Chapter 39

Gaveston did nothing to mitigate the general aversion. He had not learnt wisdom by his first fall, and though the clergy and commons meeting at Stamford granted a twenty-fifth of the year’s produce to the King, and consented to his remaining so long as he should demean himself properly, he soon disgusted them also. He wore the crown-jewels openly, and affected greater contempt than ever for the Barons, till it became popularly said that there were two Kings, the real one a mere subject to the false. The young Queen wrote piteous complaints to her father of her husband’s neglect; and the Countess of Cornwall had still greater wrongs from Gaveston to complain of to her brother, the Earl of Gloucester. Dances, sports, and gayeties were the occupation of the court, heedless of the storm that was preparing. The Barons, jealous, alarmed, and irritated, looked on in displeasure, and on the All-Saints’ Day of 1310, after high mass at St. Paul’s, the bold-spirited Archbishop Winchelsea, in his pontifical robes, standing on the step of the altar, made a discourse to the Earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, Pembroke, Hereford, and eight other persons, after which he bound them by an oath to unite to deliver the kingdom from the exactions of the favorite, and pronounced sentence of excommunication against any who should reveal any part of their confederation before the time.

The Earl of Lincoln, the last of the Lacys, shortly after fell sick, and made what he thought a death-bed exhortation to the Earl of Lancaster, who had married his only daughter, not to abandon England to the King and the Pope, but, like the former barons, to resist all infractions of their privileges.

This Earl of Lancaster was the son of Edmund Crouchback and of Blanche of Artois, mother of the Queen of France. He was a fine-looking man, devout and gracious, and much beloved by the people, who called him the Gentle Count; but Gaveston’s nickname for him of the “stage-player” may not have been unmerited, for he seems to have been over-greedy of popular applause and influence, and to have had much personal ambition; and it does not seem certain, though Gaveston might be vain, and his master weak and foolish, that Lancaster and his friends did not exaggerate their faults, and excite the malevolence of a nation never tolerant either of royal favorites or of an expensive court. Pembroke was Aymar de Valence, son of one of the foreign brothers who had been the bane of Henry III.; but now, becoming a thorough Englishman, he bore the like malice to the unfortunate Gascon who held the same post as his own father had done. Hereford, though husband to the King’s favorite sister Elizabeth, was true to the stout old Bohun, his father, who had sworn to Edward I. that he would neither go nor hang. Two poor butterflies, such as Edward II. and Gaveston, could have done little injury to the realm, but the fierce warriors were resolved to crush them, impatient of the calls upon their purses made needful by their extravagance.

A tournament had been announced at Kennington, and preparations were made; but Gaveston’s jousts were not popular. None of the Barons accepted the invitation, and in the night the lists and scaffolding were secretly carried away. This mortification was ominous, but Edward’s funds were so low that he could not avoid summoning a parliament to meet at Westminster; and at their meeting the nobles again resorted to the device of Montfort at the Mad Parliament. They brought their armed followers, and forced the King to consent to the appointment of a committee of ordainers, who made him declare that this measure proceeded of his own free will, and was not to prejudice the rights of the Crown; but that their office would expire of itself on the ensuing Michaelmas-Day. So strangely and inconsistently did they try to bring about their own ends without infringing on the constitution.

Gaveston had either previously hidden himself, or was driven away by the ordainers; but the King, anxious to escape from their surveillance, proclaimed an expedition to Scotland, and summoned his vassals to meet him at York. Hardly any noble came except Gaveston, and they made an ineffectual inroad into Scotland together, after which Gaveston shut himself up in Bamborough Castle, while the King went to London to receive the decision of the ordainers. The foremost was, of course, the banishment of Gaveston; and he went, but only again to appear, before two months were past, in the company of the King, at York.

Lancaster and his friends now look up arms and marched northward. Edward and his court had proceeded to Newcastle, but no army was with them; and on the report of the advance of the enemy the King fled to Tynemouth, and embarked in a little boat with his friend, leaving behind him his wife, discourteously perhaps, but hardly cruelly, for Isabel was the niece of Lancaster, and probably would have been in more danger from a sea-voyage in a rude vessel, than from the rebel lords. She was, however, greatly offended, and was far more inclined to her uncle, who wrote her an affectionate letter, than to her regardless husband.

Edward and Piers landed at Scarborough, where the King was obliged to leave his friend for security, while he went on to raise his standard at York. Few obeyed the summons, and Pembroke hastened to besiege Scarborough. It was impossible to hold out, and Gaveston surrendered, Pembroke and Henry Percy binding themselves for his safety to the King, under forfeiture of life and limb. Gaveston was to be confined in his own castle of Wallingford, and the Earl proceeded to escort him thither. But at Dedington Pembroke left the party to visit his wife, who was in the neighborhood, and, on rising in the morning, Gaveston beheld the guard changed. They bore the badge of Warwick, and the grim black dog of Ardennes rode exulting at their head. The unhappy man was set upon a mule, and carried to Warwick Castle, where Lancaster, Hereford, and Surrey, were met to decide his fate in the noble pile newly raised by Earl Guy, to whom the loftiest tower owes its name.

They set Piers before them, and gave him a mock trial. At first there was a reluctance to shed blood, but a voice exclaimed, “Let the fox go, and you will have to hunt him again.” And it was resolved that, in defiance of law and of their own honor, Piers Gaveston should die.

He flung himself on his knees before Lancaster, and implored mercy; but in vain he called him “Gentle Count.” “Old hog” rankled in the mind of the Earl, who, with his two confederates, rode-forth to Blacklow Hill, a knoll between Warwick and Coventry, and there, beneath the clump of ragged pine-trees, they sternly and ruthlessly looked on while, on June 19th, 1312, the head of the unfortunate young Gaveston was struck off, a victim to his own vanity and the inordinate affection of his master.

Pembroke, regretting either his carelessness or his treachery, when he saw the dreadful consequences, went to the King, and satisfied him of his innocence. Poor Edward was at first wild with grief and rage, but his efforts to punish the murderers were fruitless; and gradually his wrath cooled enough to listen to the mediation of the Pope and King of France, and he consented to grant the Barons a pardon. They wanted to force him, for their own justification, to declare Gaveston a traitor; but weak as Edward was, his affection could not be overcome. He could forgive the murderers, but he could not denounce the memory of the murdered friend of his youth. And the Barons were forced to content themselves with receiving a free pardon after they had come to profess their penitence on their knees before the King enthroned in Westminster Hall.

Gaveston had been buried by some friars at Oxford; but, twelve years after, Edward showed how enduring his love had been, by transporting the corpse to the church he had newly built at Langley, and placing with his own hands two palls of gold on the tomb.

CAMEO XXXVIII. BANNOCKBURN. (1307-1313.)

_King of England_. 1307. Edward II.

_King of Scotland_. 1306. Robert I.

_King of France_. 1285. Philippe IV.

_Emperor of Germany_. 1308. Henry VII.

_Pope_. 1305. Clement VI.

While the son of the Hammer of the Scots wasted his manhood in silken ease, the brave though savage patriots of the North were foot by foot winning back their native soil.

Lord Clifford had posted an English garrison in Douglas Castle, and reigned over Douglasdale, which had been granted to him by Edward I. on the forfeiture of Baron William. It sorely grieved the spirit of James Douglas to see his inheritance held by the stranger, and, with Bruce’s permission, he sought his own valley in disguise, revealing himself only to an old servant, named Thomas Dickson, who burst into tears at the first sight of his young lord, and gave him shelter in his cottage.

Here Douglas lay concealed, while Dickson conducted to him, one by one, his trusty vassals, and measures were concerted with total disregard to the sacred holiday. Once, all Passion-tide would have been peaceful for the sake of the Truce of God; but the wrongs of the Scots had blotted out all the gentler influences that soften war, and in their eyes justified treachery and sacrilege. On the Palm-Sunday of 1307, when the English troops would come forth in procession to the Church of St. Bride, carrying willow boughs in memory of the palm-branches at Jerusalem, the adherents of Douglas intended to attack and beset them on all sides, and Douglas, by way of encouragement, made a grant to Dickson of the lands of Hisleside. Dickson and the other secret friends of the Scots mingled in the procession, with their arms concealed, and entered the church with the English, and no sooner had they disappeared within the low doorway, than the loud slogan of “Douglas! Douglas!” was heard without. Dickson drew his sword and ran upon the English, but the signal had been given too soon, and he was overthrown and slain before Sir James came up. The English bravely defended the chancel, but Douglas and his armed followers prevailed, killed twenty-six, took twelve prisoners, and set out for the castle, which, in full security, had been left with all the gates open, with no one within but the porter, and the cook dressing the dinner, which was eaten by very different guests from those whom they expected. Douglas had not men enough to hold the castle, and had a great dislike to standing a siege. “I had rather hear the lark sing, than the mouse squeak,” was his saying, and he therefore resolved to return to his king on the mountains, and carry off all the treasure and arms that could be transported from Douglasdale. As to the remainder, he showed that French breeding had not rooted the barbarian even out of the “gentil Lord James.” He broke up every barrel of wheat, flour, or meal, staved every cask of wine or ale among them on the floor of the hall, flung the corpses of dead men and horses upon them, slew his prisoners on the top of the horrible compound, and finally set fire to the castle, calling it, in derision, the Douglas Larder.

Clifford, enraged at this horrible foray, came in person to Douglasdale, cleansed the fire-scathed walls, built a new tower, and entrusted the defence to a captain named Thirlwall. Him Sir James deluded by sending fourteen men to drive a herd of cattle past the castle, when Thirlwall, intending to plunder the drovers, came forth, fell into the ambush laid for him by Douglas, and was slain with all his men.

It went forth among the English, that Black Sir James had made oath that, if he abode not within his father’s castle, neither should any Englishman dwell there. The knights of Edward’s court named it the “Perilous Castle of Douglas,” and Lord Clifford found that even brave men made excuses, and were unwilling to risk the dishonor of the loss, or to run the chance of serving to furnish a second Douglas larder. At this juncture a young lady, enthusiastic in romance, bethought her of making her hand the reward of any knight who would hold out the Perilous Castle for a year and a day. The spirited Sir John de Walton took the damsel at her word, and shut himself up in Douglas Castle; but his prudence did not equal his courage, and he fell a prey to the same stratagem which had deluded Thirlwall, except that the bait, in this case, was sacks of corn instead of wandering cattle. The young knight was slain in the encounter, when his lady’s letters were found in his bosom, and brought to Sir James, who was so much touched by this chivalrous incident that he spared the remainder of the garrison, and gave them provisions and money to return in safety to Clifford [Footnote: The wild adventures at the Perilous Castle derive a most affecting interest from the chord they never failed to touch in the heart of “The Last Minstrel.” Seen by him when a schoolboy, the Dale of Douglas, the ruin of the castle, and the tombs at St. Bride’s, aided to form his spirit of romance; the Douglas ballad lore rang in his ears through life, stirring his heart and swelling his eyes with tears; and the home of the Douglas was the last spot he sought to explore, in the land which he loved with more than a patriot’s love. Castle Dangerous was the last tale he told; and though the hand was feeble, the brain over-tasked, and the strain faltering, yet still the same heart breathed in every word, and it was a fit farewell from Scott to the haunted castles, glens, and hills of his home.]

Douglasdale, Ettrick Forest, and Jeddart, were thus made too terrible to be held by the English; but Bruce himself was for a long time disabled by a severe illness which gave slight hope of recovery. At Inverary, the Earl of Buchan made an attack on him when he was still so weak as to be obliged to be supported on horseback by a man on either side of him; but he gained a complete victory, and followed it up by such a dreadful devastation, that “the harrying of Buchan” was a proverb for half a century. The oaks sunk deep in the mosses bear marks of fire on their trunks, as if in memory of this destruction.

Another victory, a “right fair point of chivalry,” was gained in Galloway by Edward Bruce, who in one year, 1308, took thirteen fortresses in that district. Robert might well say that “he was more afraid of the bones of Edward I. than of the living Edward of Caernarvon, and that it was easier to win a kingdom from the son than half a foot of land from the father.” Edward II. was always intending to come to Scotland in person, and wasting time in preparations, spending subsidies as fast as he collected them, and changing his governors. In less than a year six different rulers were appointed, and, of course no consistent course could be pursued by nobles following each other in such quick succession.

At a lonely house near Lyme Water, Sir James Douglas captured the King’s sister’s son, Thomas Randolph, and led him to Bruce.

“Nephew” said Bruce, “you have forgotten your allegiance.”

“Have Done nothing of which I have been ashamed,” returned Randolph. “You blame me, but you deserve blame. If you choose to defy the King of England, why not debate the matter like a true knight in a pitched field?”

“That may be hereafter,” replied Bruce, calmly; “but since thou art so rude of speech, it is fitting thy proud words should be punished, till thou learn my right and thy duty.”

Whatever was, strictly speaking, Bruce’s _right_, his nephew learnt in captivity to respect it, gave in his adhesion to King Robert, was created Earl of Moray, and became one of the firmest friends of his throne. The world was beginning to afford the successful man countenance, and the cunning Philippe le Bel wrote letters which were to pass through England under the address of the Earl of Carrick, but, within, bore the direction to King Robert of Scotland.

A vain march of Edward II into Scotland was revenged by a horrible inroad of the Scots into Northumberland, up to the very gates of Durham. On his return, Robert tried to surprise Berwick, but was prevented by the barking of a dog, which awakened the garrison. He next besieged Perth. After having discovered the shallowest part of the moat, he made a feint of raising the siege, and, after an absence of eight days, made a sudden night-attack, wading through the moat with the water up to his neck, and a scaling-ladder in one hand, while with the other he felt his way with his spear.

“What,” cried a French knight, “shall we say of our lords, who live at home in ease and jollity, when so brave a knight is here risking his life to win a miserable hamlet?”

So saying, the Frenchman rushed after the King and his men, and the town was taken before the garrison were well awake.

About the same time Douglas came upon Roxburgh, when the garrison were enjoying the careless mirth of Shrovetide. Hiding their armor with dark cloaks, Sir James and his men crept on all-fours through the brushwood till they came to the very foot of the battlements, and could hear a woman singing to her child that the Black Douglas should not touch it, and the sentries saying to each other that yonder oxen were out late. Planting their ladders, the Scots gained the summit of the tower, killed the sentinels, and burst upon the revelry with shouts of “Douglas! Douglas!” The governor, a gallant Burgundian knight, named Fiennes, retreated into the keep, and held out till he was badly wounded, and forced to surrender, when he was spared, and retreated to die in England, while the castle was levelled to the ground by Edward Bruce.

The destruction of these strongholds was matter of great joy to the surrounding peasantry, who had been cruelly despoiled by the English soldiers there stationed; and a farmer, named Binning, actually made an attempt upon the great fortress of Linlithgow, which was well garrisoned by the English. He had been required to furnish the troops with hay, and this gave him the opportunity of placing eight strong peasants well armed, lying hidden, in the wagon, by which he walked himself, while it was driven by a stout countryman with an axe at his belt, and another party were concealed close without the walls.

The drawbridge was lowered, and the portcullis raised to admit the forage, when, at the moment that the wagon stood midway beneath the arch, at a signal from the farmer, the driver with his axe cut asunder the yoke, the horses started forward, and Binning, with a loud cry, “Call all! call all!” drew the sword hidden under his carter’s frock, and killed the porter. The eight men leaped out from among the hay, and were joined by their friends from the ambush without; the cart under the doorway prevented the gates from being closed, and the pile of hay caught the portcullis as it fell. The Englishmen, surprised and discomfited, had no time to make head against the rustics, and were slaughtered or made prisoners; the castle was given up to the King, and Binning received the grant of an estate, and became a gentleman of coat-armor, with a wagon argent on his shield, and the harnessed head of a horse for a crest.

Jedburgh, Stirling, and Edinburgh, were the last castles still in the hands of the invaders. The Castle of Edinburgh, aloft on the rock frowning above the town, had been held by the English full twenty years, and, when Randolph was sent to besiege it, was governed by a Gascon knight named Piers Luband, a kinsman of Gaveston. In hatred and suspicion of all connected with the minion, the English soldiers rose against the foreigner, threw him into a dungeon, and, electing a fresh captain, made oath to hold out to the last. The rock was believed to be inaccessible, and a blockade appeared to be the only means of reducing the garrison. This had already lasted six weeks, when a man named Frank, coming secretly to Randolph, told him that his father had formerly been governor, and that he, when a youth, had been in the habit of scrambling down the south face of the rock, at night, to visit a young damsel who lived in the Grass-market, and returning in the same manner; and he undertook to guide a party by this perilous ascent into the very heart of the castle.

Randolph caught at the proposal, desperate as it was, and, selecting thirty men, chose an excessively dark night for the adventure. Frank went the first, climbing up the face of the precipice with hands and feet; then followed Sir Andrew Grey; thirdly, Randolph himself; and then the rest of the party. The ascent was exceedingly difficult and dangerous, especially in utter darkness and to men in full armor, fearing to make the slightest noise. Coming to a projecting crag, close under the wall, they rested to collect their breath, and listen. It was the moment when the guards were going their rounds, and, to their horror, they heard a soldier exclaim, as he threw a pebble down on them, “Away! I see you well!” A few more stones, and every man of them might have been hurled from the cliff by the soldiers merely rolling down stones on them. They dared not more, and a few moments’ silence proved that the alarm had been merely a trick to startle the garrison--a jest soon to turn to earnest.

When the guard had passed on, the brave Scots crept to the foot of the wall, where it was only twelve feet high, and fixed the iron hook of their rope-ladder to the top of it. Ere all had mounted, the clank of their weapons had been heard, shouts of “Treason!” arose, and the sentinels made a brave resistance; but it was too late, and, after some hard fighting, the survivors of the garrison were forced to surrender. Sir Piers Luband, on being released from his dungeon, offered his services to King Robert, whereupon the English laid all the blame of the loss of the castle upon him, declaring that he had betrayed them. Randolph’s seizure of Edinburgh was considered as the most daring of all the many gallant exploits of the Scots.

Bruce forayed Cumberland, and threatened Berwick, so that the poor Countess of Buchan was removed from thence to a more secure place of captivity. He also pursued his enemies, the Macdougals of Lorn, up the passes of Cruachan Ben, and even hunted them into the Isle of Man, where he took Rushyn Castle, and conquered the whole island. In his absence, Edward Bruce took Dundee, and besieged Stirling, until the governor, Philip Mowbray, was reduced to such straits by famine, that he begged for a truce, in which to go and inform the King of England of the state of affairs, promising to surrender on the Midsummer Day of the following year, if he were not relieved before that time. Edward Bruce granted these terms, and allowed Mowbray to depart. Robert was displeased at such a treaty, giving a full year to the enemy to collect their forces: but his brother boldly answered, “Let Edward bring every man he has; we will fight them--ay, and more too!” King Robert saw more danger than did the reckless prince, but he resolved to abide by his brother’s word, though so lightly given. It was, in fact, a challenge to the decisive battle, which was to determine whether Bruce or Plantagenet should reign in Scotland.