EDWARD THE FIRST AND CHESHIRE
Simon of Whitchurch received the Abbey of S. Werburgh from the hands of
another and a greater Simon, the powerful Earl of Leicester, who was
engaged in a grim struggle with the king on account of the king's
extravagance and misgovernment, and the rule of foreign favourites. Both
Henry and his son Edward were, in fact, at this very time prisoners of
the earl, for the battle of Lewes, which ended so disastrously for the
king, had just been fought. In the same year Earl Simon summoned the
famous Parliament in which knights from the shires, and citizens from
the boroughs, sat side by side with the nobles and bishops.
Edward had not long received the Earldom of Chester from his father when
the Barons' War broke out. Simon de Montfort made an alliance with
Llewellyn the Welsh prince, and Chester, expecting an attack, was put
into a state of defence. Abbot Simon could hardly have commenced
building his beautiful Lady Chapel when he saw his church desecrated and
turned into barracks by Sir William de la Zouche, the Chief Justice of
Chester.
After the defeat of Henry and Edward at Lewes they were compelled to
hand over to Earl Simon the Earldom of Chester, and Henry de Montfort,
Simon's eldest son, came to Chester and received in his father's name
the homage and oath of fealty of the citizens. Lucas de Taney was left
in charge of the city.
Edward afterwards escaped from the custody of Earl Simon, and James de
Audley seized the castle of Beeston on his behalf. He also besieged
Lucas de Taney in the castle of Chester for ten weeks, but did not
succeed in taking it on account of the excellent defence made by the
garrison. De Taney surrendered when he heard of the death of Simon de
Montfort at Evesham, where Edward won a great victory. The chief of the
surviving barons were brought as prisoners to Beeston Castle.
But the great prize for which de Montfort fought and laid down his life
was won. When Edward came to the throne he learned from the mistakes
made by his father, chose his ministers wisely, and gave his people good
laws. His reign saw the growth of a full and free parliament, in which
all classes of free men were represented. Cheshire did not, however,
send any members, but being under the personal eye of the king had still
a separate government of its own as well as its own judges and
law-courts.
Vale Royal reminds us of the great Plantagenet king, whose motto was
'Keep Troth' and who for thirty-five years did all he could to win the
love of his people. Before Edward became king he went on Crusade to the
Holy Land, where he distinguished himself by recovering the holy city of
Nazareth from the Saracens. On his return he narrowly escaped shipwreck.
In his peril he invoked the aid of the Virgin Mary, and vowed that if he
were saved he would build a monastery in her honour on his return to his
own country. The Chronicle tells us that 'the vessel straightway
righted itself and was miraculously brought safe into port; the sailors
disembarked, the Prince landing last of all, and immediately the vessel
broke in pieces, and every fragment of the wreck vanished under the
water'.
Edward 'kept his troth' and built a home for one hundred monks of the
Cistercian Order at Darnhall. Four years later he laid the foundation
stone of a stately Abbey at Vale Royal, in the very heart of Cheshire.
Queen Eleanor and a great company of nobles accompanied him. We may not
now hear the Angelus tolling its summons to evening prayer, nor see
jolly monks fishing the streams of the Weaver, but in the last few
months the foundations of the Abbey church where they chanted the mass
have been discovered.
The abbey took more than fifty years to build, and it was not until the
reign of the third Edward that the monks were able to move from their
temporary lodgings to the new and spacious building. The abbey received
valuable lands in the neighbourhood of Over, Darnhall, and Weaverham, of
which villages the abbot became lord. By the ancient 'customs' of the
manor of Darnhall the villagers were required to attend at the manorial,
now the abbot's court; the abbot had power of life and death over all
his tenants, who had also to grind all their corn at the abbot's mill;
at the death of any native the abbot took all his horses, cattle, and
pigs, and half of his standing and gathered corn.
Cheshire saw a good deal of Edward the First in the earlier half of his
reign. In the year after the ceremonies at Vale Royal we find him at
Macclesfield, when he began to build the parish church of S. Michael.
He was the first English king to take in hand the conquest of Wales
seriously. In the reign of Henry the Third the Welsh had taken advantage
of the king's troubles with his barons, and waged a murderous warfare on
the Cheshire border. They advanced as far as Nantwich, and James de
Audley, who owned a large part of the barony of Nantwich, saw his
castles burnt, woods felled, and cattle destroyed. Preparations were
made for a big expedition into Wales, and Prince Edward summoned the
knights and barons of Cheshire to Shotwick Castle on the banks of the
Dee. A grassy knoll, where once stood the castle keep, is all that is
left of the scene of the gathering.
[Illustration: CHESTER WALL. Roman below; Edwardian above]
Chester, from its position at the very gates of North Wales, was the
natural meeting-place for the troops, and the starting-point of Edward's
expedition against Llewellyn. Soon after his accession he summoned the
Welsh princes to do homage to him. This they refused to do, and the king
prepared for war. Llewellyn's brother David for a long time fought on
the side of the English, and received the manor of Frodsham as his
reward.
Edward's first task, however, was to strengthen the defences of Chester
so that it might resist all attacks. The enemy frequently came close up
to the walls of the city, and raided especially the suburb of Handbridge
on the opposite shore of the Dee, naming it Treboeth or 'Burnt Town', a
name that tells its own tale.
Edward was a great castle-builder, as many of you have learnt from
pictures you have seen of his Welsh castles. The Norman castle of
Chester had been constructed largely of wood. Edward now rebuilt it of
stone, and greatly enlarged it by adding an outer ward or 'bailey'. He
surrounded the whole fortress with 'curtain' walls flanked with towers
and protected with a deep ditch. He also set to work to rebuild the
walls of the city.
The ancient Roman walls had long since crumbled to their foundations,
though here and there a mass of masonry remained standing, and the Roman
east gate was still in its place. The stones of which the walls had been
built had provided building-material for many centuries. On the east
side from the Pepper Gate to the Phoenix Tower Edward built his wall on
or near the foundations of the Roman wall, portions of which you may
still see on this side of the city. For the most part, however, the new
walls were built outside the older ones, and the area enclosed was much
greater than that of the Roman town.
The walls were strengthened by a number of watch towers, some of which
were not completed until the time of his grandson Edward the Third, when
Bonewaldeston's Tower and the Water Tower were built. A wall-tax called
'murage' was levied on the inhabitants of Cheshire for keeping the walls
in repair. The citizens of Chester were also made to build a bridge over
the Dee. Edward's chief engineer was named Richard, and in return for
his services he received for a number of years the Dee Mills, so that
for the time being he was the 'Miller of the Dee'.
[Illustration: WATER TOWER AND CURTAIN WALL, CHESTER]
After some years of hard fighting the conquest of the Welsh was
complete. At Rhuddlan Castle, on the borders of the ancient palatine
earldom, Edward gave to the conquered Welsh a settled government and a
system of law-courts similar to that which he had already set up for the
English. He returned to Chester to celebrate the peace that he had made,
and accompanied by his queen, with great pomp and ceremony attended mass
and a service of thanksgiving in the Abbey of S. Werburgh.
The river Dee washed the walls of the Water Tower, and great iron rings,
to which the barges were moored, were fixed in the Tower walls. The
ships brought wines from Gascony and cloth from Flanders, whither the
monks of Vale Royal and Combermere sent the wool of the flocks that
pastured on their meadows. Some of the Flemish weavers left their own
country and settled on the shores of the Mersey near Birkenhead.
In nearly every field in the pastoral parts of Cheshire are to be found
one or more small round pools, often fringed with willows and reeds. You
know them well, for you have been to them often to watch the tadpoles
and the minnows. But you have not wondered why they are there, and why
there are so many of them. Yet they have something to tell of the
wool-raising in the days of the three Edwards. For they are marl-pits,
and many of them were dug first when the first Edward was king; the
marl, which is a great fertilizer, being taken out of the earth and
spread over the grass-lands on which the flocks were pastured. The
farmers do not use it now, for new and easier ways of enriching the soil
have been found.
The marl-diggers, or 'marlers' as they were called, had their own
particular feast-day once a year, when they claimed toll of every
passer-by, and in the evening sang their marling songs in the village
ale-house.
When shut the pit, the labour o'er,
He whom we work for opes his door
And gies to us of drink galore,
For this was always Marler's law.
Who-whoop who-whoop wo-o-o-o-o.