ld obey. But ere the agony
were full over, God Almighty stepped in, and bare him away from what she
would have had him suffer. When they put him on the hurdle, he lay as
though he wist not; when they twined a crown of nettles and pressed it
on his brow, he was as though he felt not; when, the torture over, they
made ready to drag him to the gallows, they saw that he was dead. God
cried to them, "Let be!"

God assoil that dead man! Ay, maybe he shall take less assoiling than
hath done that dead woman.

Man said that when my Lord of Lincoln came to tell her of this matter,
she was counting the silver in my Lord of Arundel his bags, that were
confiscate, and had then been brought to her: and but a few days later,
at Marcle, Sir William de Blount brought from the King the Great Seal in
its leathern bag sealed with the privy seal, and delivered it unto the
Queen and her Keeper [Chancellor] the Bishop of Norwich. Soothly, it
seemed to me as though those canvas bags that held my Lord of Arundel's
silver, and the white leathern bag that held the Great Seal, might be
said to be tied together by a lace dipped in blood. And somewhat later,
when we had reached Woodstock, was Sir Hugh Le Despenser's plate brought
to the Wardrobe, that had been in the Tower with the Lady Alianora his
wife--five cups and two ewers of silver, and twenty-seven cups and six
ewers of gold; and his horses and hers delivered into the keeping of
Adam le Ferrour, keeper of the Queen's horses: and his servants either
cast adrift, or drafted, some of them, into the household of the Lord
John of Eltham. Go to! saith man: was all this more than is usual in
like case? Verily, nay: but should such things be usual in Christendom?
Was it for this our Lord came to found His Church--that Christian blood
should thus treat his Christian brother? And if no, what can be said of
such as called themselves His priests, and passed by on the other
side?--nay, rather, took into their own hands the arrows of Sathanas,
and wounded their brother with their own fingers? "_Numquid adhaeret
Tibi sedes iniquitatis_?" [Psalm 94, verse 20]. Might it not have been
said to Dame Isabel the Queen like as Moses said to Korah, "Is it
nothing to you that you have been joined to the King, and set by his
side on the throne, and given favour in his eyes, so that he suffereth
you to entreat him oftener and more effectually than any other, but you
must needs covet the royal throne these