The History of England / From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)

y a head and shoulders. His abundant hair was yellow in childhood, black in manhood, and snowy white in age. His brow was broad, and his features regular, save that his left

injuries, and reckless of dangers when seeking revenge, though easily won over by a humble submission."[1] The defects of his youth are well brought out by the radical friar who wrote the Song of Lewes. Even to the partisan of Earl Simon, Edward was "a valiant lion, quick to attack the strongest, and fearing the onslaught of none. But if a lion in pride and fierceness, he was a panther in inconstancy and mutability, changing his word a

als, pp

wes, pp. 14-15

gard to his plighted word. "Keep troth" was inscribed upon his tomb, and his reign signally falsified the prediction of evil which the Lewes song-writer ventured to utter. A true sympathy bound him closely to his nobles and people. His unstained family life, his piety and religious zeal, his devotion to friends and kinsfolk, his keen interest in the best movements of his time, showed him a true son o

to appropriate what was best in the age that had gone before, and to combine it in orderly sequence. The same ideals mark the constitutional policy of his later years. The materials for the future constitution of England were already at his hand. It was a task well within Edward's capacity to strengthen the authority of the crown by associating the loyal nobles and clergy in the work of ruling the state, and to build up a body politic in which every class of the nation should have its part. Yet he never willingly surrendered the most insignificant of his prerogatives, and if he took the people into partnership with him, he did so with the firm belief that he would be a more powerful king if his s

check the French king, and to establish a sort of European balance of power, of which England, as in Wolsey's later dreams, was to be the tongue of the balance. Yet, despite his severe schooling in self-control, he undertook more than he could accomplish, and his failure was the more signal because he found the utmost difficulty in discovering trustworthy subordinates. Moreover, the limited resources of a medieval state, and the even more limit

of the realm his two colleagues in the management of the new king's private affairs. Early in 1273 a parliament of magnates and representatives of shires and boroughs took oaths of allegiance to the king and continued the authority of the three regents. By the double title of Edward's personal delegation and the recognition of the estates, Giffard, Mortimer, and Burnell ruled the country for the two years which were to elapse before the sovereign's return. Their government was just, economical, and peaceful. Even Gilbert of Gloucest

and pope alike Edward earnestly sought vengeance for the murder of Henry of Almaine. Proceeding northwards, he was received with great pomp by the cities of Lombardy, and made personal acquaintance with Savoy and its count, Philip, his aged great-uncle. Crossing the Mont Cenis, he was welcomed by bands of English magnates who had gone forth to meet him. He was soon at the head of a little army, and in

prics of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux, which St. Louis had ceded. New complications arose after the death of Alfonse of Poitiers in the course of the Tunisian crusade. By the treaty of Paris the English king should then have entered into possession of Saintonge south of the Charente, the Agenais, and lower Quercy. But the ministers of Philip III. laid hands upon the whole of Alfonse's inheritance and refused to surrender these districts to the English. The welcome which Edward received from his cousin at Paris could not blind him to the incompatibility of their interests, nor to the impossibility of obtaining at the moment the cession of the promised lands. He did not choose to tarry at Paris while the diplomatists unravelled the tan

et canis," Chron. Limov., in Recue

nd Gavrilovitch's Le Traité de Paris, give the best modern

to quarrel openly with the French court, granted a truce. The suit of Gaston long occupied the parliament of Paris, but the good-will of the French lawyers could not palliate the wanton violence of the Viscount of Béarn. The French, like the English, were sticklers for formal right, and were unwilling to push matters to extremities. Edward had the reward of his forbearance, for Philip advised Gaston to go to England and make his submission. Gratified by his restoration to Béarn in 1279, Gaston remained faithful for the next few years. Edward was less successful in dealing with Limoges. There had been for many years a struggle between the commune of the castle, or bourg, of Limoges and Margaret the viscountess. It was to no purpose that the townsfolk had invoked the treaty of Paris, whereby, as they maintained, the French king transferred to the King of England his ancient jurisdiction over them. They were answered by a decree of the parliament of Paris that the homage of the commune of Limoges belonged not to the crown but to the viscountess, and that therefore t

him the grievous results of the long disputes with Flanders, which had broken off the commercial relations between the two countries, and had inflicted serious losses on English trade. Edward strove to bring the Flemings to their senses by prohibiting the export of wool from England to the weaving towns of Flanders. The looms of Ghent and Bruges were stopped by reason of the withholding of the raw material, and the distress of his subjects made Count Guy of Flanders anxious to end so costly a quarrel. On July 28 Edward met Guy at Montreuil and signed a treaty which re-establ

tendom would enable the King of France to "collect chivalry from all the world" and institute the crusade which both Gregory X. and Edward so ardently desired. But the most zealous enthusiast for the holy war could hardly be deceived by the false zeal with which the Angevin cloaked his overweening ambition. It was a veritable triumph for Edward, when Gregory X., though attracted for a moment by the prospect of a strong emperor capable of landing a crusade, accepted the cho

the more inasmuch as he was depriving her of all influence over her son, King Philip. It was easy in such circumstances for the two widowed queens of France and England to form grandiose schemes for ousting Charles from Provence. Rudolf lent himself to their plans by investing Margaret with the county. Edward's filial piety and political interests made him a willing partner in these designs. In 1278 he betrothed his daughter Joan of Acre to Hartman

enne (1891) gives the best modern account

hey suffered Blanche to rule in Champagne in her daughter's name, and Edmund was associated with her in the government of that county. The tenure of a great French fief by the brother of the English king was a fresh security against the aggressions of the kings of France and Sicily. It probably facilitated the conclusion of the long negotiations as to the interpretation of the treaty of Paris, and the partition of the inheritance of Alfonse of Poitiers. Edward's position against France was further strengthened in 1279 by the death of his wife's mother, Joan of Castile, the widow of Ferdinand the Saint and the stepmother of Alfonso the Wise, whereupon he took possession of Ponthieu in Eleanor's name. Scarcely had he established himself

garet of Provence against the Angevins. In 1281 Margaret's intrigues formed a combination of feudal magnates called the League of Macon, with the object of prosecuting her claims over Provence by force of arms. Edward and his mother, Eleanor, his Savoyard kinsfolk, and Edmund of Lancaster all entered into the league. But it was hopeless for a disorderly crowd of lesser chieftains, with the nominal support of a distant prince like Edward, to conquer Provence in the teeth of the hostility of the strongest and the ablest princes of the age. The League of Macon came to nothing, like so many other ambitious combinations of a time in which men's capacity to form plans

lted islanders chose Peter, King of Aragon, as their sovereign, Charles, seeking to divert him from Sicily by attacking him at home, inspi

once withdrew from the undertaking. In the year of the crusade of Aragon, Charles of Anjou, Peter of Aragon, and Martin IV. died. With them the struggles, which had begun with the attack on Frederick II, reached their culminating point. Their successors continued the quarrel with diminished forces and less frantic zeal, and so gave Edward his best chance to pose as the arbiter of Europe. Though Edward's continental policy lay so near his heart that it can hardly be p

of Bath and Wells. For the eighteen years of life which still remained to him, Bishop Burnell held the chancery and possessed the chief place in Edward's counsels. The whole of this period was marked by a constant legislative activity which ceased so soon after Burnell's death that it is tempting to assign at least as large a part of the law-making of the reign to the minister as to the

t made Edward a permanent grant of a custom on wool, wool-fells, and leather, which remained henceforth a chief source of the regular income of the crown. The later imposition of further duties soon caused men to describe the customs of 1275 as the "Great and Ancient Custom". It was significant of the economic condition of England that the great custom was a tax on exports, not imports, and that, with the exception of leather, it was a tax on raw materials. Granted the more willingly since the

ubles of Edward's youth had made clear to him the obstacles thrown in the path of orderly government by the great territorial franchises. He had been forced to modify his policy to gratify the lord of Glamorgan, and win over the house of Mortimer by the erection of a new franchise that was a palatinate in all but name. But such great "regalities" were, after all, exceptional. Much more irritating to an orderly mind were the innumerable petty immunities which made half

of similar immunities, Pollock and Maitl

d have destroyed more than half the existing liberties. But aristocratic opinion deserted Edward when he strove to carry out so violent a revolution. The irritation of the whole baronage is well expressed in the story of how Earl Warenne, unsheathing a rusty sword, declared to the commissioners: "Here is my warrant. My ancestors won their lands with the sword. With my sword I will defend them against all usurpers." Nor was this mere boasting. The return of the king's officers tells us that Warenne would not say of whom, or by what services, he held his Yorkshire stronghold of Conisborough, and that his bailiffs refused them entrance into his liberties and would not suffer his tenants to answer or appear before them.[1] Edward found it prudent not to press his claims. He disturbed few men in their franchises,

r Yorkshire, pp. 3, 2

s were incapable of solution on medieval lines. Edward saw that the most practical way of dealing with clerical claims was for him to stand in good personal relations to the chief dispensers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. With a pope like Gregory X. it was easy for Edward to be on friendly terms; but it was more difficult to feel any cordiality for the dogmatic canonists or the furious Guelfic partisans who too often occupied the chair of St. Peter. Yet Edward was shrewd enough to see that it was worth while making sacrific

by from England and to send a more active man in his place. Edward's indiscreet devotion to Bishop Burnell led him again to press his friend's claims, but, though he persuaded the monks of Christ Church to elect him, Nicholas III. quashed the appointment, and selected the Franciscan friar, John Peckham, as archbishop. Peckham, a famous theologian and physicist, had been a distinguished professor at Paris, Oxford, and Rome. He was high-minded, honourable and zealous, a saint as well as a scholar, an enthusiast for Church reform and a vigorous upholder of the extremest hierarchical pretensions. Fussy, energetic, tactless, he was the true type of the academic ecclesiastic, and alike in his personal qualiti

aw all grants of land to ecclesiastical corporations were expressly prohibited, under the penalty of the land being forfeited to its supreme lord. The statute was not a mere political weapon of the moment. It had a wider importance as a step in the development of Edward's anti-feudal policy, and may be regarded as a counterpart of the inquest into franchises, and as a means of protecting the State as well as of disciplining the Church. A corporation never died, and never paid reliefs or wardships. Its property never escheated for want of heirs, and, as scutages were passing out of fashion, ecclesiastics were less valuable to the king in times of war than lay lords. The recent exigenc

antage still further by the royal ordinance of 1285, called Circumspecte agatis, which, though accepting the supremacy of the Church courts within their own sphere, narrowly defined the limits of their power in matters involving a temporal element. Again Peckham was fain to acquiesce. His policy had not only irritated the king, but alienated his fellow bishops. He visited his province with pertinacity and minuteness, and he was the less able to stand up against the king as he was engaged in violent quarrels with all his own suffragans. The leader of the bishops in resisting his claims was Thomas of Cantilupe. Restored to England by the liberal policy of Edward, Montfort's chancellor after

rinted in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, Oct. 1,

merchants' debts, and the statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 for the regulation of the king's exchequer. The king's full activity as a lawgiver was renewed after the settlement of his conquest by the statute of Wales of 1284, and the legislation of his early years c

n estate, granted upon conditions, were not to be barred on account of the alienation of such an estate by its previous tenant. Thus arose those estates for life, which in later ages became a special feature of the English land system, and which, by restricting the control of the actual possessor of a property over his land, did much to perpetuate the worst features of medieval land-holding. It is a modern error to regard the legitimation of estates in tail as a triumph of reactionary feudalism over the will of Edward. Apart from the fact that there is not a tittle of contemporary evidence to justify such a view, it is manifest that the interest of the king was in this case exactly the same as that of ea

al courts; reformed the ancient system of watch and ward, and brought the ancient system of popular courts into harmony with the jurisdiction emanating from the crown, which h