On hearing of his wife’s landing, Edward threw himself on the compassion of the Londoners, but met with so cold a reception that early in October he withdrew to Gloucester.  Besides the chancellor and the two Despensers, the only magnates of mark who remained faithful to him were the brothers-in-law, Edmund, Earl of Arundel, and Earl Warenne.  On Edward’s retreat from London, Bishop Stratford made his way to the capital, where he joined with Archbishop Reynolds in a hollow pretence of mediation.  The Londoners gladly welcomed the queen’s messengers and soon rose in revolt in her favour.  They plundered and burnt the house of the Bishop of Exeter, who fled in alarm to St. Paul’s.  Seized at the very door of the church, Stapledon was brutally murdered by the mob in Cheapside, where his naked body lay exposed all day.  Immediately after this, Reynolds fled in terror to his Kentish estates, where he waited to see which was the stronger side.  The king’s younger son, John of Eltham, a boy of nine, who had been left behind by his father in the Tower, was proclaimed warden of the capital.

On hearing of Edward’s flight to the west, Isabella went after him in pursuit.  On the day of Stapledon’s murder, she had advanced as far as Wallingford, where, posing as the continuer of the policy of the lords ordainers, she issued a proclamation denouncing the Despensers.  Thence she made her way to Oxford, where Bishop Orleton, who had already joined her, preached a seditious sermon before the university and the leaders of the revolt.  Taking as his text, “My head, my head,” he demonstrated that the sick head of the state could not be restored by all the remedies of Hippocrates, and would therefore have to be cut off.  This was the first intimation that the insurgents would not be content with the fall of the Despensers.  From Oxford, Isabella and Mortimer hurried to Gloucester, whence Edward had already fled to the younger Despenser’s palatinate of Glamorgan.  From Gloucester, they passed on through Berkeley to Bristol, where the elder Despenser, the Earl of Winchester, was in command.  The feeling of the burgesses of the second town in England was so strongly adverse that the earl was unable to defend either the borough or the castle.  In despair he opened the gates on October 26 to the queen, and was immediately consigned, without trial or inquiry, to the death of a traitor.  After proclaiming the Duke of Aquitaine as warden of the realm during his father’s absence, the queen’s army marched on Hereford, where Isabella remained, while the Earl of Leicester, accompanied by a Welsh clerk, named Rhys ap Howel, was sent, with part of the army to hunt out the king.