swelled the alarmingly long roll of lapsed dignities. None of the few
remaining earls could step into his place, nor give Edward the wise
counsel which the creator of the middle party had always provided.
Warenne was brutal, profligate, unstable, and distrusted; Arundel had
no great influence; Richmond was a foreigner, and of little personal
weight, and the successors of Humphrey of Hereford and Guy of Warwick
were minors, suspected by reason of their fathers' treasons. The only
new earl was Henry of Lancaster, who in 1324 obtained a partial
restitution of his brother's estates and the title of Earl of
Leicester. Prudent, moderate, and high-minded, Henry stood in strong
contrast to his more famous brother. But the tragedy of Pontefract and
his unsatisfied claim on the Lancaster earldom stood between Henry and
the government, and the imprudence of the Despensers soon utterly
estranged him from the king, though he was the last man to indulge in
indiscriminate opposition, and Edward dared not push his powerful
cousin to extremities. In these circumstances, the king had no wise or
strong advisers whose influence might counteract the Despensers. His
loneliness and isolation made him increasingly dependent upon the
favourites.

The older nobles were already alienated, when the Despensers provoked a
quarrel with the queen. Isabella was a woman of strong character and
violent passions, with the lack of morals and scruples which might have
been expected from a girlhood passed amidst the domestic scandals of
her father's household. She resented her want of influence over her
husband, and hated the Despensers because of their superior power with
him. The favourites met her hostility by an open declaration of
warfare. In 1324 the king deprived her of her separate estate, drove
her favourite servants from court, and put her on an allowance of a
pound a day. The wife of the younger Hugh, her husband's niece, was