Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/48

Edward II of importance save the articles requiring the exile of Gaveston. In vain he offered to consent to all other ordinances to stay the persecution of his brother Peter and leave him in possession of Cornwall. At last, when he saw clearly that civil war was the alternative, he gave an insincere and reluctant consent to them on 6 Oct. Gaveston at once left England for Flanders, while the barons removed his kinsfolk and adherents from the royal household. Edward was now intensely disturbed, and complained that the barons treated him like an idiot by taking out of his hands every detail even of the management of his own household. He was detained till the middle of December in London by fresh sittings of parliament, at which very little was done. At the end of November there was a rumour that Gaveston had returned and was hiding in the west; before Christmas he openly visited the king at Windsor (Ann. Lond, p. 202), and early in the new year went with Edward to the north. On 18 Jan. 1312 the king issued a writ announcing the favourite's return and approving his loyalty (Fœdera, ii. 153). In February he restored him his estates (ib. ii. 157). Open war necessarily resulted. Winchelsey excommunicated the favourite. Lancaster and his confederates took arms. In vain Edward sought to purchase the safety of Gaveston in Scotland by recognising Bruce as king, but Edward's alliance was not worth buying. He was at the time so miserably poor that he could only get supplies by devastating a country already cruelly ravaged by the Scots (Lanercost, pp. 218-19). On 10 April (, p. 42) the king and his favourite were at Newcastle. Thence they hastily retreated to Tynemouth, but Lancaster now captured Newcastle, and the pair, regardless of the queen's entreaties, fled in a boat to Scarborough (10 May), where Edward left Peter while he withdrew to York to divert the baronial forces. But Lancaster occupied the intervening country while the other earls besieged Scarborough, where Gaveston surrendered to Pembroke on condition that he should be unharmed till 1 Aug. Edward accepted these terms and set to work to interest the pope and the king of France for Gaveston, hoping that the cession of Gascony would be a sufficient bribe to make Philip support his old enemy (, p. 177). But the treachery of the barons, the seizure of Gaveston by Warwick, and his murder on Blacklow Hill (19 June) showed that all the bad faith was not on Edward's side. Edward was powerless to do more than pay the last honours to his dead friend. The body found a last resting-place at Langley, where a house of black friars was established by Edward to pray for the deceased favourite's soul (, c. 2533). The Earls of Pembroke and Warenne never forgave Lancaster. Henceforth they formed with Hugh le Despenser [q. v.] and Edward's other personal adherents a party strong enough to prevent further attacks upon the king. After wearisome marches and negotiations, the mediation of Gloucester, the papal envoy and Lewis of Evreux, the queen's uncle, led to the proclamation of peace on 22 Dec. 1312 (Fœdera, ii. 191-2). On 13 Nov. the birth of a son, afterwards Edward III, had turned the king's mind further from Gaveston. Nearly a year elapsed before the earls made the personal submission stipulated in the treaty, and as parliamentary resources were still withheld Edward was plunged into an extreme destitution that could only be partly met by loans from every quarter available, by laying his hands on as much as he could of the confiscated estates of the Templars, and by tallages that provoked riots in London and Bristol. In May 1313 the death of Winchelsey further weakened the baronial party, and Edward prevailed on the pope to quash the election of the eminent scholar Thomas Cobham [q.v.] in favour of his creature, Walter Reynolds. But the prospects of real peace were still very dark, Under the pretence of illness Edward kept away from the spring parliament in 1313 (, p. 190). in May he and the queen, accompanied by a magnificent court, crossed the Channel and attended the great festivities given on Whitsunday by Philip the Fair at Paris, when his three sons, the Duke of Burgundy, and a number of noble youths were dubbed knights before the magnates of the realm (ib. 190; Cont., i. 395-6; , Hist, of France, iv. 501). They returned on 16 July (Parl. Writs, II, i. 101) and reached London only to find that the barons summoned to the July parliament had already returned to their homes in disgust. By such transparent artifices the weak king postponed the settlement until a new parliament that sat between September and November. There at last the three earls publicly humiliated themselves before the king in Westminster Hall in the presence of the assembled magnates (, pp. 80, 81). Feasts of reconciliation were held, and nothing save the continued enmity of Lancaster and Hugh le Despenser remained of the old quarrels. On 10 Oct. the pardon and amnesty to the three earls and over four hundred minor ofienders were issued (Fœdera, ii. 230-1). Parliament now made Edward a much-needed grant of money. The first troubles of the reign were thus finally appeased. Between 12 Dec. and 20 Dec.