The Earl of Lincoln governed England as regent during the king's
absence. In February, 1311, he died, and Gloucester abandoned the
campaign to take up the regency. The death of the last of Edward I.'s
lay ministers was followed in March by that of another survivor of the
old generation, Bishop Bek of Durham. The old landmarks were quickly
passing away, and the forces that still made for moderation were
sensibly diminished. Gilbert of Gloucester, alone of the younger
generation, still aspired to the position of a mediator. The most
important result of Lincoln's death was the unmuzzling of his
son-in-law, Thomas of Lancaster. In his own right the lord of the three
earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby, Thomas then received in
addition his father-in-law's two earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. The
enormous estates and innumerable jurisdictions attached to these five
offices gave him a territorial position greater by far than that of any
other English lord. "I do not believe," writes the monk of Malmesbury,
"that any duke or count of the Roman empire could do as much with the
revenues of his estates as the Earl of Lancaster." Nor were Earl
Thomas' personal connexions less magnificent than his feudal dignities.
As a grandson of Henry III., he was the first cousin of the king.
Through his mother, Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre and Countess of
Champagne, he was the grandson of the valiant Robert of Artois, who had
fallen at Mansura, and the great-grandson of Louis VIII. of France. His
half-sister, Joan of Champagne, was the wife of Philip the Fair, so
that the French king was his brother-in-law as well as his cousin, and
Isabella, Edward's consort, was his niece. Unluckily, the personality
of the great earl was not equal to his pedigree or his estates. Proud,
hard to work with, jealous, and irascible, he was essentially the
leader of opposition, the grumbler, and the _frondeur_. When the time
came for a constructive policy, Thomas broke down almost as signally as
Edward himself. His ability was limited, his power of application