was chosen to strike the blow, and lay outside with a band of troops.  Some rumour of the plot seems to have leaked out, and on October 19 Mortimer angrily denounced Montague as a traitor, and accused the king of complicity with his designs.  But Montague was safe outside the castle, and, when evening fell, all that Mortimer could do was to lock the gates and watch the walls.  William Eland, constable of the castle, had been induced to join the conspiracy, and had revealed to Montague a secret entrance into the stronghold.  On that very night, Montague and his men-at-arms effected an entrance through an underground passage into the castle-yard, where Edward joined them.  They then made their way up to Mortimer’s chamber, which as usual was next to that of the queen.  Two knights, who guarded the door, were struck down, and the armed band burst into the room.  After a desperate scuffle, the Earl of March was secured.  Hearing the noise, the queen rushed into the room, and though Edward still waited without, cried, with seeming consciousness of his share in the matter, “Fair son, have pity on the gentle Mortimer”.  Her entreaties were unavailing, and the fallen favourite was hurried, under strict custody, to London.

Edward then issued a proclamation announcing that he had taken the government of England into his own hands.  Parliament, prorogued to Westminster, met on November 26, and its chief business was the trial of Mortimer before the lords.  He was charged with accroaching to himself the royal power, stirring up dissension between Edward II and the queen, teaching Edward III. to regard the Earl of Lancaster as his enemy, deluding Edmund of Kent into believing that his brother was alive and with procuring his execution, accepting bribes from the Scots for concluding the disgraceful peace, and with perpetrating grievous cruelties in Ireland.  The lords, imitating the evil precedents set during Mortimer’s time of power, condemned him without trial or chance of answer to the accusations made against him.  On November 29 the fallen earl was paraded through London from his prison in the Tower to Tyburn Elms, and was there hanged on the common gallows.  His vast estates were forfeited to the crown.  His accomplice, Sir Simon Bereford, suffered the same fate; but Sir Oliver Ingham, another of his associates, was pardoned.  Edward discreetly drew a veil over his mother’s shame.  Mortimer’s notorious relations with her were not enumerated in the accusations brought against him, and Isabella, though removed from power and stripped of some of her recent acquisitions, was allowed to live in honourable retirement on her dower manors.  Scrupulously visited by her dutiful son, she wandered freely from house to house, as she felt disposed.  She died in 1358 at her castle of Hertford, in the habit of the Poor Clares—­a sister order of the Franciscans.  The later tradition that she was kept in confinement at Castle Rising has only this slender foundation in fact that Castle Rising was one of her favourite places of abode.  With her withdrawal from public life Edward III.’s real reign begins.