Even after this, Edward strove to keep the peace, and endeavoured to exact compensation from his subjects.  They answered with a highly coloured narrative of the dispute which threw the whole blame upon the Normans.  Philip, changing his policy, took up his subjects’ cause, and summoned Edward to answer in January, 1294, before the Parliament of Paris for the piracy exercised by his mariners, the misdeeds of his Gascon subjects, and the violent measures taken by his officers against any who appealed to the court of Paris.  Edward sent his brother, Edmund, to reply for him.  As Count of Champagne and the step-father of Philip’s wife, Joan, Edmund seemed a peculiarly acceptable negotiator.  After long debates, the personal intervention of the French queen, and Philip’s step-mother, Mary of Brabant, resulted in an agreement being arranged.  The overlord’s grievances could not be denied, and it was urged that the formal surrender of part of Gascony might be made by way of recognising them.  French garrisons were therefore to be admitted into six Gascon strongholds; twenty Gascon hostages were to be delivered over to Philip, while the seisin of the duchy was also to be transferred to the French king, who pledged himself not to change the officials nor to occupy the land in force.  The whole business was in fact to be as formal as the delivery of the seisin of Scotland to Edward during the suit for the succession.  Meanwhile, Edward and Philip were to arrange a meeting at Amiens to settle the conditions of a permanent peace, by which Edward was to take Philip’s sister, Margaret, as his second wife, and the Gascon duchy was to be settled upon the offspring of the union.  That Edward or Edmund should ever have contemplated such terms is a strong proof of their zeal for peace.  It soon became clear that Edmund had been outrageously duped, and that the whole negotiation was a trick to secure for Philip the permanent possession of Gascony.  The constable of France appeared on the Aquitanian frontier.  The English seneschal surrendered the six castles and the seisin of the land.  Gradually the French king began to take actual possession of the government.  Moreover, after three months, the proceedings against Edward in the parliament of Paris were resumed; Edward was declared contumacious on the ground of his non-appearance, and sentence of forfeiture was passed.

Philip’s treachery was thus manifest? and in great disgust Edmund withdrew from France.  Edward was deeply indignant.  In a parliament, held in June, 1294, which was attended by the King of Scots, war was resolved upon.  The feudal tenants were summoned to assemble at Portsmouth on September 1; and Edward appealed for help to his Gascon subjects, beseeching their pardon for having negotiated the fatal treaty, and promising a speedy effort to restore them to his obedience.  He sent them his nephew, John of Brittany, as his lieutenant and captain-general, under whom John of St. John was to act as seneschal