the havoc which death had played among the earls. "Time was," said the
monk of Malmesbury, "when fifteen earls and more followed the king to
war; but now only five or six gave him their assistance." The five
earldoms of Thomas of Lancaster meant the extinction of as many ancient
houses. The earldoms of Chester, Cornwall, and Norfolk had long been in
the king's hands. If the comital rank was not to be extinguished
altogether, it had to be recruited with fresh blood. And who were so
fit to fill up the vacant places as these well-born favourites?

A little had been done under Edward II to remedy the desolation of the
earldoms. The revival of the earldom of Cornwall in favour of Gaveston
had not been a happy experiment. But the king's elder half-brother,
Thomas of Brotherton, invested with the estates and dignities of the
Bigods, was made earl marshal and Earl of Norfolk. In 1321 the earldom
of Kent, extinct since the fall of Hubert de Burgh, was revived in
favour of Edmund of Woodstock, the younger half-brother of the king.
The titular Scottish earldoms of some English barons, such as the
Umfraville earls of Angus, kept up the name, if not the state of earls,
and we have seen the reward of the victor of Dundalk in the creation of
a new earldom of Louth in Ireland. But there were certain hereditary
dignities whose suspension seemed unnatural. Conspicuous among these
was the Gloucester earldom which, from the days of the valiant son of
Henry I. to the death of the last male Clare at Bannockburn, had played
a unique part in English history.

Both the Despensers desired to be earls, and the younger Hugh wished
that the Gloucester earldom should be revived in his favour. Assured of
the good-will of the king, both had to contend against the jealousy of
the baronage and the exclusiveness of the existing earls. The younger
Hugh had also to reckon with his two brothers-in-law, with whom he had