pilgrim.  At Pont-Sainte-Maxence, a little town on the Oise, a few miles below Compiegne, Edward held an interview with Philip VI., who came thither with equal privacy.  The French king does not seem to have insisted upon a renewal of homage, being content with the assurance already given as to the character of the previous ceremony.  The informal interview, which the modern historian can only ascertain by painful scrutiny of the royal itineraries, proved more fertile in friendship than all the pomp of Amiens.  Before Edward went home, Philip gave him complete satisfaction for the outrage at Saintes, and arrived at a financial settlement.  Thus Edward and Philip at last became friends “so far as outside appearances went,” as a chronicler of the time phrased it.  The fundamental difference of interests and standpoint could be glossed over by no facile compromise, and the calm of the next six years was only the prelude to a storm destined to end the policy that had regulated the relations of the two courts from the days of the peace of 1259 to those of the meeting at Pont-Sainte-Maxence.

At first there was talk of further cementing the newly established friendship.  There were suggestions of a marriage of Edward’s infant son with Philip’s daughter, a fresh interview between the monarchs, a treaty of perpetual alliance and a common crusade against the Turks.  The last, and the most fantastic, of these projects was the one which was most seriously discussed.  The chivalrous spirit of Philip of Valois rose eagerly to the idea of a great European expedition against the infidel, of which he was to be the chief commander.  Inspired by John XXII., he took the cross, made preparations for an early start, and invoked Edward’s co-operation.  Edward cleverly utilised his kinsman’s zeal as another lever for enforcing the settlement of outstanding differences.  “Tell your master,” he said to the French ambassador, Peter Roger, now Archbishop of Rouen, “that when he has fulfilled his promises, I will be more eager to go on the holy voyage than he is himself.”  But the chronic troubles, arising from the unceasing extension of the suzerain’s claims in Aquitaine, and from the shelter given by Philip to David Bruce, had continued all through the years of professed friendship, and in 1334 an embassy to Paris, presided over by Archbishop Stratford, failed to establish a modus vivendi.  In the same year John XXII. died without having either procured the crusade or crushed Louis of Bavaria.  His successor, James Founder of Foix, who took the name of Benedict XII., pursued his general policy, though in a more diplomatic and self-seeking spirit.  Benedict’s great wish was to, unite France and England against his enemy, the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, and he dexterously played upon Philip’s eagerness for the crusade to persuade him to abandon to the papacy the position, which he had assumed, of arbiter of the differences between Edward and the Scots.  It was a signal, though transitory, triumph of this