King and Baronage (A.D. 1135-1327)  (English, Paperback, Hutton William Holden)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EDWARD OF CAERNARVON. 97 tion of England had changed more than it changed for two centuries after. He had thrown his whole heart into what he did for his people, and he left marks which could never be effaced. Even in his mistakes we cannot forget that he was good as well as great, and his severity does not conceal his true love for his people. CHAPTER VII. THE REIGN OF EDWARD II., 1307-1327. Edward II. was a very different man from his father. He was unlike any of his ancestors who had reigned in England. All the Angevin kings had loved Edward's to rule, whether they governed well or ill. character. Edward cared for none of those things. He would have been happy as a baron with half a dozen country manors to look after, or as a wealthy merchant dealing liberally with artists and craftsmen. As a king he was utterly out of place. His father had loved work, he loved nothing but ease. He was weak where his forefathers had been strong, and without being actively vicious he had no active virtue. It was an age when no king could afford to be idle, and the idleness of Edward II. was his ruin. The new king began by disregarding his father's last injunctions. Edward I. had been a severe parent—had punished his son's faults, and had tried ear- His disregard nestly to train him for a life of business. Now for his father- that he was free the son seemed only to despise his father's memory. He had been instructed to carry on the Scots war with vigour. He left it immediately to the charge of Aymer de Valence. His bosom friend, Piers Gaveston, a young Gascon knight, brave but insolent, who had been brought up with him, had been banished by his father. Edward II. recalled him at once and made him Earl of Cornwall. He then crossed to France to marry Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fa...