CHAPTER XVI.

EDWARD III.

{1349.} THE prudent conduct and great success of Edward in his foreign

wars had excited a strong emulation and a military genius among the

English nobility; and these turbulent barons, overawed by the crown,

gave now a more useful direction to their ambition, and attached

themselves to a prince who led them to the acquisition of riches and

of glory. That he might further promote the spirit of emulation and

obedience, the king instituted the order of the garter, in imitation of

some orders of a like nature, religious as well as military, which had

been established in different parts of Europe. The number received into

this order consisted of twenty-five persons, besides the sovereign; and

as it has never been enlarged, this badge of distinction continues as

honorable as at its first institution, and is still a valuable though a

cheap present, which the prince can confer on his greatest subjects. A

vulgar story prevails, but is not supported by any ancient authority,

that at a court ball, Edward’s mistress, commonly supposed to be the

countess of Salisbury, dropped her garter; and the king, taking it up,

observed some of the courtiers to smile, as if they thought that he had

not obtained this favor merely by accident: upon which he called out,

“Honi soit qui mal y pense,”--Evil to him that evil thinks; and as every

incident of gallantry among those ancient warriors was magnified into a

matter of great importance,[*] he instituted the order of the garter in

memorial of this event, and gave these words as the motto of the order.

[8] This origin, though frivolous, is not unsuitable to the manners

of the times; and it is indeed difficult by any other means to account

either for the seemingly unmeaning terms of the motto, or for the

peculiar badge of the garter, which seems to have no reference to any

purpose either of military use or ornament.

* See note H, at the end of the volume.

But a sudden damp was thrown over this festivity and triumph of the

court of England, by a destructive pestilence, which invaded that

kingdom as well as the rest of Europe; and is computed to have swept

away near a third of the inhabitants in every country which it attacked.

It was probably more fatal in great cities than in the country; and

above fifty thousand souls are said to have perished by it in London

alone.[*] This malady first discovered itself in the north of Asia, was

spread over all that country, made its progress from one end of Europe

to the other, and sensibly depopulated every state through which it

passed. So grievous a calamity, more than the pacific disposition of

the princes, served to maintain and prolong the truce between France and

England.

* Stowe’s Survey, p. 478. There were buried fifty thousand

bodied in one churchyard, which Sir Walter Manny had bought

for the use of the poor. The same author says, that there

died above fifty thousand persons of the plague in Norwich,

which is quite incredible.

{1350.} During this truce, Philip de Valois died, without being able to

reestablish the affairs of France, which his bad success against England

had thrown into extreme disorder. This monarch, during the first years

of his reign, had obtained the appellation of Fortunate, and acquired

the character of prudent; but he ill maintained either the one or the

other; less from his own fault, than because he was overmatched by the

superior fortune and superior genius of Edward. But the incidents in the

reign of his son John gave the French nation cause to regret even the

calamitous times of his predecessor. John was distinguished by many

virtues, particularly a scrupulous honor and fidelity: he was not

deficient in personal courage: but as he wanted that masterly prudence

and foresight, which his difficult situation required his kingdom was

at the same time disturbed by intestine commotions, and oppressed with

foreign wars.

{1354.} The chief source of its calamities, was Charles, king of Navarre

who received the epithet of the Bad, or Wicked, and whose conduct fully

entitled him to that appellation. This prince was descended from males

of the blood royal of France; his mother was daughter of Lewis Hutin; he

had himself espoused a daughter of King John: but all these ties, which

ought to have connected him with the throne, gave him only greater power

to shake and overthrow it. With regard to his personal qualities, he was

courteous, affable, engaging eloquent; full of insinuation and address;

inexhaustible in his resources; active and enterprising. But these

splendid accomplishments were attended with such defects as rendered

them pernicious to his country, and even ruinous to himself: he was

volatile, inconstant, faithless, revengeful, malicious; restrained by no

principle or duty; insatiable in his pretensions: and whether successful

or unfortunate in one enterprise he immediately undertook another, in

which he was never deterred from employing the most criminal and most

dishonorable expedients.

The constable of Eu, who had been taken prisoner by Edward at Caen,

recovered his liberty, on the promise of delivering, as his ransom, the

town of Guisnes, near Calais of which he was superior lord: but as John

was offended at this stipulation, which, if fulfilled, opened still

farther that frontier to the enemy, and as he suspected the constable of

more dangerous connections with the king of England, he ordered him to

be seized, and without any legal or formal trial, put him to death, in

prison. Charles de la Cerda was appointed constable in his place;

and had a like fatal end: the king of Navarre ordered him to be

assassinated; and such was the weakness of the crown, that this prince,

instead of dreading punishment, would not even agree to ask pardon for

his offence, but on condition that he should receive an accession of

territory: and he had also John’s second son put into his hands, as a

security for his person, when he came to court, and performed this act

of mock penitence and humiliation before his sovereign.[*]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 144.

{1355.} The two French princes seemed entirely reconciled; but this

dissimulation, to which John submitted from necessity, and Charles from

habit, did not long continue; and the king of Navarre knew that he had

reason to apprehend the most severe vengeance for the many crimes and

treasons which he had already committed, and the still greater, which

he was meditating. To insure himself of protection, he entered into a

secret correspondence with England, by means of Henry, earl of Derby,

now earl of Lancaster, who at that time was employed in fruitless

negotiations for peace at Avignon, under the mediation of the pope. John

detected this correspondence; and to prevent the dangerous effects

of it, he sent forces into Normandy, the chief seat of the king of

Navarre’s power, and attacked his castles and fortresses. But hearing

that Edward had prepared an army to support his ally, he had the

weakness to propose an accommodation with Charles, and even to give this

traitorous subject the sum of a hundred thousand crowns, as the purchase

of a feigned reconcilement, which rendered him still more dangerous.

The king of Navarre, insolent from past impunity, and desperate from the

dangers which he apprehended, continued his intrigues; and associating

himself with Geoffrey d’Harcourt, who had received his pardon from

Philip de Valois, but persevered still in his factious disposition, he

increased the number of his partisans in every part of the kingdom. He

even seduced, by his address, Charles, the king of France’s eldest

son, a youth of seventeen years of age, who was the first that bore the

appellation of “dauphin,” by the reunion of the province of Dauphiny to

the crown. But this prince, being made sensible of the danger and folly

of these connections, promised to make atonement for the offence by the

sacrifice of his associates; and in concert with his father, he invited

the king of Navarre, and other noblemen of the party, to a feast at

Rouen, where they were betrayed into the hands of John. Some of the most

obnoxious were immediately led to execution: the king of Navarre was

thrown into prison;[*] but this stroke of severity in the king, and of

treachery in the dauphin, was far from proving decisive in maintaining

the royal authority. Philip of Navarre, brother to Charles, and Geoffrey

d’Harcourt, put all the towns and castles belonging to that prince in

a posture of defence; and had immediate recourse to the protection of

England in this desperate extremity.

* Froissard. liv. i. chap. 146.

The truce between the two kingdoms, which had always been ill observed

on both sides, was now expired; and Edward was entirely free to support

the French malecontents. Well pleased that the factions in France had at

length gained him some partisans in that kingdom, which his pretensions

to the crown had never been able to accomplish, he purposed to attack

his enemy both on the side of Guienne, under the command of the prince

of Wales, and on that of Calais, in his own person.

Young Edward arrived in the Garronne with his army, on board a fleet of

three hundred sail, attended by the earls of Avesbury, p. 243. Warwick,

Salisbury, Oxford, Suffolk, and other English noblemen. Being joined by

the vassals of Gascony, he took the field; and as the present disorders

in France prevented every proper plan of defence, he carried on with

impunity his ravages and devastations, according to the mode of war in

that age. He reduced all the villages and several towns in Languedoc to

ashes: he presented himself before Toulouse; passed the Garronne, and

burned the suburbs of Carcassonne; advanced even to Narbonne, laying

every place waste around him; and after an incursion of six weeks,

returned with a vast booty and many prisoners to the Guienne, where he

took up his winter quarters.[*] The constable of Bourbon, who commanded

in those provinces, received orders, though at the head of a superior

army, on no account to run the hazard of a battle.

The king of England’s incursion from Calais was of the samme nature,

and attended with the same issue. He broke into France at the head of

a numerous army; to which he gave a full license of plundering and

ravaging the open country. He advanced to St. Omer, where the king of

France was posted; and on the retreat of that prince, followed him to

Hesdin.[**] John still kept at a distance, and declined an engagement:

but in order to save his reputation, he sent Edward a challenge to fight

a pitched battle with him; a usual bravado in that age, derived from the

practice of single combat, and ridiculous in the art of war. The king,

finding no sincerity in this defiance, retired to Calais, and thence

went over to England, in order to defend that kingdom against a

threatened invasion of the Scots.

The Scots, taking advantage of the king’s absence, and that of the

military power of England, had surprised Berwick; and had collected an

army with a view of committing ravages upon the northern provinces:

but on the approach of Edward, they abandoned that place, which was not

tenable, while the castle was in the hands of the English; and

retiring to their mountains, gave the enemy full liberty of burning and

destroying the whole country from Berwick to Edinburgh.[***]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 144, 146.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 144. Avesbury, p. 206. Walsing.

p. 171.

*** Walsing. p. 171.

Baliol attended Edward on this expedition; but finding that his constant

adherence to the English had given his countrymen an unconquerable

aversion to his title, and that he himself was declining through age and

infirmities, he finally resigned into the king’s hands his pretensions

to the crown of Scotland,[*] and received in lieu of them an annual

pension of two thousand pounds, with which he passed the remainder of

his life in privacy and retirement.

During these military operations, Edward received information of the

increasing disorders in France, arising from the imprisonment of the

king of Navarre; and he sent Lancaster at the head of a small army, to

support the partisans of that prince in Normandy. The war was conducted

with various success, but chiefly to the disadvantage of the French

malecontents; till an important event happened in the other quarter of

the kingdom, which had well nigh proved fatal to the monarchy of France,

and threw every thing into the utmost confusion.

{1356.} The prince of Wales, encouraged by the success of the preceding

campaign, took the field with an army, which no historian makes amount

to above twelve thousand men, and of which not a third were English; and

with this small body, he ventured to penetrate into the heart of France.

After ravaging the Agenois, Quercy, and the Limousin, he entered the

province of Berry; and made some attacks, though without success, on the

towns of Bourges and Issoudun. It appeared that his intentions were to

march into Normandy, and to join his forces with those of the earl of

Lancaster, and the partisans of the king of Navarre; but finding all the

bridges on the Loire broken down, and every pass carefully guarded, he

was obliged to think of making his retreat into Guienne.[**] He found

this resolution the more necessary, from the intelligence which he

received of the king of France’s motions. That monarch, provoked at the

insult offered him by this incursion, and entertaining hopes of success

from the young prince’s temerity, collected a great army of above sixty

thousand men, and advanced by hasty marches to intercept his enemy.

The prince, not aware of John’s near approach, lost some days, on his

retreat, before the castle of Remorantin;[***] and thereby gave the

French an opportunity of overtaking him. They came within sight at

Maupertuis, near Poiotiers; and Edward, sensible that his retreat was

now become impracticable, prepared for battle with all the courage of a

young hero, and with all the prudence of the oldest and most experienced

commander.

* Rymer, vol. v. p. 863. [** My copy has 823] Ypod. Neust.

p. 521.

** Walsing. p. 171.

*** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 158. Walsing. p. 171

But the utmost prudence and courage would have proved insufficient to

save him in this extremity, had the king of France known how to make use

of his present advantages. His great superiority in numbers enabled him

to surround the enemy; and by intercepting all provisions, which were

already become scarce in the English camp, to reduce this small army,

without a blow, to the necessity of surrendering at discretion. But such

was the impatient ardor of the French nobility, and so much had their

thoughts been bent on overtaking the English as their sole object, that

this idea never struck any of the commanders; and they immediately took

measures for the assault, as for a certain victory. While the French

army was drawn up in order of battle, they were stopped by the

appearance of the cardinal of Perigord; who, having learned the approach

of the two armies to each other, had hastened, by interposing his good

offices, to prevent any further effusion of Christian blood. By John’s

permission, he carried proposals to the prince of Wales; and found him

so sensible of the bad posture of his affairs, that an accommodation

seemed not impracticable. Edward told him, that he would agree to any

terms consistent with his own honor and that of England; and he offered

to purchase a retreat, by ceding all the conquests which he had made

during this and the former campaign, and by stipulating not to serve

against France during the course of seven years. But John, imagining

that he had now got into his hands a sufficient pledge for the

restitution of Calais, required that Edward should surrender himself

prisoner with a hundred of his attendants; and offered, on these terms,

a safe retreat to the English army. The prince rejected the proposal

with disdain; and declared that, whatever fortune might attend him,

England should never be obliged to pay the price of his ransom. This

resolute answer cut off all hopes of accommodation; but as the day

was already spent in negotiating, the battle was delayed till the next

morning.[*]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 161.

The cardinal of Perigord, as did all the prelates of the court of Rome,

bore a great attachment to the French interest; but the most determined

enemy could not, by any expedient, have done a greater prejudice to

John’s affairs, than he did them by this delay. The prince of Wales had

leisure, daring the night, to strengthen, by new intrenchments, the post

which he had before so judiciously chosen; and he contrived an ambush

of three hundred men at arms, and as many archers, whom he put under the

command of the Captal de Buche, and ordered to make a circuit, that

they might fall on the flank or rear of the French army during the

engagement. The van of his army was commanded by the earl of Warwick,

the rear by the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk, the main body by the

prince himself. The Lords Chandos, Audeley, and many other brave and

experienced commanders, were at the head of different corps of his army.

John also arranged his forces in three divisions, nearly equal: the

first was commanded by the duke of Orleans, the king’s brother; the

second by the dauphin, attended by his two younger brothers; the third

by the king himself, who had by his side Philip, his fourth son and

favorite, then about fourteen years of age. There was no reaching the

English army but through a narrow lane, covered on each side by

hedges and in order to open this passage, the mareschals, Andrehen and

Clermont, were ordered to advance with a separate detachment of men at

arms. While they marched along the lane, a body of English archers, who

lined the hedges, plied them on each side with their arrows; and being

very near them, yet placed in perfect safety, they coolly took their

aim against the enemy, and slaughtered them with impunity. The French

detachment, much discouraged by the unequal combat, and diminished in

their number, arrived at the end of the lane, where they met on the open

ground the prince of Wales himself, at the head of a chosen body, ready

for their reception. They were discomfited and overthrown: one of the

mareschals was slain; the other taken prisoner: and the remainder of the

detachment, who were still in the lane, and exposed to the shot of the

enemy, without being able to make resistance, recoiled upon their own

army, and put every thing into disorder.[*]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 162.

In that critical moment the Captal de Buche unexpectedly appeared, and

attacked in flank the dauphin’s line, which fell into some confusion.

Landas, Bodenai, and St. Venant, to whom the care of that young prince

and his brothers had been committed, too anxious for their charge, or

for their own safety, carried them off the field, and set the example of

flight, which was followed by that whole division. The duke of Orleans,

seized with alike panic, and imagining all was lost, thought no longer

of fighting, but carried off his division by a retreat, which soon

turned into a flight. Lord Chandos called out to the prince, that the

day was won; and encouraged him to attack the division under King John,

which, though more numerous than the whole English army, were somewhat

dismayed with the precipitate flight of their companions. John here

made the utmost efforts to retrieve by his valor what his imprudence

had betrayed; and the only resistance made that day was by his line of

battle. The prince of Wales fell with impetuosity on some German cavalry

placed in the front, and commanded by the counts of Sallebruche, Nydo,

and Nosto; a fierce battle ensued: one side were encouraged by the near

prospect of so great a victory; the other were stimulated by the shame

of quitting the field to an enemy so much inferior: but the three German

generals, together with the duke of Athens, constable of France, falling

in battle, that body of cavalry gave way, and left the king himself

exposed to the whole fury of the enemy. The ranks were every moment

thinned around him: the nobles fell by his side one after another:

his son, scarce fourteen years of age, received a wound, while he was

fighting valiantly in defence of his father: the king himself, spent

with fatigue and overwhelmed by numbers, might easily have been slain;

but every English gentleman, ambitious of taking alive the royal

prisoner, spared him in the action, exhorted him to surrender, and

offered him quarter: several, who attempted to seize him, suffered for

their temerity. He still cried out, “Where is my cousin, the prince

of Wales?” and seemed unwilling to become prisoner to any person of

inferior rank. But being told that the prince was at a distance on the

field, he threw down his gauntlet, and yielded himself to Dennis de

Morbec, a knight of Arras, who had been obliged to fly his country for

murder. His son was taken with him.[*]

* Rymer, vol vi. p. 72, 154. Froissard, liv. i. chap. 164.

The prince of Wales, who had been carried away in pursuit of the flying

enemy, finding the field entirely clear, had ordered a tent to be

pitched, and was reposing himself after the toils of battle; inquiring

still with great anxiety concerning the fate of the French monarch.

He despatched the earl of Warwick to bring him intelligence; and that

nobleman came happily in time to save the life of the captive prince

which was exposed to greater danger than it had been during the heat

of the action. The English had taken him by violence from Morbec: the

Gascons claimed the honor of detaining the royal prisoner; and some

brutal soldiers, rather than yield the prize to their rivals, had

threatened to put him to death.[*] Warwick overawed both parties, and

approaching the king with great demonstrations of respect, offered to

conduct him to the prince’s tent.

Here commences the real and truly admirable heroism of Edward; for

victories are vulgar things in comparison of that moderation and

humanity displayed by a young prince of twenty-seven years of age, not

yet cooled from the fury of battle, and elated by as extraordinary and

as unexpected success as had ever crowned the arms of any commander.

He came forth to meet the captive king with all the marks of regard and

sympathy; administered comfort to him amidst his misfortunes; paid him

the tribute of praise due to his valor; and ascribed his own victory

merely to the blind chance of war, or to a superior providence, which

controls all the efforts of human force and prudence.[**] The behavior

of John showed him not unworthy of this courteous treatment; his present

abject fortune never made him forget a moment that he was a king: more

touched by Edward’s generosity than by his own calamities, he confessed

that, notwithstanding his defeat and captivity, his honor was still

unimpaired; and that if he yielded the victory, it was at least gained

by a prince of such consummate valor and humanity.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 164.

** Poul. Cemil, p. 197.

Edward ordered a repast to be prepared in his tent for the prisoner; and

he himself served at the royal captive’s table, as if he had been one

of his retinue: he stood at the king’s back during the meal; constantly

refused to take a place at table; and declared that, being a subject, he

was too well acquainted with the distance between his own rank and that

of royal majesty, to assume such freedom. All his father’s pretensions

to the crown of France were now buried in oblivion: John in captivity

received the honors of a king, which were refused him when seated on the

throne: his misfortunes, not his title, were respected; and the French

prisoners, conquered by this elevation of mind, more than by their late

discomfiture, burst into tears of admiration; which were only checked by

the reflection, that such genuine and unaltered heroism in an enemy

must certainly in the issue prove but the more dangerous to their native

country.[*]

All the English and Gascon knights imitated the generous example

set them by their prince. The captives were every where treated with

humanity, and were soon after dismissed, on paying moderate ransoms

to the persons into whose hands they had fallen. The extent of their

fortunes was considered; and an attention was given that they should

still have sufficient means left to perform their military service in

a manner suitable to their rank and quality. Yet so numerous were the

noble prisoners, that these ransoms, added to the spoils gained in the

field, were sufficient to enrich the prince’s army; and as they had

suffered very little in the action, their joy and exultation were

complete.

The prince of Wales conducted his prisoner to Bordeaux; and not being

provided with forces so numerous as might enable him to push his present

advantages, he concluded a two years’ truce with France,[**] which

was also become requisite, that he might conduct the captive king with

safety into England. He landed at Southwark, and was met by a great

concourse of people, of all ranks and stations. {1357.} The prisoner was

clad in royal apparel, and mounted on a white steed, distinguished by

its size and beauty, and by the richness of its furniture. The conqueror

rode by his side in a meaner attire, and carried by a black palfrey. In

this situation, more glorious than all the insolent parade of a Roman

triumph, he passed through the streets of London, and presented the king

of France to his father, who advanced to meet him, and received him with

the same courtesy as if he had been a neighboring potentate that had

voluntarily come to pay him a friendly visit.[***] It is impossible, in

reflecting on this noble conduct, not to perceive the advantages which

resulted from the otherwise whimsical principles of chivalry, and which

gave men in those rude times some superiority even over people of a more

cultivated age and nation.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 168.

** Rymer, vol. vi p. 3.

*** Froissard, liv i. chap. 173.

The king of France, besides the generous treatment which he met with

in England, had the melancholy consolation of the wretched, to see

companions in affliction. The king of Scots had been eleven years a

captive in Edward’s hands; and the good fortune of this latter monarch

had reduced at once the two neighboring potentates, with whom he was

engaged in war, to be prisoners in his capital.

{1357.}But Edward finding that the conquest of Scotland was nowise

advanced by the captivity of its sovereign, and that the government

conducted by Robert Stuart, his nephew and heir, was still able to

defend itself, consented to restore David Bruce to his liberty, for the

ransom of one hundred thousand marks sterling; and that prince delivered

the sons of all his principal nobility, as hostages for the payment.[*]

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 45, 46, 52, 56. Froissard, liv. i.

chap, 154 Walsing, p. 73.

{1358.} Meanwhile, the captivity of John, joined to the preceding

disorders of the French government, had produced in that country a

dissolution, almost total, of civil authority, and had occasioned

confusions the most horrible and destructive that had ever been

experienced in any age or in any nation. The dauphin, now about eighteen

years of age, naturally assumed the royal power during his father’s

captivity; but though endowed with an excellent capacity, even in such

early years, he possessed neither experience nor authority sufficient

to defend a state, assailed at once by foreign power and shaken by

intestine faction. In order to obtain supply, he assembled the states

of the kingdom: that assembly, instead of supporting his administration,

were themselves seized with the spirit of confusion; and laid hold of

the present opportunity to demand limitations of the prince’s power,

the punishment of past malversations, and the liberty of the king of

Navarre. Marcel, provost of the merchants and first magistrate of Paris,

put himself at the head of the unruly populace; and from the violence

and temerity of his character, pushed them to commit the most criminal

outrages against the royal authority. They detained the dauphin in a

sort of captivity; they murdered in his presence Robert de Clermont

and John de Conflans, mareschals, the one of Normandy, the other of

Burgundy; they threatened all the other ministers with a like fate;

and when Charles, who was obliged to temporize and dissemble, made his

escape from their hands, they levied war against him, and openly erected

the standard of rebellion, The other cities of the kingdom, in imitation

of the capital, shook off the dauphin’s authority, took the government

into their own hands, and spread the disorder into every province. The

nobles, whose inclinations led them to adhere to the crown, and were

naturally disposed to check these tumults, had lost all their influence;

and being reproached with cowardice on account of the base desertion of

their sovereign in the battle of Poiotiers, were treated with universal

contempt by the inferior orders. The troops, who, from the deficiency

of pay, were no longer retained in discipline, threw off all regard to

their officers, sought the means of subsistence by plunder and robbery,

and associating to them all the disorderly people with whom that

age abounded, formed numerous bands, which infested all parts of the

kingdom. They desolated the open country; burned and plundered the

villages; and by cutting off all means of communication or subsistence,

reduced even the inhabitants of the walled towns to the most extreme

necessity. The peasants, formerly oppressed, and now left unprotected

by their masters, became desperate from their present misery; and rising

every where in arms, carried to the last extremity those disorders

which were derived from the sedition of the citizens and disbanded

soldiers.[*]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 182,183, 184.

The gentry, hated for their tyranny, were every where exposed to the

violence of popular rage; and instead of meeting with the regard due

to their past dignity, became only, on that account, the object of

more wanton insult to the mutinous peasants. They were hunted like wild

beasts, and put to the sword without mercy: their castles were consumed

with fire, and levelled to the ground: their wives and daughters were

first ravished, then murdered: the savages proceeded so far as to impale

some gentlemen, and roast them alive before a slow fire: a body of nine

thousand of them broke into Meaux, where the wife of the dauphin, with

above three hundred ladies, had taken shelter: the most brutal treatment

and most atrocious cruelty were justly dreaded by this helpless company:

but the Captal de Buche, though in the service of Edward, yet moved by

generosity and by the gallantry of a true knight, flew to their rescue,

and beat off the peasants with great slaughter. In other civil wars,

the opposite factions, falling under the government of their several

leaders, commonly preserve still the vestige of some rule and order: but

here the wild state of nature seemed to be renewed: every man was

thrown loose and independent of his fellows: and the populousness of the

country, derived from the preceding police of civil society, served only

to increase the horror and confusion of the scene.

Amidst these disorders, the king of Navarre made his escape from prison,

and presented a dangerous leader to the furious malecontents.[*] But the

splendid talents of this prince qualified him only to do mischief,

and to increase the public distractions: he wanted the steadiness and

prudence requisite for making his intrigues subservient to his ambition,

and forming his numerous partisans into a regular faction. He revived

his pretensions, somewhat obsolete, to the crown of France: but while

he advanced this claim, he relied entirely on his alliance with the

English, who were concerned in interest to disappoint his pretensions;

and who, being public and inveterate enemies to the state, served only,

by the friendship which they seemingly bore him, to render his cause the

more odious. And in all his operations, he acted more like a leader of

banditti, than one who aspired to be the head of a regular government,

and who was engaged by his station to endeavor the reëstablishment of

order in the community.

The eyes, therefore, of all the French, who wished to restore peace to

their miserable and desolated country, were turned towards the dauphin;

and that young prince, though not remarkable for his military talents,

possessed so much prudence and spirit, that he daily gained the

ascendant over all his enemies. Marcel, the seditious provost of Paris,

was slain, while he was attempting to deliver the city to the king of

Navarre and the English; and the capital immediately returned to its

duty.[**] The most considerable bodies of the mutinous peasants

were dispersed, and put to the sword: some bands of military robbers

underwent the same fate: and though many grievous disorders still

remained, France began gradually to assume the face of a regular civil

government, and to form some plan for its defence and security.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 181.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 187

During the confusion in the dauphin’s affairs, Edward seemed to have a

favorable opportunity for pushing his conquests: but besides that his

hands were tied by the truce, and he could only assist underhand the

faction of Navarre, the state of the English finances and military

power, during those ages, rendered the kingdom incapable of making any

regular or steady effort, and obliged it to exert its force at very

distant intervals, by which all the projected ends were commonly

disappointed. Edward employed himself, during a conjuncture so inviting,

chiefly in negotiations with his prisoner; and John had the weakness

to sign terms of peace, which, had they taken effect, must have totally

ruined and dismembered his kingdom. He agreed to restore all the

provinces which had been possessed by Henry II. and his two sons, and

to annex them forever to England, without any obligation of homage

or fealty on the part of the English monarch. But the dauphin and the

states of France rejected this treaty, so dishonorable and pernicious to

the kingdom;[*] and Edward on the expiration of the truce, having now,

by subsidies and frugality, collected some treasure, prepared himself

for a new invasion of France.

The great authority and renown of the king and the prince of Wales, the

splendid success of their former enterprises, and the certain prospect

of plunder from the defenceless provinces of France, soon brought

together the whole military power of England; and the same motives

invited to Edward’s standard all the hardy adventurers of the different

countries of Europe.[**] He passed over to Calais, where he assembled an

army of near a hundred thousand men; a force which the dauphin could not

pretend to withstand in the open field: that prince, therefore, prepared

himself to elude a blow, which it was impossible for him to resist. He

put all the considerable towns in a posture of defence; ordered them to

be supplied with magazines and provisions; distributed proper garrisons

in all places; secured every thing valuable in the fortified cities;

and chose his own station at Paris, with a view of allowing the enemy to

vent their fury on the open country.

{1359.} The king, aware of this plan of defence, was obliged to carry

along with him six thousand wagons, loaded with the provisions necessary

for the subsistence of his army. After ravaging the province of Picardy,

he advanced into Champagne; and having a strong desire of being crowned

king of France at Rheims, the usual place in which this ceremony is

performed, he laid siege to that city, and carried on his attacks,

though without success, for the space of seven weeks.[***]

* Froissard. liv. i. chap. 201.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 205.

*** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 208. Walsing. p. 174.

{1360.} The place was bravely defended by the inhabitants, encouraged

by the exhortations of the archbishop, John de Craon; till the advanced

season (for this expedition was entered upon in the beginning of

winter) obliged the king to raise the siege. The province of Champagne,

meanwhile, was desolated by his incursions; and he thence conducted his

army, with a like intent, into Burgundy. He took and pillaged Tonnerre,

Gaillon, Avalon, and other small places; but the duke of Burgundy, that

he might preserve his country from further ravages, consented to pay him

the sum of one hundred thousand nobles.[*] Edward then bent his march

towards the Nivernois, which saved itself by a like composition: he laid

waste Brie and the Gatinois; and after a long march, very destructive to

France, and somewhat ruinous to his own troops, he appeared before the

gates of Paris, and taking up his quarters at Bourg-la-Reine, extended

his army to Longjumeau, Montrouge, and Vaugirard. He tried to provoke

the dauphin to hazard a battle, by sending him a defiance; but could not

make that prudent prince change his plan of operations. Paris was safe

from the danger of an assault by its numerous garrison; from that of a

blockade by its well-supplied magazines: and as Edward himself could not

subsist his army in a country wasted by foreign and domestic enemies,

and left also empty by the precaution of the dauphin, he was obliged

to remove his quarters; and he spread his troops into the provinces of

Maine, Beausse, and the Chartraine, which were abandoned to the fury

of their devastations.[**] The only repose which France experienced was

during the festival of Easter, when the king stopped the course of his

ravages. For superstition can sometimes restrain the rage of men, which

neither justice nor humanity is able to control.

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 161. Walsing. p. 174.

** Walsing. p. 175.

While the war was carried on in this ruinous manner, the negotiations

for peace were never interrupted: but as the king still insisted on

the full execution of the treaty which he had made with his prisoner

at London, and which was strenuously rejected by the dauphin, there

appeared no likelihood of an accommodation. The earl, now duke of

Lancaster, (for this, title was introduced into England during the

present reign,) endeavored to soften the rigor of these terms, and to

finish the war on more equal and reasonable conditions. He insisted with

Edward, that, notwithstanding his great and surprising successes, the

object of the war, if such were to be esteemed the acquisition of the

crown of France, was not become any nearer than at the commencement of

it; or rather, was set at a greater distance by those very victories and

advantages which seemed to lead to it. That his claim of succession had

not from the first procured him one partisan in the kingdom; and the

continuance of these destructive hostilities had united every Frenchman

in the most implacable animosity against him. That though intestine

faction had crept into the government of France, it was abating every

moment; and no party, even during the greatest heat of the contest,

when subjection under a foreign enemy usually appears preferable to the

dominion of fellow-citizens, had ever adopted the pretensions of the

king of England. That the king of Navarre himself, who alone was allied

with the English, instead of being a cordial friend, was Edward’s most

dangerous rival, and, in the opinion of his partisans, possessed a much

preferable title to the crown of France. That the prolongation of the

war, however it might enrich the English soldiers, was ruinous to the

king himself, who bore all the charges of the armament, without reaping

any solid or durable advantage from it. That if the present disorders of

France continued, that kingdom would soon be reduced to such a state of

desolation, that it would afford no spoils to its ravagers, if it could

establish a more steady government, it might turn the chance of war in

its favor, and by its superior force and advantages be able to repel the

present victors. That the dauphin, even during his greatest distresses,

had yet conducted himself with so much prudence, as to prevent the

English from acquiring one foot of land in the kingdom; and it were

better for the king to accept by a peace what he had in vain attempted

to acquire by hostilities, which, however hitherto successful, had been

extremely expensive, and might prove very dangerous. And that Edward

having acquired so much glory by his arms, the praise of moderation

was the only honor to which he could now aspire; an honor so much the

greater, as it was durable, was united with that of prudence, and might

be attended with the most real advantages.[*]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 211.

These reasons induced Edward to accept of more moderate terms of peace;

and it is probable that, in order to palliate this change of resolution,

he ascribed it to a vow made during a dreadful tempest, which attacked

his army on their march, and which ancient historians represent as

the cause of this sudden accommodation.[*] The conferences between the

English and French commissioners were carried on during a few days at

Bretigni, in the Chartraine, and the peace was at last concluded on the

following conditions:[**] it was stipulated that King John should be

restored to his liberty, and should pay as his ransom three millions of

crowns of gold, about one million five hundred thousand pounds of

our present money;[***] [9] which was to be discharged at different

payments: that Edward should forever renounce all claim to the crown of

France, and to the provinces of Normandy, Maine, Touraine, and Anjou,

possessed by his ancestors; and should receive in exchange the provinces

of Poictou, Xaintonge, l’Agenois, Perigord, the Limousin, Quercy,

Rovergue, l’Angoumois, and other districts in that quarter, together

with Calais, Guisnes, Montreuil, and the county of Ponthieu, on the

other side of France: that the full sovereignty of all these provinces,

as well as that of Guienne, should be vested in the crown of England,

and that France should renounce all title to feudal jurisdiction,

homage, or appeal from them: that the king of Navarre should be restored

to all his honors and possessions: that Edward should renounce his

confederacy with the Flemings, John his connections with the Scots: that

the disputes concerning the succession of Brittany, between the families

of Blois and Mountfort, should be decided by arbiters appointed by the

two kings; and if the competitors refused to submit to the award, the

dispute should no longer be a ground of war between the kingdoms; and

that forty hostages, such as should be agreed on, should be sent to

England as a security for the execution of all these conditions.[****]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 211.

** Rymer, vol. vi. p. 178. Froissard, liv. i. chap. 212.

*** See note I, at the end of the volume.

**** The hostages were the two sons of the French king, John

and Lewis; his brother Philip, duke of Orleans, the duke of

Bourbon, James de Bourbon count de Ponthieu, the counts

d’Eu, de Longueville, de St. Pol, de Harcourt, de Vendome,

de Couci, de Craon, de Montmorenci, and many of the chief

nobility of France. The princes were mostly released on the

fulfilling of certain articles: others of the hostages, and

the duke of Berry among the rest, were permitted to return

upon their parole, which they did not keep. Rymer, vol. vi.

p. 278, 285, 287.

In consequence of this treaty, the king of France was brought over to

Calais; whither Edward also soon after repaired; and there both princes

solemnly ratified the treaty.

John was sent to Boulogne; the king accompanied him a mile on his

journey; and the two monarchs parted with many professions, probably

cordial and sincere, of mutual amity.[*] The good disposition of John

made him fully sensible of the generous treatment which he had received

in England, and obliterated all memory of the ascendant gained over him

by his rival. There seldom has been a treaty of so great importance

so faithfully executed by both parties. Edward had scarcely from the

beginning entertained any hopes of acquiring the crown of France:

by restoring John to his liberty, and making peace at a juncture so

favorable to his arms, he had now plainly renounced all pretensions of

this nature; he had sold at a very high price that chimerical claim; and

had at present no other interest than to retain those acquisitions which

he had made with such singular prudence and good fortune. John, on the

other hand, though the terms were severe, possessed such fidelity and

honor, that he was determined at all hazards to execute them, and to

use every expedient for satisfying a monarch who had indeed been his

greatest political enemy, but had treated him personally with singular

humanity and regard. But, notwithstanding his endeavors, there occurred

many difficulties in fulfilling his purpose; chiefly from the extreme

reluctance which many towns and vassals in the neighborhood of Guienne

expressed against submitting to the English dominion;[**] and John,

in order to adjust these differences, took a resolution of coming over

himself to England.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 213.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 214.

{1363.} His council endeavored to dissuade him from this rash design;

and probably would have been pleased to see him employ more chicanes for

eluding the execution of so disadvantageous a treaty: but John replied

to them, that though good faith were banished from the rest of the

earth, she ought still to retain her habitation in the breasts of

princes. Some historians would detract from the merit of this honorable

conduct, by representing John as enamored of an English lady, to whom he

was glad on this pretence to pay a visit; but besides that this surmise

is not founded on any good authority, it appears somewhat unlikely

on account of the advanced age of that prince, who was now in his

fifty-sixth year.

{1364.} He was lodged in the Savoy; the palace where he had resided

during his captivity, and where he soon after sickened and died. Nothing

can be a stronger proof of the great dominion of fortune over men, than

the calamities which pursued a monarch of such eminent valor, goodness,

and honor, and which he incurred merely by reason of some slight

imprudences, which, in other situations, would have been of no

importance. But though both his reign and that of his father proved

extremely unfortunate to their kingdom, the French crown acquired,

during their time, very considerable accessions--those of Dauphiny and

Burgundy. This latter province, however, John had the imprudence again

to dismember by bestowing it on Philip, his fourth son, the object of

his most tender affections;[*] a deed which was afterwards the source of

many calamities to the kingdom.

John was succeeded in the throne by Charles the dauphin, a prince

educated in the school of adversity, and well qualified, by his

consummate prudence and experience, to repair all the losses which the

kingdom had sustained from the errors of his two predecessors. Contrary

to the practice of all the great princes of those times, which held

nothing in estimation but military courage, he seems to have fixed it as

a maxim never to appear at the head of his armies; and he was the first

king in Europe that showed the advantage of policy, foresight, and

judgment, above a rash and precipitate valor. The events of his reign,

compared with those of the preceding, are a proof how little reason

kingdoms have to value themselves on their victories, or to be humbled

by their defeats; which in reality ought to be ascribed chiefly to the

good or bad conduct of their rulers, and are of little moment towards

determining national characters and manners.

Before Charles could think of counterbalancing so great a power as

England, it was necessary for him to remedy the many disorders to which

his own kingdom was exposed. He turned his arms against the king of

Navarre, the great disturber of France during that age; he defeated this

prince by the conduct of Bertrand du Guesclin, a gentleman of Brittany,

one of the most accomplished characters of the age, whom he had the

discernment to choose as the instrument of all his victories:[**] and he

obliged his enemy to accept of moderate terms of peace.

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 421.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 119, 120.

Du Guesclin was less fortunate in the wars of Brittany, which still

continued, notwithstanding the mediation of France and England: he was

defeated and taken prisoner at Auray by Chandos: Charles of Blois was

there slain, and the young count of Mountfort soon after got entire

possession of that duchy.[*] But the prudence of Charles broke the force

of this blow: he submitted to the decision of fortune: he acknowledged

the title of Mountfort, though a zealous partisan of England; and

received the proffered homage for his dominions. But the chief obstacle

which the French king met with in the settlement of the state, proceeded

from obscure enemies, whom their crimes alone rendered eminent, and

their number dangerous.

On the conclusion of the treaty of Bretigni, the many military

adventurers who had followed the standard of Edward being dispersed into

the several provinces, and possessed of strongholds, refused to lay

down their arms, or relinquish a course of life to which they were now

accustomed, and by which alone they could gain a subsistence.[**] They

associated themselves with the banditti, who were already inured to the

habits of rapine and violence; and under the name of the “companies”

and “companions,” became a terror to all the peaceable inhabitants.

Some English and Gascon gentlemen of character, particularly Sir Matthew

Gournay, Sir Hugh Calverly, the chevalier Verte, and others, were not

ashamed to take the command of these ruffians, whose numbers amounted on

the whole to near forty thousand, and who bore the appearance of regular

armies, rather than bands of robbers. These leaders fought pitched

battles with the troops of France, and gained victories; in one of

which Jaques de Bourbon, a prince of the blood, was slain:[***] and

they proceeded to such a height, that they wanted little but regular

establishments to become princes, and thereby sanctify, by the maxims of

the world, their infamous profession. The greater spoil they committed

on the country, the more easy they found it to recruit their number: all

those who were reduced to misery and despair, flocked to their standard:

the evil was every day increasing; and though the pope declared them

excommunicated, these military plunderers, however deeply affected

with the sentence, to which they paid a much greater regard than to any

principles of morality, could not be induced by it to betake themselves

to peaceable or lawful professions.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 227, 228, etc. Walsing, p. 180.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 214.

*** Froissard, liv. i. chap, 214, 215.

{1366.} As Charles was not able by power to redress so enormous a

grievance, he was led by necessity, and by the turn of his character,

to correct it by policy, and to contrive some method of discharging into

foreign countries this dangerous and intestine evil.

Peter, king of Castile, stigmatized by his contemporaries and by

posterity with the epithet of Cruel, had filled with blood and murder

his kingdom and his own family; and having incurred the universal hatred

of his subjects, he kept from present terror alone, an anxious and

precarious possession of the throne. His nobles fell every day the

victims of his severity: he put to death several of his natural

brothers, from groundless jealousy: each murder, by multiplying his

enemies, became the occasion of fresh barbarities; and as he was not

destitute of talents, his neighbors, no less than his own subjects, were

alarmed at the progress of his violence and injustice. The ferocity of

his temper, instead of being softened by his strong propensity to love,

was rather inflamed by that passion, and took thence new occasion

to exert itself. Instigated by Mary de Padilla, who had acquired the

ascendant over him, he threw into prison Blanche de Bourbon, his wife,

Bister to the queen of France; and soon after made way by poison for the

espousing of his mistress.

Henry, count of Transtamare, his natural brother, seeing the fate of

every one who had become obnoxious to this tyrant, took arms against

him; but being foiled in the attempt, he sought for refuge in France,

where he found the minds of men extremely inflamed against Peter, on

account of his murder of the French princess. He asked permission of

Charles to enlist the “companies” in his service, and to lead them into

Castile; where, from the concurrence of his own friends, and the enemies

of his brother, he had the prospect of certain and immediate success.

The French king, charmed with the project, employed Du Guesclin in

negotiating with the leaders of these banditti. The treaty was soon

concluded. The high character of honor which that general possessed,

made every one trust to his promises: though the intended expedition was

kept a secret, the “companies” implicitly enlisted under his standard;

and they required no other condition before their engagement, than an

assurance that they were not to be led against the prince of Wales in

Guienne. But that prince was so little averse to the enterprise, that he

allowed some gentlemen of his retinue to enter into the service under Du

Guesclin.

Du Guesclin, having completed his levies, led the army first to Avignon,

where the pope then resided, and demanded, sword in hand, an absolution

for his soldiers, and the sum of two hundred thousand livres. The first

was readily promised him; some more difficulty was made with regard to

the second. “I believe that my fellows,” replied Du Guesclin, “may

make a shift to do without your absolution; but the money is absolutely

necessary.” The pope then extorted from the inhabitants in the city and

neighborhood the sum of a hundred thousand livres, and offered it to

Du Guesclin. “It is not my purpose,” cried that generous warrior, “to

oppress the innocent people. The pope and his cardinals themselves can

well spare me that sum from their own coffers. This money, I insist,

must be restored to the owners. And should they be defrauded of it, I

shall myself return from the other side of the Pyrenees, and oblige you

to make them restitution.” The pope found the necessity of submitting,

and paid him from his treasury the sum demanded.[*] The army, hallowed

by the blessings, and enriched by the spoils, of the church, proceeded

on their expedition.

These experienced and hardy soldiers, conducted by so able a general,

easily prevailed over the king of Castile, whose subjects, instead

of supporting their oppressor, were ready to join the enemy against

him.[**] Peter fled from his dominions took shelter in Guienne, and

craved the protection of the prince of Wales, whom his father had

invested with the sovereignty of these conquered provinces, by the title

of the principality of Aquitaine.[***]

* Hist. du Guesclin.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap 230.

*** Rymer, vol. vi. p. 384. Froissard, liv. i. chap. 231.

{1367.} The prince seemed now to have entirely changed his sentiments

with regard to the Spanish transactions: whether that he was moved by

the generosity of supporting a distressed prince, and thought, as is but

too usual among sovereigns, that the rights of the people were a matter

of much less consideration; or dreaded the acquisition of so powerful

a confederate to France as the new king of Castile; or, what is most

probable, was impatient of rest and ease, and sought only an opportunity

for exerting his military talents, by which he had already acquired so

much renown. He promised his assistance to the dethroned monarch; and

having obtained the consent of his father, he levied a great army, and

set out upon his enterprise. He was accompanied by his younger brother,

John of Gaunt, created duke of Lancaster, in the room of the good prince

of that name, who had died without any male issue, and whose daughter

he had espoused. Chandos, also, who bore among the English the same

character which Du Guesclin had acquired among the French, commanded

under him in this expedition.

The first blow which the prince of Wales gave to Henry of Transtamare,

was the recalling of all the “companies” from his service; and so much

reverence did they bear to the name of Edward, that great numbers of

them immediately withdrew from Spain, and enlisted under his banners.

Henry, however, beloved by his new subjects, and supported by the king

of Arragon and others of his neighbors, was able to meet the enemy with

an army of one hundred thousand men; forces three times more numerous

than those which were commanded by Edward. Du Guesclin, and all his

experienced officers, advised him to delay any decisive action, to cut

off the prince of Wales’s provisions, and to avoid every engagement with

a general, whose enterprises had hitherto been always conducted with

prudence, and crowned with success. Henry trusted too much to his

numbers; and ventured to encounter the English prince at Najara.[*]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 241.

Historians of that age are commonly very copious in describing the shock

of armies in battle, the valor of the combatants, the slaughter and

various successes of the day: but though small rencounters in those

times were often well disputed, military discipline was always too

imperfect to preserve order in great armies; and such actions deserve

more the name of routs than of battles. Henry was chased off the field,

with the loss of above twenty thousand men: there perished only four

knights and forty private men on the side of the English.

Peter, who so well merited the infamous epithet which he bore, purposed

to murder all his prisoners in cold blood; but was restrained from this

barbarity by the remonstrance, of the prince of Wales. All Castile now

submitted to the victor: Peter was restored to the throne; and Edward

finished his perilous enterprise with his usual glory. But he had soon

reason to repent his connections with a man like Peter, abandoned to all

sense of virtue and honor. The ungrateful tyrant refused the stipulated

pay to the English forces; and Edward finding his soldiers daily perish

by sickness, and even his own health impaired by the climate, was

obliged, without receiving any satisfaction on this head, to return into

Guienne.[*]

The barbarities exercised by Peter over his helpless subjects, whom

he now regarded as vanquished rebels, revived all the animosity of

the Castilians against him; and on the return of Henry of Transtamare,

together with Du Guesclin, and some forces levied anew in France, the

tyrant was again dethroned, and was taken prisoner. His brother, in

resentment of his cruelties, murdered him with his own hand: and was

placed on the throne of Castile, which he transmitted to his posterity.

The duke of Lancaster, who espoused in second marriage the eldest

daughter of Peter, inherited only the empty title of that sovereignty,

and, by claiming the succession, increased the animosity of the new king

of Castile against England.

{1368.} But the prejudice which the affairs of Prince Edward received

from this splendid though imprudent expedition, ended not with it. He

had involved himself in so much debt by his preparations and the pay of

his troops, that he found it necessary, on his return, to impose on his

principality a new tax, to which some of the nobility consented

with extreme reluctance, and to which others absolutely refused to

submit.[**]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 242, 243. Walsing. p. 182.

** This tax was a livre upon a hearth; and it was imagined

that the imposition would have yielded one million two

hundred thousand livres a year, which supposes so many

hearths in the provinces possessed by the English. But such

loose conjectures have commonly no manner of authority, much

less in such ignorant times. There is a strong instance of

it in the present reign. The house of commons granted the

king a tax of twenty-two shillings on each parish, supposing

that the amount of the whole would be fifty thousand pounds.

But they were found to be in a mistake of near five to one.

Cotton, p. 3. And the council assumed the power of

augmenting the tax upon each parish.

This incident revived the animosity which the inhabitants bore to the

English, and which all the amiable qualities of the prince of Wales

were not able to mitigate or assuage. They complained that they

were considered as a conquered people, that their privileges were

disregarded, that all trust was given to the English alone, that every

office of honor and profit was conferred on these foreigners, and that

the extreme reluctance, which most of them had expressed, to receive

the new yoke, was likely to be long remembered against them. They cast,

therefore, their eyes towards their ancient sovereign, whose prudence

they found had now brought the affairs of his kingdom into excellent

order; and the counts of Armagnac, Comminge, and Perigord, the lord

d’Albret, with other nobles, went to Paris, and were encouraged to carry

their complaints to Charles, as to their lord paramount, against these

oppressions of the English government.[*]

In the treaty of Bretigm it had been stipulated, that the two kings

should make renunciations; Edward, of his claim to the crown of France,

and to the provinces of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou; John, of the homage

and fealty due for Guienne and the other provinces ceded to the English.

But when that treaty was confirmed and renewed at Calais, it was found

necessary, as Edward was not yet in possession of all the territories,

that the mutual renunciations should for some time be deferred; and it

was agreed, that the parties, meanwhile, should make no use of their

respective claims against each other.[**] Though the failure in

exchanging these renunciations had still proceeded from France,[***]

Edward appears to have taken no umbrage at it; both because this clause

seemed to give him entire security, and because some reasonable apology

had probably been made to him for each delay. It was, however, on this

pretence, though directly contrary to treaty, that Charles resolved to

ground his claim of still considering himself as superior lord of those

provinces, and of receiving the appeals of his sub-vassals.[****]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 244.

** Rymer, vol. vi. p. 219, 230, 234, 237, 243.

*** Rot. Franc. 35, Edward III. from Tyrrel, vol. iii

p. 643.

**** Froissard. liv. i. chap. 245.

{1369.} But as views of policy, more than those of justice, enter into

the deliberations of princes; and as the mortal injuries received from

the English, the pride of their triumphs, the severe terms imposed by

the treaty of peace, seemed to render every prudent means of revenge

honorable against them; Charles was determined to take this measure,

less by the reasonings of his civilians and lawyers, than by the present

situation of the two monarchies. He considered the declining years

of Edward, the languishing state of the prince of Wales’s health, the

affection which the inhabitants of all these provinces bore to their

ancient master, their distance from England, their vicinity to France,

the extreme animosity expressed by his own subjects against these

invaders, and their ardent thirst of vengeance; and having silently made

all the necessary preparations, he sent to the prince of Wales a summons

to appear in his court at Paris, and there to justify his conduct

towards his vassals. The prince replied, that he would come to Paris,

but it should be at the head of sixty thousand men.[*] The unwarlike

character of Charles kept Prince Edward, even yet, from thinking that

that monarch was in earnest in this bold and hazardous attempt.

It soon appeared what a poor return the king had received by his distant

conquests for all the blood and treasure expended in the quarrel, and

how impossible it was to retain acquisitions, in an age when no regular

force could be maintained sufficient to defend them against the revolt

of the inhabitants, especially if that danger was joined with the

invasion of a foreign enemy.

{1370.} Charles fell first upon Ponthieu, which gave the English an

inlet into the heart of France: the citizens of Abbeville opened their

gates to him:[**] those of St. Valori, Rue, and Crotoy imitated the

example, and the whole country was, in a little time, reduced to

submission. The dukes of Berri and Anjou, brothers to Charles, being

assisted by Du Guesclin, who was recalled from Spain, invaded the

southern provinces; and by means of their good conduct, the favorable

dispositions of the people, and the ardor of the French nobility, they

made every day considerable progress against the English. The state of

the prince of Wales’s health did not permit him to mount on horseback,

or exert his usual activity: Chandos, the constable of Guienne, was

slain in one action;[***] the Captal de Buche, who succeeded him in

that office, was taken prisoner in another:[****] and when young Edward

himself was obliged by his increasing infirmities to throw up the

command, and return to his native country, the affairs of the English in

the south of France seemed to be menaced with total ruin.

The king, incensed at these injuries, threatened to put to death all the

French hostages who remained in his hands; but on reflection abstained

from that ungenerous revenge. After resuming, by advice of parliament,

the vain title of king of France,[*****] he endeavored to send succors

into Gascony, but all his attempts, both by sea and land, proved

unsuccessful.

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 247, 248.

** Walsing. p. 183.

*** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 277. Walsing, p. 185.

**** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 310.

***** Rymer, vol. vi. p. 621. Cotton’s Abridg. p. 108.

The earl of Pembroke was intercepted at sea, and taken prisoner with

his whole army, near Rochelle, by a fleet which the king of Castile had

fitted out for that purpose:[*] Edward himself embarked for Bordeaux

with another army; but was so long detained by contrary winds, that he

was obliged to lay aside the enterprise.[**] Sir Robert Knolles, at the

head of thirty thousand men, marched out of Calais, and continued his

ravages to the gates of Paris, without being able to provoke the enemy

to an engagement: he proceeded in his march to the provinces of Maine

and Anjou, which he laid waste; but part of his army being there

defeated by the conduct of Du Guesclin, who was now created constable of

France, and who seems to have been the first consummate general that had

yet appeared in Europe, the rest were scattered and dispersed, and the

small remains of the English forces, instead of reaching Guienne,

took shelter in Brittany, whose sovereign had embraced the alliance

of England.[***] The duke of Lancaster, some time after, made a like

attempt with an army of twenty-five thousand men; and marched the whole

length of France from Calais to Bordeaux: but was so much harassed by

the flying parties which attended him, that he brought not the half of

his army to the place of their destination. Edward, from the necessity

of his affairs was at last obliged to conclude a truce with the

enemy;[****] after almost all his ancient possessions in France had been

ravished from him, except Bordeaux and Bayonne, and all his conquests,

except Calais.

The decline of the king’s life was exposed to many mortifications, and

corresponded not to the splendid and noisy scenes which had filled the

beginning and the middle of it. Besides seeing the loss of his foreign

dominions, and being baffled in every attempt to defend them, he felt

the decay of his authority at home; and experienced, from the sharpness

of some parliamentary remonstrances, the great inconstancy of

the people, and the influence of present fortune over all their

judgments.[*****]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 302, 303, 304. Walsing. p. 186.

** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 311. Walsing. p. 187.

*** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 291. Walsing. p. 185.

**** Froissard, liv, i. chap. 311. Walsing. p. 187.

***** Walsing. p. 189. Ypod. Neust. p. 530.

This prince, who, during the vigor of his age, had been chiefly occupied

in the pursuits of war and ambition, began, at an unseasonable period,

to indulge himself in pleasure; and being now a widower, he attached

himself to a lady of sense and spirit, one Alice Pierce, who acquired a

great ascendant over him, and by her influence gave such general disgust

that, in order to satisfy the parliament, he was obliged to remove her

from court.[*]

* Walsing, p. 189.

The indolence also, naturally attending old age and infirmities, had

made him in a great measure resign the administration into the hands of

his son, the duke of Lancaster, who, as he was far from being popular,

weakened extremely the affection which the English bore to the person

and government of the king. Men carried their jealousies very far

against the duke; and as they saw, with much regret, the death of

the prince of Wales every day approaching, they apprehended lest the

succession of his son Richard, now a minor, should be defeated by the

intrigues of Lancaster, and by the weak indulgence of the old king. But

Edward, in order to satisfy both the people and the prince on this head,

declared in parliament his grandson heir and successor to the crown; and

thereby cut off all the hopes of the duke of Lancaster, if he ever had

the temerity to entertain any.

{1376.} The prince of Wales, after a lingering illness, died in the

forty-sixth year of his age; and left a character illustrious for every

eminent virtue, and, from his earliest youth till the hour he expired,

unstained by any blemish. His valor and military talents formed the

smallest part of his merit: his generosity, humanity, affability,

moderation, gained him the affections of all men; and he was qualified

to throw a lustre, not only on that rude age in which he lived, and

which nowise infected him with its vices, but on the most shining period

of ancient or modern history.

{1377.} The king survived about a year this melancholy incident: England

was deprived at once of both these princes, its chief ornament

and support: he expired in the sixty-fifth year of his age and the

fifty-first of his reign; and the people were then sensible, though too

late, of the irreparable loss which they had sustained.

The English are apt to consider with peculiar fondness the history of

Edward III., and to esteem his reign, as it was one of the longest,

the most glorious also, that occurs in the annals of their nation. The

ascendant which they then began to acquire over France, their rival and

supposed national enemy, makes them cast their eyes on this period with

great complacency, and sanctifies every measure which Edward embraced

for that end. But the domestic government of this prince is really

more admirable than his foreign victories; and England enjoyed, by the

prudence and vigor of his administration, a longer interval of domestic

peace and tranquillity than she had been blessed with in any former

period, or than she experienced for many ages after. He gained the

affections of the great, yet curbed their licentiousness: he made them

feel his power, without their daring, or even being inclined, to

murmur at it: his affable and obliging behavior, his munificence and

generosity, made them submit with pleasure to his dominion; his valor

and conduct made them successful in most of their enterprises; and their

unquiet spirits, directed against a public enemy, had no leisure to

breed those disturbances to which they were naturally so much inclined,

and which the frame of the government seemed so much to authorize.

This was the chief benefit which resulted from Edward’s victories and

conquests. His foreign wars were, in other respects, neither founded in

justice, nor directed to any salutary purpose. His attempt against the

king of Scotland, a minor and a brother-in-law, and the revival of

his grandfather’s claim of superiority over that kingdom, were both

unreasonable and ungenerous; and he allowed himself to be too easily

seduced, by the glaring prospect of French conquests, from the

acquisition of a point which was practicable, and which, if attained,

might really have been of lasting utility to his country and his

successors. The success which he met with in France, though chiefly

owing to his eminent talents, was unexpected; and yet, from the very

nature of things, not from any unforeseen accidents, was found, even

during his lifetime, to have procured him no solid advantages. But the

glory of a conqueror is so dazzling to the vulgar, the animosity of

nations is so violent, that the fruitless desolation of so fine a

part of Europe as France, is totally disregarded by us, and is never

considered as a blemish in the character or conduct of this prince. And

indeed, from the unfortunate state of human nature, it will commonly

happen, that a sovereign of genius, such as Edward, who usually finds

every thing easy in his domestic government, will turn himself towards

military enterprises, where alone he meets with opposition, and where he

has full exercise for his industry and capacity.

Edward had a numerous posterity by his queen, Philippa of Hainault. His

eldest son was the heroic Edward, usually denominated the Black Prince

from the color of his armor. This prince espoused his cousin Joan,

commonly called the “fair maid of Kent,” daughter and heir of his uncle,

the earl of Kent, who was beheaded in the beginning of this reign. She

was first married to Sir Thomas Holland, by whom she had children.

By the prince of Wales she had a son, Richard, who alone survived his

father.

The second son of King Edward (for we pass over such as died in their

childhood) was Lionel, duke of Clarence, who was first married to

Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter and heir of the earl of Ulster, by whom

he left only one daughter, married to Edmund Mortimer, earl of Marche.

Lionel espoused in second marriage Violante, the daughter of the duke of

Milan,[*] and died in Italy soon after the consummation of his nuptials,

without leaving any posterity by that princess. Of all the family, he

resembled most his father and elder brother in his noble qualities.

Edward’s third son was John of Gaunt, so called from the place of his

birth: he was created duke of Lancaster; and from him sprang that branch

which afterwards possessed the the crown. The fourth son of this royal

family was Edmund created earl of Cambridge by his father, and duke of

York by his nephew. The fifth son was Thomas, who received the title of

earl of Buckingham from his father, and that of duke of Glocester from

his nephew. In order to prevent confusion, we shall always distinguish

these two princes by the titles of York and Glocester, even before they

were advanced to them.

There were also several princesses born to Edward by Philippa; to wit,

Isabella, Joan, Mary, and Margaret, who espoused, in the order of their

names, Ingelram de Coucy, earl of Bedford, Alphonso, king of Castile,

John of Mountfort, duke of Brittany, and John Hastings, earl of

Pembroke. The princess Joan died at Bordeaux before the consummation of

her marriage.

It is remarked by an elegant historian,[**] that conquerors though

usually the bane of bunian kind, proved often, in those feudal limes,

the most indulgent of sovereigns: they stood most in need of supplies

from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit

to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make them some

compensation, by equitable laws and popular concessions.

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 564.

** Dr. Robertson’s Hist. of Scot. book i.

This remark is, in some measure, though imperfectly, justified by the

conduct of Edward III. He took no steps of moment without consulting his

parliament, and obtaining their approbation, which he afterwards pleaded

as a reason for their supporting his measures.[*] The parliament,

therefore, rose into greater consideration during his reign, and

acquired more regular authority, than in any former time; and even the

house of commons, which, during turbulent and factious periods, was

naturally depressed by the greater power of the crown and barons, began

to appear of some weight in the constitution. In the latter years of

Edward, the king’s ministers were impeached in parliament, particularly

Lord Latimer, who fell a sacrifice to the Authority of the commons;[**]

and they even obliged the king to banish his mistress by their

remonstrances. Some attention was also paid to the election of their

members; and lawyers in particular, who were at that time men of a

character somewhat inferior, were totally excluded the house during

several parliaments.[***]

One of the most popular laws enacted by any prince, was the statute

which passed in the twenty-fifth of this reign,[****] and which

limited the cases of high treason, before vague and uncertain, to three

principal heads--conspiring the death of the king, levying war against

him, and adhering to his enemies and the judges were prohibited, if any

other cases should occur, from inflicting the penalty of treason without

an application to parliament. The bounds of treason were indeed so

much limited by this statute, which still remains in force without

any alteration, that the lawyers were obliged to enlarge them, and to

explain a conspiracy for levying war against the king, to be equivalent

to a conspiracy against his life; and this interpretation, seemingly

forced, has, from the necessity of the case, been tacitly acquiesced in.

* Cotton’s Abridg. p. 108, 120.

** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 122.

*** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 18.

**** Chap. 2.

It was also ordained that a parliament should be held once a year, or

oftener, if need be; a law which, like many others, was never observed

and lost its authority by disuse.[*]

Edward granted above twenty parliamentary confirmations of the Great

Charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of

his great indulgence to the people, and his tender regard for their

liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims

of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if

the Great Charter had not been frequently violated, the parliament would

never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no

force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other

purpose, than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a

rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular

government during those ages, that a statute which had been enacted some

years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose, force by time, and

needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and

tenor. Hence likewise that general clause, so frequent in old acts of

parliament, that the statutes, enacted by the king’s progenitors,

should be observed;[**] a precaution which, if we do not consider the

circumstances of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The

frequent confirmations in general terms of the privileges of the church

proceeded from the same cause.

It is a clause in one of Edward’s statutes, “that no man, of what estate

or condition soever, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken,

nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to death, without being

brought in answer by due process of the law.” [***] This privilege

was sufficiently secured by a clause of the Great Charter, which

had received a general confirmation in the first chapter of the same

statute. Why then is the clause so anxiously, and, as we may think,

so superfluously repeated? Plainly, because there had been some late

infringements of it, which gave umbrage to the commons.[****]

* 4 Edward III. cap. 14.

** 36 Edward III. cap. 1. 37 Edward III. cap. 1, etc.

*** 28 Edward III. cap. 3.

**** They assert, in the fifteenth of this reign, that there

had been such instances. Cotton’s Abridg. p. 31. They repeat

the same in the twenty-first year. See p. 59.

But there is no article in which the laws are more frequently repeated

during this reign, almost in the same terms, than that of purveyance

which the parliament always calls an outrageous and intolerable

grievance, and the source of infinite damage to the people.[*] The

parliament tried to abolish this prerogative altogether, by prohibiting

any one from taking goods without the consent of the owners,[**] and by

changing the heinous name of purveyors, as they term it, into that of

buyers;[***] but the arbitrary conduct of Edward still brought back the

grievance upon them, though contrary both to the Great Charter and to

many statutes. This disorder was in a great measure derived from the

state of the public finances, and of the kingdom; and could therefore

the less admit of remedy. The prince frequently wanted ready money; yet

his family must be subsisted: he was therefore obliged to employ force

and violence for that purpose, and to give tallies, at what rate he

pleased, to the owners of the goods which he laid hold of. The kingdom

also abounded so little in commodities, and the interior communication

was so imperfect, that had the owners been strictly protected by law,

they could easily have exacted any price from the king; especially in

his frequent progresses, when he came to distant and poor places, where

the court did not usually reside, and where a regular plan for supplying

it could not be easily established. Not only the king, but several

great lords, insisted upon this right of purveyance within certain

districts.[****]

The magnificent Castle of Windsor was built by Edward III., and his

method of conducting the work may serve as a specimen of the condition

of the people in that age. Instead of engaging workmen by contracts and

wages, he assessed every county in England to send him a certain

number of masons, tilers, and carpenters, as if he had been levying an

army.[*****]

They mistake, indeed, very much the genius of this reign, who imagine

that it was not extremely arbitrary. All the high prerogatives of the

crown were to the full exerted in it; but what gave some consolation,

and promised in time some relief to the people, they were always

complained of by the commons: such as the dispensing power;[******]

the extension of the forests;[*******] erecting monopolies;[********]

exacting loans--[*********]

* 36 Edward III. etc.

** 14 Edward III. cap. 19.

*** 36 Edward III. cap. 2.

**** 7 Richard II. cap. 8.

***** Ashmole’s Hist, of the Garter, p. 129.

***** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 148.

****** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 71.

******* Cotton’s Abridg. p. 56, 61, 122.

******** Rymer, vol. v. p. 491, 574. Cotton’s Abridg. p. 56.

--stopping justice by particular warrants;[*] the renewal of the

commission of “trailbaton;” [**] pressing men and ships into the public

service;[***] levying arbitrary and exorbitant fines;[****] extending

the authority of the privy council or star-chamber to the decision of

private causes;[*****] enlarging the power of the mareschal’s and other

arbitrary courts;[******] imprisoning members for freedom of speech in

parliament;[*******] obliging people without any rule to send recruits

of men at arms, archers, and hoblers to the army.[********]

* Cotton, p. 114.

** Cotton, p. 67.

*** Cotton, p. 47, 79, 113.

**** Cotton, p. 32.

***** Cotton, p. 74.

****** Cotton, p. 74.

******* Walsing. p. 189, 190.

But there was no act of arbitrary power more frequently repeated in this

reign, than that of imposing taxes without consent of parliament. Though

that assembly granted the king greater supplies than had ever been

obtained by any of his predecessors, his great undertakings, and the

necessity of his affairs, obliged him to levy still more; and after his

splendid success against France had added weight to his authority,

these arbitrary impositions became almost annual and perpetual. Cotton’s

Abridgment of the records affords numerous instances of this kind,

in the first[*] year of his reign, in the thirteenth year,[**] in the

fourteenth,[***] in the twentieth,[****] in the twenty-first,[*****]

in the twenty-second,[******] in the twenty fifth,[*******] in the

thirty-eighth,[********] in the fiftieth,[*********] and in the

fifty-first,[**********]

* Tyrrel’s Hist. vol. iii. p. 554, from the records.

** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 363.

*** Page 17, 18.

**** Page 39.

***** Page 47.

****** Page 52, 53, 57, 58.

******* Page 69.

******** Page 76.

********* Page 101.

********** Page 138.

The king openly avowed and maintained this power of levying taxes

at pleasure. At one time, he replied to the remonstrance made by the

commons against it, that the impositions had been exacted from great

necessity, and had been assented to by the prelates, earls, barons,

and some of the commons;[*] at another, that he would advise with his

council.[**] When the parliament desired that a law might be enacted for

the punishment of such as levied these arbitrary impositions he refused

compliance.[***]

* Page 152.

** Cotton, p. 53. He repeats the same answer in p. 60. “Some

of the commons” were such as he should be pleased to consult

with.

*** Cotton, p. 57.

In the subsequent year, they desired that the king might renounce this

pretended prerogative; but his answer was, that he would levy no taxes

without necessity for the defence of the realm, and where he reasonably

might use that authority.[*] This incident passed a few days before his

death; and these were, in a manner, his last words to his people. It

would seem that the famous charter or statute of Edward I., “de tallagio

non concedendo,” though never repealed, was supposed to have already

lost by age all its authority.

These facts can only show the practice of the times: for as to the

right, the continual remonstrances of the commons may seem to prove that

it rather lay on their side: at least, these remonstrances served

to prevent the arbitrary practices of the court from becoming an

established part of the constitution. In so much a better condition were

the privileges of the people even during the arbitrary reign of Edward

III., than during some subsequent ones, particularly those of the

Tudors, where no tyranny or abuse of power ever met with any check or

opposition, or so much as a remonstrance, from parliament.

In this reign, we find, according to the sentiments of an ingenious

and learned author, the first strongly marked and probably contested

distinction between a proclamation by the king and his privy council,

and a law which had received the assent of the lords and commons.[**]

It is easy to imagine, that a prince of so much sense and spirit as

Edward, would be no slave to the court of Rome. Though the old tribute

was paid during some years of his minority,[***] he afterwards withheld

it; and when the pope, in 1367, threatened to cite him to the court of

Rome for default of payment, he laid the matter before his parliament.

That assembly unanimously declared, that King John could not, without a

national consent, subject his kingdom to a foreign power; and that they

were therefore determined to support their sovereign against this unjust

pretension.[****]

* Cotton, p. 132.

** Observations on the Statutes, p. 193.

*** Rymer, vol. iv. p. 434.

**** Cotton’s Abridg. p. 110.

During this reign, the statute of provisors was enacted, rendering it

penal to procure any presentations to benefices from the court of Rome,

and securing the rights of all patrons and electors, which had been

extremely encroached on by the pope.[*] By a subsequent statute, every

person was outlawed who carried any cause by appeal to the court of

Rome.[**]

The laity at this time seem to have been extremely prejudiced against

the papal power, and even somewhat against their own clergy, because of

their connections with the Roman pontiff. The parliament pretended, that

the usurpations of the pope were the cause of all the plagues, injuries,

famine, anc poverty of the realm; were more destructive to it than

al the wars; and were the reason why it contained not a third of the

inhabitants and commodities which it formerly possessed: that the taxes

levied by him exceeded five times those which were paid to the king;

that every thing was venal in that sinful city of Rome; and that even

the patrons in England had thence learned to practise simony without

shame or remorse.[***] At another time, they petition the king to employ

no churchman in any office of state;[****] and they even speak in plain

terms of expelling by force the papal authority, and thereby providing

a remedy against oppressions, which they neither could, nor would, any

longer endure.[*****] Men who talked in this strain, were not far from

the reformation: but Edward did not think proper to second all this

zeal. Though he passed the statute of provisors, he took little care

of its execution; and the parliament made frequent complaints of his

negligence on this head.[******] He was content with having reduced such

of the Romish ecclesiastics as possessed revenues in England, to depend

entirely upon him by means of that statute.

As to the police of the kingdom during this period, it was certainly

better than during times of faction, civil war, and disorder, to which

England was so often exposed: yet were there several vices in the

constitution, the bad consequences of which all the power and vigilance

of the king could not prevent. The barons, by their confederacies

with those of their own order, and by supporting and defending their

retainers in every iniquity,[*******] were the chief abettors of

robbers, murderers, and ruffians of all kinds; and no law could be

executed against those criminals.

* 25 Edward III. 27 Edward III.

** 27 Edward III. 38 Edward III.

*** Cotton, p. 74, 128, 129.

**** Cotton, p. 112.

***** Cotton, p. 41.

****** Cotton, p. 119, 128 129, 130, 143.

******* 11 Edward III. cap. 14.

******** 4 Edward III. cap.

********* 15 Edward III cap. 4.

The nobility were brought to give their promise in parliament, that they

would not avow retain, or support any felon or breaker of the law;[*]

yet this, engagement, which we may wonder to see exacted from men of

their rank, was never regarded by them. The commons make continual

complaints of the multitude of robberies, murders, rapes, and other

disorders, which, they say, were become numberless in every part of

the kingdom, and which they always ascribe to the protection that the

criminals received from the great.[**]The king of Cyprus, who paid a

visit to England in this reign, was robbed and stripped on the highway

with his whole retinue.[***] Edward himself contributed to this

dissolution of law, by his facility in granting pardons to felons,

from the solicitation of the courtiers. Laws were made to retrench

this prerogative,[****] and remonstrances of the commons were presented

against the abuse of it;[*****] but to no purpose. The gratifying of

a powerful nobleman continued still to be of more importance than the

protection of the people. The king also granted many franchises, which

interrupted the course of justice and the execution of the laws.[******]

* Cotton, p. 10.

** Cotton, p. 51, 62, 64, 70, 160.

*** Walsing. p. 170.

**** 10 Edward III. cap. 2. 27 Edward III. cap. 2.

***** Cotton, p. 75.

****** Cotton, p. 54.

Commerce and industry were certainly at a very low ebb during this

period. The bad police of the country alone affords a sufficient reason.

The only exports were wool, skins, hides leather, butter, tin, lead,

and such unmanufactured goods, of which wool was by far the most

considerable. Knyghton has asserted, that one hundred thousand sacks of

wool were annually exported, and sold at twenty pounds a sack, money of

that age. But he is widely mistaken both in the quantity exported and

in the value. In 1349, the parliament remonstrate, that the king, by an

illegal imposition of forty shillings on each sack exported, had levied

sixty thousand pounds a year:[*] which reduces the annual exports to

thirty thousand sacks. A sack contained twenty-six stone, and each stone

fourteen pounds;[**] and at a medium was not valued at above five pounds

a sack,[***] that is, fourteen or fifteen pounds of our present money.

Knyghton’s computation raises it to sixty pounds, which is near four

times the present price of wool in England.

* Cotton, p. 48, 69.

** 34 Edward III. cap. 5.

*** Cotton, p. 29.

According to this reduced computation, the export of wool brought into

the kingdom about four hundred and thousand pounds of our present money,

instead of six millions, which is an extravagant sum. Even the former

sum is so high, as to afford a suspicion of some mistake in the

computation of the parliament with regard to the number of sacks

exported. Such mistakes were very usual in those ages.

Edward endeavored to introduce and promote the woolen manufacture,

by giving protection and encouragement to foreign weavers,[*] and by

enacting a law, which prohibited every one from wearing any cloth but of

English fabric.[*] The parliament prohibited the exportation of woollen

goods, which was not so well judged, especially while the exportation

of unwrought wool was so much allowed and encouraged. A like injudicious

law was made against the exportation of manufactured iron.[**]

It appears from a record in the exchequer, that in 1354 the exports of

England amounted to two hundred and ninety-four thousand one hundred

and eighty-four pounds seventeen shillings and twopence; the imports to

thirty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy pounds three shillings

and sixpence, money of that time. This is a great balance, considering

that it arose wholly from the exportation of raw wool and other rough

materials. The import was chiefly linen and fine cloth, and some wine.

England seems to have been extremely drained at this time by Edward’s

foreign expeditions and foreign subsidies, which probably was the reason

why the exports so much exceed the imports.

The first toll we read of in England for mending the highways, was

imposed in this reign: it was that for repairing the road between St.

Giles’s and Temple Bar.[***]

In the first of Richard II., the parliament complain extremely of

the decay of shipping during the preceding reign, and assert that one

seaport formerly contained more vessels than were then to be found in

the whole kingdom. This calamity they ascribe to the arbitrary seizure

of ships by Edward for the service of his frequent expeditions.[****]

The parliament in the fifth of Richard renew the same complaint;[*****]

and we likewise find it made in the forty-sixth of Edward III.

* 11 Edward III. cap. 5. Rymer, vol. iv. p. 723. Murimuth p.

88.

** 11 Edward III. cap. 2.

*** 28 Edward III. cap. 5.

**** Rymer, vol. v. p. 520.

***** Cotton, p. 155, 164.

So false is the common opinion that this reign was favorable to

commerce.

There is an order of this king, directed to the mayor and sheriffs of

London, to take up all ships of forty ton and upwards, to be converted

into ships of war.[*]

The parliament attempted the impracticable scheme of reducing the price

of labor after the pestilence, and also that of poultry,[**] A reaper,

in the first week of August, was not allowed above twopence a day, or

near sixpence of our present money; in the second week, a third more. A

master carpenter was limited through the whole year to threepence a day,

a common carpenter to twopence, money of that age.[***] It is remarkable

that, in the same reign, the pay of a common soldier, an archer, was

sixpence a day; which, by the change both in denomination and value,

would be equivalent to near five shillings of our present money.[****]

Soldiers were then enlisted only for a very short time; they lived idle

all the rest of the year, and commonly all the rest of their lives: one

successful campaign, by pay and plunder, and the ransom of prisoners,

was supposed to be a small fortune to a man; which was a great

allurement to enter into the service.[*****]

* Rymer, vol. iv. p. 664.

** 37 Edward III. cap. 3.

**** 25 Edward III, cap. I. 3.

***** Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. i. p. 784.

****** Brady’s Hist. vol. ii. App No. 92.

The staple of wool, wool-fells, leather, and lead, was fixed by act of

parliament in particular towns of England.[*] Afterwards it was removed

by law to Calais: but Edward, who commonly deemed his prerogative above

law, paid little regard to these statutes; and when the parliament

remonstrated with him on account of those acts of power, he plainly told

them, that he would proceed in that matter as he thought proper.[**]

It is not easy to assign the reason of this great anxiety for fixing a

staple; unless, perhaps, it invited foreigners to a market, when they

knew beforehand, that they should there meet with great choice of any

particular species of commodity. This policy of inviting foreigners to

Calais was carried so far, that all English merchants were prohibited

by law from exporting any English goods from the staple; which was in

a manner the total abandoning of all foreign navigation, except that to

Calais;[***] a contrivance seemingly extraordinary.

*Brady, ibid.

** Commodities seem to have risen since the conquest.

Instead of being ten times cheaper than at present, they

were, in the age of Edward III., only three or four times.

This change seems to have taken place in a great measure

since Edward I. The allowance granted by Edward III. to the

earl of Murray, then a prisoner in Nottingham Castle, is one

pound a week; whereas the bishop of St. Andrews, the primate

of Scotland, had only sixpence a day allowed him by Edward

I.

*** 27 Edward III.

The pay of a man at arms was quadruple. We may therefore conclude, that

the numerous armies mentioned by historians in those times, consisted

chiefly of ragamuffins who followed the camp, and lived by plunder.

Edward’s army before Calais consisted of thirty-one thousand and

ninety-four men; yet its pay for sixteen months was only one hundred and

twenty-seven thousand two hundred and one pounds.

It was not till the middle of this century that the English began to

extend their navigation even to the Baltic;[*] nor till the middle of

the subsequent, that they sailed to the Mediterranean.[**]

Luxury was complained of in that age, as well as in others of more

refinement; and attempts were made by parliament to restrain it,

particularly on the head of apparel, where surely it is the most

obviously innocent and inoffensive. No man under a hundred a year was

allowed to wear gold, silver, or silk in his clothes; servants, also,

were prohibited from eating flesh meat, or fish, above once a day.[***]

By another law it was ordained, that no one should be allowed, either

for dinner or supper, above three dishes in each course, and not above

two courses; and it is likewise expressly declared that “soused” meat is

to count as one of these dishes.[****] It was easy to foresee that such

ridiculous laws must prove ineffectual, and could never be executed.

The use of the French language, in pleadings and public deeds, was

abolished.[*****] It may appear strange, that the nation should so long

have worn this badge of conquest: but the king and nobility seem never

to have become thoroughly English, or to have forgotten their French

extraction, till Edward’s wars with France gave them an antipathy to

that nation. Yet still it was long before the use of the English tongue

came into fashion. The first English paper which we meet with in Rymer

is in the year 1386, during the reign of Richard II.[******]

* Cotton, p. 117.

** 27 Edward III. cap. 7.

*** Anderson, vol. i. p. 151.

**** Anderson, vol. i. p. 177.

***** 37 Edward III. cap. 8, 9, 10, etc.

****** 10 Edward III., 36 Edward III. cap. 15.

******* Rymer, vol. vii. p. 526. This paper, by the style,

seems to have been drawn by the Scots, and was signed by the

wardens of the marches only.

There are Spanish papers in that collection of more ancient date:[*]

and the use of the Latin and French still continued. We may judge of

the ignorance of this age in geography, from a story told by Robert of

Avesbury. Pope Clement VI having, in 1344, created Lewis of Spain prince

of the Fortunate Islands, meaning the Canaries, then newly discovered,

the English ambassador at Rome and his retinue were seized with an

alarm, that Lewis had been created king of England; and they immediately

hurried home, in order to convey this important intelligence. Yet

such was the ardor for study at this time, that Speed in his Chronicle

informs us, there were then thirty thousand students in the university

of Oxford alone. What was the occupation of all these young men? To

learn very bad Latin, and still worse logic.

In 1364, the commons petitioned, that, in consideration of the preceding

pestilence, such persons as possessed manors holding of the king in

chief, and had let different leases without obtaining licenses, might

continue to exercise the same power, till the country were become

more populous.[**] The commons were sensible, that this security of

possession was a good means for rendering the kingdom prosperous and

flourishing; yet durst not apply, all at once, for a greater relaxation

of their chains.

* Rymer, vol. vi. p. 654.

** Cotton, p. 97.

There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs, which

deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III., nor one where the

domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that

kind of mixed government, which was then established in England. The

struggles with regard to the validity and authority of the Great Charter

were now over: the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations:

Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by

favorites, nor led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing

could be more essential to his interests than to keep on good terms with

his people: yet, on the whole, it appears that the government at best

was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims,

or bounded by any certain undisputed rights, which in practice were

regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles,

the barons by another, the commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth.

All these systems of government were opposite and incompatible: each of

them prevailed in its turn, as incidents were favorable to it: a great

prince rendered the monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a

king gave reins to the aristocracy; a superstitious age saw the clergy

triumphant; the people, for whom chiefly government was instituted, and

who chiefly deserve consideration, were the weakest of the whole. But

the commons, little obnoxious to any other order, though they sunk under

the violence of tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable

times; and while the storm was brewing, were courted by all sides, and

thus received still some accession to their privileges, or, at worst,

some confirmation of them.

It has been an established opinion that gold coin was not struck till

this reign; but there has lately been found proof that it is as ancient

as Henry III.[*]

* See Observations on the more ancient Statutes, p. 375, 3d

edit.