All was ready for war.  The interview at Coblenz was the deathblow to the papal diplomacy, and the sluggish Philip awaited in the Vermandois the expected attack of the Anglo-imperial armies.  Yet the best part of a year was still to elapse before lances were crossed in earnest.  The lords of the empire had no real care for the cause of Edward.  They were delighted to take his presents, to pledge themselves to support him, and to insist upon the regular payment of the subsidies he had promised.  But John of Brabant was more intent on winning Mechlin than on invading France, and even William of Avesnes was embarrassed by the ties which bound him to Philip, his uncle, even more than to Edward, his brother-in-law.  They contented themselves with taking Edward’s money and giving him little save promises in return.  It became evident that an imperial vicar would be obeyed even less than an emperor.  Every week of delay was dangerous to Edward, who had exhausted his resources in the pompous pageantry of his Rhenish journey, and in magnificent housekeeping in Brabant.  It was then Edward’s interest, as it had previously been Philip’s, to bring matters to a crisis.  That he failed to do this must be ascribed to the lukewarmness of his allies, the poverty of his exchequer, and, above all, to the still active diplomacy of Benedict XII.

The cardinal legates appeared in Brabant, but their tone was different from that which they had taken in the previous spring in England.  Profoundly irritated by the alliance of Edward and Louis, Benedict lectured the English king on the iniquity of his courses.  The empire was vacant; the Coblenz grant was therefore of no effect; if Edward persisted in acting as vicar of the schismatic, he would be excommunicated.  Benedict stood revealed as the partisan of France.  It was in vain that Edward offered peace if France gave up the Scots and made full restitution of Gascony.  Benedict ordered his legates to refuse to discuss the latter proposal, and, as the Gascon question lay at the root of the whole matter, an amicable settlement became more impossible than ever.  Edward hotly defended his right to make what alliances he chose with his wife’s kinsmen, and bitterly denounced the employment of the wealth of the Church in equipping the armies of his enemies.  Though the cardinals, Peter and Bertrand, remained in Edward’s camp, they might, for all practical purposes, as well have been at Avignon.  The papal diplomacy had failed.

Edward employed the leisure forced upon him by these events in elaborating his claim to the French throne.  His lawyers ransacked both Roman jurisprudence and feudal custom that they might lay before the pope and Christendom plausible reasons for their master’s pretensions.  They advanced pleas of an even bolder character.  Was not the right of Edward to the French throne the same as that of Jesus Christ to the succession of David?  The Virgin Mary, incapable of the succession on her own behalf, was yet able