The Perfect King by Ian Mortimer Page A

When the king entered the royal fortress of Wallingford on 6 October, they were approaching Baldock. Three days later, as the king marched into Gloucester, they came to Dunstable. On 10 October, while both armies were still far apart, the decisive blow was struck. Edward heard the devastating news that Henry of Lancaster — the most powerful man in the realm, his cousin - had declared for the invaders. Mortimer had succeeded in bringing about the most powerful alliance possible: between the lords of the Welsh Marches, the royal uncles, and the confederacy of northern barons led by Lancaster. This closed off the last avenues of hope for the king. He and Hugh Despenser abandoned their men-at-arms and tried to flee by boat from Chepstow but failed, with the wind against them. They paid a priest to sing a mass in the hope that God would favour them, but God was not listening to his dejected royal supplicant. The wind blew the king back to shore.
    Young Edward could never have expected to be greeted with such relief and joy. He and his mother were feted in town after town across England. His father's promise to make him an example to all disobedient sons now seemed a complete delusion. But if Edward's life and position had been saved by Mortimer's strategic genius, the spectres which Mortimer had summoned up were equally worrying. In London there was anarchy. The mob had broken into the Tower and dragged out Edward's nine-year-old brother, John, and had set him up as ruler of the city. This was a joke in itself, for there was no rule in the city. Rioters and thieves were on the loose. Anyone suspected of collaborating with the Despenser regime was robbed and killed. Bishop Stapeldon, hearing that his house had been looted and was on fire, rode across the city in armour to confront the robbers. The mob caught him in the churchyard of St Paul's and dragged him from his horse and down Cheapside, cutting his head off with a bread-knife in their mad fury. They sent the head as a present to Isabella.
    If ever there was an example of how devastating the loss of widespread support could be, it was the destruction of royal power in late September and early October 1326. To Edward's dismay, the country simply jettisoned his father. All the long centuries of dignity, glory, authority, respect, chivalry and honour - everything which was sacred and powerful about royalty - was stripped away. The king had been forced to run, ignomin iously, towards Wales, and then forced out to sea. This was distressing for Edward. Mortimer's political machinations, which had served so well to launch their return to the country, now threatened to destroy the very thing that Edward hoped would be saved for him: the authority of the Crown.
    At Wallingford, on 15 October, the invaders issued a proclamation. They declared - in Edward's name - that the king had accepted the advice of evil men, and through them the Church had been despoiled, the dignity of the Crown had been reduced, lords had been imprisoned without trial, and fined, put to death, or exiled; and the people had been burdened by heavy taxes. The invaders proclaimed they had come to put an end to this despotism. Edward, seeing his name now being used as an authority for political documents, could only hope that that was true. But on the same day as the proclamation was issued, Bishop Orleton preached a sermon to many hundreds of men at Oxford in which he accused the king of being a 'tyrant and a sodomite', echoing the charges brought against the disgraced Pope Boniface VIII in 1303. It was abundantly clear to Edward that a new tyranny was lurking. His father had now become the target of political lies and anti-royalist propaganda. With Mortimer in charge, the outlook for the royal family was bleak
    On 26 October, Bristol Castle fell to Mortimer. Despite Isabella's pleas for mercy, Mortimer and the royal earls had the earl of Winchester (Hugh Despenser's father) beheaded. By then they knew that the king