A Gascon favourite made Earl of Cornwall, sent into exile three times and finally seized and killed on Blacklow Hill near Warwick (1312)
Piers Gaveston; the earl of Warwick took him and the earl of Lancaster had him beheaded.
Monarchs · Plantagenet
Edward II
1284–1327
House of Plantagenet — favourites, Bannockburn and deposition
In office: 1307–1327
Born at Caernarfon and the first English Prince of Wales, Edward II lost his father's grip on both Scotland and his own baronage. His devotion to Piers Gaveston and later to the Despensers provoked the Ordinances of 1311 and repeated rebellion; Robert the Bruce destroyed an English army at Bannockburn in 1314. In 1326 his queen, Isabella of France, invaded with her ally Roger Mortimer, and in January 1327 he became the first anointed king of England to be forced from the throne. He died at Berkeley Castle that September.
How to spot them
- ▸Born at Caernarfon in 1284; the first English Prince of Wales, created 1301
- ▸Piers Gaveston, made Earl of Cornwall, and later Hugh Despenser the Younger
- ▸Bannockburn, 1314; the Lords Ordainers and the Ordinances of 1311
- ▸Deposed by his wife Isabella and Roger Mortimer; died at Berkeley Castle; buried at Gloucester
In the reign
A catastrophic defeat by Robert the Bruce beside a burn near Stirling, securing Scottish independence in practice (1314)
Bannockburn, 23–24 June 1314.
Forty-one articles drawn up by a committee of earls and bishops to control royal finance, appointments and warmaking (1311)
The Ordinances, framed by the Lords Ordainers and revoked by the Statute of York in 1322.
The rise of a father and son from the Welsh Marches, and the defeat and beheading of the earl of Lancaster at Boroughbridge (1322)
The Despensers; Thomas of Lancaster was executed at Pontefract.
An invasion led by the king's own queen and her lover, landing on the Suffolk coast with a small force and meeting almost no resistance (1326)
Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer landed on 24 September 1326.
The first anointed king of England to be forced to renounce his crown, in favour of his fourteen-year-old son (1327)
Parliament deposed him in January 1327; the renunciation was extracted at Kenilworth.
A death in a Gloucestershire castle in September, and a splendid tomb that became a place of pilgrimage (1327)
Berkeley Castle; the alabaster tomb is in Gloucester Cathedral, then the abbey church of St Peter.
An Elizabethan tragedy about a king destroyed by his love for a favourite, by the author of Doctor Faustus (c. 1592)
Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.
Quick-fire facts
- •He was created Prince of Wales in 1301, the first English heir to hold the title
- •He married Isabella of France, daughter of Philip IV, at Boulogne in 1308
- •His reign coincided with the Great Famine of 1315–17, which killed perhaps a tenth of the population
- •The Declaration of Arbroath (1320) was addressed to the Pope by the Scots during his reign
- •He founded Oriel College, Oxford in 1326 and King's Hall, Cambridge, a forerunner of Trinity College
- •The lurid story of his murder with a red-hot iron comes from later chronicles and is not contemporary
- •A minority of historians take seriously the Fieschi letter, which claims he escaped and lived on in Italy
- •He is buried in Gloucester Cathedral; offerings at his tomb helped pay for the rebuilding of the choir
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- The Royal Household — Edward II (r. 1307–1327)
- English Heritage — Berkeley Castle