himself at Abbeville, the capital of the Picard county, than the negotiations at Paris were so far ripened that Philip III. went to Amiens, where Edward joined him.  On May 23 both kings agreed to accept the treaty of Amiens by which the more important of the outstanding difficulties between the two nations were amicably regulated.  By it Philip recognised Eleanor as Countess of Ponthieu, and handed over a portion of the inheritance of Alfonse of Poitiers to Edward.  Agen and the Agenais were ceded at once, and a commission was appointed to investigate Edward’s claims over lower Quercy.  In return for this Edward yielded up his illusory rights over the three bishoprics of Limoges, Perigueux, and Cahors.  It was a real triumph for English diplomacy.

No lasting peace could arise from acts which emphasised the essential incompatibility of French and English interests by enlarging the territory of the English kings in France.  The undercurrent of hostility still continued; and the proposal of Pope Nicholas III. that Edward should act as mediator between Philip III. and Alfonso of Castile led to difficulties that deeply incensed Edward, and embroiled him once more both with France and Spain.  Under Angevin influence, both Philip and Alfonso rejected Edward’s mediation in favour of that of the Prince of Salerno, Charles of Anjou’s eldest son.  Disgust at this unfriendliness made Edward again support the plans of Margaret of Provence against the Angevins.  In 1281 Margaret’s intrigues formed a combination of feudal magnates called the League of Macon, with the object of prosecuting her claims over Provence by force of arms.  Edward and his mother, Eleanor, his Savoyard kinsfolk, and Edmund of Lancaster all entered into the league.  But it was hopeless for a disorderly crowd of lesser chieftains, with the nominal support of a distant prince like Edward, to conquer Provence in the teeth of the hostility of the strongest and the ablest princes of the age.  The League of Macon came to nothing, like so many other ambitious combinations of a time in which men’s capacity to form plans transcended their capacity to execute them.  Margaret herself soon despaired of the way of arms and was bought off by a money compensation.  The league mainly served to keep alive the troubles that still separated England and France.  In 1284 Philip gained a new success in winning the hand of Joan of Champagne, Count Edmund’s step-daughter, for his son, the future Philip the Fair.  When Joan attained her majority, Edmund lost the custody of Champagne, which went to the King of France as the natural protector of his son and his son’s bride.  With his brother’s withdrawal from Provins to Lancaster, Edward lost one of his means of influencing the course of French politics.

A compensation for these failures was found in 1282 when the Sicilian vespers rang the knell of the Angevin power in Sicily.  When the revolted islanders chose Peter, King of Aragon, as their sovereign, Charles, seeking to divert him from Sicily by attacking him at home, inspired his partisan, Pope Martin IV., to preach a crusade against Aragon.  It was in vain that Edward strove to mediate between the two kings.