the rearing of dogs, his ordinary occupations were those of the athlete
or the artisan. He was skilful with his hands, and an excellent
mechanic, proficient at the anvil and the forge, and proud of his skill
in digging ditches and thatching roofs. Interested in music, and
devoted to play-acting, he was badly educated, taking the coronation
oath in the French form provided for a king ignorant of Latin. Vain,
irritable, and easily moved to outbursts of childish wrath, he was
half-conscious of the weakness of his will, and was never without a
favourite, whose affection compensated him for his subjects' contempt.
The household of so careless a master was disorderly beyond the
ordinary measure of the time. While Edward irritated the nobles by his
neglect of their counsel, he vexed the commons by the exactions of his
purveyors.

[1] That is Gabaston, dep. Basses Pyrénées, cant. Morlaas.

The task which lay before Edward might well have daunted a stronger
man. The old king had failed in the great purpose of his life. Scotland
was in full revolt and had found a man able to guide her destinies. The
crown was deeply in debt; the exchequer was bare of supplies, and the
revenues both of England and Gascony were farmed by greedy and
unpopular companies of Italian bankers, such as the Frescobaldi of
Florence, the king's chief creditors. The nobles, though restrained by
the will of the old king, still cherished the ideals of the age of the
Barons' War, and were convinced that the best way to rule England was
to entrust the machinery of the central government, which Edward I. had
elaborated with so much care, to the control of a narrow council of
earls and prelates. Winchelsea, though broken in health, looked forward
in his banishment to the renewal of the alliance of baronage and
clergy, and to the reassertion of hierarchical ideals. The papal