appointed, the method of their election being based upon the precedents
of 1258.

Twenty-one lords ordainers represented in somewhat unequal proportions
the three great ranks of the magnates. At the head of the seven bishops
was Winchelsea, while both Bishop Baldock of London, the dismissed
chancellor, and his successor, John Langton of Chichester, were
included among the rest. All the eight earls attending the parliament
became ordainers. Side by side with moderate men, such as Gloucester,
Lincoln, and John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, were the extreme men
of the opposition, Lancaster, Pembroke, Warwick, Hereford, the king's
brother-in-law, and Edmund Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. Warenne and the
insignificant Earl of Oxford do not seem to have been present in
parliament, and are therefore omitted. With these exceptions, and of
course that of the Earl of Cornwall, the whole of the earls were
arrayed against the king. The six barons, who completed the list of
nominees, were either colourless in their policy or dependent on the
earls and their episcopal allies. The ordainers set to work at once.
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. During
the next eighteen months they remained hard at work.

Gaveston, conscious of his impending doom, betook himself to the north
as early as February. As soon as he could escape, Edward hurried
northwards to join him. An expedition against the Scots was then