King Edward Plantagenet II Of England ^{2 3 4}

   Ancestral File Number: 8WKN-JD.

  General Notes:

8 Jul 1307 Accedes to the throne after the death of his father Edward I.

1308 Edward's favorite Piers Gaveston is exiled.

1310 King's cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster takes over.

1314 English army routed at Battle of Bannockburn by Robert Bruce.

1320's Hugh le Despencer and son become favorites and restore some power to King.

1326 Isabella abandons Edward and with lover Roger de Mortimer, deposes Edward II, Executes both le Despencers,
and assumes power as regents of Edward III.

1327 Murdered.

Edward II, byname EDWARD OF CAERNARVON (b. April 25, 1284, Caernarvon, Caernarvonshire, Wales--d. September 1327, Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Eng.), king of England from 1307 to 1327. Although he was a man of limited capability, he waged a long, hopeless campaign to assert his authority over powerful barons.

The fourth son of King Edward I, he ascended the throne upon his father's death (July 7, 1307) and immediately gave the highest offices to Edward I's most prominent opponents. He earned the hatred of the barons by granting the earldom of Cornwall to his frivolous favourite (and possible lover), Piers Gaveston. In 1311 a 21-member baronial committee drafted a document -- known as the Ordinances -- demanding the banishment of Gaveston and the restriction of the King's powers over finances and appointments. Edward pretended to give in to these demands; he sent Gaveston out of the country but soon allowed him to return. In retaliation the barons seized Gaveston and executed him (June 1312).

Edward had to wait 11 years to annul the Ordinances and avenge Gaveston. Meanwhile, the Scottish king Robert I the Bruce was threatening to throw off English overlordship. Edward led an army into Scotland in 1314 but was decisively defeated by Bruce at Bannockburn on June 24. With one stroke, Scotland's independence was virtually secured, and Edward was put at the mercy of a group of barons headed by his cousin Thomas of Lancaster, who by 1315 had made himself the real master of England. Nevertheless, Lancaster proved to be incompetent; by 1318 a group of moderate barons led by Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, had assumed the role of arbitrators between Lancaster and Edward. At this juncture Edward found two new favourites--Hugh le Despenser and his son and namesake. When the King supported the younger Despenser's territorial ambitions in Wales, Lancaster banished both Despensers. Edward then took up arms in their behalf. His opponents fell out among themselves, and he defeated and captured Lancaster at Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, in March 1322. Soon afterward, he had Lancaster executed.

At last free of baronial control, Edward revoked the Ordinances. His reliance on the Despensers, however, soon aroused the resentment of his queen, Isabella. While on a diplomatic mission to Paris in 1325, she became the mistress of Roger Mortimer, an exiled baronial opponent of Edward. In September 1326 the couple invaded England, executed the Despensers, and deposed Edward on 21 Jan 1327 in favour of his son, who was crowned (January 1327) King Edward III. Edward II was imprisoned and in September 1327 died, probably by violence. [Encyclopædia Britannica CD '97]

Reigned 1307-1327, deposed and murdered. Invested as the first Prince of Wales in 1301. His reign was troubled by extravagances, his militarist disasters in Scotland, notably at Bannockburn(1314), and the unpopularity of his favourite peers, Piers Gaveston, who died in 1312, and Hugh le Despencer, 1262-1326. He was deposed on 21 Jan 1327, and murdered by a red-hot poker in his bowels.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Ruled:1307-1327

Edward married Isabelle Princess Of France [Queen Of England], daughter of Unknown and Jeanne Princess Of Navarre, on 22 Jan 1307-1308 in Boulogne, , Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.¹ (Isabelle Princess Of France [Queen Of England] was born in 1292 in Paris, , , France,¹ died on 22 Aug 1358 in Hertford Castle, Hertford, Hertfordshire, England ¹ and was buried on 27 Nov 1358 in Grey Friars, Newgate, Middlesex, England.)