Parliament of 1327

The Parliament of 1327 was held at the Palace of Westminster between 7 January and 9 March 1327. It 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 and his perceived ill-treatment of the nobility. By 1325, even his wife, Queen Isabella, despised him. She took the young Edward to her native France, where she entered into an alliance with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer.

About Parliament of 1327 in brief

The Parliament of 1327 was held at the Palace of Westminster between 7 January and 9 March 1327. It 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 and his perceived ill-treatment of the nobility. By 1325, even his wife, Queen Isabella, despised him. She took the young Edward to her native France, where she entered into an alliance with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer. 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. 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, 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. 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.

Edward III led a coup d’état against Mortimer in 1330, overthrew him, and began his personal rule. 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 ‘cruty and personal faults’, suggesting that even his half-brothers or his son would not fight for him. A contemporary chronicler described Edward as rexutilis, or a ‘useless king’ or ‘a rex inutilis’ Edward 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 between her husband and the Contemporaries. In September 1324, the government declared her an enemy alien, and the King had immediately repossessed her estates, probably at the urging of Hugh Despenser the Younger. In 1322, Edward executed his cousin, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and confiscated the Lancaster estates. 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. 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.

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