Edward the First

Chapter I Page

CHAPTEK 11 Edward and the Barons' Wars — 1258-1267 . . 26

CHAPTER HI Edward as a Crusader — 1268-1272 ... 45

CHAPTER IV

The King and his Work 58

CHAPTER V

Edward's Continental Policy — 1272-1289 . . 86

CHAPTER VI

The Conquest and Settlement of the Principality

VI EDWARD I

CHAPTER VII

PAOG

Edward's Legislation — 1275-1290 , . ,120

CHAPTER VIII

Edward and the Three Estates — The Development OP THE Parliamentary System . , 135

CHAPTER IX

Edward and the Church — 1272-1294 . . .149

CHAPTER X

The Scottish OvERLORDSHip — 1286-1292 . .164

CHAPTER XI

The Years OP Crisis — 1293-1297 . . .179

CHAPTER XII

The Conquest op Scotland — 1297-1305 . .199

CHAPTER Xni The End of the Reign — 1305-1307 . . . 219

INDEX 231

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS

1239-1258

Edward I. was born at Westminster on 17th June 1239. He was the first offspring of the marriage of Henry HI. with Eleanor of Provence. Henry had long held in special reverence King Edward the Confessor, whose pious, weak, but amiable character in some ways is suggestive of his own. He therefore at once bade the child be called EdAvard, in memory of the holy king whose ashes reposed in the neighbouring abbey of St. Peter's. A papal legate performed the baptismal ceremony, and among the sponsors was the great Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, newly reconciled to his royal brother-in-law after his audacious marriage with the widowed Countess Eleanor of Pembroke, King Henry's sister. Exceptional rejoicings attended the birth of the heir to the crown, for many feared that the young Queen was barren, and all were glad that a man-child, born on English soil and bearing an English name, had come into the world to settle the question of the succession to the throne. Significantly passing over the long line of foreign rulers who had borne sway in PiUgland since the & B

Norman Conquest, an English chronicler gleefully traced back young Edward's genealogy to Alfred, the greatest of the old English kings. The laws of the good King Edward, after whom the child had been named, had been the rallying cry of more than one generation of oppressed and down-trodden Englishmen. It was hoped that a new King Edward might renew the golden age of the holy Confessor. Groaning under weak and irresolute rule, wounded in all their dearest national aspirations. Englishmen looked forward from the dull present to the possibilities of a happier and brighter future. Nor were such hopes doomed to the disappointment which so commonly waits upon those who reckon upon the goodwill of princes. The son of the weak Henry and the greedy and unpopular Eleanor was destined to become the greatest of English monarchs.

Henry HI. in many ways reminds us of Charles 1. There is in both kings the same strict religious principle, the same high standard of private life, the same strong and pure domestic affections, the same intelligent, artistic temperament, the same graciousness, refinement, and love of culture. But a complete paralysis of will, an litter absence of straightforwardness, manliness, resolution, and clearness of vision, made Henry even more unfitted than Charles to act as ruler of England. Like Charles, Henry could never see that the times were changing. He held ideas of his own rights that the sons of the men who had wrested the Great Charter from King John could never allow to pass unquestioned. But it was not tlie policy so much as the want of policy of Henry that gave his subjects most offence. Thirteenth -century England had no objection to a strong king, who, clearly grasping the identity of interest between himself and his people, strove with might and main to grapple with anarchy and lawlessness, and drive the people into the ways of sound rule and good order. Henry III. was too feeble, too frivolous, too idle, to be such a king. Moreover, he was jealous and suspicious of all able men. He was afraid to allow his ministers to exercise the powers that he was too weak to use himself. He strove to rule personally through clerks, dependents, and foreign favourites. The result was an almost complete collapse of all sound rule. While the material and spiritual activities of the nation were alike rapidly expanding, the strong centralised government which Henry II. had handed down to his sons was smitten with palsy. The begging friars were working out a great religious revival. The young enthusiasm of the Oxford masters had made England the home of an intellectual activity that could only be paralleled in the great University of Paris. Roger Bacon was preparing the way for English medicine and science. ' Vast and noble minsters in the new Pointed style were arising throughout the land, and proclaiming the culmination of mediaeval art. The English tongue was again becoming a vehicle for original literature, while in the learned Latin and the noble French a vigorous and abundant crop of great M^orks Avere written by Englishmen. Englishmen were again conscious of national life and national unity. But with the weak Henry on the throne political progress that should match the rapid movement of the greatest and most constructive period of the I^Iiddle Ages could only be obtained throu2;h revolution.

Henry III. was himself in full sympathy with at least the religious and artistic movements of his time. His love of English saints, his anxiety to uphold English power abroad, shows that he was no mere foreigner, as has so often been said. But his wife and his mother, a Provencal and a Poitevin, exercised an unhappy influence upon him. The Provencal and Savoyard uncles of his wife, his Poitevin half-brothers by his mother's second marriage, claimed the chief places in his court and councils, and aspired to the greatest offices, estates, and dignities in the land. Henry's superstitious fear of papal authority, combined with a shrewd sense of the temporal benefits to be got from close friendship with the spiritual head of the Church, exposed England to the invasion of a swarm of greedy foreign ecclesiastics. The very good points of Henry told against his popularity as a king. His appreciation of the great position of the Roman Church, his sympathy for the great wave of religion and culture which radiated from the France of St. Louis, and exercised an influence over western Europe only second to that exercised by the France of Rousseau and Voltaire, led Henry to a love of foreign manners and methods that became increasingly repugnant to his nobles. The l)arons of England might talk French at home, and vie with Henry in their love of French Avays, but French-speaking Englishmen of the thirteenth century were no more good Frenchmen in the political sense than the French-speaking Vaudois or Genevese of to-day. Since the loss of Normandy under John, most of the English barons had become sound Englisli patriots and enemies of French political influence, however fully they shared in the international civilisation of the French-speaking world.

Queen Eleanor of Provence exercised over Henry III. the same fatal influence that Henrietta Maria wielded over Charles I. She was indeed a stronger and less frivolous character than her antitype. She inherited the subtle will and the bright poetic nature of her father, Raymond Berenger IV., the last Count of Provence of the native line, and himself not the meanest of the poets in the soft and melodious Proven9al tongue. From her mother, Beatrice of Savoy, came the harder, clearer, more grasping temperament which was already a characteristic of the rising house of Savoy. She Avas one of four fair sisters, who all in their turn became queens.

Eleanor's elder sister Margaret was the wife of Louis IX., better known as St. Louis, then at the height of his power, and the strongest king who had ever as yet reigned in France. Her next sister, Sanchia, married Henry III.'s only brother. Earl Richard of CornAvall ; while her youngest sister took the rich inheritance of Provence to her husband, Charles of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX. and the future conqueror of Sicily. But despite her French connections by marriage, Eleanor cannot herself be described as French in any strict sense of the Avord. Her family had long headed the unavailing struggle against the extension of North French influence into Languedoc and Provence. But a foreign girl from the south who never understood the ways and manners of Englishmen, and was, moreover, proud, greedy.

extravagant, and overbearing, could not but exercise an evil influence over her weak, irresolute, and uxorious husband.

With all their faults, Henry and Eleanor were devoted to each other, and set an example of family life that was rare in those days of brutality and violence. They showed no less devotion to their children, and all through his life Edward was bound by the strongest ties of duty and aff"ection to his kindly, affectionate, and loving father, and his proud, high-spirited, and passionate mother. Henry and Eleanor kept their son more about them than was usual in the foraial households of the time. Up to the age of seven Edward was mainly brought up at Windsor under the care of Hugh Giffard. He seems to have been delicate, and to have suffered some severe illnesses. AVhen he was seven he fell sick at Beaulieu Abbey, whither he had been taken by his mother to be present at the dedication of the church. For three weeks he lay in danger, and his mother, to the scandal of the strict Cistercians, insisted on staying in the convent that she might nurse him. A year later Edward was dangerously ill in London, and, at the King's request, prayers were offered up for his recovery in all the monasteries in and near the city. But as he grew older Edward got over his childish weakness. He became a tall, active, handsome boy, with bright flaxen locks, and proud, rather domineering manners. Nor was his education neglected. French, Latin, and English he could understand with equal facility, and, despite a stammer, he became ultimately an eloquent speaker in at least French and English. There is little evidence of his literary attainments and scanty proof

1 EARLY YEARS 7

of any love of books. Probably he was all through his life fonder of action than of speculation. But he certainly must have gone through that elaborate drilling in the routine of business which he afterAvards strove in vain to enforce on his unhappy son. We are still more certain that he went through a careful legal training, perhaps under the guidance of the chancery clerk, Robert Burnell, who became his chaplain and confidential servant and to whom he Avas ever warmly attached. His father's real religious feeling ensured for Edward a strict religious education. The home lessons of purity and piety took a deep root, and all through his life Edward was honourably distinguished by the uprightness of his private life and the strength and fervour of his religious principles. Nor were the martial exercises which became a prince neglected. From an early age EdAvard became famous throughout Christendom as the bravest and most dexterous of warriors. He gained many notable successes in tournaments against some of the doughtiest champions of the day. He was ecpially expert in hawking and hunting, a fearless and dexterous horseman, and a proficient in all martial and manly sports, especially those that had in them a spice of danger. Among his most ordinary companions Avere his cousin, Henry of Alraaine, the son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was soon to become the titular king of the Romans, and his other cousins, the four young jNIontforts, of Avhom the eldest, Henry de Montfort, Avas nearly his oaa'u age.

The Montforts AA'ere fierce, violent, brutal youths, and marked out for stormy and ill-fated careers. Not less violent were EdAA'ard's }'Oung Poitevin uncles, the Lusignans, the ofFspring of his father's mother, Isabella of Angouleme, by her second marriage with the Count of La Marche, and who came, like the Savoyard kinsfolk of Henry's wife, to share the bounty of their half-brother the King. Edward himself was not unmarked by the same taint in early manhood. After he had been given a household of his own, the violence and brutality of his followers involved their master in an unpopularity which was not quite undeserved. With lordly good nature, Edward bestowed his confidence on ruffianly officials, who oppressed and robbed his tenants in his name. Nor were his own acts blameless. Strange tales were told of the lawless deeds wrought by the heir to the throne out of mere love of mischief or wanton cruelty. The progresses of the Lord Edward with his band of 200 horsemen, mostly foreigners, were like the movements of a desolating plague. Not even Louis of France, the invader of England in King Henry's youth, had taken about with him such a band of ruffians and desperadoes. No common man had any rights that such high-spirited gentlemen could regard as sacred. They stole the horses, the waggons, and the provisions that came nearest to their hands. Even monks were spoiled and maltreated by these reckless youths. One day, when Edward paid a visit to his uncle Richard at Wallingford, his followers took violent possession of the neighbouring priory, and, driving out and insulting the lawful owners, stole their food, destroyed their property, and beat their servants. On another occasion Edward was passing along a road, and, out of mere wantonness, ordered his followers to cut off an ear and pluck out an eye of a harndcss youth who had hajjpened to cross his path. The r EARLY YEARS 9

most gloomy forebodings were expressed as to what would happen under so headstrong and reckless a ruler. But if courtly complacency is wont to magnify the virtues of young princes, common gossip is at least as apt to exaggerate their vices. Regard for human suffering was a very rare quality in the Middle Ages, at least outside church and cloister. Yet it is hard to believe that Edward was guilty of anything worse than youthful carelessness, and overweening pride in his exalted position. Badly served he may well have been, and all through his life it was among his chiefest misfortunes that the execution of his plans had to be confided to agents quite unworthy to give proper effect to them. But Avith all his love of joustings and hunting, events show that he seldom neglected his serious business.

Men lived short lives in the Middle Ages, and correspondingly began their active career at an exceedingly early age. The mediaeval prince or noble was often a warrior, a practised statesman, a husband and a father when still little more than a mere boy. This was the case with Edward. He was only eight when his father began to think of providing him with a wife. But the negotiations entered upon in 1247 for a marriage between the young Edward and a daughter of the Duke of Brabant led to no result. When Edward Avas about thirteen, fresh marriage negotiations were begun with Alfonso X., King of Castile. This prince was a descendant of Eleanor, daughter of Henry 11, from whose marriage with King Alfonso VIII. of Castile had resulted a long and intimate connection between England -and Castile, which coloured the whole of our foreign policy up to the Reformation. But marriage connections involved not only relations of kinship but unpleasant claims of right. Alfonso X. was the most powerful of the Spanish kings, an able, vigorous, active, and aggressive ruler. The compilation of the code of the Siete Partidas made his reign an epoch in the history of Castile, while his adventurous disposition led him later to accept the doubtful advantage of election to the Holy Roman Empire in rivalry to Edward's uncle. Earl Richard of Cornwall. The same restless and aggressive spirit Alfonso now showed by entertaining the appeals of the rebellious Gascon subjects of the English King, who called upon him to vindicate his claims to the duchy as the heir of Eleanor of Guienne.

It was even believed in England that Alfonso proposed to invade England with an army of Castilians and Saracens. Henry thought it wise to remove the possibilities of a conflict, and restore the old friendly relations with Castile by a proposal to marry Edward to Alfonso's halfsister Eleanor, the daughter of King Ferdinand the Saint by his second wife Joan of Ponthieu, a young girl already reputed to possess great beauty, goodness, and sound sense, and who was, moreover, in right of her mother, heiress of the rich counties of Ponthieu and Montreuil in Western Picardy. That Edward himself might not go landless to the marriage, Henry conferred upon his son such extensive territories that lie became, men said, no better than a mutilated king. In 1 253 Henry sailed to Gascony, hoping to appease some disturbances that were then raging there, and conclude the match. Edward, who was taken to Portsmouth to see his father depart, stood weeping upon the shore as the ship sailed away, and would not leave it as long as a sail could still be seen. Queen Eleanor remained in England to look after her son and the realm. The next year the marriage treaty was signed, and in the early summer of 1254 Edward sailed with his mother and his uncle, Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury, to join his father in Gascony. In August he went to Alfonso's court at Burgos to carry on his suit in person. His mother still accompanied him. Alfonso received them with great pomp and festivity, examined the youth in his skill and knowledge, and conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. In October he was married to Eleanor at the monastery of Las Huelgas, and shortly afterwards returned with his wife to Bordeaux, whence a year later they returned to England. The marriage thus concluded between the royal children proved one of the happiest in English history. Edward and Eleanor rivalled Henry and Eleanor in the warmth of their attachment and the purity of their domestic lives. They were scarcely ever separated, Eleanor making it her pride to share in the toils and dangers of her husband. On her death, after thirty-five years of happy wedlock, Edward experienced the most poignant grief. His whole character changed for the worse after the removal of the faithful partner of his youth and early manhood.

In the thirteenth century a king's son did not form a member of a special royal caste. He had no distinctive title and was brought up very much like any other young man of high birth. The old English word "^theling" had ceased to be used as the appropriate designation of the son of a crowned and anointed king. The vaguer modern word "prince" did not come into use for many centuries later. The eldest son of the

English king had no higher title than the vague appellation of "lord," which he shared with a whole host of feudal chieftains, great and small, with the bishops, abbots, judges, and even the masters and doctors of the universities. To speak of our hero as " Prince Edward " is an anachronism, though sometimes it is a convenient one. Contemporaries were content to call him " the Lord Edward, the first-born son of the King," or, more shortly, " the Lord Edward." It is best to imitate their example. The provision for a mediaeval king's son was not made by grants and pensions from a civil list, but by the conference of large estates and territories, which he was expected to manage as a landlord, if not also to rule as a feudal chieftain. It was only through the successful administration of his domains that he could expect to get an adequate income for himself. The privilege of receiving the revenue of his appanage thus involved the duty of hard Avork in its government. It was, moreover, a very common practice all over Europe to confer upon the youthful heir some outlying and semi-independent portion of the royal dominions that was not strictly a part of the main kingdom, and which gave the young prince a wide and free field to learn how to govern and prepare himself for the larger task of ruling the kingdom itself. A familiar though later example is the gi'ant to the French king's heirs of the outlying district of Daupliiny, whence their well-known title of Daujiliin. In the next century it became the custom in England to confer on the king's eldest son the Principality of Wales.

But long before this had grown into a regular fashion, long before the Principality Avas in the king's hands to bestow, a similar practice had arisen. The lavish grants of territory made, as we have seen, to Edward between 1252 and 1254 had not simply the object of providing him with an adequate revenue to keep his court in due state with his young wife. They were also made with the design of giving him experience as a ruler in those districts of his father's dominions Avhere the most valuable experience could be got. The ample provision made for Edward included indeed certain English cities such as Bristol, Stamford, and Grantham. But these were but an insignificant portion of the whole. The real importance of the grants lies in the gift to Edward of all Ireland, the earldom of Chester, the king's lands in Wales, the islands of Jersey and Guernsey Avith their dependencies, and the whole of Gascony with the island of Oleron, and whatever rights the king still had over all the other lands taken from his predecessors by the kings of France. It was, in short, the transference from Henry to Edward of all those parts of the British Islands outside England itself where the English King had any claim to rule. Along with these outlying dependencies, went every vestige that remained of the Norman inheritance of William the Bastard and the Aquitanian inheritance of Eleanor of Guienne. Edward Avas thus made the representative of the claims still brought forward from time to time for the restitution of the great Angevin Empire, reduced to insignificance by the heedless folly of John and the watchful aggressions of the French kings. The results of both series of grants Avere of unsjieakable importance for the future history of Edward, and indeed for the future destinies of the British Islands. It was perhaps the greatest Avork of EdAvard's life to revive and extend the policy of the great West Saxon kings before the Conquest of reducing the whole British Islands under the rule of the English King. The firmness and clearness with which Edward persisted in this policy may in no small measure be attributed to his early experience as ruler of Wales, Chester, and Ireland. Hardly second in importance to the imperial schemes of Edward in Britain was the firm policy with which he upheld England in a foremost place in the councils of Europe. This again can be traced back to his early experiences as a ruler of the English King's dominions in France. That he thought the real acquisition of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland more important and more worthy objects than vain attempts to renew the Angevin Empire on the Continent is perhaps almost equally true of his later policy. His early Gascon training gave him opportunities for reforming the institutions and developing the resources of his great feudal duchy, while it could not but convince him of the real limitations imposed upon his power in the south of France.

It is important to realise the exact position of the lands made over by Henry to Edward when the youngprince was started on his active career. The appanage he received was a large one, but it Avas so unprofitable that Henry had to promise his son that the value of the lands settled on him slioukl not fall short of 15,000 marks. In fact, Edward's whole lordship was in such a disturbed state that the maintenance of law and order within it could only be assured by means of lavish subsidies from the roj'al Exchequer. Such subsidies Henry was in no condition to make. The impossible task was therefore assicrned to Edward and his advisers of reducing Ireland, Wales, and Gascony with their own resources ; while at the same time it was necessary that sufficient revenue should be derived from these poor and disturbed regions to provide for the support of their lord's household.

Ireland was of all Edward's dominions in the most hopeless position. The first energies of the Norman conquerors of the twelfth century had been exhausted, and, though the great Norman houses still ruled extensive territories, they had begun to experience the attraction of Irish influence, and besides the hibernicisation of the Norman lords, the native septs were coming down from the hills and disputing with their new masters the domination of the plain country. But the power of the English crown had become insignificant alike over Norman lord and Irish chieftain. Edward's deputy at Dublin could command the obedience of neither. The Celtic chieftains upheld the tribal anarchy of the old Irish septs. The Norman lords saw their ideal of government in a political feudalism which gave the great landlord every regalian right, and necessarily involved the complete disintegration of all central authority. The central power was weak, foreign, and unpopular. These complicated evils had reduced the unhappy island to a state of confusion almost worse than that which had prevailed in the wild times of independence, before Strongbow and his associates had crossed the St. George's Channel. To grapple seriously with such difficulties was beyond the strcngtli of Edward's advisers. They paid little attention to Ireland, preferring to concentrate their efforts on the smaller and more accessible territory of Wales.

The plans of Edward's advisers in Wales for the reduction of Wales were made possible by the grant of the great earldom of Chester. Ever since the Conquest Chester had been a district standing by itself. It was a palatine earldom, set up by the Conqueror to keep in check the wild Welshmen. With this object the Earl was given an almost absolute control of the civil and military resources of his shire. His duties to the Crown were discharged by simple homage and service. He held Cheshire as freely by his sword as the King held England by his crown. This position is in all respects analogous to that of the practically independent feudal chieftains of France or Germany, The result was that Cheshire became a great military state. Its population were famed for their violence, turbulence, and martial powers. Headed by their fierce lords, the Cheshiremen had conquered nearly all Wales between the Dee and the Conway, though a later wave of Welsh enthusiasm had driven the invaders back almost to the walls of Chester. But the great line of Earls of Chester was now extinct. The bestowal of lapsed fiefs was among the most important of the prerogatives of the Crown. It was no small gain to the royal cause that Henry was thus able to invest his son with the rich, fair, and fertile Palatinate. It involved revenue, soldiers, influence, dignity, and the status of the greatest of English earls. It gave the new Earl of Chester means to make good the vaguer grant of "Wales."

Wales included all the exceptional jurisdictions of the western peninsula, largely but by no means exclusively inhabited by Welshmen. In thinking of the Wales of the thirteenth century, we must forget the modern boundary Avhich separates the twelve or thirteen counties of the Wales of to-day from the modern England. This boundary goes no farther back than the reign of Henry VIII. Thirteenth -century Wales included much that is now England, while some parts of what is now Wales w^ere then English ground. Beyond the vague and undefined western limits of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Gloucestershire, everything was Wales.

Before the Norman Conquest Wales had been ruled by a swarm of petty Celtic chieftains, whose energies were consumed in fruitless fights with each other, the true " battles of kites and crows " of British history. All owed a nominal allegiance to the English kings, but this lax feudal tie did not prevent them plundering and devastating the English border whenever a fair opportunity Avas offered. But the strong rule of William I. and his sons brought about a great change. The Xorman Conquest of England was followed by the Norman Conquest of Wales. A swarm of Norman adventurers crossed over the border and drove the Welsh from the fair plains to the barren uplands. The mutual jealousies of the petty Welsh kings and princes made national union impossible, and without union effectual resistance to the Normans was hardly to be thought of. But the Norman Conquerors were as little united as the Welsh that they displaced. As in Ireland, the ideal of feudal lord and clan chieftain had this in common that it involved an infinite division of political power. The Norman conquerors of Wales fought for their own hands and were almost independent of the kings of England. They set up therefore a

C whole host of petty states, over which they ruled like little kings. These small Norman principalities on Welsh ground Avere known as the Lordships Marcher, and the whole district as the Marches of Wales, though the original idea of the March as a border was largely lost sight of in an age when the Welsh Marches included the districts so remote from the English border as a great part of the modern Pembrokeshire. The most important of the Lordships Marcher of Wales were the palatine earldom of Pembroke and the great lordship of Grlamorgan, whose lords were not called Earls only because they had already that title from their English earldom of Gloucester. Next in importance was the lordship of Brecon, an appendage to the earldom of Hereford. More to the north the great family of Mortimer bore sway in Shropshire and the Middle Marches. The Four Cantreds of Perveddwlad (the plain country) Ehos, Rhuvoniog, Duflfryn Clwyd, and Tygeingl, which roughly corresponded to the modern Denbighshire and Flintshire, depended on the Earls of Chester. All southern and eastern AVales was thus March ground.