5.

What care would plot, dissension strove to cross,
Which like an earthquake rent the tottering State;
In war abroad they suffered public loss,
And were at home despoiled by private hate :
Whilst them those strange calamities did toss
(For there was none that nourished not debate),
Confusion did the common peace confound,
No help at hand, yet mortal was their wound.

6.

Thou Church, then swelling in thy mightiness, Which in thy hand so ample power didst hold To stay those factions ere their full excess, Which at thy pleasure thou might'st have controlled, Why didst not thou those outrages suppress, Which to all times thy praise might have enrolled? Thou shouldst to them have laid thy Holy Word, And not thy hand to the unholy sword.

7.

Bloodthirsty war arising first from hell,
And seizing on this chief part of the isle,
Where it before near forty years did dwell,
And with abhorred pollution did defile,
In which so many a famous soldier fell;
By Edward Longshanks banished awhile,
Transferred to Wales and to Albania, there
To ruin them as it had ravined here.

8.

Where hovering long with inauspicious wings
About the verge of these distempered climes,
By coming back new mischief hither brings,
To work them up to those disastrous crimes;
Weakeneth their power by her diminishings:
And taking fast hold on those wicked times,
So far enforced their fury, that at length

It cracked the nerves which knit their ancient strength.

9.

Whose frightful vision, at the first approach, With violent madness struck that desperate agc; And did not only those rebellions broach Amongst the commons, but the devilish rage Did on the best nobility encroach,

And in their damned conspiracies engage

The royal blood, them likewise down to bring
By unnatural treasons to their natural King.

IO.

When in the North (whilst horror yet was young) Those dangerous seasons swiftly coming on, Whilst o'er their heads portentous meteors hung, And in the skies stern comets brightly shone, Prodigious births were intermixed among, Such as before to times had been unknown:

In bloody issues forth the earth doth break, Weeping for them whose woes it could not speak.

II.

And by the rankness of contagious air A mortal plague invadeth man and beast, Which far dispersed, and raging everywhere, In doubt the same too quickly should have ceased To assure them of the slaughter being near, Yet was by famine cruelly increased;

As though the heavens in their remissful doom Took those they loved from worser days to come.

12.

The level course that we intend to go
Now to the end, that ye may clearly see,
And that we every circumstance may show,
The state of things, and truly what they be,
And our materials how we do bestow,
With each occurrent right in his degree;

From these portents we now divert our view,
To bring to pass the horrors that ensue.

13.

The calling back of banished Gaveston,

'Gainst which the Barons had to Longshanks sworn ; The seigniories and high promotion,

Him in his lawless courses to suborn;

The abetting of that wanton minion,

Who held the old nobility in scorn;

Stirred up that hateful and outrageous strife

Which cost so many an Englishman his life.

i4.

O much loved Lacy, hadst thou spared that breath,
Which shortly after Nature thee denied,
To Lancaster delivered at thy death,
To whom thy only daughter was affied,
Taking for pledge his knightly oath and faith,
Stiffly to stick upon the Barons' side;

Thy manors, rents, and titles of renown
Had not so soon been forfeit to the Crown.

15.

Those lordships Bruse to those two Spensers past, Crossing the Barons' vehement desire;

As from Jove's arm that fearful lightning cast,

That fifty towns lay spent in hostile fire:

Alas, too vain and prodigal a waste,

The strong effect of their conceived ire,

Urging the weak King by a violent hand

To abjure those false lords from the troubled land.

16.

When as the fair Queen progressing in Kent,
Was there denied her entrance into Leeds
By Badlesmer, a Baron eminent

Against the King, that in this course proceeds,
Which further addeth to their discontent
A special spring, which this great mischief feeds:
Wrong upon wrong, by heaping more and more,
To thrust on that which went too fast before.

17.

Which more and more King Edward's hate increased,

Whose mind ran still on Gaveston degraded,
The thoughts of which so settled in his breast
That it had all his faculties invaded,
Which for the Spensers happened out the best,
By whom thereto he chiefly was persuaded;

And by whose counsels he ere long was led
To leave his bright Queen, and to fly her bed.

18.

That she herself who, whilst she stood in grace, Employed her powers these discords to appease When yet confusion had not fully place, In times not grown so dangerous as these,

A party made in their afflicted case,

Her willing hand to his destruction lays;

That time, whose soft palm heals the wound of war, May cure the sore, but never close the scar.

19.

In all that heat, then gloriously began

The serious subject of my solid vein,

Brave Mortimer, that somewhat more than man,

Of the old heroes' great and godlike strain,
For whom invention doing all it can,
His weight of honour hardly shall sustain,
To bear his name immortalized, and high,
When he in earth unnumbered years shall lie.