a knight, a judge, a territorial magnate, and the first English merchant to found a baronial house.  And as the credit of the English merchants was limited, Edward was forced more and more to rely upon parliamentary grants.  The memory of the king’s want of faith to the estates of 1341 had died away, and a parliament, which met in 1344, once more made Edward liberal contributions.  Secure of his subjects’ support, the frivolous king largely employed his resources in the chivalrous pageantry which stirred up the martial ardour of his barons and made the war popular.  It was then that he resolved to set up a “round table” at Windsor after the fabled fashion of King Arthur.  From this came the foundation of the Round Tower which Edward was to erect in his favourite abode, and the organised chivalry that was soon to culminate in the Order of the Garter.  In the summer of 1345 Edward made that journey to Sluys, which has already been noted, and he held on ship-board his last interview with James van Artevelde.  His immediate return to England showed that he had no mind to renew his Flemish alliances.  In the same year the death of the queen’s brother, William of Avesnes, established the rule of Louis of Bavaria in the three counties of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault in the right of his wife, Philippa’s elder sister.  Edward put in a claim on behalf of his queen, which further embittered his already uneasy relations with Louis, and led him to seek his field of combat anywhere rather than in the Netherlands.  In Brittany the murder of the nobles of Montfort’s faction had given an excuse for the renewal of partisan warfare as early as 1343, but Montfort was still under surveillance in France, even after his release from Philip’s prison, and Joan of Flanders, the heroic defender of Hennebont, was hopelessly insane in England.  At last in 1345 Montfort ventured to flee from France to England, where he did homage to Edward as King of France for the duchy which he claimed.  He then went to Brittany, and there shortly afterwards died.  The new Duke of Brittany, also named John, was a mere boy when he was thus robbed of both his parents’ care, and his cause languished for want of a head.  Edward took upon himself the whole direction of Brittany as tutor of the little duke.  Northampton was once more sent thither, but for a time the war degenerated into sieges of castles and petty conflicts.

While action was thus impracticable in the Netherlands, and ineffective in Brittany, Gascony became, for the first time during the struggle, the scene of military operations of the first rank.  The storm of warfare had hitherto almost spared the patrimony of the English king in southern France.  No great effort was made either by the French to capture the last bulwarks of the Aquitanian inheritance, or by Edward to extend his duchy to its ancient limits.  Cut off from other fields of expansion, Edward threw his chief energies into the enlargement of his power in southern