other peers, Badlesmere, Clifford and Mowbray, were subsequently executed, with a score of knights. Rebellion of Queen Isabella and Mortimer. Such severity was most impolitic, and Lancaster was ere long hailed as a saint and a martyr. But for the moment the king seemed triumphant; he called a parliament which revoked the "ordinances" of 1311, and replaced the Despensers in power. For the remaining four years of his reign they were omnipotent; but able and unscrupulous as they were, they could not solve the problem of successful governance. To their misfortune the Scottish war once more recommenced, King Robert having refused to continue the truce. The fortune of Edward II. now hung on the chance that he might be able to maintain the struggle with success; he raised a large army and invaded Lothian, but Bruce refused a pitched battle, and drove him off with loss by devastating the countryside around him. Thereupon Edward, to the deep humiliation of the people, sued for another cessation of hostilities, and obtained it by conceding all that Robert asked, save the formal acknowledgment of his kingly title. But peace did not suffice to end Edward's troubles; he dropped back into his usual apathy, and the Despensers showed themselves so harsh and greedy that the general indignation only required a new leader in order to take once more the form of open insurrection. The end came in an unexpected fashion. Edward had quarrelled with his wife Isabella, who complained that he made her the "handmaid of the Despensers," and excluded her from her proper place and honour. Yet in 1325 he was unwise enough to send her over to France on an embassy to her brother Charles IV., and to allow his eldest son Edward, prince of Wales, to follow her to Paris. Having the boy in her power, and being surrounded by the exiles of Lancaster's faction, she set herself to plot against her husband, and opened up communications with the discontented in England. It was in vain that Edward besought her to return and to restore him his son; she came back at last, but at the head of an army commanded by Roger, Lord Mortimer, the most prominent survivor of the party of Earl Thomas, with whom she had formed an adulterous connexion which they for some time succeeded in keeping secret. Deposition and murder of Edward II.