Kings of France.  Thus he became the ruler of all the outlying dependencies of the English crown, and the representative of all the claims on the Aquitanian inheritance of Eleanor and the Norman inheritance of William the Conqueror.  The caustic St. Alban’s chronicler declared that Henry left to himself such scanty possessions that he became a “mutilated kinglet".[1] But Henry was too jealous of power utterly to renounce so large a share of his dominions.  His grants to his son were for purposes of revenue and support, and the government of these regions was still strictly under the royal control.  Yet from this moment writs ran in Edward’s name, and under his father’s direction the young prince was free to buy his experience as he would.  Soon after his son’s return with his bride, Henry III. quitted Gascony, making his way home through France, where he visited his mother’s tomb at Fontevraud and made atonement at Pontigny before the shrine of Archbishop Edmund.  Of more importance was his visit to King Louis, recently returned from his Egyptian captivity.  The cordial relations established by personal intercourse between the two kings prepared the way for peace two years later.

    [1] Matthew Paris, Chron.  Maj., v., 450.

Edward remained in Gascony about a year after his father.  He checked with a stern hand the disorders of his duchy, strove to make peace between the Rosteins and Colons, and failing to do so, took in 1261 the decisive step of putting an end to the tumultuous municipal independence of the Gascon capital by depriving the jurats of the right of choosing their mayor.[1] Thenceforth Bordeaux was ruled by a mayor nominated by the duke or his lieutenant.  Edward’s rule in Gascony has its importance as the first experiment in government by the boy of fifteen who was later to become so great a king.  Returning to London in November, 1255, he still forwarded the interests of his Gascon subjects, and an attempt to protect the Bordeaux wine-merchants from the exactions of the royal officers aroused the jealousy of Henry, who declared that the days of Henry II. had come again, when the king’s sons rose in revolt against their father.  Despite this characteristic wail, Edward gained his point.  Yet his efforts to secure the well-being of Gascony had not produced much result.  The hold of the English duke on Aquitaine was as precarious under Edward as it had been in the days of Henry’s direct rule.

    [1] See Bemont, Roles Gascons, i., supplement, pp.
    cxvi.-cxviii.

The affairs of Wales and Cheshire involved Edward in responsibilities even more pressing than those of Gascony.  On the death of John the Scot without heirs in 1237, the palatinate of Randolph of Blundeville became a royal escheat.  Its grant to Edward made him the natural head of the marcher barons.  The Cheshire earldom became the more important since the Welsh power had been driven beyond the Conway.  Since the death of David ap Llewelyn in 1246, divisions