During the years after 1320 many men suffered death in battle or by execution, others were condemned to imprisonment, while yet others made their escape from England, usually as political exiles or as fugitives from justice. There were many such exiles, and it is to some of them that this paper will turn first, but briefly, before finally concentrating on Edward II himself. Their stories were sometimes extraordinary, all of them were a product of the disturbed times in England, but they also illustrate in various ways the closeness and the complexity of the ties that existed between the kingdom of England and continental Europe.

The earliest of the refugees was John Maltravers from Dorset (he also held the important manor of Rathkeale in Co. Limerick), who was a retainer of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, one of the opposition leaders in 1321–2. Maltravers fled to France in 1322, and in 1323 was joined there by Mortimer, who had made a spectacular escape from the Tower of London shortly before his intended execution. Over the next three years Mortimer became the focus of a group of exiles from England. By the end of 1325 these included Edward II's queen, Isabella, and Edward, his elder son and heir to the English throne. They had been sent separately to the French court in order to make peace and had then refused to return to England.