contented or more loyal.  The primate Reynolds was deeply irritated by Melton’s appointment as treasurer.  Burghersh, the Bishop of Lincoln, was a nephew of Badlesmere, and anxious to avenge his uncle.  Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, was a dependant of the Mortimers, who took his surname from one of their Herefordshire manors.  Forgiven for his share in the revolt of 1322, he cleverly contrived in 1324 the escape of his patron, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, from the Tower.  The marcher made his way to France, but his ally felt the full force of the king’s wrath.  He was deprived of his temporalities, and, when the Church spread her aegis over him, the court procured the verdict of a Herefordshire jury against him.  Thus the impolicy of the crown combined the selfish worldling with the zealot for the Church in a common opposition.  Like Isabella, Orleton bided his time, and Edward feared to complete his disgrace.

In such ways the king and the Despensers proclaimed their incapacity to the world.  The Scottish truce, the wrongs of Henry of Lancaster, the humiliation of the queen, the alienation of the old nobles, the fears of greedy prelates,—­each of these was remembered against them.  Gradually every order of the community became disgusted.  The feeble efforts of Edward to conciliate the Londoners met with little response.  Weak rule and the insecurity of life and property turned away the heart of the commons from the king.  It was no wonder that men went on pilgrimage to the little hill outside Pontefract, where Earl Thomas had met his doom, or that rumours spread that the king was a changeling and no true son of the great Edward.  But though the power of the king and the Despensers was thoroughly undermined, the absence of leaders and the general want of public spirit still delayed the day of reckoning.  At last, the threatening outlook beyond the Channel indirectly precipitated the crisis.

The relations of France and England remained uneasy, despite the marriage of two English kings in succession to ladies of the Capetian house.  The union of Edward I. and Margaret of France had not done much to help the settlement of the disputed points in the interpretation of the treaty of Paris of 1303, and the match between Edward II and his stepmother’s niece had been equally ineffective.  The restoration of Gascony in 1303 had never been completed, and in the very year of the treaty a decree of the parliament of Paris had withdrawn the homage of the county of Bigorre from the English duke.  Within the ceded districts, the conflict of the jurisdictions of king and duke became increasingly accentuated.  Having failed to hold Gascony by force of arms, Philip the Fair aspired to conquer it by the old process of stealthily undermining the traditional authority of the duke.  Appeals to Paris became more and more numerous.  The agents of the king wandered at will through Edward’s Gascon possessions, and punished all loyalty to the lawful duke by dragging the culprits before their master’s