This transaction, of the 1st of March, 1328, still more augmented the resentment of the English: they passionately desired to conquer Scotland, and they believed the moment to be very favourable since Robert Bruce was ill; in fact it was not long before he died, leaving his crown to a child. The agitation against the Queen increased; one of the adversaries whom she most feared was her brother-in-law, Edmund, Earl of Kent; all her skill was directed towards drawing him into a trap: she succeeded, in fact, in less than a month, in implicating him in a conspiracy, for which he suffered the extreme penalty. But so long as Isabella felt herself to be so unsafe on the throne of England, she could hardly think to dispute that of France; she contented herself with protesting for the preservation of what she called the rights of her son. She wrote on the 28th of March in the name of Edward III. to the chief princes of Gascony, Navarre, and Languedoc, that the King intended to recover _his heritage and his rights in every good way that he knew and could_, that he prayed them then and charged them on their faith to work secretly to gain for him the heart of the nobles and the commons who were not under obedience to him that they might aid him when the time should come. On the 16th of May she gave power to the bishops of Winchester and Chester to demand and recover all the rights which belonged to him [Edward III.] as legitimate heir to the kingdom of France; on the 28th of June she caused letters of reprisals to be given to stop the goods and merchandise of all the French, as pledges for the reparation of certain hostilities which they had committed. The 28th of October, however, the effects thus seized were released under caution, and the violences committed between the two kingdoms were referred to tribunals.