EDWARD III.
1327-1377.
Shameful as the state of the realm had been under the rule of Edward of
Carnarvon and his favourites, a yet more disgraceful depth was reached
in the years of minority of his son. The young king was only fourteen,
and the government fell into the hands of those who had set him on the
throne, his mother and her paramour, Roger Mortimer. A council, headed
by Henry Earl of Lancaster, was supposed to guide the king's steps,
but as a matter of fact he was in Queen Isabella's power, while she
was entirely ruled by Mortimer. They were surrounded by a guard of 180
knights, and acted as they pleased in all things. It was only gradually
that the nation realized the state of affairs, for the murder of
Edward II. was long kept concealed, and the relations of the queen and
Mortimer were not at first generally known.
[Sidenote: =Second Scottish invasion.--"The Shameful Peace."=]
The first blow to the new government was the renewal of the Scottish
war. In 1328, Robert Bruce broke the truce that he had made six years
before. He was now growing advanced in age, and was stricken by
leprosy, but he sent out, under James "the Black Douglas," a great
host, 4000 knights and squires, and 20,000 moss-troopers, all horsed
on shaggy Galloway ponies. They harried England as far as the Tees,
and successfully eluded Mortimer, who went out against them, taking
the young king with him. Outmarching the English day by day, Douglas
retired before them across the Northumbrian fells, occasionally
harassing his pursuers by night-attacks; he returned home with much
plunder, leaving not a cow unlifted nor a house unburnt in all
Tynedale. The English host came back foiled and half starved, and
Mortimer, not daring to face another campaign, advised the queen to
make terms with the Scots. Accordingly "the Shameful Peace" was signed
at Northampton, by which England resigned all claims of suzerainty over
the Scotch realm, sent back the crown and royal jewels, which Edward I.
had carried off to London, and gave the king's sister Joanna to be wed
to Bruce's eldest son (1328).
[Sidenote: =Risings against Mortimer.=]
Mortimer's failure led to insurrections against him; but they were mere
baronial risings, not efforts of the whole people. Henry of Lancaster,
who headed the first, was put down and heavily fined for his pains.
Edmund, Earl of Kent, then took up the same plan, announcing that he
would free his half-brother Edward II., who, as he was persuaded, still
survived. But he fell into Mortimer's hands, and was beheaded.
[Sidenote: =The king asserts himself--Mortimer executed.=]
It was the young king himself who was destined to put an end to the
misrule of his mother and her minion. When he reached the age of
eighteen, and realized the shameful tutelage in which he was being
held, he resolved to free himself from it by force. While the court
lay at Nottingham Castle in October, 1330, he gathered a small band of
trustworthy adherents, and at midnight entered the queen's lodgings by
a secret stair and seized Mortimer, in spite of his mother's tears and
curses. The favourite was sent before his peers, tried, and executed;
Isabella was relegated to honourable confinement at Castle-Rising,
where she lived for many years after.
[Sidenote: =Character of Edward III.=]
King Edward now himself assumed the reins of government; he was still
very young, but in the middle ages men ripened quick if they died
early, and Edward at nineteen was thought both by others and himself
old enough to take charge of the policy of the realm. He was in his
youth a very well-served and well-loved sovereign, for he had all
the qualities that attract popularity--a handsome person, pleasant
and affable manners, a fluent tongue, and an energy that contrasted
most happily with the listless indolence of his miserable father.
It was many years before the world discovered that he was selfish,
thriftless, reckless of his country's needs, and set on gratifying his
personal ambition and love of warlike feats to the sacrifice of every
other consideration. He was a knight-errant of the type of Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, not a statesman and warrior like his grandfather Edward
I. In his later years his faculties showed a premature decay, and he
fell into the hands of favourites, male and female, who were almost as
offensive as the Gavestons and Despensers of the previous generation.
Edward's reign falls into three well-marked periods: the first,
1330-39, is that of his Scottish wars; the second, 1339-60, is that
in which he began the famous and unhappy "Hundred Years' War" with
France, and himself conducted it up to the brilliant but unwise Peace
of Bretigny; the third, 1360-77, that of his declining years, is a time
of trouble and misgovernment gradually increasing till Edward sank
unregretted into his grave.
[Sidenote: =War with Scotland.--Battle of Halidon Hill.=]
Robert Bruce, the terror of the English, had died in 1329, leaving his
throne to his son David II., a child of five years. The government
fell into the hands of regents, who ill supplied the place of the dead
king, and their weakness tempted the survivors of the English party in
Scotland to strike a blow. Edward Balliol, the son of the long-dead
John Balliol, accordingly made secret offers to Edward III., that
he would do homage to him for the Scottish crown, and reign as his
vassal, if he were helped to win the land. With Edward's connivance the
young Balliol gathered together the Earls of Buchan and Athole, and
many other Scottish refugees in England, and took ship to Scotland.
He landed in Fife, was joined by his secret friends, beat the regent,
the Earl of Mar, and seized the greater part of Scotland. He was
crowned at Scone, and forced the young David Bruce to flee over-sea
to France to save his life. But soon the national party rose against
Balliol, expelled him, and chased him back to England. Edward then
took the field in his favour, and met the Scots at Halidon Hill, near
Berwick. Here he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, which the English
celebrated as a fair revenge for the blow of Bannockburn, for the
regent Archibald Douglas, four earls, and many thousand men were left
on the field. They fell mainly by the arrows of the English archery,
for, having drawn themselves out on a hillside behind a marsh, they
stood as a broad target for the bowmen, whom they were unable to reach.
The intervening marshy ground prevented their heavy columns of pikemen
from advancing, and they were routed without even the chance of coming
to handstrokes (July, 1333). This victory made Edward Balliol King of
Scotland for a second time; he did homage to his champion, and ceded to
him Tweeddale and half Lothian. But the crown won by English help sat
uneasily on Balliol's brow. After several years of spasmodic fighting,
he was finally driven out of his realm, and took refuge again in
England. This time he found less help, for Edward III. was now plunged
deep in schemes of another kind.
Nine years of comparative quiet had done much to recover England from
the misery it had known in the last reign. The baronage and people were
serving the young king loyally, taxation had not yet been heavy, and
the success of Halidon Hill had restored the nation's self-respect.
Edward himself was flushed by victory and burning for fresh adventures.
Hence it came that, neglecting the nearer but less showy task of
restoring the English suzerainty over Scotland, he turned to wars
over-sea.
[Sidenote: =Quarrel with France.--The Hundred Years' War begins.=]
One of the usual frontier-quarrels between French and Gascons had
broken out in 1337 on the borders of Aquitaine. In consequence, Philip
VI. of France had, like so many of his predecessors, taken measures
to support Edward's Scottish enemies, and given shelter to the exiled
boy-king, David Bruce. War between England and France was probably
inevitable, but Edward chose to make it a life and death struggle,
by laying claim to the throne of France and branding Philip VI. as a
usurper.
[Sidenote: =The French succession.--The Salic Law.=]
The question of the French succession dated from some years back. In
1328 died Edward's uncle, King Charles IV., the last of the direct male
descendants of Philip IV. The problem then cropped up for the first
time whether the French crown could descend to females, or whether the
next male heir must be chosen, although he was but the cousin of the
late king. The peers of France adjudged that by the _Salic Law_, an old
custom ascribed to the ancient Franks, only male descent counted in
tracing claims to the throne. Accordingly they adjudged the kingdom to
Philip of Valois, who was crowned as Philip VI. Edward, as own nephew
through his mother to Charles IV., had protested at the time; but he
had practically withdrawn his protest by doing homage to Philip for the
Duchy of Aquitaine, and thereby acknowledging the justice of the award.
THE FRENCH SUCCESSION, 1337.
PHILIP III.,
1270-1285.
|
+----------+----------------+
| |
PHILIP IV., Charles,
1285-1314. Count of Valois.
| |
+-----------+----+------+------------+ +-----------+
| | | | |
LOUIS X., PHILIP V., CHARLES IV., Isabella. PHILIP of Valois,
1314-1316. 1316-1322. 1322-1328. | king 1328-1350.
| | |
+--+ | |
| | |
Jane, Edward III. JOHN,
Queen of Navarre. 1350-1364.
|
Charles,
King of Navarre.
Now, in 1337 Edward began to think of reviving his dormant pretensions
to the French crown, though they had two fatal defects. The first was
that there had never been any precedent in France for a claim through
the female line. The second was that, even if such descents could be
counted, one of his mother's brothers had left a daughter, the Queen of
Navarre, and the son of that princess had a better female claim than
Edward himself. The only way in which this defect could be ignored was
by pleading, like Bruce in 1292, that Edward was a generation nearer to
the old royal stock than his cousin, Charles, King of Navarre.
[Sidenote: =Edward claims the French crown.=]
On this rather futile plea Edward laid solemn claim to the French
crown, and declared Philip of Valois a usurper. Perhaps there may be
truth in the story which tells that he did not do so from any strong
belief in his own theory, but because the Flemings, vassals to the
French crown, had declared that they could not aid him, though willing
to do so, on account of oaths of fealty sworn to the King of France. If
Edward claimed to be king himself, they said, their allegiance and help
would be due to him. Whether the tale be true or not, he at any rate
made the claim.
In reliance on the assistance of the Flemings, and of their neighbours
the Dukes of Brabant and Holland, and with the countenance of the
Emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, King Edward determined to land in the
Low Countries and attack France from the north. He called out great
bodies of soldiery, and took advantage of the devotion that the nation
felt for him to raise illegal taxes for their pay. Violating his
grandfather's engagements, he took a "tallage" from the towns, and
levied a "_mal-tolt_" or extra customs-duty on the export of wool.
In the excitement of the moment, little opposition was made to these
high-handed measures.
[Sidenote: =First campaign.--Naval victory off Sluys.=]
But Edward's campaign against France proved utterly unsuccessful; his
Netherland allies were of little use to him, King Philip refused to
risk a battle in the field, and an attack on Cambray was defeated.
Edward had to return to England to raise more money; while at home, he
heard that a great French fleet had been collected for the conquest of
Flanders and a subsequent attack on England. Hastily raising all the
ships he could gather from London and the Cinque Ports, the king set
sail to seek the enemy. He found them in harbour at the Flemish port of
Sluys, and there brought them to action. They had chained their ships
in three lines and built up barricades upon them; but, by pretending
to fly, Edward induced them to cast loose and follow him, and, when
they had got out to sea, turned and attacked. The English archery swept
the enemy's decks, and then the king and his knights clambered up, and
boarded vessel after vessel till well-nigh the whole French fleet was
taken (1340). No such glorious day had been seen since Hubert de Burgh
won the battle off Dover 120 years before.
[Sidenote: =Contest with Parliament.=]
The victory of Sluys freed England from the danger of invasion, but did
nothing more. For when the king landed in Flanders, and pushed forward
against France, he again failed to break through the line of strong
towns that guarded Philip's frontier, and had to return home foiled. On
coming to England he fell into a bitter strife with his Parliament, who
were far from contented with the repeated checks in Flanders. Edward
began by charging his failure on his ministers and dismissed them
all, from the Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury downwards,
accusing them of having misappropriated the taxes. He announced that he
would bring them to trial, and appointed a special commission for the
purpose. This led to a vindication of the ancient right of trial by a
man's equals, for John de Stratford, the archbishop, insisted on being
tried in Parliament by the barons his peers, and carried his point
against the king's strenuous opposition. He was of course acquitted,
as nothing could be found against him. The Parliament only consented
to grant the king fresh supplies when he swore (1) to let them appoint
a committee to audit the accounts of the money; (2) to take no further
_maltolts_ or tallages, but confine himself to the duly voted supplies;
(3) to choose his ministers only with Parliament's consent, and make
them answerable to Parliament for malfeasance in their office (1341).
If these conditions had been kept, the crown would have been completely
under control of the national council, but Edward shamelessly broke
them when fortune turned in his favour.
[Sidenote: =Edward invades Normandy.--Battle of Crécy.=]
England had now been five years at war with France, and had gained
nothing thereby save the destruction of the French navy at Sluys.
France had fared equally badly, and in a lucid moment the kings signed
a truce. But both Edward and Philip and their subjects had come to
dislike each other so bitterly, that no end could be put to the war
till one or other had gained a decisive victory. The struggle was
soon renewed on fresh ground--the duchy of Brittany, where a disputed
succession had occurred. With strange want of logic, Philip VI. backed
the claimant whose pretensions were based on a female descent, and
Edward the one who claimed as next male heir under the Salic Law. Thus
each supported in Brittany the theory of descent which he repudiated
in France. After much indecisive fighting, both in Brittany and on
the Gascon border, Edward determined on a new invasion of France in
1345. Giving out that he would sail to Bordeaux, he really landed
near Cherbourg, in Normandy, where the enemy was not expecting him.
He had determined to fight the campaign with English forces alone,
and no longer to rely on untrustworthy continental friends. With 4000
men-at-arms, 10,000 bowmen, and 5000 light Welsh and Irish infantry,
he pushed boldly through the land, sacking St. Lo and Caen, and
driving the local levies of Normandy before him. But he had cut himself
loose from the sea, and as his course drew him into the interior, the
French began to muster on all sides of him in great numbers and in high
wrath. It was evident that he ran great danger of being surrounded,
and would certainly have to fight for his life. When he reached the
Seine, King Philip broke down all the bridges to prevent his escape,
and it was more by chance than good generalship that the English army
succeeded in forcing a passage. Hearing of the vast numbers that were
coming against him, Edward now turned north, but he was again checked
by the river Somme, and only got across by fighting his way over the
dangerous sea-swept ford of Blanchetaque, near the river's mouth, in
face of the levies of Picardy. Three days later he was overtaken by the
French at Crécy, in the county of Ponthieu, and had to turn and fight.
King Philip had brought up a vast army, some 12,000 men-at-arms and
60,000 foot-soldiers, including several thousand Genoese cross-bowmen,
who were reckoned the best mercenary troops in Europe. Edward drew up
his host on a hillside, north of Crécy, placing his archers in front,
with bodies of dismounted men-at-arms to support them; two-thirds of
the army were arrayed in the front line, under the nominal command of
Edward, Prince of Wales, the fifteen-year-old son and heir of the king.
Edward kept the rest in reserve higher up the hill, under his own hand.
[Sidenote: =The English archers.=]
Crécy was the first fight which taught the rulers of the continent
the worth of the English bowman. When the vast French army came up
against them, they easily repelled every attack. First, they riddled
with arrows the Genoese cross-bowmen, who could make no stand against
them, for the archer could shoot six times before the Genoese could
wind up their clumsy arbalests for a second discharge. Then when the
French chivalry advanced, they shot down men and horses so fast that
it was only at a few points that the enemy ever succeeded in reaching
their line, and coming to handstrokes with the Prince of Wales and his
dismounted knights. At evening the French fled, routed by less than a
third of their numbers, before King Edward and his reserve had occasion
to strike a single blow. Edward knighted his son on the field--the
first victory of the celebrated "Black Prince," who was to prove as
good a soldier as his father. When the French dead were counted, it
was discovered that the English archery had slain 11 dukes and counts,
83 barons, 1200 knights, and more than 20,000 of the French soldiery.
John, King of Bohemia, who had come to help Philip VI., though he was
old and weak of sight, was also among the slain. On the other hand, the
English had lost less than a thousand men (August 26, 1346).
[Illustration: BATTLE OF CRÉCY, 1346.]
After this splendid victory, King Edward was able to march unmolested
through the land. He resolved to end the campaign by taking Calais, the
nearest French seaport to the English coast, and one which, if held
permanently, would give him an ever-open door into France.
[Sidenote: =Capture of Calais.=]
Accordingly, he sat down before Calais, and beleaguered it for
many months, till it fell by famine in the next year. The King of
France could do nothing to relieve it, and the town had to yield at
discretion. The men of Calais had made many piratical descents on
England, and Edward was known to bear them a grudge for this. Therefore
seven chief burgesses of the place gallantly came forward to bear the
brunt of his wrath, and offered themselves to him with halters round
their necks, begging him to hang them, but spare the rest of their
townsmen. Edward was at first inclined to take these patriotic citizens
at their word, but his wife Queen Philippa urged him to gentler
counsels, and he let them go. But he drove out of Calais every man who
would not own him as king and swear him fealty, and filled their places
with English colonists. Thus Calais became an English town, and so
remained for more than 200 years, a thorn in the side of France, and an
open gate for the invader from beyond the Channel.
[Sidenote: =Scottish invasion.--Battle of Neville's Cross.=]
While the siege of Calais had been in progress, the Scots had made a
bold attempt to invade the north of England. The young king, David
Bruce, grateful for the shelter which Philip VI. had given him in the
days of his exile, had crossed the Tweed, in the hope of drawing Edward
home, and so robbing him of the results of his campaign in France. But
Queen Philippa summoned to her aid all the nobles who had not gone
over-sea, and mustered them at Durham. David Bruce pushed forward to
meet them, but at Neville's Cross he met with a crushing defeat. Once
more it was found that the Scottish pikemen could not stand against
the English archery. They were beaten with terrible loss, and the king
himself and many of his nobles were taken prisoners and sent to London
(October, 1346).
[Sidenote: =The Black Death.=]
Edward came back from Calais to England laden with glory and spoil, but
all his plunder could not pay for the exhaustion which his heavy taxes
and levies of men had brought upon his realm. The nation, however, was
blinded to its loss by the glory of Crécy, and the war would probably
have been continued with increased energy but for a fearful disaster
which befell the land in the year after the fall of Calais. A great
plague which men called "the Black Death" came sweeping over Europe
from the East, and in the awful havoc which it caused wars were for a
time forgotten. England did not suffer worse than France or Italy, yet
it is calculated that a full half of her population was stricken down
by this unexampled pestilence. Manor-rolls and bishops' registers bear
out by their lists in detail the statements which the contemporary
chroniclers make at large. We note that in this unhappy year, 1348-9,
many parishes had three, and some four successive vicars appointed
to them in nine months. We see how, in small villages of 300 or 400
inhabitants, thirty or forty families, from their oldest to their
youngest member, were swept away, so that their farms reverted to the
lord of the land for want of heirs. We find monasteries in which every
soul, from the prior to the youngest novice, died, so that the house
was left entirely desolate. And thus we realize that the chroniclers
are but telling us sober, unexaggerated facts, when they speak of
this as a pestilence such as none had ever seen before, and none is
ever like to see again. It seems to have been an eruptive form of
that oriental plague which still lingers in Syria and the valley of
the Euphrates. It began with great boils breaking out on the groin or
under the armpits, culminated in sharp fever and violent retching, and
generally carried off its victims within two days.
[Sidenote: RISE IN WAGES.--THE STATUTE OF LABOURERS.]
It is probable that England did not recover the loss of population
which it now sustained for a couple of centuries. But if the nation
was dreadfully thinned, the results of the plague were not all in
the direction of evil. It certainly raised the position of the lower
classes by making labour more scarce, and therefore more valuable.
The surviving agricultural labourers were able to demand much higher
wages than before, and it was in vain that Parliament, by the foolish
_Statute of Labourers_ (1349), tried to prescribe a maximum rate of
wages for them, and to prevent employers giving more. Legislation
is unable to prevent the necessary working of the laws of political
economy, and in spite of the statute the peasant got his advantage.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the French war.--The Black Prince.=]
About the time of the outbreak of the Black Death, the kings of England
and France had signed a truce, being moved to turn their thoughts far
from war by the terrible havoc that was going on around them. It was
six years before they and their peoples could find heart to forget the
plague, and once more resumed their reckless struggle. In 1355 Edward
made proposals for a definitive peace to King John--Philip VI. had died
in 1350--on the terms that he should give up his claims to the French
crown, but receive Aquitaine free from all burden of homage to the
King of France as suzerain. John refused this reasonable offer, and
Edward recommenced his attacks on France. He himself landed at Calais
and invaded Picardy, but was ere long recalled home by the news that
the Scots also had renewed the war, and were over the Tweed. Edward
spent the summer in beating them back and cruelly ravaging the whole
of Lothian. Meanwhile, his son, the Black Prince, now a young man of
twenty-five, started from Bordeaux and plundered the French province of
Languedoc.
In the following year, the Black Prince made a similar incursion into
Central France, and swept through the whole country from Limoges to
Tours with a small army of 4000 mounted men and 3000 archers. When
he turned his face homeward, however, he found that King John with a
host of 40,000 men had blocked his road, by getting between him and
Bordeaux. Thus intercepted, Prince Edward posted himself on the hill
of Maupertuis, near Poictiers, and took up a defensive position. It is
probable that the French, with their vastly superior numbers, could
have completely surrounded him and starved him into surrender without
any need of fighting. But King John, a fierce and reckless prince with
none of a general's ability, preferred to take the English by force of
arms, and, when they refused to surrender to him, prepared to storm
their position.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF POICTIERS, SEP. 1356.]
[Sidenote: =The Battle of Poictiers.=]
Edward's small army was drawn up behind a tall hedgerow and a ditch on
the slope of a ridge, with the archers in front lining the hedgerow,
and the men-at-arms behind them. All the latter save 300 were
dismounted, as at Crécy. The Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had command
of the two divisions which formed the front line, while the prince
himself stayed behind with the reserve. John of France, remembering the
disaster of Crécy, where the English arrows had slain so many horses,
dismounted all his knights save a few hundred, and led them on foot
up the hill in three divisions. Only a picked body of horsemen, under
the two marshals, D'Audrehem and Clermont, pushed forward in front, to
endeavour to ride down the English archers, as the Scottish cavalry had
done so successfully at Bannockburn.
[Sidenote: =Rout of the French.--King John a prisoner.=]
But, whether on foot or on horse, the French made little way with their
attack. The cavalry in advance were all shot down as they tried to push
through gaps in the hedge. The first division of the dismounted knights
then climbed the slope, but, after severe fighting with the front line
of the English, recoiled, unable to force their way over the ditch.
They fell back on to the second line behind them, and put it into
disorder before it could come near the English. Seeing two-thirds of
the French army in this plight, the Prince of Wales resolved to strike
a bold blow: he brought up his reserve to the front, and bade his whole
army charge downhill on to the huddled mass below them. His quick eye
had caught the right moment, for the whole of the French van and second
division fled right and left without fighting. Only King John, with the
rear line of his army, stood firm. With this body, one more numerous
than the whole of his own host, Prince Edward had a fierce fight in
the valley. But the French were broken in spirit by the sight of the
rout of their van, and gave way when they were charged in the flank by
a small body of troops whom Edward had detached to his right for that
purpose. They all fled save the king and his young son Philip, who
stood their ground for a long time with a small company of faithful
vassals, and maintained the fight when all the rest had vanished.
John's courageous obstinacy had the natural result: he, his son, and
the faithful few about him were all surrounded and taken prisoners.
When the English came to reckon up the results of the battle, they
found that they had slain 2 dukes, 17 barons, and 2800 knights and
men-at-arms, and taken captive a king, a prince, 13 counts, 15 barons,
and 2000 knights and men-at-arms. Their own loss did not reach 300 men
(September 19, 1356).
Edward returned in triumph to Bordeaux, and afterwards crossed to
England, to present his all-important prisoner to the king his father.
The prince treated John with great gentleness and courtesy, and did
all that he could to avoid wounding his feelings. Nevertheless, he saw
that in the pressure that could be brought to bear upon his captive,
lay the best hope of winning an honourable and profitable peace from
the French. John chafed bitterly at his detention in custody, and got
little consolation from finding himself in the company of his ally
David, King of Scotland, who had been a prisoner in England for ten
years, ever since the battle of Neville's Cross.
[Sidenote: =Misery and anarchy in France.--The Jacquerie.=]
The difficulty in negociating a peace did not come from King John, but
from the regency which replaced him at Paris. The French did not see
why they should sign a humiliating treaty merely in order to deliver
a harsh and not very popular king from confinement. But a series of
disasters at last forced them to submit. The three years 1357-60 were
almost the most miserable that France ever knew. The young Dauphin
Charles, a mere lad, proved quite unable to keep order in the land;
the barons did what they pleased; hordes of disbanded mercenary
soldiers, whom the government could not pay, roamed plundering over the
countryside side. The people of Paris broke out into sedition, under
a bold citizen named Etienne Marcel, and put the Dauphin himself in
durance for a time. Last and worst of all, the peasantry of Central
France, driven to despair by the general misery of the times, rose in
rebellion against all constituted authority, slew every man of gentle
blood that they could lay hands on, and roamed about in huge bands,
burning castles and manors, and plundering towns and villages. The
horrors of the Jacquerie,[22] as this anarchic revolt was called,
bid fair to destroy all government in France, and it was only by a
desperate rally that those who had anything to lose succeeded in
banding themselves together and crushing the insurgents.
[Sidenote: =Edward again invades France.--Treaty of Bretigny.=]
When France had suffered so bitterly from its foes within, Edward of
England took a great army across the Channel, and in 1359-60 wasted
the whole land as far as Paris and Rheims. But as the French refused
to meet him in the field, he won no battles, took few towns, and got
little profit from his destructive raid. It was at this juncture that
he and the Dauphin at last came to terms. To end the war the French
were ready to grant whatever conditions Edward chose to exact. He asked
for a ransom of 3,000,000 gold crowns for the person of King John, and
for the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine, as Duchess Eleanor had held it
in 1154. In return, he would give up his claim on the crown of France,
and be content to be independent Duke of Aquitaine only. So all the
lands in Southern France which John and Henry III. had lost--Poitou,
Saintonge, Perigord, Limoges, Quercy, and the rest,--were restored to
the Plantagenets, after being 150 years in French hands. Calais and
Ponthieu in the north were also formally ceded to King Edward by this
celebrated treaty of Bretigny (May, 1360).
[Illustration: FRANCE 1380.
SHOWING THE ENGLISH BOUNDARIES
AFTER THE
TREATY OF BRETIGNY.]
It appeared for a moment as if a permanent peace between England and
France had been established. King Edward, in return for giving up a
claim on the whole of France, which no one had taken very seriously,
had won the long-lost lands which his ancestors had never hoped to
retake. He had also made an advantageous peace with Scotland, releasing
King David for a ransom of 90,000 marks, and the fortresses of Berwick
and Roxburgh.
[Sidenote: =Development of trade.--The Flemish weavers.=]
Edward's fortune was now at its highest, and his reign promised to have
a prosperous and peaceful end. He had reached the age of fifty, and was
surrounded by a band of sons who should have been the strength of his
old age. Edward the Black Prince he made Duke of Aquitaine; Lionel
of Clarence, his second son, was married to the heiress of the great
Irish family of de Burgh; John of Gaunt, the third son, was wedded
to the heiress of Lancaster; Thomas of Woodstock, his fifth son, to
one of the co-heiresses of the earldom of Hereford. Thus he trusted
to identify by intermarriage the interests of the royal house and the
greater baronage, not seeing that there was as much probability of his
younger sons becoming leaders of baronial factions as of the barons
forgetting their old jealousy of the royal house. Meanwhile, however,
things went fairly well for some years after the peace of Bretigny. In
spite of the vast expenditure of money on the war, and in spite of the
ravages of the Black Death, the country was in many ways prosperous.
England had enjoyed internal quiet for thirty years; her commerce
with Flanders and Gascony was developing; her fleet, in spite of much
piracy, was dominant in all the Western seas. The increase of wealth is
shown by the fact that Edward III. first of all English monarchs issued
a large currency of gold money (1349), and that his "nobles," as the
broad thin pieces were called, became the favourite medium of exchange
in all North-Western Europe, and formed the model for the gold coins of
the Netherlands, part of Germany, and Scotland. Manufactures as well
as foreign trade were beginning to grow important; the reign of Edward
is always remembered for the development of the weaving industry in
Eastern England. He induced many Flemish weavers to settle in Norwich
and elsewhere, moved, it is said, by the advice of his Netherlandish
queen, Philippa of Hainault. But the main exports of England were
still raw material--especially wool and metals--and not manufactured
goods. The English trader did not usually sail beyond Norway on the
one hand, and North Spain on the other; intercourse with more distant
countries was carried on mainly by companies of foreign merchants, of
whom the men of the Hanse Towns were the most important. These Germans
had a factory in London called the Steelyard, where they dwelt in a
body, under strict rules and regulations. It was by them that English
goods were taken to the more distant markets on the Baltic or the
Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: =Desultory fighting in Brittany.--Spanish war.=]
The reasons why the treaty of Bretigny failed to give a permanent
settlement of the quarrel between England and France were many. The
English pleaded that the French never fulfilled their obligations,
for King John found his people very unwilling to raise his huge
ransom, and never paid half of it. He returned to England in 1364 to
surrender himself in default of payment--for he had a keen sense of
honour in such things--and then died. His son, Charles V., at once
refused--as was natural--to pay the arrears. But a more fruitful source
of quarrelling was the civil war in Brittany, which still lingered
on after twenty years of fighting; English and French succours came
to help the two rival dukes, and fought each other on Breton soil,
though peace reigned elsewhere. The same thing was soon after seen in
Spain: Pedro the Cruel, the wicked King of Castile, was attacked by
his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara, who enlisted a great host of
French mercenaries, under Bertrand du Guesclin, the best professional
soldier in France. Driven out of Castile by the usurper and his
allies, Pedro fled to Bordeaux, where the Black Prince was reigning
as Duke of Aquitaine. He enlisted the help of the English, who were
jealous of French influence in Spain, and bought the aid of Edward's
younger brothers, John of Gaunt, who was now a widower, and Edmund of
Cambridge, by marrying his two daughters to them. Edward raised a great
army of English and Gascons, and crossed the Pyrenees to restore King
Pedro. At Najara[23] he routed the French and Castilians, took Bertrand
du Guesclin prisoner, and drove Henry of Trastamara out of the land
(1367). But the ungrateful Pedro then refused to repay the large sums
which Edward had spent in raising his army, and the prince withdrew in
wrath to Aquitaine. He took back with him an intermittent fever which
he had caught in Spain, and never recovered his health. Left to his
own resources, Pedro was soon beset for a second time by his brother
and the French; he was captured by treachery, and slain by Henry of
Trastamara's own hand.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion in Aquitaine.--Massacre at Limoges.=]
Edward had raised vast sums of money from Aquitaine for his Spanish
expedition by heavy taxation which sorely vexed his new subjects. For
the Poitevins and other French, who had become the unwilling vassals
of an English lord by the treaty of Bretigny, were entirely without
any sympathy for Edward and his plans. When the prince returned,
broken in health and penniless, from Spain, they plotted rebellion
against him, with the secret approval of the young King of France. It
soon appeared that Edward III. had been unwise in annexing so many
districts of purely French feeling and blood to the Gascon duchy. For
in 1369-70 Poitou, Limoges, and all the northern half of Aquitaine
broke out into rebellion, and Charles V. openly sent out his armies to
aid them. The Black Prince took the field in a litter, for he was too
weak to ride, and stormed Limoges, where he ordered a horrid massacre
of the rebellious citizens, a deed that deeply stained his hitherto
untarnished fame. But his strength could carry him no further; he
returned helpless to Bordeaux, and presently resigned the duchy of
Aquitaine and returned to England, thereto languish for some years, and
die at last of his lingering disorder.
[Sidenote: =Premature decay of the king.=]
The king himself, though not yet sixty years of age, had fallen into a
premature decay both of mind and body, so that his son's early decease
was doubly unfortunate. After losing his excellent wife Queen Philippa
in 1369, he had sunk into a deep depression, from which he only
recovered to fall into the hands of unscrupulous favourites. In private
he was governed by his chamberlain, Lord Latimer, and by a lady named
Alice Perrers, who had become his mistress; both abused their influence
to plunder his coffers and make market of his favour. The higher
governance of the realm was mainly in the hands of John of Gaunt, the
king's eldest surviving son, a selfish and headstrong prince, who made
himself the head of the war-party, and hoped to gather laurels that
might vie with those of his elder brother, the Black Prince.
[Sidenote: =Loss of possessions in France.=]
The last seven years of Edward's reign (1370-77) were full of disasters
abroad and discontent at home. In France the successors of the Black
Prince proved utterly unable to maintain their grasp on Aquitaine. Town
by town and castle by castle, all the districts that had been won by
the treaty of Bretigny passed into the hands of King Charles V. His
skilful general Bertrand du Guesclin won his way to success without
risking a single pitched battle with the invincible English archery.
When John of Gaunt took a great host over to Calais in 1373, the French
retired before him by their king's order, and shut themselves up behind
stone walls, after sweeping the country bare of provisions. The Duke
of Lancaster marched up to the gates of Paris, and then all through
Central France down to Bordeaux; but, though he did much damage to the
open country, he could not halt to besiege any great town for want
of food, and finally reached Guienne with an army half-starved and
woefully reduced in numbers. Before King Edward was in his grave his
dominions in France had shrunk to a district far smaller than he had
held before the "Hundred Years' War" had commenced. Nothing was left
save the ports of Bordeaux and Bayonne, with the strip of Gascon coast
between them; in the north, however, the all-important fortress of
Calais was firmly and successfully maintained.
[Sidenote: =Discontent and intrigue in England.--The Lollards.=]
Meanwhile there was bitter strife in Parliament at home, for ill
success without always brings on discontent within. John of Gaunt,
since he was known to sway his father's councils, was forced to bear
the brunt of the popular displeasure. It was he who was considered
responsible for the misconduct of the French war, the peculations of
the king's favourites, and the demands of the crown for increased
taxation. The party opposed to him in Parliament counted as its head
the good bishop William of Wykeham, who had been Chancellor from 1367
to 1371, and had been driven from office by Lancaster's command. He was
supported by the clergy, and by most of the "knights of the shires,"
who formed the more important half of the House of Commons. It was
probably the fact that the clergy were unanimously set against him that
led John of Gaunt to seek allies for himself by giving countenance to
an attack on the Church, which was just then beginning to develop.
This was the anti-papal movement of the _Lollards_, or Wicliffites,
as they were called after their leader John Wicliffe--the "Morning
Star of the Reformation." The state of the Papacy and of the Church
at large was at this moment very scandalous. The Pope was living no
more at Rome, but at Avignon, under the shadow of the French king,
and the power of the Papacy was being shamelessly misused for French
objects. England had never loved the papal influence, and had still
less reason to love it when it was employed for the benefit of her
political enemies. The tale of the simony, corruption, and evil living
of the papal court had gone forth all over Europe, and provoked even
more wrath in England than elsewhere. The English Church itself was
far from blameless: there were bishops who were mere statesmen and
warriors, and neglected their diocesan work; there were secular clergy
who never saw their parishes, and monasteries where religion and
sound learning were less regarded than wealth and high living. It was
especially the great wealth of the monasteries, and the small profit
that it brought the nation, which provoked popular comment. Since the
days of the Statute of Mortmain the spirit of the times was changed,
and benefactors who desired to leave a good work behind them founded
and endowed schools and colleges, and not abbeys as of old. It was John
Wicliffe, an Oxford Doctor of Divinity, and sometime master of Balliol
College, who gave voice to the popular discontent with the state of
the Papacy and the national Church. He taught that the Pope's claim to
be God's vicegerent on earth and to guide the consciences of all men
was a blasphemous usurpation, because each individual was responsible
to Heaven for his own acts and thoughts. "All men," he said in feudal
phraseology, "are tenants-in-chief under God, and hold from him all
that they are and possess: the Pope claims to be our mesne-lord, and to
interfere between us and our divine suzerain, and therein he grievously
errs." Wicliffe also held that the Church was far too rich; he thought
that her virtue was oppressed by the load of wealth, and advocated a
return to apostolic poverty, in which the clergy should surrender the
greater part of their enormous endowments. At a later date he developed
doubts on the Real Presence and other leading doctrines of the mediaeval
Church, but it was mainly as a denouncer of the power of the Papacy
and the riches and luxury of the clergy that he became known.
[Sidenote: =Policy of John of Gaunt.--The Good Parliament.=]
John of Gaunt's object in favouring Wicliffe was purely political; with
the reformer's religious views he can have had little sympathy. But he
wished to turn the seething discontent of England into the channel of
an attack on the Church, and to keep it from his own doors. For the
last twenty years legislation against ecclesiastical grievances had
been not infrequent. In 1351 the _Statute of Provisors_ had prohibited
the Pope from giving away English benefices to his favourites. In 1353
the _First Statute of Praemunire_ had forbidden English litigants
to transfer their disputes to the Church courts abroad. Duke John's
attempt to distract the attention of the nation to the reform of
matters ecclesiastic was partly successful; we find many proposals in
Parliament to strip the Church of part of her overgrown endowments,
and utilize them for the service of the state. On this point clerk and
layman had many a bitter wrangle. But Lancaster could not altogether
keep the storm from beating on himself and his father; in 1376 the
"Good Parliament" impeached Latimer and Neville, Edward's favourites
and ministers, and removed and fined them. Alice Perrers, the old
king's mistress, was at the same time banished. In the following year
Lancaster reasserted himself, packed a Parliament with his supporters,
and cancelled the condemnation of Latimer, Neville, and Alice Perrers.
The Bishop of London in revenge arrested Lancaster's _protégé_
Wicliffe, and began to try him for heresy; but the duke appeared in the
court, and so threatened and browbeat the bishop that he was fain to
release his prisoner.
But new complications were now at hand; the aspect of affairs was
suddenly changed by the death of the old king on January 2, 1377, and
political affairs took a new complexion on the accession of his young
grandson, Richard II., the only surviving child of the Black Prince.
DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD III.
EDWARD III. = Philippa of Hainault. (1)
|
+-----------+--------------+-------------------------+
| | |
Edward John of = (1)Blanche of Thomas,
the Black Gaunt | Lancaster. Duke of
Prince. | (2) Constance Gloucester.
| | of Castile. |
RICHARD II., | (3) Catherine Edmund Earl = Anne of
1377-1399. | Swinford. of Stafford. | Gloucester.
| |
| Humphrey, Duke
(1) | (3) (3) of Buckingham,
+--------+--+-------------+ killed at
| | | Northampton, 1460.
HENRY IV., Henry John |
1399-1413. Beaufort, Beaufort, Humphrey, Earl
| Cardinal, Earl of of Stafford.
| died 1447. Somerset. |
| | Henry, Duke of
+----+-----+---------+---------+ +----+ Buckingham,
| | | | | executed 1483.
| | | | | |
HENRY V., Thomas John of Humphrey | Edward, Duke of
1413-1422. of Bedford. of | Buckingham,
| Clarence. Gloucester. | executed 1521.
| |
HENRY VI., |
1422-1461. |
|
+----------------------------------+--+
| |
John of Edmund of
Somerset, Somerset,
died 1444. killed at
| St. Albans.
| |
+----------+ +------+------+
| | | |
Edmund Tudor, = Margaret Henry, Edmund, John
Earl of | Beaufort. killed in the Wars
Richmond. | of the Roses.
|
+-------+
|
HENRY VII. = Elizabeth,
1485-1509. Daughter of
Edward IV.
EDWARD III. = Philippa of Hainault. (2)
|
+-----------------------+----------------+
| |
Lionel of = Elizabeth Edmund,
Clarence | De Burgh. Duke of York.
| |
+------+ +--------+
| | |
Edmund = Philippa Edmund Richard = Anne
Mortimer, | of Clarence. of York, of | Mortimer.
Earl of March. | killed at Cambridge.|
| Agincourt. |
| |
| +---+
| |
Roger of March, Cicely Neville. = Richard, Duke of
killed in Ireland, 1398. | York, killed at
| | Wakefield, 1460.
| |
+----------+ +-----------+-----------+
| | | | |
Edmund Anne = Richard, EDWARD IV., George of RICHARD
of March, Mortimer. | Earl of 1461-1483. Clarence. III.,
died 1425. | Cambridge. | | 1483-1485.
| | |
_See opposite, among | +-----------+
descendants of Edmund, | | |
Duke of York_. | Edward of Margaret of
| Warwick, Salisbury,
| executed executed
| 1499. 1541.
|
+------------+---------------+
| | |
EDWARD V., Richard Elizabeth = HENRY VII.
1483. of York.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] So called from Jacques Bonhomme, the nickname of the typical
French peasant.
[23] Sometimes also called Navarette; it lies beyond the Ebro, near
Logroño.