her influence with him to procure peace and the restitution of Gascony.  With the strange infatuation which marked all the acts of Edward and his favourites, Isabella’s proposal was adopted, and in March, 1325, the queen crossed the Channel and made her way to her brother’s court.  The summer was consumed in negotiating a treaty, by which Edward’s French fiefs were to be restored to him in their integrity, as soon as he had performed homage to the new king.  Meanwhile the English garrison of Gascony was to withdraw to Bayonne, leaving the rest of the duchy in the hands of a French seneschal.  Edward agreed to these terms, and put Gascony into Charles’s hands.  He was still unwilling to compromise his dignity by performing homage, while the Despensers were mortally afraid of his going to France, lest it should remove him from their influence.  Isabella then made a second suggestion.  She persuaded her brother to excuse the personal homage of her husband, if Edward would invest his young son, Edward, with Gascony and Ponthieu, and send him in his stead to tender his feudal duly.  This also was agreed to by the English king, and in September the young prince, then about thirteen years old, was appointed Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Ponthieu, and despatched to join his mother at Paris, where he performed homage to his uncle.

It was expected that Gascony and Ponthieu would then be restored, and that the queen and her son would return to England.  But Charles IV. perpetrated a clever piece of trickery which showed how far off a real settlement still was.  He “restored” to Edward those parts of Gascony which had been peacefully surrendered to him in the summer, and announced that he should keep the Agenais and La Reole, as belonging to France by right of Charles of Valois’ recent conquest.  Bitterly mortified at this treachery, Edward took upon himself the title of “governor and administrator of his firstborn, Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, and of his estates”.  By this technical subtlety, he thought himself entitled to resume the control of the ceded districts and resist the attack which was bound to follow hard upon the new breach.  Once more Charles IV. pronounced the sequestration of the duchy, and despite Edward’s efforts, his power crumbled away before the peaceful advent of the French troops, charged with the execution of their master’s edict.

Long before the last Gascon castles had opened their gates to Charles’s officers, new developments at Paris made the question of Aquitaine a subordinate matter.  Despite the breach of the negotiations, Isabella and her son still tarried at the French court.  In answer to Edward’s requests for their return, she sent back excuse after excuse, till his patience was fairly exhausted.  At last, on December 1, 1325, Edward peremptorily ordered his wife to return home, and warned her not to consort with certain English traitors in the French court.  The Duke of Aquitaine was similarly exhorted to return, with his mother if