It must have been judiciously and fairly selected, for while we find
on one hand proofs of Winchelsey’s presence and influence, in the
reservation of the question as to the taxation of the clergy, the
demand for a transfer of the regal authority to parliament in the
matter of the nomination of ministers dwindles down to a request that
“auditours” be appointed, which request the king declines to grant.
The final result is given in the “Parliamentary Writs,” in the shape
of a reply of the parliament to the royal message. In that reply the
parliament says that “the ‘gentz de la communauté de la terre’ show
unto the king that they dare not answer which of the two ways should
be adopted, on account of the perils which might ensue.” But, instead
of adopting or rejecting the king’s proposal, they submit for his
consideration twelve articles or propositions; which, generally, are to
the following purport: That the great charters be observed; that all
statutes contrary thereto be repealed; that the powers of the justices
to be named for the maintenance of the charters be clearly defined;
that the perambulations not yet completed be finished by the Michaelmas
next ensuing, etc., etc.
To nine of these propositions the king gives his immediate assent. To
two he gives qualified and doubtful answers. To one only—that in which
the barons say, that they cannot insist on the taxation of the clergy
against the will of the pope—the king gives his distinct disapproval.
We shall give these three articles in the Appendix,[112] together with
the answers of the king.
These twelve articles, then, with the king’s assent to nine of them,
seem to have ended the disafforesting question, so far as this
parliament was concerned. As a general result, we may say, that the
king had piloted the vessel of the state through a difficult and
perilous passage. The confederacy was defeated. Winchelsey’s purpose
of weakening the crown by involving it in war with the barons, was
frustrated. Edward succeeded in keeping his parliament together.
There were no “withdrawals in anger,” as there had been on previous
occasions. The barons, including even Hereford and Norfolk, passed
on to the next question, the letter of pope Boniface; and they gave
that letter a fitting reply. They then voted the king a fifteenth, and
agreed to join him, in the summer, for a march into Scotland.
On the other hand Winchelsey had succeeded in doing some mischief.
Though it is impossible, at this distance of time, to learn the
details, it seems tolerably clear that the king was obliged to yield,
in the matter of forest boundaries, more than he felt to be right and
just. This clearly appears in the occurrences of the following years.
And, whatever wrong of this kind may have been done, the primate strove
to render irrevocable, by rising, at the close of the assembly, and
pronouncing the greater excommunication against all who should depart
from the agreement then made. He also adhered to his former course, of
refusing to give the king any “aid” from the funds of the church.
And so ended this great parliament—an assembly of the most remarkable
character, whether we look at its patriotic and spirited reply to the
pretensions of the pope, or at its large and full exercise of all
the proper duties of a representative assembly. With respect to the
disafforesting controversy, it seems to have disturbed, rather than
settled, that question. It established those new and reduced boundaries
which had for some time previous been demanded; but, effecting this
in a sudden and abrupt manner, it left occasion for many subsequent
alterations.
The next step we perceive to have been taken, is one, which, like
many other of Edward’s acts, has been grossly misrepresented by some
prejudiced historians. It is said, in some of their narratives, that
he “persecuted the two earls;” and it is always implied, that his
animosity was excited by their zeal for “the charters.”
Now, if we look closely at the king’s steps, we shall find him
perpetually associating with these two noblemen on friendly terms,
long after they had opposed him in the matter of the charters. But the
question he had now to deal with, was one of high treason. An offence
had been committed, for the like of which many great men, in various
periods of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, _died on the
scaffold_. Yet Edward dealt with it in the most noble and generous way.
“There was opened to king Edward,” says Pakington in his “Chronicle,”
“a conspiracy, wrought by the archbishop of Canterbury, and divers
earls and barons, against him, at such time as he was in Flanders. And
when the earl marshal was examined of this, and was not well able to
clear himself, he made the king his heir, and put him in possession of
all his lands. And the king gave him his lands again during his life;
and also land of £1000 value in addition.”
Several of the chroniclers state, that the earl had no children, and
was on bad terms with his brother, who was an ecclesiastic. But whether
this were so or not, it is clear that the charge brought against him
was one which involved him in great peril. All the writers whom we have
already quoted, and Walsingham also, plainly tell us that it had been
contemplated to employ _force_ against the king. Now any man called
before the king’s council on such a charge as this, would perceive,
that not his estates merely, but his life also, was in danger. Hence
his wisest and safest course, especially with such a monarch as Edward,
was an immediate and frank submission.
And such a course, with the king, always led to a restoration of good
feeling. In the days of the Tudors or the Stuarts, a nobleman who had
been guilty of “conspiring against the king,” would soon have found
his way to the scaffold. With Edward, the usage was very different. A
face‐to‐face encounter—a frank confession and surrender on the earl’s
part, was soon followed by forgiveness on the part of the king, and so
the whole quarrel ended.
The case of the earl of Hereford differed in one important respect from
that of Norfolk. The conspiracy spoken of by Pakington was said to
have been commenced in the year 1297, when the king was in Flanders;
although its last and most strenuous effort was made in 1301. But the
earl of Hereford, who had been Norfolk’s supporter in 1297, had died
in the autumn of the following year, and the present earl was a young
man, his son. He had probably merely followed in his father’s steps,
without any deep concernment in the plot. The king called him to an
account, as well as Norfolk; but the young man found a different way of
making his peace. He asked for the hand of one of the king’s daughters;
and, having, like Norfolk, pleaded guilty, he surrendered, like him,
his estates to the king, receiving them back again with the hand of the
young princess. And so ended this transaction, which some historians
have described as a “persecution” of the two earls.
Winchelsey, then, had not only been foiled, but the king had fully
succeeded in breaking up his “confederacy.” Without severity or
vengeance of any kind, Edward had fairly taken the two earls away from
the primate; and was now at liberty to deal, at his leisure, with the
chief conspirator.
It seems probable, too, from a circumstance which will presently
appear, that the young earl of Hereford, on becoming the king’s
son‐in‐law, had given Edward full explanations as to the past, and had
placed in his hands written evidence against Winchelsey; for shortly
after, we find the king resolving to take decisive measures against
the archbishop. But with Edward all was orderly and legitimate.
Winchelsey had no reason to fear the fate of Thomas à Becket, or of
the archbishop whom Henry IV. sent to the scaffold. The king under
whom he lived could resolutely withstand either a pope or a primate,
when he felt his own cause to be a just one; but his respect for the
church, and for the forms of law, was sincere and deeply‐rooted. He had
the highest kind of complaint to prefer against this intriguing and
turbulent prelate; but he resolved to lay it before the pope, and to
send the cause to him for judgment. His ambassadors therefore placed
the matter in the hands of the pontiff, who immediately cited the
archbishop to Rome, to answer for his conduct. William Thorn, a monk of
Canterbury, thus describes the next scene: “When the archbishop knew
that he was thus cited, he went to the king to ask for permission to
cross the sea. And when the king heard of his coming, he ordered the
doors of his presence‐chamber to be thrown open, that all who wished
might enter, and hear the words which he should address to him. And,
having heard the archbishop, he thus replied to him: ‘The permission
to cross the sea which you ask of us we willingly grant you; but
permission to return grant we none; bearing in mind your treachery, and
the treason which at our parliament at Lincoln you plotted against us;
_whereof a letter under your seal is witness_, and plainly testifies
against you.’ ‘We leave it to the pope to avenge our wrongs; and as
you have deserved, so shall he recompense you. But from our favour and
mercy, which you ask, we utterly exclude you; because merciless you
have yourself been, and therefore deserve not to obtain mercy.’”
And so we part with Winchelsey, who disappears from this history; not
returning to England until the weak and troubled reign of Edward
II. gave him re‐entrance, and supplied him with new opportunities
for treason and conspiracy; all his plans and objects having one end
in view—the prostration of the royal authority at the feet of the
pontifical. But, in taking leave of him we feel inclined to contrast,
for a few moments, his character with that of another prelate to whom
he was, in this parliament of Lincoln, especially opposed. It will be
remembered, that one especial demand of the “confederacy” was, the
dismissal and disgrace of the king’s treasurer; and the concession of
the future appointments to that office, to the parliament. Now this
treasurer, against whom the conspirators preferred such complaints,
was Walter Langton, bishop of Chester. And the guiding spirit of the
conspiracy was, as we have seen, Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of
Canterbury. Let us, then, briefly sketch the history of these two men;
one of whom was Edward’s principal domestic foe; the other, his most
trusted servant and minister.
Robert Winchelsey, who came to the primacy in 1295, was as restless,
arrogant, and intriguing an ecclesiastic as had filled the
archiepiscopal chair since the days of Thomas à Becket. In fact, he
seems to have been selected by the enterprising Boniface VIII. as a fit
agent to carry on the work of Becket and Pandulph; but to do this with
any hope of success under such a prince as Edward, it was necessary to
affect the tone and language of Stephen Langton.
As an ecclesiastical superior, Winchelsey was arrogant and tyrannical.
He had one long contest with the monks of St. Augustine’s in
Canterbury; another with the earl of Lancaster; one year we find him
excommunicating the constable of Dover Castle; the next, the bishop of
London; the next, the prior and canons of Gloucester, and so on to the
end of the story. But these were merely the amusements of his leisure
hours. The grand business of his life, as of Becket’s, was to bring, if
possible, the crown into subserviency to the papal tiara.
He had no sooner landed from Rome and taken possession of his see,
than he convened, says Matthew of Westminster, some of his suffragans
in the church of St. Paul, London, “for a special discussion _on the
liberties and customs of the church_, reviving and re‐establishing
certain constitutions which had been approved by the holy fathers,
but which, by neglect, had fallen into disuse.” The real drift of all
this “revival of certain liberties of the church” soon appeared. A
very few months had elapsed before the king was compelled, by Philip’s
seizure of Gascony, to call upon his subjects for aid; and at once the
archbishop revealed his real purpose, by producing a papal mandate,
which he, probably, had brought with him from Rome, forbidding the
clergy any longer to grant “aids” to the king without the special
permission of the pope.
This novel assumption, which at once made the pope, and not the king,
the ruler over a large part of England, might have succeeded in either
of the two preceding or in the succeeding reign; but in Edward the
crafty churchman had met with more than his match. By making them
practically feel the meaning of the word “outlawry” the king soon
brought the clergy to a clearer understanding of their real position.
But, though defeated in his first attempt, Winchelsey was not
discouraged. Unable alone to cope with the power of the crown, he
immediately began to form “conspiracies” and “confederacies” with any
whom he perceived to be discontented; and in this way, by fostering
and encouraging the resistance of Norfolk and Hereford, he managed
to keep the king in a state of conflict and discomfort from 1296 to
1301, and in this last year he had proceeded to the verge of a civil
war. The king at last, irritated and seriously aggrieved, sent him to
the pope for judgment, and so in effect cast him out of the realm;
but the man, and his plans and purposes, remained unchanged. So soon
as this great king, the only person who could control him, was gone,
Winchelsey crept back again into England, and we soon find him, under
the weak and incapable Edward II., leading the discontented barons,
and again attempting to enact the part of Stephen Langton. Such was
Winchelsey—a fit agent of the papal court, but to England a troubler
and an intestine foe.
Contrast with him the man who, in confederacy with the discontented
barons, he essayed, in 1301, to crush—Walter Langton, bishop of
Chester, the king’s treasurer, and one of his most valued servants.
Had we no further knowledge of this prelate than the fact, that the
conspirators at Lincoln prayed the king
“Him to remove by common assent,”
we might feel a doubt whether the king had shielded an unworthy
favourite, or the barons had conspired against an officer of
inconvenient integrity. Happily, we are enabled to discover a few other
facts respecting Walter Langton, and those facts all redound greatly to
his honour.
Foremost of these must be placed his steady resistance to the excesses
of the young prince and his favourite Gaveston. The king was now in
the decline of life, and the young Edward had every prospect of being
king in a few years. Langton was treasurer, and had the duty assigned
to him of providing the young prince with a regular and a liberal
income. What could have been a more obvious policy, with any minister
of flexible morality, than to cultivate, by any practicable means,
the good opinion and the favour of the young prince and of his minion?
Yet we find Langton, during all the latter years of this reign, in a
state of constant warfare with young Edward and with Gaveston; and as
one very natural result—a result which the bishop himself must always
have contemplated—we find Edward II., as one of his first acts on
ascending the throne, depriving Langton of all his offices, throwing
him into prison, and granting to Gaveston all the moveable property of
the deprived prelate. This single fact of itself is sufficient to give
us a favourable impression of Langton’s character. To have withstood
the follies of the young prince and his favourite, and to have been
persecuted by them for so doing, are surely circumstances which tell
much in Langton’s favour; but they do not stand alone.
Two or three years pass over, during which the poor ex‐treasurer
languishes in prison, while his enemies are occupied with the endeavour
to find evidence to warrant his condemnation. The discontented barons
at Lincoln had brought “many complaints” against him. If he had
actually wronged any man, that person would now have the strongest
reason for laying the crime to his charge; for in so doing he would
not only gratify his own natural desire for vengeance, but would
also please those who were now in power. But what do we hear? After
being immured in a prison for nearly three years, Langton is at last
released, there being no case against him. Under all the circumstances,
we doubt if any higher or more triumphant proof of the integrity of the
ex‐treasurer’s character could have been given.
But even this is not all. Winchelsey, the restless intriguer, has
now returned, the only man who could keep him in check having been
removed; and this factious ecclesiastic at once resumes his former
work just where he had been forced to drop it, and begins to conspire
against the son as he had been used to do against the father. The
“confederacy” of the barons is revived, and Winchelsey is again its
inspiring genius. What could have been more natural than for Langton,
indignant at the persecution which he had endured, to have joined
with eagerness this confederacy, the main object of which was to get
rid of Gaveston, the cause of all his sufferings? But the course
taken by this honest minister was one of singular integrity. He had
been “imprisoned, deprived of his offices, and stripped of all his
property;” and yet, after all, his persecutors had been obliged to
admit his innocence, and to let him go free; and now “he was the only
prelate who refused to join the confederacy against Edward II.”[113]
Notwithstanding all the wrongs which he had received at the young
king’s hands, this noble‐minded man remembered his great master, and
that master’s faithful support of him against his enemies at Lincoln;
and he refused to take part in any conspiracy against that master’s
son. But the proof of Langton’s purity and integrity does not even end
here. He had been released; the charges against him were now known
to be groundless; but one more evidence of the highest kind was yet
to be given. Three or four years after he had ignominiously expelled
the bishop from his office, and ordered his imprisonment and his
prosecution, the young king himself felt compelled to pay a reluctant
tribute to Langton’s ability and integrity, by actually asking him to
resume the treasurership, and to serve him as faithfully as he had
served his father! Considering all the past quarrels between these
two men, and their frequent collisions and consequent ill‐blood, this
application must be admitted to be one of the most striking proofs of
integrity that an expelled and disgraced officer ever received; and,
taken in connection with the first Edward’s other selections, of such
men as Burnel, Brabazon, etc., it gives us a deep impression both of
that king’s skill and judgment in selecting his ministers, and also of
his firm and steady support of them in the discharge of their duty.
But we must terminate this digression, and go back to the moment of
Winchelsey’s disgrace and banishment to Rome. The chief criminal had
thus been punished, but, as in many similar cases, the effects of his
crime remained. He had fostered the discontent of the earls, and had
guided and suggested their course. At Lincoln, though substantially
defeated, the “confederacy” evidently obtained from the king some
larger concessions, in regard to the forests, than he thought just
or right; and the archbishop adroitly struck in at the close of the
matter with his denunciation of the greater excommunication, which
was calculated and intended to make those concessions unalterable and
irrevocable. But this violent way of ending and deciding a great and
intricate controversy only led, as violent courses usually do, to
further complications. Questions of title and boundary, in the case
of territory or landed estates, are those which, beyond most others,
require patience and moderation. The king, also, in the present
instance was dealt with in a manner which the great barons themselves
would not tolerate in their own cases. Twenty years before this period
the king had proposed a general investigation of titles, and one of the
earls at once drew his sword, exclaiming, “It was by _this_ that my
forefathers won their lands, and by _this_ I mean to maintain them.”
To this repugnance the king gave way. But now a different rule was to
be applied to the royal domains. The principle asserted was, that
whatever could not be shown to have been forest at the accession of
Henry II., in 1154, should be disafforested. The adoption of so wide a
range must inevitably have introduced great differences of opinion, but
there can be no doubt that many of the great barons added largely to
their estates at the king’s expense by these “disafforestings.”
Yet, after all, there was another class, and that not a small one,
which had a deep interest in these questions—an interest of a very
different, and, indeed, opposite kind to that of the barons. The royal
forests were not vast solitudes, or parks occupied solely by animals
for the chase. Their borders, especially, were largely peopled by
cottagers; who, under the permission of the king or his officers, had
reared up dwellings within the privileged limits, and were allowed
pasturage and even some kind of tillage therein. This whole class of
persons now found their position imperilled. A sudden change of owners
had in many places been experienced, and often the poor cottager found
reason to regret the alteration. In this way, it soon became evident,
that the “disafforesting” question was not one bearing upon the king’s
personal recreations merely; but was intimately connected with the
interests of thousands of his people. We are not imagining a possible
or even a probable case. It is upon record, that divers petitions were
sent in to the king, at his parliament of 1305, held at Westminster, on
the day before the feast of St. Matthew, by “certain people that be put
out of the forests by the great men,” and who “pray the king that they
may be as they were wont to be heretofore.” This is set forth in the
preamble to the ordinance. It was, then, in answer to the prayers of
many who felt themselves aggrieved and oppressed, that the king passed,
in that parliament, an “Ordinance of the Forests;” in which, with his
usual frankness and explicitness, he explains the real position of the
question.
He adverts, first, to the origin of the “disafforesting,” saying, “Our
lord the king (to these petitions) answers, that since he hath granted
the perambulation, he is pleased that it should stand, in like manner
as it was granted; albeit that the thing was sued and demanded in an
evil point.”
But next the king proceeds, as far as he was able, to amend the evil
complained of, and to give comfort to those who had “cried unto him
for succour.” He says, that with respect to “them that have lands and
tenements disafforested by the late perambulation, and do desire to
have common within the bounds of the forests,” “the intent and will of
our lord the king is,” “that if any of them would rather be within the
forest as they were before, than out of the forest as they are now,
it pleaseth the king very well that they shall be received hereunto;
so that they may remain in their ancient estate, and have common and
other easement, as they had before. And our lord the king willeth and
commandeth, that his justices of the forests, etc., shall take notice
of this ordinance.”
This was an attempt to undo, so far as might be, some of the ill
consequences of the hasty and violent determinations of 1301. But it
may easily be perceived, that controversies and collisions would be
likely to arise out of this state of things. Upon the strength of the
charters and perambulations, and oaths and excommunications of 1301,
the “great men” had begun to take portions of the royal forests to
themselves, and to add them to their own estates. They also frequently
got rid of the cottagers who had long found a home in the forests;
and proceeded either to add the land to their farms, or to their own
demesnes. To stop these evictions, the king issues a new ordinance.
But that ordinance, when produced, would doubtless be met by an
appeal to the charter, to the perambulations, and to the archbishop’s
excommunication of all who departed from them. And, with many
churchmen, this terrible anathema would be admitted to have a fearful
weight.