In this chapter, we look at the implications for magnates of the efforts by the Crown to extend the patronage in its control. Here we start with a familiar theme: Edward I's acquisition of magnate estates and the increase in the later thirteenth century of the amount of royal ecclesiastical patronage. The two were necessarily linked. Many years ago K.B. McFarlane exposed Edward I's acquisitiveness of magnates' estates, which, as he saw it, amounted to a ‘policy’ towards the earls: Edward acquired their estates by dubious legal procedures (the earldom of Derby or Ferrars), putting pressure on magnates to allow him to acquire their estates (the earldoms of Aumâle, Devon and Norfolk) and by the normal rules of inheritance (the earldom of Cornwall). Michael Prestwich has offered a refinement of the picture, although he has concurred in the view of Edward's limited generosity as far as grants of land were concerned. Ann Deeley showed that the Crown was pushing more forcefully for its patronage rights in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, particularly in the context of a growing number of papal provisions. And the expansion of royal ecclesiastical patronage in Edward's I's reign and afterwards, as demonstrated by Philip Saunders, was in large measure due to the acquisition of magnate estates as well as to more intense exploitation of wardship patronage. What is called for now is a consideration of whether Henry III and Edward I systematically targeted the ecclesiastical interests of the magnates – and, if so, what effect this may have had on the relationships between land and patronage rights.