imagination, as the following verses, penned by him during his captivity, show : " On my devoted head Her bitterest showers, All from a wintry cloud, Stern fortune pours. View blither favourite, Sage and discerning, Graced with fair comeliness, Famed for his learning, Should she withdraw her smiles, Each grace she banishes, Wisdom and wit are flown, And virtue vanishes." The brutal murder of Edward the Second greatly excited the public indignation. It was generally whispered abroad, that the captive King had not died a natural death. Gourncy and Ogle were obliged to fly the country, and it was only by the iron rod of despotism that Isabella and Mortimer were enabled to maintain their usurped power. In the spring of 1328, the inglorious war with Scotland was terminated by a pacification highly repugnant to the national pride of the English. Isabella and Mortimer, in consideration of receiving from the Scottish King twenty thousand pounds, a sum which it is said they put into their own private purse, betrothed Edward's sister, Joanna, to David Bruce, the heir of Scotland, then two years old, and agreed that Edward the Third should send hack to Scotland the Scotch regalia, Ragman Roll, the Black Cross, all the national documents seized by Edward the First, and renounce for himself and his successors all claim of superiority over the crown of Scotland. On the seventeenth of July, the bctrothment of the Princess Joanna,* then in the fifth year of her age, to the Scottish heir, was performed with great pomp at Berwick, in the presence of Isabella, Mortimer, and a vast assembly of English and Scotch nobles. Edward did not grace this spectacle with his presence ; he viewed the terms of the pacification as a disgrace to the nation, and had he have been of age to take the reins of government into his own hands, never would have signed the treaty. * The Scots called her, in derision, u Joan Make Peace," The wicked conduct of Isabella, and the increasing arrogance of her paramour, who at this period assumed an authority to which even Gaveston and Spencer in the last reign had not dared to aspire, opened the eyes of the royal Earls of Kent, Norfolk, and Lancaster, and other nobles, who too late perceived they had been made the unconscious tools of the unprincipled Queen, and who now withdrew from the national council in disgust, raised a force strong enough to curb the power of Isabella, and drive Mortimer from the kingdom, and published a manifesto, declaring that they had taken up arms to demand a reduction of Isabella's extravagant income ; to stop the extortion and encroachments of those who govern in the King's name ; to punish those who betrayed their country in the late war with Scotland ; to learn why the Regents appointed by parliament were not permitted to govern the state ; to make enquiries regarding the late King's death ; to bring to account those who seized the treasures of the late King ; to inform the public who had advised the King, now a minor, to renounce his claim to the crown of Scotland ; and lastly, to punish those who had prevailed on the King to marry his sister, Joanna, to David Bruce. These hostile demonstrations greatly alarmed Isabella. Aware of the impossibility of satisfactorily answering the barons' manifesto, she artfully insinuated to the young King that his uncle desired to dethrone him, and urged him to arm against them as rebels. Accordingly, a considerable force was raised and headed by Mortimer; but at thie juncture the royal Earls quarrelled, Leicester was unexpectedly deserted by Norfolk and Kent, and being too weak to carry out the enterprise by himself, he was compelled to make his submission to the arrogant Mortimer. Immediately after Leicester's submission, Norfolk and Kent were pardoned, at the intercession of the primate. The proceedings that followed are involved in great obscurity. A general spirit of discontent pervaded all classes, strange rumours were whispered about. It was at length generally asserted that