ner
in Corfe Castle, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to restore him to
the throne, tried before a Parliament filled with Mortimer's adherents, and
sent to the block. But the death of a prince of the royal blood roused the
young king to resentment at the greed and arrogance of a minister who
treated Edward himself as little more than a state-prisoner. A few months
after his uncle's execution the king entered the Council chamber in
Nottingham Castle with a force which he had introduced through a secret
passage in the rock on which it stands, and arrested Mortimer with his own
hands. A Parliament which was at once summoned condemned the Earl of March
to a traitor's death, and in November 1330 he was beheaded at Tyburn, while
the queen-mother was sent for the rest of her life into confinement at
Castle Rising.

[Sidenote: Edward and France]

Young as he was, and he had only reached his eighteenth year, Edward at
once assumed the control of affairs. His first care was to restore good
order throughout the country, which under the late government had fallen
into ruin, and to free his hands by a peace with France for further
enterprises in the North. A formal peace had been concluded by Isabella
after her husband's fall; but the death of Charles the Fourth soon brought
about new jealousies between the two courts. The three sons of Philip the
Fair had followed him on the throne in succession, but all had now died
without male issue, and Isabella, as Philip's daughter, claimed the crown
for her son. The claim in any case was a hard one to make out. Though her
brothers had left no sons, they had left daughters, and if female
succession were admitted these daughters of Philip's sons would precede a
son of Philip's daughter. Isabella met this difficulty by a contention that
though females could transmit the right of succession they could not
themselves possess it, and that her son, as the nearest living male
descendant of Philip the Fair, and born in the lifetime of the king from
whom he claimed, could claim in preference to females who were related to
Philip in as near a degree. But the bulk of French jurists asserted that
only male succession gave right to the French throne. On such a theory the
right inheritable from Philip the Fair was exhausted; and the crown passed
to the son of Philip's younger brother, Charles of Valois, who in fact
peacefully mounted the throne as Philip the Sixth. Purely formal as the
claim which