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