_EPOCHS of MODERN HISTORY_
EDITED BY
EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A., J. SURTEES PHILLPOTTS
B.C.L. AND
C. COLBECK M.A.
_THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS_
W. STUBBS, M.A.
EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
Edited by Rev. G. W. COX and CHARLES SANKEY, M. A. Eleven volumes,
16mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. Price per vol., $1.00. The set,
Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00.
=TROY--ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE.= By S. G. W. Benjamin
=THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS.= By G. W. Cox.
=THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.= By G. W. Cox.
=THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES.= By Charles Sankey.
=THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.= By A. M. Curteis.
=EARLY ROME.= By W. Ihne.
=ROME AND CARTHAGE.= By R. Bosworth Smith.
=THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA.= By A. H. Beesley.
=THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES.= By Charles Merivale.
=THE EARLY EMPIRE.= By W. Wolfe Capes.
=THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES.= By W. Wolfe Capes.
EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY.
Edited by EDWARD E. MORRIS. Eighteen volumes, 16mo, with 77 Maps,
Plans, and Tables. Price per vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style,
gilt top, in box, $18.00.
=THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES.= By R. W. Church.
=THE NORMANS IN EUROPE.= By A. H. Johnson.
=THE CRUSADES.= By G. W. Cox.
=THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS.= By Wm. Stubbs.
=EDWARD III.= By W. Warburton.
=THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK.= By James Gairdner.
=THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION.= By Frederic Seebohm.
=THE EARLY TUDORS.= By C. E. Moberly.
=THE AGE OF ELIZABETH.= By M. Creighton.
=THE THIRTY YEARS WAR, 1618-1648.= By S. R. Gardiner.
=THE PURITAN REVOLUTION.= By S. R. Gardiner.
=THE FALL OF THE STUARTS.= By Edward Hale.
=THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS XIV.= By Osmond Airy.
=THE AGE OF ANNE.= By Edward E. Morris.
=THE EARLY HANOVERIANS.= By Edward E. Morris.
=FREDERICK THE GREAT.= By F. W. Longman.
=THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE.= By W. O’Connor Morris.
Appendix by Andrew D. White.
=THE EPOCH OF REFORM.= 1830-1850. By Justin McCarthy.
[Illustration: MEDIEVAL EUROPE]
_Epochs of Modern History_
THE
EARLY PLANTAGENETS
BY
WILLIAM STUBBS, M.A.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
WITH TWO MAPS
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS,
1900.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Importance of the Epoch--Its character in French and German
History--In English History--Geographical
Summary--Italy--Germany--France--Spain _Page_ 1
CHAPTER II.
STEPHEN AND MATILDA.
Accession of Stephen--Arrest of the
Bishops--Election of Matilda--The
Anarchy--The Pacification 11
CHAPTER III.
THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY II.
Terms of Henry’s accession--His character--His early
reforms--His relations with France--War of Toulouse--Summary of
nine years’ work 34
CHAPTER IV.
HENRY II. AND THOMAS BECKET.
The English Church--Schools of Clergy--Rise of Becket--Quarrel
with the King--Exile--Death 58
CHAPTER V.
THE LATTER YEARS OF HENRY II.
Continued Reforms--Revolt of 1173-1174--Renewed industry of
Henry--His later years--Quarrel with Richard--Fall and
death 85
CHAPTER VI.
RICHARD CŒUR DE LION.
Character of the Reign--Richard’s first visit to England--His
character--The Crusade--Fall of Longchamp--Richard’s second
visit--His struggle with Philip--His death 110
CHAPTER VII.
JOHN.
John’s succession--Arthur’s claims--Loss of Normandy--Quarrel
with the Church--Submission to the Pope--Quarrel with the
Barons--The Great Charter and its consequences--Arrival of
Lewis--John’s death 136
CHAPTER VIII.
HENRY III.
Character of Henry--Administration of William Marshall--Hubert
de Burgh--Henry his own minister--Foreign favorites--General
misgovernment--Papal intrigue and taxation 161
CHAPTER IX.
SIMON DE MONTFORT.
Delay of the Crisis--Simon de Montfort--Parliament of
1258--Provisions of Oxford--Political troubles--Award of St.
Lewis--Battle of Lewes--Baronial government--Battle of
Evesham--Closing years 189
CHAPTER X.
EDWARD I.
Position and character of Edward--The Crusade--The accession--The
conquest of Wales--Edward’s legal reforms--Financial
system--Growth of Parliament 212
CHAPTER XI.
THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS.
Punishment of the Judges--Banishment of the Jews--Scottish
succession--The French quarrel--The Ecclesiastical quarrel--The
Constitutional crisis--The Confirmation of the
Charters--Parliament of Lincoln--Its sequel--War of Scottish
Independence--Edward’s death 238
CHAPTER XII.
EDWARD II.
Character of Edward II.--Piers Gaveston--The Ordinances--Thomas
of Lancaster--The Despensers--The King’s ruin and
death 263
INDEX 291
MAPS.
MEDIEVAL EUROPE _To face Title_
ENGLAND AND FRANCE (1152-1327) ” _p._ 34
THE
EARLY PLANTAGENETS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Importance of the Epoch--Its character in French and
German History--In English History--Geographical
Summary--Italy--Germany--France--Spain.
[Sidenote:
Various
areas and
stages of
human
history.
]
The geographical area of that history which alone deserves the name
has more than once changed. The early home of human society was in
Asia. Greece and Italy successively became the theatres of the world’s
drama, and in modern times the real progress of society has moved
within the limits of Western Christendom. So, too, with the material
history. At one period the growth of the life of the world is in its
literature, at another in its wars, at another in its institutions.
Sometimes everything circles round one great man; at other times the
key to the interest is found in some complex political idea such as
the balance of power, or the realization of national identity. The
successive stages of growth in the more advanced nations are not
contemporaneous and may not follow in the same order. The quickened
energy of one race finds its expression in commerce and colonization,
that of another in internal organization and elaborate training, that
of a third in arms, that of a fourth in art and literature. In some the
literary growth precedes the political growth, in others it follows it;
in some it is forced into premature luxuriance by national struggles,
in others the national struggles themselves engross the strength that
would ordinarily find expression in literature. Art has flourished
greatly both where political freedom has encouraged the exercise of
every natural gift and where political oppression has forced the genius
of the people into a channel which seemed least dangerous to the
oppressor. Still, on the whole, the European nations in modern history
emerge from somewhat similar circumstances. Under somewhat similar
discipline, and by somewhat similar expedients, they feel their way to
that national consciousness in which they ultimately diverge so widely.
We may hope, then, to find, in the illustration of a definite section
or well ascertained epoch of that history, sufficient unity of plot and
interest, a sufficient number of contrasts and analogies, to save it
from being a dry analysis of facts or a mere statement of general laws.
[Sidenote:
The epoch
to be now
treated.
]
[Sidenote: France.]
[Sidenote: Germany.]
Such a period is that upon which we now enter; an epoch which in the
history of England extends from the accession of Stephen to the death
of Edward II.; that is, from the beginning of the constitutional growth
of a consolidated English people to the opening of the long struggle
with France under Edward III. It is scarcely less well defined in
French and German history. In France it witnesses the process through
which the modern kingdom of France was constituted; the aggregation
of the several provinces which had hitherto recognized only a nominal
feudal supremacy, under the direct personal rule of the king, and
their incorporation into a national system of administration. In
Germany it comprises a more varied series of great incidents. The
process of disruption in the German kingdom, never well consolidated,
had begun with the great schism between North and South under Henry
IV., and furnished one chief element in the quarrel between pope and
emperor. During the first half of the twelfth century it worked more
deeply, if not more widely, in the rivalry between Saxon and Swabian.
Under Frederick I. it necessitated the remodelling of the internal
arrangement of Germany, the breaking up of the national or dynastic
dukedoms. Under Frederick II. it broke up the empire itself, to be
reconstituted in a widely different form and with altered aims and
pretensions under Rudolf of Hapsburg. This is by itself a most eventful
history, in which the varieties of combinations and alternations
of public feeling abound with new results and illustrations of the
permanence of ancient causes.
[Sidenote: The Empire.]
In the relations of the Empire and the Papacy the same epoch contains
one cycle of the great rivalry, the series of struggles which take a
new form under Frederick I. and Alexander III., and come to an end in
the contest between Lewis of Bavaria and John XXII. It comprises the
whole drama of the Hohenstaufen, and the failure of the great hopes of
the world under Henry VII., which resulted in the constituting of a new
theory of relations under the Luxemburg and Hapsburg emperors.
Whilst these greater actors are thus preparing for the struggle which
forms the later history of European politics, Spain and Italy are
passing through a different discipline. In the midst of all runs the
history of the Church and the Crusades, which supplies one continuous
clue to the reading of the period, a common ground on which all the
actors for a time and from time to time meet.
[Sidenote:
An epoch of
great men.
]
[Sidenote:
Manners
and religion.
]
[Sidenote:
Moral
lessons.
]
But the interest of the time is not confined to political history.
It abounds with character. It is an age in which there are very many
great men, and in which the great men not only occupy but deserve the
first place in the historian’s eye. It is their history rather than
the history of their peoples that furnishes the contribution of the
period to the world’s progress. This is the heroic period of the middle
ages,--the only period during which, on a great scale and on a great
stage, were exemplified the true virtues which were later idealized
and debased in the name of chivalry,--the age of John of Brienne and
Simon de Montfort, of the two great Fredericks, of St. Bernard and
Innocent III., and of St. Lewis and Edward I. It is free for the most
part from the repulsive features of the ages that precede, and from the
vindictive cruelty and political immorality of the age that follows.
Manners are more refined than in the earlier age and yet simpler and
sincerer than those of the next; religion is more distinctly operative
for good and less marked by the evils which seem inseparable from its
participation in the political action of the world. Yet not even the
thirteenth century was an age of gold, much less those portions of
the twelfth and fourteenth which come within our present view. It was
not an age of prosperity, although it was an age of growth; its gains
were gained in great measure by suffering. If Lewis IX. and Edward
I. taught the world that kings might be both good men and strong
sovereigns, Henry III. and Lewis VII. taught it that religious habits
and even firm convictions are too often insufficient to keep the weak
from falsehood and wrong. The history of Frederick II. showed that the
race is not always to the swift or the battle to the strong, that of
Conrad and Conradin that the right is not always to triumph, and that
the vengeance which evil deeds must bring in the end comes in some
cases very slowly and with no remedy to those who have suffered.
[Sidenote:
Importance
of England’s
work
in this
epoch.
]
[Sidenote:
Character
of this book.
]
It is but a small section of this great period that we propose to
sketch in the present volume; the history of our own country during
this epoch of great men and great causes; but it comprises the history
of what is one at least of England’s greatest contributions to the
world’s progress. The history of England under the early kings of the
house of Plantagenet unfolds and traces the growth of that constitution
which, far more than any other that the world has ever seen, has kept
alive the forms and spirit of free government; which has been the
discipline that formed the great free republic of the present day;
which was for ages the beacon of true social freedom that terrified the
despots abroad and served as a model for the aspirations of hopeful
patriots. It is scarcely too much to say that English history, during
these ages, is the history of the birth of true political liberty.
For, not to forget the services of the Italian republics, or of the
German confederations of the middle ages, we cannot fail to see that in
their actual results they fell as dead before the great monarchies of
the sixteenth century, as the ancient liberties of Athens had fallen;
or where the spirit survived, as in Switzerland, it took a form in
which no great nationality could work. It was in England alone that
the problem of national self-government was practically solved; and
although under the Tudor and Stewart sovereigns Englishmen themselves
ran the risk of forgetting the lesson they had learned and being robbed
of the fruits for which their fathers had labored, the men who restored
political consciousness, and who recovered the endangered rights, won
their victory by argumentative weapons drawn from the storehouse of
medieval English history, and by the maintenance and realization of the
spirit of liberty in forms which had survived from earlier days. It is
an introduction to the study of English history during the period of
constitutional growth, that we shall attempt to sketch the epoch, not
as a Constitutional History, but as an outline of the period and of
the combinations through which the constitutional growth was working,
the place of England in European history and the character of the men
who helped to make her what she ultimately became. Before we begin,
however, we may take a glance at the map of Europe at the point of time
from which we start.
[Sidenote:
Geographical
summary.
]
[Sidenote:
Eastern
Europe.
]
[Sidenote: Italy.]
Eastern Europe, from the coasts of the Adriatic to the limits of
Mahometan conquest eastward, was subject to the emperor who reigned at
Constantinople, and may, except for its incidental connection with the
Crusades, be left out of the present view. The northern portions were
in the hands of half-civilized, half-Christianized races, which formed
a barrier dangerous but efficacious between the Byzantine emperor and
Western Christendom. The kingdom of Hungary, and the acquisitions of
Venice on the east of the Adriatic fenced medieval Europe from the same
enemies. Italy was divided between the Normans, who governed Apulia
and Sicily, and the sway of the Empire, which under Lothar II.--the
Emperor who was on the throne when our period begins--had become little
more than nominal south of the Alps; the independence of the imperial
cities and small principalities reaching from the Alps to Rome itself
was maintained chiefly by the inability of the Germans to keep either
by administrative organization or by dynastic alliances a permanent
hold upon it. With both the Republican north and the Normanized south,
the political history of the Plantagenet kings came in constant
connection; and even more close and continuous was the relation through
the agency of the Church with Rome itself. At the opening of the
period, Englishmen were not only studying in the universities of Italy,
at Salerno, at Bologna, and at Pavia, but were repaying to Italy, in
the services of prelates and statesmen, the debt which England had
incurred through Lanfranc and Anselm. An Englishman was soon to be
pope. The Norman kings chose ministers and prelates of English birth;
and the same Norman power of organization which worked in England under
Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury, worked in similar line in Sicily under
King Roger and his posterity.
[Sidenote: Germany.]
Looking northwards, we see Germany, in the middle of the twelfth
century, still administered, although uneasily, under the ancient
system of the four nations, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria;
four distinct nationalities which refused permanent combination. This
system was, however, in its last decay. Its completeness was everywhere
broken in upon by the great ecclesiastical principalities which the
piety and policy of the emperors had interposed among the great secular
states, to break the impulse of aggressive warfare, to serve as models
of good order, and to maintain a direct hold in the imperial hands
on territories which could not become hereditary in a succession of
priests. Not only so; the debatable lands which lay between the great
nations were breaking up into minor states: landgraves, margraves, and
counts palatine were assuming the functions of dukes; the dukes, where
they could not maintain the independence of kings, were seeing their
powers limited and their territories divided. Thus Bavaria was soon to
be dismembered to form a duchy of Austria; Saxony was falling to pieces
between the archbishops of Cologne and the margraves of Brandenburg:
Franconia between the Emperor and the Count Palatine; Swabia was the
portion of the reigning imperial house, the treasury therefore out
of which the Emperor had to carve rewards for his servants. Between
the great house of the Welf in Saxony, Bavaria, and Lombardy, and
the Hohenstaufen on the imperial throne and in Franconia and Swabia,
subsisted the jealousy which was sooner or later to reach the heart
of the Empire itself, to supply the force which threw the dislocated
provinces into absolute division.
[Sidenote:
The intermediate
provinces.
]
[Sidenote: France.]
Westward was France under Lewis VII., divided from Germany by the
long narrow range of the Lotharingian provinces, over which the
imperial rule was recognized as nominal only. These provinces formed
a debatable boundary line, which had for one of its chief functions
the maintenance of peace between the descendants of Hugh Capet and the
representatives of the majesty of Charles and Otto; and which served
its turn, for between France and the Hohenstaufen empire there was
peace and alliance. But many of the provinces which now form part of
France were then imperial, and beyond the Rhone and Meuse the king
of Paris had no vassals and but uncertain allies. Within his feudal
territory, the count of Flanders to the north, the duke of Aquitaine
to the south, the duke of Normandy with his claims over Maine and
Brittany, cut him off from the sea; and even the little strip of coast
between Flanders and Normandy was held by the count of Boulogne, who
at the moment was likewise king of England. Yet the kingdom of France
was by no means at its deepest degradation. Lewis VI. had kept alive
the idea of central power, and had obtained for his son the hand of the
heiress of Aquitaine; the schemes were already in operation by which
the kings were to offer to the provinces a better and firmer rule than
they enjoyed under their petty lords, by which fraud and policy were to
split up the principalities and attract them fragment by fragment to
the central power, and by which even Normandy itself was in little more
than fifty years to be recovered; by which a real central government
was to be instituted, and the semblance of national unity to be
completed by the formation of a distinct national character.
[Sidenote:
The Low
Countries.
]
North of France the imperial provinces of Lower Lorraine, and the
debatable lands between Lorraine and Saxony, had much the same
indefinite character as belonged to the southern parts of the
intermediate kingdom. They seldom took part in the work of the Empire,
although they were nominally part of it, and the stronger emperors
enforced their right. But as a rule they were too distant from the
centre of government to fear much interference, and, enjoying such
freedom as they could, they gladly recognized the emperor’s sway when
they required his help. We shall see the princes of Lorraine taking
no small part in the negotiations between England and Germany under
Richard and John, but they generally played a game with Flanders,
France, and the Empire which has but an indirect bearing on European
politics; and we chiefly hear of these lands as furnishing the hordes
of mercenary soldiers for the crusades and internal wars of Europe,
until almost suddenly the Flemish cities break upon our eye as centres
of commerce and political life.
[Sidenote:
Spain and
Portugal.
]
Southward lie Spain and Portugal; divided into several small kingdoms
between closely allied and kindred kings, all employed in the long
crusade of seven centuries against the Moor; a crusade which is now
beginning to have hopes of successful issue. Central Spain, on the
line of the Tagus, is still in dispute, although Toledo had been
taken in 1085, and Saragossa in 1118. Lisbon was taken with the
help of the Crusaders in 1147. In each of the Christian states of
Spain, free institutions of government, national assemblies and local
self-government, preserved distinct traces of the Teutonic or Gothic
origin of the ruling races; and even before the English parliament grew
to completeness, the Cortes of Castile and Aragon were theoretically
complete assemblies of the three estates. The growth of Spain is one
of the distinct features of our epoch; but it is a growth apart. There
are as yet scarcely more than one or two points at which it comes in
contact with the general action of Europe.