Isabella spent the last months of 1326 in the West Country, and while in Bristol witnessed the hanging of Despenser's father, the Earl of Winchester on 27 October. Despenser himself was captured in Hereford and executed there within the month. In Bristol Isabella, Mortimer and the accompanying lords discussed strategy. Not yet possessing the Great Seal, on 26 October they proclaimed the young Edward guardian of the realm, declaring that "by the assent of the whole community of the said kingdom present there, they unanimously chose [Edward III] as keeper of the said kingdom". He was not yet officially declared king. The rebels' description of themselves as a community deliberately harked back to the reform movement of Simon de Montfort and the baronial league, which had described its reform programme as being of the community of the realm against Henry III. 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.