to England as they were to Scotland itself.  The troubled history of the next eight years reveals in detail the effects of Bannockburn on England.  Edward’s defeat threw him into the power of the ordainers.  The ordainers, when called upon to govern, showed themselves as incapable as ever Edward or his favourites had been.  The results were misrule, aristocratic faction, popular distress, and mob violence.  Ineffective as are the first seven years of the reign of Edward of Carnarvon, the eight years which followed Bruce’s victory plunged England deeper into the pit of degradation, from which neither the king nor the king’s foes were strong, wise, or honest enough to release her.

CHAPTER XIII.

LANCASTER, PEMBROKE, AND THE DESPENSERS.

Bannockburn was almost welcomed by the ordainers, for it afforded new opportunities of humiliating the defeated king.  While Edward tarried at Berwick, Lancaster was in his castle of Pontefract with a force far larger than his cousin’s.  Loudly declaring that the true cause of the disaster was Edward’s neglect to carry out the ordinances, he announced his intention of immediately enforcing their observance.  At a parliament at York, in September, Edward delivered himself altogether into Thomas’s hands, ordering the immediate execution of the ordinances, and replacing his ministers and sheriffs by nominees of the ordainers.  The only boon that he obtained was that the earls postponed the removal from court of Hugh Despenser and Henry Beaumont, the two faithful friends who had guarded him in his flight from Bannockburn.  Despenser, however, thought it prudent to avoid his enemies by going into hiding.  Edward’s submission did not help him against the Scots.  The earls resolved that the question of an expedition was to be postponed until the next parliament, on the ground that it was imprudent to take action until Hereford and the other captives had been released.  It was a sorry excuse, for King Robert and his brother were devastating the northern counties with fire and sword, and it gave new ground to the suspicion of an understanding between the Scottish king and the ordainers.  But the victor of Bannockburn showed surprising moderation.  He suffered the bodies of Gloucester and the slain barons to be buried among their ancestors, and released Gloucester’s father-in-law, Monthermer, without ransom, declaring that the thing in the world which he most desired was to live in peace with the English.  He welcomed an exchange of prisoners, by which his wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, his sister, his daughter, and the Bishop of Glasgow were restored to Scotland.  The release of Hereford soon added to the king’s troubles.