Isabella was residing with her children at Gloucester, when her inconstant husband, smitten with the charms of Matilda the fair daughter of Lord Fitz Walter, stormed the castle of her father, banished him from the kingdom, and bore away the trembling girl to the fortress of London. There confining her in one of the lofty turrets of the White tower he set himself to win her affections; but the noble maiden spurned all his overtures with virtuous indignation. When the hoary libertine found that flattery and coercion were alike vain, his adoration changed to hate, and the hapless lady fell a victim to poison. This crowning act of villainy completed the exasperation of the English nobles, and a confederacy was formed to resist farther aggressions upon their liberties. Cardinal Langton, in searching the records of the monasteries, had found a copy of the charter executed by Henry Beauclerk upon his marriage with Matilda the Good. From this charter the primate drew up the bill of rights, which has become world-renowned as the Magna Charta. At Runnymede between Windsor and Staines the mail-clad barons met their guilty sovereign, and "There in happy hour Made the fell tyrant feel his people's power." The signing of the great charter of English liberty was soon followed by the death of King John, and the diplomatic talents of Isabella were called into exercise to secure the vacant throne for her son Henry, then a boy of only nine years of age. The diadem of his father having been lost in Lincoln washes, and that of Edward the Confessor being in London, the little prince was crowned with a gold throat collar that she had worn in those happy days while the affianced bride of Count Hugh la Marche. Only a small part of England at first owned the sway of Prince Henry, but the nobles at length rallied around the young Plantagenet, and the valor and wisdom of the protector Pembroke soon drove the invading French from the island. No share in the government was committed into the hands of the dowager queen, and before the first year of her widowhood had expired she set out for her native city of Angoulême.