THE SICILIAN AND THE SCOTTISH ARBITRATIONS.
Edward I. had now attained the height of his fame. He had conquered
Llewelyn; he had reformed the administration; he had put himself as a
lawmaker in the same rank as St. Louis or Frederick II.; and he had
restored England to a leading position in the councils of Europe.
Moreover, he had won a character for justice and fairness which did him
even greater service, since the several deaths of prominent sovereigns
during 1285 left him almost alone of his generation among princes of a
lesser stature. Of the chief rulers of Europe in the early years of
Edward's reign, Rudolf of Hapsburg alone survived; and the King of the
Romans had little weight outside Germany many. Edward had outlived his
brother-in-law Alfonso of Castile, his cousin Philip the Bold, his
uncle Charles of Anjou, and Peter of Aragon. But the conflicts, in
which these kings had been engaged, were continued by their successors.
Above all, the contest for Sicily still raged. The successors of Martin
IV., though deprived of the active support of France, would not abandon
the claims of the captive Charles of Salerno; and James of Aragon,
Peter's second son, maintained himself in Sicily, despite papal
censures and despite the virtual desertion of his cause by his elder
brother, Alfonso III., the new king of Aragon. Each side was at a
standstill, though each side struggled on. The personal hatreds, which
made it impossible to reconcile the older generation, were dying out,
and the chief obstacle in the way of a settlement was the stubbornness
of the papacy. If any one could reconcile the quarrel, it was the King
of England; and to him Charles' sons and the nobles of his dominions
appealed to procure his release.
Edward was anxious to proffer his services as a peacemaker, dream of a
Europe, united for the liberation of the holy places, had not been
expelled from his mind by his schemes for the advancement of his
kingdom. If he could inspire his neighbour kings with something of his
spirit, the crusade might still be possible. Other matters also called
Edward's attention to the continent. He had to do homage to the new
French king; he had to press for the execution of the treaty of Amiens,
and his presence was again necessary in Gascony. His realm was in such
profound peace that he could safely leave it. Accordingly in May, 1286,
he took ship for France. With him went his wife Eleanor of Castile, his
chancellor Bishop Burnell, and a large number of his nobles. He
entrusted the regency to his cousin, Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, the son
and successor of Earl Richard; and England saw him no more until
August, 1289. Edward first made his way to Amiens, where he met the new
King of France, Philip the Fair. The two kings went together to Paris,
where Edward spent two months. There he performed homage for Gascony,
and made a new agreement as to the execution of the treaty of Amiens,
by which he renounced his claims over Quercy for a money payment, and
was put in possession of Saintonge, south of the Charente. The
settlement was the easier as for the moment neither king had his
supreme interest in Gascony. Edward's real business was to make peace
between Anjou and Aragon, and Philip IV. showed every desire to help
him. Before Edward left Paris, he had negotiated a truce between the
Kings of France and Aragon. Soon afterwards he went to Bordeaux. He
made Gascony his headquarters for three years, and strove with all his
might to convert the truce into a peace.
Grave obstacles arose, chief among which was the determination of the
papacy to make no terms with the King of Aragon so long as his brother
still reigned over Sicily. Honorius IV., in approving Edward's
preliminary action, and exhorting him to obtain the liberation of the
Prince of Salerno, carefully guarded himself against recognising the
schismatic Aragonese. Edward himself was no partisan of either side. He
was heartily anxious for peace and desirous to free his kinsman from
the rigours of his long imprisonment. His wish for a close alliance
between England and Aragon was unacceptable to the partisanship both of
Honorius IV. and his successor Nicholas IV. Papal coldness, however,
did not turn Edward from his course. In the summer of 1287 he met
Alfonso at Oloron in Béarn, where a treaty was drawn up by which the
Aragonese king agreed to release Charles of Salerno on condition that
he would either, within three years, procure from the pope the
recognition of James in Sicily, or return to captivity and forfeit
Provence. Besides this, an alliance between England and Aragon was to
be cemented by the marriage of one of Edward's daughters to Alfonso.
Delighted with the success of his undertaking, Edward, on his return to
Bordeaux, again took the cross and prepared to embark on the crusade.
Nicholas IV. interposed between Edward and his vows by denouncing the
treaty of Oloron.[1] Though well-meaning, he was not strong enough to
shake himself free from partisan traditions, and though honestly anxious
to bring about a crusade, he could not see that he made the holy war
impossible by interposing obstacles in the way of the one prince who
seriously intended to take the cross. While denouncing Edward's treaty,
Nicholas encouraged his crusading zeal by granting him a new
ecclesiastical tenth for six years, a tax made memorable by the fact
that it occasioned the stringent valuation of benefices, called the
taxation of Pope Nicholas, which was the standard clerical rate-book
until the reign of Henry VIII. Despite the pope, Edward still persevered
in his mediation, and in October, 1288, a new treaty for Charles'
liberation was signed at Canfranc, in Aragon, which only varied in
details from the agreement of 1287. Charles was released, but he
straightway made his way to Rome, where Nicholas absolved him from his
oath and crowned him King of Sicily. Edward was bitterly disappointed.
He tarried in the south until July, 1289, usefully employed in promoting
the prosperity of his duchy, crushing conspiracies, furthering the
commerce of Bordeaux, and founding new _bastides_. At last tidings of
disorder at home called him back to his kingdom before the purpose of
his continental sojourn had been accomplished. But he still pressed on
his thankless task, and in 1291 peace was made at Tarascon, between
Aragon and the Roman see, on the hard condition of Alfonso abandoning
his brother's cause. On Alfonso's death soon afterwards the war was
renewed, for James then united the Sicilian and Aragonese thrones and
would not yield up either. It was not until 1295 that Boniface VIII., a
stronger pope than Nicholas, ended the struggle on terms which left the
stubborn Aragonese masters of Sicily.
[1] For his policy, see O. Schiff, _Studien zur Geschichte P.
Nikolaus IV._ (1897).
Things had not gone well in England during Edward's absence. Edmund of
Cornwall had shown vigour in putting down the revolt of Rhys, but he
was not strong enough to control either the greater barons or the
officers of the crown. Grave troubles were already brewing in Scotland.
A fierce quarrel between the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford broke out
with regard to the boundaries of Glamorgan and Brecon, and the private
war between the two marchers proved more formidable to the peace of the
realm than the revolt of the Welsh prince. Even more disastrous to the
country was the scandalous conduct of the judges and royal officials,
who profited by the king's absence to pile up fortunes at the expense
of his subjects. The highest judges of the land forged charters,
condoned homicides, sold judgments, and practised extortion and
violence. A great cry arose for the king's return. In the Candlemas
parliament of 1289 Earl Gilbert of Gloucester met a request for a
general aid by urging that nothing should be granted until Englishmen
once more saw the king's face. Alarmed at this threat, Edward returned,
and landed at Dover on August 12, 1289.
The whole situation was changed by the king's arrival. Edward met the
innumerable complaints against his subordinates by dismissing nearly all
the judges from office, and appointing a special commission to
investigate the charges brought against royal officials of every rank.
Thomas Weyland, chief justice of the common pleas, anticipated inquiry
by taking sanctuary with the Franciscan friars of Bury St. Edmunds. A
knight and a married man, he had taken subdeacon's orders in early life
and sought to little purpose to be protected by his clergy. His refuge
was watched by the local sheriffs; finally, he was starved into
surrender, and suffered to abjure the realm.[1] He fled to France,
whence he never returned. For some years the commission investigated the
offences of the ministers of the crown. Though much that was irregular
was proved against them, many charges broke down under inquiry, and, as
time went on, the official class saw that their interest lay in
condoning rather than in punishing scandals. Some of the worst
offenders, such as the greedy and corrupt Adam of Stratton, were never
restored to office;[2] but Hengham, the chief justice of the King's
Bench, was soon reinstated. There were not enough good lawyers in
England to make it prudent for Edward to dispense with the services of
such a man. A rigorous maintenance of a high standard of official
morality meant getting rid of nearly all the king's ministers, and any
successors would have been inferior in experience and not superior in
honesty. Edward had to work with such material as he had, and on the
whole he made the best of it. Scandalous as were the proceedings of his
agents, their iniquities are but trifles as compared with the offences
of the counsellors of Philip the Fair.
[1] For the _abjuratio regni_ see A. Réville in the _Revue
Historique_, 1. (1892), 1-42.
[2] For Adam of Stratton see Hall, _Red Book of the Exchequer_,
iii., cccxv.-cccxxxi. Extracts from the Assize rolls recording
the proceedings of the special commission will soon be
published by the Royal Historical Society.
Fear of Edward drove nobles into obedience as well as ministers into
honesty. Gloucester desisted unwillingly from his attacks on Brecon,
and was constrained to divorce his wife and marry the king's daughter,
Joan of Acre. In becoming the king's son-in-law, he was forced to
surrender his estates to the crown, receiving them back entailed on the
heirs of the marriage or, in their default, on the heirs of Joan. Thus
the system of entails made possible by the statute _De donis_ was used
by Edward to strengthen his hold over the most powerful of his
feudatories and increase the prospect of his estates escheating to the
crown. Considered in this light, Gilbert's marriage with the king's
daughter seems less a reward of loyalty than a punishment for
lawlessness. In the same year as this marriage, Edward passed another
law directed against the baronage. This was the statute of Westminster
the Third, called from its opening words, _Quia emptores_. It enacted
that, when part of an estate was alienated by its lord, the grantee
should not be permitted to become the subtenant of the grantor, but
should stand to the ultimate lord of the fief in the same feudal
relation as the grantor himself. This prohibition of further
subinfeudation stopped the creation of new manors and prevented the
rivetting of new links in the feudal chain, which were the necessary
condition of its strength. Though passed at the request of the barons,
it was a measure much more helpful to the king than to his vassals. It
stood to the barons as the statute of Mortmain stood to the Church.
Edward was bent on showing that he was master, and his new son-in-law
and the Earl of Hereford became the victims of his policy. He forced the
reluctant Gloucester to admit that the pretensions of the lord of
Glamorgan to be the overlord of the bishop of LLandaff and the guardian
of the temporalities of the see during a vacancy were usurpations.
Seeing that his marcher prerogatives were thus rapidly becoming
undermined, Gloucester put the most cherished marcher right to the test
by renewing the private war with the Earl of Hereford which had
disturbed the realm during Edward's absence. The king issued peremptory
orders for the immediate cessation of hostilities. These mandates
Hereford obeyed, but Gloucester did not. Resolved that law not force was
henceforth to settle disputes in the march, Edward summoned a novel
court at Ystradvellte, in Brecon, wherein a jury from the neighbouring
shires and liberties was to decide the case between the two earls in the
presence of the chief marchers. Gloucester refused to appear, and the
marchers declined to take part in the trial, pleading that it was
against their liberties. The case was adjourned to give the
recalcitrants every chance, and after a preliminary report by the
judges, Edward resolved to hear the suit in person. In October, 1291, he
presided at Abergavenny over the court before which the earls were
arraigned. They were condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture. Content
with humbling their pride and annihilating their privileges, Edward
suffered them to redeem themselves from captivity by the payment of
heavy fines, and before long gave them back their lands. The king's
victory was so complete that neither of the earls could forgive it. In
1295, Gloucester died, without opportunity of revenge; but Hereford
lived on, brooding over his wrongs, and in later years signally avenged
the trial at Abergavenny. Meanwhile the conqueror of the principality
had shown unmistakably that the liberties of the march were an
anachronism, since the marchers had no longer the work of defending
English interests against the Welsh nation.[1]
[1] Mr. J.E. Morris in chap. vi. of his _Welsh Wars of Edward
I._ has admirably summarised this suit. See also G.T. Clark's
_Land of Morgan_.
Another measure that followed Edward's home-coming was the expulsion of
the Jews. Despite constant odium and intermittent persecution, the
Jewish financiers who had settled in England after the Norman conquest
steadily improved their position down to the reign of Henry III. The
personal dependants of the crown, they were well able to afford to share
their gains from usury with their protectors. They lived in luxury,
built stone houses, set up an organisation of their own, and even
purchased lands. Henry III.'s financial embarrassments forced him to
rely upon them, and the alliance of the Jews and the crown stimulated
the religious bigotry of the popular party to ill-treat the Jews during
the Barons' War. Stories of Jews murdering Christian children were
eagerly believed; and the cult of St. Hugh of Lincoln and St. William of
Norwich,[1] two pretended victims of Hebrew cruelty, testified to the
hatred which Englishmen bore to the race.
[1] See for this saint, Thomas of Monmouth, _Life and Miracles
of St. William of Norwich_, ed. Jessopp and James (1896).
Under Edward I. the condition of the Jews became more precarious. The
king hated them alike on religious and economical grounds. He rigorously
insisted that they should wear a distinctive dress, and at last
altogether prohibited usury. Driven from their chief means of earning
their living, the Jews had recourse to clipping and sweating the coin.
Indiscriminate severities did little to abate these evils. Meanwhile
active missionary efforts were made to win over the Jews to the
Christian faith. They were compelled to listen to long sermons from
mendicant friars, and their obstinacy in adhering to their own creed was
denounced as a deliberate offence against the light. Peckham shut up
their synagogues, and Eleanor of Provence, who had entered a convent,
joined with the archbishop in urging her son to take severe measures
against them. There was a similar movement in France, and Edward, during
his long stay abroad, had expelled the Jews from Aquitaine. In 1290 he
applied the same policy to England, and their exile was so popular an
act that parliament made him a special grant as a thankoffering. But
though Edward thus drove the Jews to seek new homes beyond sea, he
allowed them to carry their property with them, and punished the
mariners who took advantage of the helplessness of their passengers to
rob and murder them. Though individual Jews were found from time to time
in England during the later middle ages, their official re-establishment
was only allowed in the seventeenth century.[1]
[1] For the Jews see J. Jacobs, _Jews in Angevin England_;
Tovey, _Anglia Judaica_; J.M. Rigg, _Select Pleas of the Jewish
Exchequer_; and for their exile B.L. Abrahams, _Expulsion of
the Jews from England in 1290_.
Two generations at least before their expulsion, the Jews had been
outrivalled in their financial operations by societies of Italian
bankers, whose admirable organisation and developed system of credit
enabled them to undertake banking operations of a magnitude quite beyond
the means of the Hebrews. First brought into England as papal agents for
remitting to Rome the spoils of the Church, they found means of evading
the canonical prohibitions of usury, and became the loanmongers of
prince and subject alike. To the crown the Italians were more useful
than the Jews had been. The value of the Jews to the monarch had been in
the special facilities enjoyed by him in taxing them. The utility of the
Italian societies was in their power of advancing sums of money that
enabled the king to embark on enterprises hitherto beyond the limited
resources of the medieval state. The Italians financed all Edward's
enterprises from the crusade of 1270 to his Welsh and Scottish
campaigns. From them Edward and his son borrowed at various times sums
amounting to almost half a million of the money of the time. In return
the Italians, chief among whom was the Florentine Society of the
Frescobaldi, obtained privileges which made them as deeply hated as ever
the Hebrews had been.[1]
[1] See on this subject E.A. Bond's article in _Archæologia_,
vol. xxviii., pp. 207-326; W.E. Rhodes, _Italian Bankers in
England under Edward I. and II._ in _Owens Coll. Historical
Essays_, pp. 137-68; and R.J. Whitwell, _Italian Bankers and
the English Crown_ in _Transactions of Royal Hist. Soc._, N.S.,
xvii. (1903), pp. 175-234.
Among the troubles which had called Edward back from Gascony was the
condition of Scotland, where a long period of prosperity had ended with
the death of Edward's brother-in-law, Alexander III., in 1286. Alexander
III. attended his brother-in-law's coronation in 1274, and the
irritation excited by his limiting his homage to his English lordships
of Tynedale and Penrith did not cause any great amount of friction. But
the homage question was only postponed, and at Michaelmas, 1278,
Alexander was constrained to perform unconditionally this unwelcome act.
"I, Alexander King of Scotland," were his words, "become the liege man
of the lord Edward, King of England, against all men." But by carefully
refraining from specifying for what he became Edward's vassal, Alexander
still suggested that it was for his English lordships. Edward with equal
caution declared that he received the homage, "saving his right and
claim to the homage of Scotland when he may wish to speak concerning
it". Both parties were content with mutual protestations. Edward was so
friendly to Alexander that he allowed him to appoint Robert Bruce, Earl
of Carrick, his proxy in professing fealty, so as to minimise the king's
feeling of humiliation. The King of Scots went home loaded with
presents, and for the rest of his life his relations with Edward
remained cordial.
The closing years of Alexander's reign were overshadowed by domestic
misfortunes and the prospects of difficulties about the succession. His
wife, Margaret of England, had died in 1275, and was followed to the
tomb by their two sons, Alexander and David. A delicate girl, Margaret,
then alone represented the direct line of the descendants of William the
Lion. Margaret was married, when still young, to Eric, King of Norway,
and died in 1283 in giving birth to her only child, a daughter named
Margaret. No children were born of Alexander's second marriage; and in
March, 1286, the king broke his neck, when riding by night along the
cliffs of the coast of Fife. Before his death, however, he persuaded the
magnates of Scotland to recognise his granddaughter as his successor.
The Maid of Norway, as Margaret was called, was proclaimed queen, and
the administration was put into the hands of six guardians, who from
1286 to 1289 carried on the government with fair success. As time went
on, the baronage got out of hand and a feud between the rival
south-western houses of Balliol and Bruce foreshadowed worse troubles.
William Eraser, Bishop of St. Andrews, the chief of the regents, visited
Edward in Gascony and urged the necessity of action. The best solution
of all problems was that the young Queen of Scots should be married to
Edward of Carnarvon, a boy a few months her junior. But both the Scots
nobles and the King of Norway were jealous and suspicious, and any
attempt to hurry forward such a proposal would have been fatal to its
accomplishment. However, negotiations were entered into between England,
Scotland, and Norway. In 1289 the guardians of Scotland agreed to
nominate representatives to treat on the matter. Edward took up his
quarters at Clarendon, while his agents, conspicuous among whom was
Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, negotiated with the envoys of Norway and
Scotland. On November 6 the three powers concluded the treaty of
Salisbury, by which they agreed that Margaret should be sent to England
or Scotland before All Saints' Day, 1290, "free and quit of all contract
of marriage or espousals". Edward promised that if Margaret came into
his custody he would, as soon as Scotland was tranquil, hand her over to
the Scots as "free and quit" as when she came to him; and the "good folk
of Scotland" engaged that, if they received their queen thus free, they
would not marry her "save with the ordinance, will, and counsel of
Edward and with the agreement of the King of Norway". In March, 1290, a
parliament of Scots magnates met at Brigham, near Kelso, and ratified
the treaty. Fresh negotiations were begun for the marriage of Edward of
Carnarvon and the Queen of Scots, resulting in the treaty of Brigham of
July 18, which Edward confirmed a month later at Northampton. By this
Edward agreed that, in the event of the marriage taking place, the laws
and customs of Scotland should be perpetually maintained. Should
Margaret die without issue, Scotland was to go to its natural heir, and
in any case was to remain "separate and divided from the realm of
England".
The treaty of Brigham was as wise a scheme as could have been devised
for bringing about the unity of Britain. In the care taken to meet the
natural scruples of the smaller nation we are reminded of the treaty of
Union of 1707. But a nearer parallel is to be found in the conditions
under which the union between France and Brittany was gradually
accomplished after the marriage of Anne of Brittany. In both cases
alike, in France and in England, the stronger party was content with
securing the personal union of the two crowns, and strove to reconcile
the weaker party by providing safeguards against violent or over-rapid
amalgamation. It was left for the future to decide whether the habit of
co-operation, continued for generations, might not ultimately involve a
more organic union. Unluckily for this island, the policy which
ultimately made the stubborn Celts of Brittany content with union with
France, never had a chance of being carried out here. Edward made every
preparation for bringing over the Maid of Norway to her kingdom and her
husband, and neither the Scots nor the Norwegians grudged his leading
share in accomplishing their common wishes. But the child's health gave
way before the hardships of the journey. Before All Saints' day had come
round, she died in one of the Orkneys, where the ship which conveyed her
had put in.
The death of the queen threatened Scotland with revolution. The regents'
commission became of doubtful legality, and a swarm of claimants for the
vacant throne arose, whose resources, if not their rights, were
sufficiently evenly balanced to make civil strife inevitable. Since
southern Scotland had become a wholly feudal, largely Norman, and partly
English state, there had been no grave difficulties with regard to the
succession. Now that they arose, there was doubt as to the principles on
which claims to the throne should be settled. There was no legitimate
representative left of the stock of William the Lion. The male line of
his brother David, Earl of Huntingdon, had died out with John the Scot,
the last independent Earl of Chester. The nearest claimants to the
succession were therefore to be found in the descendants of David's
three daughters. But there was no certainty that any rights could be
transmitted through the female line. Moreover there was a doubt whether,
allowing that a woman could transmit the right to rule, the succession
should proceed according to primogeniture or in accordance with the
nearness of the claimant to the source of his claim. If the former view
were held then John of Balliol, lord of Barnard castle in Durham and of
Galloway in Scotland, had the best right as the grandson of Earl David's
eldest daughter. Yet less than a century before, the passing over of
Arthur of Brittany in favour of his uncle John, had recalled to men's
mind the ancient doctrine that a younger son is nearer to the parent
stock than a grandson sprung from his elder brother; and if the view,
then expressed in the _History of William the Marshal_,[1] was still to
hold good, Robert Bruce, lord of Skelton in Yorkshire, and of Annandale
in the northern kingdom, was the nearest in blood to David of Huntingdon
as the son of his second daughter. Beyond this there was the further
question of the divisibility of the kingdom. So fully was southern
Scotland feudalised that it seemed arguable that the monarchy, or at
least its demesne lands, might be divided among all the representatives
of the coheiresses, after the fashion in which the Huntingdon estates
had been allotted to all the representatives of Earl David. In that case
John of Hastings, lord of Abergavenny, put in a claim as the grandson of
Earl David's youngest daughter.
[1] _Hist. de Guillaume le Maréchal_, ii., _64_, II. 11899-902.
Oil, sire, quer c'est raison
Quer plus près est sanz achaison
Le filz de la terre son père
Que le niês: dreiz est qu'il i père.
When so much was uncertain, every noble who boasted any connexion with
the royal house safeguarded his interests, or advertised his pedigree,
by enrolling himself among the claimants. Five or six of the competitors
had no better ground of right than descent from bastards of the royal
house, especially from the numerous illegitimate offspring of William
the Lion. The others went back to more remote ancestors. A foreign
prince, Florence, Count of Holland, demanded the succession as a
descendant of a sister of Earl David, declaring that David had forfeited
his rights by rebellion. John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, brought forward
his descent from Donaldbane, brother of Malcolm Canmore. One claim reads
like a fairy tale, with stories of an unknown king dying, leaving a son
to be murdered by a wicked uncle, and a daughter to escape to obscurity
in Ireland, where she married and transmitted her rights to her
children. There was no authority in Scotland strong enough to decide
these claims. Once more Robert Bruce raised the standard of disorder,
and the appeal of Bishop Fraser to Edward to undertake the settlement of
the question showed that the English king's mediation was the readiest
way of restoring order.
In 1291 Edward summoned the magnates of both realms, along with certain
popular representatives, to meet at Norham, Bishop Bek's border castle
on the Tweed. Trained civilians and canonists also attended, while
abbeys and churches contributed extracts from chronicles, carefully
compiled by royal order, with a view of illustrating the king's claims.
On May 10 Edward met the assembly in Norham parish church. Roger
Brabazon, the chief justice, declared in the French tongue that Edward
was prepared to do justice to the claimants as "superior and direct lord
of Scotland". Before, however, he could act, his master required that
his overlordship should be recognised by the Scots. It is likely that
this demand was not unexpected. Even in the treaty of Brigham Edward had
been careful not to withdraw his claim of superiority, and his action
with relation to Alexander III.'s homage was well known. But the
sensitiveness which their late king had shown in the face of Edward's
earlier claims was shared by the Scots lords, and shrinking from
recognising facts which they ought to have faced before they solicited
his intervention, they begged for delay and drew up remonstrances.
Edward granted them, a respite for three weeks, though he swore by St.
Edward that he would rather die than diminish the rights due to the
Confessor's crown. He had already summoned the northern levies, and was
prepared to enforce his claim by force. His uncompromising attitude put
the Scots in an awkward position. But they had gone to Norham to get his
help, and they were not prepared to run the risk of an English invasion
as well as civil war. Most of the claimants had as many interests in
England as in Scotland, and a breach with Edward would involve the
forfeiture of their southern lands as well as the loss of a possible
kingdom in the north. When the magnates reassembled, the competitors set
the example of acknowledging Edward as overlord. Fresh demands followed
their submission, and were at once conceded. Edward was to have seisin
of Scotland and its royal castles, though he pledged himself to return
both land and fortresses to him who should be chosen king.
Edward then undertook the examination of the suit. He delegated the
hearing of the claims to a commission, of whom the great majority,
eighty, were Scotsmen, nominated in equal numbers by Bruce and Balliol,
the two senior competitors, while the remaining twenty-four consisted of
Englishmen, and included many of Edward's wisest counsellors. In
deference to Scottish feeling, Edward ordered the court to meet on
Scottish territory, at Berwick, and appointed August 2 for the opening
day. Meanwhile the full consequences of the Scottish submission were
carried out. On Edward's taking seisin of Scotland, the regency came to
an end. The nomination of the provisional government resting with
Edward, he reappointed the former regents, and allowed the Scots barons
to elect their chancellor. But with the regents Edward associated a
northern baron, Brian Fitzalan of Bedale, and the Scottish bishop, who
was appointed chancellor, had to act jointly with one of Edward's
clerks. Edward then made a short progress, reaching as far as Stirling
and St. Andrews. He was back at Berwick for the meeting of the
commissioners on August 2.
The first session of the court was a brief one. The twelve competitors
put in their claims, and Bruce and Balliol supported theirs by argument.
However, on August 12, the trial was adjourned for nearly a year, until
June 2, 1292. On its resumption in Edward's presence, the more difficult
issues were carefully worked out. A new and fantastic claim, sent in by
Eric of Norway, as the nearest of kin to his daughter, did not delay
matters. The judges were instructed to settle in the first instance the
relative claims of Bruce and Balliol, and also to decide by what law
these should be determined. On October 14, they declared their first
judgment. They rejected Bruce's plea that the decision should follow the
"natural law by which kings rule," and accepted Balliol's contention
that they should follow the laws of England and Scotland. They further
laid down that the law of succession to the throne was that of other
earldoms and dignities. They pronounced in favour of primogeniture as
against proximity of blood.
These decisions practically settled the case, but a further adjournment
was resolved upon, and upon the reassembling of the court on November 6
the only question still open, that of whether the kingdom could be
divided, was taken up. John of Hastings came on the scene with the
contention that the monarchy should be divided among the representatives
of Earl David's daughters. Bruce had the effrontery to associate himself
with Hastings' demand. A short adjournment was arranged to settle this
issue, and on November 17 the final scene took place in the hall of
Berwick castle. Besides the commissioners, the king was there in full
parliament, and eleven claimants, who still persevered, were present or
represented by proxy. Nine of these were severally told that they would
obtain nothing by their petitions. Bruce was informed that his claim to
the whole was incompatible with his present claim for a third. It was
laid down that the kingdom of Scotland was indivisible, and that the
right of Balliol had been established.
The seal of the regency was broken: Edward handed over the seisin of
Scotland to John Balliol, who three days later took the oath of fealty
as King of Scots, promising that he would perform all the service due to
Edward from his kingdom, Balliol hurried to his kingdom, and was crowned
at Scone on St. Andrew's day. He then returned to England, and kept
Christmas with his overlord at Newcastle, where, on December 26, he did
homage to Edward in the castle hall. But within a few days a difficulty
arose. John resented Edward's retaining the jurisdiction over a law-suit
in which a Berwick merchant, a Scotsman, was a party. He was reassured
by Edward that he only did so, because the case had arisen during the
vacancy, when Edward was admittedly ruling Scotland. But Edward
significantly added a reservation of his right of hearing appeals, even
in England; and when the King of Scots went back to his realm, early in
January, he must have already foreseen that there was trouble to come.
Edward never lost sight of his own interests, and it is clear that he
took full advantage of the needs of the Scots to establish a close
supremacy over the northern kingdom. Making allowance for this sinister
element, his general policy in dealing with the great suit had been
singularly prudent and correct. He was anxious to ascertain the right
heir; he gave the Scots a preponderating voice in the tribunal; he
rejected the temptation which Bruce and Hastings dangled before him of
splitting up the realm into three parts, and he restored the land and
its castles as soon as the suit was settled. There is nothing to show
that up to this point his action had produced any resentment in
Scotland, and little evidence that there was any strong national feeling
involved. Scottish chroniclers, who wrote after the war of independence,
have given a colour to Edward's policy which contemporary evidence does
not justify. From the point of his generation, his action was just and
legal. He had, in fact, performed a signal service to Scotland in
vindicating its unity; and by maintaining the rigid doctrines of
Anglo-Norman jurisprudence, he rescued it from the vague philosophy
which Bruce called natural law, and the recrudescence of Celtic custom
that gave even bastards a hope of the succession. The real temptation
came when, after his triumph, Edward sought to extract from the
submission of the Scots consequences which had no warranty in custom,
and made Scottish resistance inevitable.
The expulsion of the Jews, the reform of the administration, the statute
_Quia emptores_, the treaty of Tarascon, the humiliation of Gloucester,
and the successful issue of the Scottish arbitration, mark the
culminating point in the reign of Edward I. The king had ruled twenty
years with almost uniform success, and his only serious disappointment
had been the failure of the crusade. The last hope of the Latin East
faded when, in 1291, Acre, so long the bulwark of the crusaders against
the Turks, opened its gates to the infidel. With the fall of Acre went
the last chance of the holy war. Before long the peace of Europe, which
Edward thought that he had established, was once more rudely disturbed.
Difficulties soon arose with Scotland, with France, with the Church, and
with the barons. These troubles bore the more severely on the king
because this period saw also the removal of nearly all of those in whom
he had placed special trust. The gracious Eleanor of Castile died in
1290, at Harby, in Nottinghamshire, near Lincoln,[1] and the devotion of
the king to the partner of his youth found a striking expression in the
sculptured crosses, which marked the successive resting-places of her
corpse on its last journey from Harby to Westminster Abbey. A few months
later Edward's mother, Eleanor of Castile, ended her long life in the
convent of Amesbury, in Wiltshire. The ministers of Edward's early reign
were also removed by death. Bishop Kirkby, the treasurer, died in 1290,
and Burnell, the chancellor, in 1292, soon after he had performed his
last public act in the declaration of the king's judgment as to the
Scottish succession. Archbishop Peckham died in the same year. New
domestic ties were formed, and fresh ministers were found, but the
ageing king became more and more lonely, as he was compelled to rely
upon a younger and a less faithful generation. Of his old comrades the
chief remaining was Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, while the removal of
Burnell brought forward to the first rank prelates whose position had
hitherto been somewhat obscured by his predominance. Prominent among
these were the brothers Thomas Bek, Bishop of St. David's, and Anthony
Bek, Bishop of Durham, members of a conspicuous Lincolnshire baronial
family. Both of these for a time strikingly combined devotion to the
royal service with loyalty to those clerical and aristocratic traditions
which, strictly interpreted, were almost incompatible with faithful
service to a secular monarch. Even more important henceforth was the
king's treasurer, Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, the most trusted
minister of Edward's later life, a faithful but not too scrupulous
prelate of the ministerial type, who stood to the second half of the
reign in almost the same close relation as that in which Burnell stood
to the years which we have now traversed.
[1] See for this W.H. Stevenson, _Death of Eleanor of Castile_,
in _English Hist. Review_, iii. (1888), pp. 315-318.