At the close of the late reign a direct demand on the part of the barons to nominate the great officers of state had been curtly rejected, but the royal choice had been practically limited in the selection of its ministers to the class of prelates and nobles, and however closely connected with royalty they might be such officers always to a great extent shared the feelings and opinions of their order.  The aim of the young king seems to have been to undo the change which had been silently brought about, and to imitate the policy of the contemporary sovereigns of France by choosing as his ministers men of an inferior position, wholly dependent on the Crown for their power, and representatives of nothing but the policy and interests of their master.  Piers Gaveston, a foreigner sprung from a family of Guienne, had been his friend and companion during his father’s reign, at the close of which he had been banished from the realm for his share in intrigues which divided Edward from his son.  At the accession of the new king he was at once recalled, created Earl of Cornwall, and placed at the head of the administration.  When Edward crossed the sea to wed Isabella of France, the daughter of Philip the Fair, a marriage planned by his father to provide against any further intervention of France in his difficulties with Scotland, the new minister was left as Regent in his room.  The offence given by this rapid promotion was embittered by his personal temper.  Gay, genial, thriftless, Gaveston showed in his first acts the quickness and audacity of Southern Gaul.  The older ministers were dismissed, all claims of precedence or inheritance were set aside in the distribution of offices at the coronation, while taunts and defiances goaded the proud baronage to fury.  The favourite was a fine soldier, and his lance unhorsed his opponents in tourney after tourney.  His reckless wit flung nicknames about the Court, the Earl of Lancaster was “the Actor,” Pembroke “the Jew,” Warwick “the Black Dog.”  But taunt and defiance broke helplessly against the iron mass of the baronage.  After a few months of power the formal demand of the Parliament for his dismissal could not be resisted, and in May 1308 Gaveston was formally banished from the realm.

[Sidenote:  Thomas of Lancaster]

But Edward was far from abandoning his favourite.  In Ireland he was unfettered by the baronage, and here Gaveston found a refuge as the King’s Lieutenant while Edward sought to obtain his recall by the intervention of France and the Papacy.  But the financial pressure of the Scotch war again brought the king and his Parliament together in the spring of 1309.  It was only by conceding the rights which his father had sought to establish of imposing import duties on the merchants by their own assent that he procured a subsidy.  The firmness of the baronage sprang from their having found a head.  In no point had the policy of Henry the Third more utterly broken down than in his attempt