The Queen of England rode from triumph to triumph. Artfully clad in widow’s weeds to emphasise how the King had tried to divorce her from her adopted country, she led her forces south-west from the Essex Coast, her advance guard riding ahead of her and stripping the land of livestock and goods, as Mortimer had suggested. And as he had predicted, the people complained bitterly and flocked to Isabella to demand compensation.
She supplied it, and more besides, showering them with practised charm and liberal handfuls of silver. Soon enough, those who came to complain were kneeling and cheering her to the echo as she rode past. Prince Edward rode immediately behind her, and they cheered him with even greater vigour. The prince responded with an easy, natural charm that was entirely different to his mother’s calculated variety, even going so far as to stop and talk to the farmers and common labourers that gathered by the roadside.
Mortimer scowled as he witnessed young Edward’s performance, and privately recommended to his mother that he should learn to keep a sensible distance.
The invading army, constantly swollen by willing recruits, marched unopposed through the towns of Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Bury. In the latter Isabella was invited by the local order of Dominican monks to lodge at their abbey, where one of her clerks discovered a hidden cache of eight hundred marks. Enquiries were made, and it transpired that the money had been deposited there for safekeeping by one of King Edward’s justices. Smiling blandly as the monks politely insisted that they should continue to guard the money, Isabella had some of her mercenaries load it onto a wagon.
The triumphant march, now more like a royal progress than an invasion, swung west towards Cambridge. Still no one opposed Isabella and her army, and the only sign of her husband’s troops was a small body of troops led by one Sir Robert Wateville. He came to the Queen and explained that the Despensers had sent him to raise men to oppose her. Only sixty men had answered his summons, and he, like so many others, had decided to cast aside his former loyalties and throw in his lot with the Queen. Isabella received him graciously, and his men.
At Cambridge, where she was received joyfully by the citizens, she lodged at Barnwell Priory, where her husband had often stayed. There she was joined by droves of magnates and high churchmen, including long-term sympathisers such as Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, and the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, Durham, and Dublin. Orleton, a fiery fighting priest and mortal enemy of the Despensers, stood up before Isabella and her lords and thundered that their cause was undeniably just in the eyes of God.
“It is to the advantage of this poor, fragmented and dishonoured kingdom,” he declared, “that the King should be forced to submit to the counsel of the great nobles gathered here.”
No one disagreed, though there was some confusion over the purpose of the invasion. In her role as wronged spouse, Isabella maintained that she had come to rid the King of his vile favourites, the Despensers, and force him to submit to wiser counsel, as Thomas of Lancaster had tried to do before her. Many instead believed that she and Mortimer meant to depose the King and replace him with his son. All were agreed that King Edward’s regime, after twenty years of tyranny and disaster, could not be allowed to continue.
On they marched to Oxford, where the burghers of the city came out of the gates in procession to greet Isabella and present her with a precious silver cup. The King, she was informed, had frantically offered them all manner of special privileges if they closed their gates against her, but they had elected to ignore him. Oxford was the first major city Isabella’s army had approached, and she was much relieved by its submission. Her supporters were just as encouraged, and Bishop Orleton was inspired to deliver another furious sermon from the pulpit of St Mary’s in the university.
He took his text from Genesis, and made Despenser the snake in Eden. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman,” he bawled, red-faced and hectoring, “and between thy seed and her seed, she will bruise thy head.”
The sermon was delivered in front of a packed congregation, including Isabella, Prince Edward and a highly amused Mortimer. The atmosphere was full of excitement, rising to near hysteria as Orleton showered his audience with invective. “Hugh Despenser is the snake and the seed of the first tyrant, Satan,” he shouted, “but he will be crushed by the noble Lady Isabella, and her son, who have come to put an end to oppression and tyranny!”
As her army moved out of Oxford, cheered and feted on its way, Isabella received news from breathless outriders of the movements of her allies, and of her husband. The Earl of Leicester had left her in Essex to re-join his Northern host, and she was informed that the city of Leicester had opened its gates to the rebels without a fight. Even better, the numbers of the host had been swelled by the forces of Henry Percy, Baron of Alnwick in Northumberland, and Henry de Beaumont, Earl of Buchan.
“What of the King?” asked Mortimer, “Will he hold London? Let him try. The citizens will open the gates and we will have him.”
“Lord, the King has left London in desperate haste,” the outrider informed him, “and he took with him a fortune in silver, the Despensers, the Earls of Surrey and Arundel, the Chancellor, and a rabble of clerks, and Welsh archers. The Bishop of Exeter has been left as the guardian of the City.”
Mortimer punched the air.
“Abandoned London, and left that dotard Stapledon in charge!” exclaimed Isabella. “He has practically handed me the keys to England on a plate!”
“Handed us,” Mortimer reminded her in a quiet voice, and she looked at him with annoyance. Her confidence, which had drained away through the long, anxious months of exile in France, had returned to her in a flood since landing in England, and she was no longer inclined to be so submissive towards her paramour.
“Us, then,” she said, and turned away from him. They did not speak again for the remainder of the day.
Their brief quarrel was the only burr in Isabella’s saddle, as her ever-growing army marched south and reached the market town of Baldock. Here, she arrested Thomas Baldock, a cowering nonentity who was brother to the Chancellor, and ordered his house ransacked for money and information.
While they waited at Baldock, Isabella chose to write an open letter to the people of London. She had recently heard that the Despensers were offering a thousand pounds to anyone who delivered to them Mortimer’s head. Amused by the thought, and aware of the need to whip up popular feeling, she included in the letter an offer for two thousand pounds to anyone who brought her the head of the Younger Despenser. In a more serious tone, it also demanded the support of all good and faithful citizens in aiding her campaign, and threatened punishment to those who refused.
The Queen’s army then moved on to Dunstable, just thirty miles from London. From there, she prepared to march on the capital.