The young king had been betrothed to Isabella of France, the daughter of Philip the Fair. He wished that his young bride should be crowned with him, and so crossed over to Boulogne to marry her. The indignation of the lords and of the country at the recall and promotion of Gaveston was fanned into a flame by the announcement that, as it was necessary to appoint a regent during the king’s short absence, the Earl of Cornwall with full and even peculiar powers was appointed to the place. It became clear that the coronation could scarcely take place without an uproar.
The Coronation.
The coronation
oath.
Nor was the question of coronation itself without some difficulties; for Archbishop Winchelsey, although invited by the new king, had not yet returned from banishment, and it was by no means safe for any other prelate to act in his stead. After a little delay Winchelsey consented to empower a substitute; and Edward II. and Isabella were crowned on the 25th of February by the Bishop of Winchester. The form of the coronation oath taken on this occasion, perhaps for the first time in this shape, is worth careful remark. In it the king promises to maintain the ancient laws, to keep the peace of God and the people, and to do right judgment and justice. So much was found in the older formula: but another question was put: “Will you consent to hold and keep the laws and righteous customs which the community of your realm shall have chosen, and will you defend them and strengthen them to the honor of God, to the utmost of your power?” If, as is supposed, these words were new, they seemed to contain a recognition of the fact that the community of the realm had now entered into their place as entitled to control by counsel and consent the legislative action and policy of the king. And so construed they form a valuable comment on the results of the last reign, which had seen the community organized in a perfect parliament and admitted to a share of the responsibilities of government. The lords heard them with interest; even if they had been used at the coronation of Edward I. few were old enough to remember them. They saw in them either an earnest of good government or a lever by which they themselves could remedy the evils of misgovernment, and they proceeded to try the maiden weapon against the favorite whom they now hated as well as feared.
Thomas Earl
of Lancaster.
Gaveston had at first tried to propitiate the more powerful lords of the court, especially Earl Thomas of Lancaster and Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. The latter was an old and trusted servant of Edward I. Thomas of Lancaster was the son of Earl Edmund of Lancaster, the younger son of Henry III., who had been titular King of Sicily; his mother was Blanche, the Queen Dowager of Navarre, whose daughter by her first husband had married Philip the Fair. He was thus cousin to the king and uncle to the queen; he possessed the great estates with which his grandfather and uncle had founded the Lancaster earldom; he was Earl of Leicester and Derby also, and had thus succeeded to the support of those vassals of the Montforts and the Ferrers who had sustained them in their struggle against the crown; and he was the son-in-law and heir of Henry de Lacy. Distantly following out the policy of Earl Simon, he had set himself up as a friend of the clergy and of the liberties of the people. Personally he was a haughty, vicious, and selfish man, whom the mistakes and follies of Edward II. raised into the fame of a popular champion, and whom his bitter sufferings and cruel death promoted to the rank of a martyr and a saint. But he was not a man of high principle or great capacity, as the result proved.
Gaveston and
the Earls.
Banishment of
Gaveston.
Schism between
the king
and the lords.
Recall of
Gaveston.