A picture of the times of Edward III should be one of strong lights and
shades. His fifty years were crowded with events remarkable in their
nature and of powerful influence on England, then and thereafter. His
wars by land and sea revolutionized the military ideas of Europe; the
invincible English infantry rose, and the thunder of the first cannon
proclaimed the end of chivalry; the organization of the House of
Commons and the enlistment of soldiers for stipend introduced in its
full effect the safe policy of “control of the sovereign by the control
of his purse.” The foundation of Flemish manufactures in England, and
the opening of the New Castle coal trade on the one hand, with the
labors of Wickliffe and Chaucer on the other, were alone sufficient to
make any reign memorable.
It is a matter of wonder that “philosophers of history” have not made
more study of the pregnant events of this reign. It is a matter of
greater wonder that writers of romance and the drama have not more
utilized its highly-colored scenes; the reigns of John and Richard
II, which Shakspere seized as food for his pen, seem tame in the
comparison—the more so because Froissart’s minute and picturesque
“Chronicles” have preserved a wealth of material of these events ready
to the modern adapter’s hand. This variety of strong situations should
have half a dozen “pictures” instead of one. Perhaps we can “photograph
them down” into a group of seven vignettes for our one “Picture.”
First shows us Edward, the boy of ten years, taken by his mother to
her brother’s court at Paris and there made the unwitting tool to work
the dethronement and death of his father (Edward II). His mother has
sold his hand in marriage to the Count of Hainault’s infant daughter
for troops to invade England withal. He becomes nominal king at the age
of fifteen, but his mother and her brilliantly bad paramour, Mortimer,
are the real rulers of England. His luckless Scotch campaign should be
seen, in which his army was wasted and used up without a blow being
struck, because the Scotch on their Highland ponies, with a bag of
oatmeal dough and a pan-cake griddle at their saddles, needed no base
of supplies, and just starved out and tired out the richly equipped
English army—Isabella and Mortimer plotting the whole thing to ruin the
young king’s popularity and avert the catastrophe which their black
prophetic souls but too surely anticipated. For there is Nottingham
Castle, the home of the two conspirators. The guards are changed every
night and the keys kept under the queen’s pillow; and no nobleman is
allowed to bring his retinue nearer than five miles from the walls.
Good reason have they to be thus careful and suspicious after their
five years of riot and usurpation; but their care avails not. The king
is twenty years old and the only man in England capable of delivering
her. We can see to this day the underground passage beneath the castle
walls, where Edward and his few trusted knights went in and burst open
Mortimer’s bed-room, where he was himself plotting the death of Edward.
Comes the queen rushing in, _en déshabillé_, screaming, “Do not hurt my
darling Mortimer!” Mortimer goes to the block, nevertheless; and the
scene closes with the guilty queen’s agony for the loss of the only
love of her unhappy life, her succeeding years of alternate brooding
and raving, while all Europe is ringing with the feats of her son and
grandson, (the Black Prince), not one ray of which glory penetrated the
gloom of her solitary mourning over a lost and guilty passion. Is not
this opening picture of the reign sufficiently tragic?
Next we should have the first exhibitions of the equally unholy passion
of Edward for foreign conquest. His intrigues in the Netherlands for
the invasion of France are a study in early diplomacy. A foremost
figure in the scene is the remarkable “Brewer of Ghent,” de Artevelde,
whose romantic career and tragic death at the hands of the people he
most loved and benefited, because they resented his devotion to Edward,
“read like a novel.” Here appear, too, the sturdy burghers of the
Netherlands, painted by Motley’s matchless pen:
“Commerce plucks up half drowned Holland by the locks and
pours gold into her lap. Fishermen and river raftsmen
become ocean adventurers and merchant princes. Flemish
weavers become mighty manufacturers. Armies of workmen,
fifty thousand strong, tramp through the swarming streets.
Silk-makers, clothiers, brewers, become the gossips of
kings, lend their royal gossips vast sums and burn the royal
notes of hand in fires of cinnamon wood. Wealth brings
strength, strength confidence. Learning to handle cross-bow
and dagger, the burghers fear less the baronial sword,
finding that their own will cut as well, seeing that great
armies—flowers of chivalry—can ride away before them fast
enough at battles of spears and other encounters.... And so,
struggling along their appointed path, making cloth, making
money, making treaties with great kingdoms, making war by
land and sea, ringing great bells, waving great banners,
these insolent, boisterous burghers accomplish their work.”
These burghers took all Edward’s money for fighting and did not fight.
From three invasions of France their armies came back with whole skins
and full pockets, until Edward was beggared, his crown jewels pawned,
his estates mortgaged, and he at last obliged to give hostages to the
thrifty Dutchmen for payment of their claims.
But, three things resulted: (1) “The Brewer of Ghent” advising it,
Edward laid claim to the throne of France as next in succession by his
mother’s prior right, and thus began the Hundred Years’ War, of great
portent to both countries. (2) Edward and his queen, Phillippa of
Hainault, transplanted colonies of Flemish manufacturers to England,
and laid the foundation of her wealth and independence. (3) Edward’s
necessity proved England’s opportunity, and every appropriation for his
wars was the occasion of new demands for parliamentary privilege and
popular rights.
This vignette closes with the great naval battle off Sluys (June 24,
1340), so quaintly described by Froissart; in which we have the strange
spectacle of iron-clad French knights fighting on shipboard, sturdy
English sailors boarding and incontinently pitching them into the sea,
where, like Falstaff, they “have a kind of alacrity in sinking,”—the
result being a victory so striking that it “made the Channel an English
lake for two hundred years,” and a calamity so complete that no one
dared to break the news to the French king, and so they set the court
fools to berating in his presence “the cowardly English who dared
not jump into the sea as your majesty’s soldiers did.” This victory
redeemed Edward’s military renown, and began to stir the slow blood
of England at last. The idea of annexing France, which had so long
regarded England as only a Norman-French colony, began to take a hold
on all classes.
The third scene should open with the little wars in Little Britain, the
“wars of the two Janes,” wives of the dead dukes of Brittany, England
and France aiding respective sides. Jane de Montfort’s heroic defense
of Hennebon; her promise to her despairing garrison to surrender within
three days should not the English succor arrive; her discovery of the
English fleet in the offing at day-break of the third day; and how
she came down from the walls after her allies had beaten and driven
off the French and “kissed Sir Walter Manny and all his knights like
a noble and valiant dame;” and then her subsequent naval victory in
the channel, when she stood on the deck of her flag-ship, in complete
armor, and vanquished her assailants—all this was just the thing to
“fire the hearts” of English chivalry. It only needed in addition the
promise of unlimited booty to raise an army of English yeomen—not of
Dutch burghers—for the invasion of France (1346). The Norman spoliation
is requited with interest after two hundred and eighty years; booty and
prisoners are sent home by the ship load; the very hostlers of Edward’s
army wear velvets and fine furs every day. Now we come to the wonderful
battle of Cressy—more full of romantic incident than any other of
modern times, save possibly that of Poictiers, its companion-piece, in
the same reign. On the English side 7,000 jaded, retreating men—on the
French, 60,000 of the best and freshest recruits. But this handful of
men, untitled and unarmored, shall overthrow that host of steel-clad
warriors, with genealogies as long as their lances, and an ancient
culture of arms as useless as their metal overcoats before the English
yeomen, in their buff and green jerkins. Here the peal of the new
bombards—“the thunder of God,” the French called it—also told of a new
order of war. The world had moved and the French had not discovered
it; while the English had, for they moved it! The picture is full of
incident. There stands Edward, on the hill by the windmill, refusing
to send reinforcements to the beset Black Prince. “Let the boy win
his spurs. This shall be his victory.” Over here is the brave, blind,
old king of Bohemia, who has heard the battle is going badly, and he
insists on being led into the fray where he may strike one blow for
France and honor, and is struck down. _Ich dien_[F] is blazoned on his
crest—a motto which an admiring and commiserating foe is to take up and
fulfill in proud humility, a young warrior of sixteen years—
Edward, the Black Prince,
Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.
The slaughter of thirty thousand French—Edward had them carefully
counted—by this handful of English made French prowess forever after
despised in the homes and market-places of England.
The next condensed picture is of the siege of Calais. An English city
springs up around the doomed fortress, and for a year the English
trade, feast, game and tourney before the starving garrison. Scotland
thinks this a good time to strike England. Queen Phillippa is anon
in the field with an English army, and at Nevill’s Cross (October,
1346) there is another exhibition of Amazonian chivalry. King David
of Scotland is taken prisoner and by a common soldier, plain John
Copeland, as if everything must be extraordinary and strange. John
hurries his royal prize away to the castle of Ogle, and sturdily
refuses to give him up to the queen or to any man but King Edward
himself. Just the same John was knighted and rewarded; he would have
lost his head in any other country. Phillippa goes happy enough over
to Calais to spend Christmas and receive the plaudits of Europe and
of her lord, which she thought more of. We must take in Froissart’s
fancy sketch of the surrender of Calais. The six wealthy burghers
voluntarily march out, barefooted, in their shirts, halters about
their necks, to die vicariously for the rest of the Calaisians; at the
pitiful sight all the English generals intercede with Edward for mercy,
but he will not; the queen goes on her knees and pleads so eloquently
that the stoutest warriors drop surreptitious tears; the king, with
recollections of Nevill’s Cross and the anticipation of another royal
child soon to come, can not withstand this, and he says, rather
ungraciously, he wishes the queen had been farther away that day, but
he supposes she will have it so; and she gives the six citizens each
his life, his liberty, a good suit of clothes and a banquet—the last
being esteemed not the least of the gifts after their long diet on dogs
and horses. All this dear old Froissart tells, and it does not impair
its acceptation in history that he evolved the whole incident from
his inner consciousness—any more than does the fact that good parson
Weems invented the incident of George Washington and the cherry tree
injure that story’s currency. In fact, sober history of those times
is more marvelous than anything that even the imaginative Froissart
could invent. Calais remained an English stronghold and base of English
operations in France for two hundred years.
It is now 1347, and all England gives itself up to months of festivity,
and patting its own back for its French feats. There are brilliant
tournaments and balls, in which the captive king of Scotland and
captive French nobles take part as heartily as if they were victors.
The Noble Order of the Garter is established with imposing ritual and
brilliant festivities, and St. George becomes England’s titular saint.
Now occurs Edward’s attempted intrigue with the Countess of Salisbury,
who is as wise, brave and pure as she is beautiful. The noble part she
played makes her, in our eyes, a greater heroine than Phillippa and
“the two Janes.” She taught Edward such a lesson of propriety that
he was able to turn her own confusion at a court ball into a lesson
in modesty to the tittering lords and ladies, as he clasped the lost
garter on his own knee and said, “_Evil be to him who evil thinks_.”
And so it comes that the highest order of English nobility and the
noble motto on her coat of arms commemorates a pure woman’s holding
fast to her integrity. Is not this the best of all the vignettes?
But there is an awfully dark background to it. A rude stop was put
to all these rejoicings by the Black Death (1348-50). This Chinese
epidemic swept desolation over all Europe. One-third of the population
of England was carried off; half the people of London died, and it was
difficult to find places of burial. The king’s daughter was one of its
victims, and her death took place while she was _en route_ to Spain to
be married; she was buried in the church she was to have been married
in. The loss of laborers and beasts was so great that famine was added
to pestilence. But these dreadful dispensations contributed to the
overthrow of slavery and hastened the downfall of the Plantagenets. To
counteract the effects of the scarcity of help the Statute of Laborers
was passed, a law which attempted to fix the price of labor and to
prevent villeins leaving their masters. This act was at the bottom of
Wat Tyler’s rebellion in the next reign, and that was the beginning
of the end of slavery. The revolt of the laboring classes proved a
powerful aid to the spread of Lollardism, and that was the beginning
of the Reformation. Thus do remote blessings flow from dark and
inscrutable causes.
A more resplendent scene follows, by way of contrast again: The
wonderful battle of Poictiers (September 19, 1356), in the heart of
France, whither the Black Prince has recklessly pushed his maraudings.
Here ten thousand English defeated sixty thousand French, and took the
French king, John, prisoner. This completed the humiliation of France,
and “she found in her desolation a miserable defence against invasion.”
King John was borne to London in honor—for the chivalrous prince would
not triumph over his captive, and humbly waited on him at table as his
superior in rank. Then did his motto, _Ich dien_, shine brightly.
Another contrast: “Last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful
history is second childishness and mere oblivion” to honor and fame
on the part of Edward III. Phillippa was dead. The Black Prince had
died, his last battle being disgraced by an inhuman slaughter of all
his prisoners. The great warrior king in his dotage is the degraded
creature of wicked Alice Perrers. Faction and contention rule at court,
and discontent is in the land. The old king is on his death-bed. Alice
Perrers hastily gathers her wealth, seizes the king’s jewels, even
strips the rings from his fingers, and flees. The servants rifle the
palace, and the mighty conqueror is left to meet a mightier—alone. Thus
a wandering friar finds the apartments deserted, the doors standing
open, and a wasted, gray old man dying alone.
“Mighty Cæsar, dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, triumphs, glories, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?”
The true glory of the reign remains to be told. Wickliffe’s brave
revolt against Rome called to life the love of religious liberty there
was in English character, and it never went out again even before the
fires of persecution; while Chaucer called to life the hidden riches of
the old-new English tongue, and the revelation drove the Norman speech,
the last relic of England’s subjugation, out of court, school, and
Parliament, in a statute formally recognizing the King’s English. The
complete organization of the House of Commons adds another land-mark of
the world’s progress.
Thus the chief glories of Edward Third’s time were not of his securing
or voluntary promoting, and the resulting advantages to the world can
hardly be in their fullness ascribed to any direct human agency. To
whose, then?
[To be continued.]