While the ordainers were acting, Edward and Gaveston were aimlessly wandering about in the north.  They failed to raise an army or to win the people to their side, and on the approach of Lancaster, they fled before him from York to Newcastle.  The earl followed quickly.  On the afternoon of Ascension day, May 4, Lancaster, Clifford, and Percy suddenly swooped down on Newcastle.  The king and his friend escaped with the utmost difficulty to Tynemouth, leaving their luggage, jewels, horses, and other possessions to the victor.  Next day they fled by sea to Scarborough.  The queen, left behind at Tynemouth, fell into her uncle Lancaster’s power.

The royal castle of Scarborough, whose Norman keep and spacious wards occupy a rocky peninsula surrounded, except on the town side, by the North Sea, had lately been transferred from the custody of Henry Percy, one of the confederate barons, to that of Gaveston.  There was no fitter place wherein the favourite could stand at bay against his pursuers.  Accordingly Edward left Gaveston, after a tender parting, and betook himself to York.  Lancaster thereupon occupied a position midway between Scarborough and Knaresborough, while Pembroke, Warenne, and Henry Percy laid siege to Scarborough.  Gaveston soon found that he was unable to resist them.  His troops, scarcely adequate to man the extensive walls, were too many for the scanty store of provisions which the castle contained.  After less than a fortnight’s siege, he persuaded the two earls and Percy to allow him easy terms of surrender.  The three baronial leaders pledged themselves on the Gospels to protect Gaveston from all manner of evil until August 1.  During the interval parliament was to decide as to what was to be his future fate.  If the terms agreed upon by parliament were unsatisfactory to him, he was to return to Scarborough, which was still to be garrisoned by his followers, with leave to purchase supplies.

Pembroke undertook the personal custody of the prisoner, and escorted him by slow stages from Scarborough to the south, where he was to be retained in honourable custody at his own castle of Wallingford.  Three weeks after the surrender, the convoy reached Deddington, a small town in Oxfordshire, a few miles south of Banbury.  There Gaveston was lodged in the house of the vicar of the parish, and told to take a few days’ rest after the fatigues of the journey.  Pembroke himself did not remain at Deddington, but went on to Bampton in the Bush, where his countess then was.  Thereupon on June 10, at sunrise, the Earl of Warwick, the most rancorous of Peter’s enemies, occupied Deddington with a strong force.  Bursting into the bedchamber of his victim, Earl Guy exclaimed in a loud voice:  “Arise, traitor, thou art taken”.  Peter was at once led with every mark of indignity to Warwick castle.  Thus the black dog of Arden showed that he could bite.