ring
the prejudices, and attaching to himself the affections, of the
people. Nor had his efforts proved unsuccessful. Men in the higher
ranks of life might penetrate behind the veil, with which he sought to
conceal his ambition; but by the nation at large he was considered as
the reformer of abuses, the protector of the oppressed, and the savior
of his country. Even some of the clergy, and several religious bodies,
soured by papal and regal exactions, gave him credit for the truth of
his pretensions, and preachers were found who, though he had been
excommunicated by the legate, made his virtues the theme of their
sermons, and exhorted their hearers to stand by the patron of the poor
and the avenger of the Church.[64] Within the kingdom no man dared to
dispute his authority; it was only at the extremities that a faint
show of resistance was maintained. The distant disobedience of a few
chiefs on the Scottish borders he despised or dissembled; and the open
hostilities of the lords in the Welsh marches were crushed in their
birth by his promptitude and decision. He compelled Roger de Mortimer
and his associates to throw down their arms, surrender their castles,
and abide the judgment of their peers, by whom they were condemned to
expatriate themselves, some for twelve months, others for three years,
and to reside during their exile in Ireland. They pretended to submit,
but lingered on the sea-coast, and amid the mountains of Wales, in the
hope that some new event might recall them to draw the sword and fight
again in the cause of their sovereign.

It had cost Leicester some years and much labor to climb to the summit
of his greatness; his descent was rapid beyond the calculation of the
most sanguine among his enemies. He had hitherto enjoyed the
cooeperation of the powerful earls of Derby and Gloucester; but, if he
was too ambitious to admit of an equal, they were too proud to bow to
a fellow-subject. Frequent altercations betrayed their secret
jealousies; and the sudden arrest and imprisonment of Derby, on a
charge of corresponding with the royalists, warned Gloucester of his
own danger. He would have shared the captivity of his friends had he
assisted at the great tournament at Northampton; but by his absence he
disconcerted the plans of his enemy, and, recalling Mortimer and the
exiles, unfurled the royal standard in the midst of his tenantry.
Leicester immediately hastened to Hereford with the King, the Prince,
and a