of Gascony.  Ambassadors were despatched to all neighbouring courts to build up a coalition against the French.  Strenuous efforts were made to get together men and money, and the clergy were forced to make a grant of a half of their spiritual income.  Edward overbore their opposition amidst a scene of excitement in which the Dean of St. Paul’s fell dead at the king’s feet.  The shires were mulcted of a tenth and the boroughs of a sixth.  And besides these constitutional exactions, the king laid violent hands on all the coined money deposited in the treasuries of the churches, and appropriated the wool of the merchants, which he only restored on the payment of a heavy pecuniary redemption.  Meanwhile, about Michaelmas the lieutenant and the seneschal sailed with a fairly strong force.  Further levies were summoned to assemble at Portsmouth at later dates.  Besides the ordinary tenants of the crown, writs were sent to the chief magnates of Ireland and Scotland; and Wales and its march were called upon to furnish all the men that could be mustered.  The Earls of Cornwall and Lincoln were appointed to the command, and Edward himself proposed to follow them to Gascony as soon as he could.

At the moment of the departure of John of Brittany a sudden insurrection in Wales frustrated Edward’s plans.  All Wales was ripe for revolt.  In the principality the Cymry resented English rule, and the sulky marchers stood aloof in sullen discontent, while their native tenants, seeing in the recent humiliation of Gloucester and Hereford the degradation of all their lords, lost respect for such powerless masters.  Both in the principality and in the marches, Edward’s demand for compulsory service in Gascony was universally regarded as a new aggression.  The intensity of the resistance to his demand can be measured by the general nature of the insurrection, and by the admirable way in which it was organised.  As by a common signal all Wales rose at Michaelmas, 1294.  One Madog, probably a bastard son of Llewelyn, son of Griffith, raised all Gwynedd, took possession of Carnarvon castle, and closely besieged the other royal strongholds.  In west Wales a chieftain named Maelgwn was equally successful in Carmarthen and Cardigan.  The marches were in arms equally with the principality.  In the north, Lincoln’s tenants in Rhos and Rhuvoniog besieged Denbigh, and threatened the king’s fortresses in Flint.  Maelgwn’s sphere of operations included the earldom of Pembroke, while Brecon rose against Hereford, and Glamorgan against Gilbert of Gloucester.  Morgan, the leader of the Glamorganshire rebels, loudly declared that he did not rebel against the king but against the Earl of Gloucester.  With the beginning of winter the state of Wales was more critical than in the worst times of the winter of 1282.