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 to weaken the power of the nobles by
filling the great earldoms with kinsmen of the royal house. He had made
Simon of Montfort his brother-in-law only to furnish a leader to the nation
in the Barons' war. In loading his second son, Edmund Crouchback, with
honours and estates he rais