The other claim made by the two earls, for a new perambulation (or survey) of the forests, opened a controversy of some duration; and we shall find it convenient to reserve it for a distinct chapter. But, besides these controversies, one main business of the session was, to receive from the king a statement of the result of the arbitration of pope Boniface, to whom, in the autumn of 1297, both kings had agreed to refer all matters in dispute. The pope’s award had been given; and a treaty with the king of France had been signed. Peace was to be restored between the two countries; Gascony was to be given back to England; and Edward was to marry Margaret, the sister of the king of France; while his son was to obtain the hand of Philip’s daughter, Isabel. In fine, all lands, territories, and goods were to be restored to their owners; compensation being made for waste or damage.
Such was the pacification agreed upon between the two kings, and now made known by Edward to his parliament. But even while that parliament was sitting, Philip made two further demands or applications. The first was, that John Baliol, the late king of Scotland, should be set at liberty. Edward felt no difficulty on this point, only stipulating that the ex‐king should not meddle in any way with the realm of Scotland. This proviso could not trouble or annoy Baliol; for he had, not long before, declared his resolution never again to set foot in a country “in which he had experienced so much malice, fraud, treason, and deceit.”[105]
The second point urged by Philip was, that the Scotch should be allowed a truce of seven months—a request to which Edward, having other matters in hand, felt no difficulty in acceding. In truth, one affair which he was very desirous of bringing to a conclusion, was his own marriage with the princess Margaret, Philip’s sister. He had now been a widower for more than eight years; and a lonely life after a happy wedlock of such long continuance, did not at all suit a man of so ardent and sincere a temperament. Peter tells us how, two or three years before this, while returning from Scotland,—
“On fell things he thought, and wext heavie as lead,
How chances ’gainst him foughte, and that his queen was dead;
His solace all was ’reft, now she from him was gone.”
And shortly after this, he began to make inquiries, first as to the princess Blanche of France, and then as to her sister Margaret. The latter princess became, at last, his choice, and she was brought over by the duke of Bourgogne, landing at Dover on the 8th of September. The king, with the courtesy which never forsook him, went to meet her, and at Canterbury, in the cathedral, on the 10th of September, 1299, the marriage was celebrated; the archbishop himself officiating. A large number of foreign as well as of the English nobility were present. Queen Margaret, like her predecessor, seems to have been entirely devoted to her great consort. Like Eleanor, even in war she was always near the king, and his attentions to her were unremitting. Thus, of the Scottish campaign of 1301, Langtoft writes:—
“The queen Margaret then with childe was she;
The king bade her not stay, but come to the north countrye;
To Brotherton on Wharfe, and there she was