heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

340 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
there. After hanging on the gallows two days, Mortimer's body was
removed and buried in the Grey Friars church, within Newgate.
Very significant, but very just and very touching, was the King's
conduct towards Isabella, consistent at once with the respect due to his
mother, and the respect due to the law of God and man, which she had
outraged. She was sent to Castle Rising, in Norfolk, which, built by
"Wm. de Albini, 1176, had been rented by her from the widow of the last
Baron Montalt, during her regency, for ,400 per annum. Here she
remained in close seclusion for twenty-seven years, until her death, on
August 22nd, 1358, at the age of 63. "The Queen," says Froissart, "passed
"her time there meekly," i.e. gave no further occasion for political or
moral scandal. Her health of mind, if not of body, was affected by what
had taken place, and she was liable to severe fits of derangement, which
had commenced while Mortimer's body hung for two days on the gallows.
After two years the King returned to her the revenues of Ponthieu
and Montrieul, originally granted to her by her murdered lord, as a
token of his approval of her conduct ; and when she had resided ten years
at Castle Rising, he himself visited her, with his good Queen Philippa,
and stayed some days. Miss Strickland " says
: Once only did she leave
" her seclusion, and that was to be present at a solemn act of State in
" the Bishop of Winchester's great chamber, at Southwark, when Edward
"delivered the great seal in its purse to Robert de Burghesh."
This is impossible, for Henry Burghesh, who succeeded Hotham as
chancellor, was dismissed from office at the time of Mortimer's death.
Probably it was on an occasion which would naturally be deeply interesting
to her, when Edward her son, on appointing Robert de Stratford
chancellor, adopted a new great seal, quartering, for the first time, with
the lions of the Plantagenets, the lilies of France, to which he was
entitled through her, and which he now adopted as betokening his claim
to the kingdom of France.*
She also more than once received visits from her daughter Joanna,
wife of David Bruce, King of Scotland, "who," says Wyntown, recording
her visit to England, "came her mother and her brother to see." John
Packington, clerk of Edward Prince of Wales, mentions the Queen-mother
as being at Hertford Castle (which had been given to Joanna as her
residence in England) with her daughter, f
It was a long and, no doubt, a needed season of repentance for
such a life : not altogether inexcusable, perhaps, for she must have been
sorely aggravated by the wanton folly of her husband in the early days
of their married life ; but nothing could justify the vindictive cruelty, to
which she was, no doubt, a consenting party, inflicted upon him. How-
*
Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, t Green's Princesses of England.