Towards the end of the year, she took the young Edward to her native France, where she entered into an alliance with the powerful and wealthy nobleman Roger Mortimer, who her husband previously had exiled.

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.

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.

[9] In September 1324 Queen Isabella had been publicly humiliated when the government declared her an enemy alien,[10] and the King had immediately repossessed her estates,[10] probably at the urging of Despenser.

[11] Soon after her arrival, correspondence between Isabella and her husband, as well between them and her brother King Charles IV of France and Pope John XXII, effectively disclosed the royal couple's increasing estrangement to the world.

[21] Ormrod notes how Given that Mortimer and his adherents were already condemned traitors and that any engagement with the invading force was to be treated as an act of open rebellion, it is all the more striking how many great men were prepared to enter upon such a high-risk venture at so early a stage in its prosecution.

[48] Claire Valente has pointed out how, in reality, the most common phrase heard "was not 'the community of the realm', but 'the quarrel of the earl of Lancaster'", illustrating how the struggle was still a factional one within baronial politics, whatever cloak it may have appeared to possess as a reform movement.

[51] A document issued by Isabella and her son at this time described their respective positions thus: Isabel by the grace of God Queen of England, lady of Ireland, Countess of Ponthieu and we, Edward, eldest son of the noble King Edward of England, Duke of Gascony, Earl of Chester, of Ponthieu, of Montreuil...[34]Isabella, Mortimer and the lords arrived in London on 4 January 1327.

[54] The History of Parliament Trust has described the legality of the writs as being "highly questionable",[9] and C. T. Wood called the sitting "a show of pseudo-parliamentary regularity",[55][note 10] "stage-managed" by Mortimer and Thomas, Lord Wake.

[13] Edward II was still king, although in official documents, this was only alongside his "most beloved consort Isabella queen of England" and his "firstborn son keeper of the kingdom",[57] in what Phil Bradford called as a "nominal presidency".

The Lords Temporal affirmed that Edward had failed his country so gravely that only his death could heal it; the attending bishops, on the other hand, held that whatever his faults, he had been anointed king by God.

[60] Although the deposition of Edward II did not attack kingship itself, the actual process of deposing a legitimate and anointed king involved an attempt to square the circle.

[78] The various titles bestowed on the younger Edward at the end of 1326—which acknowledged his unique position in government while avoiding calling him king—reflected an underlying constitutional crisis, of which contemporaries were keenly aware.

[76] Also on the 12th, Sir Richard de Betoyne, the Mayor of London, and the Common Council wrote to the lords in support of both the Earl of Chester being made King and the deposition of Edward II, whom they accused of failing to uphold his coronation oath and the duties of the crown.

And the same [Edward] there assumed the rule of the said kingdom on the same day in the form aforesaid, and began to exercise those things which were rightful under his privy seal, which was then in the custody of his clerk Sir Robert Wyville, because he did not then have any other seal for the said rule...[88] Whether Edward II resigned his throne or was forced from it[89] under pressure,[61] the crown legally changed hands on 13 January[89] with the support, it was recorded, of "all the baronage of the land".

[98] The French chronicler Jean Le Bel described how the lords proceeded to document Edward II's "ill-advised deeds and actions" to create a legal record which was duly presented to parliament.

[106] The King was accused of being incapable of fair rule; of indulging false counsellors; preferring his own amusements to good government; neglecting England and losing Scotland; dilapidating the church and imprisoning the clergy; and, all in all, being in fundamental breach of the coronation oath he had made to his subjects.

[151] The Commons too were concerned for the restoration of law and order, and one of their petitions called for the immediate appointment of wide-ranging keepers of the peace who could personally put men on trial.

[159] In 1327 Londoners petitioned the recalled parliament for their liberties to be restored, and, since they had been of valuable—probably crucial—importance in enabling the deposition,[160] on 7 March they received not just the rights Edward II had removed from them, but greater privileges than they had ever possessed.

The Roll of 1327 is notable, according to the History of as Parliament, because "despite the highly charged political situation in January 1327, [it] contains no mention of the process by which Edward II ceased to be king".

[160] Other possible reasons for the lack of an enrolment are that it would never have been entered on a roll because the parliament was clearly illegitimate, or because Edward III later felt it was undesirable to have an official record of a royal deposition in case it suggested a precedent had been set, and removed it himself.

[140] Mortimer himself occupied his energies in getting rich and alienating people, and the defeat of the English army by the Scots at the Battle of Stanhope Park (and the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton which followed it in 1328) worsened his position.

[19][note 40] Michael Prestwich has described the latter as a "classic example of a man whose power went to his head", and compares Mortimer's greed to that of the Despensers and his political sensitivity to that of Piers Gaveston.

The lurid reports about the brutal, and possibly symbolic, manner of Edward II's death the following September have fuelled a prurient interest in him on the one hand, while on the other the circulation of claims that he had instead survived and escaped from captivity gave him in effect a long 'after-life' which has provided endless scope for further research and speculation.

On the first point, Gwilym Dodd has described the parliament as a landmark event in the institution's history,[172] and, say Richardson and Sayles, it began a fifty-year period of developing and honing procedure.

[173] The assembly also, suggests G. L. Harriss, marks a point in the history of the English monarchy in which its authority was curtailed to a similar degree to the limitation previously imposed on King John by Magna Carta and Henry III by de Montfort.

Barry Wilkinson, for example, considered it a deposition—but by the magnates, rather than parliament—but G. L. Harriss termed it an abdication,[79] believing "there was no legal process of deposition, and kings like ... Edward II were induced to resign".

[61] To try to determine precisely how it was that Edward II was removed from the throne, whether by abdication, deposition, Roman legal theory, renunciation of homage, or parliamentary decision is a futile task.

The leaders of the revolution, aware that deposition was a barely understood and unpopular concept in the political culture of the day, began almost immediately re-casting events as an abdication instead.

Attorney general Henry Yelverton publicly compared Buckingham to Hugh Despenser on account of Villiers' penchant for enriching his friends and relatives through royal patronage.