The riot at court had its necessary consequence—the dissipation of the royal funds and the need of more. The barons already, before voting supplies, had several times obliged the king to promise a redress of grievances. But now, on being summoned in October, 1309, three months after Gaveston's return, to meet at York, they refused, alleging fear of the all-powerful and vindictive favourite. The necessities of Edward made him imperatively renew the summons, but the barons still refused to assemble, and the object of the general odium was compelled to retire for the time. The barons then came together at Westminster in March of the following year, 1310; but they came fully armed, and Edward found himself completely in their power. They now insisted that he should sign a commission, enabling the Parliament to appoint twelve persons, who should take the name of Ordainers, having power thoroughly to reform both the government and the king's household. They were to enact ordinances for this purpose, which should for ever have the force of laws, and which, in truth, involved the whole authority of the Crown and Parliament.

PIERS GAVESTON BEFORE THE EARL OF WARWICK. (See p. [370.])

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The committee, instead, however, of being confined to twelve, was extended to twenty-eight persons—seven bishops, eight earls, and thirteen barons. These powerful men were authorised to form associations amongst themselves and their friends to enforce the strict observance of their ordinances; and all this was said to be for the glory of God, the security of the Church, and the honour and advantage of the king and kingdom.

Thus had the imbecility of the second Edward reduced the nation to the yoke of a baronial and ecclesiastical oligarchy. This suspicious junto, however, conscious that they would be regarded with a jealous eye by the nation, voluntarily signed a declaration that they owed these concessions to the king's free grace; that they should not be drawn into a precedent, nor allowed to trench on the royal prerogative; and that the functions and power of the Ordainers should expire at Michaelmas in the year following.

The committee sat in London, and in the ensuing year, 1311, presented their ordinances to the king and Parliament. Some of these ordinances were not only constitutional, but highly requisite, and tending to the due administration of the laws. They required sheriffs to be men of substance and standing; abolished the mischievous practice of issuing privy seals for the suspension of justice; restrained the practice of purveyance, where, under pretence of the king's service, enormous rapine and abuse were carried on; prohibited the alteration and debasement of the coin; made it illegal for foreigners to farm the revenues, ordering regular payment of taxes into the exchequer; revoked all the late grants of the crown—thus aiming a direct blow at the chief favourite, on whom the crown property had been most shamefully wasted. But the main grievance to the king was the sweeping ordinance against all evil counsellors, by which not only Piers Gaveston, but the whole tribe of sycophants and parasites were removed from their offices by name, and persons more agreeable to the barons were put in their places. It was, moreover, decreed that for the future all considerable offices, not only of the law, the revenue, and the military, but of the household also—an especial and immemorial royal privilege—should be under the appointment of the baronage. Still further, the power of making war, or even of assembling his military tenants, should no longer be exercised by the king, without the consent of his nobility. This was a wholesale suppression of the prerogatives of the crown, which the barons dared not have attempted in any ordinary reign; but this would probably have little affected Edward had not Piers Gaveston been declared a public enemy, and banished from the realm, on pain of death in case of his ever daring to return.

Nothing can show more decisively that Edward was not merely weak as regarded his favourite, but was totally unfit to rule a kingdom, having no serious feeling of its rights, or desire of its prosperity, than the fact that he signed all these deeply important decrees with a secret protest against them, meaning to break them on the first opportunity; and that he sent Gaveston away to Flanders, intending as soon as possible to recall him. The moment he was freed from the demands of Parliament, he set out to the north of England, pretending a campaign against the Scots. Once at liberty, he recalled Gaveston, declared his punishment quite illegal, restored him to his honours, employments, and estates, and the two dear friends continued at Berwick, and on the Scottish borders, doing nothing to resist the advances of Bruce.

The barons now broke all measures of restraint. Provoked to exasperation by seeing the whole of their labours at once set aside, and the favourite restored to his fortune in defiance of them, they united in a most formidable conspiracy. At the head of it appeared Gaveston's old enemy Lancaster; Guy, Earl of Warwick, "the black dog of Arden," entered into the alliance, according to one historian's expression, with "a furious and precipitate passion." Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the constable, the Earl of Pembroke, and even the Earl Warrenne, who hitherto had supported, on most occasions, the royal cause, now joined zealously in the confederacy. Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, led on the clergy, who declared themselves in a body against the king and Gaveston. Such a coalition was able, at that time, to shake the throne itself.

Lancaster, at the head of an army marched to York, whence the king precipitately retreated to Newcastle. The former made a keen pursuit, and Edward had only just time to get on board a vessel at Tynemouth, and escape to Scarborough with his minion. There Edward left him to defend the castle, while he again set out for York to endeavour to raise a body of troops. Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whom Gaveston had ridiculed as "Joseph the Jew," laid brisk siege to the castle, which was in bad condition, and Gaveston, on the 19th of May, 1312, was obliged to capitulate. Both Pembroke and Lord Henry Percy pledged themselves that no harm should happen to him, and that he should be confined in his own castle of Wallingford. But, with all the boasts of chivalry, no great faith was to be reposed in such promises in those times, and they marched him away to the castle of Dedington, near Banbury, where Pembroke, on pretence of meeting his countess somewhere in the neighbourhood, left him under a feeble guard. Pembroke, who was under oath, having thus on plausible grounds retired, Warwick, "the black dog of Arden," who had vowed to show Gaveston his teeth, now appeared upon the scene. He made a show of attacking the castle; the garrison refused to defend it—no doubt being well informed of the part they were to play—and in the morning the unhappy favourite was ordered suddenly to dress and descend into the court. There he found himself, to his consternation, in the presence of the grim and vengeful Warwick, accompanied by a strong force. By his orders he was set on a mule and led to Warwick Castle with great triumph. His arrival there was announced by a burst of military music; great were the acclamations and triumph at seeing the long-detested favourite thus overwhelmed. A council was speedily formed, at which Lancaster, Hereford, Arundel, and other barons assisted. Some one ventured to propose gentle measures, and to shed no blood, but a voice exclaimed, "You have caught the fox; if you let him go, you will have to hunt him again." That hint decided Gaveston's fate. The certainty that the king would on the first possible occasion reinstate his favourite, and that their own lives might fall before his vengeance, determined them to put him to death, in disgraceful violation of the articles of capitulation, but in accordance with the ordinance passed by Parliament for his exile. Gaveston now stooped from his haughty insolence at the approach of death, and prayed for mercy from the Earl of Lancaster. It was useless; his enemies hurried him away on the road towards Coventry, and there, at a mile or more distant from the castle, on the 1st of July, 1312, they struck off his head on a rising ground called Blacklow Hill, where the Avon winds through a pleasant scene, suggestive of anything but such a tragedy.