The slothful Edward and the arrogant Despensers soon tired out the patience of England, and they fell before the first blow levelled against them. The blow came from an unexpected quarter. Edward's wife, Isabella of France, was visiting the court of her brother, Charles IV., on a diplomatic mission concerning some frontier feuds in Guienne. At Paris she met and became desperately enamoured of the exiled Marcher-baron, Roger Mortimer. He drew her into a conspiracy against her husband; by his advice she induced her young son Edward, the heir of England, to cross over and join her. When the boy was safely in her hands, she sent to King Edward to bid him dismiss the Despensers, because they had wronged and insulted her. When he refused, she and Mortimer gathered a force of Flemish mercenaries and crossed to England. They had already enlisted the support of the kinsmen and friends of Lancaster, Hereford, Baddlesmere, and the other barons who had been slain in 1322. On landing in Suffolk, Isabella was at once joined by them, and found herself at the head of a large army. Edward and his unpopular ministers fled towards Wales; but the elder Despenser was caught at Bristol and promptly hanged. His son Hugh and the king were captured three weeks later; the former was executed, while his master was taken under guard to London (November, 1326). [Sidenote: =Edward deposed.--His son proclaimed king.=] The queen then summoned a Parliament in the name of her son, Prince Edward. Articles were placed before it, accusing the king of breaking his coronation oath, of wilfully neglecting the right governance of the land, of promoting unworthy favourites, of losing Scotland and Ireland, and of slaying his enemies without just cause or a fair trial. The Parliament pronounced him unfit to reign, deposed him, and elected his young son to fill his throne in his stead. [Sidenote: =Death of Edward.=] Edward was constrained by force to resign his crown, and at once thrown into prison. He was first consigned to the charge of Henry of Lancaster, the brother of Earl Thomas; but Henry kept him safely, and there were those who did not desire his safety. Presently the queen and Mortimer took him from Lancaster's hands and removed him to Berkeley Castle. There he was treated with gross neglect and cruelty, in the deliberate design of ending his life; but when his constitution proved strong enough to resist all privations, his keepers secretly put him to death (September 21, 1327). Thus ended the unhappy son of Edward I., the victim of an unfaithful wife, and a knot of barons bent on revenging an old blood-feud. That he deserved his fate it would be hard to say, but that he owed it entirely to his own unwise choice of favourites it is impossible to deny. FOOTNOTES: [19] Son of Edward I.'s brother Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. [20] A grandson of one of Henry III.'s foreign relatives. [21] See p. 140. CHAPTER XIII. EDWARD III. 1327-1377.