or some years the commission investigated the
offences of the ministers of the crown. Though much that was irregular
was proved against them, many charges broke down under inquiry, and, as
time went on, the official class saw that their interest lay in
condoning rather than in punishing scandals. Some of the worst
offenders, such as the greedy and corrupt Adam of Stratton, were never
restored to office;[2] but Hengham, the chief justice of the King's
Bench, was soon reinstated. There were not enough good lawyers in
England to make it prudent for Edward to dispense with the services of
such a man. A rigorous maintenance of a high standard of official
morality meant getting rid of nearly all the king's ministers, and any
successors would have been inferior in experience and not superior in
honesty. Edward had to work with such material as he had, and on the
whole he made the best of it. Scandalous as were the proceedings of his
agents, their iniquities are but trifles as compared with the offences
of the counsellors of Philip the Fair.

[1] For the _abjuratio regni_ see A. Reville in the _Revue
Historique_, 1. (1892), 1-42.

[2] For Adam of Stratton see Hall, _Red Book of the Exchequer_,
iii., cccxv.-cccxxxi. Extracts from the Assize rolls recording
the proceedings of the special commission will soon be
published by the Royal Historical Society.

Fear of Edward drove nobles into obedience as well as ministers into
honesty. Gloucester desisted unwillingly from his attacks on Brecon,
and was constrained to divorce his wife and marry the king's daughter,
Joan of Acre. In becoming the king's son-in-law, he was forced to
surrender his estates to the crown, receiving them back entailed on the
heirs of the marriage or, in their default, on the heirs of Joan. Thus
the system of entails made possible by the statute _De donis_ was used
by Edward to strengthen his hold over the most powerful of his
feudatories and increase the prospect of his estates escheating to the
crown. Considered in this light, Gilbert's marriage with the king's
daughter seems less a reward of loyalty than a punishment for
lawlessness. In the same year as this marriage, Edward passed another
law directed against the baronage. This was the statute of Westminster
the Third, called from its opening words, _Quia emptores_. It enacted
that, when part of an estate was alienated by its lord, the grantee
should not be permitted to become the