d Ponthieu soon brought the English government face to face with
realities. The request for his vassal's submission, conveyed to England
by Peter Roger, Abbot of Fecamp, the future Clement VI., was even more
unwelcome than such demands commonly were. At first Isabella used brave
words: "My son, who is the son of a king, will never do homage to the
son of a count".[1] But a threat of a third seizure of Gascony soon
brought the queen to her senses. Further insistence on the part of
Philip was met with polite apologies for delay. At last, in May, 1329,
the young king crossed the Channel, and on June 6 performed homage to
Philip in the choir of the cathedral of Amiens. But even at the last
moment there were explanations and reservations on both sides. Philip
made it clear that he acknowledged no claim of his vassal to any
territories, beyond those which he actually possessed. Edward's
advisers protested that they abandoned no pretension to the whole by
performing homage for a part. Moreover, the act of homage was couched
in such ambiguous phrases that it remained doubtful whether Edward had
performed "liege homage," as the King of France demanded, or only
"simple homage," such as seemed to him less offensive to the dignity of
a crowned king. Thus, though the cousins parted amicably and discussed
proposals of a marriage treaty between the English and French houses,
the homage at Amiens settled nothing.

[1] _Grandes Chroniques de France_, v., 323 (ed. P. Paris).

The diplomatists still had plenty of work before them. The French
statesmen insisted on the necessity of the ceremony at Amiens being
interpreted as liege homage, involving the obligation of defending the
overlord "against all those who can live or die". The English
politicians complained of the "injustice and unreason of the King of
France, who seeks the disinheritance of their master in Aquitaine". It
was only by limiting the demands of both parties to points of detail,
that a compromise was arrived at in the convention of the Wood of
Vincennes on May 8, 1330. Further negotiations were still necessary;
and at the moment when everything was trembling in the balance, the
sudden occupation of Saintes by the Count of Alencon, brother of Philip
VI., brought matters within a measurable distance of war. But Edward,
then at the beginning of his real reign, had no mind for fighting. A
more satisfactory convention, drawn up on March 9, 1331, at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, w