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103. THE DEATH OF PIERS GAVESTON.

C. KNIGHT.

On the edge of the road that leads from Warwick to Coventry, is a knoll now almost covered with trees, which was the scene of one of the most remarkable events in our history. It was on this mount that Piers Gaveston, the favourite of a weak monarch, (Edward II.), was beheaded. The original name of this place was Blacklow-hill. It is now called either by that name, or by that of Gaveston-hill. We have visited this spot;—and the murder which was there committed appears to us to present a very appropriate illustration of the fierce and troublesome times, when force was opposed to force, and the conflicts of power had not yet submitted to the sacred dominion of law and justice.

The establishment of general freedom, and of legal obligations, in a rude and martial state of society, is generally the work not of a few years, but of whole generations. Though the terms of Magna Charta evidently imply that the great principles of civil liberty were very early developed in England, yet it is evident that the condition of the great body of the people was still slowly improved, and that the crown and the nobility were too often involved in disputes for power, which would not admit of any very decided social amelioration. During the long reign of Henry III., the country was distracted by civil contests;-and in the sueceeding sway of Edward I., the bold and martial character of the prince was communicated to the age in which he lived; and though many wholesome laws were established, the balance of authority and of interests in our constitution was still very imperfectly exhibited. The vices and frivolity of Edward II. again stirred up the contests between the monarch and the barons. The event which we are about to record shows to what daring extremities these contests would sometimes lead.

Previous to the accession of Edward II. to the throne, in the year 1307, he had submitted himself, with the most blind and obstinate confidence, to the councils of his favourite, Piers Gaveston. This young man was a Gascon by birth. He is represented by historians to have been possessed of singular personal and mental acquirements; to have been handsome, active, enterprising, and courageous-and superior in spirit and talent to the rough and unpolished barons of the English court. But he was notoriously unprincipled and profligate, and his prido and ambition were altogether of the most extravagant character. During the life of his father, the young prince Edward had exhibited marks of a vicious and dissolute disposition. He had incurred the displeasure of the king by his irregularities;— and his crimes being ascribed to the evil suggestions of Gaveston, the companion of his vices was banished the kingdom. The first act of the accession of Edward II., was to recall his favourite, and to load him with fortune and honours. He made a grant to him of the whole estate belonging to the earldom of Cornwall ;— and also bestowed upon him a sum of money, which, in the currency of our own days, would appear to exceed the most extravagant donations of the most thoughtless and luxurious princes of antiquity. Gaveston soon acquired an unbounded influence over the weak king. He removed all the high and responsible officers of the court from their stations, and filled their places with his dependents. He procured himself to be appointed Great Chamberlain of the kingdom, and he became, indeed, the sole ruler of the English dominions. The monarch bestowed upon him his own niece in marriage ;-and consummated the greatness of his favourite by appointing him guardian of the realm during a voyage which he made to France. Had Gaveston possessed the greatest discretion, it is probable that these honours would have excited the utmost jealousy amongst the English nobles. But he was

vain and presuming; and his pride and insolence laid the foundation of an enmity, as extensive as it was bitter and unrelenting.

The unbounded power and ostentation of Gaveston soon called forth the fierce and uncompromising spirit of the barons. They demanded of Edward the banishment of his favourite. The king tampered with their claims; and it soon appeared probable that the sword would decide the controversy. The barons solemnly demanded in Parliament that Gaveston should be expelled the kingdom; the clergy denounced him excommunicated, should he continue in the island. The king at length appointed him Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, assigned the whole revenue of that kingdom for his subsistence, and attended him to the place of his embarkation. In a very short period Edward, being impatient for the return of his favourite, prevailed upon the pope to absolve Gaveston, according to the wretched superstition of those days, from the oath he had taken to leave the kingdom for ever. The sentence of excommunication was also suspended. At the Parliament which followed, the king induced the nobility to consent to Gaveston's recall. But the favourite had not learned prudence. He continued to display the same unbounded arrogance which had provoked the original resentment of the nobility;—and he indulged without reserve a talent for ridicule, of all qualities the most dangerous to the possessor. The barons came armed to Parliament;—and having a popular subject of complaint against the king, they succeeded in compelling him to authorise a commission for regulating the affairs of the kingdom. The monarch proceeded to the Scottish war against Robert Bruce, accompanied by Gaveston, but his enterprises were not eventually successful. Edward returned to England. The commission which he had authorised had formed many salutary, though perhaps extreme and unconstitutional regulations, for the restriction of the royal prerogative. One of the articles particularly insisted upon was the banishment of Gaveston. The king was compelled to yield, and his favourite left the realm, and for some time resided at Bruges, with all the splendour of a sovereign prince. The next year, 1312, he ventured to return to York. The barons almost immediately took arms, under pretence of holding tournaments. They suddenly united their forces, and proceeded to attack the king at Newcastle. The unhappy monarch fled with precipitation; and Gaveston secured himself in the fortress of Scarborough, then one of the strongest holds in the kingdom. A detachment of the baronial army immediately invested that post. Gaveston stood several assaults with great bravery; -but, dreading to exasperate his enemies, he at length capitulated to the earl of Pembroke, on condition of being kept in safe custody, while the barons should deliberate on the diposal of his person, and if he should not agree to their terms, that he should be placed in the same posture of defence which he resigned. The barons in authority pledged themselves to the treaty, on pain of forfeiting all their possessions. The earl of Pembroke proposed to convey his prisoner to his own castle at Wallingford, but left him during one night at Deddington Castle, near Banbury. Guy, earl of Warwick, the implacable enemy of Gaveston, immediately seized upon his person. He bore him in triumph to Warwick Castle, where the earls of Lancaster, Hereford, and Arundel, repaired to hold a consultation about their prisoner. His fate was speedily decided. He was dragged to Blacklow-hill, about two miles from Warwick Castle, where he was beheaded amidst the scorn and reproach of his implacable and perfidious enemies.

On the top of Blacklow-hill there is a rude stone, on which the name of Gaveston, and the date of his execution, are cut in ancient characters. As we have here sat, looking with delight upon the beautiful prospect which this summit presents, we could not avoid contrasting the peacefulness and the fertility that were spread around, with the wild appearance that the same spot must have presented, at the period of

lawless violence which we have described. Beneath our feet the Avon was gliding in tranquillity and loveliness, pursuing its silent course through plenteous fields or by elegant villas-now ornamenting the mansion of the noble, and now bestowing its beauty upon the cottage of the peasant. When Gaveston fell, it glided amongst sterile cliffs, or through barren plains,-for equal laws had not then bestowed upon industry the blessing of security ;-the labourer worked for a severe task-master, and the possessions of the yeomen were under the control of a tyrannical lord. In the distant prospect we saw the lofty towers of Warwick Castle rising above the woods in ancient magnificence. When Gaveston perished, they were the scenes of many a midnight murder, and many an ignominious torture. Here had been the rude pomp, the fearful counsels, and the tumultuous passions, of the feudal days. The pride, and the devices, and the ambition of those times were now only "to point a moral, or adorn a tale." The towers of antique splendour indeed remained; -but they were associated with the beauties of modern adornment; and the hand of taste had arrested the slow ravages of time, to preserve those memorials of past generations, whose records should teach us how much we have gained in intelligence and in happiness.

104. THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

King Edward II. was not a wise and brave man like his father, but a foolish prince, who was influenced by unworthy favourites, and thought more of pleasure than of governing his kingdom. His father Edward I. would have entered Scotland at the head of a large army, before he had left Bruce time to conquer back so much of the country. But we have seen, that, very fortunately for the Scots, that wise and skilful, though ambitious king, died when he was on the point of marching into Scotland. His son Edward had afterwards neglected the Scottish war, and thus lost the opportunity of defeating Bruce when his force was small. But now, when Sir Philip Mowbray, the governor of Stirling, came to London, to tell the king, that Stirling, the last Scottish town of importance which remained in possession of the English, was to be surrendered if it were not relieved by force of arms before Midsummer, then all the English nobles called out, it would be a sin and a shame to permit the fair conquest which Edward I. had made, to be forfeited to the Scots for want of fighting. It was, therefore, resolved, that the king should go himself to Scotland, with as great forces as he could possibly muster.

King Edward the Second, therefore, assembled one of the greatest armies which a king of England ever commanded. There were troops brought from all his dominions. Many brave soldiers from the French provinces which the king of England possessed in France,—many Irish, many Welsh,—and all the great English nobles and barons, with their followers, were assembled in one great army. The number was not less than one hundred thousand men.

King Robert the Bruce summoned all his nobles and barons to join him, when he heard of the great preparation which the king of England was making. They were not so numerous as the English by many thousand men. In fact, his whole army did not very much excced thirty thousand, and they were much worse armed than the wealthy Englishmen ; but then, Robert, who was at their head, was one of the most expert generals of the time; and the officers he had under him, were his brother Edward, his nephew Randolph, his faithful follower the Douglas, and other brave and experienced leaders, who commanded the same men that had been

accustomed to fight and gain victories under every disadvantage of situation and numbers.

The king, on his part, studied how he might supply, by address and stratagem, what he wanted in numbers and strength. He knew the superiority of the English, both in their heavy-armed cavalry, which were much better mounted and armed than that of the Scots, and in their archers, which were better trained than any others in the world. Both these disadvantages he resolved to provide against. With this purpose he led his army down into a plain near Stirling, called the Park, near which, and beneath it, the English army must needs pass through a boggy country, broken with water-courses, while the Scots occupied hard dry ground. He then caused all the ground upon the front of his line of battle, where cavalry were likely to act, to be dug full of holes, about as deep as a man's knee. They were filled with light brush-wood, and the turf was laid on the top, so that it appeared a plain field, while in reality it was all full of these pits as a honeycomb is of holes. He also, it is said, caused steel spikes, called calthrops, to be scattered up and down in the plain, where the English cavalry were most likely to advance, trusting in that manner to lame and destroy their horses.

When the Scottish army was drawn up, the line stretched north and south. On the south, it was terminated by the banks of the brook called Bannockburn, which are so rocky, that no troops could attack them there. On the left, the Scottish line extended near to the town of Stirling. Bruce reviewed his troops very carefully; all the useless servants, drivers of carts, and such like, of whom there were very many, he ordered to go behind a height, afterwards, in memory of the event, called the Gillies' hill, that is, the Servants' hill. He then spoke to the soldiers, and expressed his determination to gain the victory, or lose his life on the field of battle. He desired that all those who did not propose to fight to the last, should leave the field before the battle began, and that none should remain except those who were determined to take the issue of victory or death, as God should send it.

When the main body of his army was thus placed in order, the king posted Randolph, with a body of horse, near to the church of St. Ninian's, commanding him to use the utmost diligence to prevent any succours from being thrown into Stirling Castle. He then dispatched James of Douglas, and Sir Robert Keith, the Mareschal of the Scottish army, in order that they might survey, as nearly as they could, the English force, which was now approaching from Falkirk. They returned with information, that the approach of that vast host was one of the most beautiful and terrible sights which could be seen, that the whole country seemed covered with men-at-arms on horse and foot,-that the number of standards, banners, and pennons, (all flags of different kinds,) made so gallant a show, that the bravest and most numerous host in Christendom, might be alarmed to see king Edward moving against them

It was upon the 23d of June (1314), the king of Scotland heard the news, that the English army were approaching Stirling. He drew out his army, therefore, in the order which he had before resolved on. After a short time, Bruce, who was looking out anxiously for the enemy, saw a body of English cavalry trying to get into Stirling from the eastward. This was the Lord Clifford, who with a chosen body of eight hundred horse, had been detached to relieve the castle.

"See, Randolph," said the king to his nephew, "there is a rose fallen from your chaplet." By this he meant. that Randolph had lost some honour, by suffering the enemy to pass where he had been stationed to hinder them. Randolph made no reply, but rushed against Clifford with little more than half his number. The Scots were on foot. The English turned to charge them with their lances, and Randolph drew up his men in close order to receive the onset. He seemed to be

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in so much danger, that Douglas asked leave of the king to go and assist hin. The king refused permission.

"Let Randolph," he said, "redeem his own fault; I cannot break the order of battle for his sake." Still the danger appeared greater, and the English horse seemed entirely to encompass the small handful of Scottish infantry. "So please you," said Douglas to the king, "my heart will not suffer me to stand idle and see Randolph perish. I must go to his assistance." He rode off accordingly; but long before they had reached the place of combat, they saw the English horses galloping off, many with empty saddles.

"Halt!" said Douglas to his men, "Randolph has gained the day; since we were not soon enough to help him in the battle, do not let us lessen his glory by approaching the field." Now, that was nobly done; especially as Randolph and Douglas were always contending which should rise highest in the good opinion of the king and the nation.

The van of the English army now came in sight, and a number of their bravest knights drew near to see what the Scots were doing. They saw king Robert dressed in his armour, and distinguished by a gold crown, which he wore over his helmet. He was not mounted on his great war-horse, because he did not expect to fight that evening. But he rode on a little pony up and down the ranks of his army, putting his men in order, and carried in his hand a sort of battle-axe made of steel. When the king saw the English horsemen draw near, he advanced a little before his own men, that he might look at them more nearly.

There was a knight among the English, called Sir Henry de Bohun, who thought this would be a good opportunity to gain great fame to himself, and put an end to the war, by killing King Robert. The king being poorly mounted, and having no lance, Bohun galloped on him suddenly and furiously, thinking, with his long spear, and his tall powerful horse, easily to bear him down to the ground. King Robert saw him, and permitted him to come very near, then suddenly turned his pony a little to one side, so that Sir Henry missed him with the lance-point, and was in the act of being carried past him by the career of his horse. But as he passed, King Robert rose up in his stirrups, and struck Sir Henry on the head with his battleaxe so terrible a blow, that it broke to pieces his iron helmet as if it had been a nut-shell, and hurled him from his saddle. He was dead before he reached the ground. This gallant action was blamed by the Scottish leaders, who thought Bruce ought not to have exposed himself to so much danger when the safety of the whole army depended on him. The king only kept looking at his weapon, which was injured by the force of the blow, and said, “I have broken my good battle-axe."

The next morning, being the 24th June, at break of day, the battle began in terrible earnest. The English as they advanced saw the Scots getting into line. The Abbot of Inchaffray walked through their ranks barefooted, and exhorted them to fight for their freedom. They kneeled down as he passed, and prayed to Heaven for victory. King Edward, who saw this, called out, "They kneel down-they are asking forgiveness."-"Yes," said a celebrated English baron, called Ingelram de Umphraville, "but they ask it from God, not from us-these men will conquer, or die upon the field."

The English king ordered his men to begin the battle. The archers then bent their bows, and begun to shoot so closely together, that the arrows fell like flakes of snow on a Christmas-day. They killed many of the Scots, and might, as at Falkirk, and other places, have decided the victory; but Bruce, as I told you before, was prepared for them. He had in readiness a body of men-at-arms, well mounted, who rode at full gallop among the archers, and as they had no weapons save their bows and arrows, which they could not use when they were attacked hand to hand,

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