feeble-headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of himself.
Somebody lifted him up, and then SIR WILLIAM TRUSSEL, the Speaker
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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 his history by saying that he lived a harmless
life in the Castle and the Castle gardens at Kenilworth, 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 GOURNAY and
WILLIAM OGLE.
One night – it was the night of September the twenty-first, one
thousand three hundred and twenty-seven – 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 forbode
that no good is being done to him in his dismal prison!’ Next
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, Gournay 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 the Second
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 – ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD
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
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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