In January, 1315, Edward’s humiliation was completed at a London parliament.  Hugh Despenser and Walter Langton were removed from the council.  The “superfluous members” of the royal household, denounced as “excessively burdensome to the king and the land,” were dismissed, and drastic ordinances were drawn up for the regulation of the diminished following still allowed to the king.  Edward was put on an allowance of L10 a day, and the administration of his revenues taken out of his hands.  The grant made was accompanied by the condition that its spending should be entirely in the hands of the barons, and the estates arranged after their own fashion for the new Scottish campaign.  When summer came, Lancaster insisted on taking the command himself, and thus gave a new grievance to Pembroke, who had already been appointed general.  Lancaster was henceforth the indispensable man.  When parliament met at Lincoln, in January, 1316, the few magnates who attended would transact no business until his arrival.  On his tardy appearance in the last days of the session, it was resolved “that the lord king should do nothing grave or arduous without the advice of the council, and that the Earl of Lancaster should hold the chief place in the council”.  It was only after some hesitation that the earl accepted this position.  Once more the king was forced to confirm the ordinances.  Liberal grants were made by the estates, and every rural township was called upon to furnish and pay a foot soldier to fight the Scots.

The commander of the army and the chief counsellor of the king, Lancaster, was in a stronger position than any subject since the days of Simon of Montfort.  He could afford to despise aristocratic jealousy and royal malignity.  To the commons he was the good earl, who was standing up for the rights of the people.  He was the darling of the clergy, who looked upon him as the pillar of orthodoxy, the disciple of Winchelsea, and the upholder of the rights of Holy Church.  The warlike and energetic barons of the north were his sworn followers, and, apart from his hold upon public opinion, he could always fall back on the resources of his five earldoms.  But events were soon to show that the successful leader of opposition was absolutely incapable of carrying out a constructive policy.  He had no ideals, no principles, no feeling of the importance of administrative efficiency, no sense of responsibility, no power of controlling his followers.  He never understood that his business was no longer to oppose but to act.  The clear-headed monk of Malmesbury paints the disastrous results of his inaction:  “Whatsoever pleased the king, the earl’s servants strove to overthrow; and whatever pleased the earl, was declared by the king’s servants to be treasonable; and so, at the suggestion of the evil one, the households of earl and king put themselves in the way and would not allow their masters, by whom the land should have been defended, to be of one accord”.  Even the implied understanding