the exchequer was bare of supplies, and the
revenues both of England and Gascony were farmed by greedy and
unpopular companies of Italian bankers, such as the Frescobaldi of
Florence, the king's chief creditors. The nobles, though restrained by
the will of the old king, still cherished the ideals of the age of the
Barons' War, and were convinced that the best way to rule England was
to entrust the machinery of the central government, which Edward I. had
elaborated with so much care, to the control of a narrow council of
earls and prelates. Winchelsea, though broken in health, looked forward
in his banishment to the renewal of the alliance of baronage and
clergy, and to the reassertion of hierarchical ideals. The papal
_curia_, already triumphant in the last days of the reign of the dead
king, was anticipating a return to the times of Henry III, when every
dignity of the English Church was at its mercy. The strenuous endeavour
which had marked the last reign gave place to the extreme of
negligence.

Edward at once broke with the policy of his father. After receiving, at
Carlisle, the homage of the English magnates, he crossed the Solway to
Dumfries, where such Scottish barons as had not joined Robert Bruce
took oaths of fealty to him. He soon relinquished the personal conduct
of the war, and travelled slowly to Westminster on the pretext of
following his father's body to its last resting-place. He replaced his
father's ministers by dependants of his own. Bishop Walter Langton, the
chief minister of the last years of Edward I., was singled out for
special vengeance. He was stripped of his offices, robbed of his
treasure, and thrown into close confinement, without any regard to the
immunities of a churchman from secular jurisdiction. Langton's place as
treasurer was given to Walter Reynolds, an illiterate clerk, who had
won the chief place in Edward's household through his skill in
theatricals. Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London, was replaced in the
chancery by John Langton, Bishop of Chichester. The barons of the
exchequer, the justices of the high courts, and the other ministers of
the old king were removed in favour of more complacent successors.
Signal favour was shown to all who had fallen under Edward I.'s
displeasure. Bishop Bek, of Durham, was restored to his palatinate, and
the road to return opened to Winchelsea, though ill-health detained him
on the Continent for some time longer. Conspicuous among the returned
e