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Updated: May 18, 2025
Two days after their appointment, they issued six preliminary ordinances by which they resolved that the place of their sitting should be London, that none of the ordainers should receive gifts from the crown, that no royal grants should be valid without the consent of the majority, that the customs should be paid directly into the exchequer, that the foreign merchants who had lately farmed them should be arrested, and that the Great Charter should be firmly kept.
But the notice given was far too short, and June was well advanced before anything was ready. For the numbers at Bannockburn, see Foedera, ii., 248, and Round, Commune of London, pp. 289-301. Even the Scottish peril could not quicken the sluggish patriotism of the ordainers.
Hardly any noble came except Gaveston, and they made an ineffectual inroad into Scotland together, after which Gaveston shut himself up in Bamborough Castle, while the King went to London to receive the decision of the ordainers. The foremost was, of course, the banishment of Gaveston; and he went, but only again to appear, before two months were past, in the company of the King, at York.
He was steadfast in his prejudices and hatreds, and the ordainers found in him a leader who could at least save them from the reproach of inconstancy and the lack of fixed purpose shown at the parliament of Stamford. It was the first duty of Earl Thomas to perform homage and fealty for his new earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. Attended by a hundred armed knights, he rode towards the border.
Then in disgust he betook himself to the king, whom he found still surrounded with the Beaumonts, Mauleys, and other friends of Gaveston, against whom the ordinances had decreed banishment. Warenne, whose honour was only less impeached than Pembroke's, also deserted the ordainers for the court. Edward bitterly deplored the death of his friend.
The ordainers looked upon Gaveston's return as a declaration of war. Winchelsea pronounced him excommunicate, and five of the eight earls who sat among the ordainers, bound themselves by oaths to maintain the ordinances and pursue the favourite to the death. These were Thomas of Lancaster, Aymer of Pembroke, Humphrey of Hereford, Edmund of Arundel, and Guy of Warwick.
The ordainers then divided England into large districts, appointing one of the baronial leaders to the charge of each. Gloucester himself undertook the government of the south-east, while Robert Clifford and Henry Percy agreed to guard the march, to prevent Gaveston escaping to the Scots. Pembroke and Warenne marched to the north to lay hands on the favourite, and Lancaster himself followed them.
They brought their armed followers, and forced the King to consent to the appointment of a committee of ordainers, who made him declare that this measure proceeded of his own free will, and was not to prejudice the rights of the Crown; but that their office would expire of itself on the ensuing Michaelmas-Day.
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