in his absence as a traitor, and devoured by a ferocious hatred of Philip and his Burgundian wife, Robert did all that he could to inflame the mind of Edward against the French king.  French romance of the next generation, in the poem of the Vow of the Heron,[1] tells how Robert, returning to Edward’s court from the chase, brought as his only victim a heron, which he offered to the king as the most timid of birds to the most cowardly of kings; “for, sire,” he declared, “you have not dared to claim the realm of France which belongs to you by hereditary right”.  Stirred up by this challenge, Edward swore to God and the heron that within a year he would place the crown of France on Queen Philippa’s brow.  This famous legend is, however, a fiction.  It was not until later that Edward seriously renewed the claim which he had advanced in 1328.  But when once war became certain, the challenge of the French throne was bound to be made, and the dissolution of the friendly personal relations of the two kings, which had so long prevented either from proceeding to extremities, was certainly in large part the work of Robert of Artois.  For the moment, Edward probably thought that his welcome of Robert was only a fair return for Philip’s reception of David Bruce.

    [1] Les voeus du heron in Wright, Political Poems and
    Songs, i., 1-25 (Rolls Ser.)

War being imminent, Edward looked beyond sea for foreign allies.  Commercial and traditional ties closely bound England to the county of Flanders, but our friendship had latterly been with its people rather than with its princes.  Louis of Nevers, the Count of Flanders, had been expelled in 1328 by a rising of the maritime districts of the county, and had been restored by force of arms through the agency of Philip of Valois.  Gratitude and interest accordingly combined to make Count Louis a strong partisan of Philip of Valois.  Though far from absolute, he was still possessed of sufficient authority over his unruly townsmen to make it impossible for Edward to negotiate successfully with them.  In 1336 the count answered Edward’s advances by prohibiting all commercial relations between his subjects and England.  Bitterly disgusted at the hostility of Flanders, Edward in 1337 passed a law through parliament which prohibited the export of wool to the Flemish weaving centres.  This measure provoked an economic crisis at Ghent and Ypres; but for the moment such a catastrophe could only accentuate the differences between England and the count.  It was otherwise, however, with the neighbouring princes of the imperial obedience.  Count William I. of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand was Edward III.’s father-in-law, and, during the last months of his strenuous career, he welcomed Bishop Burghersh, Edward’s chief diplomatist, to his favourite residence of Valenciennes, where from April, 1337, the English ambassadors kept great state, “sparing as little as if the king were present there in his own person,” and striving