Despenser War
civil war between Edward II of England and his barons
The Despenser War (1321–22) was a baronial revolt against Edward II of England led by the Marcher Lords Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun. The rebellion was fuelled by opposition to Hugh Despenser the Younger, the royal favourite. After the rebels' summer campaign of 1321, Edward was able to take advantage of a temporary peace to rally more support and a successful winter campaign in southern Wales, culminating in royal victory at the Battle of Boroughbridge in the north of England in March 1322. Edward's response to victory was his increasingly harsh rule until his fall from power in 1326.
Causes of the war
The initial success of the rebels reflected the power of the Marcher Lords. Since Edward I's conquest of Wales, "[t]he marcher privileges remained undiminished, and the marcher energies which could no longer find employment in the struggle against the Welsh, sought new direction in the fertile field of English politics." The death of the last Earl of Gloucester also meant the redistribution of his vast estates and lordships in Ireland and Wales. The important Lordship of Glamorgan passed to the late earl's brother-in-law, the younger Despenser, married to his eldest sister Eleanor.
The Lords Ordainers, the powerful baronial hegemony led by the Earl of Lancaster, despised the younger Despenser and his father, the elder Despenser, on account of the influence they both wielded over the king. The council of Ordainers was formed in 1311 to reform the King's household, restrict his royal prerogatives, supervise the economy, and they insisted on the banishment of his then-favourite, Piers Gaveston, husband of the earl of Gloucester's sister Margaret. Gaveston was killed after he returned from exile.
“Despenser War” enters the record as civil war between Edward II of England and his barons. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Despenser, civil and between can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3778609. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1321, 1322, 1326 and 1311.
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This entry incorporates text from “Despenser War” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.