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Edward II
Edward II; Part 2

Edward II; Part 2

Incapable of ruling himself or his realm, Edward trusted the task to favourites. The friend of his boyhood, Piers Gaveston, had been much disliked by Edward I, and banished from the Court. The young king at once recalled him, made him Earl of Cornwall, married him to his niece, and put him over the heads of all the nobility. Naturally vain and empty, the elation of success turned Gaveston's brain. He combined insolence and incapacity in all he did. His one talent appears to have lain in the bestowing of rude nicknames, which were appropriate enough to stick and pointed enough to sting. The nobles, assembled in Parliament, agreed immediately that he must be banished; but though they drove him out they could not keep him out. A solemn assembly of the Great Council in 1310 appointed "Lords Ordainers", who were intended to take the government out of the king's hands, and these officers did indeed produce a scheme of reform known as the Ordinances, which included the appointment of responsible Court officials, the summoning of Parliament, and, of course, the perpetual banishment of Gaveston. Edward II brought him back again for the third time in 1312, but this proved to be his end. He was besieged and captured at Scarborough, taken south into the midst of his enemies, the Earls of Lancaster and Warwick, and beheaded by them on Blacklow Hill. The "Hog" and "The Black Dog of Arden"( Gaveston's nicknames for the two Earls) taught him that as he had made them afeard of his wit, he might well be afeard of their memory.

Scottish troubles filled the next few years, and the disaster of Bannockburn was turned to advantage by an ambitious noble. This was Thomas of Lancaster, son of Edmund Crouch-back, the younger brother of Edward I. Thomas held from his father the earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, and expected to succeed, through his wife, to the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. His chief exploits up till now had been the destruction of Gaveston and his refusal to go north with Edward to Bannockburn, a piece of fortunate prudence which enabled him to push off all share for that disaster on his cousin, the king. For a year or two he practically ruled the kingdom, till Edward grew restive under his control. As Lancaster's chief allies were great men on the Welsh border, Hereford and the Mortimers, Edward sought to set up a party for himself in the west, and promoted a pair of new favourites, the Despensers, father and son, to wealth and possessions. This proved a prelude to more disturbance. The Despensers were banished in 1321, but the king, showing some energy for once, collected an army, crushed the western nobles, and drove Lancaster in flight northward. The king's friends turned him at Borough bridge, where he strove to cross the Ure, scattered his men, and took him prisoner. His fate could not be doubtful. He was beheaded at Pontefract and a number of his adherents hanged or imprisoned; among the prisoners was Roger Mortimer.

Edward II; Part 2

Chronology