scuffle, the Earl of March was secured. Hearing the noise, the queen
rushed into the room, and though Edward still waited without, cried,
with seeming consciousness of his share in the matter, "Fair son, have
pity on the gentle Mortimer". Her entreaties were unavailing, and the
fallen favourite was hurried, under strict custody, to London.

Edward then issued a proclamation announcing that he had taken the
government of England into his own hands. Parliament, prorogued to
Westminster, met on November 26, and its chief business was the trial
of Mortimer before the lords. He was charged with accroaching to
himself the royal power, stirring up dissension between Edward II and
the queen, teaching Edward III. to regard the Earl of Lancaster as his
enemy, deluding Edmund of Kent into believing that his brother was
alive and with procuring his execution, accepting bribes from the Scots
for concluding the disgraceful peace, and with perpetrating grievous
cruelties in Ireland. The lords, imitating the evil precedents set
during Mortimer's time of power, condemned him without trial or chance
of answer to the accusations made against him. On November 29 the
fallen earl was paraded through London from his prison in the Tower to
Tyburn Elms, and was there hanged on the common gallows. His vast
estates were forfeited to the crown. His accomplice, Sir Simon
Bereford, suffered the same fate; but Sir Oliver Ingham, another of his
associates, was pardoned. Edward discreetly drew a veil over his
mother's shame. Mortimer's notorious relations with her were not
enumerated in the accusations brought against him, and Isabella, though
removed from power and stripped of some of her recent acquisitions, was
allowed to live in honourable retirement on her dower manors.
Scrupulously visited by her dutiful son, she wandered freely from house
to house, as she felt disposed. She died in 1358 at her castle of
Hertford, in the habit of the Poor Clares--a sister order of the