The serious business of kingcraft began when Edward met his cousin, Philip III., at Paris.  The news from England was still so good that Edward resolved to remain in France with the twofold object of settling his relations with the French monarchy and of receiving the homage and regulating the affairs of Aquitaine.  Despite the treaty of Paris of 1259, there were so many subjects of dispute between the English and French kings that, beneath the warm protestations of affection between the kinsmen, there was, as a French chronicler said, but a cat-and-dog love between them.[1] The treaty had not been properly executed, and the English had long complained that the French had not yielded up to England their king’s rights over the three bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors, and Perigueux, which St. Louis had ceded.  New complications arose after the death of Alfonse of Poitiers in the course of the Tunisian crusade.  By the treaty of Paris the English king should then have entered into possession of Saintonge south of the Charente, the Agenais, and lower Quercy.  But the ministers of Philip III. laid hands upon the whole of Alfonse’s inheritance and refused to surrender these districts to the English.  The welcome which Edward received from his cousin at Paris could not blind him to the incompatibility of their interests, nor to the impossibility of obtaining at the moment the cession of the promised lands.  He did not choose to tarry at Paris while the diplomatists unravelled the tangled web of statecraft.  Nor would he tender an unconditional homage to the prince who withheld from him his inheritance.  Already a stickler for legal rights, even when used to his own detriment, Edward was unable to deny his subjection to the overlord of Aquitaine.  He therefore performed homage, but he phrased his submission in terms which left him free to urge his claims at a more convenient season.  “Lord king,” he said to Philip, “I do you homage for all the lands which I ought to hold of you.”  The vagueness of this language suggested that, if Edward could not get Saintonge, he might revive his claim to Normandy.  The king appointed a commission to continue the negotiations with the French court, and then betook himself to Aquitaine.[2]

    [1] “Hic amor dici potest amor cati et canis,” Chron.  Limov.,
    in Recueil des Hist. de la France, xxi., 784.

    [2] C.V.  Langlois’ Le Regne de Philippe le Hardi (1887), and
    Gavrilovitch’s Le Traite de Paris, give the best modern
    accounts of Edward’s early dealings with the French crown.

It was nearly ten years since the presence of the monarch had restrained the turbulence of the Gascon duchy.  Edward had before him the task of watching over its internal administration, and checking the subtle policy whereby the agents of the French crown were gradually undermining his authority.  Two wars, the war of Bearn and the war of Limoges, desolated Gascony from the Pyrenees to the Vienne.  It was