Edward again despotic, 1322-1323.
Edward, again a free ruler, lost no time in revoking these Ordinances. The elder Despenser he raised to the earldom of Winchester.[403] This was in May, 1322; a year later (April, 1323), he deposed Chigwell, who had again been re-elected to the mayoralty in the previous October, and put in his place Nicholas de Farndon,[404] thus reversing the order of things in 1321, when Farndon had been deposed and his place taken by Chigwell.
The deposed mayor, however, was ordered to keep close attendance on the Court, as were also three other London citizens, viz.: Hamo Godchep, Edmund Lambyn, and Roger le Palmere; and in the following November he recovered his position,[405] and held it for the rest of Edward's reign.
Escape of Roger Mortimer from the Tower. Aug. 1323.
The king's triumph was destined to be short-lived. In August, 1323, Roger Mortimer, a favourite of the queen, effected his escape from the Tower, where he had lain prisoner since January, 1322. The divided feeling of the citizens which had been more or less apparent since the year of the great Iter, now began to assert itself. Mortimer's escape had taken[pg 154] place with the connivance, if not active assistance, of a leading citizen, Richard de Betoyne, and he took sanctuary on the property of another leading citizen, John Gisors.[406] In November the citizens thought fit to close their gates, to prevent surprise.[407]
A feud between the Weavers and the Goldsmiths, 1324.
In the following year (1324), a quarrel broke out between two of the city guilds, the weavers and the goldsmiths. Fights took place in the streets and lives were lost.[408] How far, if at all, such a quarrel had any political significance it is difficult to say, but it is not unlikely, at a time when the guilds were winning their way to chartered rights, that occasionally their members took sides in the political struggle that was then being carried on.
Departure of the queen for France, 9 March, 1324.
Edward, in the meanwhile, was threatened with war by France, unless he consented to cross the sea and do homage to the French king for the possessions he held in that country. This the Despensers dared not allow him to do. A compromise was therefore effected. Queen Isabel, who was not sorry for an opportunity of quitting the side of a husband who had seized all her property, removed her household, and put her on board wages at twenty shillings a day,[409] undertook, with the king's assent, to revisit her home and to bring about a settlement. Accordingly, on the 9th March,[410] 1324, she crossed over to France, where she was afterwards joined by Mortimer and her son.
Her return to England, 24 September, 1326.