Background
Edward II was a weak and ineffectual king, and his reign was marked by military failure and internal strife. A great number of the barony turned against the king, and the leader of the opposition eventually became Thomas of Lancaster. Lancaster was Edward's cousin, and next to the king he was the richest man in the country. Through a set of regulations known as the Ordinances, Lancaster and his associates had been trying to put restrictions on royal authority, but by the late 1310s Edward was again in full control of central government. The situation was aggravated by the king's ostentatious patronage of his favourite, Hugh Despenser, and Hugh's father by the same name.
In 1319, the king and Lancaster fell out during a failed campaign against Scotland. The next year Lancaster refused to attend a parliament summoned by the king, and later the same year, Edward obtained papal absolution from his oath to follow the Ordinances. Meanwhile an inheritance dispute had broken out in the Welsh Marches between the Despensers and certain marcher lords, including Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. Lancaster now took the initiative with the discontented. In 1321 he summoned two meetings of magnates, one at Lancaster's residence of Pontefract in March, and the other at Sherburn in June. The meetings consisted of northern and marcher lords, as well as Lancaster's own retainers, but little assistance was forthcoming from the northerners. The marcher rebellion, and the threat of civil war, forced the king to exile the younger Despenser, but the favourite was recalled within weeks.
Edward now seized the initiative, and moved northwards. Lancaster convened one final meeting at Doncaster in November, and also entered into an alliance with Robert I of Scotland to strengthen his hand against the king. In January 1322 Edward crossed the River Severn, and secured the surrender of several of the marcher lords while Lancaster remained passive. The earl's most trusted retainer, Robert de Holland, then defected to the king, and as the royal army crossed the River Trent after the Battle of Burton Bridge, Lancaster was forced to flee north. On 16 March Lancaster and his army had reached Boroughbridge by the River Ure. There they were cut off by the forces of Sir Andrew Harclay, a veteran from the Scottish wars, who had gathered the levies from the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Boroughbridge
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