ber 23, 1326, the queen and her followers took ship at
Dordrecht in Holland. Next day the fleet cast anchor in the port of
Orwell, and that same day the expedition was landed and marched to
Walton, where it spent the first night on English soil. The gentry of
Suffolk and Essex flocked to the standard of the queen, who declared
that she had come to avenge the wrongs of Earl Thomas of Lancaster and
to drive the Despensers from power. Thomas of Brotherton, the earl
marshal, made common cause with the invaders, and Henry, Earl of
Leicester, hastened to associate himself with the champions of his
martyred brother. A great force of native Englishmen swelled the
queen's host, and reduced to insignificance the little band of
Hainaulters and Hollanders. There was no resistance. Isabella marched
to Bury St. Edmunds, "as if on a pilgrimage," and thence to Cambridge,
where she tarried several days with the canons of Barnwell. From
Cambridge she moved on to Baldock, where she despoiled the chancellor's
manors and took his brother captive. At Dunstable, her next halt, she
was on a great highway, within thirty-three miles of London.

On hearing of his wife's landing, Edward threw himself on the
compassion of the Londoners, but met with so cold a reception that
early in October he withdrew to Gloucester. Besides the chancellor and
the two Despensers, the only magnates of mark who remained faithful to
him were the brothers-in-law, Edmund, Earl of Arundel, and Earl
Warenne. On Edward's retreat from London, Bishop Stratford made his way
to the capital, where he joined with Archbishop Reynolds in a hollow
pretence of mediation. The Londoners gladly welcomed the queen's
messengers and soon rose in revolt in her favour. They plundered and
burnt the house of the Bishop of Exeter, who fled in alarm to St.
Paul's. Seized at the very door of the church, Stapledon was brutally
murdered by the mob in Cheapside, where his naked body lay exposed all
day. Immediately after this, Reynolds fled in terror to his Kentish
estates, where he waited to see which was the stronger side. The king's
younger son, John of Eltham, a boy of nine, who had been left behind by
his father in the Tower, was proclaimed warden of the capital.

On hearing of Edward's flight to the west, Isabella went after him in
pursuit. On the day of Stapledon's murder, she had advanced as far as
Wallingford, where, posing as the continuer of the policy of the lords
ordainers, she issued