back to the policy of the Mad Parliament. As the king could not be
trusted, the royal power must once more be put into commission in the
hands of a committee of magnates. So stiff were the barons in their
adhesion to the precedents of 1258, that they made no pretence of
taking the commons into partnership with them. To them the work of
Edward I. had been done to no purpose. Baronial assemblies and full
parliaments of the estates were still equally competent to transact all
the business of the nation. It is vain to see in this ignoring of the
commons any aristocratic jealousy of the more popular element in the
constitution. There can be no doubt but that any full parliament would
have co-operated with the barons as heartily in 1310 as it had done in
1309. It was simply that popular co-operation was regarded as
unnecessary. As in 1258, the magnates claimed to speak for the whole
nation.

The barons drew up a statement of the "great perils and dangers" to
which England was exposed through the king's dependence on bad
counsellors. The franchises of Holy Church were threatened; the king
was reduced to live by extortion; Scotland was lost; and the crown was
"grievously dismembered" in England and Ireland. "Wherefore, sire," the
petition concludes, "your good folk pray you humbly that, for the
salvation of yourself and them and of the crown, you will assent that
these perils shall be avoided and redressed by ordinance of your
baronage." Edward at once surrendered at discretion, perhaps in the
vain hope of saving Gaveston. On March 16 he issued a charter, which
empowered the barons to elect certain persons to draw up ordinances to
reform the realm and the royal household. The powers of the committee
were to last until Michaelmas, 1311. A barren promise that the king's
concession should not be counted a precedent made Edward's submission
seem a little less abject. Four days later the ordainers were