itical life. A subtle extension of his earlier policy began
to emphasise the dependence of the landed dignitaries on his pleasure.
The extinction of several important baronial houses made this the
easier, and Edward took care to retain escheats in his own hands, or at
least to entrust them only to persons of approved confidence. The old
leaders of opposition were dead or powerless. Ralph of Monthermer, the
simple north-country knight who had won the hand of Joan of Acre, ruled
over the Gloutester-Glamorgan inheritance on behalf of his wife and
Edward's little grandson, Gilbert of Clare. The Earl of Hereford died
in 1299, and in 1302 his son and successor, another Humphrey Bohun, was
bribed by a marriage with the king's daughter, Elizabeth, the widowed
Countess of Holland, to surrender his lands to the crown and receive
them back, like the Earl of Gloucester in 1290, entailed on the issue
of himself and his consort. In the same year the childless earl
marshal, Roger Bigod, conscious of his inability to continue any longer
his struggle against royal assumptions and at variance with his brother
and heir, made a similar surrender of his estates, which was the more
humiliating since the estate in tail, with which he was reinvested, was
bound to terminate with his life. In 1306, on the marshal's death, the
Bigod inheritance lapsed to the crown. Much earlier than that, in 1293,
Edward had extorted on her deathbed from the great heiress, Isabella of
Fors, Countess of Albemarle and Devon, the bequest of the Isle of Wight
and the adjacent castle of Christchurch. In 1300, on the death of the
king's childless cousin, Earl Edmund, the wealthy earldom of Cornwall
escheated to the crown. To Edward's contemporaries the acquisition of
the earldoms of Norfolk and Cornwall seemed worthy to be put alongside
the conquests of Wales and Scotland.[1]

[1] See John of London, _Commendatio lamentabilis_ in _Chron.
of Edw. I. and Edw. II._, ii., 8-9. See for the earldoms my
_Earldoms under Edward I._ in _Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, new ser._, viii. (1894), 129-155.

Even more important as adding to Edward's resources than these direct
additions to the royal domains, was the increasing dependence of the
remaining earls upon the crown. His sons-in-law of Gloucester and
Hereford were entirely under his sway. In 1304 the aged Earl Warenne
had died, and in 1306 his grandson and successor was bound closely to
the roya