Walsing, p.

125.
But it was impossible that the people, however corrupted by the barbarity of the times, still further inflamed by faction, could forever remain insensible to the voice of nature.

Here a wife had first deserted, next invaded, and then dethroned her husband; had made her minor son an instrument in this unnatural treatment of his father; had, by lying pretences, seduced the nation into a rebellion against their sovereign had pushed them into violence and cruelties that had dishonored them: all those circumstances were so odious in themselves, and formed such a complicated scene of guilt, that the least reflection sufficed to open men's eyes, and make them detest this flagrant infringement of every public and private duty.

The suspicions which soon arose of Isabella's criminal commerce with Mortimer, the proofs which daily broke out of this part of her guilt, increased the general abhorrence against her; and her hypocrisy, in publicly bewailing with tears the king's unhappy fate,[*] was not able to deceive even the most stupid and most prejudiced of her adherents.

In proportion as the queen became the object of public hatred the dethroned monarch, who had been the victim of her crimes and her ambition, was regarded with pity, with friendship, with veneration: and men became sensible, that all his misconduct, which faction had so much exaggerated, had been owing to the unavoidable weakness, not to any voluntary depravity, of his character.
The earl of Leicester, now earl of Lancaster, to whose custody he had been committed, was soon touched with those generous sentiments; and besides using his prisoner with gentleness and humanity, he was suspected to have entertained still more honorable intentions in his favor.