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.
[Sidenote:
Evils consequent
on the
absence of
the king.
]
Edward completed his work in Wales at the end of the year 1284. The
next year was spent in legislation, and in the summer of 1286 he went
to France. Edmund of Cornwall acted as regent in his absence, and he
stayed away for three years. For two out of the three the country was
at peace; in 1288, however, the absence of the king began to tell,
and in 1289 the need of money for home and foreign purposes became
pressing. The news that the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford were
engaged in all but open warfare on the Welsh marshes, and that the
collected parliament of 1289 had refused to sanction a new tax before
the king came home, brought Edward back in the August of that year. He
found that the public service had suffered sadly from the removal of
the guiding hand. Complaints were pouring in against the judges of the
Courts of Westminster; violence and corruption were charged upon the
chief administrators of the law; and the king’s first work was to try
the accused, to remove and punish the guilty. The two chief justices
and several other high officers were, after careful investigation,
deprived of their places. The next thing was if possible to gain a
stronger hold over the uneasy earls. Gilbert of Gloucester, whose
assistance had enabled Edward to overthrow Earl Simon at Evesham, and
who had been the first to take the oath of fealty at his accession, had
been throughout his career marked by singular erratic waywardness. He
was not yet an old man, and a project had been on foot for some time,
by which he was to marry the king’s daughter Johanna, who was born at
Acre during the crusade. This was now carried into effect, and thus
one of the most dangerous competitors for influence in the country was
bound more closely than ever to the king.
[Sidenote:
Banishment
of the Jews.
]
That done Edward looked round for means of raising money. And this
was found in a device which has ever since weighed heavily on his
reputation. The Jews were banished from England, and in gratitude for
the relief the nation undertook to make a grant of money. The measure
was no doubt generally acceptable; it was backed by the clergy, by the
strong influence of Eleanor of Provence, the king’s mother, and by his
own bitter prejudice. Harsh, however, as this measure was, it was not
a mere act of religious persecution. The Jews had, unfortunately for
the nation and for themselves, devoted themselves to usurious banking
when usury was forbidden to Christians. They had thus come to wear
the appearance of oppressive money-lenders. They lived, too, under
a system of law devised by the kings to keep them ever at the royal
mercy; their accumulated stores of gold lay conveniently under the
king’s hand, and Henry III., whenever he wanted money, had been able
to obtain it by extortion from the Jews. But, last and worst, they had
allowed themselves to be used by the rich as agents in the oppression
of the poor; they had made over the mortgages on small estates to
the neighboring great land-owners, and in other ways had played into
the hands of the nobles, whose protection was necessary to their own
safety. They were hated by the poor. Great men, like Grosseteste and
Simon de Montfort, had longed to see them banished; the accusation
of money-clipping and forgery was rife against them, and two hundred
and eighty had been hanged for these offences since the beginning
of the reign. Edward was too bigoted or perhaps too high-minded to
wish to retain them as useful servants when the nation demanded their
expulsion. They were banished, and the price paid for the concession
was a tax of a fifteenth granted by clergy and laity in the autumn of
1290.
[Sidenote:
Claims of
Edward upon
Scotland.
]
Just at this time the death of the young Queen of Scots opened to
Edward the prospect of asserting his supremacy over the whole island,
a prospect which within a few years tempted him to claim the actual
sovereignty of Scotland. The design of a marriage between the young
queen and Edward’s eldest surviving son, Edward of Carnarvon, which had
been already concluded, shows that the king contemplated the union of
the two kingdoms in the next generation; her death disappointed that
hope, but there is no reason to suppose that Edward, when he undertook
to settle the Scottish succession, had in his eye any project of
conquest.
[Sidenote:
The Scottish
kingdom.
]
The case of Scotland was very different from that of Wales. The
Scottish people were a rising not a declining nation. The Scottish
kingdom was a collection of states held by different historical
titles, and inhabited by races of different origin, not a nationality
struggling for existence. Southern Scotland was far more akin to
Northern England than to Northern Scotland; inhabited by people of
English blood and English institutions, and feudally held, like great
part of England, by Norman barons. The royal race was a Celtic race,
but Celtic Scotland gave to the kings little more than a nominal
recognition; the strength of the royal house was in the Lowlands. Ever
since the Norman Conquest the relations between Scotland and England
had been close. Of the several provinces over which the Scottish
king now ruled, Lothian was a part of the ancient Northumbria, which
had been granted, according to English accounts, by either Edgar the
Peaceable or by Canute to a Scottish king. South-western Scotland,
or Scottish Cumberland, had been given by Edmund I. to Malcolm. The
whole Scottish race had acknowledged as their father and lord Edward,
the West Saxon king, the son of Alfred; and William the Conqueror,
and William Rufus, and after him, had extorted a recognition of the
superiority or overlordship of the King of the English. These were
shadowy claims, certainly; but since the middle of the twelfth century
there had been several instances in which either the King of Scots or
his son had received English estates and dignities and done homage for
them. The earldoms of Northumberland and Huntingdon had been thus held
by Henry, son of David I., and the latter by his son William, the Lion.
Homage had on several occasions been rendered without any very distinct
understanding whether it was for the English earldoms, for the Lowland
provinces, or for the whole Scottish kingdom, that the overlordship of
the English crown was acknowledged. Henry II. had, indeed, after the
capture of king William, compelled both him and his barons to recognize
his superiority in the strictest terms, but Richard had liberated them
from that special bondage, and the mutual reservations or compromises,
which both preceded and followed that short period of subjection,
left the claims as vague as ever. Except during the same period the
relations of the two kingdoms had been, since the death of Stephen,
fairly friendly. The Scottish kings were married to kinswomen of the
English kings; their political progress followed at some short distance
behind, but in the footsteps of the progress begun under Henry II., and
for nearly a century there had been only short and languid intervals
of war. Now and then the Scots had pillaged or intrigued, but the
two crowns were generally at peace. Edward’s design for the Scottish
marriage would have turned the peace into union; but the time was not
come for that.
[Sidenote:
Decision of
Edward in
favor of
Balliol.
]
These facts will explain the position taken by Edward in 1290. He
believed that upon him, as overlord, devolved the right of determining
which of the many heirs was entitled to the succession. With great
pomp and circumstance he undertook the task; obtained from the
competitors a recognition of his character as arbitrator, and, after
careful examination, decided the cause in favor of John Balliol,
a powerful North Country baron of his own, in whom according to
recognized legal right the inheritance vested. He was careful to
obtain, on Balliol’s accession, a distinct homage for himself and his
heirs for the whole kingdom of Scotland. This was the work of 1291
and 1292; early in 1293 symptoms began to show themselves that the
result would not be lasting. The rising troubles in the North were
followed by an alarm on the side of France. The opportunity given by
these troubles, and the means taken by Edward to meet them, combined to
produce the complication of difficulties which brought about the great
constitutional crisis of the reign in 1297. The several points must be
taken in order: the relations with France first.
[Sidenote:
Relations of
Edward
with the
French
king.
]
In France Edward still possessed Gascony and some small adjoining
provinces, which, after all the vicissitudes of the preceding century,
had, mainly by the honesty and friendly feeling of Lewis IX. and
Philip III., been preserved to the French descendants of Henry II. In
1279 Eleanor of Castile, his wife, had claimed as her inheritance the
little province of Ponthieu, lying on the coast between Flanders and
Normandy, and her claim had been recognized by Philip III. But Philip
died in 1285, and his son, Philip IV., generally known as Philip the
Fair, was a true inheritor of the guile and ability of Philip Augustus.
Edward’s long visit to France, from 1286 to 1289, had been spent partly
in arranging for a continuance of friendship with the king, and partly
in securing and reforming the administration of Gascony; but he must
have been aware that the jealousy with which Philip viewed him would
sooner or later take the form of downright hostility. Until 1293,
however, they continued to be friends. In that year a series of petty
quarrels, between the Norman coast towns and the English sailors, and
an outbreak between the Gascons and their neighbors, gave Philip his
opportunity. He summoned Edward to Paris to render an account for the
misdeeds of the offenders, and on his non-appearance condemned him to
forfeiture. This was done with considerable craft. Edward, who had lost
his faithful wife in 1290, was engaged in a negotiation for marriage
with Margaret, the sister of Philip; in preparation for that marriage a
new enfeoffment or settlement of Gascony on the King of England and his
heirs was agreed on. As a step towards that settlement the fortresses
of Guienne were for form’s sake placed in Philip’s hands, and as soon
as he had hold of them he declared Edward a contumacious vassal, for
not having obeyed his summons to Paris. This was done in May, 1294.
[Sidenote:
Consequences
of the
quarrel with
Philip the
Fair.
]
The news of this outrageous proceeding was received in England with
great indignation, and for a moment it appeared that the nation was
unanimously determined to uphold the rights of the king. Even John
Balliol, the King of Scots, who had got himself into trouble owing
to his divided duties to his subjects and his overlord, and who
was present in the Parliament which Edward called in June, offered
to devote the whole produce of his English estates to maintain the
righteous cause. A great scheme was set on foot for foreign alliances:
the Spaniards were asked for substantial assistance; the princes of
the Low Countries, the King of the Romans too, were taken into pay. A
thorough scheme for the defence of the coast and organization of the
navy was devised. Edward’s urgent needs or consistent policy led him to
assemble, as we saw, the estates of the kingdom, in a way in which they
had never been brought together before, and the parliaments of 1294 and
1295 completed the formation of the constitutional system. But a rising
on the Welsh border prevented any general expedition in 1294; and the
dread of a common enemy threw the Scots in 1295 into correspondence
with France. Edward, provoked at the delay, pressed by the deficiency
and waste of his resources, had recourse to very exceptional measures
for raising money, and so produced a reaction against the foreign
war, and a combination of political forces most dangerous to his own
authority, and most trying to the new machinery of government at
the very moment of its completion. The model parliament of 1295 was
followed by the crisis of 1296, and the confirmation of charters of
1297.
[Sidenote:
Relations of
Edward
with the
clergy.
]
So strong a king, so determinate a policy, was sure to provoke
complaints; the very enforcement of order wears the appearance of
oppression. Both clergy and laity had their grievances, and Edward’s
extremity gave them their opportunity. The clergy with a certain
number of bishops at their head, had throughout the struggles of the
century ranged themselves on the side of liberty. The inferior clergy
had always had much in common with the people, and John’s conduct
during the Interdict had broken the alliance which ever since the
Norman Conquest had subsisted between the great prelates and the
court. Stephen Langton had set an example which was bravely followed.
Henry III., by his love of foreigners, his obsequious behaviour to
the popes, and his unscrupulous dealings in money matters alienated
the national Church almost as widely as John had done; while Simon de
Montfort had conciliated all that was good and holy. But when Henry
III. with the abuses which he had maintained, had passed away, and when
Church and nation alike saw that Edward was laboring for the benefit
of his people with all his heart, matters might have been changed.
There was doubtless need for watchfulness on the part of the clergy,
for the ministers of the court were always on the lookout for means to
limit the spiritual power; but defensive watchfulness is a different
thing from aggression. Three successive archbishops had ruled since
Edward’s accession, all of them anxious to promote the independence
of the Church and to diminish the power of the crown, even if it were
to be done by throwing the Church more entirely into the hands of the
Pope. Hence it was that Archbishop Peckham in 1279 had declared himself
the champion of the Great Charter, although the Great Charter was not
assailed, and had in a council at Reading passed several canons which
were intended to limit the king’s action in ecclesiastical causes.
Edward in return had taken his opportunity of repressing what seemed to
him to be ecclesiastical innovation; he had interfered to prevent the
publication of the canons, and had made the archbishop apologize and
withdraw them. Not content with this, he took advantage of the occasion
to pass the statute “De Religiosis,” by which he prevented the clergy
from acquiring more land than they held at the time, without express
permission. The taxation of the clergy too was heavy; the popes were as
willing to minister to Edward’s needs as they had been to supply his
father with money from the revenues of the English Church. More than
once they had empowered him to collect a three years tenth of all the
revenue of the clergy for the purpose of a crusade which was never
carried out, and in 1288 Pope Nicolas IV. ordered a new and very exact
valuation of all church property. This valuation included both temporal
property, that is land, and spiritual, that is tithes and offerings.
Such a permanent record laid them open at any moment to exaction. But
Edward was not satisfied to have to ask the Pope’s leave to tax his
own subjects, whether clerical or lay; he had begun to assemble the
clergy in councils of their own, for the purpose of obtaining money
grants, and, a little later, gave them a representative constitution
as an estate of parliament. They were, on the other hand, unwilling
to obey the summons to attend a secular court, and to spend their
money on secular purposes, much more so when it was demanded out of
all proportion and without reasonable consultation. Robert Winchelsey,
who became archbishop in 1294, was fitted to be the leader of a strong
ecclesiastical opposition. He was a pious, learned and far-seeing man,
but he was fully possessed with the idea that the king was determined
to subject the Church to the State; and he knew that in the Pope,
Boniface VIII., he had a friend and supporter who would not desert him.
He was ready to fight the battle the prospect of which was very near.
[Sidenote:
Quarrel between
Edward and the
clergy.
]
Edward regarded the situation of affairs in 1294 as entitling him to
assume the office of dictator; to take all advantage of the law offered
him for raising men and money; but, if he saw means which the law did
not warrant, to use them also as justified by the necessity of the
case. So he not only assembled the barons, clergy, and commons, to
obtain money grants from them, but seized the wool of the merchants
and took account of the treasures of the churches. It is true that by
negotiating with the merchants in assemblies of their own he obtained
their consent to pay a large increase of custom on the wool, and
that he did not actually confiscate the church treasure, still the
measures were oppressive and alarming; and when in the autumn council
of 1294 he demanded one-half of the revenue of the Church the alarm
became a panic. The clergy yielded, only to find another heavy demand
made on them the next year; but the king was becoming irritated by
delay and the clergy emboldened by papal support. Boniface VIII., in
February 1296, issued a famous Bull called, from its opening words, the
Bull _Clericis Laicos_, in which he forbade the king to take or the
clergy to pay taxes on their ecclesiastical revenue. Armed with this
Archbishop Winchelsey in 1297 declined to agree to a money grant, and
the king replied by placing all the clergy, who would not submit, out
of the protection of the law.
[Sidenote:
Discontent of
the greater
barons under
the growth of
the royal
power.
]
But by this time the spirit of the laity was roused. Gilbert of
Gloucester was dead, and the heads of the baronage were Roger Bigod,
Earl of Norfolk, the Marshall, and Humfrey Bohun Earl of Hereford, the
Constable of England; men not of high character or of much patriotism,
but of great power and spirit, and eager to take the opportunity of
asserting their position, which the king’s measure for enforcing equal
justice had threatened to shake. Bohun, too, had been imprisoned on
account of the private war which he had carried on against Gloucester
in 1288. Edward’s legal reforms had touched the baronage like every
other class. A close inquiry into the title by which they held their
estates and local jurisdictions--the commission, as it was called,
of “quo warranto”--had alarmed them in 1278; then the Earl Warenne
had boldly averred that his warrant was the sword by which his lands
had been won, and by which he was prepared to defend them. They found
too that, although the new legislation in some respects gave them a
stronger hold on their vassals, that advantage was counterbalanced by
the stronger hold which the king gained by it over themselves. They did
not care to have too strong a king, or one who ruled them by ministers
of his own choosing. When, then, early in 1297, Edward called for the
whole military force of the kingdom to go abroad, part to follow him
to Flanders to support his allies, and part to go to Gascony, they
determined to thwart him. It was a moot question how far they were
bound to foreign service at all; the king himself seemed to be asking
them for a favor rather than a right. They knew that the clergy were
hostile on account of the taxes, and the merchants on account of the
wool; they would make the king feel their strength. Edward himself
acted unwisely; he had become exasperated with the delay; he had lost
his early and best counsellor, Robert Burnell, and had taken in his
place Walter Langton, the treasurer, a faithful but unpopular and
unscrupulous man, and he had conceived the notion, which was probably
a true one, that the barons wished to embarrass him. The plea of
necessity by which he tried to justify himself must also justify him
with posterity.
[Sidenote:
Assembly of
the barons at
Salisbury.
]
[Sidenote:
Reconciliation
of Edward and
Archbishop
Winchelsey.
]
The year 1297 saw the contest decided. In February, the king had
summoned the barons to meet at Salisbury. When they were assembled the
two earls refused to perform their offices as marshal and constable;
the clergy were in a state of outlawry, and the king did not venture
to summon the representatives of the commons. The assembly broke up
in wrath. Edward again laid hands on the wool, summoned the armed
force, and put in execution the sentence against the clergy; the barons
assembled in arms, the bishops threatened excommunication. In spite of
this, the king, in July, collected the military strength of the nation
at London and tried to bring matters to a decision. As the earls would
not yield he determined to submit to the demands of the clergy, and to
use his influence with the commons so as to get, even informally, a
vote of more money. Winchelsey saw his opportunity. If the king would
confirm the charters, the Great Charter and the charter of the forests,
he would do his best to obtain money from the clergy; the Pope had
already declared that his prohibition did not affect voluntary grants
for national defence. The chief men of the commons, who although not
summoned as to parliament were present in arms, agreed to vote a tax
of a fifth; and the people were moved to tears by seeing the public
reconciliation of the archbishop with the king, who commended his son
Edward to his care whilst he himself went to war.
[Sidenote:
Confirmation
of the
charter
establishing
the right of
the people
to determine
taxation.
]
But the end was not come even now. The archbishop and the earls knew
how often the charters had been confirmed in vain in King Henry’s days;
and it was an evil omen that the king, whilst offering to confirm
them, was attempting to exact money without a vote of Parliament. They
drew up a series of new articles to be added to the Great Charter,
and, after some difficulty, forced them upon the king just as he was
preparing to embark. Edward saw that he must yield, but he left his son
and his ministers to finish the negotiation. As soon as he had sailed
the earls went to the Exchequer and forbade the officers of that
court to collect the newly-imposed tax; the young Prince Edward was
urged to summon the knights of the shire to receive the copies of the
charter which his father had promised, and on October 10 the charters
were re-issued, with an addition of seven articles, by which the king
renounced the right of taxing the nation without national consent. It
is true that these articles were not drawn up with such exactness as to
prevent all evasion, and Edward I. and Edward III. are accused of using
the obscurities of the wording to justify them in transgressing the
spirit of the concession. But the confirmation of the charters, however
won, was the completion of the work begun by Stephen Langton and the
barons at Runnymede. It established finally the principle that for all
taxation, direct and indirect, the consent of the nation must be asked,
and made it clear that all transgressions of that principle, whether
within the letter of the law or beyond it, were evasions of the spirit
of the constitution. The seven articles were these: by the first the
charters were confirmed; by the second all proceedings in contravention
of them were declared null; by the third copies of them were to be sent
to the cathedral churches to be read twice a year; and by the fourth
the bishops were to excommunicate all who transgressed them. These
four were the contribution of the prelates, the condition under which
the clergy had been reconciled. By the fifth article the king declared
that the exactions, by which the people had been aggrieved, should not
be regarded as giving him a customary right to take such exactions
any more; by the sixth he promised that he would no more take such
“aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of the realm;” and by the
seventh he undertook not to impose on the wool of the country any such
“maletote” or heavy custom in future without their common assent and
good will. It would have been clearer if the rights renounced had been
absolutely renounced and clearly specified. The king and his servants
soon learned that, without taking such taxes and maletotes as had been
complained of, they could by negotiating with the merchants raise money
indirectly without consulting parliament, but that excuse was never
allowed by the parliament to be sufficient, and, when they could, they
closed every opening for evasion. Thus was England’s greatest king
compelled to make to his people the greatest of all constitutional
concessions, at the very moment at which by his new organization of
Parliament he had placed the nation for the first time in a position
in which they could compel him to fulfill it. It was to some extent
a compromise, in which both parties felt themselves justified in
putting their own interpretation on the terms by which they had been
reconciled, but it is not the less a landmark in the history of
England, second only to Magna Carta. The _confirmatio cartarum_ is the
fulfillment, made now to the whole consolidated people, of the promises
made in the charter to a nation just awaking to its unity and to the
sense of its own just claims.
[Sidenote:
Dissatisfaction
of Edward with
his subjects.
]
[Sidenote:
Re-confirmation
of the
Charters.
]
Before we turn again to the military work of the reign, the war for the
subjection of Scotland, which was one of the main causes of Edward’s
difficulties at this time, and which furnished him with hard work
for the rest of his life, we may briefly sum up the sequel of the
great constitutional crisis. Not the least of the causes that led to
Edward’s irritation, and provoked him to impolitic violence, was the
thought that the nation did not trust him. From the beginning of the
reign he had labored indefatigably for their good; he had amended
their laws, and had given them what, to all intents and purposes,
was a new and free constitution. He felt that he had a right to
their confidence, and a right to direct, if not also to control, the
mechanism which he had created. But as yet it was only thirty years
since the Battle of Evesham. Men were still alive who remembered
the countless tergiversations of Henry III., and who, so warned,
could scarcely help suspecting that Edward in the hour of need would
repudiate his obligations, as his father had done. They did not profess
to be satisfied with the act of confirmation which Edward sealed at
Ghent on November 5, 1297. As soon as he returned from Flanders,
in the following year, the earls insisted on a renewal of the act,
and, before they would join him in the Scottish war, the king had to
promise to grant it. In March, 1299 the promise was fulfilled, but the
confirmation was even now regarded as incomplete. The enforcement of
the charter of the forests involved a new survey of the forests, and
the king, when he promised that this should be done, made a distinct
reservation of the rights of the crown, and of some questions which
had just been referred to the court of Rome. The reservation appeared
to the people to be an evident token of insincerity; and to calm the
excitement Edward, two months afterwards, executed an unconditional
confirmation. Still, however, it was declared that the forest reforms
were intentionally delayed; and in a full parliament, held at London in
March, 1300, the confirmation was repeated, additional articles being
embodied in an important act called “The articles upon the charters.”
In consequence of these the survey of the forests was made and the
report of the survey presented to a parliament held at Lincoln in
January, 1301, at which all the old animosities threatened to revive,
and the barons, backed by the commons, and with Archbishop Winchelsey
at their head, subjected the king to a pressure which he felt most
bitterly and never forgave.
[Sidenote:
Papal
claims over
Scotland.
]
[Sidenote:
Quarrel of
Edward
with Archbishop
Winchelsey.
]
Again he was in grievous want of money. The Pope had claimed the
overlordship of Scotland, and it was of the utmost importance that he
should receive a united and unhesitating answer from the assembled
nation. In spite of all the concessions that Edward had made so
reluctantly, showing by his very reluctance that he intended to keep
them, a new list of articles was presented as conditions on which
money would be granted. Nay, even if the king agreed to the articles,
the Archbishop, on the part of the clergy, would consent to no grant
that the Pope had not sanctioned. Again Edward yielded, although he
refused to admit the article in which the Pope’s consent was mentioned.
It was by thus yielding probably, that he obtained from the whole
assembled baronage a distinct denial of the Papal claims over Scotland.
But the prelates and clergy did not join in the letter addressed in
consequence to the Pope; and Edward, putting the two things together,
chose to regard the archbishop as a traitor in intention if not in
act. The knight who had presented to him the articles at Lincoln, was
sent for a short time to prison, as a concession perhaps to Walter
Langton, whose dismissal had been asked for. Winchelsey’s punishment
was delayed as long as Pope Boniface lived; but, when Clement V. in
1305 succeeded him, the Archbishop was formally accused, summoned to
Rome, and suspended, nor was he allowed to return to England during the
remainder of the reign. This quarrel is a sad comment on the conduct
of two great men, both of whom had at heart the welfare of England;
but if the balance must be struck between them, it inclines in favor
of Edward. He may have been somewhat vindictive, but his adversary had
taken cruel advantages of his needs, had credited him with unworthy
motives, and with a guile of which he knew himself to be innocent; and
the archbishop had, in order to humiliate him, laid him open to the
most arrogant assumptions on the part of the Pope. Winchelsey wished to
be a second Langton; Edward was not, and was incapable of becoming, a
second John.
[Sidenote:
Edward and
the foreign
merchants.
]
[Sidenote:
The New
Custom.
]
The Parliament of Lincoln closes the constitutional drama of the
reign; but two or three minor points in connection with what has gone
before may be mentioned here. In 1303 and 1304 Edward was again in
great straits for money, and he did not wish to be again subjected
to the treatment which he had endured at Lincoln. In searching for
the means of raising a revenue he recurred to the same source from
which he had obtained the custom of wool at the beginning of his
reign--the assistance of the merchants. He called together the foreign
merchants in 1303 and offered them certain privileges of trading, on
the condition that they should consent to pay import duties. They
agreed; and, although an assembly of English representatives from the
mercantile towns refused to join in the arrangement, the institution
held good. The “New Custom,” the origin of our import duties, was
established without the consent of parliament, although not in direct
contravention of the Act of 1297, for it was a special agreement made
with the consent of the prayers and in consideration of immunities
received. In 1304 he adopted an expedient even more hazardous, and
collected a tallage from the royal demesne; yet even here he avoided
breaking the letter of his promise. Such tallage was not expressly
renounced in 1297, and it was now sanctioned by the consent of the
baronage, who raised money from their vassals in the same way. In 1305
he did a still more imprudent and dangerous act, in obtaining from
Clement V. a formal absolution from the engagements taken in 1297.
Except in a slight modification of the forest regulations, which was
perhaps made rather as a demonstration of his power than as a real
readjustment of the law, he took no advantage of this absolution. These
three facts, however, remain on record as illustrations of Edward’s
chief weakness, the legal captiousness, which was the one drawback on
his greatness. The last was too grievously justified by the morality of
the time, and proves that in one respect at least Edward was not before
other men of the age.
[Sidenote:
Rebellion
in Wales
under
Madoc.
]
We turn now to trace the course of events which had so powerfully
affected the king’s action during these critical years. We saw him in
1294 preparing for an expedition to France, which was delayed until
1297 by troubles in Wales and Scotland, and by the political crisis on
which we have dwelt so long. The Welsh revolt under Madoc, a kinsman of
the last princes, involved an expedition which Edward himself in the
winter of 1294 led into Wales. It was an unseasonable undertaking, and
attended with no great success. Madoc was, however, taken prisoner in
1295, and the rebellion came to an end. The Scottish troubles were more
general and lasted much longer.
[Sidenote:
Summons of
Edward to
Balliol.
]
[Sidenote:
Alliance of
Scotland
with France.
]
[Sidenote:
Scottish
war.
]
[Sidenote:
Surrender
of Balliol to
Edward.
]
[Sidenote:
Truce between
England
and
Scotland.
]
John Balliol had from the beginning of his reign felt himself in
a false position, distracted between his duties to Edward as his
suzerain and patron, and his duties to his subjects. By a curious
coincidence Edward had summoned him to appear as a vassal in his court
to answer the complaints of the Earl of Fife, in the very year that he
himself was summoned to appear at Paris to answer the complaints of
the Normans. The neglect and contempt with which Balliol was treated
may have embittered his feelings towards Edward, yet in 1294 he had
been the foremost of the barons in offering help against France. But
it is clear that he was not a man of strong will or decided views;
that he could not easily bring himself to break with Edward, and so
throw himself on the support of the Scottish baronage, and that even
Edward’s support did not make him strong enough to defy them. He
halted between the two and lost his hold on both. In 1295 the Scottish
lords determined, in imitation of the French court, to institute a
body of twelve peers who were practically to control the action of
Balliol, and opened negotiations for an alliance with France. Such an
alliance was then a new thing, but in its consequences it was one of
the most important influences of mediæval history, for it not only
turned the progress of Scottish civilization and politics into a
French channel, leading the Scots to imitate French institutions, as
they had hitherto copied those of England, but gave to the French a
most effective assistance in every quarrel with England, down to the
seventeenth century. As soon as Edward learned that such a negotiation
was in progress he demanded that, until peace should be made between
Philip and himself, the border castles of Scotland should be placed
in his hands. This was at once refused, and war broke out. In March,
1206, Edward took and sacked Berwick, and the Scots threatened
Carlisle. The unfortunate Balliol seeing himself at last compelled
to choose between the two evils, renounced his allegiance to Edward,
and almost immediately paid the penalty of his temerity. The Earl
Warenne won a great victory at Dunbar in April, and took Edinburgh;
Balliol surrendered in July, and was obliged to resign the crown to
his conqueror. The Scottish regalia were carried to England. The
coronation-stone, which tradition identified with the stone on which
the patriarch Jacob had rested his head at Bethel, was removed from
Scone to Westminster. The chief nobles of Scotland were led away
as hostages, and Scotland, if not subdued, was so far cowed into
silence that during 1297 Edward thought it safe to leave it under the
government of the Earl Warenne. Sir William Wallace, the somewhat
obscure and mythical hero of Scottish liberation, remained, however,
in arms against him, and he in September defeated the Earl Warenne
at Cambuskenneth, and drove the English out of the country. Edward’s
expedition to France, so long delayed, terminated in March 1298 in a
truce of two years, which was renewed in 1299 and turned into a peace
in 1303. As a pledge of the arrangement Edward married Margaret, the
sister of Philip, in 1299. The Scots thus lost at first the active
help of their new ally. Immediately on his return Edward resumed the
attack upon them, and the victory won at Falkirk in July 1298 proved
his continued superiority, while it served to stimulate the national
aspirations of the Scots, and, what was even more important, taught
them that, if they were still to be free, they must learn to act as a
united people.
[Sidenote:
Affairs in Scotland
after the
fall of Balliol.
]
Wallace’s victory at Cambuskenneth had earned for him the jealousy
instead of the confidence of the Scottish nobles; the defeat at Falkirk
was made an excuse for declining his leadership and clinging to the
shadowy royalty of the imprisoned Balliol. They chose a council of
regency to govern Scotland in his name. Three regents were elected; the
bishop of St. Andrew’s was one; the other two were John Comyn, lord of
Badenoch, and Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick; sons of two of the lords
who had competed for the crown when Balliol was chosen. Wallace was
not even named. Some small successes now fell to the Scots: in 1299
they compelled the English garrison in Stirling Castle to capitulate;
in 1300 they foiled the invading army by avoiding a pitched battle,
and, at the close of the campaign, obtained by the mediation of the
French a truce which lasted till the summer of 1301. It was just then
that Boniface VIII., had laid claim to the suzerainty of Scotland, and
Edward’s time was spent during the truce in obtaining from his barons a
unanimous declaration against that claim. This, as we saw, was done in
the parliament of Lincoln. Although the papal argument was one to which
Edward could not refuse to listen, Boniface’s influence with Archbishop
Winchelsey gave him more trouble than the illusory claim.
The Scottish campaign of 1301 was a repetition of that of the preceding
year; Edward spent the winter in the country and built a castle at
Linlithgow; and another truce was made, which lasted to the winter of
1302.
[Sidenote:
Campaign of
Edward in
Scotland.
]
[Sidenote:
Capture and
execution of
Wallace.
]
The conclusion of peace with France in 1303 left Edward free to direct
all his strength against Scotland; and the Scots, under Comyn as
regent, were now in better condition to resist. They had defeated the
English army under Sir John Segrave in February, and were preparing
for greater exertions, when the news arrived that not only the Pope
but the French had deserted them. No provision in their favor was
contained in the treaty of peace; and Edward was already in the country
in full force. The year 1303 appeared to be a fatal year to the hopes
of Scotland. Edward marched the whole length of the country as far
north as the Moray Frith, and within sight of Caithness. Stirling
alone of all the castles of the land was left in the possession of
the native people, and after a futile attempt under the walls of
Stirling to intercept the invader, they seem to have given up all idea
of resistance. The so-called governors of the Scots surrendered and
submitted on condition of having their lives, liberties, and estates
secured; a few patriotic men were excepted from the benefit of the act,
the chief of whom was Wallace, against whom as the leading spirit of
liberty Edward’s indignation burned most hotly, and whom the selfish
and jealous lords cared least to protect. Stirling, after a brave
resistance, surrendered in July, and Scotland seemed to be at last
subdued. The hero Wallace, taken by treachery in 1305, was sent to
London to be tried and put to death as a traitor. The execution of
this sentence is one of the greatest blots upon Edward’s character
as a high-minded prince. Only the profound conviction that his own
claims over Scotland were indisputably legal and that all the misery
and bloodshed which had followed the renewal of the war must justly be
charged upon Wallace--a conviction akin in origin to the other mistakes
which we have traced in Edward’s great career--can have overcome the
feeling of admiration and sympathy which he must have felt for so brave
a man.
[Sidenote:
Edward’s new
constitution for
Scotland.
]
[Sidenote:
Return of
Robert Bruce
to Scotland.
]
Wallace perished in 1305. In the same year Edward drew up a new
constitution for Scotland, dividing the country into sheriffdoms like
the English counties and providing machinery for the representation
of the Scots at the meetings of the English parliament. But the
arrangement was very short-lived. Scarcely four months had elapsed when
the new and more successful hero of Scottish history, Robert Bruce,
declared himself. He was the son of the regent Earl of Carrick, but had
hitherto clung to the English interest, in the hope that Edward would
at last set him in the place of Balliol. When the new measures for the
government of Scotland were drawn up, disappointment, mingled perhaps
with the shame which Wallace’s death must have inspired, led him to
quit the court and return to Scotland. At Dumfries, early in 1306, he
slew John Comyn, the late regent, whom he could not induce to join
him. He then gathered round him all whom he could prevail on to trust
him; and by his energy and military ability took all his enemies by
surprise. In March, he was crowned at Scone.
[Sidenote:
Reverses of
Bruce.
]
His success was too great to be permanent; before the close of the
summer Aymer de Valence, Edward’s lieutenant, had driven him into the
islands, and the king himself soon followed and put an end to all
collective opposition. Still Bruce was active, and defied all attempts
to crush him. Constantly put to flight and as constantly reappearing,
he kept the English armies on the alert during the winter of 1306
and the spring of 1307; and in July, on his last march from Carlisle
against him, king Edward died.
[Sidenote:
Death of
Edward I.
]
[Sidenote:
His character
and
motives.
]
Edward had just passed into his sixty-ninth year. He was older than any
king who reigned in England before him, nor did any of his successors
until Elizabeth attain the same length of years. His life had been
one, in its earlier and later portions, of great exertion, both bodily
and mental; and constant labor and irritation had made him during his
latter years somewhat harsh and austere. His son, Edward, gave no
hopes of a happy or useful reign; he had already chosen his friends in
defiance of his father’s wishes, and been rebuked by the king himself
for misconduct towards his ministers. Edward had outlived, too, most of
his early companions in arms; he saw a generation springing up who had
not passed through the training which he and they had had, and who were
more luxurious and extravagant, less polished and refined than the men
of his youth. An earnestly religious man, he had been unable to keep
on good terms with the great scholar and divine who filled the see of
Canterbury, or even with the Pope himself. The people for whom he had
labored and cared, were scarcely as yet able to understand how much
they had gained by his toil; how even in his foreign undertakings he
was fighting the battles of England, and earning for them and for their
posterity, a place which should never again be lost in the councils of
Europe. But though his bodily strength was gone his mental vigor was
not abated, nor his belief in the justice of his cause. When he made
his solemn vow, at the knighting of Prince Edward in 1306, to avenge
the murder of Comyn and punish the broken faith of the Scots, he looked
on them not as a noble nation fighting for liberty, but as a perjured
and rebellious company of outlaws, whom it would be a shame to him as
a king and as a knight not to punish. The sin of breaking faith, the
crime which his early lessons had taught him to think the greatest
which could be committed by a king, the temptation to which he believed
himself to have overcome, and which he even inculcated on posterity by
the motto “Pactum serva” on his tomb--in his eyes justified all the
cruelty and oppression which marked his treatment of the Scots. Cruel
it was, whatever allowances are to be made for the exaggeration of
contemporary writers, or for the savageness of contemporary warfare.
Yet it was not the bitter cruelty of the tyrant directed against the
liberty of a free nation.
Edward’s death took place at Burgh-on-the Sands, in Cumberland, on the
7th of July, 1307. His character we have tried to draw in tracing the
history of his acts. His work remains in the history of the country and
the people whom he loved.