were taken by the Scottish men; so many
waggons and other wheeled vehicles were
seized, that it is related that they would have
reached, if they had been drawn out in a line,
one hundred and eighty miles. The fortunes
of Scotland were, for the time, completely
changed; and never was a battle won, more
famous upon Scottish ground, than this great
battle of Bannockburn.

Plague and famine succeeded in England;
and still the powerless King and his
disdainful Lords were always in contention.
Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made
proposals to Bruce, to accept the rule of that
country. He sent his brother Edward to
them, who was crowned King of Ireland. He
afterwards went himself to help his brother
in his Irish wars, but his brother was
defeated in the end and killed. Robert
Bruce, returning to Scotland, still increased
his strength there.

As the King's ruin had begun in a favorite,
so it seemed likely to end in one. He was
too poor a creature to rely at all upon himself;
and his new favorite was one HUGH LE
DESPENSER, the son of a gentleman of an
ancient family. Hugh was handsome and
brave, but he was the favorite of a weak
King, whom no man cared a rush for, and
that was a dangerous place to hold. The
Nobles leagued against him, because the King
liked him; and they lay in wait, both for his
ruin and his father's. Now, the King had
married him to the daughter of the late Earl
of Gloucester, and had given both him and
his father great possessions in Wales. In
their endeavours to extend these, they gave
violent offence to an angry "Welsh gentleman,
named JOHN DE MOWBRAY, and to divers
other angry Welsh gentlemen, who resorted
to arms, took their castles, and seized their
estates. The Earl of Lancaster had first
placed the favorite (who was a poor relation
of his own) at Court, and he considered his
own dignity offended by the preference he
received and the honors he acquired; so
he, and the Barons who were his friends,
joined the Welshmen, marched on London,
and sent a message to the King demanding
to have the favorite and his father banished.
At first, the King unaccountably took it into
his head to be spirited, and to send them a
bold reply; but, when they quartered themselves
around Holborn and Clerkenwell, and
went down, armed, to the Parliament at
Westminster, he gave way, and complied
with their demands.

His turn of triumph came sooner than he
expected. It arose out of an accidental
circumstance. The beautiful Queen happening
to be travelling, came one night to one of the
royal castles, and demanded to be lodged and
entertained there until morning. The governor
of this castle, who was one of the
enraged lords, was away, and, in his absence,
his wife refused admission to the Queen; a
scuffle took place among the common men on
either side, and some of the royal attendants
were killed. The people, who cared nothing
for the King, were very angry that their
beautiful Queen should be thus rudely treated
in her own dominions; and the King, taking
advantage of this feeling, besieged the castle,
took it, and then recalled the two Despensers
home. Upon this, the confederate lords and
the Welshmen went over to Bruce. The King
encountered them at Boroughbridge, gained
the victory, and took a number of distinguished
prisoners; among them, the Earl of Lancaster,
now an old man, upon whose
destruction he was resolved. This Earl was
taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and
there tried and found guilty by an unfair
court appointed for the purpose; he was not
even allowed to speak in his own defence.
He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a
starved pony without saddle or bridle, carried
out, and beheaded. Eight-and-twenty knights
were hanged, drawn, and quartered. When
the King had despatched this bloody work, and
had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce,
he took the Despensers into greater favor than
ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester.

But one prisoner, and an important one,
who was taken at Boroughbridge, made his
escape, and turned the tide against the King.
This was ROGER MORTIMER, always resolutely
opposed to him, who was sentenced to death,
and placed for safe-custody in the Tower of
London. He treated his guards to a quantity
of wine into which he had put a sleeping
potion; and, when they were insensible, broke
out of his dungeon, got into a kitchen,
climbed up the chimney, let himself down
from the roof of the building with a rope-
ladder, passed the sentries, got down to the
river, and made away in a boat to where
servants and horses were waiting for him.
He finally escaped to France, where CHARLES
LE BEL, the brother of the beautiful Queen,
was King. Charles sought to quarrel with
the King of England, on pretence of his
not having come to do him homage at his
coronation. It was proposed that the beautiful
Queen should go over to arrange the
dispute; she went, and wrote home to the
King, that as he was sick and could not come
to France himself, perhaps it would be better
to send over the young Prince, their son, who
was only twelve years old, who could do
homage to her brother in his stead, and in
whose company she would immediately return.
The King sent him: but, both he and the
Queen remained at the French court, and
Roger Mortimer became the Queen's lover.

When the King wrote, again and again, to
the Queen to come home, she did not reply
that she despised him too much to live with
him any more (which was the truth), but said
she was afraid of the two Despensers. In short,
her design was to overthrow the favorite's
power, and the King's power, such as it was,
and invade England. Having obtained a
French force of two thousand men, and being