[[A.D. 1326.]] On the following Christmas day, 1326, young King Edward, who was just fifteen years of age, was crowned in Westminster Abbey. Then twelve bishops and nobles were appointed to advise and assist the youthful sovereign in affairs of state. The queen offered no objection, but as she had the military power in her own hands she made Roger Mortimer her prime minister, and demanded an enormous sum of money for her own use. She sent presents and deceitful messages full of affection to her husband, who in return wrote to request the favor of being once more permitted to see her and his son. But Isabella was never softened towards him, though she was, to a great extent, the cause of his unfortunate situation. She was so thoroughly hard-hearted that, when she heard he was kindly treated at Kenilworth, she had him removed from one place to another under the care of two brutal fellows whose cruelties were too horrible to mention. One night, just a year after the queen's return, Edward II. was put to death by her order in Berkeley Castle, and buried privately. Then the nation became indignant; many of Isabella's friends deserted her when they found that they had been the tools of an artful, ambitious, depraved woman, and a strong party was organized to get rid of her. She had committed more crimes in one year than the late king and his ministers had done in twenty, though she pretended to be a reformer. She was a cruel hypocrite, planning, with the slyness of a cat, the destruction of each member of the royal family. Knowing that the Earl of Kent was most miserable on account of the part he had taken in her proceedings, she caused somebody to tell him that his brother was not dead, {210}but a prisoner at Corfe Castle. The earl employed a friar to inquire whether this was true. [Illustration: 0214] He was assured that it was, and had shown to him at a distance a person seated at a table so disguised as to resemble the dead king. The earl then went to the castle and requested the governor to conduct him to his brother's apartment. The governor did {211} [Illustration: 0215] {213}not deny that Edward was in the castle, but said that he was not permitted to let any one see him, upon which the earl wrote a letter to be conveyed to the supposed prisoner. This letter was immediately carried to the queen, who used it as a pretence for the earl's arrest, and after an absurd trial he was unjustly condemned to die. His estates passed into the hands of Mortimer's son. By this time Roger Mortimer had made himself so offensive with his haughty display and his cruelty that the king had him arrested and locked up in the Tower. A few days later he was executed with several of his friends, and his body hung on the gallows at Tyburn for two days.