The Three Edwards (34 page)

The “Eleanor Cross” at Waltham Cross, Herts

Stirling Castle, Scotland

Aerial view of Windsor Castle

Berkeley Castle

The Chamber above the entrance to the Keep of Berkeley Castle, where Edward II is said to have been put to death.

Castle Rising, Norfolk

Corfe Castle, Dorset

This was the business which had brought a hostile deputation to wait on the king. The latter, knowing himself on trial, turned quickly when Orleton began to speak. He listened for a few moments while the shrill invectives of his enemy assailed his ears, then he was seen to turn pale. His knees began to tremble and then folded under him and he rolled to the floor in a faint.

When he had been raised to his feet by the Earl of Leicester and the Bishop of Winchester, he had to listen to the balance of the unsparing Orleton’s diatribe with something of the mien of a schoolboy under the lash of a master’s tongue. At the finish he wept again and then spoke in a weak voice.

“I am in your hands. You must do what seems right.”

This was what the young prince had demanded, his father’s consent. Briskly, then, Sir William Trussell stepped forward as proctor of Parliament to make the customary declaration, managing to inject into it a lack of decency and honorable feeling. Raising a forefinger in the air, he broke the bonds of fealty which bound the members. “I do make this protestation in the name of all those that will not, for the future, be in your fealty or allegiance, nor claim to hold anything of you as king”—his voice raised scornfully—“but account you as a private person, without any manner of royal dignity.”

The king, who was no longer king and no greater now than plain Sir Edward of Caernarvon, seemed to shrink inside his shoddy serge. But his humiliation was not yet complete. Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the royal household, came forward and broke his white staff of office, which was done only on the deposition or death of a royal master.

Edward strove to accept these cruel rites in good spirit, but when he spoke, desiring to do so with dignity, he could frame only the plainest of words. “I am aware,” he said, “that for my many sins I am thus punished. Have compassion on me.” Then he looked about him with a faint smile, keeping his eyes away, no doubt, from his two chief tormentors, Orleton and Trussell. “Much as I grieve at having incurred the ill will of the people, I am glad they have chosen my oldest son to be their king.”

Thus ended his reign. It had been as inglorious as might have been expected in view of his unfitness for the role of king. His back bowed in shame under his threadbare robe, he turned and stumbled from the room, a humble knight, with not a real friend left, not an inch of land he could claim, and not a coin in his purse. His continued existence, he knew, would depend on one thing only: the will of the beautiful wife he now called the she-wolf of France.

When the news spread through London that Queen Isabella was leaving the Tower to ride through to Westminster, the worthy guild members donned hats and cloaks and came out to the streets to see, and did not object when their apprentices deserted counter and bench and followed on the heels of their masters. The queen was worth seeing this morning. No longer was she under the necessity of dressing simply in her role of lady in distress. She wore an ermine cloak, white and virginal and costly, and under it her tight sleeves, of the richest silk from the East, were lined with gold buttons. Her skirts had been pleated and flared until they achieved a bouffant extreme. She looked lovely; her eyes sparkled and her cheeks had a high color, and her hair showed not a single traitorous white strand. Not only did she raise her hand in greeting as she passed, she waved to her friends, the Londoners, and smiled and even laughed.

“Our fair lady is happy. She must have made a good notch,” said the merchants among themselves. Most of them still used the notched stick as a daybook.

But it was different when Isabella returned as the shades of evening were falling. Already in the streets the heralds were making their proclamation:

This should have been a welcome sound in her ears. It was what she had fought for. But there was no smile on her face as she made her way through the crowded streets. The Londoners were out in force and cheering for the young king. They gave her a boisterous welcome, but she did not respond. Occasionally she raised a hand in acknowledgment, but that was all.

A word they had used that morning came again into the comments of
the good merchants and the trained band captains, but this time in a quite different sense. “This is out of all scotch and notch,” they said, an expression which meant they were completely at sea.

This is what had happened at Westminster: a standing Council of Regency had been appointed, made up of four bishops, four earls, and six barons, it being stipulated that one bishop, one earl, and two barons would be in constant attendance on the king. Henry of Lancaster was named head of the council, the post once held by the late Earl Thomas.

Now Isabella had wanted to be regent. She had fully expected it, and the action of Parliament had been a bitter blow to her.

Why, she asked herself as she rode back to the Tower, had she been passed over? Had not Blanche of Castile been made regent of France nearly a century before when her son Louis IX was twelve years old? Although her son had grown up to be the great king called St. Louis, Blanche had maintained her ascendancy over him to the very end. Indeed, Blanche had been so reluctant to have him marry that she had kept the young king on the same floor she occupied in the royal palace and had arranged the bride’s rooms on the floor above. Whenever she heard his step on the stairs on the way to pay his young queen a visit, she would be out of the door in a wink, with papers to be signed and other affairs of state which could not wait for a minute.