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Updated: July 25, 2025
Isabella was a woman of strong character and violent passions, with the lack of morals and scruples which might have been expected from a girlhood passed amidst the domestic scandals of her father's household. She resented her want of influence over her husband, and hated the Despensers because of their superior power with him. The favourites met her hostility by an open declaration of warfare.
He was insulted, pelted, mounted on a starved pony without saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight-and-twenty knights were hanged, drawn, and quartered. When the King had despatched this bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers into greater favour than ever, and made the father Earl of Winchester.
We see in this act of the Despensers the first of a series of such attempts by which minister after minister strove to free the Crown from the bondage under which the war-pressure laid it to the growing power of Parliament; but it ended, as these after attempts ended, only in the ruin of the counsellors who planned it.
A few days later he was at Caerphilly, but afraid to entrust himself to the protection of the mightiest of marcher castles, he moved restlessly from place to place in Glamorgan and Gower, imploring the help of the tenants of the Despensers, and issuing vain summonses and commissions that no one obeyed.
It was here that Edward II. and his favorites, the Despensers, were besieged by the queen in 1326. The defence was well conducted, and the besiegers were greatly annoyed by melted metal thrown down on them from the walls, which was heated in furnaces still remaining at the foot of the tower.
The two Earls, the Lords of the Marches or borders of Wales, and thirty-four Barons and Knights, bound themselves by a deed, agreeing to prosecute the two Despensers until they should be driven into exile, and to maintain the quarrel to the honor of Heaven and Holy Church, and the profit of the King and his family.
But though the power of the king and the Despensers was thoroughly undermined, the absence of leaders and the general want of public spirit still delayed the day of reckoning. At last, the threatening outlook beyond the Channel indirectly precipitated the crisis.
No sooner had the boy arrived, than the homage was performed, and Edward expected the return of both mother and son; but they still delayed, and on receiving urgent letters from him, the Queen made public declaration that she did not believe her life in safety from the Despensers.
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