Page:The Queens of England.djvu/140

ISABELLA OF FRANCE, . QUEEN OF EDWARD THE SECOND. Isabella stands darkly prominent in English history as the only queen who murdered her husband. Shakespeare has im- mortalized her infamous renown by the title of "She- wolf of France." Her character and name are thus, perhaps, more familiar to the public than those of any queen-consort in the British annals. Her early years gave evidence of levity, but it was only when her passions and her thirst of domination had acquired their full growth, that she stood forth in all the genuine horrors of her nature, and stamped herself as the true daughter of the cruel Philip le Bel. Isabella was the daughter of Philip le Bel, King of France, and Jane, Queen of Navarre. She was thus the offspring of two sovereigns in their own right ; and her three brothers, Louis* le Hutin, Philip le Long, and Charles le Bel, were successively kings of France. No queen-consort of England, therefore, came to the matrimonial throne with higher rank. She was born in the year 1295, and in 1303, when not yet quite nine years old, she was betrothed to Edward, Prince of Wales, the son of Edward the First. This betrothal took place in Paris, in presence of the King and Queen of France, the Count of Savoy and the Earl of Lincoln being the procurators on the part of the prince. Scarcely was Edward the First dead, when Edward of Carnarvon, now Edward the Second of England, was so impatient to complete his marriage with the fair young princess of France, still only in her fourteenth year, that before the funeral of the late king, his father, had taken place, he dis- patched the Bishops of Durham and Norwich, the Earls of Pembroke and Lincoln, to obtain an early appointment of the day of marriage. Such was the characteristic weakness of Edward, who never stopped to reflect where his inclinations were concerned, that on learning the proposed day of celebra- 118