army, to assist in repelling the Scots ; but the presence acd insolence of these foreigners so disgusted the populace, that at York they were set upon by the English archers, and ia a battle which lasted till darkness set in, several hundreds were slain on both sides. The men of Hainault claimed the victory, but were forced to leave England with greater precipitancy than they had entered it. Whilst the young King was endeavouring to repel the Scots, his father remained a neglected and closely-confined prisoner in Kenilworth Castle. Prom time to time, the deposed, dolorous monarch wrote impassioned letters to Isabella, entreating her to lighten the woes of his imprisonment, and to permit him to again behold her and their children ; bat she only sent him apparel and letters, expressing an anxiety for his health and welfare, and fathering her absence upon the parliament and the Regents, whom she feigned would neither permit her nor their children to enter his presence. In fact, although in possession of sovereign powers, the mind of the guilty Isabella was filled with gloomy apprehensions, and she could not muster courage to face the husband whom she had so cruelly used. Meanwhile, a feeling in favour of the royal captive was daily gaining ground : secret associations were formed for the avowed purpose of procuring his liberation; the clergy from their pulpits denounced the Queen's adulterous intercourse with Mortimer ; whilst the endeavours of the Earl of Lancaster to alleviate the sufferings of his royal captive, so annoyed Isabella and her paramour, that they removed him from Kenilworth to the keeping of the base-hearted Sir John Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gurney, "who," says the chronicle, "carried him about whither they would, so that none of his well-wish«rs might have access to him, or understand where he made any long abode." These tormentors treated the royal captive with gross brutality. At first, they carried him to Curf, then to Bristol, and afterwards to Berkley Castle. bare-headed, and in thin miserable clothing ; when he desired to stop, they would not suffer him ; when he was hungry, they gave him loathsome food ; they shaved him in the open fields with cold water taken from a stinking ditch, and putting a crown of hay on his head, mocked him beyond measure. At Berkley Castle he was lodged on a cold damp turret, on a level with the battlements, which were covered with carrion, that stifled him with its putrid stench; the dungeon in which he lay was overrun with rats and other vermin, and commonly inundated with rain water ; horrid noises were continued throughout the night to disturb his natural rest, and he was forced to eat unwholesome and unsavory food. But all these endeavours to break his heart and destroy his constitution failed. Ho still lived. His gaolers sent for fresh instructions, and, according to several authorities, the Queen, dreading the consequences of his friends succeeding in their attempts to forcibly release him, whispered to her paramour, " Either he or I must die for the salvation of the realm ;" when Mortimer, without a word in reply, instantly wrote on a slip of parchment, the words, " Murder your prisoner," and shewing it to the messengers, exclaimed, " Go, perform your duty without more ado." In compliance with this order, his ruffianly gaolers, Thomas Gourney and William Ogle, entered his cell on the night of the twenty-first of September, and murdered him, by forcibly thrusting a red hot iron up into his bowels. The agonizing shrieks which issued from his dungeon alarmed the inmates of the castle, and on the following day the neighbouring clergy and gentry were invited to behold his dead body. It exhibited no perceptible marks of violence, hut the distorted features betrayed the horrible agonies whieh he had undergone. The body was interred without further inquiry, and with all possible privacy, in the abbey church of St. Peter, at Gloucester. Thus perished Edward the Second, a moro weak than wicked King, and who On the journey, they forced him to ride j I evidently possessed some learning and