Scotland than the
redemption of Richard I. had been for England. On hostages being given,
David was released, and Edward, without relinquishing his own
pretensions to be King of Scots, took no steps to enforce his claim.
The event showed that Edward knew his man. The instalments of ransom
could not be regularly paid, and David never became free from his
obligations. Nothing save the tenacity of the Scottish nobles prevented
him from accepting Edward's proposals to write off the arrears of his
ransom in return for his accepting either the English king himself or
his son, Lionel of Antwerp, as heir of Scotland. This attitude brought
David into conflict with his natural heir, Robert, the Steward of
Scotland, the son of his sister Margaret. The tension between uncle and
nephew forced the Scots king to remain on friendly terms with Edward.
For the rest of the reign, Scottish history was occupied by
aristocratic feuds, by financial expedients for raising the king's
ransom, by the gradual development of the practice of entrusting the
powers of parliament to those committees of the estates subsequently
famous as the lords of the articles, by David's matrimonial troubles
after Joan's death, and by his unpopular visits to the court of his
neighbour. Warfare between the realms there was none, save for the
chronic border feuds. When David died in 1371, the Steward of Scotland
land mounted the throne as Robert II. This first of the Stewart kings
went back to the policy of the French alliance, but was too weak to
inflict serious mischief on England.

In January, 1358, preliminaries of peace were also arranged with the
captive King of France, and sent to Paris and Avignon for ratification.
Innocent VI. was overjoyed at his success, and Frenchmen were willing
to make any sacrifices to bring back their monarch, for immediately
after Poitiers a storm of disorder burst over France. The states
general met a few weeks after the battle, and the regent, Charles of
Normandy, was helpless in their hands. This was the time of the power
of Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, and of Robert
Lecoq, Bishop of Laon. But the movement in Paris was neither in the
direction of parliamentary government nor of democracy, and few men
have less right to be regarded as popular heroes than Marcel and Lecoq.
The estates were manipulated in the interests of aristocratic intrigue,
and, behind the ostensible leaders, was the sinister influence of
Ch