with the King of Scots was not abandoned by the man on whom the responsibility rested of defeating him.  When Bruce devastated the north of England he still spared the lands of the king’s “chief counsellor,” as of old he had spared the lands of the opposition leader.  When, in 1316, Lancaster mustered his forces at Newcastle against the Scots, Edward repaid him for his inaction in 1314 by declining to accompany him over the border.  “Thereupon,” wrote the border annalist,[1] “the earl at once went back; for neither trusted the other.”  Edward, who forgot and forgave nothing, secretly negotiated with the pope for absolution from his oath to the ordinances.  He gradually built up a court party, and soon restored Hugh Despenser to his position in the household.  As might be expected in such circumstances no effective resistance was made to the Scots.

    [1] Lanercost Chronicle, p. 233.

It was a time of severe distress in England.  In 1315 a rainy summer ruined the harvest.  Great floods swept away the hay from the fields, and drowned the sheep and cattle.  In 1316 famine raged, especially in the north.  For a hundred years, we are told, such scarcity of corn had not been known.  A bushel of wheat was sold at London for forty pence, and the Northumbrians were driven to feed on dogs, horses, and other unwonted food.  Pestilence followed in the train of famine.  It was in vain that parliament passed laws, limiting the repasts of the barons’ households to two courses of meat, and fixing the price of the chief sorts of victuals.  The only result was that dealers refused to bring their produce to market.  Then the legislation, passed in a panic, was repealed in a panic.  “It is better,” said a chronicler, “to buy things at a high rate than not to be able to buy them at all.”

Private wars raged from end to end of south Britain.  On the upper Severn, Griffith of Welshpool, the younger son of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, laid regular siege to Powys castle, the stronghold of John Charlton, his niece’s husband and his rival for the lordship of upper Powys.  As Charlton was a courtier, Griffith attached himself to the ordainers.  After Bannockburn, the captivity of Hereford, the lord of Brecon, and the death without heirs of Gloucester, the lord of Glamorgan, removed the strongest restraints on the men of south Wales.  The royal warden of Glamorgan, Payne of Turberville, displaced Gloucester’s old officers.  One of the sufferers was Llewelyn Bren, “a great and powerful Welshman in those parts,” who had held high office under Earl Gilbert.  In 1315 Llewelyn, after seeking justice in vain at the king’s court, rose in revolt against Turberville.  He gathered the Welshmen on the hills, burst upon Caerphilly, while the constable was holding a court outside the castle, took the outer ward by surprise and burnt it to ashes.  There was fear lest this revolt should be the starting-point of a general Welsh rising.  Llewelyn’s hill strongholds threatened Brecon on the north and the