elf from the realm. As the Ordinances show, the baronage still looked
on Parliament rather as a political organization of the nobles than as a
gathering of the three Estates of the realm. The lower clergy pass
unnoticed; the Commons are regarded as mere taxpayers whose part was still
confined to the presentation of petitions of grievances and the grant of
money. But even in this imperfect fashion the Parliament was a real
representation of the country. The barons no longer depended for their
force on the rise of some active leader, or gathered in exceptional
assemblies to wrest reforms from the Crown by threat of war. Their action
was made regular and legal. Even if the Commons took little part in forming
decisions, their force when formed hung on the assent of the knights and
burgesses to them; and the grant which alone could purchase from the Crown
the concessions which the Baronage demanded lay absolutely within the
control of the Third Estate. It was this which made the king's struggles so
fruitless. He assented to the Ordinances, and then withdrawing to the North
recalled Gaveston and annulled them. But Winchelsey excommunicated the
favourite, and the barons, gathering in arms, besieged him in Scarborough.
His surrender in May 1312 ended the strife. The "Black Dog" of Warwick had
sworn that the favourite should feel his teeth; and Gaveston flung himself
in vain at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster, praying for pity "from his
gentle lord." In defiance of the terms of his capitulation he was beheaded
on Blacklow Hill.

[Sidenote: Bannockburn]

The king's burst of grief was as fruitless as his threats of vengeance; a
feigned submission of the conquerors completed the royal humiliation, and
the barons knelt before Edward in Westminster Hall to receive a pardon
which seemed the deathblow of the royal power. But if Edward was powerless
to conquer the baronage he could still by evading the observance of the
Ordinances throw the whole realm into confusion. The two years that follow
Gaveston's death are among the darkest in our history. A terrible
succession of famines intensified the suffering which sprang from the utter
absence of all rule as dissension raged between the barons and the king. At
last a common peril drew both parties together. The Scots had profited by
the English troubles, and Bruce's "harrying of Buchan" after his defeat of
its Earl, who had joined the English army, fairly turned the tide of
success in