The advanced guard, meantime, marched through the country, seizing all the cattle and food they could get hold of, and spreading misery in every direction. When Isabella came along the owners complained bitterly, but she paid them most liberally for all they had lost. The money thus distributed made the queen popular, and the people were anxious to supply her with whatever she desired after that. Although the king had forbidden his subjects to meet Isabella, when she arrived at Harwich a large number of knights, barons, and bishops were assembled to welcome her. Her force numbered two thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven soldiers, commanded by Sir John of Hainault, and Roger Mortimer commanded the English, who joined them after, they landed. So many false stories had been circulated by the queen's agents of the persecutions she had endured from her hus{205}band and his barbarous ministers, and of the way she had been driven into a foreign land by plots against her life, that she was considered the most injured of wives and queens. [Illustration: 0209] The common people were blinded by excitement, and flocked to meet her without stopping to inquire whether her cause were just or not. All the tales of her guilty conduct that had reached them from time to time they now believed to have been pure inventions of her enemies, the Despencers. No voice was raised against her though she came with her son, the Prince of Wales, attended by an outlawed traitor and a band of foreigners to raise a revolt against her own husband. It seems strange that such a wicked woman should have met with such success; but {206}every Plantagenet in England was on her side, and she had many French relations there who always had thought her of more importance than the king. Instead of taking measures to defend himself, Edward wrote pathetic letters to the Pope and to the King of France asking for aid, and issued a proclamation offering £1,000 for the head of the arch traitor, Roger Mortimer. The queen then offered a reward of double that sum for the head of the younger Despencer, and declared that her only motive in coming home was to deliver England from the king's bad advisers. When Isabella attended church at Oxford in company with her son, Mortimer, and all her followers, the Bishop of Hereford preached the sermon and explained the queen's motive for taking up arms, concluding with this sentence: "When the head of a kingdom becometh sick and diseased, it must be taken off without useless attempts to administer any other remedy." It is shocking to think of the wife and son of a man so devoted to both, as King Edward certainly was, listening to such a murderous speech without expressing their horror and indignation. But the only effect of it was to increase the madness of the populace against the unhappy king, who, attended by the two Despencers and a few other friends, fled to Bristol, intending to seek refuge in Ireland.