Larger context for LACK in Corpus USbrown_UKbncw/US_brown.txt
On the surface, the whole question was purely feudal.
The French were now occupying Gascony and Flanders on the technical grounds that their rulers had forfeited them by a breach of the feudal contract.
But Edward was invading Scotland for precisely the same reason, and his insubordinate vassal was the ally of the king of France.
Boniface had to uphold the sacredness of the feudal contract at all costs, for it was only as suzerain of Sicily and of the Patrimony of Peter that he had any justification for his Italian wars, but in the English-Scottish-French triangle it was almost impossible for him to recognize the claims of any one of the contestants without seeming to invalidate those of the other two.
lack > Because of these involvements in the matter at stake, Boniface lack ed the impartiality that is supposed to be an essential qualification for the position of arbiter, and in retrospect that would seem to be sufficient reason why the English embassies to the Curia proved so fruitless.
But when the situation was so complicated that even Nogaret, one of the principal actors in the drama, could misinterpret the pope's motives, it is possible that Othon and his companions, equally baffled, attributed their difficulties to a more immediate cause.
This was Boniface's monumental tactlessness.