begin the battle until the morrow. The king, taking this advice, gave the word to halt. But those behind, not understanding it, or desiring to be foremost with the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a great distance were covered with this immense army, and with the common people from the villages, who were flourishing their rude weapons and making a great noise. Following to these circumstances, the French army advanced in the greatest confusion, every French lord doing what he liked with his own men, and putting out the men of every other French lord. Now their king relied strongly upon a great body of crossbowmen from Genoa, and these he ordered to the front to begin the battle, on finding that he could not stop it. They shouted once, they shouted twice, they shouted three times to alarm the English archers. But the English would have heard them shout three thousand times, and would have never moved. At last the crossbowmen went forward a little, and began to discharge their bolts, upon which the English let fly such a hail of arrows that the Genoese speedily made off, for their crossbows, besides being heavy to carry, required to be wound up with a handle, and consequently took time to reload. The English, on the other hand, could discharge their arrows almost as fast as the arrows could fly. When the French king saw the Genoese turning, he cried out to his men to kill those scoundrels who were doing harm instead of service. This increased the confusion, meanwhile the English archers, continuing to shoot as fast as ever, shot down great numbers of the French soldiers and knights, whom certain sly Cornishmen and Welshmen, from the English army creeping along the ground, dispatched with great knives. The Prince and his division were at this time so heart-pressed that the Earl of Warwick sent a message to the King, who was overlooking the battle from a windmill, beseeching him to send more aid. "'Is my son killed?' said the King. "'No, Sire, please God,' returned the messenger. "'Is he wounded?' said the King. "'No, Sire. "'Is he thrown to the ground?' said the King. "'No, Sire, not so, but he is very heart-pressed.' "'Then,' said the King, "'go back to those who sent you, "'and tell them I shall send no aid. "'Because I set my heart upon my son, proving himself this day "'a brave knight, and because I am resolved, please God, "'that the honour of a great victory shall be his.'" His bold words, being reported to the Prince and his division, so raised their spirits that they fought better than ever. The King of France charged gallantly with his men many times, but it was of no use. Night closing in, his horse was killed under him by an English arrow, and the knights and nobles, who had clustered thick about him early in the day, were now completely scattered. At last some of his few remaining followers led him off the field by force, since he would not retire of himself, and they journeyed away to Amiens. The victorious English, lighting their watchfires, made Mary on the field, and the King, riding to meet his gallant son, took him in his arms, kissed him, and told him that he had acted nobly, and proved himself worthy of the day and of the crown. While it was yet night, King Edward was hardly aware of the great victory he had gained, but next day it was discovered that eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and thirty thousand common men, lay dead upon the French side. Among these was the King of Bohemia, an old blind man, who, having been told that his son was wounded in the battle, and that no force could stand against the black prince, called to him two knights, put himself on horseback between them, fastened the three bridles together, and dashed in among the English, where he was presently slain. He bore as his crest three white ostrich feathers, with the motto ick dien, signifying in English, I serve. This crest and motto were taken by the Prince of Wales in remembrance of that famous day, and have been borne by the Prince of Wales ever since. Five days after this great battle, the King laid siege to Calais, this siege, ever afterwards memorable, lasted nearly a year. In order to starve the inhabitants out, King Edward built so many wooden houses for the lodgings of his troops, that it is said their quarters looked like a second Calais, suddenly sprung around the first. Early in the siege the Governor of the town drove out what he called the useless mouths, to the number of seventeen hundred persons, men and women, young and old. King Edward allowed them to pass through his lines, and even fed them, and dismissed them with money. But later in the siege he was not so merciful, five hundred more who were afterwards driven out, dying of starvation and misery. The garrison were so hard-pressed at last, that they sent a letter to King Philip, telling him that they had eaten all the horses, all the dogs, and all the rats and mice that could be found in the place, and that, if he did not relieve them, they must either surrender to the English or eat one another. Philip made one effort to give them relief, but they were so hemmed in by the English power that he could not succeed, and was feign to leave the place. Upon this they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered to King Edward. Tell your general, said he to the humble messengers, who came out of the town, that I require to have sent here six of the most distinguished citizens, bare-legged and in their shirts, with ropes about their necks, and let those six men bring with them the keys of the castle and the town. When the Governor of Calais related this to the people in the marketplace there was great weeping and distress, in the midst of which one worthy citizen, named Eustache de Saint-Pierre, rose up and said that if the six men required were not sacrificed the whole population would be, therefore he offered himself as the first. Asked by this bright example, five other worthy citizens rose up one after another, and offered themselves to save the rest. The Governor, who was too badly wounded to be able to walk, mounted a poor old horse that had not been eaten, and conducted these good men to the gate, while all the people cried and mourned. Edward received them wrathfully, and ordered the heads of the whole six to be struck off, however the good Queen fell upon her knees, and besought the King to give them up to her. The King replied, I wish you had been somewhere else, but I cannot refuse you. So she had them properly dressed, made a feast for them, and sent them back with a handsome present, to the great rejoicing of the whole camp. I hope the people of Calais loved the daughter to whom she gave birth soon afterwards, for her gentle mother's sake. Now came that terrible disease, the plague, into Europe, hurrying from the heart of China, and killed the wretched people, especially the poor, in such enormous numbers that one half of the inhabitants of England are related to have died of it. It killed the cattle in great numbers, too, and so few working men remained alive that there were not enough left to till the ground. After eight years of differing and quarreling, the Prince of Wales again invaded France with an army of sixty thousand men. He went through the south of the country, burning and plundering wheresoever he went, while his father, who had still the Scottish war upon his hands, did the like in Scotland, but was harassed and worried in his retreat from that country by the Scottish men who repaid his cruelties with interest. The French King Philip was now dead, and was succeeded by his son John. The Black Prince, called by that name from the colour of the armour he wore, to set off his fair complexion, continuing to burn and destroy in France, roused John into determined opposition, and so cruel had the Black Prince been in his campaign, and so severely had the French peasants suffered that he could not find one who for love or money, or the fear of death, would tell him what the French King was doing, or where he was. Thus it happened that he came upon the French King's forces, all of a sudden near the town of Poitiers, and found that the whole neighbouring country was occupied by a vast French army. God help us, said the Black Prince, we must make the best of it. So on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of September, the Prince whose army was now reduced to ten thousand men in all, prepared to give battle to the French King, who had sixty thousand horse alone. While he was so engaged there came riding from the French camp a cardinal who had persuaded John to let him offer terms, and try to save the shedding of Christian blood. Save my honour, said the Prince to this good priest, and save the honour of my army, and I will make any reasonable terms. He offered to give up all the towns, castles, and prisoners he had taken, and to swear to make no war in France for seven years. But as John would hear of nothing but his surrender, with a hundred of his chief knights, the treaty was broken off, and the Prince said quietly, God defend the right, we shall fight tomorrow. Therefore on the Monday morning, at a break of day, the two armies prepared for battle. The English were posted in a strong place, which could only be approached by one narrow lane, skirted by hedges on both sides. The French attacked them by this lane, but were so galled and slain by English arrows from behind the hedges, that they were forced to retreat. Then went six hundred English bowmen round about, and, coming upon the rear of the French army, reigned arrows on them thick and fast. The French knights, thrown into confusion, quitted their banners and dispersed in all directions. Said Sir John Chandos to the Prince, Ride forward, noble Prince, and the day is yours. The King of France is so valiant a gentleman, that I know he will never fly, and may be taken prisoner. Said the Prince to this, advance English banners in the name of God and Saint George, and on they pressed until they came up with the French King, fighting fiercely with his battle-axe, and when all his nobles had forsaken him, attended faithfully to the last by his youngest son Philip, only sixteen years of age. Father and son fought well, and the King had already two wounds in his face, and had been beaten down, when he at last delivered himself to a banished French knight, and gave him his right hand glove, in token that he had done so. The Black Prince was generous as well as brave, and he invited the royal prisoner to supper in his tent, and waited upon him at table, and when they afterwards rode into London in a gorgeous procession, mounted the French King on a fine, cream-coloured horse, and rode at his side on a little pony. This was all very kind, but I think it was, perhaps, a little theatrical, too, and has been made more meritorious than it deserved to be, especially as I am inclined to think that the greatest kindness to the King of France would have been not to have shown him to the people at all. However, it must be said, for these acts of politeness, that in course of time they did much to soften the horrors of war and the passions of conquerors. It was a long, long time before the common soldiers began to have the benefit of such courtly deeds, but they did at last, and thus it is possible that a poor soldier who asked for quarter at the battle of Waterloo, or any other such great fight, may have owed his life indirectly to Edward the Black Prince. At this time there stood in the strand in London a palace called the Savoy, which was given up to the captive King of France and his son for their residence. As the King of Scotland had now been King Edward's captive for eleven years too, his success was, at this time, tolerably complete. The Scottish business was settled by the prisoner being released under the title of Sir David, King of Scotland, and by his engaging to pay a large ransom. The State of France encouraged England to propose harder terms to that country, where the people rose against the unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its nobles, where the nobles rose in turn against the people, where the most frightful outrages were committed on all sides, and where the insurrection of the peasants, called the insurrection of the Jackery, from Jacques, a common Christian name among the country people of France, awakened terrors and hatreds that have scarcely yet passed away. A treaty called the Great Peace was at last signed, under which King Edward agreed to give up the greater part of his conquests, and King John to pay, within six years, a ransom of three million crowns of gold. He was so beset by his own nobles and courtiers for having yielded to these conditions, though they could help him to know better, that he came back of his own will to his old palace prison of the Savoy, and there died. There was a sovereign of Castile at that time, called Pedro the Cruel, who deserved the name remarkably well, having committed, among other cruelties, a variety of murders. This amiable monarch, being driven from his throne for his crimes, went to the province of Bordeaux, where the Black Prince, now married to his cousin Joan, a pretty widow, was residing and besought his help. The Prince, who took to him much more kindly than a Prince of such fame ought to have taken to such a ruffian, readily listened to his fair promises, and, agreeing to help him, sent secret orders to some troublesome disbanded soldiers of his and his father's, who called themselves the Free Companions, and who had been a pest to the French people, for some time to aid this Pedro. The Prince himself, going into Spain to head the army of relief, soon set Pedro on his throne again, where he no sooner found himself, then, of course, he behaved like the villain he was, broke his word without the least shame, and abandoned all the promises he had made to the Black Prince. Now it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to pay soldiers to support this murderous king, and finding himself, when he came back disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad health, but deeply in debt, he began to tax his French subjects to pay his creditors. They appealed to the French King Charles. War broke out again, and the French town of Limoges, which the Prince had greatly benefited, went over to the French King. Upon this he ravaged the province of which it was the capital, burnt and plundered, and killed in the old sickening way, and refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women, and children, taken in the offending town, though he was so ill and so much in need of pity himself from heaven, that he was carried in a litter. He lived to come home and make himself popular with the people and parliament, and he died on Trinity Sunday, the 8th of June, 1376, at forty-six years old. The whole nation mourned for him as one of the most renowned and beloved princes it had ever had, and he was buried with great lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, his monument with his figure carved in stone, and represented in the old black armor, laying on its back, may be seen at this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet, and a pair of gauntlets hanging from a beam above it, which most people like to believe were once worn by the black Prince. King Edward did not outlive his renowned son long. He was old, and one Alice Perrer, a beautiful lady, had contrived to make him so fond of her in his old age, that he could refuse her nothing, and made himself ridiculous. She little deserved his love, or, what I dare say she valued a great deal more, the jewels of the late Queen, which he gave her among other rich presents. She took the very ring from his finger on the morning of the day when he died, and left him to be pillaged by his faithless servants. Only one good priest was true to him, and attended him to the last. Besides being famous for the great victories I have related, the reign of King Edward III was rendered memorable in better ways, by the growth of architecture and the erection of Windsor Castle. In better ways still, by the rising up of Wycliffe, originally a poor parish priest, who devoted himself to exposing, with wonderful power and success, the ambition and corruption of the Pope, and of the whole church of which he was the head. Some of those flammings were induced to come to England in this reign, too, and to settle in Norfolk, where they made better woolen cloths than the English had ever had before. The order of the garter, a very fine thing in its way, but hardly so important as a good close for the nation, also dates from this period. The king is said to have picked up a lady's garter at a ball, and to have said, Honisot Kimali Pence, in English, evil be to him who evil thinks of it. The courtiers were usually glad to imitate what the king said or did, and hence, from a slight incident, the order of the garter was instituted and became a great dignity. So the story goes. End of chapter 18.