A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Isabella (of France)
The follies and vices of this king laid the foundation for those of Isabella, who saw herself neglected by her husband, and insulted by his favourites. The scorn in which the people held this monarch was sometimes extended to his wife. She made a journey of devotion to Canterbury, and wished to lodge in a castle by the road side, but was denied admittance. The master, a discontented baron, was absent, and his wife refused to permit her entrance. The queen appearing to insist upon it, six persons of her suite were killed by the garrison. As the enemy of the Spencers, the then favourites of Edward, she ought to have been kindly received by his and their enemies; but they saw in her only the wife of a monarch they despised. Edward, accustomed to indignities, would have borne it, but Isabella would be revenged. He therefore presented himself in arms before the castle, which was taken by force; and the executions, by which this was followed, only served farther to irritate the spirits of the people. Alienated from her husband, if she had ever loved him, and discontented with her situation, Isabella, under pretence of reconciling him with his brother, passed into France. Her real motive was very different, and she went to arm him against her husband, and to demand succours against the Spencers, who continually insulted her. Whilst she was innocent, she would not have dared to have risked such an action; but become culpable by the example of her husband, emboldened by her passion, and excited by the interest of a lover, Robert Mortimer, the most beautiful and accomplished knight of the age, she hazarded every thing.
It was not surely for the Spencers to be severe, nor for Edward to be jealous; and the first should have contented themselves with governing the king, without persecuting her. They undertook, however, to inform him of his wife's infidelity, and Edward renounced her society: this perhaps was what both desired, and they should have stopped there; but his favourites feared Mortimer more than Isabella. They sent him to the Tower of London; he was twice condemned to death, and twice pardoned: they wished to retain him all his life in prison, but he escaped and fled to France: and the war rekindled between France and England, was a new pretence for the Spencers to persecute Isabella. They pretended she held intelligence with the enemy, and, under this pretence, Edward despoiled her of the county of Cornwall, which she enjoyed in virtue of a custom established then in France and in England, to give particular domains to the queens for the maintenance of their households.
After having, in this manner, attacked her in her inclinations and her fortune, they had the folly to send her to France, and thus confide to her the interests of the state. Her first words were complaints of an unjust husband and his insolent ministers. Charles the Fair, her brother, seeing her lament and weep, was touched with compassion, and promised to find a remedy for her sorrows. The council, however, agreed that they could not make war upon such a subject; but that the king might secretly assist her with money. Charles, rather diffidently, told his sister the answer, with which she appeared satisfied; and a peace being concluded, seemed to have fulfilled the object of her journey. Yet she remained in France, where Mortimer had joined her; and her brother, displeased with her conduct, saw her but seldom, treated her coldly, spoke little to her, but did not send her back.
Edward demanded her haughtily—one sees not why. Isabella answered, that she would not return till the Spencers were banished for ever. From this time she had the English people on her side. The Spencers condemned her and her sons, as enemies of the state, and declared war against France, without considering that this was the way to make Charles the Fair openly take her part; but this prince, consulting honour more than they did prudence, constantly refused his assistance to a sister whom he judged unworthy of it, and contented himself with giving her an asylum. Neither the arms, nor the intrigues of England, being able to make him send her back, the pope at length enforced it. She was therefore commanded to leave the kingdom speedily, or be driven from it with disgrace. He did more; gained, they say, as well as his council, by the money of England, he forbade any Frenchman to accompany Isabella to England, or to embrace her quarrel.
It appeared that the charms of this princess had gained her many partisans, as well in France as England. The earl of Kent, the king's brother, was come to join her. Robert d'Artois, her cousin, had a tender friendship for her, and all the zeal of chivalry. He came in the middle of the night, to tell her that the council had resolved to arrest her, the earl of Kent, and Mortimer, in order to deliver them up to the English. He counselled her to retire into Hainault; and could not have given her better advice. She found there, in John, brother of the earl of Hainault, a new knight, yet more zealous, more affected by the recital of her sufferings, than Robert d'Artois had been; he vowed to replace her upon the throne of England; and when his brother, to whose second daughter the queen had married her son, prince Edward, represented the danger and uncertainty of such an enter prize, he answered. He had but one death to die, and every loyal knight ought to assist, to the utmost of his power, ladies in distress. He departed with 3000 men only, not doubting that a queen, so beautiful and unfortunate, would meet with defenders; and his romance proved true. He disembarked with her in a port of Sussex, where her army increased at every step. The king and the Spencers shut themselves up in Bristol. Isabella besieged and took it. The Spencers were put to death in a most cruel manner, and' she began to be less interesting to her followers.
Her husband was shut up in the castle of Kenilworth, and Isabella sent to demand the great seal of him, to convoke the parliament, which was to depose him. He was deposed, degraded, and insulted; and the pity of the people began to be raised. The hypocritical tears which the impudent Isabella affected to shed for the fate of her husband, as if that fate had not depended upon her, but only upon the nation, could not impose upon them. She and Mortimer feared the effects of this pity.
The death of Edward was resolved, and that it might be without bodily marks, was executed in a manner too horrible to mention. The people could suffer it no longer, and her son shuddered to consider himself as an instrument to all these abominations. He made Mortimer be arrested in the anti-chamber of the queen, who, bathed in tears, and her voice stifled with sobs, cried, "My son! my dear son! spare the gentle Mortimer." But Edward was inexorable. Isabella was shut up in a castle. Some authors have said, that her days were shortened. The constant opinion is that she lived twenty-eight years in that prison. Froissard, a contemporary writer, says, "that she was well treated, that she had servants to attend, ladies to keep her company, gentlemen of honour to guard her, revenue sufficient to maintain her rank, and that the king, her son, came to see her two or three times a year." The last crime of Isabella and Mortimer was the beheading of the earl of Kent.