Page:The Queens of England.djvu/146

122 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. - he, the haughty favorite, treated her in return with insult. From this time, one trait in Isabella's character became con- spicuous. No man ever excited her resentment who did not perish under its effect ; the king himself forming no exception to this fact. Isabella at this period lost the reputation of a gentle and a good woman, peculiarly humane and charitable to the poor. But she had marked Gaveston for destruction, and it rapidly came. The Earl of Lancaster put himself at the head of the disaffected nobility, who demanded, with arms in their hands, the final dismissal of Gaveston. The king fled with his favorite to Newcastle, taking the queen with him, and, hotly pursued by the victorious barons, they marched thence to Scarborough, leaving the queen to take care of her- self, who retired to Tynemouth. Edward left Gaveston in possession of the almost impregnable castle at Scarborough, "and hastened to levy forces in the midland counties. But Gaveston, apparently almost as weak as his monarch, soon suffered himself to fall into the hands of his enemies, who carried him near to Warwick, where they beheaded him at Blacklow hill. The death of Gaveston, and the birth of a prince, the after- wards famous Edward the Third, when the queen his mother was only in her eighteenth year, gave a period of repose and joy to the realm. This continued for about ten years, during the greater part of which, the queen becoming successively the mother of several children, so conducted herself as to win the highest good-will of the nation. Had she possessed a husband of a vigorous and virtuous character, it is probable that the worst parts of her nature would have lain dormant, and, from want of stimulus, have died out. But the feebleness and follies of her husband roused the darker passions of her soul, and, while the king involved himself in ruin, he gave occasion to the development of a criminality in her which has scarcely a parallel in history. The amiable mother, the acquiescent wife, the benevolent woman and queen, were by degrees metamor- phosed into the insatiate reveler in adulterous passion, the relentless female fiend of cruelty, and of infamy ostentatious and unabashed. Through the influence of Isabella, the barons, who had risen in arms, and put Gaveston to death, were eventually pardoned. But scarcely was this effected, when, with his incurable prone- ness to fix his affections on a favorite, the king had supplied