Thus perished Thomas, earl of Lancaster, prince of the blood, and one of the most potent barons that had ever been in England. His public conduct sufficiently discovers the violence and turbulence of his character: his private deportment appears not to have been more innocent: and his hypocritical devotion, by which he gained the favor of the monks and populace, will rather be regarded as an aggravation than an alleviation of his guilt. Badlesmere, Giffard, Barret, Cheyney, Fleming, and about eighteen of the most notorious offenders, were afterwards condemned by a legal trial, and were executed. Many were thrown into prison: others made their escape beyond sea: some of the king’s servants were rewarded from the forfeitures: Harcla received for his services the earldom of Carlisle, and a large estate, which he soon after forfeited with his life, for a treasonable correspondence with the king of Scotland. But the greater part of those vast escheats were seized by young Spenser, whose rapacity was insatiable. Many of the barons of the king’s party were disgusted with this partial division of the spoils: the envy against Spenser rose higher than ever: the usual insolence of his temper, inflamed by success, impelled him to commit many acts of violence: the people, who always hated him, made him still more the object of aversion: all the relations of the attainted barons and gentlemen secretly vowed revenge: and though tranquillity was in appearance restored to the kingdom, the general contempt of the king, and odium against Spenser, bred dangerous humors, the source of future revolutions and convulsions.
In this situation, no success could be expected from foreign wars; and Edward, after making one more fruitless attempt against Scotland, whence he retreated with dishonor, found it necessary to terminate hostilities with that kingdom, by a truce of thirteen years.[*] Robert, though his title to the crown was not acknowledged in the treaty, was satisfied with insuring his possession of it during so long a time. He had repelled with gallantry all the attacks of England: he had carried war both into that kingdom and into Ireland: he had rejected with disdain the pope’s authority, who pretended to impose his commands upon him, and oblige him to make peace with his enemies: his throne was firmly established, as well in the affections of his subjects, as by force of arms: yet there naturally remained some inquietude in his mind, while at war with a state which, however at present disordered by faction, was of itself so much an overmatch for him both in riches and in numbers of people. And this truce was, at the same time, the more seasonable for England, because the nation was at that juncture threatened with hostilities from France.
1324.
Philip the Fair, king of France, who died in 1315, had left the crown to his son Lewis Hutin, who, after a short reign, dying without male issue, was succeeded by Philip the Long, his brother, whose death soon after made way for Charles the Fair, the youngest brother of that family. This monarch had some grounds of complaint against the king’s ministers in Guienne; and as there was no common or equitable judge in that strange species of sovereignty established by the feudal law, he seemed desirous to take advantage of Edward’s weakness, and under that pretence to confiscate all his foreign dominions.[**]
After an embassy by the earl of Kent, the king’s brother, had been tried in vain, Queen Isabella obtained permission to go over to Paris, and endeavor to adjust, in an amicable manner, the difference with her brother: but while she was making some progress in this negotiation, Charles started a new pretension, the justice of which could not be disputed, that Edward himself should appear in his court, and do homage for the fees which he held in France. But there occurred many difficulties in complying with this demand. Young Spenser, by whom the king was implicitly governed, had unavoidably been engaged in many quarrels with the queen, who aspired to the same influence, and though that artful princess, on her leaving England, had dissembled her animosity, Spenser, well acquainted with her secret sentiments, was unwilling to attend his master to Paris, and appear in a court where her credit might expose him to insults, if not to danger. He hesitated no less on allowing the king to make the journey alone; both fearing lest that easy prince should in his absence fall under other influence, and foreseeing the perils to which he himself should be exposed if, without the protection of royal authority, he remained in England where he was so generally hated.
1325.
While these doubts occasioned delays and difficulties, Isabella proposed that Edward should resign the dominion of Guienne to his son, now thirteen years of age; and that the prince should come to Paris, and do the homage which every vassal owed to his superior lord. This expedient, which seemed so happily to remove all difficulties, was immediately embraced: Spenser was charmed with the contrivance: young Edward was sent to Paris: and the ruin covered under this fatal snare, was never perceived or suspected by any of the English council.
The queen, on her arrival in France, had there found a great number of English fugitives, the remains of the Lancastrian faction; and their common hatred of Spenser soon begat a secret friendship and correspondence between them and that princess. Among the rest was young Roger Mortimer, a potent baron in the Welsh marches, who had been obliged, with others, to make his submissions to the king, had been condemned for high treason; but having received a pardon for his life, was afterwards detained in the Tower, with an intention of rendering his confinement perpetual, He was so fortunate as to make his escape into France;[*] and being one of the most considerable persons now remaining of the party, as well as distinguished by his violent animosity against Spenser, he was easily admitted to pay his court to Queen Isabella. The graces of his person and address advanced him quickly in her affections: he became her confident and counsellor in all her measures; and gaining ground daily upon her heart, he engaged her to sacrifice at last, to her passion, all the sentiments of honor and of fidelity to her husband.[**]
Hating now the man whom she had injured, and whom she never valued, she entered ardently into all Mortimer’s conspiracies; and having artfully gotten into her hands the young prince, and heir of the monarchy, she resolved on the utter ruin of the king, as well as of his favorite. She engaged her brother to take part in the same criminal purpose: her court was daily filled with the exiled barons: Mortimer lived in the most declared intimacy with her: a correspondence was secretly carried on with the malecontent party in England: and when Edward, informed of those alarming circumstances, required her speedily to return with the prince, she publicly replied, that she would never set foot in the kingdom till Spenser was forever removed from his presence and councils; a declaration which procured her great popularity in England, and threw a decent veil over all her treasonable enterprises.
Edward endeavored to put himself in a posture of defence;[*] but, besides the difficulties arising from his own indolence and slender abilities, and the want of authority, which of consequence attended all his resolutions, it was not easy for him, in the present state of the kingdom and revenue, to maintain a constant force ready to repel an invasion, which he knew not at what time or place he had reason to expect.
All his efforts were unequal to the traitorous and hostile conspiracies which, both at home and abroad, were forming against his authority, and which were daily penetrating farther even into his own family. His brother, the earl of Kent, a virtuous but weak prince, who was then at Paris, was engaged by his sister-in-law, and by the king of France, who was also his cousin-german, to give countenance to the invasion, whose sole object, he believed, was the expulsion of the Spensers: he prevailed on his elder brother, the earl of Norfolk, to enter secretly into the same design: the earl of Leicester, brother and heir of the earl of Lancaster, had too many reasons for his hatred of these ministers to refuse his concurrence. Walter de Reynel, archbishop of Canterbury, and many of the prelates, expressed their approbation of the queen’s measures: several of the most potent barons, envying the authority of the favorite, were ready to fly to arms: the minds of the people, by means of some truths and many calumnies, were strongly disposed to the same party: and there needed but the appearance of the queen and prince, with such a body of foreign troops as might protect her against immediate violence, to turn all this tempest, so artfully prepared, against the unhappy Edward.
1326.
Charles, though he gave countenance and assistance to the faction, was ashamed openly to support the queen and prince against the authority of a husband and father; and Isabella was obliged to court the alliance of some other foreign potentate, from whose dominions she might set out on her intended enterprise. For this purpose, she affianced young Edward, whose tender age made him incapable to judge of the consequences, with Philippa, daughter of the count of Holland and Hainault;[*] and having, by the open assistance of this prince, and the secret protection of her brother, enlisted in her service near three thousand men, she set sail from the harbor of Dort, and landed safely, and without opposition, on the coast of Suffolk. The earl of Kent was in her company: two other princes of the blood, the earl of Norfolk and the earl of Leicester, joined her soon after her landing with all their followers: three prelates, the bishops of Ely, Lincoln, and Hereford, brought her both the force of their vassals and the authority of their character:[**] even Robert de Watteville, who had been sent by the king to oppose her progress in Suffolk, deserted to her with all his forces. To render her cause more favorable, she renewed her declaration, that the solo purpose of her enterprise was to free the king and kingdom from the tyranny of the Spensers, and of Chancellor Baldoc, their creature.[*] The populace were allured by her specious pretences: the barons thought themselves secure against forfeitures by the appearance of the prince in her army: and a weak, irresolute king, supported by ministers generally odious, was unable to stem this torrent, which bore with such irresistible violence against him.
Edward, after trying in vain to rouse the citizens of London to some sense of duty,[****] departed for the west, where he hoped to meet with a better reception; and he had no sooner discovered his weakness by leaving the city, than the rage of the populace broke out without control against him and his ministers.
They first plundered, then murdered all those who were obnoxious to them: they seized the bishop of Exeter, a virtuous and loyal prelate, as he was passing through the streets; and having beheaded him, they threw his body into the river.[*] They made themselves masters of the Tower by surprise; then entered into a formal association to put to death, without mercy, every one who should dare to oppose the enterprise of Queen Isabella, and of the prince.[**] A like spirit was soon communicated to all other parts of England; and threw the few servants of the king, who still entertained thoughts of performing their duty, into terror and astonishment.
Edward was hotly pursued to Bristol by the earl of Kent, seconded by the foreign forces under John de Hainault. He found himself disappointed in his expectations with regard to the loyalty of those parts; and he passed over to Wales, where, he flattered himself, his name was more popular, and which he hoped to find uninfected with the contagion of general rage which had seized the English.[***] The elder Spenser, created earl of Winchester, was left governor of the castle of Bristol; but the garrison mutinied against him, and he was delivered into the hands of his enemies. This venerable noble, who had nearly reached his ninetieth year, was instantly without trial, or witness, or accusation, or answer, condemned to death by the rebellious barons: he was hanged on a gibbet; his body was cut in pieces, and thrown to the dogs;[****] and his head was sent to Winchester, the place whose title he bore, and was there set on a pole and exposed to the insults of the populace.
The king, disappointed anew in his expectations of succor from the Welsh, took shipping for Ireland; but being driven back by contrary winds, he endeavored to conceal himself in the mountains of Wales: he was soon discovered, was put under the custody of the earl of Leicester, and was confined in the castle of Kenilworth. The younger Spenser, his favorite, who also fell into the hands of his enemies, was executed, like his father, without any appearance of a legal trial.[*****]
The earl of Arundel, almost the only man of his rank in England who had maintained his loyalty, was, without any trial, put to death at the instigation of Mortimer: Baldoc, the chancellor, being a priest, could not with safety be so suddenly despatched; but being sent to the bishop of Hereford’s palace in London, he was there, as his enemies probably foresaw, seized by the populace, was thrown into Newgate, and soon after expired, from the cruel usage which he had received.[*] Even the usual reverence paid to the sacerdotal character gave way, with every other consideration, to the present rage of the people.
1327.
The queen, to avail herself of the prevailing delusion, summoned, in the king’s name, a parliament at Westminster; where, together with the power of her army, and the authority of her partisans among the barons, who were concerned to secure their past treasons by committing new acts of violence against their sovereign, she expected to be seconded by the fury of the populace, the most dangerous of all instruments, and the least answerable for their excesses. A charge was drawn up against the king, in which, even though it was framed by his inveterate enemies, nothing but his narrow genius, or his misfortunes, were objected to him; for the greatest malice found no particular crime with which it could reproach this unhappy prince. He was accused of incapacity for government, of wasting his time in idle amusements, of neglecting public business, of being swayed by evil counsellors, of having lost, by his misconduct, the kingdom of Scotland, and part of Guienne; and to swell the charge, even the death of some barons, and the imprisonment of some prelates, convicted of treason, were laid to his account.[**] It was in vain, amidst the violence of arms and tumult of the people, to appeal either to law or to reason: the deposition of the king, without any appearing opposition, was voted by parliament: the prince, already declared regent by his party,[***] was placed on the throne: and a deputation was sent to Edward at Kenilworth, to require his resignation, which menaces and terror soon extorted from him.
But it was impossible that the people, however corrupted by the barbarity of the times, still further inflamed by faction, could forever remain insensible to the voice of nature. Here a wife had first deserted, next invaded, and then dethroned her husband; had made her minor son an instrument in this unnatural treatment of his father; had, by lying pretences, seduced the nation into a rebellion against their sovereign had pushed them into violence and cruelties that had dishonored them: all those circumstances were so odious in themselves, and formed such a complicated scene of guilt, that the least reflection sufficed to open men’s eyes, and make them detest this flagrant infringement of every public and private duty. The suspicions which soon arose of Isabella’s criminal commerce with Mortimer, the proofs which daily broke out of this part of her guilt, increased the general abhorrence against her; and her hypocrisy, in publicly bewailing with tears the king’s unhappy fate,[*] was not able to deceive even the most stupid and most prejudiced of her adherents. In proportion as the queen became the object of public hatred the dethroned monarch, who had been the victim of her crimes and her ambition, was regarded with pity, with friendship, with veneration: and men became sensible, that all his misconduct, which faction had so much exaggerated, had been owing to the unavoidable weakness, not to any voluntary depravity, of his character. The earl of Leicester, now earl of Lancaster, to whose custody he had been committed, was soon touched with those generous sentiments; and besides using his prisoner with gentleness and humanity, he was suspected to have entertained still more honorable intentions in his favor. The king, therefore, was taken from his hands, and delivered over to Lord Berkeley, and Mautravers, and Gournay, who were intrusted alternately, each for a month, with the charge of guarding him. While he was in the custody of Berkeley, he was still treated with the gentleness due to his rank and his misfortunes; but when the turn of Mautravers and Gournay came, every species of indignity was practised against him, as if their intention had been to break entirely the prince’s spirit, and to employ his sorrows and afflictions, instead of more violent and more dangerous expedients, for the instruments of his murder.[**] It is reported, that one day, when Edward was to be shaved, they ordered cold and dirty water to be brought from the ditch for that purpose; and when he desired it to be changed, and was still denied his request, he burst into tears which bedewed his cheeks; and he exclaimed, that in spite of their insolence, he should be shaved with clean and warm water.[***]
But as this method of laying Edward, in his grave appeared still too slow to the impatient Mortimer, he secretly sent orders to the two keepers, who were at his devotion instantly to despatch him: and these ruffians contrived to make the manner of his death as cruel and barbarous as possible. Taking advantage of Berkeley’s sickness, in whose custody he then was, and who was thereby incapacitated from attending his charge,[*] they came to Berkeley Castle, and put themselves in possession of the king’s person. They threw him on a bed; held him down violently with a table, which they flung over him; thrust into his fundament a red-hot iron, which they inserted through a horn; and though the outward marks of violence upon his person were prevented by this expedient, the horrid deed was discovered to all the guards and attendants by the screams with which the agonizing king filled the castle while his bowels were consuming.
Gournay and Mautravers were held in general detestation, and when the ensuing revolution in England threw their protectors from power, they found it necessary to provide for their safety by flying the kingdom. Gournay was afterwards seized at Marseilles, delivered over to the seneschal of Guienne, put on board a ship with a view of carrying him to England; but he was beheaded at sea, by secret orders, as was supposed, from some nobles and prelates in England, anxious to prevent any discovery which he might make of his accomplices. Mautravers concealed himself for several years in Germany; but having found means of rendering some service to Edward III., he ventured to approach his person, threw himself on his knees before him, submitted to mercy, and received a pardon.[**]
It is not easy to imagine a man more innocent and inoffensive than the unhappy king whose tragical death we have related; nor a prince less fitted for governing that fierce and turbulent people subjected to his authority. He was obliged to devolve on others the weight of government, which he had neither ability nor inclination to bear: the same indolence and want of penetration led him to make choice of ministers and favorites who were not always the best qualified for the trust committed to them: the seditious grandees, pleased with his weakness, yet complaining of it, under pretence of attacking his ministers, insulted his person and invaded his authority: and the impatient populace, mistaking the source of their grievances, threw all the blame upon the king, and increased the public disorders by their faction and violence. It was in vain to look for protection from the laws, whose voice, always feeble in those times, was not heard amidst the din of arms—what could not defend the king, was less able to give shelter to any of the people: the whole machine of government was torn in pieces with fury and violence; and men, instead of regretting the manners of their age, and the form of their constitution, which required the most steady and most skilful hand to conduct them, imputed all errors to the person who had the misfortune to be intrusted with the reins of empire.
But though such mistakes are natural and almost unavoidable while the events are recent, it is a shameful delusion in modern historians, to imagine that all the ancient princes who were unfortunate in their government, were also tyrannical in their conduct; and that the seditions of the people always proceeded from some invasion of their privileges by the monarch. Even a great and a good king was not in that age secure against faction and rebellion, as appears in the case of Henry II.; but a great king had the best chance, as we learn from the history of the same period, for quelling and subduing them. Compare the reigns and characters of Edward I. and II. The father made several violent attempts against the liberties of the people: his barons opposed him: he was obliged, at least found it prudent, to submit: but as they dreaded his valor and abilities, they were content with reasonable satisfaction, and pushed no farther their advantages against him. The facility and weakness of the son, not his violence, threw every thing into confusion: the laws and government were overturned: an attempt to reinstate them was an unpardonable crime: and no atonement but the deposition and tragical death of the king himself could give those barons contentment. It is easy to see, that a constitution which depended so much on the personal character of the prince, must necessarily, in many of its parts, be a government of will, not of laws. But always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders upon the sovereign would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion: as if the turbulence of the great, and madness of the people, were not, equally with the tyranny of princes, evils incident to human society, and no less carefully to be guarded against in every well-regulated constitution.
While these abominable scenes passed in England, the theatre of France was stained with a wickedness equally barbarous, and still more public and deliberate. The order of knights templars had arisen during the first fervor of the crusades; and uniting the two qualities the most popular in that age, devotion and valor, and exercising both in the most popular of all enterprises, the defence of the Holy Land, they had made rapid advances in credit and authority, and had acquired, from the piety of the faithful, ample possessions in every country of Europe, especially in France. Their great riches, joined to the course of time, had, by degrees, relaxed the severity of these virtues; and the templars had, in a great measure, lost that popularity which first raised them to honor and distinction. Acquainted from experience with the fatigues and dangers of those fruitless expeditions to the East, they rather chose to enjoy in ease their opulent revenues in Europe: and being all men of birth, educated, according to the custom of that age, without any tincture of letters, they scorned the ignoble occupations of a monastic life, and passed their time wholly in the fashionable amusements of hunting, gallantry, and the pleasures of the table. Then rival order, that of St. John of Jerusalem, whose poverty had as yet preserved them from like corruptions, still distinguished themselves by their enterprises against the infidels, and succeeded to all the popularity which was lost by the indolence and luxury of the templars. But though these reasons had weakened the foundations of this order, once so celebrated and revered, the immediate cause of their destruction proceeded from the cruel and vindictive spirit of Philip the Fair, who, having entertained a private disgust against some eminent templars, determined to gratify at once his avidity and revenge, by involving the whole order in an undistinguished ruin. On no better information than that of two knights, condemned by their superiors to perpetual imprisonment for their vices and profligacy, he ordered on one day all the templars in France to be committed to prison, and imputed to them such enormous and absurd crimes as are sufficient of themselves to destroy all the credit of the accusation. Besides their being universally charged with murder, robbery, and vices the most shocking to nature, every one, it was pretended, whom they received into their order, was obliged to renounce his Savior, to spit upon the cross,[*] and to join to this impiety the superstition of worshipping a gilded head, which was secretly kept in one of their houses at Marseilles.
They also initiated, it was said, every candidate by such infamous rites as could serve to no other purpose than to degrade the order in his eyes, and destroy forever the authority of all his superiors over him.[*] Above a hundred of these unhappy gentlemen were put to the question, in order to extort from them a confession of their guilt: the more obstinate perished in the hands of their tormentors: several, to procure immediate ease in the violence of their agonies, acknowledged whatever was required of them: forged confessions were imputed to others: and Philip, as if their guilt were now certain, proceeded to a confiscation of all their treasures. But no sooner were the templars relieved from their tortures, than, preferring the most cruel execution to a life with infamy, they disavowed their confessions, exclaimed against the forgeries, justified the innocence of their order, and appealed to all the gallant actions performed by them in ancient or later times, as a full apology for their conduct. The tyrant, enraged at this disappointment, and thinking himself now engaged in honor to proceed to extremities, ordered fifty-four of them, whom he branded as relapsed heretics, to perish by the punishment of fire in his capital: great numbers expired, after a like manner, in other parts of the kingdom: and when he found that the perseverance of these unhappy victims, in justifying to the last their innocence, had made deep impression on the spectators, he endeavored to overcome the constancy of the templars by new inhumanities. The grand master of the order, John de Molay, and another great officer, brother to the sovereign of Dauphiny, were conducted to a scaffold erected before the church of Notredame, at Paris: a full pardon was offered them on the one hand; the fire destined for their execution was shown them on the other: these gallant nobles still persisted in the protestations of their own innocence and that of their order; and were instantly hurried into the flames by the executioner.[**]
In all this barbarous injustice, Clement V., who was the creature of Philip, and then resided in France, fully concurred; and without examining a witness, or making any inquiry into the truth of facts, he summarily, by the plenitude of his apostolic power, abolished the whole order. The templars all over Europe were thrown into prison; their conduct underwent a strict scrutiny; the power of their enemies still pursued and oppressed them; but nowhere, except in France, were the smallest traces of their guilt pretended to be found. England sent an ample testimony of their piety and morals; but as the order was now annihilated, the knights were distributed into several convents, and their possessions were, by command of the pope, transferred to the order of St. John.[*] We now proceed to relate some other detached transactions of the present period.
The kingdom of England was afflicted with a grievous famine during several years of this reign. Perpetual rains and cold weather not only destroyed the harvest, but bred a mortality among the cattle, and raised every kind of food to an enormous price.[**] The parliament in 1315 endeavored to fix more moderate rates to commodities! not sensible that such an attempt was impracticable, and that, were it possible to reduce the price of provisions by any other expedient than by introducing plenty, nothing could be more pernicious and destructive to the public. Where the produce of a year, for instance, falls so far short as to afford full subsistence only for nine months, the only expedient for making it last all the twelve, is to raise the prices, to put the people by that means on short allowance, and oblige them to save their food till a more plentiful season. But in reality the increase of prices is a necessary consequence of scarcity; and laws, instead of preventing it, only aggravate the evil, by cramping and restraining commerce. The parliament accordingly, in the ensuing year, repealed their ordinance, which they had found useless and burdensome.[***]
The prices affixed by the parliament are somewhat remarkable: three pounds twelve shillings of our present money for the best stalled ox; for other oxen, two pounds eight shillings; a fat hog of two years old, ten shillings; a fat wether unshorn, a crown; if shorn, three shillings and sixpence; a fat goose, sevenpence halfpenny; a fat capon, sixpence; a fat hen, threepence; two chickens, threepence; four pigeons, threepence; two dozen of eggs, threepence.[****]
If we consider these prices, we shall find that butcher’s meat, in this time of great scarcity, must still have been sold, by the parliamentary ordinance, three times cheaper than our middling prices at present; poultry somewhat lower, because, being now considered as a delicacy, it has risen beyond its proportion. In the country places of Ireland and Scotland, where delicacies bear no price, poultry is at present as cheap, if not cheaper than butcher’s meat. But the inference I would draw from the comparison of prices is still more considerable: I suppose that the rates affixed by parliament were inferior to the usual market prices in those years of famine and mortality of cattle; and that these commodities, instead of a third, had really risen to a half of the present value. But the famine at that time was so consuming, that wheat was sometimes sold for above four pounds ten shillings a quarter,[*] usually for three pounds;[**] that is, twice our middling prices: a certain proof of the wretched state of tillage in those ages. We formerly found, that the middling price of corn in that period was half of the present price; while the middling price of cattle was only an eighth part: we here find the same immense disproportion in years of scarcity. It may thence be inferred with certainty, that the raising of corn was a species of manufactory, which few in that age could practise with advantage: and there is reason to think, that other manufactures, more refined, were sold even beyond their present prices; at least, there is a demonstration for it in the reign of Henry VII., from the rates affixed to scarlet and other broadcloth by act of parliament. During all those times it was usual for the princes and great nobility to make settlements of their velvet beds and silken robes, in the same manner as of their estates and manors.[***] In the list of jewels and plate which had belonged to the ostentatious Gavaston, and which the king recovered from the earl of Lancaster after the murder of that favorite, we find some embroidered girdles, flowered shirts, and silk waistcoats.[****]
It was afterwards one article of accusation against that potent and opulent earl, when he was put to death, that he had purloined some of that finery of Gavaston’s. The ignorance of those ages in manufactures, and still more their unskilful husbandry, seem a clear proof that the country was then far from being populous.
All trade and manufactures, indeed, were then at a very low ebb. The only country in the northern parts of Europe, where they seem to have risen to any tolerable degree of improvement, was Flanders. When Robert, earl of that country, was applied to by the king, and was desired to break off commerce with the Scots, whom Edward called his rebels, and represented as excommunicated on that account by the church, the earl replied, that Flanders was always considered as common, and free and open to all nations.[*]
The petition of the elder Spenser to parliament, complaining of the devastation committed on his lands by the barons, contains several particulars which are curious, and discover the manners of the age.[**]
He affirms, that they had ravaged sixty-three manors belonging to him, and he makes his losses amount to forty-six thousand pounds; that is, to one hundred and thirty-eight thousand of our present money. Among other particulars, he enumerates twenty-eight thousand sheep, one thousand oxen and heifers, twelve hundred cows with their breed for two years, five hundred and sixty cart-horses, two thousand hogs, together with six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, and six hundred muttons in the larder; ten tuns of cider, arms for two hundred men, and other warlike engines and provisions. The plain inference is, that the greater part of Spenser’s vast estate, as well as the estates of the other nobility, was farmed by the landlord himself, managed by his stewards or bailiffs, and cultivated by his villains. Little or none of it was let on lease to husbandmen: its produce was consumed in rustic hospitality by the baron or his officers: a great number of idle retainers, ready for any disorder or mischief, were maintained by him: all who lived upon his estate were absolutely at his disposal: instead of applying to courts of justice, he usually sought redress by open force and violence: the great nobility were a kind of independent potentates, who, if they submitted to any regulations at all, were less governed by the municipal law than by a rude species of the law of nations. The method in which we find they treated the king’s favorites and ministers, is a proof of their usual way of dealing with each other. A party which complains of the arbitrary conduct of ministers, ought naturally to affect a great regard for the laws and constitution, and maintain at least the appearance of justice in their proceedings; yet those barons, when discontented, came to parliament with an armed force, constrained the king to assent to their measures, and without any trial, or witness, or conviction, passed, from the pretended notoriety of facts, an act of banishment or attainder against the minister, which, on the first revolution of fortune, was reversed by like expedients. The parliament during factious times was nothing but the organ of present power. Though the persons of whom it was chiefly composed seemed to enjoy great independence, they really possessed no true liberty; and the security of each individual among them was not so much derived from the general protection of law, as from his own private power and that of his confederates. The authority of the monarch, though far from absolute, was irregular, and might often reach him: the current of a faction might overwhelm him: a hundred considerations of benefits and injuries, friendships and animosities, hopes and fears, were able to influence his conduct; and amidst these motives, a regard to equity, and law, and justice was commonly, in those rude ages, of little moment. Nor did any man entertain thoughts of opposing present power, who did not deem himself strong enough to dispute the field with it by force, and was not prepared to give battle to the sovereign or the ruling party.
Before I conclude this reign, I cannot forbear making another remark, drawn from the detail of losses given in by the elder Spenser; particularly the great quantity of salted meat which he had in his larder, six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, six hundred muttons. We may observe, that the outrage of which he complained began after the third of May, or the eleventh, new style, as we learn from the same paper. It is easy, therefore, to conjecture what a vast store of the same kind he must have laid up at the beginning of winter; and we may draw a new conclusion with regard to the wretched state of ancient husbandry, which could not provide subsistence for the cattle during winter, even in such a temperate climate as the south of England; for Spenser had but one manor so far north as Yorkshire. There being few or no enclosures, except perhaps for deer, no sown grass, little hay, and no other resource for feeding cattle, the barons, as well as the people, were obliged to kill and salt their oxen and sheep in the beginning of winter, before they became lean upon the common pasture; a precaution still practised with regard to oxen in the least cultivated parts of this island. The salting of mutton is a miserable expedient, which has every where been long disused. From this circumstance, however trivial in appearance, may be drawn important inferences with regard to the domestic economy and manner of life in those ages.
The disorders of the times, from foreign wars and intestine dissensions, but above all, the cruel famine, which obliged the nobility to dismiss many of their retainers, increased the number of robbers in the kingdom; and no place was secure from their incursions.[*] They met in troops like armies, and over-ran the country. Two cardinals themselves, the pope’s legates, notwithstanding the numerous train which attended them, were robbed and despoiled of their goods and equipage, when they travelled on the highway.[**]
Among the other wild fancies of the age, it was imagined, that the persons affected with leprosy (a disease at that time very common, probably from bad diet) had conspired with the Saracens to poison all the springs and fountains; and men, being glad of any pretence to get rid of those who were a burden to them, many of those unhappy people were burnt alive on this chimerical imputation. Several Jews, also, were punished in their persons, and their goods were confiscated on the same account.[***]
Stowe, in his Survey of London, gives us a curious instance of the hospitality of the ancient nobility in this period; it is taken from the accounts of the cofferer or steward of Thomas earl of Lancaster, and contains the expenses of that earl during the year 1313, which was not a year of famine. For the pantry, buttery, and kitchen, three thousand four hundred and five pounds. For three hundred and sixty-nine pipes of red wine, and two of white, one hundred and four pounds, etc. The whole, seven thousand three hundred and nine pounds; that is, near twenty-two thousand pounds of our present money; and making allowance for the cheapness of commodities, near a hundred thousand pounds.
I have seen a French manuscript, containing accounts of some private disbursements of this king. There is an article, among others, of a crown paid to one for making the king laugh. To judge by the events of the reign, this ought not to have been an easy undertaking.
This king left four children, two sons and two daughters: Edward, his eldest son and successor; John, created afterwards earl of Cornwall, who died young at Perth; Jane, afterwards married to David Bruce, king of Scotland; and Eleanor, married to Reginald, count of Gueldres.
1327.
The violent party which had taken arms against Edward II., and finally deposed that unfortunate monarch, deemed it requisite for their future security to pay so far an exterior obeisance to the law, as to desire a parliamentary indemnity for all their illegal proceedings; on account of the necessity which, it was pretended, they lay under, of employing force against the Spensers and other evil counsellors, enemies of the kingdom. All the attainders, also, which had passed against the earl of Lancaster and his adherents, when the chance of war turned against them, were easily reversed during the triumph of their party;[*] and the Spensers, whose former attainder had been reversed by parliament, were now again, in this change of fortune, condemned by the votes of their enemies.
A council of regency was likewise appointed by parliament, consisting of twelve persons; five prelates, the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishops of Winchester, Worcester, and Hereford; and seven lay peers, the earls of Norfolk, Kent, and Surrey, and the lords Wake, Ingham, Piercy, and Ross. The earl of Lancaster was appointed guardian and protector of the king’s person. But though it was reasonable to expect that, as the weakness of the former king had given reins to the licentiousness of the barons, great domestic tranquillity would not prevail during the present minority; the first disturbance arose from an invasion by foreign enemies.
The king of Scots, declining in years and health, but retaining still that martial spirit which had raised his nation from the lowest ebb of fortune, deemed the present opportunity favorable for infesting England. He first made an attempt on the Castle of Norham, in which he was disappointed; he then collected an army of twenty-five thousand men on the frontiers, and having given the command to the earl of Murray and Lord Douglas, threatened an incursion into the northern counties. The English regency, after trying in vain every expedient to restore peace with Scotland, made vigorous preparations for war; and besides assembling an English army of near sixty thousand men, they invited back John of Hainault, and some foreign cavalry whom they had dismissed, and whose discipline and arms had appeared superior to those of their own country. Young Edward himself, burning with a passion for military fame, appeared at the head of these numerous forces; and marched from Durham, the appointed place of rendezvous, in quest of the enemy, who had already broken into the frontiers, and were laying every thing waste around them.
Murray and Douglas were the two most celebrated warriors, bred in the long hostilities between the Scots and English; and their forces, trained in the same school, and inured to hardships, fatigues, and dangers, were perfectly qualified, by their habits and manner of life, for that desultory and destructive war which they carried into England. Except a body of about four thousand cavalry, well armed, and fit to make a steady impression in battle, the rest of the army were light-armed troops, mounted on small horses, which found subsistence every where, and carried them with rapid and unexpected marches, whether they meant to commit depredations on the peaceable inhabitants, or to attack an armed enemy, or to retreat into their own country. Their whole equipage consisted of a bag of oatmeal, which, as a supply in case of necessity, each soldier carried behind him; together with a light plate of iron, on which he instantly baked the meal into a cake in the open fields. But his chief subsistence was the cattle which he seized; and his cookery was as expeditious as all his other operations. After flaying the animal, he placed the skin, loose and hanging in the form of a bag, upon some stakes; he poured water into it, kindled a fire below, and thus made it serve as a caldron for the boiling of his victuals.[*]