various public necessities. His absence had naturally tended to give
opportunity for lawless practices, both among the higher and the
lower classes. The excellent “Statute of Winchester,” made not long
before his departure to the continent, had been scarcely brought into
operation. Bands of outlaws concealed themselves in the forests, and
waylaid travellers. Often they proceeded to still greater lengths.
During a fair held at Boston in Lincolnshire, Thomas Chamberlain, a man
of some note, had set fire to the town, hoping, with his associates, to
take advantage of the confusion and to pillage the place. He himself
was taken and hanged, but none of his accomplices were discovered. And
the root of these disorders lay deep, and in a quarter which ought to
have been beyond suspicion. The judges of the land were corrupt, and
for bribes would release the robber and the murderer. The archbishop of
Canterbury, who probably greeted the king on his landing, acquainted
him with these disorders, and made known to him their secret cause.
Edward lost no time in acting with his accustomed energy and vigour.
On the 13th of October, the king celebrated the feast of St. Edward,
and on the same day obeyed the injunctions of the prophet (Isa. lviii.
6) by issuing a proclamation, that all persons who had been aggrieved
or oppressed by the judges or other ministers should come before him
at the ensuing parliament, and exhibit their complaints. The result
showed that the people put their trust in the king, and felt assured
that his promise would be kept. A fearful case was established against
the judges; and the chancellor, Burnel, whose whole course commands
our respect, “brought forward very serious charges against those high
functionaries for taking bribes and altering the records.” All except
two—John de Metingham and Elias de Bokingham—were convicted. The chief
baron Stratton was fined 34,000 marks; the chief justice of the king’s
bench, 7000 marks; the master of the rolls, 1000 marks; while Weyland,
the chief justice of the common pleas, who was the greatest delinquent,
fled to the convent of the Friars Minor at Bury St. Edmunds, where he
took sanctuary. The king, when informed of this, sent a knight with a
guard, not to violate the sanctuary, but to blockade it till the judge
should surrender. After holding out for two months, Weyland submitted,
and petitioned for leave to abjure the realm. This, which involved the
forfeiture of all his goods, was granted to him; and his property,
when taken possession of, was found to amount to 100,000 marks—“an
almost incredible sum,” says Blackstone, being, indeed, equal to about
_one million sterling_ at the present day. Nothing could more fully
establish the guilt of the accused judge, or more strikingly show the
enormous extent to which his criminal practices had been carried.
“These sentences,” says lord Campbell, “had on the whole a very
salutary effect.” The example was a terrible one; yet in our own day we
have seen heavier sentences, such as transportation or penal servitude,
inflicted for lighter offences. The king, however, immediately added
a new precaution, by ordering that, in future, every judge on his
appointment should take an oath to accept no gift or gratuity from any
one.
Another class of offenders was about the same time brought under the
notice of the king and his parliament. Dr. Henry says, “The Jews seem
to have taken occasion, from the king’s absence and the venality of the
judges, to push their exactions to a greater length than ever; and the
cry against them was now become so vehement and universal, that the
parliament which assembled at Westminster on the 12th of January, 1290,
came to a resolution to banish the whole race out of the kingdom.”
Rapin adds, “The king was unable any longer to protect them without
disobliging the parliament. They had enjoyed various privileges, such
as synagogues in London, a sort of high priest, and judges of their
own nation to decide on their own differences. These advantages they
lost by not being able to curb their insatiable greediness of enriching
themselves by unlawful means, such as usury, adulteration of the coin,
and the like.” Another writer cites a complaint of their exactions,
which shows that they were in the habit of requiring from forty to
sixty‐five per cent. for the use of money; a system which would
naturally and very quickly be felt to be intolerable.
Hence their entire expulsion was resolved upon, and ordered. It was not
an act of “religious intolerance,” but a result of popular indignation.
In effecting this, the impatient exultation of the people led them in
some cases to actual ill treatment of the Jews. The sailors of a ship
in which some of them had embarked placed them upon a sandbank at low
water, and left them to be drowned. The king ordered the perpetrators
of this crime to be brought to trial, and on their conviction capital
punishment followed.
In a parliament held on the 8th of July, 1290, “several important
statutes were made;” and gradually, but constantly, the idea of
_legislation_ by a _parliament_ took root, grew, and became fixed in
the English mind. The writs for this parliament command the sheriffs
to send from their respective counties two or three knights, with full
powers, “ad consulendum et consentiendum his quæ comites, barones et
proceres, tum duxerint concordanda.”[28] When assembled, it placed upon
the statute‐book the statutes “de Consultatione,” “de Quo Warranto,”
“Quia Emptores,” and those of “Westminster III.”
In the spring and summer of this year, 1290, queen Eleanor had the
satisfaction of witnessing the marriage of two of her daughters.
The princess Joanna, born at Acre, and now in her eighteenth year,
was united on the last day of April, in the monastery of St. John,
Clerkenwell, to Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, the most powerful
peer in England; and on the 9th of July, in Westminster Abbey,
Margaret, the queen’s third daughter, was married to John, duke of
Brabant. One of the young princesses, Mary, had in the preceding year
followed the example of her grandmother, Eleanor of Provence, and had
taken the veil in the convent of Ambresbury, where the old queen had
long resided.
Of the frank and cordial manners of the court, and of the harmony
subsisting between the king and his consort, we catch a few indications
from the remaining records. Thus we find that on Easter Monday, 1290,
seven of the queen’s ladies of honour invaded the king’s private
chamber to perform the feat customary on that holiday,[29] of “heaving”
or lifting the monarch in his chair; and from their hands he was only
released on paying a fine of forty shillings to each, to be set at
liberty. On another occasion, while the king and his attendants were
saddling and mounting for the chase at Fingringhoe in Essex, the king
espies Matilda of Waltham, his laundress, among the lookers‐on in the
court‐yard. He merrily proposes a wager of a fleet horse, probably with
the queen, that Matilda cannot ride with them, and be in at the death
of the stag. The wager is accepted; Matilda starts and wins, and Edward
has to ransom his horse for forty shillings.
On the marriage of the king’s daughter, Margaret, to the duke of
Brabant, as many as four hundred and twenty‐six minstrels were present,
and the bridegroom distributed among them an hundred pounds. Some
entries about this period shows the king’s quick irascibility. On one
occasion we note an expense incurred in repairing a crown or coronet
which he had thrown behind the fire. And on the princess’s wedding‐day,
an esquire, or gentleman of the court, had irritated the king by some
supposed neglect or misbehaviour, and received from him a stroke on
the head with a wand. But the offender was able to show the king that
he had been hasty and, perhaps, unjust. Most princes would probably
have been content with an expression of regret; but Edward was warm
and hearty, alike in reproof or in retractation. Finding that he had
done his attendant a wrong, he at once _fined himself twenty marks_,
equal to about two hundred pounds of our present money, which sum was
duly paid to the aggrieved party, and charged in the king’s wardrobe
account. Gifts of various kinds were constantly issuing from Edward’s
hands. In one year, 1286, the new year’s gift to queen Eleanor was a
cup of gold, worth £23 6s. 8d.; and in another, a pitcher of gold,
enamelled and set with precious stones.
But all this mutual and well‐placed affection was now to find the
common termination of all earthly enjoyments. That happy and entire
union which had subsisted for nearly five‐and‐thirty years was drawing
to a close. The king and queen, after taking leave of their daughter
Margaret, now duchess of Brabant, left their palace in Westminster for
the midland counties. Edward had given directions for a parliament to
be summoned to meet at Clipston, a royal palace in Sherwood Forest;
and in the interim, he hoped to enjoy his favourite recreation of the
chase. He also began to receive, about this time, frequent applications
from Scotland, and he probably meant to go northward on that business.
The queen, as usual, was with him, or near him; but while he was
moving about during September, she seems to have remained at Hardby,
near Lincoln. We find by mention of her physicians, and of medicine
purchased for her at Lincoln, that she had an illness of some duration.
It is described as a lingering disease, or slow fever. Hardby was a
manor belonging to a family of the name of Weston, and we observe a
sir John Weston in the queen’s service. The house was probably placed
by the family at the queen’s disposal, as a quieter place for a sick
person than the palace of Clipston, where the parliament was about to
assemble.
It is usually said that Edward was on his road to Scotland, the queen
slowly following him, and that she was taken ill on the journey, and
died before he could return to her. But it has been recently shown
that he remained in the vicinity of Hardby during the whole of her
illness.[30] The parliament was held at Clipston—the king being present
at the end of October, and it sat until the second week in November,
when he returned to the sick room. We find him at Hardby from the 20th
to the 28th of November, on which day the queen died.[31]
For two or three days silence reigns at Hardby. There is an entire
cessation of all public business; as if the powerful mind of the king
had been, for the moment, utterly prostrated. But, after this pause,
we find the widowed monarch at Lincoln, where he doubtless went to
issue his orders for the funeral. And all the measures he took with
reference to this object and to the matters which followed, and which
were connected with it, give proof of the depth of his feeling for
his departed consort. It has been said, with great truth, that “this
funeral procession was one of the most striking spectacles that England
has ever witnessed.”[32]
About ten days were occupied in the sad and solemn journey from
Lincolnshire to Westminster, the king and his relatives following
the body the whole way. When the procession approached a town which
was to furnish a resting‐place, it halted until the ecclesiastics
of the place approached with their procession, to bear the body to
its temporary abode, before the high altar in the principal church.
These halting‐places were afterwards made the site of crosses, richly
sculptured, and intended to remind passengers in all future times of
the good queen’s last journey. These crosses were raised at Lincoln,
Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn,
Dunstable, St. Alban’s, Waltham, West Cheap, and Charing.
The body of the departed queen, as it entered one of these towns, was
met by the monks and clergy of the place, who, receiving and conveying
it to its temporary resting‐place, kept watch over it all night long,
with mournful chants and unceasing prayers. It was thus slowly brought
to the neighbourhood of London, and here, apparently, the king left the
procession by night and entered the metropolis, in order that he might
meet the body at the head of the nobility and of all the dignified
clergy of London and Westminster, on its approach to its last
resting‐place. Some of those then present would be able to recal to
memory the day when, five‐and‐thirty years before, they had accompanied
king Henry and the rejoicing citizens of London to meet the young
Eleanor, then for the first time approaching their city as the prince’s
bride.
We have already alluded to the manner of the disposal of the queen’s
remains. It is most probable that it was chiefly in accordance with
Eleanor’s own desire. One portion was deposited in Lincoln cathedral;
another in the church of the Black Friars in London; but the body
itself was conveyed to Westminster, and placed near to the tomb of king
Henry, which was even then hardly completed. It is needless to add
that the funeral rites were in accordance with all the rest of this
solemnly‐magnificent ceremony; “cum summâ omnium reverentiâ et honore.”
The king remained at Westminster for about a week after the interment;
doubtless he was chiefly occupied in giving directions for the
extraordinary honours which were yet to be paid to the memory of
his departed consort. He then retired to Ashridge, a house of “Bons
Hommes,” recently founded by his uncle, the earl of Cornwall, which
enjoyed the reputation of possessing “a few drops of the precious blood
of Jesus.” This may have been a principal reason for the selection
of this spot by the king, who himself reckoned among his most valued
treasures “two pieces of the rock of Calvary, which had been presented
to him by one Robert Ailward, a pilgrim.”
Edward remained at Ashridge until the 26th of January, 1291, a long
retirement for a man of such active energy. He then went to Evesham, or
Eynsham, and from thence to Ambresbury, where his mother resided, and
where he would also meet his daughter Mary. The spring opens before
we find him actively engaged in public business, and there are many
proofs that he never ceased to lament his beloved Eleanor. Assuredly
the measures he adopted during the next two years to do honour to
her memory, were of a kind which, for munificence and persevering
thoughtfulness, have very seldom been equalled.
The twelve crosses, which were apparently the first thought that
occurred to him, constituted in themselves a princely monument. There
are records still extant of no less than £650 17s. 5d. paid for the
work done on that erected at Charing, a sum equal to £10,000 of our
money. The cross at West Cheap cost £300; that at Waltham, £95; that at
St. Alban’s, £113. But it is probable that the statues were supplied by
a different artist. We are surely within the mark when we reckon that
a sum equal to £30,000 or £40,000 of our present money was expended on
these mementoes.
A splendid tomb was placed in the minster at Lincoln; another, in
the form of a chapel, was raised in the church of the Black Friars
in London. The principal sepulchral monument, however, was naturally
allotted to Westminster Abbey. There the best artist that could be
procured was employed to form in metal a recumbent effigy of the queen,
placed appropriately on a richly‐ornamented tomb. The cost of the
tomb is not recorded, but we find entries of as much as £113 6s. 8d.,
equal to about £1700 of our present money, paid to the artist employed
on queen Eleanor and king Henry’s effigies. A distinct payment also
appears of a smaller sum for the erection of a workshop, in which these
two statues were fabricated.
But the chief work still remained to be done. Edward had noble and
splendid conceptions of princely works and long‐enduring memorials,
but his sagacious and reflecting mind could not rest satisfied with
works in stone or works in metal. The almost universal belief of
the church in England in those days, even “holy bishop Robert” not
dissenting, was, that prayers and alms especially directed to the
welfare of a departed soul had a beneficial effect upon that soul in
the intermediate state.
This opinion, when compared with the teaching of Holy Scripture at
the time of the Reformation, was found to be delusive; but in the
thirteenth century it had not even been questioned. Edward’s care,
therefore, for the well‐being of his beloved Eleanor in the invisible
world soon began to manifest itself. While at Ashridge, and himself
engaged in continual prayers for his departed consort, he found time to
write a very earnest and pathetic letter to the abbot of Clugny, one
of the most famous monasteries in Europe, entreating the prayers of
that fraternity for her, “whom living he had dearly loved, and whom,
though dead, he should never cease to love.” And such a request was,
doubtless, accompanied by a princely offering. But in his own realm
Edward could be more definite and elaborate.
At Hardby a chantry was founded, and another at Elynton; and on the
first and second anniversaries of the queen’s death we find mention
of various religious services and of large distributions of alms. But
the principal provision was naturally reserved for Westminster. In his
gifts to the abbey church for perpetual prayers and alms on behalf
of the departed queen, “the king was quite profuse.” He gave to this
church the manors of Knoll, Arden’s Grafton, and Langdon, Warwickshire,
with other lands in the same county; and the manors of Bidbrook in
Essex, Westerham in Kent, and Turweston in Bucks, for a perpetual
commemoration. Special services of the most solemn kind were provided
for, and seven score poor persons were to have charity. The charter for
these gifts was dated in October, 1292, showing that neither the lapse
of time nor the distractions of the momentous Scottish controversy
could withdraw his mind from this earnest and settled purpose.
Edward, however, was well versed in the Old Testament scriptures, and
he remembered Isaiah’s warnings against religious ceremonies without
justice or charity. On the anniversaries of his consort’s death, we
often remark the occurrence of large distributions of alms. But another
thing is also noticeable. The queen had enjoyed from her husband’s
affection large landed possessions. Her stewards or bailiffs might
have wronged or oppressed her tenants. We know not what proclamation
may have been made, or invitation given, calling upon all who had any
complaint to offer, to come forward; but it seems quite clear, that
some such proclamation must have been issued; for the records are
very numerous, in the next year or two, of the investigation of such
complaints. And a fixed and honest purpose to do justice to all parties
is evident in all these transactions.
The sorrow felt for queen Eleanor’s death was, apparently, general
and sincere. Her name is connected with no political contention or
intrigue; and she seems to have made no enemies. Rishanger, writing at
the time of her death, styles her “this most saintly woman and queen;”
and adds, somewhat hyperbolically, that she was like “a pillar that
supported the whole state.” Walsingham, who wrote in the next age,
described her more intelligibly, as “a woman pious, modest, pitiful,
benevolent to all.” He adds, that “the sorrowful, everywhere, so far
as her dignity allowed, she consoled, and those who were at variance
she delighted to reconcile.” But her best eulogium is found in her
consort’s grief. His penetration and sagacity, his native nobleness
of soul would have rendered it impossible for him to love a mean and
unworthy object. But his affection for her was not a mere youthful
passion. It was after a companionship of five‐and‐thirty years that he
gave his testimony to her worth; and that testimony was one which few
women indeed in the whole world’s history have ever received or have
ever merited.
Footnotes:
[24] “Seldom,” says Mr. Pearson, “has a shameful and violent death
been better merited than by a double‐dyed traitor like David, false
by turns to his country and his king; nor could justice be better
honoured than by making the last penalty of rebellion fall upon the
guilty prince, rather than on his followers.”—“History of England,”
vol. ii., p. 330.
[25] Tytler’s History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 431.
[26] Pearson’s Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 336.
[27] Hoare’s edit. of Giraldus Cambrensis.
[28] Parry’s History of Parliaments, p. 54.
[29] This custom still exists, after the lapse of more than five
hundred years, in some of the midland counties of England.
[30] “Archæologia,” vol. xxix., p. 169.
[31] Ibid., p. 174.
[32] “Archæologia,” vol. xxix., p. 174.
V.
RETROSPECTIVE VIEW.
The autumn of the year 1290 was a solemn epoch in this great king’s
life. In this autumn died his beloved Eleanor; in this autumn died,
also, “the maiden of Norway,” the young queen of Scotland, whose death
ushered in so many troubles.
Halcyon skies had for a whole quarter of a century gilded Edward’s
course and prospects; but a few weeks sufficed to end the sunshine of
his prosperous career. From the battle of Evesham, in 1265, to the
death of his queen, and the opening of the Scottish controversy in
1290, his life had been one of great enjoyment, great harmony, and
great usefulness. “Held in universal esteem at home,” and “famous
throughout the world” for wisdom and valour, his lot might be regarded
as one of no common prosperity. But this sad year, 1290, ended all
this happiness. Clouds and storms arose, and though brief intervals of
calm occurred, we find a king who was “slow to all manner of strife,”
compelled in his fifty‐seventh year to don his armour and mount his
horse, and set forth to meet a Scottish inroad, and from that time
forth until his death in 1307, almost in every year we find him, in
whom the infirmities of age must have begun to make themselves felt, in
harness and in the saddle, sleeping at night by his horse’s side on the
bare heath, working with his men in the laborious siege of a fortress,
and encountering, all the time, what to such a man was by far more
painful—treachery from professed friends, and from his foes, perpetual
simulations of submission, followed by constant treasons and breaches
of covenant, the moment the sword was lifted from their throat. We
open, in this sad year, the second volume of Edward’s reign, but before
we close the first, let us glance for a few moments at the past, and
try once more to rectify the widespread error, or rather the constant
misrepresentation, which shows to us this great king as, by choice,
a man of war; when he was, more than most other sovereigns, a man of
peace.
One of the ablest, and generally one of the fairest of our modern
historians, thus commences his account of Edward’s reign:—“Laying aside
his disputes with his neighbours as a French prince, his active and
splendid reign may be considered as an attempt to subject the whole
island of Great Britain to his sway.”[33] And a few pages later we
are told that “his ambition tainted all his acts,” and again, that “a
conqueror is a perpetual plotter against the safety of all nations.”
And another justly‐esteemed writer, Mr. Sharon Turner, tells us that
“The reign of Edward was that of a prince whose sedate judgment and
active talents advanced the civilization and power of his country. It
may be considered under four heads—his incorporation of Wales, his wars
in Scotland, his foreign treaties, and his internal reforms.”
Thus both these writers, and with them a multitude of smaller note,
agree in describing Edward as a man of ambition, a man covetous of his
neighbour’s possessions, a conqueror, “perpetually plotting” against
the safety of others. Now, our quarrel with this view is not merely
that it is inaccurate or imperfect, but that it is diametrically
opposed to all the principal facts of the case, calling white black
and black white, and representing a sovereign as ambitious and
unscrupulous, whose real character was that he was scrupulously
conscientious;—“as careful in performing his obligations as in exacting
his rights,”[34] or, again, to cite the old chronicler,
“Slowe to all manner of strife;
Discreet and wise, and true of his worde.”
Such writers as those we have cited place before their readers a king
who, from his very accession, coveted and “plotted against” both
Wales and Scotland. To this we oppose the indubitable facts, that
when Llewellyn withheld his homage, Edward, instead of proceeding
to extremities, was patient and forbearing, sent him summons after
summons, offered to go to Shrewsbury or to Chester to meet him, and
waited, in all, two whole years before he took up arms. And, again,
that when Llewellyn was reduced to extremities, and might have been
banished and Wales annexed, Edward granted him peace the moment he
asked it, replaced him in his seat, attended his marriage, and did
all he could to make him his friend. The war which led to Llewellyn’s
chance‐medley death, and to the annexation, was a war made by Llewellyn
and David, not by the English king.