Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, while the removal of Burnell brought forward to the first rank prelates whose position had hitherto been somewhat obscured by his predominance.  Prominent among these were the brothers Thomas Bek, Bishop of St. David’s, and Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, members of a conspicuous Lincolnshire baronial family.  Both of these for a time strikingly combined devotion to the royal service with loyalty to those clerical and aristocratic traditions which, strictly interpreted, were almost incompatible with faithful service to a secular monarch.  Even more important henceforth was the king’s treasurer, Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, the most trusted minister of Edward’s later life, a faithful but not too scrupulous prelate of the ministerial type, who stood to the second half of the reign in almost the same close relation as that in which Burnell stood to the years which we have now traversed.

    [1] See for this W.H.  Stevenson, Death of Eleanor of Castile,
    in English Hist.  Review, iii. (1888), pp. 315-318.

CHAPTER X.

THE FRENCH AND SCOTTISH WARS AND THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS.

Troubles arose between France and England soon after Edward had settled the Scottish succession.  Neither Edward nor Philip the Fair sought a conflict.  Edward was satisfied with his diplomatic successes, and Philip’s designs upon Gascony were better pursued by chicane than by warfare.  But questions arose of a different kind from the disputes as to feudal right, which had been hitherto the principal matters in debate between the two crowns.

There had long been keen commercial rivalry between the Cinque Ports and the traders of Normandy.  The sailors of Bayonne and other Gascon harbours had associated themselves with the English against the Normans, and both sides loudly complained to their respective rulers of the piracies and homicides committed by their enemies.  Edward and Philip did what they could to smooth over matters, but were alike unable to prevent their subjects flying at each other’s throats.  The story spread that a Norman ship was to be seen in the Channel with’ English sailors and dogs hanging suspended from her yard-arms:  “And so,” says Hemingburgh, “they sailed over the sea, making no difference between a dog and an Englishman”.  Indignation at this outrage drove the English to act together in large organised squadrons.  The French adopted the same tactics, and a collision soon ensued.  On May 15, 1293, an Anglo-Gascon merchant fleet encountered a Norman fleet off Saint Mahe in Brittany.  A pitched battle, probably prearranged, at once ensued.  It ended in a complete victory for the less numerous English squadron, which immediately returned to Portsmouth, laden with booty.