the Welsh principality; and, worse than all, they made common cause
with the baronial opposition. Hence it followed that the political
results of the victory were as important 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