removed from his presence and councils;
a declaration which procured her great popularity in England, and threw
a decent veil over all her treasonable enterprises.

Edward endeavored to put himself in a posture of defence;[*] but,
besides the difficulties arising from his own indolence and slender
abilities, and the want of authority, which of consequence attended all
his resolutions, it was not easy for him, in the present state of the
kingdom and revenue, to maintain a constant force ready to repel an
invasion, which he knew not at what time or place he had reason to
expect.

* Rymer, vol. iv. p. 184, 188, 225.

All his efforts were unequal to the traitorous and hostile conspiracies
which, both at home and abroad, were forming against his authority,
and which were daily penetrating farther even into his own family. His
brother, the earl of Kent, a virtuous but weak prince, who was then at
Paris, was engaged by his sister-in-law, and by the king of France, who
was also his cousin-german, to give countenance to the invasion,
whose sole object, he believed, was the expulsion of the Spensers: he
prevailed on his elder brother, the earl of Norfolk, to enter secretly
into the same design: the earl of Leicester, brother and heir of
the earl of Lancaster, had too many reasons for his hatred of these
ministers to refuse his concurrence. Walter de Reynel, archbishop of
Canterbury, and many of the prelates, expressed their approbation of
the queen's measures: several of the most potent barons, envying the
authority of the favorite, were ready to fly to arms: the minds of
the people, by means of some truths and many calumnies, were strongly
disposed to the same party: and there needed but the appearance of the
queen and prince, with such a body of foreign troops as might protect
her against immediate violence, to turn all this tempest, so artfully
prepared, against the unhappy Edward.

{1326.} Charles, though he gave countenance and assistance to the
faction, was ashamed openly to support the queen and prince against the
authority of a husband and father; and Isabella was obliged to court the
alliance of some other foreign potentate, from whose dominions she might
set out on her intended enterprise. For this purpose, she affianced
young Edward, whose tender age made him incapable to judge of the
consequences, with Philippa, daughter of the count of Holland and
Hainault;[*] and having, by the open assistance of this princ