Edward was still abroad when the news of his father’s death was brought to him. His accession had been so long looked forward to as a happy termination to the difficulties of the last reign, that what might have been a dangerous crisis passed over peacefully. An assembly was summoned at Westminster, not only of the nobles, but also of the representatives of the lower estates, and there an oath of fidelity was taken to the absent King. Three prominent nobles seem to have assumed the position of governors; the Archbishop of York, as head of the clergy, Edmund of Cornwall, the King’s brother, as representative of the royalty, and Gilbert of Gloucester, as chief of the baronage. Under them the government pursued its old course. Hearing that things were going well in England, Edward did not hurry home. He returned by Sicily and Rome, where he induced the Pope to visit upon the young De Montforts the murder of Henry D’Almeyne, whom they had killed at Viterbo. Thence he passed into France, joined in a great tournament at Châlons, where jest was changed to earnest, and a rough skirmish ensued, known as the little battle of Châlons. True to his legal obligations, he did homage at Paris for his French dominions, demanding what as yet had not been fulfilled, the completion of the late definitive treaty in France: and after settling, not without application to the French King as feudal superior, his quarrels with Gaston de Bearn in Gascony, and establishing friendly relations with Flanders, he returned in 1274 to England, and there, on the 18th of August, was crowned and received the homage of his Barons, and that, among others, of Alexander III. of Scotland. Shortly after, he appointed as his chancellor Robert Burnell, who served him throughout his life as chief minister, while Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, was his chief agent in all diplomatic matters.
From the reign of Edward began what may be properly spoken of as the English monarchy. The last reign had brought prominently forward the two great points which constituted the nationality of the country. Primarily the object of the baronial party had been to separate England from the overwhelming importance of its foreign connections, and to prevent it from becoming a mere source of wealth to foreign adventurers. In this the baronial party had succeeded. While declaring themselves national, they had been obliged to have recourse for support to other elements of the nation than those from which the ruling class had hitherto been formed. The advance of these new classes had, as has been seen, been gradual. Already, in earlier reigns, the principle both of election and representation had been, on more than one occasion, accepted. But it was the formal admission both of knights of the shire and of burghers to parliamentary privileges, even though the practice had not been continued, which rendered it impossible long to ignore the growing feeling that all classes should in some way be consulted about what interested all.
Edward was well fitted, both by position and character, to play the part of the first English king. He had given distinct proofs in the earlier part of the late baronial quarrels that a good and national government was what he desired. But it would be wrong to suppose that he was at all inclined to what we should now call liberal policy. In the latter part of his father’s reign he had made it clear that to his mind a strong monarchy was a necessary condition of good government. It was only gradually, and in accordance with a love of symmetrical government which strongly characterized him, that he recognized the advantage of the complete admission of the hitherto unprivileged classes to the rights of representation. He set before him as his object the establishment of a good and orderly government in the national interests, but carried out by a strong, nay despotic monarch, subjected only to the restrictions of the law. This is indeed another prominent characteristic of the King, in which he went along with the tendencies of the age. His mind was essentially legal, and just at this time the Roman and civil law were forcing their way into prominence throughout Europe. In Edward and his great rival Philip IV. of France, we have, allowing for their differences in personal character, instances of the same course of action. They both intended to make use of feudal law, interpreted more or less by the Roman law, and pressed to its legal and logical conclusions, to strengthen the monarchy. It is thus that we find Edward constantly enacting statutes and constitutions, making use of feudal claims to compel the submission of his neighbours, and exerting to the full, sometimes even beyond the limits of honesty, the rights the constitution gave him, but never wilfully transgressing what he regarded as the law. He was successful in carrying out the two first branches of his threefold policy; in the third he failed. Good government he established by a series of admirable administrative enactments, and by that power of definition which a living historian[44] has attributed to him, in spite of the difficulties presented by the independent position of the Church, and by the disorders still remaining from the late troubled times. Nationality he was able to foster both by foreign wars and by his great plan of connecting all the kingdoms of Great Britain. But in his efforts to establish an absolute monarchy, he was met by the financial difficulties into which the late reign had plunged the Crown, and by that entanglement in foreign politics which the English possessions in France, of which he was not yet quite free, continually caused. Urged by his wide schemes to have recourse to arbitrary means for replenishing his treasury, he excited again an opposition similar to that of his father’s reign, and found himself obliged to make concessions which effectually prevented any of his successors from attempting to render the Crown independent.
The first years of the King’s reign were employed in restoring order to the government and the finances. His first Parliament met at Westminster in 1275, where was passed a great restorative measure known by the name of the First Statute of Westminster. It was so wide and far-reaching that it might be called a code rather than an Act. Its object is said by a contemporary writer to have been to “awake those languid laws which had long been lulled asleep” by the abuses of the time. It secured the rights of the Church, improved the tardy processes of law, and re-established the charters, further limiting the sums which could be demanded for the three legal aids. At the same Parliament, an export duty on wool and leather, the origin of the customs, was granted to the King, the more readily, perhaps, as his firmness had lately re-established the wool-trade with Flanders. During the next three or four years other less popular measures were taken with a view to replenish the King’s treasury. Commissions were issued to inquire into the exact limits of the grants of the late King to the clergy, and to inquire into the tenure of property throughout England, with the twofold view of establishing the rights of property disturbed by the late war, and of clearly defining the revenue due to the Crown.
It was not till the year 1278 that the effect of this commission was seen. Orders were then issued to the itinerant justices to make use of the evidence which had been obtained, and to issue writs of “quo warranto,” to oblige owners to make good their titles. This was the occasion of the well-known answer of Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, who presented his sword to the judge, saying, “This is my title-deed, with this my ancestors won my land, with this will I keep it.” The temper thus shown by one of his most faithful followers prevented Edward from pushing matters to extremity. During these years was set on foot also the practice of demanding that those who were wealthy enough should receive knighthood. The practice was kept up during the reign, but the property counted sufficient for the holder of that dignity varied from £20 to £100 a year. The King’s activity reached in all directions. Another commission was issued to inquire into the conduct of sheriffs. The coinage, much clipped and debased, was renewed; it was ordered that its shape should always be round, as the prevalent method of clipping had been to cut the pieces into four, so that the exact edge could not be known. At length, in 1279, Edward proceeded to regulate one of the great abuses of the Church. Not only had that body become exorbitantly rich, but the privileges which it claimed had begun to be detrimental to the Crown; and when, in the earlier part of the year, Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced and authorized, at a meeting at Reading, some canons tending to the independence of the Church, the King was determined to strike a blow in return. As corporations could not die, land which had passed into their possession was free from the fines and payments due from an incoming heir, which were thus lost to the feudal superior. Moreover, and this touched the Crown more nearly, it had become a habit to give property to the Church, and fraudulently to receive it back again as a Church fief, and thus free from feudal services. By the Statute of Mortmain, which was now passed, it was forbidden, without the King’s consent, to transfer property to the Church.
Meanwhile, while Edward had been thus busied at home, affairs in Wales had begun to attract his attention. Llewellyn had always been in close alliance with the Leicester party, and had shown his dissatisfaction at the accession of Edward by refusing to come to the assembly which swore fealty to the new King. Edward, who wished honestly to heal the late differences, had summoned him to his coronation, and had again been refused. Had he not desired a peaceful solution of the difficulty, he would certainly now have proceeded to extremities. But no less than six opportunities were given to the Prince of appearing in England, to set himself right; on every occasion he had refused to do so. The suspicions which his conduct excited received a strong confirmation when it was known that he was contemplating a marriage with the daughter of De Montfort. It is probable that this marriage was to be carried out in pursuance of some scheme for continuing the disturbances of the last reign. Fortunately the lady was captured, with her brother Almeric who was escorting her, on her way to Wales. This brought matters to a crisis. In 1276, Llewellyn, who had refused all approaches to friendship, demanded, in the language of an independent prince, a treaty, and the restoration of his wife. In November of that year Edward, acting in concert with his Parliament, ordered his army to meet him at Worcester, and the war began. Even the strength of his country did not enable Llewellyn to hold out against the superior power and ability of the English King. A fleet of ships from the Cinque Ports cut him off from Anglesea, and mastered that island, while the English army forced him back towards the mountains of Snowdon. He was induced to treat. The terms given him were stringent. The Cantreds or Hundreds between Chester and Conway were given up to the English. Anglesea alone he was allowed to keep in full, on the payment of 1000 marks, while a few baronies around Snowdon were left in his hands, to prevent his title of Prince of Wales being a mere empty honour. Besides this, he had to pay 50,000 marks for the expenses of the war, and a tribute of 1000 marks. Once conquered, however, and brought to complete submission, his treatment was generous. The money payments were at once remitted. His brother David, his enemy, and a probable source of discomfort to him, was kept in England and pensioned; and finally, he came to England, and received his wife, their marriage being nobly celebrated by the King.
In less than three years the whole arrangement was again destroyed. David, though he had fought for Edward and been well rewarded, suddenly deserted to his fellow countrymen. He attacked the Castle of Hawardyn, and, in company with his brother Llewellyn, besieged Rhuddlan and Flint. Edward at once advanced against them. Hard pressed, the brothers divided their forces. David continued to fight in the North, while his brother betook himself to South Wales. He was there surprised, defeated, and killed, on the River Wye, and his head sent to Edward, and displayed in London, in scorn adorned with an ivy crown, in allusion to some prophecy that he should be crowned in London. David was shortly afterwards compelled to surrender. A Parliament had been summoned to grant supplies; some difficulty had arisen, and before an answer could be given, a fresh one was called at Shrewsbury, (moved afterwards to Acton Burnell, the seat of the Chancellor,) by which the unfortunate Prince was tried, and condemned to death. This Parliament afterwards proceeded to the settlement of the conquered country, by what is known as the Statute of Wales. By this a considerable part of English law and English institutions, with some modifications to suit the prejudices of the Welsh, were introduced. The conquest was completed by the famous presentation to the people of the King’s new-born heir, under the title of the Prince of Wales. There was henceforth no longer any pretence of feudal supremacy; Wales was annexed to the English Crown. The following year the Parliament at Winchester produced the Statute known by the name of that city, which arranged the defence of the country upon a national basis. Of that piece of legislation, as well as of others before and after it, more will be said by and by. In the year after this, Edward left England, placing the government in the hands of his brother Edmund.
It will be necessary to turn for a moment to Edward’s foreign relations to explain the necessity of his journey abroad. He had the misfortune, like his predecessors, to be master of Aquitaine, and as Duke of that province a vassal and peer of France. He was, moreover, cousin of the King of France, and brother-in-law of the King of Castile. Although a definitive treaty had been made between Henry III. and the French King, it had never been properly carried out; Edward had, as in duty bound done homage for his French possessions, and had from time to time renewed his claims. He had even been allowed in 1279, in right of his wife, to take possession of Ponthieu. There was, nevertheless a constant feeling of distrust between the French King and his too powerful vassal. Edward had therefore done his best to cement his friendship on the side of Spain. But, in 1282, an event happened which enabled him to secure a settlement of his French claims, and to assume the important position of mediator in a great foreign quarrel. A war seemed imminent between Castile and France, when Peter III. of Aragon, for whose favour both parties had been intriguing, suddenly raised a large army, the destination of which was said to be Africa, but which shortly after proved to be intended for the conquest of Sicily from the French. This put an end to the quarrel with Castile, and brought Aragon forward as the Spanish power against which the French energies were directed. Charles of Anjou had received from the Pope the grant of the Two Sicilies when the Barons of England had obliged Edmund to renounce it. He had made good his position with extreme cruelty; and now the Sicilian people entered into that famous conspiracy known by the name of Sicilian Vespers, and massacred the French throughout the island. They then proceeded to give themselves to Peter III. of Aragon, in concert with whom they had certainly been acting. He was successful in his enterprise. His admiral, Loria, had everywhere defeated the fleets of Anjou, and in 1284 had taken prisoner Charles, Prince of Salerno, the Duke of Anjou’s heir. For a short time there seemed some possibility of the quarrel being ended by a single combat between Peter and Charles; formal preparations were made, and Edward was entreated to preside as umpire. But chivalrous though he was, he was too much of a statesman to give his consent to so trivial a form of settlement; and, in 1285, Charles died.
His quarrel was taken up by the French King, and matters had reached this point when Edward thought it necessary to go abroad (especially as a new King, Philip IV., had just come to the throne), to arrange if possible a question which, involving not only his own interests, but also the authority of the Pope, was one of European interest. He succeeded in inducing Philip IV. to allow the justice of his claims with regard to the provinces to be united to Gascony, and proceeded the following year to act the part of mediator between the Courts of France and Aragon. He was trusted absolutely in this negotiation, and after some difficulty hoped that he had arrived at some conclusion, when he had succeeded in obtaining the freedom of Prince Charles of Salerno, although the terms of liberation were very hard. Large sums of money were to be paid, and Sicily was to be given up to the Spanish Prince, James. But no sooner was Charles at liberty than he repudiated these conditions; and Edward, disgusted with his want of faith, and thinking probably that it was wiser not to plunge too deep into European politics, determined to return home, neglecting the offered opportunity of forming an alliance with Aragon, which might have formed some counter-poise in Southern Europe to the power of France and of Rome.
His presence at home indeed was much wanted. The moment the back of the great ruler was turned, and the weight of his hand removed, it became evident that much time would be necessary before his arrangements could restore more than external order to the deeply disturbed society of England. Fresh disturbances had arisen in Wales, where Rhys ap Meredith had been roused to rebellion by the strictness with which the English law was carried out. Nor had the Regent’s army, under Gilbert de Clare, succeeded in capturing him. It seems indeed that several of the greater nobles had begun to show discontent, and in 1288, Surrey, Warwick, Gloucester, and Norfolk had all appeared in a disorderly fashion in arms. There were other disturbances too in the lower strata of society. The Statute of Winchester was not yet fairly in operation, bands of outlaws appeared in the forest districts, and among others, one Chamberlain had fallen upon a fair held at Boston in Lincolnshire, and had burnt the town. The presence of the King restored order, but the fundamental cause of the misgovernment was laid open to him by his faithful Chancellor, Burnell. Like Henry II., he had employed as his judges professional lawyers, and they had not been proof against the great temptations of their office. The judges were corrupt, and justice was bought and sold. Very serious charges were brought against them in October; all except two, who deserve to be mentioned, John of Methingham and Elias de Bockingham, were convicted. The chief baron, Stratton, was fined 34,000 marks, the chief justice of the King’s Bench, 7000, the master of the rolls, 1000; while Weyland, chief justice of the common pleas, fled to sanctuary, was there blockaded, and after his forty days of safety had to abjure the realm. His property, which was confiscated, is said to have amounted to 100,000 marks.
At the same time the King banished all the Jews from the kingdom. Upwards of 16,000 are said to have left England, nor did they reappear till Cromwell connived at their return in 1654. It is not quite clear why the King determined on this act of severity, especially as the Jews were royal property, and a very convenient source of income. It is probable, however, that their way of doing business was very repugnant to his ideas of justice, while they were certainly great falsifiers of the coinage, which he was very anxious to keep pure and true. Earlier in the reign he had hanged between 200 and 300 of them for that crime, and they are said to have demanded 60 per cent. for their loans, taking advantage of the monopoly as money-lenders which the ecclesiastical prohibition of usury had given them. Moreover, about this time, the great banking-houses of Italy were becoming prominent. With them Edward had already had much business, and their system of advances upon fairer terms was much more pleasing to him. From this time onwards the money business of England was in their hands.[45]
We have now reached what may be considered as the close of the first period of Edward’s reign, which had been occupied by legislation and by the conquest of Wales. From this time onwards, it is the conquest of Scotland, and the great constitutional effort of the reign, intermingled with foreign affairs, which we shall have to observe.
It is uncertain when Edward’s thoughts were first directed to the Northern kingdom, but events had been rapidly occurring, which threw Scotland almost entirely into his hands. Quite early in the reign he seems to have wished, as was natural for one of his legal mind, to have the disputed question of homage cleared up. Again and again homage had been paid to his predecessors; but, except in the case of William the Lion’s homage to Henry II., it had been always open to the Scotch King to assert that it was for fiefs in England, and not for Scotland, that his homage was rendered. Even that clear instance had been annihilated by the subsequent sale of the submission then made by Richard I. It would seem in fact that the claim to overlordship was really based upon much earlier transactions. Scotland consisted of three incorporated kingdoms—the Highlands, or kingdoms of the Scots, Galloway, which was part of the British kingdom of Strathclyde, and the Lothians, which had undoubtedly been a part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. In the time of the English Empire the King of Scots and all the people had chosen Eadward the Elder as father and lord; that is to say, they had what is technically called commended themselves to the English King. Strathclyde had been conquered by Eadmund, and by him had been granted to Malcolm as a fief, on condition of military tenure; while afterwards the Lothians had been granted by Eadgar to the Scotch kings as an English earldom. Thus, on various grounds, all parts of the Kingdom of Scotland acknowledged the English King as their overlord. When England fell into the hands of the Normans, William, professedly assuming the position which his predecessor had held, would naturally expect the same homage to be paid to him. It is equally certain that the Scotch kings would object to pay it. It had therefore been a constantly open and disputed question till the time of Edward. Meanwhile the feudal law, which had not existed at the time of the original commendation, had grown up and been formulated. Edward, as we have seen, intended to use it to the full. He therefore desired the uncertain acknowledgment of the old supremacy to be brought, as it had never hitherto been, within the precise and clearly-defined limits of feudal overlordship. The character of Alexander III. was such as to strengthen such ideas. In 1275, his wife, Edward’s sister Margaret, had died. The tie of relationship thus broken, Edward had demanded and received, in 1278, a homage, which he declared to his chancellor was complete and without reservation;[46] and since that time, more than once, Alexander had seemed to acknowledge the supremacy.
But it was the rapid extinction of that monarch’s family which brought matters to a crisis. Margaret had had two sons and one daughter, Margaret. Both the sons had died young, and the daughter had married Eric, King of Norway, with the promise that she was to retain her rights to the Scotch succession. In accordance with this, when she died in her first confinement, her little child of the same name, spoken of as the Maid of Norway, was, in 1284, declared heiress of the throne. In 1286 King Alexander died. He had married again, but had no children; the crown would therefore have naturally come to the Maid of Norway. During her absence, a regency, consisting of the Bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, the Lords Fife, Buchan, and Comyn, and others, was appointed. But already other claimants had come forward, and their respective parties had begun a civil war. To Edward it seemed the opportunity had arrived of establishing his rights without violence. A marriage between his son and the Maid of Norway at once occurred to him. For this he had secretly cleared the way by obtaining from the Pope a dispensation to enable these cousins to marry. Armed with this, but acting ostensibly in the Norwegian interest, he contrived to bring about a meeting at Salisbury between commissioners on the part of Eric, of the Scotch government, and of himself, at which it was agreed that the young Queen should be received in Scotland free of matrimonial engagements, but pledged not to marry except by the advice of Edward and with the consent of her father. Almost immediately after this, the plan of the marriage was made public, and was at once willingly accepted by the Scotch, who were anxious to be saved from a civil war, but who, while accepting it, took care, at a parliament held at Brigham in 1290, to guard with scrupulous care the independence of the kingdom.
It was not exactly thus that Edward understood the treaty. He at once despatched Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, to act in unison with the guardians of Scotland, as Lieutenant of Queen Margaret and her husband, at the same time demanding possession of the royal castles, ostensibly for the purpose of preserving the peace of the kingdom. The governors of the castles declined to give them up, but seven great Earls wrote to Edward, as though to a superior, begging him to curb the power of the regency, while, on the other hand, a member of the regency, the Bishop of St. Andrews, also wrote, begging Edward to approach the border to assist in keeping order, and to appoint a king if the rumour which had been spread of the death of the Maid of Norway should prove true. The report was true, Margaret had died on her journey from Norway in the Orkney islands; and acting on these two letters, which he construed as an invitation, Edward summoned a meeting at Norham, to be held after Easter 1291. The delay was probably occasioned by a heavy blow which had fallen on Edward. In November he had lost his much loved wife Eleanor. It is one of his titles to our respect, that in a licentious age he was remarkably pure, and that no word was ever breathed against his perfect fidelity as a husband. After a period of bitter sorrow, and a pompous funeral, each stage of the journey being subsequently marked by a beautiful cross, he returned again in the following year to his Scotch plans. At that meeting he put forward his claim as superior and overlord of the kingdom, saying that it lay with him in that capacity to put an end to discord. He ended by asking that his title should be acknowledged, in order that he might act freely. A delay of three weeks was demanded, at which time the assembly met again on Scotch ground opposite the Castle of Norham. An answer seems to have been meanwhile sent, but the King had regarded it as not to the point; and at the assembly itself no objections were raised to his claim. All the competitors acknowledged his authority in set words, and the case was put into Edward’s hands.
There were a great number of claimants; but three only established a case worth consideration. These were Bruce, Balliol, and Hastings. The claims of all these went back to David I. This king had three grandsons; Malcolm IV., who was childless, William the Lion, whose direct descendants had just come to an end, and David, Earl of Huntingdon, from whom all three claimants were descended. He had had three daughters; Margaret, the eldest, whose grandson was Balliol, Isabella, the second, whose son was Bruce, Ada, the third, whose grandson was Hastings. Besides these three, Comyn was also a grandson of Margaret, but being a son of a second daughter, his claims were obviously inferior to those of Balliol.[47] To decide these claims, Edward, as lord superior, established a great court; forty of Bruce’s friends, forty of Balliol’s, and twenty-four members on the part of Edward, were to constitute it. Edward seems to have proceeded with the full intention of giving a just and legal judgment, and after several meetings, in November 1292, a decision was arrived at in favour of John Balliol. Meanwhile, during the settlement of the question, Edward had taken possession of the Scotch castles, had appointed the great officers of the kingdom, and had caused the regents to exact an oath of fealty to him as superior lord. The new King accepted the throne distinctly as a vassal of England, and finally, to make his dependence perfectly clear, did homage after his coronation. He did not find his new position free from difficulty. He found that the letter of the feudal law to which he owed his elevation could be turned against himself. It was indeed unnatural to expect the Scotch to submit to the inconveniences without claiming the advantages of that law. Balliol had not been long on the throne before they asserted that, if he was a vassal, appeals would lie from his judgments to the English courts. In the following year two or three such appeals were made, one from a goldsmith, and one from Macduff, Earl of Fife. When summoned to appear before the English courts, Balliol refused to come. He made his appearance however at the Parliament held in the autumn of 1293, and there declared that, as King of Scotland, he could not act without the advice of his people. A delay was given him for the purpose of consulting his parliament; he did not take advantage of it. The case of Macduff was therefore given against him by the English baronage in his presence. He was fined to Macduff 700 marks, to Edward 10,000. On the protest of Balliol, a fresh delay was allowed, nor does Edward seem to have been in any way disposed to do more than make good his legal position. It is plain, however that the position of vassal king, with its awkward and probably unexpected incidents, disgusted Balliol; and political events soon enabled him to make his displeasure felt.
Philip IV., the new King of France, was as legal in his mind as Edward, but more dishonest. It was as plain to him that it was desirable to unite France by annexing Guienne, as it was to Edward that it was advantageous to England to annex Scotland. They set about their designs in somewhat the same way. The sea was at this time regarded as a sort of no man’s land, where incessant fighting little short of piracy was allowable. There were plenty of instances of battles between English and French merchant-ships. The Normans are said to have infested the whole coast of France from Holland to Spain. The Cinque Ports mariners were probably not much behind them. At last a formal meeting was arranged in 1293, where the matter was to be fought out. An empty chip marked the point of contest, and there the fleets of France and England fought a great battle, which terminated in the defeat of the French. Edward, who knew Philip’s character and the resources of the feudal law, was anxious to do what he could to clear himself of complicity in the quarrel; but no representations of his were attended to by the French King, and Philip summoned him to appear before the French Parliament. As the English offenders were not given up, and as Edward declined to appear, the Constable of France took possession in the King’s name of Edward’s French provinces. With much more important matters in hand, and with the knowledge probably of what Balliol’s conduct was going to be, Edward tried all he could to settle the matter peacefully. He sent over to France his brother Edmund, whose wife[48] was the mother of the French Queen. Through the instrumentality of these Queens a treaty was arranged, by which the summons to Paris was annulled, and a personal meeting at Amiens arranged, pending which the strongholds of Gascony were to be put in Philip’s hands. Edmund withdrew the English army, and dismissed the commander, St. John, and at the same time demanded a safe conduct for his brother at the proposed meeting. But Philip refused the safe conduct, declared himself dissatisfied with the surrender of the towns, and refused to leave the country which he had occupied. Fresh insulting messages were sent to Edward, and, in 1294, Edmund returned to England, and war became necessary. Great preparations were made; alliances were formed on the north-east of France; money was granted by Parliament. This proving insufficient, no less than half their property was demanded from the clergy. An insurrection in Wales, and the news that an alliance had been formed between Philip and the Scotch, rendered the preparations useless.
It was plain to Edward that it was worth risking his foreign dominions to consolidate his power as King of Great Britain. For the present, therefore, he left Gascony alone, and turned his arms against Scotland. Engaged at once in a war with France, with Scotland, and with Wales, he found it necessary to raise supplies from all branches of his subjects. A genuine Parliament was therefore called in October, in which all estates were represented, and which has been considered the true origin of our Parliament as it now exists. The three Estates granted the supply as different orders; and it was not without difficulty that the clergy, suffering from the late enormous exaction, were induced to grant him a tenth. The other estates seem to have come readily to his assistance at this great crisis.
In March a large army was assembled at Newcastle, and while the Scotch crossed the borders and ravaged Cumberland with savage ferocity,[49] Edward pushed forward into Scotland. In three days Berwick was captured. While still before that place, he received from Balliol, who seems to have been under some constraint, renunciation of his allegiance; and before the end of April brought his army, under the Earl of Surrey and Warrenne, to Dunbar. The Scotch advanced to meet him, occupying the higher ground; but foolishly mistaking the movements of the English army in the valley for a flight, they left their strong position, and were hopelessly routed, with a loss of 10,000 men. This battle decided the fate of Scotland. Several of the great Earls and many knights were taken prisoners. The King met no further opposition in his march through Edinburgh to Perth. On the 10th of July, Balliol made his submission, was allowed to live under supervision in the Tower of London, whence he afterwards proceeded to Normandy; and Edward henceforth acted no longer as feudal superior, but as King. At a Parliament held at Berwick, he received the fealty of the clergy, gentry, and barons of Scotland, whose names, filling thirty-five skins of parchment, are still preserved among the English archives. Scotland was left as much as possible in its old condition, but the Earl of Warenne and Surrey was made Guardian; Hugh de Cressingham, Treasurer; William of Ormsby, Justiciary; and an Exchequer was established in the English fashion. At the same time the coronation stone of Scone was removed to Westminster, where it still is. Edward had thus completed his first conquest of Scotland. Both legally and politically, his conduct is justifiable. The consolidation of Great Britain was a most desirable object. The French alliance, the invasion of England, and the renunciation of vassalage, constituted by feudal law a sufficient cause for confiscating the possessions of a vassal prince. But this leaves untouched the question, how far it is right to annex a free people against their will? It must be remembered that the submission of Scotland had been made by the nobility only, who were in fact Normans, and many of them English Barons.
Freed from danger on the side of Scotland, Edward was now at liberty to turn his attention towards France. But his late exertions had caused great expenditure, to which had been added the subsidies by which he had been compelled to purchase the alliance of the Princes on the north-east of France. To meet this necessity, a Parliament was summoned at Bury St. Edmunds, at which the Barons and Commons gave fresh grants. But the clergy, driven to extremity by the King’s late demands upon them, found themselves in a position to refuse. Benedict of Gaita had lately been elected Pope, under the title of Boniface VIII., and had at once entered upon a policy resembling that of the great Popes of the twelfth century. He had issued a Bull known by the name of “Clericis Laicos,” in which he had forbidden the clergy to pay taxes to their temporal sovereign. Backed by this authority, Archbishop Winchelsea refused in the name of the clergy to make any grant to Edward. The clergy, it was said, owed allegiance to two sovereigns—the one temporal, the other spiritual. Their obedience was due first to their spiritual chief. An exemption from taxation of the Church, which had rapidly been growing enormously wealthy, would have crippled Edward’s resources. He had already accepted the principle, that all should be consulted and all pay in matters touching the advantage of all. He proceeded at once, therefore, to meet the claim in his usual legal fashion. If the clergy would not help him, he would not protect the clergy. The Chief Justice was ordered to announce publicly from the bench in Westminster Hall, that no justice would be done the clergy in the King’s Court, but would nevertheless be done to all manner of persons who had any complaint against them. Nor was this sentence of outlawry a vain one; the tenants began at once to refuse to pay their rents, the Church property was seized, and the owners could get no redress. This severe treatment induced many of the clergy to make their submission, but the Archbishop still held out.
Matters thus remained till another Parliament met at Salisbury in February 1297, when, the Barons only being summoned, the King explained his plan for the war with France. He was under pledge to pay subsidies, and to bring an army to his allies in Flanders. This army he would personally command. He wished his Constable and Marshall, the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, to take charge of a second army destined for Guienne. These two noblemen positively refused. They had learnt law from their King, and alleged as their excuse, which was evidently only a technical one, that they were only bound to follow the King in person. They then withdrew from the Assembly, which broke up, with nothing done. The King, in want of money, gave free vent to his arbitrary temper, seized the wool of his merchants, and ordered large requisitions of provisions to be made in the counties, for which, however, he promised future payment. In the following March, Winchelsea had a personal interview with the King, in which he appears to have arranged some sort of temporary compromise; for immediately afterwards a meeting of the clergy was held, in which he recommended them to act each for himself as best he could. Determined to proceed in spite of all opposition, the King summoned the whole military force of the kingdom to meet him at London on the 7th of July. There the Earls still refused to do their duty, and fresh officers were appointed in their place. The King reconciled himself with the clergy, and appointed the Archbishop one of the counsellors who were to act as advisers to his young son Edward, in whose hands he left the government. He also induced those nobles and Commons who were with him, though in no sense a Parliament, to make him a money grant. They gave him an eighth of the moveables of the barons and knights, a fifth of the cities and boroughs. This grant was given expressly for a promised confirmation of the charters. This seems to show what the real point at issue was. The King’s excessive arbitrary taxation had aroused the old feeling which had produced the baronial wars of the preceding reign. The clergy were also asked for a grant in a convocation held upon the 10th of August. It was there decided that there was good hope that leave would be given them to make a grant. On this the King acted, and ordered a levy of what amounted to a fifth on all their revenue, both temporal and spiritual.