advanced towards the Severn.  As the inaction of Lancaster kept the northern barons quiet, Edward’s sole task was to wreak his revenge on the marcher lords.  They were unprepared for resistance, and waited in vain for Lancaster to come to their help.  Without a leader, they made feeble and ill-devised efforts to oppose the king’s advance.  Their command of the few bridges over the Severn prevented the king from crossing the river, and leading his troops directly into the march.  Foiled at Gloucester, Worcester, and Bridgnorth, Edward made his way up the stream to Shrewsbury.  The two Mortimers, who held the town and the passage of the river, could have stopped him if they had chosen.  But they feared to undertake strong measures while Lancaster’s action remained uncertain.  They suffered Edward to cross the stream and surrendered to him.  The collapse of the fiercest of the marcher lords frightened the rest into surrender.  Edward wandered back through the middle and southern marches, occupying without resistance the main strongholds of his enemies.  At Hereford, he sharply rebuked the bishop for upholding the barons against their natural lord.  At Berkeley, he received from Maurice of Berkeley the keys of the stately fortress which was so soon to be the place of his last humiliation.  Early in February, he was back at Gloucester, where, on February 11, he recalled the Despensers.

Humphrey of Hereford, Roger of Amory, and a few other marchers managed to escape the king’s pursuit, and rode northwards to join Thomas of Lancaster.  Thomas had long been ready at Pontefract with his followers in arms.  But he let the time for effective action slip, and was only goaded into doing anything when the fugitives from the march impressed him with the critical state of affairs.  The quarrel of king and barons was not the only trouble besetting England.  The two years’ truce with Scotland had expired, and Robert Bruce was once more devastating the northern counties.  But neither Edward nor Lancaster cared anything for this.  Andrew Harclay, the governor of Carlisle, strongly urged the king to defend his subjects from the Scots rather than make war against them.  Edward answered that rebels must be put down before foreign enemies could be encountered, and pressed northwards with his victorious troops.

Lancaster was then besieging Tickhill, a royal castle in southern Yorkshire.  After wasting three weeks before its walls, he led his force south to Burton-on-Trent, which he occupied on March 10.  Edward soon approached the Trent on his northward march.  The barons thereupon lost courage, and, abandoning the defence of the passage over the river, fled northwards to Pontefract, the centre of Lancaster’s power in Yorkshire.  Edward advanced against them, taking on his road Lancaster’s castle of Tutbury, where Roger of Amory was captured, mortally wounded.  The Lancastrians were panic-stricken.  They fled from Pontefract as they had fled from Burton,