challenged a troop, which included the Earls of Hereford, Warenne, and Arundel, and utterly discomfited his rivals.[1] The victory of the upstart over magnates of such dignity was accounted for by treachery, and the prohibition of a coronation tournament, probably a simple measure of police, was ascribed to the unwillingness of Peter to give his opponents a legitimate opportunity of vindicating their skill.  There had been much resentment at Gaveston’s appointment as regent during the king’s absence in France.  A further outburst of indignation followed when the Gascon, magnificently arrayed and bedecked with jewels, bore the crown of St. Edward in the coronation procession.  The queen’s uncles, who had escorted her to her new home, left England disgusted that Edward’s love for Gaveston led him to neglect his bride, and the want of reserve shown in the personal dealings of the king and his “idol” suggested the worst interpretation of their relations, though this is against the weight of evidence.  Rumours spread that the favourite had laid hands on the vast treasures which Bishop Walter Langton had deposited at the New Temple, and had extorted from the king even larger sums, which he had sent to his kinsfolk in Gascony by the agency of the Italian farmers of the revenue.

    [1] Ann.  Paulini, p. 258, and Monk of Malmesbury, p. 156, are
    to be preferred to Trokelowe, p. 65.

Gaveston was a typical Gascon, vain, loquacious, and ostentatious, proud of his own ready wit and possessed of a fatal talent for sharp and bitter sayings.  He seems to have been a brave and generous soldier.  There is little proof that he was specially vicious or incompetent, and, had he been allowed time to establish himself, he might well have been the parent of a noble house, as patriotic and as narrowly English as the Valence lords of Pembroke had become in the second generation.  But his sudden elevation rather turned his head, and the dull but dignified English earls were soon mortally offended by his airs of superiority, and by his intervention between them and the sovereign.  “If,” wrote the annalist of St. Paul’s, London, “one of the earls or magnates sought any special favour of the king, the king forthwith sent him to Peter, and whatever Peter said or ordered at once took place, and the king ratified it.  Hence the whole people grew indignant that there should be two kings in one kingdom, one the king in name, the other the king in reality.”  Gaveston’s vanity was touched by the sullen hostility of the earls.  He returned their suspicion by an openly expressed contempt.  He amused himself and the king by devising nicknames for them.  Thomas of Lancaster was the old pig or the play-actor, Aymer of Pembroke was Joseph the Jew, Gilbert of Gloucester was the cuckoo, and Guy of Warwick was the black dog of Arden.  Such jests were bitterly resented.  “If he call me dog,” said Warwick on hearing of the insult, “I will take care to bite him.”