It is to be hoped, for Isabel’s sake, that this story was merely the invention of an enemy. But little doubt can be entertained that the domestic quarrels were serious. Indeed, during the year when John submitted to Rome, matters reached such a stage between the royal pair, that the queen, then twenty-seven years of age, was consigned to the castle of Gloucester, and there kept, by command of her husband, in safe custody as a captive. A reconciliation, however, did take place, and there was some prospect of a better state of feeling in future. But when the scandal about John and Maude, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, reached the queen’s ears, the matrimonial feud was renewed; and Isabel, almost frantic with jealous rage, declined to see her husband’s face. Subsequently, however, a second reconciliation was brought about; and, after some correspondence, a meeting between the king and queen had been appointed to take place, when the sudden seizure of London by the confederate barons threw all John’s plans into confusion, and forced him not only to postpone his visit to Isabel till a more convenient season, but to take measures for her security, lest she and her son, Prince Henry, should fall into the hands of the barons, and be used as instruments to complete his ruin. It was at Savernake that Isabel was residing while the barons assembled at Stamford, and marched, by Brackley, and Northampton, and Bedford, to London. Only vague and indistinct intelligence as to their movements reached her in her retreat; and, buoyed up by the king’s confident assurance that he would crush any attempts at insurrection, she delighted her soul with visions of reigning as a queen in reality, and occupied her time with repairing the palace of Savernake, and appears to have meditated housekeeping on a very extensive scale, since she added kitchens with fires for roasting oxen whole. It was not pleasant to be disturbed in the midst of such projects by news that her husband’s crown was at stake; and, when Isabel had been conveyed home after her fright and her escape, and sufficiently restored to be informed that a knight and squire sent by the king were awaiting an audience to deliver a message, she felt instinctively that something was wrong; she wrung her hands, and exclaimed to her ladies-- “My heart misgives me; I fear me they bring tidings of woe.” But, at the same time, her impatience to know all made her anxious to receive them without delay; and, having arrayed herself so as to appear to the best advantage--for her vanity as woman was quite as strong as her ambition as queen--she ordered them to be conducted to her presence.