GAVESTON, THE ORDAINERS, AND BANNOCKBURN.
Edward of Carnarvon was over twenty-three years of age when he became
king. Tall, graceful, and handsome, with magnificent health and
exceptional bodily strength, the young king was, so far as externals
went, almost as fine a man as his father. Yet no one could have been
more absolutely destitute of all those qualities which constitute
Edward I.'s claims to greatness. An utter want of serious purpose
blasted his whole career. It was in vain that his father subjected him
to a careful training in statecraft and in military science. Though not
lacking in intelligence, the young prince from the first to the last
concerned himself with nothing but his own amusements. A confirmed
gambler and a deep drinker, Edward showed a special bent for unkingly
and frivolous diversions. Save in his devotion for the chase, his
tastes had nothing in common with the high-born youths with whom he was
educated. He showed himself a coward on the battlefield, and shirked
even the mimic warfare of the tournament. He repaid the contempt and
dislike of his own class by withdrawing himself from the society of the
nobles, and associating himself with buffoons, singers, play-actors,
coachmen, ditchers, watermen, sailors, and smiths. Of the befitting
comrades of his youth, the only one of the higher aristocracy with whom
he had any true intimacy was his nephew, Gilbert of Clare, while the
only member of his household for whom he showed real affection was the
Gascon knight, Peter of Gaveston.[1] Attributing his son's levity to
Gaveston's corrupting influence, the old king had banished the foreign
favourite early in 1307. But no change in his surroundings could stir
up the prince's frivolous nature to fulfil the duties of his station.
Edward's most kingly qualities were love of fine clothes and of
ceremonies. Passionately fond of rowing, driving, horse-breeding, and
the rearing of dogs, his ordinary occupations were those of the athlete
or the artisan. He was skilful with his hands, and an excellent
mechanic, proficient at the anvil and the forge, and proud of his skill
in digging ditches and thatching roofs. Interested in music, and
devoted to play-acting, he was badly educated, taking the coronation
oath in the French form provided for a king ignorant of Latin. Vain,
irritable, and easily moved to outbursts of childish wrath, he was
half-conscious of the weakness of his will, and was never without a
favourite, whose affection compensated him for his subjects' contempt.
The household of so careless a master was disorderly beyond the
ordinary measure of the time. While Edward irritated the nobles by his
neglect of their counsel, he vexed the commons by the exactions of his
purveyors.
[1] That is Gabaston, dep. Basses Pyrénées, cant. Morlaas.
The task which lay before Edward might well have daunted a stronger
man. The old king had failed in the great purpose of his life. Scotland
was in full revolt and had found a man able to guide her destinies. The
crown was deeply in debt; the exchequer was bare of supplies, and the
revenues both of England and Gascony were farmed by greedy and
unpopular companies of Italian bankers, such as the Frescobaldi of
Florence, the king's chief creditors. The nobles, though restrained by
the will of the old king, still cherished the ideals of the age of the
Barons' War, and were convinced that the best way to rule England was
to entrust the machinery of the central government, which Edward I. had
elaborated with so much care, to the control of a narrow council of
earls and prelates. Winchelsea, though broken in health, looked forward
in his banishment to the renewal of the alliance of baronage and
clergy, and to the reassertion of hierarchical ideals. The papal
_curia_, already triumphant in the last days of the reign of the dead
king, was anticipating a return to the times of Henry III, when every
dignity of the English Church was at its mercy. The strenuous endeavour
which had marked the last reign gave place to the extreme of
negligence.
Edward at once broke with the policy of his father. After receiving, at
Carlisle, the homage of the English magnates, he crossed the Solway to
Dumfries, where such Scottish barons as had not joined Robert Bruce
took oaths of fealty to him. He soon relinquished the personal conduct
of the war, and travelled slowly to Westminster on the pretext of
following his father's body to its last resting-place. He replaced his
father's ministers by dependants of his own. Bishop Walter Langton, the
chief minister of the last years of Edward I., was singled out for
special vengeance. He was stripped of his offices, robbed of his
treasure, and thrown into close confinement, without any regard to the
immunities of a churchman from secular jurisdiction. Langton's place as
treasurer was given to Walter Reynolds, an illiterate clerk, who had
won the chief place in Edward's household through his skill in
theatricals. Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London, was replaced in the
chancery by John Langton, Bishop of Chichester. The barons of the
exchequer, the justices of the high courts, and the other ministers of
the old king were removed in favour of more complacent successors.
Signal favour was shown to all who had fallen under Edward I.'s
displeasure. Bishop Bek, of Durham, was restored to his palatinate, and
the road to return opened to Winchelsea, though ill-health detained him
on the Continent for some time longer. Conspicuous among the returned
exiles was Peter of Gaveston, whom the king welcomed with the warmest
affection. He at once invested his "brother Peter" with the rich
earldom of Cornwall, which the old king, with the object of conferring
it on one of his sons by his second marriage, had kept in his hands
since Earl Edmund's death. A little later Edward married the favourite
to his niece, Margaret of Clare, the eldest sister of Earl Gilbert of
Gloucester. Of the tried comrades of Edward I. the only one who
remained in authority was Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. The abandonment
of the Scottish campaign soon followed. It was no wonder that the Scots
lords, who had performed homage to Edward at Dumfries, began to turn to
Bruce. Already king of the Scottish commons, Robert was in a fair way
to become accepted by the whole people.
The readiness with which the barons acquiesced in Edward's reversal of
his father's policy shows that they had regarded the late king's action
with little favour. Lincoln, the wisest and most influential of the
earls, even found reasons for the grant of Cornwall to Gaveston, and
kept in check his son-in-law, Earl Thomas of Lancaster, who was the
most disposed to grumble at the elevation of the Gascon favourite.
Gilbert of Gloucester was but newly come to his earldom. He was
personally attached to the king, his old playmate and uncle, and was
not unfriendly to his Gascon brother-in-law. The recent concentration
of the great estates in the hands of a few individuals gave these three
earls a position of overwhelming importance both in the court and in
the country, and with their good-will Edward was safe. But the weakness
of the king and the rashness of the favourite soon caused murmurs to
arise.
Early in 1308 Edward crossed over to France, leaving Gaveston as
regent, and was married on January 25, at Boulogne, to Philip the
Fair's daughter Isabella, a child of twelve, to whom he had been
plighted since 1298. The marriage was attended by the French king and a
great gathering of the magnates of both countries. Opportunity was
taken of the meeting for Edward to perform homage for Aquitaine. After
the arrival of the royal couple in England, their coronation took place
on February 25. Time had been when the reign began with the king's
crowning; but Edward had taken up every royal function immediately on
his father's death, and set a precedent to later sovereigns by dating
his own accession from the day succeeding the decease of his
predecessor. The coronation ceremony, minutely recorded, provided
precedents for later ages. It was some recognition of the work of the
last generation that the coronation oath was somewhat more rigid and
involved a more definite recognition of the rights of the community
than on earlier occasions. Winchelsea was still abroad, and the
hallowing was performed by Henry Woodlock, Bishop of Winchester.
Discontent was already simmering. Not even Lincoln's weighty influence
could overcome the irritation of the earls at the elevation of the
Gascon knight into their circle. The very virtues of the vigorous
favourite turned to his discredit. At a tournament given by him, at his
own castle of Wallingford, to celebrate his marriage with the king's
niece, the new-made earl, with a party of valiant knights, challenged a
troop, which included the Earls of Hereford, Warenne, and Arundel, and
utterly discomfited his rivals.[1] The victory of the upstart over
magnates of such dignity was accounted for by treachery, and the
prohibition of a coronation tournament, probably a simple measure of
police, was ascribed to the unwillingness of Peter to give his opponents
a legitimate opportunity of vindicating their skill. There had been much
resentment at Gaveston's appointment as regent during the king's absence
in France. A further outburst of indignation followed when the Gascon,
magnificently arrayed and bedecked with jewels, bore the crown of St.
Edward in the coronation procession. The queen's uncles, who had
escorted her to her new home, left England disgusted that Edward's love
for Gaveston led him to neglect his bride, and the want of reserve shown
in the personal dealings of the king and his "idol" suggested the worst
interpretation of their relations, though this is against the weight of
evidence. Rumours spread that the favourite had laid hands on the vast
treasures which Bishop Walter Langton had deposited at the New Temple,
and had extorted from the king even larger sums, which he had sent to
his kinsfolk in Gascony by the agency of the Italian farmers of the
revenue.
[1] _Ann. Paulini_, p. 258, and Monk of Malmesbury, p. 156, are
to be preferred to Trokelowe, p. 65.
Gaveston was a typical Gascon, vain, loquacious, and ostentatious,
proud of his own ready wit and possessed of a fatal talent for sharp
and bitter sayings. He seems to have been a brave and generous soldier.
There is little proof that he was specially vicious or incompetent,
and, had he been allowed time to establish himself, he might well have
been the parent of a noble house, as patriotic and as narrowly English
as the Valence lords of Pembroke had become in the second generation.
But his sudden elevation rather turned his head, and the dull but
dignified English earls were soon mortally offended by his airs of
superiority, and by his intervention between them and the sovereign.
"If," wrote the annalist of St. Paul's, London, "one of the earls or
magnates sought any special favour of the king, the king forthwith sent
him to Peter, and whatever Peter said or ordered at once took place,
and the king ratified it. Hence the whole people grew indignant that
there should be two kings in one kingdom, one the king in name, the
other the king in reality." Gaveston's vanity was touched by the sullen
hostility of the earls. He returned their suspicion by an openly
expressed contempt. He amused himself and the king by devising
nicknames for them. Thomas of Lancaster was the old pig or the
play-actor, Aymer of Pembroke was Joseph the Jew, Gilbert of Gloucester
was the cuckoo, and Guy of Warwick was the black dog of Arden. Such
jests were bitterly resented. "If he call me dog," said Warwick on
hearing of the insult, "I will take care to bite him." The barons
formed an association, bound by oath to drive Gaveston into exile and
deprive him of his earldom. All over the country there were secret
meetings and eager preparations for war. The outlook became still more
alarming when the Earl of Lincoln at last changed his policy. Convinced
of the unworthiness of Gaveston, he turned against him, and the whole
baronage followed his lead. Only Hugh Despenser and a few lawyers
adhered to the favourite. Gloucester did not like to take an active
part against his brother-in-law, but his stepfather, Monthermer, was
conspicuous among the enemies of the Gascon. Winchelsea, too, came to
England and threw his powerful influence on the side of the opposition.
In April, 1308, a parliament of nobles met and insisted upon the exile
of the favourite. The magnates took up a high line. "Homage and the
oath of allegiance," they declared, "are due to the crown rather than
to the person of the king. If the king behave unreasonably, his lieges
are bound to bring him back to the ways of righteousness." On May 18
letters patent were issued promising that Gaveston should be banished
before June 25. Gaveston, bending before the storm, surrendered his
earldom and prepared for departure, while Winchelsea and the bishops
declared him excommunicate if he tarried in England beyond the
appointed day. The king did his best to lighten his friend's
misfortune. Fresh grants of land and castles compensated for the loss
of Cornwall and gave him means for armed resistance. The grant of
Gascon counties, jurisdictions, cities and castles to the value of
3,000 marks a year provided him with a dignified refuge. The pope and
cardinals were besought to relieve him from the sentence hung over his
head by the archbishop. It is significant of Edward's early intention
to violate his promise, that in his letters to the curia he still
describes Gaveston as Earl of Cornwall. Peter was soon appointed the
king's lieutenant in Ireland. This time he was called Earl of Cornwall
in a document meant for English use. As midsummer approached, Edward
accompanied him to Bristol and bade him a sorrowful farewell. Attended
by a numerous and splendid household, Gaveston crossed over to Ireland
and took up the government of that country, where his energy and
liberality won him considerable popularity.
Edward was inconsolable at the loss of his friend. For the first time
in his reign he threw himself into politics with interest, and
intrigued with rare perseverance to bring about his recall. Meanwhile
the business of the state fell into deplorable confusion. No supplies
were raised; no laws were passed; no effort was made to stay the
progress of Robert Bruce. The magnates refused to help the king, and in
April, 1309, Edward was forced to meet a parliament of the three
estates at Westminster. There he received a much-needed supply, but the
barons and commons drew up a long schedule of grievances, in which they
complained of the abuses of purveyance, the weakness of the government,
the tyranny of the royal officials, and the delays in obtaining
justice. The estates refused point blank the king's request for the
recall of Gaveston and demanded an answer to their petitions in the
next parliament.
Edward saw in submission to the estates the only way of bringing back
his brother Peter from his gilded exile. He persuaded the pope to annul
the ecclesiastical censures with which Winchelsea had sought to prevent
Gaveston's return, and then recalled his friend on his own authority.
Gaveston at once quitted Ireland and was met at Chester by Edward.
Together they attended a parliament of magnates held in July at
Stamford. There Edward announced that he accepted the petitions of the
estates and issued a statute limiting purveyance. But the real work of
this assembly was the ratification of the recall of the favourite,
which was assured since Edward had won over some of the chief earls to
agree to it. Gloucester was easily moved to champion his
brother-in-law's cause. Lincoln reverted to his former friendship for
the Gascon, and managed both to overbear the hostility of Lancaster and
to induce Earl Warenne, "who had never shown a cheerful face to Peter
since the Wallingford tournament," to become his friend. Warwick, alone
of the earls, was irreconcilable. But Edward had gained his point. It
was even agreed that the returned exile should regain his earldom of
Cornwall.
The annalists moralise on the instability of the magnates; and the
sudden revolution may perhaps be set down as much to their incapacity
as to the dexterity of the king. But Peter's second period of power was
even shorter than his first. He had learnt nothing from his
misfortunes, save perhaps increased contempt for his enemies. He was
more insolent, greedy, and bitter in speech than ever. Early in 1310
the barons were again preparing to renew their attacks. The second
storm burst in a parliament of magnates held at London in March, 1310.
The barons came to this parliament in military array, and Edward once
more found himself at their mercy. The conditions of 1258 exactly
repeated themselves. Once more an armed baronial parliament made itself
the mouthpiece of the national discontent against a weak king, an
incompetent administration, and foreign favourites. The magnates were
no longer contented with simply demanding the banishment of Gaveston.
They were ready with a constructive programme of reform, and they went
back to the policy of the Mad Parliament. As the king could not be
trusted, the royal power must once more be put into commission in the
hands of a committee of magnates. So stiff were the barons in their
adhesion to the precedents of 1258, that they made no pretence of
taking the commons into partnership with them. To them the work of
Edward I. had been done to no purpose. Baronial assemblies and full
parliaments of the estates were still equally competent to transact all
the business of the nation. It is vain to see in this ignoring of the
commons any aristocratic jealousy of the more popular element in the
constitution. There can be no doubt but that any full parliament would
have co-operated with the barons as heartily in 1310 as it had done in
1309. It was simply that popular co-operation was regarded as
unnecessary. As in 1258, the magnates claimed to speak for the whole
nation.
The barons drew up a statement of the "great perils and dangers" to
which England was exposed through the king's dependence on bad
counsellors. The franchises of Holy Church were threatened; the king
was reduced to live by extortion; Scotland was lost; and the crown was
"grievously dismembered" in England and Ireland. "Wherefore, sire," the
petition concludes, "your good folk pray you humbly that, for the
salvation of yourself and them and of the crown, you will assent that
these perils shall be avoided and redressed by ordinance of your
baronage." Edward at once surrendered at discretion, perhaps in the
vain hope of saving Gaveston. On March 16 he issued a charter, which
empowered the barons to elect certain persons to draw up ordinances to
reform the realm and the royal household. The powers of the committee
were to last until Michaelmas, 1311. A barren promise that the king's
concession should not be counted a precedent made Edward's submission
seem a little less abject. Four days later the ordainers were
appointed, the method of their election being based upon the precedents
of 1258.
Twenty-one lords ordainers represented in somewhat unequal proportions
the three great ranks of the magnates. At the head of the seven bishops
was Winchelsea, while both Bishop Baldock of London, the dismissed
chancellor, and his successor, John Langton of Chichester, were
included among the rest. All the eight earls attending the parliament
became ordainers. Side by side with moderate men, such as Gloucester,
Lincoln, and John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, were the extreme men
of the opposition, Lancaster, Pembroke, Warwick, Hereford, the king's
brother-in-law, and Edmund Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. Warenne and the
insignificant Earl of Oxford do not seem to have been present in
parliament, and are therefore omitted. With these exceptions, and of
course that of the Earl of Cornwall, the whole of the earls were
arrayed against the king. The six barons, who completed the list of
nominees, were either colourless in their policy or dependent on the
earls and their episcopal allies. The ordainers set to work at once.
Two days after their appointment, they issued six preliminary
ordinances by which they resolved that the place of their sitting
should be London, that none of the ordainers should receive gifts from
the crown, that no royal grants should be valid without the consent of
the majority, that the customs should be paid directly into the
exchequer, that the foreign merchants who had lately farmed them should
be arrested, and that the Great Charter should be firmly kept. During
the next eighteen months they remained hard at work.
Gaveston, conscious of his impending doom, betook himself to the north
as early as February. As soon as he could escape, Edward hurried
northwards to join him. An expedition against the Scots was then
summoned for September. It was high time that something should be done.
During the three years that Edward had reigned, Robert Bruce had made
alarming progress. One after the other the Scottish magnates had joined
his cause, and a few despairing partisans and some scattered
ill-garrisoned, ill-equipped strongholds alone upheld the English cause
north of the Tweed. But even then Edward did not wage war in earnest.
His real motive for affecting zeal for martial enterprise was his
desire to escape from his taskmasters, and to keep Gaveston out of
harm's way. The earls gave him no encouragement. On the pretext that
their services were required in London at the meetings of the
ordainers, the great majority of the higher baronage took no personal
part in the expedition. Gloucester was the only ordainer who was
present, and the only other earls in the host were Warenne and Gaveston
himself. The chief strength of Edwards army was a swarm of
ill-disciplined Welsh and English infantry, more intent on plunder than
on victory. In September Edward advanced to Roxburgh and made his way
as far as Linlithgow. No enemy was to be found, for Bruce was not
strong enough to risk a pitched battle, even against Edward's army. He
hid himself in the mountains and moors, and contented himself with
cutting off foraging parties, destroying stragglers, and breaking down
the enemy's communications. Within two months Edward discreetly retired
to Berwick, and there passed many months at the border town.
Technically he was in Scotland; practically he might as well have been
in London for all the harm he was doing to Bruce. However, Gaveston
showed more martial zeal than his master. He led an expedition which
penetrated as far as Perth, and reduced the country between the Forth
and the Grampians to Edward's obedience. Gloucester also pacified the
forest of Ettrick. To these two all the little honour of the campaign
belonged.
The Earl of Lincoln governed England as regent during the king's
absence. In February, 1311, he died, and Gloucester abandoned the
campaign to take up the regency. The death of the last of Edward I.'s
lay ministers was followed in March by that of another survivor of the
old generation, Bishop Bek of Durham. The old landmarks were quickly
passing away, and the forces that still made for moderation were
sensibly diminished. Gilbert of Gloucester, alone of the younger
generation, still aspired to the position of a mediator. The most
important result of Lincoln's death was the unmuzzling of his
son-in-law, Thomas of Lancaster. In his own right the lord of the three
earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby, Thomas then received in
addition his father-in-law's two earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. The
enormous estates and innumerable jurisdictions attached to these five
offices gave him a territorial position greater by far than that of any
other English lord. "I do not believe," writes the monk of Malmesbury,
"that any duke or count of the Roman empire could do as much with the
revenues of his estates as the Earl of Lancaster." Nor were Earl
Thomas' personal connexions less magnificent than his feudal dignities.
As a grandson of Henry III., he was the first cousin of the king.
Through his mother, Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre and Countess of
Champagne, he was the grandson of the valiant Robert of Artois, who had
fallen at Mansura, and the great-grandson of Louis VIII. of France. His
half-sister, Joan of Champagne, was the wife of Philip the Fair, so
that the French king was his brother-in-law as well as his cousin, and
Isabella, Edward's consort, was his niece. Unluckily, the personality
of the great earl was not equal to his pedigree or his estates. Proud,
hard to work with, jealous, and irascible, he was essentially the
leader of opposition, the grumbler, and the _frondeur_. When the time
came for a constructive policy, Thomas broke down almost as signally as
Edward himself. His ability was limited, his power of application
small, and his passions violent and ungovernable. Greedy, selfish,
domineering, and narrow, he had few scruples and no foresight, little
patriotism, and no breadth of view. At this moment he had to play a
part which was within his powers. The simple continuance of the
traditions of policy, which he inherited with his pedigree and his
estates; was all that was necessary. As the greatest of the English
earls, the head of a younger branch of the royal house, and the
inheritor of the estates and titles of Montfort and Ferrars, he was
trebly bound to act as leader of the baronial opposition, the champion
of the charters, the enemy of kings, courtiers, favourites, and
foreigners. He was steadfast in his prejudices and hatreds, and the
ordainers found in him a leader who could at least save them from the
reproach of inconstancy and the lack of fixed purpose shown at the
parliament of Stamford.
It was the first duty of Earl Thomas to perform homage and fealty for
his new earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. Attended by a hundred armed
knights, he rode towards the border. Edward was at Berwick, and Thomas
declined to proffer his homage outside the kingdom. On Edward refusing
to cross the Tweed, Thomas declared that he would take forcible
possession of his lands. Civil war was only avoided by Edward giving
way. The king met Thomas on English soil at Haggerston, four miles from
Berwick. There the earl performed homage, and exchanged the kiss of
peace with his king, but he would not even salute the upstart Earl of
Cornwall, who injudiciously accompanied Edward, and the king departed
deeply indignant at this want of courtesy. Returning to Berwick, Edward
lingered there until the completion of the work of the ordainers made
it necessary for him to face parliament. Leaving Gaveston protected by
the strong walls of Bamburgh, the king quitted the border at the end of
July, and met his parliament a month later in London. Though the
ordainers had been appointed by a baronial parliament, the three
estates were summoned to hear and ratify the results of their labours.
Thirty-five more ordinances, covering a very wide field, were then laid
before them. Disorderly and disproportioned, like most medieval
legislation, they ranged from trivial personal questions and the
details of administration to the broadest schemes for the future. Many
of them were simply efforts to get the recognised law enforced. There
were clauses forbidding alienation of domain, the abuses of purveyance,
the usurpations of the courts of the royal household, the enlargement
of the forests, and the employment of unlawful sources of revenue.
Under the last head, the new custom, which Edward I. had persuaded the
foreign merchants to pay, was specifically abolished. Provisions of
such a character show that the king had made no effort to observe
either the Great Charter or the laws of Edward I. Even the recent
statute of Stamford, and the six ordinances of the previous year, had
to be re-enacted. Similar restatements of sound principles were too
common in the fourteenth century to make the ordinances an epoch. The
vital clauses were those providing for the control of the king and for
penalties against his favourites.
Under the first of these heads, the ordainers worked out to the
uttermost consequences their favourite distinction between the crown
and the king. The crown was to be strengthened, but the king was to be
deprived of every shred of power. The great offices of state in
England, Ireland, and Gascony were to be filled up with the counsel and
consent of the barons, a provision which, if literally interpreted,
meant that the barons intended to govern Gascony as well as England.
The king was not to go to war, raise an army, or leave the kingdom
without the permission of parliament. He was to "live of his own,"
however scanty a living that might be. Special judges were to hear
complaints against royal ministers and bailiffs. Parliaments were to
meet once or twice a year. It was a complete programme of limited
monarchy. But there was no reference to the commons and clergy. We are
still in the atmosphere of the Provisions of Oxford, and there is no
Earl Simon to emphasise the fuller conception of national control.
To Edward and to the barons, the penal clauses were the very essence of
the ordinances. The twentieth ordinance declared that Peter of
Gaveston, "as a public enemy of the king and kingdom, be forthwith
exiled, for all time and without hope of return," from all dominions
subject to the English king. He was to leave England before All Saints'
day, and the port of Dover was to be his place of embarkation. Other
ordinances dealt with lesser offenders. Exile was once more to be the
doom of the Frescobaldi, and the other alien merchants who had acted as
Edward's financial agents; Gaveston's kinsfolk, followers and abettors
incurred their master's fate. All Gascons were to be sent to their own
country, their allegiance to the crown in no wise saving them from the
hatred meted out to all aliens. Neither high nor low were spared: Henry
de Beaumont, the grandson of an Eastern emperor, and his sister, the
lady Vesey, were to leave the realm; John Charlton, the pushing
Shropshire squire who was worming his way by court favour into the
estates of the degenerate descendants of the house of Gwenwynwyn, was,
with the other English partisans of the favourite, to be driven from
the royal service.
Edward made a last desperate attempt to save Gaveston. He would agree
to all the other ordinances, if he were still allowed to keep his
brother Peter in England and in possession of the earldom of Cornwall.
But the estates refused to yield the root of the whole matter.
Threatened with the prospect of a new battle of Lewes, if he remained
obdurate, Edward bowed to his destiny. The ordinances were published in
every shire, and new ministers, chosen with the approval of the
estates, deprived the king of the government of the country.
Early in November, Gaveston sailed to Flanders, but within a few weeks
Edward insisted upon his return. Rumours spread that Gaveston was in
England, hiding himself away in his former castles of Wallingford and
Tintagel, or in the king's castle of Windsor. The thin veil of mystery
was soon withdrawn. Early in 1312, Peter openly accompanied the king to
York, where, on January 18, Edward issued a proclamation to the effect
that Gaveston had been unlawfully exiled, that he was back in England
by the king's command, and prepared to answer to all charges against
him. A few weeks later, Edward restored him to his earldom and estates.
King and favourite still tarried in the north, preparing for the
inevitable struggle. It was believed that they intrigued with Robert
Bruce for a refuge in Scotland. Bruce, according to the story, declined
to have anything to do with them. "If the King of England will not keep
faith with his own subjects," he is reported to have said, "how then
will he keep faith with me?"
The ordainers looked upon Gaveston's return as a declaration of war.
Winchelsea pronounced him excommunicate, and five of the eight earls
who sat among the ordainers, bound themselves by oaths to maintain the
ordinances and pursue the favourite to the death. These were Thomas of
Lancaster, Aymer of Pembroke, Humphrey of Hereford, Edmund of Arundel,
and Guy of Warwick. Gilbert of Gloucester declined to take part in the
confederacy, but promised to accept whatever the five earls might
determine. Moreover, John, Earl Warenne, who had hitherto kept aloof
from the ordainers, at last threw in his lot with them, won over, it
was believed, by the eloquence of Archbishop Winchelsea. The ordainers
then divided England into large districts, appointing one of the
baronial leaders to the charge of each. Gloucester himself undertook
the government of the south-east, while Robert Clifford and Henry Percy
agreed to guard the march, to prevent Gaveston escaping to the Scots.
Pembroke and Warenne marched to the north to lay hands on the
favourite, and Lancaster himself followed them.
While the ordainers were acting, Edward and Gaveston were aimlessly
wandering about in the north. They failed to raise an army or to win
the people to their side, and on the approach of Lancaster, they fled
before him from York to Newcastle. The earl followed quickly. On the
afternoon of Ascension day, May 4, Lancaster, Clifford, and Percy
suddenly swooped down on Newcastle. The king and his friend escaped
with the utmost difficulty to Tynemouth, leaving their luggage, jewels,
horses, and other possessions to the victor. Next day they fled by sea
to Scarborough. The queen, left behind at Tynemouth, fell into her
uncle Lancaster's power.
The royal castle of Scarborough, whose Norman keep and spacious wards
occupy a rocky peninsula surrounded, except on the town side, by the
North Sea, had lately been transferred from the custody of Henry Percy,
one of the confederate barons, to that of Gaveston. There was no fitter
place wherein the favourite could stand at bay against his pursuers.
Accordingly Edward left Gaveston, after a tender parting, and betook
himself to York. Lancaster thereupon occupied a position midway between
Scarborough and Knaresborough, while Pembroke, Warenne, and Henry Percy
laid siege to Scarborough. Gaveston soon found that he was unable to
resist them. His troops, scarcely adequate to man the extensive walls,
were too many for the scanty store of provisions which the castle
contained. After less than a fortnight's siege, he persuaded the two
earls and Percy to allow him easy terms of surrender. The three
baronial leaders pledged themselves on the Gospels to protect Gaveston
from all manner of evil until August 1. During the interval parliament
was to decide as to what was to be his future fate. If the terms agreed
upon by parliament were unsatisfactory to him, he was to return to
Scarborough, which was still to be garrisoned by his followers, with
leave to purchase supplies.
Pembroke undertook the personal custody of the prisoner, and escorted
him by slow stages from Scarborough to the south, where he was to be
retained in honourable custody at his own castle of Wallingford. Three
weeks after the surrender, the convoy reached Deddington, a small town
in Oxfordshire, a few miles south of Banbury. There Gaveston was lodged
in the house of the vicar of the parish, and told to take a few days'
rest after the fatigues of the journey. Pembroke himself did not remain
at Deddington, but went on to Bampton in the Bush, where his countess
then was. Thereupon on June 10, at sunrise, the Earl of Warwick, the
most rancorous of Peter's enemies, occupied Deddington with a strong
force. Bursting into the bedchamber of his victim, Earl Guy exclaimed
in a loud voice: "Arise, traitor, thou art taken". Peter was at once
led with every mark of indignity to Warwick castle. Thus the black dog
of Arden showed that he could bite.
Warwick was not personally pledged to Gaveston's safety, though, as one
of the confederates, he was clearly bound by their acts. His seizure of
Peter was only warrantable by the, fear that Pembroke, with his
royalist leanings, was likely to play the extreme party false; but in
any case Warwick was as much obliged as Pembroke to observe the terms
of the capitulation. Neither Warwick nor his allies took this view of
the matter. They rejoiced at the good fortune which had remedied the
disastrous capitulation of Scarborough, and resolved to put an end to
the favourite without delay. Lancaster was then at Kenilworth;
Hereford, Arundel, and other magnates were also present, and all agreed
in praising Warwick's energy. On Monday morning, June 19, the three
earls rode the few miles from Kenilworth to Warwick, and Earl Guy
handed over Peter to them. They then escorted their captive to a place
called Blacklow hill, about two miles out of Warwick on the Kenilworth
road, but situated in Lancaster's lands. The crowd following the
cavalcade was moved to tears when Peter, kneeling to Lancaster, cried
in vain for mercy from the "gentle earl". On reaching Blacklow hill,
the three earls withdrew, though remaining near enough to see what was
going on. Then two Welshmen in Lancaster's service laid hands upon the
victim. One drove his sword through his body, the other cut off his
head. The corpse remained where it had fallen, but the head was brought
to the earls as a sign that the deed was done. After this the earls
rode back to Kenilworth. Guy of Warwick remained all the time in his
castle. He had already taken his share in the cruel act of treachery.
It was, however, important that Lancaster should take the
responsibility for the deed. Four cobblers of Warwick piously bore the
headless corpse within their town. But the grim earl sent it back,
because it was not found on his fee. At last some Oxford Dominicans
took charge of the body and deposited it temporarily in their convent,
not daring to inter it in holy ground, as Gaveston had died
excommunicate.
The ostentatious violence of the confederate earls broke up their
party. Aymer of Pembroke, indignant at their breach of faith, regarded
the whole transaction as a stain on his honour. He besought
Gloucester's intervention, but was only told that he should be more
cautious in his future negotiations. He harangued the clerks and
burgesses of Oxford, but university and town agreed that the matter was
no business of theirs. Then in disgust he betook himself to the king,
whom he found still surrounded with the Beaumonts, Mauleys, and other
friends of Gaveston, against whom the ordinances had decreed
banishment. Warenne, whose honour was only less impeached than
Pembroke's, also deserted the ordainers for the court. Edward bitterly
deplored the death of his friend. He gladly welcomed the deserters, and
prepared to wreak vengeance on the ordainers.
Edward plucked up courage to return to London, where in July he
addressed the citizens, and persuaded them to maintain the peace of the
city against the barons. He next visited Dover, and there he
strengthened the fortifications of the castle, took oaths of fealty
from the Cinque Ports, and negotiated with the King of France. Thence
he returned to London, hoping that the precautions he had taken would
secure his position in the parliament which he had summoned to meet at
Westminster. But the four earls still held the field, and answered the
summons to parliament by occupying Ware with a strong military force. A
thousand men-at-arms were drawn by Lancaster from his five earldoms,
while the Welsh from Brecon, who followed the Earl of Hereford, and the
vigorous foresters of Arden, who mustered under the banner of Warwick,
made a formidable show. Yet at the last moment neither side was eager
to begin hostilities. The four earls' violence damaged their cause, and
many who had no love of Gaveston, or desire to avenge him, inclined to
the king's party. Gilbert of Gloucester busied himself with mediating
between the two sides. At this juncture two papal envoys, sent to end
the interminable outstanding disputes with France, arrived in England,
along with Louis, Count of Évreux, the queen's uncle. Edward availed
himself of the presence of French jurists in the count's train to
obtain legal opinion that the ordinances were invalid, as against
natural equity and civil law. These technicalities did little service
to the king's cause, and better work was done when Louis and the papal
envoys joined with Gloucester in mediating between the opposing forces.
At length moderate counsels prevailed. Edward could only resist the
four earls through the support of his new allies, and Pembroke and
Warenne were as little anxious to fight as Gloucester himself. They
were quite willing to make terms which seemed to the king treason to
his friend's memory.
The negotiations were still proceeding when, on November 13, 1312, the
birth of a son to Edward and Isabella revived the almost dormant
feeling of loyalty to the sovereign. The king ceased to brood over the
loss of his brother Peter, and became more willing to accept the
inevitable. He gave some pleasure to his subjects by refusing the
suggestion of the queen's uncle that the child should be called Louis,
and christened him Edward after his own father. At last, on December
22, terms of peace were agreed upon. The earls and barons concerned in
Gaveston's death were to appear before the king in Westminster Hall,
and humbly beg his pardon and good-will. In return for this the king
agreed to remit all rancour caused by the death of the favourite.
Lancaster and Warwick, who took no personal part in the negotiations,
sent in a long list of objections to the details of the treaty. Nearly
a year elapsed before the earls personally acknowledged their fault.
During that interval there was no improvement in the position of
affairs. Parliament granted no money; and Edward only met his daily
expenses by loans, contracted from every quarter, and by keeping tight
hands on the confiscated estates of the Templars. Both the king and the
leading earls made every excuse to escape attending the ineffective
parliaments of that miserable time. Two short visits to France gave
Edward a pretext for avoiding his subjects. There were some hasty
musterings of armed men on pretence of tournaments. But the king was
still formidable enough to make it desirable for the barons to carry
out the treaty. Finally, in October, 1313, Lancaster, Hereford, and
Warwick made their public submission in Westminster Hall. Pardons were
at once issued to them and to over four hundred minor offenders. Feasts
of reconciliation were held, and it seemed as if the old feuds were at
last ended. Gaveston's corpse was removed from Oxford to Langley, in
Hertfordshire, and buried in the church of a new convent of Dominicans
set up by Edward to pray for the favourite's soul.
Just before the end of the disputes Archbishop Winchelsea died in May,
1313. He left behind him the reputation of a saint and a hero, and a
movement was undertaken for his canonisation. With all his faults, he
was the greatest churchman of his time, and the most steadfast and
unselfish of ecclesiastical statesmen. Despite his palsy, he had shown
wonderful activity since his return. The brain and soul of the
ordainers, he equally made it his business to uphold extreme
hierarchical privilege. Bitterly as he hated Walter Langton, he was
indignant that a bishop should be imprisoned and despoiled by the lay
power, and took up his cause with such energy that he effected his
liberation, only to find that Langton made peace with the king and
turned his back on the ordainers. The after-swell of the storms,
excited by the petition of Lincoln and the statute of Carlisle, still
continued troublous during Winchelsea's later years. The pope
complained of the violated privileges of the Church and of the
accumulated arrears of King John's tribute; and Winchelsea was anxious
to promote the papal cause. But the barons in Edward's early
parliaments still used the bold language of the magnates of 1301, and
the letter of 1309, drawn up by the parliament of Stamford, is no
unworthy pendant of the Lincoln letter. As time went on, the disorders
of the government and the weakness of the king surrendered everything
to the pope. It was soon as it had been in the days of Henry III., when
pope and king combined to despoil the English Church.
The suppression of the order of the Temple shows how absolutely England
was forced to follow in the wake of the papacy and the King of France.
There was no spontaneous movement against the society as in France;
there was not even the fierce malice and insatiable greed which could
find their only satisfaction in the ruin of the brethren; and there is
not much evidence that the Templars were unpopular. The whole attack
was the result of commands given from without. It was at the repeated
request of Philip of France and Clement V. that Edward reluctantly
ordered the apprehension of all the Templars within England, Scotland,
and Ireland on January 8, 1308. Their property was taken into the
king's hands, and their persons were confined in the royal prisons
under the custody of the sheriffs. For their trial, Clement appointed a
mixed commission including Winchelsea, Archbishop Greenfield of York,
several English bishops, one French bishop, and certain papal
inquisitors specially assigned for the purpose, the chief of whom were
the Abbot of Lagny and Sicard de Lavaur, Canon of Narbonne, who came to
England in 1309. At last the victims were collected at London and York,
where the trials were to be conducted for the southern and northern
provinces. There was much hesitation among the English bishops. The
foes of the Templars lamented the prelates' lack of zeal and their
scruples in collecting evidence, and suggested that the torture, which
had so freely been used in France, would soon extract confessions. But
the northern bishops declared that torture was unknown in England, and
asked, if it were to be adopted, whether it was to be applied by clerks
or laymen, and whether torturers should be imported from beyond sea. In
the end, torture was used, but not to any great extent.
A great mass of depositions, mostly vague and worthless, or derived
from the suspicious confessions of apostates and weaklings, was
gathered together, and in 1311 laid before provincial councils, but
neither province came to any fixed decision. "Inasmuch," says
Hemingburgh, "as the Templars were not found altogether guilty or
altogether innocent, they referred the dubious matter to the pope."
They sent the evidence they had collected to swell the mass of
testimony from all Christendom, which was laid before the council of
Vienne. When the pope suppressed the order in April, 1312, and
transferred its lands to the Knights of St. John, the papal decrees
were quietly carried out in England. One or two Templars died in
prison, but none were executed; and the majority were dismissed with
pensions or secluded in monasteries. Edward and his nobles took good
care to make a large profit out of the transaction. The resources of
the Temple alone kept the king from destitution during the period
between the death of Gaveston and his reconciliation with the earls.
Many barons laid violent hands on estates belonging to the order, and
long held on to them despite papal expostulation. The Hospitallers
found that the lands of their rivals came to them so slowly, and
encumbered with so many charges, that their new property became
burdensome rather than helpful to their society. Thus it was that they
never made any use of the New Temple in London, and, before long, let
it out to the common-lawyers. In the fall of the Templars, the pope and
the Church set the first great example of the suppression of a
religious order to kings, who before long bettered the precedent given
them. The sordid story is mainly important to our history as an example
of the completeness of the influence of the papal autocracy, and of the
submissiveness of clergy and laity to its behests. It was a lurid
commentary on the practical working of the ecclesiastical system that
the business of condemning an innocent order first brought into England
the papal inquisitor and the use of torture. Yet the whole process was
but so pale a reflection of the horrors wrought in France that the
conclusion arises that England owed more to the weakness of Edward II
than France to the strength of Philip IV.
Winchelsea's death removed a real check on Edward, especially as the
king was on such good terms with the papacy that he had little
difficulty in obtaining a successor amenable to his will. Undeterred by
Clement's bull reserving to himself the appointment, the monks of
Christ Church at once proceeded to elect Thomas of Cobham, a theologian
and a canonist of distinction, a man of high birth, great sanctity, and
unblemished character, and in every way worthy of the primacy. But his
merits did not weigh for a moment with Clement against the wishes of
the king. He rejected Cobham and conferred the primacy on Edwards
favourite, Walter Reynolds, who had already obtained the bishopric of
Worcester through the king's influence. A good deal of money, it was
believed, found its way to the coffers of the _curia_; and the
indignation of the English Church found voice in the impassioned
protests of the chroniclers. "Lady Money rules everything in the pope's
court," lamented the monk of Malmesbury. "For eight years Pope Clement
has ruled the Universal Church: but what good he has done escapes
memory. England, alone of all countries, feels the burden of papal
domination. Out of the fulness of his power, the pope presumes to do
many things, and neither prince nor people dare contradict him. He
reserves all the fat benefices for himself, and excommunicates all who
resist him: his legates come and spoil the land: those armed with his
bulls come and demand prebends. He has given all the deaneries to
foreigners, and cut down the number of resident canons. Why does the
pope exercise greater power over the clergy than the emperor over the
laity? Lord Jesus! either take away the pope from our midst or lessen
the power which he presumes to have over the people." Such lamentations
bore no fruit, and the simoniacal nomination of Reynolds was but the
first of a series of appointments which robbed the episcopate of
dignity and moral worth.
While Church and State in England were thus distressed, the cause of
Robert Bruce was making steady progress in Scotland. It is some measure
of the difficulties against which Bruce had to contend that, after six
years, he was still by no means master of all that land. But least of
all among the causes which retarded his advance can be placed the armed
forces of England. During six years Edward II.'s one personal
expedition had been a complete failure. A more formidable obstacle in
Bruce's way was the stubborn resistance offered to him by the valour
and skill of the small but highly trained garrisons which the wisdom of
Edward I. had established in the fortresses of southern and central
Scotland. Each castle took a long time to subdue, and demanded
engineering resources and a persistency of effort, which were difficult
to obtain from a popular army. The garrisons co-operated with the
Scottish nobles who still adhered to Edward through jealousy of the
upstart Bruces and love of feudal independence, rather than by reason
of any sympathy with the English cause. Additional obstacles to
Robert's progress were the hostility of the Church, to which he was
still the excommunicated murderer of Comyn; the captivity of so many
Scottish prelates and barons in England; the efforts of the pope and
the King of France to bring about suspensions of hostilities, and the
grievous famines which desolated Scotland no less than southern
Britain. But during these years the King of Scots gradually overcame
these difficulties. His hardest fighting in the field was with rival
Scots rather than with the English intruders. In 1308 he defeated the
Comyns of Buchan, and established himself on the ruins of that house in
the north-east. In the same year his brother, Edward Bruce, conquered
Galloway, where the Balliol tradition long prevented the domination of
the rival family.
Secure from retaliation so long as domestic troubles lasted, the Scots
devastated the northern counties of England, whose inhabitants were
forced to purchase relief from further attacks by paying large sums of
money to the invaders. Formal truces were more than once made, but they
were ill observed, and each violation of an armistice involved some
loss to Edward and some gain to Robert. Meanwhile the garrisons were
carefully isolated, and one by one signalled out for attack. In 1312
Berwick itself was only saved from surprise by the opportune barking of
a dog. In January, 1313, Perth was captured by assault. Next day Robert
slew the leading native burgesses who had adhered to the English, while
he permitted the English inhabitants to return freely to their own
country. The whole town was destroyed, since walled towns, like
castles, had given the English their chief hold upon the country.
Such was the state of Scotland when the reconciliation between Edward
and the earls restored England to the appearance of unity. As if
conscious that no time was to be lost in strengthening his position,
Bruce redoubled his efforts to make himself master of the fortresses
which still remained in the enemy's hands. Regardless of the rigour of
the season, he set actively to work in the early weeks of 1314, and
remarkable success attended his efforts. In February, the border
stronghold of Roxburgh was taken by a night attack. "And all that fair
castle, like the other castles which he had acquired, they pulled down
to the ground, lest the English should afterwards by holding the castle
bear rule over the land."[1] In March, Edinburgh castle was secured by
some Scots who climbed up the precipitous northern face of the castle
rock, overpowered the garrison, and opened the gates to their comrades
outside. Flushed with this great success, Bruce began the siege of
Stirling, the only important English garrison then held by the English
in the heart of Scotland. He pressed the besieged so hard that they
agreed to surrender to the enemy, if they were not relieved before
Midsummer day, the feast of St. John the Baptist. While Robert was
watching Stirling, his brother Edward devastated the country round
Carlisle, lording it for three days at the bishop's castle of Rose, and
levying heavy blackmail on the men of Cumberland.
[1] _Lanercost Chronicle_, p. 223.
If Stirling were lost, all Scotland would be at Bruce's mercy. Even
Edward was stirred by the disgrace involved in the utter abandonment of
his father's conquest; and from March onwards he began to make spasmodic
efforts to collect men and ships to enable him to advance to the relief
of the beleaguered garrison. At first it seemed sufficient to raise the
feudal levies and a small infantry force from the northern shires, but
as time went on the necessity of meeting the Scottish pikemen by
corresponding levies of foot soldiers became evident, and over 20,000
infantry were summoned from the northern counties and Wales.[1] But the
notice given was far too short, and June was well advanced before
anything was ready.
[1] For the numbers at Bannockburn, see _Foedera_, ii., 248,
and Round, _Commune_ of London, pp. 289-301.
Even the Scottish peril could not quicken the sluggish patriotism of
the ordainers. Four earls, Lancaster, Warenne, Warwick, and Arundel,
answered Edward's summons by reminding him that the ordinances
prescribed that war should only be undertaken with the approval of
parliament, and by declining to follow him to a campaign undertaken on
his own responsibility. They would send quotas, but begged to be
excused from personal attendance. Yet even without them, a gallant
array slowly gathered together at Berwick, and one at least of the
opposition earls, Humphrey of Hereford, was there, with Gilbert of
Gloucester and Aymer of Pembroke and 2,000 men-at-arms. An enormous
baggage train enabled the knights and barons to appear in the field in
great magnificence, though it destroyed the mobility of the force. "The
multitude of waggons," wrote the monk of Malmesbury, "if they had been
extended in a single line would have occupied the space of twenty
leagues." The splendour and number of the army inspired the king and
his friends with the utmost confidence. Though the host started from
Berwick less than a week before the appointed day, the king moved, says
the Malmesbury monk, not as if he were about to lead an army to battle,
but rather as if he were going on a pilgrimage to Compostella. "There
was but short delay for sleep, and a shorter delay for taking food.
Hence horses, horsemen, and infantry were worn out with fatigue and
hunger." There was no order or method in the proceedings of the host.
The presence of the king meant that there was no effective general, and
Hereford and Gloucester quarrelled for the second place.
It was not until Sunday, June 23, that Edward at last took up his
quarters a few miles south of Stirling, with a worn-out and dispirited
army. Yet, if Stirling were to be saved, immediate action was
necessary. Gloucester and Hereford made a vigorous but unsuccessful
effort to penetrate at once into the castle, and Bruce came down just
in time to throw himself between them and the walls. Henry Bohun, who
had forced his way forward at the head of a force of Welsh infantry,
was slain, and his troops dispersed. Gloucester was unhorsed, and
thereupon the English retreated to their camp. Fearing an attack under
cover of darkness, they had little sleep that night, and many of the
watchers consoled themselves with revelry and drunkenness. When St.
John's day dawned, they were too weary to fight effectively. Bruce
advanced from the woods and stationed his troops on the low ridge
bounding the northern slope of the little brook, called the
Bannockburn, which runs about two miles south of Stirling on its course
towards the Forth. Of the three divisions, or battles, into which the
Scots were divided, two stood on the same front, side by side, while
King Robert commanded the rear battle, which was to serve as a reserve.
He marshalled his forces much in the same way that Wallace had adopted
at Falkirk. There was the same close array of infantry, protected by a
wall of shields and a thick hedge of pikes. Each man wore light but
adequate armour, and, besides the pike, bore an axe at his side for
work at close quarters. Pits were dug before the Scots lines, and
covered over with hurdles so light that they would not bear the weight
of a mail-clad warrior and his horse. Save for a small cavalry force
kept in reserve in the rear, the men-at-arms were ordered to dismount
and take their place in the dense array, lest, like their comrades at
Falkirk, they should ride off in alarm when they saw the preponderance
of the enemy's horse. The Scots were less numerous than the English,
but they were an army and not a mob; their commander was a man of rare
military insight, and their tactics were those which, twelve years
before, had defeated the chivalry of France at Courtrai.
The English had feared that the Scots would not fight a pitched battle,
and were astonished to see them at daybreak prepared to receive an
attack. Their contempt for their enemy made them eager to accept the
challenge, but Gloucester, who, though only twenty-three, had more of
the soldier's eye than most of the magnates, urged Edward to postpone
the encounter for a day, that the army might recover from its fatigue,
and the clergy advised delay out of respect to St. John the Baptist.
Unmoved by prudence or piety, Edward denounced his nephew as a coward,
and ordered an immediate advance.
The English, forgetting the lessons of the Welsh wars, sent on the
archers in front of the cavalry. Bruce, seeing that their missiles were
playing havoc on his dense ranks, directed his small cavalry force to
charge the archers on their left flank. The unsupported bowmen at once
fell back in confusion, leaving the cavalry to do its work. Meanwhile
the English men-at-arms were advancing in three "battles," the first of
which then came into action. Many of the English fell into the pits
prepared for them, and the Scottish shields and pikes broke the attack
of those who evaded these obstacles. Gloucester fought with rare
gallantry, but was badly seconded by his followers. At last his horse
was slain under him, and he was knocked down and killed. The troop
which he led fled panic-stricken from the field. The Scots then
advanced with such vigour that the English never recovered from the
disorder into which their first disaster had thrown them. While these
things were going on, the second and third English "battles" had been
making feeble efforts to take their part in the fight. But the first
line cut them off from direct access to the foe, and the archers of the
second battle did more harm to their friends than to their enemies by
shooting wildly, straight in front of them. There was no single
directing force, nor, after Gloucester's fall, even one conspicuous
leader who would set an example of blind valour. Hundreds of English
knights, who had not drawn their swords, were soon fleeing in terror
before the enemy. Edward, who had taken up his station in the rear
battle, rode off the field and never dismounted until he reached
Dunbar, whence he fled by sea to Berwick.
Abandoned by their leaders, the English retreated as best they could.
Many of their best knights lay dead on the field, and more were drowned
in the Forth or Bannock, or swallowed up in the bogs, than were slain
in the fight. The Scots, whose losses were slight, showed a prudent
tendency to capture rather than slay the knights and barons, in order
that they might hold them up to ransom, and though many desisted from
the pursuit to plunder the baggage train, those who followed the
English fugitives reaped an abundant harvest of captives. Hereford was
chased into Bothwell castle, which was still held for the English. But
next day the Scottish official who commanded there for Edward opened
the gates to Bruce, and the earl became a prisoner. Pembroke escaped
with difficulty on foot, along with a contingent of Welsh infantry. The
mighty English army had ceased to exist; and with the surrender of
Stirling, next day, Bruce's career attained its culminating point. His
long years of trial were at last over, and the clever adventurer could
henceforth enjoy in security the crown which he had so gallantly won.
The military results of Bannockburn were of extreme importance. The
ablest of contemporary annalists aptly compared Bruce's victory to the
battle of Courtrai. An even nearer analogy was the fight at Morgarten
where, within two years, the pikemen of the Forest Cantons were to
scatter the chivalry of the Hapsburgers as effectively as the Flemings
won the day at Courtrai or the Scots at Bannockburn. The English had
forgotten the military lessons of Edward I., as completely as they had
forgotten his political lessons, and their reliance on the obsolete and
unsupported cavalry charge was their undoing. Bruce, on the other hand,
had improved upon the teaching of Wallace and Edward I. His use of his
men-at-arms on foot anticipates the English tactics of the Hundred
Years' War. The presence of these heavily armed troopers in his ranks
gave him a strength in defence, and an impetuosity in attack, which
made it a simple matter to break up the undisciplined squadrons opposed
to him. Bannockburn rang the death-knell of the tactics which since
Hastings had been regarded as the perfection of military art. The
political lessons of the victory were of not less importance. It is
almost too much to say that Bannockburn won for Scotland its
independence, for Scottish independence had already been vindicated.
But the easy victory brought home to men's minds the full measure of
the Scottish triumph. It was already clear that so long as Edward
lived, England would never make the continued effort which, as Edward
I.'s wars both in Wales and Scotland had shown, could alone
systematically conquer a nation. Bruce's difficulties were not so much
with the English as with the Scots. It was no small task to unite the
English of the Lothians, the Welsh of the south-west, the Norsemen of
the extreme north, and the Celts of the hills into a single Scottish
nation. He had against him the separatist local feeling which Scottish
history and ethnology made inevitable, and it took time for him to
obtain that prestige, which should hedge a king, and raise him above
the crowd of feudal earls and clan chieftains, who thought themselves
as good as the sometime Earl of Carrick. Such dignity and distinction
Bannockburn supplied, and such measure of national unity and strong
monarchical authority as Scotland ever enjoyed, came from the triumph
of him who became, even more than Wallace, the hero of the new nation.
For the next few years the Scots took the aggressive. They induced the
French kings to renew the alliance which Philip IV. had made with them
in the early years of the contest. They obtained papal recognition for
their king and the withdrawal of the ban of the Church on Comyn's
murderer; they plundered northern England from end to end, and broke
down Anglo-Norman rule in Ireland; they plotted for the resurrection of
the Welsh principality; and, worse than all, they made common cause
with the baronial opposition. Hence it followed that the political
results of the victory were as important to England as they were to
Scotland itself. The troubled history of the next eight years reveals
in detail the effects of Bannockburn on England. Edward's defeat threw
him into the power of the ordainers. The ordainers, when called upon to
govern, showed themselves as incapable as ever Edward or his favourites
had been. The results were misrule, aristocratic faction, popular
distress, and mob violence. Ineffective as are the first seven years of
the reign of Edward of Carnarvon, the eight years which followed
Bruce's victory plunged England deeper into the pit of degradation,
from which neither the king nor the king's foes were strong, wise, or
honest enough to release her.