In January 22 1308 Edward went to Boulogne-sur-mer to marry Isabella, daughter of King Philippe IV of France. During his absence, he left Gaveston as regent. at his return, Edward was crowned at Westminster on February 23 1308. Although he was now married, he continued his close relation with Gaveston. He appointed him Viceroy of Ireland and offered him all kind of gifts and jewels, even the ones that belonged to the Queen. Gaveston was married too. In 1307 he had married Margaret de Clare, daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and granddaughter of Edward Longshanks.
In 1311 the barons, leaded by Thomas Earl of Lancaster forced the King to name a commission formed bytwent one nobles and prelates who proclaimed several decrets which transfered them the executive power, and excluded the lower clergy and popular classes from the Parliament. This commission obliged Edward to banish Gaveston in tow different occasions but as the King brought him back both times, the baorns, in complicity with Queen Isabella, captured Gaveston and ejecuted him in june 1312.
Meanwhile, the King of Scotland, Robert the Bruce, had almost accomplished the independence of Scotland begun short before Longshank's death. In 1314 Edward recruited an army of about 100,000 men and he advanced to confront Bruce. Edward's army intended to raise the siege of Stirling but he was disastously defeated by the Scots at the battle of Bannockburn. This battle assured Scotish independence for the next three centuries. During all this time, Scotland was a constant menace for England, being a land ruled by war lords.
At Gaveston's death Edward took another favourite: Hugh Despenser the Young, whose father, Hugh Despenser the Old, was himself son of Hugh Despenser, great Just of England, and who became Edward's chief counselor since 1312. Hugh the Young was married to Eleanor de Clare, a sister of Gaveston's wife, so she was also a daughter of the Earl of Gloucester. The new favourite was as ambitious as his predecesor Gaveston had been. He wanted to be Earl of Gloucester and Edward pleased him in 1322; his father was created Earl of Winchester.
Although his sexual preferences , King Edward fullfilled his marital obligations. Queen Isabella gave him four children: Edward, Prince of Wales and future Edward III; John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall; Elanor, married to Raynal de Gueldres, adn Joanna, married to David, the son of Robert the Bruce.
A group of barons, leaded by the King's cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, and Roger Mortimer, rebeled against the Despensers. Unfortunately Mortimer was captured, along with his unlce, Lord Mortimer of Chirk, at Shrewsbury in January 1322. Both Mortimers were imprisoned in the Tower of London, from where Roger escaped a year later, aided by Adan Orleton, Bishop of Hereford. Lancaster was defeated two months later at Boroughbridge and executed immediately.
After the baron's defeat, the Despensers became the true rulers of the country. They convoked a Parliament with the presence of the Commoners, who abolished the decrets of 1311, arguing that they had only been approved by the barons. This abolishion caused a great advanced in the development of the English constitucionalism; since then, no law approved by the Parliament was valid if it was not approved by the Chamber of Commoners.
Edward unsuccesfully invaded Scotland again in 1322. A year later he signed a truce for thirteen years with Robert the Bruce.
In France, things for England were not going better. After his escaped from the Tower, Roger Mortimer had left England and refuged in France. Along with the French King, Charles IV, who was Queen Isabella's brother, and other French barons, Mortimer joined a war in Aquitaine (Guyenne). This French duchy was a property of the English Crown since the times of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Henry II of England, so this fact made the English King a vassal of the French monarch. Edward had not pledge homage to King Charles, so this was the pretext for the war, besides of solving other feudal maters. The French army, along withe Roger Mortimer, invaded Aquitaine in 1324.
In order to stop the war, Edward agreeded that his 11-year-old son, Prince Edward, went to France, accompanied by Queen Isabella, to pledge homage to King Charles. Isabella was anxious to escape from the humiliations her husband and his favourite had infringed her, so she and her son did not return to England, they remained in France, where she became Roger Mortimer's lover.
In spite of Edward's demmands that he wanted his wife and son back at home, King Charles decided to send his sister back to England. With the aid of Robert III, Count of Artois, Isabella and Mortimer escaped to Hainaut, in Holland, where they recruited an army, leaded by Sir John of Hainaut, and disembarked in England, with the intention to depose the King. The English people left Edward alone and he and the Despensers fled to Wales.
Henry of Lancaster Tortcol (Thomas's brother), who was among Isabella and Mortimer's partisans, joined a council around the Queen. This council, founding its basis in the fact that the King was outside the English borders, decided to proclaimed Prince Edward as king. Meanwhile, Hugh Despenser the Old was captured in Bristol; he was tortured and executed.
On November 20 1326, King Edward and Hugh the Young were captured by Henry of Lancaster at Neath Abbey in Towe Valley, while working at the forge, dressed as monks. Lancaster took his cousin as prisoner to Kenilworth Castle, while Despenser was tortured, castrated and executed on November 24.
At Kenilworth, Edward and his cousin Lancaster spent much time together as never before. Although Edward was a prisoner he was still a king and Lancaster treated like so. The King confided to Lancaster as he necer did to anyone. He remember with tenderness his two lost lovers and Tortcol understood him as he hadn't before.
On January 1327 Adan Orleton presented the new proclaimed Kimg to the Parliament at Westminster and the Bishop of Winchester read to the audience the six causes for which Edward had been deprived of his crown:
First: The King is incapable to reign; during his reign he has been bad influenced by detestable counselors.
Second: He has spent his time in jobs and activities unwworthy of his dignity and he has forgotten to attend the kingdom matters.
Third: He has lost Scotland, Ireland and half Guyenne.
Fourth: He has damaged the Church by imprisoning its prelates.
Fifth: He has imprisoned, banished, desinherited and condemned to death to many of his great vassals.
Sixth: He has ruined the kingdom and he is incapable to mend himself.
But when Prince Edward was about to be crowned, he refused unless his father abdicated. On January 20 Orleton traveled to Kenilworth to ask King Edward for his abdication. When the Bishop presented teh King the scepter and the crown to renounce them, Edward fainted. When he recovered he accepted his abdication with tears in his eyes. Five days later his son was crowned while Mortimer and Isabella ruled the country.
On April 1st of that samen year, the old King of Scotland, Robert the Bruce, threatened the young king with a possible Scotish invasion to England. Edward III was soon involved in a disastrous war agaisnt Scotland while Mortimer decided to move Edward II tgo another prison. Lancaster was needed in the army and besides, it was said that he had been too indulgent with the prisoner. There was another reason: Mortimer was not so loved by the English anymore and he feared a conspiracy to free Edward. On the night of April 3rd, Baron John of Maltravers took Edward from Kenilworth to Berkerly Castle.
At the end of the war with Scotland Mortimer ordered Maltravers to move Edward again. This time he was taken to Corfe. The journey to his new prison was a true torture for the deposed King. Maltravers was afraid that his prisoner could be recognized and released during the way, so he change his face. Edward's beard and hair were completely shaved and a crown of hey was put over on his head, being victim his wardens' mockery.
In Corfe Edward recieved an humiliating treatment. Soon rumours of his imprisonment there had spreaded all around and Maltravers, with Mortimer's previous authorization, took his royal prisoner back to Berkerly, where he forced the King to sleep in a narrow cell, at the edge of a deep hole, where he could fell if he moved. Death animals were thrown into the hole, so besides living with the fear of falling at the less movement, Edward had to endure the fetid smell.
Meanwhile Mortimer was still fearing any revolt to rescue the King. He was expecting Edward's death of natural causes, aided by the infamous treatment. But the King was strong and he resisted. Mortimer convinced Isabella that her husband was a latent danger, that he must die. He ordered Maltravers to provoke the King's death in a very discret way. And so he did. The Baron and his assitants introduced a red-hot iron by the King's anus. A terrible scream was heard trough the thick walls of Berkerly on the night of September 21 1327. King Edward II was dead. His death body was publicly shown in Berkerly Castle in order to prove he had dead of natural causes and that no sign of violence was on his body. Some days later the corpse was put on a cart, covered with a black piece of cloth and taken to Gloucester Cathedral where he was buried.