A papal legate presided over a congress of English and French ambassadors at Montreuil-sur-mer, which belonged to Edward by right of the late queen, Eleanor as Countess of Ponthieu.  The outcome of these deliberations was the treaty of Montreuil, concluded on June 19, 1299.  It was not the final pacification which had been hoped for.  Edward indeed abandoned his Flemish allies, but Philip would not relax his hold upon Gascony, and without that a definitive peace was impossible.  The treaty of Montreuil was simply a marriage treaty.  Edward was forthwith to marry Margaret, and his son was to be betrothed to Isabella of France.  Neither the prolongation of the truce nor the affairs of the Flemings were mentioned in it, while all that Philip did for the Scots was to provide for the liberation of the deposed King John from his English prison.  As soon as the ratifications were exchanged the king, who was then sixty years of age, and his youthful bride were married on September 9 at Canterbury by Archbishop Winchelsea.

Edward’s willingness to marry the sister of the king who still kept him out of Gascony can best be explained by his overmastering desire to renew operations in Scotland.  Shortly after his marriage, he again busied himself with preparations for the long-delayed Scots campaign.  It was high time that he took action.  The English garrisons were surrendering one by one, and the Scottish magnates were deserting the English cause.  Their conversion to patriotic principles was made easier by the decay of Wallace’s power consequent on his defeat at Falkirk.  After stormy scenes with his aristocratic rivals, Wallace withdrew from Scotland and went to the continent, where he implored the help of the King of France.  Philip proved true to his new brother-in-law, and put Wallace in prison, only releasing him that he might go to Rome and enlist the sympathy of Boniface VIII.  Meanwhile the Scots chose a new regency at the head of which was the younger John Comyn of Badenoch.  Under these changed conditions the Scottish earls rapidly rallied round the national cause.  Stirling, Edward’s chief stronghold in central Scotland, was so hardly pressed that the men-at-arms were forced to eat their chargers.  Yet when the English barons assembled about the beginning of winter, in obedience to Edward’s summons, they stubbornly declared that they would not endure the hardships of a winter campaign until the king had fulfilled his pledges as regards the charters.  Thus left to their own resources, the sorely tried garrison of Stirling surrendered to the Scots.

In March, 1300, Edward met his parliament at Westminster.  Despite the straits to which he was reduced, he was still unwilling to make a complete surrender.  He avoided a formal re-issue of the charters by giving his sanction to a long series of articles, drawn up apparently by the barons.  These articles provided for the better publication of the charters, and the appointment in every shire of a commission to punish