deer. The wrath of King Edward was fierce, but the Prince, albeit offending, waited its subsidence with hope and respect. He remains at Midhurst, he states, awaiting the King's pleasure; and to recover his father's good will, as he desires to do, the Prince will follow him humbly, at a distance. A prayer to the earl to come to him and give him the aid and counsel which he needs, is a promising trait in a young and seemingly thoughtless offender.

The anxiety of the Prince appears less intense in fact than in words. He was soon occupied in the business I have before alluded to, of getting the Archbishop of Canterbury to help him in the improvement of his stud, and on the 22nd of June, a letter to Walter "Reynaud," of whom he was a frequent correspondent, not only shows a mind gaily at ease, but betrays one of the weak points in the Prince of Wales's character-his love of finery. On this occasion, he has heard that Marie, Queen of France, and Louis, her son, are coming to England. He must of course welcome their arrival and escort them inland. To do this as becomes a Prince, he needs must have good palfreys and fine robes. Accordingly, Walter is directed to purchase "two fit and good palfreys, and two saddles, with the best reins kept by Gilbert de Taunton; and that he purchase the best and finest cloths he can find in London, for two or three robes, with fur and cedeux for the same, and to send them to him as soon as he can."

In about a month, a letter from Lambeth to the Countess of Gloucester, contains the Prince's thanks for the good offices of his sister; and further, a comforting assurance that the information she had received of the

King's harshness towards him was unfounded. His father had at least allowed him the necessaries which he had once refused. Father and son, however, were not yet reconciled. On the 1st of September, at Windsor, we hear of thanks from the Prince to the Queen for the trouble she had taken in his affairs. He was then employing Sir Roger de Clifford to negotiate between him and the King; but the Queen was made previously acquainted with the nature of his commission, in order that she might instruct him in the way most likely to find favour with the offended father. Edward prays

his step-mother to listen to the knight, and as she loves her step-son, to counsel him in this matter, and to reply by Sir Roger, as to her wishes with reference. to the Prince. He would seem also to have engaged an intercessor in his sister Mary, to whom, on the 7th of September, he sent a hare, by Robert de Wygmore, with a prayer for her favourable offices in the business. in which he was then concerned. The Princess was, at the time, forbidden to visit her brother; but subsequently the prohibition was raised, and Mary was to have an interview with Edward at Amesbury. The Prince, then at White Waltham, was pleased, yet perplexed. He evidently experienced some awe of his irascible sire. A Parliament was about to assemble, and the King might at any moment command the Prince's presence. That he might not fail to attend, if summoned, he dared not depart from White Waltham, and was reluctantly compelled to abandon the idea of yet meeting his young sister.

The administration of the Prince's affairs seems, at this period, to have been completely in the hands of the

King. So completely was this paternal control exercised even over the Prince's household, that he could not, of his own free will, lend the services of one of his gentlemen, who held his appointment of the King and not of the Prince of Wales. This is exemplified in a letter from Kennington, October 2nd, to an earl, supposed to be of Lincoln. This nobleman was about setting out on a mission to the Court of Rome, and he desired to have Miles de Stapleton to manage his household. The Prince's reply to this letter states, that he would willingly permit the earl to take any knight or squire of his establishment that he might choose-always excepting Sir Miles; to whom he cannot give leave to transfer his services to the earl, seeing that the King has charged Sir Miles with the direction of the Prince's household and affairs generally. He can do nothing without the command of the King, to whom the Prince refers the earl.

Notwithstanding this control, the Prince of Wales was evidently master of his actions in some of the affairs of his estate and household. This is observable in another letter written from Kennington, on the 26th of October, to Walter Reynaud, to whom the Prince often wrote, with remarkable variations in the spelling of Reynaud's name. The letter is to the effect that the King, in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, had granted to the Prince the land of Wales, and subsequently all the debts due to the King in that principality. Under this grant, the Prince had received from Joan, widow of Owen de la Pole, 1207. as part of a fine due to the King on her marriage. Meanwhile, the King's Court of Exchequer had distrained the property of Joan for this

debt. The Prince denied the right of the court to do this. He clearly and properly held, that whatever portion of the fine remain unacquitted was due to him, and not to the King; and he accordingly directed his agent Walter to repair to the Barons of the Exchequer, and obtain the release of the distress.

Acts of this nature showed that the first Prince of Wales lacked neither spirit nor generous feeling. Indeed, men who had suffered wrong had recourse to him to see them righted, and Edward of Caernarvon does not appear to have been dilatory in performing the services required. We have an illustration of this in a matter regarding the Earl of Ulster and Eustace le Poer. The former, styled by Prince Edward his "dear cousin,” with his friend Eustace had had some feud with certain "" men of the Court," who must have been personages of great influence, for they were powerful enough to throw the earl and Eustace into prison, and to call down upon them some over-rigorous measure of "justice" at the hands of the King. For false imprisonment and other grievous wrong, thus inflicted on them, they turned to the Prince for redress. King Edward was not then on very friendly terms with his son; but the Prince, albeit unable to mediate with his father in person, determined to do so by deputy; and he accordingly wrote to John de Benstede, praying him to present to his father, "at a fitting time" (for who knew the wayward and irascible temper of the King better than his son?) the petition of the earl and his co-sufferer; and with it the Prince's own letter to De Benstede. The King had already assigned justices to try the matter on which the respective parties were at issue, but the Prince

manfully desires John to beg of the King, in his son's name, that he would assign such justices as would redress the grievances of those who had been wronged.

With these evidences of active good-will before us, we may the less wonder that the Prince possessed friends warmly attached to him. For small services from these he returned thanks gracefully and promptly, and repaid the services themselves with interest. He was at Purbright on the 19th of September, when Sir Hugh le Despenser forwarded to him, by a servant, a present of some grapes. The Prince not only gratefully acknowledged the kind homage, but entered into details which showed his appreciation of the pleasant and useful gift. Sir Hugh's man, he says, arrived opportunely, on Sunday morning, before the Prince had broken his fast, consequently, he could not have arrived at a better time; to eat grapes, fasting, being a healthy regimen. The Prince rewarded the attention tenfold, by sending Le Despenser a horse. He confessed, indeed, that it was but "a poor beast;" but he will send Sir Hugh a better as soon as he has the power to do so.

In less than a week he was again kindly busy, and apologizing for failure in having been so; as may be seen in a note to the "Lady Mary," his sister, whom he prays not to take it ill that he has not sent the wine and the organs to her convent, according to his promise. The latter he had ordered, but though they were at Langley, they had not yet been sent to him. With regard to the wine, he had ordered his men in London. to purchase a quantity, but they had hitherto been unable to find any sufficiently good in quality to send to the Lady Mary's convent-a noticeable fact! The con