hrough a secret passage in the rock on which it stood. His mother
pleaded in vain for her favourite: "Fair son, have pity on the gentle
Mortimer." Mortimer was hanged, and Queen Isabella was never again
allowed to take part in public affairs.

2. =The French Succession. 1328--1331.=--Isabella's three brothers,
Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., had successively reigned in
France. Louis X. died in =1316=, leaving behind him a daughter and a
posthumous son, who died a week after his birth. Then Philip V. seized
the crown, his lawyers asserting that, according to the Salic law, 'no
part of the heritage of Salic land can fall to a woman,' and that
therefore no woman could rule in France. As a matter of fact this was
a mere quibble of the lawyers. The Salic law had been the law of the
Salian Franks in the fifth century, and had to do with the inheritance
of estates, not with the inheritance of the throne of France, which
was not at that time in existence. The quibble, however, was used on
the right side. What Frenchmen wanted was that France should remain an
independent nation, which it was not likely to do under a queen who
might marry the king of another country. The rule thus laid down was
permanently adopted in France. When Philip V. died in =1322= the
throne passed, not to his daughter, but to his brother, Charles IV.,
and when Charles died in =1328=, to his cousin, Philip of Valois, who
reigned as Philip VI. At that time England was still under the control
of Mortimer and Isabella, and though Isabella, being the sister of
Charles IV., thought of claiming the crown, not for herself, but for
her son, Mortimer did not press the claim. In =1329= he sent Edward to
do homage to Philip VI. for his French possessions, but Edward only
did it with certain reservations, and in =1330= preparations for war
were made in England. In =1331=, after Mortimer's fall, when Edward
was his own master, he again visited France, and a treaty was
concluded between the two kings in which he abandoned the reservations
on his homage.

[Illustration: Effigies of Edward III. and Queen Philippa; from their
tombs in Westminster Abbey.]

3. =Troubles in Scotland. 1329--1336.=--On his return, Edward looked
in another direction. In =1329= Robert Bruce died, leaving his crown
to his son, David II., a child five years old. Certain English
noblemen had in the late treaty (see p. 231) been promised restoration
of the estates of their ancestors in Scotl