Parliament of 1327
The Parliament of 1327, which sat at the Palace of Westminster between 7 January and 9 March 1327, was instrumental in the transfer of the English Crown from King Edward II to his son, Edward III. Edward II had become increasingly unpopular with the English nobility due to the excessive influence of unpopular court favourites, the patronage he accorded them, and his perceived ill-treatment of the nobility. By 1325, even his wife, Queen Isabella, despised him. Towards the end of the year, she took the young Edward to her native France, where she entered into an alliance with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer, who her husband previously had exiled. The following year, they invaded England to depose Edward II. Almost immediately, the King's resistance was beset by betrayal, and he eventually abandoned London and fled west, probably to raise an army in Wales or Ireland. He was soon captured and imprisoned.
Isabella and Mortimer summoned a parliament to confer legitimacy on their regime. The meeting began gathering at Westminster on 7 January, but little could be done in the absence of the King. The fourteen-year-old Edward was proclaimed "Keeper of the Realm", and a parliamentary deputation was sent to Edward II asking him to allow himself to be brought to parliament. He refused, and the parliament continued without him. The King was accused of offences ranging from the promotion of favourites to the destruction of the church, resulting in a betrayal of his coronation oath to the people. These were known as the "Articles of Accusation". The City of London was particularly aggressive in its attacks on Edward II, and its citizens may have helped intimidate those attending the parliament into agreeing to the King's deposition, which occurred on the afternoon of 13 January.
On or around 21 January, the Lords Temporal sent another delegation to the King to inform him of his deposition, effectively giving Edward an ultimatum: if he did not agree to hand over the crown to his son, then the lords in parliament would give it to somebody outside the royal family. King Edward wept but agreed to their conditions. The delegation returned to London, and Edward III was proclaimed king immediately. He was crowned on 1 February 1327. In the aftermath of the parliamentary session, his father remained imprisoned, being moved around to prevent attempted rescues; he died—presumed killed, probably on Mortimer's orders—that September. Crises continued for Mortimer and Isabella, who were de facto rulers of the country, partly because of Mortimer's own greed, mismanagement, and mishandling of the new king. Edward III led a coup d'état against Mortimer in 1330, overthrew him, and began his personal rule.
Background
King Edward II of England had court favourites who were unpopular with his nobility, such as Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Younger. Gaveston was killed during an earlier noble rebellion against Edward in 1312, and Despenser was hated by the English nobility. Edward was also unpopular with the common people due to his repeated demands from them for unpaid military service in Scotland. None of his campaigns there were successful, and this led to a further decline in his popularity, particularly with the nobility. His image was further diminished in 1322 when he executed his cousin, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and confiscated the Lancaster estates. Historian Chris Given-Wilson has written how by 1325 the nobility believed that "no landholder could feel safe" under the regime. This distrust of Edward was shared by his wife, Isabella of France, who believed Despenser responsible for poisoning the King's mind against her. In September 1324 Queen Isabella had been publicly humiliated when the government declared her an enemy alien, and the King had immediately repossessed her estates, probably at the urging of Despenser. Edward also disbanded her retinue. Edward had already been threatened with deposition on two previous occasions. Historians agree that hostility towards Edward was universal. W. H. Dunham and C. T. Wood ascribed this to Edward's "cruelty and personal faults", suggesting that "very few, not even his half-brothers or his son, seemed to care about the wretched man" and that none would fight for him. A contemporary chronicler described Edward as rex inutilis, or a "useless king".France had recently invaded the Duchy of Aquitaine, then an English royal possession. In response, King Edward sent Isabella to Paris, accompanied by their thirteen-year-old son, Edward, to negotiate a settlement. Contemporaries believed she had sworn, on leaving, never to return to England with the Despensers in power. Soon after her arrival, correspondence between Isabella and her husband, as well between them and her brother King Charles IV of France and Pope John XXII, effectively disclosed the royal couple's increasing estrangement to the world. A contemporary chronicler reports how Isabella and Edward became increasingly scathing of each other, worsening relations. By December 1325 she had entered into a possibly sexual relationship in Paris with the wealthy exiled nobleman Roger Mortimer. This was public knowledge in England by March 1326, and the King openly considered a divorce. He demanded that Isabella and Edward return to England, which they refused to do: "she sent back many of her retinue but gave trivial excuses for not returning herself" noted her biographer, John Parsons. Their son's failure to break with his mother angered the King further. Isabella became more strident in her criticisms of Edward's government, particularly against Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, a close associate of the King and Despenser. King Edward alienated his son by putting the prince's estates under royal administration in January 1326, and the following month the King ordered that both he and his mother be arrested on landing in England.
While in Paris, the Queen became the head of King Edward's exiled opposition. Along with Mortimer, this group included Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, Henry de Beaumont, John de Botetourt, John Maltravers and William Trussell. All were united by hatred of the Despensers. Isabella portrayed her and Prince Edward as seeking refuge from her husband and his court, both of whom she claimed were hostile to her, and claimed protection from Edward II. King Charles refused to countenance an invasion of England; instead, the rebels gained the Count of Hainaut's backing. In return, Isabella agreed that her son would marry the Count's daughter Philippa. This was a further insult to Edward II, who had intended to use his eldest son's marriage as a bargaining tool against France, probably intending a marriage alliance with Spain.
Invasion of England
From February 1326 it was clear in England that Isabella and Mortimer intended to invade. Despite false alarms, large ships, as a defensive measure, were forbidden from leaving English ports, and some were pressed into royal service. King Edward declared war on France in July; Isabella and Mortimer invaded England in September, landing in Suffolk on the 24th. The commander of the royal fleet assisted the rebels: the first of many betrayals Edward II suffered. Isabella and Mortimer soon found they had significant support among the English political class. They were quickly joined by Thomas, Earl of Norfolk, the King's brother, accompanied by Henry, Earl of Leicester, and soon afterwards arrived the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Hereford and Lincoln. Within the week, support for the King had dissolved, and, accompanied by Despenser, he deserted London and travelled west. Edward's flight to the west precipitated his downfall. Historian Michael Prestwich describes the King's support as collapsing "like a building hit by an earthquake". Edward's rule was already weak, and "even before the invasion, along with preparation, there had been panic. Now there was simply panic". Ormrod notes howKing Edward's attempt to raise an army in South Wales was to no avail, and he and Despenser were captured on 16 November 1326 near Llantrisant. This, along with the unexpected swiftness with which the entire regime had collapsed, forced Isabella and Mortimer to wield executive power until they made arrangements for a successor to the throne. The King was incarcerated by the Earl of Leicester, while those suspected of being Despenser spies or supporters of the King—particularly in London, which was aggressively loyal to the Queen—were murdered by mobs.
Isabella spent the last months of 1326 in the West Country, and while in Bristol witnessed the hanging of Despenser's father, the Earl of Winchester on 27 October. Despenser himself was captured in Hereford and executed there within the month. In Bristol Isabella, Mortimer and the accompanying lords discussed strategy. Not yet possessing the Great Seal, on 26 October they proclaimed the young Edward guardian of the realm, declaring that "by the assent of the whole community of the said kingdom present there, they unanimously chose as keeper of the said kingdom". He was not yet officially declared king. The rebels' description of themselves as a community deliberately harked back to the reform movement of Simon de Montfort and the baronial league, which had described its reform programme as being of the community of the realm against Henry III. Claire Valente has pointed out how, in reality, the most common phrase heard "was not 'the community of the realm', but 'the quarrel of the earl of Lancaster'", illustrating how the struggle was still a factional one within baronial politics, whatever cloak it may have appeared to possess as a reform movement.
By 20 November 1326 the Bishop of Hereford had retrieved the Great Seal from the King and delivered it to the King's son. He could now be announced as his father's heir apparent. Although, at this stage, it might still have been possible for Edward II to remain king, says Ormrod, "the writing was on the wall". A document issued by Isabella and her son at this time described their respective positions thus: