rgot and forgave nothing, secretly negotiated with
the pope for absolution from his oath to the ordinances. He gradually
built up a court party, and soon restored Hugh Despenser to his position
in the household. As might be expected in such circumstances no
effective resistance was made to the Scots.

[1] _Lanercost Chronicle_, p. 233.

It was a time of severe distress in England. In 1315 a rainy summer
ruined the harvest. Great floods swept away the hay from the fields,
and drowned the sheep and cattle. In 1316 famine raged, especially in
the north. For a hundred years, we are told, such scarcity of corn had
not been known. A bushel of wheat was sold at London for forty pence,
and the Northumbrians were driven to feed on dogs, horses, and other
unwonted food. Pestilence followed in the train of famine. It was in
vain that parliament passed laws, limiting the repasts of the barons'
households to two courses of meat, and fixing the price of the chief
sorts of victuals. The only result was that dealers refused to bring
their produce to market. Then the legislation, passed in a panic, was
repealed in a panic. "It is better," said a chronicler, "to buy things
at a high rate than not to be able to buy them at all."

Private wars raged from end to end of south Britain. On the upper
Severn, Griffith of Welshpool, the younger son of Griffith ap
Gwenwynwyn, laid regular siege to Powys castle, the stronghold of John
Charlton, his niece's husband and his rival for the lordship of upper
Powys. As Charlton was a courtier, Griffith attached himself to the
ordainers. After Bannockburn, the captivity of Hereford, the lord of
Brecon, and the death without heirs of Gloucester, the lord of
Glamorgan, removed the strongest restraints on the men of south Wales.
The royal warden of Glamorgan, Payne of Turberville, displaced
Gloucester's old officers. One of the sufferers was Llewelyn Bren, "a
great and powerful Welshman in those parts," who had held high office
under Earl Gilbert. In 1315 Llewelyn, after seeking justice in vain at
the king's court, rose in revolt against Turberville. He gathered the
Welshmen on the hills, burst upon Caerphilly, while the constable was
holding a court outside the castle, took the outer ward by surprise and
burnt it to ashes. There was fear lest this revolt should be the
starting-point of a general Welsh rising. Llewelyn's hill strongholds
threatened Brecon on the north and the vale of Glamorgan on the s