[Illustration: 1_176_edward1.jpg EDWARD I.]
{1272.} The English were as yet so little inured to obedience under
a regular government, that the death of almost every king, since the
conquest, had been attended with disorders, and the council, reflecting
on the recent civil wars, and on the animosities which naturally
remain after these great convulsions, had reason to apprehend dangerous
consequences from the absence of the son and successor of Henry. They
therefore hastened to proclaim Prince Edward, to swear allegiance to
him, and to summon the states of the kingdom, in order to provide for
the public peace in this important conjuncture.[*]
* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 1 Walsing, p. 43. Trivet, p. 239.
Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, the earl of Cornwall, son of
Richard, king of the Romans, and the earl of Glocester, were appointed
guardians of the realm, and proceeded peaceably to the exercise of
their authority, without either meeting with opposition from any of the
people, or being disturbed with emulation and faction among themselves.
The high character acquired by Edward during the late commotions, his
military genius, his success in subduing the rebels, his moderation
in settling the kingdom, had procured him great esteem, mixed with
affection, among all orders of men; and no one could reasonably
entertain hopes of making any advantage of his absence, or of raising
disturbance in the nation. The earl of Glocester himself, whose great
power and turbulent spirit had excited most jealousy, was forward
to give proofs of his allegiance; and the other malecontents, being
destitute of a leader, were obliged to remain in submission to the
government.
Prince Edward had reached Sicily in his return from the Holy Land, when
he received intelligence of the death of his father; and he discovered a
deep concern on the occasion. At the same time, he learned the death of
an infant son, John whom his princess, Eleanor of Castile, had born him
at Acre, in Palestine; and as he appeared much less affected with that
misfortune, the king of Sicily expressed a surprise at this difference
of sentiment; but was told by Edward, that the death of a son was a
loss which he might hope to repair; the death of a father was a loss
irreparable.[*]
Edward proceeded homeward; but as he soon learned the quiet settlement
of the kingdom, he was in no hurry to take possession of the throne, but
spent near a year in France, before he made his appearance in England.
{1273.} In his passage by Chalons, in Burgundy, he was challenged by
the prince of the country to a tournament which he was preparing; and as
Edward excelled in those martial and dangerous exercises, the true image
of war, he declined not the opportunity of acquiring honor in that
great assembly of the neighboring nobles. But the image of war was here
unfortunately turned into the thing itself. Edward and his retinue were
so successful in the jousts, that the French knights, provoked at their
superiority, made a serious attack upon them, which was repulsed, and
much blood was idly shed in the quarrel.[**] This rencounter received
the name of the petty battle of Chalons.
{1274.} Edward went from Chalons to Paris, and did homage to Philip for the
dominions which he held in France.[***] He thence returned to Guienne,
and settled that province, which was in some confusion. He made
his journey to London through France; in his passage, he accommodated at
Montreuil a difference with Margaret, countess of Flanders, heiress of
that territory;[****] he was received with joyful acclamations by his
people, and was solemnly crowned at Westminster by Robert, archbishop of
Canterbury.
* Walsing. p. 44. Trivet. p. 240.
** Walsing. p. 44. Trivet. p. 241. M. West. p. 402.
*** Walsing p. 45.
**** Rymer. vol. ii. p. 32, 33.
The king immediately applied himself to the reestablishment of his
kingdom, and to the correcting of those disorders which the civil
commotions and the loose administration of his father had introduced
into every part of government. The plan of his policy was equally
generous and prudent. He considered the great barons both as the
immediate rivals of the crown and oppressors of the people; and he
purposed, by an exact distribution of justice, and a rigid execution
of the laws, to give at once protection to the inferior orders of the
state, and to diminish the arbitrary power of the great, on which their
dangerous authority was chiefly founded. Making it a rule in his own
conduct to observe, except on extraordinary occasions, the privileges
secured to them by the Great Charter, he acquired a right to insist
upon their observance of the same charter towards their vassals and
inferiors; and he made the crown be regarded by all the gentry and
commonalty of the kingdom, as the fountain of justice, and the general
asylum against oppression.
{1275.} Besides enacting several useful statutes, in a parliament which
he summoned at Westminster, he took care to inspect the conduct of all
his magistrates and judges, to displace such as were either negligent
or corrupt, to provide them with sufficient force for the execution of
justice, to extirpate all bands and confederacies of robbers, and to
repress those more silent robberies which were committed either by the
power of the nobles or under the countenance of public authority. By
this rigid administration, the face of the kingdom was soon changed; and
order and justice took place of violence and oppression: but amidst the
excellent institutions and public-spirited plans of Edward, there still
appears somewhat both of the severity of his personal character and of
the prejudices of the times.
As the various kinds of malefactors, the murderers, robbers,
incendiaries, ravishers, and plunderers, had become so numerous and
powerful, that the ordinary ministers of justice, especially in the
western counties, were afraid to execute the laws against them, the king
found it necessary to provide an extraordinary remedy for the evil; and
he erected a new tribunal, which, however useful, would have been
deemed in times of more regular liberty, a great stretch of illegal and
arbitrary power. It consisted of commissioners, who were empowered
to inquire into disorders and crimes of all kinds, and to inflict the
proper punishments upon them. The officers charged with this unusual
commission, made their circuits throughout the counties of England most
infested with this evil, and carried terror into all those parts of
the kingdom. In their zeal to punish crimes, they did not sufficiently
distinguish between the innocent and guilty; the smallest suspicion
became a ground of accusation and trial; the slightest evidence was
received against criminals; prisons were crowded with malefactors, real
or pretended; severe fines were levied for small offences; and the king,
though his exhausted exchequer was supplied by this expedient, found it
necessary to stop the course of so great rigor, and after terrifying and
dissipating by this tribunal the gangs of disorderly people in England,
he prudently annulled the commission;[*] and never afterwards renewed
it.
Among the various disorders to which the kingdom was subject, no one was
more universally complained of than the adulteration of the coin; and as
this crime required more art than the English of that age, who chiefly
employed force and violence in their iniquities, were possessed of, the
imputation fell upon the Jews.[**] Edward also seems to have indulged a
strong prepossession against that nation; and this ill-judged zeal for
Christianity being naturally augmented by an expedition to the Holy
Land, he let loose the whole rigor of his justice against that unhappy
people. Two hundred and eighty of them were hanged at once for this
crime in London alone, besides those who suffered in other parts of the
kingdom.[***]
* Spel. Gloss, in verbo Trailbaston. But Spelman was either
mistaken in placing this commission in the fifth year of the
king, or it was renewed in 1305. See Rymer, vol. ii. p. 960.
Trivet, p. 838., M. West. p. 450.
** Walsing. p. 48 Heming. vol. i. p. 6.
*** T. Wykes, p. 107.
The houses and lands, (for the Jews had of late ventured to make
purchases of that kind,) as well as the goods of great multitudes, were
sold and confiscated; and the king, lest it should be suspected that the
riches of the sufferers were the chief part of their guilt, ordered a
moiety of the money raised by these confiscations to be set apart, and
bestowed upon such as were willing to be converted to Christianity. But
resentment was more prevalent with them than any temptation from their
poverty; and very few of them could be induced by interest to embrace
the religion of their persecutors. The miseries of this people did not
here terminate. Though the arbitrary talliages and exactions levied upon
them had yielded a constant and a considerable revenue to the crown,
Edward prompted by his zeal and his rapacity, resolved some time
after[*] to purge the kingdom entirely of that hated race, and to seize
to himself at once their whole property as the reward of his labor.[**]
He left them only money sufficient to bear their charges into foreign
countries, where new persecutions and extortions awaited them: but the
inhabitants of the cinque ports, imitating the bigotry and avidity of
their sovereign, despoiled most of them of this small pittance, and even
threw many of them into the sea; a crime for which the king, who was
determined to be the sole plunderer in his dominions, inflicted a
capital punishment upon them. No less than fifteen thousand Jews were at
this time robbed of their effects, and banished the kingdom: very few of
that nation have since lived in England: and as it is impossible for a
nation to subsist without lenders of money, and none will lend without
a compensation, the practice of usury, as it was then called,
was thenceforth exercised by the English themselves upon their
fellow-citizens, or by Lombards and other foreigners. It is very much
to be questioned, whether the dealings of these new usurers were equally
open and unexceptionable with those of the old. By a law of Richard, it
was enacted, that three copies should be made of every bond given to a
Jew; one to be put into the hands of a public magistrate, another
into those of a man of credit, and a third to remain with the Jew
himself.[***] But as the canon law, seconded by the municipal, permitted
no Christian to take interest, all transactions of this kind must, after
the banishment of the Jews, have become more secret and clandestine, and
the lender, of consequence, be paid both for the use of his money, and
for the infamy and danger which he incurred by lending it.
* In the year 1290.
** Walsing. p. 54. Heming. vol. i. p. 20. Trivet, p 266.
*** Trivet, p. 128.
The great poverty of the crown, though no excuse, was probably the cause
of this egregious tyranny exercised against the Jews; but Edward also
practised other more honorable means of remedying that evil. He employed
a strict frugality in the management and distribution of his revenue: he
engaged the parliament to vote him a fifteenth of all movables; the pope
to grant him the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues for three years;
and the merchants to consent to a perpetual imposition of half a mark on
every sack of wool exported, and a mark on three hundred skins. He
also issued commissions to inquire into all encroachments on the royal
demesne; into the value of escheats, forfeitures, and Wardships; and
into the means of repairing or improving every branch of the revenue.[*]
The commissioners, in the execution of their office, began to carry
matters too far against the nobility, and to question titles to estates
which had been transmitted from father to son for several generations.
Earl Warrenne, who had done such eminent service in the late reign,
being required to show his titles, drew his sword; and subjoined, that
William the bastard had not conquered the kingdom for himself alone: his
ancestor was a joint adventurer in the enterprise; and he himself was
determined to maintain what had from that period remained unquestioned
in his family. The king, sensible of the danger, desisted from making
further inquiries of this nature.
{1276.} But the active spirit of Edward could not long remain without
employment. He soon after undertook an enterprise more prudent for
himself, and more advantageous to his people. Lewellyn, prince of Wales,
had been deeply engaged with the Mountfort faction; had entered into
all their conspiracies against the crown; had frequently fought on
their side; and, till the battle of Evesham, so fatal to that party, had
employed every expedient to depress the royal cause, and to promote
the success of the barons. In the general accommodation made with the
vanquished, Lewellyn had also obtained his pardon; but as he was the
most powerful, and therefore the most obnoxious vassal of the crown, he
had reason to entertain anxiety about his situation, and to dread the
future effects of resentment and jealousy in the English monarch. For
this reason he determined to provide for his security by maintaining a
secret correspondence with his former associates; and he even made his
addresses to a daughter of the earl of Leicester, who was sent to him
from beyond sea, but being intercepted in her passage near the Isles of
Scilly, was detained in the court of England.[**]
* Ann. Waverl.p. 235.
** Walsing. p. 46, 47. Heming. vol. i. p. 5. Trivet, p. 248
This incident increasing the mutual jealousy between Edward and
Lewellyn, the latter, when required to come to England, and do homage to
the new king, scrupled to put himself in the hands of an enemy, desired
a safe-conduct from Edward, insisted upon having the king’s son and
other noblemen delivered to him as hostages, and demanded that his
consort should previously be set at liberty.[*] The king, having now
brought the state to a full settlement, was not displeased with
this occasion of exercising his authority, and subduing entirely the
principality of Wales. He refused all Lewellyn’s demands, except that
of a safe-conduct; sent him repeated summons to perform the duty of a
vassal; levied an army to reduce him to obedience; obtained a new aid of
a fifteenth from parliament; and marched out with certain assurance of
success against the enemy.
{1277.} Besides the great disproportion of force between the kingdom
and the principality, the circumstances of the two states were entirely
reversed; and the same intestine dissensions which had formerly weakened
England, now prevailed in Wales, and had even taken place in the
reigning family. David and Roderic, brothers to Lewellyn, dispossessed
of their inheritance by that prince, had been obliged to have recourse
to the protection of Edward, and they seconded with all their interest,
which was extensive, his attempts to enslave their native country. The
Welsh prince had no resource but in the inaccessible situation of
his mountains, which had hitherto, through many ages, defended his
forefathers against all attempts of the Saxon and Norman conquerors; and
he retired among the hills of Snowdun, resolute to defend himself to the
last extremity. But Edward, equally vigorous and cautious, entering by
the north with a formidable army, pierced into the heart of the country;
and having carefully explored every road before him, and secured every
pass behind him, approached the Welsh army in its last retreat. He here
avoided the putting to trial the valor of a nation proud of its ancient
independence, and inflamed with animosity against its hereditary
enemies; and he trusted to the slow, but sure effects of famine, for
reducing that people to subjection. The rude and simple manners of the
natives, as well as the mountainous situation of their country, had made
them entirely neglect tillage, and trust to pasturage alone for their
subsistence; a method of life which had hitherto[*] secured them against
the irregular attempts of the English, out exposed them to certain ruin,
when the conquest of the country was steadily pursued, and prudently
planned by Edward. Destitute of magazines, cooped up in a narrow corner,
they, as well as their cattle, suffered all the rigors of famine; and
Lewellyn, without being able to strike a stroke for his independence,
was at last obliged to submit at discretion, and receive the terms
imposed upon him by the victor.[**] He bound himself to pay to Edward
fifty thousand pounds, as a reparation of damages; to do homage to the
crown of England; to permit all the other barons of Wales, except four
near Snowdun, to swear fealty to the same crown; to relinquish the
country between Cheshire and the River Conway; to settle on his brother
Roderic a thousand marks a year, and on David five hundred; and to
deliver ten hostages as security for his future submission.[***]
Edward, on the performance of the other articles, remitted to the prince
of Wales the payment of the fifty thousand pounds;[****] which were
stipulated by treaty, and which, it is probable, the poverty of
the country made it absolutely impossible for him to levy. But,
notwithstanding this indulgence, complaints of iniquities soon arose
on the side of the vanquished: the English, insolent on their easy and
bloodless victory, oppressed the inhabitants of the districts which were
yielded to them: the lords marchers committed with impunity all kinds
of violence on their Welsh neighbors: new and more severe terms were
imposed on Lewellyn himself; and Edward, when the prince attended him
at Worcester, exacted a promise that he would retain no person in his
principality who should be obnoxious to the English monarch.[****]
* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 68. Walsing, p. 46 Trivet, p. 247
** T. Wykes, p. 105.
*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 88. Walsing. p. 47. Trivet, p. 251.
T. Wykes p. 106.
**** Rymer, p. 92.
***** Dr. Powell’s Hist. of Wales, p.344, 345.
There were other personal insults which raised the indignation of the
Welsh, and made them determine rather to encounter a force which they
had already experienced to be so much superior, than to bear oppression
from the haughty victors. Prince David, seized with the national spirit,
made peace with his brother, and promised to concur in the defence of
public liberty. The Welsh flew to arms; and Edward, not displeased with
the occasion of making his conquest final and absolute, assembled all
his military tenants, and advanced into Wales with an army which the
inhabitants could not reasonably hope to resist. The situation of the
country gave the Welsh at first some advantage over Luke de Tany, one
of Edward’s captains, who had passed the Menau with a detachment;[*]
but Lewelly, being surprised by Mortimer, was defeated and slain in an
action, and two thousand of his followers were put to the sword.[**]
David, who succeeded him in the principality, could never collect an
army sufficient to face the English; and being chased from hill to hill,
and hunted from one retreat to another, was obliged to conceal himself
under various disguises, and was at last betrayed in his lurking-place
to the enemy.
{1283.} Edward sent him in chains to Shrewsbury; and bringing him to
a formal trial before all the peers of England, ordered this sovereign
prince to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, as a traitor, for defending
by arms the liberties of his native country, together with his own
hereditary authority.[***] All the Welsh nobility submitted to the
conqueror; the laws of England, with the sheriffs and other ministers of
justice, were established in that principality; and though it was long
before national antipathies were extinguished, and a thorough union
attained between the people, yet this important conquest, which it had
required eight hundred years fully to effect, was at last, through the
abilities of Edward, completed by the English.
{1284} The king, sensible that nothing kept alive the ideas of military
valor and of ancient glory so much as the traditional poetry of the
people, which, assisted by the power of music and the jollity of
festivals, made deep impression on the minds of the youth, gathered
together all the Welsh bards, and from a barbarous, though not absurd
policy, ordered them to be put to death.[****]
* Walsing. p. 50. Heming. vol. i p. 9. Trivet, p. 258. T
Wykes, p. 110.
** Heming. vol. i. p. 11. Trivet, p. 257. Ann. Waverl. p.
235.
*** Heming. vol. i. p. 12. Trivet, p. 269. Ann Waverl. p.
288 T Wykes, p. 111. M. West. p. 411.
**** Sir J. Wynne, p. 15. crown; and henceforth gives a
title to the eldest son of the kings of England.
There prevails a vulgar story, which, as it well suits the capacity
of the monkish writers, is carefully recorded by them; that Edward,
assembling the Welsh, promised to give them a prince of unexceptionable
manners, a Welshman by birth, and one who could speak no other language.
On their acclamations of joy, and promise of obedience, he invested in
the principality his second son, Edward, then an infant, who had been
born at Carnarvon. The death of his eldest son Alphonso, soon after,
made young Edward heir of the monarchy; the principality of Wales was
fully annexed.
[Illustration: 1_178_carnaryon.jpg CARNARVON CASTLE]
{1286.} The settlement of Wales appeared so complete to Edward, that
in less than two years after, he went abroad, in order to make peace
between Alphonso, king of Arragon, and Philip the Fair, who had lately
succeeded his father, Philip the Hardy, on the throne of France.[*] The
difference between these two princes had arisen about the kingdom of
Sicily, which the pope, after his hopes from England failed him, had
bestowed on Charles, brother to St. Lewis, and which was claimed upon
other titles by Peter, king of Arragon, father to Alphonso. Edward had
powers from both princes to settle the terms of peace, and he succeeded
in his endeavors; but as the controversy nowise regards England, we
shall not enter into a detail of it. He staid abroad above three years;
and on his return found many disorders to have prevailed, both from open
violence and from the corruption of justice.
Thomas Chamberlain, a gentleman of some note, had assembled several of
his associates at Boston, in Lincolnshire, under pretence of holding
a tournament, an exercise practised by the gentry only; but in reality
with a view of plundering the rich fair of Boston, and robbing the
merchants. To facilitate his purpose, he privately set fire to the town;
and while the inhabitants were employed in quenching the flames,
the conspirators broke into the booths, and carried off the goods.
Chamberlain himself was detected and hanged; but maintained so steadily
the point of honor to his accomplices, that he could not be prevailed
on, by offers or promises, to discover any of them. Many other instances
of robbery and violence broke out in all parts of England; though the
singular circumstances attending this conspiracy have made it alone be
particularly recorded by historians.[**]
* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 149,150, 174.
** Heming vol. i. p. 16, 17.
{1289.} But the corruption of the judges, by which the fountains of
justice were poisoned, seemed of still more dangerous consequence.
Edward, in order to remedy this prevailing abuse, summoned a parliament,
and brought the judges to a trial; where all of them, except two, who
were clergymen, were convicted of this flagrant iniquity, were fined,
and deposed. The amount of the fines levied upon them is alone a
sufficient proof of their guilt; being above one hundred thousand marks,
an immense sum in those days, and sufficient to defray the charges of an
expensive war between two great kingdoms. The king afterwards made all
the new judges swear that they would take no bribes; but his expedient
of deposing and fining the old ones, was the more effectual remedy.
We now come to give an account of the state of affairs in Scotland,
which gave rise to the most interesting transactions of this reign, and
of some of the subsequent; though the intercourse of that kingdom with
England, either in peace or war, had hitherto produced so few events of
moment, that, to avoid tediousness, we have omitted many of them, and
have been very concise in relating the rest. If the Scots had, before
this period, any real history worthy of the name, except what they glean
from scattered passages in the English historians, those events, however
minute, yet being the only foreign transactions of the nation, might
deserve a place in it.
Though the government of Scotland had been continually exposed to those
factions and convulsions which are incident to all barbarous and to many
civilized nations; and though the successions of their kings, the
only part of their history which deserves any credit had often been
disordered by irregularities and usurpations; the true heir of the
royal family had still in the end prevailed, and Alexander III., who
had espoused the sister of Edward, probably inherited, after a period
of about eight hundred years, and through a succession of males, the
sceptre of all the Scottish princes who had governed the nation since
its first establishment in the island. This prince died in 1286, by a
fall from his horse at Kinghorn,[*] without leaving any male issue, and
without any descendant, except Margaret, born of Eric, king of Norway,
and of Margaret, daughter of the Scottish monarch. This princess,
commonly called the Maid of Norway, though a female, and an infant, and
a foreigner, yet being the lawful heir of the kingdom, had, through
her grandfather’s care, been recognized successor by the states of
Scotland;[**] and on Alexander’s death, the dispositions which had been
previously made against that event, appeared so just and prudent, that
no disorders, as might naturally be apprehended, ensued in the kingdom.
* Heming. vol. i. p. 29. Trivet, p. 267.
** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 266.
Margaret was acknowledged queen of Scotland; five guardians, the bishops
of St. Andrews and Glasgow, the earls of Fife and Buchan, and James,
steward of Scotland, entered peaceably upon the administration; and the
infant princess, under the protection of Edward, her great uncle, and
Eric, her father, who exerted themselves on this occasion, seemed firmly
seated on the throne of Scotland. The English monarch was naturally led
to build mighty projects on this incident; and having lately, by force
of arms, brought Wales under subjection, he attempted, by the marriage
of Margaret with his eldest son, Edward, to unite the whole island into
one monarchy, and thereby to give it security both against domestic
convulsions and foreign invasions.
{1290.} The amity which had of late prevailed between the two nations,
and which, even in former times, had never been interrupted by any
violent wars or injuries, facilitated extremely the execution of this
project, so favorable to the happiness and grandeur of both kingdoms;
and the states of Scotland readily gave their assent to the English
proposals, and even agreed that their young sovereign should be
educated in the court of Edward. Anxious, however, for the liberty
and independency of their country, they took care to stipulate very
equitable conditions, ere they intrusted themselves into the hands of so
great and so ambitious a monarch. It was agreed that they should enjoy
all their ancient laws, liberties, and customs; that in case young
Edward and Margaret should die without issue, the crown of Scotland
should revert to the next heir, and should be inherited by him free
and independent; that the military tenants of the crown should never be
obliged to go out of Scotland, in order to do homage to the sovereign
of the united kingdoms, nor the chapters of cathedral, collegiate, or
conventual churches, in order to make elections; that the parliaments
summoned for Scottish affairs should always be held within the bounds of
that kingdom; and that Edward should bind himself, under the penalty of
one hundred thousand marks, payable to the pope for the use of the holy
wars to observe all these articles.[*]
* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 482.
It is not easy to conceive that two nations could have treated more on
a footing of equality than Scotland and England maintained during the
whole course of this transaction; and though Edward gave his assent to
the article concerning the future independency of the Scottish crown,
with a “saving of his former rights,” this reserve gave no alarm to the
nobility of Scotland, both because these rights, having hitherto been
little heard of had occasioned no disturbance, and because the Scots
had so near a prospect of seeing them entirely absorbed in the rights of
their sovereignty.
{1291.} But this project, so happily formed and so amicably conducted,
failed of success, by the sudden death of the Norwegian princess, who
expired on her passage to Scotland,[*] and left a very dismal prospect
to the kingdom. Though disorders were for the present obviated by the
authority of the regency formerly established, the succession itself of
the crown was now become an object of dispute; and the regents could not
expect that a controversy, which is not usually decided by reason and
argument alone, would be peaceably settled by them, or even by the
states of the kingdom, amidst so many powerful pretenders. The posterity
of William, king of Scotland, the prince taken prisoner by Henry II.,
being all extinct by the death of Margaret of Norway, the right to the
crown devolved on the issue of David, earl of Huntingdon brother to
William, whose male line being also extinct, left the succession open
to the posterity of his daughters. The earl of Huntingdon had three
daughters; Margaret, married to Alan, lord of Galloway, Isabella, wife
of Robert Brus or Bruce lord of Annandale, and Adama, who espoused
Henry, Lord Hastings. Margaret, the eldest of the sisters, left one
daughter, Devergilda, married to John Baliol, by whom she had a son of
the same name, one of the present competitors for the crown: Isabella
II. bore a son, Robert Bruce, who was now alive, and who also insisted
on his claim: Adama III. left a son, John Hastings, who pretended that
the kingdom of Scotland, like many other inheritances, was divisible
among the three daughters of the earl of Huntingdon, and that he, in
right of his mother, had a title to a third of it. Baliol and
Bruce united against Hastings, in maintaining that, the kingdom was
indivisible; but each of them, supported by plausible reasons, asserted
the preference of his own title. Baliol was sprung from the elder
branch: Bruce was one degree nearer the common stock: if the principle
of representation was regarded, the former had the better claim:
if propinquity was considered, the latter was entitled to the
preference.[**]
* Heming. vol. i. p. 30. Trivet, p. 268
** Heming. vol. i. p. 36.
The sentiments of men were divided: all the nobility had taken part on
one side or the other: the people followed implicitly their leaders:
the two claimants themselves had great power and numerous retainers in
Scotland: and it is no wonder that, among a rude people, more accustomed
to arms than inured to laws, a controversy of this nature, which could
not be decided by any former precedent among them, and which is
capable of exciting commotions in the most legal and best established
governments, should threaten the state with the most fatal convulsions.
Each century has its peculiar mode in conducting business; and men,
guided more by custom than by reason, follow, without inquiry, the
manners which are prevalent in their own time. The practice of that
age in controversies between states and princes, seems to have been to
choose a foreign prince as an equal arbiter, by whom the question
was decided, and whose sentence prevented those dismal confusions and
disorders, inseparable at all times from war, but which were multiplied
a hundred fold, and dispersed into every corner, by the nature of the
feudal governments. It was thus that the English king and barons, in
the preceding reign, had endeavored to compose their dissensions by a
reference to the king of France; and the celebrated integrity of that
monarch had prevented all the bad effects which might naturally have
been dreaded from so perilous an expedient. It was thus that the kings
of France and Arragon, and afterwards other princes, had submitted their
controversies to Edward’s judgment; and the remoteness of their states,
the great power of the princes, and the little interest which he had
on either side, had induced him to acquit himself with honor in his
decisions. The parliament of Scotland, therefore, threatened with a
furious civil war, and allured by the great reputation of the English
monarch, as well as by the present amicable correspondence between the
kingdoms, agreed in making a reference to Edward; and Fraser, bishop
of St. Andrews, with other deputies, was sent to notify to him their
resolution, and to claim his good offices in the present dangers to
which they were exposed.[*]
* Heming, vol. i. p. 31.
His inclination, they flattered themselves, led him to prevent their
dissensions, and to interpose with a power which none of the competitors
would dare to withstand: when this expedient was proposed by one party,
the other deemed it dangerous to object to it: indifferent persons
thought that the imminent perils of a civil war would thereby be
prevented; and no one reflected on the ambitious character of Edward,
and the almost certain ruin which must attend a small state divided
by faction, when it thus implicitly submits itself to the will of so
powerful and encroaching a neighbor.
The temptation was too strong for the virtue of the English monarch to
resist. He purposed to lay hold of the present favorable opportunity,
and if not to create, at least to revive, his claim of a feudal
superiority over Scotland; a claim which had hitherto lain in the
deepest obscurity, and which, if ever it had been an object of
attention, or had been so much as suspected, would have effectually
prevented the Scottish barons from choosing him for an umpire. He well
knew that, if this pretension were once submitted to, as it seemed
difficult in the present situation of Scotland to oppose it, the
absolute sovereignty of that kingdom (which had been the case with
Wales) would soon follow; and that one great vassal, cooped up in
an island with his liege lord, without resource from foreign powers,
without aid from any fellow-vassals, could not long maintain his
dominions against the efforts of a mighty kingdom, assisted by all
the cavils which the feudal law afforded his superior against him. In
pursuit of this great object, very advantageous to England, perhaps
in the end no less beneficial to Scotland, but extremely unjust and
iniquitous in itself, Edward busied himself in searching for proofs
of his pretended superiority; and, instead of looking into his own
archives, which, if his claim had been real, must have afforded him
numerous records of the homages done by the Scottish princes, and could
alone yield him any authentic testimony, he made all the monasteries be
ransacked for old chronicles and histories written by Englishmen, and
he collected all the passages which seemed anywise to favor his
pretensions.[*] Yet even in this method of proceeding, which must have
discovered to himself the injustice of his claim, he was far from being
fortunate. He began his proofs from the time of Edward the Elder, and
continued them through all the subsequent Saxon and Norman times; but
produced nothing to his purpose.[**]
* Walsing. p. 55.
** Rymer, vol. ii. p, 559.
The whole amount of his authorities during the Saxon period, when
stripped of the bombast and inaccurate style of the monkish historians,
is, that the Scots had sometimes been defeated by the English, had
received peace on disadvantageous terms, had made submissions to the
English monarch, and had even perhaps fallen into some dependence on a
power which was so much superior, and which they had not at that time
sufficient force to resist. His authorities from the Norman period were,
if possible, still less conclusive: the historians indeed make frequent
mention of homage done by the northern potentate; but no one of them
says that it was done for his kingdom; and several of them declare, in
express terms that it was relative only to the fiefs which he enjoyed
south of the Tweed;[*] in the same manner, as the king of England
himself swore fealty to the French monarch, for the fiefs which he
inherited in France. And to such scandalous shifts was Edward reduced,
that he quotes a passage from Hoveden[**] where it is asserted that a
Scottish king had done homage to England; but he purposely omits the
latter part of the sentence, which expresses that this prince did homage
for the lands which he held in England.
When William, king of Scotland, was taken prisoner in the battle of
Alnwick, he was obliged, for the recovery of his liberty, to swear
fealty to the victor for his crown itself. The deed was performed
according to all the rites of the feudal law: the record was preserved
in the English archives, and is mentioned by all the historians: but
as it is the only one of the kind, and as historians speak of this
superiority as a great acquisition gained by the fortunate arms of Henry
II.,[***] there can remain no doubt that the kingdom of Scotland was,
in all former periods, entirely free and independent. Its subjection
continued a very few years: King Richard, desirous, before his departure
for the Holy Land, to conciliate the friendship of William, renounced
that homage, which, he says in express terms, had been extorted by his
father; and he only retained the usual homage which had been done by the
Scottish princes for the lands which they held in England.
* Hoveden, p. 492, 662. M. Paris, p. 109. M. West. p. 256.
** Page 662.
*** Neubr. lib. ii. cap. 4. Knyghton, p. 2392.
But though this transaction rendered the independence of Scotland
still more unquestionable, than if no fealty had ever been sworn to the
English crown, the Scottish kings, apprised of the point aimed at by
their powerful neighbors, seem for a long time to have retained some
jealousy on that head, and, in doing homage, to have anxiously obviated
all such pretensions. When William, in 1200, did homage to John at
Lincoln, he was careful to insert a salvo for his royal dignity;[*] when
Alexander III. sent assistance to his father-in-law, Henry III., during
the wars of the barons, he previously procured an acknowledgment, that
this aid was granted only from friendship, not from any right claimed by
the English monarch;[**] and when that same prince was invited to assist
at the coronation of this very Edward, he declined attendance till he
received a like acknowledgment.[***] [1]
But as all these reasons (and stronger could not be produced) were but a
feeble rampart against the power of the sword, Edward, carrying with
him a great army, which was to enforce his proofs, advanced to the
frontiers, and invited the Scottish parliament, and all the competitors,
to attend him in the Castle of Norham, a place situated on the southern
banks of the Tweed, in order to determine the cause which had been
referred to his arbitration. But though this deference seemed due to so
great a monarch, and was no more than what his father and the English
barons had, in similar circumstances, paid to Lewis IX., the king,
careful not to give umbrage, and determined never to produce his claim
till it should be too late to think of opposition, sent the Scottish
barons an acknowledgment, that, though at that time they passed the
frontiers, this step should never be drawn into precedent, or afford the
English kings a pretence for exacting a like submission in any future
transaction.[****] When the whole Scottish nation had thus unwarily put
themselves in his power, Edward opened the conferences at Norham: he
informed the parliament, by the mouth of Roger le Brabançon, his chief
justiciary, that he was come thither to determine the right among the
competitors to their crown; that he was determined to do strict justice
to all parties; and that he was entitled to this authority, not in
virtue of the reference made to him, but in quality of superior and
liege lord of the kingdom.[*****] [2]
* Hoveden, p. 811.
** Rymer, vol. ii p 844.
*** See note A. at the end of the volume.
**** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 539, 845. Walsing. p. 58.
***** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 543. See note B, at the end of the
volume.
He then produced his proofs of this superiority, which he pretended to
be unquestionable, and he required of them an acknowledgment of it; a
demand which was superfluous if the fact were already known and avowed,
and which plainly betrays Edward’s consciousness of his lame and
defective title. The Scottish parliament was astonished at so new a
pretension, and answered only by their silence. But the king, in order
to maintain the appearance of free and regular proceedings, desired
them to remove into their own country, to deliberate upon his claim, to
examine his proofs, to propose all their objections, and to inform him
of their resolution; and he appointed a plain at Upsettleton, on the
northern banks of the Tweed, for that purpose.
When the Scottish barons assembled in this place, though moved with
indignation at the injustice of this unexpected claim, and at the fraud
with which it had been conducted, they found themselves betrayed into
a situation in which it was impossible for them to make any defence
for the ancient liberty and independence of their country. The king of
England, a martial and politic prince, at the head of a powerful army,
lay at a very small distance, and was only separated from them by a
river fordable in many places. Though, by a sudden flight, some of them
might themselves be, able to make their escape, what hopes could they
entertain of securing the kingdom against his future enterprises?
Without a head, without union among themselves, attached all of them
to different competitors, whose title they had rashly submitted to the
decision of this foreign usurper, and who were thereby reduced to an
absolute dependence upon him, they could only expect by resistance
to entail on themselves and their posterity a more grievous and more
destructive servitude. Yet even in this desperate state of their affairs
the Scottish barons, as we learn from Walsingham,[*] one of the best
historians of that period, had the courage to reply that, till they
had a king, they could take no resolution on so momentous a point: the
journal of King Edward says, that they made no answer at all;[**] that
is, perhaps, no particular answer or objection to Edward’s claim: and
by this solution it is possible to reconcile the journal with the
historian. The king, therefore, interpreting their silence as consent,
addressed himself to the several competitors.
* Page 56. M. West. p. 436. It is said by Hemingford, vol.
i, p. 33, that the king menaced violently the Scotch barons,
and forced them to compliance, at least to silence.
** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 548. previously to his pronouncing
sentence, required their acknowledgment of his superiority.
It is evident from the genealogy of the royal family of Scotland, that
there could only be two questions about the succession--that between
Baliol and Bruce on the one hand, and Lord Hastings on the other,
concerning the partition of the crown: and that between Baliol and
Bruce themselves concerning the preference of their respective titles,
supposing the kingdom indivisible: yet there appeared on this occasion
no less than nine claimants besides; John Comyn or Cummin, lord of
Badenoch, Florence, earl of Holland, Patric Dunbar, earl of March,
William de Vescey, Robert de Pynkeni, Nicholas de Soules, Patric
Galythly, Roger de Mandeville, Robert de Ross; not to mention the king
of Norway, who claimed as heir to his daughter Margaret.[*] Some of
these competitors were descended from more remote branches of the royal
family; others were even sprung from illegitimate children; and as none
of them had the least pretence of right, it is natural to conjecture
that Edward had secretly encouraged them to appear in the list of
claimants, that he might sow the more division among the Scottish
nobility, make the cause appear the more intricate, and be able to
choose, among a great number, the most obsequious candidate.
But he found them all equally obsequious on this occasion.[**] Robert
Bruce was the first that acknowledged Edward’s right of superiority over
Scotland; and he had so far foreseen the king’s pretensions, that even
in his petition, where he set forth his claim to the crown, he had
previously applied to him as liege lord of the kingdom; a step which was
not taken by any of the other competitors.[***] They all, however, with
seeming willingness, made a like acknowledgment when required; though
Baliol, lest he should give offence to the Scottish nation, had taken
care to be absent during the first days; and he was the last that
recognized the king’s title.[****]
* Walsing. p. 58.
** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 529, 545. Walsing. p. 56. Heming.
vol. i. 33, 34. Trivet, p. 260. M. West. p. 415.
*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 577, 578, 579.
**** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 546.
Edward next deliberated concerning the method of proceeding in the
discussion of this great controversy. He gave orders that Baliol,
and such of the competitors as adhered to him should choose forty
commissioners; Bruce and his adherents forty more: to these the
king added twenty-four Englishmen: he ordered these hundred and four
commissioners to examine the cause deliberately among themselves, and
make their report to him:[*] and he promised in the ensuing year to give
his determination. Meanwhile he pretended that it was requisite to have
all the fortresses of Scotland delivered into his hands, in order to
enable him, without opposition, to put the true heir in possession of
the crown; and this exorbitant demand was complied with, both by the
states and by the claimants.[**] The governors also of all the castles
immediately resigned their command; except Umfreville, earl of Angus,
who refused, without a formal and particular acquittal from the
parliament and the several claimants, to surrender his fortresses to so
domineering an arbiter, who had given to Scotland so many just reasons
of suspicion.[***] Before this assembly broke up, which had fixed such
a mark of dishonor on the nation, all the prelates and barons there
present swore fealty to Edward; and that prince appointed commissioners
to receive a like oath from all the other barons and persons of
distinction in Scotland.[****]
* Rymer, vol. ii. p. 555, 556.
** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 529. Walsing. p. 56, 57.
*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 531.
**** Rymer, vol. ii p. 573.
The king, having finally made, as he imagined, this important
acquisition, left the commissioners to sit at Berwick, and examine the
titles of the several competitors who claimed the precarious crown,
which Edward was willing for some time to allow the lawful heir to
enjoy. He went southwards, both in order to assist at the funeral of
his mother, Queen Eleanor, who died about this time, and to compose some
differences which had arisen among his principal nobility. Gilbert, earl
of Glocester, the greatest baron of the kingdom, had espoused the king’s
daughter; and being elated by that alliance, and still more by his
own power, which, he thought, set him above the laws, he permitted his
bailiffs and vassals to commit violence on the lands of Humphrey Bohun,
earl of Hereford, who retaliated the injury by like violence. But
this was not a reign in which such illegal proceedings could pass with
impunity. Edward procured a sentence against the two earls, committed
them both to prison, and would not restore them to their liberty, till
he had exacted a fine of one thousand marks from Hereford, and one of
ten thousand from his son-in-law.
{1292.} During this interval, the titles of John Baliol and of
Robert Bruce, whose claims appeared to be the best founded among the
competitors for the crown of Scotland, were the subject of general
disquisition, as well as of debate among the commissioners. Edward, in
order to give greater authority to his intended decision, proposed this
general question both to the commissioners and to all the celebrated
lawyers in Europe, “Whether a person descended from the elder sister,
but farther removed by one degree, were preferable, in the succession
of kingdoms, fiefs, and other indivisible inheritances, to one descended
from the younger sister, but one degree nearer to the common stock?”
This was the true state of the case; and the principle of representation
had now gained such ground every where, that a uniform answer was
returned to the king in the affirmative. He therefore pronounced
sentence in favor of Balioi; and when Bruce, upon this disappointment,
joined afterwards Lord Hastings, and claimed a third of the kingdom,
which he now pretended to be divisible, Edward, though his interests
seemed more to require the partition of Scotland, again pronounced
sentence in favor of Baliol. That competitor, upon renewing his oath
of fealty to England, was put in possession of the kingdom;[*] all his
fortresses were restored to him;[**] and the conduct of Edward, both in
the deliberate solemnity of the proceedings, and in the justice of the
award, was so far unexceptionable.
{1293.} Had the king entertained no other view than that of establishing
his superiority over Scotland, though the iniquity of that claim was
apparent, and was aggravated by the most egregious breach of trust,
he might have fixed his pretensions, and have left that important
acquisition to his posterity: but he immediately proceeded in such a
manner as made it evident that, not content with this usurpation, he
aimed also at the absolute sovereignty and dominion of the kingdom.
Instead of gradually inuring the Scots to the yoke, and exerting his
rights of superiority with moderation, he encouraged all appeals to
England; required King John himself, by six different summons on
trivial occasions, to come to London;[***] refused him the privilege of
defending his cause by a procurator; and obliged him to appear at the
bar of his parliament as a private person.[****]
* Rymer vol. ii. p. 590, 591, 593, 600.
** Rymer, voL ii p. 599.
*** Rymer, p. 603, 605, 606, 608, 615, 616.
**** Ryley’s Placit. Parl. p. 152, 153.
These humiliating demands were hitherto quite unknown to a king of
Scotland: they are, however, the necessary consequence of vassalage by
the feudal law; and as there was no preceding instance of such treatment
submitted to by a prince of that country, Edward must, from that
circumstance alone, had there remained any doubt, have been himself
convinced that his claim was altogether a usurpation.[*] [3] But his
intention plainly was to enrage Baliol by these indignities, to engage
him in rebellion, and to assume the dominion of the state as the
punishment of his treason and felony. Accordingly Baliol, though a
prince of a soft and gentle spirit, returned into Scotland highly
provoked at this usage, and determined at all hazards to vindicate
his liberty; and the war which soon after broke out between France and
England, gave him a favorable opportunity of executing his purpose.
The violence, robberies, and disorders, to which that age was so
subject, were not confined to the licentious barons and their retainers
at land: the sea was equally infested with piracy: the feeble execution
of the laws had given license to all orders of men: and a general
appetite for rapine and revenge, supported by a false point of honor,
had also infected the merchants and mariners; and it pushed them, on
any provocation, to seek redress by immediate retaliation upon the
aggressors. A Norman and an English vessel met off the coast near
Bayonne; and both of them having occasion for water, they sent their
boats to land, and the several crews came at the same time to the same
spring: there ensued a quarrel for the preference: a Norman, drawing his
dagger, attempted to stab an Englishman; who, grappling with him, threw
his adversary on the ground; and the Norman, as was pretended, falling
on his own dagger, was slain.[**] This scuffle between two seamen about
water, soon kindled a bloody war between the two nations, and involved
a great part of Europe in the quarrel. The mariners of the Norman ship
carried their complaints to the French king: Philip, without inquiring
into the fact, without demanding redress, bade them take revenge, and
trouble him no more about the matter.[***]
* See note C, at the end of the volume.
** Walsing. p. 58. Heming. vol. i. p. 39.
*** Walsing. p. 59.
The Normans, who had been more regular than usual in applying to the
crown, needed but this hint to proceed to immediate violence. They
seized an English ship in the channel; and hanging, along with some
dogs, several of the crew on the yard-arm, in presence of their
companions, dismissed the vessel; [*] and bade the mariners inform their
countrymen that vengeance was now taken for the blood of the Norman
killed at Bayonne. This injury, accompanied with so general and
deliberate an insult, was resented by the mariners of the cinque ports,
who, without carrying any complaint to the king, or waiting for redress,
retaliated by committing like barbarities on all French vessels without
distinction. The French, provoked by their losses, preyed on the ships
of all Edward’s subjects, whether English or Gascon: the sea became
a scene of piracy between the nations: the sovereigns, without either
seconding or repressing the violence of their subjects, seemed to remain
indifferent spectators: the English made private associations with the
Irish and Dutch seamen; the French with the Flemish and Genoese;[**]
and the animosities of the people on both sides became every day more
violent and barbarous. A fleet of two hundred Norman vessels set sail
to the south for wine and other commodities; and in their passage seized
all the English ships which they met with, hanged the seamen, and seized
the goods. The inhabitants of the English seaports, informed of this
incident, fitted out a fleet of sixty sail, stronger and better manned
than the others, and awaited the enemy on their return. After an
obstinate battle, they put them to rout, and sunk, destroyed, or took
the greater part of them.[***] No quarter was given; and it is pretended
that the loss of the French amounted to fifteen thousand men; which is
accounted for by this circumstance, that the Norman fleet was employed
in transporting a considerable body of soldiers from the south.
The affair was now become too important to be any longer overlooked by
the sovereigns. On Philip’s sending an envoy to demand reparation and
restitution, the king despatched the bishop of London to the French
court, in order to accommodate the quarrel. He first said, that the
English courts of justice were open to all men; and if any Frenchman
were injured, he might seek reparation by course of law.[****]
* Heming. vol. i. p. 40. M. West. p. 419.
** Heming. vol. i. p. 40.
*** Walsing. p. 60. Trivet, p 274. Chron. Dunst vol. ii. p
609.
**** Trivet, p. 275.
He next offered to adjust the matter by private arbiters, or by a
personal interview with the king of France, or by a reference either
to the pope, or the college of cardinals, or any particular cardinals,
agreed on by both parties.[*] The French, probably the more disgusted,
as they were hitherto losers in the quarrel, refused all these
expedients: the vessels and the goods of merchants were confiscated on
both sides: depredations were continued by the Gascons on the western
coast of France, as well as by the English in the Channel: Philip cited
the king, as duke of Guienne, to appear in his court at Paris, and
answer for these offences; and Edward, apprehensive of danger to that
province, sent John St. John, an experienced soldier, to Bordeaux, and
gave him directions to put Guienne in a posture of defence.[**]
{1294.} That he might, however, prevent a final rupture between the
nations, the king despatched his brother, Edmond, earl of Lancaster, to
Paris; and as this prince had espoused the queen of Navarre, mother to
Jane, queen of France, he seemed, on account of that alliance, the most
proper person for finding expedients to accommodate the difference. Jane
pretended to interpose with her good offices: Mary, the queen dowager,
feigned the same amicable disposition: and these two princesses told
Edmond, that the circumstance the most difficult to adjust was the point
of honor with Philip, who thought himself affronted by the injuries
committed against him by his sub-vassals in Guienne; but if Edward would
once consent to give him seizin and possession of that province, he
would think his honor fully repaired, would engage to restore Guienne
immediately, and would accept of a very easy satisfaction for all the
other injuries. The king was consulted on the occasion; and as he
then found himself in immediate danger of war with the Scots, which he
regarded as the more important concern, this politic prince, blinded
by his favorite passion for subduing that nation, allowed himself to
be deceived by so gross an artifice.[***] He sent his brother orders
to sign and execute the treaty with the two queens; Philip solemnly
promised to execute his part of it; and the king’s citation to appear
in the court of France, was accordingly recalled; but the French monarch
was no sooner put in possession of Guienne, than the citation was
renewed; Edward was condemned for non-appearance; and Guienne, by
a formal sentence, was declared to be forfeited and annexed to the
crown.[****]
* Trivet, p. 275.
** Trivet, p. 276.
*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 619, 620. Walsing. p. 61. Heming. vol.
i p. 42, 43. Trivet, p. 277.
**** Rymer vol. ii p. 620, 622. Walsing. p. 61. Trivet, p. 278.
Edward, fallen into a like snare with that which he himself had spread
for the Scots, was enraged; and the more so, as he was justly ashamed
of his own conduct, in being so egregiously overreached by the court of
France. Sensible of the extreme difficulties which he should encounter
in the recovery of Gascony, where he had not retained a single place in
his hands, he endeavored to compensate that loss by forming alliances
with several princes, who, he projected, should attack France on all
quarters, and make a diversion of her forces. Adolphus de Nassau, king
of the Romans, entered into a treaty with him for that purpose;[*] as
did also Amadæus, count of Savoy, the archbishop of Cologne, the counts
of Gueldre and Luxembourg; the duke of Brabant and count of Barre, who
had married his two daughters, Margaret and Eleanor: but these alliances
were extremely burdensome to his narrow revenues, and proved in the
issue entirely ineffectual. More impression was made on Guienne by an
English army, which he completed by emptying the jails of many thousand
thieves and robbers, who had been confined there for their crimes. So
low had the profession of arms fallen, and so much had it degenerated
from the estimation in which it stood during the vigor of the feudal
system!
{1295.} The king himself was detained in England, first by contrary
winds,[**] then by his apprehensions of a Scottish invasion, and by
a rebellion of the Welsh, whom he repressed and brought again under
subjection.[***] The army which he sent to Guienne, was commanded by his
nephew, John de Bretagne, earl of Richmond, and under him by St. John,
Tibetot, De Vere, and other officers of reputation;[****] who made
themselves masters of the town of Bayonne, as well as of Bourg, Blaye,
Reole, St. Severe, and other places, which straitened Bordeaux, and cut
off its communication both by sea and land.
* Heming. vol, i. p. 51.
** Chron. Dunst. vol. ii. p. 622.
*** Walsing. p. 62. Heming. vol. i. p. 55. Trivet, p. 282.
Chron Dunst. vol. ii. p. 622.
**** Trivet, p. 279.
The favor which the Gascon nobility bore to the English government
facilitated these conquests, and seemed to promise still greater
successes; but this advantage was soon lost by the misconduct of some
of the officers. Philip’s brother, Charles de Valois, who commanded
the French armies, having laid siege to Podensac, a small fortress near
Reole, obliged Giffard, the governor, to capitulate; and the articles
though favorable to the English, left all the Gascons prisoners at
discretion, of whom about fifty were hanged by Charles as rebels;
a policy by which he both intimidated that people, and produced
an irreparable breach between them and the English.[*] That prince
immediately attacked Reole, where the earl of Richmond himself
commanded; and as the place seemed not tenable, the English general drew
his troops to the water side, with an intention of embarking with the
greater part of the army. The enraged Gascons fell upon his rear, and
at the same time opened their gates to the French, who, besides making
themselves masters of the place, took many prisoners of distinction. St.
Severe was more vigorously defended by Hugh de Vere, son of the earl
of Oxford; but was at last obliged to capitulate. The French king, not
content with these successes in Gascony, threatened England with an
invasion; and, by a sudden attempt, his troops took and burnt Dover,[**]
but were obliged soon after to retire. And in order to make a greater
diversion of the English force, and engage Edward in dangerous and
important wars, he formed a secret alliance with John Baliol, king of
Scotland; the commencement of that strict union which, during so many
centuries, was maintained, by mutual interests and necessities, between
the French and Scottish nations. John confirmed this alliance by
stipulating a marriage between his eldest son and the daughter of
Charles de Valois.[***]
* Heming. vol. i. p. 49.
** Trivet, p. 284. Chron. Dunst. vol. ii. p. 642.
*** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 680, 681, 695, 697. Heming. vol. i. p.
76. Trivet, i, 285.
The expenses attending these multiplied wars of Edward, and his
preparations for war, joined to alterations which had insensibly taken
place in the general state of affairs, obliged him to have frequent
recourse to parliamentary supplies, introduced the lower orders of the
state into the public councils, and laid the foundations of great and
important changes in the government.
Though nothing could be worse calculated for cultivating the arts of
peace, or maintaining peace itself, than the long subordination of
vassalage from the king to the meanest gentleman, and the consequent
slavery of the lower people, evils inseparable from the feudal system,
that system was never able to fix the state in a proper warlike posture,
or give it the full exertion of its power for defence, and still less
for offence, against a public enemy. The military tenants, unacquainted
with obedience, unexperienced in war, held a rank in the troops by
their birth, not by their merits or services; composed a disorderly
and consequently a feeble army; and during the few days which they
were obliged by their tenures to remain in the field, were often more
formidable to their own prince than to foreign powers, against whom they
were assembled. The sovereigns came gradually to disuse this cumbersome
and dangerous machine, so apt to recoil upon the hand which held it; and
exchanging the military service for pecuniary supplies, enlisted forces
by means of a contract with particular officers, (such as those the
Italians denominate “condottieri,”) whom they dismissed at the end of
the war.[*] The barons and knights themselves often entered into these
engagements with the prince; and were enabled to fill their bands, both
by the authority which they possessed over their vassals and tenants,
and from the great numbers of loose, disorderly people whom they
found on their estates, and who willingly embraced an opportunity of
gratifying their appetite for war and rapine.
Meanwhile the old Gothic fabric, being neglected, went gradually to
decay. Though the Conqueror had divided all the lands of England
into sixty thousand knights’ fees, the number of these was insensibly
diminished by various artifices; and the king at last found that, by
putting the law in execution, he could assemble a small part only of the
ancient force of the kingdom. It was a usual expedient for men who held
of the king or great barons by military tenure, to transfer their
land to the church, and receive it back by another tenure, called
frankalmoigne, by which they were not bound to per form any service.[**]
A law was made against this practice; but the abuse had probably gone
far before it was attended to, and probably was not entirely corrected
by the new statute, which, like most laws of that age, we may conjecture
to have been but feebly executed by the magistrate against the perpetual
interest of so many individuals. The constable and mareschal, when
they mustered the armies, often in a hurry, and for want of better
information, received the service of a baron for fewer knights’ fees
than were due by him; and one precedent of this kind was held good
against the king, and became ever after a reason for diminishing the
service.[***]
* Cotton’s Abr. p. 11.
** Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 114.
*** Madox, Bar. Ang. p 115.
The rolls of knights’ fees were inaccurately kept; no care was taken to
correct them before the armies were summoned into the field,[*] it
was then too late to think of examining records and charters; and the
service was accepted on the footing which the vassal himself was pleased
to acknowledge, after all the various subdivisions and conjunctions
of property had thrown an obscurity on the nature and extent of his
tenure.[**] It is easy to judge of the intricacies which would attend
disputes of this kind with individuals; when even the number of military
fees belonging to the church, whose property way fixed and unalienable,
became the subject of controversy; and we find in particular, that when
the bishop of Durham was charged with seventy knights’ fees for the aid
levied on occasion of the marriage of Henry II.’s daughter to the
duke of Saxony, the prelate acknowledged ten, and disowned the other
sixty.[***] It is not known in what mariner this difference was
terminated; but had the question been concerning an armament to defend
the kingdom, the bishop’s service would probably have been received
without opposition for ten fees; and this rate must also have fixed all
his future payments. Pecuniary scutages, therefore, diminished as much
as military services;[****] other methods of filling the exchequer, as
well as the armies, must be devised: new situations produced new laws
and institutions; and the great alterations in the finances and military
power of the crown, as well as in private property, were the source of
equal innovations in every part of the legislature or civil government.
* We hear only of one king, Henry II., who took this pains;
and the record, called Liber Niger Scaccarii, was the result
of it.
** Madox, Bar. Ang. p. 116.
*** Madox, p. 122. Hist. of the Exch. p. 404.
**** In order to pay the sum of one hundred thousand marks, as
King Richard’s ransom, twenty shillings were imposed on each
knight’s fee. Had the fees remained on the original footing,
as settled by the Conqueror, this scutage would have
amounted to ninety thousand marks, which was nearly the sum
required; but we find that other grievous taxes were imposed
to complete it; a certain proof that many frauds and abuses
had prevailed in the roll of knights fees.
The exorbitant estates conferred by the Norman on his barons and
chieftains, remained not long entire and unimpaired. The landed property
was gradually shared out into more hands; and those immense baronies
were divided, either by provisions to younger children, by partitions
among co-heirs, by sale, or by escheating to the king, who gratified a
great number of his courtiers by dealing them out among them in smaller
portions. Such moderate estates, as they required economy, and confined
the proprietors to live at home, were better calculated for duration;
and the order of knights and small barons grew daily more numerous, and
began to form a very respectable rank or order in the state. As they
were all immediate vassals of the crown by military tenure, they were,
by the principles of the feudal law, equally entitled with the greatest
barons to a seat in the national or general councils; and this right,
though regarded as a privilege which the owners would not entirely
relinquish, was also considered as a burden which they desired to be
subjected to on extraordinary occasions only. Hence it was provided in
the charter of King John, that, while the great barons were summoned to
the national council by a particular writ, the small barons, under which
appellation the knights were also comprehended, should only be called
by a general summons of the sheriff. The distinction between great and
small barons, like that between rich and poor, was not exactly defined;
but, agreeably to the inaccurate genius of that age, and to the
simplicity of ancient government, was left very much to be determined
by the discretion of the king and his ministers. It was usual for the
prince to require, by a particular summons, the attendance of a baron
in one parliament, and to neglect him in future parliaments;[*] nor
was this uncertainty ever complained of as an injury. He attended when
required: he was better pleased on other occasions to be exempted from
the burden: and as he was acknowledged to be of the same order with the
greatest barons, it gave them no surprise to see him take his seat
in the great council, whether he appeared of his own accord, or by a
particular summons from the king. The barons by writ, therefore, began
gradually to intermix themselves with the barons by tenure; and, as
Camden tells us,[**] from an ancient manuscript now lost, that after the
battle of Evesham, a positive law was enacted, prohibiting every
baron from appearing in parliament, who was not invited thither by a
particular summons, the whole baronage of England held thenceforward
their seat by writ, and this important privilege of their tenures was in
effect abolished. Only where writs had been regularly continued for some
time in one great family, the omission of them would have been regarded
as an affront, and even as an injury.
* Chancellor West’s Inquiry into the Manner of creating
Peers p. 43, 46, 47, 55.
** In Britain. p 122.
A like alteration gradually took place in the order of earls who were
the highest rank of barons. The dignity of an earl, like that of
a baron, was anciently territorial and official:[*] he exercised
jurisdiction within his county: he levied the third of the fines to his
own profit: he was at once a civil and a military magistrate: and though
his authority, from the time of the Norman conquest, was hereditary in
England, the title was so much connected with the office, that where the
king intended to create a new earl, he had no other expedient than to
erect a certain territory into a county or earldom, and to bestow it
upon the person and his family.[**] But as the sheriffs, who were the
vicegerents of the earls, were named by the king, and removable at
pleasure, he found them more dependent upon him; and endeavored to throw
the whole authority and jurisdiction of the office into their hands.
This magistrate was at the head of the finances, and levied all the
king’s rents within the county: he assessed at pleasure the talliages
of the inhabitants in royal demesne: he had usually committed to him
the management of wards, and often of escheats: he presided in the lower
courts of judicature: and thus, though inferior to the earl in dignity,
he was soon considered, by this union of the judicial and fiscal powers,
and by the confidence reposed in him by the king, as much superior to
him in authority, and undermined his influence within his own
jurisdiction.[***] It became usual, in creating an earl, to give him a
fixed salary, commonly about twenty pounds a year, in lieu of his third
of the fines: the diminution of his power kept pace with the
retrenchment of his profit: and the dignity of earl, instead of being
territorial and official, dwindled into personal and titular. Such were
the mighty alterations which already had fully taken place, or were
gradually advancing, in the house of peers; that is, in the parliament:
for there seems anciently to have been no other house.
* Spel. Gloss, in voce Comes.
** Essays on British Antiquities. This practice, however,
seems to have been more familiar in Scotland and the
kingdoms on the continent, than in England.
*** There are instances of princes of the blood who accepted
of the office of sheriff. Spel. in voce Vicecomes.
But though the introduction of barons by writ, and of titular earls, had
given some increase to royal authority, there were other causes which
counterbalanced those innovations, and tended in a higher degree to
diminish the power of the sovereign. The disuse into which the feudal
militia had in a great measure fallen made the barons almost entirely
forget their dependence on the crown: by the diminution of the number
of knights’ fees the king had no reasonable compensation when he levied
scutages, and exchanged their service for money: the alienations of the
crown lands had reduced him to poverty: and above all, the concession
of the Great Charter had set bounds to royal power, and had rendered it
more difficult and dangerous for the prince to exert any extraordinary
act of arbitrary authority. In this situation it was natural for the
king to court the friendship of the lesser barons and knights, whose
influence was no ways dangerous to him, and who, being exposed to
oppression from their powerful neighbors, sought a legal protection
under the shadow of the throne. He desired, therefore, to have their
presence in parliament, where they served to control the turbulent
resolutions of the great. To exact a regular attendance of the whole
body would have produced confusion, and would have imposed too heavy a
burden upon them. To summon only a few by writ, though it was practised
and had a good effect, served not entirely the king’s purpose; because
these members had no further authority than attended their personal
character, and were eclipsed by the appearance of the more powerful
nobility, He therefore dispensed with the attendance of most of the
lesser barons in parliament; and in return for this indulgence (for such
it was then esteemed) required them to choose in each county a certain
number of their own body, whose charges they bore, and who, having
gained the confidence, carried with them, of course, the authority of
the whole order. This expedient had been practised at different times
in the reign of Henry III.,[*] and regularly during that of the present
king. The numbers sent up by each county varied at the will of the
prince:[**] they took their seat among the other peers; because by their
tenure they belonged to that order:[***] the introducing of them into
that house scarcely appeared an innovation: and though it was easily in
the king’s power, by varying their number, to command the resolutions of
the whole parliament this circumstance was little attended to in an age
when force was more prevalent than laws, and when a resolution, though
taken by the majority of a legal assembly, could not be executed, if it
opposed the will of the more powerful minority.
*Rot. Glaus. 38. Hen. III. pp. 7. and 12. d.; as also Ret.
Claus 12 Hen. III. m. 1. d. Prynne’s Pref. to Cotton’s
Abridgment.
** Brady’s Answer to Petyt, from the records, p 151.
*** Brady’s Treatise of Boroughs, App. No. 13.
But there were other important consequences, which followed the
diminution and consequent disuse of the ancient feudal militia. The
king’s expense in levying and maintaining a military force for every
enterprise, was increased beyond what his narrow revenues were able to
bear: as the scutages of his military tenants, which were accepted in
lieu of their personal service, had fallen to nothing, there were no
means of supply but from voluntary aids granted him by the parliament
and clergy, or from the talliages which he might levy upon the towns
and inhabitants in royal demesne. In the preceding year, Edward had been
obliged to exact no less than the sixth of all movables from the laity,
and a moiety of all ecclesiastical benefices[*] for his expedition
into Poictou, and the suppression of the Welsh: and this distressful
situation which was likely often to return upon him and his successors,
made him think of a new device, and summon the representatives of all
the boroughs to parliament. This period, which is the twenty-third of
his reign, seems to be the real and true epoch of the house of
commons, and the faint dawn of popular government in England. For the
representatives of the counties were only deputies from the smaller
barons and lesser nobility; and the former precedent of representatives
from the boroughs, who were summoned by the earl of Leicester, was
regarded as the act of a violent usurpation, had beer, discontinued in
all the subsequent parliaments; and if such a measure had not become
necessary on other accounts, that precedent was more likely to blast
than give credit to it.
* Brady’s Treatise of Boroughs, p. 31, from the records.
Heming vol. i. p. 52. M. West. p. 422. Ryley, p. 462
During the course of several years, the kings of England, in imitation
of other European princes, had embraced the salutary policy of
encouraging and protecting the lower and more industrious orders of
the state; whom they found well disposed to obey the laws and civil
magistrate, and whose ingenuity and labor furnish commodities requisite
for the ornament of peace and support of war. Though the inhabitants of
the country were still left at the disposal of their imperious lords,
many attempts were made to give more security and liberty to citizens,
and make them enjoy unmolested the fruits of their industry. Boroughs
were erected by royal patent within the demesne lands; liberty of trade
was conferred upon them; the inhabitants were allowed to farm, at a
fixed rent, their own tolls and customs,[*] they were permitted to
elect their own magistrates; justice was administered to them by these
magistrates, without obliging them to attend the sheriff or county
court: and some shadow of independence, by means of these equitable
privileges, was gradually acquired by the people.[**] The king, however,
retained still the power of levying talliage or taxes upon them at
pleasure;[***] and though their poverty and the customs of the age made
these demands neither frequent or exorbitant, such unlimited authority
in the sovereign was a sensible check upon commerce, and was utterly
incompatible with all the principles of a free government. But when
the multiplied necessities of the crown produced a greater avidity for
supply, the king, whose prerogative entitled him to exact it, found
that he had not power sufficient to enforce his edicts, and that it was
necessary, before he imposed taxes, to smooth the way for his demand,
and to obtain the previous consent of the boroughs, by solicitations,
remonstrances, and authority. The inconvenience of transacting this
business with every particular borough was soon felt; and Edward became
sensible, that the most expeditious way of obtaining supply, was to
assemble the deputies of all the boroughs, to lay before them the
necessities of the state, to discuss the matter in their presence, and
to require their consent to the demands of their sovereign, For this
reason, he issued writs to the sheriffs, enjoining them to send to
parliament, along with two knights of the shire two deputies from each
borough within their county,[****] and these provided with sufficient
powers from their community to consent, in their name, to what he and
his council should require of them.
* Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 21.
** Brady of Boroughs, App. No. I, 2, 3.
*** The king had not only the power of talliating the
inhabitants within his own demosnes, but that of granting to
particular barons the power of talliating the inhabitants
within theirs. See Brady’s Answer to Petyt, p. 118. Madox,
Hist, of the Exch. p. 518.
*** Writs were issued to about one hundred and twenty cities
and boroughs.
“As it is a most equitable rule,” says he, in his preamble to this writ,
“that what concerns all should be approved of by all; and common dangers
be repelled by united efforts;” [*] a noble principle, which may seem to
indicate a liberal mind in the king, and which laid the foundation of a
free and an equitable government.
After the election of these deputies by the aldermen and common council,
they gave sureties for their attendance before the king and parliament:
their charges were respectively borne by the borough which sent them;
and they had so little idea of appearing as legislators,--a character
extremely wide of their low rank and condition,[**]--that no
intelligence could be more disagreeable to any borough, than to find
that they must elect, or to any individual than that he was elected, to
a trust from which no profit or honor could possibly be derived.[***]
They composed not, properly speaking, any essential part of the
parliament: they sat apart both from the barons and knights,[****] who
disdained to mix with such mean personages: after they had given
their consent to the taxes required of them, their business being then
finished, they separated, even though the parliament still continued
to sit, and to canvass the national business.[*****] And as they all
consisted of men who were real burgesses of the place from which they
were sent, the sheriff, when he found no person of abilities or wealth
sufficient for the office, often used the freedom of omitting particular
boroughs in his returns; and as he received the thanks of the people for
this indulgence, he gave no displeasure to the court, who levied on all
the boroughs, without distinction, the tax agreed to by the majority of
deputies.[******]
* Brady of Boroughs, p. 25, 33, from the records. The writs
of the parliament immediately preceding, remain: and the
return of knights is there required, but not a word of the
boroughs: a demonstration that this was the very year in
which they commenced. In the year immediately preceding, the
taxes were levied by a seeming free consent of each
particular borough, beginning with London. Brady of
Boroughs, p. 31, 32, 33, from the records. Also his Answer
to Petyt, p. 40, 41.
** Reiiquia Spel. p. 64. Prynne’s Pref. to Cotton’s Abridg.
and the Abridg. passim.
*** Brady of Boroughs, p. 59, 60.
**** Brady of Boroughs, p. 37, 38, from the records, and
Append. p. 19. Also his Append, to his Answer to Petyt,
Record. And his gloss. in verb. Communitas regn. p. 33.
***** Ryley’s Placit. Parl. p. 241, 242, etc. Cotton’s
Abridg. p. 14.
****** Bradv of Boroughs, p. 52, from the records. There is
even an instance in the reign of Edward III., when the king
named all the deputies. Brady’s Answer to Petyt, p. 161. If
he fairly named the most considerable and creditable
burgesses, little exception would be taken; as their
business was not to check the king, but to reason with him,
and consent to his demands. It was not till the reign of
Richard II. that the sheriffs were deprived of the power of
omitting boroughs at pleasure. See Stat. at large, 5th
Richard II. cap. iv.
The union, however, of the representatives from the boroughs gave
gradually more weight to the whole order; and it became customary for
them, in return for the supplies which they granted, to prefer petitions
to the crown for the redress of any particular grievance, of which they
found reason to complain. The more the king’s demands multiplied, the
faster these petitions increased both in number and authority; and the
prince found it difficult to refuse men whose grants had supported his
throne, and to whose assistance he might so soon be again obliged to
have recourse. The commons, however, were still much below the rank
of legislators.[*] [4] Their petitions, though they received a verbal
assent from the throne, were only the rudiments of laws: the judges were
afterwards intrusted with the power of putting them into form. and
the king, by adding to them the sanction of his authority, and that
sometimes without the assent of the nobles, bestowed validity upon
them. The age did not refine so much as to perceive the danger of these
irregularities. No man was displeased that the sovereign, at the desire
of any class of men, should issue an order which appeared only to
concern that class; and his predecessors were so near possessing the
whole legislative power, that he gave no disgust by assuming it in this
seemingly inoffensive manner. But time and further experience gradually
opened men’s eyes, and corrected these abuses. It was found that no laws
could be fixed for one order of men without affecting the whole; and
that the force and efficacy of laws depended entirely on the terms
employed in wording them. The house of peers, therefore, the most
powerful order in the state, with reason, expected that their assent
should be expressly granted to all public ordinances:[**]
* See note D, at the end of the volume.
** In those instances found in Cotton’s Abridgment, where
the king appears to answer of himself the petitions of the
commons, he probably exerted no more than that power, which
was long inherent in the crown, of regulating matters by
royal edicts or proclamations.
But no durable or general statute seems ever to have been made by the
king from the petition of the commons alone, without the assent of the
peers. It is more likely that the peers alone without the commons, would
enact statutes, and in the reign of Henry V., the commons required,
that no laws should be framed merely upon their petitions, unless the
statutes were worded by themselves, and had passed their house in the
form of a bill.[*]
But as the same causes which had produced a partition of property
continued still to operate, the number of knights and lesser barons, or
what the English call the gentry, perpetually increased, and they sunk
into a rank still more inferior to the great nobility. The equality of
tenure was lost in the great inferiority of power and property; and the
house of representatives from the counties was gradually separated from
that of the peers, and formed a distinct order in the state.[**]
The growth of commerce, meanwhile, augmented the private wealth and
consideration of the burgesses; the frequent demands of the crown
increased their public importance; and as they resembled the knights
of shires in one material circumstance, that of representing particular
bodies of men, it no longer appeared unsuitable to unite them together
in the same house, and to confound their rights and privileges.[***] [5]
Thus the third estate that of the commons, reached at last its present
form; and as the country gentlemen made thenceforwards no scruple of
appearing as deputies from the boroughs, the distinction between the
members was entirely lost, and the lower house acquired thence a great
accession of weight and importance in the kingdom. Still, however, the
office of this estate was very different from that which it has since
exercised with so much advantage to the public. Instead of checking and
controlling the authority of the king, they were naturally induced to
adhere to him, as the great fountain of law and justice, and to support
him against the power of the aristocracy, which at once was the source
of oppression to themselves, and disturbed him in the execution of the
laws. The king, in his turn, gave countenance to an order of men so
useful and so little dangerous: the peers also were obliged to pay them
some consideration: and by this means the third estate, formerly so
abject in England, as well as in all other European nations, rose by
slow degrees to their present importance; and in their progress made
arts and commerce, the necessary attendants of liberty and equality,
flourish in the kingdom.[****] [6]
* Brady’s Answer to Petyt, p. 85, from the records.
** Cotton’s Abridgment, p. 13.