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THE WARRENNES. 295
Then came a quarrel between him and his royal cousin.
For, having been
affronted by Piers Gaveston, the King's favourite, at a tournament at
Wallingford, he associated himself with Thomas of Lancaster and others
and never rested till the obnoxious favourite had been
similarly aggrieved,
captured at Scarborough Castle, and beheaded at Warwick by the Earl of
Warwick, whom Gaveston had once tauntingly called "the black boar of
" the Ardennes." Nor were matters mended by his matrimonial dissensions ;
for his wife, the King's cousin, bearing no children, he divorced her, and
Two
cohabited with one Maud de Nerford, the daughter of a Norfolk knight.
years after (1317) he carried off Alice de Laci, the wanton wife of Thomas
Earl of Lancaster, who at once divorced her, and proceeded, in revenge, to
demolish the Earl of Warrenne's castle of Sandal, near Wakefield, and
waste his manors on the north side of the Trent. This probably alienated
Warrenne from the Lancastrian party, and induced him to seek reconciliation
with the King; for in 13 Edward II. he was again with him in Scotland,
and two years later he did him signal service and indulged his own revenge
by making a flank movement across the river at the battle of Burton-upon-
Trent, and thus assisting materially in the King's victory over Thomas of
Lancaster. He was also present when, four days afterwards, the unfortunate
Earl of Lancaster having been again defeated, by
Sir Andrew de
Harcley, at the battle of Boroughbridge was arraigned in his own hall
at Pontefract Castle, before the King, and sentenced to lose his head,
which immediately was put in execution on the Monday next preceding
the Festival of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary.
On the death of Edward II. he was taken into favour by his son
Edward III. He was with him in Scotland at the battle of Halidon,
and soon after assisted his relative Edward Balliol against the Scots,
receiving from him in recognition of his services the earldom of Stratherne.
Two years afterwards he was again with the King, in an attack made
upon the Scotch both by sea and land, entering Scotland by Berwick as
the King did by Carlisle.
On June ^oth, 1347, he died, and was buried under a raised tomb
before the altar at Lewes. Having no legitimate children the hereditary
honours became extinct; and as regards his property, "knowing that
" according to the custom of those days
it would not descend to his illegiti-
"mate children, except
it was estated in trust, he gave by special grant the
"inheritance of all his lands to the King and his heirs, with the intent
"to have a re-grant to his unlawful issue in tail."* This was accomplished,
and in 9 Edward II. he had a re-grant to himself for life. Then he made
a settlement for Maud de Nerford and the children which he had by her,
still extant in the patent rolls of 10 Edward II., consisting of all his
* Watson.