. There can be no doubt but that any full parliament would
have co-operated with the barons as heartily in 1310 as it had done in
1309. It was simply that popular co-operation was regarded as
unnecessary. As in 1258, the magnates claimed to speak for the whole
nation.

The barons drew up a statement of the "great perils and dangers" to
which England was exposed through the king's dependence on bad
counsellors. The franchises of Holy Church were threatened; the king
was reduced to live by extortion; Scotland was lost; and the crown was
"grievously dismembered" in England and Ireland. "Wherefore, sire," the
petition concludes, "your good folk pray you humbly that, for the
salvation of yourself and them and of the crown, you will assent that
these perils shall be avoided and redressed by ordinance of your
baronage." Edward at once surrendered at discretion, perhaps in the
vain hope of saving Gaveston. On March 16 he issued a charter, which
empowered the barons to elect certain persons to draw up ordinances to
reform the realm and the royal household. The powers of the committee
were to last until Michaelmas, 1311. A barren promise that the king's
concession should not be counted a precedent made Edward's submission
seem a little less abject. Four days later the ordainers were
appointed, the method of their election being based upon the precedents
of 1258.

Twenty-one lords ordainers represented in somewhat unequal proportions
the three great ranks of the magnates. At the head of the seven bishops
was Winchelsea, while both Bishop Baldock of London, the dismissed
chancellor, and his successor, John Langton of Chichester, were
included among the rest. All the eight earls attending the parliament
became ordainers. Side by side with moderate men, such as Gloucester,
Lincoln, and John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, were the extreme men
of the opposition, Lancaster, Pembroke, Warwick, Hereford, the king's
brother-in-law, and Edmund Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. Warenne and the
insignificant Earl of Oxford do not seem to have been present in
parliament, and are therefore omitted. With these exceptions, and of
course that of the Earl of Cornwall, the whole of the earls were
arrayed against the king. The six barons, who completed the list of
nominees, were either colourless in their policy or dependent on the
earls and their episcopal allies. The ordainers set to work at once.
Two days after their appointment, they issued six prelim