His first acts on coming to the throne caused patriotic Englishmen
to despair. His father, on his death-bed, had made him
swear to conduct the Scottish expedition to its end.
But he marched no further than Dumfries, and then
turned back, on the vain pretext that he must conduct
Piers Gaveston.
his parent’s funeral in person. Leaving Bruce to gather fresh
strength and to commence the tedious process of reducing the
numerous English garrisons in Scotland, he betook himself to
London, and was not seen on the border again for more than
three years. He then dismissed all his father’s old ministers,
and replaced them by creatures of his own, for the most part
persons of complete incompetence. But his most offensive act
was to promote to the position of chief councillor of the crown,
and disperser of the royal favours, a clever but vain and ostentatious
Gascon knight, one Piers Gaveston, who had been the
companion of his boyhood, and had been banished by Edward I.
for encouraging him in his follies and frivolity. Piers was given
the royal title of earl of Cornwall, and married to the king’s
niece; when Edward went over to France to do homage for
Gascony, he even made his friend regent during his absence, in
preference to any of his kinsmen. It was his regular habit to
refer those who came to him on matters of state to “his good
brother Piers,” and to refuse to discuss them in person.
It was of course impossible that the nation or the baronage should accept such a preposterous régime, and Edward was soon involved in a lively struggle with his subjects. Of the leaders of opposition in his father’s reign both Hereford and Norfolk were now dead. But Archbishop Baronial opposition. Winchelsea had returned from exile in a belligerent mood, and the place of Norfolk and Hereford was taken by an ambitious prince of the royal house, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, the son of the younger brother of Edward I. Thomas was selfish and incompetent, but violent and self-assertive, and for some years was able to pose successfully as a patriot simply because he set himself to oppose every act of the unpopular king. He had several powerful baronial allies—the earls of Warwick, Pembroke and Warenne, with Humphrey Bohun of Hereford, who had succeeded to his father’s politics, though he had married the king’s own sister.
The annals of the early years of Edward II. are mainly filled
by contemporary chroniclers with details of the miserable strife
between the king and his barons on the question of
Gaveston’s unconstitutional position. But the really
important feature of the time was the gradual reconquest
Progress
of Bruce in Scotland.
of Scotland by Robert Bruce, during the continuance
of the domestic strife in England. Edward I. had laid
such a firm grip on the northern realm that it required many
years to undo his work. A very large proportion of the Scottish
nobility regarded Bruce as a usurper who had opened his career
with murder and sacrilege, and either openly opposed him or
denied him help. His resources were small, and it was only by
constant effort, often chequered by failures, that he gradually
fought down his local adversaries, and reduced the English
garrisons one by one. Dumbarton and Linlithgow were only
mastered in 1312. Perth did not finally fall into his hands till
1313; Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling were still holding out
in 1314. During all this time the English king only once went
north of the Border—in 1311—and then with a very small army,
for Lancaster and his friends had refused to join his banner.
Yet even under such conditions Bruce had to retire to the
mountains, and to allow the invaders to range unopposed
through Lothian and Fife, and even beyond the Tay. With
ordinary capacity and perseverance Edward II. might have
mastered his enemy; indeed the Comyns and Umfravilles and
other loyalist barons of Scotland would have carried out the
business for him, if only he had given them adequate support.
But he spent what small energy he possessed in a wretched
strife of chicanery and broken promises with Thomas of Lancaster
and his party, dismissing and recalling Gaveston according
to the exigencies of the moment, while he let the Scottish war
shift for itself. It must be confessed that the conduct of his
adversaries was almost as contemptible and unpatriotic. They
refused to aid in the war, as if it was the king’s private affair and
not that of the nation. And repeatedly, when they had Edward
at their mercy and might have dictated what terms they pleased
to him, they failed to rise to the situation. This was especially
the case in 1311, when the king had completely submitted
in face of their armed demonstrations. Instead of introducing
any general scheme of reform they contented themselves with
The “Lords Ordainers.”
putting him under the tutelage of twenty-one “lords
ordainers,” a baronial committee like that which had
been appointed by the Provisions of Oxford, fifty
years back. Edward was not to levy an army, appoint
an official, raise a tax, or quit the realm without their leave.
He had also to swear an obedience to a long string of constitutional
limitations of his power, and to promise to remove
many practical grievances of administration. But there were
two great faults in the proceedings of Thomas of Lancaster and
his friends. The first was that they ignored the rights of the
commons—save indeed that they got their ordinances confirmed
by parliament—and put all power into the hands of a council
which represented nothing but the baronial interest. The second,
and more fatal, was that this council of “ordainers,” when
installed in office, showed energy in nothing save in persecuting
the friends of Edward and Gaveston; it neglected the general
welfare of the realm, and in particular made no effort whatever
to end the Scottish war. It was clearly their duty either to make
peace with Robert Bruce, or to exert themselves to crush him;
but they would do neither.
Gaveston’s unhappy career came to an end in 1312. After he had been twice exiled, and had been twice recalled by the king, he was besieged in Scarborough and captured by the earl of Pembroke. He was being conducted to London to be tried in parliament, when his two greatest enemies, Thomas of Lancaster and Guy, earl of Warwick, took him out of the hands of his escort, and beheaded him by the wayside without any legal authority or justification. The unhappy king was compelled to promise to forget and forgive this offence, and was then restored to a certain amount of freedom and power; the barons believed that when freed from the influence of Gaveston he would prove a less unsatisfactory sovereign. The experiment did not turn out happily. Bruce having at last made an almost complete end of the English garrisons within his realm, laid siege to Stirling, the last and strongest of them all, in the spring of 1313. Compelled by the pressure of public opinion to attempt its relief, Edward crossed the border in June 1314, with an army of 20,000 foot and 4000 men-at-arms. He found Bruce prepared Battle of Bannock-burn. to dispute his advance on the hillside of Bannockburn, 2 m. in front of Stirling, in a strong position with a stream in front and his flanks covered by rows of pitfalls, dug to discomfit the English cavalry. The Scots, as at Falkirk, were ranged in solid clumps of pikemen above the burn, with only a small reserve of horse. The English king, forgetting his father’s experiences, endeavoured to ride down the enemy by headlong frontal charges of his men-at-arms, and made practically no attempt to use his archery to advantage. After several attacks had been beaten off with heavy loss, the English host recoiled in disorder and broke up—the king, who had kept in the rear all day, was one of the first to move off. The flower of his knights had fallen, including his nephew, the earl of Gloucester, who was the only one of the great magnates of the realm who had shown loyalty to him during the last six years. The Scots also made many prisoners; the disaster was complete, and the wrecks of the beaten army dispersed before reaching the border. Bruce followed them up, and spent the autumn in ravaging Northumberland and Cumberland.
Thomas of Lancaster, who had refused to join in the late campaign, took advantage of its results to place the king once more in complete tutelage. His household was dismissed, he was bidden to live as best he could on an allowance of £10 a day, and all his ministers and Thomas, earl of Lancaster. officials were changed. For more than three years Lancaster practically reigned in his cousin’s name; it was soon found that the realm got no profit thereby, for Earl Thomas,
