had always been more apparent than real.  The Earl of Pembroke had never forgiven the treachery of Deddington.  Though Warwick was dead, Pembroke still pursued Lancaster with unrelenting hatred.  No partisan of prerogative, and an enemy of Edward’s personal following, Earl Aymer separated himself from his old associates and strove to form a middle party between the faction of the king and the faction of Lancaster.  Warerine, coarse, turbulent, and vicious, at once violent and crafty, still acted with him.  The lord of Conisborough had long grudged the master of Pontefract and Sandal his great position in Yorkshire.  The natural rivalries of neighbouring potentates were further emphasised by personal animosity of the deadliest kind.  Lancaster had long been at variance with his wife, Alice Lacy.  On May 9, 1317, the Countess of Lancaster ran away from him, with the active help of Warenne and by the secret contrivance of the king.  Private war at once broke out between the two earls.  Lancaster was too strong for his enemy.  Before winter had begun, Conisborough and Warenne’s other Yorkshire castles fell into his hands.  Lancaster’s partisans even laid hold of the king’s castle of Knaresborough, while other Lancastrian bands occupied Alton castle in Staffordshire.  Intermittent hostilities continued until the summer of 1318.  Twice Edward himself went to the north, and on one occasion appeared in force outside Pontefract.  But the more moderate of the baronage managed to prevent open hostilities between the king and the earl.  Lancaster was, as ever, fighting for his own hand.  His self-seeking narrowness gave Pembroke the chance of winning for his middle party a preponderating authority.

Pembroke found more trustworthy allies than Warenne in Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere, the sometime instigator of the Bristol troubles, and a bitter opponent of Lancaster, and in Roger of Amory, the husband of one of the three co-heiresses who now divided the Gloucester inheritance.  Edward, who had profited by the divisions of his enemies to revive the court party, formed a coalition between his friends and the followers of Pembroke.  All lovers of order, of moderation, and of the supremacy of the law necessarily made common cause with them.  Thus it followed that the same machinery, which Lancaster a few years earlier had turned against the king, was now turned against him.  An additional motive to bring peaceable Englishmen into line was found in the capture of Berwick by Bruce in April, 1318.  After this negotiations for peace began.  The king and Lancaster treated as two independent princes.  Lancaster was no longer supported by any prominent earl, and even his clerical friends were falling from him.  Ordainers as jealous as Arundel, royalists as fierce as Mortimer, served along with trimmers like Pembroke and Badlesmere, in acting as mediators.  Lancaster could no more resist than Edward could in 1312.  On August 9 he accepted at Leek, in Staffordshire, the conditions drawn up for him.