this annexation by promising that he
would still give them a native of Wales for prince. They thought he
meant by this that they should continue to be governed by one of their
own royal family; but what he really meant was that he would make his
own son Prince of Wales. This son of his was then an infant. He was
born in Wales. This happened from the fact that the king, in the
course of his conquests in that country, had seized upon a place
called Caernarvon, and had built a castle there, in a beautiful
situation on the Straits of Menai, which separate the main land from
the isle of Anglesea.

When his castle was finished the king brought the queen to Caernarvon
to see it, and while she was there, her child, Prince Edward, who
afterward became Edward the Second, was born.

This was the origin of the title of Prince of Wales, which has been
held ever since by the oldest sons of the English sovereigns.

[Illustration: CAERNARVON CASTLE.]

This first English Prince of Wales led a most unhappy life, and his
history illustrates in a most striking manner one of the classes of
quarrels enumerated at the head of this chapter, namely, the disputes
and contentions that often prevailed between the sovereign of the
country and his principal nobles. While he was a young man he formed a
very intimate friendship with another young man named Piers Gaveston.
This Gaveston was a remarkably handsome youth, and very prepossessing
and agreeable in his manners, and he soon gained a complete ascendency
over the mind of young Edward. He was, however, very wild and dissolute
in his habits, and the influence which he exerted upon Edward was
extremely bad. As long as the common people only were injured by the
lawless behavior of these young men, the king seems to have borne with
them; but at last, in a riot in which they were concerned, they broke
into the park of a bishop, and committed damage there which the king
could not overlook. He caused his son, the young prince, to be seized
and put into prison, and he banished Gaveston from the country, and
forbade his son to have any thing more to do with him. This was in 1305,
when the prince was twenty-one years of age.

In 1307, two years later, the king died, and the prince succeeded him,
under the title of King Edward the Second. He immediately sent for
Gaveston to return to England, where he received him with the greatest
joy. He made him a duke, under the title of Duke of Cornwall; and as