Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/355

A.D. 1311.] attention from the court, which was filled with revelry and feasting, and the centre and soul of which was his beloved Gaveston. The people looked on and openly expressed their contempt for the favourite. They refused to call him anything but simply "that Piers Gaveston," which, incensing the foolish man, induced him to prevail on the king to put forth a proclamation commanding all men to give him his title of Earl of Cornwall whensoever he was spoken of, which had only the effect of covering him with ridicule. The past experience was entirely lost on this thoughtless personage. No sooner was he freed from the consequences of his insults to the great barons and courtiers than he repeated them with fresh modes of offence. He laughed at and caricatured them amongst his worthless associates. He threw his jibes and sarcasms right and left, and let them fall with the vilest nicknames on the loftiest heads. The great Earl of Lancaster was the "old hog," and the "stage-player;" the Earl of Pembroke—a tall man, of a pale aspect—was "Joseph the Jew; "the Earl of Gloucester was "the cuckold's bird;" and the stern Earl of Warwick "the black dog of Ardenne." Dearly did the vain favourite rue these galling epithets. The "black dog of Ardenne" swore a bitter oath that the miscreant should feel his teeth. The queen, more and more disgusted and incensed by the folly of the king, not only complained querulously to her father the King of France, but gave all encouragement to the angry nobles against the insolent Gaveston.

The riot at court had its necessary consequence—the dissipation of the royal funds and the need of more. The barons already, before voting supplies, had several times obliged the king to promise a redress of grievances. But now, on being summoned in October, 1309, three months after Gaveston's return, to meet at York, they refused, alleging fear of the all-powerful and vindictive favourite. The necessities of Edward made him imperatively renew the summons, but the barons still refused to assemble, and the object of the general odium was compelled to retire for the time. The barons then came together at Westminster in March of the following year, 1310; but they came fully armed, and Edward found himself completely in their power. They now insisted that he should sign a commission, enabling the Parliament to appoint twelve persons, who should take the name of ordainers, having power thoroughly to reform both the government and the king's household. They were to enact ordinances for this purpose, which should for ever have the force of laws, and which, in truth, involved the whole authority of the Crown and Parliament. The committee, instead, however, of being confined to twelve, was extended to twenty-eight persons—seven bishops, eight earls, and thirteen barons. This powerful body was authorised to form associations amongst themselves and their friends to enforce the strict observance of their ordinances; and all this was said to be for the glory of God, the security of the Church, and the honour and advantage of the king and kingdom.

Thus had the imbecility of the king reduced the nation to the yoke of a baronial and ecclesiastical oligarchy. This auspicious junto, however, conscious that they would be regarded with a jealous eye by the nation, voluntarily signed a declaration that they owed these concessions to the king's free grace; that they should not be drawn into a precedent, nor allowed to trench on the royal prerogative; and that the functions and power of the ordainers should expire at the term of Michaelmas the year following.

The committee sat in London, and in the ensuing year, 1311, presented their ordinances to the king and Parliament. Some of those ordinances were not only constitutional, but highly requisite, and tending to the due administration of the laws. They required sheriffs to be men of substance and standing; abolished the mischievous practice of issuing privy seals for the suspension of justice; restrained the practice of purveyance, where, under pretence of the king's service, enormous rapine and abuse were carried on; prohibited the alteration and debasement of the coin; made it illegal for foreigners to farm the revenues, ordering regular payment of taxes into the exchequer; revoked all the late grants of the crown-thus amiming a direct blow at the chief favourite, on whom the crown property had been most shamefully wasted. But the main grievance to the king was the sweeping ordinance against all evil counsellors, by which not only Piers Gaveston, but the whole tribe of sycophants and parasites were removed from their offices by name, and persons more agreeable to the barons wore put in their places. It was moreover decreed that for the future all considerable offices, not only in the law, revenue, and military government, but of the household also—and especial and immemorial royal privilege—should be under the appointment of the baronage. Still farther, the power of making war, or even assembling his military tenants, should no longer be exercised by the king, without the consent of his nobility. This was a wholesale suppression of the prerogatives of the crown, which the barons dared not have attempted in any ordinary reign; but this would probably have little affected Edward had not Piers Gaveston been declared a public enemy, and banished from the realm, on pain of death in case of his ever daring to return.

Nothing can show more decisively that Edward was not merely weak, as it regarded his favourite, but was totally unfit to rule a kingdom, having no serious feeling of its rights or drsire of its prosperity, than the fact that he signed all those deeply important decrees with a secret protest against them, moaning to break them on the first opportunity; that he sent Gaveston away to Flanders, intending as soon as possible to recall him, and the moment he was freed from the demands of Parliament, he set out to the north of England, pretending a campaign against the Scots. Once at liberty, he recalled Gaveston, declared his punishment quite illegal, restored him to all his honours, employments, and estates, and the two dear friends continued at Berwick, and on the Scotch borders, doing nothing to resist the advances of Bruce.

The barons now broke all measures of restraint. Provoked to exasperation by seeing the whole of their labours at once set aside, and the ruinous favourite restored to his whole fortune in defiance of them, they united in a most formidable conspiracy. At the head of it appeared his old enemy Lancaster; Guy, Earl of Warwick, "the black dog of Ardenne," entered into the alliance, according to one historian's expression, with "a furious and precipitate passion." Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the constable, the Earl of Pembroke, and oven the Earl Wareune, who hitherto had supported, on most occasions,