Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/84

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the parliament, which had been summoned for 8 Aug. Gaveston was therefore placed for safety in Bamborough Castle. In the parliament the new ordinances were presented to the king for confirmation, one of them specially requiring the perpetual banishment of the favourite. Edward resisted for some time, but on 30 Sept. was forced to assent. By the terms of his sentence Gaveston was called upon to leave the kingdom, sailing from the port of Dover before the feast of All Saints, and Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Gascony, as well as England, were forbidden to him. He is said to have first attempted to pass into France, but, fearing to be made prisoner, he retired to Bruges in Flanders, where, however, through the hostile influence of the king of France, he was badly received. At Christmas he secretly returned to England, and for a while remained in hiding, moving from place to place. At the beginning of 1312 the king went to York, recalled Gaveston to his side, and restored his estates. On 18 Jan. he publicly announced his favourite's return and reinstatement. The hostile barons, with Lancaster at their head, at once took up arms, and demanded Gaveston's surrender, while Archbishop Winchelsey publicly excommunicated him and his abettors. The king and Gaveston now drew away further north, leaving York on 5 April, and remained at Newcastle till the beginning of May. But the barons were now approaching. Edward and his favourite, hastily retiring to Tynemouth, took ship and fled to Scarborough, a place of great strength, but not prepared to stand a siege. The king withdrew to York. Meanwhile the barons seized all Gaveston's goods in Newcastle, and advanced against Scarborough, which the Earls of Warenne and Pembroke were appointed to besiege. On 19 May Gaveston surrendered to Pembroke, who pledged himself for his prisoner's personal safety, and set out with him towards Wallingford, there to await the meeting of parliament in August. Arrived at Deddington in Oxfordshire, Pembroke left Gaveston under a guard, and departed on his own affairs. Scarcely had he gone, when Warwick, hearing that his hated enemy was so close at hand, surprised him before dawn on 10 June, and, making him his prisoner, carried him off to his castle of Warwick. There, on the arrival of Lancaster, Hereford, and Arundel, a consultation was hastily held, and it was determined to put their prisoner to death. The place chosen for the execution was Blacklow Hill, otherwise called—prophetically, as the chroniclers say—Gaversike, about a mile north of the town, in order that the Earl of Warwick might be relieved of immediate responsibility. There his head was struck off on 19 June 1312, in the presence of Lancaster and his confederates; Warwick, however, apparently again with a view to future justification, remaining behind in his castle. The body was taken possession of by the Dominicans or preaching friars of Oxford, in which city it lay for more than two years. It was thence conveyed by Edward's orders to King's Langley in Hertfordshire, and buried there on 2 Jan. 1315, with great ceremony, in the house of the Dominicans, which had been lately built and endowed by the king. Gaveston left but one child, a daughter. His widow afterwards married Hugh de Audley the younger.

[Chronicles of Trokelowe, Lanercost, Walsingham, Baker of Swynebroke; Chron. of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II (Rolls Ser.); Dugdale's Baronage; Stubbs's Const. Hist.; W. P. Dodge's Piers Gaveston, 1899; art. supra Edward II. In Marlowe's tragedy of Edward II, Gaveston plays a prominent part.]

E. M. T.

GAVIN, ANTONIO (fl. 1726), author of ‘A Master-Key to Popery,’ a native of Saragossa, was educated at the university of that city and graduated M.A. Before he was twenty-three years of age he received ordination as a secular priest in the church of Rome. He subsequently embraced protestantism, escaped from Spain disguised as an officer in the army, reached London, where he was hospitably entertained by Earl Stanhope, whom he had met in Saragossa, and on 3 Jan. 1715–16 was licensed by Robinson, bishop of London, to officiate in a Spanish congregation. For two years and eight months he preached first in the chapel in Queen's Square, Westminster, and afterwards in Oxenden's chapel, near the Haymarket. His first sermon, which is dedicated to Lord Stanhope, was published as ‘Conversion de las tres Potencias del alma, explicada en el Primer Sermon’ [on Deut. xxx. 9, 10], 8vo, London, 1716. Stanhope, wishing to obtain for him some settled preferment in the church of England, advised Gavin to accept in June 1720 the chaplaincy of the Preston man-of-war, in which capacity he would have ample leisure to master English. On the ship being put out of commission he went to Ireland ‘on the importunity of a friend,’ and while there heard of the death of Stanhope at London on 5 Feb. 1721. Soon afterwards, by favour of Palliser, archbishop of Cashel, and Dean Percival, he obtained the curacy of Gowran, near Kilkenny, which he served nearly eleven months. He then removed to Cork, where he continued almost a year as curate of an adjacent parish, occasionally