The gallant line of Scottish kings descended from “the gracious Duncan” suddenly decayed and dwindled away in the latter part of the thirteenth century. They had generally been on friendly terms with the English, to whom Malcolm Ceanmore and Edgar both owed their crown; they had usually married ladies of English birth; and holding the earldom of Huntingdon, the county of Cumberland, and the three Lothians, under the English crown, they stood in nearly the same relation to our Anglo-Norman sovereigns as did these to the kings of France. If France were esteemed a more polished country, and her language and manners were adopted by the Plantagenet kings, who were French nobles as well as independent sovereigns of the ruder Saxons, so, again, England was the model of courtesy and refinement to the earlier Scottish kings, who, in the right of inheritance from St. David’s queen, Earl Waltheof’s heiress, were barons of the civilized court of England, where they learnt modes of taming their own savage Highland and island domains.
Thus, with few exceptions, the terms of alliance were well understood, and many of the Cumbrian barons were liegemen to both the English and Scottish kings. Scotland was in a flourishing and fast-improving condition, and there was no mutual enmity or jealousy between the two nations.
Alexander III. was the husband of Margaret, the eldest sister of Edward I., and frequently was present at the pageants of the English court. He was a brave and beloved monarch, and his wife was much honored and loved in Scotland; but, while still a young man, a succession of misfortunes befell him. His queen died in 1275, and his only son a year or two after; his only other child, Margaret, who had been married to Eric, Prince of Norway, likewise died, leaving an infant daughter named Margaret.
Finding himself left childless, Alexander contracted a second marriage with Yolande, daughter of the Count de Dreux; and a splendid bridal took place at Jedburgh, with every kind of amusements, especially mumming and masquing. In the midst, some reckless reveller glided in arrayed in ghastly vestments, so as to personate death, and after making fearful gestures, vanished away, leaving an impression of terror among the guests that they did not quickly shake off—the jest was too earnest.
Less than a year subsequently, Alexander gave a great feast to his nobles at Edinburgh, on the 15th of March, 1286. It was a most unsuitable day for banquetting, for it was Lent; and, moreover, popular imagination, always trying to guess the times and seasons only known to the Most High, had fixed on tins as destined to be the Last Day.
But the Scottish nobles feasted and revelled, mocking at the delusion of the populace, till, when at a late hour they broke up, the night was discovered to be intensely dark and stormy. King Alexander was, however, bent on joining his queen, who was at Kinghorn—perhaps he had promised to come to calm her alarms—and all the objections urged by his servants could not deter him. He bade one of his servants remain at home, since he seemed to fear the storm. “No, my lord,” said the man, “it would ill become me to refuse to die for your father’s son.”
At Inverkeithing the storm became more violent, and again the royal followers remonstrated; but the King laughed at them, and only desired to have two runners to show him the way, when they might all remain in shelter.
He was thought to have been “fey”—namely, in high spirits—recklessly hastening to a violent death; for as he rode along the crags close above Kinghorn, his horse suddenly stumbled, and he was thrown over its head to the bottom of a frightful precipice, where he lay dead. The spot is still called the King’s Crag.
Truly it was the last day of Scotland’s peace and prosperity. Thomas of Ereildoune, called the Rymour, who was believed to possess second sight, had declared that on the 16th of March the greatest wind should blow before noon that Scotland had ever known. The morning, however, rose fair and calm, and he was reproached for his prediction. “Noon is not yet gone!” he answered; and ere long came a messenger to the gate, with tidings that the King was killed. “Gone is the wind that shall blow to the great calamity and trouble of all Scotland,” said Thomas the Rymour—a saying that needed no powers of prophecy, when the only remaining scion of the royal line was a girl of two years old, the child of a foreign prince, himself only eighteen years of age.
The oldest poem in the Scottish tongue that has been preserved is a lament over the last son of St. David.
The perplexity began at once, for the realm of Scotland had never yet descended to the “spindle,” and the rights of the little “Maid of Norway” were contested by her cousins, Robert Bruce and John Balliol, two of the Cumbrian barons, half-Scottish and half-English, who, though their claims were only through females, thought themselves fitter to rule than the infant Margaret.
Young Eric of Norway sent to entreat counsel from Edward of England, and thus first kindled his hopes of uniting the whole island under his sway. “Now,” he said, “the time is come when Scotland and her petty kings shall be reduced under my power.” The Scottish nobles came at the same time to request his decision, which was readily given in favor of the little heiress, whom he further proposed to betroth to his only son, Edward of Caernarvon; and as the children were first cousins once removed, he sent to Rome for a dispensation, while Margaret sailed from Norway to be placed in his keeping. Thus would the young Prince have peaceably succeeded to the whole British dominions; but the will of Heaven was otherwise, and three hundred years of war were to elapse before the crowns were placed on the same brow.
The stormy passage from Norway was injurious to the tender frame of the little Queen: she was landed in the Orkney Isles, in the hope of saving her life, but in vain; she died, after having scarcely touched her dominions, happy in being spared so wild a kingdom and so helpless a husband as were awaiting her.
Twelve claimants for the vacant throne at once arose, all so distant that it was a nice matter to weigh their several rights, since the very nearest were descendants of Henry, son of St. David, five generations back.
The Scots agreed to refer the question to the arbitration of one hitherto so noted for wisdom and justice as Edward I. They little knew that their realm was the very temptation that was most liable to draw him aside from the strict probity he had hitherto observed.
He called on the competitors and the states of Scotland to meet him at Norham Castle on the 10th of May, 1291, and the conference was opened by his justiciary, Robert Brabazon, who, in a speech of some length, called on the assembly to begin by owning the King as Lord Paramount of Scotland.
It had never been fully understood for how much of their domains the Scottish kings did homage to the English, and the more prudent princes had avoided opening the question, so that there might honestly be two opinions on the subject. Still Edward was acting as the King of France would have done had he claimed to be Paramount of England, because Edward paid homage for Gascony, and he ought to have known that he was taking an ungenerous advantage of the kingless state of his neighbors.
They made answer that they were incapable of making such an acknowledgment; but Edward answered, “Tell them that by the holy St. Edward, whose crown I wear, I will either have my rights recognized, or die in the vindication of them.”
He gave them three weeks to consider his challenge, but in the meantime issued writs for assembling his army; and thus left the more quietly-disposed to expect an invasion, without any leader to oppose it; while each of the twelve claimants could not but conceive the hope of being raised to the throne, if he would consent to make the required acknowledgment.
Accordingly, they all yielded; and when the next meeting took place at Hollywell Haugh, a green plain close to “Norham’s castled height,” the whole body owned Edward as their feudal superior; after which the kingdom of Scotland was delivered over to him, and the great seal placed in the joint keeping of the Scottish and English chancellors.
In the following year, on the 17th of November, the final decision was made. Nine of the claimants had such frivolous claims, that no attention was paid to them, and the only ones worth consideration were those derived from David, Earl of Huntingdon, the crusading comrade of Coeur de Lion, and son of Henry, son of St. David. This Earl had left three daughters, Margaret, Isabel, and Ada. Margaret had married Allan of Galloway, and John Balliol was the son of her only daughter Devorgoil. Isabel married Robert Bruce, and her son, Robert, Earl of Carrick, was the claimant; and Ada had left a grandson, Florence Hastings, Earl of Holland.
A baron leaving daughters alone would divide his heritage equally among them, and this was what Hastings desired; but Scotland was pronounced indivisible, and he retired from the field. Bruce contended that, as son of one sister, he was nearer the throne than the grandson of the other, although the elder; but this was completely untenable, and Balliol, having been adjudged the rightful heir, was declared King of Scotland, was crowned, and paid homage to Edward.
He soon found that the fealty he had sworn was not, as he had hoped, to be a mere dead letter, as with the former kings. Edward used to the utmost the suzerain’s privilege of hearing appeals from the vassal-prince—a practice never put in force by his predecessors, and excessively galling to the new Scottish King, who found himself fettered in all his measures, and degraded in the eyes of his rude and savage subjects, who regarded him as having given away the honor of their crown. Whenever there was an appeal, he was cited to appear in person at the English court, and was treated, in fact, like a mere feudal noble, instead of the King of a brave and ancient kingdom. Indeed, the Scots called him the “toom tabard,” or empty herald’s coat—a name not unsuited to such a king of vain show.
By and by a war broke out between England and France, and Edward sent summonses to the Scottish barons to attend him with their vassals. It was no concern of theirs, and many flatly refused to come, whereupon he declared them to have forfeited their fiefs, and thus pushed his interference beyond their endurance. John Balliol, their unfortunate King, who was personally attached to Edward, and at the same time greatly in dread of his fierce vassals, was utterly confused and distressed; and finding no help in him, his subjects seized him, placed him in a fortress, under the keeping of a council of twelve, and in his name declared war against England.
Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, to whom his father’s claims had descended, remained faithful to King Edward, who, to punish the rebellion of the Scots, collected an army of 30,000 foot and 4,000 horse, and, with the sacred standards of Durham at their head, marched them into Scotland. Berwick, then a considerable merchant-town, closed her gates against him, and further provoked him by the plunder of some English merchant-ships. He offered terms of surrender, but these were refused; and he led his men to the assault of the dyke, that was the only defence of the town. He was the first to leap the dyke on his horse Bayard, and the place was won after a brave resistance, sufficient to arouse the passions of the soldiery, who made a most shocking massacre, without respect to age or sex.
The report of these horrors so shocked John Balliol, that he sent to renounce his allegiance to Edward, and to defy his power. “Felon and fool!” cried Edward, “if he will not come to us, we must go to him.”
So frightful ravages were carried on by the English on one side and the Scots on the other, till a battle took place at Dunbar, which so utterly ruined the Scots, that they were forced to make submission, and Balliol sued for peace. But Edward would not treat with him as a king, and only sent Anthony Beck, the Bishop of Durham, to meet him at Brechin. He was forced to appear, and was declared a rebel, stripped of his crown and robes, and made to stand with a white rod in his hand, confessing that he had acted rebelliously, and that Edward had justly invaded his realm. After this humiliation, he resigned all his rights to Scotland, declaring himself worn out with the malice and fraud of the nation, which was probably quite true. He was sent at first to the Tower, but afterward was released, lived peaceably on his estates in France, and founded the college at Oxford that bears his name and arms.
The misfortunes endured by this puppet did not deter the Earl of Carrick from aspiring to his seat; but Edward harshly answered, “Have I nothing to do but to conquer kingdoms for you?” and sent him away with his eldest son, a third Robert Bruce, to pacify their own territories of Carrick and Annandale. Edward did nothing without law enough to make him believe himself in the right, and poor Balliol’s forfeiture gave him, as he imagined, the power to assume Scotland as a fief of his own. He caused himself to be acknowledged as King of Scotland, destroyed the old Scottish charters, and transported to Westminster the Scottish crown and sceptre, together with the stone from Scone Abbey, on which, from time immemorial, the Kings of Scotland had been placed when crowned and anointed. All the castles were delivered up into his hands, and every noble in his dominions gave him the oath of allegiance, excepting one, William, Lord Douglas, who steadily refused, and was therefore carried off a prisoner to England, where he remained to the day of his death.
Edward did not come in as a severe or cruel conqueror; he gave privileges to the Scottish clergy, and re-instated the families of the barons killed in the war. Doubtless he hoped to do great good to the wild population, and bring them into the same order as the English; but the flaw in his title made this impossible; the Scots regarded his soldiery as their enemies and oppressors, and though the nobles had given in a self-interested adhesion to the new government, they abhorred it all the time, and the mutual hatred between the English garrisons and Scottish inhabitants led to outrages in which neither party was free from blame.
As Hereward the Saxon had been stirred up against the Norman invaders, so a champion arose who kept alive the memory of Scottish independence.
William Wallace was the younger son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Ellerslie, near Paisley, one of the lesser gentry, not sufficiently high in rank to be required to take oaths to the English King. William was a youth of unusual stature, noble countenance, and great personal strength and skill in the use of arms, and he grew up with a violent hatred to the English usurpers, which various circumstances combined to foster. While very young, he had been fishing in the river Irvine, attended by a boy who carried his basket, when some English soldiers, belonging to the garrison of Ayr meeting him, insisted on seizing his trout. A fray took place, and Wallace killed the foremost Englishman with a blow from the butt of his fishing-rod, took his sword, and put the rest to flight.
This obliged him to fly to the hills. But in those lawless times such adventures soon blew over, and, a year or two after, he was walking in the market-place of Lanark, dressed in green, and with, a dagger by his side, when an Englishman, coming up, insulted him on account of his gay attire, and his passionate temper, thus inflamed, led to a fray, in which the Englishman was killed. He then fled to the house where he was lodging, and while the sheriff and his force were endeavoring to break in, the lady of the house contrived his escape by a back way to a rocky glen called the Crags, where he hid himself in a cave. The disappointed sheriff wreaked his vengeance on the unfortunate lady, slew her, and burnt the house.
Thenceforth Wallace was an outlaw, and the most implacable foe to the English. In his wild retreat he quickly gathered round him other men ill-used, or discontented, or patriotic, or lovers of the wild life which he led, and at their head he not only cut off the parties sent to seize him, but watched his opportunity for marauding on the English or their allies. There is a horrible story that the English governor of Ayr, treacherously inviting the Scottish gentry to a feast, hung them all as they entered, and that Wallace revenged the slaughter with equal cruelty by burning the English alive in their sleep in the very buildings where the murder took place, the Barns of Ayr, as they were called. The history is unauthenticated, but it is believed in the neighborhood of Ayr, and has been handed down by Wallace’s Homer, Blind Harry, whose poem on the exploits of the Knight of Ellerslie was published sixty years from this time.
The fame of Wallace’s prowess swelled his party, and many knights and nobles began to join him. He raised his banner in the name of King John of Scotland, and, with the help of another outlaw chief, Sir William Douglas, pounced on the English justiciary, Ormesby, while holding his court at Scone, put him to flight, and seized a large booty and many prisoners.
His forays were the more successful because the King was absent in England, and the Chancellor, Hugh Cressingham, was not well agreed with the lay-governor, John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey. Many of the higher nobility took his side, among them the younger Robert Bruce; but as the English force began to be marshalled against him, they took flight for their estates, and returned to the stronger party. It may have been that they found that Wallace was not a suitable chief for more than a mere partisan camp; brave as he was, he could not keep men of higher rank in obedience. He lived by plunder, and horrible atrocities were constantly committed by his men, especially against such English clergy as had received Scottish preferment. Whenever one of these fell into their hands, his sacred character could not save him; his arms were tied behind his back, and he was thrown from a high bridge into a river, while the merciless Scots derided his agony.
Warrene and Cressingham drew together a mighty force, and marched to the relief of Stirling, which Wallace had threatened. The Scots had come together to the number of 40,000, but they had only 180 horse; and Warrenne had 50,000 foot and 1,000 horse. The Scots were, however, in a far more favorable position, encamped on the higher ground on the bank of the river Forth; and Warrenne, wishing to avoid a battle, sent two friars to propose terms. “Return to your friends,” said Wallace; “tell them we came with no peaceful intent, but determined to avenge ourselves and set our country free. Let them come and attack us; we are ready to meet them beard to beard.”
On hearing this answer, the English shouted to be led against the bold rebel; but the more prudent leaders thought it folly to attempt to cross the bridge, exposed as it, was to the enemy, but that a chosen body should cross a ford, attack them in the flank, and clear the way. Cressingham thought this policy timid. “Why,” said he to Warrenne, “should we protract the war, and spend the King’s money? Let us pass on, and do our duty!”
Warrenne weakly gave way, and the English troops began to cross the bridge, the Scots retaining their post on the high ground until Sir Marmaduke Twenge, an English knight, impetuously spurred up the hill, when about half the army had crossed, and charged the Scottish ranks. In the meantime, Wallace had sent a chosen force to march down the side of the hill and cut off the troops who had crossed from the foot of the bridge, and he himself, rushing down on the advancing horsemen, entirely, broke them, and made a fearful slaughter of all on that side of the river, seizing on the bridge, so that there was no escape. One of the knights proposed to swim their horses across the river. “What!” said Sir Marmaduke Twenge, “drown myself, when I can cut my way through the midst of them by the bridge? Never let such foul slander fall on me!” He then set spurs to his horse, and, with his nephew and armor-bearer, forced his way back to his friends, across the bridge, by weight of man and horse, through the far more slightly-armed Scots. Warrenne was obliged to march off, with, the loss of half his army, and of Cressingham, whose corpse was found lying on the plain, and was barbarously, mangled by the Scots. They cut the skin into pieces, and used it for saddle-girths; even Wallace himself being said to have had a sword-belt made of it.
This decisive victory threw the greater part of Scotland into Wallace’s hands; and though most of the great earls still held with the English, the towns and castles were given up to him, and the mass of the people was with him. He plundered without mercy the lands of such as would not join him, and pushed his forays into England, where he frightfully ravaged Cumberland and Northumberland; and from St. Luke’s to St. Martin’s-day all was terror and dismay, not a priest remaining between Newcastle and Carlisle to say mass. At last the winter drove him back, and on his return he went to Hexham, a rich convent, which had been plundered on the advance, but to which three of the monks had just returned, hoping the danger was over. Seeing the enemy entering, they fled into a little chapel; but the Scots had seen them, and, rushing on them, demanded their treasures. “Alas!” said they, “you yourselves best know where they are!” Wallace, coming in, silenced his men, and bade the priests say mass; but in one moment, while he turned aside to take off his helmet, his fierce soldiery snatched away the chalice from the altar, and tore off the ornaments and sacred vestments. He ordered that the perpetrators should be put to death, and said to the priests, “My presence alone can secure you. My men are evil-disposed. I cannot justify, I dare not punish them.”
On returning to Scotland, he assumed the title of Governor, and strove to bring matters into a more regular state, but without success; the great nobles either feared to offend the English, or would not submit to his authority.
In 1298, Edward, having freed himself from his difficulties in England and France, hurried to the North to put down in person what in his eyes was not patriotism, but rebellion. How violently enraged he was, was shown by his speech to Sir John Marmaduke, who was sent by Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, to ask his pleasure respecting Dirleton Castle and two other fortresses to which he had laid siege. “Tell Anthony,” he said, “that he is right to be pacific when he is acting the bishop, but that, in his present business, he must forget his calling. As for yourself, you are a relentless soldier, and I have too often had to reprove you for too cruel an exultation over the death of your enemies. But, now, return whence you came, and be as relentless as you choose; you will have my thanks, not my censure; and, look you, do not see my face again till those three castles be razed to the ground.”
The castles were taken and overthrown, but the difficulties of the English continued to be great; the fleet was detained by contrary winds, and this delay of supplies caused a famine in the camp. Edward was obliged to command a retreat; but at that juncture, just as the country was so nearly rescued by the wise dispositions of Wallace, two Scottish nobles, the Earls of Dunbar and Angus, were led by a mean jealousy to betray him to the English, disclosing the place where he was encamped in the forest of Falkirk, and his intention of making a night-attack upon the English.
Edward was greatly rejoiced at the intelligence. “Thanks be to God,” he exclaimed, “who has saved me from every danger! They need not come after me, since I will go to meet them.”
He immediately put on his armor, and rode through the camp, calling on his soldiers to march immediately, and at three o’clock in the afternoon all were on their way to Falkirk. They halted for the night on a heath, where they lay down to sleep in their armor, with their horses picketed beside them In the course of the night the King’s horse trod upon him, breaking two of his ribs; and a cry arose among those around him that he was slain, and the enemy were upon them. But Edward, regardless of the pain, made the alarm serve as a reveillè, mounted his horse, rallied his troops, and, as it was near morning, gave orders to march. The light of the rising sun showed, on the top of the opposite hill, the lances of the Scottish advanced guard; but when they reached the summit, they found it deserted, and in the distance could see the enemy preparing for battle, the foot drawn up in four compact bodies of pikemen, the foremost rank kneeling, so that the spears of those behind rested on their shoulders. “I have brought you to the ring; hop if ye can,” was the brief exhortation of the outlawed patriot to his men; and grim was the dance prepared for them.
Edward heard mass in a tent set up on the hill, and afterward held a council on the manner of attack. An immediate advance was determined on, and they charged the Scots with great fury. The horse, consisting of the time-serving and cowardly nobility, fled without a blow, leaving Wallace and his archers unsupported, to be overwhelmed by the numbers of the English. Wallace, after a long resistance, was compelled to retreat into the woods, with a loss of 15,000, while on the English side the slain were very few.
Edward pushed on, carrying all before him, and wasting the country with fire and sword; but, as has happened in every invasion of Scotland, famine proved his chief enemy, and he was obliged to return to England, leaving unsubdued all the lands north of the Forth. But his determination was sternly fixed, and he made everything else give way to his Scottish wars.
The last stronghold which held out against him was Stirling Castle, under Sir William Oliphant, who, with only one hundred and forty men, for ninety days resisted with the most desperate valor; when the walls were broken down, taking shelter in caverns hewn out of the rock on which their fortress was founded. Edward, who led the attack, was often exposed to great danger; his horse was thrown down by a stone, and his armor pierced by an arrow; but he would not consent to use greater precautions, saying that he fought in a just war, and Heaven would protect him. At last the brave garrison were reduced to surrender, and came down from their castle in a miserable, dejected state, to implore his mercy. The tenderness of his nature revived as he saw brave men in such a condition. He could not restrain his tears, and he received them to his favor, sending them in safety to England.
Scotland was now completely tranquil, and entirely reduced. Every noble had sworn allegiance, every castle was garrisoned by English. Balliol was in Normandy, Bruce in the English army, and at last, in August, 1305, the brave outlaw, Sir William Wallace, was, by his former friend, Monteith, betrayed into the hands of the English. He was brought to Westminster, tried as a traitor to King Edward, and sentenced to die. He had never sworn fealty to Edward, but this could not save him; and on the 23d of August, 1305, he was dragged on a hurdle to Smithfield, and suffered the frightful death that the English laws allotted to a traitor. His head was placed on a pole on London Bridge, and his several limbs sent to the different towns in Scotland, where they were regarded far more as relics than as tokens of disgrace.
Had Edward appreciated and pardoned the gallant Scot, it would have been a noble deed. But his death should not be regarded as an act of personal, revenge. Wallace had disregarded many a proclamation of mercy, and had carried on a most savage warfare upon the Scots who had submitted to the English with every circumstance of cruelty. Edward, who believed himself the rightful King, was not likely to regard him as otherwise than a pertinacious bandit, with whom the law might properly take its course. More mercy might have been hoped from the prince who fought hand to hand with Adam de Gourdon; but ambition had greatly warped and changed Edward since those days, and the fifteen years of effort to retain his usurpation had hardened his whole nature.
Wallace himself, half a robber, half a knight, has won for himself a place in the affections of his countrymen, and has lived ever since in story and song. To the last century it was regarded as rude to turn a loaf in the presence of a Monteith, because that was the signal for the admission of the soldiers who seized Wallace; and there can be little doubt that this constant recollection was well deserved, since assuredly it was the spirit of resistance maintained by Wallace, though unsuccessful, that lived to flourish again after his death.
He was one of those men whose self-devotion bears visible fruits.
Unlike the former Plantagenets, Edward I. was a thorough Englishman; his schemes, both for good and evil, were entirely insular; and as he became more engrossed in the Scottish war, he almost neglected his relations with the Continent.
One of the most wily and unscrupulous men who ever wore a crown was seated on the throne of France—the fair-faced and false-hearted Philippe IV., the “pest of France,” the oppressor of the Church, and the murderer of the Templars; and eagerly did he watch to take any advantage of the needs of his mighty vassal in Aquitaine.
Edward had made alliances to strengthen himself. He had married his daughter Eleanor to the Count of Bar, and Margaret to the heir of Brabant, and betrothed his son Edward to the only daughter of Guy Dampierre, Count of Flanders, thus hoping to restrain Philippe without breaking the peace.
Unluckily, in 1294, a sailors’ quarrel took place between the crews of an English and a Norman ship upon the French coast. They had both landed to replenish their stock of water, and disputed which had the right first to fill their casks. In the fray, a Norman was killed, and his shipmates, escaping, took their revenge by boarding another English vessel, and hanging a poor, innocent Bayonne merchant from the masthead, with a dog fastened to his feet. Retaliation followed upon revenge; and while the two kings professed to be at peace, every ship from their ports went armed, and fierce struggles took place wherever there was an encounter. Slaughter and plunder fell upon the defeated, for the sailors were little better than savage pirates, and were unrestrained by authority. Edward, who had a right to a share in all captures made by his subjects, refused to accept of any portion of these, though he did not put a stop to them. The Irish and Dutch vessels took part with the English, the Genoese with the French. At last, upward of two hundred French ships met at St. Mahé in Brittany, and their crews rejoiced over the captures which they had obtained, and held a great carousal. Eighty well-manned English vessels had, however, sailed from the Cinque Ports, and, surrounding St. Mahé, sent a challenge to their enemies. It was accepted; a ship was moored in the midst, as a point round which the two fleets might assemble, and a hot contest took place, fiercely fought upon either side; but English seamanship prevailed over superior numbers, every French ship was sunk or taken, and, horrible to relate, not one of their crews was spared.
Such destruction provoked Philippe, and he summoned Edward, as Duke of Aquitaine, to deliver up to him such Gascons as had taken part in the battle. This Edward neglected, whereupon Philippe sent to seize the lands of Perigord, and, on being repulsed by the seneschal, called on Edward to appear at his court within twenty days, to answer for his misdeeds, on pain of forfeiting the province of Gascony. Edward sent first the Bishop of London, and afterward his brother Edmund Crouchback, to represent him. Edmund’s second wife was the mother of Philippe’s queen, and it was therefore expected that he would the more easily come to terms, especially as he was commissioned to offer the hand of his royal brother to Blanche, the sister of Philippe, a maiden who inherited the unusual beauty of her family. Apparently all was easily arranged: Philippe promised Edmund that if, as a matter of form, Gascony were put into his hands by way of forfeit, it should be restored at the end of forty days on the intercession of the two ladies, and Blanche should be betrothed to the King.
All was thus arranged. But at the end of the forty days it proved that what Philippe had once grasped he had no notion of releasing; and, moreover, that Blanche la Belle was promised to Albert of Hapsburg! If Edward chose to marry any French princess at all, he was welcome to her little sister Marguerite, a child of eleven, while Edward was fifty-five. The excuse offered was, that Edward, had not obeyed the summons in person, and that another outrage had been perpetrated on the coast. After another summons, he was adjudged to lose not only Gascony, but all Aquitaine.
On discovering how he had been duped, Edward’s first impulse was to send out his writs to collect his vassals to recover Gascony, chastise the insolent ill faith of Philippe, and to stir up his foreign connections to support him. He collected his troops at Portsmouth, hoping to augment his army by a general release of prisoners, Scottish, Welsh, and malefactors alike; but while he was detained seven weeks by contrary winds, all these men, after taking his pay, made their escape, and either returned to their countries, or marauded in the woods. A great insurrection broke out in Wales, and he was forced to hasten thither, and from thence was called away to quell the rising of the Scottish barons against Balliol.
Meanwhile, it fared ill with his foreign allies. The Duke of Brabant, father-in-law to his daughter Margaret, was killed in a tournament at the court of her sister Eleanor; and when Eleanor’s husband, Henri of Bar, took up arms in the English cause, and marched into Champagne, he was defeated, and made prisoner by the Queen of France. The poor old Count of Flanders and his Countess were invited to Paris by Philippe, who insisted that they should bring his godchild and namesake, the betrothed of young Edward, to visit him. When they arrived, they were all thrown into the prison of the Louvre, on the plea that Guy had no right to bestow his daughter in marriage without permission from his suzerain.
Edward’s head was so full of Scotland, that he was shamefully indifferent to the sufferings of his friends in his behalf. Poor Eleanor of Bar, after striving hard to gain her husband’s freedom, died of grief, after a few months; and Guy of Flanders contrived to obtain his own release by promising to renounce the English alliance; but Philippe would not set free the poor young Philippa, whom he kept in his hands as a hostage.
One cause of the King’s neglect was his great distress for money. He had learnt to have recourse to his father’s disgraceful plea of a sham Crusade, and thus, for six years, gained a tenth of the Church revenues; but in 1294, requiring a further supply, he made a demand of half the year’s income of the clergy. The new Archbishop, Robert Winchelsea, was gone to Rome to receive his pall; the Dean of St. Paul’s, who was sent to remonstrate with the King, died suddenly in his presence; but Edward was not touched, and sent a knight to address the assembled clergy, telling them that any reverend father who dared to oppose the royal will would be considered to have broken the King’s peace. In terror they yielded for that time; but they sent a petition to the Pope, who, in return, granted a bull forbidding any subsidies to be paid by church lands to the King without his permission.
Little did Edward reck of this decree. He knew that Boniface VIII. had his hands full of his quarrels with the Romans and with Philippe le Bel, and his own ambition was fast searing the conscience once so generous and tender. Again he convened the clergy to grant his exactions, but Archbishop Winchelsea replied that they had two lords, spiritual and temporal; they owed the superior obedience to the spiritual lord, and would therefore grant nothing till the Pope should have ratified the demand; for which purpose they would send messengers to Rome.
The lay barons backed Edward in making a declaration of outlawry against the clergy, and seizing all the ecclesiastical property, both lands and treasures, except what was within churches or burying-grounds, declaring that, if not redeemed by submission before Easter, all should be forfeited forever. The Archbishop of York came to terms; but the Archbishop of Canterbury held out, and was deprived of everything, retiring to a country village, where he acted as parish priest, and lived upon the alms of the parishioners. He held a synod, where excommunication was denounced on those who seized church property; but the censures of the Church had lost their terrors, and the clergy gradually made their peace with the King, Winchelsea himself among the last.
The laity had looked on quietly at the oppression of the clergy, and indeed had borne their share of exactions; but these came at last to a point beyond endurance, and Edward’s need, and their obstinate resistance, led to another step in the formation of our constitution.
In 1297 he made a new alliance with Guy of Flanders, and was fitting out three armies, against Scotland, Guienne, and Flanders. To raise the means, he exacted five marks as a duty on each sack of wool exported to Flanders, and made ruinous requisitions for wheat on the landowners. Merchants and burghers, barons and clergy, took counsel together, and finding each other all of one mind, resolved to make a stand against this tax on wool, which was called the “Evil Toll,” and to establish what Magna Carta had already declared, that the nation would not be taxed against its own consent.
The King’s brother, Edmund of Lancaster, had lately died while commanding in Guienne, and Edward, meeting his vassals at Salisbury, gave the command of the army, thus left without a head, to Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk—the one Constable, the other Marshal of England. To his great wrath, they answered that their offices only bound them to attend the King’s person in war, and that they would not go. Edward swore a fierce oath that they should either go, or hang. Bigod coolly repeated the same oath, that he would neither go nor hang, and back to their own estates they went, and after them thirty bannerets, and 1,500 knights, who, by main force, hindered the King’s officers from making any further levies on their barns and storehouses.
Nothing was left Edward, but to speak them fair. He summoned his vassals to meet him in London, reconciled himself to Archbishop Winchelsea, and on the 14th of July, 1297, when all were assembled at Westminster, he stood forth on a platform, attended by his son, the Primate, and the Earl of Warwick, and harangued the people. He told them that he grieved at the burthens which he was forced to impose on them, but it was for their defence; for that the Scots, Welsh, and French thirsted for their blood, and it was better to lose a part, than the whole. “I am going to risk my life for your sake,” he said. “If I return, receive me; and I will make you amends. If I fall, here is my son: he will reward you, if faithful.”
His voice was broken by tears; and his people, remembering what he once had been rather than what he was now, broke into loud shouts of loyal affection. He appointed his son as regent, and set out for Flanders, but not in time to prevent poor Guy from again falling into captivity, and pursued by requisitions, to which he promised to attend on his return. All the nobles who held with him accompanied him, and Bohun and Bigod were left to act in their own way.
They rode to London with a large train, lodged complaints of the illegal exaction before the Exchequer, and then, going to the Guildhall, worked up the citizens to be ready to assert their rights, and compel the King to revoke the evil toll, and to observe the charter. They had scrupulously kept within the law, and, though accompanied by so many armed followers, neither murder nor pillage was permitted; and thus they obtained the sympathies of the whole country.
Young Edward of Caernarvon was but thirteen, and could only submit; and a Parliament was convoked by his authority, when the present taxes were repealed, the important clause was added to the Great Charter which declared that no talliage or aid should thenceforth be levied without the consent of the bishops, peers, burgesses, and freemen of the realm, nor should any goods be taken for the King without consent of the owners.
Further, it was enacted that Magna Charta should be rehearsed twice a year in all the cathedrals, with a sentence of excommunication on all who should infringe it. The Archbishop enforced this order strictly, adding another sentence of excommunication to be rehearsed in each church on every Sunday against any who should beat or imprison clergymen, desiring it to be done with tolling of bell and putting out of candle, because these solemnities had the greater effect on the laity. This statute is a sad proof how much too cheaply sacred things were held, and how habit was leading even the clergy to debase them by over-frequent and frivolous use of the most awful emblems.
Young Edward and his council signed the acts, and they were sent to the King for ratification, with a promise that his barons would thereupon join him in Flanders, or march to Scotland, at his pleasure. He was three days in coming to his resolution, but finally agreed, though it was suspected that he might set aside his signature as invalid, because made in a foreign country.
Wallace’s proceedings in Scotland made Edward anxious to hasten thither and rid himself of the French war. He therefore accepted the mediation of Boniface VIII., and consented to sacrifice his unfortunate ally, Guy of Flanders, whom he left in his captivity, as well as his poor young daughter. Both died in the prison to which the daughter had been consigned at twelve years old. The Prince of Wales, for whose sake her bloom wasted in prison, was contracted to Isabelle, the daughter of her persecutor, Philippe le Bel; and old King Edward himself received the hand of the Princess Marguerite, now about seventeen, fair and good. Aquitaine was restored, though not Gascony; but Edward only wanted to be free, that he might hasten to Scotland. And, curiously enough, the outlaw Wallace, whatever he did for his own land, unconsciously fought the battles of his foes, the English nation; for it was his resistance that weakened Edward’s power, and made necessity extort compliance with the demands of the Barons.
At York, Bigod and Bohun claimed a formal ratification of the charter of Westminster. He put them off by pleading the urgency of affairs in Scotland, and hastened on; but when he returned, in 1299, the staunch Barons again beset him, and he confirmed the charter, but added the phrase, “Saving the rights of the Crown,” which annulled the whole force of the decree. The two barons instantly went off in high displeasure, with a large number of their friends; and Edward, to try the temper of the people, ordered the charter to be rehearsed at St. Paul’s Cross; but when the rights of the Crown were mentioned, such a storm of hootings and curses arose, that Edward, taught by the storms of his youth not to push matters to extremity, summoned a new parliament, and granted the right of his subjects to tax themselves.
This right has often since been proved to be the main strength of the Parliament, by preventing the King from acting against their opinion, and by rendering it the interest of all classes of men to attend to the proceedings of the sovereign: it has not only kept kings in check, but it has saved the nobles and commonalty from sinking into that indifference to public affairs which has been the bane of foreign nations. For, unfortunately, the mass of men are more easily kept on the alert when wealth is affected, than by any deeper or higher consideration.
When we yearly hear of Parliament granting the supplies ere the close of the session, they are exercising the right first claimed at Runnymede, striven for by Simon de Montfort, and won by Humphrey Bohun, who succeeded through the careful self-command and forbearance which hindered him from ever putting his party in the wrong by violence or transgression of the laws. He should be honored as a steadfast bulwark to the freedom of his country, teaching the might of steady resolution, even against the boldest and ablest of all our kings. In spite of rough words, Edward and Bohun respected each other, and the heir of Hereford, likewise named Humphrey, married Elizabeth, the youngest surviving daughter left by good Queen Eleanor. Another of Edward’s daughters had been married to an English earl. Joan of Acre, the high-spirited, wilful girl, who was born in the last Crusade, had been given as a wife to her father’s stout old comrade, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. He died when she was only twenty-three, and before the end of a year she secretly married her squire, Ralph de Monthermer, and her father only discovered the union when he had promised her to the Count of Savoy. Monthermer was imprisoned; but Edward, always a fond father, listened to Joan’s pleading, that, as an Earl could ennoble a woman of mean birth, it was hard that she might not raise a gallant youth to rank. Ralph was released, and bore for the rest of his life the title of Earl of Gloucester, which properly belonged only to Joan’s young son, Gilbert. Joan was a pleasure-loving lady, expensive in her habits, and neglectful of her children; but her father’s indulgence for her never failed: he lent her money, pardoned her faults, and took on himself the education of her son Gilbert, who was the companion of his own two young sons by his second marriage, Thomas of Brotherton and Edmund of Woodstock.
Their mother, Margaret of France, was a fair and gentle lady, who lived on the best terms with her stepdaughters, many of whom were her elders; and she followed the King on his campaigns, as her predecessor Eleanor had done. Mary, the princess who had taken the veil, was almost always with her, and contrived to spend a far larger income than any of her sisters, though without the same excuse of royal apparel; but she was luxurious in diet, fond of pomp and display; never moving without twenty-four horses, and so devoted to amusement that she lost large sums at dice. She must have been an unedifying abbess at Ambresbury, though not devoid of kindness of heart.
Archbishop Winchelsea held a synod at Mertoun in 1305, where various decrees were made respecting the books and furniture which each parish was bound to provide for the Divine service. The books were to be “a legend” containing the lessons for reading, with others containing the Psalms and Services. The vestments were “two copes, a chasuble, a dalmatic, three surplices, and a frontal for the altar.” And, besides these, a chalice of silver, a pyx of ivory or silver, a censer, two crosses, a font with lock and key, a vessel for holy water, a great candlestick, and a lantern and bell, which were carried before the Host when taken to the dying, a board with a picture to receive the kiss of peace, and all the images of the Church. The nave, then as now, was the charge of the parish; the chancel, of the rector.
This synod was Archbishop Winchelsea’s last act before the King took vengeance on him for his past resistance. His friend and supporter, Boniface VIII., was dead, harassed to death by the persecutions of Philippe IV.; and Clement V., the new Pope, was a miserable time-server, raised to the papal chair by the machinations of the French King, and ready to serve as the tool of any injustice.
Edward disliked the Archbishop for having withstood him in the matter of the tithe, as well as for having cited him in the name of the Pope to leave Scotland in peace. The King now induced Clement to summon him to answer for insubordination. Winchelsea was very unwilling to go to Rome; but Edward seized his temporalities, banished eighty monks for giving him support, and finally exiled him. He died in indigence at Rome.
He was a prelate of the same busy class as Langton, not fulfilling the highest standard of his sacred office, but spirited, uncompromising, and an ardent though unsuccessful champion of the rights of the nation.
If Langton be honored for his part in Magna Charta, Winchelsea merits a place by his side, for it was the resistance of his party to the “Evil Toll” that placed taxation in the power of the English nation, and in the wondrous ways of Providence caused the Scottish and French wars to work for the good of our constitution.