So far life went smoothly enough, to all appearance, with the King and Queen of England. But ere long their domestic affairs assumed a much less satisfactory aspect. In fact, Isabel did not find her position quite the bed of roses she had probably anticipated when she consented, for the sake of a crown, to give the Count de la Marche the slip. With a temper which became worse under the influence of trials and reverses, John not only proved a very disagreeable companion to the young lady whom he had carried off, so much to the mortification of the Continental magnate to whom she was betrothed, but he involved himself with women of various ranks, whose memories are still preserved in chronicle or tradition--from Constance, Countess of Chester, to the miller’s wife of Charlton, whose frailty is annually commemorated by the Horn Fair, at the Feast of St. Luke--in a series of vagrant amours, which, besides being of a scandalous kind, could not fail to wound the queen’s vanity and alienate her regard. Moreover, the splendour which had tempted her was fast disappearing. The coronal of Normandy was gone; the crown of England was in great danger of following. It really must have seemed that the glory was departing from the House of Plantagenet; and, after many musings and reflections, Isabel, doubtless, began to think very pensively of the sacrifice she had made to unite her fate with one who showed so little respect for her feelings. Unfortunately, she was not a woman to act with much discretion and dignity in very trying circumstances; and the serious domestic quarrels of John and Isabel gave rise to rumours and stories which were far from raising the king’s character for humanity, or the queen’s reputation as a wife, in the opinion of the world. “His queen,” says the chronicler, speaking of John, “hates him, and is hated by him, she being an evil-minded woman, often found guilty of crimes, upon which the king seized her paramours, and had them strangled with a rope on her bed.”
It is to be hoped, for Isabel’s sake, that this story was merely the invention of an enemy. But little doubt can be entertained that the domestic quarrels were serious. Indeed, during the year when John submitted to Rome, matters reached such a stage between the royal pair, that the queen, then twenty-seven years of age, was consigned to the castle of Gloucester, and there kept, by command of her husband, in safe custody as a captive. A reconciliation, however, did take place, and there was some prospect of a better state of feeling in future. But when the scandal about John and Maude, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, reached the queen’s ears, the matrimonial feud was renewed; and Isabel, almost frantic with jealous rage, declined to see her husband’s face. Subsequently, however, a second reconciliation was brought about; and, after some correspondence, a meeting between the king and queen had been appointed to take place, when the sudden seizure of London by the confederate barons threw all John’s plans into confusion, and forced him not only to postpone his visit to Isabel till a more convenient season, but to take measures for her security, lest she and her son, Prince Henry, should fall into the hands of the barons, and be used as instruments to complete his ruin.