erprise. The
queen dowager and Mortimer lodged in that fortress: the king also was
admitted, though with a few only of his attendants: and as the castle
was strictly guarded, the gates locked every evening, and the keys
carried to the queen, it became necessary to communicate the design to
Sir William Eland, the governor, who zealously took part in it. By his
direction, the king's associates were admitted through a subterraneous
passage, which had formerly been contrived for a secret outlet from the
castle, but was now buried in rubbish; and Mortimer, without having it
in his power to make resistance, was suddenly seized in an apartment
adjoining to the queen's.[*] A parliament was immediately summoned for
his condemnation. He was accused before that assembly of having usurped
regal power from the council of regency appointed by parliament; of
having procured the death of the late king; of having deceived the earl
of Kent into a conspiracy to restore that prince; of having solicited
and obtained exorbitant grants of the royal demesnes; of having
dissipated the public treasure; of secreting twenty thousand marks
of the money paid by the king of Scotland; and of other crimes and
misdemeanors.[**] The parliament condemned him from the supposed
notoriety of the facts, without trial, or hearing his answer, or
examining a witness; and he was hanged on a gibbet at the Elmes, in the
neighborhood of London. It is remarkable, that this sentence was near
twenty years after reversed by parliament, in favor of Mortimer's son;
and the reason assigned was, the illegal manner of proceeding.[***] The
principles of law and justice were established in England, not in such a
degree as to prevent any iniquitous sentence against a person obnoxious
to the ruling party; but sufficient, on the return of his credit, or
that of his friends, to serve as a reason or pretence for its reversal.

* Avesbury, p. 9.

** Brady's App. No. 83. Anon. Hist. p. 397, 398. Knyghton,
p. 2556.

*** Cotton's Abridg. p. 85, 86.

{1331.} Justice was also executed by a sentence of the house of peers on
some of the inferior criminals, particularly on Simon de Bereford: but
the barons, in that act of jurisdiction, entered a protest, that though
they had tried Bereford, who was none of their peers, they should not
for the future be obliged to receive any such indictment. The queen
was confined to her own house at Risings, near London: her revenue