repealed, no future
statute could come into existence without the consent of the commons.

25. =The Rule of the Despensers. 1322--1326.=--For some years after
the execution of Lancaster, Edward, or rather the Despensers, retained
power, but it was power which did not work for good. In =1323= Edward
made a truce with Scotland, but the cessation of foreign war did not
bring with it a cessation of troubles at home. Edward was entirely
unable to control his favourites. The elder Despenser was covetous and
the younger Despenser haughty, and they both made enemies for
themselves and the king. Queen Isabella was alienated from her
husband, partly by his exclusive devotion to the Despensers and partly
by the contempt which an active woman is apt to feel for a husband
without a will of his own. In =1325= she went to France, and was soon
followed by her eldest son, named Edward after his father. From that
moment she conspired against her husband. In =1326= she landed,
accompanied by her paramour, Robert Mortimer, and bringing with her
foreign troops. The barons rose in her favour. London joined them, and
all resistance was speedily beaten down. The elder Despenser was
hanged by the queen at Bristol. The younger was hanged, after a form
of trial, at Hereford.

[Illustration: Sir John de Creke; from his brass at Westley Waterless,
Cambridgeshire: showing armour worn between 1300 and 1335 or 1340.
Date, about 1325.]

26. =The Deposition and Murder of Edward II. 1327.=--Early in =1327= a
Parliament met at Westminster. It was filled with the king's enemies,
and under pressure from the queen and Mortimer Edward II. was
compelled to sign a declaration of his own wrong-doing and
incompetency, after which he formally resigned the crown. He was
allowed to live for eight months, at the end of which he was brutally
murdered in Berkeley Castle. The deposition of Edward II.--for his
enforced resignation was practically nothing less than that--was the
work of a faithless wife and of unscrupulous partisans, but at least
they clothed their vengeance in the forms of Parliamentary action. It
was by the action of Parliament in loosing the feudal ties by which
vassals were bound to an unworthy king, that it rose to the full
position of being the representative of the nation, and at the same
time virtually proclaimed that the wants of the nation must be
satisfied at the expense of the feudal claims of the king. The
national headship of the king wo