Man said that when my Lord of Lincoln came to tell her of this matter, she was counting the silver in my Lord of Arundel his bags, that were confiscate, and had then been brought to her: and but a few days later, at Marcle, Sir William de Blount brought from the King the Great Seal in its leathern bag sealed with the privy seal, and delivered it unto the Queen and her Keeper [Chancellor] the Bishop of Norwich. Soothly, it seemed to me as though those canvas bags that held my Lord of Arundel's silver, and the white leathern bag that held the Great Seal, might be said to be tied together by a lace dipped in blood. And somewhat later, when we had reached Woodstock, was Sir Hugh Le Despenser's plate brought to the Wardrobe, that had been in the Tower with the Lady Alianora his wife--five cups and two ewers of silver, and twenty-seven cups and six ewers of gold; and his horses and hers delivered into the keeping of Adam le Ferrour, keeper of the Queen's horses: and his servants either cast adrift, or drafted, some of them, into the household of the Lord John of Eltham. Go to! saith man: was all this more than is usual in like case? Verily, nay: but should such things be usual in Christendom? Was it for this our Lord came to found His Church--that Christian blood should thus treat his Christian brother? And if no, what can be said of such as called themselves His priests, and passed by on the other side?--nay, rather, took into their own hands the arrows of Sathanas, and wounded their brother with their own fingers? "_Numquid adhaeret Tibi sedes iniquitatis_?" [Psalm 94, verse 20]. Might it not have been said to Dame Isabel the Queen like as Moses said to Korah, "Is it nothing to you that you have been joined to the King, and set by his side on the throne, and given favour in his eyes, so that he suffereth you to entreat him oftener and more effectually than any other, but you must needs covet the royal throne theself?" [Itself.] Ah, what good to write such words, or to speak them? When man hath no fear of God before his eyes, what shall he regard the reasonings of men? But the day of doom cometh, and that sure. The morrow of that awesome day, to wit, Saint Katherine, departed we from Hereford, and came to Gloucester and Cirencester, going back on the road we had come. By Woodstock (where Dame Margery de Verdon joined us from Dover) we came to Wallingford: where was the Lord John of Eltham, that had come from London, and awaited the Queen his mother. So, by Reading and Chertsey, came we to Westminster Palace, on the fourth day of January [1327]. And here was Dame Alice de Lethegreve, mine honoured mother, whom I was full fain to see after all the long and somewhat weariful time that I had been away from England. My mother would have me tell her all I had seen and heard, in the which she oft stayed me by tears and lamentations. And saith she--