the king or to act with him, and in the dead-lock of both parties the Scots plundered as they would.  Their ravages in the North brought shame on England such as it had never known.  At last Bruce’s capture of Berwick in the spring of 1318 forced the king to give way.  The Ordinances were formally accepted, an amnesty granted, and a small number of peers belonging to the barons’ party added to the great officers of state.  Had a statesman been at the head of the baronage the weakness of Edward might have now been turned to good purpose.  But the character of the Earl of Lancaster seems to have fallen far beneath the greatness of his position.  Distrustful of his cousin, yet himself incapable of governing, he stood sullenly aloof from the royal Council and the royal armies, and Edward was able to lay his failure in recovering Berwick during the campaign of 1319 to the Earl’s charge.  His influence over the country was sensibly weakened; and in this weakness the new advisers on whom the king was leaning saw a hope of destroying his power.  These were a younger and elder Hugh Le Despenser, son and grandson of the Justiciar who had fallen beside Earl Simon at Evesham.  Greedy and ambitious as they may have been, they were able men, and their policy was of a higher stamp than the wilful defiance of Gaveston.  It lay, if we may gather it from the faint indications which remain, in a frank recognition of the power of the three Estates as opposed to the separate action of the baronage.  The rise of the younger Hugh, on whom the king bestowed the county of Glamorgan with the hand of one of its coheiresses, a daughter of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, was rapid enough to excite general jealousy; and in 1321 Lancaster found little difficulty in extorting by force of arms his exile from the kingdom.  But the tide of popular sympathy was already wavering, and it was turned to the royal cause by an insult offered to the queen, against whom Lady Badlesmere closed the doors of Ledes Castle.  The unexpected energy shown by Edward in avenging this insult gave fresh strength to his cause.  At the opening of 1322 he found himself strong enough to recall Despenser, and when Lancaster convoked the baronage to force him again into exile, the weakness of their party was shown by some negotiations into which the Earl entered with the Scots and by his precipitate retreat to the north on the advance of the royal army.  At Boroughbridge his forces were arrested and dispersed, and Thomas himself, brought captive before Edward at Pontefract, was tried and condemned to death as a traitor.  “Have mercy on me, King of Heaven,” cried Lancaster, as, mounted on a grey pony without a bridle, he was hurried to execution, “for my earthly king has forsaken me.”  His death was followed by that of a number of his adherents and by the captivity of others; while a Parliament at York annulled the proceedings against the Despensers and repealed the Ordinances.

[Sidenote:  The Despensers]