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 rely at all upon
himself; and his new favourite was one HUGH LE DESPENSER, 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 a rush for,
and that was a dangerous place to hold. The Nobles leagued 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 MOWBRAY, and to divers other angry Welsh
gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took their castles, and seized
their estates. 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 Welshmen, 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 Holborn and Clerkenwell, 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
Boroughbridge, 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 despatched 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 Boroughbridge,
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 LE BEL, 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
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England