Page:The Queens of England.djvu/150

126 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. making his fortune. He declared that he "believed God had inspired him with a desire for this enterprise for his advance- ment." An armament soon collected at Dort, and on the 25th of September, 1326, the queen embarked, accompanied by Sir John Hainault, as commander of the forces, and Roger Mortimer, as commander of her English partisans. Her army consisted of 2,757 soldiers. Henry of Lancaster, and many other lords and knights, forgetting her offenses against them in their still deeper hatred to. the Despensers, flocked to her standard. The infamy of the queen, so notorious in France, was still unknown to the mass of the people on this side of the Channel. Their belief in her being an injured and persecuted queen and woman, blinded them in all attempts to unveil her real character, and from all sides streamed multitudes to her aid. Every Planta- genet in the kingdom deserted the king and united in her support. The king, in consternation, proscribed all who had apppeared in arms against him, and offered a thousand pounds for the Earl of Mortimer. Isabella replied by offering two thousand for the head of young Despenser. The affrighted king fled to Bristol. The queen and all her forces went in brisk pursuit. The Londoners rose, and, in the queen's name, seized on the Tower, and put to death the Bishop of Exeter, whom the king had left in it ; and named the king's boy- son, John of Eltham, Keeper of the city. From Bristol the king fled in a boat for the Welsh shore, after seeing the elder Despenser executed before the walls with unheard-of barbarities. But, driven by a storm to the coast of Glamorganshire, Despenser and Baldrock, Bishop of Nor- wich, his companions, were seized in the woods of Llantressan ; and Edward, helpless and hopeless, immediately surrendered himself, and was led in triumph to the queen, and delivered to her as her prisoner. The hour was now come which was to display the full ma- lignity of Isabella's nature. She had reached the object of her ambition. Power was in her hands, and she indulged in its exercise with a regardlessness of honor, nature, or feeling, which stripped the bandage from the eyes of her deluded sub- jects, and showed her as she was — a monster of cruelty and vice in the shape of a lovely woman. Isabella set forward towards London, leading her husband, a despised and degraded captive, in her train. His favorite,