ABSTRACT
Edward III’s personal rule began in 1330, with the execution of Mortimer and the effective exclusion from power of Isabella, the queen mother. Matters were not easy for the young king. He found it hard to rally full support for the Scottish war. There were difficulties in obtaining grants of taxation, and one chronicler refers darkly to plots against the king in 1334. The great offices of state, the chancery and the exchequer, were controlled by men whose loyalties lay in the past, and who were not wholly committed to the new regime. Frequent ministerial changes suggest instability: eight different men served as treasurer between 1330 and 1340. In the departments of the royal household, the wardrobe and the chamber, Edward was building up a personal following, but his hand was not yet completely sure.
