Thomas, Earl of Lancaster.

DIED A. d. 1322.

AMONG Edward's English nobles, the most powerful was Thomas, the grandson of Henry III., who united in his single person the five earldoms of Lancaster, Lincoln, Leicester, Salisbury, and Derby. He was the eldest son of Edmond, surnamed Crouchback, the favourite son of Henry III. Edward had received from his father a large portion of the forfeited estates of the rebellious barons, and many other magnificent donations: he had also obtained valuable grants from his brother, Edward I., and his mother, Eleanor. Two successive marriages, first with Aveline, sole heiress of the earl of Albemarle, who, dying with out issue, bequeathed to him the whole of her vast possessions, and next with Blanche of Artois, daughter of Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln, had vastly augmented Edmond's already extensive possessions, and this accumulation of wealth and power was turned against the crown by his descendants. The confederate barons, while concerting measures for the overthrow of the hated Gaveston, placed themselves under the leadership of Thomas Plantagenet, Edmond's eldest son, now the first prince of the blood, and by far the most potent nobleman in the kingdom. He headed the armed barons who presented themselves in the parliament at Westminster, and extorted from their intimidated sovereign an order for the immediate banishment of the man whom he most delighted to honour. Upon Gaveston's return to England, he raised and led on the ariny, which, for a time, set the royal power at defiance, and wielded the destinies of the kingdom; and when that unfortunate minion was doomed to expiate his manifold offences against the haughty nobility of England on the scaffold, the spot selected for his execution was fixed within the jurisdiction of the earl of Lancaster, who alone, of all the conspirators, dared to brave the highest resentment and indignation of his sovereign. In the negotiations which followed betwixt the king and his nobles, the earl of Lancaster still acted the most conspicuous and important part; and when a pacification was at last concluded betwixt the two parties, the approbation of Lancaster and his chief associates, who were absent at the time, was specially stipulated for by the rest.

In 1316, when, yielding to the necessities of his situation, Edward consented to the execution of the ordinances,' as they were called, and submitted to the other conditions imposed upon him by the predominating faction, the earl of Lancaster was appointed chief of the council, as well as commander-in-chief of the expedition then prepar ing against Scotland. On this occasion, the earl accepted the presidentship on three conditions:-That he should be allowed to resign if the king refused to follow his advice; that nothing of consequence should be done till he had been consulted;-and that unprofitable counsellors should be removed, from time to time, by authority of parliament. These terms were entered at his demand on the rolls. These stipulations were wise and prudent; but the influence of the royalists,

1 Walsing. 101.-T. de la More, 593.

Rot. Parl. i. 352.

notwithstanding, prevailed to such an extent, that Lancaster hesitated to attend the rendezvous at Newcastle previous to the inroad upon Scotland, and absented himself likewise from two successive meetings of parliament. In justification of this conduct, he alleged his knowledge of a clandestine correspondence betwixt Edward and the Scottish monarch, and of designs having been formed against his own life by his enemies at court. Whatever truth there might be in either of these allegations, it is certain that the popular party hung together by ties of so slender a nature, that a breath of suspicion might dissolve them. There were always men found willing to link their own fortune to that of their sovereign; and if the influence of Lancaster had been even more predominating than it was, there existed a source of dissension in his own family, which must have gone far to weaken his hands in so turbulent a period. His countess, Alice, only child of Henry, earl of Lincoln, who had brought her husband an immense accession of property, being the greatest heiress in the kingdom, appears to have lived unhappily with him, and finally to have withdrawn from his house and bed, and placed herself under the protection of John de Warenne, earl of Surrey. The insulted husband instantly appealed to arms, and had made himself master of several of Surrey's castles, and likewise of some belonging to the king, when, by the interference of the pope's legates and the earl of Pembroke, both parties were prevailed upon to suspend hostilities, and appeal their differences to a parliament to be held at Lincoln. In this appeal, the influence of Lancaster prevailed, and the ordinances were again confirmed.

The rise of the Despensers, under the favour shown them by the king, was the next matter which supplied the turbulent Lancaster' with a pretext for taking up arms against his sovereign. Success again attended his rebellious proceedings; and on the same rolls, in which the order of banishment against the Spensers, father and son, was recorded, a general pardon was also entered to the earl and his associates for all treasons, murders, or felonies, committed by them up to that day. Lancaster's domination, however, was now drawing to a close. Impatient of the yoke which his haughty cousin had contrived to fix upon him, Edward had recourse to arms; and being joined by a number of the barons, formerly confederates with Lancaster, but who now began to perceive the secret ambition which prompted his opposition to the king, compelled Lancaster and the earl of Hereford, who made common cause with him, to retire into Yorkshire. Lancaster had long been suspected of secretly negotiating with the Scots; he now entered into a formal alliance with the king of Scotland, and, emboldened by his promise of aid, advanced with his army to oppose the passage of the royalists over the Trent at Burton; but his plan of operations failing, he retreated northwards, pursued by the royal forces who came up with him at Boroughbridge, where his passage of the river was likewise disputed by Sir Andrew Harcla. Repulsed in the attempt to force his way, and discouraged by the fall of his associate Hereford, who was slain in endeavouring to force the bridge, Lancaster returned into the town of Boroughbridge, probably in the hope that the promised reinforcement from Scotland might arrive during the night.

Rot. Parl. i 364.

But in this hope he was disappointed, and on receiving a summons to surrender next morning he retired into the chapel, and having recommended himself to the mercy of heaven, resigned himself to his captors, who conducted him to York. Here he was summarily arraigned before the king, six earls, and the royal barons, and was condemned to be drawn, hanged, and quartered as a traitor. The king was pleased to commute this ignominious punishment for that of decapitation, but his courtiers took care to signalise their own loyalty by heaping insults on the person of the traitor. On the 22d of March, 1322, being seven days after the battle of Boroughbridge, this once potent earl was led forth to execution from his own castle of Pontefract, on a lean jade without a bridle, to an eminence in the neighbourhood. The spectators pelted him with mud as he moved along, and taunted him with the title of King Arthur, the name which he had assumed in his correspondence with the Scots; but he bore their insults with calmness and dignity. "King of heaven," he cried, "grant me mercy, for the king of earth hath forsaken me !" On reaching the spot which had been fixed on for his execution, he knelt down at first with his face towards the east, but the malignity of his enemies was yet unsoftened, and as a last insult they ordered him to turn towards the north, that he might look upon his friends. He obeyed, and while in that posture his head was struck off by an executioner from London. His associates, Badlesmere, Giffard, Barret, Cheyney, Fleming, and several others were afterwards formally tried and executed; and Harcla received for his services the forfeited earldom of Carlisle, a boon which he was destined soon to forfeit in his turn for treasonable correspondence with the Scots. Lancaster's immense possessions being forfeited to the crown, were extensively employed in gratifying the rapacity of the Despensers; but the fortunes of the house of Lancaster did not long remain under a cloud. Thomas had died childless, but Henry, the second sor of Edward Crouchback, contrived so to ingratiate himself with Edward's son and successor, that in the first parliament of that monarch, he obtained an act for the reversal of his brother's attainder, whereby he became repossessed of the confiscated family estates.

Hugh Spenser.

DIED A. D. 1326.

THE king's chief favourite after the death of Gaveston was Hugh Le Despenser, or Spenser, a young gentleman of English birth, of high rank, and ample fortune. His father, a baron descended from the Conqueror's steward, had been in high trust under Edward I., and he himself held the office of chamberlain of the royal household. His handsome person and agreeable manners won for him the favour of his sovereign; while his marriage with a daughter of the late earl of Gloucester sain at Bannockburn, gave him possession of the greater portion of the county of Glamorgan. But these advantages rendered him so much the more an object of aversion and envy to the less favoured and less

Rym. iii. 939.

potent nobility. Wa.singnam indeed represents him as drawing upon himself the hatred of the other courtiers, and of the Lancasterian party, by his arrogant and oppressive behaviour,' but there is no proof of this, and it seems probable that the head and front of his offending lay in his avowed attachment to the royal person, and the consequent gratitude of his sovereign.

In 1321, John de Mowbray having taken possession, without previously obtaining livery and seizin from the crown, of an estate belonging to his wife's father, the younger Spenser advised his royal master to claim the fief as escheated to the crown, and subsequently to confer it upon himself. This transaction excited the indignation of the lords of the marches, who immediately began to devastate the possessions of the favourite and destroy his castles. In these proceedings they were countenanced by the earls of Lancaster and Hereford, who also supported an act of accusation against the Spensers, consisting of eleven counts; it charged them with usurping the royal power, and alienating the king's affections from his faithful nobility, also generally with advising unconstitutional measures and extorting fines from all who solicited grants from the crown. The act concluded with these words. "Therefore we, the peers of the land, earls and barons, in the presence of our lord the king, do award that Hugh Le Despenser, the son, and Hugh Le Despenser, the father, be disinherited for ever, and banished from the kingdom of England, never to return, unless it be by the assent of the king, and by assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, in parliament duly summoned: and that they quit the realm by the port of Dover before the next feast of St John the Baptist: and that if they be found in England after that day, or ever return, they be dealt with as enemies of the king and kingdom." The king endeavoured to shield his favourite from the punishment demanded; he urged that the elder Spenser was beyond the sea on his service, that the younger was with his fleet guarding the Cinque Ports, and that it was unjust to condemn men before they had had an opportunity of answering the counts laid to their charge; the prelates also protested in writing against the sentence; but the plan of intimidation resorted to by Lancaster prevailed, and the royal assent to the banishment of the two Spensers was wrung from the unwilling monarch.

On the decline of Lancaster's popularity, and the consequent infusion of new hopes and fresh vigour into the royal cause, the two Spensers successively returned to England and obtained the repeal of the award enacted against them. The father was also created earl of Winchester, and was amply compensated for his losses by the gift of several of the forfeited estates on the fall of his arch-enemy the earl of Lancaster. But both failed to profit by their recent lesson of adversity, and by a series of impolitic measures soon drew down upon themselves a heavier vengeance than that which they had so lately experienced. To the queen they became objects of the most decided aversion; and on her return from France, her proclamation was especially levelled against them as the principal source of the calamities which had befallen the nation under her husband's government. Bishop Orleton availing himself of the queen's known resentment towards the Spensers

on being commanded to preach before her as she passed through Ox ford in pursuit of her fugitive husband, selected for his text that passage in Genesis :-" I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. She shall bruise thy head." These words he applied to Isabella and the Spensers.

On the surrender of Bristol by the burghers, the elder Spenser, to whom the town had been intrusted by Edward, was accused before Sir William Trussel, of having usurped the royal prerogatives, and done what in him lay to widen the breach between his sovereign and the people. After a mock trial, he was hurried to the place of execution, where he was embowelled alive; his body was afterwards hung on a gibbet for four days, and then cut into pieces and thrown to the dogs.3 The execution of the old man, now in his ninetieth year, took place within sight of the king and of his own son, who had hastily put to sea with the intention of retiring into the small island of Lundy in the Bristol channel, which had been previously fortified and stored with provisions. But after beating about for several days in the estuary of the Severn, contending with a strong westerly wind, the fugitives were compelled to re-land near Swansea, and endeavoured to elude the vigilance of their enemies by concealing themselves in different places between the monastery of Neath and the castle of Caerfilly. Here their retreat was soon discovered by Henry, earl of Leicester, who, having corrupted the fidelity of the natives, got possession of the younger Spenser, and Robert Baldoch, the king's chancellor, who had secreted themselves in the woods near the castle of Lantressan. Edward, on hearing of their apprehension, instantly surrendered himself to his cousin. Baldoch, being a priest, escaped immediate execution, but sank under the rigours of his imprisonment. A severer fate awaited Spenser. He was arraigned at Hereford before the same judge who had pronounced sentence against his father. The charges preferred against him were his returning to the kingdom after having been banished in parliament; his having caused the earl of Lancaster to be put to death at Pomfret castle; his having favoured the king of Scots, and by his treachery occasioned the defeat of Bannockburn; and finally, his having excited misunderstandings between the king and queen, and by bribes procured her being sent out of France. Most of these accusations were totally unfounded, and some of them even inconsistent with each other. But they sufficed for the purpose of his enemies, and sentence of death being recorded against him, he was immediately drawn in a black gown, with the arms of his family reversed, and a wreath of nettles on his head, to the place of execution, where he was hanged on a gallows fifty feet high. His head was afterwards sent as an agree able present to the citizens of London, who decorated one of their bridges with it.