EDWARD I.
Position and character of Edward--The Crusade--The Accession--The
Conquest of Wales--Edward’s legal reforms--Financial system--Growth of
Parliament.
[Sidenote:
Political
education of
Edward I.
]
If ever king came to his throne with a distinct understanding of the
work that lay before him, that king must have been Edward I. The
lessons of the last fifteen years of his father’s reign had not been
thrown away upon him. He had been trained for the task of reigning, as
well by his father’s mistakes and misgovernment as by the means which
the nation, under Earl Simon and the barons, had taken to remedy the
evils which those mistakes and misgovernment had produced. He must have
known that England required sound laws and strong administration, an
adequate organization for national defence, and effective methods for
preserving internal peace; and the history of the late reign must have
taught him not only that without the sympathy and co-operation of the
nation at large these ends could not be secured, but that the nation
was itself ready, educated sufficiently, and united sufficiently,
to give the aid that he required. Earl Simon and his companions had
perished, but the great end of their work had been achieved; they had
made it impossible for a king again to rule as John had ruled, and as
Henry had tried to rule. They had drawn out a plan of reform in the
laws which Henry himself had accepted after their death, although he
had struggled against it and evaded it whilst they lived; for most
of the articles which had been forced upon him at Oxford in 1258,
and at Westminster in 1259, he had re-enacted in the great statute
of Marlborough, in 1267. He had reformed his expenditure; he had
observed the constitutional rule of not taxing without the consent of
the national council; he had even on some occasions called together
representatives of the towns and counties, as Simon had done, although
he had not so far imitated his rival as to make them an integral part
of his Parliament. And thus the great contest had immediate effects
even under Henry.
[Sidenote:
Motives determining
Edward’s
Crusade.
]
Edward had learned the deeper lessons; he had conceived the desire of
satisfying the more essential needs of his people. Hence, perhaps, in
part, his willingness to go on the Crusade. He knew that he had made
enemies in the late war; a few years would heal up the old wounds. He
knew that the land was exhausted; a few years’ rest would give it time
to recruit. If he were likely to be the cause of unrest, he was better
away; and even if he should not return until he returned as king, he
might begin his new career less hampered than he would otherwise have
been by the policy of his father.
[Sidenote:
Edward’s
English
policy.
]
[Sidenote:
Edward’s
idea of
kingship.
]
But Edward was qualified to do far more than merely restore the
strength and energy of his fainting people; he was fitted to start and
guide them on a new path of progress. He seems to have possessed, with
his English name, the desire, which he certainly did not inherit, of
being an English king; of putting himself at the head of his English
people to make England a great power in Christendom. His aim no doubt
was to secure that place for his descendants, not, as Henry II. had
done it, simply by founding a great family inheritance of states
scattered and divided, but as the true king of a people strong in the
feeling of national unity, bound together by good laws, but more so
by a sense of national identity, an intelligent participation in all
national designs. The restoration of law and order, the determination
that the English crown should be supreme within the British isles, the
assertion and realization of the idea that the king should work as the
leader and spokesman of a nation that could enter into his plans and
take a share of his responsibilities--these thoughts must have been
more or less before Edward’s mind from the beginning of his reign. Very
possibly he foresaw little of the exact path in which he was going to
walk: the exact points of legal reform, the opportunities for conquest,
the exigencies in which he would have to act for the execution of his
great designs, no doubt broke gradually on his view as he proceeded.
He had still something to unlearn as well as something to learn. If in
spirit he was English, he was in education and by association French;
if he was to be a great national king, still his idea of kingship
had too much of an inherited form, a form which it did not surrender
without a struggle. His greatness was not without an element which
sets it far above all the greatness that arises from mere success; he
had it to learn, and he learned, to rule himself, to cast away his own
cherished idea of reigning, and faithfully and honorably abide by the
conditions which, although forced upon him, he saw at last were needed
for the true realization of his character as a national king. He was
not free from faults; it is no small part of his grandeur that, in a
nature so strong as his, and with temptations so powerful as those
which were presented to him, those faults had so little sway. Of an
eminently legal mind, he was too apt to take captious advantage of
his legal position, somewhat prone to evade responsibilities to which
the letter of the law did not bind him. This weakness was the source
of all his mistakes and the cause of all his failures; but this was
all. His mistakes were few, and his failures fewer still. Yet, as we
shall see, he did not realize all that he hoped. Nor was his actual
contribution to national progress exactly what he designed. There are
dark lines in his history as well as bright ones. Of his schemes some
were too early, some too late for success; and in some points he drew
the outline rather than built the fabric that was to last. Still his
reign is a great era; he is the great lawgiver, the great politician,
the great organizer of the mediæval English polity.
[Sidenote:
Crusade of
Prince
Edward.
]
[Sidenote:
Edward’s
accession to
the English
crown.
]
Edward was thirty-three years old at the time of his father’s death.
He had been for eighteen years a married man; his wife, Eleanor of
Castile, was the sister of that Alfonso the Wise who had been the
competitor of Richard of Cornwall for the imperial crown, a noble
and faithful lady. He himself was a tall, strong man, an adept in
all knightly accomplishments, brave to rashness, and now skilled and
experienced in war. His crusade had not been a successful one. Late
in starting, he had reached the African coast in the autumn of 1270,
to find Lewis IX. dead, and the hopes of the pilgrims already waning.
After spending the winter in Sicily, he had, in May, 1271, gone on,
like Richard Cœur de Lion, to Acre, and had spent more than a year in
an attempt to retrieve the fortunes of the Frank kingdom. It was quite
in vain. Mutual jealousies and universal mistrust had eaten out the
heart of the Crusaders. A few dashing exploits, and a few almost wanton
inroads, could do little more than exasperate the hatred of the Moslem.
Edward played his part as a knight, but he had neither force nor
opportunity to do more. Still he made himself feared; and an attempt
at assassination in June, 1272, warned him of the risks he was running.
An emissary of the Sultan Bibars struck him in his tent. The weapon was
poisoned, it was said, and the story was told and believed, that his
faithful queen, who had followed him in his pilgrimage, had sucked the
poison from the wound. Two months later he sailed homewards, thoroughly
disappointed, and heavily burdened with the cost of his expedition. He
was slowly proceeding on his way, when, at Capua, in January, 1273, he
received the news of his father’s death and of the death of his eldest
son John, a boy of six. Quickening his pace, he went on at once to
Rome, visited the Pope at Orvieto, and crossed by the Mont Cenis pass
to Lyons; thence to Paris, where he did homage to King Philip III. for
his French provinces; and then into Gascony, where he was delayed for
another year before he could come to England to be crowned.
[Sidenote:
Administration
of the
kingdom
during
Edward’s
absence.
]
England was still at rest. The royal dignity of Henry III. passed on
at once to his son. There was no formal interregnum such as had always
occurred before, between the death of the old king and the coronation
of the new. Edward was proclaimed without being waited for. The king’s
peace was maintained by the royal council, and the three ministers to
whom, before he started, he had committed the defence of his private
interests, undertook to govern England in his stead. Archbishop Giffard
of York, Roger Mortimer, the great lord of the Welsh Marches, who
had helped him so well in 1265, and Robert Burnell, his confidential
chaplain, the man who was to be his prime minister during half his
reign, acted as regents in his place, and were at once recognised
by the baronage and nation as his agents. Competitor there was none.
Gilbert of Gloucester, the brilliant and somewhat erratic earl who had
tried to act as arbiter in the last scenes of the barons’ war, and had
lost the confidence of both parties, had sworn to King Henry on his
death-bed that he would maintain the rights of Edward. He, as the first
baron of the kingdom, took the oath of allegiance to the new king at
his father’s funeral. Early in 1273 a great assembly of all estates of
the realm, an assembly not only of barons and prelates, but of knightly
representatives of the shires and citizens deputed by every city, met
at Westminster, and bound themselves by the same oath. One or two faint
reports of local tumult served only to mark the profoundness of the
general peace. The government worked in quiet; even money was raised
without much murmuring.
[Sidenote:
Coronation of
Edward.
]
On August 2, 1274, Edward I. landed at Dover, and on the 19th he was
crowned. At once the work of his reign began. He was a warrior and a
lawgiver by nature, education, and opportunity; the exigencies of the
time made him a financier also; and the occasion speedily arose for him
to display his powers in each capacity.
[Sidenote:
Turbulence of
the Welsh
princes.
]
The princes of North Wales had long been a sharp thorn in the side of
England. Neither force nor friendly alliance had been strong enough
to keep them quiet. The love of independence, the inheritance of
proud, although illusory traditions, the attachment of an affectionate
people, the possession of remote mountain fastnesses, the antipathy
as strongly felt towards the Norman as it had been towards the Saxon,
combined to prevent either peace or submission. All the other races had
combined on the soil of Britain, the Welsh would not. The demands of
feudal homage made by the kings of England were evaded or repudiated;
the intermarriages, by which Henry II. and John had tried to help
on a national agreement had in every case failed. In every internal
difficulty of English politics the Welsh princes had done their best
to embarrass the action of the kings; they had intrigued with every
aspirant for power, had been in league with every rebel. At the
beginning of the reign of Henry III. they had conspired with Falkes de
Breauté against the Marshalls; at the close of it they were in intimate
alliance with the Montforts. Not only so; the necessity of guarding
the Welsh border had caused the English kings to found on the March a
number of feudal lordships, which were privileged to exercise almost
sovereign jurisdictions, and exempted from the common operations of the
English law. The Mortimers at Chirk and Wigmore, the Bohuns at Hereford
and Brecon, the Marshalls at Pembroke, and the Clares in Glamorgan,
were out of the reach of the king, and often turned against one another
the arms which had been given them to overawe the Welsh. There they had
an open ground for combats which they could not wage where English law
was strong. So long as the Welsh were left free to rebel the Marchers
must be left free to fight.
[Sidenote:
Rebellion of
Llewelyn,
Prince of
North Wales,
and his brother
David.
]
Edward had long known this. He too had been put in the position of
a Marcher. His father had given him, in 1254, a great territory in
Wales, between Dee and Conway, and into it he had tried, with signal
ill success, to introduce English laws. He probably knew that one of
his greatest tasks, when he came to the crown, would be this. And he
had not to wait for his opportunity. Llewelyn, the prince of North
Wales, had, by the assistance given to Simon de Montfort earned as his
reward a recognition of his independence, subject only to the ancient
feudal obligations. All the advantages won during the early years of
Henry III. had been thus surrendered. When the tide turned Llewelyn
had done homage to Henry; but when he was invited, in 1273, to perform
the usual service to the new king, he refused; and again, in 1274 and
1275, he evaded the royal summons. In 1276, under the joint pressure
of excommunication and a great army which Edward brought against him,
he made a formal submission; performed the homage, and received, as
a pledge of amity the hand of Eleanor de Montfort in marriage. But
Eleanor, although she was Edward’s cousin, was Earl Simon’s daughter,
and scarcely qualified to be a peacemaker. Another adviser of rebellion
was found in Llewelyn’s brother David, who had hitherto taken part
with the English, and had received special favors and promotion from
Edward himself. The reconciliation of Edward and Llewelyn had put an
end to his hopes of supplanting his brother, and he had drawn closer
to him, in order to entangle him in a rebellion for which he was
always ready. The peace made in 1277 lasted about four years. In 1282
the brothers rose, seized the border castles of Hawarden, Flint, and
Rhuddlan, and captured the Justiciar of Wales, Roger Clifford. Edward
saw then that his time was come. He marched into North Wales, carrying
with him the courts of law and the exchequer, and transferring the
seat of government for the time to Shrewsbury. He left nothing undone
that might give the expedition the character of a national effort. He
collected forces on all sides; he assembled the estates of the realm,
clergy, lords, and commons, and prevailed on them to furnish liberal
supplies; he obtained sentence of excommunication from the Archbishop
of Canterbury. The Welsh made a brave defence, and, had it not been
for the almost accidental capture and murder of Llewelyn in December,
England might have found the task too hard for her. The death of
Llewelyn, however, and the capture of David in the following June,
deprived the Welsh of their leaders, and they submitted.
[Sidenote:
Conquest of
Wales.
]
[Sidenote:
Statute of
Wales.
]
Edward began forthwith his work of consolidation. David, as a
traitor to his feudal lord, a conspirator against his benefactor, a
blasphemer of God, and a murderer, was tried by the king’s judges at
Shrewsbury and sentenced to a terrible death, the details of which
were apportioned according to the articles of the accusation. Justice
satisfied, Edward devoted himself to the securing of his conquest; in
1284 he published at Rhuddlan a statute, called the Statute of Wales,
which was intended to introduce the laws and customs of England,
and to reform the administration of that country altogether on the
English system. The process was a slow one; the Welsh retained their
ancient common law and their national spirit; the administrative
powers were weak and not far-reaching; the sway of the lords Marchers
was suffered to continue; and, although assimilated, Wales was not
incorporated with England. It was not until the reign of Henry VIII.
that the principality was represented in the English Parliament, and
the sovereignty, which from 1300 upwards was generally, although not
invariably bestowed on the king’s eldest son, conferred under the most
favorable circumstances, little more than a high-sounding title and
some slight and ideal claim to the affection of a portion of the Welsh
people. The task, however, which the energies of his predecessors had
failed to accomplish was achieved by Edward. All Britain south of the
Tweed recognized his direct and supreme authority, and the power of the
Welsh nationality was so far broken that it could never more thwart the
determined and united action of England.
[Sidenote:
Edward as
a lawgiver.
]
During the first ten years of the reign the Welsh war and rumors of
war were the chief matters that distracted Edward from the scarcely
less congenial work of legislation and political organization. The
age was one of great lawgivers. Frederick II. had set the example in
Naples, and his minister Peter de Vineis had codified there the laws
and constitutions of the Norman kings of Sicily. Lewis IX. had in his
“Etablissements” created a body of law for France; and Alfonso the Wise
in the “Siete Partidas,” or seven divisions of a system of universal
law, had tried to do the same for Spain. Law had become a chief subject
of study in the universities, and Englishmen, especially clergymen,
had been used for a century to go to Bologna to read the canon and
civil law under the great professors there. In England the expansion of
judicial machinery and judicial business, which followed the reforms of
Henry II., had worked, out of old and new materials, a body of customs
which became known as the common law; and one great summary of the
hitherto unwritten law of England had been published towards the end
of the last reign by Henry Bracton, one of the judges of the king’s
court. Men’s minds had been invited by these and the like influences
to this study. The nation, awaking to political work, began to see the
necessity of changing or amending the existing system of law.
[Sidenote:
Probable
plan for the
codification
of the law.
]
In undertaking the work of a lawgiver, Edward I was simply approaching
one part of his duty as a king; but his own mind had, as has been
said, a legal bent; his chief minister Robert Burnell, was a great
lawyer; in his journey through Italy, he had engaged the services of
Francesco Accursi, an eminent jurist of Bologna, whose father had
written a body of explanatory glosses on the Roman law. It is probable
that the king had set before himself the codification of the law as
one great object. The work of Britton, another eminent judge of his
time, which is written in French, and contains much that is not in
Bracton, was published in Edward’s name; and some of his longer Acts
of Parliament contain provisions so varied and full, as almost to
constitute codes in special departments of law. But the English nation
seems to have had a dread of too elaborate systems, and the whole of
the national law has never yet been under supreme authority embodied in
a single compilation.
[Sidenote:
Principles of
Edward’s
legislation.
]
The legislation of Edward I. must be sought in the statute books. It
may be generally described as an attempt to develop and apply the
principles which had been conceded in Magna Carta and to adapt them to
the changed circumstances of his time. That document had now become,
what the laws of Edward the Confessor had been in the reign of Henry
I., and the laws of Henry I. under John, the watchword of the party
which was bent on preventing any increase or abuse of royal power.
[Sidenote:
Edward and
the Great
Charter.
]
[Sidenote:
Feudal
powers
of
the king.
]
Edward himself, who took for his motto the words “Pactum serva,” which
may be seen upon his tomb, not unnaturally regarded the demands which
were made for the re-issue of the Great Charter as a slur upon his good
faith. Only once during the first half of his reign, did he undertake
to re-confirm it; and when the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1279,
obtained the enactment of a canon by which copies of the charter were
to be affixed to the doors of the churches, the king interfered to
forbid it. It is not too much, perhaps, to say that it was the legal
rather than the constitutional articles of the Great Charter that he
took the most pains to develop. The influence of the great lords is
conspicuous in some of the provisions of his statutes, which tend to
restrict the liberty of alienating lands. Jealousy of ecclesiastical
aggrandizement appears in others, which forbid the acquisition of new
estates by the clergy. It cannot be supposed likely that a king like
Edward, would miss his opportunity of strengthening the hold which he
had on both barons and prelates. The idea of constitutional liberty
had now grown so powerful that he knew that he could no longer make
laws, or raise taxes, or even go to war without their consent. In those
respects he could not coerce them. But the legal rights which the
crown had over its own vassals were a different matter. It was quite
practicable for him to exact the full payment of feudal services, to
prevent the impoverishment of the crown, by the transference of estates
which paid a large revenue to the king on the occasion of successions
or marriages of wardships, into the hands of religious corporations
which neither died nor married, nor required tutelage. It was equally
practicable to prevent the owners of great estates from cutting up
their property, by what was called subinfeudation, into smaller
holdings, which would not, any more than the church lands, render to
the king the feudal services that he required. Two of Edward’s most
famous statutes--the statute “De Religiosis,” in 1279, and the statute
“Quia Emptores,” in 1290, were intended to secure these two points.
[Sidenote:
Powers of
the feudal
lords.
]
[Sidenote:
Courts of Exchequer,
King’s Bench,
and Common
Pleas.
]
Again, all measures for the due interpretation and execution of the
law protected the people at large against the usurpations of their
strong neighbors. It is not to be forgotten that although in England
the feudal landlords had, more than a century before, been deprived
of their power to usurp jurisdiction over their vassals, and obliged
to admit the king’s judges, still a great part of Europe was governed
under the old plan. We have seen how, during the barons’ war, the party
opposed to the king was divided between those who really desired the
freedom of the people, and those who wished to restrict the king’s
power in order to increase their own. In some important matters of
judicial proceeding the interests of the crown and of the people at
large were still united in opposition to the claims of the great
land-owners. Hence the importance of regulating and improving the
courts of provincial judicature, the limitation of the functions of
the sheriffs, which fell constantly into the hands of local magnates;
the organization of the sessions of the king’s judges, and the opening
of ways by which suits, which could not be fairly or justly settled
in the country, might be heard in the king’s courts at Westminster.
It is to the early years of Edward I., that we owe the final division
of the three great royal tribunals; the Court of Exchequer, in which
were heard all causes that touched the revenue; that of King’s Bench,
which determined suits in which the king was concerned, criminal
questions on the matters, which under the name of “pleas of the crown”
were reserved for his particular treatment; and that of Common Pleas,
which heard suits between private individuals. Now these matters were
apportioned to three distinct staffs of judges, instead of being
heard indiscriminately by the whole or part of the judicial body. The
circuits of judges of assize were defined during the same period of
the reign. Many other measures for the protection of life and property
helped to increase the feeling of security in the body of the people,
to further the growth of loyalty, and at the same time to increase the
royal income.
[Sidenote:
Statute of
Winchester.
]
A third principle of Edward’s legislation may be discovered in the
careful reform and expansion of some of the most ancient institutions,
which he knew had in former reigns assisted greatly in the defence of
the crown and in the maintenance of peace and order. In the Statute of
Winchester, in 1285, he placed the ancient militia system, which Henry
II., had remodeled by the Assize of Arms, upon a better footing, and
re-organized the “watch and ward,” by which the particular districts
and communities were trained to keep order and to search for and
arrest criminals. Similar methods were followed in the preparations
for national defence in 1294, and both by sea and land the old duty of
guarding the country, was based upon the same primitive system. In all
these particular points we may trace a purpose of developing the policy
by which Henry II., had tried to overthrow the influence of feudalism,
and to strengthen his administration by alliance with the great body of
the free people; by placing arms in their hands, providing them with
just and accessible tribunals, and by diminishing, as far as could be
done, the means which the landlord had of oppressing those who held
their land under him. We shall see by and by how the same principles
affected his plans, or the plans which circumstances forced upon him,
for the development of the Parliament and constitution. But before
doing this we must look at the question of finance, which, with those
of war and legislation, gave him, from the very beginning of the reign,
a great deal of hard work. This has been already sketched in connection
with the work of Henry II. It must now be viewed in fuller detail.
[Sidenote:
Sources of
the royal
revenue.
]
The sources of royal revenue were various rather than abundant. There
were, first of all, the estates of the crown, crown lands strictly so
called, which the king as king possessed and managed like any other
landlord, out of which he provided for his family and friends, and
which, in spite of the national jealousy of favorites, were always
more liable to be diminished than to be increased. Of the same class,
though with some important differences, were the estates which fell
into the hands of the sovereign on the extinction of great families or
the forfeiture of their owners; so the earldom of Chester had come into
the hands of Henry III. on the death of the last earl, and the estates
of the Montforts after the battle of Evesham. These estates--escheats,
as they were called--seldom remained long in the king’s hands; the
magnates did not like to see the inheritances of their fellows one by
one absorbed in the royal domain, and it was necessary from time to
time to provide for new rising men and for younger sons of the king.
The possession of crown estates is, of course, common to all ages and
forms of royalty. But a somewhat intricate system pervades the English
finance of the middle ages, and grows out of the growing history of
the nation itself. Under the Anglo-Saxon kings there had been little
call for taxation. The king had a revenue from the public lands of
the nation, which furnished him with provisions and money, enough to
supply all needs that were not satisfied from his royal estates. It
was a part of the sheriff’s duty to collect these contributions, and
they were later on fixed at a regular sum to be paid by the sheriff,
and exacted by him from the county he ruled. All local administration
was maintained by popular action, the land-owners being liable for the
three great task’s called “trinoda necessitas,” the building of bridges
and fortresses, and the service in arms for national defence; and thus
the king had little expense if he had little revenue. In the great
emergencies, however, of the Danish wars, a tax of two shillings on the
hide of land, the famous Danegeld, was established and became perpetual.
[Sidenote:
The Exchequer.
]
These three, the royal lands, the contributions of the shires, and
the Danegeld, were the sources of revenue which William the Conqueror
found when he had secured his hold on England. Under him, or under the
ministers of William Rufus, were introduced a number of new expedients
for raising money, expedients which were made easy by the new doctrine
of land tenure that had been brought in at the Conquest. The Norman
kings did not commute the old for the new methods, but simply added
the feudal burdens to the ancient national taxes. The Exchequer under
Henry I., audited the national, or rather the royal, accounts; twice
a year the sheriffs paid the “ferm”--that is, the composition or rent
for the ancient dues of their counties--the Danegeld, and the fines
arising from the local courts of law; but at the same times were paid
the feudal incidents, the reliefs, the sums which the son paid to
secure the inheritance of his father, the profits of marriages, of
wardships, and the aids which the king as feudal lord of the whole land
claimed as a right from his vassals. Henry I. had, in the beginning of
his reign, promised to make these demands definite and reasonable,
and he had done so; but they were heavy notwithstanding. Still nothing
beyond these could, even on the feudal theory, be taken from the
subject without the consent of the national council. When the king’s
necessities were too great to be met by the ordinary means, the barons
and bishops in council were asked for a grant; and the inferior classes
received in the county courts an intimation of what they were expected
to contribute. It is true that there was little liberty of refusing or
chance of evading payment, but a certain form of consent on the part of
the tax-payer was thus maintained.
[Sidenote:
Changes in
the modes
of taxation.
]
After the time of Henry I. important changes had taken place in the
matter of taxation, many of which have been noticed in our former
pages. Henry II., as we saw, introduced the payment of scutage, by
which the land-owners contributed money instead of serving personally
in arms. He likewise got rid of Danegeld, and consulted the towns and
shires on the amount of grants required, by means of his itinerant
judges. Until now all taxation had been defrayed by the land, except
in the boroughs, where the contribution required was often raised by a
poll-tax, an equal sum per head imposed on every inhabitant. Towards
the end of the reign of Henry II. the custom of taxing movables,
household furniture, and stock was introduced; first, in order to raise
the national contribution for the Crusade, known as the Saladin tithe.
Great part of the money required for Richard’s ransom was levied in the
same way, and under John and Henry III. this became the most common
way of taxing. A seventh, a tenth, a fifteenth, or a thirtieth of
“movables” was from time to time asked for, and the more frequent the
need became the more fully was developed the idea that the tax-payer
had a right to be consulted on the amount which he was to pay, and
to gain, if he could, some advantage in return. John’s frequent
demands for money, and the illegal ways in which he took it, led to
the exaction of the famous promise embodied in the 12th article of
the Great Charter; “No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom
unless by the common counsel of our kingdom, except to ransom our own
person, to make our first-born son a knight, and to marry once our
first-born daughter.” The 14th article describes the assembly which
is to be called when any such impost is required: “We will cause our
archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons to be summoned
severally by our letters, and besides we will cause all who hold of
us in chief to be summoned by general summons by our sheriffs and
bailiffs.”
[Sidenote:
The revenue
under
Henry III.
]
The growth of the country in wealth during the first half of the reign
of Henry III. made this plan of raising revenue the most convenient and
the easiest. As there were few foreign expeditions there was little
opportunity of asking for scutage, and nearly all the regular taxation
was raised from movables, or, as we should now say, personal property.
On each occasion on which such a grant was demanded, the barons and
bishops tried to obtain some compensation in the shape of a re-issue of
the charters or an amendment of the law. The many confirmations of the
charters during that long reign were, it may be said, purchased from
the crown in this way. But Henry could not obtain grants sufficient to
meet the requirements of his greedy and extravagant court. He exacted,
contrary to the letter and spirit of the charter, large sums from the
citizens of London, under the name of gifts; from the Jews, whom he
looked upon very much as if they were part of the farming stock of his
realm; and from every class of persons whom he could draw within the
meshes of his legal nets, he exacted money by fine or composition for
real or imaginary offences.
[Sidenote:
The customs
revenue.
Imports and
exports.
]
But besides the land and the personal property of its inhabitants
there was another source of income which ultimately was to become
most lucrative--the taxation of merchandize, imported and exported,
and especially the wool, wool-fells, and leather, which were, if not
exactly the chief produce of the land, at least the most profitable,
the least easy to conceal, and the most easy for the king’s ministers
to confiscate. These two branches of indirect taxation, although
distinct in themselves, were managed by the same machinery--that of
the customs; and they have to be treated together. But the taxes on
imported merchandize had their origin in the licenses to trade or to
introduce particular sorts of goods, which it was one of the ancient
rights of the king to grant, whilst the taxes on exported produce
were primarily a part of the general system of taxing movables. Both
had been long in requisition; the privileges of the foreign merchants
had been a source of profit even before the Conquest; the wool of
the Cistercian monks and other great sheep-farmers had been demanded
for Richard’s ransom, and both classes had suffered under John and
Henry III. Magna Carta had contained, in its 41st article, a distinct
provision in favor of free trade, which would have obviated the evils
of mismanagement in this department, if it could have been carried out.
All merchants were to have safe ingress and egress to and from England,
and to pay only the right and ancient customs. But such a provision
did not forbid separate negotiations between the king and traders, by
which both made a profit to be wrung from the consumers. One part of
Edward’s financial policy was to bring the customs into order and make
them permanently and regularly profitable, and this he undertook in his
first parliament.
[Sidenote:
Parliamentary
settlement of
revenue on
Edward I.
]
He had come home, deep in debt, to an inheritance heavily encumbered
by his father’s debts. He had obtained from the Pope, whom he visited
at Orvieto on his way, permission to exact a tenth of the income of
the clergy for three years. But this would not be sufficient. He took
counsel, therefore, with the Italian bankers, who had already obtained
a footing in England, and devised the plan of obtaining from his
assembled estates a permanent revenue from wool; half a mark--that is,
six shillings and eightpence--on each sack of wool exported. This is
the legal foundation of the English customs. It was formally granted
in the parliament which met soon after Easter 1275, and with a grant
of a fifteenth of movables, and the tax already imposed on the clergy,
provided him with a revenue which carried on the government for some
years. Nor did it require material increase until Edward, in 1292 and
1293, became involved in a new series of wars.
The exigencies of the Welsh war, the necessity for legal changes, and
the orderly arrangement of the royal revenue, could not have failed to
make their mark on the growth of parliament, even if Edward had not
learned the lessons of constitutional lore which his father’s reign
had furnished; and, even without those lessons, Edward was eminently
qualified by the very habit of his mind to be a constitutional
reformer. Accordingly, in the parliaments of his reign, especially in
those which were called at irregular intervals from 1275 to 1295, are
found the clearest, most distinct, steps of growth, which led to the
complete organization of the three estates of the realm in one central
assembly. And here, again, we must take a brief retrospect.
[Sidenote:
Summoning
of representative
assemblies
for
purposes of
taxation.
]
The days were long past in which either the king, the barons, or the
nation at large were content to see the kingdom managed by a council
of barons and bishops, gathered round a sovereign who was of necessity
either strong enough to coerce them or too weak to resist them. From
the very beginning of the century the right of the tax-payer to give
or refuse had been becoming more clearly recognized; and the methods
which under Henry I. and Henry II. had been used for facilitating
the collection of money provided a machinery which could be used for
still more important purposes. In the twelfth century, when the king
wanted money, and had declared in his council what he expected, he
sent down his justices or barons of the Exchequer to arrange with
the towns and counties the sums which were to be contributed. Whilst
land only was taxed all questions of liability could be answered by
reference to Domesday Book; but when personal property was taxed it
was necessary to discover how much each man possessed before he could
be made to pay. This could be ascertained only by consulting his
neighbors; and, in order to do this, a system of assessment was devised
by which the property of each tax-payer was valued by a jury of his
neighbors. The custom of electing these assessors, and, further, of
electing collectors for the counties, treasurers, and similar officers,
familiarized the people with the idea of using representation for such
business. For legal transactions they already used representation
in the county courts. The grand jury which presented the list of
accused persons to the king’s judges on circuit was, for instance,
an elected and representative body, chosen in the county court. The
convenience of dealing thus with the government by representative
accredited agents approved itself to both king and nation long before
there was any idea of calling the representatives to parliament. On
one occasion, in the reign of John, each shire had been ordered to
send four discreet knights to speak with the king at Oxford; and
that Council of St. Albans, in which mention was first made of the
charter of Henry I., contained representatives from every township in
the royal demesne. In 1254, when Henry III. was in France, the queen
regent summoned representative knights to the parliament to make a
grant. In the parliaments which were held in 1259 and afterwards,
representative knights brought up the lists of grievances under which
their constituents were groaning; and in 1264 Simon de Montfort had
called up from both shires and boroughs representatives to aid him in
the new work of government. That part of Earl Simon’s work had not been
lasting. The task was left for Edward I., to be advanced by gradual,
safe steps but to be thoroughly completed, as a part of a definite and
orderly arrangement, according to which the English Parliament was
to be the perfect representation of the Three Estates of the Realm,
assembled for purposes of taxation, legislation, and united political
action. Under this system the several communities were no longer to
be asked to give their money or to accept the laws, by commissions of
judges whom they could neither resist nor refuse, but were to send
their deputies with full powers to act for them, to join with the lords
and the judges and the king himself in deliberation on all the matters
on which counsel and consent were needed. The steps of the change may
be traced very briefly.
[Sidenote:
Parliaments
of
Edward I.
]
Edward’s first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a great statute
of legal reform, called the Statute of Westminster the First, and to
exact the new custom on wool; another assembly, the same year, granted
him a fifteenth. Both these are said to represent the “communaulte,”
or community of the land; but there is no evidence that the commons of
either town or county were represented. They were, in fact, consulted
as to taxation by special commissions, as had been done before. In
1282, when the expenses of the Welsh war were becoming heavy, Edward
again tried the plan of obtaining money from the towns and counties
by separate negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds
sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283, two
great assemblies, one at York, and another at Northampton, in which
four knights from each shire and four members from each city and
borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral and conventional clergy
also of the two provinces being represented at the same places, by
their elected proctors. At these assemblies there was no attendance of
the barons; they were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a
grant of one-thirtieth, on the understanding that the lords should do
the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same year, 1283,
to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this the bishops and clergy
were not called, but twenty towns and all the counties were ordered to
send representatives. Another step was taken in 1290: knights of the
shire were again summoned; but still much remained to be done before a
perfect parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation,
consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were summoned in May, and
did their work in June and July, granting a feudal aid and passing
the statute “Quia Emptores,” but the knights only came to vote or to
promise a tax, after the law had been passed; and the towns were again
taxed by special commissions. In 1294--for we must anticipate the
thread of the general history--under the alarm of war with France, an
alarm which led Edward into several breaches of constitutional law, he
went still further, assembling the clergy by their representatives in
August, and the shires by their representative knights in October. The
next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect and model
parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops, deans, archdeacons
and elected proctors; the barons summoned severally in person by the
king’s special writ, and the commons summoned by writs addressed to
the sheriffs, directing them to send up two elected knights from each
shire, two elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers
from each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to this
parliament, contained a famous sentence taken from the Roman law, “That
which touches all should be approved by all,” a maxim which might serve
as a motto for Edward’s constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew
upon him, now permanently and consistently completed.
[Sidenote:
House of
Lords.
]
The House of Commons was not the only part of the parliamentary system
that benefited by his genius for organization. The House of Lords
became, under the same influence and about the same time, a more
definitely constructed body than it had been before. Up to this reign,
the numbers of barons specially summoned had greatly varied. When they
were assembled for military service they had been summoned by special
writ, whilst the forces of the shires were summoned by a general order
to the sheriff. Although a much smaller number were requisite for
purposes of counsel than for armed service, the two functions of the
king’s immediate vassals were intimately connected, and for a long
period, every baron or land-owner who was summoned by name to the host,
might perhaps claim to be summoned by name to the parliament. But such
a summons was a burden rather than a privilege. The poorer lords,
the smaller land-owners, would be glad to escape it, and to throw in
their lot with the commons, who were represented by elected knights;
nor were the kings very anxious to entertain so large and disorderly
a company of counsellors. The custom of calling to parliament a much
smaller number of these tenants-in-chief than were called to the host,
must have grown up during the reign of Henry III., as the idea of
representation grew. From the reign of Edward I. it became the rule to
call only a definite number of hereditary peers; and, although that
rule was not based upon any legal enactment or any recorded resolution
of government, it quickly gained acceptance as the constitutional rule;
the king could increase the number of lords by new writs of summons,
and the special writ conferred hereditary peerage. This limited body
was the House of Lords, and the dignity of the peerage descended from
father to son, no longer tied to the possession of a particular estate
or quantity of land held of the king.
[Sidenote:
Representation
of the
clergy.
]
With the representatives of the commons and the estate of the lords
Edward associated a representative assembly of clergy; delegates
were to be sent from each diocese to each parliament to assist
in the national work and to tax the ecclesiastical property. And
the form invented by Edward in 1294 still subsists, although for
many centuries no such representatives have been chosen or sat in
parliament. In truth the clergy were averse to obeying the mandate
for their appearance in a secular parliament, and preferred to vote
the money, which it would have been very difficult for them to
refuse, in the two provincial convocations of York and Canterbury,
which likewise contained their chosen representatives, assembled as a
spiritual council. These were called together by the writs of the two
archbishops; they could, through the bishops, act in concert with the
parliament, and were not unfrequently, in modern times invariably,
called together within a few days of the meeting of parliament.
[Sidenote:
National
policy of
Edward I.
]
The latter half of Edward’s reign witnessed most of the critical
occasions which opened the way for those changes or improvements
in the constitutional system, and supplied means for testing their
efficiency. These must form the subject of another chapter. But we may
pause, before we proceed, to mark definitely one other note of Edward’s
policy. Henry II., had done his best to get rid of the feudal element
in judicial matters, and to create a national army independent of
the influences of land tenure. He had sent his judges throughout the
land and taken the judicature out of the hands of the feudal lords.
He armed all freemen under the assize of arms, and, by instituting
scutage, raised money to provide mercenaries. By the national militia
at home and by mercenary forces abroad he strengthened himself so as
not to depend for an army on that feudal rule by which every landlord
led his vassals to battle. Edward I., whilst he still more perfectly
carried out these principles, went further in the same direction, in
his constitution of parliament. The representatives whom he called up
from the shires and towns were chosen by the freemen of the shires
and towns in their ancient courts; they were not the delegates of
royal tenants-in-chief but of the whole free people. Even the barons
who composed the House of Lords owed their places there not so much
to the fact that they held great estates as the immediate vassals of
the crown, as to the summons by which they were selected from a great
number of persons so qualified. Even if this had not been the case,
the institution of the House of Commons would itself have marked the
extinction of the ancient feudal idea that the council of the king was
merely the assembly of those who held their land under him. But it was
so throughout Edward’s policy. In court, and camp, and council, it was
the general bond of allegiance and fealty, not the peculiar tie of
feudal relation, by which he chose to bind his people, in their three
estates, to help him to govern and to take their share in all national
work.