in deep potations with his bosom friend Piers Gaveston, the son of a Gascon knight, and other vicious nobles, he prevailed npon the whole party to accompany him on a " merry frohc," as it was called, when, after committing several minor outrages, he, with riotous tumult, broke into the park of the Bishop of Lichfield, killed all the deer that could be met with, and grossly insulted the domestics. For ttiese enormities, his father, with a laudable sense of justice, sent him to prison, and Gaveston, as the leader of the riot and the corruptor of the Prince's morals, was, in the following year, outlawed. Shortly afterwards, the giddy Prince was banished from court, and kept under restraint at Windsor, for having, in his father's presence, used grossly abusive language to the Bishop of Chichester ; and. despite the urgent pleadings of the Queen and his royal sisters, he was not permitted to again enterthe King's presence, until at the meeting of parliament, a few months afterwards, he had asked and obtained the bishop's pardon. This sternness of King Edward did not proceed from a lack of paternal love. He desired to elevate the character of his heir, and now that he had pardoned him, he resolved to animate his breast with chivalrous sentiments. Accordingly, all the young nobility of England were summoned to receive, in company with Prince Edward, the honour of knighthood. This festival, the most splendid of the kind hitherto witnessed in England, took place at Westminster, in May, 1306, and so numerous were the august company, that many were compelled to dwell in tents erected for their accommodation in the Temple gardens. The expectant knights performed their vigil in the Temple Church, but the Prince, by command of his sire, kept his vigil in St. Edward's Chapel, the last home of several of his departed kindred. On the morrow, the King being weak, and the heat, caused by the denseness of the crowd, excessive, he knighted bis son in the hall of the palace, and afterwards the same honour was conferred by the Prince of Wales on about three hundred aspirants for the gilded spurs in the Abbey Church. As it was the custom for new-made knights to make a vow, not on the gospels, but in the presence of a peacock, heron, or other bird, to perform some deed of valour, suggested by the circumstances of the times, two swans, in nets of gold, were placed by the minstrels on the table at the banquet ; when the King rising, vowed, before heaven and the swans, to revenge the murder of Comyn, and punish the perfidy of Bruce and the other Scotch rebels. Then addressing the company, he told them how that John Comyn, the son of Baliol's sister, Marjory, him who, from the battle of FaUtirk to Edward's last expedition into Scotland, had directed the Scottish council as Guardian, had been treacherously assassinated at the church of the Minorites, in Dumfries, in the preceding February, by the ambitious Bruce, grandson of the original unsuccessful competitor for the regal dignity of Scotland, and how this Prince was now animating the Scotch to again rise in rebellion against the English rule, and own him for their sovereign -, " and therefore, my lieges," continued the old warrior King, " I am about proceeding to tame the turbulent spirit of the haughty Scotchmen, and I conjure yon, should I die on the expedition, not to entomb my remains until my son, aided by your good swords, has accomplished my vow." This oration was followed by a general burst of indignation against iîruce and his patriotic supporters ; and, to add to the excitement, a noble, in disguise, leaped upon a table, and roared out at the top of his voice, 1 1 By the Holy Lord! if the Scotch do not lay down their arms, and cease to annoy us with their proud threats and swelling lies, we will consume all Scotland from sea to sea, and not leave a living man to tell the tale of their sanguine slaughter." The excitement appeased, Prince Edward, aroused by the stimulating scene around him to a momentary glow of chivalrous enthusiasm, swore that he would not rest two nights in the same place until he had passed the Scottish border, to do his father's bidding. The