The opposition to Edward II displayed the typical medieval baronial attitude to royal government. It was an ambivalent one. On the one hand the magnates proclaimed that the rights of the crown must be integrally maintained and they protested against alienations of royal property. On the other hand they were ready to resort to violence and rebellion against these same kings whose authority was the linch-pin of the whole order of society which the magnates professed to uphold. During and after the reign of Henry III, and before the dynastic civil wars of the fifteenth century, they mostly justified their opposition to royal government by claiming that they were attacking not the king's proper authority but one perverted by the counsel of evil favourites. Favourites were, in any case, a considerable threat to magnates' possibilities of bettering themselves, or even of surviving. Those magnates rich and important enough to frequent the court were always haunted by the fear that their power, based on a quasi-monopoly of royal favour and patronage, might be eroded by the arrival of newcomers or monopolised by one or two individuals. This meant not only the loss of land grants but of possibilities of finding the best marriages for themselves and their children. For such favours they were dependent on the king as their feudal overlord. If the favourite not only absorbed a lot of royal wealth himself but also developed a hostile or contemptuous attitude to the nobility, this could not be endured.