ime at
Bury until she was satisfied that her allies would be sufficient to
effect her object, and then showed herself openly at Harwich were it not
that Bury is so distant, and Harwich is so near, that the supposition
seems to be negatived by the facts. From Harwich or Bury, whichever it
were, she marched towards London, which according to some writers, she
reached; but the other account seems to be better authenticated, which
states that on hearing that the King had left the capital for the West
she altered her course for Oxford. She certainly was not in London when
the Tower was captured by the citizens, October 16th (_Compotus
Willielmi de Culpho_, Wardrobe Accounts, 20 Edward the Second, 31/8),
since she dates a mandate from Wallingford on the 15th, unless Bishop
Orleton falsified the date in quoting it in his Apology. Thence she
marched to Cirencester and Gloucester, and at last to Bristol, which she
entered on or before the 25th. Since Gloucester was considerably out of
her way--for we are assured that her aim was to make a straight and
rapid course to Bristol--why did she go there at all if the King were at
Bristol? But we know he was not; he had then set sail for Wales. Her
object in going to Bristol was probably twofold: to capture Le Despenser
and Arundel, and to stop the King's supplies, for Bristol was his
commissariat-centre. A cartload of provisions reached that city from
London for him on the 14th [Note 2.] (_Rot. Magne Gard._, 20 Edward the
Second, 26/3), and his butler, John Pyrie, went thither for wine, even
so late as November 1st (_Ibidem_, 26/4). Is it possible that Pyrie,
perhaps unconsciously, betrayed to some adherent of the Queen the fact
that his master was in Wales? The informer, we are told by the
chroniclers, was Sir Thomas le Blount, the King's Seneschal of the
Household. But that suspicious embassage of the Abbot of Neath and
several of the King's co-refugees, noted on November 10th in terms
which, though ostensibly spoken by the King and dated from Neath, are
unmistakably the Queen's diction and not his, cannot be left out of the
account in estimating his betrayers. From October 26, when the
illegally-assembled Parliament, in the hall of Bristol Castle, went
through the farce of electing the young Prince to the regency "because
the King was absent from his kingdom," and October 27th, which is given
(probably with truth) by Harl. Ms. 6124 as the day of the judicial
murder of Hugh