The accession of a new monarch in medieval England was rarely a simple, seamless transition. It was a moment of profound political realignment, a legal and social earthquake in which the fortunes of the powerful could be made or catastrophically unmade. What was law one day could be deemed tyranny the next; land confiscated by a king’s command could be restored by his son; a man condemned as a traitor could be venerated as a martyr. Nowhere is this brutal re-evaluation of the immediate past more starkly illustrated than in the violent transition from the reign of Edward II to that of his son, Edward III. For the landowning elites of England, from the great magnates to the local knights of a county like Lincolnshire, this period was a visceral lesson in the precariousness of wealth and status. Their very existence was tethered not to immutable law, but to the shifting winds of royal favour and the cyclical nature of political revenge.
This article explores that tumultuous epoch, tracing the dramatic reversals of fortune through the lens of Lincolnshire and its connections to the great upheavals of the age, reminding us that for those whose power is rooted in land, memory and prosperity are ever at the mercy of the prevailing political climate.
The Long Shadow of Edward I: A Kingdom Consolidated?
To understand the chaos that engulfed the reign of Edward II, one must first appreciate the formidable, if severe, order imposed by his father, Edward I (r. 1272–1307). Known as ‘Longshanks’ and the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, Edward I was a king obsessed with law, sovereignty, and the definition of rights. His reign was one of institutional consolidation. Through far-reaching legislative acts like the Statutes of Westminster (1275, 1285) and Gloucester (1278), he sought to clarify and codify the complex web of feudal obligations that structured his kingdom.
For the landholders of Lincolnshire, this was a double-edged sword. The infamous Quo Warranto (‘By what warrant?’) inquiries, initiated following the Statute of Gloucester, forced barons, knights, and even powerful ecclesiastical bodies to legally prove their right to hold courts, collect tolls, and exercise other local franchises. This was a direct challenge to privileges many held simply by ancient custom. In Lincolnshire, a county of immense agricultural wealth and strategic importance, royal commissioners scrutinised the claims of hundreds of landholders. The great Abbey of Peterborough, whose vast estates included the manor of Brattleby, had to defend its ancient rights alongside secular magnates like Henry de Lacy, the powerful Earl of Lincoln, whose castle dominated the county town.
While disruptive, Edward I’s legalism created a sense of established order. Rights, once proven, were recorded and, in theory, secure. A man knew where he stood before the king’s law. This was a kingdom built on parchment and precedent, where royal authority was paramount, funded by the wool trade of counties like Lincolnshire and legitimised by a robust, if often intrusive, legal system. When Edward I died in 1307 on his way to another campaign in Scotland, he left his son, Edward II, a kingdom that appeared powerful, centralised, and legally coherent. This appearance of solidity would prove to be tragically deceptive.
The Unravelling: Edward II, Favourites, and the Baronial Backlash
Edward II was not his father. Where Edward I was imperious, martial, and devoted to the business of kingship, his son was seen as frivolous, disinterested in warfare, and dangerously dependent on a succession of male favourites. The first and most notorious of these was Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight of relatively humble birth whose wit and charm had captured the king’s affection. Edward II elevated him to the Earldom of Cornwall, a title traditionally reserved for royalty, and showered him with land and honours.
To the established baronage—men like Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, the king’s cousin and the richest magnate in England—this was an outrageous affront. Gaveston was an upstart who monopolised royal patronage, mocked their baronial dignity with cutting nicknames, and disrupted the natural order of the realm. Thomas of Lancaster, who held the vast Honours of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, and Lincoln (through his wife, Alice de Lacy), became the natural leader of the opposition. His immense landholdings gave him a power base that rivalled the king’s, with significant estates and influence across Lincolnshire, including the great castle at Bolingbroke.
The conflict escalated into a full-blown political crisis. In 1311, a council of magnates known as the Lords Ordainers, led by Lancaster, forced upon the king a set of reforms, the Ordinances of 1311. These sought to control royal appointments and finances, and explicitly demanded the permanent exile of Gaveston. Edward II reluctantly agreed, only to recall his favourite soon after. The infuriated barons took matters into their own hands. In 1312, Gaveston was captured, subjected to a mock trial, and executed by Lancaster’s retainers at Blacklow Hill.
The extra-judicial killing of the king’s favourite was a shocking act that poisoned the political atmosphere for the next decade. For Edward II, it was a personal tragedy and a humiliation he would never forgive. For Lancaster and his allies, it was a grim necessity to restore balance to the realm. For the next several years, England was paralyzed by a cold war between the king’s faction and the Lancastrian affinity, a tension felt acutely in counties where Lancaster’s power was strongest.
The Tyranny of the Despensers and the Contrariant Rebellion
After a period of uneasy truce, the vacuum left by Gaveston was filled by new royal favourites: Hugh Despenser the Elder and his son, Hugh Despenser the Younger. The younger Despenser, in particular, proved to be more politically astute and far greedier than Gaveston. He and his father systematically used their proximity to the king to amass a vast empire of land, primarily in the Welsh Marches, by manipulating the law, coercing heiresses into marriage, and dispossessing their rivals through sheer intimidation. Their rapacity united a broad coalition against them.
By 1321, the kingdom was again on the brink of civil war. An alliance of Marcher Lords and northern magnates, including Lancaster, took up arms. Initially successful, they forced the king to exile the Despensers in August 1321. However, Edward II, galvanised into action, skillfully exploited a local dispute to raise an army and mount a counter-attack. He declared the coalition’s actions treasonous and recalled the Despensers.
What followed was the brief, disastrous civil war known as the Contrariant Rebellion. Lancaster and his allies, now branded as ‘Contrariants’ (those acting contrary to the king), were outmanoeuvred. Retreating northwards, they were intercepted by a royalist army under Sir Andrew Harclay at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire in March 1322. The battle was a tactical fiasco for the rebels. Blocked from crossing the bridge over the River Ure, their forces were decimated by loyalist archers. The Earl of Hereford was killed, and Thomas of Lancaster himself was captured and taken to his own castle at Pontefract.
There, before a tribunal that included the king and the newly returned Despensers, Lancaster was subjected to a summary trial. He was denied the right to speak in his own defence, condemned as a traitor on a list of charges, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. In a small act of mercy, owing to his royal blood, the sentence was commuted to beheading. His execution on 22 March 1322 was a seismic event. The most powerful man in England after the king had been judicially murdered.
The aftermath was a whirlwind of retribution. A parliament at York formally annulled the Ordinances of 1311 and sanctioned a brutal purge. Over a hundred of Lancaster’s followers were captured and executed; many more, including dozens of knights from Lincolnshire and neighbouring counties with Lancastrian connections, saw their lands confiscated. Sir Robert de Holland, one of Lancaster’s chief retainers, was hunted down. Roger Damory and Bartholomew de Badlesmere, both powerful barons who had joined the rebellion, were also executed and their families disinherited. The Despensers, now unchecked, gorged themselves on the forfeited estates. For the next four years, England was subject to their tyrannical rule. Law had become a weapon of the victors, and the property of the defeated was the spoil of war. In popular memory, however, Lancaster began to be viewed as a martyr for English liberties, with a saintly cult emerging around his tomb at Pontefract.
The Pendulum Swings: The Fall of Edward II
The Despenser regime (1322–1326) was defined by avarice and fear. They extorted money from the clergy, forced pardons for enormous sums, and imprisoned their enemies’ wives and children. In this climate of terror, the Abbey of Peterborough, holding its manor at Brattleby, would have navigated a perilous course, its abbots needing to display loyalty while resisting the financial demands of a rapacious government.
The catalyst for the regime’s downfall came from an unexpected quarter: the Queen. Isabella of France, Edward II’s estranged wife, had been sent to Paris to negotiate a treaty with her brother, the French king. There, she joined forces with Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, a powerful Marcher Lord who had been imprisoned after the Contrariant Rebellion but had daringly escaped from the Tower of London. They became lovers and plotted their revenge.
In September 1326, Isabella and Mortimer landed at Orwell in Suffolk with a small mercenary army. They issued a proclamation declaring their intent to remove the Despensers and restore the rights of the kingdom. The response was overwhelming. The Despenser regime, built on fear rather than loyalty, collapsed overnight. No one would fight for them. The king and his favourites fled westwards, but were captured in Wales.
The revenge was swift and savage. Hugh Despenser the Elder was executed at Bristol. Hugh the Younger suffered a horrific public execution at Hereford: he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, with parts of his body sent to be displayed in major cities. Edward II was taken to Kenilworth Castle and forced to abdicate in favour of his son in January 1327. His grim fate was sealed later that year at Berkeley Castle, where he was almost certainly murdered on Mortimer’s orders. A new regime was in power, and with it came a radical reinterpretation of the recent past. The Despensers were now the arch-traitors; Thomas of Lancaster was formally hailed a hero.
Restoration and Re-evaluation: The First Parliament of Edward III
The brief from which this study takes its cue finds its most potent expression in the actions of the first parliament of the new reign, held at Westminster in January and February 1327. While the young Edward III was the nominal king, power lay with his mother Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Their first order of business was to dismantle the legal and political legacy of the Despenser regime and reward their own supporters. This was, in effect, a revolution conducted through parliamentary process.
The central act of this assembly was the formal reversal of the judgments made in the wake of the Contrariant Rebellion. The very first petition addressed by the parliament was from Henry of Lancaster, the executed Earl’s brother. It called for the annulment of the verdict against Thomas, arguing that his trial had been illegal. The grounds were specific and crucial: Thomas had been condemned in a time of war, without being offered the chance to answer the charges in a proper court, which was "contrary to the law and custom of the realm and the tenor of Magna Carta."
The parliament agreed. The judgment against Thomas of Lancaster was officially annulled. The legal record was rewritten. He was no longer a traitor but a loyal peer unjustly killed. His brother Henry was restored to the Earldoms of Lancaster and Leicester, and a process began to reclaim the family’s vast forfeited estates, including those across Lincolnshire.
This act opened the floodgates. The parliament was inundated with petitions from the widows, sons, and heirs of those who had been executed or dispossessed after Boroughbridge. The judgments against some twenty other executed Contrariants, including Roger Damory and Bartholomew de Badlesmere, were similarly reversed on the same legal grounds. Scores of others who had been imprisoned or had their lands seized had their possessions restored. For families who had spent five years in disgrace and poverty, this was a moment of profound deliverance. Across the country, and certainly visible to the tenants of Peterborough Abbey at Brattleby, estates that had been seized by the Crown or granted to Despenser loyalists were now returned to their former owners. What had been consolidated under Edward II was utterly cancelled by his successors. The wheel of fortune had turned completely.
The King Comes of Age: A New Consolidation
The restoration, however, was not the end of the turmoil. The three-year regency of Isabella and Roger Mortimer (1327–1330) proved to be as greedy and self-serving as that of the Despensers. Mortimer, now Earl of March, enriched himself and his followers, alienated the established nobility, and presided over a humiliating peace treaty with Scotland. The lesson was being repeated: one tyranny had simply been replaced by another.
The final act of this long drama came in October 1330. The young Edward III, now eighteen and chafing under Mortimer’s control, staged a daring coup. With a small group of loyal companions, he entered Nottingham Castle through a secret passage and arrested Mortimer in the queen mother’s presence. Hauled before parliament, Mortimer was accused of a litany of crimes, including the murder of Edward II and the usurpation of royal power. Like Lancaster before him, he was denied a full trial, condemned by his peers, and executed as a traitor.
With Mortimer’s fall, Edward III finally took personal control of his kingdom. He began his reign with a promise to rule by law and in consultation with his natural councillors, the magnates of the realm. He continued the process of restoration begun in 1327 but brought a much-needed measure of stability. He was a king in the mould of his grandfather, Edward I: martial, charismatic, and determined to unite the political community behind him, a goal he largely achieved by redirecting their energies towards the Hundred Years’ War with France.
Conclusion: A Recurrent Lesson
The period from 1321 to 1330 remains one of the most volatile in English history. In less than a decade, the landowning elite witnessed a rebellion crushed, its leaders executed and disinherited; a tyrannical regime brought down by invasion; a king deposed and murdered; and finally, a new order established, only to be violently overthrown by the young king himself.
At the heart of this story lies the brutal truth articulated in our opening brief: the accession of a new ruler, or the victory of a new faction, redefines not only the future but also the past. The legal status of Thomas of Lancaster—swinging from traitor to martyr—perfectly encapsulates this process. His vast holdings in Lincolnshire and elsewhere were confiscated and then restored, a tangible symbol of the reversals of fortune that defined the era. For the gentry and aristocracy of Plantagenet England, this was no abstract historical process. It was the lived reality that their titles, their manors, and their very lives depended not on a fixed and stable law, but on the unpredictable currents of high politics. The fate of their neighbours, the identity of their overlord, the legality of their charter—all could be overturned in an instant.
The Abbot of Peterborough, watching from the relative security of his monastic franchise at Brattleby, would have seen the secular world convulsed by these changes. This recurring lesson—that no settlement is permanent and that power dictates truth—resonates far beyond the fields of medieval Lincolnshire. It is a fundamental dynamic of history, a reminder that the narratives we inherit, and the rights we hold, are often far more fragile than they appear.
Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources: Domesday Book: A Complete Translation. Penguin, 2003. (For foundational landholding patterns in Brattleby and Lincolnshire). The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272-1346. Translated by H. Maxwell. James Maclehose and Sons, 1913. Vita Edwardi Secundi. Edited and translated by N. Denholm-Young. Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1957. The Brut or The Chronicles of England. Edited by F.W.D. Brie. Early English Text Society, 1906. The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275-1504. Edited by C. Given-Wilson, et al. Scholarly Digital Editions, 2005. (Specifically the rolls for 1327, which detail the reversals of attainder). Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward II & Edward III. H.M. Stationery Office. Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward II & Edward III. H.M. Stationery Office.
Secondary Sources: Maddicott, J.R. Thomas of Lancaster, 1307-1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II. Oxford University Press, 1970. (The definitive study of Lancaster and the Contrariant rebellion). Mortimer, Ian. The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327-1330. Jonathan Cape, 2003. Mortimer, Ian. The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation. Jonathan Cape, 2006. Phillips, J.R.S. Edward II. Yale University Press, 2010. (A comprehensive modern biography). Prestwich, Michael. Plantagenet England, 1225-1360. Oxford University Press, 2005. Prestwich, Michael. The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1377. Routledge, 2003. Tebbit, Alistair. Lincolnshire and the Wars of the Roses. Carnegie Publishing, 2013. (While focused on a later period, contains useful background on Lincolnshire’s magnates and gentry). Victoria County History: A History of the County of Lincoln*. (Various volumes, for specific local details on manorial history).