jurisdictions attached to these five offices gave him a territorial position greater by far than that of any other English lord.  “I do not believe,” writes the monk of Malmesbury, “that any duke or count of the Roman empire could do as much with the revenues of his estates as the Earl of Lancaster.”  Nor were Earl Thomas’ personal connexions less magnificent than his feudal dignities.  As a grandson of Henry III., he was the first cousin of the king.  Through his mother, Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne, he was the grandson of the valiant Robert of Artois, who had fallen at Mansura, and the great-grandson of Louis VIII. of France.  His half-sister, Joan of Champagne, was the wife of Philip the Fair, so that the French king was his brother-in-law as well as his cousin, and Isabella, Edward’s consort, was his niece.  Unluckily, the personality of the great earl was not equal to his pedigree or his estates.  Proud, hard to work with, jealous, and irascible, he was essentially the leader of opposition, the grumbler, and the frondeur.  When the time came for a constructive policy, Thomas broke down almost as signally as Edward himself.  His ability was limited, his power of application small, and his passions violent and ungovernable.  Greedy, selfish, domineering, and narrow, he had few scruples and no foresight, little patriotism, and no breadth of view.  At this moment he had to play a part which was within his powers.  The simple continuance of the traditions of policy, which he inherited with his pedigree and his estates; was all that was necessary.  As the greatest of the English earls, the head of a younger branch of the royal house, and the inheritor of the estates and titles of Montfort and Ferrars, he was trebly bound to act as leader of the baronial opposition, the champion of the charters, the enemy of kings, courtiers, favourites, and foreigners.  He was steadfast in his prejudices and hatreds, and the ordainers found in him a leader who could at least save them from the reproach of inconstancy and the lack of fixed purpose shown at the parliament of Stamford.

It was the first duty of Earl Thomas to perform homage and fealty for his new earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury.  Attended by a hundred armed knights, he rode towards the border.  Edward was at Berwick, and Thomas declined to proffer his homage outside the kingdom.  On Edward refusing to cross the Tweed, Thomas declared that he would take forcible possession of his lands.  Civil war was only avoided by Edward giving way.  The king met Thomas on English soil at Haggerston, four miles from Berwick.  There the earl performed homage, and exchanged the kiss of peace with his king, but he would not even salute the upstart Earl of Cornwall, who injudiciously accompanied Edward, and the king departed deeply indignant at this want of courtesy.  Returning to Berwick, Edward lingered there until the completion of the work of the ordainers made it