d been in
fashion for two centuries or thereabouts, but was now beginning to be
generally discarded.

Note 3. In accordance with the custom of the time, by which persons
were commonly named from their birth-places, Edward the First, the
Second, and the Third are respectively designated Edward of Westminster,
of Caernarvon, and of Windsor.

Note 4. The copped-hat was the high-crowned brimless hat then
fashionable, the parent of the modern one. An instance of it will be
found in the figure of Bolingbroke, plate xvi. of the illustrations to
Cretan's History of Richard the Second, Archaeologia, vol. xx.

Note 5. One historian after another has copied Froissart's assertion
that Hugh Le Despenser the elder at his death was an old man of ninety,
and none ever took the trouble to verify the statement; yet the
_post-mortem_ inquisition of his father is extant, certifying that he
was born in the first week in March 1261; so that on October 8, 1326,
the day of his execution, he was only sixty-five.

Note 6. It will be understood that this was the light in which the
monks regarded Earl Edmund.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE STORY OF ISABEL.

"O dumb, dumb lips! O crushed, crushed heart!
O grief, past pride, past shame!"

Miss Muloch.

Mother Joan had arrived at the point closing the last chapter, when the
sharp ringing of the Abbess' little bell announced the end of the
recreation-time; and convent laws being quite as rigid as those of the
Medes and Persians, Philippa was obliged to defer the further
gratification of her curiosity. When the next recreation-time came, the
blind nun resumed her narrative.

"When Dame Isabelle was lodged at her ease, for she saw first to that,
she ordered her prisoners to be brought before the Prince her son. She
had the decency not to sit as judge herself; but, in outrage of all
womanliness, she sat herself in the court, near the Prince's seat. She
would have sat in the seat rather than have missed her end. The Prince
was wholly governed by his mother; he knew not her true character; and
he was but a lad of fourteen years. So, when the prisoners were brought
forth, the tigress rose up in her place, and spake openly to the
assembled barons (a shameful thing for a woman to do!) that she and her
son would see that law and justice were rendered to them, according to
their deeds. She! That was the barons' place, not hers. She should
have kept to her distaff.

"Then said my gra