[1] See Pirenne, La premiere Tentative pour reconnaitre
    Edouard I. comme Roi de France in Ann. de la Soc. d’Hist. de
    Gand, 1902.

The inevitable demand from Philip VI. for Edward’s homage for Guienne and Ponthieu soon brought the English government face to face with realities.  The request for his vassal’s submission, conveyed to England by Peter Roger, Abbot of Fecamp, the future Clement VI., was even more unwelcome than such demands commonly were.  At first Isabella used brave words:  “My son, who is the son of a king, will never do homage to the son of a count".[1] But a threat of a third seizure of Gascony soon brought the queen to her senses.  Further insistence on the part of Philip was met with polite apologies for delay.  At last, in May, 1329, the young king crossed the Channel, and on June 6 performed homage to Philip in the choir of the cathedral of Amiens.  But even at the last moment there were explanations and reservations on both sides.  Philip made it clear that he acknowledged no claim of his vassal to any territories, beyond those which he actually possessed.  Edward’s advisers protested that they abandoned no pretension to the whole by performing homage for a part.  Moreover, the act of homage was couched in such ambiguous phrases that it remained doubtful whether Edward had performed “liege homage,” as the King of France demanded, or only “simple homage,” such as seemed to him less offensive to the dignity of a crowned king.  Thus, though the cousins parted amicably and discussed proposals of a marriage treaty between the English and French houses, the homage at Amiens settled nothing.

    [1] Grandes Chroniques de France, v., 323 (ed.  P. Paris).

The diplomatists still had plenty of work before them.  The French statesmen insisted on the necessity of the ceremony at Amiens being interpreted as liege homage, involving the obligation of defending the overlord “against all those who can live or die”.  The English politicians complained of the “injustice and unreason of the King of France, who seeks the disinheritance of their master in Aquitaine”.  It was only by limiting the demands of both parties to points of detail, that a compromise was arrived at in the convention of the Wood of Vincennes on May 8, 1330.  Further negotiations were still necessary; and at the moment when everything was trembling in the balance, the sudden occupation of Saintes by the Count of Alencon, brother of Philip VI., brought matters within a measurable distance of war.  But Edward, then at the beginning of his real reign, had no mind for fighting.  A more satisfactory convention, drawn up on March 9, 1331, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was ratified by Edward at Eltham on March 30, when he recognised that he owed liege homage, and not merely simple homage, to the King of France.  Next month, he crossed over to France so secretly that his subjects believed that he went disguised as a merchant or a